It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, February 28, 2022
Atheists more likely to hide beliefs if they're women, Republicans, southerners or were previously religious
Atheists in the United States are more likely to conceal their beliefs if they're women, Republicans, southerners or if they've previously been religious, according to new research from Rice University and West Virginia University.
"Patterns of Perceived Hostility and Identity Concealment among Self-Identified Atheists" appears in a recent edition of Social Forces and was authored by Jacqui Frost and Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice University and Christopher Scheitle of West Virginia University. The study used survey data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults and examined which atheists are more likely to hide their religious identity and why.
While certain atheists were more likely to conceal their identity depending on where they lived or with whom they were affiliated, they were still less likely to conceal their identity when compared to other non-religious groups, such as agnostics or those who simply say they do not have a religion, the researchers wrote.
Frost, a postdoctoral research fellow in sociology and the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice and the study's lead author, said that findings about atheists hiding their religious beliefs aren't surprising. Previous research shows atheists are among the least liked and most distrusted minority groups in the U.S.
"If someone is already in a marginalized group—like women—or are members of a group that is heavily religious—such as Republicans or southern Americans—it stands to reason they are less likely to take on the additional stigma of being an 'out' atheist," she said.
Earlier research has also shown that atheists are more likely to report discrimination on the basis of their atheism in social settings, at school and at work, Frost said.
A 2015 survey from the Pew Research Center found the number of people who claim no religious affiliation had increased to 25%. That raises a question among researchers studying this subject: What can be done to support and protect this growing group of people in the U.S.?
"Our research suggests that openness about one's atheist identity may help combat some of the effects of the stigma they face," said Ecklund, director of the Religion and Public Life Program and a Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Social Sciences at Rice.
"In addition, the ability to gather with fellow atheists may help encourage this openness and provide individuals with a safe place to seek support in the face of discrimination," Scheitle said.
The researchers wrote that their findings are valuable for understanding the many different types of religious discrimination. The work also helps better understand how to address and cope with negative side effects of this mistreatment.New book explores the different—and surprising—types of atheism in science
More information:Jacqui Frost et al, Patterns of Perceived Hostility and Identity Concealment among Self-Identified Atheists,Social Forces(2021).DOI: 10.1093/sf/soab165
Chronosequences of mining restoration where invertebrate samples were collected. Restoration sites shown with the number of years restoration from 1 to 22 years. Reference sites shown below. JF, Jarrah Forest; PB, Pilbara; SCP, Swan Coastal Plain. Credit: DOI: 10.1111/mec.16375
Curtin University researchers have identified a "game-changing" way of protecting native animals—including pygmy possums, western bush wallabies and Australian painted-snipe birds—using sophisticated DNA technology.
Two research papers, published in Molecular Ecology and Biodiversity and Conservation, examined animals and insects across multiple locations including Western Australia's Pilbara region, Perth region and the Jarrah Forest to find out where the use of DNA metabarcoding—a rapid DNA sequencing tool—would be most effective to monitor restoration.
Lead researcher Dr. Mieke van der Heyde, from Curtin's School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said DNA metabarcoding was a game-changer for monitoring the recovery of insects and animals because it could save time, money and resources.
"Fauna monitoring is often overlooked in restoration efforts because there is an assumption that as long as there are plants, everything else will come back on its own—and this isn't necessarily true," Dr. van der Heyde said.
"The problem is that monitoring fauna is hard, often requiring teams of experts in remote locations for weeks at a time, making it time-consuming and expensive. Tracking down the expertise to identify all the animals can also be difficult."
Dr. van der Hyde said DNA metabarcoding has a per sample cost rather than a per specimen cost, so it can be a cost-effective alternative to monitoring fauna recovery in diverse ecosystems but warned that it is not a 'one-size-fits-all' method.
"We found DNA metabarcoding can show the recovery of insects and plants in woodlands and forests, but not in the arid Pilbara region; and ground-dwelling insects give a better restoration signal than flying insects because they don't travel as far," Dr. van der Heyde said.
"In the arid Pilbara, we could tell the difference between restoration and reference sites using the animals detected from pooled poo samples. The lack of rain makes the droppings last longer and the lack of vegetation makes it much easier to see, especially bird droppings," Dr. van der Heyde said.
"Unfortunately, DNA metabarcoding can only identify animals and insects if we have reference DNA for them in our database. To improve this tool, we need to DNA barcode many more animals if we want accurate, species-level identifications from DNA.
"This technology can drastically improve conservation and restoration efforts for the many species under threat from loss of habitat and changing climates."
More information:Mieke Heyde et al, Evaluating restoration trajectories using DNA metabarcoding of ground‐dwelling and airborne invertebrates and associated plant communities,Molecular Ecology(2022).DOI: 10.1111/mec.16375
M. van der Heyde et al, Scat DNA provides important data for effective monitoring of mammal and bird biodiversity,Biodiversity and Conservation(2021).DOI: 10.1007/s10531-021-02264-x
Astrobee is a team of free-flying cube-shaped robots that help astronauts perform routine tasks either autonomously or by remote control. An international research collaboration between researchers at MIT and the German Space Agency used this platform to test a set of algorithms to enable a rendezvous with a tumbling target. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In 2002, the European Space Agency launched Envisat, the largest civilian satellite (at the time) to go to low Earth orbit (LEO). For a decade, it observed our planet and sent back valuable data on Earth's climate, tracking the decline of Arctic sea ice and more, until it went dark in 2012. One of the prevailing theories for its demise is that it simply ran out of fuel. As LEO becomes more crowded, Envisat is a school bus-sized example of a growing area of concern in the space domain: orbital debris and the ever-increasing risk of disrupting active satellite missions that would yield outcomes ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic for modern society.
But how do you catch up to an uncooperative object tumbling through space faster than a speeding bullet? An international research collaboration between MIT and the German Space Agency (DLR) completed a series of experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that illuminated a possible path forward to help address this question.
"If we could refuel or repair these tumbling bodies that are otherwise functional, it would be really useful for orbital debris reduction, as long as we can catch up to it. But a close-proximity rendezvous is hard to do if you don't know exactly how your target is moving," says Keenan Albee SM '19, a Ph.D. candidate in aeronautics and astronautics who helped lead the project. "We've assembled a set of algorithms that figures out how the target is tumbling, and then along with other tools that allow us to account for uncertainty, we can produce a plan to get us to the target, despite the tumble."
To test their algorithms in microgravity, the team used NASA's Astrobee robots aboard the ISS as their test bed. Astrobee is a team of three cube-shaped robots that help astronauts perform routine tasks either autonomously or by remote control, such as taking inventory, documenting experiments, or moving cargo, using their electric fan propulsion system as well as their built-in cameras and sensors to move about the station and perform their tasks. The first round of microgravity experiments aboard the ISS in June 2021 tested this set of algorithms both individually and together to enable a successful autonomous rendezvous of a "Chaser" Astrobee robot with a tumbling "Target" Astrobee, which were improved upon and tested again in a successful second session in February 2022.
The MIT project team comprises researchers from the Space Systems Laboratory (SSL) and the Astrodynamics, space Robotics, and Controls Laboratory (ARCLab), including Albee, Charles Oestreich SM '21, and principal investigator Richard Linares, the Boeing Career Development Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics. The DLR team includes principal investigator Roberto Lampariello, graduate student Caroline Specht, and graduate student Hrishik Mishra.
To test the set of algorithms selected by the TumbleDock/ROAM team, first the “Chaser” Astrobee robot (yellow) observes the movement of a tumbling “Target” robot (blue) using its time-of-flight camera. Using data gathered from its cameras, lidar sensors, and onboard inertial measurement unit, the Chaser develops a model of the Target’s state. From there, the Chaser will create a trajectory to follow, correcting reference errors using robust control. Once the trajectory is completed, the Chaser robot reaches a “mating point” with the Target robot. The result: a successful rendezvous. Credit:Background image courtesy of NASA. Illustration by MIT AeroAstro
The TumbleDock/ROAM project
First, the MIT and DLR research teams identified a series of algorithms, including simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), system identification, online motion planning, and model predictive control to test on Astrobee's autonomous robots and software platform to enable autonomous rendezvous. Then, they worked to develop the software and hardware required to experiment on the Astrobee platform. Astrobee's open-source flight software, developed by NASA Ames, was augmented with MIT's testing interface, the Astrobee Science Application Package, to enable low-level autonomy experiments. The TumbleDock/ROAM project was the first of a series of research collaborations out of the SSL/ARCLab to use this interface for algorithm testing on-orbit.
Working in a control room from MIT's campus, the team commanded the first round of microgravity testing with Astrobee. One Astrobee served as the "Chaser," with the goal of performing an autonomous rendezvous with another Astrobee acting as the tumbling "Target." Using data from Astrobee's cameras, lidar sensors, and onboard inertial measurement unit, the observing Chaser developed a model of the tumbling Target's motion and inertial properties, which then informed a nonlinear programming-based trajectory optimization to reach a "mating point," fixed in the rotating Target's frame. This trajectory was then tracked using robust model predictive control. The result: a successful rendezvous.
After the first round of testing, the team continued to refine their software based on lessons learned from seeing their work operate on an actual test bed. According to the students, seeing their experiment operate in an actual test bed rather than a simulation is a game-changer.
"I think it's so important for young roboticists and engineers to actually get their hands dirty on a physical system because you see the actual interactions between bodies in the field and gain a new understanding on parameters you may not have thought were important, but require copious amounts of tuning," says Specht. "Working out the math and simulating it is one thing, but actually putting it on a real system and seeing how that works in the real world is a completely different experience, and it opens your mind to so many different possibilities."
In microgravity experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station using NASA’s Astrobee robot system, a research team from MIT and DLR tested a set of algorithms to enable a successful autonomous rendezvous of a "Chaser" Astrobee robot with a tumbling "Target" Astrobee. The time-lapse on top shows a successful rendezvous in real time, while the time-lapse below shows a trajectory in simulation. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
After the first test session, the TumbleDock/ROAM team worked closely with both NASA and DLR to make further improvements to their system. DLR developed enhancements to Astrobee's default localization system that complemented additional upgrades created by the team at NASA Ames, with MIT continuing work on system integration and other algorithm overhauls. The final test session in February 2022 put these improvements in estimating the Target's orientation, safely tracking the motion plan to the Target with robustness guarantees, and working with Astrobee's maturing localization system to the test, yielding a number of successful rendezvous maneuvers with differing motion plans.
"Because Astrobee is such a new system, we've had a lot more opportunity to collaborate more closely with the engineers from NASA Ames throughout the entire process than we would have otherwise," says Oestreich. "We've had some unique use cases for their system, so it's been an interesting challenge to work through together and get everyone in the same loop."
Working closely together on this project has also yielded benefits for the agency. NASA used portions of data from their project to improve the Astrobee base localization system and have also incorporated changes into the flight code software, providing crucial inputs to the autonomous rendezvous pipeline that will continue to benefit all future Astrobee users. Passing the torch
NASA's Astrobee robot system is preceded by SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites), small programmable probes first conceived of by MIT undergraduates and further developed by MIT SSL. The SPHERES satellites launched in 2006 and were operated by SSL and NASA under professors David Miller and Alvar Saenz-Otero until Dec. 31, 2019, when Astrobee took over as the sole microgravity robotics test bed aboard the ISS. ROAM, or Relative Operations for Autonomous Maneuvers, became the umbrella for SSL research projects that focused on developing systems to support satellite proximity operations and is part of the namesake of the TumbleDock/ROAM project team.
Before the TumbleDock/ROAM team commanded their experiment aboard the ISS from Earth, they ran through rendezvous maneuvers in simulation.
Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Our project achieved multiple on-orbit firsts both for MIT and for Astrobee, which is really exciting," says Albee. "We were the first Astrobee payload to perform simultaneous complex control of multiple robots and the first to perform low-level planning and control autonomy research using the Astrobee system. It was also the first time the SSL commanded an ISS payload directly and in real time from MIT's campus."
In addition to building the systems, the research teams at MIT and DLR collaborated on operations, experiments, and testing, leveraging the work done previously in SPHERES to enable this new application with Astrobee. When Lampariello first met David Miller, the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor and former director of the SSL at MIT, he proposed a research project to test his motion planning software for tumbling targets on the SPHERES system. This initial collaboration eventually led to the TumbleDock/ROAM project on Astrobee.
"This project brings together the work my lab has done in motion planning and the work in perception that MIT has developed. Together, we all worked to develop the controls required to test the hardware," says Lampariello. "By the time we ran the tests aboard the ISS, we had a whole pipeline of functionalities—perception, motion prediction, planning, and control—to demonstrate on the Astrobee platform."
According to Oestreich, the TumbleDock/ROAM project not only builds on a foundation of knowledge and collaboration from SPHERES, but also on a legacy of generations of graduate work in SSL that came before them.
"The SLAM and target estimation algorithms, which help with the initial stage of finding out how the target is tumbling, were developed by graduate students in SSL and have been handed down through generations of us now," says Oestreich. "It's been interesting to see how it has evolved over the past eight years from thesis to thesis as each person worked to advance its capabilities further, and it has been cool to be able to implement it on new hardware like Astrobee."
In the process of building and refining their Astrobee experiment, they found the interface they developed could be adapted and repurposed for other investigations. Looking ahead, the TumbleDock/ROAM team hopes to make Astrobee as useful for other researchers as SPHERES was for them. The team has already run another set of experiments, RElative Satellite sWArming and Robotic Maneuvering (ReSWARM), in collaboration with KTH Space Center in Sweden and IST at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. The ReSWARM experiments successfully demonstrated a variety of algorithms related to on-orbit assembly and servicing, including information-aware motion planning and distributed model predictive control of microgravity robot teams. While MIT is currently one of the most prolific users of the Astrobee platform, the project team plans to continue refining their work with the goal to make testing resources open source for other researchers at MIT and beyond.
Researchers have developed an efficient concept to turn carbon dioxide into clean, sustainable fuels, without any unwanted by-products or waste.
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, have previously shown that biological catalysts, or enzymes, can produce fuels cleanly using renewable energy sources, but at low efficiency.
Their latest research has improved fuel production efficiency by 18 times in a laboratory setting, demonstrating that polluting carbon emissions can be turned into green fuels efficiently without any wasted energy. The results are reported in two related papers in Nature Chemistry and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Most methods for converting CO2 into fuel also produce unwanted by-products such as hydrogen. Scientists can alter the chemical conditions to minimise hydrogen production, but this also reduces the performance for CO2 conversion: so cleaner fuel can be produced, but at the cost of efficiency.
The Cambridge-developed proof of concept relies on enzymes isolated from bacteria to power the chemical reactions which convert CO2 into fuel, a process called electrolysis. Enzymes are more efficient than other catalysts, such as gold, but they are highly sensitive to their local chemical environment. If the local environment isn't exactly right, the enzymes fall apart and the chemical reactions are slow.
The Cambridge researchers, working with a team from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, have developed a method to improve the efficiency of electrolysis by fine-tuning the solution conditions to alter the local environment of the enzymes.
"Enzymes have evolved over millions of years to be extremely efficient and selective, and they're great for fuel-production because there aren't any unwanted by-products," said Dr. Esther Edwardes Moore from Cambridge's Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, first author of the PNAS paper. "However, enzyme sensitivity throws up a different set of challenges. Our method accounts for this sensitivity, so that the local environment is adjusted to match the enzyme's ideal working conditions."
The researchers used computational methods to design a system to improve the electrolysis of CO2. Using the enzyme-based system, the level of fuel production increased by 18 times compared to the current benchmark solution.
To improve the local environment further, the team showed how two enzymes can work together, one producing fuel and the other controlling the environment. They found that by adding another enzyme, it sped up the reactions, both increasing efficiency and reducing unwanted by-products.
"We ended up with just the fuel we wanted, with no side-products and only marginal energy losses, producing clean fuels at maximum efficiency," said Dr. Sam Cobb, first author of the Nature Chemistry paper. "By taking our inspiration from biology, it will help us develop better synthetic catalyst systems, which is what we'll need if we're going to deploy CO2 electrolysis at a large scale."
"Electrolysis has a big part to play in reducing carbon emissions," said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. "Instead of capturing and storing CO2, which is incredibly energy-intensive, we have demonstrated a new concept to capture carbon and make something useful from it in an energy-efficient way."
The researchers say that the secret to more efficient CO2 electrolysis lies in the catalysts. There have been big improvements in the development of synthetic catalysts in recent years, but they still fall short of the enzymes used in this work.
"Once you manage to make better catalysts, many of the problems with CO2 electrolysis just disappear," said Cobb. "We're showing the scientific community that once we can produce catalysts of the future, we'll be able to do away with many of the compromises currently being made, since what we learn from enzymes can be transferred to synthetic catalysts."
"Once we designed the concept, the improvement in performance was startling," said Edwardes Moore. "I was worried we'd spend years trying to understand what was going on at the molecular level, but once we truly appreciated the influence of the local environment, it evolved really quickly."
"In future we want to use what we have learned to tackle some challenging problems that the current state-of-the-art catalysts struggle with, such as using CO2 straight from air as these are conditions where the properties of enzymes as ideal catalysts can really shine," said Cobb.
Esther Edwardes Moore et al, Understanding the local chemical environment of bioelectrocatalysis,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2022).DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114097119
The original Venus from Willendorf. Left: lateral view. Right-top: hemispherical cavities on the right haunch and leg. Right bottom: existing hole enlarged to form the navel. Credit: Kern, A. & Antl-Weiser, W. Venus. Editon-Lammerhuber, 2008
The almost 11-cm-high Venus figurine from Willendorf (Austria) is one of the most important examples of early art in Europe. It is made of a rock called oolite that is not found in or around Willendorf. A research team led by the anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna and the two geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser as well as the prehistorian Walpurga Antl-Weiser from the Natural History Museum Vienna have now found out with the help of high-resolution tomographic images that the material from which the Venus was carved likely comes from northern Italy. This sheds new light on the remarkable mobility of the first modern humans south and north of the Alps. The results currently appear in Scientific Reports.
The Venus von Willendorf is not only special in terms of its design, but also in terms of its material. While other Venus figures are usually made of ivory or bone, sometimes also of different stones, oolite was used for the Lower Austrian Venus, which is unique for such cult objects. The figurine found in the Wachau in 1908 and on display in the Natural History Museum in Vienna has so far only been examined from the outside. Now, more than 100 years later, anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna has used a new method to examine its interior: micro-computed tomography. During several passes, the scientists obtained images with a resolution of up to 11.5 micrometers—a quality that is otherwise only seen under a microscope. The first insight gained is: "Venus does not look uniform at all on the inside. A special property that could be used to determine its origin," says the anthropologist.
Along with the two geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, who had previously worked with oolites, the team procured comparative samples from Austria and Europe and evaluated them. A complex project: Rock samples from France to eastern Ukraine, from Germany to Sicily were obtained, sawn up and examined under a microscope. The team was supported by the state of Lower Austria, which provided funds for the time-consuming analyses.
The inside also gives information about the outside
The tomographic data from the Venus showed that the sediments were deposited in the rocks in different densities and sizes. In between there were also small remnants of shells and six very dense, larger grains, so-called limonites. The latter explains the previously mysterious hemispherical cavities on the surface of Venus with the same diameter: "The hard limonites probably broke out when the creator of the Venus was carving it," explains Weber. "In the case of the Venus navel, he then apparently made it a virtue out of necessity."
Another finding: The Venus oolite is porous because the cores of the millions of globules (ooides) of which it is comprised had dissolved. This is a great explanation for why the resourceful sculptor chose this material 30,000 years ago: It is much easier to work with. The scientists also identified a tiny shell remnant, just 2.5 millimeters long, and dated it to the Jurassic period. This ruled out all other potential deposits of the rock from the much later Miocene geological era, such as those in the nearby Vienna Basin.
Pictures derived from micro-computed tomography scans of the Venus. Left: Segmented bivalve (Oxytomidae) that was located on the right side of the Venus head; scan resolution 11.5 μm; characteristic features are theumbo and the wings. Middle: Volume rendering of the virtual Venus; six embedded limonite concretions: neck right (orange), neck left (blue), breast left (red), belly left (yellow), hip left (green), leg left (purple); three mollusc fragments: bivalve head right (blue, only 2.5 mm long, see white line from label "Bivalve" for position), shell breast middle (orange), shell leg left (turquoise). Right: Single μCT-slice showing the porosity and layering of the oolite; note the relative density of the limonite concretion; scan resolution 53 μm. Credit: Gerhard Weber, Universityof Vienna
A long way for that period
The research team also analyzed the grain sizes of the other samples. Hundreds, sometimes even thousands of grains were marked and measured with image processing programs or even manually. None of the samples within a 200-kilometer radius of Willendorf even remotely matched. The analysis finally showed that the samples from the Venus were statistically indistinguishable from samples from a location in northern Italy near Lake Garda. This is remarkable because it means that the Venus (or at least its material) started a journey from south of the Alps to the Danube north of the Alps.
"People in the Gravettian—the tool culture of the time—looked for and inhabited favorable locations. When the climate or the prey situation changed, they moved on, preferably along rivers," explains Gerhard Weber. Such a journey could have taken generations.
One of the two possible routes from the south to the north would lead around the Alps and into the Pannonian Plain and was described in simulations by other researchers a few years ago. The other way to get from Lake Garda to the Wachau would be via the Alps. Whether this was possible more than 30,000 years ago is unclear due to the climate deterioration that began at that time. This would be a rather improbable variant if there had already been continuous glaciers at that time. However, the 730 km long path along the Etsch, the Inn and the Danube had always been below 1,000 meters above sea level, with the exception of 35 kilometers at Lake Reschen.
Possible, but less likely, connection to eastern Ukraine
The statistics clearly point to northern Italy as the origin of the Venus oolite. Nevertheless, there is another interesting place for the origin of the rock. It is in eastern Ukraine, more than 1,600 kilometers linear distance from Willendorf. The samples there do not fit as clearly as those from Italy, but better than all the rest of the sample. An interesting connection here: Venus figures were found in nearby southern Russia, which are somewhat younger, but look very similar to the Venus found in Austria. Genetic results also show that people in Central and Eastern Europe were connected to one another at this time.
The exciting story of the Lower Austrian Venus could be continued. Only a few systematic studies have so far dealt with the existence of early humans in this time frame in the Alpine region, and with their mobility. The famous "Ötzi," for example, only comes into play much later, namely 5,300 years ago. "We want to use these Venus results and our new Vienna research network Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, in cooperation with anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines, to further clarify early history in the Alpine region," concludes Weber.Venus will soon appear to sink and disappear right before our eyes
More information:Gerhard W. Weber et al, The microstructure and the origin of the Venus from Willendorf,Scientific Reports(2022).DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-06799-z
Molds and yeasts common in daycares — could cause chronic asthma and allergy
Date:February 23, 2022
Source:American Society for Microbiology
Summary:
Citizen science sampling of dust in outdoor and indoor surfaces led to the identification of building features that contribute to the prevalence of yeasts and molds in daycare centers. This information is important to understand environmental factors contributing to the alarming rise of respiratory chronic diseases in children.
Molds, and especially yeasts, were far more common in indoor daycare centers than outside of them, according to a new study. Factors such as certain building features and the number of children in a daycare influenced the species of fungi found within, suggesting that many of the molds and yeasts probably have indoor sources.
"This information is important to understand the alarming increase in chronic diseases like asthma and allergies in children," said first author Eva Lena Estensmo, Ph.D., University of Oslo, Norway. The research is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
The study was motivated by the rise in chronic allergies and asthma, combined with the general lack of knowledge about the indoor mycobiome, said Dr. Estensmo. "Fungal growth can lead to poor indoor air quality, and some fungi are associated with allergic reactions and respiratory symptoms that may lead to chronic respiratory diseases."
In the study, the researchers investigated the indoor and immediate outdoor mycobiomes of 125 daycare centers in Norway, sampling dust swabbed from the insides and outsides of door frames and correlating the findings with different variables such as the number and ages of children in each daycare, the building type (single building, apartment, etc.), building materials (bricks, wood, etc.), ventilation type, presence of pests, history of mold damage and year of construction.
The study also accounted for environmental data including temperature and moisture levels inside and out, distance from the coast, and longitude and latitude of the daycare centers.
"Especially the high diversity of yeasts came as a surprise," said Dr. Estensmo. "Many might be associated with the human body. We don't fully know whether the yeasts are especially associated with children, but we have some indications -- work in progress -- that far more yeasts are present in daycares than in other indoor environments.
"In addition, the daycare environment with a lot of activity and high density of people is an interesting environment to study in relation to human influence on the indoor mycobiome," said Dr. Estensmo. She said it was well established that the indoor microbiome related to bacteria is influenced by humans, but that much less had been known about human influence on the mycobiome.
"Since young children often bring in organic materials such as soil and litter from nature, daycare centers may accumulate extra organic substrates promoting fungal growth, compared to other indoor environments," the authors wrote. Previously, it has been shown that the concentration of fungi in daycare centers is higher than that in homes.
Citizen scientists played an important role in the research, using materials mailed to them by the investigators to collect dust samples from doorframes both outside and inside the buildings. They also filled out questionnaires the researchers had mailed them, on the number and ages of children in the daycares, the building type (single building, apartment, etc.) and the previously mentioned characteristics of the buildings. special promotion
Journal Reference: Eva Lena F. Estensmo, Synnøve Smebye Botnen, Sundy Maurice, Pedro M. Martin-Sanchez, Luis Morgado, Ingeborg Bjorvand Engh, Klaus Høiland, Inger Skrede, Håvard Kauserud. The indoor mycobiome of daycare centers is affected by occupancy and climate. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2022; DOI: 10.1128/aem.02113-21
Onset of modern sea level rise began in 1863, study finds
Date: February 24, 2022
Source: Rutgers University
Summary:
Scientists have found that modern rates of sea level rise began emerging in 1863 as the Industrial Age intensified, coinciding with evidence for early ocean warming and glacier melt. The study, which used a global database of sea-level records spanning the last 2,000 years, will help local and regional planners prepare for future sea-level rise
An international team of scientists including Rutgers researchers has found that modern rates of sea level rise began emerging in 1863 as the Industrial Age intensified, coinciding with evidence for early ocean warming and glacier melt.
The study, which used a global database of sea-level records spanning the last 2,000 years, will help local and regional planners prepare for future sea-level rise. The study appears in the journal Nature Communications.
Sea-level rise is an important indicator of broader climate changes. By identifying the time when modern rates of sea-level rise emerged above natural variability, the researchers were able to pinpoint the onset of a significant period of climate change.
By examining the worldwide records, the researchers found that globally, the onset of modern rates of sea-level rise occurred in 1863, in line with the Industrial Revolution. At individual sites in the United States, modern rates emerged earliest in the mid-Atlantic region in the mid to late 19th century, and later in Canada and Europe, emerging by the mid-20th century.
The study is especially timely given NOAA's recently-released report detailing the rapid acceleration of sea-level rise on U.S. coasts.
"We can be virtually certain the global rate of sea-level rise from 1940 to 2000 was faster than all previous 60-year intervals over the last 2,000 years," said Jennifer S. Walker, lead author of the study and postdoctoral associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Having a thorough understanding of site-specific sea-level changes over long timescales is imperative for regional and local planning and response to future sea level rise."
Walker noted that the statistical model the research team utilized could also be applied to more individual sites to further understand the processes driving sea-level change on global and regional scales.
"The fact that modern rates emerge at all of our study sites by the mid-20th century demonstrates the significant influence global sea-level rise has had on our planet in the last century," Walker added. "Further analysis of the spatial variability in the time of emergence at different locations will continue to improve society's understanding of how regional and local processes impact rates of sea-level rise." special promotion
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Story Source:
Materials provided by Rutgers University. Original written by Emily Everson Layden. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference: Jennifer S. Walker, Robert E. Kopp, Christopher M. Little, Benjamin P. Horton. Timing of emergence of modern rates of sea-level rise by 1863. Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28564-6
Understanding Homelessness in Canada: From the Street to the Classroom
Have you ever wondered why homelessness exists in Canada? This free ebook brings together lived experience representation and the most recent research to explore homelessness from a range of different perspectives.
Kristy Buccieri, James Davy, Cyndi Gilmer, and Nicole Whitmore
More People Are Microdosing for Mental Health. But Does It Work?
Scientists are split over whether the benefits some microdosers experience are a placebo effect or something more.
Credit...River Cousin
By Dana G Smith
NEW YORK TIMES Feb. 28, 2022
Joseph started microdosing psychedelics five years ago to try to improve his mental health. “I was just kind of in this depression, in this rut,” he said. “I was unhappy and angry and agitated all the time, and it went against the way that I saw myself.”
Depression and anxiety run in Joseph’s family, and he’d been prescribed Prozac as a kid. But when symptoms of depression returned in his early 30s, he didn’t want to go back to a prescription drug.
Joseph, an Austin-based designer (he asked to withhold his full name, citing privacy concerns surrounding mental health issues and illegal drug use), came across research from Johns Hopkins University about psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic, or “magic,” mushrooms. In a small study, full doses of the drug helped cancer patients cope with depression and anxiety. Then he read anecdotes of Silicon Valley influencers claiming increased energy from taking tiny doses of psychedelics. So he decided to start microdosing a few times a week, eating a “small nibble” — about half an inch — of mushrooms to see if it would improve his mood.
Almost immediately he started seeing a benefit. “It just kind of boosted my morale,” he said. “I was in a little bit better mood. I had a little bit more pep to my step. I was having a little bit more fun, feeling a little bit more excited about things.”
Microdosing is typically defined by experts as taking 5 percent to 10 percent of a full dose of a psychedelic, usually LSD or psilocybin, as a way to get the supposed mental health benefits of the drug without the hallucinogenic high. For instance, in a clinical setting, a 155-pound man might take 20 milligrams of psilocybin for a full psychedelic experience. For a microdose, he’d take only one to two milligrams. At that level, taken several times a week, some claim the drugs improve their mood, boost their creativity and give the world a brighter, shinier quality, like it’s in high-definition.
“It’s akin to walking outside and the sun is suddenly out,” said Erin Royal, 30, a bartender in Seattle who microdoses one or two times a week with mushrooms she forages from nearby forests. “It reminds you that you are a person who can feel positive things and notice things that are beautiful.”
In practice, only about a third of people who microdose carefully measure the amount of the psychedelic they are taking; most take just enough to begin feeling some effects, which usually start after an hour and last four to six hours. That requires some trial and error — particularly when eating mushrooms, which can vary in psilocybin concentration. (The most commonly reported negative side effect of microdosing is accidentally taking too much, which isn’t dangerous but can be inconvenient if you’re at the office. Researchers also say frequent repeated doses of a psychedelic could theoretically stress the heart.)
Research into the mental health benefits of full doses of psychedelics is promising, and one early-phase study even found that psilocybin, at high doses, may be as effective as a selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor for treating depression. Full doses of psychedelics help the brain develop new cellular connections, a process called neuroplasticity, and there’s some evidence that microdoses produce similar changes.
So many of the scientists who pioneered research into full doses of psychedelics have started studying whether a microdose might also be beneficial. But evidence is limited, and experts are divided about how microdosing helps people — or if it does at all.
Much of the early research into microdosing has been anecdotal, consisting of enthusiastic survey responses from users who experienced enhanced attention and cognition, feelings of well-being and relief from anxiety and depression. Lab studies of psilocybin and LSD microdoses tend to support these claims, showing improvements in mood, attention and creativity. But these studies have generally been small, and they didn’t compare a microdose to a placebo.
“You probably only participate at this point in a trial in microdosing if you really have a strong belief that this might help you,” said Dr. David Erritzoe, clinical director of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. And when people expect to benefit from a drug, they typically do.
The two largest placebo-controlled trials of microdosing were published last year, and they both suggest that the benefits people experience are from the placebo effect. In the studies, volunteers used their own drugs to participate and, unknown to them, received either active doses or a placebo packaged in identical capsules. At the end of several weeks, almost everyone’s mood and well-being had improved, regardless of what they had taken.
“I was initially surprised but also a bit disappointed by the results, because when we set up the study we were quite optimistic that microdosing could have an effect” beyond a placebo, said Michiel van Elk, an assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands who led one of the trials.
Dr. Erritzoe, who ran the other study, found that the drug’s efficacy was tied to users’ expectations. If they took a placebo but thought it was a microdose, they felt better, and if they had an active dose but wrongly guessed it was a placebo, they did not.
A third placebo-controlled trial, published earlier this month from the University of Chicago, tried to get around user expectations by giving participants four microdoses of LSD over the course of two weeks, but without telling them about the purpose of the study or even what they were taking. Once again, there was no difference between the LSD and placebo groups.
Still, some scientists point to evidence showing that microdosing has a direct impact on the brain to argue that its benefits are real. Using neuroimaging technology, researchers have shown changes in brain activity and connectivity after single small doses of LSD that are similar to what’s seen with larger amounts of the drug. And a study in Denmark found that a microdose of psilocybin activated nearly half of the specific type of serotonin receptors that psychedelics act on to produce their hallucinogenic effects.
“I wouldn’t say it’s all placebo. Clearly, it’s an active drug,” said Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago who led several of the studies. “We see brain changes that are a little bit like the high dose effect,” which suggests the smaller doses are acting on the same systems.
Some microdosing researchers, like Dr. de Wit and Dr. van Elk, remain optimistic that tiny amounts of hallucinogenic drugs will ultimately prove beneficial for mental health and cognition. They say that the design of the placebo-controlled trials may be to blame for their lack of significant findings. The studies may not have run for long enough, or the tests and questionnaires used during the studies may not fully capture the benefits some people experience from microdosing.
On the other side, Dr. Erritzoe said that just because a drug has an impact on the brain doesn’t mean it has any therapeutic value. “If you can’t see in a proper trial that it works for the symptoms, for things that people can actually detect and feel and experience in their lives, then it’s just not that interesting,” he said.
“I’m not trying to shoot down microdosing,” he added. “I’m just being cautious and saying at the moment, it does not look particularly optimistic.”
One of the biggest problems with microdosing research is that it’s hard to block the placebo effect in studies of a psychoactive substance. In Dr. Erritzoe’s trial, 72 percent of people correctly guessed what they had taken, which means it’s no longer blinded. For the studies showing effects in the brain, the biggest changes came at the higher end of the microdosing spectrum — 20 to 26 micrograms of LSD and 3 milligrams of psilocybin — an amount where people often start noticing the drug’s effects.
Out of the lab, most users dose themselves aiming for a similar subtle awareness that they’ve taken something. At that level, the microdose might be closer to a half dose, or their expectations could heighten the drug’s benefits because they can feel that it’s doing something.
As a result of these difficulties and the lack of conclusive findings, Dr. van Elk has abandoned microdosing research to go back to studying large doses of the drugs. Dr. Erritzoe said once his next study ends, he’ll probably do the same.
Both Joseph and Ms. Royal are aware that the benefits of microdosing could be a placebo effect. But for them, how it works matters less than the fact that it’s helped. These days, Joseph said his depression has improved thanks to a regular meditation practice, although he still microdoses occasionally if he starts feeling down.
After several years of microdosing, he said the biggest change he’s experienced is a general shift in his mind set — something that’s harder for scientists to measure. “I started because I read that it helps with depression,” he said. “But as I’ve moved on, it’s helped really a lot more with mental and personal growth and outlook on life — how you want to live and your existence in the world.” Dana Smith is an award-winning health and science writer based in Durham, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Scientific American, Popular Science and more.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger at her home in Ontario. “If you build back the forests, you oxygenate the atmosphere more, and it buys us time,” she said.Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
MERRICKVILLE, Ontario — There aren’t many scientists raised in the ways of druids by Celtic medicine women, but there is at least one. She lives in the woods of Canada, in a forest she helped grow. From there, wielding just a pencil, she has been working to save some of the oldest life-forms on Earth by bewitching its humans.
At a hale 77, Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a medical biochemist, botanist, organic chemist, poet, author and developer of artificial blood. But her main focus for decades now has been to telegraph to the world, in prose that is scientifically exacting yet startlingly affecting, the wondrous capabilities of trees.
Dr. Beresford-Kroeger’s goal is to combat the climate crisis by fighting for what’s left of the great forests (she says the vast boreal wilderness that stretches across the Northern Hemisphere is as vital as the Amazon) and rebuilding what’s already come down. Trees store carbon dioxide and oxygenate the air, making them “the best and only thing we have right now to fight climate change and do it fast,” she said.
Her admirers, who included the late biodiversity pioneer E.O. Wilson, say what sets Dr. Beresford-Kreoger apart is the breadth of her knowledge. She can talk about the medicinal value of trees in one breath and their connection to human souls in the next. She moved Jane Fonda to tears. She inspired Richard Powers to base a central character of his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, “The Overstory,” in part on her: He has called her a “maverick” and her work “the best kind of animism.”
Dr. Beresford-Kroeger has also cultivated an arboreal Noah’s Ark of rare and hardy specimens that can best withstand a warming planet. The native trees she planted on her property in this rural village sequester more carbon and better resist drought, storms and temperature swings, she said, and also produce high quality, protein-rich nuts. If industrial logging continues to eat away at forests worldwide, soil fertility will plummet, and Dr. Beresford-Kroeger, an Irishwoman, is haunted by the prospect of famine.
She is an independent researcher, unaffiliated with any institution, funded by her writings and the sale of her rare plants; she wanted freedom to study and spread her ideas without any strictures.
“Often these kinds of brilliant pioneers are outliers who don’t play by the rules,” said Ben Rawlence, an English writer who found himself “sitting at her feet doing a master’s in the boreal forest packed into three days” while researching his new book “The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth”.
“People like her are very important,” he said. “They can integrate the depth of different disciplines into a total picture.”
Dr. Beresford-Kroeger didn’t set out to be an outlier. Born in England and raised in Ireland, she studied botany and biochemistry at the University College Cork before coming to America in 1966 to research organic and radionuclear chemistry at the University of Connecticut. Three years later, she moved to Canada to study plant metabolism at Carleton University, and then do cardiovascular research at the University of Ottawa, where she began working as a research scientist in 1972.
But she faced sexism, harassment and, in that part of Loyalist Canada, anti-Irish sentiment, she said. She left academia in 1982, as much repelled by the toxicity as she was drawn to a deeper calling, rooted in a childhood that was both Dickensian and folkloric.
A childhood portrait of Dr. Beresford-Kroeger, painted by her father, in her home.Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
Dr. Beresford-Kroeger was orphaned at 12. Her father, an English aristocrat, died under mysterious circumstances, while her mother, who traced her lineage to ancient Irish kings, perished in a car crash. Dr. Beresford-Kroeger was taken in by a kindly if neglectful uncle in Cork, and spent her summers with Gaelic-speaking relatives in the countryside.
There, under the tutelage of a maternal grandaunt, she was taught ancient Irish ways of life known as the Brehon laws. She learned that in Druidic thinking, trees were viewed as sentient beings that connected the Earth to the heavens. She was also versed in the medicinal properties of local flora: Wildflowers that warded off nervousness and mental ailments, jelly from boiled seaweed that could treat tuberculosis, dew from shamrocks that Celtic women used for anti-aging.
As a university student a few years later, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger put those teachings to the scientific test and discovered with a start that they were true. The wildflowers were St. John’s Wort, which indeed had antidepressant capacities. The seaweed jelly had strong antibiotic properties. Shamrocks contained flavonoids that increased blood flow. This foundation of ancient Celtic teachings, classical botany and medical biochemistry set the course for Dr. Beresford-Kreoger’s life. The more she studied, the more she discovered that the symbiosis between plants and humans extended far beyond the life-giving oxygen they produced.
“Every unseen or unlikely connection between the natural world and human survival has assured me that we have very little grasp of all that we depend on for our lives,” she wrote in her most recent book, “To Speak for the Trees.” “When we cut down a forest, we only understand a small portion of what we’re choosing to destroy.” Deforestation, she continued, was a suicidal, even homicidal, act.
“We’ve taken down too much forest, that’s our big mistake,” Dr. Beresford-Kroeger said during a recent chat in her hand-built home, as her husband, Christian Kroeger, puttered in the kitchen, making lunch. “But if you build back the forests, you oxygenate the atmosphere more, and it buys us time.”
The Beresford-Kroegers live south of Ottawa, down a long country lane on a 160-acre parcel of land they bought decades ago. Their house is filled with well-thumbed books, fingers of sunlight, thriving plants and Boots, their rescue cat. Dr. Beresford-Kroeger writes all of her papers and books by hand, and doesn’t have a smartphone or computer or any social media accounts. When she needs to Zoom, she pops down to the local library and uses a public desktop.
Dr. Beresford-Kroeger’s husband, Christian Kroeger, read aloud from “Under the Cedars and the Stars,” by the Irish author and Catholic priest Patrick Augustine Sheehan.
Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
Outside the house, her treasured trees grow, all climate-change resistant to varying degrees: the kingnut, a blue-needled fir and a rare variant of the bur oak. She began creating her arboretum after learning that many key tree species prized by First Nations people for medicines, salves, oils and food had been razed by colonizers centuries ago.
“These trees have fed the continent before in the past,” she said. “I want them available there for people in the future.” Over the years, she painstakingly tracked down, across the continent and beyond, rare seeds and saplings native to Canada. “I thought, ‘Well I’m going to repatriate these trees,’” Dr. Beresford-Kroeger said. “I am going to bring them back to here, where I know they’re safe.”
She also knew if the “repatriated” plants and trees were shared far and wide, they’d no longer be lost. She and Christian began giving away native seeds and saplings to pretty much anyone who asked. Among the tens of thousands of recipients were local Hell’s Angels, who roared up to their doorstep to collect black walnut seedlings, wanting to grow the valuable trees on their property nearby. “I put them in the back of their motorbikes, their Harley-Davidsons, she said. “I thought I’d die of a heart attack. But they were very nice to me.”
In her forties, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger turned to writing, though it would take a decade to find a publisher for her first manuscript. She has since published eight books, at least a couple of them Canadian best sellers. One was about holistic gardening, another about living a pared-down life. But her main focus was the importance of trees.
She wrote about the irreplaceability of the boreal forest, which principally spans eight countries, and “oxygenates the atmosphere under the toughest conditions imaginable for any plant.” She introduced her “bioplan”: If everyone on earth planted six native trees over six years, she says it could help to mitigate climate change. She wrote about how a trip to the forest can bolster immune systems, ward off viral infections and disease, even cancer, and drive down blood pressure.
There have been skeptics. One publisher admonished her for being a scientist who described landscapes as sacred, she said. The head of a foundation, while introducing her following a screening of “Call of the Forest,” a documentary about her life, let slip that he didn’t believe a word of what she said.
Bill Libby, an emeritus professor of forest genetics at the University of California, Berkeley, said he initially had reservations when Dr. Beresford-Kroeger offered a biological explanation for why he felt so good after walking through redwood groves. She attributed his sense of well-being to fine particles, or aerosols, given off by the trees.
“She said the aerosoles go up my nose and that’s what makes me feel good,” Dr. Libby said.
Outside research has supported some of those claims. Studies led by Dr. Qi Ling, a physician who coedited a book for which Dr. Beresford-Kroeger was a contributor, found visits to forests, or forest bathing, lessened stress and activated cancer-fighting cells. A 2021 study from Italy suggested that lower rates of Covid-19 deaths in forested areas of the country were linked in part to immunity-boosting aerosols from the region’s trees and plants.
“I was laughed at until fairly recently,” Dr. Beresford-Kroeger said, her Irish accent still strong. “People all of a sudden seem to be waking up.”
Nowadays, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger is in great demand, a shift she attributes to mounting fears about the environment and a hunger for solutions.
In 2019, Carleton University awarded her a doctorate in biology along with an honorary doctor of law degree for her climate work. The next year, she was a guest on one of Jane Fonda’s televised climate action teach-ins. She regularly delivers virtual talks to universities and keynote addresses to organizations (“I had goose bumps talking to her,” said Susan Leopold, the moderator of her talk at the 2021 International Herb Symposium). She is helping to plan medicinal healing gardens in Toronto and outside Ottawa as she finishes a new book about how people are spiritually connected to nature. “The publishers can like it or bloody lump it,” she said.
During a tour of her forest and gardens, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger spoke with wonder about how ancient Celtic cures were almost identical to those of Indigenous peoples, and waxed poetic about the energy transfer from photons of sunlight to plants’ electrons during photosynthesis.
Then she advised a reporter to lean against a tree before writing. People, she said, should look at forests as “the sacred center of being.”
“Without trees, we could not survive,” she said. “The trees laid the path for the human soul.”
Dr. Beresford-Kroeger in a grove of dwarf bird’s nest spruce on her property.
Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
Cara Buckley is a climate reporter who focuses on people working toward solutions and off-the-beaten-path tales about responses to the crisis. She joined The Times in 2006 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment. @caraNYT • Facebook
A childhood portrait of Dr. Beresford-Kroeger, painted by her father, in her home.Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
