It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Turning diapers into sticky notes: Using chemical recycling to prevent millions of tons of waste
Every year, 3.5 million metric tons of sodden diapers end up in landfills.
The superabsorbent material inside these diapers is made up of a matrix of polymers that expand once dampness hits them. Polymers are a long chain of repeating units, and in this case, the absorbent material in diapers is based on the polymer polyacrylic acid.
A University of Michigan team has developed a technique to untangle these absorbent polymers and recycle them into materials similar to the gooey adhesives used in sticky notes and bandages. Their results are published in Nature Communications.
Broadly, recycling can be grouped into mechanical recycling and chemical recycling.
"Mechanical recycling is what most people think about: You separate different plastics based on their identities, chop them up into small pieces, melt them and reuse them, which lowers the quality of the product," said U-M chemist Anne McNeil, corresponding author of the paper.
Mechanical recycling leads to lower quality materials because different companies' plastics are constructed differently: The polymers can be different chain lengths or altered with different additives and dyes.
"There's just so many problems, everything usually gets downcycled and ends up as carpet fibers or park benches," said McNeil, whose lab focuses on the chemical recycling of plastics. "Chemical recycling is this idea of using chemistry and chemical transformations to make a value-added material, or at least a material as valuable as the original."
The qualities that generally make plastics desirable, such as toughness and durability, are also responsible for their difficulty in recycling. In particular, polymers are difficult to break down because they are held together by stable bonds.
McNeil, professor of chemistry and macromolecular science and engineering, and Takunda Chazovachii, who recently graduated from U-M with his doctoral degree in polymer chemistry, worked with Procter & Gamble to develop a three-step process that turns superabsorbent polymers into a reusable material—in this case, adhesives. The method needed to be energy-efficient and able to be deployed on an industrial scale.
"Superabsorbent polymers are particularly difficult to recycle because they are designed to resist degradation and retain water permanently," Chazovachii said. "The superabsorbent polymers and adhesives are both derived from acrylic acid. This common origin inspired our recycling idea."
The polymers in superabsorbent materials look like a loosely woven fishing net, McNeil says, except instead of a honeycomb mesh, these polymers have a crosslink every 2,000 units, which is more than enough to create an insoluble network structure. To recycle these materials, the researchers needed to find a way to delink the network polymer into water soluble chains. Chazovachii found that when these polymers are heated either in the presence of acid or base, their crosslinks are broken.
The researchers also needed to determine whether these processes would be feasible on an industrial scale. Collaborators Madeline Somers, a research assistant at the U-M Graham Sustainability Institute, and Jose Alfaro, a researcher in the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, performed a life cycle assessment. They learned that using this acid method to de-crosslink the polymers would exhibit a 10 times lower global warming potential, based on carbon dioxide release, and would require 10 times less energy than using a base-mediated approach.
Next, the researchers needed to shorten the long chains of polymers within the material to produce different types of adhesives. Chazovachii realized sonication—using tiny bursting air bubbles to break the polymer chains—could cut the chains in pieces without changing the chains' chemical properties.
"What we really liked about this method is that it is a mild and simple mechanical process," he said. "It breaks the polymer but leaves its building blocks, or acid groups, intact, so you can actually do other reactions with it."
Finally, Chazovachii, assisted by chemistry professor Paul Zimmerman and his student Michael Robo, converted acid groups on the polymer chains to ester groups. This changes the properties from water soluble to organic soluble, and they become tacky, like an adhesive. An extra bonus: The reagent used in this reaction, which also serves as the solvent, could be recycled and reused. After testing the adhesive properties, Chazovachii realized that sonication wasn't necessary to target one type of adhesives, further simplifying the approach.
Finally, the researchers needed to show that developing adhesives from recycled polymers was easier on the planet than making adhesives from petroleum—the typical route. Comparing their route to adhesives to the conventional one, the authors found that there is a 22% reduction in global warming potential and 25% reduction in energy for the route using recycled diapers.
The researchers say they work with diapers that are already clean—but companies that clean used diapers are cropping up, such as the Procter & Gamble affiliate FaterSMART. Additionally, Chazovachii says the conditions of the chemical recycling would kill any surviving bacteria.
McNeil says she hopes that synthetic chemists who work on making reactions for small molecules will turn their attention to polymers.
"This is just one paper, but I've moved most of my research in this direction because I think it's a really open opportunity for synthetic chemists to make an impact on a real-world problem," McNeil said. "I want more people to be thinking about this because the global plastics problem is so huge and chemists can play a really important role in reimagining what we do with this waste."
More information: P. Takunda Chazovachii et al, Giving superabsorbent polymers a second life as pressure-sensitive adhesives, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24488-9
Backscattered-electron (BSE) image of a botryoidal Pt-Pd nugget. Credit: Rogerio Kwitko-Ribeiro.
International drilling efforts over the last decades into the seafloor have provided increasing evidence for the existence of an extensive deep biosphere below the seafloor. There, circulating fluids in the sub-seafloor deliver chemical compounds from which energy is produced to fuel microbial life in such deep ecosystems. Our understanding of the role of such chemolithotrophic microbes in the continental deep biosphere, however, is much more limited due to poor accessibility.
Only a few places worldwide, mostly some of the oldest continental crust fragments such as Archean cratons, enable direct sampling of the continental deep biosphere. Such places indicate that deep-seated fractures act as fluid pathways and deliver microbially important nutrients to otherwise hostile habitats. The availability of selenium (Se) might play a crucial role in such systems because the reduction of oxidized Se species provides by far more energy than the reduction of sulfate. Hence, even small amounts of Se could potentially sustain microbial activity if the right physicochemical conditions are met.
An international team led by scientists from Brazil and Germany investigated Se-rich platinum-palladium (Pt-Pd) nuggets from a placer deposit in Minas Gerais (Brazil), a locality where Pd has originally been identified. Although such Pt-Pd nuggets are covered by biofilms, the formation of such nuggets remains elusive. High-precision Se-isotope data were therefore combined with trace-metal data and Pt-Os ages to assess the nugget formation and to identify potential microbial processes.
The combined data show that the Pt-Pd nuggets formed about 180 million years ago, likely by replacement of precursor vein minerals in the host quartzite at 70 degrees C and approximately 800 meters below the surface. The high levels of Se and other biophilic elements (iodine, organic carbon, nitrogen), together with an extremely negative Se isotopic composition, the lowest yet measured in natural samples (δ82/76Se = –17.4 to –15.4= ‰), are consistent with a microbial origin. Abiogenic processes cannot be fully excluded yet, but the study suggests that the Pt-Pd nuggets plausibly record Se-dependent microbial activity in the continental deep biosphere.
Stephan König and Benjamin Eickmann, who performed the Se-isotope analysis, remark that the difficulty in sampling the continental deep biosphere can be circumvented by applying novel isotope proxies to weathering-resistant minerals such as nuggets. This novel approach may provide a wealth of information that is needed to enhance our understanding of the continental deep biosphere.
More information: Alexandre Raphael Cabral et al, Extreme fractionation of selenium isotopes and possible deep biospheric origin of platinum nuggets from Minas Gerais, Brazil, Geology (2021). DOI: 10.1130/G49088.1
Dogs can tell when people are lying to them, study finds
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
A team of researchers at the University of Vienna has found that dogs can sometimes tell when people are lying to them. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes experiments they conducted with hundreds of dogs, and what was learned about their ability to detect deception in unknown people.
Adult humans have been found to engage in mental state assessments of others. People determine, based on various clues, the truthfulness of other people, for example. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if the same might be true of dogs. To find out, they carried out simple experiments with 260 dog volunteers of various breeds.
In the experiments, all of the dogs were taught to follow the advice of an unknown human in choosing which of two bowls contained a hidden treat. By following the advice, they received the treat. Then the researchers mixed things up. They allowed the dogs to watch as another unknown human moved the treat from one bowl to another while a second unknown human watched; in other cases, the second human was absent from the switch-up. The researchers then conducted the same experiments with the dogs and the second person in the switch-up to see if the dogs would continue to follow the advice.
The researchers found that the dogs ignored the human advice if the person had not been present when the bowls were switched—they knew the person did not know which bowl had the treat. But more importantly, half of the dogs ignored the human advice when they knew from observation that the human was pointing at the wrong bowl—evidence indicating that the dogs knew the humans were lying to them.
As an aside, the researchers noted that the same experiments had been carried out by prior researchers with humans under the age of five, macaques and chimpanzees. In those experiments, the children and the other animals were much more likely than the dogs to follow the advice of the obvious liar over what they knew to be true. They suggest this indicates that the dogs were less trusting of the unknown human giving the advice.
More information: Lucrezia Lonardo et al, Dogs follow human misleading suggestions more often when the informant has a false belief, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.0906
A morning view of the landscape in the Ihosy district of south-central Madagascar. Credit: Sean Hixon
Madagascar is renowned for its unique and varied biodiversity, which spans dry grasslands, wet rain forests, mangroves and deserts. This variety, combined with the island's isolation and size, has fostered distinctive assemblages of plants and animals, including the country's famous lemurs and baobab trees.
Yet until relatively recently, Madagascar was even more diverse. Species like the elephant bird, dwarf hippo and giant lemurs inhabited the island within the past 2,000 years. The causes and timeline of their extinctions are intertwined with the arrival of humans and the animals we brought with us, a topic that has challenged scientists for decades. Now this is the focus of two studies led by UC Santa Barbara anthropology doctoral student Sean Hixon.
"Madagascar's remarkable biodiversity is threatened, yet people have lived on the island for over a millennium," Hixon said. "A long-term understanding of how people and introduced species shaped Madagascar's ecosystems gives important context to the current crisis."
"Because this is an island that has so much biodiversity, and so much of that biodiversity is native only to Madagascar—is highly endemic—the question has always been what impact has human arrival had on this large, biodiverse island," added co-author Kristina Douglass, an archeologist at Pennsylvania State University.
The new studies have finally answered some of these questions by analyzing different isotopes of nitrogen and carbon in ancient animal remains. In the process, the team nearly doubled the number of reliably radiocarbon dated traces of past human activity from the island.
The most recent study, which appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, establishes an overlap between the arrival of domesticated herbivores and the continued existence of some of the region's megafauna. It then compares the animals' ecological niches and discusses how they may have influenced one another. The other paper, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, details how dogs interacted with Madagascar's ancient ecosystems and compares them to the island's native top predator, the fosa.
"The extinction of large-bodied animals sometime in the past 1,000 years has always been a very contentious debate," Douglass explained. "And what we've done in this paper, for the first time, is really look at how much interaction there was between animals that people brought and those that ended up going extinct to see if any kind of competition or interactions played a role."
Ultimately, the researchers confirmed that most of Madagascar's recently extinct megafauna briefly co-occurred with introduced species, meaning that the newcomers likely contributed to their demise. "We found that a series of disappearances of large endemic animals —including giant tortoises, elephant birds, pygmy hippos and giant lemurs—coincides with the arrival of goats, sheep, bush pigs and cattle in southern and western Madagascar between 1,200 and 700 years ago," Hixon said.
However, the results suggest that direct competition may not have been what drove the island's large herbivores over the edge. Rather, indirect impacts like changing habitats and an expanding human population could have had more pronounced effects.
A time and a place
Although the earliest traces of human activity on Madagascar are subject to debate, some estimates of human arrival suggest that people were perhaps present on the island as long as 10,000 years ago. At some point dogs and livestock joined them.
Hixon and his team sought to determine whether these domesticated animals even crossed paths with the island's megafauna. Settling this question required dating as many bone samples as possible, both from the field and from collections, using radiocarbon analysis.
Atoms of a given element all have the same number of positive protons; indeed, this number defines an element. But they can vary in the number of chargeless neutrons in their nuclei, giving the different isotopes slightly different weights. Scientists can glean a lot of information by analyzing these ratios.
For example, a living organism will have a similar proportion of stable carbon-12 to radioactive carbon-14 as its environment. However, after death, the creature can no longer replenish the decaying 14C. So, scientists can use the ratio between the two isotopes to estimate the age of organic matter.
Hixon and his colleagues used this approach to date 83 introduced animals (dogs and livestock) and 75 endemic animals. They found that the two groups did overlap in time and space, and statistical analysis suggests that all the regional extinctions occurred within the span of 500 years, between A.D. 800 and 1300. These are the first papers to show an overlap between human-introduced animals and Malagasy megafauna, Hixon and Douglass said.
This is a significant finding in a line of research that has been plagued by a paucity of data. Malagasy specimens are uncommon, and many are poorly documented, Hixon explained. What's more, carbon dating is expensive. Commercial services can cost more than $500 for a single sample. Fortunately, Penn State has the facilities to do this in house, and co-author Douglas Kennett (Hixon's advisor) has recently established a lab at UC Santa Barbara to prepare specimens for this technique.
Still, radiocarbon dating cost the team over $100 per specimen. Given the cost and facilities this requires, it's a significant issue in terms of scientific and cultural equity for researchers and communities in regions with fewer resources invested in the paleosciences, the authors said. These two studies alone have increased the number of reliably dated traces of past human activity from the island by more than 75%. "So this is a massive contribution and increase in just building up the chronology for human arrival and activity in Madagascar," Douglass said.
Diets and interactions
The team also analyzed ratios between two stable isotopes of both carbon and nitrogen to investigate the ecology of ancient animals. Ratios of carbon isotopes are sensitive to the type of photosynthesis different plants employ. Woody plants, like trees and shrubs, tend to use C3 photosynthesis. Grasses and the succulents of the island's southwest tend to employ C4 and CAM photosynthesis, respectively, which use different enzymes.
The pathways differ slightly in their tendency to incorporate different carbon isotopes into biomass: C3 plants have a lower ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 compared to their C4 and CAM relatives. By analyzing a sample's 13C to 12C ratio, the researchers could learn about an herbivore's diet and the type of ecosystem it likely inhabited: Open grasslands or dense forests. They could also extend this information to carnivores, like dogs and fosa, by extrapolating from the types of herbivores they ate.
The nitrogen isotopes also provided the team with information on animals' ecological niches. Animals higher on the food chain tend to have tissues enriched in heavier 15N, as opposed to 14N.
The stable isotopes revealed a mixture of overlapping and non-overlapping niches between the endemic megafauna and the introduced herbivores. For example, goats appear to have eaten similar forage to the island's giant tortoises and pygmy hippos. Zebu and sheep likely relied significantly more on succulents and grasses than did any of the island's endemic megafauna, especially the giant lemurs and elephant birds.
Meanwhile, the analysis reveals stark contrasts between introduced dogs and endemic fosa. Ancient fosa primarily consumed forest-dwelling animals, while dogs relied more heavily on prey from relatively open habitats and possibly food scraps from people. "Dogs certainly arrived in time to help people hunt megafauna," Hixon said, "and could have interacted with some of the extinct giant lemurs. But the data suggests that dogs weren't consistently eating any of the extinct megafauna."
Despite the often distinct diets of introduced and endemic animals, the introduction of new species to the island could still have contributed to the extinction of Madagascar's megafauna. It is easy to construct a simplified concept of extinctions based on direct impacts like overhunting or direct competition, but the process can be much more subtle. "People are extremely good at settling new places, in the sense of creating a niche that suits them," Douglass said. "And not only just suits people, but suits the animals that people rely on."
For instance, expanding zebu herds could have impacted the island's native animals even if they ate different plants. Their presence may still have threatened the megafauna through indirect competition if people were clearing land for grazing and occasionally hunting megafauna. And the success of the zebu would have fostered human population growth, with all the impacts it entails. Indirect interactions such as these could account for a period of coexistence between humans and Malagasy megafauna.
Understanding a process like extinction will require looking at many different angles. "It's not just that people arrived on Madagascar, it's that people arrived and then were experimenting with different kinds of livelihoods," Douglass added. "And each of those different livelihoods had different types of impacts on the environment."
Continuing to unravel the past
There's evidence that Madagascar was also experiencing climatic changes around the time of human arrival. The recent studies don't exclude the possibility that environmental changes may have contributed to the demise of the island's megafauna. In fact, the team just submitted a paper investigating how endemic and introduced herbivores responded to drying conditions in the island's southwest during the past 1,600 years. And competition between plants, as well as human land use, could have contributed to historical vegetation changes.
Hixon, Douglass and their co-authors have many plans for future research. To start, they want to look at specimens from more areas of the island. These papers were mostly limited to the country's arid southwest, where specimens preserve well. However, Madagascar hosts an astounding diversity of ecosystems that researchers have yet to fully explore.
Hixon plans to further investigate the island's ancient food webs. He is curious to learn more about when introduced mice and rats arrived on the island, how they likely interacted with endemic small mammals, and how they responded to past vegetation and climate change.
Douglass' lab has begun using remote sensing technology to predict the locations of undiscovered archeological settlements and signatures of land use change in the Southwest. She's curious if pastoralists living in particular places for generations have altered the soil chemistry and distribution of different vegetation types.
This research also has potential applications beyond its importance in documenting the culture, history and ecology of the island. As a biodiversity hotspot, Madagascar's ecosystems are critical areas for conservation, and there is ongoing work to rewild parts of the island. For instance, giant tortoises have already been reintroduced to western Madagascar from Aldabra Atoll in the western Indian Ocean.
"The type of work that we're doing is important for the long-term success of efforts like this," Hixon said, "because if we don't understand why the animals disappeared in the first place, it's pretty unlikely that reintroduction efforts will work."
More information: Sean W. Hixon et al, Late Holocene spread of pastoralism coincides with endemic megafaunal extinction on Madagascar, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1204
Of the states that opted out of federal unemployment benefits early, workers came back where vaccination rates were higher.
The more vaccinated states saw their headcounts increase by 11%, according to a Gusto analysis.
The analysis comes as the Delta variant rises across the country, and threatens the economy.
The labor market has a big puzzle at its center: Millions of Americans are unemployed, so why are so many workers not returning to work - or just quitting their jobs altogether?
More than half of the governors in America are blaming one thing: Enhanced unemployment benefits.
"Alabama is giving the federal government our 30-day notice that it's time to get back to work," Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in her announcement that federal benefits, which includes $300 in weekly benefits and programs that expanded both eligibility and the duration of benefits, would end early in the state. Yet, people still haven't rushed back to work.
That could be due to low vaccination rates, according to an analysis by economist Luke Pardue at payroll platform Gusto. That analysis found that workers over the age of 25 flocked back to work in states with higher vaccination rates; employment gains were led by states that had the most fully vaccinated adults.
Among the states that cut off benefits early, an average of 31% of adults were fully vaccinated
The six most vaccinated states in this group of 12- Alaska, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming - had an average of 34% of adults vaccinated when governors announced the end of $300 in weekly federal unemployment benefits. Since April 2021, worker headcount across that group of six increased by 11%.
Meanwhile, the story was different in less-vaccinated states - Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi, and Nebraska, which had a cumulative average of 27% of adults vaccinated - prematurely cutting off benefits. Their headcounts grew by just 3% since April 11.
Significantly, according to Gusto, the two groups of states had similar employment trends until the announcement that benefits would be revoked. Once that came, "nearly all of the growth after the announcement dates is driven by growth in higher-vaccinated states."
The ongoing labor shortage is still mostly about health concerns
The data shows, again, how so-called labor shortages are still driven by the ongoing pandemic and its accompanying health and safety concerns. Currently, the more contagious Delta variant is responsible for the majority of cases in the US - and it's also emerged as a threat to the economy. The CDC is now recommending that even fully vaccinated adults should mask up in public indoors spaces in high transmission areas.
But even unemployed workers in states that haven't opted out of benefits early will soon be impacted: 20 million Americans will lose their benefits in weeks, but Congress isn't budging on extending relief - even in the face of another covid surge.
USA
Critical pipelines have reported more than 220 cyber incidents since May TSA directive
Critical pipeline operators have reported more than 220 cybersecurity incidents since the Transportation Security Administration implemented emergency measures in the wake of the crippling ransomware attack on one of America's most important pipelines, according to TSA Administrator David Pekoske.
Companies have been reporting incidents since day one of the agency's May 28 security directive aimed at critical pipelines, Pekoske told CNN in an interview. Reporting of cybersecurity incidents has ramped up since the directive, according to Pekoske, who said the reports will help TSA understand the risks facing the industry. Prior to the directive, reporting was voluntary.
TSA issued its first cybersecurity directive following the ransomware incident at Colonial Pipeline, which prompted the shutdown of operations and led to several days of panic gasoline buying and shortages throughout the East Coast.
The directive includes a requirement for around 100 critical pipeline companies to report cybersecurity incidents to the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency within 12 hours, a DHS official previously said. TSA has unique authority over the surface transportation industry, which includes more than 2.7 million miles of natural gas and hazardous liquid pipelines, allowing the agency to regulate the industry.
Companies are required to report incidents related to unauthorized access of an IT or operational technology system, discovery of malicious software, activity resulting in a denial of service, a physical attack against network infrastructure or any other cybersecurity incident that results in operational disruption, according to the directive.
The incidents are reported to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and that agency evaluates each incident to determine if a response is needed, TSA spokesperson Alexa Lopez told CNN.
"TSA and CISA will use this information to determine the most appropriate mitigating measures to close potential vulnerability gaps in the national critical function set of pipelines," she said in a statement.
Pressed during a congressional hearing Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on whether companies are reporting cyberattacks "as fully as they should be," Pekoske said, "Yes, they are reporting more than they have in the past."
"The first security directive, the first thing it requires is reporting for significant incidents, because we wanted to get a baseline of information as to what is going on," the administrator told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Pekoske told lawmakers the reporting requirement is beneficial for companies to see they aren't alone, and he expects the reporting to "continue to be robust," which will help TSA. The raw data from the reports will not be made public for propriety reasons, but summary data will be available.
Under the first directive, the pipeline owners and operators are also required to designate a "24/7, always available" cybersecurity coordinator who can respond to incidents and coordinate with TSA and the department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Within 30 days of the directive, the pipelines were also required to complete and assess how their practices align with TSA's long-standing pipeline guidance, identify any gaps and propose plans to remedy those gaps.
All the designated pipeline owner/operators have complied with the requirements in the first directive, Pekoske told the congressional panel on Tuesday, including conducting the self-assessment. TSA, working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is analyzing all the assessments to identify further mitigation efforts, according to Pekoske.
In July, TSA issued a second directive escalating cybersecurity requirements for the industry, a move meant to protect against ransomware and other known threats.
Pipeline companies expressed concerns about the second security directive, including its "aggressive time lines," and pipeline operators requested more time, Pekoske told the panel on Tuesday.
Pipeline companies are allowed to provide TSA with plans for alternative security procedures, according to Pekoske, who said there will be a "very good give and take" with the industry.
The two directives are not based solely on the Colonial incident and are in place for a year but can be extended. The agency, Pekoske told CNN, is reviewing longer-term cybersecurity efforts, but no decisions have been made yet.
"The Colonial incident was criminal activity. We are concerned about other activity that might target pipeline systems in the country," he said.
THE GHOST OF KLEIN HAUNTS ALBERTA About 350 AHS jobs to be affected by outsourcing of linen and laundry services
Alberta Health Services is outsourcing the last of its in-house laundry jobs, impacting 334 employees.
In a statement Monday, AHS said the remaining linen and laundry services will transition to K-Bro Linen Systems starting in September.
K-Bro already handles more than two-thirds of AHS’s linen services including in Calgary, Edmonton, Hinton and Edson.
The company will begin taking over the rural Calgary zone followed by the south, central and north zones. AHS estimates it will take 34 weeks for K-Bro to completely take over providing linen services throughout the province by April 2022.
“If AHS were to try to maintain the existing in-house services, more than $38 million in upgrades would be required to ensure both safety and quality of services. Alternatively, AHS would need to invest more than $100 million to build new modern linen systems across the province,” the statement says.
The outsourcing will impact approximately 334 full-time, part-time and casual employees, the health authority said.
“AHS is committed to working with them and their union throughout this process to explore potential options in accordance with the collective agreement,” according to the statement.
Kevin Barry, vice-president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE), said the move to outsource the remaining jobs is going to hurt rural Alberta. He expects K-Bro to centralize operations in larger cities and not keep the rural positions that exist now.
“(Government officials) talk about a strategy to help small businesses recover from the pandemic and this is certainly not a way to do it — to cut jobs from the rural communities who are going to need these people to shop in their communities to help support small business,” he said.
K-Bro Linen Systems did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Barry said it is risky to be trucking in linen to communities if there is ever bad weather that might impact road conditions.
Last year the government said it would be cutting 11,000 Alberta Health Services jobs mostly by outsourcing positions in laboratories, housekeeping, food services and laundry. The change is estimated to save $600 million annually.
A review conducted by Ernst & Young in 2020 found that outsourcing seven different services including linen, housekeeping and food would save the government between $100 million and $146 million annually.
The news of the upcoming cuts led to a one-day wildcat strike last year by some AHS employees in an effort to get the government to change its mind.
Greenhouse gas-cutting project cancelled by city, citing high cost
The bottom line sealed the deal for the city in cancelling its district energy heating system project before it was fully realized.
High costs of facility construction and the price tag associated with the work needed to re-furbish customer buildings to facilitate the heat — as well as creating connecting supply lines — derailed efforts to develop the district energy heating system in Nelson’s downtown, according to Nelson Hydro’s general manager.
“The City of Nelson aspires to achieve 100 per cent renewables by 2040, and the district energy concept was a desirable option to reduce greenhouse gases produced by heating from natural gas,” said Scott Spencer in a release from the city.
“Unfortunately, it isn’t an economically viable solution at this time.”
City manager Kevin Cormack noted that access to low-cost biomass was also “a project risk,” considering other larger-scale facilities in the region were creating a similar product, such as the REN Energy renewable natural gas facility in Fruitvale and Mercer’s biomass gasification project in Castlegar.
Cormack said in the press release that he was “happy there is potential that the private sector will step up to build these facilities in our area, and that has allowed us to step back and be a customer versus the developer. These facilities will help the region meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals and allow Nelson Hydro to focus on serving its customers.” Around 10 years ago the city first started to investigate the creation of a centralized heat source to supply heat to multiple buildings in the downtown core.
Six years ago Nelson Hydro advanced the biomass plant project to the creation of a business case and preliminary design, but customer reception for the biomass project was characterized as “warm,” said the then Nelson Hydro manager, Alex Love.
Utilizing biomass from locally collected wood waste, the district energy system was expected to be a low carbon alternative to heating with natural gas. The district energy system proposed for Nelson was to use a central heating plant, an underground piping system that would transport heated water to buildings within the community, and energy transfer stations at each building that would transfer the heat from the water to the facility.
The central energy plant was projected to have a biomass boiler used wood waste from the local area as a fuel source. The system was for heat only and not electricity generation.
The full project had a capital cost of about $6 million, with a payback of 15 years or less based on a combination of financing rates, grant funding and customer connections.
However, several subsequent feasibility studies showed the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction benefits did not offset the high cost estimates.
According to the city, other energy options were explored — like heat pumps that use lake water, geo-exchange and sewer waste heat — but proved either not obtainable or the cost was too high.
The cancellation slightly derails the city’s vision.
“Nelson Hydro will continue to monitor developments in district heating; however, its primary focus will continue to be providing low cost, reliable, renewable electricity,” said Spencer.
Timothy Schafer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Nelson Daily
In Spain, Iberian lynx claws back from brink of extinction
At a nature reserve in southern Spain, four baby Iberian lynxes sleep peacefully beside their mother, part of a captive breeding programme that has brought the species back from the brink of extinction.
The El Acebuche breeding centre at the Donana National Park, home to one of Europe's largest wetlands, is one of five breeding sites set up in the 2000s to boost their numbers in the wild. Four are in Spain and one in Portugal.
Slightly larger than a red fox, the Iberian lynx is distinguished by a white-and-black beard and black ear tufts.
There were around 100,000 of them in the two nations at start of the 20th century, but urban development, hunting and road kill all took their toll.
Most damaging of all however was a dramatic decline in the numbers of wild rabbits, their main prey, due to disease. By 2002, the wild cat's numbers had plummeted to fewer than 100.
That prompted warnings from the WWF that the Iberian lynx -- found only in Spain and Portugal -- risked becoming the first big cat to fall into extinction since the sabre-tooth tiger died out 10,000 years ago.
The authorities and conservation groups have managed to reverse the trend by fighting poaching, reintroducing rabbits into the wild and -- most important of all -- through the breeding programme.
By the end of last year there were just over 1,100 Iberian lynxes living in the two countries, most of them in Spain's southern region of Andalusia.
The conservation programme has also reintroduced captive-bred animals across southern and central Spain in the regions of Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Murcia -- as well as in Portugal
"We are very pleased and surprised by the results," the coordinator of the El Acebuche breeding centre, Antonio Rivas, told AFP.
The five breeding centres have managed to become "lynx-producing factories", he said.
The lynxes live and breed in a large, enclosed park that recreates their natural habitat. Their caretakers try to disturb them as little as possible to prevent the animals from getting used to the presence of humans.
These days, the main cause of death for wild lynxes is related to human activities such as poaching, said Rivas: "So the less interaction they have with humans, the better it will be."
The lynxes live off a diet of live rabbits, which staff place in a box that only opens several hours later. That delay prevents the lynx from associating the presence of the rabbits with humans, said caretaker Antonio Pardo.
He and all the other staff members wear face masks at all times because the lynxes, like other feline species, can catch Covid-19.
A system of cameras and microphones help staff monitor the animals around the clock to study their behaviour.
Sitting in front of a wall of screens, Blanca Rodriguez points to one showing Nota and her litter: Sismo, Sicilia, Senegal and Susurro.
"It's nap time, we're going to see them rest," she said.
- 'Freedom!' -
In March 2005, El Acebuche recorded its first births of Iberian lynxes in captivity -- three cubs, two of which survived.
The first litters remained in captivity for several years until they reached breeding age, so as to avoid having to capture more felines in the wild.
But since 2011 the breeding centres have released just over 300 lynxes.
When they are about one year old the lynxes are tagged with a GPS tracker and taken to their natural habitat "where we open the cage and... freedom!" said Rivas.
Eighty-five percent of Iberian lynxes born in captivity are released into the wild.
About 70 percent of them survive and each female lynx has up to six kittens per year.
Despite these encouraging results however, the International Union for Conservation of Nature still lists the animal as "endangered".
The WWF estimates the species will be out of danger only when its population surpasses 3,000, including 750 breeding females.
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Homeless encampment violence in Toronto betrays any real hope for police reform
These police raids terrorized already traumatized people, and have taken away the last space they have to survive. Most of the displaced residents remain unhoused and are likely to be exposed to even more dangerous circumstances away from the support that the encampments offered.
The widespread criticism of these evictions focus on the human rights breaches that have occurred. But what is equally troubling is that promises made by the police to be more accountable to marginalized communities have been exposed as a fraud.
In her meticulous analysis, Justice Gloria J. Epstein, an independent reviewer of the report, found that while some dedicated officers did excellent work, the overall investigation had “serious flaws” and was marred by “systematic discrimination.” The report made clear that, while those murdered were part of the LGBTQ2S+ community, “these victims were marginalized and vulnerable in a variety of ways.”
A major theme of the 151 inquiry recommendations is the absolute necessity of repairing the badly damaged trust between the Toronto Police and marginalized communities, which include racialized and Indigenous people, those experiencing homelessness and people with mental health issues.
In other words, repairing trust with the very people who are most likely to have been forced to take shelter in homeless encampments in Toronto parks in order to survive the pandemic. Those who take refuge in encampments tend to be the most vulnerable and victimized of people experiencing homelessness, and are more likely to have complex needs that are poorly served by the shelter system.
In their response three months ago, Tory and Police Chief James Ramer vowed to listen to and build a relationship with the very same people who are now being beaten and pepper-sprayed, and having their shelters bulldozed.
Tory pledged that he was “personally committed” to renewing a relationship with vulnerable communities, including homeless people. He stated, “the safety of all Toronto residents — every single resident in every community — is my number one priority. Maintaining the trust of all of our communities is extremely important to the ongoing success of the Toronto Police Service.”
“We understand, however, that saying ‘sorry’ only means something if it is followed by demonstrated and sustained action, and a commitment to the marginalized and vulnerable communities most impacted by the issues outlined in this report. We vow to listen to you, and to act.”
A profound betrayal
In her report, Epstein was hopeful that that there was a “genuine commitment” to build a “new relationship between the service and marginalized and vulnerable communities.”
The violence used to forcibly evict homeless park users over the past few weeks not only suggests otherwise, but amounts to a profound betrayal of public trust.
The vow of the mayor and police chief to “listen” and “act” in the interests of marginalized people now read as a cynical public relations ploy.
How many “missing persons” did the police create when residents fled the police violence and destruction of their shelters? As an institution the police do not seem capable of caring about vulnerable people. And they are now making their disdain clear for reforms that would make them more accountable.
If the police can so casually ignore a central recommendation resulting from how they failed marginalized people who were targeted by a serial killer, how can we now possibly expect any type of calls for democratic reform to be treated seriously?
Elliot Fonarev, Cheryl Cheung, Deanna Pikkov and Ferdouse Asefi are research assistants who provided assistance with this piece.
Joe Hermer receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the University of Toronto COVID-19 Action Fund. He advises not-for-profit groups on policing issues.
