Starbucks workers strike at more than 100 US stores

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

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People chant and hold signs in front of a Starbucks in New York, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022. Starbucks workers at more than 100 U.S. stores say they're going on strike Thursday in what would be the largest labor action since a campaign to unionize the company's stores began late last year. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Starbucks workers at more than 100 U.S. stores are on strike Thursday in their largest labor action since a campaign to unionize the company’s stores began late last year.

The walkouts coincide with Starbucks’ annual Red Cup Day, when the company gives free reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink. Workers say it’s often one of the busiest days of the year. Starbucks declined to say how many red cups it plans to distribute.

Workers say they’re seeking better pay, more consistent schedules and higher staffing levels in busy stores. Stores in 25 states planned to take part in the labor action, according to Starbucks Workers United, the group organizing the effort. Strikers are handing out their own red cups with union logos.

Starbucks, which opposes the unionization effort, said it is aware of the walkouts and respects its employees’ right to lawfully protest. The Seattle company noted that the protests are happening at a small number of its 9,000 company-run U.S. locations.

“We remain committed to all partners and will continue to work together, side-by-side, to make Starbucks a company that works for everyone,” the company said Thursday in a statement.

Some workers planned to picket all day while others will do shorter walkouts. The union said the goal is to shut stores down during the strikes, and noted that the company usually has difficulty staffing during Red Cup Day because it’s so busy.

Willow Montana, a shift manager at a Starbucks store in Brighton, Massachusetts, planned to strike because Starbucks hasn’t begun bargaining with the store despite a successful union vote in April.

“If the company won’t bargain in good faith, why should we come to work where we are understaffed, underpaid and overworked?” Montana said.

Others, including Michelle Eisen, a union organizer at one of the first stores to organize in Buffalo, New York, said workers are angry that Starbucks promised higher pay and benefits to non-union stores. Starbucks says it is following the law and can’t give union stores pay hikes without bargaining.

At least 257 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late last year, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Fifty-seven stores have held votes where workers opted not to unionize.

Starbucks and the union have begun contract talks at 53 stores, with 13 additional sessions scheduled, Starbucks Workers United said. No agreements have been reached so far.

The process has been contentious. Earlier this week, a regional director with the NLRB filed a request for an injunction against Starbucks in federal court, saying the company violated labor law when it fired a union organizer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The regional director asked the court to direct Starbucks to reinstate the employee and stop interfering in the unionization campaign nationwide.

It was the fourth time the NLRB has asked a federal court to intervene. In August, a federal judge ruled that Starbucks had to reinstate seven union organizers who were fired in Memphis, Tennessee. A similar case in Buffalo has yet to be decided, while a federal judge ruled against the NLRB in a case in Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Starbucks has asked the NLRB to temporarily suspend all union elections at its U.S. stores, citing allegations from a board employee that regional officials improperly coordinated with union organizers. A decision in that case is pending

HISTORIC

NLRB requests 'nationwide cease and desist order' to stop union-busting at Starbucks

Kenny Stancil,

 Common Dreams
November 16, 2022

Workers at the Willow Lawn Starbucks in Richmond, Virginia show their support for unionization. The store's employees voted 19-0 to form a union on April 19, 2022. 

(Photo: @_devinonearth/Twitter)

The National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday asked a federal court in Michigan for a "nationwide cease and desist order" prohibiting Starbucks from firing workers for union organizing.

Federal prosecutors also asked the court to reinstate and reimburse a pro-union worker who was fired from one of the coffee giant's Ann Arbor stores and to require a high-ranking Starbucks official to publicly inform the store's employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act to pursue representation and collectively bargain for better conditions without fear of retaliation.

As Law360 reported:

Starbucks managers fired Hannah Whitbeck on April 11, days after Michigan news outlet MLive published an article about Starbucks workers' nationwide organizing campaign that quoted Whitbeck multiple times, according to the preliminary injunction motion filed by NLRB Region 7 prosecutors.

The firing also came months after Whitbeck reached out to Workers United—the union behind the organizing push—wore a button bearing the union's name to work, spoke to co-workers about the campaign, and posted about her support for discharged Starbucks employees in Memphis, Tennessee, the filing said.

The same day Whitbeck was fired, Workers United filed an unfair labor practice charge against Starbucks to challenge the move. The NLRB's general counsel later consolidated the case with another unfair labor practice charge against the company, and on October 7, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter found Starbucks unlawfully fired Whitbeck for participating in union activity.

Employees at the Starbucks location that discharged Whitbeck voted to be represented by Workers United on June 15, but after Whitbeck and other employees left, the union had trouble finding out who the new employees were, prosecutors said.

"Starbucks will achieve its unlawful goals of purging the Ann Arbor store of the union's leadership and crushing employee activism in Michigan and nationwide," the prosecutors wrote. "In the process, Starbucks will irreparably harm the statutory rights of its employees, frustrating the board's remedial power, and thwarting the intent of Congress."


In a Tuesday statement, NLRB Region 7 Director Elizabeth Kerwin said, "We are asking the court to swiftly grant the injunction so that the employee Starbucks unlawfully fired can return to work and all Starbucks employees nationally can effectively exercise their right to engage in union activities."

The new petition marks the fourth time this year that the NLRB has sought a preliminary injunction against Starbucks. Prosecutors previously asked courts to mandate that the corporation rehire pro-union workers who were terminated from stores in Memphis, Phoenix, and Buffalo, and halt unfair labor practices.

But as VICE reported Wednesday, "[R]equesting a national prohibition on firing employees for supporting union efforts marks a significant escalation in the labor board's attempts to rein in Starbucks' alleged union-busting."


Starbucks Workers United called the request for a nationwide injunction a "huge victory for workers."

According to the union, the coffee chain has illegally terminated more than 150 workers in retaliation for organizing.
Starbucks "has repeatedly and consistently denied those claims," VICE noted, but "a former Starbucks manager in the Buffalo area testified under oath in August that he was encouraged by higher-ups to scrutinize the record of a longtime pro-union employee to find 'something in there we can use against her,' and to ensure a manager was always working and able to discourage employees from talking about the union."

A federal judge in Tennessee recently ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven pro-union baristas who were fired in Memphis. That ruling came several weeks after an Arizona judge dismissed the NLRB's request for injunctive relief in Phoenix. In Buffalo, meanwhile, litigation has been paused since last month, when a New York judge permitted Workers United to appeal his contentious ruling allowing Starbucks to subpoena the union and employees.

The NLRB has also accused Starbucks of unlawfully withholding raises and benefits from thousands of workers at unionized and unionizing shops in an effort to repress a nationwide organizing campaign. In addition, the company has completely shut down some unionized shops, including as recently as Tuesday in Portland, Maine.

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) blasted Starbucks for "blatantly union-busting at one of the busiest stores in my district." Describing the move as "despicable," Pingree called for a "full NLRB investigation now."

Baristas at 264 of the coffee giant's roughly 9,000 locations have voted to join Workers United since December, when an initial victory was claimed in Buffalo. Fewer than 60 stores have lost an election.

But interim CEO Howard Schultz has openly refused to work in good faith with the union and largely prevented collective bargaining from moving forward. Of the 264 shops that have voted to unionize in 36 states since late 2021, just three started contract negotiations with Starbucks prior to October, though more meetings were expected to start last month.

The NLRB has issued dozens of formal complaints against Starbucks in the past year, encompassing hundreds of allegations of labor law violations.

Earlier this year, House Labor Caucus co-chair Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) said that "Starbucks—a multi-billion dollar corporation—is squeezing its workers to stop them from exercising their legally protected rights."


"This is worker intimidation at its worst," he added. "We must pass the No Tax Breaks for Union Busting Act and fully fund the NLRB."

Global luxury sales set to hit record this year, study says

By COLLEEN BARRY

November 15, 2022

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A model displays the collection by Russian designer Slava Zaitsev during the opening of the Fashion Week in at Zaryadye Park with the Spasskaya Tower and St. Basil's Cathedral in the background near Red Square in Moscow, Russia, on June 20, 2022. Luxury spending is growing faster than ever, fueled by pent-up pandemic demand and shifting demographics as younger, more diverse consumers buy into tiny handbag and post-streetwear trends, according to a new study by Bain consultancy released on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. The disappearance of the Russian market, representing 2% of sales before the war, due to sanctions imposed after the Ukraine invasion has had "almost zero impact,'' Bain said. (AP Photo, File)

MILAN (AP) — Luxury spending is growing faster than ever, fueled by pent-up pandemic demand and shifting demographics as younger, more diverse consumers buy into tiny handbag and post-streetwear trends, according to a study released Tuesday.

Global sales of personal luxury goods including leather accessories, apparel, footwear, jewelry and watches are expected to grow by 22% this year, to 353 billion euros ($367 billion) from 290 billion euros in 2021, according to the Bain consultancy study commissioned by Italy’s Altagamma association of high-end producers.

“Consumption is back at pre-crisis levels, but it is also a rebirth, since there is a new consumer base that is younger, and some pockets of consumers that have been unlocked during COVID are here to stay and growing, like subcultures and ethnic groups in the U.S.,” said Bain partner Claudia D’Arpizio, a study co-author.

The record growth comes after the sharp 2021 recovery from the global pandemic lockdowns, creating a strong trajectory despite the specter of recession next year blamed on higher raw material and energy prices. Bain predicts the sector will expand to between 550 billion euros and 570 billion euros in the next five years.

D’Arpizio cautioned that the sector is not recession-proof but is more resilient than it was in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, when luxury sales tanked.

Factors that have made the luxury industry more resilient include the enlarged customer base, as well as stronger relationships between the brands and consumers developed both through social media and an elevated focus on the in-store shopping experience in branded stores.

Mature markets in the United States and Europe are the strongest performers, each growing by about a quarter. U.S. sales are projected to hit 113 billion euros this year, while Europe is the globe’s second-largest market at 94 billion euros in sales.

The disappearance of the Russian market after the invasion of Ukraine led to Western sanctions has had “almost zero impact,” Bain said. The market represented 2% of sales before the war.

Chinese consumers are strong drivers despite the impact of ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns, but their overall weight has been reduced by the emergence of strong new markets, including South Korea and Mexico, D’Arpizio said.

While Bain previously predicted that Chinese shoppers would represent half of all luxury consumers by the middle of this decade, the new study puts them at around 40% by 2030.

The average age of luxury shoppers also is dropping, with half of all purchases by people in their mid-20s to early 40s, while up-and-coming Gen Z, now in their teens to mid-20s, account for nearly 20% of luxury sales.

Trends like the mini-handbags, that can carry little more than a credit card or lipstick, are made for young consumers, D’Arpizio said, creating brand affinity at a lower price-point while allowing brands to cap their average prices amid booming inflation.

The tiny bags replace former entry-level purchases like wallets and key chains, with something that “is more visible,” D’Arpizio said.

Powerful linear accelerator begins smashing atoms – 2 scientists on the team explain how it could reveal rare forms of matter

The Conversation
November 15, 2022

A new particle accelerator at Michigan State University is set to discover thousands of never-before-seen isotopes. Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, CC BY-ND

Just a few hundred feet from where we are sitting is a large metal chamber devoid of air and draped with the wires needed to control the instruments inside. A beam of particles passes through the interior of the chamber silently at around half the speed of light until it smashes into a solid piece of material, resulting in a burst of rare isotopes.

This is all taking place in the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, which is operated by Michigan State University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Starting in May 2022, national and international teams of scientists converged at Michigan State University and began running scientific experiments at FRIB with the goal of creating, isolating and studying new isotopes. The experiments promised to provide new insights into the fundamental nature of the universe.

We are two professors in nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics who study rare isotopes. Isotopes are, in a sense, different flavors of an element with the same number of protons in their nucleus but different numbers of neutrons.

The accelerator at FRIB started working at low power, but when it finishes ramping up to full strength, it will be the most powerful heavy-ion accelerator on Earth. By accelerating heavy ions – electrically charged atoms of elements – FRIB will allow scientists like us to create and study thousands of never-before-seen isotopes. A community of roughly 1,600 nuclear scientists from all over the world has been waiting for a decade to begin doing science enabled by the new particle accelerator.

The first experiments at FRIB were completed over the summer of 2022. Even though the facility is currently running at only a fraction of its full power, multiple scientific collaborations working at FRIB have already produced and detected about 100 rare isotopes. These early results are helping researchers learn about some of the rarest physics in the universe.


Rare isotopes are radioactive and decay over time as they emit radiation – visible here as the streaks coming from the small piece of uranium in the center.


What is a rare isotope?

It takes incredibly high amounts of energy to produce most isotopes. In nature, heavy rare isotopes are produced during the cataclysmic deaths of massive stars called supernovas or during the merging of two neutron stars.

To the naked eye, two isotopes of any element look and behave the same way – all isotopes of the element mercury would look just like the liquid metal used in old thermometers. However, because the nuclei of isotopes of the same element have different numbers of neutrons, they differ in how long they live, what type of radioactivity they emit and in many other ways.

For example, some isotopes are stable and do not decay or emit radiation, so they are common in the universe. Other isotopes of the very same element can be radioactive so they inevitably decay away as they turn into other elements. Since radioactive isotopes disappear over time, they are relatively rarer.

Not all decay happens at the same rate though. Some radioactive elements – like potassium-40 – emit particles through decay at such a low rate that a small amount of the isotope can last for billions of years. Other, more highly radioactive isotopes like magnesium-38 exist for only a fraction of a second before decaying away into other elements. Short-lived isotopes, by definition, do not survive long and are rare in the universe. So if you want to study them, you have to make them yourself.


The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams was designed to allow researchers to create rare isotopes and measure them before they decay.

Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, CC BY-ND

Creating isotopes in a lab


While only about 250 isotopes naturally occur on Earth, theoretical models predict that about 7,000 isotopes should exist in nature. Scientists have used particle accelerators to produce around 3,000 of these rare isotopes.


The green-colored chambers use electromagnetic waves to accelerate charged ions to nearly half the speed of light.
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, CC BY-ND

The FRIB accelerator is 1,600 feet long and made of three segments folded in roughly the shape of a paperclip. Within these segments are numerous, extremely cold vacuum chambers that alternatively pull and push the ions using powerful electromagnetic pulses. FRIB can accelerate any naturally occurring isotope – whether it is as light as oxygen or as heavy as uranium – to approximately half the speed of light.

To create radioactive isotopes, you only need to smash this beam of ions into a solid target like a piece of beryllium metal or a rotating disk of carbon.



There are many different instruments designed to measure specific attributes of the particles created during experiments at FRIB – like this instrument called FDSi, which is built to measure charged particles, neutrons and photons.
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, CC BY-ND

The impact of the ion beam on the fragmentation target breaks the nucleus of the stable isotope apart and produces many hundreds of rare isotopes simultaneously. To isolate the interesting or new isotopes from the rest, a separator sits between the target and the sensors. Particles with the right momentum and electrical charge will be passed through the separator while the rest are absorbed. Only a subset of the desired isotopes will reach the many instruments built to observe the nature of the particles.

The probability of creating any specific isotope during a single collision can be very small. The odds of creating some of the rarer exotic isotopes can be on the order of 1 in a quadrillion – roughly the same odds as winning back-to-back Mega Millions jackpots. But the powerful beams of ions used by FRIB contain so many ions and produce so many collisions in a single experiment that the team can reasonably expect to find even the rarest of isotopes. According to calculations, FRIB’s accelerator should be able to produce approximately 80% of all theorized isotopes.

The first two FRIB scientific experiments

A multi-institution team led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), Mississippi State University and Florida State University, together with researchers at MSU, began running the first experiment at FRIB on May 9, 2022. The group directed a beam of calcium-48 – a calcium nucleus with 48 neutrons instead of the usual 20 – into a beryllium target at 1 kW of power. Even at one quarter of a percent of the facility’s 400-kW maximum power, approximately 40 different isotopes passed through the separator to the instruments.

The FDSi device recorded the time each ion arrived, what isotope it was and when it decayed away. Using this information, the collaboration deduced the half-lives of the isotopes; the team has already reported on five previously unknown half-lives.

The second FRIB experiment began on June 15, 2022, led by a collaboration of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, ORNL, UTK and MSU. The facility accelerated a beam of selenium-82 and used it to produce rare isotopes of the elements scandium, calcium and potassium. These isotopes are commonly found in neutron stars, and the goal of the experiment was to better understand what type of radioactivity these isotopes emit as they decay. Understanding this process could shed light on how neutron stars lose energy.

The first two FRIB experiments were just the tip of the iceberg of this new facility’s capabilities. Over the coming years, FRIB is set to explore four big questions in nuclear physics: First, what are the properties of atomic nuclei with a large difference between the numbers of protons and neutrons? Second, how are elements formed in the cosmos? Third, do physicists understand the fundamental symmetries of the universe, like why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe? Finally, how can the information from rare isotopes be applied in medicine, industry and national security?

Sean Liddick, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Michigan State University and Artemis Spyrou, Professor of Nuclear Physics, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ants – with their wise farming practices and efficient navigation techniques – could inspire solutions for some human problems

The Conversation
November 15, 2022

Ants (Shutterstock)

King Solomon may have gained some of his famed wisdom from an unlikely source – ants.

According to a Jewish legend, Solomon conversed with a clever ant queen that confronted his pride, making quite an impression on the Israelite king. In the biblical book of Proverbs (6:6-8), Solomon shares this advice with his son: “Look to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.”

While I can’t claim any familial connection to King Solomon, despite sharing his name, I’ve long admired the wisdom of ants and have spent over 20 years studying their ecology, evolution and behaviors. While the notion that ants may offer lessons for humans has certainly been around for a while, there may be new wisdom to gain from what scientists have learned about their biology.



Ants have evolved highly complex social organizations.

Lessons from ant agriculture

As a researcher, I’m especially intrigued by fungus-growing ants, a group of 248 species that cultivate fungi as their main source of food. They include 79 species of leafcutter ants, which grow their fungal gardens with freshly cut leaves they carry into their enormous underground nests. I’ve excavated hundreds of leafcutter ant nests from Texas to Argentina as part of the scientific effort to understand how these ants coevolved with their fungal crops.

Much like human farmers, each species of fungus-growing ant is very particular about the type of crops they cultivate. Most varieties descend from a type of fungus that the ancestors of fungus-growing ants began growing some 55 million to 65 million years ago. Some of these fungi became domesticated and are now unable to survive on their own without their insect farmers, much like some human crops such as maize.

Ants started farming tens of millions of years before humans.

Ant farmers face many of the same challenges human farmers do, including the threat of pests. A parasite called Escovopsis can devastate ant gardens, causing the ants to starve. Likewise in human agriculture, pest outbreaks have contributed to disasters like the Irish Potato Famine, the 1970 corn blight and the current threat to bananas.

Since the 1950s, human agriculture has become industrialized and relies on monoculture, or growing large amounts of the same variety of crop in a single place. Yet monoculture makes crops more vulnerable to pests because it is easier to destroy an entire field of genetically identical plants than a more diverse one.

Industrial agriculture has looked to chemical pesticides as a partial solution, turning agricultural pest management into a billion-dollar industry. The trouble with this approach is that pests can evolve new ways to get around pesticides faster than researchers can develop more effective chemicals. It’s an arms race – and the pests have the upper hand.

Ants also grow their crops in monoculture and at a similar scale – after all, a leafcutter ant nest can be home to 5 million ants, all of which feed on the fungi in their underground gardens. They, too, use a pesticide to control Escovopsis and other pests.

Yet, their approach to pesticide use differs from humans’ in one important way. Ant pesticides are produced by bacteria they allow to grow in their nests, and in some cases even on their bodies. Keeping bacteria as a living culture allows the microbes to adapt in real time to evolutionary changes in the pests. In the arms race between pests and farmers, farming ants have discovered that live bacteria can serve as pharmaceutical factories that can keep up with ever-changing pests.

Whereas recent developments in agricultural pest management have focused on genetically engineering crop plants to produce their own pesticides, the lesson from 55 million years of ant agriculture is to leverage living microorganisms to make useful products. Researchers are currently experimenting with applying live bacteria to crop plants to determine if they are effective at producing pesticides that can evolve in real time along with pests.

Improving transportation

Ants can also offer practical lessons in the realm of transportation.

Ants are notoriously good at quickly locating food, whether it’s a dead insect on a forest floor or some crumbs in your kitchen. They do this by leaving a trail of pheromones – chemicals with a distinctive smell ants use to guide their nest mates to food. The shortest route to a destination will accumulate the most pheromone because more ants will have traveled back and forth along it in a given amount of time.


In the 1990s, computer scientists developed a class of algorithms modeled after ant behavior that are very effective at finding the shortest path between two or more locations. Like with real ants, the shortest route to a destination will accumulate the most virtual pheromone because more virtual ants will have traveled along it in a given amount of time. Engineers have used this simple but effective approach to design telecommunication networks and map delivery routes.


Thousands of ants can travel along the same path without causing traffic jams.
Esteban Castao Solano/EyeEm via Getty Images

Not only are ants good at finding the shortest route from their nests to a source of food, thousands of ants are capable of traveling along these routes without causing traffic jams. I recently began collaborating with physicist Oscar Andrey Herrera-Sancho to study how leafcutter ants maintain such a steady flow along their foraging paths without the slowdowns typical of crowded human sidewalks and highways.

We are using cameras to track how each individual ant responds to artificial obstacles placed on their foraging trails. Our hope is that by getting a better understanding of the rules ants use to respond to both obstacles and the movement of other ants, we can develop algorithms that can eventually help program self-driving cars that never get stuck in traffic.

Look to the ant

To be fair, there are plenty of ways ants are far from perfect role models. After all, some ant species are known for indiscriminate killing, and others for enslaving babies.

But the fact is that ants remind us of ourselves – or the way we might like to imagine ourselves – in many ways. They live in complex societies with division of labor. They cooperate to raise their young. And they accomplish remarkable engineering feats – like building structures with air funnels that can house millions – all without blueprints or a leader. Did I mention their societies are run entirely by females?

There is still a lot to learn about ants. For example, researchers still don’t fully understand how an ant larva develops into either a queen – a female with wings that can live for 20 years and lay millions of eggs – or a worker – a wingless, often sterile female that lives for less than a year and performs all the other jobs in the colony. What’s more, scientists are constantly discovering new species – 167 new ant species were described in 2021 alone, bringing the total to more than 15,980.

By considering ants and their many fascinating ways, there’s plenty of wisdom to be gained.

Scott Solomon, Associate Teaching Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice University


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why go back to the Moon?
Agence France-Presse
November 15, 2022

Full Moon (Shutterstock)

On September 12, 1962, then US president John F. Kennedy informed the public of his plan to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

It was the height of the Cold War and America needed a big victory to demonstrate its space superiority after the Soviet Union had launched the first satellite and put the first man in orbit.

"We choose to go to the Moon," Kennedy told 40,000 people at Rice University, "because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

Sixty years on, the United States is about to launch the first mission of its return program to the Moon, Artemis. But why repeat what has already been done?

Criticism has risen in recent years, for example from Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, and the Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin, who have long advocated for America to go directly to Mars.

But NASA argues re-conquering the Moon is a must before a trip to the Red Planet. Here's why.

Long space missions

NASA wants to develop a sustainable human presence on the Moon, with missions lasting several weeks –- compared to just a few days for Apollo.

The goal: to better understand how to prepare for a multi-year round trip to Mars.

In deep space, radiation is much more intense and poses a real threat to health.

Low Earth Orbit, where the International Space Station (ISS) operates, is partly shielded from radiation by the Earth's magnetic field, which isn't the case on the Moon.

From the first Artemis mission, many experiments are planned to study the impact of this radiation on living organisms, and to assess the effectiveness of an anti-radiation vest.

What's more, while the ISS can often be resupplied, trips to the Moon -- a thousand times further -- are much more complex.

To avoid having to take everything with them, and to save costs, NASA wants to learn how to use the resources present on the surface.

In particular, water in the form of ice, which has been confirmed to exist on the lunar south pole, could be transformed into rocket fuel by cracking it into its separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Testing new gear

NASA also wants to test on the Moon the technologies that will continue to evolve for a mission to Mars. First, new spacesuits for spacewalks.

Their design was entrusted to the company Axiom Space for the first crewed mission to the Moon, in 2025 at the earliest.

Other needs: vehicles -- both pressurized and unpressurized -- so that the astronauts can move around, as well as a fixed habitat at the lunar base camp.

Finally, for sustainable access to an energy source, NASA is working on the development of portable nuclear fission systems.

Solving any problems that arise will be much easier on the Moon, only a few days away, than on Mars, which can only be reached after at least several months of voyage.
Establishing a waypoint

A major pillar of the Artemis program is the construction of a space station in orbit around the Moon, called Gateway, which will serve as a relay before the trip to Mars.

All the necessary equipment can be sent there in "multiple launches," before finally being joined by the crew to set off on the long voyage, Sean Fuller, responsible for the Gateway program, told AFP.

"Kind of like you're stopping at your gas station to make sure you get all the stuff, and then you're off on your way."

Maintaining leadership over China

Apart from Mars, another reason put forward by the Americans for settling on the Moon is to do so before the Chinese, who plan to send taikonauts by the year 2030.

China is the United States' main competition today as the once proud Russian space program has withered.

"We don't want China suddenly getting there and saying, "This is our exclusive territory,'" NASA boss Bill Nelson said in a recent interview.
For the sake of science

While the Apollo missions brought back to Earth nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rock, new samples will make it possible to further deepen our knowledge of this celestial object and its formation.

"The samples that we collected during the Apollo missions changed the way we view our solar system," astronaut Jessica Meir told AFP. "I think we can expect that from the Artemis program as well."

She expects further scientific and technological breakthroughs too, just like during the Apollo era.

© Agence France-Presse

Analysis-Ukraine's sparse wheat plantings sow further trouble for global food security

By Pavel Polityuk, Maytaal Angel and Nigel Hunt - Tuesday

FILE PHOTO: Wheat harvesting in the Kyiv region of Ukraine© Thomson Reuters

KYIV/LONDON (Reuters) - War, rain and economic hardship have depressed Ukraine's wheat plantings, depriving the nation of vital export earnings in 2023 and heralding another year of tight global supplies and potentially high prices for basic foodstuffs.

Ukraine is one of the world's top wheat exporters with key buyers including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and a further drop in production will leave many scrambling to find alternative supplies.

The race to secure grain is likely to drive up global prices, even hitting importers who don't buy directly from Ukraine.

Ukraine harvested around 19 million tonnes of wheat this year, down more than 40% from the previous season's record of 33 million tonnes and a further sharp drop in production looks inevitable in 2023, analysts said.

In a further blow to production prospects, cash-strapped farmers in Ukraine are also reducing use of vital crop inputs such as fertilisers. Less fertiliser means lower yields for the farmers that do plant.

"Farmers prefer to see what happens next year so did very little planting in the fall. People just want to wait and see what happens, sit on the money, maybe they don't have money, there are different reasons," Kees Huizinga, a Dutch national who runs a 15,000 hectare dairy and crop farm in central Ukraine.

The drop in production will affect some of the world's poorest countries. Ukraine exports some wheat to Turkey where it may be processed into flour and shipped to Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, and also into soft wheat-based pasta which is popular among consumers in developing countries owing to more affordable prices compared to the pasta made from durum.

The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), which was set up by G20 members to strengthen global food security, has warned another poor crop in Ukraine would mean global stocks would not recover for at least another year, ensuring prices remain high and markets volatile.

The food crisis also coincides with continued economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, climate shocks and high energy prices.

"I fear that higher food prices are here to stay not only because of the problems in Ukraine. All other producers are facing high fertilizer, fuel, labour and transportation costs," analyst Georgi Slavov of broker Marex Solutions said.

In contrast, prices the farmers receive in Ukraine remain very low due to the difficulty and high cost of moving crops across the war-torn country to export hubs.

"Everyone is saving money and planting with minimum costs (including less fertiliser use), which leads to a very significant drop in yield next year," Dmitry Skornyakov, chief executive of Ukraine farm company HarvEast said.

Alexander Karavaytsev, a senior economist at the International Grains Council, said lower fertilizer application could also have an adverse impact on the quality of the crop.

"It is understood that soils in Ukraine have some buffer owing to investment by farmers in previous years, and Chernozems (black soils) are the world’s most fertile soils," he said.

"Still, quality can be affected by persistent reduced fertilizer application rates."

Graphic: Ukraine domestic versus international grain prices: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/jnvwygmqlvw/Screenshot%20Ukraine%20grain%20prices.png

LOWER EXPORT EARNINGS

A sharp drop in production is also likely to mean Ukraine's wheat export revenues fall far below the roughly $4 billion in the 2021/22 season, according to Reuters calculations.

Farmers had sown 3.6 million hectares of winter wheat, as of Nov. 7, down 41% from 6.09 million at the same stage a year ago, government data shows.

Ukraine sowed around 6.1 million hectares of winter wheat for the 2022 harvest, but a large area has been occupied by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine in February and only 4.6 million hectares were harvested.

"It's a triple effect of weather, economic and technical factors (such as the inability to access fields)," said Sebastien Poncelet, analyst at Agritel, a French crop consultancy which has a Ukrainian office, referring to the drop in planted area.

NON GMO RAPESEED (NOT CANOLA(tm))

In contrast to wheat, rapeseed plantings have held up well.

"Rapeseed got sown. It's down a bit but reasonable. We think about 1 million hectares were sown compared with 1.15-1.3 million usually," Poncelet said.

The cost of transporting crops to Europe are very high but these represent a much smaller percentage of the value for rapeseed, which can be sold at roughly twice the price of wheat once delivered to the European Union.

"Rapeseed generates more cash. If you can get one lorry dispatched from the farm, there's more money than with cereals.

Rapeseed is offering good margins," Poncelet added.

(Graphic: Ukraine winter wheat plantings Ukraine winter wheat plantings: https://graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/dwpkdgwxevm/chart.png)

SPRING OILSEEDS FAVOURED

Ukraine is expected to see similar shifts in the upcoming spring planting season, with corn the main grain crop sown and sunflowers the main oilseed.

"Spring might look the same as the fall," Huizinga said, noting there could be less plantings of grains and a similar area for oilseeds.

Prospects, however, also hinge on whether it is possible to export from Ukraine's ports under a United Nations-led pact which was signed on July 22 but is due to expire on Nov. 19.

The agreement allows for agricultural products to be exported from three Ukrainian ports and there are hopes that it will be extended despite some reservations from Russia about how the pact is working.

Without it prices within Ukraine are likely to fall further, particularly in eastern and central Ukraine as it will only be possible to export through land routes which run from western Ukraine into the European Union.

"Much depends on the ability to export by sea. In fact, one of the reasons for the decrease in sown areas this autumn was the lack of funds for farmers due to the inability to sell grain at (global) market prices," said Denys Marchuk, deputy chair of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council.

"If the export by sea from Ukraine does not work we will see a decrease in the number of crops. I think that corn will decrease first of all," he added, noting he believed the grains initiative would continue.

(Graphic: Ukraine winter rapeseed plantings Ukraine winter rapeseed plantings: https://graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/zdvxdyzmgvx/chart.png)

(Writing by Nigel Hunt, Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris; Editing by Veronica Brown and Susan Fenton)

Webb telescope reveals blazing hourglass around forming star

Agence France-Presse
November 16, 2022

The colourful clouds are only visible in infrared light, so had never been seen before being captured by the James Webb Space Telescope Handout ESA, NASA, CSA, STScI/AFP

The James Webb Space Telescope unveiled its latest image of celestial majesty on Wednesday, an ethereal hourglass of orange and blue dust being shot out from a newly forming star at its center.

The colorful clouds are only visible in infrared light, so had never been seen before being captured by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), NASA and the European Space Agency said in a statement.

The very young star, known as protostar L1527, is hidden in darkness by the edge of a rotating disk of gas at the neck of the hourglass.

However light spills out from the top and bottom of the disk, lighting up the hourglass-shaped clouds.

The clouds are created by material ejected from the star colliding with surrounding matter, the statement said. The dust is thinnest in the blue sections and thickest in the orange parts, it added.

The protostar, which is just 100,000 years old and at the earliest stage of star formation, is not yet able to generate its own energy.

The surrounding black disk, which is around the size of our solar system, will feed material to the protostar until it eventually reaches "the threshold for nuclear fusion to begin," the statement said.

"Ultimately, this view of L1527 provides a window into what our Sun and solar system looked like in their infancy," it added.

The protostar is located in the Taurus molecular cloud, a stellar nursery home to hundreds of nearly formed stars around 430 light years from Earth.

Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, and has already unleashed a raft of unprecedented data as well as stunning images. Scientists are hopeful it will herald a new era of discovery.


One of the main goals for the $10-billion telescope is to study the life cycle of stars. Another main research focus is on exoplanets, planets outside Earth's solar system.

© 2022 AFP

SINGAPORE

4 Tasmanian devils from Australia make Night Safari their home

The endangered animals will make Singapore their permanent home, acting as animal ambassadors for the plight of their counterparts in the wild.

ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE

Gena Soh
PUBLISHED
NOV 15, 2022, 7

SINGAPORE - Hardly the cantankerous, dust storm-kicking Looney Tunes beasts, four tasmanian devils from Australia, each about the size of a shiba inu dog, have now made their home at the Night Safari.

Making their debut in a new exhibit on Tuesday, these endangered animals will make Singapore their permanent home, acting as animal ambassadors for the plight of their counterparts in the wild.

The four animals are managed by Australia’s Save the Tasmanian Devil Programme (STDP).

It was introduced in response to an infectious cancer that led to a significant decline of tasmanian devil numbers in the wild, said Mr David Schaap, senior wildlife officer from the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania.

Spread from one tasmanian devil to another through skin-to-skin and sexual contact, the devil facial tumour disease causes large facial tumours to grow around their mouths, making eating hard for the animals.

Most devils that catch the disease die of starvation.

With more than 80 per cent of the wild population of tasmanian devils succumbing since 1996, Mr Schaap said the STDP seeds these animals in zoos globally to build insurance colonies as a crucial response to the threat the species faces as a result of the disease.

Insurance colonies for threatened animals in captivity ensure they do not go extinct through conservation and breeding programmes.

The effort to bring the animals here from an insurance colony started in 2018, and much preparation was required before the zoo was ready to receive them, said Dr Luis Carlos Neves, vice-president of animal care at Mandai Wildlife Group.

Tasmanian devils have unique vocalisations such as growls, screams and screeches when feeding or during confrontations, and live in dark confined environments such as caves and burrows.

Dr Neves said the animal care team had to work closely with their counterparts in Australia to design a suitable habitat for the animals in Singapore and upskill the zoo’s animal care team to care for the endangered marsupials.

In 2019, the team travelled to Tasmania to undergo training and learn the biology of the animals, as well as how to safely manage, restrain them for medical procedures, and feed them properly.

During the pandemic in 2020, a video tour of the new exhibit here was filmed, so experts in Australia could verify that the facilities suited the animals’ needs.

After four years of preparation, Crumpet, Snickers, Jesse and Panini – as the four female marsupials are called – finally arrived in Singapore on Oct 7.

After the month-long mandatory quarantine, they now live in two expansive habitats with indoor dens and outdoor yards, which give them space to roam and explore, as well as a den that allows the nocturnal creatures to rest during the day.

The habitats in the Night Safari’s Wallaby Trail also feature eucalyptus trees and red flowered silky oak shrubs to simulate the devils’ native dry shrubland habitat.

Mr Razak Jaffar, assistant curator for marsupials at Mandai Wildlife Group, said that though the four female animals look similar, their personalities are quite distinct.

“Crumpet is a confident individual with a more dominant personality... Snickers, on the other hand, is much more reserved, preferring to hide in her nest box when Crumpet expresses her dominance,” said Mr Jaffar.

He added that Jesse and Panini have also formed a bond despite a rocky start, which involved hostile caterwauling and occasional squabbles.

“The pair now thoroughly enjoy each other’s company, preferring to sleep in the same nest box and appearing restless when they are not together,” Mr Jaffar said.

At the launch of the new exhibit, Mr Mike Barclay, group chief executive of Mandai Wildlife Group, said tasmanian devils will join many other native Australian species in the zoo.

He added: “We remain committed to ensuring the highest standards of welfare for all the ambassador animals under our care... and protecting threatened species and their native habitats.

“Crumpet, Snickers, Panini and Jesse will raise awareness regarding the threats that tasmanian devils face in the wild.”

EU countries have relocated just 117 asylum seekers out of 8,000 pledges

The European Union-wide relocation system was introduced in June, but despite the total of 8,000 pledges, EU countries have relocated only 117 asylum seekers up to this point.

November 16, 2022

© diema | Pixabay

“We’re working very closely with all member states to ensure that we have in place a common solution. I know this number doesn’t seem like a lot but we need to keep in mind that we have 8,000 pledges as such,” a European Commission spokesperson pointed out in this regard, according to Euronews report.

The same reveals that relations between France and Italy have worsened due to the disembarkation of the Ocean Viking, a ship that authorities in Rome did not allow to disembark despite its obligation under international law, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

Italy’s actions have been considered inhumane and incomprehensible by the French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin who stressed that the vessel was in Italian waters and thus was required to disembark somewhere in Italy.

At the same time, Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, pointed out that she was struck by the aggressive reaction from France’s capital which she deemed incomprehensible.

French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, soon after the Ocean Viking incident, pointed out that nine European countries had committed to hosting about two-thirds of the migrants rescued with the remaining third staying in France.

“France introduced a call of solidarity to EU Member States and others have responded positively. This is working. And we will ensure that we put all efforts into the voluntary solidarity mechanism,” a Commission spokesperson pointed out in this regard.

Italy and France are continuously receiving a large number of asylum seekers. According to the figures provided previously by the General Directorate for Immigration and Integration Policies of Italy, on June 30, 2020, there were registered a total of 15,959 unaccompanied minors in this country, which means a 99.9 per cent increase.

The notable increase in the number of unaccompanied minors was mainly a result of the war in Ukraine, according to local media reports.

At the same time, in August this year, France welcomed the first group of asylum seekers following the European Union’s Migration Mechanism.

Back then, it was reported that 38 asylum seekers who were going from Italy to France became the first group relocated, following the EU’s voluntary solidarity mechanism. Based on the EU’s mechanism, Italy and France are among the European countries that have agreed to take in migrants as well as refugees from other countries who are dealing with an increased number of arrivals.