Increasing impacts of floods and droughts worldwide

How to improve natural risk management

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

Risk management has reduced the vulnerability to floods and droughts around the world, but their impact is still increasing worldwide, according to a study published in the journal Nature, which includes the participation of the researcher María del Carmen Llasat, professor of Atmospheric Physics at the Faculty of Physics and member of the Water Research Institute (IdRA) of the University of Barcelona.

This intensification of the impact of natural phenomena is particularly noticeable when the second event —rain, floods or droughts— affecting the same region has a higher degree of hazard —more intensity and magnitude— than the first previously recorded event.

“This results from the fact that the improvement in management has been based on the parameters of previous episodes, but it has not been designed to cope with such extreme events. The difficulty observed in managing unprecedented events is alarming, especially if we consider that, as a result of the climate change, the hydrological events that are projected are becoming increasingly extreme”, notes Llasat, who received the Saint George’s Cross this year for her scientific career in the field of physics and for the study, research and awareness of climate change and natural hazards.

Flood and drought episodes worldwide

The study, led by the expert Heidi Kreibich, from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), includes the participation of nearly a hundred experts from the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS).

The study analyses 29 pairs of flood episodes and 15 cases drought episodes in different areas of the world. The aim is to check how these factors involved in risk have changed between the first and the second episode, generally occurring more than ten years apart, but in the same place.

In the case of Catalonia, the study compared pluvial floods in Barcelona that occurred on 21 September 1995 and on 6 September 2018, and the recorded droughts in the periods 1986-1989 and 2004-2008. To carry this comparative analysis out, in the case of the rainfalls, the researchers worked in collaboration with Barcelona Water Cycle (BCASA) —entity in charge of the pluvial rain management in Barcelona—, and regarding the droughts, they worked in collaboration with the Ebro Observatory (URL-CSIC).

Barcelona city, a successful case

The international study has recorded only two success stories —Barcelona and Central Europe— in natural hazard management, out of the 29 pairs of flood events analysed worldwide. In these cases, the hazard of the second recorded event was higher than that of the first, but the recorded damage was lower.

In the case of Barcelona, following the 1996 floods, the city promoted a plan that culminated in the construction of 15 rainwater retention basins and the improvement of the entire flood prevention and management system.

"The improvements in Barcelona's rainwater network over the last twenty years have been decisive in alleviating the effects of floods in the city. In fact, while in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona there has been a slight increase in flooding since 1981, this trend is negative in Barcelona. However, this is not enough", notes Llasat, member of the Department of Applied Physics and head of the Group for the Analysis of Adverse Meteorological Situations (GAMA).

"The permeability of the soil should be increased with paving that allows rain to filter through, more areas should be set aside for green spaces and streets and drains should be kept clean. However, there are still neighbourhoods with major flooding problems where it is difficult to take structural action, such as storm water tanks. In these cases, it is necessary to look for solutions that require citizen participation and awareness of this type of event. Specifically, this is the challenge now faced by the I-CHANGE (Individual Change of HAbits Needed for Green European transition) project, funded with Horizon 2020 funds and in which the University of Barcelona is participating.

Flood management in Germany and Austria is the other success story described in the article. Two common factors stand out in the successful strategies of Barcelona and Central Europe: the improvement of risk management governance —more integration in emergency management and early warning systems— and the implementation of a series of structural measures that required high investment (the storm water reservoirs in Barcelona or the construction of dykes in Central Europe).

How to improve natural risk management?

Efforts to promote more operational and effective responses to these extreme events face a number of obstacles. "Large investments such as those made in the city of Barcelona or in Central Europe are not possible for everyone. In fact, they would not be desirable either. Recent studies have shown that they can lead to a false sense of security (especially in the case of river flooding), as they increase the occupation of flood zones and thus the associated risk”.

“Despite structural improvements —she continues—, "the United Nations consider that Barcelona is not doing enough to raise awareness of the risk of flooding among its inhabitants, nor among visiting people. This is a widespread problem", Llasat points out.

Improving governance, applying nature-based solutions and involving citizens are the global key actions for mitigating the effects of natural hazards worldwide, in a context of sustainable development.

"It is necessary for the Administration to improve its knowledge of risk, the distribution of the most flood-prone areas in the city, how to act when there are heavy rains, etc. Regarding the citizens, it is necessary to become aware that this risk will increase with climate change and that we will need citizen participation. Education in schools, compulsory information on flood risks, improved warnings to the population and guidelines on how to act both preventively and during the emergency are also some of the points that should be considered to reduce the impact of these natural events", concludes Professor Llasat.

 

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-04917-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The challenge of unprecedented floods and droughts in risk management

Young children who walk or bike to school are more likely to continue the habit as they age

Smarter urban design can help encourage ‘active commuting,’ Rutgers researcher says

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Children who walk or bike to school at a young age are more likely to continue the healthy habit as they age, according to a study co-authored by a Rutgers researcher.

“The walk to school is a wonderful moment in the day that provides children a glimpse of living an active lifestyle,” said David Tulloch, a professor of landscape architecture at Rutgers–New Brunswick and co-author of the study, which was published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports. “When people start walking early, it can have a lasting impact on their health.”

In the United States, about 11 percent of children walked or biked to or from school, according to data from the National Household Travel Survey, and that rate hasn’t changed in a decade.

The research team found that if children are taught early to actively commute – traveling by physical means – they are far more likely to keep doing so later in their educational career.

To measure whether active commuting persists over time, the researchers surveyed parents and caregivers about the school travel habits of their children on two separate occasions two to four years apart (baseline and follow-up) between 2009 and 2017 in four predominantly low-income New Jersey cities: Camden, New Brunswick, Newark and Trenton.

Data from 587 households was collected as part of the New Jersey Child Heath Study, which tracked children 3-15 years of age. The distance to school and other spatial factors were calculated by Tulloch and colleagues at the Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis at Rutgers.

The researchers found that more than three quarters of children who engaged in active commuting at baseline continued to do so two to four years later, while few newly took it up by the time of follow-up if they hadn’t done so before.  In fact, children who actively commuted to school at baseline were seven times more likely to actively commute two to four years later compared with children who didn’t actively commute at baseline.

“Most kids don't achieve the 60 minutes per day of physical activity that they're recommended to get,” said Robin DeWeese, an assistant research professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State and the study’s lead author. “Active commuting to school is one way to get more of that activity.”

To promote active commuting, DeWeese suggests “schools and communities encourage active commuting during early grades as that may yield benefits even for students in higher grades.”

Active commuting varied by demographic characteristics and perceptions of the neighborhood. Children with a parent born outside the U.S. had lower odds of active commuting compared with those whose parents were born in the U.S., while children of parents who perceived their neighborhood safe from crime were more than 2.5 times as likely to engage in active commuting.

The greatest and most persistent barrier was the distance between home and school, Tulloch said. Distance to school often increases as children age because middle and high schools are larger and less prominent than elementary schools. As a result, active commuting likelihood tends to decrease once children reach high school.

Smarter urban design can help reverse this trend, said Tulloch. Remote drop-offs and “walking school buses” – that is, groups of students chaperoned by volunteer parents – can encourage children to actively commute at a young age. Infrastructure improvements, such as sidewalks and tree-lined streets, can make walking more pleasant, he added.

“One of the most visited tourist sites in New York City is the High Line, a green walkable space with no cars,” said Tulloch. “We should be doing this type of planning everywhere – especially in school zones.”

Novel technique helps discover whether bacteria that cause meningitis are resistant to antibiotics

The results of a study conducted by Brazilian researchers will be useful both for epidemiological surveillance and to improve the treatment available to patients. An article on the study is published in PLOS ONE.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

 

IMAGE: IT CAN BE USED TO STUDY THE RESISTANCE PROFILE OF PNEUMOCOCCUS EVEN IN THE ABSENCE OF THE ISOLATED STRAINS (PNEUMOCOCCI OBSERVED IN THE MICROSCOPE) view more 

CREDIT: IVANA CAMPOS

A study published in the journal PLOS ONE could one day help health workers determine whether bacteria of the species Streptococcus pneumoniae, which cause meningitis – an inflammation of the membranes that envelop the brain and spinal cord – are resistant to antibiotics.

This type of analysis is no easy task when the conventional method is used. The bacteria must be isolated from a patient sample and analyzed while still alive, which is difficult because the microorganisms are sensitive and usually do not survive the journey to the laboratory.

A highly feasible novel method has been developed in Brazil by researchers at the Santo André branch of Adolfo Lutz Institute (IAL), São Paulo state's central epidemiological surveillance laboratory. Between 2014 and 2020, they analyzed 873 samples of cerebrospinal fluid from patients with suspected streptococcal meningitis at health clinics in six cities in the state – Diadema, Mauá, Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, São Caetano do Sul and Ribeirão Pires. Cerebrospinal fluid is produced by tissue that lines the ventricles in the brain. It flows in and around the brain and spinal cord to cushion them from injury and provide nutrients. 

As part of the laboratory’s routine, the scientists analyzed the samples using real-time PCR, the gold standard for diagnosing infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The technique amplifies a specific gene or gene sequence from the target microorganism, if present in the sample, so that it can be identified more easily. In this case, S. pneumoniae (pneumococcus) was detected in 149 samples.

They then re-analyzed the samples that tested positive for pneumococcus to detect the three genes associated with resistance to antibiotics, again using real-time PCR but this time with SYBR Green, a dye that binds to DNA and emits a fluorescent signal which is captured by the equipment. 

To find out which classes of antibiotics the bacteria resisted – penicillin, lincosamides or macrolides – they used the dissociation curve technique. “This technique entails raising the temperature of the samples degree by degree, making the dye separate from the DNA as the twin strands in the double helix forming the genetic material amplified in the PCR machine gradually unwind. We measured the melting temperature [Tm], which is when half the structure is still entwined and the rest has separated out. This temperature varies depending on the amplified gene, so it can be used to identify the gene that’s been amplified and hence the antibiotic to which the bacteria are resistant,” said Ivana Campos, principal investigator for the study. 

After conducting all these procedures, the researchers compared the results with those obtained by the conventional method used to analyze resistance to antibiotics, in which live bacteria are observed while in contact with each drug to see if they are able to proliferate. This conventional test was performed on 25 samples, which were the only ones that contained viable pneumococci for the procedure. The results were similar, confirming the novel technique’s potential. 

“We found that 51% of the samples analyzed, which IAL received between 2014 and 2020, were sensitive to antibiotics. That’s positive, meaning these patients must have had a good prognosis. On the other hand, 17% were resistant to various drugs, which is very dangerous because in these cases it’s more difficult to treat the disease and other classes of antibiotic have to be tried,” Campos said. 

Moreover, S. pneumoniae is capable of changing its genetic makeup as it reproduces, so that new copies have the genes associated with drug resistance. “We, therefore, concluded that the test we developed can be used to study the resistance profile of pneumococcus even in the absence of the isolated strains, as evidenced for our region,” she said.

The study was supported by FAPESP via two projects (17/03022-6 and 18/22718-4. The results obtained will be useful both for epidemiological surveillance and to improve treatment of patients in future.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0269895 

ARTICLE TITLE

Multiplex real-time PCR using SYBR Green: Unspecific intercalating dye to detect antimicrobial resistance genes of Streptococcus pneumoniae in cerebrospinal fluid

How pencils can help us understand the future of everything (Alex wants a jetpack) (video)

Business Announcement

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

 

IMAGE: THE CHEMISTRY WORLD HAS BEEN EXCITED ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF BUCKYBALLS, GRAPHENE AND CARBON NANOTUBES FOR DECADES. BUT THE SCIENCE HAS TAKEN A LONG TIME TO CATCH UP TO THE HYPE. SO WHERE ARE WE NOW, AND HOW FAR AWAY ARE WE FROM A CARBON-POWERED JETPACK FUTURE? HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/BHXN4XP8INC. view more 

CREDIT: THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2022 — The chemistry world has been excited about the possibility of buckyballs, graphene and carbon nanotubes for decades. But the science has taken a long time to catch up to the hype. So where are we now, and how far away are we from a carbon-powered jetpack future? https://youtu.be/BHxn4xP8Inc.

Reactions is a video series produced by the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to Reactions at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Ohio State researchers involved in first-of-its-kind global study on prevalence of coma

Crowdsourcing study focuses on frequency, causes of coma in U.S. and United Kingdom

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY WEXNER MEDICAL CENTER

A newly-published study conducted jointly by eighteen neuroscientists from the United States and Europe – including two researchers from The Ohio State University College of Nursing and Wexner Medical Center – and using crowdsourcing as an information-gathering method reveals the first epidemiologic data on coma in the United Kingdom and the U.S.

"In contrast to neurological conditions for which epidemiological data are available, coma results from many different brain injuries or medical diseases,” said Daniel Kondziella, a neurologist from Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen (Denmark) University Hospital and a lead author of the study. “Coma is not readily identifiable with conventional methods that utilize electronic medical records, insurance billing codes or clinical surveyance data.”

“Crowdsourcing allows us to achieve a representative sampling of participants based on official census data,” said Molly McNett, PhD, clinical professor at The Ohio State University College of Nursing and a co-author of the study. “Family members are acutely aware of the impact of coma on their loved ones and can share information with high confidence when a relative has been in a coma recently.”

The survey of nearly 2,000 people – 994 from the U.K. and 977 from the U.S. – provided data on more than 30,000 first- and second-degree family members and identified 714 plausible cases of common coma. Among the findings:

• The annual incidence of coma was nearly twice as high in the United States (258 per 100,000 population) as in the U.K. (135 per 100,000).
• The five most common causes of coma in family members were identified as stroke, medically-induced coma, COVID-19, traumatic brain injury and cardiac arrest.
• The incidence of coma (2 in 1,000 people per year) appears high when compared with commonly encountered conditions such as sepsis.

“Having this data at our disposal is critical not only in our understanding of the incidence of coma, but also in how we approach the condition at the bedside,” said Thomas Lawson, MS, lead advanced practice provider in the Neurocritical Care Unit at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center who is also a co-author and a PhD candidate at the College of Nursing. “The seriousness of coma requires us to gain a deeper understanding that can broaden our perspective for this and other disorders of consciousness.”

The study was sponsored by the Neurocritical Care Society’s Curing Coma Campaign which, according to its website, “is the first global public health initiative to tackle the unifying concept of coma as a treatable medical entity.”

The full article on the study, which is published in the peer-reviewed journal Brain Communications, can be found here.

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JOURNAL

Brain Communications

DOI

10.1093/braincomms/fcac188 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Incidence and prevalence of coma in the UK and the USA

North America’s rarest snake found biting off more than it could chew

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

 

IMAGE: THE RIM ROCK CROWNED SNAKE WAS FOUND DEAD IN THE FLORIDA KEYS, LOCKED IN LIFELESS COMBAT WITH A GIANT CENTIPEDE IT HAD MANAGED TO SWALLOW HALFWAY. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY DREW MARTIN

North America’s rarest snake, Tantilla oolitica (rim rock crowned snake), was recently spotted in a park in the Florida Keys after a four-year hiatus. While this would normally be cause for celebration among conservationists, the snake sighting was more a source of incredulous awe than anything else. The snake was found dead, locked in lifeless combat with a giant centipede it had managed to swallow halfway.

The fatal duel marks the first time that scientists have observed the snake’s eating habits. Closely related species are known to have a preference for centipedes, but T. oolitica is so rarely seen that, until now, no one had any definite idea of what it ate. Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History created CT scans of the interlocked pair and published their results this Sunday in the journal Ecology.

“I was amazed when I first saw the photos,” said co-author Coleman Sheehy, the Florida Museum’s herpetology collection manager. “It’s extremely rare to find specimens that died while eating prey, and given how rare this species is, I would never have predicted finding something like this. We were all totally flabbergasted.”

The snake was initially found on the side of a trail by a hiker in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, who alerted park staff. The specimen quickly found its way to the Florida Museum, where researchers hoped to ascertain the exact cause of death.

The most obvious explanation, given that the centipede was one-third the size of the snake, would be asphyxiation. But snakes are known for gorging on prey much larger than themselves. Unlike jaws in humans and most other vertebrates, which are directly attached to the skull, snake jaws are held in place by flexible ligaments and muscles that allow them to wrap their heads around their food.

To be certain, researchers would need to take a look inside. In the past, this would have required a dissection, which causes irreversible damage that can hamper future study. More recently, however, scientists have turned to CT-scanning technology, which provides an unparalleled look at an organism’s anatomy without physically altering the specimen.

Jaimi Gray, a postdoctoral associate at the museum, stained the snake with an iodine solution to enhance the contrast of its internal tissues and constructed a fine-scaled 3D model from CT scans.

“We were able to perform a digital autopsy, which allowed us to examine the centipede and snake, including its injuries and gut contents, without ever picking up a scalpel,” she said. After scanning, the specimen was de-stained and now remains intact on collection shelves at the Florida Museum for future researchers to study.

The model revealed a small wound on the snake’s side, likely imparted by the centipede’s powerful venomous pinchers. Snakes that commonly dine on centipedes are thought to have some measure of resistance to their mélange of caustic venom, but that assumption has yet to be definitively demonstrated, Sheehy said. The bite seemed to cause some internal bleeding, but neither that nor the toxin were enough to deter the snake from killing and partially swallowing its prey.

Instead, the final blow seems to have been dealt by the centipede’s size. Close inspection of the CT scans show the snake’s trachea was pinched at the approximate location where the centipede’s circumference was the largest, cutting off its air supply.

The results offer an intimate glimpse of a species many fear is on the verge of extinction. Tantilla oolitica once thrived in pine rocklands that spread from Central Florida south to the Keys but has since undergone a severe reduction in population size. The species has been listed as threatened in Florida since 1975, and efforts are underway by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to have the species federally listed.

Pine rockland ecosystems evolved for millions of years along the spine of an ancient coral reef, harboring a long list of rare plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. But the same attributes that fostered the growth of hyperdiverse forests also made this part of Florida an ideal place to build towns and cities. Today, an uninterrupted sprawl of development, from Miami to West Palm Beach, has almost entirely replaced the native ecosystems. Outside of the Everglades, only 2% of the original pine rocklands remain. For animals endemic to pine rocklands, like T. oolitica, the new cityscapes have meant near annihilation.

“We can't say for sure whether or not they're still present in peninsular Florida. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but their habitat has basically been destroyed,” Sheehy said.

For now, researchers are encouraged by what seems to be a somewhat stable population of T. oolitica in Key Largo and plan to make as much use of the new specimen as possible. The CT scans are available online for free, and there’s no shortage of new information that can be gleaned from them.

According to Sheehy, anyone interested in this specimen can access the CT-scan data to look at other aspects of the snake’s anatomy, and because this is the first CT scan for the species, they’ll be the first people to make those discoveries. “This study is just the beginning of what will be learned about this enigmatic species from the CT-scan data,” he said.

CAPTION

The fatal duel marks the first time that scientists have observed the snake’s eating habits.

CREDIT

Florida Museum photo by Jerald Pinson

JOURNAL

Ecology

DOI

10.1002/ecy.3857 

ARTICLE TITLE

What killed the rarest snake in North America?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Sep-2022

McMaster researchers discover toxin that kills bacteria in unprecedented ways

Discovery could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: NATHAN BULLEN (LEFT) AND JOHN WHITNEY (RIGHT) EXAMINE CRYSTALS OF THE PURIFIED TOXIN, WHICH THEY USED TO SOLVE ITS 3-DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE THROUGH X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY. view more 

CREDIT: BLAKE DILLON, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

Hamilton, ON (Sept. 6, 2022) - Researchers at McMaster University have discovered a previously unknown bacteria-killing toxin that could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics.

 

The study, led by John Whitney at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, shows that the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, known to cause hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, secretes a toxin that has evolved to kill other species of bacteria.

 

For Whitney, the key aspect of his discovery is not just that this toxin kills bacteria, but how it does so.

 

“This research is significant, because it shows that the toxin targets essential RNA molecules of other bacteria, effectively rendering them non-functional,” said Whitney, associate professor for the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.

 

“Like humans, bacteria require properly functioning RNA in order to live.”

 

“It's a total assault on the cell because of how many essential pathways depend on functional RNAs” said first study author Nathan Bullen, a graduate student in McMaster’s Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.

 

“This toxin enters its target, hijacks an essential molecule needed for life, and then uses that molecule to disrupt normal processes.”

 

Whitney and Bullen, together with colleagues at Imperial College London and the University of Manitoba, have studied this toxin for nearly three years to understand exactly how it functions at a molecular level.

 

The breakthrough, published in Molecular Cell, was achieved by Bullen following rigorous experimentation on common targets of toxins, such as protein and DNA molecules, before eventually testing the toxin against RNA.

 

This discovery breaks well-established precedents set by protein-targeting toxins secreted by other bacteria, such as those that cause cholera and diphtheria.

 

Researchers say that this development holds great potential for future research that could eventually lead to new innovations that combat infection-causing bacteria.

Whitney says the newly-discovered vulnerability can be exploited for future antibiotic development.

 

                                                                        -30-

 

Editors:

 

A photo of Nathan Bullen and Jon Whitney is attached. Cutline: Nathan Bullen (left) and John Whitney (right) examine crystals of the purified toxin, which they used to solve its 3-dimensional structure through X-ray crystallography. Credit: Blake Dillon, McMaster University.

 

For information, please contact:

 

Veronica McGuire

Media Relations

Faculty of Health Sciences

McMaster University

289-776-6952

vmcguir@mcmaster.ca

 

 

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JOURNAL

Molecular Cell

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

An ADP-ribosyltransferase toxin kills bacterial cells by modifying structured non-coding RNAs

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Sep-2022

A nutrition label for Earth

Researchers estimate the environmental impacts of 57,000 common store-bought food products

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

We’re all capable of slowing down the effects of a warming Earth, and it could be as simple as how we stock our pantries.

An international team of scientists has evaluated the environmental impacts of more than 57,000 food products – the stuff you typically find as you wander the aisles of your local grocery. If this type of information is made easily available to the public, they say, it could not only enable the transition to a more sustainable food system, but chances are it could also improve people’s health.

“The goal is to have a simpler, and more rigorous quantitative way to inform consumers about the tens of thousands of different items they might buy in a grocery store,” said ecologist David Tilman, a professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and also at the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences. Tilman is a co-author of a study that appears in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

According to the researchers’ assessment, beef and lamb take the greatest toll on the environment, with impacts far outpacing those of other proteins such as chicken, fish and seafood and nuts, which also are on the higher end of the environmental impact scale.

“Many people consider beef to taste good, and I understand why, but it is a very inefficient way to create food for humans,” Tilman said. Meanwhile, processed drinks such as soda and energy drinks were rated at the lowest impact level of food products evaluated, sharing space with plant-based grocery foods such as rice and flatbreads.

A Decade of Studying Food Products
While much research has gone into the environmental impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat and beef, most food products contain many different ingredients, each of which have taken their own routes to become part of that product. This lifecycle data, which informs the total environmental impacts of producing, harvesting, transporting and processing of said ingredients, are largely invisible to the consumer, as are the proportions of ingredients. According to the study, this information gap exists because “the exact amount of each ingredient and their supply chain in each food product are often considered a trade secret.” The sheer number of food products and their variety makes the assessment a “daunting” task for food companies and for retailers aiming to reduce their carbon emissions.

To overcome these limitations, the researchers, led by first author Michael Clark of Oxford University, used prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient. They then paired this information with environmental databases to gauge impacts across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress and eutrophication potential (the magnitude of excess nutrients from production that can pollute surrounding environment and waterways).

“This is the result of a decade since Mike and I started working on this,” said Tilman, who is Clark’s former advisor. “It started with doing some of the lifecycles ourselves, then using many of these lifecycles that were published. And then we started critically evaluating the quality of lifecycle data available for each of the major food commodities.” They consulted previously published papers, conducted further analyses and used their approach on 57,000 food products found in Tesco supermarkets, a major grocery chain in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“You go to a grocery store in Europe and it doesn’t look very different from a grocery store in the United States,” Tilman said. While humans around the world don’t have the exact same taste preferences, he added, we tend to have to similar tastes, which results in more or less the same kind of food products in our stores.

These tastes tend to gravitate to foods that contain high levels of sugar. It’s a commodity that is both cheap and produced in abundance, with effects that have led to increased rates of obesity, diabetes and other conditions related to overconsumption of highly processed foods that often contain high fructose corn syrup.

“That’s what happened with the Green Revolution,” Tilman said of an unintended consequence of the world’s move in the 1950s and ‘60s toward high-yield, industrial farming processes that include pesticides, fertilizers and monocultures. “Sugar is cheap. Fats are cheap and salt is cheap. People love salty, fatty and sweet kinds of foods; that’s what our taste preferences are. They made total sense during our evolutionary past, and now that these foods are so cheap and readily available, we eat them in excess.”

Healthy Choices = Healthy Earth
In a previous study, Tilman and Clark found that in general, diets that included healthy, less-processed foods were also heathier for the environment. “We know there’s a relationship there, and we wanted to apply this for individual foods,” Tilman said. As a result, the researchers’ current study also ranks grocery foods by nutritional impact, with plant-based, less processed foods on the healthier end of the scale for both humans and the environment, and highly processed grains and dairy products toward the less-healthy end.

“The healthiest diets that we know of are variants on the classical Mediterranean diet, which has many servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and whole grains,” Tilman said. “Whole grain has the advantage of having fiber, which helps slow the rate at which starch becomes sugars.” The main meat is fish, he added, with other meats used as flavoring and on special occasions. Other environmentally friendly and nutritious diets include vegetarian and pescatarian diets, provided hydrogenated fats and sugars are kept to a minimum. There isn’t enough scientific data yet to put the vegan diet in the same group, but Tilman suspects it belongs there as well.

Still, more work needs to be done to refine the researchers’ assessment. There’s a lot of variability in the proportion and type of ingredients in similar grocery store foods that can lead to differences in health and environmental impacts, and there are also alternative processes to consider, Tilman said. But the hope is that this information becomes widely available, empowering consumers to make better food choices for the health of both their bodies and the environment.

“I hope this information ends up on packages,” Tilman said. “And I hope because it’s on packages that companies that make different foods will willingly tell us the exact ingredients and amounts in their foods, so we can give the most rigorous, honest evaluation of their product.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2022

New research shows how COVID-19 altered Americans' intentions to move

Study reveals pandemic’s impact on individuals’ decisions to relocate

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY

 NEWS RELEASE 6-SEP-2022

 

IMAGE: XIALU LIU, PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS (MIS), THE FOWLER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS, SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY view more 

CREDIT: SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY

Divorce. Changing jobs. Natural disasters. A change in financial resources. Going away to college. Wanting to be nearer to family members. 

Those are just a handful of traditional reasons Americans choose to pack up and move. 

One non-traditional reason for moving was the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a significant impact on every aspect of Americans’ lives starting in March 2020. With this fact in mind, Xialu Liu, professor of management information systems (MIS) at the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University and Lei Lei, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, analyzed data gathered from Google Trends to assess how the pandemic may have altered American’s’ decisions to change residences. 

Thoughts of Escaping Pandemic Lockdowns Were High
To measure the intentions of those people considering a move, the researchers accessed Google Trends to identify internet searches using keywords or phrases associated with changes in residence (such as “real estate agent,” “house for rent” or “moving company”) or a temporary relocation (such as a trip to Florida or Hawaii) between January 2011 to February 2021.  

They noted that Americans’ thoughts about temporarily relocating surged during the early months of the pandemic lockdown in March through April of 2020. But while the number of Americans thinking about a short-term move may have spiked over 40%, the number of people seeking real estate purchases and housing rentals dropped 20 - 30% during the same period. 

Eventually, The Panic Dies Down
“The lack of knowledge, feelings of uncertainty and fear of the disease may have caused some level of widespread panic, prompting those in high-density areas to escape what they perceived as increased exposure to COVID and societal restrictions,” said Liu. “But these feelings soon subsided as lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were implemented in most states. Additionally, the risk of infection inhibited the home search process in the early months of the pandemic, causing real estate sales and rentals to decline during that same period.”

While the frequency of temporary relocations searches had declined by 30 - 50% at the end of April 2020, it was the exact opposite for those seeking more permanent housing solutions. Starting in June 2020, people seeking both real estate purchases and rentals, saw their numbers increase substantially (22 - 24%) and remain high until the research concluded in February 2021. The only exception was individuals using the search term “apartments for rent” which returned to pre-pandemic levels, while searches for house rentals increased by 15.65%. 

Temporary Escape Give Way to Thought of Permanent Relocation
“In June 2020, the Google Trends data indicated that as Americans became more knowledgeable about the disease — and as businesses and amenities began to adjust and open up again — there was an initial marked increase in searches for housing purchases and rentals,” said Liu. “With the pandemic responses varying in different areas in the country, many people relocated to areas that fit their lifestyles. For example, some people moved to avoid strict lockdowns, while others may have moved to be nearer to necessary medical care.”

The researchers also noted that educational requirements and working conditions also may have driven Americans to consider a permanent relocation as well. “With many people working and learning from home, the constraints binding them to a physical office or school were removed,” said Liu. “This allowed them to consider a broader array of locations and housing options that met their evolving needs.”

Family Ties Run Deep
The only search that never fluctuated after the start of the pandemic was the increase (around 50%) of individuals looking to move in with their parents or other family, which showed no significant change between March 2020 and February 2021. The researchers noted that this may be a result of college students moving home or adult children searching for ways to remove their parents from retirement facilities. 

As their research wrapped up, the two professors concluded while only “move in with family” searches remained consistently higher since March 2020, the fluctuations in the searches for temporary or permanent relocations offers a glimpse into U.S. residents’ thought processes as their housing needs and the regulations surrounding COVID-19 protocols evolved. 

Maybe…Or Maybe Not
Lastly, they also concluded that while Google Trends indicated an intention to relocate, not everyone seeking to move followed through.

“Housing inventory, price, employment factors and other issues factor into relocations intentions vs. an actual move,” said Liu. “Theoretically, scholars view residential mobility as a multi-stage process, though the actual process could be nonlinear and much messier. In other words, desires or intentions to relocate may — or may not — eventually result in actually moving.” 

 

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JOURNAL

Population Space and Place

DOI

10.1002/psp.2581 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The COVID-19 pandemic and residential mobility intentions in the United States: Evidence from Google Trends data