China police response to lockdown domestic violence case sparks uproar


The response by police in China's Xi'an to a recent domestic violence case has sparked outrage on social media (AFP/Frederic J. BROWN) (Frederic J. BROWN)


Tue, January 25, 2022

A viral video of a man beating his wife in China, and police's handling of the case, has renewed a debate online in the country over how to punish domestic abusers.

Last week, a home security video that showed a man from the northwestern city of Xi'an assaulting his wife during a citywide Covid-19 lockdown spread on Chinese social media.

The police response to the incident triggered an even wider uproar, with a related hashtag racking up more than 3.6 million views.


Over the weekend, Xi'an police said the man, surnamed Wang, would be kept in custody for five days then released without criminal charge.

Under a Chinese domestic violence law passed in 2016, perpetrators can be punished with no more than 20 days of police detention. Tougher punishments can only be meted out if there are serious injuries and criminal intent is proved.

The Xi'an video showed the man repeatedly hitting his partner as a child watches from a few feet away.

It was first posted by the woman's relatives and colleagues, then later picked up by official Chinese media.

"Domestic abusers only get punished with five days' detention, and you wonder why Chinese women don't want to get married or have babies?," read one comment on Weibo.

According to police, a fight over family chores had escalated due to the wife's "extreme words and deeds". The statement added that officers had since "criticised and educated" the woman -- a move that triggered a swift online backlash.

"It's no use relying on the law for protection against domestic violence when all they do is criticise the victim," another Weibo commentator said.

The woman "sustained soft-tissue damage," the police said without giving details of her injuries.

The incident happened while Xi'an, a megacity with more than 13 million residents, was under lockdown to curb a coronavirus outbreak.

Wang's employer, a state-owned trading company in Xi'an, issued a notice Saturday saying it had fired him for violating Communist Party rules.

Domestic violence remains pervasive and under-reported in China, especially in rural communities.

There have also been concerns that a recent change to China's divorce laws -- which introduced a mandatory 30-day "cooling-off" period for couples wishing to untie the knot -- could make it harder for victims to leave abusive marriages.

About one in four married Chinese women have experienced domestic abuse, according to a 2013 survey by the All-China Women's Federation.

Last October, a Chinese man was sentenced to death for murdering his ex-wife as she live-streamed on social media in a case that shocked the nation.

prw/jta/cwl/lb

Kurds locked in tense Syria prison standoff with jihadists


US troops are seen on the ground near the prison in the Kurdish-controlled Syrian city of Hasakeh where Islamic State group fighters are holed up (AFP/Gihad DARWISH)

Tue, January 25, 2022, 2:20 AM·2 min read

US-backed Kurdish forces tightened the noose around armed jihadists hunkering down inside a Syrian prison Tuesday, with both sides facing a bloodbath or talks to end the five-day-old standoff.

Around 100 Islamic State fighters attacked Ghwayran prison in the northeastern city of Hasakeh on January 20, in their biggest military operation since their "caliphate" was defeated in 2019.

The ensuing clashes with the Kurdish forces running northeastern Syria have left more than 160 people dead, including 45 in Kurdish ranks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Some of the estimated 3,500 IS prisoners inside the facility have already been bused out to other detention centres in recent hours but it was unclear how many remained holed up inside Ghwayran.

Some of the hundreds of minors detained in the prison were transferred on Monday, the Observatory said.

"If there is no deal for a swap, there will be a massacre, hundreds of people will be killed," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish administration's de-facto army, have not confirmed reports that several prison guards were being held by IS fighters.

SDF forces operating with air support from the US-led coalition present in the region have deployed elite units and armoured vehicles in and around the converted school that became one of the world's largest IS prisons.

An assault has looked imminent since early Monday but the Observatory said Kurdish forces were reluctant to move in due to the presence of hostages inside.

The SDF is counting on the besieged jihadist fighters running out of ammunition and supplies, Abdel Rahman said.

He said talks were taking place for some of the Kurdish forces and prison staff trapped inside to be freed in exchange for medical treatment for wounded jihadist fighters.

The Observatory put the number of hostages held inside the prison at 27 with around 40 people whose whereabouts are unknown.

bur-aya/jmm/kir

Webb telescope reaches final destination, a million miles from Earth

by Issam Ahmed

In this file photo taken on August 30, 2007 this NASA artist's rendition shows the 

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its cosmic parking spot a million miles away, bringing it a step closer to its mission to unravel the mysteries of the Universe, NASA said Monday.

At around 2:00 pm Eastern Time (1900 GMT), the observatory fired its thrusters for five minutes to reach the so-called second Lagrange point, or L2, where it will have access to nearly half the sky at any given moment.

The delicate burn added 3.6 miles per hour (1.6 meters per second) to Webb's overall speed, just enough to bring it into a "halo" orbit around L2, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

"Webb, welcome home!" said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement.

Webb will begin its science mission by summer, which includes using its high resolution infrared instruments to peer back in time 13.5 billion years to the first generation of galaxies that formed after the Big Bang.

At L2, it will stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the Sun, allowing Webb's sunshield to protect its sensitive equipment from heat and light.

For the giant parasol to offer effective protection, it needs the Sun, Earth and Moon to all be in the same direction, with the cold side operating at -370 degrees Fahrenheit (-225 Celsius).

The thruster firing, known as an orbital burn, was the third such maneuver since Webb was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket on December 25.

This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second

 Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth on

 January 24, 2022. Credit: NASA

The plan was intentional, because if Webb had gotten too much thrust from the rocket, it wouldn't be able to turn around to fly back to Earth, as that would expose its optics to the Sun, overheating and destroying them.

It was therefore decided to slightly underburn the rocket firing and use the telescope's own thrusters to make up the difference.

The burns went so well that Webb should easily be able to exceed its planned minimum life of five years, Keith Parrish Webb observatory commissioning manager told reporters on a call.

"Around 20 years, we think that's probably a good ballpark, but we're trying to refine that," he said. It's hypothetically possible, but not anticipated, that a future mission could go there and refuel it.

Webb, which is expected to cost NASA nearly $10 billion, is one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and its predecessor telescope, Hubble

Halo orbit

But while Hubble orbits the Earth, Webb will orbit in an area of space known as a Lagrange point, where the gravitational pull from the Sun and Earth will be balanced by the centrifugal force of the rotating system.

An object at one of these five points, first theorized by Italian French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, will remain stable and not fall into the gravity well of the Sun and Earth, requiring only a little fuel for adjustments.

Graphic overview of Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kms from Earth, around the James Webb 

space telescope will orbit.

Webb won't sit precisely at L2, but rather go around it in a "halo" at a distance similar to that between the Earth and Moon, completing a cycle every six months.

This will allow the telescope to remain thermally stable and to generate power from its solar panels.

Previous missions to L2 include the European Space Agency's Herschel and Planck observatories, and NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

Webb's position will also allow continuous communications with Earth via the Deep Space Network—three large antennas in Australia, Spain and California.

Earlier this month, NASA completed the process of unfolding Webb's massive golden mirror that will collect infrared signals from the first stars and galaxies that formed a few hundred million years after the Universe began expanding.

Visible and ultraviolet light emitted by the very first luminous objects has been stretched by the Universe's expansion, and arrives today in the form of infrared, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.

Its mission also includes the study of distant planets, known as exoplanets, to determine their origin, evolution and habitability.

Next steps include aligning the telescope's optics and calibrating its scientific instruments. It is expected to transmit its first images back in June or July.

© 2022 AFP

COLLECTIVISM

Seed production and recruitment of juvenile trees affect how trees are migrating due to climate change

by Talia Ogliore, Washington University in St. Louis

Seed trap in the oak-hickory forest at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s

 environmental field station near Eureka, Mo. Credit: Jonathan Myers

A new study co-authored by Jonathan Myers, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, provides key insights into how and why tree populations migrate in response to climate change at the continental scale.

Suitable habitats for forest trees may be shifting fast with recent climate change. Across North America, most tree species in the northern part of the continent already show evidence for northward migrations due to warming temperatures. But the actual mechanics of how trees move into new areas appears to be different depending on whether the trees are found in the West or the East.

In this study led by Duke University, researchers separated out the effects of seed production—the sheer number of seeds that certain tree species create—and the establishment of juvenile trees to identify larger patterns. The results, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide the first continental-scale evidence for migration and geographic shifts in the processes that control migration.

The researchers discovered that in the interior mountain West, high seed production and the recruitment of juvenile trees—basically, how well baby trees do when they are just getting started—both contribute to migration. In the Northeast, on the other hand, migration is limited by seed production, but facilitated by high recruitment.

The study taps data from the MASTIF network, which features a massive synthesis of seed-production data from over 130 research sites across North America. It includes seven years of data from the Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) Forest Dynamics Plot at Washington University's field station, Tyson Research Center.

"As part of a long-term study of seed production and dispersal—also known as 'seed rain'—our research team has collected, counted and identified seeds of every woody plant species in 200 seed traps distributed across the Tyson ForestGEO Plot each year since 2012," Myers said.

"Interestingly, around 30% of the 81 tree species examined in this study have been collected in our seed traps at Tyson Research Center," he said. "As one of only two research sites located in the central forests grasslands ecoregion, the Tyson ForestGEO Plot helps to bridge an important biogeographic gap in the MASTIF network."

In the new study, the southeastern United States emerges as a fecundity hotspot, but it is situated south of tree population centers where high seed production could contribute to poleward population spread. By contrast, seedling success is highest in the West and North, serving to partially offset limited seed production near poleward frontiers.

The evidence of fecundity and recruitment control on tree migration can be used to inform conservation planning.

Tree fecundity and biological aging

More information: Shubhi Sharma et al, North American tree migration paced by climate in the West, lagging in the East, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2116691118

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis 

Gender disparities may be widening for physicians due to COVID-19

Women doctors published fewer studies during stay-at-home orders, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

As people transitioned to working from home at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, journal submissions from academics increased across the board. But a new study from Northwestern University found as men’s scholarly productivity increased, women physicians were submitting less.

The research reflects wider trends in academic publishing and is the first study to find such patterns in family medicine. The study contributes to a growing body of evidence that the pandemic caused unique career disruptions for women as they became stretched thin during remote work, causing stress, burnout and anxiety.

“The worry is that these problems will compound,” said Katherine Wright, the paper’s corresponding author and the director of research in the department of family and community medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “As men were able to submit more, they may benefit from more citations, promotions, funding and career opportunities as women fall further behind.”

The paper, “COVID-19 and Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship,” will be published Jan. 24 in the journal Annals of Family Medicine.

Wright said the study was conceived in part because of observations about her own department, where she saw roles changing dramatically and many doctors attempting to play dual roles between childcare or eldercare and work. Santina Wheat, co-first author and program director of the Northwestern-McGaw family medicine residency at Erie Family Health Center in Humboldt Park, emphasized the impact of shifting schedules on her own life.

“All of a sudden we were doing telehealth at all hours of the day, and hours of the clinics shifted significantly and quickly,” Wheat said. “There was also always the sense you may need to cover for someone else, which impacted your ability to think about the academic side — or mentor others to do the same.”

To conduct the study, the team performed a bibliometric analysis of journal submissions to see how submission rates changed during the pandemic. With access to the last five years of submission data from the Annals of Family Medicine, the top-ranked primary care journal, the scientists reviewed submission data before and during the pandemic. They examined submission volume by gender in addition to distribution of author’s gender by submission type (such as original research versus special reports, which impact tenure differently).

The paper found the Annals of Family Medicine received 41.5% of its submissions from women during the early months of the pandemic — the period analyzed by scientists — marking a widening gender gap in the field.

The paper warns the gap is “troubling” and may result in long-term repercussions for women in the medical field because of how tenure decisions are made. Wright’s hope is that adding this research to the growing body of data will catalyze change in these fields.

“Publications are still the hallmark of tenure and promotion decisions, so we want to make sure women aren’t at risk of falling further behind,” Wright said. “Our hope is this data might be used by promotion and tenure committees to reevaluate promotion criteria.”

For example, Wright said, women tend to be more involved in creating curriculum and service, so weighting activities like these more equally with publications could help balance the scales. She added that there’s both a childcare and eldercare crisis in the country, and that parents and caretakers need strengthened support to thrive in their roles. Wright said without intervention, these impacts will reverberate beyond the pandemic.

Beyond advocacy, the team hopes to look at other metrics of diversity in the data and see if other populations have been impacted disproportionately by the pandemic. They’re also currently analyzing the gender composition of peer reviewers, the gatekeepers of the work accepted by scientific journals.

Deborah Smith Clements, chair of the department of family and community medicine, the Nancy Warren Furey Professor of Community Medicine and a professor of medical education, also is a co-author, along with Deborah Edburg, a professor and physician at Rush University.

---

JOURNAL

The Annals of Family Medicine

DOI

10.1370/afm.2756 

ARTICLE TITLE

COVID-19 and Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jan-2022

Performance enhancing substances linked to eating disorder symptoms

Findings show use of appearance- and performance- enhances drugs and substances is associated with eating disorder symptoms in U.S. college students

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

With increasing value and emphasis being placed on muscularity and leanness as today’s body ideal, the use of appearance- and performance- enhancing drugs and substances (APEDS), such as whey protein and steroids, has become increasingly prevalent among college-age men and women. Few studies have been completed to explore associations between certain APEDS use and eating disorder symptoms, however a new study published in the Eating and Weight Disorders – Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity journal aimed to fill this research gap by exploring this relationship.

Analyzing over 7,000 U.S. college and university students from the 2020-2021 Healthy Minds Study, researchers found that a lifetime history of APEDS use is associated with eating disorder symptoms, specifically when using protein supplements, creatine supplements, and diuretics or water pills. 

“Many people use multiple APEDS to help them achieve their desired body, but this can be problematic, given our findings that use of multiple substances significantly increased the risk of eating disorder symptoms,” says lead author Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

APEDS are most commonly used to aid in the development of increased muscle mass, tone, and definition, in efforts to achieve specific body ideals.

“Our study emphasizes the need for healthcare professionals to remain aware of changing body ideals among youth and young adults, as well as the association between APEDS use and eating disorder symptoms,” said co-author Jason M. Nagata, MD, MSc, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Pediatrics. “Appropriate prevention, assessment, and treatment must be made readily available to individuals accessing healthcare services.” 

These researcher’s findings are particularly salient given the documented increased prevalence of eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It’s important that healthcare professionals and members of the public understand that APEDS, which are marketed to be “healthy” and “safe”, can have consequences, particularly when used to achieve an unrealistic body ideal,” Ganson said. “There needs to be a greater emphasis on public health efforts to increase the public’s awareness of the risks associated with APEDS use. Our findings also underscore the importance of regulations, such as those currently under consideration in Massachusetts and California, to diminish APEDS consumption among youth and young adults.”

 

---

JOURNAL

Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia Bulimia and Obesity

DOI

10.1007/s40519-022-01364-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Use of appearance and performance enhancing drugs and substances is associated with eating disorder symptomatology among U.S. college students

New economic model finds wetlands provide billions in filtration value

Wetlands in Southern Ontario provide $4.2 billion in water filtration services each year

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

Southern Ontario wetlands provide $4.2 billion worth of sediment filtration and phosphorus removal services each year, keeping our drinking water sources clean and helping to mitigate harmful and nuisance algal blooms in our lakes and rivers.

A new study from the University of Waterloo uses economic valuation to help us understand the importance of Southern Ontario’s wetlands for water filtration – particularly as these sensitive ecosystems continue to be lost by conversion to agriculture or urban development.

“Wetlands naturally filter out phosphorus and sediments from water, but their value is often greatly overlooked,” said Tariq Aziz, who carried out the study during his PhD and postdoctoral work in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science. “By calculating the economic value of wetland filtration and comparing it to the costs of engineered interventions, we hope to reinforce the importance of protecting our wetlands.”

The total value of $4.2 billion in sediment and phosphorus filtration services was found based on the average rate of sediment accretion in each type of wetland in Southern Ontario and estimating how much the removal and disposal of the same amounts of sediment and phosphorus in stormwater management facilities in Ontario would cost.

This is the first economic valuation study to separate the values of the major types of wetlands in Southern Ontario: marshes, bogs, swamps, and fens. “We found that marshes were the most valuable wetland type for sediment and phosphorus filtration, based on the removal rates per hectare,” said Aziz. “However, because swamps make up 87 per cent of Southern Ontario’s wetlands, they contribute about 80 per cent of the overall filtration services we benefit from, at a value of about $3.4 billion per year.”

This study also calculated how much it would cost to replace wetlands’ existing phosphorus filtration function with three different human-engineered solutions. Building artificially constructed wetlands would cost an average of $2.9 billion per year to replace the free phosphorus filtration service our natural wetlands currently provide. Implementing agricultural Best Management Practices to remove an equivalent phosphorus load would cost society $13 billion annually, while expanding current wastewater treatment capacity to replace wetlands’ filtration service would cost $164 billion per year.

The study “Economic valuation of suspended sediment and phosphorus filtration services by four different wetland types: A preliminary assessment for southern Ontario, Canada,” authored by Aziz and his supervisor professor Philippe Van Cappellen was published in the journal Hydrological Processes.

---

JOURNAL

Hydrological Processes

New strategic partnership to explore four-dimensional first order controls on nickel mineral systems

Researchers at the University of Leicester have signed a major research agreement with BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies, to identify new areas for the discovery of metals critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

 

IMAGE: A RESEARCHER HOLDS A PIECE OF NICKEL ORE. view more 

CREDIT: DAVID HOLWELL/UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

Researchers at the University of Leicester have signed a major research agreement with BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies, to identify new areas for the discovery of metals critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

Dr David Holwell from the Centre for Sustainable Resource Extraction in the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, will work in partnership with BHP to explore deposits of nickel and copper.

The two-year project, ‘Craton Margin Exploration Targeting 4D’, also involves colleagues at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Perth, and Macquarie University, Sydney. It is funded by BHP’s Resource Centre of Excellence and Metals Exploration and will support three post-doctoral research fellows located in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Dr Holwell said: “We are delighted to have agreed this partnership with BHP. It is particularly exciting to have the opportunity to apply some of our recent and ongoing research on nickel-copper-platinum group metal deposits directly to exploration targeting. We have a truly international and diverse team with complementary expertise and I am very excited to get started!”

The project and partnership with BHP has developed directly from recent work by the Leicester-UWA group that has shed new light on the processes involved in the sources and transport mechanisms of metals through the lithosphere in magmatic systems, published in Nature Communications (Holwell et al., 2019; Blanks et al., 2020) and Lithos (Chong et al., 2021).

This innovative work will be coupled with novel advances in experimental petrology and tectonic modelling to highlight ‘sweet spots’ of crust that have undergone a series of favourable processes through geological time.

The collaborative research project will challenge scientists’ current understanding of the nickel mineral system, potentially opening up new exploration search space for nickel across the globe. Nickel is a major component in the lithium-ion battery cathodes used in the manufacture of EVs, and is therefore vital to the EV revolution.

Alongside Dr Holwell, the international project team involves Professor Marco Fiorentini and Dr Weronika Gorczyk at UWA, Professor Steven Foley at Macquarie University, with Dr Daryl Blanks taking up the position of BHP Research Fellow at Leicester. The BHP project team includes Dr Libby Sharman and Dr Nicole Januszczak.

Professor Fiorentini added: “We are very proud to collaborate with BHP to tackle key knowledge gaps that currently hamper successful exploration of metals needed for the green future of our planet.”

New study calls into question the importance of meat eating in shaping our evolution

by George Washington University

Homo erectus in East Africa surrounded by contemporary fauna.

 Credit: Mauricio Anton

Quintessential human traits such as large brains first appear in Homo erectus nearly 2 million years ago. This evolutionary transition towards human-like traits is often linked to a major dietary shift involving greater meat consumption. A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, calls into question the primacy of meat eating in early human evolution. While the archaeological evidence for meat eating increases dramatically after the appearance of Homo erectus, the study authors argue that this increase can largely be explained by greater research attention on this time period, effectively skewing the evidence in favor of the "meat made us human" hypothesis.

"Generations of paleoanthropologists have gone to famously well-preserved sites in places like Olduvai Gorge looking for—and finding—breathtaking direct evidence of early humans eating meat, furthering this viewpoint that there was an explosion of meat eating after 2 million years ago," W. Andrew Barr, an assistant professor of anthropology at the George Washington University and lead author on the study, said. "However, when you quantitatively synthesize the data from numerous sites across eastern Africa to test this hypothesis, as we did here, that 'meat made us human' evolutionary narrative starts to unravel."

Barr and his colleagues compiled published data from nine major research areas in eastern Africa, including 59 site levels dating between 2.6 and 1.2 million years ago. They used several metrics to track hominin carnivory: the number of zooarchaeological sites preserving animal bones that have cut marks made by stone tools, the total count of animal bones with cut marks across sites, and the number of separately reported stratigraphic levels.

1.5 million year old fossil bones with cut marks from Koobi Fora, Kenya.

 Credit: Briana Pobiner

The researchers found that, when accounting for variation in sampling effort over time, there is no sustained increase in the relative amount of evidence for carnivory after the appearance of H. erectus. They note that while the raw abundance of modified bones and the number of zooarchaeological sites and levels all demonstrably increased after the appearance of H. erectus, the increases were mirrored by a corresponding rise in sampling intensity, suggesting that intensive sampling—rather than changes in human behavior—could be the cause.

"I've excavated and studied cut marked fossils for over 20 years, and our findings were still a big surprise to me," Briana Pobiner, a research scientist in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and co-author on the study, said. "This study changes our understanding of what the zooarchaeological record tells us about the earliest prehistoric meat-eating. It also shows how important it is that we continue to ask big questions about our evolution, while we also continue to uncover and analyze new evidence about our past."

In the future, the researchers stressed the need for alternative explanations for why certain anatomical and behavioral traits associated with modern humans emerged. Possible alternative theories include the provisioning of plant foods by grandmothers and the development of controlled fire for increasing nutrient availability through cooking. The researchers caution that none of these possible explanations currently have a strong grounding in the archaeological record, so much work remains to be done.

1.5 million year old fossil bones with cut marks from Koobi Fora, Kenya. 

Credit: Briana Pobiner

"I would think this study and its findings would be of interest not just to the paleoanthropology community but to all the people currently basing their dieting decisions around some version of this meat-eating narrative," Barr said. "Our study undermines the idea that eating large quantities of meat drove evolutionary changes in our early ancestors."

In addition to Barr and Pobiner, the research team included John Rowan, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Albany; Andrew Du, an assistant professor of anthropology and geography at Colorado State University; and J. Tyler Faith, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.Early modern human from Southeast Asia adapted to a rainforest environment

More information: No sustained increase in zooarchaeological evidence for carnivory after the appearance of, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2115540119

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by George Washington University 

The Tonga volcanic eruption reveals the vulnerabilities in our global telecommunication system

by Dale Dominey-Howes, The Conversation

Tonga is connected to the rest of the world via a global network of submarine 

cables. Credit: Author provided

In the wake of a violent volcanic eruption in Tonga, much of the communication with residents on the islands remains at a standstill. In our modern, highly-connected world, more than 95% of global data transfer occurs along fiber-optic cables that criss-cross through the world's oceans.

Breakage or interruption to this critical infrastructure can have catastrophic local, regional and even global consequences. This is exactly what has happened in Tonga following Saturday's volcano-tsunami disaster. But this isn't the first time a natural disaster has cut off critical submarine cables, and it won't be the last.

The video below shows the incredible spread of submarine cables around the planet—with more than 885,000 kilometers of cable laid down since 1989. These cables cluster in narrow corridors and pass between so-called critical "choke points" which leave them vulnerable to a number of natural hazards including volcanic eruptions, underwater landslides, earthquakes and tsunamis.

What exactly has happened in Tonga?

Tonga was only connected to the global submarine telecommunication network in the last decade. Its islands have been heavily reliant on this system as it is more stable than other technologies such as satellite and fixed infrastructure.

The situation in Tonga right now is still fluid, and certain details have yet to be confirmed—but it seems one or more volcanic processes (such as the tsunami, submarine landslide or other underwater currents) have snapped the 872km long fiber-optic cable connecting Tonga to the rest of the world. The cable system was not switched off or disconnected by the authorities.

This has had a massive impact. Tongans living in Australia and New Zealand can't contact their loved ones to check on them. It has also made it difficult for Tongan government officials and emergency services to communicate with each other, and for local communities to determine aid and recovery needs.

Telecommunications are down, as are regular internet functions—and outages keep disrupting online services, making things worse. Tonga is particularly vulnerable to this type of disruption as there is only one cable connecting the capital Nuku'alofa to Fiji, which is more than 800km away. No inter-island cables exist.

Animation of spread of global submarine cable network between 1989 and 2023.

Risks to submarine cables elsewhere

The events in Tonga once again highlight how fragile the global undersea cable network is and how quickly it can go offline. In 2009, I coauthored a study detailing the vulnerabilities of the submarine telecommunications network to a variety of natural hazard processes. And nothing has changed since then.

Cables are laid in the shortest (that means cheapest) distance between two points on the Earth's surface. They also have to be laid along particular geographic locations that allow easy placement, which is why many cables are clustered in choke points.

Some good examples of choke points include the Hawaiian islands, the Suez Canal, Guam and the Sunda Strait in Indonesia. Inconveniently, these are also locations where major natural hazards tend to occur.

Once damaged it can takes days to weeks (or even longer) to repair broken cables, depending on the cable's depth and how easily accessible it is. At times of crisis, such outages make it much harder for governments, emergency services and charities to engage in recovery efforts.

Many of these undersea cables pass close to or directly over active volcanoes, regions impacted by tropical cyclones and/or active earthquake zones.

In many ways, Australia is also very vulnerable (as is New Zealand and the rest of the world) since we are connected to the global cable network by a very small number of connection points, from just Sydney and Perth.

In regards to Sydney and the eastern seaboard of Australia, we know large underwater landslides have occurred off the coast of Sydney in the past. Future events could damage the critical portion of the network which links to us.

In this map you can see the global plate tectonic boundaries (dashed lines)

 where most volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur, approximate 

cyclone/hurricane zone (blue lines) and locations of volcanic regions 

(red triangles). Significant zones where earthquakes and tsunami occur are 

marked. Credit: Author provided

How do we manage risk going forward?

Given the vulnerability of the network, the first step to mitigating risk is to undertake research to quantify and evaluate the actual risk to submarine cables in particular places on the ocean floors and to different types of natural hazards. For example, tropical cyclones (hurricanes/typhoons) occur regularly, but other disaster such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen less often.

Currently, there is little publicly available data on the risk to the global submarine cable network. Once we know which cables are vulnerable, and to what sorts of hazards, we can then develop plans to reduce risk.

At the same time, governments and the telecommunication companies should find ways to diversify the way we communicate, such as by using more satellite-based systems and other technologies.Flights sent to assess Tonga damage after volcanic eruption

Provided by The Conversation 

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