HANG OVER

Texas lab unlocks keys to alcohol withdrawal headache

Researchers outline steps that result in pain signals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER AT SAN ANTONIO

SAN ANTONIO (Oct. 30, 2023) — About 283 million people worldwide suffer from alcohol use disorder, a debilitating health challenge for which limited therapeutic options are available. The cost to society is estimated at greater than $2 trillion annually.

“People try to rehabilitate, but it is very challenging,” said Yu Shin Kim, PhD, a neuroscience researcher at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “Headache is one of the severe withdrawal symptoms that pushes the rehabilitating patient back to alcohol, because people know that, after drinking, alcohol will actually reduce the headache. It becomes a vicious cycle. This is how they develop alcohol dependence.”

Kim, associate professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery in the health science center’s School of Dentistry, and colleagues found that a stress hormone called corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) activates immune cells known as mast cells in the dura — the thin, transparent membrane under the skull.

Dura matter includes peripheral nerve fibers and peripheral blood vessels. CRF binds to a specific mast cell receptor called MrgprB2, Kim said. This is the central finding of the team’s study published Oct. 30 in the journal Neuron.

“After alcohol withdrawal, the CRF stress hormone is released from the hypothalamus, a brain region that controls many functions,” Kim said. “The CRF travels through peripheral blood vessels to dura matter, where it is released from the vessels and binds to MrgprB2. This signals the mast cells to degranulate, or open, and secrete chemical messengers that induce functions including blood vessel dilation (widening).

“This also activates peripheral nerve fibers extending from trigeminal ganglia neurons, which are sensory neurons. That is how these neurons are sensitized and a person has alcohol-withdrawal headache.”

It is this process that sends the pain signals.

Researchers knew that peripheral neural fibers must be related to vessel dilation that occurs with alcohol withdrawal. The lab’s new contribution is that CRF binds to the mast cell receptor MrgprB2, Kim said.

“MrgprB2 is a very specific receptor for mast cells. Only mast cells have these receptors,” Kim said.

This research may benefit further studies of various substance use disorder mechanisms including withdrawal, he said. It may be possible to develop a small-molecule drug therapy to inhibit the CRF and MrgprB2 interaction, resulting in fewer pain signals during alcohol withdrawal.

Acknowledgments

Support for this research is from National Institutes of Health grants (NIH/NIDCR, DE026677, DE031477 to Y.S.K.), an award from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio startup fund (to Y.S.K.), and a Rising STARs Award (to Y.S.K.) from The University of Texas System.

---

Mast cell-specific receptor mediates alcohol withdrawal-associated headache in male mice

Hyeonwi Son, Yan Zhang, John Shannonhouse, Hirotake Ishida, Ruben Gomez, Yu Shin Kim

First published: Oct. 30, 2023, Neuron

10.1016/j.neuron.2023.09.039

---

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) is one of the country’s leading health science universities and is designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. With missions of teaching, research, patient care and community engagement, its schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions, graduate biomedical sciences and public health have graduated more than 42,300 alumni who are leading change, advancing their fields and renewing hope for patients and their families throughout South Texas and the world. To learn about the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit UTHealthSA.org.

The UT Health San Antonio School of Dentistry offers 18 degrees and programs in dentistry and dental hygiene, world-renowned faculty educators, a diverse student population, state-of-the-art clinical facilities and a distinguished research enterprise. Departments include comprehensive dentistry, developmental dentistry, endodontics, periodontics, and oral and maxillofacial surgery. Scientists collaborate with clinicians and research teams worldwide, and work across multiple medical and dental disciplines to find new treatments, advancing knowledge of oral health, biomaterials, cancer, pain and more. To learn more, visit https://www.uthscsa.edu/academics/dental.

Stay connected with The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

---

JOURNAL

Neuron

DOI

10.1016/j.neuron.2023.09.039 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Mast cell-specific receptor mediates alcohol withdrawal-associated headache in male mice

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Engineers develop an efficient process to make fuel from carbon dioxide

The approach directly converts the greenhouse gas into formate, a solid fuel that can be stored indefinitely and could be used to heat homes or power industries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: 

A SCHEMATIC SHOWS THE FORMATE PROCESS. THE TOP LEFT SHOWS A HOUSEHOLD POWERED BY THE DIRECT FORMATE FUEL CELL, WITH FORMATE FUEL STORED IN THE UNDERGROUND TANK. IN THE MIDDLE, THE FUEL CELL THAT HARNESSES FORMATE TO SUPPLY ELECTRICITY IS SHOWN. ON THE LOWER RIGHT IS THE ELECTROLYZER THAT CONVERTS BICARBONATE INTO FORMATE. 

view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE:  SHUHAN MIAO, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The search is on worldwide to find ways to extract carbon dioxide from the air or from power plant exhaust and then make it into something useful. One of the more promising ideas is to make it into a stable fuel that can replace fossil fuels in some applications. But most such conversion processes have had problems with low carbon efficiency, or they produce fuels that can be hard to handle, toxic, or flammable.

Now, researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed an efficient process that can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a liquid or solid material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity. Potassium or sodium formate, already produced at industrial scales and commonly used as a de-icer for roads and sidewalks, is nontoxic, nonflammable, easy to store and transport, and can remain stable in ordinary steel tanks to be used months, or even years, after its production.

The new process, developed by MIT doctoral students Zhen Zhang, Zhichu Ren, and Alexander H. Quinn, Harvard University doctoral student Dawei Xi, and MIT Professor Ju Li, is described this week in the journal Cell Press Physical Sciences. The whole process — including capture and electrochemical conversion of the gas to a solid formate powder, which is then used in a fuel cell to produce electricity — was demonstrated at a small, laboratory scale. However, the researchers expect it to be scalable so that it could provide emissions-free heat and power to individual homes and even be used in industrial or grid-scale applications.

Other approaches to converting carbon dioxide into fuel, Li explains, usually involve a two-stage process: First the gas is chemically captured and turned into a solid form as calcium carbonate, then later that material is heated to drive off the carbon dioxide and convert it to a fuel feedstock such as carbon monoxide. That second step has very low efficiency, typically converting less than 20 percent of the gaseous carbon dioxide into the desired product, Li says. 

By contrast, the new process achieves a conversion of well over 90 percent and eliminates the need for the inefficient heating step by first converting the carbon dioxide into an intermediate form, liquid metal bicarbonate. That liquid is then electrochemically converted into liquid potassium or sodium formate in an electrolyzer that uses low-carbon electricity, e.g. nuclear, wind, or solar power. The highly concentrated liquid potassium or sodium formate solution produced can then be dried, for example by solar evaporation, to produce a solid powder that is highly stable and can be stored in ordinary steel tanks for up to years or even decades, Li says. 

Several steps of optimization developed by the team made all the difference in changing an inefficient chemical-conversion process into a practical solution, says Li, who holds joint appointments in the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and of Materials Science and Engineering.

The process of carbon capture and conversion involves first an alkaline solution based capture that concentrates carbon dioxide, either from concentrated streams such as from power plant emissions or from very low-concentration sources, even open air, into the form of a liquid metal-bicarbonate solution. Then, through the use of a cation-exchange membrane electrolyzer, this bicarbonate is electrochemically converted into solid formate crystals with a carbon efficiency of greater than 96 percent, as confirmed in the team’s lab-scale experiments.

These crystals have an indefinite shelf life, remaining so stable that they could be stored for years, or even decades, with little or no loss. By comparison, even the best available practical hydrogen storage tanks allow the gas to leak out at a rate of about 1 percent per day, precluding any uses that would require year-long storage, Li says. Methanol, another widely explored alternative for converting carbon dioxide into a fuel usable in fuel cells, is a toxic substance that cannot easily be adapted to use in situations where leakage could pose a health hazard. Formate, on the other hand, is widely used and considered benign, according to national safety standards.

Several improvements account for the greatly improved efficiency of this process. First, a careful design of the membrane materials and their configuration overcomes a problem that previous attempts at such a system have encountered, where a buildup of certain chemical byproducts changes the pH, causing the system to steadily lose efficiency over time. “Traditionally, it is difficult to achieve long-term, stable, continuous conversion of the feedstocks,” Zhang says. “The key to our system is to achieve a pH balance for steady-state conversion.”

To achieve that, the researchers carried out thermodynamic modeling to design the new process so that it is chemically balanced and the pH remains at a steady state with no shift in acidity over time. It can therefore can continue operating efficiently over long periods. In their tests, the system ran for over 200 hours with no significant decrease in output. The whole process can be done at ambient temperatures and relatively low pressures (about five times atmospheric pressure).

Another issue was that unwanted side reactions produced other chemical products that were not useful, but the team figured out a way to prevent these side reactions by the introduction of an extra “buffer” layer of bicarbonate-enriched fiberglass wool that blocked these reactions.

The team also built a fuel cell specifically optimized for the use of this formate fuel to produce electricity. The stored formate particles are simply dissolved in water and pumped into the fuel cell as needed. Although the solid fuel is much heavier than pure hydrogen, when the weight and volume of the high-pressure gas tanks needed to store hydrogen is considered, the end result is an electricity output near parity for a given storage volume, Li says.

The formate fuel can potentially be adapted for anything from home-sized units to large scale industrial uses or grid-scale storage systems, the researchers say. Initial household applications might involve an electrolyzer unit about the size of a refrigerator to capture and convert the carbon dioxide into formate, which could be stored in an underground or rooftop tank. Then, when needed, the powdered solid would be mixed with water and fed into a fuel cell to provide power and heat. “This is for community or household demonstrations,” Zhang says, “but we believe that also in the future it may be good for factories or the grid.”

The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

###

Written by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

Paper: “A carbon-efficient bicarbonate electrolyzer”

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(23)00485-X

 

---

JOURNAL

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101662 

ARTICLE TITLE

A carbon-efficient bicarbonate electrolyzer

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

UBC Okanagan researchers work to be guardians of the city

Gaming strategy helps plan for and prevent attacks on infrastructure

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA OKANAGAN CAMPUS

 

IMAGE: 

UBC OKANAGAN FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCHERS DR. AMIR ARDESTANI-JAAFARI (RIGHT) AND DR. AMIN AHMADI DIGEHSARA DISCUSS THEIR GAMING STRATEGY THAT HELPS PROTECT INFRASTRUCTURE FROM ATTACK WITH STUDENT MOHAMMAD MOSAFFA (LEFT).

view more 

CREDIT: UBCO

As technology continues to advance, the likelihood of malevolent attacks and subsequent failures on society’s critical infrastructures increases. Blackouts, water shortages, transport collapses—these potential threats to cities not only come with a hefty price tag but are likely to cause chaos and affect the health and safety of communities.

UBC Okanagan Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Amin Ahmadi Digehsara, along with Assistant Professor Dr. Amir Ardestani-Jaafari, both with the Faculty of Management, recently published a study that will enhance the resilience of vital infrastructures against malevolent attacks.

“We rely heavily on various interconnected systems and networks, like electricity, water and transportation,” says Dr. Ahmadi Digehsara. “Imagine these networks as a series of roads and intersections. If certain roads or intersections are blocked due to an attack or disaster, it can cause significant problems within our community.”

Their study tackles the ever-growing challenges associated with safeguarding power stations, water systems, railways, highways, subway stations, roads and other key components of a community’s infrastructure. As threats, ranging from warfare and criminal acts to terrorism, continue to loom it becomes imperative to devise robust strategies to defend against these vulnerabilities.

“Our research is crucial because it helps us better prepare to support our communities during disasters,” says Dr. Ahmadi Digehsara. “By identifying which roads and intersections are crucial, we can reinforce them so our daily lives are less disrupted during emergencies. This isn't just about avoiding inconvenience; it's about ensuring safety, health and even saving lives during disasters."

Dr. Ardestani-Jaafari explains how they used a gaming strategy to devise ways to prevent potential blockages or infrastructure attacks.

“For our research, we acted like city planners. By thinking ahead, we try to strengthen important roads and intersections—we call these nodes and links—to keep the city running smoothly, even when trouble happens,” he says. “However, it's tricky because we don't know exactly where or how these blockages might occur. So, we've created a three-part strategy, like a game, involving a defender which is us, an attacker who created blockages, and then the defender again.”

In their study, the first defender makes strengthening plans and the attacker finds weak spots to hit and create damage. Then the second defender makes quick moves to fix issues and find the best paths within the damaged network.

“To figure out how to do this efficiently, we used a special method—like a problem-solving tool—to test our strategy on known examples. We found out that with smart planning, we can make really strong protection plans quickly, even when facing complex problems.”

The research, published this month in Annals of Operations Research, proved that by strengthening the most important roads and intersections, cities become more resistant to unexpected disasters and attacks. Their paper also determined that by properly preparing for disaster, the financial consequences can be decreased.

“Even if we don't know exactly what's coming, we have smart tools and strategies that help us prepare to respond effectively,” adds Dr. Ardestani-Jaafari “Our approach isn't just theoretical. We've tested it, and it will keep things running more smoothly in emergencies while simultaneously saving money and resources in the long term.”

Though the research is promising, Dr. Ahmadi Digehsara cautions that as threats change and networks continue to grow, it is imperative to keep adapting to these changes in order to improve defences.

“This isn't a one-time effort,” he says. “As threats change and our networks grow, it is important to keep adapting and improving the response. In simple terms, we're like the guardians of the city's lifelines, working behind the scenes to make sure everyone can continue living their lives with minimal disruption, no matter what surprises come our way.”

---

JOURNAL

Annals of Operations Research

DOI

10.1007/s10479-023-05630-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Two-stage nodal network interdiction under decision-dependent uncertainty

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Offset markets: New approach could help save tropical forests by restoring faith in carbon credits

A new way to price carbon credits could encourage desperately needed investment in forest preservation and boost vital progress towards net-zero.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

 

IMAGE: 

A TEAM LED BY SCIENTISTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE HAS INVENTED A RELIABLE AND TRANSPARENT WAY OF ESTIMATING THE BENEFIT OF CARBON STORED BECAUSE OF FOREST CONSERVATION.

view more 

CREDIT: MARIJE SCHAAFSMA

A new approach to valuing the carbon storage potential of natural habitats aims to help restore faith in offset schemes, by enabling investors to directly compare carbon credit pricing across a wide range of projects.

Current valuation methods for forest conservation projects have come under heavy scrutiny, leading to a crisis of confidence in carbon markets. This is hampering efforts to offset unavoidable carbon footprints, mitigate climate change, and scale up urgently needed investment in tropical forest conservation.

Measuring the value of carbon storage is not easy. Recent research revealed that as little as 6% of carbon credits from voluntary REDD+ schemes result in preserved forests. And the length of time these forests are preserved is critical to the climate benefits achieved.

Now, a team led by scientists at the University of Cambridge has invented a more reliable and transparent way of estimating the benefit of carbon stored because of forest conservation.  

The method is published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. In it, the researchers argue that saving tropical forests is not only vital for biodiversity, but also a much less expensive way of balancing emissions than most of the current carbon capture and storage technologies.

The new approach works a bit like a lease agreement: carbon credits are issued to tropical forest projects that store carbon for a predicted amount of time. The valuation is front-loaded, because more trees protected now means less carbon released to the atmosphere straight away.

The technique involves deliberately pessimistic predictions of when stored carbon might be released, so that the number of credits issued is conservative. But because forests can now be monitored by remote sensing, if projects do better than predicted – which they usually will – they can be rewarded through the issue of further credits.

The payments encourage local people to protect forests: the carbon finance they receive can help provide alternative livelihoods that don’t involve cutting down trees.

And by allowing for future payments, the new method generates incentives for safeguarding forests long after credits have been issued. This contrasts with the current approach, which passes on a burden for conservation to future generations without compensation for lost livelihoods.

The approach also allows different types of conservation projects to be compared in a like-for-like manner.

“Until now there hasn’t been a satisfactory way of directly comparing technological solutions with nature-based solutions for carbon capture. This has caused a lack of enthusiasm for investing in carbon credits linked to tropical forest protection,” said Dr Tom Swinfield, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and senior author of the study.

He added: “Tropical forests are being cleared so quickly that if we don’t protect them now, we’re not going to make the vital progress we need towards net-zero. Buying carbon credits linked to their protection is one of the best ways to do this.”

Tropical forests play a key role in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, helping to reduce global warming and avert climate catastrophe. But the carbon they capture is not taken out of the atmosphere permanently: forests can be destroyed by pests, floods, fire, wind – and by human clearance.

This impermanence, and therefore the difficulty of reliably measuring the long-term climate benefit of tropical forest protection, has made it an unattractive proposition for investors wanting to offset their carbon emissions.

And this is despite it being a far cheaper investment than more permanent, technology-based methods of carbon capture and storage.

Protection of tropical forests, a nature-based solution to climate change, comes with additional benefits: helping to conserve biodiversity, and supporting the livelihoods of people living near the forests.

“Nature-based carbon solutions are highly undervalued right now because the market doesn’t know how to account for the fact that forests aren’t a permanent carbon storage solution. Our method takes away a lot of the uncertainties,” said Anil Madhavapeddy, a Professor in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology, who was involved in the study.

The new method, developed by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter and the London School of Economics, is called ‘Permanent Additional Carbon Tonne' (PACT) accounting, and can be used to value a wide range of nature-based solutions.

“Carbon finance is a way for us – the carbon emitters of the richer world – to direct funds towards rural communities in the tropics so they can get more out of the land they have, without cutting down more trees,” said Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science at the University of Cambridge and first author of the paper.

Co-author Srinivasan Keshav, Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science at Cambridge added: “Our new approach has the potential to address market concerns around nature-based solutions to carbon offsetting, and lead to desperately needed investment.”

Conversion of tropical forest to agricultural land results in vast carbon emissions. Around 30% of all progress towards the ambitious net-zero commitments made at COP26 is reliant on better management of carbon in nature.

Other carbon credit investment options include technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it deep in the Earth for hundreds of years. These permanent storage options may currently be easier to value, say the researchers, but they typically cost substantially more than nature-based solutions and do nothing to protect natural habitats that are vital in regulating the global climate and mitigating the extinction crisis.

---

JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01815-0 

ARTICLE TITLE

Realising the social value of impermanent carbon credits

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Window to avoid 1.5°C of warming will close before 2030 if emissions are not reduced

Peer-Reviewed Publication

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

WHEN YOU ARE NOT FAST ENOUGH TO UNSEND

**CORRECTION**

We have identified an error in this press release. The fifth paragraph of the release originally read:

The researchers warn that if carbon dioxide emissions remain at 2022 levels of about 40 billion gigatonnes per year, the carbon budget will be exhausted by around 2029, committing the world to warming of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

However, this should read:

The researchers warn that if carbon dioxide emissions remain at 2022 levels of about 40 gigatonnes per year, the carbon budget will be exhausted by around 2029, committing the world to warming of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

The text of the press release has been corrected below. The rest of the press release remains unchanged.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused, Imperial College London Press Office (press.office@imperial.ac.uk)

 

Without rapid carbon dioxide emission reductions, the world has a 50% chance of locking in 1.5°C of warming before 2030, according to a study led by Imperial College London researchers.

The study, published today in Nature Climate Change, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the global carbon budget. The carbon budget is an estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that can be emitted while keeping global warming below certain temperature limits.

The Paris Agreement aims to limit global temperature increase to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The remaining carbon budget is commonly used to assess global progress against these targets.

The new study estimates that for a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C, there are less than 250 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left in the global carbon budget.

The researchers warn that if carbon dioxide emissions remain at 2022 levels of about 40 gigatonnes per year, the carbon budget will be exhausted by around 2029, committing the world to warming of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

The finding means the budget is less than previously calculated and has approximately halved since 2020 due to the continued increase of global greenhouse gas emissions, caused primarily from the burning of fossil fuels as well as an improved estimate of the cooling effect of aerosols, which are decreasing globally due to measures to improve air quality and reduce emissions.

Dr Robin Lamboll, research fellow at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, and the lead author of the study, said: “Our finding confirms what we already know – we’re not doing nearly enough to keep warming below 1.5°C.

“The remaining budget is now so small that minor changes in our understanding of the world can result in large proportional changes to the budget. However, estimates point to less than a decade of emissions at current levels.

"The lack of progress on emissions reduction means that we can be ever more certain that the window for keeping warming to safe levels is rapidly closing."

Dr Joeri Rogelj, Director of Research at the Grantham Institute and Professor of Climate Science & Policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, said: “This carbon budget update is both expected and fully consistent with the latest UN Climate Report.

“That report from 2021 already highlighted that there was a one in three chance that the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C could be as small as our study now reports. 

“This shows the importance of not simply looking at central estimates, but also considering the uncertainty surrounding them.”

The study also found that the carbon budget for a 50% chance of limiting warming to 2°C is approximately 1,200 gigatonnes, meaning that if carbon dioxide emissions continue at current levels, the central 2°C budget will be exhausted by 2046.

There has been much uncertainty in calculating the remaining carbon budget, due to the influence of other factors, including warming from gasses other than carbon dioxide and the ongoing effects of emissions that are not accounted for in models. 

The new research used an updated dataset and improved climate modelling compared to other recent estimates, published in June, characterising these uncertainties and increasing confidence around the remaining carbon budget estimates.

The strengthened methodology also gave new insights into the importance of the potential responses of the climate system to achieving net zero.

‘Net zero’ refers to achieving an overall balance between global emissions produced and emissions removed from the atmosphere.

According to the modelling results in the study, there are still large uncertainties in the way various parts of the climate system will respond in the years just before net zero is achieved.

It is possible that the climate will continue warming due to effects such as melting ice, the release of methane, and changes in ocean circulation.

However, carbon sinks such as increased vegetation growth could also absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide leading to a cooling of global temperatures before net zero is achieved.  

Dr Lamboll says these uncertainties further highlight the urgent need to rapidly cut emissions. “At this stage, our best guess is that the opposing warming and cooling will approximately cancel each other out after we reach net zero.

“However, it’s only when we only when we cut emissions and get closer to net zero that we will be able to see what the longer-term heating and cooling adjustments will look like.

“Every fraction of a degree of warming will make life harder for people and ecosystems. This study is yet another warning from the scientific community. Now it is up to governments to act.”

---

JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01848-5 

ARTICLE TITLE

Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Why all languages have words for ‘this’ and ‘that’

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

Languages around the world have words for ‘this’ and ‘that’ according to new research from an international team, led by the University of East Anglia.

Researchers studied more than 1,000 speakers of 29 different languages to see how they use demonstratives – words that show where something is in relation to a person talking such as ‘this cat’ or ‘that dog’.

It was previously thought that languages vary in the spatial distinctions they make - and that speakers of different languages may think in fundamentally different ways as a consequence.

But the new study shows that all of the languages tested make the same spatial distinctions using words like ‘this’ or ‘that’ based on whether they can reach the object they are talking about.

Lead researcher Prof Kenny Coventry, from UEA’s School of Psychology, said; “There are over 7,000 diverse languages spoken across the world.

“We wanted to find out how speakers of a wide range of languages use the oldest recorded words in all of language – spatial demonstratives, such as ‘this’ or ‘that’.”

The 45-strong international team studied 29 languages from around the world including English, Spanish, Norwegian, Japanese, Mandarin, Tzeltal and Telugu.

They tested over 1,000 speakers to see how they use demonstratives in their language to describe where objects are across a range of different spatial configurations.

Statistical analysis revealed the same mapping between reachable and non-reachable objects and demonstratives across all languages.

Prof Coventry said: “We found that in all the languages we tested, there is a word for objects that are within reach of the speaker, like ‘this’ in English, and a word for objects out of reach – ‘that’.

“This distinction may explain the early evolutionary origin of demonstratives as linguistic forms,” he added.

This research was led by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with researchers at 32 other international institutions including Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Aarhus University, Denmark, and the University of Buffalo, USA.

It was funded by by EU H2020 ITN Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action grant agreement no. 676063 (DCOMM) awarded to Kenny R. Coventry and colleagues. 

‘Spatial Communication Systems Across Languages Reflect Universal Action Constraints’ is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

---

JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Spatial Communication Systems Across Languages Reflect Universal Action Constraints

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Low-income countries could lose 30% of nutrients like protein and omega-3 from seafood due to climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

The nutrients available from seafood could drop by 30 per cent for low-income countries by the end of the century due to climate change, suggests new UBC research.

That’s in a high carbon emissions and low mitigation scenario, according to the study published today in Nature Climate Change. This could be reduced to a roughly 10 per cent decline if the world were to meet the Paris Agreement targets of limiting global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius - which recent reports have shown we’re not on track to achieve.

“Low-income countries and the global south, where seafood is central to diets and has the potential to help address malnutrition, are the hardest hit by the effects of climate change,” said first author Dr. William Cheung, professor and director of the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). “For many, seafood is an irreplaceable and affordable source of nutrients.”

The researchers examined historical fisheries and seafood farming, or mariculture, databases including data from UBC’s Sea Around Us to find out quantities of key nutrients that were available through fisheries and seafood farming in the past, and used predictive climate models to project these into the future. They focused on four nutrients that are plentiful in seafood and important to human health: calcium, iron, protein and omega-3 fatty acids, the latter of which is not readily available in other food sources.

They found that the availability of these nutrients peaked in the 1990s and stagnated to the 2010s, despite increases provided by farming seafood, and from fishing for invertebrates such as shrimp and oysters.

Calcium sees biggest decline

Looking to the future, the availability of all four nutrients from catches is projected to decrease, with calcium the hardest hit at a projected decline of about 15 to 40 per cent by 2100 under a low and high emissions scenario, respectively. Omega-3 would see an approximately five to 25 per cent decrease. These declines are largely driven by decreases in the amounts of pelagic fish available for catch.

“Small pelagic fish are really rich in calcium so in areas of the world where people have intolerances to milk or where other animal-sourced foods, like meat and dairy, are much more expensive, fish is really key to people’s diets,” said senior author Dr. Christina Hicks, professor at Lancaster University. “In many parts of the world, particularly low-income countries across the tropics, fish supply nutrients that are lacking in people's diets.”

While seafood farming will contribute more nutrients in the future compared with current levels, the researchers projected these increases would not be able to compensate for the loss from fisheries. Under a high emissions scenario, any gains in the availability of nutrients from seafood farming before 2050 would be lost by 2100.

“The primary reason for this is climate change, which is also a significant threat to seafood farming, leaving us with a growing nutritional deficit,” said co-author Dr. Muhammed Oyinlola, a postdoctoral fellow in the UBC department of zoology and the Institut national de la recherche scientifique. “Seafood farming alone cannot provide a comprehensive solution to this complex issue.”

The availability of all four nutrients from tropical waters of generally lower income nations, such as Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and Sierra Leone, is projected to decline steeply by the end of the century under a high emissions scenario, compared with minimal declines in higher income, non-tropical waters, such as those of Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.

Globally, the researchers projected that seafood-sourced nutrient availability would decrease by about four to seven per cent per degree Celsius warming. For lower-income countries across the tropics including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Solomon Islands, the projected decline was two to three times this global average at nearly 10 to 12 per cent per unit of warming.

“This research highlights the impact of every degree of warming,” said Dr. Cheung. “The more we can reduce warming, the fewer risks to marine and human life.”

Using all of a fish

Certain types of fish such as anchovies and herring are packed with nutrients but often used for fish meal and fish oil because these nutrients also promote fish growth. Similarly, many countries retain only select parts of a fish for sale. The researchers highlighted potential adaptations to increase nutrient availability from seafood, by retaining more of these nutritious fish for local human consumption, as well as reducing food waste in fisheries production and consumption by using all parts of a fish including the head and fins.

“The future development of seafood supply needs to consider the nutritional security of vulnerable groups, not just economic benefit,” said Dr. Cheung. “But there’s a limit to how effective these interventions are, so it’s important to limit global warming as much as possible.”

---

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01822-1