I burned out at McKinsey and quit the 

elitist consulting lifestyle. 

The workload was mentally straining

and I felt myself losing my humility.

Story by ayang@insider.com (Aria Yang) •8h

Angelina Lu took a pay cut to quit management consulting and join a tech startup.

 Angelina Lu© Provided by Business Insider

• Angelina Lu is a former business analyst at McKinsey & Company who quit to join a tech startup.
• She said she left her $130,000 consultant job because of burnout and workdays of 12 to 15 hours.
• Lu also said was too proud to discuss her declining mental health with her coworkers.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angelina Lu, a former business analyst who worked at McKinsey & Company. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I studied material science and engineering as an undergrad at Northwestern University. But after spending two summers working in a research lab, I realized that research life was not what I wanted — I didn't feel excited by the routine of going to the lab to conduct research.

I became more interested in the business side of material science than the technical side, and I considered another career path — consulting, a popular track for Northwestern graduates

I was hired by McKinsey & Company as a business analyst

My base salary was $80,000 plus an additional performance bonus when I joined in 2016. McKinsey provided a retirement-program contribution of 7% of qualified compensation, and I also received a sign-on bonus of $5,000. This brought the total compensation I received in my first year to $106,650.

The bonus was based on my performance after the first year and was calculated as a percentage of my base salary. If I performed exceptionally well, I got a bonus addition to my base. Then in the following year, this bonus was combined with my base salary to become my new base for compensation.

When I left McKinsey as a senior business analyst, my salary was about $130,000. As far as I know, McKinsey doesn't negotiate salaries, and they don't play the numbers game. It doesn't matter whether you're hired as a business analyst or an associate or whether you have competing offers from other companies — there's no negotiating your salary.

For me, the $130,000 salary wasn't worth it, so I walked away and took a pay cut to join a tech startup. I also wanted to explore something else in my career.

The McKinsey workload was mentally agonizing

We averaged workdays of 12 to 15 hours. On Mondays, I'd typically wake up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. before getting to the airport to catch the earliest flight to meet my client. I'd use the flight to catch up on work, get ready for the day, or nap to get more rest.

I still recall how depressed I felt during one flight to a client's city. Just as the flight touched down, my phone started going off with email notifications. The sound of the notifications was stressing me so badly that I moved the Gmail app to the last screen of my phone just so I could stop looking at it and try to calm down.

Some weeks were known for having crazy workloads, like the two-week due diligence period. This is when a consulting firm thoroughly investigates a client's business, operations, and other relevant aspects. During this time, some of us had work until the early morning hours and slept only a few hours before returning to work at 8 a.m.

I was also stressed out by a not-so-friendly colleague. He was an associate on my team who had been at the firm longer than me. Whenever there was an issue with the project we were working on, he said it was because I didn't do my job properly, which made me look really bad in front of leadership. The situation was super stressful — I remember it was wintertime in Chicago, and I started to have severe face allergies and stress-induced eczema on my hands that I couldn't stop scratching.

I started losing my humility and patience

McKinsey recruits extremely smart people who often come from similar backgrounds — most are extremely academic or very accomplished in their fields. Consultants like me get used to our well-manicured lifestyle. I stayed in upscale $400 a night hotels, and the company gave me food credits of $120 a day. I also never had to worry about extraneous administrative tasks — McKinsey took care of that.

McKinsey has a dedicated travel team that books flights for consultants. If we needed to change a flight, instead of waiting in line to contact airline agents, we would just call our internal travel desk, and they'd sort everything out for us. It saved us a lot of time.

But I realized I was getting too used to this lifestyle when I started losing humility and patience. I remember waiting in an extremely slow-moving line. I became extremely impatient and thought, "How can these people be so inefficient?" Reflecting on this now, I recognize that I was under a lot of stress and was used to this consultant lifestyle where the firm tended to my every need. Real life, as I came to understand, operates quite differently.

I was too proud to share about my declining mental health

Saying "I'm having a mental breakdown" aloud makes you sound defeated, so I never admitted it. A lot of consultants I know are proud, myself included.

This often meant that I couldn't admit when I didn't know how to do something or that I was on the brink of a mental breakdown — it would make me look defeated and unsuccessful, and it meant that I didn't have enough grit to make it through.

I didn't want to burden others with my emotions because everyone had full plates, so I never publicly discussed the mental strains with my team, mentors, or managers.

There were positives to working at McKinsey

It wasn't all bad. The mere fact that I got into a place at McKinsey and spoke up in a room of senior consultants gave me a confidence boost. McKinsey also gave me a platform that made it much easier for me to open doors: I've been able to get conversations with companies I'm interested in because I have "McKinsey" on my résumé.

McKinsey also provides a program called "Secondment." This is a temporary assignment where a McKinsey consultant or employee is placed within another organization to work on a specific project or initiative, like an internship. So if you wanted to take a break while working at McKinsey, you could join other companies affiliated with the program to try new roles without really leaving.

I chose to work in a small consultancy in Kenya for six months. It was an incredible experience where I got to explore the country and build a strong network there.

I even met my husband through McKinsey — we just got married this March.

I'm now a product manager in tech and love seeing the impact I make

After McKinsey, I became a product manager at the fintech company WealthSimple. Unlike my time in management consulting, I've met many people from diverse backgrounds — like college dropouts who have successfully built startups, for example.

Another thing I like about my job as a product manager is executing projects. In consulting, I did high-level strategy and walked through one or two use cases only to hand it off to the clients to implement and finish. But in tech, I can collect feedback to make an impact immediately.

I think it's important to discuss the realities of consulting. Many people hear about only the positives, but I believe it's crucial to mentally prepare people for the challenges they might face in the industry. This way, they might be able to make informed decisions about pursuing a consulting career for reasons beyond glamour and prestige.

McKinsey & Company did not respond to a request for comment.

If you've left management consulting and want to share your story, email Aria Yang at ayang@insider.com.

 

Synthetic antibiotic could be effective against drug-resistant superbugs

Decades of work by a series of Duke investigators yields new drug, patents and a startup company

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

DURHAM, N.C – A scientific journey decades in the making at Duke University has found a new antibiotic strategy to defeat gram-negative bacteria like Salmonella, Pseudomonas and E. coli, the culprits in many urinary tract infections (UTIs). The synthetic molecule works fast and is durable in animal tests.  

It works by interfering with a bacterium’s ability to make its outer lipid layer, its skin, so to speak.

“If you disrupt the synthesis of the bacterial outer membrane, the bacteria cannot survive without it,” said lead investigator Pei Zhou, a professor of biochemistry in the Duke School of Medicine. “Our compound is very good and very potent.”

The compound, called LPC-233, is a small molecule that has proven effective at wrecking the outer membrane lipid biosynthesis in every gram-negative bacterium it was tested against. Co-authors at the University of Lille in France tested it against a collection of 285 bacterial strains, including some that were highly resistant to commercial antibiotics, and it killed them all.

And it works fast. “LPC-233 can reduce bacterial viability by 100,000-fold within four hours,” Zhou said.

The compound is also tenacious enough to survive all the way to the urinary tract after oral administration, which may make it a vital tool against stubborn urinary tract infections (UTIs).

Tests run at high concentrations of the compound showed “exceedingly low rates of spontaneous resistance mutations in these bacteria,” according to a paper describing the findings, which appears Aug. 9 in Science Translational Medicine.

In animal studies, the compound was successful when administered orally and intravenously or injected into the abdomen. In one experiment, mice given what should have been a fatal dose of multidrug-resistant bacteria were rescued by the new compound.

The search for this compound took decades because of the specificity and safety required of the synthetic molecule.

Zhou credits his late colleague, former Duke Biochemistry Chair Christian Raetz, for starting the search decades ago. “He spent his entire career working on this pathway,” Zhou said. “Dr. Raetz proposed a conceptual blueprint for this pathway in the 1980s, and it took him over two decades to identify all of the players,” Zhou said.

The new drug’s target is an enzyme called LpxC that is the second enzyme in the “Raetz pathway” and is essential to making the outer membrane lipid in gram-negative bacteria.

Raetz joined Duke as the chairman of biochemistry in 1993 after his work on this pathway at Merck & Co. had failed to produce a successful clinical candidate. The Merck antibiotic worked, but only against E. coli, so it wasn’t commercially viable and the pharmaceutical company dropped it.

“He actually recruited me to Duke to work on this enzyme, initially just from the structural biology perspective,” said Zhou, who came to Duke in 2001.

Zhou and Raetz had solved the structure of the LpxC enzyme and revealed molecular details of a few potential inhibitors. “We realized that we could tweak the compound to make it better,” Zhou said. Since then, Zhou has been working with his colleague, Duke Chemistry professor Eric Toone, to make more potent LpxC inhibitors.

The first human trial of LpxC inhibitors had failed because of cardiovascular toxicity. The focus of the Duke group’s subsequent work was to avoid cardiovascular effects  while maintaining the potency of the compound.

They worked on more than 200 different versions of the enzyme inhibitor, always searching for better safety and more potency. Other compounds worked to varying degrees, but compound number 233 was the winner.

LPC-233 fits a binding spot on the LpxC enzyme and prevents it from doing its work. “It fits in the right way to inhibit formation of the lipid,” Zhou said. “We’re jamming the system.”

Adding to its durability, the compound works by a remarkable two-step process, Zhou said. After the initial binding to LpxC, the enzyme-inhibitor complex changes its shape somewhat to become an even more stable complex.

The lifetime of the inhibitor binding in this more stable complex is longer than the lifetime of the bacteria. “We think that contributes to the potency, as it has a semi-permanent effect on the enzyme,” he said. “Even after the unbound drug is metabolized by the body, the enzyme is still inhibited due to the extremely slow inhibitor dissociation process,” Zhou said.

There are multiple patents being filed on the series of compounds, and Toone and Zhou have co-founded a company called Valanbio Therapeutics, Inc. which will be looking for partners to bring LPC-233 through phase 1 clinical trials to assess safety and efficacy in humans.

“All of these studies were done in animals,” Zhou said. “Ultimately the cardiovascular safety needs to be tested in humans.”

Large scale synthesis of LPC-233 was first accomplished by David Gooden at the Duke Small Molecule Synthesis Facility. Vance Fowler and Joshua Thaden (Duke School of Medicine), Ziqiang Guan (Biochemistry) and Ivan Spasojevic (Duke PK/PD Core) helped with in vivo studies, mass spectrometry and pharmacokinetics analysis.

This work was supported by grants from National Institutes of Health (R01 GM115355, AI094475, AI152896, AI148366), the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (2016-TEG-1501) and a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center Core Grant (P30CA014236).

CITATION: “Preclinical Safety and Efficacy Characterization of an LpxC Inhibitor Against Gram-Negative Pathogens,” Jinshi Zhao, Skyler Cochrane, Javaria Najeeb, David Gooden, Carly Sciandra, Ping Fan, Nadine Lemaitre, Kate Newns, Robert Nicholas, Ziqiang Guan, Joshua Thaden, Vance Fowler, Ivan Spasojevic, Florent Sebbane, Eric Toone, Clayton Duncan, Richard Gammans, Pei Zhou. Science Translational Medicine, Aug. 9, 2023. DOI: 10.1126/science.abq5693

---

JOURNAL

Science Translational Medicine

DOI

10.1126/science.abq5693 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Preclinical Safety and Efficacy Characterization of an LpxC Inhibitor Against Gram-Negative Pathogens

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Aug-2023

 

App-based tool quantifies pesticide toxicity in watersheds; identifies mitigation opportunities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: WATERSHED APPLIED TOXICITY. THE HEAT MAP AND LEGEND VALUES REPRESENT APPLIED TOXICITY AS THE NET TOXICITY INDEX (NTI), THE TOTAL APPLIED TOXICITY OF PESTICIDE APPLICATIONS TO ALL AQUATIC TAXA INVESTIGATED OVER THE SIMULATION PERIOD, FISH, INVERTEBRATES, NONVASCULAR AQUATIC PLANTS, AND VASCULAR AQUATIC PLANTS. RESULTS ARE DISPLAYED FOR EACH STUDY EXTENT, A) CALIFORNIA’S HUC8 WATERSHEDS AND B) THE HUC12 SUBWATERSHEDS IN THE BAY-DELTA WATERSHED. THE NTI RANGES IDENTIFY THE MAGNITUDE OF TOXICITY RELEASED DURING PESTICIDE APPLICATIONS, WITH VALUES IN THE UPPER RANGE, GREATER THAN 50,000,000, ILLUSTRATING AREAS OF APPLIED TOXICITY THAT ARE UP TO 8 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE GREATER THAN OTHER WATERSHEDS. BASE MAP SOURCE:HTTP://GOTO.ARCGISONLINE.COM/MAPS/REFERENCE/WORLD_IMAGERY. view more 

CREDIT: PARKER ET AL., 2023, PLOS WATER, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Pesticides are a leading source of chemical hazards in aquatic environments. A study published in PLOS Water by Nicol Parker and Arturo A Keller at University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States and colleagues introduces a new tool to help evaluate toxicity at high resolution and suggests that targeting a small number of pesticides in a few watersheds could significantly reduce aquatic toxicity in California’s agricultural centers.

Reducing pesticide toxicity in watersheds is limited by the ability to quantify pesticide use, toxicity, and impacts over spatial and temporal scales. In order to provide a framework for targeting pesticide reductions, the authors developed the Environmental Release Tool (ERT) using watershed data from the US Geological Survey. ERT is a web and desktop application that summarizes pesticide applications and toxicity by watershed. They used ERT to analyze pesticide use across 140 California watersheds receiving agricultural pesticide applications. The ERT was able to quantify the toxicity released to aquatic taxa across these watershed areas, representing approximately 20 percent of the pesticide mass in the United States and covering hundreds of commodities.

The ERT demonstrated that mitigation actions on just two pesticides and sixteen site types would affect about 90 percent of applied toxicity to fish, aquatic invertebrates, nonvascular plants, and vascular plants in California’s agricultural landscapes. The study also showed that 20 percent of agricultural watersheds account for 80 percent of applied toxicity, suggesting that targeting a small number of watersheds receiving high concentrations of pesticides could be effective in reducing overall applied chemical toxicity. The tool has some important limitations—for example, it does not predict risks to human health or watershed ecologies, only opportunities to decrease pesticide toxicity.

According to the authors, “Our study developed the Environmental Release Tool (ERT) to provide an integrated framework for targeting pesticide toxicity reductions. Results indicate that the ERT can be a valuable tool for identifying pesticide environmental toxicity and should be considered in future agricultural management strategies”.

The authors add: "The applied toxicity of agricultural pesticides in California is dominated by a handful of pesticides, and a few crops like almonds and other nuts. Careful selection of less toxic pesticides for the same crops can drastically reduce overall applied toxicity in California, and probably around the world."

#####

Environmental Release Tool link: https://nicol-parker.shinyapps.io/Environmental-Release-Tool/

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Water: https://journals.plos.org/water/article?id=10.1371/journal.pwat.0000124

Citation: Parker N, Larsen A, Banerjee P, Keller AA (2023) Leveraging high spatiotemporal resolution data of pesticides applied to agricultural fields in California to identify toxicity reduction opportunities. PLOS Water 2(8): e0000124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000124

Author Countries: US

Funding: This project was funded by the California Sea Grant Delta Science Fellowship (SEADSR4/183BCA/416701/440000 to NP). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Nicol Parker and Priyanka Banerjee were funded by the California Sea Grant Delta Science Fellowship.

---

JOURNAL

PLOS Water

DOI

10.1371/journal.pwat.0000124 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Leveraging high spatiotemporal resolution data of pesticides applied to agricultural fields in California to identify toxicity reduction opportunities

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Aug-2023

 

Traditional and complementary medicine, including acupuncture and naturopathic medicine, has a mixed picture of regulation and eligibility for reimbursement across the US

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: STATUTORY REGULATION OF TRADITIONAL AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE PRACTITIONERS IN THE UNITED STATES. view more 

CREDIT: IJAZ ET AL., 2023, PLOS GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Traditional and complementary medicine, including acupuncture and naturopathic medicine, has a mixed picture of regulation and eligibility for reimbursement across the US.

####

Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0001996

Article Title: Governing therapeutic pluralism: An environmental scan of the statutory regulation and government reimbursement of traditional and complementary medicine practitioners in the United States

Author Countries: Canada, US

Funding: This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (NI). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

---

JOURNAL

PLOS Water

DOI

10.1371/journal.pgph.0001996 

ARTICLE TITLE

Governing therapeutic pluralism: An environmental scan of the statutory regulation and government reimbursement of traditional and complementary medicine practitioners in the United States

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

 

Top fish predators could suffer wide loss of suitable habitat by 2100 due to climate change

The impacts of climate change on habitats are already evident

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

 

IMAGE: A NEWLY PUBLISHED STUDY FROM WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION, SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY, AND NOAA FISHERIES, SHOWS THAT SOME SPECIES OF HIGHLY MIGRATORY FISH PREDATORS – INCLUDING SHARKS, TUNA, AND BILLFISH, COULD LOSE UPWARDS OF 70% OF SUITABLE HABITAT BY THE END OF THE CENTURY, WHICH IS WHEN CLIMATE DRIVEN CHANGES IN THE OCEAN ARE PROJECTED TO INCREASE BETWEEN 1-6°C (+1-10°F) IN SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES. THE STUDY IDENTIFIED THE NORTHWEST ATLANTIC OCEAN AND THE GULF OF MEXICO, WHICH ARE AMONG THE FASTEST WARMING OCEAN REGIONS, AS PREDICTED HOTSPOTS OF MULTI-SPECIES HABITAT LOSS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: BLUE SHARK, ©TOM BURNS

Woods Hole, Mass. (August 9, 2023) --A study of 12 species of highly migratory fish predators—including sharks, tuna, and billfish such as marlin and swordfish—finds that most of them will encounter widespread losses of suitable habitat and redistribution from current habitats in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA) and the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) by 2100. These areas are among the fastest warming ocean regions and are projected to increase between 1-6°C (+1-10°F) by the end of the century, a sign of climate-driven changes in marine ecosystems.

In some cases, these iconic, and economically and ecologically important species, could lose upwards of 70% of suitable habitat by the end of the century, and in most cases, the impacts of these climate-induced changes are already observable.

“The ongoing and projected effects of climate change highlight the urgent need to adaptively and proactively manage dynamic marine ecosystems,” according to the study, “Widespread habitat loss and redistribution of marine top predators in a changing ocean,” published in the journal Science Advances.

The study, led by Camrin Braun, an assistant scientist and marine ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), identified areas offshore of the Southeast U.S. and Mid-Atlantic coasts as predicted hotspots of multi-species habitat loss. The researchers studied the impacts on three shark (blue, porbeagle, and shortfin mako), five tuna (albacore, bigeye, bluefin, skipjack, and yellowfin), and four billfish (sailfish, blue marlin, white marlin, and swordfish) species. Although the researchers’ model framework could not account for potential adaptability or thermal tolerance by species, the results “suggest predominant and widespread habitat loss for nearly all [highly migratory species] studied.”

“Climate change is expected to fundamentally change the status quo for where these species are and how they live. While we don’t really understand all the details of what that fundamental change might look like, this study is a good step in the direction of trying to nail down what those changes might be, so that we can do something about it,” said Braun.

Scientists used three decades of satellite, oceanographic model, and in situ biological data to develop dynamic species distribution models to assess how climate change has already and will continue to impact the fish species in the NWA and GOM.

“Our research demonstrates that climate-driven changes are happening now, not from projections of climate change, but based on observed empirical data from the last two decades. So while our findings do point to larger species shifts in the near term, it also clarifies the substantial changes in species distributions that have already occurred,” said study co-author Rebecca Lewison. She is professor of biology and a conservation ecologist at the Coastal and Marine Institute at San Diego State University. She added that the research results “highlight the importance of using NASA and other satellite data to understand how a changing ocean is impacting commercially important marine species like swordfish and tunas.”

The study “not only sheds more light on the far-reaching effects of climate change on ocean environments but highlights that marine conservation and management efforts need to plan for these ongoing changes. If migratory fish are on the move, fishing vessels and coastal communities will also need to adapt. Studies like this will help marine resource agencies be even more dynamic in their decision-making,” said study co-author Tobey Curtis, a fishery management specialist in the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division of NOAA Fisheries.

The shifts in the habitat and distributions of these species “raise concerns for associated fisheries and the socioeconomic impacts of climate change on fishing communities,” according to the article. The concentrated changes in species distribution also “highlight the need for adaptive management approaches that can respond to expected changes.” “Our results suggest static fishery management measures will continue to lose ecological relevance and economic efficacy as species redistribute under climate change.” Braun said the motivation for the research is not only to better understand the fish and marine ecosystems, but also to understand how changes affect people, their livelihoods, coastal communities, and commercial fisheries.

“We are doing our best to try to figure out what will happen, so that people can adapt and so that we can develop climate-resilient or climate-ready management policies,” Braun said.

He said that historic ways to manage fisheries are static, even though fish move around a lot. “We basically draw a box in the ocean and say whether you can or can’t fish there,” he said. Dynamic ocean management frameworks “must embody expected changes. Otherwise, you are left with your static box in the ocean that doesn’t move, even though the fish may have moved, and the ocean may have changed.”

Funding for this research was provided by a NASA Ecological Conservation program grant, the NOAA Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program, the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at WHOI, and the Dr. George D. Grice Postdoctoral Scholarship Fund at WHOI.

Global SST graphic [VIDEO] 

 

Authors: Camrin D. Braun1 *, Nerea Lezama-Ochoa2,3, Nima Farchadi4, Martin C. Arostegui1, Michael Alexander5, Andrew Allyn6, Steven J. Bograd2, Stephanie Brodie2,3, Daniel P. Crear7, Tobey H. Curtis8, Elliott L. Hazen2,3, Alex Kerney6, Katherine E. Mills6, Dylan Pugh6, James D. Scott5,9, Heather Welch2,3, Riley Young-Morse6, and Rebecca Lewison4

Affiliations:

1Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

2Environmental Research Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Monterey, CA, USA

3Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

4Institute for Ecological Monitoring and Management, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

5NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA

6. Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Portland, ME, USA

7ECS Federal, in Support of National Marine Fisheries Service, Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division, Silver Spring, MD, USA

8National Marine Fisheries Service, Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division, Gloucester, MA, USA

9Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

 

About Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. WHOI’s pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering—one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu

About San Diego State University

San Diego State University is a major public research institution that provides transformative experiences for its more than 36,000 students. SDSU offers bachelor’s degrees in 96 areas, master’s degrees in 84 fields and doctorates in 23 areas, with additional certificates and programs at regional microsites. SDSU ranks as the number 1 California State University in federal research support, as one of the top public research universities in California. In addition to academic offerings at SDSU, SDSU Imperial Valley and SDSU Georgia, SDSU Global Campus offers online training, certificates, and degrees in areas of study designed to meet the needs of students everywhere. Students participate in transformational research, international experiences, sustainability and entrepreneurship initiatives, internships and mentoring, and a broad range of student life and leadership opportunities. SDSU is committed to inclusive excellence and is known for its efforts in advancing diversity and inclusion. SDSU is nationally recognized for its study abroad initiatives, veterans’ programs, and support of LGBTQA+ students, as well as its powerhouse Division I Athletics Program. More than 50% of SDSU’s undergraduate and graduate students are students of color. The university resides on Kumeyaay land and was most recently recognized as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI). SDSU is also a long-standing Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). The university’s rich campus life and location offers opportunities for students to lead and engage with the creative and performing arts, career, and internship opportunities with SDSU’s more than 491,000 living alumni, and the vibrant cultural life of the greater San Diego and U.S.- Mexico region.

Key takeaways:

•         A study of 12 species of highly migratory fish predators—including sharks, tuna, and billfish such as marlin and swordfish—finds that most of them will encounter widespread losses of suitable habitat and redistribution from current habitats by 2100. That is when ocean surface temperatures are projected to increase between 1-6°C (+1-10°F), a sign of climate-driven changes in marine ecosystems.

•         In some cases, these iconic and economically- and ecologically important species could lose upwards of 70% of suitable habitat by the end of the century. In most cases, the impacts of climate change on habitat already are observable.

•         In most cases, the impacts of climate change on habitat already are observable.

•         “The ongoing and projected effects of climate change highlight the urgent need to adaptively and proactively manage dynamic marine ecosystems,” according to the study. “Our results suggest static fishery management measures will continue to lose ecological relevance and economic efficacy as species redistribute under climate change.”

•       The study identified the Northwest Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, which are        among the fastest warming ocean regions, as predicted hotspots of multi-species habitat loss.

•          The motivation for the research is not only to better understand the fish and marine ecosystems, but also to understand how changes affect people, their livelihoods, coastal communities, and commercial fisheries, said journal article lead author Camrin Braun. “We are doing our best to try to figure out what will happen, so that people can adapt and so that we can develop climate-resilient or climate-ready management policies.”

•            “Climate change is expected to cause the status quo for where these species are and how they live to fundamentally change. While we don’t really understand all the details of what that fundamental change might look like, this study is a good step in the direction of trying to nail down what those changes might be, so that we can do something about it,” said journal article lead author Camrin Braun

JOURNAL

Science Advances

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Aug-2023

HEGEMONIC HUBRIS

Few in US recognize inequities of climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – Despite broad scientific consensus that climate change has more serious consequences for some groups – particularly those already socially or economically disadvantaged – a large swath of people in the U.S. doesn’t see it that way.

A new national survey study found that just over one-third of U.S. adults believe climate change is impacting some groups more than others. Nearly half feel that climate change impacts all groups about equally. And when the question referenced race in climate impacts, even fewer people believed some groups are more adversely affected than others.

“Our earlier research showed that the American public misperceives who is concerned about environmental issues, and we’re wondering why that’s the case,” said Jonathon Schuldt, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, and executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

“And one thought we had was, ‘Is the American public even aware of the unequal impacts of environmental issues – specifically the unequal impacts of climate change?’” Schuldt said. “Our findings suggest many people might not be.”

Schuldt and Adam Pearson, associate professor and chair of psychological science at Pomona College, are co-authors of “Public Recognition of Climate Change Inequities Within the United States,” which published in Climatic Change.

For this study, Schuldt and Pearson analyzed data from two national surveys they conducted in May and August-September 2022.

Democrats were more likely than Republicans, and younger people more likely than older people, to believe climate change affected some groups more than others. Still, Schuldt said, the misperceptions exist across all groups.

“It’s still only a minority of Democrats who are choosing the ‘some more than others’ response, which is the correct response,” he said. “That’s a little surprising to us. It does seem like there is this sort of ‘common threat’ or ‘great equalizer’ perception when it comes to climate change, that may prevent people from seeing or acknowledging these inequities.”

The biggest surprise, he said, was that when race was included in the question, the belief that some groups were more affected than others was so much weaker.

“That’s remarkable to us, because race is a robust social predictor of exposure to climate-related hazards,” Schuldt said. “It suggests that calling attention to one of the main factors that puts people at risk might actually backfire.”

Schuldt is hoping that this and future research on climate justice leads to more awareness by the public and, consequently, legislation that can make a real difference.

“We know a lot about Americans’ climate change attitudes, but we know relatively little about their perceptions of climate injustice,” he said. “We think there’s a need for survey researchers to study these in more depth, so that we can track them over time and see how well they predict support for policy aimed at reducing climate inequities in the years to come.”

This research was supported by grants from the Cornell Center for Social Sciences and the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement at Cornell.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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JOURNAL

Climatic Change

DOI

10.1007/s10584-023-03594-1 

ARTICLE TITLE

Public recognition of climate change inequities within the United States

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Aug-2023

 

New research points to possible seasonal climate patterns on early Mars

The Curiosity Rover finds evidence of high frequency wet-dry cycling in the Gale Crater

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: PATTERNS IN MUD CRACKS SHOW THAT MARS MAY HAVE HAD CYCLICAL MOISTURE PATTERNS. LEFT: THE TERRAIN IN THE GALE CRATER WHERE CURIOSITY IS CURRENTLY EXPLORING. RIGHT: MUD CRACKS ON EARTH, WHERE WET-DRY CYCLING HAS OCCURRED, CREATING Y-SHAPED PATTERNS. view more 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS, LANL.

New observations of mud cracks made by the Curiosity Rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the red planet may have once seen seasonal weather patterns or even flash floods. The research was published today in Nature. “These exciting observations of mature mud cracks are allowing us to fill in some of the missing history of water on Mars. How did Mars go from a warm, wet planet to the cold, dry place we know today? These mud cracks show us that transitional time, when liquid water was less abundant but still active on the Martian surface,” said Nina Lanza, principal investigator of the ChemCam instrument onboard the Curiosity Rover. “These features also point to the existence of wet-dry environments that on Earth are extremely conducive to the development of organic molecules and potentially life. Taken as a whole, these results a giving us a clearer picture of Mars as a habitable world.” The presence of long-term wet environments, such as evidence of ancient lakes on Mars, is well-documented, but far less is known about short-term climate fluctuations. After years of exploring terrain largely comprised of silicates, the rover entered a new area filled with sulfates, marking a major environment transition. In this new environment, the research team found a change in mud crack patterns, signifying a change in the way the surface would have dried. This indicates that water was still present on the surface of Mars episodically, meaning water could have been present for a time, evaporated, and repeated until polygons, or mud cracks, formed. “A major focus of the Curiosity mission, and one of the main reasons for selecting Gale Crater, is to understand the transition of a 'warm and wet' ancient Mars to a 'cold and dry' Mars we see today,” said Patrick Gasda of the Laboratory’s Space Remote Sensing and Data Science group and coauthor of the paper. “The rover's drive from clay lakebed sediments to drier non-lakebed and sulfate-rich sediments is part of this transition.” On Earth, initial mud cracks in mud form a T-shaped pattern, but subsequent wetting and drying cycles cause the cracks to form more of a Y-shaped pattern, which is what Curiosity observed. Additionally, the rover found evidence that the mud cracks were only a few centimeters deep, which could mean that wet-dry cycles were seasonal, or may have even occurred more quickly, such as in a flash flood. These findings could mean that Mars once had an Earth-like wet climate, with seasonal or short-term flooding, and that Mars may have been able to support life at some point. “What's important about this phenomenon is that it's the perfect place for the formation of polymeric molecules required for life, including proteins and RNA, if the right organic molecules were present at this location,” Gasda said “Wet periods bring molecules together while dry periods drive reactions to form polymers. When these processes occur repeatedly at the same location, the chance increases that more complex molecules formed there.” The paper: “Sustained wet-dry cycling on early Mars.” Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06220-3 Funding: NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and in France is conducted under the authority of CNES. Mastcam mosaics were processed by the Mastcam team at Malin Space Science Systems. Edwin Kite funding by NASA grant 80NSSC22K0731. Lucy Thompson funding as MSL team member is provided by the CSA.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-06220-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Imaging analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Sustained wet–dry cycling on early Mars

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Aug-2023