Swapping just one food item per day can make diets substantially more planet-friendly

Americans who eat beef could slash their diet’s carbon footprint as much as 48 percent by swapping just one serving per day for a more planet-friendly alternative, according to a new study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TULANE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: LEAD AUTHOR DIEGO ROSE, A PROFESSOR OF NUTRITION AND FOOD SECURITY AT TULANE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND TROPICAL MEDICINE. view more 

CREDIT: TULANE UNIVERSITY

If your New Year’s resolution is to eat better for the planet, a new Tulane University study finds it may be easier than you think. 

Americans who eat beef could slash their diet’s carbon footprint as much as 48 percent by swapping just one serving per day for a more planet-friendly alternative, according to a new study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Using real-world data from a survey of what more than 16,000 Americans eat in an average day, researchers from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the University of Michigan calculated how much of a difference people could make if they swapped one high-impact food item for similar, more sustainable options. They examined how the change would impact two metrics — their daily diets’ greenhouse gas emissions and water scarcity footprint, a measure of the irrigated water used to produce the foods they eat that takes into account regional variations in water scarcity.

The highest impact item in Americans’ diet is beef and around 20 percent of survey respondents ate at least one serving of it in a day. If they collectively swapped one serving of beef — for example, choosing ground turkey instead of ground beef — their diets’ greenhouse gas emissions fell by an average of 48 percent and water-use impact declined by 30 percent.

“People can make a significant difference in their carbon footprint with very simple changes — and the easiest one would be to substitute poultry for beef,” said lead author Diego Rose, a professor of nutrition and food security at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

The study also examined how the change would affect the overall environmental impact of all food consumption in the U.S. in a day — including the 80 percent of diets without any changes. If only the 20 percent of Americans who ate beef in a day switched to something else for one meal, that would reduce the overall carbon footprint of all U.S. diets by 9.6 percent and reduce water-use impacts by 5.9 percent.

Agricultural production accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and about 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. For the study, researchers built an extensive database of the greenhouse gas emissions and water use related to the production of foods and linked it to a large federal survey that asked people what they ate over a 24-hour period.

Although swapping beef had the greatest impact, they also measured the impact of changing other items. Replacing a serving of shrimp with cod reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent; replacing dairy milk with soymilk resulted in an 8 percent reduction. 

The greatest reduction in the water scarcity footprint came from replacing asparagus with peas, resulting in a 48 percent decrease. Substituting peanuts in place of almonds decreased the water scarcity footprint by 30 percent.

Although individual substitutions were the focus of the study, Rose said that addressing climate change must involve more than singular actions.

“The changes needed to address our climate problems are major. They are needed across all sectors and along all levels of human organization from international agencies to federal and state governments to communities and households,” Rose said. “Many individuals feel strongly about this and wish to change our climate problem through direct actions that they can control. This, in turn, can change social norms about both the seriousness of the problem and the potential solutions that can address it. Our study provides evidence that even simple steps can assist in these efforts.”
 

---

JOURNAL

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

DOI

10.1093/ajcn/nqab338 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Single-item substitutions can substantially reduce the carbon and water scarcity footprints of US diets

ARTICLE PUB

Martian meteorite’s organic materials origin not biological, formed by geochemical interactions between water and rock

The search for life on Mars can teach us about the reactions that led to the building blocks of life on early Earth

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: THE ALLAN HILLS 84001 METEORITE COURTESY OF NASA/JSC/STANFORD UNIVERSITY. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF NASA/JSC/STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

Washington, DC—Organic molecules found in a meteorite that hurtled to Earth from Mars were synthesized during interactions between water and rocks that occurred on the Red Planet about 4 billion years ago, according to new analysis led by Carnegie’s Andrew Steele and published by Science.  

The meteorite, called Allan Hills (ALH) 84001, was discovered in the Antarctic in 1984 and is considered one of the oldest known projectiles to reach Earth from Mars.  

“Analyzing the origin of the meteorite’s minerals can serve as a window to reveal both the geochemical processes occurring early in Earth’s history and Mars’ potential for habitability,” explained Steele, who has done extensive research on organic material in Martian meteorites and is a member of both the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers’ science teams.

Organic molecules contain carbon and hydrogen, and sometimes include oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and other elements. Organic compounds are commonly associated with life, although they can be created by non-biological processes as well, which are referred to as abiotic organic chemistry. 

For years, scientists have debated the origin story for the organic carbon found in the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite, with possibilities including various abiotic process related to volcanic activity, impact events on Mars, or hydrological exposure, as well as potentially the remnants of ancient life forms on Mars or contamination from its crash landing on Earth.  

The Steele-led team, which also included Carnegie’s Larry Nittler, Jianhua Wang, Pamela Conrad, Suzy Vitale, and Vincent Riggi as well as researchers from GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Free University of Berlin, NASA Johnson Space Center, NASA Ames Research Center, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, used a variety of sophisticated sample preparation and analysis techniques—including co-located nanoscale imaging, isotopic analysis, and spectroscopy—to reveal the origin of organic molecules in the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite.

They found evidence of water-rock interactions similar to those that happen on Earth. The samples indicate that the Martian rocks experienced two important geochemical processes. One, called serpentinization, occurs when iron- or magnesium-rich igneous rocks chemically interact with circulating water, changing their mineralogy and producing hydrogen in the process.  The other, called carbonization, involves interaction between rocks and slightly acidic water containing dissolved carbon dioxide and results in the formation of carbonate minerals.

It is unclear whether these processes were induced by surrounding aqueous conditions simultaneously or sequentially, but the evidence indicates that the interactions between water and rocks did not occur over a prolonged period. What is evident, however, is that the reactions produced organic material from the reduction of carbon dioxide.

These mineralogical features are rare in Martian meteorites, and while carbonation and serpentinization have been shown in orbital surveys of Mars and carbonation has been found in other, less-ancient, Martian meteorites, this is the first instance of these processes occurring in samples from ancient Mars. Organic molecules have been detected by Steele in other Martian meteorites and from his work with the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) team on the Curiosity rover, indicating that abiotic synthesis of organic molecules has been a part of Martian geochemistry for much of the planet’s history.

“These kinds of non-biological, geological reactions are responsible for a pool of organic carbon compounds from which life could have evolved and represent a background signal that must be taken into consideration when searching for evidence of past life on Mars,” Steele concluded. “Furthermore, if these reactions happened on ancient Mars, they must have happened on ancient Earth, and could possibly explain the results from Saturn’s moon Enceladus as well. All that is required for this type of organic synthesis is for a brine that contains dissolved carbon dioxide to percolate through igneous rocks. The search for life on Mars is not just an attempt to answer the question ‘are we alone?’ It also relates to early Earth environments and addresses the question of ‘where did we come from?’”

_____

The US Antarctic meteorite samples were recovered by the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program, which has been funded by NSF and NASA and characterized and curated by the Department of Mineral Sciences of the Smithsonian Institution and the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA Johnson Space Center, respectively.

This work was funded by NASA, Carnegie’s Earth and Planets Laboratory, and the Helmholtz Recruiting Initiative program.

The Carnegie Institution for Science (carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with three research divisions on both coasts. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in the life and environmental sciences, Earth and planetary science, and astronomy and astrophysics.

---

DOI

10.1126/science.abg7905 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Organic synthesis associated with serpentinization and carbonation on early Mars

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Jan-202

The role of risk aversion in the coal contracting behavior of US power plants

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS

A new paper published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists provides empirical evidence that risk aversion plays an important role in the coal contracting behavior of US power plants.

In “Regulatory Induced Risk Aversion in Coal Contracting at US Power Plants: Implications for Environmental Policy,” author Akshaya Jha notes that from 1983 to 1997, US power plants purchased the majority of their input coal from long-term contracts, consistently paying contract prices in excess of prevailing spot coal prices. Jha proposes a regulatory mechanism for why power plants specifically might exhibit risk aversion when purchasing inputs, arguing that regulators in practice are less likely to incorporate high input cost realizations into the output price they set for utilities. Utilities respond to this regulatory practice by taking costly actions to reduce the variance of their input costs.

Jha specifies an illustrative model in which an expected profit-maximizing firm receives a regulated revenue stream. This regulated revenue stream only reimburses the firm for total costs below a particular "prudence" threshold. Jha demonstrates that the price-regulated firm in this framework does not minimize expected total costs, instead expressing preferences for both a lower expected total cost and a lower variance in total.

Jha estimates the degree of risk aversion exhibited by US power plants using transaction-level data on the coal purchases made by virtually every power plant in the United States from 1983–97. The spot price uncertainty faced by each plant in each month is estimated using a panel-data version of a third-order autoregressive model for the growth rate of spot prices; both the mean and the variance of this growth rate are allowed to vary by the region where the plant is located and month of year.

Jha finds that power plants facing more spot coal price uncertainty sign longer duration coal contracts, purchase contract coal from a larger number of origin counties, and pay higher contract coal prices on average. To put his estimates in perspective, Jha notes, “if every power plant purchased all of their coal from the spot market, the annual aggregate cost savings would be $2.9 billion on average.”

The results indicate that a 10% increase in spot price uncertainty is associated with 0.9% increase in contract coal prices, and that both risk aversion and relationship-specific investments are important determinants of the coal contracting behavior of US power plants. “This suggests that any empirical analysis of contracting should account for the roles played by both transaction costs and risk aversion,” Jha writes. His estimated effect of spot price uncertainty on contract prices implies that plants are willing to trade off a $1.62 increase in their expected total costs for a $1 decrease in their standard deviation of total costs. “This is far larger than the risk premiums traditionally paid in commodities markets, suggesting that price regulated electric utilities have an especially low tolerance for risk.”

Jha uses his estimate of risk aversion to conduct a simple simulation analysis of the cost-effectiveness of a carbon tax relative to cap and trade.  The inputs to this simulation analysis are plant-level risk aversion, the mean of the permit price, volatility in the permit price, and the correlation between the permit price and the spot coal price. The carbon tax is set equal to the mean permit price, noting that the conditional variance of the carbon tax is equal to zero.  At the central parameter values, the ratio of the aggregate costs incurred by plants under cap and trade relative to the carbon tax is 1.27. When the risk aversion parameter is set to 50% of his estimate, the relative cost-effectiveness ratio is 1.13. This relative cost-effectiveness ratio is thus highly sensitive to the assumed level of risk aversion. He concludes, “The results of my simulation analysis highlight that risk aversion should play an important role in the decision regarding which of these two policy instruments are implemented.”

---

JOURNAL

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

DOI

10.1086/715885 

Risky food-finding strategy could be the key to human success

Creative free time may have come from big meals that could be shared

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A GROUP OF HADZA WOMEN SHARE A MEAL OF ROASTED TUBERS. COMBINING HUNTING AND GATHERING WITH FOOD SHARING, GROUP MEMBERS CAN RISK SPENDING A LOT OF ENERGY TO FIND FOOD KNOWING THEY WON’T STARVE IF THEY RETURN TO CAMP EMPTY-HANDED. view more 

CREDIT: HERMAN PONTZER, DUKE UNIVERSITY

DURHAM, N.C. – It’s a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon: would you rather be running after tasteless wild berries, or curled up on your couch with fuzzy socks and a good book?

You might not have had that choice if our ancestors had not taken a big gamble with their food.

A new study published in Science on December 24 shows that early human foragers and farmers adopted an inefficient high-risk, high-reward strategy to find food. They spent more energy in pursuit of food than their great ape cousins, but brought home much more calorie-rich meals that could be shared with the rest of their group. This strategy allowed some to rest or tackle other tasks while food was being acquired.

“Hunting and gathering is risky and inefficient, but the rate of return is enormous,” said study co-leader, Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. “We can share our food, and because we got so many calories before noon, we can hang out around each other in this new space, a free-time space.”

Humans spend a lot more energy than great apes. We have big brains that eat up a lot of calories, we live a long time, we can have long pregnancies that produce big babies, and these babies rely on adults for a long time.

To find out how humans obtained this extra energy, a group of researchers led by Thomas Kraft, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Pontzer  compared the energy budgets of wild gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans with that of populations of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers (Hadza) and Bolivian forager-horticulturalists (Tsimane).

Hunter-gatherers and forager-horticulturalists both gather food from wild plants and animals, but the Tsimane also produce small-scale crops.

Energy budgets depend on how much food energy is absorbed, and how much time and energy are spent obtaining food. Humans were thought to maintain their energetically costly lifestyle in one of two ways: they could be super-efficient, spending little time and energy finding food – in part due to the use of tools and technological advances, or they could spend a lot of energy to quickly bring home a lot of food, sacrificing energy efficiency.

The researchers found that hunter-gatherers and forager-horticulturalists are inefficient, high-intensity foragers. Like a gas-guzzling pick-up truck bringing home a ton of donuts, they spend a lot more energy obtaining food than great apes, but they do it faster and the food they obtain is high in calories. Rather than minimizing their costs, they take a risk to maximize their rewards.

Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, on the other hand, are like an electric car bringing home a head of lettuce and some apples. They are essentially herbivores and frugivores who eat very little, if any, meat. Their strategy is one of low risk, low rewards: their food is easy to find, but it’s fibrous, low in energy, and it takes a lot of time to get enough of it.

The Hadza hunter-gatherers and the Tsimane forager-horticulturalists both eat high-calorie foods that are harder to get. They spend a lot of energy hunting, gathering, planting and harvesting, but can quickly bring home a nutritious lunch. What’s more, they bring enough to share.

CAPTION

A group of Hadza women use tools to dig out high-calorie tubers, that they will then roast and share with their group.

CREDIT

Herman Pontzer, Duke University

Pontzer said sharing provides a safety net, enabling some group members to take risks, targeting big game and other high-risk, high-reward foods. If they come home empty-handed, which they often do, they know others will have something to share. The possibility of sharing food also means some group members can even stay at the camp on occasion, enjoying one of our most precious commodities: free time.

“This slight shift in the way that we go about getting our food has fundamentally made everything else possible,” Pontzer said. Free time allows group members to communicate about things other than food. It allows for experimentation, for learning, for creativity, for play, for culture.

Being wired to finding and sharing energy bombs was, and still is, a winning strategy for hunter-gatherers and foragers-horticulturalists, Pontzer said. But it also can be treacherous for those of us with a pantry full of delicious highly caloric food.

“We are built to try and get a lot of food,” Pontzer said. “We are hugely ravenous and inefficient, and that's how we've evolved for 2 million years.”

“That doesn’t mean we can be careless with our energy today, and it doesn't mean that we have to say, ‘well there's nothing we can do about it’,” Pontzer said. “We have to be aware of ourselves and our evolutionary history.”

This research was Supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS0422690, BCS-0850815, BCS-1440867, BCS-1062879, BCS-1440841, BCS-1440671, BCS-0242455), NIH (R01AG024119, R56AG024119), the Leakey Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of California, San Diego, and the American School of Prehistoric Research (Harvard University), as well as IAST funding from ANR under grant ANR-17-EUR-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir program).

CITATION: “The Energetics of Uniquely Human Subsistence Strategies,” Thomas S. Kraft,  Vivek V. Venkataraman, Ian J. Wallace, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Nicholas B. Holowka, Jonathan Stieglitz, Jacob Harris, David A. Raichlen, Brian Wood, Michael Gurven, Herman Pontzer. Science, 374 (6575), eabf0130. Decemer 2021. DOI: 10.1126/science.abf0130

---

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abf0130 

SIRT2: another important factor that determines the toxic effects and potential mechanisms of PM2.5

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HIGHER EDUCATION PRESS

 

VIDEO: SIRT2: ANOTHER IMPORTANT FACTOR THAT DETERMINES THE TOXIC EFFECTS AND POTENTIAL MECHANISMS OF PM2.5 view more 

CREDIT: HIGHER EDUCATION PRESS LIMITED COMPANY

Air pollutants comprise a complex mixture of airborne particles such as gases, liquids, and particulate matter (PM). Particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) refers to fine particles with aerodynamic equivalent diameter less than or equal to 2.5 μm in ambient air. It is one of the most harmful air pollutants that can be deposited in bronchi and alveoli through inhalation. Moreover, PM2.5 can even penetrate the air–blood barrier into the blood circulation. Epidemiological studies have shown a relationship between PM2.5 exposure and adverse health outcomes, including respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and autoimmune diseases. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying PM2.5-induced airway inflammation remain largely unexplored. Fourth Military Medical University professor Qiong Wang and Heng Ma provide a novel mechanism underlying PM2.5-induced airway inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness. This study entitled “Particulate matter 2.5 triggers airway inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness in mice by activating the SIRT2–p65 pathway" is published in Frontiers of Medicine on Nov. 2021.

In this study, PM2.5 exposure was found to trigger airway inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness. Mechanistically, PM2.5 exposure lowered the expression and activity of SIRT2 in bronchial tissues. Notably, SIRT2 directly interacted with p65 and regulated the phosphorylation and acetylation activation of p65 to initiate the NF-κB signaling pathway and airway inflammation. Thereafter, the airway inflammation induced thickening in the bronchial smooth muscle layer and basement membrane layer, increased goblet cell proliferation and mucus secretion, tracheal stenosis, and bronchial hyperresponsiveness. Meanwhile, p65 phosphorylation and acetylation, airway inflammation, and bronchial hyperresponsiveness were deteriorated in SIRT2 knockout mice exposed to PM2.5. Importantly, we found that triptolide, an inhibitor of p65, significantly inhibited PM2.5-induced p65 phosphorylation and acetylation, thereby reducing airway inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness.

This study demonstrated that the SIRT2-p65 signaling pathway is a novel mechanism responsible for PM2.5-induced organ damage, therefore providing a scientific basis and promising therapeutic and prevention strategies against PM2.5-induced toxicity.

###

About Higher Education Press

Founded in May 1954, Higher Education Press Limited Company (HEP), affiliated with the Ministry of Education, is one of the earliest institutions committed to educational publishing after the establishment of P.R.China in 1949. After striving for six decades, HEP has developed into a major comprehensive publisher, with products in various forms and at different levels. Both for import and export, HEP has been striving to fill in the gap of domestic and foreign markets and meet the demand of global customers by collaborating with more than 200 partners throughout the world and selling products and services in 32 languages globally. Now, HEP ranks among China's top publishers in terms of copyright export volume and the world's top 50 largest publishing enterprises in terms of comprehensive strength.

The Frontiers Journals series published by HEP includes 28 English academic journals, covering the largest academic fields in China at present. Among the series, 13 have been indexed by SCI, 6 by EI, 2 by MEDLINE, 1 by A&HCI. HEP's academic monographs have won about 300 different kinds of publishing funds and awards both at home and abroad.

About Frontiers of Medicine

Frontiers of Medicine is oriented to an international peer-reviewed journal of general medicine that captures the best science from the diverse medical disciplines and relevant fields encompassing different aspects of life sciences. The Editors-in-Chief are Academician Saijuan Chen, Shanghai Institute of Hematology, Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; Academician Boli Zhang, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin, China; Academician Baofeng Yang; Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China; Academician Xiaoping Chen, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. The main topics include clinical medicine, basic medical sciences, epidemiology, translational research, traditional Chinese medicine, public health, and health policies. The journal has been indexed by SCI, MEDLINE, SCOPUS, Source Journals for Chinese Scientific and Technical Papers and Citations, CSCD, etc.

 

---

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Medicine

DOI

10.1007/s11684-021-0839-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Particulate matter 2.5 triggers airway inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness in mice by activating the SIRT2-p65 pathway

Study finds hydroxychloroquine delays disability for least treatable form of multiple sclerosis

Research results open door for potential larger scale study of generic drug for MS

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

 

VIDEO: A UCALGARY STUDY HAS FOUND PROMISING RESULTS FOR THE GENERIC DRUG HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE WHEN USED TO REDUCE THE WORSENING OF DISABILITY OF PRIMARY PROGRESSIVE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS), THE LEAST TREATABLE FORM OF THE AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE. MS AFFECTS ABOUT 90,000 CANADIANS, ONE OF THE HIGHEST RATES IN THE WORLD WITH ABOUT 15 PER CENT OF THOSE DIAGNOSED WITH PRIMARY PROGRESSIVE MS. view more 

CREDIT: HOTCHKISS BRAIN INSTITUTE

A University of Calgary study has found promising results for the generic drug hydroxychloroquine when used to treat the evolution of disability of primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), the least treatable form of the autoimmune disease. MS affects about 90,000 Canadians with about 15 per cent of those diagnosed with primary progressive MS, one of the highest rates in the world.

Cumming School of Medicine research teams led by Dr. Marcus Koch, MD, PhD, and Dr. Wee Yong, PhD, found hydroxychloroquine helped to slow the worsening of disability during the 18-month study involving participants at the MS clinic in Calgary. The research was published in Annals of Neurology.

“With primary progressive MS, there is no good treatment to stop or reverse the progression of disease. The disability progressively worsens through time,” says Koch a clinician-investigator in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and member of the Hotchkiss Brian Institute (HBI). “Dr. Yong’s research team, with whom we closely collaborate, has been screening a large number of generic drugs over several years and the results with hydroxychloroquine show some promise. Our trial is a preliminary success that needs further research. We hope sharing these results will help inspire that work, specifically larger scale clinical trials into the future.”

The experimental study, known as a single-arm phase II futility trial, followed 35 people between November 2016 and June 2021. Researchers expected to see at least 40 percent, or 14 participants, experience a significant worsening of their walking function, but at the end of the trial only eight participants had worsened. Hydroxychloroquine was generally well-tolerated.

Hydroxychloroquine is an anti-malaria medication more commonly used to manage the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune conditions such as lupus. It was chosen because it is widely used in rheumatological diseases and generally well-tolerated.

“Based on research in our lab on models of MS, we predicted that hydroxychloroquine would reduce disability in people living with MS. Calgary has a vibrant bench-to-bedside MS program and the work from Dr. Koch’s trial offers further evidence which we were pleased to see,” says Yong, a professor in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and HBI member.

The cause of MS remains unknown. It's a disease in which the body's immune system attacks its own tissues and is generally long-lasting, often affecting the brain, spinal cord and the optic nerves in your eyes. It can cause problems with vision, balance and muscle control, although the effects are different for everyone who has the disease.

The MS Clinical Trials team’s work is supported in part by philanthropic contributions from donors including The Westman Charitable Foundation and the Swartout family. This specific study was also funded through a grant from the MS Translational Clinical Trials Program of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute.

Dr. Koch and the research team have been studying the impact of hydroxychloroquine on primary progressive MS for several years and that work continues, including its potential to achieve even greater results as a therapy in combination with select other generic drugs.

Media inquiries

Kyle Marr
Senior Communications Specialist
Cumming School of Medicine
+1.403.473.6049
kyle.marr@ucalgary.ca

---

JOURNAL

Annals of Neurology

DOI

10.1002/ana.26239 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Study finds hydroxychloroquine delays disability for least treatable form of multiple sclerosis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Jan-2022

Unusual team finds gigantic planet hidden in plain sight

Gas giant is much closer to Earth than others like it

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: LICK OBSERVATORY'S AUTOMATED PLANET FINDER, USED TO HELP CALCULATE THE NEW PLANET'S MASS AND ORBIT. view more 

CREDIT: LAURIE HATCH/LICK OBSERVATORY

A UC Riverside astronomer and a group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view by typical stargazing tools. 

The planet, TOI-2180 b, has the same diameter as Jupiter, but is nearly three times more massive. Researchers also believe it contains 105 times the mass of Earth in elements heavier than helium and hydrogen. Nothing quite like it exists in our solar system. 

Details of the finding have been published in the Astronomical Journal and presented at the American Astronomical Society virtual press event on Jan. 13. 

“TOI-2180 b is such an exciting planet to have found,” said UCR astronomer Paul Dalba, who helped confirm the planet’s existence. “It hits the trifecta of 1) having a several-hundred-day orbit, 2) being relatively close to Earth (379 lightyears is considered close for an exoplanet), and 3) us being able to see it transit in front of its star. It is very rare for astronomers to discover a planet that checks all three of these boxes.”

Dalba also explained that the planet is special because it takes 261 days to complete a journey around its star, a relatively long time compared to many known gas giants outside our solar system. Its relative proximity to Earth and the brightness of the star it orbits also make it likely astronomers will be able to learn more about it. 

In order to locate exoplanets, which orbit stars other than our sun, NASA’s TESS satellite looks at one part of the sky for a month, then moves on. It is searching for dips in brightness that occur when a planet crosses in front of a star. 

“The rule of thumb is that we need to see three ‘dips’ or transits before we believe we’ve found a planet,” Dalba said. A single transit event could be caused by a telescope with a jitter, or a star masquerading as a planet. For these reasons, TESS isn’t focused on these single transit events. However, a small group of citizen scientists is. 

CAPTION

A gas giant exoplanet that orbits a G-type star, which is similar to TOI-2180 b.

CREDIT

NASA

Looking over TESS data, Tom Jacobs, a group member and former U.S. naval officer, saw light dim from the TOI-2180 star, just once. His group alerted Dalba, who specializes in studying planets that take a long time to orbit their stars. 

Using the Lick Observatory’s Automated Planet Finder Telescope, Dalba and his colleagues observed the planet’s gravitational tug on the star, which allowed them to calculate the mass of TOI-2180 b and estimate a range of possibilities for its orbit. 

Hoping to observe a second transit event, Dalba organized a campaign using 14 different telescopes across three continents in the northern hemisphere. Over the course of 11 days in August 2021, the effort resulted in 20,000 images of the TOI-2180 star, though none of them detected the planet with confidence.

However, the campaign did lead the group to estimate that TESS will see the planet transit its star again in February, when they’re planning a follow up study. Funding for Dalba’s research is provided by the National Science Foundation’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

The citizen planet hunters’ group takes publicly available data from NASA satellites like TESS and looks for single transit events. While professional astronomers use algorithms to scan a lot of data automatically, the Visual Survey Group uses a program they created to inspect telescope data by eye. 

“The effort they put in is really important and impressive, because it’s hard to write code that can identify single transit events reliably,” Dalba said. “This is one area where humans are still beating code.”

---

JOURNAL

The Astronomical Journal

DOI

10.3847/1538-3881/ac415b 

Climate adaptation increases vulnerability of cocoa farmers, study shows

Sean Kennedy, a professor of urban and regional planning, found that strategies to keep cocoa farmers in place transferred climate-related risks from chocolate manufacturers to the farmers.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: CLIMATE ADAPTATION BY COCOA FARMERS IN INDONESIA HAS MADE THEM MORE VULNERABLE TO ECONOMIC AND CLIMATIC RISKS, SAYS SEAN KENNEDY, A PROFESSOR OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING. KENNEDY FOUND THAT STRATEGIES TO KEEP COCOA FARMERS IN PLACE TRANSFERRED CLIMATE-RELATED RISKS FROM CHOCOLATE MANUFACTURERS TO THE FARMERS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY L. BRIAN STAUFFER

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — New research offers an alternative perspective on adaptation to climate threats in Southeast Asia.

Sean Kennedy, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, looked at the ways that small cocoa farmers in Indonesia are adapting to threats from climate change, including prolonged drought. He found that corporations are shaping the behavior of small farmers, fixing their labor in place in a way that alleviates the corporations’ economic displacement but increases the vulnerability of the farmers. He reported his research findings in an article in Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Recent trends in the Indonesian cocoa sector offer a lens to examine the politics of displacement in the context of socioeconomic and climatic change, Kennedy said. Climate change can result in various forms of displacement, but the consequences of efforts designed to minimize displacement haven’t received the same attention, he said.

The farmers in the region he studied are all smallholder producers, with at least 1 million families engaged in cocoa farming. Cocoa productivity has rapidly declined due to climate change, pests and poor soil health, as well as consumer demands for sustainable cocoa necessitating increased investment in its production. A growing number of smallholders have abandoned cocoa production.

Often the goal of climate adaptation is to allow people to stay in place – for instance, building a sea wall to protect against flooding, managing wildfires or increasing a crop’s productivity in response to drought, Kennedy said. However, the cocoa farmers historically have been highly mobile, moving to seek supplemental income from nonagricultural jobs and in response to seasonal variations and climatic disruptions. They also could choose to grow other commodity crops, he said.

But chocolate manufacturers needed farmers to stay in place and continue to produce cocoa beans. Kennedy examined the efforts of Mars Inc. to manage climate-related supply chain risks.

“Like other chocolate manufacturers, for Mars, the combined impact of climate-related productivity declines, increased demand for certified chocolate and the growing unwillingness of smallholder producers to engage in cocoa cultivation have resulted in significant supply threats,” Kennedy wrote.

“’Climate-smart cocoa’ aims to transform and reorient farming systems to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, boost adaptive capacity and improve productivity while supporting incomes.”

The corporation’s strategies included standardization of farming practices and creation of financial dependencies. Mars created training programs that focus on techniques to increase production, including the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Through purchase agreements, cocoa producers were required to participate in training; buy plant stock, fertilizers and pesticides through Mars; and sell their beans to the corporation, bypassing the local traders that in the past had provided supplies and financing arrangements and bought the beans. Credit was provided through microfinance arrangements that used the farmers’ land as collateral.

The result, Kennedy said, is that farmers are beholden financially to the corporation, which dictates production practices. They cannot abandon cocoa production to grow other commodity crops or pursue a different source of income because their assets are tied up in those arrangements.

“When some entity is saying, ‘Here’s a climate-adaptation program intended to keep people in place,’ often staying in place is not the best way to adapt to climate change. People have been adapting to climatic variation for a long time in ways that often involved moving around,” Kennedy said. “Mars has avoided being displaced economically, but it is transferring the risks it faced onto others. Outreach programs that are framed as benefiting small producers are actually benefiting corporate producers, rather than the people on farms growing cocoa.”

The research shows that climate adaptation is not limited to smallholder farmers and their environments, but is part of the global economic landscape, and that corporate sustainability efforts are actually a transfer of risk from the corporations to the producers, Kennedy wrote.

 

Editor’s notes: To contact Sean Kennedy, email seankenn@illinois.edu.

The paper “The power to stay: Climate, cocoa, and the politics of displacement” is available online and from the U. of I. News Bureau.

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2021.1978839

 

---

JOURNAL

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

DOI

10.1080/24694452.2021.1978839 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Power to Stay: Climate, Cocoa, and the Politics of Displacement