Clashes with police erupt near Iran's capital as protests continue

NEWS WIRES
Thu, 3 November 2022 

© AFP

Iranian protesters clashed with police in a town near the capital on Thursday, reportedly killing or wounding a number of members of the security forces, who at one point dropped stun grenades on the demonstrators from helicopters.

It was the latest in a wave of demonstrations that have convulsed Iran for more than six weeks and mark one of the biggest challenges to the country's clerical rulers since they seized power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The protesters had gathered in Karaj, just outside Tehran, to mark the 40th day since the shooting death of Hadis Najafi, 22, one of several young women to have been killed during the protests. The demonstrations were ignited by the death of another woman held by the country's morality police.

The 40th day after someone's death has great symbolism in Shiite Islam and is marked by public mourning. Commemorating protester deaths has given momentum to the ongoing demonstrations, just as it did during the 1979 revolution that overthrew a Western-backed monarchy.

Videos circulated online showed thousands of protesters in Karaj and clashes with police. In one of them, a helicopter flies over the protesters and drops flash grenades in an attempt to disperse them before landing in the middle of a highway. Government supporters on social media said the helicopter was sent to aid wounded policemen.

The state-run IRNA news agency tweeted that police were attacked in the area and posted a video showing a police pickup truck that had crashed into a concrete barrier on a highway.

(AP)

Iran: Clashes near Tehran amid outrage over killed protester

Several police officers were reportedly injured or killed amid clashes with demonstrators near the capital. The protesters are mourning the death of Hadis Najafi, another young woman who died earlier in the unrest.

Iranians took to the streets in a town near the capital, Tehran, on Thursday amid anger over the death of Hadis Najafi, a young woman who was killed earlier in the demonstrations.
What do we know so far?

The demonstrators convened in Karaj, 40 days after 22-year-old Najafi was reportedly killed by security forces on September 21. The 40-day mourning period has strong significance in Shiite Islam, the majority religion of the Iranian population.

Crowds of people gathered at Najafi's burial site and chanted anti-government slogans.

The demonstrators clashed with security forces, as authorities attempted to crack down on the unrest. At one point, security forces reportedly began dropping stun grenades on the protesters from helicopters.

Several members of the police were injured or killed as a result of clashes with demonstrators in Karaj, according to state media.

The semi-official Tasmim News Agency reported that three officers were seriously injured in the clashes. Another semi-official news outlet, Fars, reported that a member of the security forces was stabbed to death in Karaj.

A similar mourning event occurred near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran, according to Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights. The 40-day mourning ritual, known as "chehelom," could spark a chain reaction of civil unrest if more protesters are killed by the government.

Iran protests: Revolutionary Guard deployed

01:46  https://p.dw.com/p/4J1n3

Protesters pose significant threat to clerical regime

The ongoing demonstrations may pose the most formidable threat to the country's conservative regime since its ascension to power in 1979.

A group of Iranian human rights lawyers both inside the country and abroad condemned Iran's religious rulers in a statement sent to Reuters news agency, saying the crackdown by the regime ultimately lead to its downfall.

"The government is still drowning in illusions and believes it can repress, arrest and kill to silence," the statement said. "But the flood of people will ultimately remove a government because the divine will side with the people. The voice of the people is the voice of God."

The unrest was originally sparked by the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died in police custody on September 16 for allegedly violating the country's mandatory headscarf policy.

Iran has claimed the demonstrations are being orchestrated by outside forces, such as the US, with the West imposing new sanctions on Tehran amid the crackdown.

wd/sms (AP, AFP, Reuters)

Shirin Alizadeh: Iranian woman killed filming crackdown

Driving back home from a holiday, Shirin Alizadeh found herself in the middle of a violent crackdown on a protest in northeastern Iran.


Shirin Alizadeh was in the car with her husband driving when she was shot dead© Handout

"I hope that they don't shoot towards the car," she says as shots resound around the vehicle in the town of Salmanshahr in Mazandaran province on the Caspian Sea, while she films the events on her mobile phone.

Alizadeh, her husband who was driving the car, and two other travel companions saw people being shot dead in the street as they sought to drive back to their home city of Isfahan through the throng of protesters on September 21.

"Film it!" she urges one of the travel companions on the rear seat as a woman appears to lie killed on the roadside.

A ripping sound is then heard, the frame spins around and the footage abruptly stops.

According to Amnesty International, one of the bullets entered the rear window of the car and hit 36-year-old Shirin in the neck and in the head. She died in hospital.

Amnesty has posted the video on its Twitter feed for Iran, while it has already been verified by AFP.

The traditional mourning ceremony that takes place 40-days after the death of a person in Iran should take place on Friday in Isfahan.

But Amnesty says the authorities are now subjecting her family to "harassment and intimidation" in a bid to stop the ceremony from taking place.

The authorities fear it could become a rallying point for the protests that have shaken Iran for the past six weeks since the death of Mahsa Amini who was arrested by the Tehran morality police.

- 'Documenting the violence' -

"The last words you hear her saying are 'film it!'. She (Shirin Alizadeh) cared about documenting the violence," Amnesty's Iran researcher Raha Bahreini told AFP.

"The burial certificate confirmed that she was shot by a bullet," she added.

Bahreini said that night in the city, forces of the Basij paramilitary force were shooting "randomly" from a building at the side of the road on what was the deadliest day so far in the six-week protest wave, except for the bloodletting on September 30 in the southeastern city of Zahedan.

Her husband, who was driving the car, was overcome by trauma that night and has been suffering seizure since. Their seven-year-old son, who was not with them, is traumatised and showing signs of "severe depression", said Bahreini.

She said pressure on the family had begun even in the immediate aftermath of the killing.

"To return the body, the authorities asked the family to sign an undertaking not to speak to the media," said Bahreini.

In the run-up to the 40-day ceremony, the husband and the father have been targeted by threatening telephone calls from the authorities demanding the event be cancelled.

Such events have over the last days become flashpoints of new protests, including the 40-day ceremony for Amini herself.

"The family are very concerned that as they are not cooperating they could fire on the mourners," Bahreini said.

sjw/dv

New protests erupt as Iranians mourn crackdown victims


Stuart WILLIAMS
Thu, November 3, 2022 


Major new protests erupted in Iran on Thursday as people mourned victims of a deadly crackdown by the authorities seeking to quell over six weeks of demonstrations that have shaken its leadership.

Iran has for over six weeks been gripped by protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested by the notorious morality police -- a movement that poses the biggest challenge to the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution.

The clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, has responded with a crackdown that as well as killing dozens has seen 1,000 people charged so far and according to activists risking the death penalty.

With the movement no signs of abating, the problems for the authorities are compounded by the tradition in Iran of holding a "chehelom" mourning ceremony 40 days after a death, meaning each new killing can fuel new protest actions.

A member of Iran's Basij paramilitary force was killed and 10 police officers and a cleric were injured Thursday during clashes in Karaj, west of Tehran, state media said.

Norway-based group Iran Human Rights said large numbers were attending a 40-day ceremony in Karaj mourning the death of Hadis Najafi, a 22-year-old woman activists say was killed by security forces in September.

IHR said police had blocked the highway leading to the cemetery to prevent even larger numbers attending.

"This year is the year of blood, Seyyed Ali (Khamenei) will be toppled," the video showed them chanting.

The 1500tasvir monitoring channel posted pictures from Karaj of a large column of people marching in protest down a highway. It added that security forces had also opened fire on the protesters and posted a video of demonstrators throwing stones at a police vehicle.

Similar mourning ceremonies were held in several other cities including Arak, in central Iran, where IHR said large crowds shouted "freedom!" in memory of protest victim Mehrshad Shahidi.
- 'Show trials' -

The Kurdish rights organisation Hengaw reported a sequence of protests had taken place Wednesday in the Kurdish-populated regions of northwestern Iran where Amini hailed from, including the city of Sanandaj which has become a major protest flashpoint.

It said Momen Zandkarimi, 18-year-old from Sanandaj, was killed by direct fire from Iranian security forces.

Due to the pressure from Iranian security agencies who fear his funeral could turn into a protest, his body has been moved to another village for burial, it added.

Meanwhile, Hengaw said police had arrested the father of Komar Daroftadeh, 16, who it said was shot and killed by government forces in Piranshahr in western Iran. The father Hasan had at his son's funeral bitterly denounced the security forces who he said showed "no mercy".


According to an updated death toll issued Wednesday by IHR, 176 people have been killed in the crackdown on protests sparked by Amini's death.

Another 101 people have lost their lives in a distinct protest wave in Zahedan in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province.

Of all those killed, 40 were under 18 years of age, it added.

Thousands have been arrested nationwide, rights activists say, while Iran's judiciary has said 1,000 people had already been charged over what it describes as "riots".

The trial of five men charged with offences that can carry the death penalty over the protests opened Saturday in Tehran.

"The charges and sentences have no legal validity and their sole purpose is to commit more violence and create societal fear," said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, condemning the "show trials".
- 'Under duress' -

Activists condemned as a forced confession a video published by state-run Iranian media of Toomaj Salehi, a prominent rapper arrested at the weekend after backing the protests, in which a blindfolded man saying he is Salehi admits to making "a mistake".

Freedom of expression group Article 19 said it was "extremely disturbed Iran state media are sharing forced confessions" with the subject "under clear duress".

At least 51 journalists have been detained in the protest crackdown, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Fourteen are confirmed to have been released on bail.

Journalist Yaghma Fashkhami became the latest prominent figure to be arrested, his wife Mona Moafi wrote on Twitter.

There is also growing concern over the wellbeing of Wall Street Journal contributor and freedom of expression campaigner Hassan Ronaghi, who was arrested in September and according to his family is on hunger strike with two broken legs sustained in custody.

Citing Saudi and US officials, The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that Saudi Arabia had shared intelligence with the United States warning of an imminent attack from Iran on targets in the kingdom in a bid to divert attention from the protests.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said his country's "policy is based on mutual respect and international principles" and that it "continues its policy of good neighbourliness".

sjw/dv

New international research reveals majority of gig economy workers feel under threat from review websites

Online review platforms leave freelancers in fear of their future income

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

As the cost of living crisis worsens, scores of workers in the gig economy globally are grappling with another threat to their hard-earned wages – the double-edged sword of online reviews. New research has exposed how tech companies are compounding the problem, leaving scores of workers in fear of their future income.

The study, led by researchers from the University of Bristol and University of Oxford, analysed the reputation systems of some the biggest gig economy platforms, such as Upwork and Fiverr, which use customer feedback to produce ratings. It found the algorithms – processes used to rank workers according to performance metrics – lack transparency and are highly volatile, leaving workers vulnerable to capricious and malicious customers.

Findings revealed most – seven in 10 – gig economy freelancers working remotely from across the world for some of the biggest online platforms, providing services ranging from data entry to website design, were worried about clients providing unfair feedback and negatively affecting their future earnings.

Lead author sociologist Dr Alex Wood, Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Future of Work at Bristol, said: “It was shocking how workers expressed continuous worry about the potential consequences of receiving a single bad rating from an unfair or malevolent client, and how this could leave them unable to continue making a living.”

The situation is creating a growing trend of ‘reputational insecurity’ in the workforce, where self-employed contract workers are experiencing greater instability and concern about future access to work.

Unlike traditional references and personal recommendations, gig economy platforms rely on algorithmic systems that score and rank workers according to customer-generated online ratings. Special categories, such as ‘Rising star’ and ‘Top rated’, are created to allegedly denote high-quality and trustworthy workers. But the study found the algorithms are opaque and unstable, leaving workers anxious about how they will be rated by potentially malicious customer ratings.

The fleeting nature of reviews also means some workers have been resorting to put in extra hours unpaid or even doing entire jobs for free in a desperate bid to avoid negative ratings. This finding emerged from qualitative interviews carried out by the researchers in international cities, including London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Manila. The researchers also analysed surveys of nearly 900 gig economy workers from the UK and Europe. Around seven in 10 (67%) of the 436 UK workers agreed ‘reputational insecurity’ is widespread while 62% of the 430 from Europe felt this was true.

Dr Wood said: “We discovered some workers continued to make free revisions for clients to help ensure their satisfaction and favourable feedback. Others cancelled the contract and provided their work for free if they felt the customer was unhappy and might leave a harmful rating.”

The study, published today in Sociology, found the companies operated without checks and balances to verify the ratings and effective processes to seek redress and corrections were also lacking.

Study co-author Vili Lehdonvirta, Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research from the University of Oxford, said: “This study is important as tech companies continue to rewire the social fabric of our lives and platform rating and reputation systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous beyond the gig economy. Therefore, countering these processes of reputational insecurity will not only be an important policy endeavour for improving gig work but also the wider platform economy.”

A recent national The Understanding Society survey indicated there are approximately 600,000 gig economy workers in the UK, who have used a website, platform or app to make money and around a third are remote online workers.

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JOURNAL

Sociology

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

'Platforms disrupting reputation: precarity and recognition struggles in the remote gig economy'

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Nov-2022

Traumatized communities

How can we effectively address and treat the severe trauma that people are experiencing due to the wars in Europe and around the world? The NETfacts therapy system targets the whole community where the trauma occurred – a research project of the University

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF KONSTANZ

 

IMAGE: AMANI CHIBASHIMBA AFTER A NETFACTS SESSION IN WHICH VILLAGERS CREATED THEIR COMMUNITY'S "LIFELINE". AMANI CHIBASHIMBA NOW HEADS THE FOLLOW-UP PROJECT, IN WHICH SEVERAL THOUSAND PEOPLE BENEFIT FROM NET AND NETFACTS EVERY MONTH. view more 

CREDIT: KATY ROBJANT

War and violence have a psychological impact on everyone involved. Victims of organized, sexual, and domestic violence are scarred by these traumas for the rest of their lives. For many of them it is difficult to live a normal life afterwards. Current wars in Europe and around the world make the effective treatment of trauma all the more important.

About 15 years ago, the trauma researchers Maggie Schauer, Frank Neuner and Thomas Elbert from Konstanz developed Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): a successful form of therapy for severe trauma, which can be implemented in crisis areas. NET supports the affected persons in naming the traumatic experience, contextualizing it in terms of a time period in a particular location, processing the emotions and integrating the event into the overall biography. At the same time, the person and their biography are treated with dignity.

From NET to NETfacts
Based on Narrative Exposure Therapy, a team of psychologists and conflict researchers from the University of Konstanz has now developed the therapy system NETfacts in cooperation with the aid organization "vivo international". Complementing Narrative Exposure Therapy, which focuses on the individual, NETfacts involves the community in which the traumatic event took place.

But why is it important to include the social environment? "Often, the victims are blamed. Even subtle stigmatization of the victims makes them feel worse and blocks them from coming to terms with their trauma," describes Anke Köbach, a psychologist from Konstanz who, together with Katy Robjant from "vivo international", was instrumental in developing the NETfacts system.

One example of such stigmatization is rape myths, which are attempts to trivialize sexual violence or blame the victim. "Keeping silent about the violence you have experienced, not acknowledging the horror, only leads to more violence," Köbach says. "We need the social environment in order to change the norms and acknowledge victims' histories. This is why NETfacts targets the community. "

Applying NETfacts
NETfacts combines individual treatment with a collective process. All individuals in the community are first screened for signs of posttraumatic stress disorder or significant aggressive behaviour. Affected individuals are each offered treatment with Narrative Exposure Therapy.

At the same time, the community members work through the history of their shared traumatic events – for example, a (para)military raid of their village – from different perspectives. Using symbolic objects such as flowers and stones (for positive and negative experiences), they visualize the community's "lifeline" and develop a unified understanding with a focus on the traumatic events.

In combination with the detailed NET trauma narratives, this sheds light on the events and makes them explicitly visible; the "collective memory" of the community is supplemented with the personal experiences of its members. On the one hand, this helps everyone in the community to come to terms with the traumatic event and acknowledge it as part of the community's history. On the other hand, it challenges harmful narratives such as stigmatization and rape myths.

Field study and results
In a field study with a total of 1,066 persons, NETfacts was used in six war-ridden communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and compared with results from the classic NET programme. The study was recently published in the renowned scientific journal PNAS (one of the most cited scientific journals, published by the National Academy of Sciences, USA). The results show: Both NET and NETfacts were able to significantly reduce the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression in all cases. "In addition to this, after NETfacts, rape myths and other stigmatizations of victims were accepted much less", Anke Köbach summarizes. "The most important finding of our study is that as these norms change, violence decreases – both emotional and physical violence."

 

 

Key facts: Original publication: Katy Robjant, Sabine Schmitt, Samuel Carleial, Thomas Elbert, Liliana Abreu, Amani Chibashimba, Harald Hinkel, Anke Hoeffler, Anja C. Rukundo Zeller, Brigitte Rockstroh, Anke Koebach: NETfacts – an integrated intervention at the individual and collective level to treat communities affected by organized violence, published in PNAS, October 2022 Study on the effectiveness of NETfacts in comparison to Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) Conducted in six communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (total 1,066 participants, average age 36, 51 percent (NETfacts) and 53 percent (NET) women.

Note to editors:

You can download images here:

Photo 1: https://www.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/pi/fileserver/2022/Traumatisierte_Gemeinschaften_1.jpg

Caption: Amani Chibashimba after a NETfacts session in which villagers created their community's "lifeline." Amani Chibashimba now heads the follow-up project, in which several thousand people benefit from NET and NETfacts every month.
Image: Katy Robjant

 

Photo 2: https://www.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/pi/fileserver/2022/Traumatisierte_Gemeinschaften_2.jpg

Caption 2: Psychologist Sabine Schmitt (right), member of the study team, in conversation with interviewers who conduct the meetings with the village community.

Image: Amani Chibashimba

 

Contact:

University of Konstanz

Communications and Marketing

Phone: + 49 7531 88-3603

Email: kum@uni-konstanz.de

 

- uni.kn/en

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2204698119 

ARTICLE TITLE

NETfacts – an integrated intervention at the individual and collective level to treat communities affected by organized violence

A new tool for estimating people’s total exposure to potentially harmful chemicals is developed by Mount Sinai researchers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL / MOUNT SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

New York, NY (November 2, 2022) – A novel metric that estimates our “burden,” or cumulative exposure, to a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals that we encounter in everyday life with potentially adverse health impacts, has been created by a team of researchers at Mount Sinai.

In a paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the team reported that its sophisticated tool could have distinct advantages for epidemiologists and researchers who routinely measure exposure levels to this class of chemicals, known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which have been associated with high cholesterol, liver damage, thyroid disease, and hormone disorders.

“There are few existing methods to quantify total exposure burden of individuals to mixtures of PFAS chemicals that are found in our everyday lives,” says lead author Shelley Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Center for Biostatistics, Department of Population Health Science and Policy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “For the first time we’ve developed a PFAS burden calculator that takes into account patterns of exposure to many chemicals within the PFAS family, and not just individual chemical concentrations which current methods are focused on. As a result, this robust tool could be extremely useful for biomonitoring by regulatory agencies, and for disease and health risk assessment.”

PFAS is a class of more than 5,000 chemicals whose fluorine-carbon bond gives them the ability to repel oil and water. That construct has made them an integral part of a growing number of industrial applications and consumer products in recent decades, such as stain and water repellents, Teflon nonstick pans, paints, cleaners, and food packaging. Moreover, PFAS chemicals do not disintegrate in the environment or in our bodies. Instead, they accumulate in our surroundings and in our blood, kidneys, and liver, as underscored by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study in 2007 that found PFAS could be detected in the blood of 98 percent of the U.S. population.

Mount Sinai researchers used national biomonitoring data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to develop their exposure burden score using item response theory. Item response theory was developed in the educational testing literature to score standardized tests, and Mount Sinai researchers are the first to use it in environmental epidemiology to develop an exposure burden score, highlighted by this transdisciplinary investigation. Specifically, they used serum concentrations from eight common PFAS chemicals taken from adults and children. By combining a participant’s core biomarker concentrations with their much broader “exposure pattern,” that is, their relative exposure to other PFAS biomarkers within the entire chemical class, researchers were able to estimate a cumulative or summary PFAS exposure burden. This statistical methodology can be accessed by other researchers and epidemiologists by simply plugging their data sets into the PFAS burden calculator, which is available online.

The benefits are significant. “We found our method enables comparisons of exposure burden to chemical mixtures across studies even if they do not measure the same set of chemicals, which supports harmonization across studies and consortia,” explains Dr. Liu, whose research is heavily focused on environmental health through latent variable modeling and longitudinal data analysis. Moreover, the calculator offers a straightforward way to include exposure biomarkers with low detection frequencies, and to reduce exposure measurement errors by considering both a participant’s concentrations and their exposure patterns to estimate exposure burden to chemical mixtures.

“By capturing individual biomarker variability, we’re essentially holding the exposure metric constant so it can be used for a variety of applications,” says Dr. Liu. “These could include, for example, looking across populations to determine if there are differences in exposure burden across racial/ethnic or socioeconomic strata, or if exposure burdens are the same between people in the United States or Canada. Or looking across physiological systems and health outcomes—such as cardiometabolic, hormonal, and immune—to see which are most perturbed by exposure to PFAS chemicals. This range of applications takes us well beyond anything currently available to the field of population health.” 

Other co-authors in the study were from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Department of Psychology at Fordham University, and the Stroud Center at Columbia University. Dr. Liu’s research is supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K25HD104918) and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R03ES033374).

 

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals, receiving high "Honor Roll" status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: It is consistently ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools," aligned with a U.S. News & World Report "Honor Roll" Hospital, and top 20 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding and top 5 in the nation for numerous basic and clinical research areas. Newsweek’s “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 20 globally.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Health Perspectives

Water for drinking? Nope, water for batteries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

POHANG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (POSTECH)

 

IMAGE: SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM OF AN AQUEOUS ZINC BATTERY STABILIZED BY A PROTECTIVE POLYMER LAYER view more 

CREDIT: POSTECH

Can we survive three minutes without air or three days without water? How about without batteries? Imagine not having a battery for three hours. Lightweight, high-capacity lithium-ion batteries are widely used in mobile phones, laptops, and other necessities in today’s world. However, the organic electrolytes in conventional lithium-ion batteries are highly flammable, leading to fatal fires or explosions. As lithium-ion batteries are widely used in our lives, such accidents can cause direct damage to users, which has led to a demand for a safer battery system.

 

Professor Soojin Park and Gyujin Song (Post-doc fellow) in the Department of Chemistry and PhD candidate Sangyeop Lee of the Division of Advanced Materials Science at POSTECH together developed a stable aqueous zinc-ion battery that uses water as an electrolyte. They employed a protective polymer layer to prevent electrode corrosion and increase the stability of the zinc anode, improving the electrochemical stability of the aqueous zinc-ion battery.

 

The organic-solvent-based electrolyte, which serves as a medium for ions to move inside the typical battery system, is inherently flammable, posing risk of explosion or fire. To address this issue, aqueous electrolyte batteries are being developed as promising replacements. However, the inferior reversibility of the zinc anode in aqueous electrolytes, which are caused by zinc dendrites and surface side reactions, has prevented zinc-ion batteries from being used.

 

The POSTECH research team developed a zinc anode coated with a multifunctional protective layer by using a block copolymer. This new polymer layer is elastic and stretchable, enduring volume expansion during battery charging and discharging.

 

The polymer protective layer is found to induce homogenized ion distribution and suppress dendritic growth, contributing to a long-term zinc anode lifespan. The thin film layer also improves the electrode stability by suppressing unnecessary chemical/electrochemical reactions in the electrolyte on the electrode surface.

 

Furthermore, the researchers revealed the movement of zinc ions in the coating layer by using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) analysis. Imaging the zinc ion movements, which was not successful in previous studies, promises further research on the surface properties of battery anodes.

 

Recently published in Cell Reports Physical Science, this study was supported by Nano·Material Technology Development Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea.

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JOURNAL

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.101070 

ARTICLE TITLE

Ion-selective and chemical-protective elastic block copolymer interphase for durable zinc metal anode

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Oct-2022

NCCN working with Medlive to advance high-quality cancer care in China and worldwide

United States-based National Comprehensive Cancer Network enters strategic cooperation agreement with Chinese medical information website to publish and translate evidence-based expert consensus guidelines for cancer care now available at nccnchina.org.cn

Business Announcement

NATIONAL COMPREHENSIVE CANCER NETWORK

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA, UNITED STATES [November 2, 2022] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®)—an alliance of leading cancer centers in the United States—is announcing a new collaboration with Medlive to share NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) in China at nccnchina.org.cn. NCCN Guidelines® are the recognized standard for clinical direction and policy in cancer management and the most thorough and frequently-updated clinical practice guidelines available in any area of medicine.

The current library of 84 evidence-based, expert consensus practice guidelines cover 97% of cancer cases affecting patients—with specific treatment recommendations for nearly every type of cancer, plus supportive care and prevention—and are updated at least once-a-year. There are also 65 patient-focused versions of the guidelines for patients and caregivers. All are now available at quicker in-country download speeds with a one-step registration process, also via guide.medlive.cn/NCCN on computer or the Medlive APP on smartphone. These resources will also be translated into Chinese in the future.

“We are committed to making sure providers and patients have access to the most up-to-date standards in cancer care around the world,” said Robert W. Carlson, MD, Chief Executive Officer, NCCN. “At NCCN, we believe that everyone worldwide should benefit from the rapidly expanding knowledge on how to treat cancer most effectively; and we work tirelessly to make that happen. We are proud to collaborate with Medlive on this important project.”

Although NCCN is a U.S.-based organization, NCCN resources are accessed and utilized throughout the world. Nearly half of the 1.5 million registered users viewing NCCN Guidelines at NCCN.org or via the Virtual Library of NCCN Guidelines® app are located outside of the U.S. China is currently the third-highest country for clinical practice guideline downloads, with more than 400,000 per year. This new in-country platform for guidelines is expected to increase that number significantly.

“We are happy to introduce a new home for NCCN resources in China here on our Medlive platform, providing doctors with faster access to NCCN Guidelines,” said Tian Lixin, President, Medlive. “This collaboration will help oncologists in China to reference the widely-recognized NCCN Guidelines, so all patients can receive high-quality, effective, and efficient treatment according to the latest evidence-based expert consensus standards.”

“Both NCCN and Medlive recognize the importance of collaboration and mutual learning,” said Xin Jiangtao, Vice President, Medlive. “We are pleased to use this platform for knowledge sharing between oncology circles in Asia and the United States, ultimately improving care for patients everywhere.”

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500 million year-old fossils reveal answer to evolutionary riddle

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

 

IMAGE: CAPTION: ARTIST'S RECONSTRUCTION OF GANGTOUCUNIA ASPERA AS IT WOULD HAVE APPEARED IN LIFE ON THE CAMBRIAN SEAFLOOR, CIRCA 514 MILLION YEARS AGO. THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE FOREGROUND HAS PART OF THE SKELETON REMOVED TO SHOW THE SOFT POLYP INSIDE THE SKELETON. RECONSTRUCTION BY XIAODONG WANG. view more 

CREDIT: RECONSTRUCTION BY XIAODONG WANG.

An exceptionally well-preserved collection of fossils discovered in eastern Yunnan Province, China, has enabled scientists to solve a centuries-old riddle in the evolution of life on earth, revealing what the first animals to make skeletons looked like. The results have been published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The first animals to build hard and robust skeletons appear suddenly in the fossil record in a geological blink of an eye around 550-520 million years ago during an event called the Cambrian Explosion. Many of these early fossils are simple hollow tubes ranging from a few millimetres to many centimetres in length. However, what sort of animals made these skeletons was almost completely unknown, because they lack preservation of the soft parts needed to identify them as belonging to major groups of animals that are still alive today.

The new collection of 514 million year old fossils includes four specimens of Gangtoucunia aspera with soft tissues still intact, including the gut and mouthparts. These reveal that this species had a mouth fringed with a ring of smooth, unbranched tentacles about 5 mm long. It’s likely that these were used to sting and capture prey, such as small arthropods. The fossils also show that Gangtoucunia had a blind-ended gut (open only at one end), partitioned into internal cavities, that filled the length of the tube.

These are features found today only in modern jellyfish, anemones and their close relatives (known as cnidarians), organisms whose soft parts are extremely rare in the fossil record. The study shows that these simple animals was among the first to build the hard skeletons that make up much of the known fossil record. 

According to the researchers, Gangtoucunia would have looked similar to modern scyphozoan jellyfish polyps, with a hard tubular structure anchored to the underlying substrate. The tentacle mouth would have extended outside the tube, but could have been retracted inside the tube to avoid predators. Unlike living jellyfish polyps however, the tube of Gangtoucunia was made of calcium phosphate, a hard mineral that makes up our own teeth and bones. Use of this material to build skeletons has become more rare among animals over time.

Corresponding author Dr Luke Parry, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, said: ‘This really is a one-in-million discovery. These mysterious tubes are often found in groups of hundreds of individuals, but until now they have been regarded as ‘problematic’ fossils, because we had no way of classifying them. Thanks to these extraordinary new specimens, a key piece of the evolutionary puzzle has been put firmly in place.’

The new specimens clearly demonstrate that Gangtoucunia was not related to annelid worms (earthworms, polychaetes and their relatives) as had been previously suggested for similar fossils. It is now clear that Gangtoucunia’s body had a smooth exterior and a gut partitioned longitudinally, whereas annelids have segmented bodies with transverse partitioning of the body.

The fossil was found at a site in the Gaoloufang section in Kunming, eastern Yunnan Province, China. Here, anaerobic (oxygen-poor) conditions limit the presence of bacteria that normally degrade soft tissues in fossils.

PhD student Guangxu Zhang, who collected and discovered the specimens, said: ‘The first time I discovered the pink soft tissue on top of a Gangtoucunia tube, I was surprised and confused about what they were. In the following month, I found three more specimens with soft tissue preservation, which was very exciting and made me rethink the affinity of Gangtoucunia. The soft tissue of Gangtoucunia, particularly the tentacles, reveals that it is certainly not a priapulid-like worm as previous studies suggested, but more like a coral, and then I realised that it is a cnidarian.’

Although the fossil clearly shows that Gangtoucunia was a primitive jellyfish, this doesn’t rule out the possibility that other early tube-fossil species looked very different. From Cambrian rocks in Yunnan province, the research team have previously found well-preserved tube fossils that could be identified as priapulids (marine worms), lobopodians (worms with paired legs, closely related to arthropods today) and annelids.

Co-corresponding author Xiaoya Ma (Yunnan University and University of Exeter) said: ‘A tubicolous mode of life seems to have become increasingly common in the Cambrian, which might be an adaptive response to increasing predation pressure in the early Cambrian. This study demonstrates that exceptional soft-tissue preservation is crucial for us to understand these ancient animals.’

Caption: Fossil specimen (left) and diagram (right) of Gangtoucunia aspera preserving soft tissues, including the gut and tentacle. 

Close up photograph of the mouth region of Gangtoucunia aspera showing the tentacles that would have been used to capture prey.

Fossil specimen of Gangtoucunia aspera preserving soft tissues, including the gut and tentacles (left and middle). The drawing at the right illustrates the visible anatomical features in the fossil specimens. 

CREDIT

Luke Parry and Guangxu Zhang.

Notes:

For media enquiries contact Dr Caroline Wood, University of Oxford: caroline.wood@admin.ox.ac.uk

Images of the fossils and an artistic reconstruction of a living Gangtoucunia aspera are available at the following file: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10NTzaKWMbQa_iP1LQgzO3Vos2mFVQHeN?usp=sharing Images can be used if credited.

The paper ‘Exceptional soft tissue preservation reveals a cnidarian affinity for a Cambrian phosphatic tubicolous enigma’ will be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on 2 November at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1623.To view the manuscript before this, contact Dr Caroline Wood, University of Oxford: caroline.wood@admin.ox.ac.uk

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.1623 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Exceptional soft tissue preservation reveals a cnidarian affinity for a Cambrian phosphatic tubicolous enigma

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Nov-2022