Do all fungi matter? Yes, new study argues

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENSOFT PUBLISHERS

 

IMAGE: FIELD WORK ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU. view more 

CREDIT: WENGANG KANG

Mention fungi, and most people will probably think of the mushrooms they pick in fall, or maybe the yeast they add when baking or making wine. Others will perhaps recall last week’s mouldy bread – or cucumbers gone bad in the refrigerator. Indeed, mycologists have studied these fungi as sources of food and fermentation but also decay and disease for centuries.

But while we’re used to thinking of fungi as organisms that form physical structures such as fruiting bodies, or yeast-like life forms that we can grow in our kitchens or laboratories, it is gradually becoming clear that fungi don’t readily assort into only these two groups. DNA sequencing studies of environmental substrates such as soil are finding massive evidence of large groups of fungi that do not seem to form fruiting bodies and that we seem unable to grow in the lab – but that are there nonetheless. These groups are often called “dark fungi,” in analogy with the concept of “dark matter” in astronomy – something we know is out there, but that we cannot directly observe right now.

A new study in MycoKeys contrasts the accumulation of fungal species recovered using traditional mycological approaches with those recovered using environmental DNA sequencing over time. Even when allowing for various kinds of biases, the authors found that species discovery through environmental sequencing vastly outpaces traditional species recovery in a strongly increasing trend over the last five years. The authors conclude that dark fungi form a defining feature of the fungal kingdom.

“And that’s where it gets interesting”, Henrik Nilsson at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the lead author of the study, says. “Under the current rules of nomenclature, these fungi cannot be given scientific names – they cannot be described formally. And species and groups that cannot be named formally, well, they tend to fall between the cracks. They’re typically not considered in nature conservation initiatives. They are often left out from efforts to estimate the evolutionary history of fungi, and their ecological roles and associations are largely overlooked when we try to figure out how mass and energy flow in ecosystems. They’re essentially treated as if they didn’t exist.”

Second author Martin Ryberg at the University of Uppsala, Sweden chimes in, “And it’s not like we’re adding the few missing pieces to an otherwise nearly complete jigsaw puzzle. It seems to be the other way around. We’re talking about tens of large groups of fungi – and thousands upon thousands of species, some of which seem to be so common that we have yet to find a soil sample from which they’re absent. Indeed, we’re talking about what could well prove to be the dominant life style in the fungal kingdom.”

The mycological community has been debating whether the rules of fungal nomenclature should be modified to allow formal description of these dark fungi. So far, the matter has not been resolved in the affirmative. “I think our study shows that it’s time to stop that debate, like, right away,” Nilsson says. “What we should be debating is how we should describe them. What criteria must be fulfilled for a dark fungus to be given a formal scientific name? Clearly, formation of a fruiting body or growth in the laboratory can’t be part of those criteria.”

Co-author Alice Retter of the University of Vienna, Austria explains, “We figured we’d kickstart the how debate by listing criteria that we think make sense – criteria that would be stringent enough to allow for only particularly well-vetted dark fungi to be described, upholding a high level of scientific rigor and reproducibility in the process. We blended our own observations with suggestions from the mycological community, culled from depositing a preprint of the manuscript at bioRxiv. We’re certainly not claiming that our suggestions form the final word in the debate. It’s more like they’re the first. We’re thinking that the mycological community will jointly be able to come up with a set of sound guiding principles on the matter – and here comes an initial set of well-meaning observations for nucleation.”

The authors advocate gentle modifications to the nomenclatural rules governing the naming of fungi to allow giving formal names to at least the most well-documented species and groups of dark fungi. The suggested modifications would, at present, exclude many rare or otherwise less well-documented dark fungi from formal description.

“But you don’t have to have a theory of everything to have a theory of something,” senior author Kessy Abarenkov of the Tartu Natural History Museum, Estonia asserts. “By establishing rules for what’s needed to describe dark fungi, and specifying when we’ll have to refrain from describing such species at present, mycologists can do what they do best: doggedly gather enough research data to warrant naming of the dark fungi, group by group, and species by species. It’s what mycology has excelled at for hundreds of years. It’s just the setting that’s a bit new.”

Sten Anslan, University of Tartu, continues: “Much is at stake, obviously. The current rules governing the naming of fungi have served mycology well for a long time. We don’t want to upend or overthrow them. But we fear that if they’re not updated in this particular regard, there’s a risk that they grow increasingly obsolete over time. Having a book of rules that govern maybe only some few percent of the organisms it was originally conceived to govern – the fungal kingdom – would seem untenable in the long run.”

Marisol Sanchez-Garcia of the Swedish Agricultural University concludes: “The nomenclatural aspects of dark fungi will presumably be discussed at some length at next year’s international mycological congress in Maastricht, the Netherlands. We’re hopeful that the mycological community will reach meaningful agreement on integration of the dark fungi into the rules of nomenclature. After all, mycologists are used to negotiating and solving non-trivial questions on a day-to-day basis, and this one is hardly any different. Being part of tackling a huge, more or less unknown group of organisms where precious little is set in stone and where the rules will have to be adapted over time for the endeavour to stay attuned to recent developments, well, that’s what makes being a mycologist so interesting and rewarding in my eyes.”

  

Drying soil samples immediately upon collection under field conditions in Norway.

CREDIT

Sten Anslan

Sampling soil and sediments for fungal diversity not far from Göteborg, Sweden.

CREDIT

Henrik Nilsson

Getting ready for DNA extraction from soil samples.

CREDIT

Sten Anslan

Examining minute fungal fruiting bodies not far from Stockholm, Sweden.

CREDIT

Kristina Stenmarck

Field work in New Caledonia.

CREDIT

Sten Anslan

Field work in the German Alps.

CREDIT

Vanessa Schulz

Research article:

Nilsson RH, Ryberg M, Wurzbacher C, Tedersoo L, Anslan S, Põlme S, Spirin V, Mikryukov V, Svantesson S, Hartmann M, Lennartsdotter C, Belford P, Khomich M, Retter A, Corcoll N, Gómez Martinez D, Jansson T, Ghobad-Nejhad M, Vu D, Sanchez-Garcia M, Kristiansson E, Abarenkov K (2023) How, not if, is the question mycologists should be asking about DNA-based typification. MycoKeys 96: 143-157. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.96.102669

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JOURNAL

MycoKeys

DOI

10.3897/mycokeys.96.102669 

ARTICLE TITLE

How, not if, is the question mycologists should be asking about DNA-based typification

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Apr-2023

Recent advances in mushroom research

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

So, mushroom-zombies recently took over a fictional world, but in real life, they’re really not so scary. These fungi range in shape from broad, plate-like portobellos and gangly enokis to a version resembling a giant, shaggy lion’s mane. And now scientists are finding ways to grow mushrooms on new materials, as well as incorporate them in more sustainable products. Below are some recent papers published in ACS journals that report insights into additional applications for mushrooms. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org.

“Uptake of Ultrashort Chain, Emerging, and Legacy Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Edible Mushrooms (Agaricus spp.) Grown in a Polluted Substrate”
Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry
March 8, 2023
When food waste and manure are composted by microorganisms, they create gas that can be collected and burned to generate electricity. As a step toward a circular agricultural system, some people have suggested cultivating edible mushrooms on the final compost. However, the material could contain pollutants, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). This team found that two types of mushrooms grown on PFAS-containing compost accumulated small to negligible amounts of PFAS, and they’d still be considered safe for humans to consume. 

“Self-Healing Properties of Fibers Constructed from Mushroom-Derived Chitinous Polymers”
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
Jan. 31, 2023
Here, researchers prepared textile fibers from dried white button mushrooms, Agaricus bisporus. They extracted chitin and glucan from the fungi and spun the resulting thick paste into long strands. In the presence of water, cut or damaged fibers repaired themselves in 30 seconds, returning to their original shape and strength, and woven fibers demonstrated larger-scale self-healing. This proof-of-concept study indicates that mushrooms are a potential feedstock for renewable fibers and sustainable textiles.

“Cellulose Fiber Rejects as Raw Material for Integrated Production of Pleurotus spp. Mushrooms and Activated Biochar for Removal of Emerging Pollutants from Aqueous Media”
ACS Omega
Jan. 31, 2023
In this paper, scientists showed that oyster and king trumpet mushrooms could thrive on the cellulose fibers leftover from recycling paper. Both varieties rapidly colonized the fibers and grew as well as, or slightly better than, mushrooms living on birch sawdust. And after the mushrooms were harvested, the team converted the spent cellulose fibers into activated biochars that adsorbed pharmaceuticals from water, extending the lifecycle of the waste.

“Mushroom-Mediated Reductive Bioconversion of Aldehyde-Rich Essential Oils for Aroma Alteration: A Rose-like Floral Bioflavor from Citronella Oil”
Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry
Jan. 13, 2023
Naturally derived food and beverage flavorings are in high demand by consumers. To generate a new one, this group added edible mushroom cultures to citronella essential oil. In less than 12 hours, the Neofomitella polyzonata cultures transformed the original oil into a product with floral, sweet, fresh and rosy notes. When panelists drank water flavored with the rose-like oil, they indicated that it would be acceptable to consumers. Therefore, mushrooms could be a sustainable route for converting essential oils into commercially valuable flavorings or fragrances, the researchers say.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

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A little-known drug brought billions to Syria’s coffers. Now it’s a bargaining chip

Story by Celine Alkhaldi • Yesterday

Ahighly addictive drug that became Syria’s economic lifeline over a decade of isolation may now be serving as a bargaining chip as it tries to normalize ties with neighboring states, analysts say.

Captagon, a drug that is relatively unknown outside the Middle East, helped Syria turn into a narco-state after much of the international community cut off its economy due to its brutal crackdown on an uprising in 2011.

It is a synthetic amphetamine-type stimulant, fenethylline, which goes by the trade name captagon, and has become the center of an increasing number of drug busts across the Middle East. Experts say the vast majority of global captagon production occurs in Syria, with the Gulf region being its primary destination.

The growth of the industry has raised alarms in the international community. Last year, the US introduced the 2022 US Captagon Act, which linked the trade to the Syrian regime and called it a “transnational security threat.”

After more than a decade of boycotting him, Syria’s Arab neighbors are now in talks to bring President Bashar al-Assad in from the cold. The Syrian leader has been received in some Arab capitals, but he is yet to be awarded the ultimate normalization with Saudi Arabia, one of Syria’s staunchest foes – and the biggest market for its drugs.

Following the deadly February 6 earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, Saudi relief planes landed for the first time in a decade at regime-controlled airports. And last month, Saudi state media reported Riyadh was in talks with Damascus to resume providing consular services between the two countries.

Analysts say captagon is likely to be high on the agenda in attempts at normalization.

Saudi media has been sounding the alarm lately over the rise in drug use. In September, Saudi authorities announced the largest seizure of illicit drugs in the country’s history after nearly 47 million amphetamine pills were hidden in a flour shipment and seized at a warehouse in the capital Riyadh. Millions more pills have been intercepted since. The UN says amphetamine seizures in the region refer predominantly to captagon.

“Captagon has been touted as a ‘card’ in rapprochement talks between the Syrian regime and counterparts pursuing normalization,” said Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at the New Lines Institute in Washington, DC, who has studied the captagon trade.

“The regime has been leveraging its agency over the captagon trade, signaling to states considering normalization that they could reduce captagon trafficking as a goodwill gesture,” Rose told CNN.

Exported by several actors, including Syrian smugglers, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, “the captagon smuggling is worth more than Syria’s legal export,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and an expert on the topic. Hezbollah has denied ties to any drug trades.

The United Kingdom, which last month imposed new sanctions on Syrians connected to the trade, said the Assad regime has benefited from the captagon trade to the tune of $57 billion. It described it as a “financial lifeline” for Assad that is “worth approximately three times the combined trade of the Mexican (drug) cartels.”

Syrian state media regularly reports on captagon drug busts, saying that the interior ministry is cracking down on its trade as well as that of other narcotics.

Smugglers ‘get military training’

Salah Malkawi, a Jordanian analyst who follows the trade closely, says that despite Syria’s denial, it is impossible for the drug to cross borders without the involvement of several actors closely tied to Assad and his regime.

“Commanders of militias, security agencies, military forces are involved in the drug smuggling operation,” Malkawi said. “The drugs cannot reach these areas without passing through dozens of barriers and checkpoints that fall under the Fourth Division, which is under the leadership of Maher al-Assad, the brother of the Syrian president.”

“I’ve spoken to several (smugglers),” he said. “They have received military training … using war tactics … to carry out sophisticated raids.”

The Syrian government didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Jordan, which supported anti-regime groups at the start of the Syrian civil war, has in recent months also been on the road to rapprochement with Assad.

Its foreign minister this year made his first visit to Damascus since the start of the Syrian civil war and has been sending humanitarian aid following the February 6 earthquake.

Jordan has been directly impacted by Syria’s captagon trade due to the prevalence of its use in border regions in the northeast of the country, said Saud Al-Sharafat, a former brigadier general in the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate, as well as founder of the Shorufat ِCenter for the Study of Globalization and Terrorism in Amman, Jordan.

“There is also the high cost of securing the borders and the increase in pressure on the armed forces and security services,” Al-Sharafat told CNN.

He welcomed the US Captagon Act as “the first serious international effort” to prevent the regime from expanding its use of the drug “to destabilize security in the region and the world.” Syria could potentially flood Europe and Western countries with the drug through Turkey and use it as a bargaining chip against them, he said.

But even if agreements are reached between Syria and its neighbors over stopping exports of the drug, experts say it is unlikely that Assad will fully abandon the trade.

“That’s asking the key trafficker to stop his business,” Felbab-Brown said. “It is very unlikely that the Assad regime would give up on its crucial revenue source.”

At best, he may offer cosmetic solutions to the problem, experts say, promising tighter restrictions and tougher law enforcement at home on producers and traders, whom the regime denies it is involved with.

Rose of the New Lines Institute said that the regime may maintain its captagon businesses as a form of long-term leverage against its neighbors, while maintaining “some level of plausible deniability with the trade, blaming opposition forces and non-state actors, while undertaking a wave of cosmetic seizures at home to shift the blame away from the government.”

Nadeen Ebrahim contributed to this report.

Swimming pools of the rich make cities thirsty

UNIVERSITY OF READING

Rich elites with large swimming pools and well-maintained lawns are leaving poorer communities without basic access to water in cities across the world.

New research published today (Monday,10 April) has found social inequalities are driving urban water crises more than environmental factors, such as climate change or the growth of urban populations.

The study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, found that urban elites overconsume water for their own personal leisure, such as filling their swimming pools, watering their gardens or washing their cars.

The research team focused on Cape Town, South Africa, where an urban water crisis means many under-privileged people live without taps or toilets and use their limited water for drinking and hygiene.

They also highlighted similar issues in 80 cities worldwide, including London, Miami, Barcelona, Beijing, Tokyo, Melbourne, Istanbul, Cairo, Moscow, Bangalore, Chennai, Jakarta, Sydney, Maputo, Harare, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Rome.

Professor Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at the University of Reading who co-authored the study, said: “Climate change and population growth mean that water is becoming a more precious resource in big cities, but we have shown that social inequality is the biggest problem for poorer people getting access to water for their everyday needs.

“More than 80 big cities worldwide have suffered from water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use over the past 20 years, but our projections show this crisis could get worse still as the gap between the rich and the poor widens in many parts of the world.

“This shows the close links between social, economic and environmental inequality. Ultimately, everyone will suffer the consequences unless we develop fairer ways to share water in cities."

‘Insufficient’ water management

The research, led by Dr Elisa Savelli at Uppsala University, Sweden, alongside co-authors from the University of Reading, UK, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, and the University of Manchester, UK, used a model to analyse the domestic water use of urban residents in Cape Town to understand how different social classes consume water.

They identified five social groups, ranging from ‘elite’ (people who live in spacious homes with large gardens and swimming pools) to ‘informal dwellers’ (people who tend to live in shacks at the edge of the city).

Elite and upper-middle-income households make up less than 14% of Cape Town’s population but use more than half (51%) of the water consumed by the entire city. Informal households and lower-income households account for 62% of the city’s population, but consume just 27% of Cape Town’s water.

Currently, the researchers highlight that efforts to manage water supplies in water-scarce cities mostly focus on technical solutions, such as developing more efficient water infrastructure. These reactive strategies, which focus on maintaining and increasing water supply, are insufficient and counterproductive, the research team suggest. Instead, a more proactive approach, aimed at reducing unsustainable water consumption among elites, would be more effective, they suggest.

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JOURNAL

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-023-01100-0 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Apr-2023

RBC helped arrange US$5.4B of ‘sustainability-linked’ financing for coal mine operator

Story by Redmond Shannon • Apr 4, 2023

GLOBAL NEWS

Royal Bank of Canada is one of many global lenders that want to show that being green isn’t only about the colour of money, but recent revelations about its investment in fossil fuel companies call into question its climate-action bona fides.


A police officer guards the demolition edge of the open pit mine Garzweiler at the village Lützerath near Erkelenz, Germany, on Jan. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)© Provided by Global News

Global News has learned — from financial data firm Refintiv — that those arrangements include involvement in two significant credit lines to energy giant RWE, most recently in the news for its expansion of a coal mine in western Germany.

Data compiled in an analysis by environmental NGOs shows that since 2016, RBC is estimated to be the fifth-largest global financier of fossil fuel projects.

The 2022 Banking on Climate Chaos Report, which uses information from financial data provider Bloomberg LP, also estimated that the Toronto-based bank is the 40th largest funder of coal mining and the 25th largest for coal power generation in that period.

RBC has promised to put $500 billion into so-called sustainable finance investments by 2025.

At RBC’s upcoming annual general meeting in Saskatoon, a bloc of U.S. investors is calling on the bank to be more accountable to its own goals.

On April 5, shareholders will vote on a proposal for the bank to set an “absolute” target for reducing the amount of financing it will provide to the oil and gas and power generation sectors by 2030, although not coal mining, specifically.

“Shareholders applauded these banks when they set net zero goals — but it can’t be all talk,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander in a press release in January.

“We expect them to take the steps needed now to reduce emissions on the timeline to which they have committed.”

RBC spokesperson Adam Lister told Global News that it would be improper to comment further on proposals that have yet to be voted on.

An absolute target means RBC would need to establish a concrete amount for reducing these investments, rather than a target that is a percentage of its entire portfolio.

The New York City Comptroller and three of the city’s public retirement funds collectively own around US$28 million in RBC shares.

The bank’s board is recommending that shareholders vote against the proposal, citing instability caused by fluctuating commodity prices, and a desire to recognize the “global need for essential goods and services produced by high-emitting” sectors.

Ever since 195 countries signed the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, banks around the world have wanted to show they’re all about sustainable investment.

Net-zero banking means that any emissions related to investments would be fully offset by initiatives to remove carbon from the atmosphere such as tree planting, purchasing carbon credits or carbon capture technology.

But the Refintiv data, showing RBC’s involvement in the credit lines for Germany-based RWE in 2022, raises complicated questions about how banks reach those climate goals.

The data indicates that the bank is one of 25 investment firms that extended credit lines totalling US$5.4 billion.

RWE operates the controversial Garzweiler coal mine, where in January riot police removed hundreds of protesters, including climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The company is expanding its 35-square-kilometre mine, a site that is used to fuel two coal-fired power stations. According to energy think tank Ember, both RWE plants are in the top three of CO2-emitting sources in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System.

But energy companies like RWE are rarely either dirty or clean. They can be both.

In recent years, RWE has invested heavily in wind and solar energy, becoming one of Europe’s largest producers of renewable energy.

But it also can be demonized as a paleo energy dinosaur, mining and burning coal — the most polluting fossil fuel for over a century.

When Global News asked RWE if it was using any of the money to expand the coal mine, company spokeswoman Regina Wolter said only that the credit lines “are used to finance our green growth and normal working capital needs.”

Since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, RWE’s operations have highlighted tensions at the very core of German politics; the everyday need for energy security versus efforts to reduce emissions.

In response to the stoppage of natural gas from Russia, Germany has reopened some lignite coal-fired power generation plants and prolonged the operation of others.

More broadly, though, any RBC involvement with RWE would also symbolize the nuances of ethical investment.

In 2020, RBC pledged the bank would no longer lend money to new coal-fired power generators, thermal coal mines, or coal mines that require mountaintop removal.

But the wording of that policy allows the bank to continue investing in its existing customers who are expanding coal mines, such as RWE.

“You look at all of the policies that the Canadian banks have in regards to coal, and they have so many loopholes in them that you could drive a coal excavator through those loopholes,” said Richard Brooks, climate finance director with Stand.earth, a Canadian-U.S. environmental NGO that campaigns to protect forests and promotes renewable energy sources.

“We should not be trying to reduce our emissions in Canada while increasing emissions in another country just so we can make some money.”

Earlier this year, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported that HSBC bank contributed US$340 million of the financing to RWE, despite HSBC’s commitment in 2021 to phase out coal financing within nine years from that date.

HSBC confirmed to Global News that it, too, is involved, but wouldn’t say how much it contributed.

According to information from financial data firm Refintiv, RBC is the only Canadian bank among the 25 institutions that helped finance the credit lines.

Other banks include Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and HSBC.

The data does not specify how much RBC contributed to the financing, only that the bank is classified as one of the arranging banks.

“Unfortunately, we do not discuss specific client matters,” RBC said.

Ultimately, unless banks explicitly say they’re financing a green project, there are no assurances about where the money ends up.

Brooks says that once RWE gets the cash, it can do what it wants with it.

“It's completely a black box,” Brooks said. “There's no restrictions put in place to ensure that money is going into a climate solution or renewables project.”

Brooks is among six Canadian activists who lodged a complaint with the Canadian Competition Bureau in 2022 over alleged “deceptive marketing practices” related to RBC’s climate claims. The bureau is now conducting an investigation.

“We disagree with the allegations in the complaint and believe the complaint to be unfounded,” said RBC's Adam Lister.

Sustainability-linked financing

More and more Canadians are opting to put their money into Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investments; a sector estimated to be worth more than $3 billion in Canada.

As part of the ESG boom, the investment arms of banks can opt to finance loans and bonds labelled as: “green,” “social,” “sustainability,” or “sustainability-linked.”

Sustainability-linked financing (SLF) incentivizes companies to meet a set of ESG targets to avoid facing higher interest payments.

According to the Refintiv data, the RWE credit lines involving RBC are classified as SLF.

The financing has three targets, one of which requires the company to increase the share of renewables in its portfolio.

Theoretically, that condition could still allow RWE to increase its fossil fuel emissions, as long as it simultaneously increases its renewables by a larger amount.

What’s more, SLF rules allow RWE to decide its own SLF targets.

Canadian entrepreneur Tariq Fancy is a former head of sustainable investing at the world’s largest asset management firm, BlackRock. Fancy is now a vocal skeptic of SLF transactions.

“If you're your own referee, you're not going to penalize yourself or put yourself in a corner, even if it's in the public interest to reduce exposure to fossil fuels,” Fancy said.

Since leaving his role at BlackRock, Fancy has written about his disillusionment with how the sustainable investment sector currently works, calling it a “dangerous placebo.”

Fancy maintains that investment banks will only move away from fossil fuels when they are forced to do so.

“Economic history has shown us that if we want that to happen, it has to be government regulation. It has to be mandatory compliance rather than voluntary compliance,” Fancy said.

Study: Shutting down nuclear power could increase air pollution

If reactors are retired, polluting energy sources that fill the gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths, researchers estimate

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Nearly 20 percent of today’s electricity in the United States comes from nuclear power. The U.S. has the largest nuclear fleet in the world, with 92 reactors scattered around the country. Many of these power plants have run for more than half a century and are approaching the end of their expected lifetimes. 

Policymakers are debating whether to retire the aging reactors or reinforce their structures to continue producing nuclear energy, which many consider a low-carbon alternative to climate-warming coal, oil, and natural gas. 

Now, MIT researchers say there’s another factor to consider in weighing the future of nuclear power: air quality. In addition to being a low carbon-emitting source, nuclear power is relatively clean in terms of the air pollution it generates. Without nuclear power, how would the pattern of air pollution shift, and who would feel its effects?

The MIT team took on these questions in a new study appearing in Nature Energy. They lay out a scenario in which every nuclear power plant in the country has shut down, and consider how other sources such as coal, natural gas, and renewable energy would fill the resulting energy needs throughout an entire year. 

Their analysis reveals that indeed, air pollution would increase, as coal, gas, and oil sources ramp up to compensate for nuclear power’s absence. This in itself may not be surprising, but the team has put numbers to the prediction, estimating that the increase in air pollution would have serious health effects, resulting in an additional 5,200 pollution-related deaths over a single year. 

If, however, more renewable energy sources become available to supply the energy grid, as they are expected to by the year 2030, air pollution would be curtailed, though not entirely. The team found that even under this heartier renewable scenario, there is still a slight increase in air pollution in some parts of the country, resulting in a total of 260 pollution-related deaths over one year. 

When they looked at the populations directly affected by the increased pollution, they found that Black or African American communities — a disproportionate number of whom live near fossil-fuel plants — experienced the greatest exposure. 

“This adds one more layer to the environmental health and social impacts equation when you’re thinking about nuclear shutdowns, where the conversation often focuses on local risks due to accidents and mining or long-term climate impacts,” says lead author Lyssa Freese, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). 

“In the debate over keeping nuclear power plants open, air quality has not been a focus of that discussion,” adds study author Noelle Selin, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and EAPS. “What we found was that air pollution from fossil fuel plants is so damaging, that anything that increases it, such as a nuclear shutdown, is going to have substantial impacts, and for some people more than others.”

The study’s MIT-affiliated co-authors also include Principal Research Scientist Sebastian Eastham and Guillaume Chossière SM ’17, PhD ’20, along with Alan Jenn of the University of California at Davis. 

Future phase-outs

When nuclear power plants have closed in the past, fossil fuel use increased in response. In 1985, the closure of reactors in Tennessee Valley prompted a spike in coal use, while the 2012 shutdown of a plant in California led to an increase in natural gas. In Germany, where nuclear power has almost completely been phased out, coal-fired power increased initially to fill the gap. 

Noting these trends, the MIT team wondered how the U.S. energy grid would respond if nuclear power were completely phased out. 

“We wanted to think about what future changes were expected in the energy grid,” Freese says. “We knew that coal use was declining, and there was a lot of work already looking at the impact of what that would have on air quality. But no one had looked at air quality and nuclear power, which we also noticed was on the decline.” 

In the new study, the team used an energy grid dispatch model developed by Jenn to assess how the U.S. energy system would respond to a shutdown of nuclear power. The model simulates the production of every power plant in the country and runs continuously to estimate, hour by hour, the energy demands in 64 regions across the country. 

Much like the way the actual energy market operates, the model chooses to turn a plant’s production up or down based on cost: Plants producing the cheapest energy at any given time are given priority to supply the grid over more costly energy sources. 

The team fed the model available data on each plant’s changing emissions and energy costs throughout an entire year. They then ran the model under different scenarios, including: an energy grid with no nuclear power, a baseline grid similar to today’s that includes nuclear power, and a grid with no nuclear power that also incorporates the additional renewable sources that are expected to be added by 2030. 

They combined each simulation with an atmospheric chemistry model to simulate how each plant’s various emissions travel around the country and to overlay these tracks onto maps of population density. For populations in the path of pollution, they calculated the risk of premature death based on their degree of exposure. 

System response

Their analysis showed a clear pattern: Without nuclear power, air pollution worsened in general, mainly affecting regions in the East Coast, where nuclear power plants are mostly concentrated. Without those plants, the team observed an uptick in production from coal and gas plants, resulting in 5,200 pollution-related deaths across the country, compared to the baseline scenario. 

They also calculated that more people are also likely to die prematurely due to climate impacts from the increase in carbon dioxide emissions, as the grid compensates for nuclear power’s absence. The climate-related effects from this additional influx of carbon dioxide could lead to 160,000 additional deaths over the next century. 

“We need to be thoughtful about how we’re retiring nuclear power plants if we are trying to think about them as part of an energy system,” Freese says. “Shutting down something that doesn’t have direct emissions itself can still lead to increases in emissions, because the grid system will respond.” 

“This might mean that we need to deploy even more renewables, in order to fill the hole left by nuclear, which is essentially a zero-emissions energy source,” Selin adds. “Otherwise we will have a reduction in air quality that we weren’t necessarily counting on.” 

This study was supported, in part, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

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JOURNAL

Nature Energy

ARTICLE TITLE

“Nuclear Power Generation Phaseouts Redistribute U.S. Air Quality and Climate Related Mortality Risk”

Study shows involuntary displacement of people experiencing homelessness may cause significant spikes in mortality, overdoses and hospitalizations

New model suggests encampment sweeps, bans and move-along-orders could contribute to 15-25% of deaths in this population over 10 years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

 

VIDEO: JOSH BAROCAS, MD, DISCUSSES THE RESEARCH BEHIND FINDING THAT UP TO 25% OF UNHOUSED PEOPLE WHO USE DRUGS COULD DIE IN 10 YEARS DUE TO INVOLUNTARY DISPLACEMENT POLICIES INCLUDING CAMPING BANS AND SWEEPS. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS

AURORA, Colo. (April 10, 2023) – Involuntary displacement of people experiencing homelessness will likely lead to a substantial increase in morbidity and mortality over a 10-year period.

In a study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers say practices such as encampment sweeps, bans, move-along-orders and cleanups that forcibly relocate individuals away from essential services will lead to substantial increases in overdose deaths, life threatening infections and hospitalizations.

In coordination with the National Healthcare for Homeless Council, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Foundation of the CDC, a multidisciplinary group of researchers developed a simulation model projecting the long-term health effects of involuntary displacement of people experiencing homelessness who inject drugs using data from 23 U.S. cities. They used city- and national-level data to closely model what the population looks like in real life including their overdose risk and mortality. They then modeled two scenarios over a 10-year time period: no continual displacement and continual involuntary displacement of this population.

In hundreds of different projections, the model showed no feasible scenario, in any city, where continual involuntary displacement improves health outcomes. Instead, the practice would likely result in a significant increase in morbidity, mortality and a shortened life expectancy, the study said.

“Our research shows that these widespread practices that forcibly displace people are clearly impacting the health of this population, particularly when it comes to increasing their overdose risk, so much so that it actually decreases the life expectancy of the entire population,” says Josh Barocas, MD, associate professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and corresponding author. “Modeling studies like ours give us a sense of whether we’re headed in the right or wrong direction. Our study showed that displacement could directly result in a quarter of deaths of this population. This tell us that this practice is taking us in the wrong direction if we want to solve issues around homelessness and substance use disorders.” 

Researchers also found displacement increased overdose deaths, hospitalizations, injection-related infections and hindered access to medications for opioid use disorder along with other detrimental impacts. 

“It’s estimated that more than 500,000 people are experiencing homelessness in the U.S., and understanding the toll practices such as camping bans and sweeps take on such a substantial population is critical to emphasizing the need for care and services versus literally being swept aside,” says Barocas. “We hope these results inform future policies that actually mitigate the long-term health consequences in this population before it’s too late.” 

 

About the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is a world-class medical destination at the forefront of transformative science, medicine, education and patient care. The campus encompasses the University of Colorado health professional schools, more than 60 centers and institutes, and two nationally ranked independent hospitals - UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Children's Hospital Colorado - that treat more than two million adult and pediatric patients each year. Innovative, interconnected and highly collaborative, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus delivers life-changing treatments, patient care and professional training and conducts world-renowned research fueled by over $690 million in research grants. For more information, visit www.cuanschutz.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

JAMA

DOI

10.1001/jama.2023.4800 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Population-Level Health Effects of Involuntary Displacement of People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness Who Inject Drugs in US Cities

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Apr-2023

Health effects of involuntary displacement of homeless individuals who inject drugs

JAMA

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: This simulation modeling study of 23 U.S. cities projects that involuntary displacement of people experiencing homelessness who inject drugs may yield substantial increases in morbidity and mortality over a 10-year period. Involuntary displacement is estimated to worsen overdose and hospitalizations, decrease initiations of medications for opioid use disorder, and contribute to deaths. These findings have implications for the practice of involuntary displacement, as well as policies such as access to housing and supportive services, that could mitigate these harms. 

Authors: Joshua A. Barocas, M.D., of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jama.2023.4800)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2023.4800?guestAccessKey=f321ceca-78d6-4d55-bcc5-e7a775ce1152&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=041023

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JOURNAL

JAMA

Hooper creating public database of slaving voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia

Grant and Award Announcement

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Jane Hooper, Associate Professor, History, received funding for the project: "Global Passages: Creating a Public Database of Slaving Voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia."

Hooper, along with three other scholars, has received a three-year digital production grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a major expansion of the open access SlaveVoyages website, available online at https://www.slavevoyages.org. 

The primary investigators will create an Indian Ocean and Asia (IOA) database of voyages that transported enslaved African, Malagasy, Middle Eastern, Indian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian men, women, and children within and beyond the Indian Ocean world between 1500 and 1940 as an integral part of the SlaveVoyages website. The database will incorporate the voyage datasets they have created over the last 15 years into this new open-source and fully searchable online database that will also include contributions from other internationally based scholars and researchers.  

This important new addition to the website will emphasize that the transoceanic commerce in slave labor was a truly global phenomenon that involved Arab/Swahili, Chinese, Indian, and Southeast Asian as well as European and American vessels. Research has demonstrated that the transoceanic slave trade in the Indian Ocean began centuries before it did in the Atlantic and continued into the mid-twentieth century, decades after the transatlantic trade’s demise in the mid-1860s. The investigators will also develop essays, lesson plans, and interactive maps to accompany the database.

The project will receive $400,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project; out of this funding, Hooper will receive $65,544 from Rice University on a subaward to support research and production of the database. Funding began in March 2023 and will end in late Feb. 2026.

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About George Mason University

George Mason University is Virginia's largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 38,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the last half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Learn more at http://www.gmu.edu.

Early crop plants were more easily ‘tamed’

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

 

IMAGE: ERECT KNOTWEED view more 

CREDIT: NATALIE MUELLER / WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

The story of how ancient wolves came to claim a place near the campfire as humanity’s best friend is a familiar tale (even if scientists are still working out some of the specifics). In order to be domesticated, a wild animal must be tamable — capable of living in close proximity to people without exhibiting dangerous aggression or debilitating fear. Taming was the necessary first step in animal domestication, and it is widely known that some animals are easier to tame than others.

But did humans also favor certain wild plants for domestication because they were more easily “tamed”? Research from Washington University in St. Louis calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments. The behavior of erect knotweed, a buckwheat relative, has WashU paleoethnobotanists completely reassessing our understanding of plant domestication.

“We have no equivalent term for tameness in plants,” said Natalie Mueller, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. “But plants are capable of responding to people. They have a developmental capacity to be tamed.”

Her work with early indigenous North American crops shows that some wild plants respond quickly to clearing, fertilizing, weeding or thinning. Plants that respond in ways that make cultivation easier or more productive could be considered more easily tamed than those that cannot.

“If plants responded rapidly in ways that were beneficial to early cultivators — for example by producing higher yields, larger seeds, seeds that were easier to sprout, or a second crop in a single growing season — this would have encouraged humans to continue investing in the co-evolutionary relationship,” she said.

This capacity to express different traits and characteristics in response to the environment is called plasticity, and not all species are equally plastic.

“Some plants respond quickly and obviously to cultivation and care,” Mueller said. “I think ancient people would have noticed that they could double their yields just by thinning out dense stands of plants. This is one of the simplest and most common gardening techniques, but it has many important effects on the development of plants.”

Research from Washington University in St. Louis calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments. The behavior of erect knotweed, a buckwheat relative pictured here, has WashU paleoethnobotanists completely reassessing our understanding of plant domestication.

CREDIT

Natalie Mueller / Washington University in St. Louis

What would an early farmer do?

Mueller’s study, published April 7 in PLOS ONE, focuses on work with a plant called erect knotweed, a member of the buckwheat family that was domesticated by indigenous farmers in eastern North America. The domesticated sub-species is now extinct; humans don’t eat it anymore. But Mueller and others have previously uncovered caches of seeds stored in caves, charred plant remnants in ancient hearths, and even the seeds of erect knotweed in human feces, clear evidence that this species was once consumed as a staple food.

Mueller, who studies lost crops, has spent years growing erect knotweed and other crop progenitors in experimental gardens, including at Washington University’s environmental field station, Tyson Research Center. She hasn’t always been successful with growing the plants she collects in the wild. In that way, Mueller can relate to the early farmers who similarly experimented with plants to discover their potential.

Her efforts have often been stymied by seed dormancy, a common feature among wild plants.

Unlike seeds you buy at the garden store, the seeds of most wild plants will not germinate if you simply sprinkle some water on them. Their requirements for germination are diverse and shaped by their evolutionary history. For example, if a plant has evolved in a place with a winter, like the Midwest, its seeds may not germinate unless they experience a long cold period. This prevents them from germinating too soon in the wild — they are waiting for spring. Domesticated plants have lost their diverse germination requirements.

The loss of germination inhibitors has presented a paradox to theorists of domestication. Many of the selective pressures that could have favored the evolution of this trait derive from planting seeds. But why would ancient people have started planting seeds if none of them germinated?

With erect knotweed, Mueller experienced a breakthrough of sorts. Based on four seasons of observations, Mueller determined that growing wild plants in the low-density conditions typical of a cultivated garden (i.e. spaced out and weeded) triggers plants to produce seeds that germinate more easily. This makes the harvests easier to plant successfully the next time around, eliminating a key barrier to further selection.

“Our results show that erect knotweed grown in low-density agroecosystems spontaneously ‘act domesticated’ in a single growing season, before any selection has occurred,” Mueller said.

Think of it as the plant equivalent to that first wolf who, though still a wild animal, sat down with its human friend around the fire. This is a behavioral shift, rather than an evolutionary one, but it allows new evolutionary pathways to open up.

A role for plant behavior

Mueller believes there is a bias in domestication studies toward viewing this changeability, or plasticity, as noise that is getting in the way of attempts to explain evolutionary change. Instead, this paper argues that we need to understand the development and behavior of wild crop relatives in order to explain the evolutionary process of domestication.

“Because we lack the practical experience with crop progenitors that ancient people had, these effects of the environment on plant development have gone mostly unnoticed and understudied,” Mueller said.

Her findings could have applications for developing new food crops: there is no reason why we have to be limited to the plants that our ancestors domesticated thousands of years ago.

Some researchers have been calling for de novo domestication — selecting wild plants with desirable characteristics and intentionally domesticating them. It may make sense to start looking to wild plants that are easily tamed as potential crops that could be developed for the future, Mueller said.

This paper also contributes to a growing awareness that plants are responsive and communicative beings. Though this idea is cutting-edge and hotly debated in biology and ecology, it is widespread in indigenous North American philosophies and probably would have been held by the people who domesticated erect knotweed and other plants thousands of years ago.

Recent research has shown how plants warn relatives about herbivores using chemical signaling, share resources through mycorrhizal networks and even emit noises when they are injured or stressed.

“You can’t explain plant domestication if you only consider the behaviors of humans, because domestication is the result of reciprocal relationships between multiple species that are all capable of responding to each other,” Mueller said.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0284136 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The taming of the weed: Developmental plasticity facilitated plant domestication

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Apr-2023