Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Farmed carnivores may become ‘disease reservoirs’ posing human health risk

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Carnivorous animals lack key genes needed to detect and respond to infection by pathogens, a study has found. Farming large numbers of carnivores, like mink, could allow the formation of undetected ‘disease reservoirs’, in which a pathogen could spread to many animals and mutate to become a risk to human health.

Research led by the University of Cambridge has discovered that carnivores have a defective immune system, which makes them likely to be asymptomatic carriers of disease-causing pathogens.

Three key genes in carnivores that are critical for gut health were found to have lost their function. If these genes were working, they would produce protein complexes called inflammasomes to activate inflammatory responses and fight off pathogens. The study is published today in the journal Cell Reports.

The researchers say that the carnivorous diet, which is high in protein, is thought to have antimicrobial properties that could compensate for the loss of these immune pathways in carnivores – any gut infection is expelled by the production of diarrhoea. But the immune deficiency means that other pathogens can reside undetected elsewhere in these animals.

“We’ve found that a whole cohort of inflammatory genes is missing in carnivores - we didn’t expect this at all,” said Professor Clare Bryant in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, senior author of the paper.

She added: “We think that the lack of these functioning genes contributes to the ability of pathogens to hide undetected in carnivores, to potentially mutate and be transmitted becoming a human health risk.”

Zoonotic pathogens are those that live in animal hosts before jumping to infect humans. The COVID-19 pandemic, thought to originate in a wild animal, has shown the enormous damage that can be wrought by a novel human disease. Carnivores include mink, dogs, and cats, and are the biggest carriers of zoonotic pathogens.

Three genes appear to be in the process of being lost entirely in carnivores: the DNA is still present but it is not expressed, meaning they have become ‘pseudogenes’ and are not functioning. A third gene important for gut health has developed a unique mutation, causing two proteins called caspases to be fused together to change their function so they can no longer respond to some pathogens in the animal’s body.

“When you have a large population of farmed carnivorous animals, like mink, they can harbour a pathogen - like SARS-CoV-2 and others - and it can mutate because the immune system of the mink isn’t being activated. This could potentially spread into humans,” said Bryant.

The researchers say that the results are not a reason to be concerned about COVID-19 being spread by dogs and cats. There is no evidence that these domestic pets carry or transmit COVID-19. It is when large numbers of carnivores are kept together in close proximity that a large reservoir of the pathogen can build up amongst them, and potentially mutate.

JOURNAL

Cell Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109614

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Evolutionary loss of inflammasomes in the Carnivora and implications for the carriage of zoonotic infections

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Aug-2021

Wildfires devastate Bolivian nature reserves

Issued on: 24/08/2021

The San Matias nature reserve in Bolivia, which is the size of Belgium, has been devastated by wildfires AIZAR RALDES AFP/File

Chiquitos (Bolivia) (AFP)

Wildfires, mostly started intentionally, have scorched almost 600,000 hectares of land in eastern Bolivia already this year, authorities said.

On Monday night there were 20 active fires in Santa Cruz state affecting seven protected areas.

The government said 200,000 hectares (495,000 acres) had burned in just two days.

Most of the fires are in the forests of Chiquitania, a region that lies between the Amazon to the north, the plains of Cahco to the south and the Pantanal -- the world's largest wetland -- to the southeast.

The San Matias nature reserve -- a national park the size of Belgium -- is one of the worst affected areas.

Volunteer firefighters and forest rangers have been digging trenches to try to halt the spreading fires.

The government has deployed around 1,800 military personnel to help, with two helicopters due to join in the effort.

Despite a lack of resources to fight wildfires, Bolivia cannot ask neighboring countries for help unless local and regional authorities declare a "disaster," said Juan Carlos Calvimontes, the deputy civil defense minister.

A disaster can only be declared once the government exhausts its budget for fighting wildfires.

This law "needs to be changed," said Calvimontes.

The government says most of the fires were started deliberately.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under former leftist President Evo Morales, who for years encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production.

The practice is legal in Bolivia for areas up to 20 hectares between May and July -- once the rainy season is over.

Penalties for illegal fires can be remarkably lenient, though, amounting to a fine of just one US dollar per hectare burnt.

However, for large scale wildfires, perpetrators can be given a sentence of up to three years in prison.

© 2021 AFP

UN, EU condemn Palestinian Authority over activist arrests

Issued on: 24/08/2021 -

There have been persistent protests in the West Bank against the death in Palestinian Authority custody of leading activist Nizar Banat ABBAS MOMANI AFP/File

Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

The UN and the EU expressed concern Tuesday over a spate of arrests of activists by Palestinian security forces, as the death of a leading activist in custody sparked persistent protests.

Demonstrators in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have demanded justice since the June death of Nizar Banat -- a leading critic of the Palestinian Authority and its 86-year old president Mahmud Abbas -- who died in custody after security forces stormed his home in the flashpoint city of Hebron and dragged him away.

The United Nations human rights office said it was "deeply concerned at continuing pressure on those seeking to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and assembly in Palestine."

It said the security forces had arrested 23 people in Ramallah on Saturday on the grounds that "they were holding a public protest," but noted that 21 of them "were detained before any protest had even started."

It said "more arrests appear to be taking place" targeting "well-known human rights defenders and political activists," and called for "the immediate release without charge of these individuals."

The Palestinian Authority was not immediately available to respond to the criticism.

A statement from the European Union representative in Jerusalem also condemned the weekend arrests, which it said had come "against the backdrop of reports of an increase in apparently politically motivated arrests by the Palestinian Authority over the past few months."

"Violence against peaceful human rights defenders, activists and protesters is unacceptable," the EU said.

Nearly two dozen Palestinian civil society groups issued a statement on Monday warning of "a dangerous decline in rights and public freedoms" and holding prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh responsible "his failure to protect the rights of citizens".

Opinion polls suggest support for the PA and Abbas remain low.

Anger ticked up following Abbas's decision to indefinitely postpone elections scheduled for May and July, which would have been the first Palestinian polls in 15 years.

Abbas said the elections could not go ahead until Israel agreed to allow voting in annexed east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state,

But Palestinian analysts said the president baulked when it looked like his secular Fatah movement was heading for defeat.

Banat's death appears to have intensified frustration.

A post-mortem found he had been beaten on the head, chest, neck, legs and hands, with less than an hour elapsing between his arrest and his death.

His family has described his death as an "assassination," and said it would reject the conclusions of an official inquiry. It has called instead for an international investigation.

© 2021 AFP

Battery pioneer Akira Yoshino on Tesla, Apple and the electric future

By Paul Lienert

© Reuters/TT NEWS AGENCY Nobel laureates attend a news conference at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm

(Reuters) - Akira Yoshino, a co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on lithium-ion batteries, can take credit for the upheaval in both the automotive and technology industries.

Lithium-ion batteries have provided the first serious competition in a century to fossil fuels and combustion engines for transportation. Now an honorary fellow at Asahi Kasei, the Japanese chemical firm where he has worked for nearly 50 years, Yoshino sees more disruption ahead as transportation and digital technology become one industry, sharing lithium battery technology.

Yoshino spoke with Reuters about about the next generation of electric vehicle batteries, the potential for shared autonomous electric vehicles that can charge themselves, the prospects for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and the possibility that Apple could lead the convergence of the automotive and information technology industries in future mobility.

Here is an edited transcript:

Reuters: What technical innovations — in design, in chemistry and materials, even in processes — might keep lithium ion as the dominant EV battery chemistry and for how much longer?

Yoshino: There are two major areas of innovation that would be the key. One would be new cathode materials and anode materials. The second one would be the system where the EV is used. In other words, how people will be using the EVs, and how they charge them and discharge them.

Reuters: Are you speaking of people using electric vehicles in different ways? That is, not owning vehicles, but paying per use, for instance, through ride sharing?

Yoshino: Yes, I think the biggest potential is in sharing. If autonomous electric vehicles can become practical, that will cause a huge change in the way people use vehicles.

Reuters: How long before wireless charging of electric vehicle batteries will become a reality, whether it's through the roadbed or solar panels on the vehicle or some other means?

Yoshino: The basic technology for wireless charging is not a problem. The problem is how to apply this in a practical system. There are two possibilities. One is cars that are parked in a certain place where wireless charging is available. The second one is while the car is moving. It's probably not going to be on every road, but on certain roads where this is available, that could be possible.

If you think of autonomous electric vehicles, the vehicles will know when they need to charge and on their own just go to the charging station. That kind of situation can be practical sooner than you think.

Reuters: Toyota and Honda are selling small numbers of fuel cell electric vehicles, but the hydrogen infrastructure to support fuel cells seems like it's many years away.

Yoshino: With the fuel cell vehicle, there are challenges on the technology and the costs, but you can overcome them. If you think about the longer term, 2030 to 2050, autonomous shared vehicles are going to come about. Hypothetically, an autonomous vehicle could be run by a gasoline engine, it could be electric, it could be a fuel cell. It doesn't matter what the power source is. But it needs to replenish its energy somehow. If the vehicle can't do that automatically without a human intervention, the system is kind of meaningless. The same thing would be true for gasoline or hydrogen.

In that sense, the electric vehicle is the one that can replace its energy automatically. If you think of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, this goes around the room and it goes and recharges itself. If the Roomba needed a person to come and "fill up the tank," nobody would want to buy the Roomba.

Reuters: What else should we know about the future of mobility?

Yoshino: Right now, the auto industry is thinking about how to invest in the future of mobility. At the same time, the IT industry is also thinking about the future of mobility. Somewhere, sometime, with the auto industry and the IT industry, there is going to be some kind of convergence for the future of mobility.

Tesla has their own independent strategy. The one to look out for is Apple. What will they do? I think they may announce something soon. And what kind of car would they announce? What kind of battery? They probably want to get in around 2025. If they do that, I think they have to announce something by the end of this year. That's just my own personal hypothesis.

(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit; editing by Edward Tobin)

Blackrock's former sustainable investing chief now thinks ESG is a 'dangerous placebo'
Silvia Amaro

Tariq Fancy argued that financial institutions have an obvious motivation to push for ESG products given these have higher fees, which then improves their profits.

But there are other issues with ESG investing, according to Fancy, including its subjectivity and the unreliability of data and ratings.

© Provided by CNBC Climate change and low-carbon solutions are impacting investors' portfolios.

LONDON — A former BlackRock executive has outlined why he now thinks that sustainable investing is a "dangerous placebo that harms the public interest," after previously evangelizing the trend for the world's largest asset management firm.

Environmental, social and governance — or ESG — investing has grown increasingly popular in recent years, mainly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

A report published in July, looking at five of the world's top markets, said that this type of investing had $35.3 trillion in assets under management during 2020, representing more than a third of all assets in those large markets. And the trend is not showing any signs of slowing down.

But Tariq Fancy, who was BlackRock's first global chief investment officer for sustainable investing between 2018 and 2019, warned that there were some fallacies associated with this area.

"Green bonds, where companies raise debt for environmentally friendly uses, is one of the largest and fastest-growing categories in sustainable investing, with a market size that has now passed $1 trillion. In practice, it's not totally clear if they create much positive environmental impact that would not have occurred otherwise," Fancy said in an online essay posted last week.

This is because "most companies have a few qualifying green initiatives that they can raise green bonds to specifically fund while not increasing or altering their overall plans. And nothing stops them from pursuing decidedly non-green activities with their other sources of funding," he added.

BlackRock was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC on Tuesday.

He also argued that financial institutions have an obvious motivation to push for ESG products given these have higher fees, which then improves their profits.

According to data from FactSet and published by the Wall Street Journal, ESG funds had an average fee of 0.2% at the end of 2020, whereas other more standard baskets of stocks had fees of 0.14%.

But there are other issues with ESG investing, according to Fancy, including its subjectivity and the unreliability of data and ratings.

Others in the industry have questioned the lack of clarity with these types of investments.

Sheila Patel, chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, who told CNBC last year: "When you think about the composition of ESG funds, it's first of all important to remember they are still meant to be a fund invested to get a return for the portfolio. And so, they can tilt based on industry groups, based on sector views and that may or may not relate to an ESG view."

The necessity to make profits also leads market players to think about ESG investing within a short-time horizon, according to Fancy. This could become an issue when trying to address climate change and governments' plans to achieve carbon neutrality in the coming decades.

Fancy used a basketball analogy to describe the situation in ESG investing.

"Players have collectively engaged in forms of dirty play for decades because it scores points and wins games. The rules generally haven't changed: in most such cases dirty play can still help maximize points, and players remain under strict instructions to score points and only partake in good sportsmanship insofar as it contributes to (or doesn't detract from) the scoreboard. And on top of that they're exceedingly focused on the short-term (think: today's game), a time horizon for which few believe that good sportsmanship has much of a link to points," he said.

IT GUMMED THE POOR BIRD TO DEATH

Giant tortoise seen attacking and eating baby bird for first time in the wild in 'horrifying' incident

By Amy Woodyatt, CNN

Researchers have captured the moment when a livelong vegetarian broke rank to eat meat -- and what made it all the more "horrifying" was that it was a tortoise.

Giant tortoises are the largest herbivores on the Galapagos and Seychelles islands.

Scientists captured the moment on video when a Seychelles giant tortoise -- previously thought to be vegetarian -- attacked and ate a tern chick in what they say is the first documentation of deliberate hunting in any wild tortoise species.

"This is completely unexpected behaviour and has never been seen before in wild tortoises," Justin Gerlach, director of studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge and affiliated researcher at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology, said in a statement Monday.

© Anna Zora/Fregate Island Foundation/University of Cambridge Researchers captured the moment when a Seychelles giant tortoise, Aldabrachelys gigantea, attacked and ate the chick.

"The giant tortoise pursued the tern chick along a log, finally killing the chick and eating it," Gerlach, who led the study, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, said.

"It was a very slow encounter, with the tortoise moving at its normal, slow walking pace -- the whole interaction took seven minutes and was quite horrifying."

Anna Zora, conservation manager on Frégate Island and co-author of the study, captured the ordeal, which took place in July 2020.

"When I saw the tortoise moving in a strange way I sat and watched, and when I realised what it was doing I started filming," said Zora in the statement.

Gerlach told CNN that the way the tortoise moved towards the chick suggested it was "experienced."

"It's moving very deliberately -- it's not just wandering about, it's looking at this tern, and it's walking straight at it, clearly intending to do something. That suggests to me that it's doing it with intent. It knows what it's doing, it's done this before," he said.

Though tortoises are thought to be vegetarian, they have been spotted "opportunistically" eating carrion, as well as bones and snail shells for calcium.

"It's quite common for herbivores to eat a bit of dead animal as a free protein source, essentially. But this is the first video evidence of them deliberately killing in order to eat," he said.

Still, the team can't say for certain how common such behavior is among the tortoises, and plan to study them further.

Giant tortoises are the largest herbivores on the Galapagos and Seychelles islands, and eat up to 11% of the vegetation, researchers said. Gerlach added that the tortoise's behavior was unlikely to significantly affect tern populations.

Experts said that the new hunting behavior was caused by the "unusual" combination of a tree-nesting tern colony and a resident giant tortoise population on the Seychelles' Frégate island, which is home to around 3,000 tortoises.

It's not the first time uncharacteristic lethal attacks between animal species have been seen in the wild -- chimpanzees were observed killing gorillas in the wild for the first time in 2019.

"It's probably not uncommon for animals to surprise our expectations by eating unexpected things that may just be a one off," Gerlach explained.

"We should try and avoid having too many assumptions about what animals are going to do, or what they are doing. And it really shows the value of observation. Just by watching and recording what animals are doing you can find really totally unexpected things, things that we couldn't discover deliberately -- it has to be by chance," he said.

Stoney Nakoda celebrate name change of Alberta mountain landmark

CANMORE, Alta. — The Alberta government says a prominent landmark in the Rocky Mountains has been renamed in the spirit of reconciliation.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The offensive name for the feature on Mount Charles Stewart combines a derogatory term for an Indigenous woman and slang for a woman's breast. The name had been used since the 1920s and many considered it to be racist and misogynistic.

The formation, visible from the mountain town of Canmore, will now be known by its original name Anû Kathâ Îpa, or Bald Eagle Peak. It is the traditional name used by the Stoney Nakoda Nation. Elders had already revealed the name change last September.

In a statement, Chiniki First Nation Chief Aaron Young said the Stoney Nakoda people have a "deep and lasting respect" for women in their community and are happy the racist term has been cast aside.

An official name change means the landmark will be updated on provincial and federal place name databases and maps.

The fight to change the name went on for many years. Two Canmore lawyers had been working since 2014 to find a formal name for the landmark.

There were also at least two attempts to change the name but both were rejected by the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation board. One contained the second half of the former name and another was not a traditional Indigenous name.

The derogatory nickname for the landmark has been used in several hiking and climbing guides, on Google maps and on many trail websites, although some sites have removed it.

A mountain in Banff National Park with a name Indigenous communities find offensive is also to be renamed. The province says it is working with Parks Canada and First Nations to come up with a replacement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 23, 2021.

The Canadian Press

THE ARCHITECTURE OF WAR

Month of fighting in Syria's Daraa displaces 38,000: UN

Issued on: 24/08/2021 -

Swathes of the Syrian city of Daraa have been left deserted after heavy fighting between government forces and rebel fighters who stayed on after its return to government control in 2018 Sam HARIRI AFP/File

Beirut (AFP)

Fighting between government forces and former rebels in the Syrian province of Daraa has displaced more than 38,000 people over the past month, the United Nations said Tuesday, as truce talks falter.

Daraa, retaken by government forces in 2018, has emerged as a new flashpoint in recent weeks as government forces tightened control over Daraa al-Balad, a southern district of the provincial capital that is considered a hub for former rebel fighters.

Clashes, including artillery exchanges, between the two sides since late July have marked the biggest challenge yet to the Russian-brokered deal that returned the southern province to government control but allowed rebels to stay on in some areas.

Russian-sponsored truce talks launched in the wake of the latest fighting have made little headway as the government has stepped up its campaign to root out remaining rebel fighters from Daraa al-Balad.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 38,600 internally displaced persons are registered in and around Daraa, with most having fled from Daraa al-Balad.

"This includes almost 15,000 women, over 3,200 men and elderly and over 20,400 children," OCHA said.

It warned of a critical situation in the volatile district, saying that access to goods and services, including food and power, is "extremely challenging."

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that government forces are restricting the entry of goods into Daraa al-Balad, where it says 40,000 people still live.

"They are living under siege with families facing shortages of food, medical services, potable water, power and internet," said the monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

The Observatory said that many in Daraa al-Balad reject the truce terms being set by the government and its Russian ally.

The pro-government al-Watan newspaper and the official SANA news agency have accused rebel groups of thwarting ceasefire efforts.

The exact terms of the proposed truce remain unclear.

© 2021 AFP

An innovative process which prevents irreversible energy loss in batteries

100% initial efficiency achieved with a graphite-silicon oxide composite using a prelithiation solution; capable of increasing the ratio of silicon oxide content in anodes to over 50%

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Graphical Abstract — IMAGE: A CHEMICAL PRELITHIATION METHOD TO MAXIMIZE THE ICE OF THE BLEND ANODES USING A REDUCTIVE LI-ARENE COMPLEX SOLUTION OF REGULATED SOLVATION POWER, WHICH ENABLES A FULL CELL TO EXHIBIT A NEAR-IDEAL ENERGY DENSITY view more
CREDIT: KOREA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (KIST)

When its batteries are fully charged, an electronic device will normally indicate that they are at 100% capacity. However, this value only represents 70-90% of the theoretical energy density that can be stored in the batteries, owing to the permanent loss of Li ions that occurs during the initial charge in the stabilization (formation) stage of battery production. By preventing this initial loss of Li ions, the mileage of electric vehicles (EVs) and usage time of smartphones can be drastically increased.

In an effort to overcome this issue, a joint research team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), led by Dr. Minah Lee from the Center for Energy Storage Research, Dr. Jihyun Hong from the Center for Energy Materials Research, and Dr. Hyangsoo Jeong from the Center for Hydrogen-Fuel Cell Research, has developed an electrode pre-treatment solution capable of minimizing this initial Li ion loss in graphite-silicon oxide (SiOx, 0.5 ≤ x ≤ 1.5) composite anodes. After being dipped in the solution, the anode, which was composed of 50% SiOx, demonstrated negligible Li loss, enabling a full cell to exhibit near-ideal energy density.

While most commercial Li batteries utilize a graphite anode, SiOx has been garnering significant attention as a next-generation material for anodes due to its high capacity, which is 5-10 times greater than graphite. Yet, SiOx also irreversibly consumes three times as much active Li as graphite. As a result, a composite electrode, consisting of a mixture of graphite and SiOx, is now gaining recognition as an alternative for practical next-generation anodes. However, while there was a corresponding increase in the capacity of graphite-SiOx composite electrodes at higher ratios of SiOx, there was also an increase in loss of initial Li. Consequently, the ratio of SiOx content in a graphite-SiOx composite electrode was limited to 15%, as increasing the ratio to 50% would result in an initial Li loss of 40%.

To simultaneously achieve high capacity and high initial efficiency, scientists proposed various prelithiation methods involving the pre-doping of extra Li into the anode. Dr. Minah Lee’s research team at KIST developed a process wherein the electrode is dipped into a unique solution to mitigate Li consumption by the SiOx electrode. The team then applied this process to a graphite-SiOx composite material with significant commercialization potential.

The research team found that the pre-treatment solutions developed previously would cause the unintended insertion of solvent molecules with Li ions into the graphite, owing to the graphite’s versatile intercalation capability. This intercalation of large solvent molecules resulted in the structural breakdown of the graphite-SiOx composite electrode. To prevent electrode failure, the researchers developed a new solution using a weakly solvating solvent to reduce the interaction between the solvent and the Li ions. This solution enabled the selective insertion of Li ions into the active materials, ensuring a stable supply of additional Li to the graphite-SiOx composite electrode.

The initial Li consumption was completely prevented after the graphite-SiOx electrode was immersed in the solution developed by the research team for approximately 1 minute, even at a 50% SiOx ratio. Consequently, the electrode showed a high initial efficiency of nearly 100%, indicating negligible Li loss (≤ 1%) in the initial charge. Electrodes developed through this process had a capacity 2.6 times higher than conventional graphite anodes, while also maintaining 87.3% of the initial capacity after 250 charge-/discharge cycles.

Dr. Minah Lee from KIST gave the following statement: “As a result of this study, we should be able to increase the SiOx content in graphite-SiOx composite anodes to over 50%, as opposed to the 15% ratio allowed by conventional materials, making it possible to produce lithium ion batteries with a greater capacity and improve the mileage of future EVs.” Dr. Jihyun Hong, a co-researcher at KIST, also said, “The technology is safe and suitable for mass production, and therefore is likely to be commercialized.”

CAPTION

A KIST researcher conducts an experiment to evaluate high-capacity batteries following prelithiation

CREDIT

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)

This study was funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT through KIST’s institutional research program, and the National Research Foundation of Korea’s Basic Research Program (for young and mid-career researchers) and Climate Change Response Technology Development Project. The findings of this study were published in the latest edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (IF:15.419, top 6.621% in the JCR field, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c03648).