Monarch butterflies raised in captivity can still join the migration

by Alana Wilcox, Ryan Norris, The Conversation

Migrating monarch butterflies rest at Pismo Beach, Calif. on their way to Mexico. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Each year, thousands of hobbyists and educators across North America collect monarch eggs or caterpillars from the wild to raise indoors and patiently wait for butterflies to emerge. Raising monarch butterflies indoors has become an increasingly popular activity that can have numerous benefits.

Captively reared monarchs provide a unique opportunity for people to learn about the complex life cycle of butterflies and, at the same time, help raise awareness about monarch conservation. However, rearing monarchs (and other butterflies) must be done responsibly and in moderation to make sure that it does not have a negative effect on the population.

Monarch butterflies undergo a multi-generational migration in spring and summer that will bring them as far north as Canada and then, in the fall, a new generation of monarchs undergo a unique transformation that prepares them for a single-bout long-distance migration south. These larger, stronger monarch butterflies will travel more than 4,500 kilometers to congregate and overwinter by the millions in the tree canopies high in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico.

Population decline

The overwintering population of eastern monarch butterflies, however, has been dwindling from an occupancy level of 44.95 hectares in 1997 to 14.95 hectares in 2019 to five hectares this year. Some causes of this decline are thought to be loss of milkweed on which caterpillars feed, long-term changes in climate and deforestation at their overwintering sites. This has caused concern about the likelihood of extinction and the loss of the migratory phenomenon.

Rearing monarchs indoors has been touted as a way to help bolster population numbers and mitigate declines. In reality, indoor rearing probably does little to supplement the wild population, but arguably goes a long way towards awareness and education.

A PBS Nature special on overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico.

The practice of indoor rearing is not without controversy and has been considered potentially harmful due to the negative impact it could have on butterfly health and the risk it could pose to the butterflies' ability to migrate to Mexico.

However, our recent research provides some evidence that monarchs raised indoors may still be able to migrate south to their overwintering grounds.

Disoriented butterflies

Our team at the University of Guelph raised monarch caterpillars on milkweed indoors in controlled environmental conditions that approximated what monarchs would experience naturally in the wild. Once butterflies emerged from their cocoons, they were tested in a flight simulator, a large open vessel with a digital sensor that recorded which direction the monarchs attempted to fly.

The results from this experiment were consistent with previous research showing that indoor-reared monarchs, on average, did not orient in the proper direction for migration to Mexico.

Monarch butterflies' inability to orient in the flight simulator could be the result of a lack of exposure to natural and direct sunlight during development. Many animals are equipped with an internal clock that tells the animal when to perform certain activities. For monarch butterflies, this internal clock is located in their antennae and, when coupled with visual information on the sun's position, tells the monarch which direction it should fly each fall.

Monarch butterflies hatched in captivity but released in the wild were found to join the southward migration. Credit: Wilcox, Newman, Raine, Mitchell, and Norris, Author provided

Recalibration in natural light

Given this, our research team went one step further to determine if indoor-reared monarchs exposed to natural environmental conditions and sunlight after they were released could calibrate their internal compass and fly south.

To do so, our team attached tiny radio transmitters to a second group of indoor-reared monarchs and released the butterflies into the wild. The radio transmitters emit a signal during migration and, if a monarch flies close enough, can be received at one of several hundred automatic radio receiving towers scattered across North America, called the Motus telemetry array.

We detected 29 butterflies at the beginning of migration and found that, given some time outdoors, these butterflies were able to get their bearings and fly southward. This suggests that under certain controlled conditions, raising monarchs indoors may not affect their orientation and ability to start migration.

Indoor rearing offers a valuable tool for learning and fostering a connection to nature. Our results help curb concern that indoor rearing negatively impacts monarch orientation.

While more research needs to be conducted to determine how monarchs perform under different indoor conditions and at different rearing locations in North America, our research suggests that monarch enthusiasts may be able to continue enjoying the wonderful experience of raising these butterflies at home.

Monarchs raised in captivity can orient themselves for migration, study reveals

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Upcycling plastic waste into high-performing mechanical lubricants

by Steve Kuhlmann, Texas A&M University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Finding new solutions to address the challenges posed by plastic waste can dramatically improve global sustainability practices and help achieve a greener future. While many researchers are working to solve this problem on an international scale, a new, multi-institutional team is seeking to turn that waste into a high-performing contributor.

The research team is working on upcycling plastic waste into liquid lubricants, including oil, hydraulic fluids, heat transfer fluids and greases.

Led by Iowa State University, the project team includes Argonne National Laboratory, Chevron Philips Chemical Company, Chemstations Inc., American Packaging Corp., the City of Ames Resource Recovery Facility and Hy-Vee, alongside Texas A&M University. Ali Erdemir, Halliburton Chair in Engineering Professor and professor in the J. Mike Walker' 66 Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, leads the efforts for Texas A&M.

The project is one of 12 funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Plastics Innovation Challenge, an initiative designed to reduce plastic waste in oceans and landfills, as well as help to position the U.S. as a global leader in plastics recycling technologies and in the manufacture of new plastics that are recyclable by design. Their research was recently published in the journal ChemSusChem.

Erdemir said the team is working toward the common goal of demonstrating that plastic wastes can be responsibly and economically upcycled into high-performance lubricants and used to minimize friction and wear. If successful, the team hopes their research could help reduce both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

"This project aims to reduce the adverse impacts made by hundreds of millions of tons of waste plastics through upcycling in order to support a circular economy with minimal environmental impact," Erdemir said. "These responsibly recycled materials will provide new economic incentives by developing through a novel upcycling process to produce innovative value-added products."

Erdemir said the general public could see day-to-day benefits from this research through a less adverse impact from plastic waste, and cheaper—and potentially better functioning—lubricants used in cars and other industrial activities.

"Reducing plastic wastes to lubricating oils is quite remarkable and may lead to a greener and more sustainable future," Erdemir said. "Benefits could be huge as the end-products of this project will not only help reduce the adverse environmental impacts of plastic wastes, but also put them in use in a very green and continuously recyclable manner."

By turning the waste into high-performing lubricants that perform as well or even better than their traditional counterparts, Erdemir said the mechanical components that utilize the lubricants for smooth and safe operation could benefit through mechanical durability, energy efficiency and environmental compatibility.

Moving forward, the team will be researching both the cost and technology needed to upcycle the plastic waste into lubricants, as well as how well the product ultimately performs.

"By the end of our project, we hope that we turn plastic trash into lubricating treasures in a sound and cost-effective way, thus helping alleviate the dire consequences of plastic wastes, which are already hurting our planet in so many ways," Erdemir said. "If proven commercially viable, we expect our research findings to turn into a wide range of lubricating products—including engine oils and a wide range of industrial lubricants—that could help reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint of future transportation and other industrial systems."

Plastic waste has some economic benefit for developing countries

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More information: Ryan A. Hackler et al, Synthetic Lubricants Derived from Plastic Waste and their Tribological Performance, ChemSusChem (2021). DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202100912

Provided by Texas A&M University 

 

Returning nitrogen to soils without chemicals

by Flinders University

Credit: Flinders University

While agricultural production around the world struggles with declining soil health, Australian researchers are investigating production of a sustainable organic nitrogen fertilizer made from aquatic cyanobacterial biomass—ideally suited for badly degraded areas reliant on chemical fertilizers.

"Many soils are degraded and becoming less fertile. This challenges agriculture to produce sufficient high-quality food to feed the continuously growing population, which is further exacerbated by climatic instability threatening crop production," says Flinders University researcher Associate Professor Kirsten Heimann.

Scientists in Australia, US and Europe are testing a new biofertiliser made from a fast-growing freshwater cyanobacterium Tolypothrix, which can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere without the need for additional nitrogen fertilization, making the biomass inexpensive to produce compared to alternative microalgal and macroalgal biofertilisers.

This form of non-toxic blue-green algae can be cultivated in freshwater, and even slightly saline or industrial wastewater such as from coal-fired power stations, the research team has found. Capturing biofuel may also be used to offset production costs.

Energy inputs for the production of Tolypothrix biomass can be offset by producing biogas, essentially a methane-rich gas for either drying the biomass to extract high-value health supplement phycocyanin or to produce carbon and nitrogen-rich liquid and solid biofertilisers to remediate soil infertility.

In a recent paper in Chemosphere, Dr. Heimann and colleagues in Australia, the US and Spain investigate Tolypothrix production as a sustainable solution for biological soil improvement, which when combined with biogas or the spirulina-like nutritional powder promises "strong economic returns for regional and remote farming communities."

"Australian soils, in particular in the marginal wheat belt in Western Australia, are structurally degraded, which cannot be overcome by applications of synthetic fertilizers," says Associate Professor Heimann, from the Flinders University Centre for Marine Bioproducts Development in South Australia.

"To improve soil structure, organic carbon applications are required to return the soils' capacity to sustain a healthy soil microbiome and to improve the soils' cation exchange of nutrients and water-holding capacity."

Researchers say conversion of pond-produced cyanobacterial biomass produced on farming land would provide a major in-situ source of renewable nitrogen-rich fertilizer, also helping to reduce carbon emissions from chemical fertilizer production and transport.

Higher energy and food demands are forecast as a consequence of expected global population growth, predicted by the UN to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion in 2100.

These projections encourage research into biofertilizer and biogas production through sustainable energy generation using waste organic material of controlled production of biomass such as microalgae and multicellular cyanobacteria.

Researchers have previously reported photosynthetic fixation of CO2by cyanobacteria of 100 to >200 tons CO2ha−1y−1under outdoor cultivation conditions in open ponds, raceway ponds, photobioreactors and attached growthbioreactors.

Unlike many cyanobacterial species,Tolypothrixsp., a freshwater cyanobacterium, is filamentous and forms aggregates that self-flocculate, making it very easy to harvest from suspension cultures, reducing dewatering costs by up to 90%, studies suggest.

The article, "Biomass pre-treatments of the N2-fixing cyanobacterium Tolypothrix for co-production of methane," by C Velu, OP Karthikeyan, DL Brinkman, S Cirés and K Heimann, has been published in Chemosphere

Peatland fires reduce future methane production in peat soils

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More information: Chinnathambi Velu et al, Biomass pre-treatments of the N2-fixing cyanobacterium Tolypothrix for co-production of methane, Chemosphere (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.131246

Journal information: Chemosphere 

Provided by Flinders University 

 

More research needed to predict eruption of supervolcanoes

by Cardiff University

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Scientists say it is extremely challenging to try and predict when a supervolcano might erupt again due to the sheer diversity of events that have gone before.

Writing today in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, the team say there is not a single model which can describe how these catastrophic events play out, making it extremely difficult to determine how supervolcanoes may erupt in the future.

Supervolcanoes are defined as a volcano that has had at least one explosion of magnitude 8, the highest ranking on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, meaning it has released more than 1000 cubic kilometers of material.

When these huge volcanic systems explode, the associated 'supereruption' represents the most catastrophic of events caused by a natural hazard, resulting in widespread ash-fall blankets and ground-hugging pyroclastic flows, which can be hundreds of meters thick, covering thousands to tens of thousands of square kilometers.

These events also leave huge holes in the ground called Calderas due to the collapse of the Earth's surface through removal of such large volumes of magma.

However, these events are extremely rare, occurring roughly once every 100,000 years. To date, there are no unique explanations for the mechanisms, timings and extreme volumes of supereruptions.

In their study, the team, including scientists from Cardiff University, performed an in-depth review of field, geochemical and petrological evidence from 13 supereruptions that have occurred over the last two million years. They also reviewed geophysical studies of modern volcanic systems which provide a complimentary current snapshot of the magmatic system.

The events ranged from the most recent eruption at the Taupō volcano in New Zealand, over 24,000 years ago, to the oldest at Yellowstone in the U.S. roughly two million years ago.

Analysis of the data revealed no single, unified model that described how each of the 13 events played out and showed that the supereruptions could start mildly over weeks to months or go into vigorous activity immediately. Individual supereruptions could occupy periods of days to weeks, or be prolonged over decades.

Evidence from the Youngest Toba Tuff, Indonesia, which erupted74,000 years ago, suggest the eruption began abruptly, with immediate collapse of the chamber roof. In contrast, the Oruanui eruption, New Zealand, which erupted 25,400 years ago, started slowly, depositing a large ash blanket before Caldera collapse, and progressed intermittently including pauses of several months.

The source of the magma that eventually spews out from the volcano also varies, from single bodies of magma to multiple magma bodies that are simultaneously or sequentially tapped.

"Supereruptions can start literally with a bang and collapse of the chamber roof or begin gradually, with hesitancy before escalating into catastrophic activity," said co-author of the study Dr. George Cooper, from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"Overall, the eruption can be rapid, uninterrupted events over a few days or an episodic sequence prolonged over decades.

"The uncertainty associated with these events therefore makes it very challenging to determine when and how these volcanos may potentially erupt in the future."

The team have called on more research to be undertaken to help answer these questions, including the use of machine learning algorithms situated at monitoring stations to help interpret signals that show the movement of stored magma towards the surface in the hours or days leading up to an eruption.

They also call for more education amongst the public, specifically regarding the nature and frequency of eruptions at these large volcanoes.

"Yellowstone is an example where misinformation has led to the public perception that a catastrophic eruption may be imminent, whereas, in reality, it is extremely unlikely. Therefore, we need to improve our understanding and communication as to the difference between normal non-eruptive unrest, versus indicators that an eruption may be about to happen," continued Dr. Cooper.

Volcano researchers learn how Earth builds supereruption-feeding magma systems

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More information: Colin J. N. Wilson et al, No single model for supersized eruptions and their magma bodies, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43017-021-00191-7

Provided by Cardiff University 

 

Militaries plunder science fiction for technology ideas, but turn a blind eye to the genre's social commentary

by Will Slocombe, The Conversation

Credit: Pavel Chagochkin/Shutterstock

Military planning is a complicated endeavor, calling upon experts in logistics and infrastructure to predict resource availability and technological advancements. Long-range military planning, deciding what to invest in now to prepare armed forces for the world in thirty years' time, is even more difficult.

One of the most interesting tools for thinking about future defense technology isn't big data forecasting and the use of synthetic training environments, but narrative and imagination. And we get this from science fiction.

That might sound fanciful, but many militaries are already engaging with the genre. The U.S. military and the French army use science fiction writers to generate future threat scenarios. The Australian Defense College advocates for the reading of science fiction and, in Germany, Project Cassandra uses novels to predict the world's next conflict. The Sigma Forum, a science fiction think tank, has been offering forecasting services to U.S. officials for years.

But while science fiction provides military planners with a tantalizing glimpse of future weaponry, from exoskeletons to mind-machine interfaces, the genre is always about more than flashy new gadgets. It's about anticipating the unforeseen ways in which these technologies could affect humans and society—and this extra context is often overlooked by the officials deciding which technologies to invest in for future conflicts.

Imagined worlds

Like my colleague David Seed, who has studied how fiction impacts on real-life threat assumptions about nuclear terrorism, I'm interested in how science fiction informs our sense of the future. This has given me the opportunity to work with members of the armed forces, using science fiction to query assumptions and generate novel visions of the future.

But the relationship between military planners and science fiction is a troubled one. Despite increasing calls for "cognitive diversity" and new ways of thinking in government and the armed forces, the genre faces a significant image problem.

People tend to associate science fiction solely with aliens and space travel—its more fantastic elements—which is seemingly removed from the supposedly proper business of planning and strategy. As a result, even open-minded planners who identify science fiction as a source of inspiration, especially for novel technologies, invariably keep it at arm's length.

So when I read a recent report on the strategic implications of "human augmentation", published by defense planners from the UK and German militaries, I was intrigued. Human augmentation—like enhanced sensory perception and personalized medicine—is a big thing in defense circles, which see the technologisation of the human body as a key arms race this century.

If you think this all sounds like science fiction, you'd be right. The subgenre of cyberpunk (think William Gibson and Pat Cadigan, as well as games such as the Deus Ex series) is perhaps the acme of human augmentation fiction: cyborgs with enhanced vision; warriors with bionic arms and razor claws; "console cowboys" infiltrating the data fortresses of big businesses in cyberspace.

For super-soldiers striding on the battlefield in powered armor, look no further than Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, or John Scalzi's Old Man's War. The genetic hybridisation of enhanced soldiers features extensively in texts such as James Cameron's serial Dark Angel and, more recently, in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dogs of War.

Fiction to fact

Yet these texts don't really make it into the military planning report. There's a reference to "science fiction inspired suits" and technologies that "make possible what used to be science fiction," but otherwise the genre is absent. Like many military planners, the report's authors seem to want to define these technologies against science fiction, emphasizing that the genre is fiction, while human augmentation technologies are fact.

But in sidelining science fiction, something is lost. In contrast to readers who might bemoan any mention of science fiction in military reports, I would assert that such reports aren't nearly science fictional enough.

The genre might be commonly associated with technology, but even then it's not about technology per se, but about the contexts, uses and effects of new technologies on humans. Science fiction author Frederick Pohl said it well: "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." Science fiction is always about the second- and third-order effects of a technology—effects military planners may not anticipate.

That's the true value of science fiction for those concerned with the future. Technologies aren't neutral, but operate within a discourse set by the stories that are told about them. This affects their development and possible applications (and mis-applications).

When military reports speak of perceiving the human as a platform to optimize with new technologies, alarm bells go off for science fiction scholars. When augmentation has been imagined in fictional worlds, it's often associated with profound new inequalities and conflicts.

Facing change creatively

According to military planners, augmentation is no longer just about "supersoldiers," but also "supercivilians." If augmentations might need to protect an entire population from biotechnological threats, how are we to explore the ethics of this? How are societies to navigate the emergence of "bring your own enhancement" technologies in the workplace? What black markets might come about to perform such augmentations on the cheap?

Science fiction doesn't have all of the answers to these questions, but it does provide us with a space to examine them—an imaginative experiment where audiences can consider dramatic situations that expose the dangers and benefits of technological interventions.

Military planners are right to foreground these issues now. But they should also consider science fiction as more than just a fictional background to "real-life" debates. Science fiction can help in what the planning report calls "making sense of these potential changes to human capabilities," pointing not only to the automobile, but to the traffic, the fumes and the crashes too.

Study finds boys' dislike for reading fiction is actually fiction

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Provided by The Conversation 

 

How scientists and communities can build partnerships to deal with floods: Learning from Indonesia

by Erich Wolff, Diego Ramírez-Lovering, The Conversation

Community members participating in the RISE program collected photos of floods 

between 2018 and 2020 in Makassar. Rise Program. Credit: volunteer community members

Millions of people in Indonesia, a vast low-lying archipelago in Southeast Asia with the second-longest coastline in the world, live in flood-prone river and coastal areas. Floods and storms are the most common type of disaster affecting Indonesian cities, according to a UN report.

Current attempts to manage these disasters rely heavily on investing in flood walls and canals. These measures seem to be insufficient, as the disasters continue every year, hurting the economy.

Our latest research shows citizen science can contribute to finding solutions by helping scientists understand the impacts of floods.

Citizen science is a way for communities to collaborate with researchers. This approach has been gaining traction in fields such as ecology, environmental planning and hydrology.

Engaging with community

After reviewing 40 publications from the past five years, we found scientists have been increasingly interested in involving communities in flood studies.

In Australia, for example, scientists analyzed photos posted on social media during the 2010 Queensland floods to map water levels. Similarly, scientists in Argentina used community measurements from the 2014 Buenos Aires floods to model the local hydrology.

Most of these projects, however, only involve citizens as data collectors. They offer limited opportunities for scientists to work closely with, and learn from, communities.

Some examples show communities can participate more directly as interpreters and central stakeholders in the process of understanding, managing and responding to floods.

The RISE program is implementing and testing the effects of nature-based infrastructure 

in Makassar. Credit: RISE program, photograph by Peter Breen

In Indonesia, for example, the PetaBencana project is a phone application that allows citizens to contribute to flood studies by sharing information about water levels. This information is available to other users and can inform emergency services and government activities.

This example shows the application of citizen science to study floods, beyond collecting data, can help risk communication and involve these communities in technical discussions.

Learning from Makassar

In Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, we partnered with community members to collect photos of floods throughout the past two years.

This citizen science project was developed as part of the Revitalizing Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) program. The program is testing innovative infrastructure systems in 12 settlements in Makassar and 12 settlements in Fiji.

The designers in RISE soon realized that understanding floods in particular sites was essential to ensure the infrastructure would work well.

Partnering with volunteers from six settlements in Makassar, RISE has documented floods throughout the rainy seasons of 2018, 2019 and 2020.

So far, it has received more than 2,800 photos from local communities in Makassar. These images have allowed scientists to better understand floods and design more resilient infrastructure.

The experiences of RISE and other citizen science initiatives indicate that this kind of project can positively transform the relationship between scientists and communities.

The results of the RISE program’s citizen science project allowed researchers to better

 understand water levels in Kampung Baru, Makassar. Credit: Erich Wolff

Beyond supporting data collection, citizen science allows researchers to work more directly with communities while creating opportunities for science to connect with local knowledge and adaptation strategies.

It is important to highlight that communities should not be held responsible for managing floods alone. Citizen science is not a substitute but a complement to evidence-based policy and infrastructure planning.

Local wisdom

On the peripheries of the largest Indonesian cities, the residents of kampungs and informal settlements close to canals and rivers rely on local wisdom to coexist with floods.

Our research shows the residents of kampungs in Makassar often work with neighbors to protect valuable assets or to evacuate the elderly and the children.

They have also developed important strategies to protect their houses, such as using sandbags and building on stilts.

How can scientists learn from them?

Access to the internet and social media has shown people can collect information about floods, but the example from the RISE program shows how this can be done by connecting scientists and local communities.

The long-term effects of the project are still being studied, but participants have told us RISE's citizen science project helped them better understand floods in their neighborhoods. It also provided a platform for them to share experiences and knowledge.

While we are still learning how scientists can work with communities, the lessons from the RISE program show citizen science can be a powerful ally in building resilience and supporting local knowledge and agency in Indonesian cities.

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Explore further

Brazilian communities fight floods together – with memories and an app

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Provided by The Conversation 

 

Death toll from Henan floods rises to 71 as China braces for more rain

Flowers were laid in front of a subway station in in Zhengzhou, China in memory of flood victims.

The death toll from floods in central China's Henan province rose to 71 on Tuesday as a tribute at a subway where 14 people died was sealed off in a sign of sensitivity to public criticism of the government's handling of the disaster.

Torrential downpours dumped a year's rain in just three days last week on the hardest-hit city of Zhengzhou, flooding subway cars and trapping more than 500 commuters during rush hour last Tuesday.

Images of passengers inundated by shoulder-height water went viral on Chinese social media.

The city government announced on Tuesday the names of those who perished in the subway, a rare attempt at transparency after people started leaving flowers at the entrance to the station.

"Extreme rains caused severe water logging in parts of subway line 5, and the retaining walls that protected the subway lines crumbled," the government statement said.

Subway guards eventually blocked access to the floral tribute, but a video published by state-run West China Metropolis Daily Tuesday showed a group of people pushing aside the yellow barricades on Monday night chanting "let the spirits of those who died come back home!"

One of the victims, identified in the official list by his last name Sha, was days short of his 34th birthday.

"Who would have thought that you were only one stop away from home, but you will never come back again," his wife wrote on China's twitter-like Weibo.

Sha's wife, who declined to give her name, told Jimu news that she was suing the metro operator for negligence.

Foreign journalists covering the floods have been harassed online and on the ground, as sensitivity towards any negative portrayal of China mounts.

Reporters from AFP were forced to delete footage by hostile residents and surrounded by dozens of men while reporting on a submerged traffic tunnel in Zhengzhou.

Heavy downpours that began July 17 have affected almost 13 million people, damaged nearly 9,000 homes and caused economic losses in Henan estimated at 13.9 billion yuan ($2 billion).

Forecasters said Tuesday more heavy rain is expected as the remnants of Typhoon In Fa pass through the area.

Cities still reeling from the last week's floods, including Xinxiang, Hebi and Anyang, are likely to see the heaviest downpours from July 27 to 29, Henan's meteorological observatory said in a statement.

Villagers flee fresh floods in central China as typhoon approaches

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© 2021 AFP

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