Scientists highlight safe access to the outdoors with naming of new plant species

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENSOFT PUBLISHERS

 

IMAGE: PHOTO OF SOLANUM SCALARIUM, A NEWLY-DESCRIBED BUSH TOMATO SPECIES FROM THE NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA, SHOWING THE UNUSUAL LADDER-LIKE ARRANGEMENT OF PRICKLES ON MALE FLORAL STEMS. PLANTS GROWN IN THE ROOKE BIOLOGY RESEARCH GREENHOUSE AT BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY WERE CLOSELY STUDIED BY UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT JONATHAN HAYES (BIOLOGY ‘22) UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF DRS. TANISHA WILLIAMS AND CHRIS MARTINE. view more 

CREDIT: JONATHAN HAYES

A new species of Australian bush tomato described from the Garrarnawun Lookout in Judbarra National Park provides a compelling example of the need to provide equal and safe access to natural places. Bucknell University postdoctoral fellow Tanisha Williams and biology professor Chris Martine led the study following a chance encounter with an unusual population of plants during a 2019 research expedition to the Northern Territory.

Martine, who has studied northern Australia’s bush tomatoes for more than 20 years, immediately sensed that the plants were representative of a not-yet-described species, so he, Angela McDonnell (St. Cloud State University), Jason Cantley (San Francisco State University), and Peter Jobson (Northern Territory Herbarium in Alice Springs) combed the local area for plants to closely study and make research collections from. The task was made easier by the fact that the Garrarnawun Lookout is accessible by a set of dozens of human-made stone steps running directly from the unpaved parking area to the peak of the sandstone outcrop – without which the new species might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

The botanists were able to collect numerous new specimens and have now published the new species description in the open-access journal PhytoKeys, choosing the name Solanum scalarium as a nod to the steps leading to the plant and the unusual ladder-like prickles that adorn the flowering stems. The Latin “scalarium” translates to “ladder”, “staircase” or “stairs.”

“This Latin name does relate to the appearance of this species, how it looks,” says first-author Williams. “But it is also a way for us to acknowledge how important it is to create ways for people to interact with nature; not just scientists like us, but everyone.”

According to the authors, a recent study done by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries in Western Australia found that 8 in 10 people felt it is important to have access to natural spaces, both locally and outside of their current jurisdictions. However, one in three persons felt dissatisfied with the current outdoor spaces available to them and many identified barriers to access and participation in outdoor activities that include urbanization - which is especially credited for the growing number of Australians that lack outdoor experiences.

Importantly, the awareness of who has access and feels safe to participate in outdoor activities is being recognized throughout Australia and the lack of diversity in participation from culturally diverse and marginalized populations has been identified as an issue. Key indices such as ethnic background, socio-economic status, physical abilities and gender, are indicators of low outdoor recreation participation.

“These disparities of who are and are not participating and who feels safe and welcomed are artifacts of historic and current environmental and social injustices,” notes Williams. “To overcome these injustices and increase access and participation from diverse groups, intentional and targeted efforts are needed to provide a range of outdoor experiences that attract people from all of the 270 plus ancestries with which Australians identify with and special attention should be placed on groups historically excluded from outdoor spaces.”

Also now known as the Garrarnawun Bush Tomato, Solanum scalarium is a distant cousin of the cultivated eggplant and a close relative to a number of other Australian species recently discovered by Martine and colleagues that were also published in PhytoKeys including Solanum plastisexum, named to reflect the diversity of sex forms across Earth’s organisms; and Solanum watneyi, named for the space botanist of the book/film The Martian. 

The scientists hope that the naming of this latest new species highlights the importance of building community around natural spaces.

“We suggest the use of Garrarnawun Bush Tomato for the English-language common name of the species,” the authors write, “In recognition of the Garrarnawun Lookout near where the type collection was made, a traditional meeting place of the Wardaman and Nungali-Ngaliwurru peoples whose lands overlap in this area.”

Access to nature is not just a concern in Australia.

“In the United States, where most of the authors of this paper are located, “access” is one thing but safety and equitability are another,” says Martine, “The U.S. National Parks Service reports that around 95% of those who visit federal parks are white. Meanwhile, African Americans, Latinos, women, and members of the LGBTQIA+ communities often report feeling unwelcome or unsafe in outdoor spaces.”

“If African Americans, for example, are already apprehensive in a country where they make up 13% of the population, it should be understandable that they are hesitant to be part of a community where they represent as little as 1% of participants.”

Williams suggests that James Edward Mills, author of The Adventure Gap (2014) put it best:

“It’s not enough to say that the outdoors is free and open for everyone to enjoy. Of course it is! But after four centuries of racial oppression and discrimination that systematically made Black Americans fear for their physical safety, we must also make sure that we create a natural environment where people of color can not only feel welcome but encouraged to become active participants as outdoor enthusiasts and stewards dedicated to the protection of the land.”

Recent Bucknell graduate Jonathan Hayes, who measured and analyzed the physical characters of the new species using plants grown from seed in a campus greenhouse, joins Williams, McDonnell, Cantley, Jobson, and Martine as a co-author on the publication.

 

Research Article:

Williams TM, Hayes J, McDonnell AJ, Cantley JT, Jobson P, Martine CT (2022) Solanum scalarium (Solanaceae), a newly-described dioecious bush tomato from Judbarra/Gregory National Park, Northern Territory, Australia. PhytoKeys 216: 103-116. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.216.85972

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JOURNAL

PhytoKeys

DOI

10.3897/phytokeys.216.85972 

ARTICLE TITLE

Solanum scalarium (Solanaceae), a newly-described dioecious bush tomato from Judbarra/Gregory National Park, Northern Territory, Australia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Dec-2022

Disclaimer: AAAS

Cross-cultural study examines maternal attitudes and infant development

UK/Ugandan study finds differences and surprising similarities in mothers’ attitudes, parenting behaviors and infant development

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY LOOKED AT THE VARIATION IN ATTITUDES TOWARDS PARENTING ACROSS TWO SAMPLES OF PARTICIPANTS FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, AND FOUND THAT CULTURAL ATTITUDES ABOUT PARENTING SEEM TO RELATE TO INFANT EXPERIENCE IN SOME WAYS, BUT NOT OTHERS. view more 

CREDIT: HOLDEN ET AL., CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)Mothers in the samples from the UK and Uganda have different attitudes toward parenting, but while on a group level the experience and development of their infants sometimes aligns with parenting attitudes, surprisingly, it did not always show such variation, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Eve Holden and Katie Slocombe of University of York, UK, and colleagues.

Early life experiences, including those shaped by parental behaviors, are known to affect infant learning and development. There is considerable cultural variation in parenting practices, which may be underpinned by varying attitudes toward parenting and infant development. Most studies examining how parenting impacts infant development rely on attitude questionnaires or observations of behavior in a single context. It has been unclear whether these attitudes or behavior snapshots are representative of behavior in broader contexts.

In the new work, the researchers studied 53 mother-infant dyads in the UK and 44 mother-infant dyads in Uganda. Mothers and their babies were followed for full eight-hour days at five time points, when the infants were 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 months old. Data about parental attitudes and behaviors were also collected research sessions of up to 4 hours in participants’ homes.

The study revealed that Ugandan mothers had, on average, more relational attitudes toward parenting, whereas UK mothers tended to more strongly focus on autonomy. This translated into certain differences in parenting behaviors: Ugandan infants received more distributed caregiving (i.e. more caregivers), more body contact with their mothers, and more proximity to mothers at night. However, attitudes toward specific behaviors did not predict infant experience in all contexts. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, for instance, Ugandan infants were not in closer proximity to their mothers during the day, did not have more people in proximity or more partners for social interaction compared to UK infants. Despite the UK mothers’ greater focus on self-development, more of the Ugandan infants showed earlier physical development compared to UK infants.

The authors describe how “infants’ early life environment varies cross-culturally in many important ways” but add that the findings highlight the importance of measuring behavior, rather than extrapolating expected behavior based on attitudes alone. 

The authors add: “Most of us know that among our friends and family there can be a lot of variation in attitudes towards parenting – in our study we looked at this across two samples of participants from quite different backgrounds and looked at how attitudes may or may not match up to infant experience and development. We found that cultural attitudes about parenting seem to relate to infant experience in some ways, but not others – this shows the interaction between attitudes and infant experience is quite complicated and there could be many things that influence infant experience beyond parents attitudes.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278378

Citation: Holden E, Buryn-Weitzel JC, Atim S, Biroch H, Donnellan E, Graham KE, et al. (2022) Maternal attitudes and behaviours differentially shape infant early life experience: A cross cultural study. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0278378. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278378

Author Countries: UK, Uganda, USA

Funding: This research was funded by an ERC (European Research Council: https://erc.europa.eu/funding) Consolidator grant to KES (ERC_CoG 2016_724608). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278378 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Maternal attitudes and behaviours differentially shape infant early life experience: A cross cultural study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

COI STATEMENT

Exploring perceptions of faces paired with fake news on Twitter

Study suggests “disputed” tags may do little to sway long-term perceptions of trustworthiness

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: EXAMPLE TWEET STIMULI. STIMULI ENCOUNTERED BY PARTICIPANTS DURING THE STUDY PHASE. FACE STIMULI TAKEN FROM GENERATE PHOTOS (HTTPS://GENERATED.PHOTOS/DATASETS) AND TWEETS CREATED IN (WWW.TWEETGEN.COM). view more 

CREDIT: EGGLESTON ET AL., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

In experiments using made-up tweets, participants rated the trustworthiness of faces paired with positive news headlines more highly than faces paired with negative headlines. Tagging the headlines as “disputed”—Twitter’s indicator of potentially fake news—appeared to have no long-term influence on these ratings. Adam Eggleston of the University of York, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 21. 

Prior research has shown that a person’s facial appearance significantly affects others’ perceptions of their character, and that such perceptions are influenced by knowing about the person’s prior actions. However, research also suggests that, once associations between appearance and traits are learned, they can be difficult to alter, even in light of new information about the person.

To explore how these dynamics might play out on Twitter, Eggleston and colleagues conducted two experiments in which 128 participants viewed made-up tweets that each paired an A.I.-generated photo of a person’s face with a news headline portraying the person in either a positive or negative light. Half of the tweets were tagged as disputed. In one experiment, participants rated the trustworthiness of the faces shortly after viewing them, and in the other, ratings occurred after a 10-minute gap.

In both experiments, participants rated faces paired with positive, undisputed headlines as more trustworthy than faces paired with negative, undisputed headlines. For participants who rated just after viewing, faces paired with positive or negative disputed headlines were perceived as similarly trustworthy. However, for participants who rated after a 10-minute gap, faces paired with positive, disputed headlines were rated as more trustworthy than those paired with negative, disputed headlines.

These findings suggest that disputed tags may not impact people’s long-term perceptions of faces they see on Twitter. This analysis could therefore add to growing concerns about “fake news” on social media and its potential to influence the public’s opinions and actions, including voting behaviors.

The authors note that their experiments differ from real-world settings of Twitter usage, and future research could further deepen understanding of facial perception on Twitter, potentially helping to inform efforts to combat misinformation.

The authors add: “Our data expand upon a growing and important area of research evaluating the effectiveness of measures used to combat fake news. Our results give important insights into how propaganda may potentially spread online.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278671

Citation: Eggleston A, Cook R, Over H (2022) The influence of fake news on face-trait learning. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0278671. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278671

Author Countries: UK

Funding: This research was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 Programme, grant number ERC-STG- 755719 awarded to HO and grant number ERC-2016-StG-715824 awarded to RC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278671 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The influence of fake news on face-trait learning

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

Climate impacts are increasing; textbooks aren’t keeping pace

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A NEW STUDY FINDS BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS HAVE DONE A POOR JOB OF INCORPORATING MATERIAL RELATED TO CLIMATE CHANGE. FOR EXAMPLE, THE STUDY FOUND THAT MOST TEXTBOOKS PUBLISHED IN THE 2010S INCLUDED LESS INFORMATION ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAN THEY DID IN THE PREVIOUS DECADE – DESPITE SIGNIFICANT ADVANCES IN OUR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW CLIMATE CHANGE IS INFLUENCING ECOSYSTEMS AND THE ENVIRONMENT. TEXTBOOKS ARE ALSO DEVOTING SUBSTANTIALLY LESS SPACE TO ADDRESSING CLIMATE SOLUTIONS NOW THAN THEY DID IN THE 1990S. view more 

CREDIT: JENNIFER LANDIN, NC STATE UNIVERSITY

A new study from North Carolina State University finds that biology textbooks have done a poor job of incorporating material related to climate change. For example, the study found that most textbooks published in the 2010s included less information about climate change than they did in the previous decade – despite significant advances in our understanding of how climate change is influencing ecosystems and the environment.

“In short, we found biology textbooks are failing to share adequate information about climate change, which is a generation-defining topic in the life sciences,” says Jennifer Landin, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of biological sciences at NC State. “These books are the baseline texts for helping students understand the science of life on Earth, yet they are providing very little information about a phenomenon that is having a profound impact on habitats, ecosystems, agriculture – almost every aspect of life on Earth.”

For the study, researchers analyzed coverage of climate change in 57 college biology textbooks published between 1970 and 2019. The researchers found that climate coverage has varied substantially over those five decades.

Prior to 1990, textbooks had a median of fewer than 10 sentences addressing climate change. In the 1990s, the median length of climate content was 30 sentences. The median length of climate content rose to 52 sentences in the 2000s, which is not surprising given the amount of emerging research into climate change and its impacts. However, the researchers found that the amount of climate coverage in textbooks actually declined in the 2010s – dropping to a median of 45 sentences.

In addition to length, the nature of the content has also changed substantially over time. For example, sentences dedicated to actionable solutions to climate change peaked in the 1990s at more than 15% of the climate content. However, in more recent decades, actionable solutions make up only about 3% of the climate content.

“One of the most troubling findings was that textbooks are devoting substantially less space to addressing climate solutions now than they did in the 1990s – even as they focus more on the effects of climate change,” Landin says. “That suggests to students that nothing can be done, which is both wildly misleading and contributes to a sense of fatalism regarding climate change.”

In addition, the position of climate change sections keeps moving further back in the books, from the last 15% of the overall text in the 1970s to the last 2.5% of the text in the 2010s.

“This is important because most instructors present textbook content in order, which means topics at the end of the book are often skipped,” Landin says.

“However, it’s not all bad news,” Landin adds. “Textbooks in the 2000s and 2010s began including a wider variety of climate-relevant information, such as how climate is affecting species distributions, which can help students understand the various impacts of climate change.

“However, we are hoping that this study will serve as a wake-up call for publishers and instructors. We need to do a much better job of incorporating climate change into our courses if we want to prepare students to understand the role that climate change is playing in shaping life on Earth and how we study it.”

The paper, “Coverage of climate change in introductory biology textbooks, 1970-2019,” will be published Dec. 21 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. First author of the paper is Rabiya Arif Ansari, a former undergraduate at NC State.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Coverage of climate change in introductory biology textbooks, 1970-2019

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

Characters’ actions in movie scripts reflect gender stereotypes

Machine-learning framework finds female characters display less agency and more emotion than male counterparts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: THE RESEARCHES STARTED WITH THE ANNOTATION PROCESS, WHERE THEY COLLECTED MANUAL ANNOTATIONS FOR 9,613 DESCRIPTIONS AND OVER 1.5 MILLION GENDER EXPRESSION LABELS FOR CHARACTERS. THEN THEY DEVELOPED A MACHINE LEARNING MODEL TO IDENTIFY ACTIONS, AGENTS AND PATIENTS FROM THE NATURAL LANGUAGE FOUND IN THE MOVIE SCRIPTS. IN THE FINAL STEP, THEY UNDERTOOK STATISTICAL ANALYSIS TO UNCOVER PORTRAYAL DIFFERENCES ALONG CHARACTERS’ PORTRAYED ATTRIBUTES. view more 

CREDIT: MARTINEZ ET AL., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Researchers have developed a novel machine-learning framework that uses scene descriptions in movie scripts to automatically recognize different characters’ actions. Applying the framework to hundreds of movie scripts showed that these actions tend to reflect widespread gender stereotypes, some of which are found to be consistent across time. Victor Martinez and colleagues at the University of Southern California, U.S., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 21.

Movies, tv shows, and other media consistently portray traditional gender stereotypes, some of which may be harmful. To deepen understanding of this issue, some researchers have explored the use of computational frameworks as an efficient and accurate way to analyze large amounts of character dialogue in scripts. However, some harmful stereotypes might be communicated not through what characters say, but through their actions.

To explore how characters’ actions might reflect stereotypes, Martinez and colleagues used a machine-learning approach to create a computational model that can automatically analyze scene descriptions in movie scripts and identify different characters’ actions. Using this model, the researchers analyzed over 1.2 million scene descriptions from 912 movie scripts produced from 1909 to 2013, identifying fifty thousand actions performed by twenty thousand characters.

Next, the researchers conducted statistical analyses to examine whether there were differences between the types of actions performed by characters of different genders. These analyses identified a number of differences that reflect known gender stereotypes.

For instance, they found that female characters tend to display less agency than male characters, and that female characters are more likely to show affection. Male characters are less likely to “sob” or “cry,” and female characters are more likely to be subjected to “gawking” or “watching” by other characters, highlighting an emphasis on female appearance.

While the researchers' model is limited by the extent of its ability to fully capture nuanced societal context relating the script to each scene and the overall narrative, these findings align with prior research on gender stereotypes in popular media, and could help raise awareness of how media might perpetuate harmful stereotypes and thereby influence people’s real-life beliefs and actions. In the future, the new machine-learning framework could be refined and applied to incorporate notions of intersectionality such as between gender, age, and race, to deepen understanding of this issue

The authors add: “Researchers have proposed using machine-learning methods to identify stereotypes in character dialogues in media, but these methods do not account for harmful stereotypes communicated through character actions. To address this issue, we developed a large-scale machine-learning framework that can identify character actions from movie script descriptions. By collecting 1.2 million scene descriptions from 912 movie scripts, we were able to study systematic gender differences in movie portrayals at a large scale.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278604

Citation: Martinez VR, Somandepalli K, Narayanan S (2022) Boys don’t cry (or kiss or dance): A computational linguistic lens into gendered actions in film. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0278604. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278604

Author Countries: USA

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278604 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Boys don’t cry (or kiss or dance): A computational linguistic lens into gendered actions in film

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

Small turtles cannot legally be sold as pets because of the Salmonella infection risk, but half of online sellers fail to provide information about the law and the disease risk

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: SMALL TURTLES CANNOT LEGALLY BE SOLD AS PETS BECAUSE OF THE SALMONELLA INFECTION RISK. view more 

CREDIT: KRIS-MIKAEL KRISTER, UNSPLASH, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

Small turtles cannot legally be sold as pets because of the Salmonella infection risk, but half of online sellers fail to provide information about the law and the disease risk

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Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278443

Article Title: Online sale of small turtles circumvents public health regulations in the United States

Contact: Niamh E. Keane, nkeane@uri.edu, Ph.: +1 781 530 0277; Juliana M. Marcotrigiano, marcotrigianoj@uri.edu, Ph.: +1 908 514 9288

Author Countries: USA

Funding: L.E.M., J.M.M., and N.E. Keane received an Undergraduate Research Grant from the University of Rhode Island (https://web.uri.edu/undergraduate-research/). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. J.A.S. and N.E. Karraker received an award (#2018428) from the National Science Foundation - Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology (https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/research-coordination-networks-undergraduate-biology-education-rcn-ube). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278443 

ARTICLE TITLE

Online sale of small turtles circumvents public health regulations in the United States

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Metabolic hack makes ocean algae more resilient to 21st century climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: PHOTOSYNTHESIZING ALGAE PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN MARINE LIFE. ACCORDING TO NEW COMPUTER MODEL SIMULATIONS, A METABOLIC HACK MAKES PHYTOPLANKTON MORE RESILIENT TO 21ST CENTURY CLIMATE CHANGE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT. view more 

CREDIT: INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE

A study published in Science Advances by an international team of scientists provides clear evidence that marine phytoplankton are much more resilient to future climate change than previously thought.

Combining data from the long-term Hawai'i Ocean Time-series program with new climate model simulations conducted on one of South Korea’s fastest supercomputers, the scientists revealed that a mechanism, known as nutrient uptake plasticity, allows marine algae to adapt and cope with nutrient-poor ocean conditions expected to occur over the next decades in response to global warming of the upper ocean.

Phytoplankton are tiny algae (Fig. 1) which drift at the ocean’s surface and form the basis of the marine food web. While photosynthesizing, these algae absorb nutrients (e.g., phosphate, nitrate), take up dissolved carbon dioxide and release oxygen, which makes up for about 50% of the oxygen that we breathe. Knowing how marine algae will respond to global warming and to associated decline of nutrients in upper ocean waters is therefore crucial for understanding the long-term habitability of our planet.

How the annual phytoplankton production rate will change globally over the next 80 years remains highly uncertain. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states an uncertainty of -20% to +20%, which implies an uncertainty as to whether phytoplankton will increase or decrease in future.

Global warming affects the upper layers of the ocean more than the deeper layers. Warmer water is lighter and hence the upper ocean will become more stratified in future, which reduces mixing of nutrients from the subsurface into the sun-lit layer, where phytoplankton reside. Earlier studies suggested that the expected future depletion of nutrients near the surface would lead to a substantial reduction of ocean’s phytoplankton production with widespread and potentially catastrophic effects on both marine ecosystems and climate.

But according to a new study in Science Advances, this may not happen. New analyses of the upper ocean phytoplankton data from Hawai'i Ocean Time-series program shows that productivity can be sustained, even in very nutrient-depleted conditions. “Under such conditions individual phytoplankton cells can substitute phosphorus with sulfur. On a community level, one might see further shifts towards taxa that require less phosphorus”, says David Karl, a coauthor of the study, Professor in Oceanography at the University of Hawai'i and co-founder of the Hawai'i Ocean Time-series Study program, to illustrate the concept of phytoplankton plasticity. Further supporting evidence for plasticity comes from the fact that in subtropical regions, where nutrient concentrations in the surface waters are low, algae take up less phosphorus per amount of carbon stored in their cells, as compared to the global mean.

To study how this unique metabolic “hack” will impact global ocean productivity over the next few decades, the team ran a series of climate model simulations with the Community Earth System model (version 2, CESM2) on their supercomputer Aleph. By turning off the phytoplankton plasticity in their model, the authors were able to qualitatively reproduce previous model results of a decline in global productivity by about 8%. However, when turning on the plasticity parameter in their model, in a way that captures the observations near Hawai'i for the past 3 decades, the computer simulation reveals an increase in global productivity of up to 5% until the end of this century. “Regionally, however, these future productivity differences can be much higher, reaching up to 200% in subtropical regions,” says Dr. Eun Young Kwon, first author of the study and a researcher at the IBS Center for Climate Physics at Pusan National University, South Korea. With this extra productivity boost, the ocean can also take up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and eventually sequester it below the ocean’s surface.

Inspired by the results of their sensitivity computer model simulations, the authors then looked at 10 other climate models, whose data were used in the recent 6th Assessment Report of the IPCC. The results confirmed the author’s initial conclusions. “Models without plasticity tend to project overall declining primary production for the 21st century, whereas those that account for the capability of phytoplankton to adapt to low nutrient conditions show on average increasing global productivity” says Dr. M.G. Sreeush, co-corresponding author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the IBS Center for Climate Physics.

“Even though our study demonstrates the importance of biological buffering of global-scale ecological changes, this does not imply that phytoplankton are immune to human induced climate change. For instance, worsening ocean acidification will reduce the calcification rates of certain types of phytoplankton, which can lead to large-scale shifts in ecosystems.” warns Dr. Eun Young Kwon. These factors are neither well understood nor represented yet in climate models.

“Future Earth system models need to use improved observationally-based representations of how phytoplankton respond to multiple stressors, including warming and ocean acidification. This is necessary to predict the future of marine life on our planet” says Prof. Axel Timmermann, a coauthor of this study and director of the IBS Center for Climate Physics.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add2475 

ARTICLE TITLE

Nutrient uptake plasticity in phytoplankton sustains future ocean net primary production

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

UK

Lower risk of alcohol disorders in top footballers but only from 1960s onwards

Questions also persist over alcohol marketing to football fans

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Elite male football players have a lower risk of alcohol and drug related disorders than men from the general population, but this protective effect was seen only for those who first played in the 1960s and later, not for players from earlier eras, finds a study in the Christmas issue of The BMJ.

Questions also persist over the health impacts of alcohol marketing to millions of football fans around the globe, say authors of a linked editorial.

Alcohol consumption has been deeply ingrained in football culture for both players and fans, and several well known players have experienced alcohol addiction during and after their playing careers.

Constant pressure to perform at a high level, public attention and fame have been suggested to increase the risk of alcohol related disorders among active and retired elite athletes, but large scale studies assessing such outcomes are scarce.

To explore this further, researchers tracked the health of 6,007 male football players who had played in the Swedish top division, Allsvenskan, from 1924 to 2019 and 56,168 men from the general population matched to players based on age and region of residence.

They identified any alcohol and drug related disorders recorded in death certificates, during hospital admissions and outpatient visits, or use of prescription drugs for alcohol addiction.

They also assessed whether any increased risk would vary according to year of first top tier playing season, age, career length, and goal scoring abilities.

Participants were followed for an average of 27 years, during which time 257 (4.3%) football players and 3,528 (6.3%) men from the general population received diagnoses of alcohol related disorders.

In analyses accounting for age, region of residence, and calendar time, risk of alcohol related disorders was about 30% lower among football players than among men from the general population. 

This reduced risk was seen among football players who played their first season in the top tier from the early 1960s onwards, while football players from earlier eras had a similar risk as men from the general population.

The risk of alcohol related disorders was lowest at around age 35 years, and then increased with age. At around age 75, football players had a higher risk of alcohol related disorders than men from the general population.

No significant association was seen between goal scoring, number of games, and seasons played in the top tier and the risk of alcohol related disorders.

Risk of disorders related to other drug misuse was significantly lower (78%) among football players than the general population.

This is an observational study and the researchers acknowledge that individuals could have had alcohol related disorders without receiving a diagnosis, and that their findings may not apply to female elite players and to male and female amateur and youth players (who constitute most football players worldwide). 

But they conclude: “In this nationwide cohort study, male football players who had played in the Swedish top tier of competition had a significantly lower risk of alcohol related disorders than men from the general population.”

These findings are likely to reflect the economic changes in football, altering players’ drinking habits since the 1960s and mitigating alcohol related health harms, say researchers in a linked editorial.

In contrast, they point out that football clubs, competitions, and leagues continue to promote alcohol and other unhealthy commodities to football fans, which evidence indicates is directly linked with higher consumption, particularly among young people.

Further research might be able to compare the incidence of alcohol related disorders between the general population and football fans to ascertain the impact of football related marketing, they write. It could also look at how and when elite footballers object to alcohol sponsorship and whether elite footballers pushing back on alcohol can influence the consumption habits of fans.

“While fans could not buy alcohol at the matches at the Qatar World Cup, digital advertising boards alongside the pitch promoted beer to millions of global television viewers,” they note. “Playing football might be healthy but watching it could be the very opposite.”

 

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2022-074093 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Alcohol related disorders among elite male football players in Sweden: nationwide cohort study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Dec-2022

Microplastics deposited on the seafloor triple in 20 years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHER LAURA SIMON-SÁNCHEZ DURING ONE OF THE SAMPLE COLLECTION CAMPAIGNS view more 

CREDIT: (AUTHOR: LENA HEINS).

The total amount of microplastics deposited on the bottom of oceans has tripled in the past two decades with a progression that corresponds to the type and volume of consumption of plastic products by society. This is the main conclusion of a study developed by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of the Built Environment of Aalborg University (AAU-BUILD), which provides the first high-resolution reconstruction of microplastic pollution from sediments obtained in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea.

Despite the seafloor being considered the final sink for microplastics floating on the sea surface, the historical evolution of this pollution source in the sediment compartment, and particularly the sequestration and burial rate of smaller microplastics on the ocean floor, is unknown.

This new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T), shows that microplastics are retained unaltered in marine sediments, and that the microplastic mass sequestered in the seafloor mimics the global plastic production from 1965 to 2016. "Specifically, the results show that, since 2000, the amount of plastic particles deposited on the seafloor has tripled and that, far from decreasing, the accumulation has not stopped growing mimicking the production and global use of these materials," explains ICTA-UAB researcher Laura Simon-Sánchez.

Researchers explains that the sediments analysed have remained unaltered on the seafloor since they were deposited decades ago. "This has allowed us to see how, since the 1980s, but especially in the past two decades, the accumulation of polyethylene and polypropylene particles from packaging, bottles and food films has increased, as well as polyester from synthetic fibres in clothing fabrics," explains Michael Grelaud, ICTA-UAB researcher. The amount of these three types of particles reaches 1.5mg per kilogram of sediment collected, with polypropylene being the most abundant, followed by polyethylene and polyester. Despite awareness campaigns on the need to reduce single-use plastic, data from annual marine sediment records show that we are still far from achieving this. Policies at the global level in this regard could contribute to improving this serious problem.

Although smaller microplastics are very abundant in the environment, constraints in analytical methods have limited robust evidence on the levels of small microplastics in previous studies targeting marine sediment. In this study they were characterised by applying state-of-the-art imaging to quantify particles down to 11 µm in size.

The degradation status of the buried particles was investigated, and it was found that, once trapped in the seafloor, they no longer degrade, either due to lack of erosion, oxygen, or light. "The process of fragmentation takes place mostly in the beach sediments, on the sea surface or in the water column. Once deposited, degradation is minimal, so plastics from the 1960s remain on the seabed, leaving the signature of human pollution there," says Patrizia Ziveri, ICREA professor at ICTA-UAB.

The investigated sediment core was collected in November 2019, on board the oceanographic vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa, in an expedition that went from Barcelona to the coast of the Ebro Delta, in Tarragona, Spain. The research group selected the western Mediterranean Sea as a study area, in particular the Ebro Delta, because rivers are recognized as hotspots for several pollutants, including microplastics. In addition, the influx of sediment from the Ebro River provides higher sedimentation rates than in the open ocean.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.2c04264 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Microplastic preservation in a coastal sedimentary record