Wednesday, September 01, 2021

How ant teeth cut like a scalpel

Atomic-scale imaging reveals tiny animals use zinc to sharpen their miniature tools

DOE/PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

Arun Devaraj — IMAGE: ARUN DEVARAJ AT WORK IN THE LAB. view more
CREDIT: PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

Ever wonder how tiny creatures can so easily slice, puncture, or sting? New research reveals that ants, worms, spiders, and other tiny creatures have a built-in set of tools that would be the envy of any carpenter or surgeon.

A recent study, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, shows for the first time how individual atoms of zinc are arranged to maximize cutting efficiency and maintain the sharpness of these exquisitely constructed tiny animal tools. A collaboration between a research team at the University of Oregon and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) revealed nature’s solution to enable tiny creatures to cut and puncture with relative ease.

When the ant bites

Consider the ant tooth. Yes, ants have teeth, as anyone who has ever stepped on an ant mound can attest. These specialized structures, technically called “mandibular teeth” because they are attached outside of their mouths, are made of a network of material that tightly binds individual atoms of zinc. The total effect is a mandible that packs more than 8 percent of the tooth weight with zinc.

These kinds of specialized critter tools have been a decades-long fascination for University of Oregon associate professor Robert Schofield, who led this study. His team of biophysicists has developed techniques to measure the hardness, elasticity, energy of fracture, abrasion resistance, and impact resistance on a miniature scale.

But they couldn’t actually see the structure of the materials that make up ant teeth and other microscopic animal tools, especially at the atomic scale. That’s where PNNL materials scientist Arun Devaraj and doctoral intern Xiaoyue Wang entered the picture. Devaraj is an expert in the use of a specialized microscope technique called atom probe tomography. He used a focused ion beam microscope to take a tiny needle sample from the tip of an ant tooth and then imaged that needle sample using atom probe tomography, allowing the team to identify how individual atoms are arranged near the tip of an ant tooth.

Using this technique, Devaraj and Wang recorded for the first time the nanoscale distribution of zinc atoms in the ant tooth.

“We could see that the zinc is uniformly distributed in the tooth, which was a surprise,” said Devaraj. “We were expecting the zinc to be clustered in nano-nodules.”

The research team estimated that, because these biomaterials can be sharper, they make it possible for the animals to use 60 percent or even less of the force that they would have to use if their tools were made of materials similar to that found in human teeth. Because less force is required, their smaller muscles spend less energy. These advantages may explain why every spider, ant, other insects, worms, crustaceans, and many other groups of organisms have these specialized tools.

CAPTION

Ant mandibles pack a powerful bite, thanks to embedded atoms of zinc.

CREDIT

Robert Schofield | University of Oregon

Ouch! Ant teeth at work

“Human engineers might also learn from this biological trick,” said Schofield. “The hardness of ant teeth, for example, increases from about the hardness of plastic to the hardness of aluminum when the zinc is added. While there are much harder engineering materials, they are often more brittle.”

Learning from nature is one way of understanding what makes materials stronger and more damage-resistant, added Devaraj. He is currently using a DOE Early Career Award to study, at the atomic scale, principles that make some materials strong and damage resistant. “By studying steel microstructure also at the atomic scale, we can better understand how altering the composition of materials changes its damage resistance, specifically stress corrosion resistance and behavior over time,” he said. “This is especially important for designing structures like nuclear power plants that need to withstand aging for many decades.”

The research study was supported by the National Science Foundation-supported research Center for Advanced Materials Characterization, a University of Oregon-based facility. A portion of the work was conducted at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a DOE Office of Science user facility at PNNL in Richland, Washington.

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-021-91795-y

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

The homogenous alternative to biomineralization: Znand Mn‑rich materials enable sharp organismal “tools” that reduce force requirements

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2021

Zinc-infused proteins are the secret that allows scorpions, spiders and ants to puncture tough skin

by Robert Schofield, The Conversation

Many small animals grow their teeth, claws and other "tools" out of materials that are filled with zinc, bromine and manganese, reaching up to 20% of the material's weight. My colleagues and I call these "heavy element biomaterials," and in a new paper, we suggest that these materials make it possible for animals to grow scalpel-sharp and precisely shaped tools that are resistant to breaking, deformation and wear.

Because of the small size of things like ant teeth, it has been hard for biologists to test how well the materials they are made of resist fractures, impacts and abrasions. My research group developed machines and methods to test these and other properties, and along with our collaborators, we studied their composition and molecular structure.

We examined ant mandible teeth and found that they are a smooth mix of proteins and zinc, with single zinc atoms attached to about a quarter of the amino acid units that make up the proteins forming the teeth. In contrast, calcified tools—like human teeth—are made of relatively large chunks of calcium minerals. We think the lack of chunkiness in heavy element biomaterials makes them better than calcified materials at forming smooth, precisely shaped and extremely sharp tools.

To evaluate the advantages of heavy element biomaterials, we estimated the force, energy and muscle size required for cutting with tools made of different materials. Compared with other hard materials grown by these animals, the wear-resistant zinc material enables heavily used tools to puncture stiff substances using only one-fifth of the force. The estimated advantage is even greater relative to calcified materials that—since they can't be nearly as sharp as heavy element biomaterials—can require more than 100 times as much force.

It's not surprising that materials that could make sharp tools would evolve in small animals. A tick and a wolf both need to puncture the same elk skin, but the wolf has vastly stronger muscles. The tick can make up for its tiny muscles by using sharper tools that focus force onto smaller regions.

But, like a sharp pencil tip, sharper tool tips break more easily. The danger of fracture is made even worse by the tendency for small animals to extend their reach using long thin tools—like those pictured above. And a chipped claw or tooth may be fatal for a small animal that doesn't have the strength to cut with blunted tools.

But we found that heavy element biomaterials are also particularly hard and damage-resistant.

From an evolutionary perspective, these materials allow smaller animals to consume tougher foods. And the energy saved by using less force during cutting can be important for any animal. These advantages may explain the widespread use of heavy element biomaterials in nature—most ants, many other insects, spiders and their relatives, marine worms, crustaceans and many other types of organisms use them.

While my team's research has clarified the advantages of heavy element biomaterials, we still don't know exactly how zinc and manganese harden and protect the tools.

One possibility is that a small fraction of the zinc, for example, forms bridges between proteins, and these cross-links stiffen the material—like crossbeams stiffen a building. We also think that when a fang bangs into something hard, these zinc cross-links may break first, absorbing energy to keep the fang itself from chipping.

We speculate that the abundance of extra zinc is a ready supply for healing the material by quickly reestablishing the broken zinc-histidine cross-links between proteins.

The potential that these materials are self-healing makes them even more interesting, and our team's next step is to test this hypothesis. Eventually we may find that self-healing or other features of heavy element biomaterials could lead to improved materials for things like small medical devices

Atomic-scale imaging reveals ants use zinc to sharpen their teeth

Provided by The Conversation

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

UK

Cuts to housing benefits led to over 75,000 more overcrowded households during the pandemic

by Amy Clair, The Conversation

COVID-19 has been described as a "housing disease". Overcrowded living conditions make it easier for the virus to spread, and statistics show a link between overcrowding and mortality from COVID.

In my new research published in the International Journal of Housing Policy, I found that reductions to housing benefits led to a significant increase in overcrowding among private renters in England in the years leading up to the pandemic. My analysis shows that more than 75,000 additional households were overcrowded during the pandemic because of these policies.

Changes to housing benefit

The local housing allowance (LHA) approach to calculating housing benefit for private renters was introduced by the Labour government in 2008. Previously, housing benefit was based on the actual rent paid by individual recipients. Arguing that this was undermining work incentives, the LHA approach instead meant recipient households could receive support up to the median rental prices for the relevant property size in their area. The median, or 50th percentile, represents the "middle" value between the lowest and highest values—in this case the lowest and highest rents, therefore making the cheapest half of housing in an area affordable to recipients.

After the 2010 election, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government made further changes with the aim of reducing spending. From April 2011, LHA rates were reduced from the 50th to the 30th percentile, meaning that housing benefit would now only cover rents for the cheapest three out of 10 homes in an area. This resulted in an average loss of £1,220 per household per year. Caps depending on property size were also introduced.

The government argued that the lower levels of support would encourage lower rent levels. However, a government-commissioned review found that this was not the case: the vast majority (89%) of the effects fell on tenants who had to find money for their housing costs elsewhere, while just 11% of the effects fell on landlords via reducing rents.

In the years that followed this change, the way that LHA rates were updated to keep up with rising rents was also altered. Previously increased monthly according to rental prices, from April 2013 increases took place annually, capped at the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation. The Consumer Price Index calculates inflation based on the price of a range of goods and services, but does not include housing costs.

Annual increases were further restricted to 1% in 2014 and 2015 before being frozen for four years. This led to a widening gap between LHA rates and rents in the years leading up to the pandemic. For example, in the year to 2016 while increases were limited to just 1%, actual rents in England increased by 2.5%.

Overcrowding

One potential way for renters to adapt to lower financial support is to move into smaller and less suitable homes. In my research, I compared trends in overcrowding both before and after the LHA reductions, as well as between private renters who do and do not receive support. By using this approach, I found a causal link between the policy changes and overcrowding.

My analysis first looked at the immediate effect of the cut to LHA rates from the 50th to 30th percentile of rents in an area, finding an increase in overcrowding of over 5% in England. This is equivalent to 75,000 additional households living in overcrowded homes.

I then looked at the longer-term effect of the changes, including the changes to to the way LHA rates were set, which undermined the link between allowances and actual rents. The results show further increases in overcrowding for recipients of housing benefit, while overcrowding for other private renters continued to decrease.

Spread within households has been one of the main routes of COVID-19 transmission, putting people in overcrowded homes at greater risk. Overcrowding makes self-isolation and reducing risk much harder and less pleasant, and is associated with poorer mental and physical health.

During the pandemic the government did increase the LHA levels back to the true 30th percentile of rents, reversing the effects of limits to increases. But failure to adjust the benefit cap in response will have significantly reduced any beneficial effect this may have had. Between February and May 2020 there was a near doubling of households who had their benefit income reduced by the cap, disproportionately affecting single-parent households. LHA rates have once again been frozen.

Moving forward

These findings support calls from housing organizations such as Shelter to increase the LHA back to the 50th percentile, and to once again increase allowances in line with rents. This would protect private renters from financial hardship in the short term while a more sustainable housing policy should be the longer-term goal. While this conflicts with government's approach of once again freezing LHA rates and reducing spending, three arguments against such an approach should be considered.

Firstly, the increased spending on renter support reflects government decisions more than it does excessive or frivolous spending by benefit recipients. Continuous reductions in support for the social rented sector have led to more people living in the private sector, where rents, and therefore housing benefit rates, are higher.

Secondly, many policies to "improve" access to home ownership have, at great cost, inflated housing prices and made accessing ownership more difficult for renters. These policies benefit large housebuilders, and those already in owner occupation. Given these impacts, support for renters should perhaps not be the main target of actions to reduce housing spending.

Finally, reducing LHA levels may have reduced government spending on housing, but its consequences will have led to increases in spending elsewhere, particularly health. A person's home is central to their broader health and wellbeing—in an era where low housing quality has been directly linked to the spread of a deadly disease, housing policy must take this into account.

Study: People who use food banks live in substandard and unaffordable homes

Provided by The Conversation

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

Pregnant women victims of microaggressions in the workplace

by Tony Trueman, British Academy of Management

office — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Half of women questioned in a survey said that taking maternity leave had hurt their careers, new research says.

Many pregnant women had endured negative comments from colleagues about them needing to take time off work or having a "preggy brain," the British Academy of Management online annual conference heard today [Wednesday 1 September].

Dr. Yehia Nawar, of London South Bank University, carried out an online survey of 104 women, who were mostly graduates and included senior managers.

Around 50% said that said that taking maternity leave had a negative impact on their careers, while a third said it had not, and the remainder were undecided.

"All women that gave feedback about maternity said that since they become pregnant, men in their companies had treated them differently," Dr. Nawar told the conference.

"The most common microaggressions were discriminatory comments about the women having a 'preggy brain' when doing their work, or comments about their pregnancy, but there are also negative assumptions made about taking additional time off work upon return and being less available to attend meetings or conferences.

"A large number of women had experienced a more difficult situation at the workplace because of their pregnancy, such as missing promotions and no further pay-rise or bonus.

"This study revealed that glass ceiling still occurs in the UK and that women find difficult to reach top managerial positions due to microaggressions, discriminations, harassments, inequalities, stereotypes, prejudice, organizational culture and maternity."

They survey also asked the women if had felt any type of barrier or glass ceiling at their workplace and almost half said there was, while a quarter said denied it. A third of respondents said this had affected their career.

Over a third said their self-esteem had suffered as a result of discrimination, including disrespectful comments as being thought of as the "coffee lady," being mistaken for a personal assistant, being called "dramatic" when pointing out a problem. Some said men received larger bonuses for doing the same job.

"This demonstrates that a glass ceiling and gender bias is deep in the UK, and that it is affecting women's careers," said Dr. Nawar.

"More specifically, microaggressions, discriminations, harassments, inequalities, stereotypes, prejudice, organizational culture and maternity are destroying the women's career prospects."

Women and ethnic minorities face 'severe disadvantages' in reaching top rank among surgeons

Provided by British Academy of Management

Dog vaccination essential for preventing rabies spread to humans and animals

by Stephen Johns, Imperial College London

A coordinated and sustained program of dog vaccination is essential for preventing rabies spread to humans and animals, according to new research.

Research, led by academics at Imperial, the University of Glasgow and Ifakara Health Institute, and published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found that rabies incidence in both humans and domestic dogs decreased during a period of sustained dog vaccination in southeast Tanzania, despite incidences of ongoing wildlife rabies infections.

The team found that even in areas with a relatively high proportion of wildlife rabies cases, the domestic dog vaccination campaign still reduced the risk to humans. However, after mass dog vaccination ended in early 2017, rabies cases began to rise in some areas once again.

A deadly disease

Rabies is one of the world's most feared diseases due to its high case fatality rate.

Despite the existence of safe and effective vaccines, rabies continues to kill an estimated 59,000 people annually in low-and middle-income countries, with children disproportionately affected. For this reason, in 2015 a call for action set the "Zero by 30' goal, to achieve zero human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030.

Most human rabies cases result from bites by rabid animals, either from domestic dogs or, less commonly, wild animals including jackals. Once exposed, immediate treatment is vital as rabies is invariably fatal once clinical signs develop.

Treatment consists of a course of vaccinations known as post-exposure prophylaxis, which although highly effective, can be difficult to access due to the cost, limited availability, and low awareness of rabies risks.

Across Africa and Asia, domestic dogs are considered the main hosts for rabies, and over 99% of human rabies deaths are caused by dog bites. Vaccination of domestic dogs against rabies has repeatedly been shown to be successful and cost-effective in preventing human rabies.

However, despite this, in many rabies-endemic countries dog vaccination is still not routine. This is primarily due to lack of investment in dog vaccination, but concerns are often expressed that wildlife may play a role in maintaining transmission and dog vaccination may therefore be ineffective.

Exploring transmission dynamics

To answer these concerns the researchers investigated the transmission dynamics of rabies in a previously unstudied area of Tanzania where jackals were found to make up more than 40% of reported animal rabies cases.

Collecting data over a nine-year period from 13 districts in southern Tanzania, they used hospital records to identify people potentially exposed to rabies who were then traced and interviewed to determine if the biting animal was rabid. As part of this they were able to examine evidence on whether rabies transmission is sustained in wildlife as well as in domestic dogs, and whether wildlife could present an obstacle to rabies elimination.

The researchers found that rabies incidence in both humans and animals decreased during the period of dog vaccinations, from a high of 218 cases in 2011 to a low of just 15 in 2017. Most human rabies exposures (56%) were from domestic dogs, but approximately one third of transmission events occurred in wildlife, with the remainder due to cross-species transmission between dogs and wildlife.

Reducing the risk to humans

These findings highlight the potential importance of wildlife as a rabies public health threat and also a potential obstacle to elimination. However, even in areas with a relatively a high proportion of wildlife cases, the researchers found that domestic dog vaccination still significantly reduced the risk of rabies infection to humans.

One of the lead authors of the study, Sarah Hayes, from the School of Public Health, said: "Even in this part of Tanzania, where wildlife makes up a large proportion of the reported rabies cases, we have shown that vaccinating domestic dogs can significantly reduce the risk to people and have an important public health impact.

"It is critical that there is continued investment in domestic dog vaccination and this work suggests that the presence of rabies within wildlife populations should not be a barrier to implementing these programs."

Professor Katie Hampson, from the University of Glasgow, said: "Our findings confirm that, even in areas where wildlife rabies cases are high, focusing on domestic dog vaccination will have major public health benefits. Moreover, if sustained and coordinated a dog vaccination program has the potential to eliminate rabies from circulating even in these areas despite the presence of wildlife transmission.

"We were surprised to see how many wildlife rabies cases were occurring in this part of Tanzania. Jackal cases represented a far higher proportion of rabies cases than we've seen elsewhere in East Africa. This was why it was such a relief to see that, even with such high numbers of cases in jackals, dog vaccination still led to very clear declines in rabies, in all species, and in people bitten by rabid animals—both dogs and jackals."

Kennedy Lushasi, from the Ifakara Health Institute, said: "Even though wildlife cases, especially jackals appear to make up a large proportion of animal rabies cases and of bites to people in south-eastern Tanzania, vaccinating domestic dogs alone resulted in the decline of cases in all species. This suggests that wildlife should not be an obstacle in eliminating rabies. The government and other stakeholders should invest in mass dog vaccination programs and these should be sustained to make rabies history."

The paper, "Reservoir Dynamics of Rabies in Southeast Tanzania and the role of cross-species transmission," is published in Journal of Applied Ecology.

Dog rabies vaccination programs affect human exposure, prophylaxis use

More information: Kennedy Lushasi et al, Reservoir dynamics of rabies in south‐east Tanzania and the roles of cross‐species transmission and domestic dog vaccination, Journal of Applied Ecology (2021). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.13983

Journal information: Journal of Applied Ecology

Provided by Imperial College London

Most stray cats die before they turn one, so what's the best way to deal with them?

by Trish Fleming, Heather M. Crawford, Mike Calver, Tida Nou, The Conversation

Street life ain't easy for a stray cat, with most dying before they turn 1. So what's the best way to deal with them? — Credit: Shutterstock

Odds are, if you've seen a cat prowling around your neighborhood, it doesn't have an owner. Australia is home to hordes of unowned cats, with an estimated 700,000 living without appropriate care in urban areas, around rubbish dumps or on farms.

Unowned cats are sometimes called "stray" or "semi-feral": they, or their parents, were once owned by humans but are now abandoned or lost. Unowned stray cats rely heavily on human settlements for food and shelter and breed freely. Feral cats, on the other hand, live in the wild and can survive without relying on people for food.

Like their feral counterparts, unowned cats are a public health threat, they can fight with or transmit diseases to pet cats, and they kill native wildlife. And, of course, they themselves suffer poor welfare. In fact, our recent studies show unowned cats have significantly shorter lives than pet cats, with less than half surviving their first year.

It's vital we find effective ways to reduce their numbers—but what's the best way to go about this?

Street cats have hard, short lives

Free-roaming cats have hard lives on the streets. Even when they're owned by someone, things can come to a sticky end.

Numerous international studies report high death rates for roaming pet cats, with causes including road accidents and accidental poisoning. They're also frequently injured or killed by domestic dogs.

Even Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's cat Paddles, the "first cat" of New Zealand, was killed by a car in 2017.

Unowned cats encounter the same issues and more, but without an owner to provide immediate veterinary attention. So it's no surprise free-roaming unowned cats have low life expectancy.

We analyzed the demographics of free-roaming unowned cats in Perth, Western Australia. The 145 unowned cats we studied had significantly shorter lives than the 899 pet cats in Perth. The median age of unowned cats was just eight to ten months. By contrast, the median age for pet cats was about five years.

The unowned cats in our study looked healthy, were reproductive, and had few external parasites. However, these animals were the ones that had survived long enough to be trapped and studied. Cats often hide when traumatized or ill, and so sick cats will often just "disappear".

Alarmingly, 58% of the cats we examined had consumed dangerous refuse, including sharp, dangerous items or indigestible material that blocked their gastrointestinal tracts. Nearly all (95%) carried substantial loads of transmissible helminth parasites.

Across Australia's states and territories, there are two main approaches local governments use to manage unowned cat populations in urban and regional areas: trap and euthanase or trap and adopt.

Another approach is to trap, desex and return cats to their point of capture (called "trap-neuter-return"). Although this is currently being undertaken by private individuals and groups in capital cities and some towns, it is considered illegal across most jurisdictions in Australia, as it is construed as abandonment or releasing an invasive species.

1. Euthanasia

In most parts of the country, where problems with unowned cats have been reported, they are trapped and removed. This normally means euthanasia.

For example, in Brisbane, a council program that ran since 2013 efficiently reduced the numbers of unowned cats with euthanasia, with complaints about stray cats falling from about 140 to just ten per year, over five years.

But high rates of euthanasia for unowned cats can be problematic for many people, especially for veterinarians undertaking the task. It can be traumatic and challenging to euthanise healthy cats just because they are unwanted.

2. Trap-neuter-return programs

Some believe desexing cats and returning them to street life, with supplementary feeding, is a solution to large numbers of unwanted cats, because it avoids euthanasia.

But overseas studies have shown trap-neuter-return programs encourage abandonment of unwanted cats at feeding stations. Numbers of cats can actually go up, despite best efforts.

And what is the quality of life for returned cats? Given the difficult, short lives of free-roaming cats, trap-neuter-return programs are arguably a less ethical choice with poor welfare outcomes for the cats themselves. There have even been calls in Japan to revise trap-neuter-return policies on account of poor health and well-being of the cats.

Returning neutered animals to where they were found may also violate state laws. Enforcing these laws is critical to reduce unowned cat populations, improve the welfare of cats, and discourage dumping of unwanted pets.

3. Adopt a cat

In May, the ACT government released an ambitious and targeted ten-year plan with the vision that, by 2031, "all cats in the ACT will be owned, wanted and cared for by responsible owners." It is an exemplar of what the community can do to improve the lives of cats, and we believe it should be modeled elsewhere in Australia.

The plan has been developed to raise best practice standards, recognizing the duty of care needed to ensure the health and well-being of cats.

This starts with responsible owners. It calls for improved compliance with compulsory desexing and registration. To encourage people to comply, the ACT government will be implementing free or low-cost desexing and free microchipping. Compulsory containment for new cats acquired after July 1, 2022 is also on the cards.

The plan provides a strategy to trap roaming cats, with improvements in how pet cats can be identified and returned to their owners, while unowned neighborhood cats will be put up for adoption.

So what do we do about it?

Well, we know two tasks are critical: removing unowned cats from the streets, and reducing unwanted breeding and abandonment of cats.

Trap-neuter-return programs can do more harm than good because cats still live a hard life on the streets and may lead to some people feeling comfortable abandoning unwanted cats at the release sites. And while euthanasia has been shown to be effective, it can be a difficult choice.

Instead, Australia must boost efforts to socialize and adopt unowned cats, and enforce laws that stop owned cats free-roaming the streets. This will require enormous effort with community education, but it is a compassionate choice addressing all problems caused by free-roaming cats (both owned and unowned).

If you're inspired to give a cat a "furrever" home, contact your nearest cat welfare organization or local council. And if you already have a pet cat, it's important to keep it on your property all day, every day—not only to protect native wildlife, but to protect the cats themselves.

Cats prefer to get free meals rather than work for them

Provided by The Conversation

Afghanistan has vast mineral wealth but faces steep challenges to tap it

by Scott L. Montgomery, The Conversation

The official ending of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan leaves a number of long-term questions, including how the country can build a functioning economy. Now that U.S. assistance has evaporated and international aid is largely shut off, what options does Afghanistan have?

One possibility resides in natural resources. Afghanistan possesses a wealth of nonfuel minerals whose value has been estimated at more than US$1 trillion. For millennia the country was renowned for its gemstones—rubies, emeralds, tourmalines and lapis lazuli. These minerals continue to be locally extracted, both legally and illegally, in mostly small, artisanal mines. Far more value, however, lies with the country's endowments of iron, copper, lithium, rare earth elements, cobalt, bauxite, mercury, uranium and chromium.

While the total abundance of minerals is certainly vast, scientific understanding of these resources is still at an exploratory stage. Even with a better understanding of how rewarding their extraction might be, the presence of these resources will not provide a jump-start to a new economy. As a geologist who has studied the extent of their resources, I estimate a minimum of seven to 10 years will be needed for large-scale mining to become a major new source of revenue.

USGS follows the Soviets

British and German geologists conducted the earliest modern surveys of Afghanistan's minerals in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But it was the Soviets in the 1960s and 1970s who performed the most systematic exploratory work throughout the country, producing a large body of detailed information that stood as the backbone to more recent studies.

From 2004 to 2011, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a detailed review of available data, adding new information from its own aerial survey, limited field checking and from the Afghanistan Geological Survey. This work better identified mineral sites, richness and abundance.

No one who examines this work, as I have, can ignore the large-scale exploratory effort by Soviet scientists. Detailed field mapping and massive sampling, including tens of thousands of meters of borehole drilling, and lab analyses were performed. Given the time and money invested, it would appear high-level plans were in play to develop Afghanistan's minerals once the country was under Soviet influence.

Based largely on this information, the USGS delineated 24 areas in the country and estimated their mineral abundance. Data packages were prepared on all 24 areas for companies to use as a basis for making bids to exploit any resources.

Chinese and Indian companies expressed strong interest, and actual concessions were granted. Arguments over contract terms and concerns about security, however, have stalled activity since the late 2010s.

Mineral abundance

How much mineral abundance does Afghanistan actually have? I'll try to answer this with a brief summary of USGS estimates for metals of special interest: copper, iron, lithium and rare earth metals. Geoscientists who were part of the USGS effort have noted that their figures are "conservative" but also "preliminary."

Regardless, it's safe to say the resources in total are huge. Total copper resources for all known deposits sum to about 57.7 million metric tons. At current prices, the resource value is $516 billion. These are "undiscovered" resources—identified but not fully explored and assessed. If further study were to judge them recoverable at a profit, they would rank Afghanistan among the top five nations for copper reserves in the world.

The largest copper deposit, which also contains significant amounts of cobalt, is the Aynak ore body, located about 18 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Kabul. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Soviets began development of the mine but it was suspended in 1989 following Soviet withdrawal from the country. The high-grade portion of the total Aynak deposit is estimated at 11.3 million metric tons of copper, worth $102 billion at current market prices.

Afghanistan also has world-class iron ore resources, concentrated in the Haji Gak deposit of Bamiyan Province. Haji Gak has an estimated 2,100 million metric tons of high-grade ore that is 61%-69% iron by weight. At current price levels, this represents a value of $336.8 billion, placing Afghanistan among the top 10 nations worldwide in extractable iron.

Lithium resources in Nuristan Province, which occur as veins, impressed Soviet geoscientists with the amount of hard rock ore (lithium is also mined from brine). Based on USGS estimates, it is a significant but modest resource in today's terms, as exploration for such deposits has increased around the world in the past decade.

Finally, rare earth elements exist in southern Helmand Province. These deposits mainly contain cerium, with smaller amounts of more valuable lanthanum, praseodymium and neodymium, totaling perhaps 1.4 million metric tons. Two of these, praseodymium and neodymium, are at high price levels—more than $45,000 per metric ton—and make exceptional magnets used in motors for hybrid and electric cars, but the abundance of these elements is not large relative to how much other countries have.

Above-ground factors and geopolitics

Mining wisdom holds that what's in the ground is less important than what's above ground. Market realities, security, contract terms, infrastructure and environmental concerns matter more than sheer abundance to whether resources can be developed.

Among these factors, perhaps the most relevant at present is strong global demand for the metals, particularly copper, lithium and rare earth elements, which are essential to the growing markets in renewable energy and electric vehicles.

Whether or not Afghanistan can begin mining these elements will depend on what the new Taliban government does. Under the former Ministry of Mines, a $2.9 billion contract for a portion of the Aynak copper deposit was granted to two state-owned Chinese companies. The 30-year contract signed in 2007 had a high royalty rate by global standards and required that ore smelting and processing be done locally. Other conditions included building a 400-megawatt coal power plant and a railway to the Pakistan border. Also stipulated was that 85%-100% of employees, from skilled labor to managerial personnel, be Afghan nationals within eight years of the date work begins. Though originally agreed to, these terms were later declared onerous by the companies, halting development.

Though roads exist to many ore deposit areas, Afghanistan lacks good-quality roadways, railways and electricity. Mining companies are no stranger to such challenges, yet the situation is heightened in this case by rugged terrain and the landlocked nature of the country. Railways, in particular, would be essential for transporting ore, raw or refined, to foreign markets.

There are also environmental and cultural concerns. Mining can result in major impacts to land and air quality, as well as watersheds—a particular concern in water-poor Afghanistan—if not regulated to best practices. No less, enforcement of such standards is required and has been a problem in many lower-income countries.

Close to the Aynak copper deposit is a large site of Buddhist relics, statues, temples and stupas. There are also Bronze Age mining sites that constitute important archaeological resources. Here, too, no clarity yet exists about how Taliban leaders, who ordered the destruction of the great Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in 2001, might view these sites.

For Afghanistan, its resources could mean a source of long-term foreign investment, skill-building and infrastructure expansion, all essential for a sustainable economy. But a major question is which companies would be involved. Afghanistan is also at the center of geopolitical struggles, involving both India and Pakistan, as well as China, Iran and the U.S. That the Taliban are now in control does not make the country's minerals any less invested with large significance.

Author's note: In 2015, I was the instructor for a task force class in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington that produced a report on Afghanistan's natural resources and the possibility of their acting as a basis for economic development. This article is devoted to the excellent work done by students on that task force.

Afghanistan finds deadly fungal infection in COVID patients

Provided by The Conversation

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

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/08/how-afghanistans-1-trillion-mining.html

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Wednesday, September 01, 2021

CAPTION

CREDIT

JOURNAL

DOI

METHOD OF RESEARCH

ARTICLE TITLE

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

Zinc-infused proteins are the secret that allows scorpions, spiders and ants to puncture tough skin

UK

Cuts to housing benefits led to over 75,000 more overcrowded households during the pandemic

Pregnant women victims of microaggressions in the workplace

Dog vaccination essential for preventing rabies spread to humans and animals

Most stray cats die before they turn one, so what's the best way to deal with them?

Afghanistan has vast mineral wealth but faces steep challenges to tap it

About Me