SOLITARY IS TORTURE

Rates of solitary confinement of incarcerated people with mental illness three times higher than those without mental illness

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY

Harsh prison conditions, including solitary confinement, affect the mental health of incarcerated people. But few studies have considered how the criminalization of mental health status contributes to harsh treatment in the criminal justice system. A new study examined inequities in the incidence and duration of solitary confinement by mental health status. The study found high rates of punitive isolation among those with serious mental illness, with a three times higher rate of solitary confinement for them than for similar incarcerated people without mental health problems.

The study, by researchers at Boston University, Columbia University, and Harvard University, appears in Criminology, a publication of the American Society of Criminology.

“With people in prison confined to their cells for up to 23 hours a day, often denied visitors and phone calls, solitary confinement is an important test case for studying harsh treatment in prisons,” says Jessica T. Simes, assistant professor of sociology at Boston University, who led the study. “Routinely used as punishment for prison infractions, this type of confinement may be subject to the same forces that criminalize people with mental health problems in community settings.”

Researchers analyzed a large administrative dataset that showed all prison admissions and discharges from 2007 to 2016 in Pennsylvania, whose prison population is demographically similar to the national prison population. The study analyzed data for more than 90,000 individuals.

All those entering Pennsylvania prisons for the first time receive a four-day mental health screening at intake. More than half of the men and 18 percent of the women in the study had no prior history of mental illness. More than half of the women and 21 percent of the men had active diagnoses requiring treatment for mental illness. About 11 percent of the women were diagnosed with serious mental illness or intellectual disability; 2 percent of the men were diagnosed with serious mental illness. Similar to the national average, on an average day, 4 percent of the total Pennsylvania prison population was in solitary confinement.

Researchers looked at a classification that indicates the mental health history and treatment needs of people in prison at their first admission. With data on prison misconduct charges and admissions to solitary confinement that result from a charge, they then modelled solitary confinement through the three stages of receiving a ticket written for a charge of misconduct, being sent to solitary confinement, and being sentenced for a given duration, estimating disparities by mental health status at each stage of the disciplinary process, to determine which stage of prison discipline contributes most to overall disparity.

The study found that people with serious mental illness experienced frequent and lengthy periods of solitary confinement, controlling for crime and misconduct histories. The average person in prison with serious mental illness spent three times longer in solitary confinement than a similar person in prison with no history of mental illness.

In addition, disproportionate solitary confinement resulted mostly from the large number of misconduct tickets written by prison staff to mentally ill people in prison, with most tickets for nonviolent misconduct categories of threats and defiance. This highlights the importance of correctional officers at the first stage of the prison disciplinary process, and it suggests that disparities could be reduced by changing the use of discretion through officer training, policy change, or greater oversight.

The study also found that 64 percent of female prisoners had an ongoing mental health diagnosis, putting them at high risk of punitive isolation in prison.

 “Our results are consistent with a process of cumulative disadvantage operating in prisons in which the stigma of mental illness affects decisions at each stage of the prison discipline process,” explains Bruce Western, professor of sociology and director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University, who coauthored the study. “The mental health disparities we found, combined with evidence that isolation in incarceration exacerbates mental illness, underline the extreme potential for institutional harm associated with solitary confinement, and show how U.S. prisons heap the harshest forms of punishment on the most vulnerable.”

Among the study’s limitations, the authors note that administrative records provide limited portraits of prison conditions and may underestimate incidences of solitary confinement. In addition, the study observed only the mental health category assigned at intake and did not account for changes in mental health status over time. And it assessed incidents of disciplinary confinement, not administrative segregation (the former is used for punishment while the latter is used to separate the vulnerable and control conflicts among people in prison).

            “Although we focused on prisons and the disciplinary process leading to solitary confinement, our findings are relevant to the institutional production of social inequality more generally,” suggests Angela Lee, researcher at Harvard University, who coauthored the study. “Institutionalized power relations—whether in prisons, large corporations, classrooms, the military, or border control facilities—facilitate the effects of stigma and accumulated disparity.”

The study was supported by Arnold Ventures, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Project on Race, Class, and Cumulative Adversity at Harvard University funded by the Ford Foundation and the Hutchins Family Foundation, the Justice and Poverty Project funded by the Ford Foundation, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University.

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Summarized from Criminology, Mental Health Disparities in Solitary Confinement by Simes, JT (Boston University), Western, B (Columbia University), and Lee, A (Harvard University). Copyright 2022 The American Society of Criminology. All rights reserved.

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JOURNAL

Criminology

New study challenges old views on what’s ‘primitive’ in mammalian reproduction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

 

IMAGE: AN ARTISTIC RENDERING OF MULTITUBERCULATES FROM THE GENUS MESODMA — A MOTHER WITH HER LITTER OF OFFSPRING — WHO LIVED IN WESTERN NORTH AMERICA ABOUT 60 TO 70 MILLION YEARS AGO. FOSSIL EVIDENCE INDICATES THAT THESE CREATURES WERE THE MOST ABUNDANT MAMMALS IN WESTERN NORTH AMERICA JUST BEFORE AND DIRECTLY AFTER THE MASS EXTINCTION EVENT 66 MILLION YEARS AGO THAT KILLED OFF THE DINOSAURS. view more 

CREDIT: ANDREY ATUCHIN

Link to Google Drive folder containing images and caption/credit information:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mQN6VLwXhCt6jUIaQnY9AJ7E6146WlfV?usp=sharing

It’s hard to imagine life on Earth without mammals. They swim in the depths of the ocean, hop across deserts in Australia and travel to the moon.

This diversity can be deceiving, at least when it comes to how mammals create the next generation. Based on how they reproduce, nearly all mammals alive today fall into one of two categories: placental mammals and marsupials. Placentals, including humans, whales and rodents, have long gestation periods. They give birth to well-developed young — with all major organs and structures in place — and have relatively short weaning periods, or lactation periods, during which young are nursed on milk from their mothers. Marsupials, like kangaroos and opossums, are the opposite: They have short gestation periods — giving birth to young that are little more than fetuses — and long lactation periods during which offspring spend weeks or months nursing and growing within the mother’s pouch, or marsupium.

For decades, biologists saw the marsupial way of reproduction as the more “primitive” state, and assumed that placentals had evolved their more “advanced” method after these two groups diverged from one another. But new research is testing that view. In a paper published July 18 in The American Naturalist, a team led by researchers at the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture present evidence that another group of mammals — the extinct multituberculates — likely reproduced in a placental-like manner. Since multituberculates split off from the rest of the mammalian lineage before placentals and marsupials evolved, these findings question the view that marsupials were “less advanced” than their placental cousins.

“This study challenges the prevalent idea that the placental reproductive strategy is ‘advanced’ relative to a more ‘primitive’ marsupial strategy,” said lead author Lucas Weaver, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan who conducted this study as a UW doctoral student. “Our findings suggest that placental-like reproduction either is the ancestral reproductive route for all mammals that give birth to live young, or that placental-like reproduction evolved independently in both multituberculates and placentals.”

Multituberculates arose about 170 million years ago in the Jurassic. Most were small-bodied creatures, resembling rodents. For much of their history, multituberculates were the most abundant and diverse group of mammals. But scientists know very little about their life history, including how they reproduced, because of their generally poor fossil record. The last multituberculates died out about 35 million years ago.

Weaver reasoned that the microscopic structure of fossilized bone tissues can house useful life-history information about multituberculates, such as their growth rate. Working under co-author Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum, Weaver and his colleagues obtained cross sections of 18 fossilized femurs — the thigh bone — from multituberculates that lived approximately 66 million years ago in Montana.

All 18 samples showed the same structural organization: a layer of disorganized bone “sandwiched” between an inner and outer layer of organized bone. Disorganized bone, or woven bone, indicates rapid growth and is so named because, under a microscope, the layers of bone tissue are laid out in a crisscrossed fashion. In organized bone, which reflects slower growth, layers are parallel to one another.

The researchers then examined femoral cross sections taken from 35 small-bodied mammalian species that are living today — 28 placentals and seven marsupials, all from Burke Museum collections. Nearly all of the placental femurs showed the same “sandwich” organization as the multituberculates. But all of the marsupial femurs consisted almost entirely of organized bone, with only a sliver of disorganized bone.

CAPTION

The three images are cross sections of femurs from a marsupial (the Virginia opossum, left), a placental (the eastern chipmunk, center) and a 66-million-year-old multituberculate fossil (right). The opossum femur has a thick layer of organized bone in the outermost cortex (labeled “POB” for periosteal organized bone), with little disorganized bone (labeled “DB”). In the chipmunk and multituberculate femurs, a layer of disorganized bone (“DB”) is “sandwiched” between layers of organized bone (“POB” and “EOB,” which stands for endosteal organized bone). Scale bar is 0.1 millimeters. The multituberculate specimen (UWBM 70536) is likely a member of the genus Mesodma.

CREDIT

Henry Fulghum/Lucas Weaver/University of Washington

The team believes that this stark difference likely reflects their divergent life histories.

“The amount of organized bone in the outermost layer, or cortex, of the femur strongly correlates with the length of the lactation period,” said Weaver. “Marsupials have long lactation periods and a lot of organized bone in the outermost cortex. The opposite is true for placentals: a short lactation period and much less organized bone in the outermost cortex.”

The outermost layer of organized bone was laid down after birth as the femur’s diameter increased. For tiny marsupial newborns, bones must grow much more to reach adult size, so they deposit a greater amount of outer organized bone compared to placentals, according to Weaver.

“This is compelling evidence that multituberculates had a long gestation and a short lactation period similar to placental mammals, but very different from marsupials,” said Weaver.

Based on this correlation, the researchers estimate that multituberculates had a lactation period of approximately 30 days — similar to today’s rodents.

These findings cast further doubt on an old view that marsupials have a “more primitive” and placentals a “more advanced” reproductive strategy. The common ancestor of multituberculates, placentals and marsupials may have had a placental-like mode of reproduction that was retained by placentals and multituberculates. Alternatively, multituberculates and placentals could have evolved their long-gestation and short-lactation reproductive methods independently.

Future studies of multituberculate life history may clarify which explanation is true, as well as other outstanding questions of this, and other, ancient branches of our mammalian family tree.

“The real revelation here is that we can cut open fossil bones and examine their microscopic structures to reconstruct the intimate life history details of long-extinct mammals,” said Wilson Mantilla. “That’s really incredible to me.”

Additional co-authors are former UW undergraduate researcher Henry Fulghum, now a graduate student at Indiana University; UW postdoctoral researcher David Grossnickle; UW graduate students William Brightly and Zoe Kulik; and Megan Whitney, a UW doctoral alum and current postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the UW, the Burke Museum, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Paleontological Society and the American Society of Mammalogists.

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JOURNAL

The American Naturalist

DOI

10.1086/720410 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animal tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Multituberculate Mammals Show Evidence of a Life History Strategy Similar to That of Placentals, Not Marsupials

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jul-2022

For dairy farmers, where does the time go?

A new study in the July Journal of Dairy Science® examines labor time-use on pasture-based dairy farms in Ireland

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELSEVIER

 

IMAGE: THE LABOR-TRACKING SMARTPHONE APP USED TO STUDY TIME USE ON IRISH PASTURE-BASED DAIRY FARMS IN 2019. view more 

CREDIT: CONOR HOGAN, TEAGASC ANIMAL & GRASSLAND RESEARCH & INNOVATION CENTRE, IRELAND

Philadelphia, July 25, 2022 – Globally, dairy producers face increasing challenges regarding sustainability, including declining numbers of workers in the agricultural sector, while continuing to meet increasing demand for nutritious and affordable food. Dairy systems must now focus on more sustainable production that reflects economic, environmental, and social goals. A new report in the Journal of Dairy Science®, published by Elsevier, explores labor time-use on Irish pasture-based dairy farms in the busy spring and summer seasons.

Employment in agriculture, as a share of total worldwide employment, has declined by 29.8% since the year 2000. Due to this reduced availability of workers, management of labor input is becoming a crucial challenge for dairy farms internationally, especially in expanding dairy markets. The seasonal workload associated with pasture-based dairy farming—a system that promotes farm profitability along with favorable environmental impacts—combined with increasing herd sizes, has led to a renewed focus on labor time-use and efficiency on these farms.

The study used up-to-date technology, including a mobile phone app, to track labor time-use across 82 spring-calving pasture-based Irish dairy farms from February 1 to June 30, 2019. This allowed the research team to begin examining the often-overlooked social dimension of sustainable farming, including working hours and quality of life.

First author Conor Hogan, of Teagasc Animal & Grassland Research & Innovation Centre (Moorepark, Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland) and the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland), explains, “Each farmer recorded their labor input on one alternating day each week, using a smartphone app. Any labor input by farm workers not using the app was recorded through a weekly online survey.”

The team found that milking was the most time-consuming task, representing 31% of farm labor input, making it an important focus for potential improvements in efficiency. The next most time-consuming tasks were calf care (14%), grassland management (13%), cow care (10%), repairs and maintenance (10%), and administration/business (8%). The researchers further report that participating farmers worked, on average, 60 hours a week across the study period, and that the busiest months on most of the farms were February and March.

The team emphasizes the importance of understanding labor use during the most labor-demanding time of year on pasture-based dairy farms, as this points to areas where labor efficiency improvements can be made. As Hogan points out, “Improved time-use in spring and summer, resulting in reduced work hours, can have associated positive effects on many aspects of dairy farming, including enhanced health and safety of farm operators and reduced stress and fatigue among farmers, creating more attractive workplaces and improving farm profitability.”

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Dairy Science

DOI

10.3168/jds.2022-21935 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

An examination of labor time-use on spring-calving dairy farms in Ireland

Study refutes claim that T. rex was three separate species

Paleontologists find insufficient evidence that iconic Tyrannosaurus rex should be reclassified

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: AS PART OF THE MUSEUM’S TEMPORARY EXHIBITION T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR, WHICH WAS ON VIEW FROM 2019-2021, VISITORS ENCOUNTERED A MASSIVE LIFE-SIZED MODEL OF T. REX WITH PATCHES OF FEATHERS—THE MOST SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF T. REX TO DATE. view more 

CREDIT: D. FINNIN/ ©AMNH

A new study refutes a provocative claim made earlier this year that fossils classified as the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex represent three separate species. The rebuttal, published today in the journal Evolutionary Biology and led by paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History and Carthage College, finds that the earlier proposal lacks sufficient evidence to split up the iconic species.

“Tyrannosaurus rex remains the one true king of the dinosaurs,” said study co-author Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who conducted his Ph.D. work at the Museum. “Recently, a bold theory was announced to much fanfare: what we call T. rex was actually multiple species. It is true that the fossils we have are somewhat variable in size and shape, but as we show in our new study, that variation is minor and cannot be used to neatly separate the fossils into easily defined clusters. Based on all the fossil evidence we currently have, T. rex stands alone as the single giant apex predator from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in North America.”

In March 2022, authors of the controversial study, also published in Evolutionary Biology, made the case that T. rex should be reclassified as three species: the standard T. rex, the bulkier “T. imperator,” and the slimmer “T. regina.” The study was based on analysis of the leg bones and teeth of 38 T. rex specimens.

The authors of the new study revisited the data presented in the earlier paper and also added data points from 112 species of living dinosaurs—birds—and from four non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They found that the multiple species argument was based on a limited comparative sample, non-comparable measurements, and improper statistical techniques.

“Their study claimed that the variation in T. rex specimens was so high that they were probably from multiple closely related species of giant meat-eating dinosaur,” said James Napoli, co-lead author of the rebuttal study and a graduating doctoral student in the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School. “But this claim was based on a very small comparative sample. When compared to data from hundreds of living birds, we actually found that T. rex is less variable than most living theropod dinosaurs. This line of evidence for proposed multiple species doesn’t hold up.”

“Pinning down variation in long-extinct animals is a major challenge for paleontologists,” said co-lead author Thomas Carr from Carthage College. “Our study shows that rigorous statistical analyses that are grounded in our knowledge of living animals is the best way to clarify the boundaries of extinct species. In practical terms, the three-species model is so poorly defined that many excellent specimens can’t be identified. That’s a clear warning sign of a hypothesis that doesn’t map onto the real world.”

CAPTION

An illustration of a T. rex feeding

CREDIT

© Mark Witton 2022

The original paper asserted that variation in the size of the second tooth in the lower jaw, in addition to robustness of the femur, indicated the presence of multiple species. But the authors of the new study could not replicate the tooth findings, and they recovered different results from their own measurements of the same specimens. In addition, the authors of the new study took issue with how the “breakpoints” for each species using these traits were statistically determined. The statistical analysis in the original study defined the number of groups before the test was run, so it is not useful for testing the hypothesis, according to the authors of the new study. In the latest study, a different statistical technique was used to determine how many clusters exist within the data without any advanced assumptions, finding that they are best considered as a single group—in other words, one species—T. rex.

“The boundaries of even living species are very hard to define: for instance, zoologists disagree over the number of living species of giraffe,” said co-author Thomas Holtz, from the University of Maryland and the National Museum of Natural History. “It becomes much more difficult when the species involved are ancient and only known from a fairly small number of specimens. Other sources of variation—changes with growth, with region, with sex, and with good old-fashioned individual differences—have to be rejected before one accepts the hypothesis that two sets of specimens are in fact separate species. In our view, that hypothesis is not yet the best explanation.”

“T. rex is an iconic species and an incredibly important one for both paleontological research and communicating to the public about science, so it’s important that we get this right,” said co-author David Hone, from Queen Mary University of London. “There is still a good chance that there is more than one species of Tyrannosaurus out there, but we need strong evidence to make that kind of decision.”

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls, including those in the Rose Center for Earth and Space plus the Hayden Planetarium, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. The Museum’s scientists draw on a world-class research collection of more than 34 million artifacts and specimens, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum grants the Ph.D. degree in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree, the only such free-standing, degree-granting programs at any museum in the United States. The Museum’s website, digital videos, and apps for mobile devices bring its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more around the world. Visit amnh.org for more information. 

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JOURNAL

Evolutionary Biology

DOI

10.1007/s11692-022-09573-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

The Tyrant Lizard King, Queen and Emperor: Multiple Lines of Morphological and Stratigraphic Evidence Support Subtle Evolution and Probable Speciation Within the North American Genus Tyrannosaurus

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2022

Heeding the heat: Desert regions may better inform the future of global temperate zones driven by climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: SATELLITE IMAGERY SHOWS THE LANDSCAPE IN DENMARK IN A TYPICAL JULY IN CONTRAST TO THE DRY, HOT CONDITIONS WITH LITTLE VEGETATION IN JULY 2018. view more 

CREDIT: JOSE GRUENZWEIG, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM, EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

When it comes to the world’s climate, in the past decade, Earth keeps sending us its summer siren’s call. 

Annually, it’s mostly been a case of heeding the heat, and repeat. According to NASA, nineteen of the hottest years have occurred since 2000, with 2016 and 2020 tied for the hottest ever on record. This summer is already making worldwide headlines, with the UK scorching beyond 40 degrees Celsius (104.5 Fahrenheit) for the first time ever. 

More climate extremes are occurring. Earlier snowmelts affect the high-altitude areas, severe forest fires are increasing, while rain pulses, followed by dry periods, are becoming the norm. But if heat waves and severe droughts are trends that will continue to hold across the globe, what will the future bring to temperate forest and cropland regions of the world? 

Scientists are looking at the unique adaptations of desert life, which function by their own set of rules long considered to be unique to dry areas. Now, new research by an international team of scientists suggests that climate change is causing these “dryland mechanisms” to increasingly affect earth’s wetter areas, such as temperate regions’ croplands and forests. 

To better predict how the world’s wetter areas will operate in the future, the scientific team recommends that we can begin to apply the lessons learned from how life works in arid regions, according to new research published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The study was led by Jose Grünzweig of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-authored by Arizona State University’s Heather Throop.  

“The new insights can contribute to advancing our adaptive capacity to withstand climate extremes and lessen their impacts on nature and people,” said Throop, a professor with a joint appointment in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Life Sciences.  

Spurred by a recent meeting of the European Ecological Federation, the team compiled a list of the unique rules of life driving dryland ecosystems. Currently, more than a third of the Earth’s land area is drylands. Many of these key processes have been considered relevant only to arid regions, including: 

•    rapid cycling between wet and dry conditions that influence plant and animal activity,
•    redistribution of water in soils by plant roots,
•    and formation of living crusts on soil surfaces by microscopic organisms.

Overall, the team identified a dozen different dryland mechanisms affecting multiple processes, including vegetation distribution, plant growth, water flow, energy budget, carbon and nutrient cycling, and decomposition of dead material. 

“These dryland mechanisms are controlled by environmental factors, such as intense solar radiation, high temperatures, large bare patches between plants, and inconsistent availability of water,” said Throop. 

The mechanisms were also categorized as either more likely to be fast-responding – those that we might expect to see occurring from short-term drought (e.g., dry-wet cycles, heat and sunlight breaking down dead material) and slow-responding – those that would happen after decades of dry conditions (e.g., formation of living crust on soils) as a result of changes in plant distribution. 

“In the paper we present these 12 different dryland mechanisms that are really routine processes in drylands but aren’t commonly found in wet systems,” said Throop. “And then we categorized them in the paper based on how likely it is that these are going to happen in wetter systems in the future. What sort of changes would be required for us to start seeing those in wetter systems?”

What’s clear to the researchers is that a new, unprecedented pattern is emerging, one that was considered absent or insignificant in most biomes on Earth.  These dryland mechanisms are now, with increasing frequency, occurring in temperate regions. In the future, these also will likely increase in frequency and become more relevant due to warmer, drier conditions from climate change. 

For example, much of Europe experienced a severe drought and heat wave in summer 2018. As a result, the low plant cover in agricultural fields during this time likely led to desert-like biological processes occurring in these usually wet locations (see Denmark aerial image). 

“A lot of the corn and irrigated agriculture suffered,” said Throop. “There was dramatically decreased plant growth in those systems, which leads to more exposure of bare soil on the surface that’s not covered by plants.”

To better understand potential future ramifications of dryland mechanisms on things like vegetation distribution and decomposition of dead material, the team took its drylands’ data and modeled it to show how the forces driving drylands will increasingly apply to temperate regions under future climate conditions. 

“We can use mathematical models to predict how systems will behave under drier or hotter conditions, but we usually assume that the operating rules will stay the same even if the climate changes,” said Throop. “But right now, what our models don’t really take into account is what if the rules by the which the system works change?”

What happened when they fully took their dozen dryland mechanisms into account? 
The results, first and long-term consequences were stunning. For example, their models predict that the total non-dryland area with average topsoil temperature of >40C (>104F) is estimated to increase by about 17 million km2 (approximately equal to the total land area of the USA and Brazil) by the end of the century. 

“Breaking down dead material is important in ecosystems since it releases nutrients for new plant growth,” said Throop. “Typically, in wet systems this decomposition is driven by organisms such as bacteria that consume the dead material. In dry systems the rules are different -- we have a lot more influence of sunlight and high temperatures breaking down material that’s sitting on the surface.”

“So, instead of having biology driving that decay, we have physical processes driving it,” said Throop. “One of the big differences with dry systems is that because you don’t have many plants there’s a lot of open space and you have a lot of redistribution, with things like dead leaves blowing around on the soil surface and accumulating unevenly. Where in wet systems, those things are staying in place, and you have a much more even distribution of resources.”

Dry soil conditions will cause the emergence of some dryland mechanisms, such as redistribution of soil water via plant roots. Other mechanisms will respond to changes in vegetation, with more sparsely distributed vegetation increasing the prevalence of microorganisms forming soil surface crusts and increasing the role of sunlight in breaking down dead leaves. 

“What’s also clear is that some of these projected changes will occur in regions with large human populations, and, thus, will significantly affect the well-being of society in these regions,” said Throop. “We will need continued research and monitoring on ecosystem functioning under increasing frequency and severity of droughts and heatwaves in order to improve our understanding of the underlying emergent processes.” 

Ultimately, the researchers hope that a better understanding of these uniquely adapted desert systems will lead society to set realistic expectations for the future of historically temperate and wetter areas----before it’s too late to heed Mother Nature’s call. 

CAPTION

Corn in Denmark during the July 2018 heatwave.

CREDIT

Janne Hansen; CC BY-NC 4.0

 

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41559-022-01779-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Dryland mechanisms could widely control ecosystem functioning in a drier and warmer world.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2022

NSF, DOE grants fund UIC research to decarbonize cement manufacturing

Researchers investigate new methods to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO

 

IMAGE: CEMENT FACTORY IMAGE BY EMILIAN ROBERT VICOL view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE BY EMILIAN ROBERT VICOL FROM PIXABAY

Chemical engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago are investigating new methods to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacturing.

Cement is one of the most widely used building materials, but its production is responsible for up to 8% of global emissions from carbon dioxide, representing a major challenge to the goal of reducing climate change. Despite ongoing efforts to research renewable energy options and new cementation methods, there is currently no clear pathway to carbon-neutral cement manufacturing. 

Now, thanks to two federal grant awards, UIC researchers and their collaborators from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pennsylvania State University are hoping to change this fact.

“We have a global problem with C02 emissions, and if you look at all the industrial processes and rank them from highest to the lowest in terms of producing C02, cement manufacturing is at the top,” said Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the UIC College of Engineering. “We cannot just stop using it because cement is so crucial for creating buildings, infrastructures, roads and many other places.”

One award, from the Department of Energy, will provide $2.3 million in support of research to develop a carbon-negative replacement for portland cement, the most commonly used type of cement. 

“We hope to turn the widely used and previously carbon-intensive building material into a carbon capture system,” said Singh, co-principal investigator of the DOE award.

The funding is awarded through the Harnessing Emissions into Structures Taking Inputs from the Atmosphere program, which was created to support the development of technologies that cancel out embodied emissions while transforming buildings into net carbon storage structures.

Singh’s research group will collaborate with scientists from UW-Madison and Penn State on the grant. The proposed project from the three universities uses carbon captured from the air through a process called distributed direct air capture with rapid mineral carbonation to convert industrial mineral wastes such as coal ash into a recyclable replacement for portland cement. The objective is to create a durable and versatile building material that permanently stores C02 through a process that pulls more carbon out of the air than is emitted.

“What we have done with this idea is take a waste material that we then make into a castable cement-like material, which does not release C02 but actually captures it,” Singh said. 

UIC is working on a high-throughput system that can test different types and levels of chemicals, which can be used with varied waste materials. 

Another award, $1.9 million from the National Science Foundation to UIC, UW-Madison and Fort Lewis College, will support the development of a sustainable way to produce calcium hydroxide, a critical ingredient for creating cement.

The process under development is known as LoTECH, for low-temperature calcium hydroxide process. It uses a low-temperature ammonia cycle to produce calcium hydroxide from industrial waste streams, such as crushed concrete and coal ashes. As a result, cement could be made into concrete in small, distributed plants or portable units, Singh said.

The LoTECH system also has potential to shorten supply chains and promote sustainability in the concrete industry, he said.

“You can think of this as a closed-looped, modular process,” said Singh, co-principal investigator of the NSF award. “It can be placed in the back of a truck, and wherever you have a supply of concrete after a building is demolished, this system can harvest the waste product and then manufacture new cement right on site.”

Singh added that sustainable calcium hydroxide could replace the traditionally used limestone as the calcium source, which offers a realistic way to quickly lower the carbon footprint of the existing cement industry by more than 50% by eliminating the thermal decomposition of limestone.

Reducing sugar consumption to achieve climate and sustainability goals

New ICTA-UAB study says that sugar taxation policies have the potential to meet environmental, social, and economic objectives.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

Reducing sugar consumption would have important benefits in the fight against climate change, as well as in the recovery from the health and economic crises associated with the coronavirus pandemic. This is the conclusion of a study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) that analyses the potential climate and sustainability co-benefits of reducing sugar consumption through redirecting existing sugar cropland to alternative uses.

The study, published today in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability, highlights that sugar taxation policies have the potential to meet these competing objectives as sugar is arguably one of the worst foods to eat from a health perspective while it has great potential for biofuel production.

The study, conducted by Lewis King and Jeroen van den Bergh from ICTA-UAB evaluates the reorientation of existing sugar cropland for alternative uses. The authors examine three scenarios, namely the EU reforesting its existing sugar cropland, the EU switching its sugar beet crops to ethanol production, and the EU exporting its excess sugar production while Brazil switches its sugarcane crops from sugar to ethanol production.

Calculations indicate that emissions could fall by 20.9–54.3 MtCO2e per year under the first scenario (figure). These savings would be double those from the second scenario and around four times higher than those under the third scenario.

The study finds that an EU-Brazil agreement with the EU focusing on sugar production from sugar beet and Brazil producing ethanol from sugarcane would provide the greatest environmental benefits to society. Sugarcane ethanol production has already proved to be an economically viable alternative to sugar in Brazil. The economic impact on farmers in both the EU and Brazil would therefore be minimal, resulting in an equitable specialisation across countries that provides welfare gains through reducing negative externalities. “It provides a clear example of how broad collaboration can help direct society in a more sustainable direction”, says ICREA research professor at ICTA-UAB, Jeroen van den Bergh.

Achieving this reduction in sugar consumption would likely involve a similar approach that has helped the EU considerably reduce its tobacco consumption over the past decades: education and policies aimed at behavioural change, with a serious role for taxation. Sugar taxation has been shown to be both effective and politically popular in countries such as the UK, and thus presents a promising policy instrument to indirectly contribute towards achieving climate change targets. Sugar taxation will not affect only end use but also reduce sugar use by production sectors, such as beverages.

“For sustainability policies to be both efficient and effective, we must consider the full impact across the three – environmental, social, and economic – pillars. Changing how we use sugar crops presents an appealing strategy from this perspective as sugar is arguably the least efficient crop to be used as food, apart even from its negative health impacts; moreover, it is the most efficient crop for biofuel from a net energy perspective”, states Lewis King, ICTA-UAB researcher and first author of the article.

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JOURNAL

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-022-00934-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Sugar taxation for climate and sustainability goals

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2022