Study offers neurological explanation for how brains bias partisans against new information

People who share a political ideology have more similar ‘neural fingerprints’ of political words and process new information in similar ways, according to a new analysis led by Brown University researchers.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — What causes two people from opposing political parties to have strongly divergent interpretations of the same word, image or event?

Take the word “freedom,” for example, or a picture of the American flag, or even the 2020 U.S. presidential election. A person who identifies politically as liberal vs. one who identifies as conservative will likely have opposing interpretations when processing this information — and a new study helps to explain why.

While previous theories posited that political polarization results from selective consumption (and over-consumption) of news and social media, a team led by researchers at Brown University hypothesized that polarization may start even earlier.

Their new study, published in Science Advances, shows that individuals who share an ideology have more similar neural fingerprints of political words, experience greater neural synchrony when engaging with political content, and their brains sequentially segment new information into the same units of meaning. In this way, the researchers said, they show how polarization arises at the very point when the brain receives and processes new information.

“This helps shed light on what happens in the brain that gives rise to political polarization,” said senior study author Oriel FeldmanHall, an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences who is affiliated with the Carney Institute of Brain Science at Brown University. Daantje de Bruin, a graduate student in FeldmanHall's lab, led the research and conducted the data analysis.

Previous research from FeldmanHall’s lab showed that when watching a potentially polarizing video about hot-button issues like abortion, policing or immigration, the brain activity of people who identified as Democrat or Republican was similar to the brain activity of people in their respective parties.

That neurosynchrony, FeldmanHall explained, is considered evidence that the brains are processing the information in a similar way. For this new study, the researchers wanted to get an even more detailed picture of why and how the brains of people in the same political party are able to sync up.

To do that, the team used a range of methods that they say have never before been used in conjunction with each other. They conducted a series of experiments with a group of 44 participants, equally split among liberals and conservatives, who agreed to perform various cognitive tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures the small changes in blood flow that occur with brain activity.

Participants first completed a word reading task in which they were presented with single words (e.g., “immigration,” “abortion”) and asked to determine whether the word was political or non-political (indicated via a button press). Then the participants watched a series of videos, including a neutrally worded news clip on abortion and a heated 2016 vice presidential campaign debate on police brutality and immigration. During the experiments, the participants’ brain activity was measured using fMRI.

One of the methods the researchers used is called representation similarity analysis. When a person sees a simple, static image, like a word, the brain will represent that word with certain activity patterns.

“You can think of it as the brain representing the word by firing neurons in a certain way,” FeldmanHall said. “It’s almost like a fingerprint — a neural fingerprint that encodes the concept of that word within the brain.”

She added that since neural activity patterns store information about the world, how the brain represents this information is considered a metric for how that information is interpreted and used to steer behavior and attitudes.

In the study, the participants were exposed to words that are often politicized, like “abortion,” “immigration” and “gangs,” as well as more ambiguous words, like “freedom”.

The researchers found by analyzing the fMRI data that the neural fingerprint created by a liberal brain is more similar to other liberal brains than the neural fingerprint created by a conservative brain, and vice versa. This is important, FeldmanHall said, because it shows how the brains of partisans are processing information in a polarized way, even when it’s devoid of any political context.

Putting the polarized pieces together to create an ideological story

The researchers also used a newer methodology called neural segmentation to explore how the brains of people who identify with a particular party bias the interpretation of incoming information. Brains are constantly receiving visual and auditory input, FeldmanHall said, and the way the brain makes sense of that continuous barrage of information is to separate it into discrete chunks, or segments.

“You can think of it like dividing a book of solid text into sentences, paragraphs and chapters,” she said.

The researchers found that the brains of Democrats separate incoming information in the same way, which then gives similar, partisan meanings to those pieces of information — but that the brains of Republican segment the same information in a different way.

The researchers noted that individuals who shared an ideology had more similar neural representations of political words and experienced greater neural synchrony while watching the political videos, and segmented real-world information into the same meaningful units.

“The reason two liberal brains are synchronizing when watching a complicated video is due in part to the fact that each brain has neural fingerprints for political concepts or words that are very aligned,” FeldmanHall explained.

This explains why two opposing partisans can watch the same news segment and both believe that it was biased against their side — for each partisan, the words, images, sounds and concepts were represented in their brain in a different way (but similar to other partisans who share their ideology). The stream of information was also segmented out in a different format, telling a different ideological story.

Taken together, the researchers concluded, the findings show that political ideology is shaped by semantic representations of political concepts processed in an environment free of any polarizing agenda, and that these representations bias how real-world political information is construed into a polarized perspective.

“In this way, our study provided a mechanistic account for why political polarization arises,” FeldmanHall said.

The researchers are now focusing on how this explanation of polarization can be used to combat polarization.

“The problem of political polarization can’t be addressed on a superficial level,” FeldmanHall said. “Our work showed that these polarized beliefs are very entrenched, and go all the way down to the way people experience a political word. Understanding this will influence how researchers think about potential interventions.”

Additional contributors to this research included Pedro L. Rodríguez from the Center for Data Science at New York University and Jeroen M. van Baar from the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abq5920 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Shared neural representations and temporal segmentation of political content predict ideological similarity

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2023

 

Protected areas fail to safeguard more than 75% of global insect species

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

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IMAGE: THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF AN AUSTRALIAN PAINTED LADY BUTTERFLY (VANESSA KERSHAWI). view more 

CREDIT: SHAWAN CHOWDHURY

Insects play crucial roles in almost every ecosystem—they pollinate more than 80% of plants and are a major source of food for thousands of vertebrate species—but insect populations are collapsing around the globe, and they continue to be overlooked by conservation efforts. Protected areas can safeguard threatened species but only if these threatened species actually live within the areas we protect. A new study publishing on February 1 in the journal One Earth found that 76% of insect species are not adequately covered by protected areas.

“It's high time we considered insects in conservation assessments,” says lead author Shawan Chowdhury (@shawan_c), a conservation biologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). “Countries must include insects in protected area planning and when managing the existing ones.”

Although protected areas are known to actively shield many vertebrate species from key anthropogenic threats, the extent to which this is true for insects remains largely unknown. To determine what proportion of insect species are protected by protected areas, Chowdhury and colleagues overlaid species distribution data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility with global maps of protected areas.

They found that 76% of global insect species are inadequately represented in protected areas, including several critically endangered insects such as the dinosaur ant, crimson Hawaiian damselfly, and harnessed tiger moth. Furthermore, the global distributions of 1,876 species from 225 families do not overlap with protected areas at all.

The authors were surprised by the degree of underrepresentation. “A lot of insect data come from protected areas, so we thought that the proportion of species covered by protected areas would be higher,” says Chowdhury. “The shortfall is also much more severe than a similar analysis that was conducted on vertebrate species, which found that 57% of 25,380 vertebrate species were inadequately covered.”

Insects in some regions were better protected than others. Relatively high proportions of insect species achieved adequate protection in Amazonia, Saharo-Arabia, Western Australia, the Neotropics, the Afrotropics, and Central Europe, but protection fell short for many species in North America, Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and Australasia.

Insects have been historically overlooked by conservation programs, and this research was limited by the paucity of data on insect distributions. “Of the estimated 5.5 million insect species globally, we could only model the distributions of 89,151 species,” says Chowdhury. “Over 80% of all animals are insects, yet insects comprise only 8% of the assessed species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.”

Even if insects live within protected areas, they may not be reaping the benefits of this “protection,” says Chowdhury. “Many insect species are declining within protected areas because of threats such as rapid environmental change, loss of corridors, and roads inside protected areas.”

“A number of steps can be taken to efficiently conserve insects, and participation from all sorts of people is essential,” says Chowdhury. “Citizen science could have an enormous impact in filling the data gap on insect distributions. Scientists and policy makers must now step up and help with this challenge of identifying sites of importance for insect conservation.”

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One Earth, Chowdhury et al. “Three quarters of insect species are insufficiently represented by protected areas” https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(22)00631-5

One Earth (@OneEarth_CP), published by Cell Press, is a monthly journal that features papers from the fields of natural, social, and applied sciences. One Earth is the home for high-quality research that seeks to understand and address today’s environmental grand challenges, publishing across the spectrum of environmental change and sustainability science. A sister journal to Cell, Chem, and Joule, One Earth aspires to break down barriers between disciplines and stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas with a platform that unites communities, fosters dialogue, and encourages transformative research. Visit http://www.cell.com/one-earth. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

For the latest sustainability research and ideas from Cell Press follow @CellPressSust on Twitter.

This is a photograph of a Granny's Cloak Moth (Speiredonia spectans).

This is a photograph of a Red-base Jezebel butterfly (Delias pasithoe).

CREDIT

Shawan Chowdhury

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JOURNAL

One Earth

DOI

10.1016/j.oneear.2022.12.003 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Three quarters of insect species are insufficiently represented by protected areas

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2023

Soil tainted by air pollution expels carbon

How climate change is fueling itself

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DRYLAND SOIL SAMPLED FOR NITROGEN DEPOSITION STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: JOHANN PÜSPÖK/UCR

New UC Riverside research suggests nitrogen released by gas-powered machines causes dry soil to let go of carbon and release it back into the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate change. 

Industrial manufacturing, agricultural practices, and significantly, vehicles, all burn fossil fuels that release nitrogen into the air. As a result, levels of nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere have tripled since 1850. The research team wanted to understand whether this extra nitrogen is affecting soil’s ability to hold onto carbon and keep it from becoming a greenhouse gas.

“Because nitrogen is used as a fertilizer for plants, we expected additional nitrogen would promote plant growth as well as microbial activity, thereby increasing carbon put into soils,” said Peter Homyak, study co-author and assistant professor in UCR’s Department of Environmental Sciences. 

In dryland soil, the type that covers much of Southern California, this is not what they saw.

Instead, the team found that under certain conditions, extra nitrogen causes dryland soil to acidify and leach calcium. Calcium binds to carbon, and the two elements then leave the soil together. This finding is detailed in the journal Global Change Biology.   

To obtain their results, the research team sampled soil from ecological reserves near San Diego and Irvine that have been fertilized with nitrogen in long-term experiments. This allowed them to know precisely how much nitrogen was being added, and account for any effects they observed.

In many cases, nitrogen can affect biological processes that in turn influence how soil stores carbon. Such processes include the fueling of plant growth, as well as slowing down the microbes that help decompose dead things in the soil. 

What the researchers did not expect was a big effect on carbon storage through abiotic, or non-biological means. 

The pH scale measures how acidic or alkaline — basic — something is. In general, soils resist dramatic changes in pH by releasing elements like calcium in exchange for acidity. As nitrogen acidified soils at some of the sites in this study, the soil attempted to resist this acidity by releasing calcium. As it did so, some of the carbon stabilized by association with the calcium was lost.

“It is a surprising result because the main effect seems to be abiotic,” said Johann Püspök, UCR environmental sciences graduate student and first author of the study. “That means bare patches of soil with no plant cover and low microbial activity, which I always thought of as areas where not much is going on, appear to be affected by nitrogen pollution too.”

Dryland soil, characterized by limited ability to retain moisture and low levels of organic matter, covers roughly 45% of Earth’s land area. It is responsible for storing a large amount of the world’s carbon. 

Future studies may shed more light on how much dryland soil is being affected by nitrogen pollution in the way the study plots were. “We need more information as to how widespread such acidification effects are, and how they work under non-experimental conditions of nitrogen deposition,” Püspök said. 

However, since there is no quick fix for this phenomenon, and no clear way to reverse the process once it has begun, researchers recommend reducing emissions as much as possible to help soil retain its carbon stores.

“Air pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion has an impact on many things, including human health by causing asthma,” Homyak said. “It can also impact the amount of carbon these dryland systems can store for us. For many reasons, we have to get a handle on air pollution.”

Researcher sampling Southern California dryland soil to analyze for carbon content.

CREDIT

Johann Püspök/UCR

JOURNAL

Global Change Biology

DOI

10.1111/gcb.16563 

ARTICLE TITLE

Effects of experimental nitrogen deposition on soil organic carbon storage in Southern California drylands

Hundreds of Chinese Americans protest in Dallas against 'discriminatory' Texas Senate bills

Ryan General
Tue, January 31, 2023 
[Source]

Chinese Americans from North Texas are protesting against two Texas Senate bills that would ban specific communities from buying property in the state.

Over 250 protesters flocked to John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza in downtown Dallas on Sunday to condemn Senate Bills 147 and 552, which they have denounced as discriminatory.

Bill 147, filed by Republican State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst in November 2022, will effectively prevent people with ties to four countries — China, Russia, North Korea and Iran — from purchasing Texas property or real estate if passed.

More from NextShark: Armenia Voices Support For China Fighting COVID-19 in Heartwarming VIdeo

Meanwhile, Bill 552 will hinder companies with links to the four countries from buying agricultural land.

"I will sign it,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted on Jan. 15 in support of Bill 147. “This follows a law I signed banning those countries from threatening our infrastructure.”

According to Kolkhorst, the bill seeks to address national security issues with the singled-out countries.

More from NextShark: Nepalese Family Finds Their Car TORCHED in Alleged 'Hate Crime Against Asians' in the UK

Following Abbott’s expressed support, organizations backed by the local Chinese American community bared their plans to conduct a series of demonstrations in Texas' major cities.

The Sunday protest, which was hosted by DFW Chinese Alliance, included testimonies from community members who shared their concerns about the bills.

A Euless resident named Kuo Zhang lamented how Bill 147 would have a significant effect on their family.

“My husband and I are expecting a baby and we were planning to buy a house for our extended family, too,” Zhang was quoted by The Dallas Morning News as saying.

A recent Texas A&M University graduate named Wei Wu finds both bills “hateful and discriminatory.”

“We are here, we pay taxes, we’re here to seek our dreams; we should not be discriminated against,” she said.

Speaking to attendees, Plano City Council member Maria Tu urged Austin lawmakers to fight against the Senate bills on behalf of the Chinese Americans in their community.

Other local elected officials sought help from attendees to let Auston lawmakers know that they oppose the proposed legislation.

Hailong Jin, DFW Chinese Alliance's board director, said the bills are akin to previous anti-Chinese legislation in the U.S., including the Chinese Exclusion Act and California’s “Alien Land Law.”

According to Jin, passing the bills poses a dangerous precedent, as “other states will follow and anti-Asian hate will increase in this country – definitely.”

Scientists now know why methane mysteriously surged during lockdowns



Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc
Wed, February 1, 2023 

The world largely came to a halt in 2020 when extensive COVID-19 lockdowns were issued, which temporarily caused a global decline in greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the slowdowns in highly polluting sectors like aviation and manufacturing, methane emissions mysteriously climbed.

While carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of rising atmospheric temperatures, methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas and a particularly hazardous pollutant that scientists are closely monitoring.

See also: Why your fancy gas stove could be bad for the environment, and your health

Over a 20-year period, methane’s heat-trapping potential is up to 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Although carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for much longer time periods — up to several centuries — methane’s ability to rapidly warm the atmosphere highlights the urgency to investigate and address its sources.

So, why did methane emissions surge when most of the world screeched to a standstill in 2020?

A study published in Nature reports that the rise in methane emissions came from ecosystems that are typically methane sinks, such as wetlands. Additionally, reduced air pollution was also cited as an explanation for the rise in these emissions due to chemical changes in the atmosphere.

Gas plant flaring at a gas terminal in the United Kingdom.

 (Alexisaj/ iStock/ Getty Images Plus)

Gas plant flaring at a gas terminal in the United Kingdom. (Alexisaj/ iStock/ Getty Images Plus)

In the first half of 2020, lower levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides were emitted due to reduced combustion of fossil fuels and fewer fire emissions. Both of these compounds affect the concentration of hydroxyl radical, which is often referred to as a “detergent” in the atmosphere because of its ability to break down methane and other pollutants.

The study explains that hydroxyl radical is the main atmospheric sink for methane and even minor changes in its concentration can result in the rate that methane emissions accumulate in the atmosphere.

To determine how much the decrease in atmospheric hydroxyl and the environment contributed to the 2020 surge in methane, the researchers estimated the amount of methane that was emitted by the fossil fuel, agricultural, and waste sectors emitted in that year compared to 2019.

The study found that the reduced levels of human-released methane emissions in 2020 would have only resulted in a decrease of 0.4 parts per billion per year (ppb/year) compared to 2019. In 2020 the methane growth rate anomaly grew to 5.2 ppb/year compared with 2019, which is why the researchers state that the surge in emissions “must be attributed to a change of natural emissions and/or [the atmospheric] hydroxyl sink.”

Watch below: Historic Canadian town sinks as climate change sets into the North

Click here to view the video

Extreme weather patterns and other environmental factors were cited as triggers for the significant methane release in northern and tropical regions.

Northern Eurasia experienced abnormally warm temperatures during the 2020 spring and summer seasons, which the researchers say is a “sensitive region for methane emissions” due to sprawling wetlands, permafrost slumps, and Arctic lakes. In fact, the largest temperature anomaly that has been recorded in the past 20 years occurred over Russian permafrost regions in 2020.

NASA estimates that approximately 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon, including methane and carbon dioxide, are held within Arctic permafrost, which is approximately 51 times the amount of carbon that was released through fossil fuel emissions in 2019.

Abnormally wet conditions added another layer of environmental strain. Global wetlands saw a 2-11 per cent annual increase in precipitations compared to 2019, with some of the wettest conditions occurring in northern high latitudes and tropics. The researchers stated that shallower water tables, an earlier soil thaw, and a later soil freeze all contributed to higher methane emissions from high northern wetlands.

“It is probable that wetland emissions made a dominant contribution to the soaring level of atmospheric methane in 2020, although there is uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the contribution, mainly owing to uncertainty in the precipitation data,” the study stated.

“Our study highlights that future improvements in air quality with reduced [nitrogen oxides] emissions may increase the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere and therefore would require more reduction of methane emissions to achieve the target of the Paris Agreement,” the researchers concluded.

These new findings highlight the need for expanded policies that monitor and regulate methane emissions as well as deeper research into the processes that affect how this greenhouse gas decomposes in the atmosphere.

Thumbnail image: Tundra of the Arctic North Slope of Alaska in the National Petroleum Reserve. (Patrick J. Endres/ Getty Images)

The Real Reason Florida Wants to Ban AP African-American Studies, According to an Architect of the Course


Olivia B. Waxman
Wed, February 1, 2023

W.E.B. DUBOIS FOUNDER OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY 

In 1513, Juan Garrido, a free conquistador from the Kingdom of Kongo, became the first known African to arrive in North America when he explored what’s now Florida via a Spanish expedition.

Now, in 2023, Florida, the state where Black history began in America, is blocking an in-depth Black history class from being offered in its schools.

Garrido’s story is in the official framework for AP African American Studies, the College Board’s newest Advanced Placement course in nearly a decade. The course framework was viewed by TIME in advance of its release on Feb. 1, the beginning of Black History Month. As TIME previously reported, the course is being piloted at 60 schools nationwide.

But in January, the Florida Department of Education informed the College Board that it would not approve the curriculum unless certain changes are made. Among the course materials it objected to are references to Black Lives Matter and reparations. According to the official framework, students are not required to know about these topics for the AP exam, but they are listed as examples of possible research topics students may want to pursue.

Elaborating on the decision in a Jan. 23 press conference, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a former history teacher and college history major, said, “We want education not indoctrination,” arguing that the class is “pushing an agenda on our kids.”

Florida has become a ground-zero for the latest front of the culture wars. Last spring, DeSantis signed into law the STOP W.O.K.E. Act, which aimed to regulate how schools and workplaces talk about race and gender. Though a federal judge blocked a provision aimed at private businesses, it’s still had a chilling effect. College professors are opting not to teach classes on racism, and there are restrictions on professional development opportunities for teachers aimed at preventing critical race theory from being taught in K-12 schools (even though it’s rarely taught below the graduate level).

While Florida teachers are required to teach African American history, AP African American Studies would offer students a chance to earn college credit. On Jan. 25, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump announced he’s ready to sue DeSantis, with three AP honors students as lead plaintiffs.

To comment on Florida’s criticism of the curricula, TIME talked to one of its architects, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, professor of history and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. The College Board created the course, and Higginbotham and her Harvard colleague Henry Louis Gates Jr. were the primary scholars who reviewed it.

In the below conversation, she explains what’s in the course and what’s not in the course.
TIME: What’s your reaction to the Florida Department of Education’s criticisms about the AP African American Studies pilot?

HIGGINBOTHAM: Those narratives that they were singling out aren’t in the curriculum itself. What they see is buzzwords. They are picking on buzzwords that they know will inflame the hearts of some of their constituency. Communism was a buzzword in the 1950s against interracial marriage. If you were interracially married in the South, you became a communist. If people have political reasons for not wanting to see this [course], then no matter what arguments you give them, it won’t matter. So at this point, what I’m just interested in is stating what this course is and what we will do. And it’s exciting.

Governor DeSantis claims AP African American Studies is pushing “queer theory.”

We’re not pushing theory. Those things come up. Theory is replete in academia. Critical race theory built off of critical legal theory. Critical legal theory isn’t Black. Theory is everywhere. You’ve got Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection, Einstein’s theory of relativity, bad theorists who are absolutely racist like Morton and Agassiz [who tried to use science to claim Blacks were inferior]. You’ve got religious theories. Theory is a part of higher education. But that’s not what this course is about.

And DeSantis says he wants to focus on American history, focus on the “great figures.”

That’s a very old fashioned way of thinking about history. American history is not the American history of the great white male anymore. America wasn’t made by just simply the people who left their autobiographies, libraries, and manuscript papers in the Library of Congress.

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) presents the 2014 National Humanities Medal to Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (L) during an East Room ceremony at the White House September 10, 2015, in Washington, DC. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham was honored for illuminating the African-American journey in her writings and edited volumes.

Alex Wong—Getty ImagesMore

The governor also says AP African American Studies would “indoctrinate” students. ​

One of our goals is to have students look at topics from a variety of angles. This is the farthest thing from indoctrination. How you look at a subject from different angles is best done through interdisciplinary work. And this is an interdisciplinary course.

The big difference is that when you indoctrinate, you are not seeking a questioning mind. You’re just trying to put an idea into pretty much a blank mind and think that that will be accepted unquestioningly. This is exactly the opposite of what the AP course is doing. The AP course is trying to give a sense of the different ways to talk about a particular topic. And so there’s room for debates on a variety of things.

One of the major points that comes out of this course is that Black people are not a monolith. The people of African descent are themselves of different ethnicities, of different ideologies and political persuasions. They are different as far as income, as far as education. And we’re trying to capture that complexity. There’s certain things that will be similar. But the richness of it is the complexity within a narrative that allows for students to disagree. And we want students to disagree. We want respectful and civil debate.

What are myths or misconceptions about the AP African American Studies pilot that you have found yourself debunking or having to set the record straight on?

Governor DeSantis said [Florida has] Black history, but [AP African American Studies] is a different type of Black history. No. This is a Black history that is based on facts and not theories. It is a Black history that uses primary sources, meaning those records of the times—the newspapers of the time, letters, correspondences, archival records of the times. It means looking at our laws, our Constitution, our judicial decisions. It means reading the Congressional Record. So this isn’t something that is made up.

For many people, the idea of kingdoms in Africa will be shocking because when I was growing up, watching television as a child in the 1950s and early 1960s, there was the portrayal of African people as though they were merely savages. And those kinds of images were everywhere, even children’s games. People of African descent should be understood in a new light.

The biggest misperception is that this is somehow neophyte. African American Studies is over 50 years in the academy. And when it first started in the academy, it started in the white schools. Over 200 primarily white schools had Black studies in one form or another—programs, centers, departments—in 1969. This is not some ghettoized knowledge that will not land you a job.
Am I understanding this correctly from reading the pilot curriculum—that the Governor of the state where Black history in America begins is now trying to ban an in-depth course on African American history?

Yes. Absolutely. Obviously he doesn’t know American history, or Florida history.

The first time Black people came to North America was not in 1619. I have to remind people that when we talk about Jamestown, we’re talking about the British. When we talk about Black people, we’ve got to go into the earlier century—and that earlier century is the story of Florida. That’s one of the ironies of this whole resistance on the part of the governor, because the story of Florida, which was settled by the Spanish, starts in the early 1500s.

Did you know that in 1528, Africans were part of an expedition to settle in an area which would be near present-day Tampa Bay? It’s not until 1565 that St. Augustine is established [in present-day Florida]. Well, St. Augustine is the oldest surviving city in the United States. Enslaved Blacks and some free Blacks were crucial in the building of that city, along with whites, and along with some native indigenous people. Then as early as the early 1700s, St. Augustine develops this Black town called Fort Mose. The Spanish governor of Florida chartered this settlement called Fort Mose. And it was a settlement for free Blacks and also a settlement for slaves of the British that were fleeing to Florida from South Carolina. I would love to see teachers take the students there.

Brazil authorities probe Amazon ties to capital attacks
  

 An investigation into anti-democratic protests and a recent attack on Brazil's capital is centering in part on areas along an important highway that goes through the Amazon. 

FABIANO MAISONNAVE AND JOSHUA GOODMAN
Wed, February 1, 2023 

SAO PAULO (AP) — On the edge of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the Rovaris family is a symbol of a pioneering success story.

The family arrived in the state of Mato Grosso in the 1970s as part of a wave of agricultural expansion promoted by the country’s then-military dictatorship. In a short span, the Rovaris clan accumulated vast wealth as agronomists figured out how to successfully grow soy in the hostile tropical climate.

Now, the family’s scion, Atilio Rovaris, is being investigated in the sprawling criminal probe into how supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro tried to subvert Brazil’s democracy when they blocked highways right after the election and temporarily took over several government buildings in the capital of Brasilia in early January. Bolsonaro lost October's election to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a result that many Bolsonaro supporters don't accept.

Much of the investigation is centered along the northern stretch of highway BR-163, built in the 1970s. It connects two of Bolsonaro’s most substantial support bases. In Mato Grosso, these are Rovaris and other businesspeople from wealthy cities such as Sorriso, Brazil’s largest soybean producer. In Para, they are land-grabbers, illegal gold miners, and loggers who sustain impoverished cities such as Novo Progresso, 700 km (438 miles) north of Sorriso.

Days after the failed takeover, Justice Minister Flávio Dino said that “agribusiness sectors” were among the leading financiers. And Environment Minister Marina Silva said some of the rioters were linked to criminal activities in the Amazon.

“A significant portion of the enraged crowd were individuals who, under the Bolsonaro government, believed their criminal activities, such as deforestation, land grabbing, illegal logging, illegal fishing, and illegal mining, would go unpunished,” Silva told daily Folha de S.Paulo a few days after the Jan. 8 attack.

Bolsonaro won by big margins in population centers along the highway, as many people in theses areas share his view that Brazil needs to push economic growth by rolling back environmental regulations aimed at slowing deforestation. They deem conservation units and Indigenous territories as barriers that undermine agribusiness. Protected areas in the region are reeling from invasions from cattle farmers, loggers and gold miners.

That so much support for Bolsonaro came from these areas could complicate Lula's promise to reach “zero deforestation” in the Amazon, as such efforts will require the buy in of locals and must be joined with sustainable forms of development.

Rovaris, an amateur rally car driver, has made no secret of his support for Bolsonaro. He was one of the biggest donors to his presidential campaign, contributing close to $100,000, according to public election data.

Although no evidence in the fledgling probe has emerged publicly tying him to the rioters who vandalized Brazil’s presidential palace and congress, he is being investigating for alleged support of protests that blocked major highways for weeks in attempts to restore Bolsonaro to power after the lost the elections in October.

In November, a bank account belonging to a trucking company that Rovaris owns was one of 43 frozen by the Supreme Court as part of an investigation into possible crimes against Brazil’s democracy. In total, 30 of the frozen accounts belonged to individuals or companies from Mato Grosso — a sign of how deep support for Bolsonaro remains in one of Brazil’s key economic hubs.

“There is a repeated abuse of the right of assembly, directed illicitly and criminally, to propagate non-compliance and disrespect for the result of the election for president,” Justice Alexandre de Moraes wrote in the ruling.

Rovaris merely supported Bolsonaro in the campaign and had no involvement in anti-democratic acts, Larissa Gribler, his spokesperson, told The Associated Press. Gribler said Rovaris declined to answer further questions or give an interview.

During his first term as president, between 2003 and 2006, Lula started paving BR-163, a job later completed by Bolsonaro. As part of the environmental licensing to authorize the paving, conservation units were created along the highway. The goal was to “close the agriculture border” to prevent uncontrolled deforestation, as had happened in Mato Grosso.

In the Novo Progresso region in Para state, these conservation units have been largely invaded by land-grabbers, who have fought to annul them. The most prominent example is Jamanxin National Forest, the most deforested federal conservation unit in the Amazon.

A roadblock there lasted several days in November. Footage shows police cars being attacked with stones by an angry mob and a felled Brazil Nuts tree, a protected species, across the road. According to local press reports, about 30 Novo Progresso residents were arrested in Brasilia following the attack. Those included the owner of a sawmill.

"The city relies on illegal activities such as illegal gold mining, illegally harvested wood, cattle raised in off-limits areas within conservation units, and land grabbing,” said Mauricio Torres, a geographer from Para Federal University.

“Bolsonaro supported these illegal activities. And the people are willing to kill and die for it because they have no other option. So I don’t know how Lula will be able to implement the rule of law," he added.

That is a different situation from Sorriso, where initial deforestation and land-grabbing were legalized decades ago, and the economy depends on soybean exports, Torres said.

Just as the profile of the Amazonian strongholds for Bolsonaro differ, combatting deforestation will require different approaches, depending on the place, according to deforestation experts.

Lula's administration will have to act on many fronts, said Brenda Brito from Amazon Institute of People and the Environment, a group focused on sustainable development in the Amazon. It will have to reverse court decisions that have favored land-grabbers inside conservation units and a offer wide range of economic incentives, from forest land concessions to supporting ecotourism.

“Otherwise, even if we manage to remove invaders, the protected areas will be invaded again,” she said.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Protesters, supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro, stand on the roof of the National Congress building after they stormed it, in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023.

(AP Photos/Eraldo Peres, File)

FIELD TESTED
Arctic cold 'no sweat' for electric cars in Norway

Pierre-Henry DESHAYES, with Elias HUUHTANEN in Helsinki
Wed, February 1, 2023 


Norwegian electric car owners have a word for the way they feel when they look nervously at their battery indicators while driving in subfreezing weather: "rekkevideangst", or "range anxiety".

Tesla owner Philip Benassi has experienced it on cold winter days, but like other Norwegians, he has learned to cope with it.

With temperatures often falling below zero, rugged terrain and long stretches of remote roads, Norway may not seem like the most ideal place to drive an electric car, whose battery dies faster in cold weather.

Yet the country is the undisputed world champion when it comes to the zero-emission vehicles.

A record four out of five new autos sold in Norway last year were electric, in a major oil-producing country that aims to end the sale of new fossil fuel cars by 2025 -- a decade ahead of the European Union's planned ban.

By comparison, electric cars accounted for 12.1 percent of new car sales in the EU in 2022, up from 9.1 percent a year earlier, according to data published Wednesday by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.

Benassi took the plunge in 2018.

In his gleaming white Tesla S, the 38-year-old salesman for a cosmetics company clocks between 20,000 and 25,000 kilometres (12,400 and 15,500 miles) a year.

Like most new electric vehicle owners, he had moments of panic in the beginning when he saw the battery gauge drop quickly, with the prospect of it falling to zero on a deserted country road.

"I didn't know the car well enough. But after all these years, I have a pretty good idea of how many kilowatts it needs and I know that it varies a lot depending on whether the car has spent the night outdoors or in a garage," he told AFP.

The car uses much more battery when it is parked outside in temperatures that can reach minus 15 degrees Celsius (five degrees Fahrenheit), Benassi said.

"It takes quite a while for it to go back to normal consumption," he added.

In the cold season, how much range electric cars lose depends on the model and how low the temperature gets.

"But the following rules of thumb apply: a frost of around minus 10C will reduce the operating range by around a third compared to summer weather, and a severe one (minus 20C or more) by up to half," said Finnish consultant Vesa Linja-aho.

"By storing the car in a warm garage, this phenomenon can be mitigated somewhat," he added.

- Charging stations -

Drivers must plan their routes before long journeys, but car applications and Norway's vast network of more than 5,600 fast and superfast charging stations help make the process easier.

Electric cars accounted for 54 percent of new car registrations last year in Finnmark, Norway's northernmost region in the Arctic where the mercury has at times fallen to minus 51C -- a sign that the cold issue is not insurmountable.

Other Nordic countries that regularly experience chilly temperatures also top world rankings for electric vehicles -- they accounted for around 33 percent of new car sales in Sweden and Iceland in 2022.

"Now more and more new electric cars have systems for pre-heating the batteries, which is very smart because you get more range and because if your car is heated before you charge, it will also charge faster," said Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association.

Electric car owners are not the only ones who have to worry about the cold.

"Actually, if it's very, very cold -- freezing temperatures -- sometimes diesel engine cars can't start and an electric car starts," she said.

- 'Everyone can do it' -

Norwegians are clearly sold: more than 20 percent of cars on Norway's roads are now electric -- and green, with the electricity they consume generated almost exclusively by hydro power.

Norway's longstanding policy of tax rebates for electric cars has facilitated the transition, although the government has begun to roll back some of the incentives to make up for a budget shortfall estimated at nearly 40 billion kroner ($4 billion) last year.

There is "a simple answer to why we have this success in Norway and that's green taxes", Bu said.

"We tax what we don't want, namely fossil fuel cars, and we promote what we do want, electric cars. It's as simple as that," she said.

"If Norway can do this, everyone else can do it as well."

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