Artificial light disrupts dung beetles’ sense of direction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LUND UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A NOCTURNAL DUNG BEETLE CLIMBING ATOP ITS DUNG BALL TO SURVEY THE STARS BEFORE STARTING TO ROLL view more 

CREDIT: CHRIS COLLINGRIDGE

For the first time, researchers have been able to prove that city lights limit the ability of nocturnal animals to navigate by natural light in the night sky. Instead, they are forced to use streetlamps, neon light or floodlights to orient themselves. The findings are published in Current Biology.

Some animals, including migratory birds, seals and moths, use light from the moon, stars and Milky Way to navigate at night. A team of researchers at Lund University in Sweden and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa have now shown how nocturnal dung beetles are forced to search for cues in their immediate surroundings when they can no longer navigate using natural light from the night sky. 

“These beetles are forced to abandon their celestial compass and orient using artificial light instead”, says James Foster at the University of Würzburg in Germany, who led the study during his time at Lund University.

The Lund University team previously received a great deal of attention for their investigation into how dung beetles orient themselves using the Milky Way as they roll their balls of dung over the South African savannah. The new study investigates how light pollution affects the beetles’ ability to orient themselves according to compass references in the night sky. 

The experiments took place over several nights in two different locations in South Africa. One location was a light-polluted site on the roof of a building in central Johannesburg, while the other was in rural Limpopo, where the stars illuminated an otherwise dark sky. The result was unambiguous: the dung beetles were unable to use their celestial compass in the presence of light pollution. Instead, they moved towards the streetlights and illuminated buildings. In addition, several individuals often moved towards the same light source in the surroundings. Under natural conditions, these beetles tend to disperse in all directions, steering clear of one another and thereby avoiding confrontation.   

“We believe that light pollution can have an equivalent effect on moths, forcing them to abandon their compass and fly towards the artificial light, in order to have any signals at all to orient themselves by”, says Maria Dacke, professor at Functional zoology at Lund University.

According to the researchers, it is likely that the animals living on the outskirts of cities are the ones most affected by light pollution—without stars or streetlights to guide them. 

“In our experiments, we observed how beetles that viewed direct light pollution behaved unnaturally, but remained oriented. The ones that could only see the light-polluted night sky, but could not see any illuminated buildings or streetlights, became completely disoriented”, concludes Foster.

CAPTION

James Foster and Marie Dacke performing orientation experiments at a dark-sky site in rural Limpopo

CREDIT

Chris Collingridge

  

CAPTION

Claudia Tocco on the same night performing the same experiment at our light-polluted site: the roof of the University of the Witwatersrand in central Johannesburg

CREDIT

Marcus Byrne

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.038

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Light pollution forces a change in dung beetle orientation behavior

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Jul-2021

COI STATEMENT

(Conflict of Interest)

Khepri (Egyptian: ḫprj, also transliterated Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun. By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of life.

Major cult center: Heliopolis

Offspring: All gods (some accounts), Ma’at

Parents: Nut (some accounts)

Symbol: scarab, blue lotus

Khepri - Wikipedia

 

Study: Buffer zones, better regulation

 needed to prevent agricultural pollution in

 rivers, streams

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Greater buffer zones around bodies of water and more consistent enforcement of water protection regulations are needed to reduce agriculture-based pollution in the Western U.S., a recent review from Oregon State University found.

Prior research has shown that agricultural pollution, both from croplands and rangelands, is the cause of 48% of water-quality impairment in U.S. surface waters, which in turn disrupts habitat for fish and insects and reduces biodiversity in aquatic environments.

The OSU paper, featured earlier this month on the cover of the journal Water, reviewed more than 40 case studies on the impacts of agriculture on water quality. Specifically, researchers looked at studies that related agricultural management practices to aquatic responses in rivers and streams; and related livestock rangeland uses to biotic responses within rivers and streams as well as in riparian zones, the areas bordering rivers and streams.

The latest national assessment of streams and rivers in the lower 48 U.S. states found that only 26-30% of the entire stream and river length was in good condition for the insects and fish that inhabit them. Still, researchers are optimistic that with proper mitigation, led by local communities, the U.S. can improve aquatic habitat and boost the health of water-dwelling species.

“What I see is that there are still a lot of pretty good places; but there are still a lot of places where, regardless of laws and regulations and mitigation actions, there’s still some work that remains,” said lead author Robert Hughes, who holds a courtesy appointment as an associate professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “We can do better. We already know how.”

The same national assessment found that 44% and 37% of total stream and river length was in poor condition for insects and fish, respectively.

Study authors say that point sources — specific outlets where pollution enters the water — are relatively easy to identify and treat, but the challenge with agricultural pollution is that it occurs over diffuse areas of land, especially throughout the Western U.S. This includes row crop fields that drain into rivers and streams, as well as rangelands where cattle graze and defecate directly in and near bodies of water.

Researcher Robert Vadas, Jr. from Washington co-authored the study and emphasized that regulation of agricultural pollution in Washington lags behind regulation of urban and forestry land uses.

“The best solution would be to give the riparian sectors back to the streams,” Hughes said, referring to the floodplain areas that extend outward a short distance from riverbanks. “We could have easements; we could pay farmers to put that land out of crop production; just provide a little bit of a buffer, a little bit of shade, maybe some wood to fall in and provide habitat for fishes.”

Better fences and herding to keep cattle out of rivers and streams would also make a difference, he said.

“If you look at the sites that are in good condition, it’s because they’ve had watersheds that are protected and riparian zones that are protected,” Hughes said. “They’re not perfect; they’re still used by farmers, ranchers and loggers, but they’re in significantly better shape.”

In Oregon, a 2009 study found that agricultural lands accounted for 80% of the impaired stream length in the Willamette Basin, despite representing only 30% of the total length.

But Hughes cites the Willamette River as an example of positive change. Significant rehabilitation projects have cleaned up point sources of pollution and improved fish habitat by planting trees, opening up side channels and removing road crossings that blocked fish migration.

“You can now swim and fish in the Willamette; 70 years ago it was an open sewer,” he said. “We still have some problems, of course, but we have made some big strides.”

Hughes recognizes the potential barriers to convincing farmers to allow some of their farmland to return to nature, as well as the cost of infrastructure needed to provide more protection for rivers and streams.

The solutions need to come from within local communities themselves, he said, not as mandates handed down from outside government agencies.

“What we’ve done most successfully in Oregon is watershed councils, where local people get together and decide what they can do, and talk about, ‘We tried this; we can make this improvement,’” Hughes said. “That’s the way to do it. We’re wired to not listen to something that comes from above.”

###

---

JOURNAL

Water

DOI

10.3390/w13141901

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Agricultural Effects on Streams and Rivers: A Western USA Focus

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Jul-2021

 

Combined effects of masking and distance on aerosol exposure potential

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAYO CLINIC

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended this week that people vaccinated against COVID-19 resume wearing masks in public indoor spaces in areas of the United States where the virus is spreading. “Appropriate masking in addition to vaccination remain the best methods to help protect individuals from the Coronavirus,” says Gregory Poland, M.D., an infectious disease expert at Mayo Clinic.

In fact, published data from Mayo Clinic researchers have found that appropriate masking and physical separation reduces the exposure of individuals to respiratory droplets that spread the virus and a physical separation of 6 feet reduces particle counts to near baseline levels. The findings strongly support the protective value and effectiveness of widespread mask use, maintaining physical distance and vaccination in helping to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Watch: Dr. Elie Berbari and Dr. Matthew Callstrom discuss mask study.

Journalists: Broadcast-quality soundbites and b-roll  are available on the Mayo Clinic News Network. Please "Courtesy: Elie Berbari, M.D./Infectious Diseases/Mayo Clinic" and "Matthew Callstrom, M.D./Radiology/Mayo Clinic."

"Our masking study emulated the production of respiratory droplets by using mannequins, that were masked and other mannequins that were unmasked," says Elie Berbari, M.D., chair of the department of infectious diseases at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “We measured the spread of those droplets at various distances.”

Researchers measured how effectively masks blocked the number of aerosol particles from a masked source, simulating an individual with a COVID-19 infection, and they simulated the risk of an individual contracting COVID-19 when they were masked.

"We found the most important measure for reducing the risk of exposure to COVID-19 is to wear a mask," says Matthew Callstrom, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the department of radiology at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. "We found that both disposable paper medical masks and two-layer cloth masks were effective in reducing droplet transmission and we did not find a difference between mask types in terms of how well they blocked aerosol particles emitted by the wearer."

"The most common mechanism for COVID-19 transmission is through respiratory droplets which are larger than aerosols and are more easily blocked with masks," says Dr. Callstrom.

A second part of the study measured aerosol particle counts from a source to a target from one foot to six feet apart, at one-foot intervals. Researchers found that overall, particle counts were reduced with increasing distance which supports current CDC guidance of maintaining physical separation of six feet from others.  

"I think we had some knowledge about the importance of masks and there's been a number of studies that have shown masks are effective in blocking viruses, but what's really important here is just how effective masking is when done by both parties," says Dr. Berbari.

Watch: See the mannequins in action.

He says additional measures to reduce the risk of transmission include frequent hand washing and use hand sanitizer before and after meals, and after removing masks, and honoring posted room capacities in busy areas.

"We found objectively that masks are critically important for protecting yourself and the people around you," says Dr. Callstrom. "If you're wearing a mask, you're protecting others. If they're wearing masks, they're protecting you."

###

About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news. For information on COVID-19, including Mayo Clinic’s Coronavirus Map tracking tool, which has 14-day forecasting on COVID-19 trends, visit the Mayo Clinic COVID-19 Resource Center.

---

JOURNAL

Mayo Clinic Proceedings

ARTICLE TITLE

Combined Effects of Masking and Distance on Aerosol Exposure Potential

Engineering student designs snorkel-like mask with fan to help protect healthcare workers from COVID-19

Sun., August 1, 2021

Emanuel Martinez Villanueva wearing the respirator he designed that helps healthcare workers breathe clean air while working with COVID-19 patients.

 (Submitted by Emanuel Martinez Villanueva - image credit)

Emanuel Martinez Villanueva's memory of his mother being proud of him has kept him going for his work on a respirator he designed to help keep front-line workers safe from COVID-19.

His mother died from the disease herself in Mexico in February.

The respirator — a face mask that filters air for the person to breathe in — was the brainchild of the engineering department at the University of Alberta under Rafiq Ahmad, an engineering professor.

They began working on a proactive solution to help keep healthcare workers safe in March 2020, after seeing the effects of the pandemic in Italy and Spain.

Villanueva came up with the design, inspired by the video game Halo, and they had a prototype ready by August 2020. For the remaining months the team worked on the prototype, tinkering with the device to make it better, more comfortable, and long-lasting while also looking for ways to make it available to the masses.

Submitted by Emanuel Martinez Villanueva

Villanueva would fill his mother in once a week about the progress of his work. He said she was so enthusiastic about his work and was willing to support him all the way from home.

"She was even talking about probably she could find some investors or someone down there," he said.

The news of his mother passing left Villanueva in a dark place for a moment. He kept thinking if his device had been ready and he had sent one to her, maybe she would still be alive.

"At that moment I felt devastated," he said.

Although he has come to terms with the fact that there was nothing he could have done, he is now motivated even more to have the device out for mass use.

"It's like honouring her, the life of my mother through this project ... because if I couldn't save her, at least I want to save somebody else," he said.

After several adjustments, they came up with a finished product in March that is ready for use. The final design looks like a clear snorkelling mask (which inspired it) that covers the whole face — much bigger than a regular N95 mask — with hoses to a special battery-powered fan and filter system.

On Thursday, Ahmad told CBC's Edmonton AM the mask is bulkier for a reason.

"It is designed specifically for front-line workers working in a COVID intensive environment where they would have COVID patients," he said.

"When there is a high chance that COVID droplets or COVID viruses are there in the air, this filters the air and that goes to the frontline worker so they don't need any other protective gear."

Ahmad is also personally affected by the pandemic, with his brother currently in an ICU in Pakistan with COVID-19.

Ultimately, both Ahmad and Villanueva are driven by the fact that their design can help a community of doctors not just in Canada but around the world.

The team wrote a paper on the first prototype and submitted it to HardwareX, a peer-reviewed, open-access, scientific journal for design and construction of scientific instruments, in June.

The paper includes their entire work, including 3D-modelling, to help reproduce the early version of the respirator they created in August.

"We feel this is a global solution for a global problem," Villanueva explained.

Recently, the team has partnered with a manufacturing company called Flexcim Services to get the device mass-produced, which they hope happens by fall.

STUPID HUMANS

After-hours partying, garbage in Vancouver's Stanley Park contributing to coyote attacks: researcher



Sun., August 1, 2021

An image of a coyote in Stanley Park captured by a motion-sensor camera in June 2021. (Submitted by Kristen Walker - image credit)

A University of British Columbia wildlife researcher hopes Vancouver will do more to manage garbage and late-night visits to the city's biggest park as part of the solution to dozens of aggressive coyote attacks over the past eight months.

Kristen Walker, a wildlife biologist with UBC's Faculty of Land and Food Systems, is part of a team that put ground-level motion-sensor cameras around the four square-kilometre Stanley Park in January. The team's goal is to better identify the coyotes, which have lived in the park for decades and are most active between dusk and dawn.

"It's highly unusual, this is behaviour we have not seen from coyotes around the world," Walker said.

"It is unprecedented."

Images from the cameras Walker and her team set up are helping to identify just how many coyotes live in the park and provide more insight into their behaviour. In the past, ecologists believed around a dozen coyotes lived there, but those numbers have not been verified.

Submitted by Kristen Walker

While picking up images of the animals, the cameras have also captured people in the park in the middle of the night and garbage being left behind.

Researchers are still working on the data, but Walker believes the after-hours park use, garbage and even toxins such as alcohol from discarded containers could be contributing to the aggressive behaviour from the coyotes toward humans.

Walker thinks the coyotes could be reaching a threshold.

"We know that people have been feeding animals in the park. So that is contributing," she said. "I think this is a compounded issue."

The Vancouver Park Board estimates there are up to 10 million visits a year to Stanley Park. It's within walking or biking distance of several downtown neighbourhoods and features a paved seawall, beaches, forested areas, trails and natural meadows.

A steady string of coyote bites on humans began in December.

The aggressive attacks have at times closed sections of the park and resulted in the province's Conservation Officer Service trapping and euthanizing six coyotes.

In July, a two-year old girl was taken to hospital after she was bitten by a coyote near the Vancouver Aquarium on a Monday evening while walking with her family.

On Saturday night the B.C. Conservation Officer Service said on social media that there had been yet another attack. Officers said a woman was scratched on her upper back and shoulders after a coyote came up from behind her on the east side of the park around 10 p.m.

The previous incident happened on July 22, when the Park Board said a man was attacked between the aquarium and Brockton Oval — a track and rugby pitch in the park.

Conservation officers have warned people to use the park at their own peril.

Walker says euthanizing coyotes will not solve the problem because other coyotes, which are plentiful across Metro Vancouver, will move into the area. She also worries that it's a difficult task for conservation officers to accurately target the coyotes responsible for the attacks.

"The coyotes' behaviour is abnormal and it's unacceptable," she said. "But we need to get at the root cause of the problem."

Submitted by Kristen Walker

The Conservation Officer Service said that it is making efforts to only trap coyotes in specific areas, to minimize the chances of catching a coyote not involved in aggressive attacks.

Officers said that any coyotes captured that do not match the profile of an animal involved in a reported attack will be released.

Walker wants the Vancouver Park Board to increase patrols in the park to reduce the number of people there overnight. Walker also wants the park board to install tamper-proof garbage cans to keep coyotes and rodents, which can attract more coyotes, from eating waste.

She says the park board should also invest in programs that would safely train coyotes to avoid humans.

"I think there needs to be a more immediate response for the sake of the humans that are involved with being bitten and for the sake of no more coyotes dying," Walker said.

No one cause

The Vancouver Park Board says it's considering all of Walker's suggestions, but is still working to pinpoint all the factors causing the aggressive behaviour.

"I don't think there is one single cause," said Chad Townsend, a senior environment and sustainability planner with the park board.

"In terms of the factors that may be contributing to them, they aren't necessarily different than previous years. But the aggressive incidents are. And that's what we're trying to get to the bottom of and solve and look at the causes we can control."

However, Walker suspects that more people may be using the park as a result of the pandemic.

Townsend said the park board has also contacted researchers in Ontario and Alberta to learn from how they have dealt with aggressive coyotes in those jurisdictions.

In the meantime, officials are discouraging after-hours use of the park, asking people to properly dispose of garbage and not leave food out for wildlife.

Water deductions centre stage as harvesters hold out on sea cucumber fishery

Sun., August 1, 2021

The provincial sea cucumber fishery is on hold in Newfoundland and Labrador as harvesters are concerned about changes to the water deduction calculation that helps determine price. (Emaline Montgomery - image credit)

Emaline Montgomery

CBC

Changes to how the water content of sea cucumbers is deducted from its price at the wharf are keeping harvesters out of the water this summer, despite a 10 cent per pound increase in price from last year prior.

Sea cucumbers represent a $10-million industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, according to Fish Food & Allied Workers president Keith Sullivan. The creatures are a delicacy in Asian countries and other markets, and fetch a price of 70 cents per pound, according to the province's fishery pricing panel.

When catches are landed, processors drain the water inside sea cucumbers to remove the weight of the sea water from the buying price.

Harvesters used to deduct 23 per cent of the sea cucumber's weight across the board to account for the water, but that percentage has been changed in the past year, and Sullivan says the harvesters' bottom lines are being impacted.

"Whereas other years you might be getting paid for 80 per cent or close to that of the animal, this year in a couple of cases we're talking just over 50 per cent," Sullivan told CBC Radio's The Broadcast last week.

Heather Gillis/CBC

According to Derek Butler, executive director of the Association of Seafood Producers, the average deduction on a catch of 200,000 pounds in 2021 is about 37 per cent.

Using this rate and the current price of 70 cents per pound, a 200,000 pound catch of sea cucumber would fetch a harvester a price of $88,200.

Using last year's numbers for comparison, a 23 per cent deduction rate and a price of 60 cents per pound, a 200,000 pound catch would net $92,400.

Sullivan said the situation has been created by several factors, including a lack of transparency during negotiations with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Association of Seafood Producers. Harvesters were told the same process as last year would be in place, he said, but that isn't what's happening on the wharf.

"We really want to work with the processing sector to get this fishery back on track. Because as of now, harvesters have told me it's not something that they can fish for if we're going to kind of manipulate the water loss," he said.

"There's a number of problems. Some of them are more systematic, and we'll look to meet with provincial government to deal with the transparency issues overall. But right now, we're looking at finding a way to make it a profitable fishery for everybody in sea cucumber this year."

Processors' association hopes people will fish this season

Butler said changes to the water deduction system were advocated for last year. He said DFO has not responded to their inquiries about water deduction.

"In the past, there had been an industry practice to pay a net 23 per cent deduction on water, and that was inappropriate," Butler told The Broadcast.

"At the end of the day, if we're going to mature this industry and if we're going to grow the industry, it is only appropriate if we're going to have a collective agreement with terms and conditions that we make provisions for independent grading … on the wharf, and that they would make the appropriate deduction."

Eddy Kennedy/CBC

Butler said the sea cucumber market has seen a decline since 2020, despite the price increase.

"The loss to harvesters would be reflective of the market decrease," he said. "In fact, the full extent of the market decrease year over year is not reflected. Producers are still taking the brunt of the market decline because we increased the price in an agreement between the parties just a few weeks ago.

"Nobody wants to make less money next year … but there will be less money in the sea cucumber business this year just based on the market decline."

Matthew Bingley/CBC

Butler said he hopes to see harvesters in the water this summer and that the Department of Fisheries can help parties come to a solution given the uniqueness of the situation.

"It would be no good to absent ourselves from the market for a year in the hopes everything gets fixed next year."

 

Black and Latinx conservatives “upshift” competence to white audiences

Peer-Reviewed Publication

YALE UNIVERSITY

When communicating in mostly white settings, politically conservative Black and Latinx Americans use words associated with competence more often than their liberal counterparts, distancing themselves from negative racial stereotypes, according to a new study by Yale social psychologist Cydney Dupree.

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, combined several experiments to show that Black and Latinx conservatives, specifically those who are less concerned with social and economic inequality (“hierarchy-based conservatives”), are more likely to adopt language associated with power, status, and ability than liberals when addressing white people or operating in predominantly white spaces, including the halls of Congress.   

“Despite common misconceptions, Black and Latinx Americans hold varied political beliefs,” said Dupree, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management. “Those who are more conservative — specifically, those not so concerned about inequality—tend to distance themselves from their racial ingroup.

“I predicted that, when talking to white people, Black and Latinx conservatives would distance themselves from negative ingroup stereotypes, such as those labeling them as lower in competence. My findings supported that prediction. When addressing whites, Black and Latinx conservatives use language associated with competence more frequently than their liberal counterparts, reversing stereotypes.”

n the study’s first two experiments, Dupree analyzed 250,000 remarks made in Congress and then nearly 1 million tweets posted by Black, Latinx, and white politicians for content associated with competence. She measured the politicians’ concern for inequality using a scale based on their voting records. Her analysis showed that Black and Latinx politicians who were hierarchy-based conservatives used more language related to competence than their liberal counterparts — using more words like “determined” or “intelligent”— in Congress and on Twitter. White politicians’ views about inequality did not predict their references to competence, she found.

In a previous study, Dupree showed that white liberals tend to “downshift competence,” or self-present as less competent, when engaging with Black (versus white) people. She uses the term “competence upshift” to label the phenomenon revealed in this new study.

To understand whether conservative racial minorities “upshift” competence all the time or only when speaking to white people, Dupree recruited 1,200 Black Americans to participate in an experiment on online communication. She identified the participants’ political views on inequality using a scale that measures agreement with statements such as, “Group equality should not be our primary goal.” Participants believed they were being introduced to a real online partner who was either Black or white.

Dupree found that Black hierarchy-based conservatives referenced competence more often than liberals, using words like “influential” and “superior,” but only when introducing themselves to a white online partner. Hierarchy-based conservatism was the sole predictor of this behavior. Other factors, such as Black participants’ general attitudes toward white people, did not predict this phenomenon, she said.

“This finding suggests that hierarchy-based conservatism can predict racial minorities’ behavior toward white Americans,” Dupree said. “Black Americans who are more comfortable with inequality portray themselves as anything but disadvantaged. I’m not saying that’s wrong. There are situations when reversing stereotypes could save Black and Latinx lives, such as during police encounters. But it’s important for us to understand when and why this behavior occurs.”

More research is needed to understand whether “competence upshift” is a form of codeswitching, the practice of altering one’s speech patterns to be better understood by others, Dupree added. While the competence upshift concerns only a speaker’s choice of words, codeswitching involves other factors, such as syntax and phonology, she explained.

In the study’s final experiment, Dupree analyzed 18,000 news editorials about Black, Latinx, and white politicians to test whether politicians’ use of words associated with competence influences their press coverage. She found that the more Black and Latinx conservatives use words associated with “power” in Congress, the more journalists adopted language referencing power while describing them in editorials, suggesting that competence upshift is effective in reversing stereotypes.

“This final test provides initial evidence that conservative Black and Latinx politicians may gain favorable coverage from referencing competence,” Dupree said. “Black and Latinx people must overcome negative stereotypes about their ability, status, and power to be accepted as valuable employees or worthy friends. This phenomenon suggests that Black and Latinx conservatives may be better at reversing these stereotypes, to their advantage.”

###

---

JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-021-01167-9

ARTICLE TITLE

Black and Latinx conservatives upshift competence relative to liberals in mostly white settings

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Jul-2021

 

Why uncertainty makes us change our behaviour – even when we shouldn’t

‘Panic buying’ might be a normal human response to uncertainty, after all

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

People around the world dramatically changed their shopping behaviours at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Faced with new uncertainty, shoppers began stocking up on basic household items – especially toilet paper – to account for the new unknown. This buying frenzy led to shortages, even though, in most cases, there would have been enough to go around if people only purchased what they needed. 

According to a study led by UNSW Sydney, reactive behaviour like this isn’t unusual, but a common way to handle unexpected uncertainty. 

In fact, unexpected uncertainty is such a powerful motivator for change that it often prompts us to adjust our behaviour – even when it’s not good for us.

“When people experience an unexpected change in their environment, they start looking for ways to lessen that uncertainty,” says lead author of the study Dr Adrian Walker, who completed this research as part of his PhD in psychology at UNSW Science. “They can change their behaviour and decision-making strategies to try and find a way to regain some sense of control.

“Surprisingly, our study found that unexpected uncertainty caused people to change their behaviours even when they would have been better off sticking to an old strategy.” 

The behavioural study, recently published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, is the first to show the type of uncertainty we experience – that is, whether it is expected or unexpected – plays a key role in our reaction.

For example, a city worker who knows their morning commute takes anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes wouldn’t be surprised by a 50-minute trip. On the other hand, a country driver would be very surprised if their predictable 30-minute trip suddenly took 50 minutes.

To test how people respond to unexpected change, the researchers tasked study participants with selling a pair of objects to one of two subjects – in this scenario, aliens – in a virtual simulation. Their task was simple: get as many points (or ‘alien dollars’) as possible.

Participants needed to choose which alien to sell a pair of chemicals to, but only one of the chemicals determined how much the alien would pay. They needed to work out which chemical and alien combination would earn them the greatest rewards.

An initial group of 35 participants were familiarised with the task and quickly learnt that one strategy (say, Option A) gave the better offer of 15 points. But midway through the experiment, the reward pattern changed, and Option A now gave a random number between 8 and 22 points. 

“As soon as we added an element of uncertainty, the participants started looking for new ways to complete the task,” says Dr Walker. “The kicker is that in all cases, the best thing they could do was use their old strategy.”

Dr Walker says the pandemic – and our different responses to it – is a large-scale example of unexpected uncertainty.

“Everything changed very suddenly at the start of COVID-19,” he says. 

“Many of us were suddenly all working from home, changing how we shop, and changing how we socialise. The rules we were living by beforehand no longer applied, and there was – and still is – no clear answer about when or how the pandemic will end.

“Different people tried all sorts of things – like panic shopping – to reduce this new uncertainty and return to ‘normal’. But as we’ve seen, not all of these reactive strategies were good in the long run.”

Boiling frog syndrome

While unexpected uncertainty led to dramatic responses, expected uncertainty had the opposite effect. 

During the second phase of the trial, the researchers introduced uncertainty in a gradual way to a different group of 35 participants. Option A’s usual 15 points changed to 14-16 points, then 13-17 points, until the uncertainty rose to 8-22 points.

“The participants’ behaviour didn’t change dramatically, even though the uncertainty eventually reached the same levels as in the first experiment,” says Dr Walker. 

“When uncertainty was introduced gradually, people were able to maintain their old strategies.”

While this specific experiment was designed for the original strategy to be the most beneficial, Dr Walker says other research has shown the harm in not changing behaviour when faced with gradual change.

“We can see this pattern in a lot of real-world challenges, like the climate change crisis,” says Dr Walker. 

“When change is slow and barely noticeable, there’s no sudden prompt to change our behaviour, and so we hold to old behaviours. 

“Trying to get action on climate change is a lot like the boiling frog fable. If you put a frog in a pot and boil the water, it won’t notice the threat because the water is warming gradually. When it finally notices, it is too late to jump out.”

Professor Ben Newell, the Deputy Head of UNSW School of Psychology, was one of the researchers involved in the project. He says an important next step in this research is translating insights about how people react to uncertainty in the lab to engaging people in climate action. 

“If we can identify the triggers for exploring new alternatives, then we might overcome the inertia inherent in developing new, sustainable behaviours,” says Prof. Newell.

Being certain about uncertainty

Uncertainty is something humans face every day, whether it’s how bad traffic will be or what questions might be asked in an exam. 

But the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a new layer of uncertainty to major areas of our lives, like career, health, and living circumstances.

“While this study isn’t the whole picture for human behaviour during the pandemic, it can help explain why so many people looked for new ways to add certainty to their lives,” says Dr Walker, who is now a researcher in the School of Psychiatry at UNSW Medicine & Health.

Co-author Dr Tom Beesley, formerly of UNSW and now based at Lancaster University, says “Dr Walker’s work really helps us understand how people develop a representation of the uncertainty they are facing, and how they might cope, or not cope, with that.

“My lab is trying to formalise this relationship in a computational model of behaviour, so that we can make clearer predictions about what we might expect to happen under different conditions of uncertainty.” 

While Dr Walker’s research is now focused on psychiatric epidemiology, he is interested to see where future research in this area goes – especially in predicting individual responses to uncertainty.

“Given how many decisions we make under uncertainty in our everyday lives, the more we can understand about how these decisions are made, the more we hope to enable people to make good decisions,” says Dr Walker. 

###

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Experimental Psychology

DOI

10.1037/xlm0000883

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Protection from uncertainty in the exploration/exploitation trade-off

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Jun-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

Mexican methane leak rate 'alarming' for climate change, report says

Stefanie Eschenbacher
Wed., July 28, 2021

A fuel burner is seen at Mexico's state-run oil monopoly Pemex platform "Ku Maloob Zaap" in the Northeast Marine Region of Pemex Exploration and Production in the Bay of Campeche


By Stefanie Eschenbacher

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's methane leak rate from oil and gas operations is twice as high as that of the world's top oil producer, the United States, a group of researchers found in a report due to be released this week.

Invisible and odorless but much more harmful than carbon dioxide, climate change scientists consider methane to be a major driver of global warming.

Methane is produced in Mexico and elsewhere as a byproduct of the oil and gas industry. It is the major component of natural gas and - if captured - can be used as a fuel for power plants and domestic purposes.

Daniel Zavala, a senior scientist specializing in methane emissions from the global oil and gas system at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a U.S. non-profit advocacy group, has long studied Mexico's emissions.

Zavala said satellite data shows that roughly 4.7% of gas produced in the country is released into the atmosphere - by global standards a very high leak rate.

The Mexican results compare with a rate of 2.3% for all of the United States and 3.7% in the Permian basin, the largest U.S. region of crude oil production, located in West Texas and an adjoining area of southeastern New Mexico.

"It's a huge gap," said Zavala in an interview ahead of the report's publication due on Wednesday. "Cutting these emissions in half would have the same climate benefit over 20 years as removing one third of total passenger cars in the country."

The research focused on eastern Mexico, where almost all the country's oil and gas production - and related methane emissions - take place.

The leak rate is a formula that divides total oil and gas methane emissions by total natural gas production. The calculation includes all sources of methane emissions from the industry: leaks, vents and flaring.

Together with 12 other climate change scientists, Zavala studied 20 months of data gathered between 2018 and 2019 by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument, a single sensor on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor, a European Space Agency satellite.

Zavala called the latest findings "alarming and worrying."

Using new technology, scientists are only gradually building a fuller picture of methane emissions globally, including of abandoned oil wells and landfills.

Reuters was unable to determine whether the problem has improved or worsened under Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office at the end of 2018.

But the study estimates 1.3 million tons of methane is wasted in Mexico per year, about one third of the nation's natural gas imports and equivalent to $200 million.

VENTING AND FLARING

To blame for Mexico's poor record are mostly high emissions at midstream facilities that gather, compress, and process the gas, the report says. Another culprit is venting, the practice of releasing gas from oil wells without capturing it. A third source is flaring, or burning gas at the wells.

"While flaring is a big source of methane emissions, and our measurements showed that it's higher than what the government and industry reports, it's not enough to explain the emissions we measured," Zavala said.

"The findings point to other key sources of methane emissions: venting from wells and midstream facilities handling the offshore gas."

While governments around the world do not usually report leak rate figures, scientists can estimate the leak rate by looking at reported emissions and reported production.

Neither Pemex nor the energy ministry responded to requests for comment but have previously publicly acknowledged maintenance issues.

'CLIMATE MENACE'

On a global scale, methane emissions are responsible for around 30% of warming since the pre-industrial era, the United Nations https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/1091402#:~:text=Methane%20is%20an%20extremely%20powerful,agriculture%2C%20chiefly%20related%20to%20livestock has recently said.

Tackling methane emissions is "the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years," Inger Andersen 

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/global-assessment-urgent-steps-must-be-taken-reduce-methane, 

the United Nations Environmental Programme executive director, has said.

Methane is much more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide but only lasts in the atmosphere for about a decade.

Scientists and current and former Mexican energy regulators told Reuters capturing more of the gas as a fuel could allow the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to become more energy independent while tackling a climate menace.

The president's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this year, U.S. President Joe Biden and Lopez Obrador highlighted in a statement https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/01/u-s-mexico-joint-declaration the benefits of tackling short-lived climate pollutants.

Total oil and gas methane emissions account for about a quarter of Mexico's man-made methane emissions, with the rest coming from landfills and waste; and agriculture, mostly livestock.

(Reporting by Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Marguerita Choy)

Column: Canada just surpassed us on vaccinations. 

Good for them, and shame on us


Doyle McManus

LA Times
Sun., August 1, 2021

President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hold a virtual meeting earlier this year. Canada, which once trailed the U.S. in its vaccination rate, has surpassed it. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Three months ago, Canada, which has no domestic manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccines, lagged far behind the United States in immunizations. Only 3% of its population was fully vaccinated. Canadians watched glumly as friends and relatives south of the border lined up for shots, while residents of Toronto and Montreal suffered repeated lockdowns.

No longer. Last month, Canada blew past the United States in the share of its population that’s fully vaccinated — 58% as of Friday, versus 49% in the U.S. — to take first place among the seven big industrial democracies. (The United States ranks sixth, ahead of only Japan.)

How did Canada, the country that most closely resembles the United States, do so much better, even though it had to wait longer for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to deliver their vaccines?

The simple answer is that in Canada, the pandemic didn’t become a politically polarized issue, as it did in the United States.

Canada’s major political parties, including the opposition Conservatives, joined early in full-throated support of mass vaccination. Leading politicians didn’t dismiss immunization as unnecessary, deride mask mandates or attack scientists.

When Andrew Scheer, then the Conservative leader, criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year over the immunization program, it was to complain that he wasn’t delivering vaccines fast enough.

Canadians have argued over how quickly to lift limits on public gatherings, restaurants and retail stores, but their debates have been muted by U.S. standards. The country’s toughest lockdown was imposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a populist conservative who has been compared to former President Trump.

“I can’t stand lockdowns,” Ford complained, but he stuck by his health experts’ recommendation to keep the restrictions until almost 80% of Ontarians had received their first doses of vaccine.

Like the United States, Canada has anti-vaxxers — just fewer of them. An Angus Reid Institute poll last month found that only 8% of Canadians said they definitely do not intend to get a COVID vaccination, including 15% of Conservative Party voters. Polls in the United States have found refusal rates at least twice as high.

And there lies a clue toward a deeper, more complex explanation for Canada's vaccination success over that of the U.S.: the underlying differences between the countries’ political cultures and, especially, their conservative parties.

“There is much less polarization in Canada overall,” Peter Loewen, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, told me. “There’s not a lot of political mileage in appearing to be anti-science in Canada; there is in the United States.”

Canadians also differ from Americans in that more of them trust their government to do the right thing. Frank Graves of Ekos Research, an Ottawa pollster, noted that in one survey last year, Americans’ trust in Washington was as low as 17%; the trust level in Canada was 37%, about twice as high.

“In Canada, our number actually bounced up during the pandemic, as people looked to government as a source of salvation,” he told me. “Trust in government, in science and in public health are all interrelated, and they are all key predictors of anti-vax sentiment.”

Another difference: Canada’s Conservative Party is more moderate than the post-Trump Republican Party.

“There's a strain of authoritarian populism in both parties, but it has become the dominant faction in the Republican Party; it’s not as large in Canada,” Graves said.

Before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Canada’s Leger Poll asked Canadians whether they would vote for Trump or Joe Biden. Among all Canadians, Biden was the favorite, by a whopping 84%; even Conservative Party voters preferred Biden over Trump, at 59%.

One last difference: Canada has no equivalent of Fox News spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines.

“We’ve got a more centrist media system, with one dominant, government-owned broadcast network,” Loewen said, referring to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s hard to quantify the impact, but it’s clear that there is one.”

Of course, not everyone is impressed by Canada’s antipandemic measures. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently derided them as an example of what not to do.

"We were the leading state fighting against coronavirus lockdowns," he bragged on Fox News. “I believe had Florida not done that, you would see the other states to have followed Canada, [which is] still locked down.”

But the governor should be careful about the comparisons he invites.

Florida led the United States in COVID-19 cases last week, and more than 39,000 Sunshine State residents have died from the disease.

Canada, with a much larger population, has had about 27,000 COVID deaths. Its per capita death rate is less than half that of Florida.

That should make even Republicans ask themselves: What is Canada doing right?

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.