Products made of plastic falsely claimed to be biodegradable are on sale at Brazilian supermarkets

Researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo analyzed allegedly biodegradable plastic items sold by 40 supermarkets and found most to be oxo-degradables, banned in several countries because they contribute significantly to microplastic pollution

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

A famous study published in the journal Science showed that some 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic polymer had been produced and discarded in human history, and that only 9% had been recycled. Twelve percent had been incinerated and the remaining 79% left to rot in landfills or garbage dumps, from which about 10% reached the coast and eventually the sea.

These numbers are from eight years ago. The situation is certainly worse now. Although some countries have announced “zero plastic” policies, factories continue to churn out 400 million tons of plastic per year, and the amount thrown away continues to accumulate.

As a result, contamination by microplastics (fragments less than 5 millimeters in length) has become one of the worst environmental problems in the world, almost as serious as the climate crisis. Microplastics are everywhere – on land, in the sea and in the air. They have even been found in the human body – in the bloodstream, heart and lungs, and in placenta.

“You don’t find microplastics only where you don’t look,” said Ítalo Castro, a researcher and professor at the Federal University of São Paulo’s Institute of Marine Sciences (IMAR-UNIFESP) in Brazil. 

Unfortunately, some attempts at solving the problem are making matters worse, as shown by an investigation of greenwashing led by Castro in which researchers from IMAR-UNIFESP visited 40 supermarkets and analyzed products the manufacturers claimed to be made of biodegradable plastic. The stores belonged to major chains in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The study sample comprised 49 different products, including plates, cutlery, cups, straws, trays, and other utensils, as well as partyware.  On average, they cost 125% more than the equivalents made from conventional (non-biodegradable) plastic. None of them, including the major brands, met the minimum requirements to be considered genuinely biodegradable.

The results are published in Sustainable Production and Consumption. The first author of the article is Beatriz Barbosa Moreno, a PhD candidate with a scholarship from FAPESP and Castro as thesis advisor. 

“To be considered biodegradable, a product must convert into water [H2O], carbon gas [CO2], methane [CH4] and biomass when discarded into the environment. This should happen relatively quickly, in a few weeks to a year, although there’s no consensus regarding how long it should take. None of the 49 items investigated met this requirement,” Castro said.

More than 90% were made of a class of material that has become known as oxo-degradable, he added. Despite the name, these materials do not degrade in normal environmental conditions. They are polymers of fossil origin additivized with metallic salts, which accelerate oxidation and fragmentation, but the fragments can remain in the environment for decades. Fragmentation does not contribute to degradation. It accelerates the formation of microplastic particles.

“Oxo-degradable plastic is banned in several parts of the world, including the European Union,” Castro said. “In most cases, the ban was due to lack of evidence of biodegradability in real-world conditions, associated with the risk of microplastic formation.”

Regulation

Oxo-degradable plastic has not been banned in Brazil, where it can legally be sold. However, quite apart from the misleading nomenclature, consumers are deceived by many companies that claim their products are certified to technical standards relating to biodegradability, such as ASTM D6954-4 or SPCR 141. “These standards merely provide guidelines for comparing degradation rates and changes in physical properties under controlled laboratory conditions, and they don’t concern the final stages of degradation. In fact, the organizations that produce the standards state on their websites that they must not be used for the purposes of certifying commercial plastic products as biodegradable,” Castro said.

For Castro, the claim that a commercial product is biodegradable when it is nothing of the kind can be considered greenwashing. “When a product that has been shown to harm the environment becomes widely used, official action should be taken to stop it. In Brazil, the Senate is debating a bill (PL 2524/2022) that would ban the use of oxo-degrading or pro-oxidant additives in thermoplastic resins, as well as the manufacturing, importing and marketing of packaging and products made of oxo-degradable plastic,” he said.

If PL 2524/2022 is passed in its present form, Castro explained, it could enable Brazil to engineer a transition to a circular economy in plastics. “This transition is urgently needed,” he said. “IMAR-UNIFESP is based in Santos on the coast of São Paulo state. In Santos, we detected an accumulation of microplastics in mangrove oysters [Crassostrea brasiliana] and brown mussels [Perna perna]. Both filter seawater for food and retain microparticles in their tissue, so that they are considered the gold standard for assessing environmental conditions in areas like this. The levels we detected were among the highest in the world compared with data from more than 100 similar studies conducted in 40 countries” (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/44773). 

In response to our inquiries, the Brazilian Ministry for the Environment and Climate Change (MMA) said it supports PL 2524/2022 but with certain amendments. “The ministry is favorable to prohibition of oxo-degrading and pro-oxidant additives based on studies showing that microplastic particles are created when these additives cause fragmentation of plastic, which is particularly harmful to the marine environment,” it stressed.

The Brazilian Plastics Industry Association (ABIPLAST) also issued a statement saying it supports a ban on the use of oxo-degradable additives in plastic products. However, it opposes PL 2524/2022, which it sees as “confusing the circular economy with a ban on plastic products and targeting a single class of material”. The text also says that “the circular economy entails a systemic change and therefore requires a macro approach involving all sectors of the manufacturing industry”. 

Meanwhile, another bill – PL 1874/2022 [establishing a National Circular Economy Policy] – includes important provisions regarding strategic resource management, promotion of new business models, investment in research and innovation, and support for the transition to low-carbon technologies by means of the creation of attractive conditions for public and private investment, among others provisions.

The statement sent by ABIPLAST says it “trusts that a serious and accurate science-based debate will promote a constructive dialogue on the correct use of plastic and all the benefits the material has brought society. The plastic sector has taken a leadership role in actions to promote a circular economy of this material, investing in technology, sustainability and innovation”.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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JOURNAL

Sustainable Production and Consumption

DOI

10.1016/j.spc.2023.07.024 

ARTICLE TITLE

Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

 

New quantum effect demonstrated for the first time: Spinaron, a rugby in a ball pit

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG

 

IMAGE: 

THE COBALT ATOM (RED) HAS A MAGNETIC MOMENT (“SPIN,” BLUE ARROW ), WHICH IS CONSTANTLY REORIENTED (FROM SPIN-UP TO SPIN-DOWN) BY AN EXTERNAL MAGNETIC FIELD. AS A RESULT, THE MAGNETIC ATOM EXCITES THE ELECTRONS OF THE COPPER SURFACE (GRAY), CAUSING THEM TO OSCILLATE (CREATING RIPPLES). THIS REVELATION BY THE WÜRZBURG-DRESDEN CLUSTER OF EXCELLENCE CT.QMAT WAS MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO THE PHYSICISTS’ INCLUSION OF AN IRON TIP (YELLOW) ON THEIR SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPE.

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CREDIT: JUBA BOUAZIZ / ULRICH PUHLFÜRST

Extreme conditions prevail in the Würzburg laboratory of experimental physicists Professor Matthias Bode and Dr. Artem Odobesko. Affiliated with the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, a collaboration between JMU Würzburg and TU Dresden, these visionaries are setting new milestones in quantum research. Their latest endeavor is unveiling the spinaron effect. They strategically placed individual cobalt atoms onto a copper surface, brought the temperature down to 1.4 Kelvin (–271.75° Celsius), and then subjected them to a powerful external magnetic field. “The magnet we use costs half a million euros. It’s not something that’s widely available,” explains Bode. Their subsequent analysis yielded unexpected revelations.

Tiny Atom, Massive Effect

“We can see the individual cobalt atoms by usinga scanning tunneling microscope. Each atom has a spin, which can be thought of as a magnetic north or south pole. Measuring it was crucial to our surprising discoveries,” explains Bode. “We vapor-deposited a magnetic cobalt atom onto a non-magnetic copper base, causing the atom to interact with the copper’s electrons. Researching such correlation effects within quantum materials is at the heart of ct.qmat’s mission – a pursuit that promises transformative tech innovations down the road.

Like a Rugby in a Ball Pit

Since the 1960s, solid-state physicists have assumed that the interaction between cobalt and copper can be explained by the Kondo effect, with the different magnetic orientations of the cobalt atom and copper electrons canceling each other out. This leads to a state in which the copper electrons are bound to the cobalt atom, forming what’s termed a “Kondo cloud.” However, Bode and his team delved deeper in their laboratory. And they validated an alternate theory proposed in 2020 by theorist Samir Lounis from research institute Forschungszentrum Jülich.

By harnessing the power of an intense external magnetic field and using an iron tip in the scanning tunneling microscope, the Würzburg physicists managed to determine the magnetic orientation of the cobalt’s spin. This spin isn’t rigid, but switches permanently back and forth, i.e. from “spin-up” (positive) to “spin-down” (negative), and vice versa. This switching excites the copper electrons, a phenomenon called the spinaron effect. Bode elucidates it with a vivid analogy: “Because of the constant change in spin alignment, the state of the cobalt atom can be compared to a rugby ball. When a rugby ball spins continuously in a ball pit, the surrounding balls are displaced in a wave-like manner. That’s precisely what we observed – the copper electrons started oscillating in response and bonded with the cobalt atom.” Bode continues: “This combination of the cobalt atom’s changing magnetization and the copper electrons bound to it is the spinaron predicted by our Jülich colleague.”

The first experimental validation of the spinaron effect, courtesy of the Würzburg team, casts doubt on the Kondo effect. Until now, it was considered the universal model to explain the interaction between magnetic atoms and electrons in quantum materials such as the cobalt-copper duo. Bode quips: “Time to pencil in a significant asterisk in those physics textbooks!”

Spinaron and Spintronics

In the spinaron effect, the cobalt atom remains in perpetual motion, maintaining its magnetic essence despite its interaction with the electrons. In the Kondo effect, on the other hand, the magnetic moment is neutralized by its the electron interactions. “Our discovery is important for understanding the physics of magnetic moments on metal surfaces,” declares Bode. Peeking into the future, such phenomena could pave the way for magnetic information encoding and transportation in new types of electronic devices. Dubbed “spintronics,” this could make IT greener and more energy-efficient.

However, Bode tempers expectations when talking about the practicality of this cobalt-copper combination. “We’ve essentially manipulated individual atoms at ultra-low temperatures on a pristine surface in ultra-high vacuum. That’s infeasible for cell phones. While the correlation effect is a watershed moment in fundamental research for understanding the behavior of matter, I can’t build an actual switch from it.”

Currently, Würzburg quantum physicist Artem Odobesko and Jülich theorist Samir Lounis are concentrating on a large-scale review of the numerous publications that have described the Kondo effect in various combinations of materials since the 1960s. “We suspect that many might actually be describing the spinaron effect,” says Odobesko, adding: “If so, we’ll rewrite the history of theoretical quantum physics.”

Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat

The Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat – Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter has been jointly run by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and Technische Universität Dresden since 2019. Nearly 400 scientists from more than thirty countries and four continents study topological quantum materials that reveal surprising phenomena under extreme conditions such as ultra-low temperatures, high pressure, or strong magnetic fields. ct.qmat is funded through the German Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments and is the only Cluster of Excellence in Germany to be based in two different federal states.

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JOURNAL

Nature Physics

DOI

10.1038/s41567-023-02262-6 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Evidence for spinarons in Co adatoms

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Oct-2023

Disclaimer: AAA

 

New phone case provides workaround for inaccessible touch screens

Touch screens are everywhere but not built for everyone. A new device could help bridge that gap, helping users access ticket kiosks, restaurant menus and more

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

 

 

Images  //  Video

A new smartphone case could soon enable folks with visual impairments, tremors and spasms to use touch screens independently. 

 

Developed at the University of Michigan, BrushLens could help users perceive, locate and tap buttons and keys on the touch screen menus now ubiquitous in restaurant kiosks, ATM machines and other public terminals.

 

"So many technologies around us require some assumptions about users' abilities, but seemingly intuitive interactions can actually be challenging for people," said Chen Liang, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering. 

 

Liang is the first author of a paper accepted by the Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in San Francisco. He will demo BrushLens at 7 p.m. Pacific Time Oct. 30 and present the paper at 9 a.m. Pacific Time Oct. 31.

 

"People have to be able to operate these inaccessible touch screens in the world. Our goal is to make that technology accessible to everyone," Liang said.

 

Liang works in the lab of Anhong Guo, U-M assistant professor of computer science and engineering. Guo led the development of BrushLens with Alanson Sample, an associate professor in the same department.

 

Users can comb through a touch screen interface by holding a phone connected to BrushLens against a touch screen and dragging the phone across the screen. The phone sees what's on the screen with its camera then reads the options aloud by harnessing the phone's built-in screen readers. Users indicate their menu choice through screen readers or an enlarged, easy-to-tap button in the BrushLens app.

 

When given a target, BrushLens divides the screen into a grid, then guides the user's hand toward the section of the screen containing their menu choice by saying the coordinates of both the target and device. Once those coordinates overlap, pushbuttons or autoclickers on the underside of the phone case tap the screen for the user, depending on the model.

 

"The user doesn't have to precisely locate where the button is and perform the touch gesture," Liang said.

 

Ten study participants, six with visual impairments and four with tremors or spasms, tested the hardware and app. 

 

"As a blind person, touch screens are pretty much inaccessible to me unless I have some help or I can plug headphones into the kiosk," said study participant Sam Rau. "Somebody else has to order for you, or they have to help you out with it. I don't want to be in a situation where I always have to rely on the kindness of others."

 

It took some time for Rau to figure BrushLens out, but once he became familiar with the device, he was excited by the tool's potential.

 

"I thought about myself going into a Panera Bread and being able to order from the kiosk," Rau said. "I could actually see myself accomplishing something that I otherwise thought impossible."

 

Likewise, BrushLens worked as intended for users whose tremors or spasms cause them to make unwanted selections on touch screens. For one participant with cerebral palsy, BrushLens improved their accuracy by nearly 74%.

 

The inventors of BrushLens recently applied for a patent with the help of Innovation Partnerships, U-M's central hub for research commercialization. The team hopes to bring the product to users as an affordable phone accessory. 

 

"The parts that we used are relatively affordable. Each clicker costs only $1," Liang said. "The whole device is definitely under $50, and that's a conservative estimate."

 

The team plans to further streamline their design so that it easily fits in a pocket. Offloading the battery and processing to the phone, for example, could make the design cheaper and less bulky.

 

"It doesn't have to be much more complex than a TV remote," said study co-author Yasha Iravantchi, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering.

 

The companion app could also be improved by allowing users to directly interface with it via voice commands, Liang said.

 

Participants were enrolled in the trial study with the help of the Disability Network, the University of Michigan Council for Disability Concerns and the James Weiland research group in the U-M Department of Biomedical Engineering. The research was funded by a Google Research Scholar Award.

 

Study: BrushLens: Hardware Interaction Proxies for Accessible Touchscreen Interface Actuation

 

Renewed support for high power laser facilities will benefit discovery science and inertial fusion energy research at SLAC

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/SLAC NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: 

MATTER IN EXTREME CONDITIONS (MEC) HUTCH 6, LOCATED IN THE LCLS FAR EXPERIMENTAL HALL.

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CREDIT: JACQUELINE RAMSEYER ORRELL/SLAC NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY

Research and technology development for plasma physics and fusion energy at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory just got a boost from a LaserNetUS award. 

In total, the DOE’s Office of Science awarded $28.5 million to advance discovery science and inertial fusion energy, including a three-year grant for the development and operations of the Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).

MEC has been home to high intensity laser experiments since 2012, and joined the LaserNetUS network as a founding member in 2018. The new DOE funding puts an additional focus on building the science and technologies needed to develop inertial fusion energy. 

Last year’s breakthrough at the National Ignition Facility brought into view the potential of inertial fusion energy, in which a net source of power can be created by heating and compressing pellets of fuel with powerful lasers. Since then, scientists in the field came together to identify the most important basic research needs for realizing this potential future energy source, according to Gilliss Dyer, MEC department head and lead scientist. The DOE Office of Science workshop resulted in the IFE Basic Research Needs Report on the topic.

“For the first time, MEC will emphasize inertial fusion energy priority research through development of capabilities and configurations, outreach through LaserNetUS, and the allocation of dedicated facility access for such research,” Dyer said. “The goal is to deliver up to 50% of MEC’s beam time for experiments relevant to inertial fusion energy.”

The activities of the network at MEC and other facilities will also help lay the groundwork for a major upgrade to MEC, Dyer said, by developing a new generation of diagnostics for hotter, denser plasmas.

Beyond inertial fusion energy science, high-intensity lasers have a broad range of applications in basic research, manufacturing and medicine. For example, they can be used to generate high energy particle beams for cancer therapy and to detect trace elements in the environment. SLAC’s MEC instrument has also enabled unique studies of extremely hot, dense matter found at the centers of stars and giant planets. The instrument’s optical lasers – one used to study hot, dynamic plasma and another to drive shockwaves in materials to study high pressures – combined with the world-leading X-ray laser beam of LCLS have produced numerous scientific results published in major journals.

LaserNetUS was established by the Fusion Energy Sciences program of the DOE’s Office of Science. It provides researchers from the U.S. and abroad open and free access to the most powerful lasers at universities and national laboratories throughout the U.S. and Canada. The network currently has more than 1,200 members. LaserNetUS management was centralized at SLAC in 2021 by appointing SLAC scientist Chandra Breanne Curry to be the consortium’s first coordinator.

 

Scientists call for a major investigation into Congo Basin 

Meeting Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Leading researchers have launched a major scientific initiative to investigate - and help protect - the fragile Congo Basin Forest region in central Africa, one of the world’s most important but little understood ecosystems.   They say the Congo Basin Science Initiative will transform the understanding of the Congo Basin, an area of 240 million hectares of contiguous tropical forests that absorb a vast quantity of carbon, which helps to moderate the impact of global climate change.  The Initiative has been launched at the Three Basins Summit, a major gathering to discuss the world’s three large tropical forest regions being held in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.  At the summit, leading researchers - including Professor Stephen Lewis, a prominent expert on the Congo forests from the University of Leeds and University College London – highlighted the stark difference between what scientists know about the Congo Basin and what they know about the Amazon Forest in South America, which has been the subject of intense scientific enquiry through what is known as the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment or LBA.   Involving 120 projects and 1700 researchers, the decade-long scheme in the Amazon has revealed the critical role that the Amazon Rainforest plays in regulating the Earth’s climate. It has also helped train local scientists and has put Brazil at the forefront of rainforest science.   The researchers meeting in Brazzaville aim to replicate that approach with the creation of the Congo basin Science Initiative.   Professor Raphael Tshimanga, a leading expert on the Congo Basin based at the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and one of the leaders of the project, said: "The Congo basin is a vast and important area that straddles central Africa, the world’s second green lung after the Amazon.   “If we can replicate what has been achieved through investing in research in the Amazon, we will be in a much stronger position to understand the threats to this unique African ecosystem not only from climate change but also from deforestation and pollution from mining and oil exploration.”   Key scientific questions  Scientists have drawn up key scientific questions that need to be answered to assess the health of the Congo Basin forests.  Professor Lewis, who helped to develop the science plan for the Initiative with scientific colleagues in the Congo region, said: “In the Amazon, scientists have uncovered a tipping point where beyond a certain level of deforestation and climate change will lead to a mass die-back of the southern and eastern part of the Amazon.   “In the Congo Basin, scientists do not know if there is a tipping point, because we do not yet have the data to investigate this.”  Underinvestment in Congo Basin science  The scientists argue that there has been “severe underinvestment” in the science to understand the Congo Basin and many barriers to researchers to lead high-level studies.   In recent years, only 11% of international funding for forest protection and sustainable management in tropical areas has been channelled to projects in the Congo Basin, whereas 34% went to the Amazon and 55% to southeast Asia.   The lack of investment meant that in the latest IPCC global climate assessment, the Congo Basin was one of only two location in the world without sufficient data needed to assess past trends in extreme heatwaves. The meeting in Brazzaville is calling for $100 million to be invested in a ten-year science programme focussed on the Basin region, with a further $100 million to give PhD training to scientists from the Congo region. Once qualified, those scientists will be able to lead and co-ordinate complex studies.   Funding would have to come from international donors, UN agencies and philanthropists. The researchers say with international spending on research and development hitting $2.4 trillion in 2020, the funding needed to understand and protect the world’s second tropical forest is relatively modest.   Professor Lewis added: “Central Africa needs more scientists who can monitor the forests, rivers and climate of the region. Central Africa needs more scientists who can advocate for evidence-based policy, so that these countries can develop and become prosperous, but without the mass-scale destruction of nature that has occurred in places like the UK.” Congo Basin   The Congo Basin forests are a global biodiversity hotspot and home to elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.  Rainfall from the region is recycled by the forests and transported beyond central Africa, feeding rivers that are used by 300 million people as far afield as Ethiopia and Egypt.   There are major discoveries being made in the Congo Basin, with scientist recently mapping the world’s largest tropical peatland, and many species that are new to science, with recent finds including a new species of gecko, an air-breathing catfish, and a new species of coffee. But experts fear as the climate gets warmer, that process could see the undisturbed Congo basin’s forests switch from being one of the world’s biggest absorbers of carbon to an emitter of carbon.

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SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

Okinawa’s ants change their seasonal rhythms amid land-cover changes

Ant communities in areas with more human development show reduced seasonal behavior.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OKINAWA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (OIST) GRADUATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

ANTS WERE COLLECTED IN SPECIAL TRAPS AT 24 SITES ACROSS OKINAWA OVER TWO YEARS.

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CREDIT: OKEON, OIST

Insects have an important role in maintaining the health of ecosystems, but our understanding of how human activities affect their populations is limited. This gap in knowledge is worrying because of the decline of insect populations and the severe consequences on ecosystems and agriculture. 

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), working with collaborators in Ireland, have led a project to understand how land-cover changes affect the seasonal behavior of ant communities in Okinawa. 

After collecting and identifying a whopping 1.2 million ants in different environments across Okinawa Island, they found that ant communities in areas with more human development lose their natural seasonal behavior and are more unpredictable when compared to sites with greater forest cover. Their results have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.  

“In forest areas, these natural seasonal cycles are preserved; however, in areas with more human development activities, these patterns become disrupted and degraded,” Prof. Evan Economo, head of OIST’s Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit, explained. “This results in a certain unpredictability regarding which species are active and a reduction in the natural cycles observed throughout the year.” 

The seasonal patterns of insect communities are linked to the important roles they play in the ecosystem, including decomposition, nutrient cycling, water purification, and seed dispersal. Ants hold a key position because of their large numbers and the multiple functions they perform.  

For Prof. Jamie Kass, a former OIST researcher who is now at Tohoku University, understanding how insect behavior changes over time is key. “If we only record their activities a few times a year, we risk missing important seasonal changes. Most studies do not consider this aspect, which makes our research unique. We show that human activities may be disrupting the normal seasonal behavior of insect communities, and this is an important but underexplored result of serious environmental changes worldwide.”  

In natural environments, especially those with very distinct seasons, insects in general are more active in spring and summer, and less active in winter. This pattern repeats every year. However, this study shows how changes to land cover by humans can disrupt these patterns, which are linked to important ecosystem services that people depend on.   

Every two weeks, worker ants were collected from traps across 24 sites in the Okinawa Environmental Observation Network (OKEON), managed by the Environmental Science and Informatics Section at OIST. Researchers identified the different ant species and counted how many of each they found. Using these data, they calculated how much ant communities were varying over time, and they modeled relationships with land cover characterized by site using remote sensing imagery. After finding that communities were changing less over time for developed areas than forested ones, they delved deeper and found that the seasonality of these communities in particular was diminished. 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2023.1185 

ARTICLE TITLE

Breakdown in seasonal dynamics of subtropical ant communities with land-cover change

Will machines soon be conscious?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ESTONIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL

 

IMAGE: 

LEFT: A SCHEMATIC DEPICTING THE BASIC ARCHITECTURE OF A LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL, WHICH CAN HAVE
TENS OR EVEN MORE THAN A HUNDRED DECODER BLOCKS ARRANGED IN A FEED-FORWARD FASHION.
RIGHT: A HEURISTIC MAP OF THE THALAMOCORTICAL SYSTEM, WHICH GENERATES COMPLEX ACTIVITY PATTERNS THOUGHT TO UNDERLIE CONSCIOUSNESS.

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CREDIT: MAC SHINE, JAAN ARU

The rise of the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has led to the view that these systems might soon be conscious. However, we might underestimate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying human consciousness.

Modern AI systems are capable of many amazing behaviors. For instance, when one uses systems like ChatGPT, the responses are (sometimes) quite human-like and intelligent. When we, humans, are interacting with ChatGPT, we consciously perceive the text the language model generates. You are currently consciously perceiving this text here! The question is whether the language model also perceives our text when we prompt it. Or is it just a zombie, working based on clever pattern-matching algorithms? Based on the text it generates, it is easy to be swayed that the system might be conscious. However, in this new research, Jaan Aru, Matthew Larkum and Mac Shine take a neuroscientific angle to answer this question.

All three being neuroscientists, these authors argue that although the responses of systems like ChatGPT seem conscious, they are most likely not. First, the inputs to language models lack the embodied, embedded information content characteristic of our sensory contact with the world around us. Secondly, the architectures of present-day AI algorithms are missing key features of the thalamocortical system that have been linked to conscious awareness in mammals. Finally, the evolutionary and developmental trajectories that led to the emergence of living conscious organisms arguably have no parallels in artificial systems as envisioned today. The existence of living organisms depends on their actions and their survival is intricately linked to multi-level cellular, inter-cellular, and organismal processes culminating in agency and consciousness.

Thus, while it is tempting to assume that ChatGPT and similar systems might be conscious, this would severely underestimate the complexity of the neural mechanisms that generate consciousness in our brains. Researchers do not have a consensus on how consciousness rises in our brains. What we know, and what this new paper points out, is that the mechanisms are likely way more complex than the mechanisms underlying current language models. For instance, as pointed out in this work, real neurons are not akin neurons in artificial neural networks. Biological neurons are real physical entities, which can grow and change shape, whereas neurons in large language models are just meaningless pieces of code. We still have a long way to understand consciousness and, hence, a long way to conscious machines.

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JOURNAL

Trends in Neurosciences

DOI

10.1016/j.tins.2023.09.009 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

Overview of an EU project’s wild pollinator conservation efforts: Safeguard’s open-access collection

The EU Horizon 2020 project Safeguard has opened an outcomes collection in the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal.

Reports and Proceedings

PENSOFT PUBLISHERS

 

IMAGE: 

SAFEGUARD OPEN-ACCESS COLLECTION IN RIO JOURNAL

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CREDIT: PROJECT SAFEGUARD

For the past decade, the European Union has been actively investing in innovative projects, addressing major social concerns, such as climate change, renewable energy, and biodiversity loss. Although these projects give valuable results, some of the outcomes remain unseen and undiscovered by many. To avoid this knowledge oblivion, Safeguard has recently released an open-access collection in the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal.

Safeguarding European wild pollinators (Safeguard) is a four-year EU Horizon 2020 funded project (2021-2025) that brings together world-leading researchers, NGOs, and industry and policy experts to substantially contribute to Europe’s capacity to reverse the losses of wild pollinators. Safeguard aims to significantly expand current assessments of the status and trends of European wild pollinators including bees, butterflies, flies, and other pollinating insects.

The open-access collection of the project in the RIO journal will not only increase the discoverability, visibility, and recognition of the research outcomes, but also set a comfortable digital environment for knowledge exchange, collaboration, sharing, and re-use of research. The collection in RIO will ensure that Safeguard outputs remain findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable beyond the project’s lifetime. 

Currently, the collection hosts 14 project papers, published in different journals and linked through their metadata. The collection will further expand to a one-stop knowledge hub, hosting a range of outputs, reports, protocols, methodologies, and research papers.

Access the Safeguard RIO collection here.

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This project receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101003476.

Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the EU nor the EC can be held responsible for them.