It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Worldwide, we are living longer and the male-female longevity gap is shrinking
Mortality patterns can be roughly grouped by continent, but are converging and share common trends
CREDIT: HELENA LOPES, PEXELS, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)
When it comes to trends in mortality over the last thirty years, countries around the world can be grouped into five clusters, roughly representing the five continents, according to a new study published January 17, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Atance of Universidad de Alcalá, Spain, and colleagues. While the clusters follow different trajectories, they share some commonalities, including longer life expectancies and fewer disparities between genders and groups of countries with different mortality and longevity indicators.
Most countries in the world have seen improvements in longevity over the last two centuries, and scientists have wondered whether there is convergence or divergence towards a unique pattern of mortality and longevity across countries. In the new study, Atance and colleagues used new statistical approaches to analyze not only life expectancy at birth, but eight other mortality indicators using data from 194 countries from the United Nations Populations Division records.
The study found that in 1990 and 2010 those countries could be clustered into five groups based on their mortality/longevity characteristics. Several countries changed clusters between the two timepoints—often based on wars and deleterious socioeconomic and political conditions—but in general the clusters represent the configuration of continents. Among all convergence clubs and countries, the life expectancy is increasing and the male-female gap in mortality is shrinking. The researchers used their model to predict groupings in 2030 and found continuation of these trends.
The authors conclude that their approach is able to show new insight into the historical evolution of the mortality convergence groupings in the period 1990-2020 and expands their score to include projections of their expected future evolution.
Citation: Atance D, Claramunt MM, Varea X, Aburto JM (2024) Convergence and divergence in mortality: A global study from 1990 to 2030. PLoS ONE 19(1): e0295842. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295842
Author Countries: Spain, UK
Funding: This work was partially supported by the funded chair UB-Longevity Institute. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Convergence and divergence in mortality: A global study from 1990 to 2030
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Jan-2024
Arsenic concentrations are predicted to increase significantly in Bangladesh's drinking well water, consumed by around 97% of Bangladeshis, thanks to sea level rise from climate change
CREDIT: SETH H. FRISBIE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
Arsenic concentrations are predicted to increase significantly in Bangladesh's drinking well water, consumed by around 97% of Bangladeshis, thanks to sea level rise from climate change
Article Title: Sea level rise from climate change is expected to increase the release of arsenic into Bangladesh’s drinking well water by reduction and by the salt effect
Author Countries: USA
Funding: The fieldwork in Bangladesh was funded by the United States Agency of International Development (USAID; contract number US AID RE III 388-0070; https://www.usaid.gov/). This fieldwork began in July of 1997 and ended in August of 1997. USAID is an international development agency that is funded by the United States government. USAID employed Seth H. Frisbie (SHF) and paid his salary during these two months in 1997. After August 1997, SHF received no specific funding for this work. Erika J. Mitchell (EJM) and Azizur R. Molla (ARM) received no specific funding for this work. No commercial companies funded the study or the authors. All other costs have been paid from the personal savings of the authors. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Sea level rise from climate change is expected to increase the release of arsenic into Bangladesh’s drinking well water by reduction and by the salt effect
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Jan-2024
A third of surveyed United Nations staff working in Geneva report having personally experienced racial discrimination, and a third having witnessed colleagues being racially discriminated against
A third of surveyed United Nations staff working in Geneva report having personally experienced racial discrimination, and a third having witnessed colleagues being racially discriminated against
Article Title: Racial discrimination within United Nations offices in Geneva: Results from an online survey
Author Countries: Germany, USA
Funding: The article was produced as part of the project "Racism and Mental Health: A Qualitative Study with Humanitarian Workers". The project is led by the first author (H.S.) and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF); grant number 01KA2215. The funder did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. BMBF project website: https://www.gesundheitsforschung-bmbf.de/de/rassismus-und-psychische-gesundheit-eine-qualitative-studie-mit-humanitaren-helfenden-15897.php.
Racial discrimination within United Nations offices in Geneva: Results from an online survey
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Jan-2024
ANOTHER REASON TO SAY NO DEEP SEA MINING
URI professor leads effort demonstrating success of new technology in conducting deep-sea research on fragile organisms
Multi-institution team uses quantitative imaging technology, innovative robotic device to capture tissue in minutes, preserve for advanced genomic study
A ROTARY ACTUATED DODECAHEDRON (RAD-2) ENCAPSULATES A HOLOPLANKTONIC POLYCHAETE (TOMOPTERIS, A MARINE WORM). VIDEO FROM REMOTELY OPERATED VEHICLE (ROV), SUBASTIAN SCIENCE CAMERA, SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Jan. 17, 2024 – A University of Rhode Island professor of Ocean Engineering and Oceanography, along with a multidisciplinary research team from multiple institutions, successfully demonstrated new technologies that can obtain preserved tissue and high-resolution 3D images within minutes of encountering some of the most fragile animals in the deep ocean.
URI Professor Brennan Phillips, the principal investigator on the project, and a team of 15 researchers from six institutions, including URI, have shown that it is possible to shave years from the process of determining whether a new or rare species has been discovered. The results of their work are published today in the journal Science Advances. An advanced copy of the article and press package are available.
Roboticists, ocean engineers, bioengineers, and marine and molecular biologists from URI’s Department of Ocean Engineering; the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine; the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University; Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California; PA Consulting, a worldwide firm that focuses on innovation; and the Department of Natural Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York, made up the team. The paper represents five years of research.
Revolutionary advancements in underwater imaging, robotics, and genomic sequencing have reshaped marine exploration, the study reads. The research shows that within minutes of an encounter with a deep-sea animal, it is possible to capture detailed measurements and motion of the animal, obtain an entire genome, and generate a comprehensive list of genes being expressed that point to their physiological status in the deep ocean. The result of this rich digital data is a ‘cybertype’ of a single animal, rather than a physical ‘holotype’ that is traditionally found in museum collections.
“Currently, if researchers want to describe what they believe is a new species, they face an arduous process,” Phillips said. “The way it is done now is you capture a specimen, which is very difficult because a lot of these animals are so delicate and tissue-thin, and it’s likely you may not be able to collect them at all. But if you successfully collect an animal, you then preserve it in a jar. Then begins a long process of physically bringing that specimen to different collections around the world where it is compared to existing organisms. After a long time, sometimes up to 21 years, scientists may reach consensus that this is a new species.
“Again, these are deep-sea, thin little wisps of animals. The current workflow is not appropriate. It’s a major reason why we have so many undescribed species in the ocean.”
Information gained from the study—and others that follow—could be useful for extinction prevention studies, as it provides a wealth of information from a single specimen gained during a single encounter. The work also responds to the growing call among researchers for compassionate collection, which minimizes harm to animals by using advanced technologies to collect information. Future studies and development could allow for complete scans and inventories of life in the deep sea within a catch-and-release framework.
“The vision was: How might a marine biologist work to better understand and connect to deep-sea life decades or centuries into the future?” said David Gruber, Distinguished Professor of Biology at Baruch College, City University of New York, and an Explorer with National Geographic Society. “This is a demonstration on how an interdisciplinary team could work collaboratively to provide an enormous amount of new information on deep-sea life after one brief encounter. The ultimate goal is to continue down this path and refine the technology to be as minimally-invasive as possible—akin to a doctor's check-up in the deep sea! This approach is becoming increasingly important with current extinction being 100 times higher than background extinction rates.”
Phillips said because collecting these samples has always been hard, there are many deep-sea species that have yet to be identified. “When you look at climate change and deep-sea mining and their potential effects, it is unsettling,” Phillips said. “You realize you don’t have a full baseline of species, and you may not know what you’ve lost before it’s too late. If you want to know what has been there before it’s gone, this is a new way to do that.”
The mission, which was funded by the Schmidt Ocean Institute and its Designing the Future program, and conducted on its research vessel Falkor, included two expeditions off the coast of Hawaii and San Diego in 2019 and 2021. The team collected as many as 14 preserved tissue samples a day, along with terabytes of quantitative digital imagery. Together, the study provided:
The first complete assembled and annotated transcriptome (genes being made in the animals’ habitat) of Pegea tunicate, a marine invertebrate animal;
Details of the molecular basis of environmental sensing of a holoplanktonic Tomopteris polychaete (marine worm), which spends its entire life in the water column;
Details of the full transcriptomes of two siphonophores, (gelatinous zooplankton composed of specialized parts growing together in a chain) Erenna sp. and Marrus claudanielis, as well as the Pegea tunicate and Tomopteris polychaete;
Full morphological (form and structure) characterizations using digital imaging of each animal while at depth.
The lead author of the paper, John Burns, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory, conducted the genomic analysis on four animals sampled at depths of almost 4,000 feet.
“What we were able to achieve with these animals is remarkable,” Burns said. “For me, this is best seen in the sequence data we generated for the Tomopteris worm: We captured it while it was exploring its environment and were able to infer that it was scanning the water using two long sensory whiskers near its head for ‘sweet’ tastes: likely sugars associated with prey, and possibly for ammonia: a waste product of its typical prey.
“With that information, we can envision how it hunts by following chemical trails in its open water habitat,” Burns said. “I don’t think that would have been possible without the innovative technology invented and employed by the engineers on the team that allowed complete preservation of the information from the animals within minutes of an encounter.”
Burns said another study with Gruber looked at how capture methods affect jellyfish ribonucleic acid, known as RNA, one of the building blocks of life. That sequence of information can start to change after about 10 minutes of stressful conditions, even with gentle collection. The Designing the Future technologies overcome this by preserving the information before the animal’s cells start to respond to stress, according to Burns.
“We also discovered that three of the animals we captured have huge genomes: each having nearly 10 times the DNA in a cell compared to us humans!” Burns said. “For the fourth, with a more modestly sized genome (about 3% the size of a human genome) we were able to use cutting edge sequencing methods to build the most cohesive and complete genome of a salp to date.”
Harvard and URI brought to the mission a rotary-actuated folding dodecahedron (RAD-2), an innovative origami-inspired robotic encapsulation device, which collected animal tissue samples and almost instantaneously preserved that tissue at depth.
“We are seeing the impact of new types of marine robots for midwater and deep-sea exploration,” said roboticist Robert Wood, the Harry Lewis and Marlyn McGrath Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. “Not only are robots going places that are difficult or impossible for humans to reach, our devices investigate, interact with, and collect specimens using a gentle touch… or no touch at all.”
Imaging systems from MBARI’s Bioinspiration Lab that included a laser-scanning imaging device called DeepPIV and a three-dimensional lightfield camera called EyeRIS enabled the measurement and reconstruction of three-dimensional morphology, or body shape, of the animals in their natural environment.
“We cannot protect what we do not yet fully understand. Advanced imaging technologies can accelerate our efforts to document the diversity of life in the ocean. The faster we can catalog marine life, the better we can assess and track the impact of human actions like climate change and mining on ocean environments,” said Kakani Katija, bioengineer and principal engineer of the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI.
“We have these remotely operated vehicles out there with advanced imaging systems, which can create a three-dimensional model after only a few minutes,” Phillips said. “We were able to approach a tiny jellyfish in a matter of seconds, collect high-resolution 3D images to the control room, and our team was able to tell in a matter of minutes that the tentacles were exactly 5 millimeters long. Then, we had extremely well-preserved tissue samples of the same animal within a matter of minutes.”
Composite image of gelatinous deep-sea animals observed and sampled in the study. Clockwise starting from upper left: the holoplanktonic polychaete Tomopteris sp.,the siphonophore Marrus claudanielis, the siphonophore Erenna sp., and the salp Pegea sp. Photos courtesy of ROV SuBastian science camera, Schmidt Ocean Institute.
CREDIT
Schmidt Ocean Institute
The ROV SuBastian with rotary actuated dodecahedron (RAD-2) mounted on the front and about to be lowered into the sea. Photo courtesy of Brennan Phillips
CREDIT
Photo courtesy Brennan Phillips
Preparations
Team members aboard the research vessel Falkor, prepare the RAD-2 for a deep-sea dive in October 2021. From left to right: Dave Casagrande (engineer, URI Graduate School of Oceanography), Brennan Phillips (URI associate professor of Ocean Engineering), Kaitlyn Becker (Ph.D. student, Harvard University at time of photo –- now assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Photo courtesy of Jovelle Tamayo/Schmidt Ocean Institute.
ARTWORK SHOWS THREE MAMMOTHS BEING WATCHED BY A FAMILY OF ANCIENT ALASKANS FROM THE DUNES NEAR THE SWAN POINT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, A SEASONAL HUNTING CAMP OCCUPIED 14,000 YEARS AGO.
Researchers have linked the travels of a 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth with the oldest known human settlements in Alaska, providing clues about the relationship between the iconic species and some of the earliest people to travel across the Bering Land Bridge.
Scientists made those connections by using isotope analysis to study the life of a female mammoth, named Élmayųujey'eh, by the Healy Lake Village Council. A tusk from Elma was discovered at the Swan Point archaeological site in Interior Alaska. Samples from the tusk revealed details about Elma and the roughly 1,000-kilometer journey she took through Alaska and northwestern Canada during her lifetime.
Isotopic data, along with DNA from other mammoths at the site and archaeological evidence, indicates that early Alaskans likely structured their settlements to overlap with areas where mammoths congregated. Those findings, highlighted in the new issue of the journal Science Advances, provide evidence that mammoths and early hunter-gatherers shared habitat in the region. The long-term predictable presence of woolly mammoths would have attracted humans to the area.
“She wandered around the densest region of archaeological sites in Alaska,” said Audrey Rowe, a University of Alaska Fairbanks Ph.D. student and lead author of the paper. “It looks like these early people were establishing hunting camps in areas that were frequented by mammoths.”
The mammoth tusk was excavated and identified in 2009 by Charles Holmes, affiliate research professor of anthropology at UAF, and François Lanoë, research associate in archaeology at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. They found Elma’s tusk and the remains of two related juvenile mammoths, along with evidence of campfires, the use of stone tools, and butchered remains of other game. All of this “indicates a pattern consistent with human hunting of mammoths,” said Ben Potter, an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at UAF.
Researchers at UAF’s Alaska Stable Isotope Facility then analyzed thousands of samples from Elma’s tusk to recreate her life and travels. Isotopes provide chemical markers of an animal’s diet and location. The markers are then recorded in the bones and tissues of animals and remain even after they die.
Mammoth tusks are well-suited to isotopic study because they grew throughout the ancient animals’ lives, with clearly visible layers appearing when split lengthwise. Those growth bands give researchers a way to collect a chronological record of a mammoth’s life by studying isotopes in samples along the tusk.
Much of Elma’s journey overlapped with that of a previously studied male mammoth who lived 3,000 years earlier, demonstrating long-term movement patterns by mammoths over several millennia. In Elma’s case, they also indicated she was a healthy 20-year-old female.
“She was a young adult in the prime of life. Her isotopes showed she was not malnourished and that she died in the same season as the seasonal hunting camp at Swan Point where her tusk was found,” said senior author Matthew Wooller, who is director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and a professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
The era in which Elma lived may have compounded the challenges posed by the relatively recent appearance of humans. The grass- and shrub-dominated steppe landscape that had been common in Interior Alaska was beginning to shift toward more forested terrain.
“Climate change at the end of the ice age fragmented mammoths’ preferred open habitat, potentially decreasing movement and making them more vulnerable to human predation,” Potter said.
Other contributors to the study included the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Ottawa, McMaster University, University of Alaska Museum of the North, University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, Adelphi University, University of Arizona, Hakai Institute and the Healy Lake Village Council.
Matthew Wooller, a professor in the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, sits among mammoth tusks in the collection at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
CREDIT
UAF photo by JR Ancheta
University of Alaska Fairbanks Ph.D. student Audrey Rowe works on a project near the Swan Point archaeological site, where a mammoth tusk she studied was found.
Higher infant mortality rates associated with restrictive abortion laws
Research reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine provides evidence that states with the most restrictive abortion laws saw 16% more infant deaths in 2014–2018 than in states offering access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare
Ann Arbor, January 17, 2024 – Contrary to professed intent, the states where abortion access was most restricted experienced the highest levels of infant mortality in the United States from 2014–2018, according to new research in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. The findings showed that states with the most restrictive laws (11-12 laws) had a 16% increased infant mortality rate (IMR) compared to states with the least number of restrictive abortion laws (1-5 laws).
Lead investigator Lois K. Lee, MD, MPH, Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Departments of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, explained, “As pediatricians and obstetricians, we are concerned about how threats to comprehensive reproductive care affect our patients and their infants. Given the current changing legal landscape in the US regarding reproductive health policy, it is essential that we consider the larger impacts of restricting access to abortion, not just to birthing individuals, but also on infant births.”
In order to examine the association of abortion access not just on birthing individuals, but also on infant births, the research team performed a national ecologic study using county-level birth cohort linked files (linking maternal and infant data) on infant mortality from the National Center for Health Statistics for 2014–2018 (before the SCOTUS decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). While previous studies had primarily examined state-level infant mortality rates, these data are novel because of the more granular analysis of county-level infant mortality.
Investigators categorized 48 states (excluding Hawaii and Alaska) by the number of restrictive abortion laws and factored in driving distance to an abortion facility, key demographic characteristics, and state Medicaid expansion status.
In addition to the impact of restrictive abortion laws, demographic characteristics such as Black ethnicity of the birthing parent, high school education attainment or less, smoking during pregnancy, and inadequate prenatal care were associated with elevated IMR.
The investigators weresurprised to find that increased driving distance to an abortion facility was not statistically associated with an increased county-level IMR, as had been determined by previous studies. This may be because prenatal care access is more of a contributor to infant mortality than abortion facility access.
The investigators stressed that if pregnant women with limited financial means have increasingly limited access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including contraception and pre-conception planning, the long-term health and wellbeing outcomes for these individuals and their children may affect future population health.
Dr. Lee elaborated, “Maternal health directly influences infant and child health—and ultimately population health. From our study findings, it is important to understand that limiting access to abortion as part of comprehensive reproductive care not only affects birthing individuals, but also their infants. Without the implementation of more equitable access to comprehensive reproductive care, there will be continued disparities in access to care and health outcomes, varying especially by geography in the US.”
She added, “It will take years to truly understand the long-term public health impact of the SCOTUS decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and other challenges to comprehensive reproductive health care services. Given the well-established disparities in maternal and infant mortality by race and geography, we are concerned more restrictions on comprehensive reproductive care will exacerbate these disparities, especially among lower-income individuals.”
CREDIT: KIT (TAKEN AS PART OF THE HEIKA PROJECT CHECK EXTREMA)
When combined with data from tree-ring records, stalagmites can open up a unique archive to study natural climate fluctuations across hundreds of years, a research team including geoscientists from Heidelberg University and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have demonstrated. The researchers analysed the isotopic composition of oxygen in a stalagmite formed from calcareous water in a cave in southern Germany. In conjunction with the data acquired from tree rings, they were able to reconstruct short-term climate fluctuations over centuries and correlate them with historically documented environmental events.
Until now, short-term climate fluctuations over hundreds of years could be analysed only by means of tree-ring records by combining independent measurements from a number of studies, explains geoscientist Dr Tobias Kluge of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The size of the tree rings, which varies by a few millimetres, provides information on the dynamics of seasonal precipitation, in turn pointing to climatic conditions in the specific growth period. According to Dr Kluge, summers with heavy rainfall are expected particularly in cold years, whereas very wet winters are expected in warm years.
In contrast to tree rings, stalagmites have only been used in exceptional cases to systematically measure climate data and their annual variations. The decisive factor is the rainwater infiltrating a cave, whose dissolved lime forms the stalagmites. This water comes from local precipitation in the cold and warm seasons, and each is characterised by a special isotopic composition of oxygen. From this, analyses can be derived indicating whether and in which years winter or summer precipitation dominated.
The researchers from Heidelberg and Karlsruhe studied a stalagmite – a dripstone that grows upward from the floor of a cave – from the “Kleine Teufelshöhle” in Franconian Switzerland. With a growth rate of one to four centimetres per millennium, or an annual growth rate of about the width of a single hair, this stalagmite grew much more slowly than comparable ones. The growth zones of the stalagmite are a hundred times thinner than a tree ring, so just a few centimetres can provide data on the climatic conditions over a thousand years. The composition of oxygen isotopes was measured using the ion probe at the Institute of Earth Sciences of Heidelberg University. “The analyses required precise measurements within the annual growth zones of just a few micrometres, which is possible only with this type of large-scale research device,” explains Prof. Dr Mario Trieloff, head of the Heidelberg Ion Probe laboratory.
The researchers report that the climate data acquired from the “Kleine Teufelshöhle” stalagmite revealed regional as well as global environmental events. The unusually cold year of 1816, which went down in history as the Year Without a Summer, stemmed from an eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in April of 1815, possibly exacerbated by a hitherto unknown volcanic eruption six years before. The data from the stalagmite measurements show that summers were cold and winters very wet during this time, which combined with year-round flooding led to poor harvests and famine.
The information stored in the stalagmite also provides evidence on long-term climate fluctuations such as the Little Ice Age, whose core period began at the end of the 16th century and lasted until the late 17th century. According to the researchers, this period was marked by frequent flooding, which is historically documented in the city of Nuremberg not far from the “Teufelshöhle”. The climate data from the cave was verified using a tree-ring archive from the vicinity. The data point to cold dry winters that delayed the annual ice and snow melts, leading to major short-term floods with catastrophic consequences, explains Dr Kluge from the Institute of Applied Geosciences at the KIT.
The research results were published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Along with the scientists from Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, researchers from Berlin, Hohenheim, and Mannheim participated in the investigations.
