‘AI-assisted genocide’: Israel reportedly used database for Gaza kill lists

Two Israeli media outlets report the Israeli military’s use of an AI-assisted system called Lavender to identify Gaza targets.


AL JAZEERA
Published On 4 Apr 2024

The Israeli military’s reported use of an untested and undisclosed artificial intelligence-powered database to identify targets for its bombing campaign in Gaza has alarmed human rights and technology experts who said it could amount to “war crimes”.

The Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language media outlet Local Call reported recently that the Israeli army was isolating and identifying thousands of Palestinians as potential bombing targets using an AI-assisted targeting system called Lavender.

“That database is responsible for drawing up kill lists of as many as 37,000 targets,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said on Thursday.

The unnamed Israeli intelligence officials who spoke to the media outlets said Lavender had an error rate of about 10 percent. “But that didn’t stop the Israelis from using it to fast-track the identification of often low-level Hamas operatives in Gaza and bombing them,” Challands said.

It is becoming clear the Israeli army is “deploying untested AI systems … to help make decisions about the life and death of civilians”, Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor in Middle East Studies and digital humanities at Hamid Bin Khalifa University, told Al Jazeera.

“Let’s be clear: This is an AI-assisted genocide, and going forward, there needs to be a call for a moratorium on the use of AI in the war,” he added.

The Israeli publications reported that this method led to many of the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza.

On Thursday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said at least 33,037 Palestinians have been killed and 75,668 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7.

AI use ‘violates’ humanitarian law

“The humans that were interacting with the AI database were often just a rubber stamp. They would scrutinise this kill list for perhaps 20 seconds before deciding whether or not to give the go-ahead for an air strike,” Challands reported.

In response to widening criticism, the Israeli military said its analysts must conduct “independent examinations” to verify that the identified targets meet the relevant definitions in accordance with international law and additional restrictions stipulated by its forces.

It refuted the notion that the technology is a “system”, but instead “simply a database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources, in order to produce up-to-date layers of information on the military operatives of terrorist organisations”.

But the fact that there were “five to 10 acceptable civilian deaths” for every single Palestinian fighter who was an intended target shows why there are so many civilian deaths in Gaza, according to Challands.

Professor Toby Walsh, an AI expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said legal scholars will likely argue that the use of AI targeting violates international humanitarian law.

“From a technical perspective, this latest news shows how hard it is to keep a human in the loop, providing meaningful oversight to AI systems that scale warfare terribly and tragically,” he told Al Jazeera.

‘War crimes’

The media outlets cited sources who said the Israeli army made decisions during the first weeks of the current conflict that “for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians”.

The sources also said that if senior Hamas officials were the target then “the army on several occasions authorised the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander”.

Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said if details in the report prove to be true, “many Israeli strikes in Gaza would constitute the war crimes of launching disproportionate attacks”.

“Israel is currently trying to sell these tools to foreign entities, to governments that are looking to what Israel’s doing in Gaza, not with disgust, but actually with admiration,” said Antony Loewenstein, an Australian journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

“We’ll find out in the coming months and years who they may be … my sense is it’s gonna be countries that are currently saying they’re opposed to what Israel is doing.”

Gaza aid efforts dealt major blow as Israel’s deadly attack on relief workers prompts withdrawal of agencies

THE PURPOSE OF THE ATTACK

WCK aid worker killings are a ‘message to the world’

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN
 Thu April 4, 2024

People gather to get food relief in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on March 21. Abaca Press/Sipa/AP
CNN —

The plight of starving Palestinians in Gaza is worsening as Israel’s actions have deterred critical aid agencies and imposed severe constraints on essential humanitarian efforts in the enclave.

As famine looms and cases of death by starvation emerge, at least three aid providers are suspending operations in Gaza after Israeli airstrikes this week killed seven workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK), an aid group that was central to a much-touted new sea corridor from Cyprus. The killings, which included six foreign victims, caused an international uproar against Israel.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing,” WCK founder Jose Andres wrote on X after the workers were killed. “It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”

Israeli attack that killed aid workers consistent with multiple precision strikes, analysis shows

Israel has taken responsibility for the killings, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Tuesday that Israeli forces had “unintentionally struck innocent people in the Gaza Strip.” Imagery of three destroyed vehicles analyzed by CNN however showed that the first vehicle was 2.4 kilometers apart from the third, indicating that they were hit by separate strikes.

WCK and Anera, another aid group, have said they will pause operations in Gaza following the incident. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is reportedly also suspending operations.

All 2.2 million people in Gaza do not have enough food to eat, with half of the population on the brink of starvation and famine projected to arrive in the north “anytime between mid-March and May,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

“It is a huge blow to the humanitarian operation in Gaza,” said Juliette Touma, spokesperson at the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the principal aid agency in Gaza that has itself been sidelined by Israel.

“It’s very sad that they had to do this, although I totally understand why they did this,” she said, referring to WCK’s decision to suspend operations. Gaza, she added, is now “probably the most dangerous place in the world to be an aid worker.”

UNRWA’s convoys have previously been hit by Israeli fire, and the group has been banned by Israel from operating in Gaza’s north. The UN has urged Israeli authorities to reverse the decision.

Palestinians inspect a vehicle with the logo of the World Central Kitchen wrecked by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on April 2. Ismael Abu Dayyah/AP

On Monday, the Cypriot foreign ministry said that a vessel organized by WCK and carrying roughly 332 tons of humanitarian aid left Gaza without offloading most of its cargo following the deadly strike on the WCK workers.

Reuters video showed the vessel arriving in the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Wednesday evening local time.
Enter your email to sign up for CNN's "Meanwhile in the Middle East" Newsletter.
close dialog

WCK on Wednesday said all of its aid ships are now back in Cyprus, adding that “a determination has not yet been made about when to resume our operations in Gaza.”

First aid ship reaches Gaza amid new efforts to step up relief to besieged enclave

The aid group had been rising in relevance in Gaza since Israel mounted allegations that some of UNRWA’s employees were involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas. Israel has long campaigned for UNRWA to be disbanded and has not presented evidence to back its accusations against the agency’s staff. UNRWA, which has a staff of 13,000 in Gaza, said it is investigating the allegations.

WCK has been responsible for 60% of non-governmental aid deliveries, according to data released by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the agency that controls access to Gaza, followed by organizations such as CARE, Save the Children and ICRC. The United Nations continues to be responsible for a large majority of the overall aid that gets in.

UNRWA currently has no plans to suspend its operations in Gaza, Touma told CNN. But as its operations have been curtailed, aid deliveries coordinated by the private sector have increasingly filled the void.

WCK has been delivering nearly 20 trucks of aid through the Rafah crossing with Egypt per day. It has also delivered food from Jordan via land convoys as well as airdrops, including over 230,000 meals to northern Gaza, the area of the enclave that is most at risk of famine.

‘Famine is going to happen’

Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon who worked in Gaza in the early weeks of the war, said the north of the territory will be particularly impacted with WCK’s move.

“The suspension of aid into the north by WCK means that famine, that man-made famine, is going to deepen, is going to take the lives of more children,” Abu-Sittah told CNN’s Eleni Giokos Wednesday, adding that it is also going to “alter the health of thousands of other children who we do not see.”

One of WCK’s most prominent operations was through a sea route established in March to take food from Cyprus to Gaza. That route was presented by Israel as an alternative to land corridors, where it has significantly throttled deliveries.

Famine in northern Gaza is imminent as more than 1 million people face ‘catastrophic’ levels of hunger, new report warns

For comparison, each vessel carries 300 to 400 tons of aid, equivalent to 15 to 20 trucks. Gaza needs around 500 trucks of aid per day, according to agencies.

Israel maintains there is no limit on the amount of food or humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza, but aid agencies accuse it of deliberately restricting deliveries.

WCK sent nearly 435,000 meals to Gaza on the Open Arms vessel via the new maritime route last month and was preparing to send two more vessels loaded with a total of 1.2 million meals destined for the north. With Israel’s cooperation, the route was emerging as a slow but viable option to deliver aid – until the airstrike killed the WCK workers.

WCK’s kitchen and warehouse in the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah were seen shuttered on Wednesday, with banners bearing its logo still hanging on a fence.

CNN has reached out to COGAT and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment on who will be replacing WCK in Gaza.
Viability of the maritime corridor

After the attack, WCK said it was pausing operations immediately in Gaza. Shortly afterwards, American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera), an NGO that delivers aid to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan, also suspended its Gaza operations.

Anera said it has provided an average of 150,000 daily meals in collaboration with WCK along with “millions of medical treatments, and thousands of critical emergency aid items” to Gaza since October 7.

The UAE is also pausing its involvement in a maritime corridor it established with international partners, CNN’s political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid, reported on Axois.

Along with Turkey, the UAE is the biggest donor of aid to Gaza, according to COGAT, providing 25% of all aid from foreign nations. It also operates the largest field hospital in Gaza after Jordan.

Aid is being shipped to Gaza by sea. But a new maritime corridor is unlikely to stop the looming famine

The Gulf state will not resume work on the corridor until Israel assures aid workers in the enclave will be protected, Ravid reported, citing sources close to the UAE government.

CNN has reached out to the UAE government for comment.

With the UN increasingly sidelined by Israel and the WCK attack scaring off others using the maritime route, it’s unclear if the option is still feasible. The fate of the extra aid WCK had planned for Gaza is also uncertain.

Cyprus’ President Nikos Christodoulides has vowed to maintain the maritime corridor delivering aid from his country to Gaza, saying “the tragic events should not discourage us.”

Meanwhile, the main distributor of aid in Gaza, UNRWA, remains restricted from operating in some parts of the enclave, particularly in the north, where the risk of famine is the highest and cases of death by starvation have been reported. At least 176 UNRWA team members have been killed since October 7, including while in the line of duty, the UN agency said.

WCK has previously partnered with UNRWA, Touma, the UN agency’s spokeswoman, said.

At least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza since October, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jamie McGoldrick, said in a statement. “This is nearly three times the death toll recorded in any single conflict in a year,” he said.

HERMAPHRODISM

United Nations Passes Groundbreaking Intersex Rights Resolution


April 4, 2024 

Hilary Power
UN Geneva Director

@Hilary_Power_

Kyle Knight
Interim Deputy Director, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program

knightktm

An Intersex flag raised in front of the Berlin Senate Department for Justice, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination. © 2022 Christophe Gateau/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed its first ever resolution affirming the rights of intersex people, signaling growing international resolve to address rights violations experienced by people born with variations in their sex characteristics.

The resolution was put forward by the governments of Australia, Chile, Finland, and South Africa and is called “Combating discrimination, violence and harmful practices against intersex persons.”

Children born with variations in their sex characteristics – sometimes called intersex traits – are often subjected to “normalizing” surgeries that are irreversible, risky, and medically unnecessary. Approximately 1.7 percent of people have an intersex trait, meaning intersex variations are not uncommon, just often misunderstood.

Since the 1950s, surgeons have conducted medically unnecessary “normalizing” operations on intersex children, such as procedures to reduce the size of the clitoris, which can result in scarring, sterilization, and psychological trauma. Intersex advocacy groups, as well as a range of medical and human rights organizations, have been speaking out for decades. Despite growing consensus that these surgeries should end and global progress on banning [HJH1] medically unnecessary intersex surgeries, some parents continue to face pressure from surgeons to choose these operations for their children who are too young to participate in the decision.

In a 2013 report, the World Health Organization opposed early sterilizing surgeries on intersex children. UN human rights treaty bodies have condemned such operations more than 50 times since 2011 and recommended the prohibition of forced or coerced medical interventions with respect to intersex characteristics, such as nonemergency medical interventions performed without full, free, and informed consent. In late 2023, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a technical note, recommending the prohibition of “forced or coerced medical interventions with respect to intersex characteristics, such as non-emergency medical interventions performed without full, free and informed consent,” drawing on the numerous recommendations from treaty bodies.

The resolution mandates a global report on human rights violations against intersex people and is an opportunity to correct myths and ensure that children born perfectly healthy – just a little different – are free to grow up and make decisions about their own bodies.

Stranded orca calf in Canadian lagoon to be airlifted to safety and reunited with its family

An orca calf whale is stranded in a remote tidal lagoon awaiting reunion with its family.


Thursday 4 April 2024 

The orca has been alone since its mother became trapped and died. 

Pic: Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press 

Rescue efforts are under way to save a killer whale stranded in a remote tidal lagoon off Canada's Vancouver Island.

The young orca calf will be airlifted by rescuers with the hope of reuniting the two-year-old with its extended family, according to Canadian authorities.

Canada's fisheries department and First Nations officials said there are plans in place to put the calf in a sling to be lifted out of the lagoon by helicopter.

The young whale will then be put in a net pen in the ocean while awaiting a reunion with its extended family.

Ehattesaht First Nation council, fisheries department officials and marine technical experts gave the nod for the plan to go ahead.

Rescuers have been unable to coax the young whale out of the area since its pregnant mother died after becoming stranded at low tide in the lagoon last month.

Ehattesaht First Nations chief Simon John spoke of his people having deep cultural and spiritual connections to orcas.

As the rescue efforts commence, it may still take anywhere from a few days to two weeks to retrieve the young orca whale, according to Paul Cottrell, a marine mammal coordinator with the fisheries department.

"And it's not, definitely not, going to be an easy road ahead. But everybody's optimistic and really working together to make this happen," Mr Cottrell told the Vancouver Sun.

He went on to say that "just looking generally at the animal, it's very active. It doesn't look emaciated at all, no peanut head".

Peanut head is a term used by whale researchers to describe the condition of malnourished killer whales, who develop a peanut-shaped profile after losing fat.

NOT TIK TOK BUT TOR

Users actively seek and share child sexual abuse material on Tor – but help is available to those willing to stop

TAMPERE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

SEARCH SESSIONS ON THE TOR NETWORK SEARCH ENGINE REVEAL THE AGE THAT USERS ARE SEEKING, AND THE SEARCHES ARE SPECIFICALLY AIMED AT CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 12 AND 16. ON THE OTHER HAND, 17-YEAR-OLDS AND ADULTS AGED 18–19 ARE NOT SIGNIFICANTLY TARGETED.

 

view more 

CREDIT: JUHA NURMI, TAMPERE UNIVERSITY

The Onion Router (Tor) encrypts the origin of communications to avoid surveillance, ensure uncensored internet browsing and enable the creation and maintenance of anonymous and untraceable onion websites. An international team of researchers has completed the first large-scale study of Tor users to discover what exactly they are looking for and how widely CSAM material is available through the Tor network. The researchers also conducted an intercept survey to directly engage Tor users.

The study, led by Tampere University, looked at 176,683 onion domains operating through the Tor network between 2018 and 2023. The researchers found that in 2023 alone, one in five of these websites shared child sexual abuse material. This material was easily available on 21 of Tor’s 26 most popular search engines, four of which even advertised CSAM on their landing page.

The article titled “Investigating child sexual abuse material availability, searches, and users on the anonymous Tor network for a public health intervention strategy” appeared in Scientific Reports on 3 April 2024.

A Tor search engine tracked the search behaviour

Juha Nurmi, a researcher at Tampere University’s Network and Information Security Group (NISEC), led the research and analysed the content available on onion websites and the search behaviour of Tor users. He was also the lead author of the research paper.

A decade ago, Nurmi developed Ahmia.fi to serve as a search engine for the Tor network.

“I programmed the search engine to automatically filter the search results for child sexual abuse material and redirect users seeking such content to self-help websites. Despite these measures, a significant percentage of users are still trying to find illegal content through my search engine,” he says.

The researchers analysed 110,133,715 search sessions in the Ahmia search engine and found that 11% of these clearly sought CSAM.

“One of the most popular searches is ‘child porn’. A closer review of sexual material searches, in which 479,555 searches revealed the age directly sought, showed that, for example, 40% of searches targeted 11-year-olds or younger and 54% targeted 12–16-year-olds,” says Juha Nurmi.

Researchers provided links to self-help services for CSAM users

One of the starting points of the study was to find ways to address illegal and harmful behaviour on the Tor network. Besides staging an intervention, the study sought to provide assistance to users. In the study, the search engine identified searches for CSAM and directed users to answer a survey. Simply answering the survey takes 15-20 minutes and already constitutes an intervention. Over the course of more than a year, users completed the survey a total of 11,470 times.

The findings reveal that 65% of the survey respondents were first exposed to CSAM when they were children themselves. Half of the respondents first came across CSAM accidentally, indicating that the material is easily available online. 48% of users said they want to stop viewing CSAM. Some of them have sought help through the Tor network, and self-care guides are popular.

“Our research found links between viewing violent material and addiction. Seeking help correlates with the duration and frequency of viewing as well as with an increase in depression, anxiety, thoughts of self-harm, guilt and shame. While some have sought help, 74% of them have not received it,” Nurmi says.

In the study, the direct interference with the search for CSAM caused users to respond to the survey and confirmed the need for assistance. Recent studies in clinical psychiatry show that online therapies, such as the Bridge Project, effectively help people who are sexually attracted to children and view CSAM – as long as abusers are motivated to change.

Researchers from different fields

The study brought together expertise from information security, computer science, criminology, psychology and society. Peer reviewers particularly noted how well the paper filled in research gaps, improved methods and combined the data into a useful whole.

The multidisciplinary study involved researchers from Finland, Spain and the United States. Mikko Aaltonen, professor of criminology at the University of Eastern Finland, conducted the statistical analysis of the survey. David Arroyo of the Spanish National Research Council and Billy Bob Brumley, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States, contributed to the technical research and writing of the article. In addition, Tegan Insoll, Anna K. Ovaska, Valeriia Soloveva and Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen from the Protect Children organisation helped to design the research from the perspective of psychotherapy and legislative development and analysed survey responses.

Juha Nurmi, Arttu Paju, Billy Bob Brumley, Tegan Insoll, Anna K. Ovaska, Valeriia Soloveva, Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen, Mikko Aaltonen, and David Arroyo “Investigating child sexual abuse material availability, searches, and users on the anonymous Tor network for a public health intervention strategy” Scientific Reports, 2024.

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-024-58346-7 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Investigating child sexual abuse material availability, searches, and users on the anonymous Tor network for a public health intervention strategy

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Apr-2024

 

Study finds gunshots in American cities twice as likely at night, potentially disrupting sleep for those in earshot

Mass General Brigham researchers studied six cities, finding that nighttime gunshots were particularly prevalent in low-income neighborhoods

MASS GENERAL BRIGHAM

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS Researchers from Mass General Brigham analyzed timing and location of gunshots in six of the most populated U.S. cities (Baltimore, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, and Portland, Ore.) from 2015-2021. The team estimates that annually, approximately 12.5 million person-nights—the number of nights of gunshots multiplied by the number of people in earshot—are impacted by nighttime gunshots, and that those were more common in low-income areas in each city. The noise of nighttime gunshots may have underrecognized and underappreciated effects on sleep and health for people living in surrounding communities.

 

The crack of a gunshot ringing out in the night is all too familiar to many Americans. A new study captures just how common—and potentially disruptive—nighttime gunshots can be in American cities. In a cross-institutional collaboration from Mass General Brigham’s founding members, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, researchers examined the number of nights and people potentially affected by the sound of nighttime versus daytime gunshots and the relationship between the sound of nighttime gunshots and median household income in the United States. The team found gunshots are twice as likely to occur at night, and that low-income communities are disproportionately affected by them. Their results are published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“A nighttime gunshot likely disrupts the sleep of nearby community residents due to the sheer sound of the shot, which is then followed by a cacophony of sirens from police vehicles and ambulances,” said corresponding author Rebecca Robbins, MMSc, PhD, MS, of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “The findings from our study shed light on this potentially significant and underexplored social determinant of sleep and population health.”

Minimizing disruptions during the sleep cycle is critical to achieving quality sleep and improving overall health. Various factors, including jetlag from traveling or the onset of hunger during the late hours of the night, can interrupt sleep and lead to metabolic, cardiovascular, and mental health diseases and conditions. Other disruptions, such as nighttime gunshots, warrant further exploration.

Gun violence is a public health threat and the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. The number of gun deaths due to gun violence in America is staggering. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 48,000 gun-related deaths in the United States in 2022.

Additionally, researchers note that there is potential for an exponentially broader community impact of gunshots beyond those that result in casualties. The current study focuses on the impact of the sounds of guns on surrounding communities; previous studies from the authors have focused on mental and behavioral health consequences from gun violence.

“The traumatic ripple effects from gunshots can extend across families and entire communities. Our work helps to broaden how we think about who is impacted by these events,” said co-last author Chana A. Sacks, MD, MPH, of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The team gathered 72,236 publicly available records on the time and location of gunshots in six major cities in the United States, including Baltimore, Boston, Washington, DC, New York, Philadelphia, and Portland, Ore., from 2015-2021. Using those data, investigators compared the prevalence of gunshots during the day versus the night. In addition, they created maps to visualize nighttime gunshot density across the cities. To identify communities potentially impacted by the sound of the gunshot, they estimated the number of those residing near to the location where gunshots took place. The team also examined the association between the number of nighttime gunshots and median household income.

To measure the potential effect of the sound of nighttime gunshots, the team estimated the number of individuals within earshot and the number of nights of potentially disrupted sleep for all individuals within hearing range. The team defined this metric as “person nights” and estimated that approximately 12.5 million person nights across the six cities could be impacted annually. Among the findings was that as median household income went up, rates of nighttime gunshots went down. This highlighted a higher level of gunshot impact—and resulting potential sleep and other disruptions—for people living in low-income neighborhoods. Additionally, it was discovered that 51,789 (72%) of the gunshots occurred during the nighttime across all six cities, with most of them occurring on Saturday and Sunday nights.

The authors note that they did not directly measure sleep disruptions as part of this study. Only six of the 30 most populated cities in the U.S. had enough publicly available data to be included in the analysis. The research team plans to study sleep disturbances in response to nighttime gunshots as they work to design community-based sleep interventions to support individuals in communities with high incidences.

The authors credit their collaboration across hospitals and across areas of research expertise for the insights described in their paper.

“Working as a multidisciplinary research team across the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, with experts in sleep and gun violence, we have been able to advance our understanding of the impacts that gunshots have on communities and inform this critical national conversation,” said Robbins. “Conversations about guns often focus on the statistics on gun-related deaths, but our work draws attention to some of the less discussed impacts of gun violence.”

Authorship: Mass General Brigham of the study include Peter T. Masiakos, Cornelia Griggs and Elizabeth Klerman. Additional authors include Mahmoud Affouf and Jay M. Iyer.

Disclosures: Robbins reports receiving consulting income from by Nacht GmbH, Savoir Beds Ltd., Oura Health Oy, Castle Hot Springs, Sonesta International Hotels Corporation. Robbins has received funding from Bryte Labs. Klerman reports consulting income from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Foundation, Circadian Therapeutics, National Sleep Foundation, Sleep Research Society Foundation, and Yale University Press; has received travel support from the European Biological Rhythms Society, EPFL Pavilion, the Santa Fe Institute, Sleep Research Society, and the World Sleep Society; and is an unpaid member of the scientific advisory board of Chronsulting. Klerman’s partner is founder, chief scientific officer of Chronsulting.
 
Funding: This study was supported by the MGH Gun Violence Prevention Center. Robbins has received grant support from the NIH/ NHLBI (K01HL150339). Klerman has received grant support from the NIH (R01NS099055, U01NS114001, U54AG062322, R21DA052861, R21DA052861, R01NS114526-02S1, R01-HD107064), DoD (W81XWH201076), and Leducq Foundation for Cardiovascular Research.

Paper cited: Robbins, R et al. “Estimating Community Disruption from Nighttime Gunshots in 6 U.S. Cities, 2015-2021. Journal of General Internal Medicine. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-024-08707-9

###

---

JOURNAL

Journal of General Internal Medicine

DOI

10.1007/s11606-024-08707-9 

ARTICLE TITLE

Robbins, R et al. “Estimating Community Disruption from Nighttime Gunshots in 6 U.S. Cities, 2015-2021. Journal of General Internal Medicine.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Apr-2024

 

A real life Eye of Sauron? New project to spot possible chemical threats in the air

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Picture this disaster scenario in the making: At an industrial plant, a pipe cracks, spraying a cloud of tiny droplets into the air. Workers, however, are in luck. Within minutes, a laser-based device the size of a small suitcase spots the cloud and tells safety crews what’s in it so they know how to respond.

That’s the vision behind a new project from a team of engineers and chemists at the University of Colorado Boulder, California Institute of Technology, University of California Santa Barbara, and three companies. It’s funded by a new contract from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), part of the federal Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The effort borrows its name, the Standoff Aerosol measUrement Remote Optical Network (SAURON), from the villain in “The Lord of the Rings” book series—a presence who often takes the form of a flaming eye and whose “gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth.”

“That’s the idea here: an all-seeing eye that can detect hazardous aerosols against a very crowded background of other substances,” said Greg Rieker, professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and principal investigator for the project.

SAURON, he explained, will zoom in on aerosols, the term for a wide range of tiny particles that float in the air. Some aerosols can contain chemicals that pose serious risks to humans, such as Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in explosives, also forms aerosols. So can fentanyl, an opioid drug that can be deadly in even small quantities.

To detect such hazards, the team is turning to a Nobel Prize-winning technology called a frequency comb laser. The researchers hope their devices could, in the not-so-distant future, help protect people from a range of airborne threats, including industrial accidents and even potential chemical attacks in crowded cities.

“The lasers will run off of batteries, so you can deploy them at an airport, on city blocks or in industrial sites where they use hazardous materials,” said Scott Diddams, professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering. “Right off the bat, people would know if there was a failure or a leak.”

CU Boulder co-principal investigators on the project include Diddams, Daven Henze, professor of mechanical engineering, and Jose Jimenez, professor of chemistry and fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Seeing the invisible

Spotting dangerous aerosols is, in many ways, the ultimate “needle in a haystack” task. The air people breathe is a lot more complicated than it looks.

“At any time in the atmosphere, methane and carbon dioxide are present, and other examples of what we call volatile organic compounds,” Rieker said. “There is a lot of clutter.”

The team believes that frequency comb lasers may be able to help sort through that clutter. 

Diddams was among the members of a team at JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (JILA), that pioneered these tools. The group, led by Nobel Laureate Jan Hall, used frequency comb lasers for research in quantum metrology and optical clocks. Unlike traditional lasers, frequency comb lasers shoot out a beam of light with millions of colors, all at the same time.

If you beam such light through an environment, these lasers can act like a fingerprint scanner for aerosols—teasing out the signals from even minute concentrations of particles or gases in the air. The project team includes LongPath Technologies, which uses these tools to search for methane leaks at oil and gas facilities. Rieker co-founded LongPath in 2017.

Over three-and-a-half years, SAURON researchers will work to make their lasers even more sensitive and much more compact. To do that, the group is incorporating new “integrated photonics” technology pioneered by Kerry Vahala at Caltech, John Bowers at UC Santa Barbara and the companies Nexus Photonics and hQphotonics. The team will design its devices on small chips that transmit information not using electronic signals but light beams. The work is part of the Quantum Engineering Initiative at CU boulder.

“They are like traditional silicon computer chips, but with light being generated, moving around and interacting in ways that make it useful for sensing,” Diddams said.

SAURON is an example of researchers at CU Boulder taking advances in fundamental science and transforming them into tangible technologies that could one day safeguard people. 

“We’re taking technologies that have been developed for quantum science and are translating them for a wide range of applications,” Rieker said.

 

SUNY ESF leads groundbreaking research in groundwater’s role in ecosystem sustainability

SUNY COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND FORESTRY

 

IMAGE: 

DR. MELISSA ROHDE

view more 

CREDIT: SUNY COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND FORESTRY

Syracuse, N.Y. – April 2, 2024 – Until now, groundwater – a critical water resource around the globe, especially in dry regions – has been largely unstudied in its importance and role in sustaining ecosystems. A new groundbreaking research effort led by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in partnership with University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), Cardiff University, and Desert Research Institute (DRI) examines the relationship between groundwater and ecosystems across California. Their innovative findings are featured in Nature Water.

Led by Dr. Melissa Rohde, who completed the study as part of her doctoral research in Dr. John Stella’s Riparian Echohydrology Lab at ESF, the team used satellite imagery and groundwater monitoring data to identify thresholds of groundwater depth and seasonal change that can support sensitive ecosystems throughout California under the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act framework. 

“A vast majority of our planet’s freshwater is groundwater, but we don’t acknowledge or manage it sustainably, resulting in serious consequences for humans and natural ecosystems,” said Dr. Rohde, now Principal at Rohde Environmental Consulting, LLC. “Groundwater is critical for many ecosystems, but their water requirements are rarely accounted for by water agencies and conservationists. To reconcile that, our study provides a simple and practical approach to detect ecological thresholds and targets that can be used by practitioners to allocate and manage water resources.”

Utilizing 38 years of Landsat satellite images (1985-2022) and statewide groundwater well data, the study examined impacts on key plant communities. A major challenge was to develop standardized metrics that can be applied across diverse ecosystems with site-specific water conditions. The team applied a common data transformation method in a new way to identify thresholds of vegetation greenness and groundwater depth over time that can determine groundwater needs for ecosystems, helping to inform decisions about water use and planning. 

“Groundwater-dependent ecosystems such as wetlands, floodplains, and riparian zones have a very outsized importance on biodiversity. Upwards of 80 to 90 percent of species in a general region may be dependent on these ecosystems in some form or another,” said Dr. Stella, study co-author and Vice President for Research at ESF. “We applied a simple statistical approach to very large data sets to identify warning signs and conservation targets for a great diversity of ecosystem types.”  

The vast geographic scope and long timeline covered by the study, allowed the team to evaluate how large-scale systems respond to major climate shocks such as the historical California drought that occurred from 2012—2016, as well as where individual groundwater-dependent ecosystems can serve as resilient drought refugia. 

“This type of study, covering the entire state of California over close to 40 years, has really only become possible in the past few years and shows the promise for similar studies over a much larger geographic area using the approach pioneered by Dr. Rohde,” remarked co-author, Dr. Dar Roberts from UCSB.

It was discovered that during drought events, groundwater-dependent vegetation that maintains a connection to groundwater can serve as critical drought refugia for associated species, such as riparian birds or fish. However, when groundwater levels deepen beyond plants’ rooting zones during drought, these safe havens can be lost. 

"A key takeaway from this study is that we can use what we know about how deep the roots of different types of plants tend to be to approximate what groundwater levels are needed to maintain ecosystem health,” said co-author Dr. Christine Albano from DRI. “We found that vegetation was healthier where groundwater levels were within about 1 meter of maximum root depth, as compared to where groundwater was deeper." 

The research team is hopeful that their approach and findings can help inform water management decisions in California and beyond.

"This study arms groundwater managers with an intuitive, site-specific measure that can provide a data-driven foundation to guide water allocation and ecosystem restoration efforts," said co-author and professor Kelly Caylor from UCSB.

“Globally, there are increasing efforts to manage groundwater resources for multiple purposes, not only to support drinking water needs or high-value agriculture. Our work provides a sound basis on which to develop clear guidelines for how to manage groundwater to support a wide range of needs within drainage basins in California and beyond,” said co-author Prof. Michael Singer from Cardiff University. 

About SUNY ESF

The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) is dedicated to the study of the environment, developing renewable technologies, and building a sustainable and resilient future through design, policy, and management of the environment and natural resources. Members of the College community share a passion for protecting the health of the planet and a deep commitment to the rigorous application of science to improve the way humans interact with the world. The College offers academic programs ranging from the associate of applied science to the Doctor of Philosophy. ESF students live, study and do research on the main campus in Syracuse, N.Y., and on 25,000 acres of field stations in a variety of ecosystems across the state.

JOURNAL

Nature Water

DOI

10.1038/s44221-024-00221-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Establishing ecological thresholds and targets for groundwater management

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Apr-2024

 

Are universities connected to local sustainability? A new study suggests yes…and no.

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

A new study finds that universities scoring strongly on measures of sustainability are associated with innovation and economic growth in their surrounding communities. However, the study did not find similar connections between university sustainability performance and environmental sustainability in their home communities.

“Society is facing a slew of global challenges, and we wanted to assess the extent to which higher education is contributing to the sort of transformative change needed to address these challenges,” says Christopher Galik, co-author of the study and a professor of public administration at North Carolina State University. “For this study, we started at the local level, exploring whether there was any association between university sustainability performance and sustainability in their surrounding communities.”

To explore the issue, researchers looked at data from 105 metropolitan areas in the United States, which are collectively home to 427 higher education institutions. Specifically, the researchers drew on data from two sources, the U.S. Cities Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Index and the QS Sustainability Universities Ranking.

The SDG Index aggregates dozens of metrics related to a municipality’s sustainability efforts, covering issues such as climate action, energy efficiency and water use. The QS Sustainability Universities Ranking evaluates university efforts related to environmental sustainability as well as efforts aimed at addressing social concerns, such as global partnerships, community engagement and the health and well-being of students, faculty and staff.

The researchers wanted to see whether there was any relationship between universities that scored well on the QS Sustainability Universities Ranking and the municipalities that scored well on the SDGs.

“Sustainability is complicated – it has lots of different components,” says Ha Vien, first author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “And we found that universities are associated with progress on some of those measures, but not others.”

The good news is that there was a very strong correlation between universities that score well on sustainability and communities that score well on innovation, reducing poverty, creating economic opportunities and reducing inequality.

“The bad news is that universities that perform strongly on sustainability measures are also associated with a decline in responsible consumption and production – measured here as increased air pollution and release of toxic chemicals – in their surrounding areas,” Vien says. “There was also little or no correlation between universities that scored well on environmental sustainability and the environmental sustainability scores of their communities.”

“This is an observational study, so it’s impossible to determine causation,” Galik says. “However, the evidence suggests two things. First, universities continue to be strongly associated with innovation and economic development. But second, the idea that universities can contribute to broader sustainable transformations doesn’t seem to be realized yet, at least on a large scale.”

“It took significant time and effort for universities to become the economic drivers that we see today,” Vien says. “Looking into the future, climate change will continue to be a defining challenge for the foreseeable future. Our findings highlight that there are still a lot of opportunities for higher education to make more of a difference in surrounding communities.”

The paper, “Individual and interlinked SDGs: higher education institutions and metro area sustainability performance,” is published in the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.

---

JOURNAL

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

DOI

10.1108/IJSHE-06-2023-0231 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Individual and interlinked SDGs: higher education institutions and metro area sustainability performance