Researchers identified over 5,500 new viruses in the ocean, including a missing link in viral evolution

THE CONVERSATION

Published: April 7, 2022

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea
Diagram of the biological classification system, showing phylum is a broad grouping. VectorMine/iStock via Getty Images Plus

An analysis of the genetic material in the ocean has identified thousands of previously unknown RNA viruses and doubled the number of phyla, or biological groups, of viruses thought to exist, according to a new study our team of researchers has published in the journal Science.

RNA viruses are best known for the diseases they cause in people, ranging from the common cold to COVID-19. They also infect plants and animals important to people.

These viruses carry their genetic information in RNA, rather than DNA. RNA viruses evolve at much quicker rates than DNA viruses do. While scientists have cataloged hundreds of thousands of DNA viruses in their natural ecosystems, RNA viruses have been relatively unstudied.

There are more RNA viruses in the oceans than researchers previously thought. Guillermo Domínguez Huerta, CC BY-ND

Unlike humans and other organisms composed of cells, however, viruses lack unique short stretches of DNA that could act as what researchers call a genetic bar code. Without this bar code, trying to distinguish different species of virus in the wild can be challenging.

To get around this limitation, we decided to identify the gene that codes for a particular protein that allows a virus to replicate its genetic material. It is the only protein that all RNA viruses share, because it plays an essential role in how they propagate themselves. Each RNA virus, however, has small differences in the gene that codes for the protein that can help distinguish one type of virus from another.

So we screened a global database of RNA sequences from plankton collected during the four-year Tara Oceans expeditions global research project. Plankton are any aquatic organisms that are too small to swim against the current. They’re a vital part of ocean food webs and are common hosts for RNA viruses. Our screening ultimately identified over 44,000 genes that code for the virus protein.

Our next challenge, then, was to determine the evolutionary connections between these genes. The more similar two genes were, the more likely viruses with those genes were closely related. Because these sequences had evolved so long ago (possibly predating the first cell), the genetic signposts indicating where new viruses may have split off from a common ancestor had been lost to time. A form of artificial intelligence called machine learning, however, allowed us to systematically organize these sequences and detect differences more objectively than if the task were done manually.

This diagram shows the five previously known phyla of RNA viruses automatically organized by our methods. Reprinted with permission from Zayed et al., Science Volume 376:156(2022).

We identified a total of 5,504 new marine RNA viruses and doubled the number of known RNA virus phyla from five to 10. Mapping these new sequences geographically revealed that two of the new phyla were particularly abundant across vast oceanic regions, with regional preferences in either temperate and tropical waters (the Taraviricota, named after the Tara Oceans expeditions) or the Arctic Ocean (the Arctiviricota).

We believe that Taraviricota might be the missing link in the evolution of RNA viruses that researchers have long sought, connecting two different known branches of RNA viruses that diverged in how they replicate.

This map shows the distribution of RNA viruses across the ocean. Wedge size is proportional to the average abundance of viruses present in that area, and wedge color indicates virus phyla. Reprinted with permission from Zayed et al., Science Volume 376:156(2022).

Why it matters

These new sequences help scientists better understand not only the evolutionary history of RNA viruses but also the evolution of early life on Earth.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, RNA viruses can cause deadly diseases. But RNA viruses also play a vital role in ecosystems because they can infect a wide array of organisms, including microbes that influence environments and food webs at the chemical level.

Mapping out where in the world these RNA viruses live can help clarify how they affect the organisms driving many of the ecological processes that run our planet. Our study also provides improved tools that can help researchers catalog new viruses as genetic databases grow.

Viruses do more than just cause disease.

What still isn’t known

Despite identifying so many new RNA viruses, it remains challenging to pinpoint what organisms they infect. Researchers are also currently limited to mostly fragments of incomplete RNA virus genomes, partly because of their genetic complexity and technological limitations.

Our next steps would be to figure out what kinds of genes might be missing and how they changed over time. Uncovering these genes could help scientists better understand how these viruses work.

Authors

Guillermo Dominguez Huerta
Science Consultant in Microbiology, The Ohio State University

Ahmed Zayed
Research Scientist in Microbiology, The Ohio State University

James Wainaina
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Microbiology, The Ohio State University

Matthew Sullivan
Professor of Microbiology, The Ohio State University

Disclosure statement

Guillermo Dominguez Huerta receives funding from U.S. National Science Foundation (DBI# 2022070). He was also supported by a Ramon-Areces Foundation postdoctoral fellowship.

Ahmed Zayed receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (DBI# 2022070)

James Wainaina receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (DBI# 2022070)

Matthew Sullivan received funding for this research from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The South African ship that found Antarctica’s Endurance wreck is vital for climate science

THE CONVERSATION
Published: April 6, 2022 

The SA Agulhas amid the ice of Antarctica. © Raquel Flynn

It was 1914 when the English explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set sail on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard a ship called Endurance. It was an ill-fated journey: the ship got trapped in the ice and eventually crushed by pack ice in 1915. It sank to the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. (Shackleton and his entire crew survived the ordeal by escaping in smaller boats.)

It was difficult to believe that the Endurance might ever be found. The icy Weddell Sea is inhospitable and the wreck lay in more than 3000 metres of water. But thanks to a South African vessel, the SA Agulhas II, Endurance was found in March 2022. It was the second time the polar icebreaker reached the coordinates that Endurance’s Captain Frank Worsley recorded as the ship went down. The first was in 2019; the ship was not located on that occasion.

Read more: Finding Shackleton's ship: why our fascination with Antarctica endures

The tale of the Endurance is fascinating. But so is the story of the SA Agulhas II. Because of this ship, South Africa is becoming a leader in aspects of Antarctic science. For example, it is highly unusual to make in situ measurements of the physics, chemistry, and biology of the open Southern Ocean and its sea ice in winter because of the darkness, inhospitable weather conditions and high concentrations of sea ice.

Yet, since 2012, the SA Agulhas II has undertaken at least five wintertime voyages between Cape Town and the Antarctic sea ice, a journey of nearly 3,000 kilometres. These expeditions have yielded data that are essential to understanding the changing Southern Ocean, and to validate numerical models developed to predict future climate. My research group, comprising mainly postgraduate students, has collected samples on numerous cruises aboard the SA Agulhas II that, following their measurement in the Marine Biogeochemistry Lab at the University of Cape Town, are improving our understanding of Southern Ocean nutrient and carbon cycling.

The SA Agulhas II has also served – and continues to serve – as a training ground for hundreds of students, most of them South African, in a range of disciplines: oceanography, marine biology, atmospheric science and more. It annually supports SEAmester, a ship-based educational programme dubbed “South Africa’s first class afloat”. During this government-funded capacity-building expedition, approximately 50 postgraduate students from across the country spend 10 days aboard the ship. They are introduced to interdisciplinary, applied, and hands-on marine science.

Shackleton’s so-called “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” was fundamentally a show of European colonial might. It kicked off decades of Antarctic research that was open near-exclusively to white men.

So it is fitting that one of the world’s most impressive icebreaking research vessels is today owned and operated by the only African signatory of the 1961 Antarctic Treaty – which protects Antarctica and its surrounding ecosystems from exploitation and annexation – and is a platform to train African researchers undertaking globally-relevant research.

Fully equipped

The SA Agulhas II is a Polar Class 5 vessel owned by the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment and operated by African Marine Solutions.

She was built in the shipyard of STX Finland in Rauma, Finland, and handed over to the South African government in 2012. Cape Town is her home port.

At 134 metres long, with ten decks, a crew of 45 and berth space for 100 scientists, the SA Agulhas II was uniquely designed as both a polar supply ship and scientific research vessel. As part of the ship’s mandate, she annually supplies fuel, food, personnel, and other essential resources to South Africa’s research bases in Antarctica and on the Subantarctic Marion and Gough Islands.

She is also equipped with eight permanent scientific laboratories (with space on the stern for six additional specialised labs in shipping containers). The ship’s infrastructure allows for various instruments and sample collection equipment (and even people) to be deployed over the side or through the centre of the vessel via an opening in the hull known as a “moon pool”.

A 1916 image of the Endurance trapped in ice. Bettmann collection/Getty Images

These and other features are critical when exploring a location as remote, vast and inhospitable as the Southern Ocean, which is typically defined as the waters south of 40ºS that connect the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. The westerly winds can exceed 60 km/hr, driving swells of over 10 metres. Sea ice more than a metre thick often extends over 1,000 km north of Antarctica. These factors make the region arguably the most logistically challenging and expensive ocean in which to conduct research.

Such research is critical. The Southern Ocean is the most important of all oceanic regions for Earth’s climate. Waters originating near Antarctica transport large quantities of heat and dissolved gases, such as the powerful greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), around the planet and into the deep ocean to be stored for hundreds of years.

Read more: An ocean like no other: the Southern Ocean's ecological richness and significance for global climate

Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, critical to all life on Earth, flow from the Southern Ocean to the tropical and temperate latitudes. There they are believed to support at least two-thirds of global ocean productivity. Without the Southern Ocean, our planet would not be habitable: continued research and monitoring of this marine system is critical.

The SA Agulhas II was able to reach the Endurance wreck site partly because of lighter than normal summertime ice conditions in the Weddell Sea. This is almost certainly a consequence of human-driven warming of the natural world. Significant reductions in Antarctic ice cover due to atmospheric and oceanic warming, along with related changes to the Southern Ocean and its ecosystems, present a very real threat to Earth’s habitability.

Broader value

Across the world, and in South Africa, government funding for research is declining; proportionally more science is being supported by private funders. A significant risk of this model is that a handful of powerful people, rather than a community of scientists reliant on peer-review and subject to checks and balances, get to set the global research agenda.

The SA Agulhas II stands out because she belongs to the people of South Africa. The ship’s success, under the leadership of master mariner Captain Knowledge Bengu, in locating the the Endurance is a reminder of her value not only to South African research, but to current and future global science initiatives.

Author

Sarah Fawcett
Senior Lecturer, University of Cape Town
Disclosure statement
Sarah Fawcett receives funding from the National Research Foundation (South African National Antarctic Programme) and the University of Cape Town Vice-Chancellor Future Leaders 2030 Fund.

Volcanoes, diamonds, and blobs: a billion-year history of Earth’s interior shows it’s more mobile than we thought

THE CONVERSATION
Published: March 30, 2022 

Deep in the Earth beneath us lie two blobs the size of continents. One is under Africa, the other under the Pacific Ocean.

The blobs have their roots 2,900km below the surface, almost halfway to the centre of the Earth. They are thought to be the birthplace of rising columns of hot rock called “deep mantle plumes” that reach Earth’s surface.

When these plumes first reach the surface, giant volcanic eruptions occur – the kind that contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago. The blobs may also control the eruption of a kind of rock called kimberlite, which brings diamonds from depths 120-150km (and in some cases up to around 800km) to Earth’s surface.

Scientists have known the blobs existed for a long time, but how they have behaved over Earth’s history has been an open question. In new research, we modelled a billion years of geological history and discovered the blobs gather together and break apart much like continents and supercontinents.

Earth’s blobs as imaged from seismic data. The African blob is at the top and the Pacific blob at the bottom. Ömer Bodur

A model for Earth blob evolution

The blobs are in the mantle, the thick layer of hot rock between Earth’s crust and its core. The mantle is solid but slowly flows over long timescales. We know the blobs are there because they slow down waves caused by earthquakes, which suggests the blobs are hotter than their surroundings.

Scientists generally agree the blobs are linked to the movement of tectonic plates at Earth’s surface. However, how the blobs have changed over the course of Earth’s history has puzzled them.

One school of thought has been that the present blobs have acted as anchors, locked in place for hundreds of millions of years while other rock moves around them. However, we know tectonic plates and mantle plumes move over time, and research suggests the shape of the blobs is changing.

Our new research shows Earth’s blobs have changed shape and location far more than previously thought. In fact, over history they have assembled and broken up in the same way that continents and supercontinents have at Earth’s surface.

We used Australia’s National Computational Infrastructure to run advanced computer simulations of how Earth’s mantle has flowed over a billion years.

These models are based on reconstructing the movements of tectonic plates. When plates push into one another, the ocean floor is pushed down between them in a process known as subduction. The cold rock from the ocean floor sinks deeper and deeper into the mantle, and once it reaches a depth of about 2,000km it pushes the hot blobs aside.
The past 200 million years of Earth’s interior. Hot structures are in yellow to red (darker is shallower) and cold structures in blue (darker is deeper).

We found that just like continents, the blobs can assemble – forming “superblobs” as in the current configuration – and break up over time.

A key aspect of our models is that although the blobs change position and shape over time, they still fit the pattern of volcanic and kimberlite eruptions recorded at Earth’s surface. This pattern was previously a key argument for the blobs as unmoving “anchors”.

Strikingly, our models reveal the African blob assembled as recently as 60 million years ago – in stark contrast to previous suggestions the blob could have existed in roughly its present form for nearly ten times as long.

Remaining questions about the blobs

How did the blobs originate? What exactly are they made of?  We still don’t know.

The blobs may be denser than the surrounding mantle, and as such they could consist of material separated out from the rest of the mantle early in Earth’s history. This could explain why the mineral composition of the Earth is different from that expected from models based on the composition of meteorites.

Alternatively, the density of the blobs could be explained by the accumulation of dense oceanic material from slabs of rock pushed down by tectonic plate movement.

Regardless of this debate, our work shows sinking slabs are more likely to transport fragments of continents to the African blob than to the Pacific blob. Interestingly, this result is consistent with recent work suggesting the source of mantle plumes rising from the African blob contains continental material, whereas plumes rising from the Pacific blob do not.

Tracking the blobs to find minerals and diamonds

While our work addresses fundamental questions about the evolution of our planet, it also has practical applications.

Our models provide a framework to more accurately target the location of minerals associated with mantle upwelling. This includes diamonds brought up to the surface by kimberlites that seem to be associated with the blobs.

Magmatic sulfide deposits, which are the world’s primary reserve of nickel, are also associated with mantle plumes. By helping target minerals such as nickel (an essential ingredient of lithium-ion batteries and other renewable energy technologies) our models can contribute to the transition to a low-emission economy.

Authors

Nicolas Flament
Senior Lecturer, University of Wollongong

Andrew Merdith
Research fellow, University of Leeds

Ömer F. Bodur
Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Wollongong

Simon Williams
Research Fellow, Northwest University, Xi'an

Disclosure statement

Nicolas Flament receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.

Andrew Merdith was supported by the Deep Carbon Observatory and the Richard Lounsbery Foundation.

Ömer F. Bodur receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from De Beers.

Simon Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The hidden world of octopus cities and culture shows why it’s wrong to farm them



Research shows that octopuses are sentient, emotional creatures. (Shutterstock)


THE CONVERSATION
Published: April 4, 2022 

A recently proposed aquaculture octopus farm in the Canary Islands would raise 3,000 tonnes of octopus a year, which means almost 275,000 individual octopuses will be killed annually.

Read more: Octopus farms raise huge animal welfare concerns - and they're unsustainable too

My research examines animal minds and ethics, and to me, the phrase “octopus culture” brings to mind Octopolis and Octlantis, two communities of wild octopuses in Jarvis Bay, Australia.

In Octopolis, numerous octopuses share — and fight over — a few square metres of seabed. In these watery towns, octopuses form dominance hierarchies, and they’ve started developing new behaviours: male octopuses fight over territory and, perhaps, females by throwing debris at one another and boxing.

Octopus community-building

The discovery of octopus communities came as a surprise to biologists who have long described octopuses as solitary animals that interact with others in three specific contexts: hunting, avoiding being hunted and mating.

What Octopolis suggests can happen in the wild is what has also been observed in captive octopuses: when living in an overly dense captive environment, octopuses will form dominance hierarchies.

In their fights for power, male octopuses perform an array of antagonistic behaviours, including throwing scallop shells to defend their den, and the “mantle up” display which makes an octopus look like a menacing vampire. Submissive octopuses signal their compliance with light colours and flattened body postures. For their efforts, the dominants appear to gain better access to high-quality dens and to females.

A look into the social life of octopus by Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith.

Animal culture

What is going on in Octopolis and Octlantis is properly called octopus culture. The idea of animal culture emerged after scientists noticed that in some groups, animals perform actions that aren’t seen in other groups of the same species.

Read more: Did they mean to do that? Accident and intent in an octopuses' garden

One of the earliest proponents of animal cultures was the Japanese primatologist Kinji Imanishi who in the 1950s observed that a group of Japanese macaques on Koshima Island would wash sweet potatoes in the water before eating them.

This was a new behaviour, not seen in other macaque groups, and observers were lucky enough to observe its origins. A monkey named Imo was the first to wash a potato in the salty water and others soon copied her, leading to a community-wide behaviour pattern.

The idea of animal culture drove much subsequent Japanese primatology, but in Europe and North America culture didn’t get much attention until 1999, when an article about culture in chimpanzees was published. Since then, evidence of culture — group-typical behaviours that are socially learned — has been found all across the animal kingdom, including among fish, birds and insects.

Japanese macaques exhibited social behaviour and influenced a cultural approach to primatology that later extended to other macaques. (Shutterstock)

A new kind of octopus

The proposal to start an octopus farm is a proposal to create a new octopus culture, because when cultural animals are brought together, they can’t help but create society. It’s also a proposal to create a new kind of octopus: the cultural behaviours coupled with the captive environment will be a novel environmental niche that shapes subsequent evolution.

Our familiar farmed animals — like Angus cows and Chocktaw hogs — have been domesticated and are entirely different from the animals they evolved from.

Many of our domesticated animals cannot survive without human care. Examples include domestic rabbits, that have evolved without the instincts and colouring wild rabbits have to protect them from predators, sheep whose wool grows too thick without regular trimming and chickens bred for meat that can’t walk as adults because their breasts are too heavy.

Starting an octopus farm is a commitment to creating a new kind of animal that relies on humans for their existence. It isn’t an idea to be taken up lightly, or a project that can responsibly be attempted and then discarded when it turns out to be too difficult or not profitable.

Managing octopus populations

There are many reasons to worry that an octopus farm will not be easy to manage. Unlike other farmed animals, octopuses need their space. Octopolis is already a battleground of boxing octopuses; one can only wonder what that will look like on a scale of thousands.

Octopuses are sentient — they are emotional animals that feel pain. A recent report commissioned by the department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in the United Kingdom reviewed the scientific evidence for pain experience in cephalopod molluscs (octopuses, squid and cuttlefish).

Sentient animals used for food are protected under welfare laws and killed in ways that should minimize their pain. Current methods of slaughtering octopuses include clubbing, slicing open the brain or suffocating them. The report’s authors conclude that none of these methods of slaughter are humane and recommends against octopus farming.

Octopuses are escape artists. The kind of housing needed to shelter them will be difficult to achieve, especially while also providing enrichment, since an enriched environment will be one full of possible getaway routes.

Octopus are known for their ability to escape tanks. (Shutterstock)

If an octopus farm is started, and then abandoned, the thousands of domesticated cultural octopuses cannot be released into the sea and be expected to flourish. We learned from the many expensive attempts to release Keiko, the killer whale that starred in the Free Willy franchise, that successful reintroduction of captive cultural animals into the wild is not easy. Even after spending US$20 million dollars, Keiko died in captivity.

The proposal to bring thousands of animals together into an octopus megacity would scale octopus culture far beyond anything found in nature or in captivity. It would create hundreds of thousands of Keikos, aquatic cultural animals captured from the wild and brought into captivity. And it would force them to live together and create a new culture in what is sure to be a violent octopus slum.

Just now, we are learning that octopuses feel emotions and have culture, and we are starting to rethink current practices of intensive animal farming.

It is exactly the wrong moment to propose such a scheme. We now know better.

Author

Kristin Andrews
Professor, Philosophy, York University, Canada
Disclosure statement
Kristin Andrews receives funding from SSHRC, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and York University. She is on the Board of Directors for Borneo Orangutan Society Canada.

Animals sleep, but little is known about how sharks do it

Sharks can sleep with their eyes open. (Shutterstock)

THE CONVERSATION 

Published: April 6, 2022 

Sharks used to figure prominently in my nightmares: coming after me in the ocean, rivers, swimming pools. But after spending some time with these elusive creatures in 2015, a more compelling question started to keep me up at night — do the very creatures that invade my dreams engage in sleep themselves?

As the world’s leading — and only — authority in sleep in elasmobranchs (sharks and rays), my research team and I have begun to unravel this enigma, and our latest findings of physiological evidence of sleep in sharks are the most conclusive on the topic yet.

Circadian rhythms

Quiescence, or inactivity, is often the most basic behavioural characteristic that we associate with sleep. It was indeed this behaviour that my team set out to identify when we began our investigations into the presence of sleep in sharks. Specifically, we studied the presence of circadian-organized activity patterns, as sleep is controlled by the circadian clock (an internal, biochemical oscillator) in many animals.

Sharks are a unique group of vertebrates, however, as many species swim continuously to passively push oxygen-rich seawater over their gills — these are known as ram ventilators. Other species manually pump seawater over their gills while remaining motionless (buccal pumpers).

A study we conducted in 2020 found the presence of daily activity patterns in all the species investigated, buccal pumpers and ram ventilators alike. Importantly, these patterns were found to be internally regulated (circadian in nature) in buccal pumping species. This was a major discovery and a great step in the right direction, but were periods of inactivity indicative of sleep?

Some sharks need to constantly swim to passively push oxygen-rich seawater over their gills.

 (Tomas Gonzalez de Rosenzweig/Unsplash)

Sleep or quiet restfulness?

An animal’s responsiveness and awareness of external stimulation is reduced when asleep due to a sensory shutdown, or attenuation. As sleep researchers, we can exploit this ubiquitous sleep characteristic to behaviourally distinguish sleep from quiet restfulness.

Our 2021 study found that buccal pumping sharks were less responsive to mild electrical pulses following five minutes of inactivity. This became the criteria for our working definition of sleep in these animals.

Sleep is also internally regulated, so that animals can recover lost sleep by sleeping more. This characteristic was absent in the sharks in our study — they did not make up sleep following periods of sleep deprivation. This phenomenon is also absent during sleep in other marine fishes.

These somewhat conflicting results highlight an important point: behaviour can be deceptive and misleading. Animals can appear to be asleep while being awake and vice versa. Sadly, behaviour alone is often not enough to reliably identify sleep in animals.

The physiology of shark sleep

To conclusively verify our working definition of sleep in buccal pumping sharks (more than five minutes of inactivity is sleep), my team set out to find physiological evidence of sleep that aligned with what we had seen behaviourally.

To do this, we recorded changes in metabolic rates in New Zealand’s draughtsboard shark via recordings of oxygen consumption over a 24-hour period. A drop in metabolic rate during sleep has been reported in many animals and is considered a reliable physiological indicator of sleep.

Research shows that some shark species who actively pump water through their gills show behaviours associated with sleep.

We also recorded subtle behaviours associated with sleep in other animals, such as eye state (open/closed) and body posture (upright/flat). We found there to be no significant difference in metabolic rates between swimming sharks and sharks engaging in periods of inactivity that lasted less than five minutes.

When sharks were inactive for five minutes or longer, however, metabolic rates dropped dramatically. This physiological change was also accompanied by a conspicuous shift in posture, with sharks transitioning from an upright position (sitting up on their pectoral fins) to a completely recumbent position. Eye state, however, was found to be unrelated to the sharks’ state of consciousness, as the animals were often observed sleeping with eyes open.

Taken together, these data are the most conclusive evidence for sleep in sharks and verify our previous behavioural findings.

Moving forward

Sleep has been found in all animals studied to date, stretching as far back on the evolutionary scale as flatworms and jellyfish. As the earliest living, jawed vertebrates, sharks play an important role in helping us understanding the evolutionary history of sleep in vertebrates.

Our research has come a long way in uncovering the previously unanswered question of sleep in sharks, but we have only touched the tip of the iceberg. Now that we know that (at least some) sharks do indeed sleep, the next question to answer is how they sleep.

Nothing is known about sleep in ram ventilating sharks. Their need for constant swimming to facilitate gas exchange suggests they have likely evolved interesting adaptations to permit sleep under this unusual lifestyle. Our group is now conducting electrophysiological studies of brain activity that will provide comprehensive insight into the form that sleep takes in these animals.

1. Michael Liam Kelly

   Postdoctoral research fellow, Neuroscience, Simon Fraser University

Iceland chilled by violence worthy of its noir novels
Agence France-Presse
April 10, 2022

Iceland has one of Europe's smallest police forces relative to its population 

Halldor KOLBEINS AFP

Long considered the "most peaceful country in the world", Iceland's tranquillity has been shattered by a spate of shootings and stabbings involving criminal gangs.

The country of only 375,000 people is more accustomed to reading about murders in its famed Icelandic noir novels than in its morning newspapers.

"A gun for Icelanders symbolizes sports" or hunting, said sociologist Helgi Gunnlaugsson.

"It's very alien to the Icelandic mind that you would use a weapon to protect yourself or to point at people," he told AFP.

Iceland has topped the Global Peace Index ranking since 2008 thanks to its low crime, strong education and welfare systems, fair pay and an absence of tension between social classes.

Only four people have been shot dead in more than two decades.

But four shootings have now taken place in a little over a year, one of which was fatal.

In February 2021, a man was gunned down in a hail of bullets outside his home in a neighborhood of the capital Reykjavik, a murder that shocked the nation.

The killing was linked to organized crime, police said.

"Criminal groups in Iceland are becoming more organized," said criminologist Margret Valdimarsdottir.

"They have more ties to international groups than what we've seen before, which may be a challenge for our police force."


In February, two separate drug-related shootings took place in Reykjavik two days apart, one in the city centre.

The gang violence is similar to that already seen in other parts of Europe.

"It takes five to 10 years for what is trending in Europe to show up in Iceland," said Runolfur Thorhallsson, superintendent of Iceland's elite police unit, known as the Viking Squad.

"Of course this is a concern for us."

- Unarmed police -

Iceland is one of the rare countries in the world where police are not armed in their daily duties.

However, patrol cars have been equipped with handguns in special safes since late 2015 after the bloody attacks by far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in 2011.

Only a small number of police officers -- the Viking Squad -- are permanently armed with semi-automatic weapons as well as bulletproof vests and ballistic shields.

The squad assists the police when weapons are reported, with the number of such incidents rocketing almost six-fold since 2014.

"We see indicators that maybe people are less hesitant in this criminal world to use weapons. We see more of an increase in knives than firearms," Thorhallsson said. While he doesn't have an explanation for the rise in violence, the interior minister is considering equipping police with tasers.

The head of the police union, Fjolnir Saemundsson, welcomed the idea but called for more recruits and training.

With 682 police officers in 2021, Iceland has one of Europe's smallest police forces relative to its population, second only to Finland and almost half the European average, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.
A safe country

Studlar, a government-run treatment centre for juveniles aged from 12 to 18, helps troubled youths with problems ranging from drugs to crime and behavioral issues.

Director Funi Sigurdsson said he has also seen a slight rise in violent incidents, with the centre confiscating an increasing number of knives.

He said with some of the young people it was often clear "when they were six years old that they would end up here.

"If we would have intervened very well then, we could possibly have prevented them from ending up in this situation."

Several of those involved in the score-settling between the gangs passed through the centre as juveniles.

While the rise in violent crime has caused concern, the situation is not alarming, experts insisted.

"It's important to note that Iceland is still a country that has an extremely low crime rate," Valdimarsdottir said.

© 2022 AFP

West Virginians lead blockade of coal plant that's made Manchin rich
Julia Conley, Common Dreams
April 10, 2022

Joe Manchin on Facebook.

Organizers of the "Coal Baron Blockade" protest which targeted right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's coal empire Saturday afternoon reported that state police almost immediately began arresting campaigners who assembled in Grant Town, West Virginia.



"Sen. Joe Manchin's policies hurt poor people and hurt our environment so deeply that activists are ready to put themselves on the line," tweeted the Poor People's Campaign, which joined grassroots group West Virginia Rising and other organizations in the blockade.

Hundreds of campaigners participated in the blockade of Grant Town Power Plant, which receives coal waste from Enersystems, the company owned by the West Virginia senator's son. Manchin earns $500,000 per year from Enersystems—"making a very lucrative living off the backs of West Virginians," said Maria Gunnoe, an organizer of the action, this week.

At least 10 demonstrators had been arrested as of this writing.

"This is what the fight for a habitable planet looks like in real time," said Jeff Goodell, author of The Water Will Come, of the dozens of campaigners who risked arrest.


Speakers and other participants highlighted the need for a just transition away from fossil fuels including coal, carrying signs that read "Solidarity with all coal workers."

"My dad worked in a chemical plant until he died of the exposure," said Holly Bradley, a ninth generation West Virginian. "We can all find common ground, but Joe Manchin is making it impossible."

While profiting from the Grant Town Power Plant, Manchin has obstructed President Joe Biden's domestic agenda while progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) have worked to pass the Build Back Better Act.

The senator refused to back the bill if it included the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), a key climate provision which would have given federal grants to utilities which increase the electricity they get from renewable sources, as well as objecting to the extended Child Tax Credit, paid family leave, and other anti-poverty measures.

About 70% of Manchin's own constituents benefited from the Child Tax Credit last year, and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy found that an extension of the monthly payments "would drive an historic reduction in child poverty, lifting 22,000 West Virginia children above the poverty line."

Manchin's ties to Grant Town Power Plant have only worsened the financial burdens faced by West Virginians, which the senator showed little interest in lessening last year as he refused to back the Build Back Better Act. As Politico reported in February:
By 2006, when Manchin was governor, the plant's owners went before the West Virginia Public Service Commission and claimed it was on the verge of shutting down.
The commission, then chaired by Jon McKinney, a Manchin appointee, raised the rate that Grant Town could charge for its electricity from $27.25 per megawatt to $34.25. They also gave the plant a way to stay in business longer, by extending its power purchase agreement with FirstEnergy by eight years to 2036.

Those changes still reverberate today. West Virginia has seen some of the highest electricity rate increases in the nation. Its loyalty to coal is one reason for that.

In addition to costing West Virginians tens of millions of dollars for higher electricity, said Appalacians Against Pipelines on Saturday, "the air pollution released by Manchin's coal company is causing nine deaths per year."

"Yet it’s the people willing to put their bodies on the line for the world’s future being rounded up and handcuffed right now," the group tweeted.

Trump may not receive $430 million windfall from his 'Truth Social' Twitter clone: report

Bob Brigham
April 09, 2022

Donald Trump speaks to Fox News (screen grab)

For more than three decades, Forbes has estimated the net worth of billionaires and expects Donald Trump could make $430 million on his Truth Social venture.



The magazine explains that the deal is being scrutinized by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, leading it to conclude the windfall is "not something he should be banking on quite yet."

Truth Social has had a rocky start.

"By any measure, Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social media platform, has had a rough start. Engagement is low, the initial flood of downloads of the app have withered to a trickle and the first resignations of its top staff have begun," Edward Helmore reported for The Guardian. "It now seems Truth Social may be heading the same way as Trump Steaks and Trump Vodka, just to name a few. Slapping the Trump name on a product that others produce better just does not work – especially now."

 

Giant German bus company hits the highway in Canada

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FlixBus, which operates in 37 countries, has entered the southern Ontario market with 3 routes

James Dunne · CBC News · Posted: Apr 08, 2022 

FlixBus launched its Canadian operations this week with three routes in Ontario. The German company says it’s the world’s largest-reaching bus provider. (James Dunne/CBC)

FlixBus, a German company that says it's the world's largest-reaching bus provider, launched its Canadian operation this week in Toronto.

"It's a dream bus market for us," said Pierre Gourdain, managing director of FlixBus North America, about rolling into Toronto with three flashy green coaches to start routes in Ontario.

That may sound like encouraging words for bus passengers and transportation advocates who felt abandoned when Greyhound pulled out of Canada in May 2021.

The sleek silver dog had been limping along for years, saying many routes it had licences to operate weren't sustainable before the pandemic stripped to the bone whatever market Greyhound had left.

• Is German FlixBus the fix for Canada's bus woes?

• New bus service will connect Waterloo, Kitchener and Guelph to Toronto

Experts say the arrival of FlixBus, which operates in 37 countries serving more than 2,500 destinations, is good news for bus customers, but it's not clear if it will help underserved communities and whether private bus operators can create a national bus network without government support.

"Given the catastrophic situation of the industry and the poor level of service we have in the country, that's a really complex question," said Jean-Baptiste Litrico, an associate professor of strategy at the Queen's University Smith School of Business in Kingston, Ont.

Starting small in big-market Ontario

In essence, FlixBus is a tech company that partners with local bus companies who own the coaches and hire the drivers.

It provides a ticket app and website, a pricing structure, route planning, and marketing, charging a 25 to 30 per cent commission on sales. 

The FlixBus plan is to establish profitable high volume routes between Ottawa and Toronto, Niagara Falls and Toronto and Waterloo and Toronto before developing routes with less demand.

• Greyhound Canada shutting down all bus service permanently

• ANALYSIS
  Canadian bus companies have plans to fill the gap left by Greyhound

The company is moving into Canada after the nation's largest province opened up its intercity bus industry to competition last summer. Deregulation in Ontario offers FlixBus and other carriers access to routes Greyhound couldn't go after when it was here.

Pierre Gourdain, managing director of FlixBus North America, says Canada is a 'dream' market for the company. Here he stands in front of passengers boarding the company's first bus in Toronto. (James Dunne/CBC)

 

Flix also does research on customer demand and demographics and according to Gourdain, several key factors make Ontario and Quebec a "dream bus market" for the company.

Gourdain said the provinces both have a "crazy high student population" and a lot of foreign students, who are frequent bus customers.

The company also sees potential customers in the roughly 30 per cent of Toronto households that don't own cars, and Gourdain believes their ticket app will appeal to the high number of Canadians who shop online.

Where to next? Not small towns

This summer FlixBus plans to start cross-border routes into the U.S. from Ontario and B.C. The next priority will be to get a licence for routes in Quebec, where regulation remains a barrier to accessing the market.

The company isn't rushing to create a national network or reach underserved communities, though some smaller destinations may come later.

Gourdain said all bus carriers are struggling to recover from the pandemic, and FlixBus is no different.

"We are still at 50 to 70 per cent, in terms of demand, compared to pre-COVID," he said.

According to the American Bus Association, which tracks the industry in both the U.S. and Canada, almost 24 per cent of bus carriers went under in 2020, and in 2021 revenues were still 62 per cent below 2019 levels.

Gourdain also said the company would likely develop several American markets, like Nashville, Tenn., and  St. Louis, Mo., before looking west to Canada's Prairie cities.

"First you start the Tier 1 routes, so be a bit patient with us," said Gourdain.

Who's going cross-country?

Several regional carriers have maintained and even tried to expand service over the past few years in different parts of the country.

Saskatchewan-based Rider Express is trying to span a big part of the country.

"We are trying our best to provide national service," said company owner Firat Uray.

After starting out with two large vans for a Regina to Saskatoon route in 2017, Rider Express has grown to 20 buses, with plans to add another five as soon as possible.

Saskatchewan-based Rider Express is trying to provide national service, says company owner Firat Uray. Its customers can travel from Vancouver to Toronto. (James Dunne/CBC)

Using Rider Express and its partner Ontario Northland, customers can travel all the way from Vancouver to Toronto. It also has a number of routes in the western provinces.

It's not an easy business, he said.

"Some routes we make money, some routes we don't make money and those two routes cover each other," said Uray. "So that's how we operate."

• Bus companies vie for coveted Ottawa-Gatineau-Montreal route

• New company promises to take over some of Greyhound's routes in Western Canada

Uray said he doesn't imagine FlixBus will pursue much Prairie business. "I don't think they're going to run those small cities," he said.

However, they will be rivals on the Toronto-Niagara route, which Rider Express is starting as well.  

Can this new player in the Canadian bus business help the sector turn a corner for the better? 1:55

Reaching underserved areas  

FlixBus also does interline with other bus companies, selling their tickets on its platform. But collaboration alone won't solve the problem of servicing thinly populated areas in such a large country. 

In Canada, said Litrico, "it's a problem that we see over and over again, in a number of essential public services, not just transportation."

Jean-Baptiste Litrico, an associate professor of strategy at the Queen's University Smith School of Business in Kingston, Ont., says Canada needs to figure out how to provide a level of intercity bus travel that's equitable. (submitted by Jean-Baptiste Litrico)

With FlixBus being valued at more than $3 billion, and having bought Greyhound's U.S. operations last year, it's not asking for government support. Gourdain said help should go to small operators, to create more jobs.       

Uray said the government could help with fuel costs for operators in small centres or "by purchasing small vans for the local bus companies" in underserved rural areas. 

No matter what the approach, Litrico said governments have to address "how to protect and maintain the level of service that's equitable."