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Monday, November 13, 2023

Climate change is altering animal brains and behavior − a neuroscientist explains how
Sean O'Donnell, Drexel University
Mon, November 13, 2023

Animal nervous systems may lose their adaptive edge with climate change. PM Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Human-driven climate change is increasingly shaping the Earth’s living environments. Rising temperatures, rapid shifts in rainfall and seasonality, and ocean acidification are presenting altered environments to many animal species. How do animals adjust to these new, often extreme, conditions?

Animal nervous systems play a central role in both enabling and limiting how they respond to changing climates. As a biologist and neuroscientist, two of my main research interests involve understanding how animals accommodate temperature extremes and identifying the forces that shape the structure and function of animal nervous systems, especially brains. The intersection of these interests led me to explore the effects of climate on nervous systems and how animals will likely respond to rapidly shifting environments.

All major functions of the nervous system – sense detection, mental processing and behavior direction – are critical. They allow animals to navigate their environments in ways that enable their survival and reproduction. Climate change will likely affect these functions, often for the worse.

Shifting sensory environments

Changing temperatures shift the energy balance of ecosystems – from plants that produce energy from sunlight to the animals that consume plants and other animals – subsequently altering the sensory worlds that animals experience. It is likely that climate change will challenge all of their senses, from sight and taste to smell and touch.

Animals like mammals perceive temperature in part with special receptor proteins in their nervous systems that respond to heat and cold, discriminating between moderate and extreme temperatures. These receptor proteins help animals seek appropriate habitats and may play a critical role in how animals respond to changing temperatures.

Climate change disrupts the environmental cues animals rely on to solve problems like selecting a habitat, finding food and choosing mates. Some animals, such as mosquitoes that transmit parasites and pathogens, rely on temperature gradients to orient themselves to their environment. Temperature shifts are altering where and when mosquitoes search for hosts, leading to changes in disease transmission.

How climate change affects the chemical signals animals use to communicate with each other or harm competitors can be especially complex because chemical compounds are highly sensitive to temperature.

Formerly reliable sources of information like seasonal changes in daylight can lose its utility as they become uncoupled. This could cause a breakdown in the link between day length and plant flowering and fruiting, and interruptions to animal behavior like hibernation and migration when day length no longer predicts resource availability.

Changing brains and cognition

Rising temperatures may disrupt how animal brains develop and function, with potentially negative effects on their ability to effectively adapt to their new environments.

Researchers have documented how temperature extremes can alter individual neurons at the genetic and structural levels, as well as how the brain is organized as a whole.

In marine environments, researchers have found that climate-induced changes of water chemistry like ocean acidification can affect animals’ general cognitive performance and sensory abilities, such as odor tracking in reef fish and sharks.

Behavior disruptions

Animals may respond to climate adversity by shifting locations, from changing the microhabitats they use to altering their geographic ranges.

Activity can also shift to different periods of the day or to new seasons. These behavioral responses can have major implications for the environmental stimuli animals will be exposed to.

Shifting climates are driving some snake species into forested habitats, and the subsequent increased predation on nesting birds may push above sustainable levels. Rapeepong Puttakumwong/Moment via Getty Images

For example, fish in warming seas have shifted to cooler, deeper waters that have dramatically different light intensity and color range than their visual systems are used to. Furthermore, because not all species will shift their behaviors in the same way, species that do move to a new habitat, time of day or season will confront new ones, including food plants and prey animals, competitors and predators, and pathogens.

Behavioral shifts driven by climate change will restructure ecosystems worldwide, with complex and unpredictable outcomes.

Plasticity and evolution

Animal brains are remarkably flexible, developed to match individual environmental experience. They’re even substantially capable of changing in adulthood.

But studies comparing species have seen strong environmental effects on brain evolution. Animal nervous systems evolve to match the sensory environments of each species’ activity space. These patterns suggest that new climate regimes will eventually shape nervous systems by forcing them to evolve.

When genetics have strong effects on brain development, nervous systems that are finely adapted to the local environment may lose their adaptive edge with climate change. This may pave the way for new adaptive solutions. As the range and significance of sensory stimuli and seasonal cues shift, natural selection will favor those with new sensory or cognitive abilities.

Some parts of the nervous system are constrained by genetic adaptations while others are more plastic and responsive to environmental conditions. A greater understanding of how animal nervous systems adapt to rapidly changing environments will help predict how all species will be affected by climate change.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Sean O'Donnell, Drexel University.

Pope Francis ousted a Texas bishop, signaling he may finally be done with ultraconservative US Catholics

JESUITS; LEFT WING CATHOLICISM

Katie Balevic
Sat, November 11, 2023

Pope Francis.Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

Pope Francis relieved an outspoken, controversial Texas bishop of his duties.
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland was often critical of Pope Francis.
The Pope has previously called some conservative US Catholics "backward."

In a rare move, Pope Francis relieved an outspoken and controversial Texas bishop from his post on Saturday.

It may be a sign that his patience with conservative Catholics in the United States — some of whom have decried the Pope as too open-minded — is waning.

"The Holy Father has removed Bishop Joseph E. Strickland from the pastoral governance of the diocese of Tyler," the Vatican announced. Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin was tapped to temporarily replace Strickland.

Strickland, a vocal opponent of the Pope, previously refused to resign after an investigation into his leadership.

"I have said publicly that I cannot resign as Bishop of Tyler because that would be me abandoning the flock that I was given charge of by Pope Benedict XVI," Strickland said in a September post on his website.

Those comments followed an Apostolic Visitation to Strickland's diocese in June, after which the visiting bishops told the Pope it was "not feasible" for Strickland to continue his charge, according to a statement by Cardinal Daniel Nicholas DiNardo, Metropolitan Archbishop of Galveston-Houston.

In a tweet in May, Strickland acknowledged Francis' legitimacy as the Pope but added: "It is time for me to say that I reject his program of undermining the Deposit of Faith. Follow Jesus."

Strickland declined when he was formally asked to resign on Thursday, prompting the Pope to remove him two days later, DiNardo said in his statement.

In the last year, Strickland intensified his criticisms of the Pope, going so far as to question whether officials at the Vatican were actual Catholics, according to The New York Times. Tensions within the Catholic Church have grown as it faces questions about same-sex couples and the ordination of women.

For his part, the Pope has blasted some American Catholics as "backward" and "reactionary" to concepts of progress.

Acknowledging the upheaval, the Diocese of Tyler said its "work as the Catholic Church in northeast Texas continues."

"We strive to deepen our faith, promote the common good, and create a welcoming environment for all to encounter the loving God — Father, Son, and Spirit," a statement from the diocese read. "During this time of transition, we pray that God may continue to abundantly bless and strengthen the Church and God's holy, faithful people here and around the world."

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Will it ever be possible for time travel to occur? – Alana C., age 12, Queens, New York

Have you ever dreamed of traveling through time, like characters do in science fiction movies? For centuries, the concept of time travel has captivated people’s imaginations. Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time, just like you move between different places. In movies, you might have seen characters using special machines, magical devices or even hopping into a futuristic car to travel backward or forward in time.

But is this just a fun idea for movies, or could it really happen?

The question of whether time is reversible remains one of the biggest unresolved questions in science. If the universe follows the laws of thermodynamics, it may not be possible. The second law of thermodynamics states that things in the universe can either remain the same or become more disordered over time.

It’s a bit like saying you can’t unscramble eggs once they’ve been cooked. According to this law, the universe can never go back exactly to how it was before. Time can only go forward, like a one-way street.

Time is relative

However, physicist Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity suggests that time passes at different rates for different people. Someone speeding along on a spaceship moving close to the speed of light – 671 million miles per hour! – will experience time slower than a person on Earth.

People have yet to build spaceships that can move at speeds anywhere near as fast as light, but astronauts who visit the International Space Station orbit around the Earth at speeds close to 17,500 mph. Astronaut Scott Kelly has spent 520 days at the International Space Station, and as a result has aged a little more slowly than his twin brother – and fellow astronaut – Mark Kelly. Scott used to be 6 minutes younger than his twin brother. Now, because Scott was traveling so much faster than Mark and for so many days, he is 6 minutes and 5 milliseconds younger.

Some scientists are exploring other ideas that could theoretically allow time travel. One concept involves wormholes, or hypothetical tunnels in space that could create shortcuts for journeys across the universe. If someone could build a wormhole and then figure out a way to move one end at close to the speed of light – like the hypothetical spaceship mentioned above – the moving end would age more slowly than the stationary end. Someone who entered the moving end and exited the wormhole through the stationary end would come out in their past.

However, wormholes remain theoretical: Scientists have yet to spot one. It also looks like it would be incredibly challenging to send humans through a wormhole space tunnel.

Paradoxes and failed dinner parties

There are also paradoxes associated with time travel. The famous “grandfather paradox” is a hypothetical problem that could arise if someone traveled back in time and accidentally prevented their grandparents from meeting. This would create a paradox where you were never born, which raises the question: How could you have traveled back in time in the first place? It’s a mind-boggling puzzle that adds to the mystery of time travel.

Famously, physicist Stephen Hawking tested the possibility of time travel by throwing a dinner party where invitations noting the date, time and coordinates were not sent out until after it had happened. His hope was that his invitation would be read by someone living in the future, who had capabilities to travel back in time. But no one showed up.

As he pointed out: “The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.”

Telescopes are time machines

Interestingly, astrophysicists armed with powerful telescopes possess a unique form of time travel. As they peer into the vast expanse of the cosmos, they gaze into the past universe. Light from all galaxies and stars takes time to travel, and these beams of light carry information from the distant past. When astrophysicists observe a star or a galaxy through a telescope, they are not seeing it as it is in the present, but as it existed when the light began its journey to Earth millions to billions of years ago.

NASA’s newest space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is peering at galaxies that were formed at the very beginning of the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.

While we aren’t likely to have time machines like the ones in movies anytime soon, scientists are actively researching and exploring new ideas. But for now, we’ll have to enjoy the idea of time travel in our favorite books, movies and dreams.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Adi Foord, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Myanmar junta attacked on new fronts, thousands flee to India

Reuters
Updated Mon, November 13, 2023

(Reuters) -Ethnic minority insurgent groups attacked security posts in Myanmar on Monday, residents, rebels and an official said, as fighting erupted on two new fronts, and thousands of people crossed into neighbouring India seeking safety.

Myanmar's military junta is facing its biggest test since taking power in a 2021 coup after three ethnic minority forces launched a coordinated offensive in late October, capturing some towns and military posts.

The military-installed president last week said Myanmar, a country the size of France, was at risk of breaking apart because of an ineffective response to the rebellion. The generals say they are fighting "terrorists".

One of the three allied insurgent groups, the Arakan Army (AA), which is fighting for greater autonomy in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, seized posts in the Rathedaung and Minbya areas, about 200 km (124 miles) apart, AA spokesman Khine Thu Kha said.

"We have conquered some posts and fighting is continuing in some other places," he said.

A resident of Rathedaung said gunfire was heard before dawn on Monday followed by hours of artillery bombardment, with the military seen blocking entrances to the area and reinforcing administrative buildings.

Fighting also broke out in Chin State, which borders India, when insurgents attacked two military camps, according to an Indian official and two sources with knowledge of the assault.

About 5,000 people from Myanmar crossed into India's Mizoram state to seek shelter from the fighting, said James Lalrinchhana, the deputy commissioner of a district on the Myanmar border.

Chin State, which had been largely peaceful for years, saw fierce fighting after the 2021 coup with thousands of residents taking up arms against the military administration.

A spokesperson for Myanmar's junta did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the latest fighting.

OVERSTRETCHED MILITARY

The new combat will be another blow for a junta that is increasingly stretched as armed opposition to its rule grows in scale and strength, fuelled by anger over the coup and ensuing crackdown that ended a decade of tentative democratic reforms.

The coordinated anti-junta offensive launched on Oct. 27 in Shan State in the northeast has seen several towns and more than 100 military posts seized near the border with China.

Assaults on urban centres have also taken place in the Sagaing region in central Myanmar, to the west of Shan State, while conflict in neighbouring Kayah State to the south led to the crash on Saturday of a fighter jet.

The rebels said they shot the aircraft down while the military said it had a technical fault.

Richard Horsey, senior Myanmar Adviser for the Crisis Group think tank, said the military had experience fighting in Rakhine State but could struggle as enemy forces probe for weaknesses in multiple areas.

"If combat persists, it will open a significant new front for the regime, which is already overstretched," he said.

"It will be hard for the regime to focus their efforts across all fronts."

(Reporting by Reuters Staff and Chanchinmawia in MIZORAM; Writing by Martin Petty and Devjyot Ghoshal; editing by Robert Birsel)

Myanmar army faces a new challenge as an armed ethnic group opens a new front in a western state

GRANT PECK
Updated Mon, November 13, 2023

Members of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army pose for a photograph with the weapons allegedly seized from the Myanmar's army outpost on a hill in Chinshwehaw town, Myanmar, Saturday Oct. 28, 2023. The leader of Myanmar’s army-installed government said the military will carry out counter-attacks against a powerful alliance of ethnic armed groups that has seized towns near the Chinese border in the country’s northeastern and northern regions, state-run media reported Friday Nov. 3, 2023.

("The Kokang" online media via AP)

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military government faced a fresh challenge Monday when one of the armed ethnic groups in an alliance that recently gained strategic territory in the country's northeast launched attacks in the western state of Rakhine.

The Arakan Army launched surprise assaults on two outposts of the Border Guard Police, a paramilitary force, in Rakhine’s Rathedaung township, according to independent online media and area residents. The attacks took place despite a yearlong cease-fire with Myanmar’s military government.

Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press that two military security outposts in Rathedaung were seized by his group and more than 20 police officers from a station in another township, Kyauktaw, had laid down their weapons.

“Some officers of Myanmar’s army have been arrested,” Khaing Thukha said by phone.

Local media outlets reported fighting between the Arakan Army and the military in Minbya, Maungdaw, Mrauk-U and Kyauktaw townships. The reports said the army blocked all roads in the affected area, and residents in the state’s capital of Sittwe were ordered not to go outside after 9 p.m.

The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement seeking autonomy from the central government. Rakhine is also known by its older name of Arakan. It's the site of a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that drove about 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh.

The Arakan Army, along with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army -- calling themselves the Three Brotherhood Alliance -- launched a coordinated offensive on Oct. 27 in northern Shan state in northeastern Myanmar along the border with China.

The alliance has claimed widespread victories and the military government has acknowledged losing control of three towns, one of which is a major border crossing for trade with China. The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army claimed to have seized another town, Kunlong, on Sunday.

Myanmar’s ruling military council declared martial law in eight townships near the Chinese border, the state-controlled Global New Light of Myanmar reported Monday.

The offensive in the northern part of Shan state was already seen as a significant challenge for the army, which has struggled to contain a nationwide uprising by the members of Peoples’ Defense Force. The pro-democracy resistance organization was formed after the army seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government in February 2021. It also set up loose alliances with several of the ethnic armed groups.

"If combat persists, it will open a significant new front for the regime, which is already overstretched with fighting, including on its eastern border with China,” Richard Horsey, the senior adviser on Myanmar for the Crisis Group think tank, said in an emailed statement.

The army-installed acting president, Myint Swe, said at a meeting last week of the state National Defense and Security Council that the country is in critical condition and could split up if the military does not effectively manage the problems in Shan state, the Global New Light of Myanmar reported.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BURMA

Opinion

An Arizona child is raped. The clergy stays silent. Then comes the truly shocking part

Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic
Updated Mon, November 13, 2023

MJ embraces her adoptive mother, Nancy Salminen, in Sierra Vista on Oct. 27, 2021. State authorities placed MJ in foster care after learning that her father, the late Paul Adams, sexually assaulted her and posted video of the assaults on the internet.

A creeper confesses to his bishop. He’s raping his 5-year-old daughter.

For seven years, the bishop tells no one outside his church — remaining silent, as a church lawyer advises him to do — and the abuse continues. Then the creeper starts raping another daughter, just 6 weeks old.

Last week, a Cochise County judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by several of the creeper's children against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It’s galling, though not surprising, that a judge would decline to hold the church responsible. While Arizona has a mandatory reporting law for teachers and doctors and such, members of the clergy are not required to report a confession that a child is being abused.

What is shocking — stunning, really — is that a key state legislator won’t even consider changing the law to carve out an exemption that might have protected that 5-year-old girl, her sister and God only knows how many other children.

Rapist's rights trump those of his victim

“The seal of confession is a sacred, sacred part of the Catholic church,” Rep. Quang Nguyen, who is Catholic, recently told Capitol Media Services Howard Fischer.

Put another way, a rapist’s sacred religious rights trump a child’s sacred right to be protected from a sexual predator? Really, sir?

This horror story was brought to light last year, the result of an Associated Press investigation into the Latter-day Saints’ handling of child sexual abuse cases.

Paul Adams, of Bisbee, a father of six, admitted during a counseling session with his bishop that he was raping his then-5-year-old daughter.

According to court records, Bishop John Herrod called the church’s helpline, which is used by bishops to report child sex abuse to church officials in Salt Lake City, and was advised by attorney not to call the police or alert anyone outside the church.

According to the AP, which based its report on court records, attorney Merrill Nelson advised Herrod and his eventual replacement, Bishop Robert “Kim” Mauzy, over a two-year span not to report Adams.

So they didn’t — instead trying to convince Adams to seek help — and the rest, as they say, is horrifying history.

Church's silence let abuse to go on for years

The abuse went on for another seven years until finally in 2017 Adams was arrested. It seems he videoed his perverted attacks of his children and posted them on the internet.

Authorities in New Zealand and the U.S. traced one of the videos to Adams, who later died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial.

Three of Adams’ six children sued the church, the bishops and other church officials in 2021, accusing them of negligence and conspiring to cover up child sex abuse to avoid “costly lawsuits” and protect the church’s reputation.

In a Nov. 3 ruling, Cochise County Superior Court Judge Timothy Dickerson threw out the lawsuit, saying the church had no legal duty to report that a child was being raped.

“Church defendants were not required under the Mandatory Reporting Statute to report the abuse of Jane Doe 1 by her father because their knowledge of the abuse came from confidential communications which fall within the clergy-penitent exception,” Dickerson wrote.

Lawmaker thwarts bill for clergy to report abuse

Church officials, who apparently sleep quite well at night, pronounced themselves “pleased” with the decision.

“Contrary to some news reports and exaggerated allegations, the court found that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its clergy handled this matter consistent with Arizona law,” the church said in a prepared statement.

Which bring us back to Arizona law and the people who make it at the state Capitol.

Rep. Stacey Travers, D-Phoenix, introduced a bill this year to require a member of the clergy to report abuse learned about during a confession or confidential communication “if there is a reasonable suspicion to believe that the abuse is ongoing, will continue or may be a threat to other minors.”

It didn’t even rate a hearing. Didn’t even get assigned to a committee.

His rationale: Victims can turn to others for help

And, apparently, it won’t go anywhere next year either, as Rep. Quang Nguyen, the Prescott Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, says he won’t give the bill a hearing. (He did say he would at least speak to Travers, so I guess there’s that.)

Nguyen, in his interview with Capitol Media Services, said he believes the bill “is an attack on the church” and he questioned why members of the clergy would need to call the police or state Department of Child Services.

“The victim has the parents, the victim has the teachers, the victim has friends, the victim has relatives that he or she is close to,’’ Nguyen said. “So, it doesn’t need a priest to be able to go to court and testify.’’

Tell that to the 5-year-old Bisbee girl who would endure seven years of assaults while devout daddy’s bishops stayed silent.

“They just let it keep happening,” the girl told the AP last year. “They just said, ‘Hey, let’s excommunicate her father.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Let’s have them do therapy.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Hey, let’s forgive and forget and all this will go away.’ It didn’t go away.”

For her, it likely never will.

Perhaps Rep. Nguyen can explain to her that her father’s rights were sacred.

“The seal of confession is never to be broken,” he said. “And priests will go to jail for it.”

And children will live in hell because of it.

For shame, Rep. Nguyen.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at @laurierobertsaz.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Child is raped. The clergy stays silent, then comes the shocking part