Illinois professor examines lasting legacy of al-Andalus for Arabs, Muslims today

Comparative and world literature professor Eric Calderwood wrote about the diverse meanings attributed to al-Andalus and the enduring cultural influence it has today

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: THE INFLUENCE OF AL-ANDALUS AND THE IMAGE OF IT AS A TOLERANT MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY ARE REFLECTED IN DIVERSE WAYS IN POLITICS AND ART TODAY, WRITES COMPARATIVE AND WORLD LITERATURE PROFESSOR ERIC CALDERWOOD IN HIS NEW BOOK, “ON EARTH OR IN POEMS: THE MANY LIVES OF AL-ANDALUS.” view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY ERIC CALDERWOOD

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Before it was home to Spain and Portugal, much of the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties for almost 800 years during the Middle Ages. Known as al-Andalus, its influence is still reflected in art and politics today – not only in Spain and North Africa, but also in places far from the historical site of al-Andalus.

Eric Calderwood, a comparative and world literature professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, wrote about that influence and how it is used to make sense of the present in his new book, “On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus.” The title of Calderwood’s book comes from a famous Palestinian poem about al-Andalus.

“The legacy of al-Andalus is all around us. We don’t have to travel to Spain or North Africa to imagine ourselves as connected to that legacy. In some ways, it comes to us. It just takes paying attention to the clues,” Calderwood said.

The book examines the ways al-Andalus is imagined in modern times to think about feminism, ethnicity, immigration and other topics, and how ideas about al-Andalus are reflected in music from flamenco to hip hop. Calderwood organized his book around the diverse ideas people have about al-Andalus, how those ideas are expressed in culture and why it is useful for people to identify with al-Andalus in particular ways.

One of the dominant views of al-Andalus, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, is as a place of religious tolerance where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in relative peace, Calderwood said. It also is viewed as a place of cultural, intellectual and scientific splendor.

He illustrated how the idea of religious coexistence is promoted through allusions to the Mosque of Cordoba in Spain, which dates to the eighth century and is the most famous Muslim heritage site in Europe. These allusions stretch all the way to Central Illinois. When the Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center in Urbana was built in the 1980s, its facade was designed to imitate the red-and-white-striped arches in the Mosque of Cordoba. A controversial proposal in 2010 to build an Islamic community center near the Ground Zero site in New York City used the name Cordoba House for the project “as a symbol of what it means for Muslims to coexist in a diverse environment like New York City,” Calderwood said.

The mosque has become a symbol of debates about Muslim heritage in Cordoba and in Spain. For example, in the 1980s and ‘90s, tourist brochures at the site emphasized the Islamic religious architecture of the building and its connection to al-Andalus, Calderwood wrote. Since then, the language describing the building has been modified to highlight its current status as a cathedral and its Christian identity and history, and to promote the debatable claim that a Christian basilica existed at the site prior to the construction of the mosque. The description reduces 500 years of Islamic rule of Cordoba to an “intervention.” The debate concerns both the view of the role of Muslims in Cordoban and Spanish history, and their place in Spanish culture today, Calderwood wrote.

His first introduction to ideas about al-Andalus came shortly after he graduated from high school and moved to Spain to study flamenco, which, according to some practitioners, has its origins in al-Andalus. He said he was surrounded by the material remains of al-Andalus in monuments such as the Alhambra and the Mosque of Cordoba, as well as cultural references.

“All these people in Spain today point to aspects of their culture, indicating it has some connection to this place in the past. Al-Andalus wasn’t just in the past but was very present for these people,” Calderwood said.

The title of Calderwood’s book, “On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus,” comes from a famous Palestinian poem about al-Andalus, indicating it is both a place in history and a place for stories.

CREDIT

Courtesy Eric Calderwood

In contemporary cultures, the legacy of al-Andalus is seen through music, in the blending of musical styles, in collaborations of performers of different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds in ways that evoke the multicultural environment of al-Andalus, and in lyrics or melodies attributed to Andalusi music, he said.

Hip hop artists – particularly Muslim artists living in Spain and France – use the ideas of al-Andalus as a sign of resistance for minority communities against economic or racial power structures. In the U.S., Black hip hop artists use it to connect to ideas of Black creativity and excellence, Calderwood said.

In his book, Calderwood also examined ideas about race and ethnicity in North Africa and the Middle East. Arabs look at al-Andalus as a symbol of cultural identity associated with Syria and the Middle East, downplaying Islam’s role and sidelining other ethnic groups, particularly North African Berbers.

“’The Arab al-Andalus has served to make al-Andalus whiter, less religious and more compatible with dominant notions of Western identity,” Calderwood wrote.

Feminists in the Middle East have looked to al-Andalus as a place where women had exceptional freedom in the Muslim world. It gives them a history of feminist thought that is not tied to Europe or the U.S., he said.

Palestinian writers have used al-Andalus as a metaphor for their homeland and for loss, occupation and cultural erasure, as well as a call to resistance and a speculative image of what Palestine might look like in the future, he said.

To Calderwood, al-Andalus is “a symbol of living with contradiction and understanding that your idea about living with the past is not the same as someone else’s idea of living with the past. It’s less about learning to tolerate difference and more about learning to tolerate contradiction.”

To boost health care teams’ effectiveness, integrate organizational sciences research with technology development

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Health care organizations today are caring for patients with increasingly complex needs and leveraging larger teams that include clinicians with diverse and specialized expertise. At the same time, high turnover and labor shortages mean that facilities frequently employ a more temporary and mobile workforce. In a new commentary, researchers point out that, as a result, “the structure of health care teams often defies decades of wisdom from team-design research about the conditions that support the best possible performance.”

The article was written by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Johns Hopkins University, Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, and the University of California, San Francisco. It is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The authors suggest that common solutions for supporting collective work have come in the form of technology developments that are costly and can fall short of addressing the human-based challenges to teamwork. They call for integrating research from the field of organizational science, which expressly studies human-based challenges related to attention and relationships, as this could reveal useful levers for amplifying the teamwork necessary for patient care.

 “Cultivating more robust teamwork in health care requires a deep understanding of human behavior along with advanced technologies,” says Anna Mayo, assistant professor of organizational behavior at CMU’s Heinz College, the article’s lead author. “But progress has been limited in part because findings from research in organizational science and related fields are not yet as incorporated into research and practice in health care as they should be.”

The challenges faced by health care teams today include a blurring of health care teams’ boundaries due to individual clinicians spanning multiple care teams and care team compositions evolving with patient needs and shift changes. At the same time, rotations in large organizations coupled with turnover and an increasing reliance on a mobile workforce mean that the clinicians who share a patient often have limited, if any, history of collaboration.

Research from organizational science sheds light on the constraints these conditions create. For instance, while clinicians used to rely on in-person communication, they now often turn to technology-mediated communication. Messaging applications offer the potential to facilitate communication across the dynamic web of patient care team members. Yet, attentional limitations can lead providers to be “out of sight, out of mind.” Similarly, organizational science has documented the social nature of learning—a process critical to teamwork and sustained performance over time. Yet, reliance on technology can limit opportunities to learn by observing others, while a transient workforce can undermine the ability to develop relationships that would otherwise enable knowledge transfer.

Better understanding these challenges can help guide more effective technology-based interventions that would enable coordination and learning. Such tools could include algorithmically-driven recommendations—for example, prompting a primary care team to connect with a particular consultant. Similarly, scheduling technologies could draw on interaction and outcome data to create effective care-team assignments that allow for both shared history that supports coordination and working with varied others that supports learning.

“Attention to improving the coordination and learning practices in health care teams is not new,” says Christopher Myers, associate professor of management and organization at Johns Hopkins University, who coauthored the article. “Yet there is a real opportunity to make progress if researchers, developers, and practitioners better integrate insights from organizational science research into the development of support tools.”

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JOURNAL

New England Journal of Medicine

DOI

10.1056/NEJMp2300172 

ARTICLE TITLE

Supporting Robust Teamwork — Bridging Technology and Organizational Science

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

27-May-2023

Are pandemic lockdowns and vaccinations complements or substitutes?

Lessons learned from COVID-19 should be considered in future pandemics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Worldwide, one of the initial responses to the COVID-19 virus was locking down parts of the economy to reduce social interactions and the virus’s spread. Now, the development and production of vaccines have largely replaced broad lockdowns. In a new study that considered epidemiology and economics, researchers sought to determine how the arrival of vaccines should affect the duration and intensity of lockdown policies. They concluded that boosting the rate of vaccine use influences intensity and duration of lockdowns, depending on a variety of factors.

The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna University of Technology, and the University of Vienna. It is published in the European Journal of Operational Research.

“While it is too late for policymakers to apply this model directly to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will likely be future pandemics,” says Jonathan Caulkins, professor of operations research and public policy at CMU’s Heinz College, who was lead author on the paper. “The devastation wrought by COVID-19—in terms of health and the economy—suggests that we should invest now in creating planning models for the next pandemic.”

For the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines were invented, tested, and approved in record-breaking time. Yet it still took nearly two years to produce and distribute enough to vaccinate everyone who wanted the vaccine. In this study, researchers asked: During the period between when vaccines begin to become available and when there are enough vaccines for everyone, how should policymakers balance them with lockdown policies? More specifically: Are vaccines and lockdowns substitutes for one another, suggesting that lockdowns should decline as vaccination rates rise? Or are they complementary, with the prospect of imminent vaccination increasing the value of stricter lockdowns since hospitalization and deaths averted may be permanently prevented, not just delayed?

Researchers created a model of the epidemic’s spread and resulting health and economic costs. Analysis began when the first vaccine was approved, with policymakers increasing or decreasing the intensity of lockdowns as vaccinations were disseminated and used.

Increasing the rate of vaccine use influences the intensity and duration of lockdowns, depending on various other factors (e.g., the duration and severity of infection, the death rate from COVID-19 and from other morbidities, the costs of shutting down businesses, the vaccination rate) and the state of the epidemic when the vaccine is approved, the study found.

Under certain circumstances, increased vaccination capacity should substitute for lockdowns, since greater vaccination capacity buys reduced unemployment. Within the study’s model, that would be the case for countries that highly value preventing COVID-19 deaths and can vaccinate their population within two years. But when these parameters are lower, increased vaccination capacity could stimulate more lockdowns (complementarity), in which case greater vaccination capacity would be used to “buy” better health outcomes.

In addition, it may be sensible for lockdowns and vaccinations to co-exist, although there is not a static relationship between the two, the authors suggest. Sometimes it is optimal to ease lockdowns steadily as vaccination progresses; sometimes it is optimal to first increase lockdown stringency and reduce it later. Likewise, there are conditions when expanding vaccine production capacity would reduce the total effort involved in locking down, and conditions when the opposite is true. When vaccination evolves slowly, there is a complementary relationship, and when vaccination evolves quickly, vaccines can be viewed as substitutes for lockdowns.

Among the study’s limitations, the authors note they did not consider the possibility that people would undermine lockdown restrictions. Similarly, the study did not consider the costs of vaccination (because they vary considerably from country to country), nor did it factor vaccine hesitancy. In addition, their model examined just one type of virus; it did not consider multiple competing virus variants, loss of vaccine effectiveness because of mutations, or re-infections. Also, the study did not distinguish people by age, sex, occupation, or any category other than disease state, nor did it factor the effects of migration or international trade.

“Nations spend a great deal maintaining militaries during peacetime as a precaution and prevention measure,” notes Caulkins. “Based on our findings, it may be equally prudent for nations to spend substantial sums on vaccine research and maintain idle vaccine production capacity even though pandemics come along only every few decades.”
 

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JOURNAL

European Journal of Operational Research

DOI

10.1016/j.ejor.2023.04.033 

ARTICLE TITLE

The hammer and the jab: Are COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccinations complements or substitutes?

Silent zoo tours can generate new perspectives on animals, study suggests

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Visiting zoos in silence can generate a range of novel experiences, helping people to connect to animals in a more intimate way and giving visits more gravitas, according to new research.

Experts ran special silent events at Paignton and Bristol zoos as part of a wider project on the auditory culture of zoos.

Visitors were better able to focus, concentrate and even meditate on specific animals and their behaviour, which sometimes fostered feelings of intimacy with and attachment to particular zoo animals.

The research, published in TRACE: Journal for Human-Animal Studies, was conducted by Professor Tom Rice, Dr Alexander Badman-King, Professor Sam Hurn and from the University of Exeter and Dr Adam Reed, from the University of St Andrews.

Professor Rice said: “Participants found keeping silent could be experienced as a privation (in that they weren’t speaking to other humans), but also a privilege, because it was so unusual and sometimes lent their zoo visiting unexpected seriousness and gravitas. Silence helped them pay more attention, meaning that they got things out of their visits that they might not have ordinarily.”

Participants in the visits, held in 2019, were allowed to choose their own paths around the zoo and move at their own pace but were not allowed to talk to others. The participants took part in focus groups after the event to discuss their experiences.

The silence appeared to affect the pace of the visits. James and Clare found that they “went round slower” and “took more time” to think and to concentrate. Some participants observed that not speaking seemed to generate periods of physical stillness, too.

The combination of silence, slowness and stillness produced feelings of “stress relief” and “tranquillity”, as well as “peacefulness” in some participants. Melanie said: “I found it a massive privilege. I felt so honoured to be sharing the animals’ space, and it didn’t feel like a zoo”, while Bridget said: “It is great stress relief”.

Professor Rice said: “Many participants reported that they felt their silence had affected the behaviour of the zoo animals they observed. For instance, some said that the animals seemed comfortable with their presence, and that they were more ready to come close to them than to noisier visitors. Silence was considered by some visitors to establish points of connection between themselves and some animals.”

Laura, like other younger participants, described how not being allowed to communicate using a mobile phone meant she was able to invest more of her attention in the zoo. She said: “I think it was quite nice having it silent, because, if it was quiet and I could still communicate, I would end up sending pictures to people, and then I wouldn’t be paying attention as much. I think social media really influences what you see and it is really distracting. So, I think it was really good just switching my phone off completely and not associating with anyone.”

The study suggests that silent visits can help visitors to develop new perspectives on zoos and their animals and can also help researchers to imagine future pos­sibilities for the auditory culture of zoos.

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DOI

10.23984/fjhas.116665 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A desirable privation: Exploring silence as a mode of zoo visiting

SEE

Can humans ever understand how animals think?

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-eye-of-hippopotamus-seen-at.html

ZOOS ARE PRISONS

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/05/zoos-are-prisons-death-of-emara-beloved.html

 

Using AI to create better, more potent medicines

Novel framework could offer chemists greater drug options

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – While it can take years for the pharmaceutical industry to create medicines capable of treating or curing human disease, a new study suggests that using generative artificial intelligence could vastly accelerate the drug-development process. 

Today, most drug discovery is carried out by human chemists who rely on their knowledge and experience to select and synthesize the right molecules needed to become the safe and efficient medicines we depend on. To identify the synthesis paths, scientists often employ a technique called retrosynthesis – a method for creating potential drugs by working backward from the wanted molecules and searching for chemical reactions to make them.

Yet because sifting through millions of potential chemical reactions can be an extremely challenging and time-consuming endeavor, researchers at The Ohio State University have created an AI framework called G2Retro to automatically generate reactions for any given molecule. The new study showed that compared to current manual-planning methods, the framework was able to cover an enormous range of possible chemical reactions as well as accurately and quickly discern which reactions might work best to create a given drug molecule. 

“Using AI for things critical to saving human lives, such as medicine, is what we really want to focus on,” said Xia Ning, lead author of the study and an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Ohio State. “Our aim was to use AI to accelerate the drug design process, and we found that it not only saves researchers time and money but provides drug candidates that may have much better properties than any molecules that exist in nature.” 

This study builds on previous research of Ning’s where her team developed a method named Modof that was able to generate molecule structures that exhibited desired properties better than any existing molecules. “Now the question becomes how to make such generated molecules, and that is where this new study shines,” said Ning, also an associate professor of biomedical informatics in the College of Medicine.

The study was published today in the journal Communications Chemistry. 

Ning’s team trained G2Retro on a dataset that contains 40,000 chemical reactions collected between 1976 and 2016. The framework “learns” from graph-based representations of given molecules, and uses deep neural networks to generate possible reactant structures that could be used to synthesize them. Its generative power is so impressive that, according to Ning, once given a molecule, G2Retro could come up with hundreds of new reaction predictions in only a few minutes. 

“Our generative AI method G2Retro is able to supply multiple different synthesis routes and options, as well as a way to rank different options for each molecule,” said Ning. “This is not going to replace current lab-based experiments, but it will offer more and better drug options so experiments can be prioritized and focused much faster.”

To further test the AI’s effectiveness, Ning’s team conducted a case study to see if G2Retro could accurately predict four newly released drugs already in circulation: Mitapivat, a medication used to treat hemolytic anemia; Tapinarof, which is used to treat various skin diseases; Mavacamten, a drug to treat systemic heart failure; and Oteseconazole, used to treat fungal infections in females. G2Retro was able to correctly generate exactly the same patented synthesis routes for these medicines, and provided alternative synthesis routes that are also feasible and synthetically useful, Ning said.

Having such a dynamic and effective device at scientists’ disposal could enable the industry to manufacture stronger drugs at a quicker pace – but despite the edge AI might give scientists inside the lab, Ning emphasizes the medicines G2Retro or any generative AI creates still need to be validated – a process that involves the created molecules being tested in animal models and later in human trials. 

“We are very excited about generative AI for medicine, and we are dedicated to using AI responsibly to improve human health,” said Ning. 

This research was supported by Ohio State’s President’s Research Excellence Program and the National Science Foundation. Other Ohio State co-authors were Ziqi Chen, Oluwatosin Ayinde, James Fuchs and Huan Sun. 

#

Contact: Xia Ning, Ning.104@osu.edu

Written by: Tatyana Woodall, Woodall.52@osu.edu

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JOURNAL

Communications Chemistry

DOI

10.1038/s42004-023-00897-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

G2Retro as a two-step graph generative models for retrosynthesis prediction

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-May-2023

INDOOR AIR POLLUTION

World leading health experts say aviation industry must act on cabin fumes as they launch new medical guidance

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING

A group of world leading health and scientific experts are calling on the aviation industry to take action to protect passengers and aircrew from dangerous cabin fumes which they say have led to a new emerging disease.

Led by former pilot and leading global aviation health researcher Dr Susan Michaelis, the specialists have released the first medical protocol of its kind to help treat those effected by contamination of the aircraft cabin breathing air supply and collect data on contamination events.

The International Fume Events Task Force, made up of 17 doctors, occupational health specialists, toxicologists, epidemiologists and aviation experts, have spent six years researching and preparing the evidence and guidance. The result is a unique protocol for medical staff and non-medically trained airline staff which outlines the actions and investigations they should carry out when a person has been exposed to fumes or fume events.

Aircrew and passengers are exposed to chronic background low-levels of engine oils and hydraulic fluids leaking into the aircraft air supply during every flight. They can also experience adverse effects from more irregular ‘fume’ events, which mark incidents when there’s a noticeable level of contaminants in the cabin.

Dr Michaelis, who is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Stirling, said: “This has been happening for the last 70 years and reports of air crew becoming unwell continue to rise.

“Currently, when aircrew or passengers become unwell, whether they are still on the plane, suffer symptoms in the days or weeks to come, or report illness in the years that follow, there’s nothing in the medical books, there’s no guidance material for the aviation industry or medical professionals and very often they get turned away or are given minimal testing.

“This new medical protocol has been written by internationally recognised experts and presents a consensus approach to the recognition, investigation and management of people suffering from the toxic effects of inhaling thermally degraded engine oil and other fluids contaminating the air conditioning systems in aircraft, and includes actions and investigations for in-flight, immediately post-flight and late subsequent follow up.

“All of the data and evidence collected strongly suggests a causal connection between the contaminants from the oils and hydraulic fluids and people becoming unwell. This is the first comprehensive and systematic approach for documenting and gathering further epidemiological data in what is a discreet and emerging occupational health syndrome.”

The medical protocol and an accompanying narrative review have been published in the open access peer reviewed journal, Environmental Health.

The narrative review illustrates the diffuse and consistent pattern of adverse effects, as documented by aircrew and some passengers, after breathing these fumes onboard and incorporates the findings from fume event reports and documented ill health effects that were collected over decades in multiple countries and regions.

Professor Andrew Watterson of the University of Stirling said “This is a globally important and ground-breaking study using a narrative review of a significant and complex problem for those exposed to aircraft cabin air supply fumes that result in a range of often serious adverse effects.

“It has generated a very useful tool in the process, based on recent research, in the form of a protocol for identifying, assessing and better documenting those effects in the future.”

Exposure to aircraft contaminated air and fume events is associated with documented aircrew impairment and incapacitation, jeopardizing the safety of the flight. These exposures are known to cause foggy thinking, dizziness, fatigue and impaired short-term memory and cognitive thinking. It can also cause neurological, respiratory and cardiac complaints, while other studies have drawn links with various cancers.

‘Health consequences of exposure to aircraft contaminated air and fume events: a narrative review and medical protocol for the investigation of exposed aircrew and passengers’ can be found on the Environment Health Journal website.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Health

ARTICLE TITLE

Health consequences of exposure to aircraft contaminated air and fume events: a narrative review and medical protocol for the investigation of exposed aircrew and passengers

Advances in technology are driving popularity of EVs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

YALE UNIVERSITY

Transportation accounts for roughly one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and adoption of electric vehicles are seen by many experts in government and the private sector as a vital tool in efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Roughly a decade ago, EVs accounted for a tiny fraction of overall car sales. As of March 2023, they make up 7% of new sales

“What changed between then and now?” asks Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at the Yale School of the Environment. “Was it that consumers suddenly decided they like EVs much more, or was it that EVs themselves got a lot better?”

New research by Gillingham, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that recent adoption of EVs is driven overwhelmingly by technological advances, while general consumer preferences for EVs has changed little. Improvements like increased battery range, faster charging, falling prices, and reduced operating costs have made EVs an enticing option alongside their gas-powered counterparts. (Range proved particularly important, with cars that can travel 300 miles or more on a single charge essentially as attractive as comparable gas cars in consumers’ minds, the study reveals.)

Gillingham and Carnegie Mellon University coauthors surveyed about 1,600 people who had intentions of purchasing a car or SUV within the next two years or who had purchased one within the prior year. Respondents were shown 15 sets of three vehicles with various attributes — some gasoline powered, some electric, some hybrid — and asked which one they would choose. The results from this survey were matched with results from a similar survey conducted in 2012 and 2013, and from this comparison the researchers were able to discern how much new adoption of EVs was due to consumer preferences and how much was due to technological advancements. This prompted another inquiry.

“The big question is what happens next,” Gillingham says.

To answer this, the researchers paired the consumer adoption trends that they revealed with forecasted improvements in vehicle technology and predicted new EV offerings. Gillingham notes that there are more than 100 new EV models slated to become available globally in the next three to four years. Taken together, this information suggests that EVs could account for 40-60% of all new cars and SUVs sold by 2030. In short, it is possible that EVs could dominate the market only seven years from now.

For policymakers, the authors note, the findings suggest that rapid change and ambitious goals might be achievable. Gillingham cites one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recently proposed rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions for cars and small trucks that, if adopted, could lead to EVs comprising about two-thirds of all new vehicle sales by 2032.

“Our study doesn’t say by any means that it is going to happen, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. We really could have EVs making up a majority of all cars sold by 2030,” Gillingham says.

The implications also are clear for manufacturers — and many have already responded to evident shifts in the market. GM announced plans to sell only EVs by 2035. Lexus, under Toyota, announced the same goal. The findings from this research, Gillingham suggests, support the deep investment required by such a transition.

“Vehicle manufacturers who are leaders in the EV space will take comfort in what we’ve found,” he says. “Manufacturers who are laggards might want to think carefully about what their plans are.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/2219396120 

ARTICLE TITLE

Technology advancement is driving electric vehicle adoption

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-May-2023

Metal shortage could put the brakes on electrification

Reports and Proceedings

CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: WITH THE CURRENT RAW MATERIAL PRODUCTION LEVELS THERE WILL NOT BE ENOUGH OF THESE METALS IN FUTURE – NOT EVEN IF RECYCLING INCREASES. THIS IS REVEALED BY THE FINDINGS OF A MAJOR SURVEY LED BY CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SWEDEN, ON BEHALF OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION. view more 

CREDIT: CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY | DANIEL

As more and more electric cars are travelling on the roads of Europe, this is leading to an increase in the use of the critical metals required for components such as electric motors and electronics. With the current raw material production levels there will not be enough of these metals in future – not even if recycling increases. This is revealed by the findings of a major survey led by Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, on behalf of the European Commission.

Electrification and digitalisation are leading to a steady increase in the need for critical metals* in the EU’s vehicle fleet. Moreover, only a small proportion of the metals are currently recycled from end-of-life vehicles. The metals that are highly sought after, such as dysprosium, neodymium, manganese and niobium, are of great economic importance to the EU, while their supply is limited and it takes time to scale up raw material production. Our increasing dependence on them is therefore problematic for several reasons. 

“The EU is heavily dependent on imports of these metals because extraction is concentrated in a few countries such as China, South Africa and Brazil. The lack of availability is both an economic and an environmental problem for the EU, and risks delaying the transition to electric cars and environmentally sustainable technologies. In addition, since many of these metals are scarce, we also risk making access to them difficult for future generations if we are unable to use what is already in circulation”, says Maria Ljunggren, Associate Professor in Sustainable Materials Management at Chalmers University of Technology. 

A serious situation, but Swedish deposit offers hope

Ljunggren points out that the serious situation affecting Europe’s critical and strategic raw materials is underlined in the Critical Raw Materials Act recently put forward by the European Commission. The Act emphasises the need to enhance cooperation with reliable external trading partners and for member states to improve the recycling of both critical and strategic raw materials. It also stresses the importance of European countries exploring their own geological resources.

In Sweden the state-owned mining company LKAB reported on significant deposits of rare earth metals in Kiruna at the start of the year. Successful exploration enabled the company to identify mineral resources of more than a million tonnes of oxides – which they now describe as the largest known deposit of its kind in Europe. 

“This is extremely interesting, especially the discovery of neodymium which, among other things, is used in magnets in electric motors. The hope is that it will help make us less dependent on imports in the long run,” she says. 

Substantial increase in the use of critical metals

Together with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, EMPA, Ljunggren has surveyed the metals that are currently in use in Europe’s vehicle fleet. The assignment comes from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), and has resulted in an extensive database that shows the presence over time of metals in new vehicles, vehicles in use and vehicles that are recycled.

The survey, which goes back as far as 2006, shows that the proportion of critical metals has increased significantly in vehicles, a development which the researchers believe will continue. Several of the rare earth elements are among the metals that have increased the most.

“Neodymium and dysprosium usage has increased by around 400 and 1,700 percent respectively in new cars over the period, and this is even before electrification had taken off. Gold and silver, which are not listed as critical metals but have great economic value, have increased by around 80 percent,” says Ljunggren.

The idea behind the survey and the database is to provide decision-makers, companies and organisations with an evidence base to support a more sustainable use of the EU’s critical metals. A major challenge is that these materials, which are found in very small concentrations in each car, are economically difficult to recycle.  

Recycling fails to meet requirements

“If recycling is to increase, cars need to be designed to enable these metals to be recovered, while incentives and flexible processes for more recycling need to be put in place. But that’s not the current reality”, says Ljunggren, who stresses that a range of measures are needed to deal with the situation.

“It is important to increase recycling. At the same time, it is clear that an increase in recycling alone cannot meet requirements in the foreseeable future, just because the need for critical metals in new cars is increasing so much. Therefore there needs to be a greater focus on how we can substitute other materials for these metals. But in the short term it will be necessary to increase extraction in mines if electrification is not to be held back”, she says. 

 

More about the survey and the database

• The survey of metals in the EU’s vehicle fleet has been carried out by Maria Ljunggren at Chalmers in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, EMPA, on behalf of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).
• The results are set out in the Raw Materials in Vehicles database which covers 60 vehicle types under 3.5 tonnes from all the EU member states. The survey covers eleven different metals in new vehicles, vehicles in use and vehicles that are recycled. It covers the period from 2006 to 2023, with the last three years being a forecast.
• The research is also described in the report Material composition trends in vehicles: critical raw materials and other relevant metals.
• Maria Ljunggren is also involved in an ongoing EU project on critical raw materials, FutuRaM, (Future availability of raw materials), which will enhance knowledge about the potential supply of recycled critical raw materials by the year 2050. 

 

More about critical metals*

• Critical metals refer to metals that are of great economic importance to a certain industry, industrial sector or a geographical area – where there is a risk of supply shortages for various reasons. 
• The switch to a green and digital economy is driving the dependence on critical metals. These are required in items such as computers, smartphones, electronic components, solar cells, batteries and electric motors. Global extraction is limited to a few countries among which China has a dominant position. Large scale extraction also takes place in countries such as Brazil, Russia, South Africa and the USA. 
• The recycling of critical metals is extremely limited and does not meet production needs. Exploration is under way to identify new deposits. The Swedish mining company LKAB issued a press release in early 2023 about its major discovery of rare earth metals in Kiruna. 
• The European Commission has listed the metals and minerals regarded as crucial to our society and for our welfare. Read more about critical raw materials in the EU. 
• Read a report from the Swedish parliament about innovation-critical metals and minerals (in Swedish). 

 

For more information, please contact: 

Maria Ljunggren, Associate Professor in Sustainable Materials Management, Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
maria.ljunggren@chalmers.se, +46 31 772 21 32

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable