Years of monarch research shows how adding habitat will help conservation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: PLANTING MILKWEED AND OTHER WILDFLOWERS IS ESSENTIAL TO SUPPORT POPULATION GROWTH FOR MONARCH BUTTERFLIES. A RECENTLY PUBLISHED JOURNAL ARTICLE FOCUSED ON THE PLACEMENT OF NEW MONARCH HABITAT PROVIDES AN OVERVIEW OF 20 IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH STUDIES. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY JACQUELINE POHL.

AMES, Iowa – When the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium was formed seven years ago, Iowa State University researchers faced two big questions about reestablishing the milkweed and other wildflowers needed for the iconic butterfly’s survival: How can habitat be restored and where should it be located? 

The “how” of restoring habitat is outlined in the consortium’s guidelines for planting prairie. “Where” is the subject of a new peer-reviewed journal article that provides an overview of 20 ISU studies, as well as work by other monarch researchers. The paper, published in Bioscience earlier this month, synthesizes years of research that includes field observations, laboratory experiments and simulation modeling. The findings are largely optimistic.

Mobility helps

Establishing new habitat at the rates called for in Iowa’s conservation plan would increase the size of the monarch population by 10-25% per generation, depending on differing scenarios for pesticide use and the amount and location of habitat creation, researchers found.

“Basically, we’ve concluded that planting habitat anywhere you can in the agricultural landscapes of the Upper Midwest will support growth of the monarch’s breeding generations, even if some of that habitat is near crop fields treated with insecticides,” said Steven Bradbury, professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State.

The higher range of estimated population growth assumes the use of integrated pest management practices and applying insecticides only when pests are likely to cause economically significant crop damage, Bradbury said. 

Establishing habitat next to crop fields where insecticides are used is expected to produce more monarchs than if prairie restoration is limited to locations set away from fields. A 100-125 feet buffer between treated fields and habitat patches would eliminate swaths of conservable land, Bradbury said – up to 80% of the non-crop land available in Story County, for instance. Forgoing that much space would make it difficult to add the 1.3-1.6 billion new milkweed stems needed in the Upper Midwest to support a sustainable monarch population. 

Insecticide spray drift from treated crops can pose risks to monarch caterpillars, which live exclusively on milkweed plants. However, the impact on the overall population is mitigated because females are highly mobile within their summer breeding grounds, Bradbury said.

“The females move around the landscape a lot. They don’t put all their eggs in one basket,” he said. 

While some portion of monarchs downwind from treated fields might have high rates of mortality, other eggs are laid in habitat patches that aren’t exposed to insecticides, Bradbury said. And the milkweed plants near treated fields can still support the next generation of adults.

Using radio transmitters to track female monarchs gave researchers better insight into their nonmigratory flight patterns. Monarchs ride wind currents to travel up to dozens of miles a day when migrating to and from the mountainous oyamel fir forests in Mexico, where they spend the winter. But breeding females also fly between patches of habitat when not migrating, in flights that can exceed a mile, researchers found. 

“They’re not migrating when they take these large flight steps, but they seem to turn on a behavior like migration,” Bradbury said. “The general notion was breeding females were moving around a lot to lay their eggs, but there hadn’t been any empirical studies that quantified their non-migratory movement patterns.”

That mobility is part of the reason modeling shows that monarch numbers will still increase if added habitat is fragmented. However, research suggests new plots of habitat of at least 6.2 acres that are situated closely, within 160 to 330 feet of each other, would offer maximal support

What’s ahead

Research and outreach are ongoing for the consortium, a diverse partnership of more than 45 organizations that includes Iowa State, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, federal agencies, agriculture and conservation associations, and agribusiness and utility companies. But now is a good time to summarize the group’s research because it’s reached a natural point to pull the best available information together, Bradbury said. 

“Sometimes in a novel there is a series of chapters that comprise part 1. Our analogy is that we’ve reached the end of part 1,” he said.

There’s also a practical consideration, he said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reconsider in 2024 if the monarch should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, and fact-finding for the decision likely will begin in 2023. It’s an ideal time to share an overview of new monarch research. 

Tasks ahead for researchers include collecting additional field data on egg-laying patterns and integrating ISU’s regional modeling with continental-level models to predict how habitat reestablished in the Upper Midwest will impact the size of the overwintering population in Mexico.

Research methods used by the Iowa State team also could be replicated in other areas where breeding monarchs reside in the summer. Though about half of the population that migrates to Mexico come from the Upper Midwest, monarchs’ other breeding destinations, such as New England and southern Ontario, have different climates and landscapes. 

The interdisciplinary and multilayered research doesn’t just benefit monarchs. It has offered numerous opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to work on projects with a wide variety of stakeholders, Bradbury said.

“That’s a strength for a researcher. Working with landowners can help refine research questions and ensure results that help advance useful conservation practices,” he said.  

The collaborative nature of the consortium also serves as a blueprint for the co-existence of conservation and agricultural production in Iowa, Bradbury said.  

“Conserving the monarch is common ground that brings people together, and those are relationships we can use in addressing other challenges we face,” he said. 

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JOURNAL

BioScience

DOI

10.1093/biosci/biac094 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Monarch Butterfly Ecology, Behavior, and Vulnerabilities in North Central United States Agricultural Landscapes

Comet impacts could bring ingredients for life to Europa’s ocean

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

 

IMAGE: A COMPUTER-GENERATED SIMULATION OF THE POST-IMPACT MELT CHAMBER OF MANANNAN CRATER, AN IMPACT CRATER ON EUROPA. THE SIMULATION SHOWS THE MELT WATER SINKING TO THE OCEAN WITHIN SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS AFTER IMPACT. CARNAHAN ET AL. view more 

CREDIT: CARNAHAN ET AL.

Comet strikes on Jupiter’s moon Europa could help transport critical ingredients for life found on the moon’s surface to its hidden ocean of liquid water — even if the impacts don’t punch completely through the moon’s icy shell.  

The discovery comes from a study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, where researchers developed a computer model to observe what happens after a comet or asteroid strikes the ice shell, which is estimated to be tens of kilometers thick.        

The model shows that if an impact can make it at least halfway through the moon’s ice shell, the heated meltwater it generates will sink through the rest of the ice, bringing oxidants — a class of chemicals required for life — from the surface to the ocean, where they could help sustain any potential life in the sheltered waters.  

The researchers compared the steady sinking of the massive melt chamber to a foundering ship.  

“Once you get enough water, you’re just going to sink,” said lead author and doctoral student Evan Carnahan. “It’s like the Titanic times 10.”  

Scientists have proposed impacts as a means to transport oxidants on Europa, but they assumed the strikes would have to break through the ice. This study is important because it suggests that a much larger range of impacts can do the job, said co-author Marc Hesse, a professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences Department of Geological Sciences.   

“This increases the probability that you would have the necessary chemical ingredients for life,” said Hesse, who is also a faculty member at the UT Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences. The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters.  

Whether oxidants can get from where they naturally form on Europa’s surface to the ocean is one of the biggest questions in planetary science. One of the goals of NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission to the icy moon is to collect data that can help narrow down answers.  

For now, comet and asteroid impacts are among the most plausible mechanisms. Scientists have spotted dozens of craters on Europa’s surface, many with a distinct rippled appearance that suggests frozen meltwater and post-impact motion beneath the crater.  

This study models the crater environment after impact — investigating how meltwater travels through ice and its capacity for transporting oxidants. It builds on a previous study by co-author Rónadh Cox, a professor at Williams College, that modeled impacts breaking through Europa’s ice.  

The study found that if an impact reaches the ice shell’s midpoint, over 40% of the meltwater will make it to the ocean. The volume of melt water generated can be significant. For example, this study showed that a half-mile-wide comet that reaches the ice shell’s midpoint would melt enough water to fill Oregon’s Crater Lake. 

Other models describing meltwater on Europa often place it near the surface of the moon for long periods, where it could potentially contribute to icy formations called “chaos terrain.” But this study’s results complicate this idea, with the heavy weight of the meltwater causing it to sink rather than stay in place.  

“We’re cautioning against the idea that you could maintain very large volumes of melt in the shallow subsurface without it sinking,” Carnahan said.  

Like Europa, Saturn’s moon Titan may also hold an ocean of liquid water beneath an icy shell. Rosaly Lopes, the directorate scientist for the Planetary Science Directorate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said that this model can help scientists understand the role impacts might have on other icy worlds.    

“In the case of Titan, this is very important because Titan has a thick ice crust — thicker than Europa’s,” she said. “We’re really interested in the application of this study.” 

Carnahan began the research during an internship at NASA JPL, working with co-author Steven Vance and completed it working with Hesse while earning his master’s degree. He is now a doctoral student at the UT Cockrell School of Engineering.   

The UT Center for Planetary Systems Habitability, the Texas Space Grant Consortium Fellowship and NASA funded the research.  

An artist's concept of a comet or asteroid impact on Jupiter's moon Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

CREDIT

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Tyre, a large impact crater on Europa.

CREDIT

NASA/JPL/DLR

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JOURNAL

Geophysical Research Letters

ARTICLE TITLE

Surface-To-Ocean Exchange by the Sinking of Impact Generated Melt Chambers on Europa

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Dec-2022

THE LANCET GLOBAL HEALTH: Cervical cancer burden remains high in many countries, scale-up needed to meet WHO’s 2030 elimination target

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE LANCET

Peer-reviewed / Observational study / People

• Incidence rates of cervical cancer in most countries remain much higher than the threshold set by WHO of 4 per 100,000 women to consider cervical cancer eliminated as a public health problem.
• Globally in 2020, there were over 600,000 estimated new cervical cancer cases and over 340,000 resulting deaths.
• Persistently high rates of cervical cancer in LMICs and recent increases in countries in Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa are of particular concern.
• Targets to to reach the WHO elimination threshold by 2030 will be missed unless countries scale up screening programmes, improve coverage of HPV vaccination and improve access to affordable treatment. 

There were over 600,000 new cases of cervical cancer and over 340,000 deaths worldwide in 2020, according to an observational study published in The Lancet Global Health journal.

Although cervical cancer has decreased in many world regions over the past three decades⁠—notably in Latin America, Asia, western Europe and North America—the burden remains high in many low- and middle-income countries. 

The development of effective HPV vaccination and screening programmes have made cervical cancer a largely preventable disease. In 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a target to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem, aiming to reduce incidence below a threshold of four cases per 100,000 women per year in every country by 2030. This study tracks the progress on cervical cancer rates and identifies the countries and regions where efforts require scaling up to reach WHO targets. 

Dr Deependra Singh, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) / WHO, France, says “HPV vaccination and screening technologies mean that cervical cancer is now largely preventable. Our study finds encouraging decreases in some high-income countries following successful implementation of HPV vaccination programmes and screening—such as in Sweden, Australia, and the UK—but globally the burden remains high. All over the world, women should be free from the risk of preventable cancer, and with development of effective vaccines and screening over the past 20 years, we have the tools to make this a reality.” [1]

The study used IARC’s GLOBOCAN 2020 database to estimate the burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates in 185 countries. Additionally, the study analysed the relationship between cervical cancer cases and deaths in relation to national levels of socioeconomic development. Finally, the authors looked at data from 1988 to 2017 to identify increase and decrease trends. 

In 2020, rates of cervical cancer cases were 13 per 100,000 women per year and there were seven deaths per 100,000 women per year. Incidence rates in 172 out of 185 countries, still exceeded the four cases per 100,000 women per year threshold for elimination set by WHO. 

Rates varied significantly between countries, with a 40 times difference in cases and 50 times difference in deaths. Case rates ranged from two cases in Iraq to 84 cases in Eswatini per 100,000 women per year; while mortality rates ranged from one death in Switzerland to 56 deaths in Eswatini per 100,000 women per year. 

There was substantial socioeconomic inequality in cervical cancer globally. There was a clear socioeconomic gradient in incidence and mortality, with higher rates observed in countries with lower socioeconomic development. 

When looking at the trend data from 1988 to 2017, the authors observed major declines in cases in some Latin American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica. A similar pattern was observed in Asia in India, Thailand, and South Korea, as well as in Eastern Europe in Poland, Slovenia, and Czechia. However, there were increases in cases in Eastern Europe, in Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria, and Eastern Africa in the past decade, as well as in The Netherlands and Italy. The reasons for recent increases might include increased prevalence of HPV among the younger generations of women and lack of effective screening programmes.

Countries with the largest average declines in incidence rates per year included Brazil (8%), Slovenia (7%), Kuwait (7%), and Chile (6%); whereas the highest increases in rates were in Latvia (4%), Japan (3%), Ireland (3%), Sweden (3%), Norway (2%), Northern Ireland (2%), Estonia (2%), and China (2%).

Dr Valentina Lorenzoni, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy, says, “Cervical cancer cases are much higher than the threshold agreed by the WHO initiative on cervical cancer elimination in most countries, indicating that there is still much work to be done before 2030. While a decrease in screening intensity due to the COVID-19 pandemic might have left a new group of susceptible women, the pandemic also boosted the introduction of self-administered HPV testing, offering new possibilities to increase screening coverage. Other new advancements, such as thermal ablation for treating cervical pre-cancer, the use of mobile phones to improve follow-up after screening, and machine learning to improve visual assessment, can also be used in low resource settings to lower cervical cancer rates.” [1]

Finally, the authors note that the estimates were based on the best available cancer data in each country, but caution that these may be incomplete or inaccurate. For instance, cases may appear low in countries where there are no effective screening programmes or there is limited local population-based cancer registry data available. 

NOTES TO EDITORS

This study was funded by Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. D. Singh was supported by the French Institut National du Cancer (INCa). It was conducted by researchers from International Agency for Research on Cancer; Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy; US National Cancer Institute, USA; Scientific Institute of Public Health, Belgium; University of Ghent, Belgium. 

[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.

The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdf if you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com  
 

IF YOU WISH TO PROVIDE A LINK FOR YOUR READERS, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WILL GO LIVE AT THE TIME THE EMBARGO LIFTS: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(22)00501-0/fulltext

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JOURNAL

The Lancet Global Health

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Global estimates of incidence and mortality of cervical cancer in 2020: a baseline analysis of the WHO Global Cervical Cancer Elimination Initiative

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Dec-2022

COI STATEMENT

We declare no competing interests. Where authors are identified as personnel of the International Agency for Research on Cancer/WHO, the authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this article, and they do not necessarily represent the decisions, policy, or views of the International Agency for Research on Cancer/WHO. Where authors are identified as personnel of US National Cancer Institute, the opinions expressed are their own and this material should not be interpreted as representing the official viewpoint of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, or the National Cancer Institute.

Machine learning reveals how black holes grow

Leveraging supercomputing power, University of Arizona researchers created simulations of millions of computer-generated "universes" to test astrophysical predictions that have eluded astronomical observations.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

 

IMAGE: HOW IT WORKS: USING TRIAL AND ERROR, MACHINE LEARNING TESTS MANY DIFFERENT PAIRINGS OF SIMULATED GALAXIES AND BLACK HOLES CREATED USING DIFFERENT RULES, AND THEN CHOOSES THE PAIRING THAT BEST MATCHES ACTUAL ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. view more 

CREDIT: H. ZHANG, WIELGUS ET AL. (2020), ESA/HUBBLE & NASA, A. BELLINI

As different as they may seem, black holes and Las Vegas have one thing in common: What happens there stays there – much to the frustration of astrophysicists trying to understand how, when and why black holes form and grow. Black holes are surrounded by a mysterious, invisible layer – the event horizon – from which nothing can escape, be it matter, light or information. The event horizon swallows every bit of evidence about the black hole's past.

"Because of these physical facts, it had been thought impossible to measure how black holes formed," said Peter Behroozi, an associate professor at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory and a project researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Together with Haowen Zhang, a doctoral student at Steward, Behroozi led an international team to use machine learning and supercomputers to reconstruct the growth histories of black holes, effectively peeling back their event horizons to reveal what lies beyond.

Simulations of millions of computer-generated "universes" revealed that supermassive black holes grow in lockstep with their host galaxies. This had been suspected for 20 years, but scientists had not been able to confirm this relationship until now. A paper with the team’s findings has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"If you go back to earlier and earlier times in the universe, you find that exactly the same relationship was present," said Behroozi, a co-author on the paper. "So, as the galaxy grows from small to large, its black hole, too, is growing from small to large, in exactly the same way as we see in galaxies today all across the universe."

Most, if not all, galaxies scattered throughout the cosmos are thought to harbor a supermassive black hole at their center. These black holes pack masses greater than 100,000 times that of the sun, with some boasting millions, even billions of solar masses. One of astrophysics' most vexing questions has been how these behemoths grow as fast they do, and how they form in the first place.

To find answers, Zhang, Behroozi and their colleagues created Trinity, a platform that uses a novel form of machine learning capable of generating millions of different universes on a supercomputer, each of which obeys different physical theories for how galaxies should form. The researchers built a framework in which computers propose new rules for how supermassive black holes grow over time. They then used those rules to simulate the growth of billions of black holes in a virtual universe and "observed" the virtual universe to test whether it agreed with decades of actual observations of black holes across the real universe. After millions of proposed and rejected rule sets, the computers settled on rules that best described existing observations.

"We're trying to understand the rules of how galaxies form," Behroozi said. "In a nutshell, we make Trinity guess what the physical laws may be and let them go in a simulated universe and see how that universe turns out. Does it look anything like the real one or not?"

According to the researchers, this approach works equally well for anything else inside of the universe, not just galaxies.

The project's name, Trinity, is in reference to its three main areas of study: galaxies, their supermassive black holes and their dark matter halos – vast cocoons of dark matter that are invisible to direct measurements but whose existence is necessary to explain the physical characteristics of galaxies everywhere. In previous studies, the researchers used an earlier version of their framework, called the UniverseMachine, to simulate millions of galaxies and their dark matter halos. The team discovered that galaxies growing in their dark matter halos follow a very specific relationship between the mass of the halo and the mass of the galaxy.

"In our new work, we added black holes to this relationship," Behroozi said, "and then asked how black holes could grow in those galaxies to reproduce all the observations people have made about them."

"We have very good observations of black hole masses," said Zhang, the paper's lead author. "However, those are largely restricted to the local universe. As you look farther away, it becomes increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible, to accurately measure the relationships between the masses of black holes and their host galaxies. Because of that uncertainty, observations can't directly tell us whether that relationship holds up throughout the universe."

Trinity allows astrophysicists to sidestep not only that limitation, but also the event horizon information barrier for individual black holes by stitching together information from millions of observed black holes at different stages of their growth. Even though no individual black hole's history could be reconstructed, the researchers could measure the average growth history of all black holes taken together.

"If you put black holes into the simulated galaxies and enter rules about how they grow, you can compare the resulting universe to all the observations of actual black holes that we have," Zhang said. "We can then reconstruct how any black hole and galaxy in the universe looked from today back to the very beginning of the cosmos."

The simulations shed light on another puzzling phenomenon: Supermassive black holes – like the one found in the center of the Milky Way – grew most vigorously during their infancy, when the universe was only a few billion years old, only to slow down dramatically during the ensuing time, over the last 10 billion years or so.

"We've known for a while that galaxies have this strange behavior, where they reach a peak in their rate of forming new stars, then it dwindles over time, and then, later on, they stop forming stars altogether," Behroozi said. "Now, we've been able to show that black holes do the same: growing and shutting off at the same times as their host galaxies. This confirms a decades-old hypothesis about black hole growth in galaxies."

However, the result poses more questions, he added. Black holes are much smaller than the galaxies in which they live. If the Milky Way were scaled down to the size of Earth, its supermassive black hole would be the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

For the black hole to double in mass within the same timeframe as the larger galaxy requires synchronization between gas flows at vastly different scales. How black holes conspire with galaxies to achieve this balance is yet to be understood.

"I think the really original thing about Trinity is that it provides us with a way to find out what kind of connections between black holes and galaxies are consistent with a wide variety of different datasets and observational methods," Zhang said. "The algorithm allows us to pick out precisely those relationships between dark matter halos, galaxies and black holes that are able to reproduce all the observations that have been made. It basically tells us, 'OK, given all these data, we know the connection between galaxies and black holes must look like this, rather than like that.' And that approach is extremely powerful."

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JOURNAL

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stac2633 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

TRINITY I: self-consistently modelling the dark matter halo–galaxy–supermassive black hole connection from z = 0–10

New robot does ‘the worm’ when temperature changes

Creators envision ‘gelbots’ crawling through human bodies to deliver medicine

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

 

VIDEO: SOFT ROBOTS MADE OF HYDROGEL ARE MADE TO CRAWL DURING TEMPERATURE CHANGES. view more 

CREDIT: AISHWARYA PANTULA/JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

A new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design, brings “a kind of intelligence” to the field of soft robotics.

The inchworm-inspired work is detailed today in Science Robotics.

“It seems very simplistic but this is an object moving without batteries, without wiring, without an external power supply of any kind – just on the swelling and shrinking of gel,” said senior author David Gracias, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “Our study shows how the manipulation of shape, dimensions and patterning of gels can tune morphology to embody a kind of intelligence for locomotion.”

Robots are made almost exclusively of hard materials like metals and plastics, a fundamental obstacle in the push to create if not more human-like robots, than robots ideal for human biomedical advancements.

Water-based gels, which feel like gummy bears, are one of the most promising materials in the field of soft robotics. Researchers have previously demonstrated that gels that swell or shrink in response to temperature can be used to create smart structures. Here, the Johns Hopkins team demonstrated for the first time, how swelling and shrinking of gels can be strategically manipulated to move robots forward and backward on flat surfaces, or to essentially have them crawl in certain directions with an undulating, wave-like motion.

The gelbots, which were created by 3D printing for this work, would be easy to mass produce. Gracias forsees a range of practical future applications, including moving on surfaces through the human body to deliver targeted medicines. They could also be marine robots, patrolling and monitoring the ocean’s surface.

Gracias hopes to train the gelbots to crawl in response to variations in human biomarkers and biochemicals. He also plans to test other worm and marine organism-inspired shapes and forms and would like to incorporate cameras and sensors on their bodies.

Authors included Aishwarya Pantula, Bibekananda Datta, Yupin Shi, Margaret Wang, Jiayu Liu, Siming Deng, Noah J. Cowan, and Thao D. Nguyen, all of Johns Hopkins.

The work was supported by: National Science Foundation (EFMA-1830893).

Gelbots do 'The Worm' When Temperature Changes (VIDEO)

Gel robots feel like gummy bears.

A new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design, brings “a kind of intelligence” to the field of soft robotics.

CREDIT

Aishwarya Pantula/Johns Hopkins University

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JOURNAL

Science Robotics

DOI

10.1126/scirobotics.add2903 

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! a

Economic pain, Turkish strikes drive Syrian Kurds to Europe

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB and HOGIR AL ABDO

1 of 5

In this UGC photo Baran Mesko takes a selfie in a fishing boat with a dozen other Kurdish Syrian migrants before leaving to Spain in Oran, Algeria, on Saturday, Octo. 15, 2022. A growing number of Syrian Kurds are making the journey to Europe on a circuitous course that includes travel by car and plane across Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, then finally by boat to Spain. (AP Photo/Baran Msko)

QAMISHLI, Syria (AP) — Baran Ramadan Mesko had been hiding with other migrants for weeks in the coastal Algerian city of Oran, awaiting a chance to take a boat across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Days before the 38-year-old Syrian Kurd was to begin the journey, he received news that a smuggler boat carrying some of his friends had sunk soon after leaving the Algerian coast. Most of its passengers had drowned.

It came as a shock, after spending weeks to get to Algeria from Syria and then waiting for a month for a smuggler to put him on the boat.

But having poured thousands of dollars into the journey, and with his wife and 4- and 3-year-old daughters counting on him to secure a life safe from conflict, the engineer-turned-citizen journalist boarded a small fishing boat with a dozen other men and took a group selfie to send to their families before they went offline.

After a 12-hour overnight journey, Mesko made his way to Almería, Spain, on Oct. 15, and then flew to Germany four days later, where he is now an asylum seeker in a migrant settlement near Bielefeld. He’s still getting used to the cold weather, and is using a translation app on his phone to help him get around while learning German. He said he’s hopeful his papers will be settled soon so his family can join him.

At least 246 migrants have gone missing while trying to cross the western Mediterranean into Europe in 2022, the International Organization for Migration says.

Mesko is among a growing number of Syrian Kurds making the journey to Europe on a winding course that includes travel by car and plane across Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, then finally by boat to Spain. Migrants say they are opting for this circuitous route because they fear detention by Turkish forces or Turkish-backed militants in Syria if they try to sneak into Turkey, the most direct path to Europe.

According to data from the European Union border agency Frontex, at least 591 Syrians have crossed the Mediterranean from Algeria and Morocco to Spain in 2022, six times more than last year’s total.

A Kurdish Syrian smuggler in Algeria said dozens of Kurds from Syria arrive in the Algerian coastal city of Oran each week for the sea journey.

“I’ve never had numbers this high before,” the smuggler told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of arrest by Algerian authorities.

Years of conflict and economic turmoil have left their mark on Syria’s northern areas, home to some 3 million people under de facto Kurdish control. The region has been targeted by Islamic State group militants, Turkish forces and Syrian opposition groups from the country’s northwestern rebel-held enclave. Climate change and worsening poverty spurred a cholera outbreak in recent months.

Like Mesko, many of the migrants come from the Syrian city of Kobani, which made headlines seven years ago when Kurdish fighters withstood a brutal siege by the Islamic State militant group.

The town was left in ruins, and since then, “not much has happened” to try to rebuild, said Joseph Daher, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, adding that most development funding went to cities further east.

Recent events in northeastern Syria have given its residents an additional incentive to leave.

Turkey stepped up attacks on Kurdish areas in Syria after a bombing in Istanbul in November killed six people and wounded over 80 others. Ankara blames the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party and the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Unit in Syria. Both have denied responsibility.

Since then, Turkish airstrikes have pounded areas across northeastern Syria, including Kobani, further battering its already pulverized infrastructure, and Ankara has vowed a ground invasion.

Bozan Shahin, an engineer from Kobani, recalled a Turkish airstrike last month.

“I saw my mother trembling in fear and holding my 4-year-old sister to keep her calm,” Shahin said.

He now wants to join the flow of Kurds headed from Syria to Europe.

“I have some friends who found a way to get to Lebanon through a smuggler and go somewhere through Libya,” he said. “I’m not familiar with all the details, but I’m trying to see how I can take that journey safely.”

The operation, which takes weeks and costs thousands of dollars, is run by a smuggler network that bribes Syrian soldiers to get the migrants through checkpoints where they could be detained for draft-dodging or anti-government activism, then across the porous border into Lebanon, the migrants and smugglers said.

There, the migrants typically stay in crowded apartments in Beirut for about a week while awaiting expedited passports from the Syrian Embassy by way of a smuggler’s middleman.

With passports in hand, the migrants fly to Egypt, where Syrians can enter visa-free, then take another flight to Benghazi in war-torn Libya before embarking on the journey to Algeria through another network of smugglers.

“We went in vans and jeeps and they took us across Libya through Tripoli and the coastal road and we would switch cars every 500 kilometers or so,” Mesko said.

During the journey across the desert, they had to cross checkpoints run by Libya’s mosaic of armed groups.

“Some of the guards at checkpoints treated us horribly when they knew we were Syrian, taking our money and phones, or making us stand outside in the heat for hours,” he said.

An armed group kidnapped the group of migrants who left before his and demanded $36,000 for their release, Mesko said.

By the time they reached the Algerian city of Oran, Mesko was relieved to take refuge in an apartment run by the smugglers. While they waited for weeks, he and the other migrants spent most of their time indoors.

“We couldn’t move freely around Oran, because security forces are all over and we did not cross into the country legally,” Mesko said. “There were also gangs in the city or even on the coast who would try to mug migrants and take their money.”

Human rights groups have accused the Algerian authorities of arresting migrants, and in some cases expelling them across land borders. According to the U.N. refugee agency, Algeria expelled over 13,000 migrants to neighboring Niger to its south in the first half of 2021.

Despite his relief at arriving safely in Germany with a chance to bring his wife and girls there, Mesko feels remorse for leaving Kobani.

“I was always opposed to the idea of migrating or even being displaced,” he said. “Whenever we had to move to another area because of the war, we’d come back to Kobani once we could.”

Mesko spends much of his time at asylum interviews and court hearings, but says he’s in good spirits knowing he’s started a process he only dreamed of months ago. He hopes to be granted asylum status soon, so his wife and daughters can reunite with him in Europe.

“Syria has become an epicenter of war, corruption and terrorism,” he said. “We lived this way for 10 years, and I don’t want my children to live through these experiences, and see all the atrocities.”

____

Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Renata Brito reported from Barcelona, Spain.

Record low turnout, opposition boycott mar Tunisia elections

Less than 9 percent of voters turned up to cast their ballot amid an opposition boycott of parliamentary elections.

By Elizia Volkmann
Published On 17 Dec 2022

Tunis, Tunisia – Tunisia’s parliamentary election on Saturday witnessed a record-low turnout as most political parties boycotted the polls, denouncing it as the culmination of President Kais Saied’s march to one-man rule.

Last year, Saied, a former law professor, unseated the government and suspended parts of a 2014 constitution, which was a product of the Arab democratic uprising in 2011. The charter curtailed the president’s powers in favour of parliament and the prime minister.

Tunisia’s previous parliament, which Saied shut down in 2021 as he moved to rule by decree in measures his foes called a coup, was elected with a turnout of about 40 percent.

Saied called Saturday’s legislative vote a “historic day” as he urged Tunisians to cast their ballots.

“It is a historic day by all standards. [The election date] was determined and respected despite all obstacles,” he said after voting at a polling station in the capital Tunis.

However, less than 9 percent of registered voters turned up to cast their ballot on Saturday.

Since the morning, people barely trickled into polling stations. For most of the day, it seemed that there were more voting centre staff and security than voters. Observers said that numbers at best crept into the tens.

At 08:05am (07:05 GMT) at a polling station in downtown Tunis, only one woman – local small business owner Manoubia Shagawi – had turned up to vote.

“I want to support my country and to support my president. I want the country to go forward and get better and that’s why I voted today,” she said.

This was in sharp contrast to a group of young women who, when asked if they intended to vote, responded with a resolute “No” and walked off.

Oumaima ben Abdullah, a campaigner with the centre-left Democratic Current party, said, “The active boycott is by people from civil society and political parties.”

Zoubeir Daly, a founding member of the Tunisian election observation association, Mourakiboun, explained that people were effectively staying away from the ballots as a silent protest rather than apathy.

“It’s a statement about the people’s feelings on the situation of the country overall,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said the turnout is an indication of the general sentiment among Tunisians who are concerned about the future of their country.

“The opposition has boycotted the election,” he said. “The biggest and most powerful trade union, UGTT, decided it won’t take part in this political process and has been very critical of President Saied.”

Ahelbarra said that the tattered economy, high inflation, and sky-rocketing food prices are all factors in why many people did not vote.

“This explains why people over the last few weeks lost hope in the political process, and hence, [there was] an unprecedented low turnout in Tunisia,” he explained.

‘Vote for who?’

In the capital Tunis, the election process itself went smoothly without a hitch.

New observers, Russia’s Civic Committee, were impressed with the calm professionalism of the elections teams that operated the centres. Security was less intrusive than during the July referendum, but still, against the rules, members of security services regularly wandered through voting centres out of boredom rather than to intimidate.

However, far away from the capital city, other observers witnessed vote buying in the west, in a number of voting centres in Nabeul to the south, Gafsa in the marginalised interior and in the desert city of Tozeur. To the west near the Algerian border in the town of Sbeitla, Mourakiboun witnessed rival candidate supporters involved in a brawl.

The lack of information about candidates has been a big turn-off for many of the electorates. Aymen, a Tunisian taxi driver said he wasn’t planning on voting.

“Vote for who? I have no idea who any of these people are,” he said.

Zyna Mejri of the Tunisian fact verification association, Falso, said that the campaign and running of the elections have been characterised by poor communication and even worse information.

“I think it is based on the ignorance of candidates. They don’t know what the role of the new parliament will be. I don’t think many of them have read the new constitution, and do not know the difference between an MP and a cabinet minister.”

Mejri said that this has led to inadvertent misleading of the electorate.

“They’ve been making promises they will not be able to deliver on because they think they will have the powers of ministers and warned this could cause problems once parliament begins working,” she said.

‘Old man’s world’

Monica Marks, an assistant professor of Arab Cross Road Studies at New York University told Al Jazeera: “No candidate who ran in today’s election could possibly understand what their role can be. Nobody, not even the most seasoned constitutional scholars or Tunisian experts know what the role of a member of parliament will be.”

After the polls closed, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) published the final voter turnout figure of just 8.8 percent of 9.3 million registered voters.

Marks said that she was surprised to see such a seemingly honest voter turnout figure.

“Had the ISIE said voter turnout was over 10 percent, I would have questioned it,” she said.

Throughout the lead-up to the election, human rights groups have decried the lack of female and youth candidates. Come polling day, the majority (66.1 percent) of voters were male and over 45 years old, and the largest group were over 60s.

Commenting on the voter demographic, Marks said: “We saw this in the referendum in the summer and see it even more dramatically now to shift Tunisia one of the most progressive models of gender, youth to a man’s world, and not just a man’s world but an old man’s world.”

The initial results of the legislative elections will be announced on Sunday, but how parliament will actually operate is yet to be seen.

“One thing for sure is that this parliament will be a powerless Potemkin parliament,” Marks told Al Jazeera.

KEEP READING
Tunisians trickle in to vote in elections as opposition boycotts
Will Tunisia’s political crisis ever end?
Why are Tunisia’s parliamentary elections so controversial?

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Germany cuts the ribbon on first LNG terminal
Updated / Saturday, 17 Dec 2022 

Germany plans to open four more government-funded LNG terminals over the next few months

Germany has inaugurated its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, built in record time, as the country scrambles to adapt to life without Russian energy.

The rig in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven was opened by Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a ceremony on board a specialist vessel known as an FSRU, named the Hoegh Esperanza.

"It's a good day for our country and a sign to the whole world that the German economy will be able to remain strong," Mr Scholz said from the boat.

The Hoegh Esperanza sounded its horn as the chancellor, dressed in a high visibility jacket, approached.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the new LNG terminal inauguration day

The ship has already been stocked with gas from Nigeria that could supply 50,000 homes for a year, and the terminal is set to begin deliveries on 22 December.

Germany plans to open four more government-funded LNG terminals over the next few months as well as a private terminal in the port of Lubmin.

Together, the terminals could deliver 30 billion cubic metres of gas a year from next year, or a third of Germany's total gas needs - if Berlin can find enough LNG to service them.

LNG terminals allow for the import by sea of natural gas which has been chilled and turned into a liquid to make it easier to transport.

The FRSU stocks the LNG, then turns it back into a ready-to-use gas.

Until now, Germany had no LNG terminals and relied on cheap gas delivered through pipelines from Russia for 55% of its supply.

Supply worries

But since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, gas supplies to Germany have been throttled and Berlin has been forced to rely on LNG processed by Belgian, French and Dutch ports, paying a premium for transport costs.

The government decided to invest in building its own LNG terminals as quickly as possible and has spent billions of euros on hiring FSRUs to service them.

However, Germany has not yet signed a single major long-term contract to begin filling the terminals from January.

"The import capacity is there. But what worries me are the deliveries," Johan Lilliestam, a researcher at the University of Potsdam, told AFP.

A contract has been signed with Qatar for LNG to supply the Wilhelmshaven terminal but deliveries are not set to begin until 2026.

Suppliers want long-term contracts, while the German government is not keen to be locked into multi-year gas deals as it wants the country to become climate-neutral by 2045.

"Companies need to know that the purchasing side in Germany will eventually diminish if we want to meet climate protection targets," economy minister Robert Habeck has said.

Environmental campaigners have criticised the LNG project, with the DUH association announcing it will take legal action. A handful of protesters turned out in Wilhelmshaven with placards demanding an "End to gas".

Cold winter

Germany could initially be forced to buy LNG from the expensive spot markets, which would lead to higher prices for consumers.

The market could also be squeezed next year by renewed demand in China as it emerges from strict Covid-19 curbs, Andreas Schroeder, an expert at the ICIS energy research institute, told AFP.

"If Europe has been able to receive so much LNG in recent months, it is because Chinese demand was low," Mr Schroeder said.

China recently signed a deal to buy gas from Qatar for 27 years - the longest such deal in history, according to Doha.

Germany has also had a cold winter so far, meaning the gas tanks have been emptying faster than expected.

"Gas consumption is increasing. This is a risk, especially if the cold spell continues," said Klaus Mueller, the head of the country's Federal Network Agency regulatory body, in a recent interview.

As a result, there is a real risk that Germany could experience temporary supply disruptions next winter, according to Mr Schroeder.

Gas usage is currently down 13% compared to last year but the government wants that figure to be closer to 20%.

In Europe, the gap between supply and demand could reach 27 billion cubic metres (950 billion cubic feet) in 2023, according to an IEA report - equivalent to 6.5% of the European Union's annual consumption.