Climate-resilient breadfruit might be the food of the future

Study finds shifting climate will have little effect on breadfruit cultivation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: BREADFRUIT, HANGING FROM A TREE ON THE ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. view more 

CREDIT: NYREE ZEREGA/NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY/CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN

In the face of climate change, breadfruit soon might come to a dinner plate near you.

While researchers predict that climate change will have an adverse effect on most staple crops, including rice, corn and soybeans, a new Northwestern University study finds that breadfruit — a starchy tree fruit native to the Pacific islands — will be relatively unaffected.

Because breadfruit is resilient to predicted climate change and particularly well-suited to growing in areas that experience high levels of food insecurity, the Northwestern team believes breadfruit could be part of the solution to the worsening global hunger crisis.

The study will be published on Aug. 17 in the journal PLOS Climate.

“Breadfruit is a neglected and underutilized species that happens to be relatively resilient in our climate change projections,” said Northwestern’s Daniel Horton, a senior author on the study. “This is good news because several other staples that we rely on are not so resilient. In really hot conditions, some of those staple crops struggle and yields decrease. As we implement strategies to adapt to climate change, breadfruit should be considered in food security adaptation strategies.”

Horton is an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, where he leads the Climate Change Research Group. Lucy Yang, a former student in Horton’s laboratory, is the paper’s first author. For this study, Horton and Yang collaborated with breadfruit expert Nyree Zerega, director of the Program in Plant Biology and Conservation, a partnership between Northwestern and the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Despite having “fruit” in its name, breadfruit is starchy and seedless, playing a culinary role more like a potato. Closely related to jackfruit, the nutrient-rich food is high in fiber, vitamins and minerals. In tropical parts of the world, people have been eating breadfruit for thousands of years — whether steamed, roasted, fried or fermented. Breadfruit also can be turned into flour, in order to lengthen its shelf life and be exported.

“Breadfruit trees can live for decades and provide a large amount of fruits each year,” Zerega said. “In some cultures, there is a tradition to plant a breadfruit tree when a child is born to ensure the child will have food for the rest of their life.”

But because tropical regions are becoming warmer and wetter, Yang, Horton and Zerega wanted to see if climate change would affect breadfruit’s ability to grow. 

To conduct the study, the researchers first determined the climate conditions required to cultivate breadfruit. Then, they looked at how these conditions are predicted to change in the future (between the years 2060 and 2080). For future climate projections, they looked at two scenarios: an unlikely scenario that reflects high greenhouse-gas emissions and a more likely scenario in which emissions stabilize.

In both scenarios, areas suitable for breadfruit cultivation remained mostly unaffected. In the tropics and subtropics, the suitable area for growing breadfruit decreased by a modest 4.4 to 4.5%. The researchers also found suitable territory where growing breadfruit trees could expand — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where breadfruit trees are not traditionally grown but could provide an important and stable source of food.

“Despite the fact that climate will drastically change in the tropics, climate is not projected to move outside the window where breadfruit is comfortable,” Yang said. “From a climate perspective, we can already grow breadfruit in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a huge swath of Africa, where breadfruit can grow to various degrees. It just has not been broadly introduced there yet. And, luckily enough, most varieties of breadfruit are seedless and have little-to-no likelihood of becoming invasive.”

According to Zerega, once established, a breadfruit tree can withstand heat and drought much longer than other staple crops. But the benefits don’t end there. Because it’s a perennial crop, it also requires less energy input (including water and fertilizer) than crops that need to be replanted every year, and, like other trees, it sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the tree’s lifetime.

“A lot of places where breadfruit can grow have high levels of food insecurity,” Yang said. “Oftentimes, they combat food insecurity by importing staple crops like wheat or rice, and that comes with a high environmental cost and carbon footprint. With breadfruit, however, these communities can produce food more locally.”

As climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exacerbate global food insecurity, the Northwestern team believes production of breadfruit and other neglected and underutilized foods could be scaled up to build more resilience in the global food system, while bolstering the biodiversity of food production.

“Climate change further emphasizes the need to diversify agriculture, so the world doesn’t rely on a small number of crop species to feed a large number of people,” Zerega said. “Humans rely heavily on a handful of crops to provide most of our food, but there are thousands of potential food crops among the approximately 400,000 described plant species. This points to the need to diversify agriculture and crops globally.”

The study, “Potential of breadfruit cultivation to contribute to climate-resilient low latitude food systems,” was supported by Northwestern University’s Office of the Provost.

CAPTION

Breadfruit and bananas at a fruit stand on the island of St. Vincent.

CREDIT

Nyree Zerega/Northwestern University/Chicago Botanic Garden

CAPTION

Breadfruit (wedges in on the upper left side of the plate) served for breakfast alongside starfruit and plantains.

CREDIT

Nyree Zerega/Northwestern University/Chicago Botanic Garden

Breadfruit prep (VIDEO)

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JOURNAL

PLOS Climate

DOI

10.1371/journal.pclm.0000062 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Potential of breadfruit cultivation to contribute to climate-resilient low latitude food systems

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Aug-2022

 

Breadfruit & The True Story of Mutiny on the Bounty with Diane Ragone

May 10, 2020  TeachEthnobotany

Does bread grow on trees? Exploring breadfruit with Diane Ragone

 Dr. Ragone earned a PhD and MSc in Horticulture from the University of Hawaii. Numerous researchers and students have worked with her to systematically study NTBG’s signature living collection to describe and better understand breadfruit. She has written or co-authored more than 100 publications on breadfruit, ethnobotany, horticulture, and agroforestry. 

AgriLife research to study lice-mammal coevolution

Project could help reduce lice-mammal infestations

Grant and Award Announcement

TEXAS A&M AGRILIFE COMMUNICATIONS

Written by Adam Russell,  adam.russell@ag.tamu.edu A Texas A&M AgriLife Research project will take a deep look at the ages-long interaction between parasitic lice and mammal species, including humans. Jessica Light, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research evolutionary biologist, will lead a research group investigating coevolution in mammals and parasitic lice. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Sam Craft) Researchers will study the evolutionary relationship between sucking lice and a wide range of placental mammal hosts, including humans and other primates, rodents and seals. Researchers hope to answer why various louse species parasitize specific hosts and what makes these species good hosts.    The three-year project received more than $197,000 from the National Science Foundation. Principal investigator Jessica Light, Ph.D., AgriLife Research evolutionary biologist in the Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, Bryan-College Station, said very little is known about Anoplura lice, or sucking lice. Researchers hope to shed light on the biological and physical characteristics in lice that have co-evolved with mammals over 90 million years. Collaborators include scientists with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which is the lead institution for the project, the University of Nevada, Reno and the Florida Museum of Natural History. The research team will work closely with natural history collections such as the Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections in Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Building the first evolutionary tree for lice Understanding these blood-feeding parasites and disease vectors presents obvious potential public and animal health benefits, Light said. But the team’s initial goals are to produce foundational data regarding louse biology and build the first comprehensive species-level tree for sucking lice that parasitize mammalian hosts. Light said the broader implications of the project include reducing parasite infestations. The study’s findings could offer insights into parasite host-choice and movement from host to host that help reduce or mitigate infestations and subsequent consequences. “We hope to build an understanding of the relationship with genetic data and scientifically preserved samples,” she said. “We are going to build a hypothesis about the relationships with genetic data and compare what we find in lice to that of their hosts and try to understand what that evolutionary history or what that association has looked like over time.” Identifying lice, mammal traits that lend to parasitism The project will investigate how the evolutionary history, genetics and morphology of sucking lice determine associations with their mammal hosts and how those relationships may have changed over time, Light said. The research will also identify potential genetic and physical traits important among lice that may be used to study other parasite species. A louse under magnification. Anoplura lice include 600 sucking species that are similar in shape and size but have characteristics such as claws, mouthparts and digestive ability that aid host specialization. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Jessica Light) The study will include genome sequencing and other high-throughput technology and techniques to follow louse ancestry and identify species divergences in the past. Fossil records will be used to determine times of divergences and allow researchers to cross-reference sucking louse divergences with their mammal hosts. This will help scientists date sucking louse diversification events/timing, follow the evolution of characteristics of interest and assess their biogeographical histories and distributions relative to their hosts. “Sucking lice are a model system in some respects because their life cycle constrains them to particular hosts,” she said. “They don’t have wings to fly like mosquitoes and do not jump like fleas. So, they almost solely rely on host-to-host contact to spread.” Creating a public database, educational tools on lice There are over 600 species of lice within the Anoplura group. Light said the species have similar shape and size but also have identifiable differences and preferred hosts. Researchers want to know if lice associate with specific mammals based on characteristics like mouth parts that can pierce skin or hides, claws that can cling better to specific species or the ability to digest hosts’ blood, she said. The research team will examine sucking louse morphology using community science initiatives and advanced micro-CT scanners, allowing them to categorize internal anatomy and explore how various organ systems may be responding to different hosts. The team will create a database of morphological characteristics that is open to other researchers and for public use, she said. The project will also include an educational element, Light said. Undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral researchers will train with cutting-edge methodologies and the data obtained will generate college-level curriculum for students and virtual reality educational tools for the public to learn about lice diversity and traits. “In terms of morphology and genetics, we are really just scratching the surface regarding the features and functions found in lice,” she said. “Parasites are understudied organisms in general, so we hope gaining a better understanding of lice can enlighten us about the parasite-host relationships and ultimately lead to better ways to address problems they create.” -30-

Snow research fills gap in understanding Arctic climate

Modeling the way that snow distribution depends on terrain, elevation and vegetation will improve Earth-system models

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: STATISTICAL MODELS BASED ON SEVERAL SEASONS OF FIELD RESEARCH ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF SNOW IN ALASKA ARE LEADING TO A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF CHANGING HYDROLOGY, TOPOGRAPHY AND VEGETATION DYNAMICS IN THE ARCTIC AND SUB-ARCTIC. view more 

CREDIT: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 17, 2022—Comprehensive data from several seasons of field research in the Alaskan Arctic will address uncertainties in Earth-system and climate-change models about snow cover across the region and its impacts on water and the environment.

“Snow cover and its distribution affects not only the Arctic but global energy balances, and thus how it is changing is critically important for understanding how future global climate will shift,” said Katrina Bennett, lead author of the paper in The Cryosphere. Bennett is principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Department of Energy’s Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment Arctic project. “Our statistical model fills in the gap in understanding the spatial distribution of snow.”

The research found that spatial distribution depends most heavily on vegetation, elevation and landscape features, such as stream banks and benches — areas of topographic variability where shrubs grow and snow accumulates.

Based on random-forest machine learning, the statistical model characterizes the spatial pattern of the end-of-winter snow distribution and identifies the key factors controlling the spatial distribution. The model also predicts the snow distribution for the local study sites and can be generalized across the region.

Bennett said the analysis will be useful in validating physically based permafrost hydrology models, such as the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator developed at Los Alamos. The work will also help validate and provide improved snow redistribution representation in the land surface model within the Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model.

“Ultimately, it will increase our understanding of changing hydrology, topography and vegetation dynamics in the Arctic and sub-Arctic,” Bennett said.

Seasons in the snow

The multi-institutional research team, which included members from Los Alamos, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Wisconsin–Madison, conducted snow surveys in the spring months of 2017–2019 at two small sites on the Seward Peninsula.

“We want to gratefully acknowledge Mary's Igloo, Sitnasuak and Council Native Corporation for their guidance and for allowing us to conduct our research on their traditional lands,” Bennett said.

The field work focused on collecting end-of-winter snow-depth and snow-density measurements to calculate the amount of water contained within the snowpack. Those measurements characterize the impacts of snow cover on water and temperature better than snow-depth measurements do.

To create a model of snow distribution, the team estimated landscape factors for topography, vegetation and wind, and then quantified their impacts on snow distribution using three statistical models.

The Paper: Spatial Patterns of Snow Distribution in the sub-Arctic, in The Cryosphere, Katrina E. Bennett, Greta Miller, Robert Busey, Min Chen, Emma R. Lathrop, Julian B. Dann, Mara Nutt, Ryan Crumley, Shannon Dillard, Baptiste Dafflon, Jitendra Kumar, W. Robert Bolton, Cathy J. Wilson, Colleen Iverson, and Stan Wullschleger. https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/3269/2022/tc-16-3269-2022.html  

The Funding: Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research through Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE) Arctic project.

-30-

LA-UR-22-28580

 

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JOURNAL

The Cryosphere

DOI

10.5194/tc-16-3269-2022 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Spatial patterns of snow distribution in the sub-Arctic

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Aug-2022

Standing desks alongside other measures cut office workers' sitting time by an hour a day

Small improvements also seen in workers' stress, well-being, and energy levels at work

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Using a standing desk alongside a package of other measures to encourage office workers to sit less and move more, reduced sitting time by about an hour a day over one year, finds a trial published in The BMJ today.

These measures were also linked to small improvements in stress, wellbeing, and energy levels at work, although the researchers stress that these improvements were not clinically meaningful. 

A growing body of evidence indicates that sedentary lifestyles are associated with higher levels of chronic disease, including heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers, and higher rates of depression and anxiety. 

Office-based workers are one of the most sedentary populations, spending 73% of their workday and 66% of their waking day sitting, but studies looking at ways to reduce sitting in the workplace have been deemed low quality. 

To address these research gaps, a team of researchers based in the UK, with collaborators in Australia set out to evaluate the impact of SMART Work & Life (SWAL), an intervention designed to reduce sitting time and increase moving time at work, with and without a standing desk, delivered by workplace champions.

The trial involved 756 office workers from two councils in Leicester, three in Greater Manchester, and one in Liverpool. Participants were randomly assigned to the SWAL intervention, the SWAL intervention with a standing desk, or a control group (working as usual) over a 12 month period.

The average age of participants was 45, of which 72% were women, 75% were white British, and 85% worked full time. Average body mass index (BMI) at the start of the study was 26.5. 

The SWAL intervention group were given a range of resources to help them reduce their sitting time, and highlight the health risks of too much sitting.

Workplaces were also encouraged to make small changes around the office to enable more movement, such as relocating printers and waste paper bins and creating standing areas for meetings.

The SWAL plus desk group also received a height adjustable desk to encourage less sitting time. The control group carried on working as usual.

Workers’ sitting time was measured using a device (accelerometer) worn on the thigh at the start of the study and again at 12 months.

Daily physical activity levels, and self-reported feedback about work, physical and mental health were also recorded.

The SWAL intervention plus standing desk was three times more effective at reducing sitting time than the SWAL intervention alone.

For example, at 12 months, daily sitting time for the SWAL group, and the SWAL plus standing desk were, respectively, 22 minutes and 64 per day minutes lower on average than the control group.  

Small, but non-clinically meaningful improvements in stress, wellbeing, and a sense of work-related vigour were found for both intervention groups compared with the control group at three and 12 months, as well as lower limb pain (hips, knees and ankles) in the SWAL plus desk group.

Although time spent sitting was lower in both intervention groups compared with the control group, the researchers note that most participants simply replaced sitting with standing, and they say further work is needed to encourage more physical activity, particularly outside of working hours.

A randomised controlled trial is considered the most reliable way to determine whether an intervention actually has the desired effect, but the researchers do point to some limitations.

For example, participants were aware of the purpose of the device measuring their movement, which could have impacted their behaviour. And participants may have been selective in their responses to questionnaires - a phenomenon known as ‘reporting bias.’

However  this was a large, well-designed trial that mimicked a real world intervention, and results were similar after further sensitivity analyses, suggesting that they are robust.

They also point out that participants were selected from three different areas in England, which bolsters the case for wider roll-out of the findings. 

As such, the researchers say both SWAL and SWAL plus desk were associated with a reduction in sitting time, although the addition of a height adjustable desk was found to be threefold more effective.

And they point to areas for future research, such as exploring how people can best be supported to make changes outside of work and increase time spent moving, across different employment sectors and for a longer time period. 

In a linked editorial, Professor Cindy Gray from the University of Glasgow says: “The findings are noteworthy because they come from a fully powered cluster randomised trial with objective measurement of sedentary behaviour at three and 12 months.”

However, she points out that the move to more home based and blended patterns of working after the covid-19 pandemic is likely to increase workforce sedentariness. Therefore, she says “understanding how to optimise occupational interventions to support people to sit less and move more around their home during both work and non-working hours is essential.”

[Ends]

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj‑2021‑069288 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Effectiveness of an intervention for reducing sitting time and improving health in office workers: three arm cluster randomised controlled trial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Aug-2022

All rise!

Height-adjustable desks can reduce workplace sitting by over an hour a day

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS OF LEICESTER NHS TRUST

Researchers at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) – a partnership between Leicester’s Hospitals, the University of Leicester and Loughborough University - have developed a programme that, when paired with a height-adjustable desk, can reduce the time people spend sitting by over an hour. To date, it is the largest study worldwide looking into programmes to overcoming sedentary behaviour in the workplace.

The team tested their ‘SMART Work and Life’ programme – training for workplace champions, educational resources, ongoing behaviour change support and a set of apps and software to monitor sitting time, - which has been developed for people who spend a lot of their day sitting down, in six local authorities across Leicester, Greater Manchester and Liverpool.

756 desk-based workers were put in one of three groups. The first group were given the SMART Work and Life programme alone; the second group received the SMART Work and Life programme and a height-adjustable desk, so they could sit or stand while working at their computer. A third group acted as a control with neither the SMART Work and Life programme nor the height-adjustable desk.

The research team monitored the sitting behaviour of participants via a small device worn on the thigh. 

Researchers found that compared to the control group, people using the SMART Work and Life programme sat for 22 minutes less per day. For participants using both the SMART Work and Life programme and a height adjustable desk, this tripled to over an hour more time spent on their feet across the working day.

Interestingly, while participants using the programme and the height-adjustable desk reduced their sitting time in the workplace, this had little impact on behaviour at home, indicating that it is challenging to break sitting habits in leisure time.

In the UK, sedentary behaviours are known to contribute to over £700 million in NHS costs and were responsible for 69,276 deaths in 2016. The COVId-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these behaviours, and their consequences for public health, prompting policy interest in public health strategies that promote safe physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviours.

Desk-based workers spend around 70 per cent of their workday sitting down and many continue to spend time sitting once at home, with data showing they accumulate 9 to10 hours per day of sitting. Sedentary behaviour in the workplace also affects job performance and is associated with higher levels of presenteeism.

Dr Charlotte Edwardson, Associate Professor of Physical Activity Sedentary Behaviour and Health at the University of Leicester, and lead author of the paper, said: “Our results suggest a combination of education, motivational resources, peer support and standing desks has the greatest effect on reducing sitting in the workplace.

“These results are a major step in providing evidence-based tools to reduce sedentary behaviour and improve health in the workplace.”

Dr Alex Clarke-Cornwell, Reader in Public Health Epidemiology from the University of Salford, who is a co-author of the study, said: “Alongside the reduction in sitting time, participants perceived small improvements in stress, wellbeing, and work vigour. They also reported feeling more energised, focused and productive, with the group who also received the desk reporting fewer musculoskeletal issues.”

SMART Work and Life is a multi-component programme including a package of training for health and wellbeing champions with workplaces. It also includes educational resources, apps and software to track sitting time and get reminders to stand up more regularly, motivational posters, sitting less challenges, suggestions on how to make small environmental changes and many more helpful resources available to all who take part. It is facilitated by workplace champions who encourage participants and develop tailored strategies for individual teams.

Dr Edwardson and her team have turned the SMART Work and Life programme into an online resource kit which is easily accessible to organisations. SMART Work and Life is a great resource to use alongside height-adjustable desks, as part of an office environment change or as a stand-alone toolkit to encourage less sitting.  The programme can be accessed here: www.smartworkandlife.co.uk

The article: “Effectiveness of the SMART Work & Life intervention for reducing sitting time and improving health in office workers: A three-arm cluster randomised controlled trial” can be found in the British Medical Journal today.

It was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), which funds, enables and delivers world-leading health and social care research that improves people's health and wellbeing and promotes economic growth.

Ends

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JOURNAL

BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj‑2021‑069288 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Effectiveness of an intervention for reducing sitting time and improving health in office workers: three arm cluster randomised controlled trial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Aug-2022

COI STATEMENT

All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) public health research programme, the Leicester Clinical Trials Unit, and the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre. MHG is a co-inventor of the activPAL3 physical activity monitor and a director of PAL Technologies. DWD reports grants from National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), Diabetes Australia, and the National Heart Foundation of Australia, during the conduct of the study. GNH reports grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) during the conduct of the study. MJD reports personal fees from Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, Lilly, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Servier, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals International, and grants from Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Janssen outside the submitted work.

Anger as US court says teen not 'mature' enough for abortion

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

An appeals court in Florida has upheld a ruling that a 16-year-old girl is not "sufficiently mature" enough to get an abortion—a decision that sparked the ire of some US lawmakers.

Two months after the Supreme Court overturned nationwide access to the termination of a pregnancy, the teenager's case is fuelling new anger over women's rights in the United States.

The girl, who is not identified, told a lower court she was "not ready to have a baby," that she was still in school and had no job, and that the father of the child could not help her.

Minors seeking an abortion in Florida need the consent of at least one of their parents. But the girl is "parentless," lives with a relative and has a state-appointed guardian, court documents showed.

She was seeking a waiver of that rule—but the lower court said she had "not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy."

On Monday, a state appeals court upheld that decision, igniting anger among US lawmakers.

"If you're infuriated because a court is forcing a teenager to carry a pregnancy to term after ruling she was not 'mature' enough to have an abortion, you're not alone. It is abhorrent," tweeted Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who has spoken openly about her own abortion.

Lois Frankel, a Democratic lawmaker from Florida, called the decision "unacceptable," adding: "This is a dangerous & horrific example of Florida's war on women."

"In what world is a 16 year old too immature to receive an abortion but mature enough to commit to carrying and raising a child?" asked Ohio Democrat Joyce Beatty, also on Twitter.

"Not mature enough for an abortion, but mature enough to have a baby. This is sick," agreed Pennsylvania lawmaker Malcolm Kenyatta.

The teenager had told the court that her guardian had given their consent for the abortion, but that consent did not appear to have been made in writing, court documents showed.

The girl was 10 weeks pregnant, according to the documents.

After the Supreme Court reversed the nationwide right to abortion in June, handing the decision back to the states, Florida changed its laws to ban the procedure after 15 weeks, when the previous cut-off was 24 weeks.

Other Republican-led states in the American South—including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia—have almost completely banned the practice or reduced the window to six weeks.

In one month, 43 US clinics have stopped offering abortions: study

© 2022 AFP

 Study confirms that speculation taxes are not an effective tool in curbing house prices

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

As the Ontario housing market enters a potentially volatile phase, new research from the University of Waterloo shows how tax policy has proven ineffective in controlling prices.  

The report specifically looked at market behaviour of the nine largest Ontario population centres between 2011 and 2021 — a time of significant price increases across the province. 

“Every city in Ontario hopes to regulate its own housing market as part of its duty to its citizens,” said Olaf Weber, a researcher in Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development. “We found that quite often such policies are ineffective partially due to factors out of their control.” 

The study points to how both geography and our three-tiered governance system both play a role in diminishing municipal efforts to regulate housing prices with taxation. For instance, speculation taxes, such as Ontario Non-Resident Speculation Tax, rarely dissuades large-scale investors from purchasing property and leaving it vacant.

“This phenomenon is most present in the largest cities, and taxes like these really only represent a marginal change in profits for most large investors,” Weber said. “They’ll either pay the tax, or they’ll move to the next closest city and buy there.”

The researchers call this the “spillover effect.” “Cities like Toronto are so desirable there is very little they can do to regulate their market, and are so big, neighbouring cities are at the mercy of what happens there,” Weber said.

According to the study, changes to other tax-related measures such as land-transfer taxes, and property taxes, have also proven to be largely ineffective in curbing prices as any stability from the well-intentioned measures can be wiped out by an interest rate change at the federal level, or a policy change provincially.

“Municipalities are frustrated,” Weber said. “I am not sure what they can do when so many factors are playing against each other. Empirically, the only thing that has worked to create affordable housing is when cities buy, build, or manage properties themselves and set the price.”

The study, authored by Weber and PhD student Muhammad Adil Rauf also of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment, was recently published in the journal Sustainability. 

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JOURNAL

Sustainability

One more clue to the Moon's origin

Date: August 10, 2022

Source: ETH Zurich

Summary:

Researchers discover the first definitive proof that the Moon inherited indigenous noble gases from the Earth's mantle. The discovery represents a significant piece of the puzzle towards understanding how the Moon and, potentially, the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed.




Moon (stock image).
Credit: © Bikej Barakus / stock.adobe.com

Humankind has maintained an enduring fascination with the Moon. It was not until Galileo's time, however, that scientists really began study it. Over the course of nearly five centuries, researchers put forward numerous, much debated theories as to how the Moon was formed. Now, geochemists, cosmochemists, and petrologists at ETH Zurich shed new light on the Moon's origin story. In a study just published in the journal, Science Advances, the research team reports findings that show that the Moon inherited the indigenous noble gases of helium and neon from Earth's mantle. The discovery adds to the already strong constraints on the currently favoured "Giant Impact" theory that hypothesizes the Moon was formed by a massive collision between Earth and another celestial body.

Meteorites from the Moon to Antarctica

During her doctoral research at ETH Zurich, Patrizia Will analysed six samples of lunar meteorites from an Antarctic collection, obtained from NASA. The meteorites consist of basalt rock that formed when magma welled up from the interior of the Moon and cooled quickly. They remained covered by additional basalt layers after their formation, which protected the rock from cosmic rays and, particularly, the solar wind. The cooling process resulted in the formation of lunar glass particles amongst the other minerals found in magma. Will and the team discovered that the glass particles retain the chemical fingerprints (isotopic signatures) of the solar gases: helium and neon from the Moon's interior. Their findings strongly support that the Moon inherited noble gases indigenous to the Earth. "Finding solar gases, for the first time, in basaltic materials from the Moon that are unrelated to any exposure on the lunar surface was such an exciting result," says Will.

Without the protection of an atmosphere, asteroids continually pelt the Moon's surface. It likely took a high-energy impact to eject the meteorites from the middle layers of the lava flow similar to the vast plains known as the Lunar Mare. Eventually the rock fragments made their way to Earth in the form of meteorites. Many of these meteorite samples are picked up in the deserts of North Africa or in, in this case, the "cold desert" of Antarctica where they are easier to spot in the landscape.

Grateful Dead lyrics inspire lab instrument

In the Noble Gas Laboratory at ETH Zurich resides a state-of-the-art noble gas mass spectrometer named, "Tom Dooley" -- sung about in the Grateful Dead tune by the same name. The instrument got its name, when earlier researchers, at one point, suspended the highly sensitive equipment from the ceiling of the lab to avoid interference from the vibrations of everyday life. Using the Tom Dooley instrument, the research team was able to measure sub-millimetre glass particles from the meteorites and rule out solar wind as the source of the detected gases. The helium and neon that they detected were in a much higher abundance than expected.

The Tom Dooley is so sensitive that it is, in fact, the only instrument in the world capable of detecting such minimal concentrations of helium and neon. It was used to detect these noble gases in the 7 billion years old grains in the Murchison meteorite -- the oldest known solid matter to-date.

Searching for the origins of life

Knowing where to look inside NASA's vast collection of some 70,000 approved meteorites represents a major step forward. "I am strongly convinced that there will be a race to study heavy noble gases and isotopes in meteoritic materials," says ETH Zurich Professor Henner Busemann, one of the world's leading scientists in the field of extra-terrestrial noble gas geochemistry. He anticipates that soon researchers will be looking for noble gases such as xenon and krypton which are more challenging to identify. They will also be searching for other volatile elements such as hydrogen or halogens in the lunar meteorites.

Busemann comments, "While such gases are not necessary for life, it would be interesting to know how some of these noble gases survived the brutal and violent formation of the moon. Such knowledge might help scientists in geochemistry and geophysics to create new models that show more generally how such most volatile elements can survive planet formation, in our solar system and beyond."

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Materials provided by ETH Zurich. Original written by Marianne Lucien. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia: Images of lunar mare basalt

Journal Reference:Patrizia Will, Henner Busemann, My E. I. Riebe, Colin Maden. Indigenous noble gases in the Moon’s interior. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (32) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl4920

Evidence that giant meteorite impacts created the continents

Date:  August 10, 2022

Source: Curtin  University  

Summary:

New research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth's continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts that were particularly prevalent during the first billion years or so of our planet's four-and-a-half-billion year history.

New Curtin research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth's continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts that were particularly prevalent during the first billion years or so of our planet's four-and-a-half-billion year history.

Dr Tim Johnson, from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the idea that the continents originally formed at sites of giant meteorite impacts had been around for decades, but until now there was little solid evidence to support the theory.

"By examining tiny crystals of the mineral zircon in rocks from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia, which represents Earth's best-preserved remnant of ancient crust, we found evidence of these giant meteorite impacts," Dr Johnson said.

"Studying the composition of oxygen isotopes in these zircon crystals revealed a 'top-down' process starting with the melting of rocks near the surface and progressing deeper, consistent with the geological effect of giant meteorite impacts.

"Our research provides the first solid evidence that the processes that ultimately formed the continents began with giant meteorite impacts, similar to those responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but which occurred billions of years earlier."

Dr Johnson said understanding the formation and ongoing evolution of the Earth's continents was crucial given that these landmasses host the majority of Earth's biomass, all humans and almost all of the planet's important mineral deposits.

"Not least, the continents host critical metals such as lithium, tin and nickel, commodities that are essential to the emerging green technologies needed to fulfil our obligation to mitigate climate change," Dr Johnson said.

"These mineral deposits are the end result of a process known as crustal differentiation, which began with the formation of the earliest landmasses, of which the Pilbara Craton is just one of many.

"Data related to other areas of ancient continental crust on Earth appears to show patterns similar to those recognised in Western Australia. We would like to test our findings on these ancient rocks to see if, as we suspect, our model is more widely applicable."

Dr Johnson is affiliated with The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR), Curtin's flagship earth sciences research institute.

The paper, 'Giant impacts and the origin and evolution of continents', was published in Nature.

Journal Reference:Tim E. Johnson, Christopher L. Kirkland, Yongjun Lu, R. Hugh Smithies, Michael Brown, Michael I. H. Hartnady. Giant impacts and the origin and evolution of continents. Nature, 2022; 608 (7922): 330 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04956-y