Column: Is it time to embrace Congo’s artisanal cobalt miners?

Reuters | April 7, 2023 |

(Image courtesy of Enough Project | Flickr)

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)


The problems around artisanal cobalt mining in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will take “a coalition to solve”, according to Microsoft.

The $1.9 trillion US tech giant was recently in the DRC to see what the other end of the consumer electronics supply chain looks like.

Microsoft chief of staff, tech and corporate responsibility Michele Burlington paid a visit in December to the Mutoshi artisanal mining site, where up to 15,000 miners, including children, are working in highly dangerous conditions.

The irony is that Mutoshi was a highly successful pilot scheme for formalizing artisanal workers until it was closed in 2020 due to coronavirus restrictions.

The site’s subsequent deterioration sums up the Congolese government’s struggle to realise its vision of integrating the entire artisanal cobalt workforce into the official sector.

Yet the West still needs Congo’s cobalt and everyone agrees that formalization is the solution to the high human and economic costs of artisanal mining.

Microsoft’s reference to a coalition suggests a collective rethink is under way, not least by a US government desperate to loosen China’s grip on the cobalt market.
Ethical dilemma

The ethical dilemma facing Western cobalt users, which is just about everyone with a mobile phone, is headline news again after the publication of “Cobalt Red” by Siddarth Kara.

The book’s subtitle – “How the blood of the Congo powers our lives” – captures both the horrors of informal cobalt mining and the near impossibility of keeping tainted ore out of the formal supply stream.

Kara’s searing first-hand accounts of artisanal life are validated by an independent report published in February by Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, the director of the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights, on the current conditions at Mutoshi.

The report noted an increase in artisanal miners from 5,000 under the two-year formalization scheme to 15,000, a renewed exclusion of the female workforce, the return of child workers and a rapid deterioration in safety conditions as miners switched back from open-cast to tunnel mining.

The local artisanal cooperative reported five deaths in November alone, compared with zero under the formalization experiment.

The ore that was once sold for processing directly to Chemaf, owner of the site, and its marketing partner, Trafigura, is now being sold to middle men, mostly Chinese, for onward sale to processors, also mostly Chinese.

Mutoshi’s artisanal miners have lost their collective pricing power and their cobalt is once again flowing down opaque channels into the industrial supply chain, the report claims.

Most of the country’s estimated 150,000-200,000 cobalt miners have never even had the chance of formalization.

The government launched the Enterprise Generale du Cobalt in 2021, aiming to formalize the entire sector and buy all its output, but the initial drive ran aground in Congo’s regional power politics.

A critical dependence

The Western response to its cobalt dilemma has been either to try to not use it at all or to avoid any supply tainted with artisanal mining in Congo.

Apple, for example, has said that 13% of the cobalt shipped in its products in 2021 came from recycling.

Electric vehicle (EV) makers are embracing non-cobalt battery chemistries such as lithium-iron-phosphate.

But around 74% of the EV battery market is still using the metal for its energy density, safety and performance attributes, according to The Cobalt Institute, and the EV sector is still expanding fast.

Global usage surged by 22% in 2021 and is forecast by the Institute to grow by around 13% a year for the next five years.

The world is going to need a lot more cobalt and right now it’s China that will supply it.

The country accounts for around 72% of global processing capacity, much of it fed with Congolese ore, both from Chinese industrial operators and the informal sector via the shadow middle-man market.
Western coalition

China’s supply-chain dominance is a headache for both the United States and Europe, which have identified cobalt as a critical mineral.

A collapse in the cobalt price from over $40 per lb a year ago to a current $17 per lb, largely due to over-production in Congo, has made it more difficult to bring on new Western supply.

Jervois Global has just announced the suspension of the final construction stage of its Idaho cobalt project due to the combination of low price and higher input costs.

The only obvious source of immediate large-scale supply remains Congo, which accounts for around 70% of global production.

Congo’s metallic riches place it at the heart of the great game that is playing out between West and East as they seek control of the critical minerals needed to decarbonise.

The United States signed in December a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Congo and Zambia to jointly develop a supply chain for EV batteries.

The MOU “opens the door for open and transparent investment to build value-added and sustainable industry in Africa and creating a just energy transition for workers and local communities,” the US State Department said.

One local community just happens to account for around 12% of cobalt production in the world’s largest producing nation. It is the same community at the heart of the West’s ethical dilemma about artisanal working conditions.

Formalizing the sector could help solve both problems.

It will, as Microsoft pointed out, need a coalition of government, industrial producers prepared to offer sites for artisanal workers, battery makers and the big brands at the end of the cobalt supply chain.

And us, the ultimate consumer.

Integrating artisanal mining is expensive. Chemaf used industrial excavation equipment to create the open pits mined under the pilot scheme at Mutoshi. It was much safer than tunnelling but expensive at $50,000 per round and had to be repeated every six months, according to Baumann-Pauly’s report.

The Western consumer’s desire to pay a premium for responsibly sourced cobalt may be the ultimate test of whether a Western coalition can simultaneously loosen China’s grip on the cobalt market and alleviate the plight of Congo’s artisanal miners.

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

Easter bunnies, cacao beans and pollinating bugs: A basket of 6 essential reads about chocolate

The Conversation
April 07, 2023

Chocolate Bunny with Chocolate Eggs (Shutterstock)

Tens of millions of chocolate bunnies get sold in the U.S. every Easter. Here are six articles about chocolate from The Conversation’s archive – great reading while you’re nibbling the ears off your own bunny (if you’re one of the three-quarters of Americans who start at the top).

1. Food scientist on cocoa chemistry

Chocolate bunnies don’t grow on trees – but cacao pods do. It takes a lot of processing to get from the raw agricultural input to the finished output.

Food scientist Sheryl Barringer from The Ohio State University wrote about various chemical reactions that are part of the transformation of beans into chocolate. One is the Maillard reaction, the same thing that gives the browned bits on roasted meats or a bread’s golden crust their flavor. Barringer also explains that weird white stuff – known as bloom – that might appear on your Easter chocolates if they hang around for a while. (Don’t worry, it’s still edible.)

2. Chocolate is a fermented food

Food science Ph.D. candidate Caitlin Clark from Colorado State University focuses her research on the microbes responsible for much of chocolate’s flavor. As a fermented food, chocolate depends on yeast and bacteria to help turn a raw ingredient into the treat you can recognize.

Clark described how the microorganisms that occur naturally in a given geographical location can give high-end chocolates their “terroir” – “the characteristic flair imparted by a place” you might be more used to thinking about with regard to wine.


Tiny flies spread pollen from one cacao tree to another.

dimarik/iStock via Getty Images Plus

3. Pollinators are important part of process

Cacao growers rely on another tiny ally to pollinate their crop. Entomologist DeWayne Shoemaker from the University of Tennessee described the mini flies – particularly biting midges and gall midges – that get the job done. “Pollinators must pick up pollen from the male parts of a flower of one tree and deposit it on the female parts of a flower on another tree,” Shoemaker wrote.

But up to 90% of cacao flowers don’t get pollinated at all. People can hand-pollinate the little flowers, but it remains a mystery which other insects might do the job in the wild.
4. Child labor is chocolate’s bitter secret

Harvesting and processing cacao is labor-intensive. To meet this need, some farmers turn to child labor. Cultural anthropologist Robert Ulin from the Rochester Institute of Technology described how the global chocolate industry is tied to inequality via exploitative labor practices.

“The largest chocolate companies signed a protocol in 2001 that condemned child labor and childhood slavery,” Ulin wrote. But he noted that consumers may want more information to make sure their purchase power supports “fair labor practices in the chocolate sector.”


Do not share your chocolates with your pooch. 

F.J. Jimenez/Moment via Getty Images

5. Not safe for furry family members

Eating a ton of chocolate is probably not a healthy choice for anyone. But even a little bit of chocolate can be deadly for dogs and cats.

In an article about all kinds of holiday foods that are unsafe for pets, veterinarian and researcher Leticia Fanucchi from Oklahoma State University explained the chemicals in this human delicacy that can cause fatal “chocolate intoxication.” Don’t delay getting veterinary help if your pet does raid your Easter basket.

6. An enslaved chocolatier in colonial America

An enslaved cook named Caesar, born in 1732, was one of the first chocolatiers in the American colonies. Historical archaeologist Kelley Fanto Deetz from the University of California, Berkeley described how Caesar “would have had to roast the cocoa beans on the open hearth, shell them by hand, grind the nibs on a heated chocolate stone, and then scrape the raw cocoa, add milk or water, cinnamon, nutmeg or vanilla, and serve it piping hot.”

Cocoa was a hot commodity for Virginia’s white elite during this period, when it was a culinary component – along with pineapples, Madeira wine, port, champagne, coffee and sugar – of the Columbian Exchange.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Maggie Villiger, Senior Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation

The man in the monkey nut coat: how a 1940s scientist made ‘vegan wool’ from peanuts

The extraordinary life of William Astbury: a pioneer of genetics, fashion, and animal welfare. 

Canva/Shutterstock

The Conversation
April 07, 2023

Woollen clothing has been around for as long as humans have been wearing clothes and sheep have been domesticated. Indeed, our distant ancestors used sheep for three things: food, clothing and shelter – wool makes good insulation and helps to keep in the warmth.

The UK is still one of the largest wool producers in the world and has more than 60 different breeds of sheep.

But with the rise of veganism, many people are now questioning whether it’s ethical to use wool in clothing and fabrics. Vegans don’t wear wool as it is often a by-product of the meat industry.

This is why the charity Peta (The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has launched a US$1 million (£844,000) vegan wool challenge to find the first individual, group, or company that can create a vegan wool material that is “visually, textually and functionally akin to or better than sheep’s wool.”

But it seems that back in the 1940s, textile physicist William Astbury was already on the case and making newspaper headlines for wearing what would today be considered a vegan coat.

For Astbury’s jacket was woven not from wool or other conventional textile materials, but from Ardil, a fibre made from monkey nut, or peanut proteins.

The monkey nut coat

In my book The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and How Wool Wove a Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix, I tell the story of Astbury (and that famous coat), who with his colleague Florence Bell laid the foundations for the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Scientists James Watson and Francis Crick are famous for having first worked out the structure of DNA. But their success came 15 years after Astbury and Bell had first shown that X-rays could actually reveal DNA’s structure.


A Daily Mail article on the coat made of peanuts, published in 1944 Author provided

And this work had a surprising origin, for Astbury’s aim was not to answer grand questions about the secrets of life, but to study the humble wool fibre while working as a lecturer in textile physics at the University of Leeds.

Ever since the Middle Ages, wool and textiles were the economic lifeblood of this Yorkshire city – with mills a major source of employment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1928 Astbury came to Leeds and used X-rays to reveal the molecular shape of the proteins in wool fibers. He found that they could be compacted or elongated – rather like a slinky toy. This change in their molecular architecture explained the stretchiness of wool – a property that made it so attractive to the textile industry.

And through it, Astbury left another powerful scientific legacy – thanks to his sporting of that rather unusual “peanut” overcoat.

A future wool?

From the mid-1930s onwards, Astbury, along with his collaborators Albert Chibnall and Kenneth Bailey, filed patents on a process that used solvents such as urea to unravel the precise 3D shape of proteins found in seeds – like the peanut. Their method then refolded them by a kind of molecular origami into insoluble fibers, creating a cheap and abundant raw material for the textile industry.

Sharing his optimism, the company Imperial Chemical Industries bought these patents and built a pilot production plant in Scotland to produce a new textile fibre from peanuts, which they called Ardil and gifted Astbury an overcoat made from it.

During the second world war, wool shortages encouraged investment in Ardil and campaigns were launched to persuade the British public of its benefits. This drive to develop new textile fibers at the time may also have inspired a storyline in the 1951 British comedy film The Man in the White Suit.

In the film, an altruistic chemist invents a fabric that resists wear and stain, but (spoiler alert) his dreams come crashing down when management realizes the fabric must be suppressed for economic reasons as it threatens their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, much like the fictional fibre, Ardil did not live up to its promise of saving the British textile industry. But Astbury and his overcoat left an important scientific legacy.

His work remains important because it showcased his lifelong belief that understanding living systems requires solving their molecular architecture. While Ardil did not succeed, Astbury’s research laid the foundation for future innovations in molecular biology and materials science.

This approach, known as structural biology, has since allowed us to understand how the blood protein haemoglobin can carry oxygen around the body, how muscles contract and more recently how the spike protein on the surface of SARS-CoV2 allows the virus to bind and enter human cells.

When Astbury died in 1961, his friend and colleague, the botanist R.D. Preston, fondly remembered him as “a man of many parts – scientist, scholar, musician, bon viveur, humorist, in some ways, a swashbuckler…boisterous to the end with every morning still a Christmas morning.” Maybe to this list of accolades, we should also add a posthumous nomination for the $1 million vegan wool prize.

Kersten Hall, Author and Honorary Fellow, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds

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

WHY STRAIGHT MEN LIKE LADY BOYS
Gynandromorph research offers insight into the complexities of male sexual attraction
2023/04/07


New research sheds light on heterosexual men’s attraction to gynandromorphs (feminine-presenting individuals assigned male at birth who retain their penises). The findings suggest that men have the capacity to become aroused by gynandromorphic individuals because of the presence of female-typical sex traits. The study has been published in Biological Psychology.

The term gynandromorph is used to describe individuals with both male and female physical characteristics. Gynandromorphs in Western culture usually identify as transgender women, while in some non-Western cultures there are specific categories of gynandromorphs who are considered non-binary, neither male nor female. Examples of non-binary gynandromorphs include muxes in southern Mexico, hijra in India, and bissu in Indonesia.

Psychologists are interested in studying gynandromorphs because they can provide insight into the complex relationship between biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Additionally, gynandromorphs allow researchers to investigate how individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles are perceived and treated by society. Studying gynandromorphs may also shed light on the psychological processes underlying attraction and sexual orientation.

“I have always had an interest in psychophysiology and human evolution. This area of research has allowed me to satisfy my own curiosities while contributing to our understandings of male sexual behaviour in humans,” said study author Lambert C. Heatlie, a graduate student at the University of Lethbridge.

The new research included a sample of 65 cisgender males (average age 23.12) who were recruited from a small university In Canada. The study only included participants who reported being exclusively attracted to adult cisgender females. Those who reported either bisexuality or arousal to cisgender males were excluded.

The participants were presented with a text screen notifying them that they would be shown images and asking them to rate how sexually arousing they found each model using a 7-point scale that ranged from 1 (“not at all arousing”) to 7 (“very arousing”).

The participants viewed 44 nude images depicting females who appeared to be cisgender, males who appeared to be cisgender, and gynandromorphs with, and without, breasts. The presentation of the stimuli was randomized. Pupil size was estimated using a Tobii X120–3 near infrared eye-tracker, and participants’ heads were stabilized using a chin rest during the study.

As expected, the male participants reported being most attracted to cisgender females. Gynandromorphs with breasts were ranked as more attractive than those without breasts and cisgender males. But the difference between cisgender males and gynandromorphs without breasts was not statistically significant. (The average subjective sexual arousal scores were 5.38 for cisgender females, 2.22 for gynandromorphs with breasts, 1.57 for gynandromorphs without breasts, and 1.71 for cisgender males.)

The researchers observed a similar pattern when examining pupillary responses. Men’s average change in pupil size was 0.25 when viewing cisgender females, 0.1 when viewing gynandromorphs with breasts, 0.03 when viewing gynandromorphs without breasts, and -0.05 when viewing cisgender males.

“This study demonstrates that heterosexual males’ arousal patterns are influenced not only by obvious sex-based characteristics, but also by gender-based ones. When there are incongruencies between the two (e.g., a feminine individual with male genitals), gender-based traits may override sex-based traits to some extent,” Heatlie told PsyPost.

“Overall, however, sex-based traits appear to be far more effective in eliciting sexual arousal. This runs parallel with past research, which has consistently demonstrated that heterosexual males exhibit some capacity to become aroused by sexual stimuli depicting feminine males.”

The findings are mostly in line with a previous study, which included 51 heterosexual men and 19 gay men. But the fact that cisgender males and gynandromorphs without breasts were viewed as equally attactrive was not expected.

“It was surprising to find that feminine individuals with penises only elicited sexual arousal when they had breasts, a female-typical secondary sex trait,” Heatlie said. “Past research has found that images of feminine individuals with penises, with or without breasts, elicit somewhat more sexual interest and subjective arousal from heterosexual males than do images of cisgender males.”

The researchers suggest using more dynamic visual materials to study gynandromorphophilia (attraction to people with both male and female characteristics) in future research. They also propose studying the behavioral characteristics of gynandromorphs, such as sexual assertiveness and openness, in relation to the sexual arousal patterns of men.

“It is important to note that we used static images, rather than audiovisual stimuli,” Heatlie explained. “Audiovisual sexual stimuli tend to be more effective at eliciting sexual arousal. This is because such stimuli contain more information (e.g., vocal cues; gait). It would be informative to explore the extent to which these cues modulate heterosexual males’ sexual response to stimuli depicting feminine males.”

“It is important to note that this research was conducted on men predominantly recruited from a Canadian university,” the researcher noted. “Until this work is replicated in non-Western and community samples, it is unclear whether men from other contexts would respond similarly.”

The study, “Heterosexual men’s pupillary responses to stimuli depicting cisgender males, cisgender females, and gynandromorphs“, was authored by Lambert C. Heatlie, Lanna J. Petterson, and Paul L. Vasey.

© PsyPost

Lifetime ecstasy use is associated with lower odds of impairments in social functioning, study finds
2023/04/07


A study of a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. adults has revealed that those who reported lifetime use of ecstasy (i.e., using ecstasy at least once in their life) were less likely to report having difficulty dealing with strangers, participating in social activities, and being prevented from participating in social activities by their mental health issues. Participants with lifetime use of mescaline also had lower odds of difficulty dealing with strangers. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Human are social beings. We live in a society and performing literally any activity requires at least some interaction with other people or the use of things other people have created. Even activities that are by their very nature solitary are at least partly performed using tools and resources created by other people or using spaces created or respected by other people. Due to this, being able to interact with others competently and function in a society is a key faculty of all humans.

However, impairments in social functioning are a hallmark feature of many different mental health disorders. These include generalized anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and others. Social impairments of individuals suffering from these disorders represent a large share of the cost to both individuals and society that these disorders inflict.

Unfortunately, methods for treating impairments in social functioning are still very limited in their effectiveness. Due to this, researchers are constantly exploring novel ways in which these impairments could be prevented or treated. One venue of research that started attracting a lot of scientific attention is using the drug ecstasy or classic psychedelics for this purpose.

Ecstasy or 3,4-Methylenedioxymetahmphetamine (MDMA), as it is scientifically called, is one of the most widely used recreational drugs in the world. It produces prosocial feelings and enhances empathy and sociability. It is also known to produce hallucinogenic effects and to facilitate a host of adverse mental health consequences through prolonged use.

Created first in Germany in the scope of researching a possible appetite suppressor, it is now banned in most of the world. However, preliminary evidence indicates that there might be a way to use ecstasy and classic psychedelics for treating or improving symptoms of multiple mental health disorders.

The lead author of this study, Grant Jones, and his colleagues wanted to explore possible protective associations between the use of ecstasy and classic psychedelics and social impairments. They analyzed data from 214,505 participants of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2015-2019), an annual survey on substance use and mental health in the United States population aged 12 and older.

The researchers analyzed data on impairments in social functioning caused by mental health problems and emotional difficulties. These impairments were difficulty of interacting with strangers (“How much difficulty did you have dealing with people you did not know well?”), being prevented from interacting with strangers due to mental health issues (“Did problems with your emotions, nerves, or mental health keep you from dealing with people you did not know well?”), difficulty in participating in social activities (“How much difficulty did you have participating in social activities, like visiting friends or going to parties?”), and being prevented from engaging in social activities due to mental health issues (“Did problems with your emotions, nerves, or mental health keep you from participating in social activities?”).

Jones and his colleagues also analyzed participants’ answers on questions about the lifetime use of ecstasy, psilocybin, LSD, peyote and mescaline, and various other legal and illegal substances as well as risky behaviors. These were yes/no questions. The person was supposed to answer yes if he/she used the particular drug at least once in his/her life. Sociodemographic data were also used in the study.

Results showed that people who reported using ecstasy at least once in their lives (lifetime use of ecstasy) had lower odds of three of the four studied social impairments. Lifetime use of mescaline was associated with lower odds of one of the social impairments.

Additionally, people who reported lifetime use of ecstasy tended to be younger, a bit more often male, and less often married. They reported more often engaging in risky behavior. There were no differences in household income between participants reporting life time use of ecstasy and those that did not report such experience.

“The association between use of MDMA/ecstasy and reduced odds of social impairment is possibly linked to the drug’s effects on several critical neurotransmitters in the brain, namely, dopamine and serotonin—which lie upstream of other potential mechanisms at the neural and behavioral levels, mentioned later,” the researchers wrote.

“Some evidence exists to suggest that MDMA-induced changes to these neurotransmitter-receptor systems in the brain are indeed long-lasting, offering a plausible explanation for how limited intake of MDMA could be linked to persistent changes in social behavior. Given that MDMA mainly impacts serotonin levels, it is worth considering that the association between lifetime use of MDMA and lowered odds of social impairment can be ultimately linked to changes in serotonergic neurotransmission.”

The study contributes to scientific knowledge on associations between psychedelic use and behavior. However, it also has limitations that need to be taken into account. Notably, the study does not allow any cause-and-effect conclusions to be made. It is possible that the use of ecstasy indeed has effects on social functioning or can prevent social impairments. However, it is also possible that people with better social skills and more resilient to social impairments are also more prone to trying ecstasy in the scope of their social activities. Additionally, all assessments were based on self-reports.

The study, “Examining associations between MDMA/ecstasy and classic psychedelic use and impairments in social functioning in a U.S. adult sample”, was authored by Grant Jones, Joshua Lipson, and Erica Wang.

© PsyPost

Why are animal-to-human diseases on the rise?

Agence France-Presse
April 07, 2023

AFP
From Covid-19 to monkey pox, Mers, Ebola, avian flu, Zika and HIV, diseases transmitted from animals to humans have multiplied in recent years, raising fears of new pandemics.


What's a zoonosis?

A zoonosis (plural zoonoses) is a disease or infection transmitted from vertebrate animals to people, and vice versa. The pathogens involved can be bacteria, viruses or parasites.

These diseases are transmitted either directly during contact between an animal and a human, or indirectly through food or through a vector such as an insect, spider or mite.

Some diseases end up becoming specifically human, like Covid-19.

According to the World Organisation for Animal Health, 60 percent of human infectious diseases are zoonotic.

What types of diseases are involved?

The term "zoonoses" includes a wide variety of diseases.

Some affect the digestive system, such as salmonellosis, others the respiratory system, such as avian and swine flu as well as Covid, or the nervous system in the case of rabies.

The severity of these diseases in humans varies greatly depending on the disease and the pathogen's virulence, but also on the infected person, who may have a particular sensitivity to the pathogen.

What animals are involved?

Bats act as a reservoir for many viruses that affect humans.

Some have been known for a long time, such as the rabies virus, but many have emerged in recent decades, such as Ebola, the SARS coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19) or the Nipah virus, which appeared in Asia in 1998.

Badgers, ferrets, mink and weasels are often implicated in viral zoonoses, and in particular those caused by coronaviruses.

Other mammals, such as cattle, pigs, dogs, foxes, camels and rodents, also often play the role of intermediate host.

All the viruses responsible for major influenza pandemics had an avian origin, either direct or indirect.

Finally, insects such as ticks are vectors of many viral diseases that affect humans.

- Why has the frequency of zoonoses increased?

Having appeared thousands of years ago, zoonoses have multiplied over the past 20 or 30 years.

The growth of international travel has allowed them to spread more quickly.

By occupying increasingly large areas of the planet, humans also contribute to disrupting the ecosystem and promoting the transmission of viruses.

Industrial farming increases the risk of pathogens spreading between animals.

Trade in wild animals also increases human exposure to the microbes they may carry.

Deforestation increases the risk of contact between wildlife, domestic animals and human populations.

Should we fear another pandemic?

Climate change will push many animals to flee their ecosystems for more livable lands, a study published by the scientific journal Nature warned in 2022.

By mixing more, species will transmit their viruses more, which will promote the emergence of new diseases potentially transmissible to humans.

"Without preventative strategies, pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, kill more people, and affect the global economy with more devastating impact than ever before," the UN Biodiversity Expert Group warned in October 2020.

According to estimates published in the journal Science in 2018, there are 1.7 million unknown viruses in mammals and birds, 540,000 to 850,000 of them with the capacity to infect humans.

But above all, the expansion of human activities and increased interactions with wildlife increase the risk that viruses capable of infecting humans will "find" their host.

© 2023 AFP

Daft Punk member who performed as robot says AI has him 'terrified'
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 07, 2023

Daft Punk may have performed as robots, and yet one part of the iconic French electronic duo says that the advent of AI was part of the reason for the group's split in 2021. David Ebener/dpa

Daft Punk may have performed as robots, and yet one part of the iconic French electronic duo says that the advent of AI was part of the reason for the group's split in 2021. David Ebener/dpa

Thomas Bangalter, formerly one-half of electronic music duo Daft Punk, said this week that his fear of artificial intelligence was a factor in why the group split in 2021.

Bangalter reflected on the duo's fictional persona in a recent interview with BBC News, saying that he always felt the group's thesis was about making sure there is an absolute line "between humanity and technology."

"It was an exploration, I would say, starting with the machines and going away from them," he said. "I love technology as a tool [but] I'm somehow terrified of the nature of the relationship between the machines and ourselves."

Throughout their nearly 30-year career, Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo hid their faces under gold and silver robot masks, while on their way to nabbing Grammy Awards and putting out chart-topping hits and club anthems. Albums by the duo, who hardly ever broke character, created a universe for their fictional personas to live in.

Even so, Bangalter shared that many fans misinterpreted their act as an uncritical embrace of tech and digital culture.

"We tried to use these machines to express something extremely moving that a machine cannot feel, but a human can," Bangalter said in the BBC interview. "We were always on the side of humanity and not on the side of technology."

To express his concerns about "the rise of artificial intelligence," Bangalter referenced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." He credited the filmmaker for asking "the question that we have to ask ourselves about technology and the obsolescence of man."

In recent post-Daft Punk work, Bangalter set electronic music production aside to collaborate with French contemporary choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, composing an orchestral score for a ballet that premiered in July. The score will be released as an album Friday.

"As much as I love this character," Bangalter said of his helmeted Daft Punk persona, "the last thing I would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot."

Bangalter's wariness of AI aside, a 10th-anniversary reissue of the duo's final album, "Random Access Memories," is on the way. The album — which won four Grammys in 2014, including for album of the year — is due out May 12 and will feature previously unreleased music.

But fittingly, given Bangalter's AI apprehension, the duo decided for the 2013 album to largely abandon the synths and drum machines that colored their previous work. Critics heralded their decision to rely on live musicians — real-life humans who plucked bass lines and banged out acoustic drum riffs.


This slogan from an German IT industry event shows that even creativity in the advertising industry has the potential to drastically change under the influence of AI. 

Philipp von Ditfurth/dpa

Mount Everest supply transports delayed amid high numbers of tourists

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 07, 2023


Due to too many foreign trekkers and too few yaks and jopkyos, small items such as food, equipment or medicine cannot be brought up the world's highest mountain as quickly as usual. 

Due to too many foreign trekkers and too few yaks and jopkyos, small items such as food, equipment or medicine cannot be brought up the world's highest mountain as quickly as usual. Sina Schuldt/dpa

Mount Everest's main expedition season is about to begin, and yet planned climbs are being undermined by delays in the transport of supplies for mountaineers.

Helicopters are currently only flying large items of equipment - such as large tents and tables - to the base camp of the world's highest mountain on the instructions of the local government.

Food, ropes, gas for cooking and medical equipment, for example, will be carried up by local porters or on animals, Tashi Lhamu Sherpa, the deputy mayor of Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Municipality, told dpa ahead of the start of climbing season in April.

Traditionally, yaks and jopkyos (a cross between yaks and cows from the Himalayas) trained to carry loads are used for this purpose.

However, according to the general secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Mohan Lamsal, there are not enough people and animals who can carry small objects up quickly - also because many of them are currently being used for trekkers from abroad.

About 30 tonnes of material from various expedition companies are now stored in the small town of Syangboche, where the airport closest to Mount Everest is also located, he said.

In recent years, he said, expedition organisers have increasingly relied on helicopter transport because it is faster but similarly expensive.

Expedition companies are hoping for a solution soon. The season on Mount Everest lasts from about the end of April to the beginning of June.

The Expedition Operator's Association Nepal expects about 500 climbers from abroad to camp at Everest base camp for several weeks with approximately 1,500 to 2,000 local helpers, who cook for them, carry their luggage and guide them up the mountain.

After acclimatising to the altitude, the climbers try their hand at Everest and Lhotse, both more than 8,000 metres in height, and the 7,000-metre Nuptse.

Foreign Everest climbers pay around $40,000 each for an expedition, according to US mountaineer and blogger Alan Arnette. Around $10,000 of this is for a climbing permit from the Tourism Ministry.

'History repeating itself': Rachel Maddow charts a new outbreak of Nazism in the US

Sarah K. Burris

Rachel Maddow 011014 [MSNBC]

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow explained that over the last several years, there has been a rise of extremism in the U.S., and added that it isn't just about the far-right and their cozy relationship with conservatives.

In one case, author Jodi Picoult had one of her best-selling books banned from a Florida library because a parent objected to the telling of a story involving the Holocaust.

Maddow explained, "it is about a county in Florida, and they have banded from their school libraries under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' broad, vague, new laws about what kids can and cannot read. The Storyteller is a novel about the Holocaust, anti-semitism, and fascism in Germany. It was a strange irony that they wanted this particular book removed because it was like history repeating itself. That feeling and stuff we thought we left behind is rearing its head again and that feeling is happening a lot these days."

She went on to cite a recent hearing about the COVID-19 crisis and how it was handled that welcomed a witness named Nicholas Wade’s who penned a book called A Troublesome Inheritance. The New Republic wrote a review describing it as "a book which argues, among other things, that Jews possess a genetic 'adaptation to capitalism.'" He was a witness welcomed by the Oversight Committee chair, Republican Rep. James Comer (KY).

"He is famous for writing a book claiming that Jewish people are genetically evolved and biologically programmed to love money. That was the expert they brought in on the science of COVID," said Maddow.

Meanwhile, she pointed to Donald Trump's son Eric, who is traveling the country with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who says "the Jews did 9/11" and that "Hitler was fighting 'the same people that we are trying to take down today.'" They headed to one of the Trump properties in Florida for a weekend soon.

Hundreds of anti-Semitic flyers have been dumped all over West Palm Beach, where a group with Eric Trump and his Hitler-loving pal are headed. The person was ticketed for littering.

In Jacksonville, Florida, individuals were seen projecting a five-story tall swastika linked with a cross on a building.

In Ohio, during a drag queen story hour, a hoard of Nazis shows up to protest the event.

"Many of them were armed and a lot of them were carrying swastika flags and shouting," described Maddow. She ran a video of them chanting "Sieg Heil" and giving the Nazi salute. There were more Nazi chants as well.

These are the people that Republicans and conservatives are allying themselves.

"They are talking about Hitler overthrowing the republic," Maddow explained. "You know what his solution was? Again, these guys are out in numbers and enforce screaming at Ohio kids this weekend. We got some folks on the right trying to ban books about the rise of nazism and anti-Semitism in 1930. Others are literally trying to make it happen all over again."

IT'S WAR ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Trans youth in US facing a conservative offensive

AFP
April 07, 2023

Supporters of LGBTQ rights during the 'Transgender Day of Visibility' in Washington

Washington (AFP) - Leo is 14 years old and has been taking testosterone for about six months.

"It definitely helps me. It makes me feel more confident," the teenager from rural Pennsylvania told AFP. "I feel more in tune with my gender identity."

Leo is worried, however, about laws adopted in a number of conservative US states that ban hormone treatments for minors like him, who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

"I just want to be able to take my shot every week," Leo said, adding that he feels "less depressed" thanks to the testosterone that blocks his menstrual periods and stimulates muscle and hair growth.

Leo said he is one of just a few "queer kids" in the coal country region of Pennsylvania where he lives.

For the moment, local lawmakers have not proposed any legislation that targets trans youth and, for his own mental health, Leo hopes it stays that way.

Before receiving the hormone treatments, "I hurt myself because of being queer," he said.

More than half of trans youth had seriously considered suicide and nearly one in five made a suicide attempt during the past year, according to 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit engaged in suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ+ youth.

They are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, risky behavior and self mutilation than other adolescents.
'More comfortable'

Jack Drescher, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said studies show that kids "feel more comfortable being allowed to express the gender that they feel themselves to be."

Nevertheless, citing the irreversible effects of some treatments, lawmakers in a dozen Republican-ruled states have adopted laws restricting or prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors.

"There may be some children who are confused and may think they're transgender," Drescher said. "And therefore you don't want to do something that they might regret later on.

"But they're trying to protect those children at the expense of children who will benefit from treatment," he said.

In addition to banning medical intervention, Republican-led states have passed a raft of laws determining what trans students can or cannot do -- from which school bathrooms they can use, to which sports teams they play on.

Pushing back against trans rights has become a rallying cry for the current generation of US conservatives, and advocates fear children are increasingly being caught in the middle.

Rachel Smith, 47, a trans woman who works as a behavioral health therapist with trans youth in Baltimore, said "a lot of kids are very depressed, not hopeful about the future" because of the anti-trans bills.

"There is a high level of anxiety," Smith said.

According to the Trevor Project, 86 percent of trans or nonbinary youth say the legislative frenzy has a negative impact on their mental health.
'I fear for my kids'

Smith and Leo recently attended an event in Washington called the "Transgender Day of Visibility" during which an artist dressed in white was covered in fake blood to draw attention to the suicide risks in the community.

Also attending was Jaclynn, a 44-year-old mother of four children -- "one trans, one queer" -- wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Proud Mom" underneath a rainbow.

"I fear for my kids," said Jaclynn, who lives in a small town in North Carolina she described as being in the heart of the "Bible belt."

"Both are in therapy," Jaclynn said, fighting back tears, and one had attempted suicide.

"That's part of why we are here," she said. "I came with my kids. I think it's very important that they see that I support them and that the rest of these people support them."

Leo was accompanied by his stepfather who said it "feels good being here."

"There is a good turnout," his stepfather said. "There don't seem to be any folks shouting at us."

That was not the case the following day when there was an altercation between trans activists holding signs reading "Protect Trans Youth" and a handful of right-wing demonstrators outside the Supreme Court.

Police rapidly intervened and no one was injured.

RUDI AND DONALD LOOK FOR SCENTS

WITH JUST A WIFF OF HYPOCRISY