Lack of focus doesn’t equal lack of intelligence — it’s proof of an intricate brain

A study by neuroscientists at Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science illustrates how parts of the brain need to work together to focus on important information while filtering out distractions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BROWN UNIVERSITY

By Gretchen Schrafft, Science Communications Specialist, Robert J. & Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Imagine a busy restaurant: dishes clattering, music playing, people talking loudly over one another. It’s a wonder that anyone in that kind of environment can focus enough to have a conversation. A new study by researchers at Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science provides some of the most detailed insights yet into the brain mechanisms that help people pay attention amid such distraction, as well as what’s happening when they can’t focus.

In an earlier psychology study, the researchers established that people can separately control how much they focus (by enhancing relevant information) and how much they filter (by tuning out distraction). The team’s new research, published in Nature Human Behaviour, unveils the process by which the brain coordinates these two critical functions.

Lead author and neuroscientist Harrison Ritz likened the process to how humans coordinate muscle activity to perform complex physical tasks.

“In the same way that we bring together more than 50 muscles to perform a physical task like using chopsticks, our study found that we can coordinate multiple different forms of attention in order to perform acts of mental dexterity,” said Ritz, who conducted the study while a Ph.D. student at Brown.

The findings provide insight into how people use their powers of attention as well as what makes attention fail, said co-author Amitai Shenhav, an associate professor in Brown’s Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences.

“These findings can help us to understand how we as humans are able to exhibit such tremendous cognitive flexibility — to pay attention to what we want, when we want to,” Shenhav said. “They can also help us better understand limitations on that flexibility, and how limitations might manifest in certain attention-related disorders such as ADHD.”

The focus-and-filter test

To conduct the study, Ritz administered a cognitive task to participants while measuring their brain activity in an fMRI machine. Participants saw a swirling mass of green and purple dots moving left and right, like a swarm of fireflies. The tasks, which varied in difficulty, involved distinguishing between the movement and colors of the dots. For example, participants in one exercise were instructed to select which color was in the majority for the rapidly moving dots when the ratio of purple to green was almost 50/50.

Ritz and Shenhav then analyzed participants’ brain activity in response to the tasks.

Ritz, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, explained how the two brain regions work together during these types of tasks.

“You can think about the intraparietal sulcus as having two knobs on a radio dial: one that adjusts focusing and one that adjusts filtering,” Ritz said. “In our study, the anterior cingulate cortex tracks what’s going on with the dots. When the anterior cingulate cortex recognizes that, for instance, motion is making the task more difficult, it directs the intraparietal sulcus to adjust the filtering knob in order to reduce the sensitivity to motion.

“In the scenario where the purple and green dots are almost at 50/50, it might also direct the intraparietal sulcus to adjust the focusing knob in order to increase the sensitivity to color. Now the relevant brain regions are less sensitive to motion and more sensitive to the appropriate color, so the participant is better able to make the correct selection.”

Ritz’s description highlights the importance of mental coordination over mental capacity, revealing an often-expressed idea to be a misconception.

“When people talk about the limitations of the mind, they often put it in terms of, ‘humans just don’t have the mental capacity’ or ‘humans lack computing power,’” Ritz said. “These findings support a different perspective on why we're not focused all the time. It's not that our brains are too simple, but instead that our brains are really complicated, and it's the coordination that's hard.”

Ongoing research projects are building on these study findings. A partnership with physician-scientists at Brown University and Baylor College of Medicine is investigating focus-and-filter strategies in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Researchers in Shenhav’s lab are looking at the way motivation drives attention; one study co-led by Ritz and Brown Ph.D. student Xiamin Leng examines the impact of financial rewards and penalties on focus-and-filter strategies.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01MH124849, S10OD02518), the National Science Foundation (2046111) and by a postdoctoral fellowship from the C.V. Starr Foundation.

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JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-024-01826-7 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Orthogonal neural encoding of targets and distractors supports multivariate cognitive control

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Mar-2024

 

When plants flower: Scientists ID genes, mechanism in sorghum

Study points to genetic strategies for altering crop-plant flowering time to increase production of fuel-generating biomass

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: 

BROOKHAVEN LAB BIOLOGIST MENG XIE AND POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW DIMIRU TADESSE WITH SORGHUM PLANTS LIKE THOSE USED IN THIS STUDY. NOTE THAT THESE PLANTS ARE FLOWERING, UNLIKE THOSE THE SCIENTISTS ENGINEERED TO DELAY FLOWERING INDEFINITELY TO MAXIMIZE THEIR ACCUMULATION OF BIOMASS.

view more 

CREDIT: KEVIN COUGHLIN/BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY

UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Oklahoma State University have identified key genes and the mechanism by which they control flowering in sorghum, an important bioenergy crop. The findings, just published in the journal New Phytologist, suggest strategies to delay sorghum flowering to maximize plant growth and the amount of biomass available for generating biofuels and bioproducts.

“Our studies elucidate the gene regulatory network controlling sorghum flowering and provide new insights into how these genes could be leveraged to improve sorghum for achieving bioenergy goals,” said Brookhaven Lab biologist Meng Xie, one of the leaders of the research.

Sorghum is particularly well suited for sustainable agriculture because it can grow on marginal lands in semiarid regions and can tolerate relatively high temperatures. Like many plants, its growth and flowering (reproductive) cycles are regulated by the duration of daily sunlight. And once plants start to flower, they stop growing, which has important implications for the accumulation of biomass.

For example, one natural sorghum variety can reach nearly 20 feet in height, only transitioning to the reproductive flowering phase near the end of the summer growing season when the duration of daylight diminishes. Other “day-neutral” lines flower earlier, after reaching about three feet in height, producing less vegetation but more grain.

“While these earlier flowering varieties might be preferable when growing sorghum as a food source, for bioenergy production, we prefer sorghum to have later flowering. That gives the plants more time to grow and accumulate biomass in the stems and leaves,” Xie said.

Understanding the genes that control these different flowering times — a long-sought goal for plant scientists — might point to ways to optimize sorghum for either desired outcome.

With the bioenergy production goal in mind, the Brookhaven team started by exploring a gene that had been previously identified as associated with later flowering, known as SbGhd7. The association between this gene and later flowering was based on statistical predictions from genome-wide studies, but it had not been validated with experimental data — and its mechanism of action was completely unknown.

“Our study provided direct evidence to support this gene’s function in flowering control and also helped us understand its molecular mechanism,” said Brookhaven Lab postdoctoral fellow Dimiru Tadesse, first author on the study.

Overexpression eliminates flowering

The first evidence came from transgenic sorghum plants engineered at Oklahoma State to overexpress the purported flowering-control gene. Sorghum varieties that overexpressed this gene — that is, made its protein product in abundance — didn’t just delay flowering; they never flowered at all.

“This was a dramatic difference from what happens in rice plants when they overexpress their version of this same gene,” Xie noted. “In rice, overexpression of this gene delays flowering for eight to 20 days — not forever!”

The transformed sorghum plants had more than twice the biomass of control plants.

To find out why, Xie and his team wanted to unravel the details of how this gene operated within cells.  Their goal was to see how the protein that is coded for by the flowering-repressor gene interacted with other genes.

Doing these studies in actual plants would have taken months or years. So, instead, Xie and his colleagues at Brookhaven worked with individual plant cells.

Transforming naked plant cells

They used plant cells whose outer cell walls had been removed. The “naked” plant cells, known as protoplasts, could easily absorb a plasmid, a small bit of DNA added to their growth medium. By putting the gene or genes they wanted to test into that plasmid, the scientists could get the plant cells to make the desired protein.

“The plasmid will get into the cell and incubate overnight and the protein will have a very high level of expression,” Xie said. “It’s just a one-day procedure.”

To track what the protein made by the flowering-repressor gene was doing in the cells, the scientists attached another small protein to it to act as a sort of tag. Then they added antibodies designed to bind to the tag. If the flowering-repressor protein bound to other gene regions in the plant’s genomic DNA, the scientists could pull the whole antibody-protein-DNA complex out of the solution to sequence those gene regions.

“This method, called ‘transient chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing’ or ‘Transient ChIP-seq,’ showed us where the protein that eliminates flowering binds to on sorghum genomic DNA,” Xie said. “It identifies the targets of this regulator protein in the sorghum genome.”

Master regulator

The scientists found that their flowering-repressor protein was binding to a lot of targets. These included other genes involved in turning flowering on.

“There were some genes that were found previously to regulate flowering in other plant species, but their functions in sorghum, many of them, were still not fully studied,” Xie said.

When collaborators at Oklahoma State produced sorghum plants that overexpressed those target genes, they found that the target genes induced early flowering. The repressor protein, the team reasoned, must therefore work by turning off those early flowering genes.

With their precision sequencing technique, the Brookhaven scientists identified the regulator protein’s specific binding site: a very short DNA sequence within the “on” switch, or promoter, for each individual target gene.

“The promoter of each target gene is different, but they all contain this same short sequence,” Xie said. By binding, the repressor protein flips these on switches off.

The idea that the repressor protein could impact multiple targets was somewhat new.

“Others had speculated that the original regulator protein only regulated one flowering activator. But we found it is much more complicated. In addition to regulating one suspected target activator, this protein also regulates several others — some directly and some indirectly,” Xie said. “It’s like a master regulator for turning off flowering.”

The practical application of these findings in making sorghum that doesn’t flower could have additional benefits for engineered sorghum. In addition to having increased biomass for biofuel production, these plants — with no flowers and no pollen — would be unable to share their altered genes with other closely related plants. This built-in gene containment might help potential growers meet the regulatory requirements for implementing such a strategy in real-world agricultural environments.

This work was funded by the DOE Office of Science through Brookhaven Lab’s Quantitative Plant Sciences Initiative and by the U.S. Department of Agriculture via collaborators at Oklahoma State University. The Transient ChIP-seq method for optimizing protoplast transformation, sample preparation, and sequencing was developed with Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding at Brookhaven Lab.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

Follow @BrookhavenLab on social media. Find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

---

JOURNAL

New Phytologist

DOI

10.1111/nph.19591 

ARTICLE TITLE

Sorghum SbGhd7 is a major regulator of floral transition and directly represses genes crucial for flowering activation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Mar-2024

 

Claims of ‘no-go zones for Jews’ in London ‘total and utter fiction’ says Shomrim president

Rabbi Herschel Gluck has accused the Home Office’s independent advisor on extremism Robin Simcox of making claims about 'no-go comes for Jews' that have 'nothing to do with reality'

By LEE HARPIN March 8, 2024, 5:29 pm

Pro-Palestine demo in central London. No one in the image relates to this article.

Suggestions that there are no-go zones in London for Jews are “a total and utter fiction”, Shomrim president Rabbi Herschel Gluck has said.

Responding to claims made by Robin Simcox, the Home Office’s independent advisor on extremism, who suggested that London should “no longer be permitted to be turned into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend” as a result of the regular pro-Palestinian marches, Rabbi Gluck said he was “very disturbed” by the claim.

“It’s like saying the Earth is flat,” he said. “It has nothing to do with reality. To say there are no-go zones in London for Jews is a total and utter fiction.”

Rabbi Herschel Gluck

There was further criticism of Simcox’s intervention, made in a Daily Telegraph op-ed published on its front page from Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner.

She told The Times: “I don’t agree with [Simcox]. It is definitely intimidating for many Jews, although I do not think that that is the intention of most people who are on these marches because they really care about justice for Palestinians as opposed to dislike or hatred of Jews.”

Rabbi Laura called on the government, however, to enforce the law to stop “extreme statements and incitement to racial hatred”.

Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner lit up the Jewish Labour Movement’s Chanukah reception Photo: Ian Vogler

Rabbi Charley Baginsky, head of the Liberal Judaism movement, also said: “Without question there are many within our communities who feel unsafe coming into London during these protests. The timing of them, often coinciding with our Shabbat services starting or ending, is also very problematic.

“This combined with a record number of antisemitic attacks and hate incidents, and the virulent online abuse many are experiencing, means this is a difficult time to be a British Jew. However, it is equally important to recognise that Jewish life in the UK is thriving. Our synagogues are full and congregations vibrant. We appreciate the wider diverse communities we live in the midst of … alongside friends of all faiths and backgrounds.”

Meanwhile Dame Sara Khan, who is carrying out a review of the resilience of the UK’s democracy for Gove, said there had been a “disproportionate” focus on the policing of protests in recent months.

She added: “There is no doubt that some Jews believe parts of central London where protests are being held feels frightening and intimidatory. I recognise other Jews have argued against this view, with some attending the protests themselves. What I don’t think is helpful is using language such as ‘no-go’ areas.”

Rabbi Charley Baginsky lights the Menorah at the JLM party (pic Ian Vogler)

Khan added:”Equally there is a real sense of censorship and fear among some Palestinian communities here in the UK and those who support the rights of Palestinian people, There is a real fear of censorship on all sides which must be resisted.”

JW3 chief executive Raymond Simonson also wrote on social media:”My sense from the MANY conversations I have with Jews every day is that a majority feel beleaguered, bruised and very concerned about antisemitism right now.

“Avoiding areas where marches take place, due to a loud minority of vile antisemites? Yes. Leaving London? Hell no!”

In a statement the Board of Deputies said the marches “are viewed by many in the Jewish community as intimidatory, raising questions about the kind of society we want to foster.

“Surely all parts of London should be open to everyone, with no sense of ‘no-go’ zones based on political affiliations or expressions of support for specific causes. Jewish Londoners are proud of their city and will not be frightened away from the place they call home.”

Earlier Mark Gardner, the Community Security Trust’s chief executive had told Radio 4’s Today programme “I think as a headline it’s deeply troubling, but it also contains a huge element of truth.”

UK

Tory Budget offers no solution to NHS crisis

8 March 2024 Keep Our NHS Public



Keep Our NHS Public Press Officer Samantha Wathen explains why Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s budget is mere smoke and mirrors.

On first glance Wednesday’s Spring Budget may have seemed positive for the NHS. A total of nearly £6bn was allocated, but dig a little deeper and the offering comes with strings attached, barely helping to keep the health service’s head above water.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt (no friend of the NHS based on past behaviour), began by allocating £3.4bn of public money to the NHS to modernise antiquated NHS IT systems. While potentially beneficial for day-to-day working, AI and technological innovations are unlikely to deliver the efficiencies they seek (an annual 2% increase in productivity). The money will be spread over 3 years and wont materialise until 2025/6 making it the next government’s problem and therefore only a hypothetical possibility.

This was optimistically billed by Hunt (the man who, when Health Secretary, promised a paperless NHS by 2018) as something that would create £35bn in efficiency savings through streamlined processes and diagnostics. However, Thea Stein of The Nuffield Trust labelled this target as at best ‘a stretch’ when speaking on Radio 4 the day after the budget, saying that these predicted productivity savings were based on ‘heroic assumptions about digital and AI [and the announcement didn’t feel] nested in a co-produced piece of work’.

Style over substance?

NHS managers need to know that these targets are not simply imposed upon them from above, but rather come from peers who understand the unique challenges that working in the NHS brings.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins proudly announced at the Nuffield Trust Summit on Thursday, that former M&S boss Steve Rowe had been appointed as NHS Productivity Tsar. She said:

‘This much loved British brand, a stalwart of our high streets for decades, realised that change was needed and embraced modernity, pivoting towards the next generation – winning them over and securing its long term future.’

However, this is a well-trodden road and not the first time the Conservatives have drawn upon industry managers to ‘fix the NHS’. In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron employed the former M&S boss in much the same way. He came up with 19 recommendations, none of which were implemented.

In 1983 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attempted to solve problems by bringing in Roy Griffiths, the boss of the supermarket chain Sainsburys, as a key advisor to the government on the NHS. Roy Griffiths spent his tenure overseeing removal of long-term care from the NHS and the introduction of means testing and privatisation of care, resulting in the current lamentable state of social care.

Historically managers from big business have never stayed for long, perhaps the enormous challenges the NHS poses or the salaries offered just aren’t worth the hassle. Those with clinical and/or specialist backgrounds who are better suited to take on these roles and choose to do them are usually side-stepped.

NHS funding on a knife edge

With several English councils at risk of bankruptcy, nothing was offered by the Chancellor for social care, a key driver of the long waits and lack of capacity in the NHS through the inability to discharge medically fit patients back into the community with the required care support. Yes, cutting-edge technology is important, but hospital flow and bed numbers are a more pressing consideration. Time will tell whether this increase in the budget for innovation and AI simply results in more money handed out to Tory donors and friends for little in the way of returns. This government has a poor track record when it comes to managing issues related to confidential health data. Arguably the last thing we need is increased involvement of huge corporations and a lack of transparency. The ink is barely dry on the budget and already there is talk of the NHS app being used to monitor patients without their explicit consent.

Despite an award of £2.5bn to ‘meet NHS pressures’ and ‘reduce waiting times’, none of this was for general practice – the front door to the NHS and arguably the area which most impacts the day to day lives of the public. This money is woefully inadequate given the NHS was already facing a £2bn funding deficit this year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that without a cash injection of at least £2bn, health spending in England will fall next year in real terms. Its director Paul Johnson took to social media platform X to say that the extra £2.5bn for the NHS next year was in fact ‘just enough to stop spending falling compared to this year’ but was not an increase on this year’s spending. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the £2.5bn would ‘scarcely touch the sides … [and] may just about stop things from worsening’ for the service.

In addition, £1bn has already been recently raided from NHS capital budgets to go towards strike related costs. In essence Hunt is giving with one hand, but taking away with the other.

More smoke and mirrors

With waiting lists for elective treatments of nearly 8 million, some doctors still forced to take strike action over low pay, and numbers of targets in all areas vastly weakened, the NHS is now a shadow of its former self.

Conservatives cannot admit that the dire state of the NHS, all too clear to the electorate, is a consequence of their policies since in office. After nearly 14 years of underfunding compared to need, it is not enough to pay for some new computers and walk away. Real, meaningful increased funding and staffing in line with comparable European neighbours is urgently needed, as well as awarding staff a proper pay rise.

Without these interventions it is not possible to envision a return to a well-functioning health service that the population, and the economy both needs and deserves. It’s up to us to fight for it.

Samantha Wathen is the Press and Media Officer for Keep Our NHS Public

GLASGOW

Women's Aid staff given 'no notice' before closure amid bullying allegations

The Easterhouse-based organisation said it was 'deeply saddened' to announce the closure last week.

Unite the Union said staff were given 'no notification or consultation' on the closure.

Matthew Fulton
2 days ago

More on this story
Domestic abuse charity 'deeply saddened' to close amid bullying allegations


Staff at a domestic abuse charity in Glasgow were given “no notice” before the organisation announced its closure last week, according to a union.

Members of Glasgow East Women’s Aid (GEWA) in Easterhouse were told the charity would be closing down permanently amid allegations of bullying.

Unite the Union confirmed in November staff voted to walk out following the suspension of 13 staff.

The dismissals were being claimed as unfair on the basis that it is specifically linked to their trade union activities.

The union had launched legal action on behalf of five members dismissed by the organisation during the ballot period and the staff were reinstated in January.
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Glasgow & West
Domestic abuse charity ‘deeply saddened’ to close amid bullying allegations

Strike action took place at Glasgow East Women’s Aid last year after 13 members of staff were suspended.

Unite claim workers were given “no notification or consultation” and that the union were first made aware the charity had been placed into administration through media sources.

Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary, said: “The mismanagement at Glasgow East Women’s Aid is one of the worst cases we have ever come across.

“Make no mistake we will get to the bottom of this sorry mess and we will fight for all our members to secure justice.”

Linda Wilson, Unite industrial officer, said: “The story of Glasgow East Women’s Aid over the last six months has been one of turmoil and chaos. Unite has protected and defended our members at all times, and we will continue to do so.

“It is our understanding that the organisation being placed in administration was primarily due to public monies either being withheld or withdrawn by Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government. We are urgently seeking clarity on whether this is in fact the case because there has been zero transparency.

“The actions of Glasgow East Women’s Aid regarding the lack of consultation is potentially illegal. Unite is contacting all our members to progress protective award claims being lodged against the organisation.”

A statement from the GEWA board said: “We are deeply saddened by the closure of the centre. The board has taken advice from liquidators and employment specialists around the closure process. It is confident that all legal processes have been followed.

“Staff have been offered support through the Employee Assistance Programme and we continue to be in communication with them and their representatives to help them transition through this difficult time.”

Glasgow City Council said the organisation was not closing down due to the withdrawal of council funding.

A spokeswoman for GCC said: “We are aware of the Glasgow East Women’s Aid (GEWA) intention to close.

“While it is extremely disappointing the Board has had to take this decision, the focus now is to maintain the continued delivery of support and services to women and children affected by domestic abuse.

“Officers, along with representatives from other funders of GEWA, have been working closely with the organisation during this difficult period and will continue to do so.”

A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said: “We are aware of this closure and that Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership is working on refuge contingency plans for those affected and that other Women’s Aid groups locally are continuing to provide support.

“The Scottish Government is working with partners to ensure that the funding we had allocated to GEWA will be redistributed to similar local services and reaches women who need support.”

Critics Skeptical of Kyrgyzstan Plans To Develop Uranium Reserves

By Eurasianet - Mar 06, 2024

• Plans to develop uranium reserves near Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan spark discontent among citizens, who fear environmental damage and government reprisals for speaking out.
• 
  
• President Japarov attempts to reassure communities by promising job creation and economic benefits from the uranium project, despite concerns about safety and environmental impact.
• 
  
• Critics highlight past environmental disasters from Soviet-era uranium mining and express skepticism about the government's ability to safely manage uranium extraction and mitigate contamination risks.

Plans by Kyrgyzstan’s government to develop reserves of uranium and dozens of other rare earth metals around the cherished Lake Issyk-Kul are generating discontent, although few are prepared to express this openly for fear of reprisals.

In an attempt to soothe moods, President Sadyr Japarov traveled last month to the city of Balykchy to meet community representatives from the Issyk-Kul and Naryn regions to offer reassurances about what might happen at the Kyzyl-Ompol field.

“During his speech, the president focused attention on the fact that more than 1,000 jobs will be created there,” said Kubatbek Baiterekov, a resident of the village of Kyzyl-Ompol who attended the encounter. “Japarov gave assurances that this will be a second Kumtor [gold mine], and that all profits from the uranium mine will go directly to the state budget.”

Officials in Japarov’s camp have said that development of the mine will be carried out by a state-run company, and that this should guarantee only safe methods are used. They have moreover insisted that there is little uranium at Kyzyl-Ompol. The mine will focus on extracting titanomagnetite, a different mineral, they say.

Titanomagnetite is an ore that can be used to make steel and extract titanium and has applications that range from aircraft construction to making medical devices.

Concerns around the prospect of the development of Kyzyl-Ompol have been bubbling away for at least five years. In 2019, one year before President Sooronbai Jeenbekov was toppled by Japarov, local activists mounted rallies in protest at exploration work being done by Russian company UrAsia Kyrgyzstan. In the face of that outcry, the authorities revoked the company’s license.

But as one participant of the February 19 meeting with Japarov told Eurasianet, such disagreement is now robustly discouraged. Indeed, dissent across the board in Kyrgyzstan is being steadily suffocated out of existence through repressive measures, rights activists say.

At one stage of the Balykchy consultations, Japarov asked those present to vote with a show of hands to gauge support for the idea of developing the Kyzyl-Ompol field. The result was illustrated in a photo distributed by the presidential press service: everybody raised their hands.

“What could we do?” said one meeting attendee on condition of anonymity. “All of us state employees and [local government] representatives were driven from nearby villages and taken to Balykchy. Five years ago, we held a rally, and then the authorities listened to us. Now we are afraid to voice opposition, given that many critics of the government are in prison, including some members of parliament.”

While there may have been limited pushback in Balykchy, some of those present did insist on clarity. One person asked about a 2019 moratorium on geological studies aimed at finding, exploring, and developing uranium and thorium deposits. 

“Japarov quickly and curtly replied that the moratorium would be lifted,” Baiterekov said. “The other officials who spoke presented data on the volume of minerals that would be mined: fully [14.8] million tons. What’s interesting is that titanomagnetite is mostly what is being extracted – 95 percent. Uranium is present only in small quantities – 0.17 percent.”

Mining engineer Omurbek Kasymbekov told Eurasianet that a lot of misleading information has been circulating about Kyzyl-Ompol, and that this accounts for the anxiety now. To attract foreign capital, the government has in the past – specifically, in Jeenbekov’s time – offered outside developers licenses indicating that the deposits were rich in uranium, Kasymbekov said. 

And it seems the boast may not have been entirely hollow. 

“In fact, it is considered a titanomagnetite deposit, but in addition to that, there is … phosphorus, zirconium, thorium and uranium. There are not large amounts. But in quantitative terms, there are at least 25 tons of preliminary uranium deposits at Kyzyl-Ompol,” Kasymbekov said.

Officials are bandying around grand boasts about how much wealth they believe Kyzyl-Ompol can generate for Kyrgyzstan. Akylbek Japarov, the head of the Cabinet (no relation to the president), said in January that the field holds deposits worth $300 billion.

Some in the now-meek parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh, have nevertheless gone on record to stress that they see environmental safety as more important than economic profit.

Elvira Surabaldiyeva said in parliament last month that she has always been against the idea of developing uranium deposits. 

“I was surprised that residents who opposed uranium mining in 2019 have suddenly changed their mind and now agree with the position of the current government,” she said.

She couched those remarks in a call for a technical safety evaluation, which she said was imperative to avoid a repeat of an incident like the one that occurred in 1998, where trucks on the road to the Kumtor gold mine spilled around a ton of cyanide into the Barskoon River, which runs into Lake Issyk-Kul.

Government scientists have previously offered negative assessments regarding the wisdom of developing Kyzyl-Ompol. They have cited the precedent of Soviet-era uranium mining in the south of the country, where it is believed that tailings are still seeping into the environment and adversely affecting the health of the local population.

Kyzyl-Ompol is located at an altitude above Issyk-Kul, which means any sediment, dust, and dirt produced there is liable to make its way to the lake. And it does not help that President Japarov has sent contradictory messages on this point. 

“The operation of the mine will be safe,” said Bektur Osmonaliyev, a Balykchy resident, relating the president’s pledges. “At the same time, he believes that the land cannot be cultivated there, and the water cannot be drunk either due to the fact that underground wells pass through the uranium.”

Social media is usually where one might find traces of grumbling, but even that relatively lively space has been muted in its positions on Kyzyl-Ompol.

Elnura Tashmatova, a resident of Karakol, a town to the east of Lake Issyk-Kul, said she received warnings from the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, the successor agency to the KGB, after posting messages against uranium mining. Tashmatova says she complied with demands to delete posts out of fear of prosecution on trumped-up charges.  

Her case is not isolated. Activists and residents around Issyk-Kul have told journalists that they have been threatened with arrest if they should try to whip up opposition to the Kyzyl-Ompol project.

As ecologist Kalia Moldogaziyeva told Eurasianet, even if the field contains just small amounts of uranium, that is no assurance that contamination is not possible.

“Even if they mine titanomagnetite, the uranium there is in a fairly high concentration and during mining and transportation it will spread with dust and affect the environment and the population,” she said. 

Moldogaziyeva said that if the government is serious about its pledges to safely remove uranium from the field, it is going to have its work cut out.

“If uranium is spread across 43,000 hectares … then the amount of work to completely clear the territory of uranium is going to be enormous,” she said.

By Eurasianet.org

Texas Wildfires Underscore Increasing Risk for Utilities

By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles - Mar 07, 2024

• Warren Buffett’s fretted, in his annual report, that wildfires threatened his electric utility investments.
• 
  
• the Smokehouse fire in the Texas Panhandle has burned over a million acres of brush and timber in the heart of cattle country.
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• Business and financial risks in the utility industry seem to be rising dramatically due to climate change.
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Warren Buffett fretted, in his annual report, that wildfires threatened his electric utility investments. He specifically cited the stock price carnage experienced by two US utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric and Hawaiian Electric, as the basis for his concern. Barely a week later,  the Smokehouse fire in the Texas Panhandle has burned over a million acres of brush and timber in the heart of cattle country. This time it is Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy and its utility subsidiary, Southwestern Public Service that is at risk. The company filed an 8-k with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on February 29 stating that a lawsuit had been filed in Texas blaming the utility's inadequate pole maintenance practices as being the cause of the wildfires. Shares of Xcel Energy have declined about 20% in response thus far.  The legal firm representing the aggrieved homeowner outside of Amarillo previously secured the $13.5 billion wildfire-related settlement against PG&E. The financial stakes here are not small.

Will Xcel ultimately be driven into bankruptcy by overwhelming legal claims resulting from wildfires? Frankly, at this point we have no idea. But we can make a few observations about changing business and financial risks in the utility industry which seem to be rising dramatically due to climate change. First, there are still three main pieces of our electric grid—generation, transmission, and distribution. For investor-owned utilities, the generation business has been partially deregulated and faces increasing competition from renewables. But the regulated transmission and distribution businesses, still monopolies, have been regarded as relatively low risk, relatively decent return business. A kind of financial rock. And this spurred a wave of corporate mergers producing the likes of Xcel Energy with regional headquarters in Minneapolis, Denver, and Amarillo. But if proximity to forests and brush is the new source of bankruptcy risk, then every single non urban utility in the US is at some elevated risk. Fairly soon the rating agencies may have to weigh in on this as well. These wildfire-lawsuit sagas are the new normal for the industry that the Xcel exposure in the Texas Panhandle merely underscores. The only question is how many wildfires and bankruptcy-threatening lawsuits have to happen before the industry revalues, presumably lower.

Mr Buffett probably saw it clearly and that’s why he wrote somewhat obliquely about the looming threat of government ownership of the utility, which is the norm in his home state of Nebraska. Perhaps he sees this as the inevitable future for investor-owned utilities. We believe he was writing unhappily about his own electric utilities as an insurance problem that even he couldn’t solve and was now stuck with. What we believe he was suggesting is that the wildfire-litigation-bankruptcy route inevitably leads to public ownership once there is no privately held corporation left to bankrupt. The best we can say is it’s a very unstable business model.  And this heightened risk exposure now has to be viewed as nationwide.

All we can conclude at this point, regardless of whether or not Xcel Energy’s shares continue to succumb to potential wildfire liabilities, is that the risk profile of the regulated utility T&D businesses has increased dramatically. In other businesses, this typically means higher financial returns to offset higher business risks. But it might be different this time for utilities. Why? Because, as Mr. Buffett pointed out in his recent shareholder letter, extreme situations in the past have led to alternatives like public ownership.

By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles for Oilprice.com