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)
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
'Go home': Overtourism sparks backlash in Spain
Valentin BONTEMPS Tue, April 16, 2024 Members of the 'Canaria se agota' ('Canaria is exhausted') movement protest against the constuction of a hotel near La Tejita playa (DESIREE MARTIN)
Anti-tourism movements are multiplying in Spain, the world's second most visited country, prompting authorities to try and reconcile the interests of locals and the lucrative sector.
Rallying under the slogan "The Canaries have a limit", a collective of groups on the archipelago off northwest Africa are planning a slew of protests on Saturday.
The Canaries are known for volcanic landscapes and year-round sunshine and attracts millions of visitors from all over the world.
Groups there want authorities to halt work on two new hotels on Tenerife, the largest and most developed of the archipelago's seven islands.
They are also demanding that locals be given a greater say in the face of what they consider uncontrolled development which is harming the environment.
Several members of the collective "Canaries Sold Out" also began an "indefinite" hunger strike last week to put pressure of the authorities.
"Our islands are a treasure that must be defended," the collective said.
The Canaries received 16 million visitors last year, more than seven times its population of around 2.2 million people.
This is an unsustainable level given the archipelago's limited resources, Victor Martin, a spokesman for the collective told a recent press briefing, calling it a "suicidal growth model".
- 'Social revulsion' -
Similar anti-tourism movements have sprung up elsewhere in Spain and are active on social media.
In the southern port of Malaga on the Costa del Sol, a centre of Spain's decades-old "soy y playa" or "sun and beach" tourism model, stickers with unfriendly slogans such as "This used to be my home" and "Go home" have appeared on the walls and doors of tourist accommodations.
In Barcelona and the Balearic Islands, activists have put up fake signs at the entrances to some popular beaches warning in English of the risk of "falling rocks" or "dangerous jellyfish".
Locals complain a rise in accommodation listings on short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have worsened a housing shortage and caused rents to soar, especially in town centres.
The influx of tourists also adds to noise and environmental pollution and taxes resources such as water, they add.
In the northeastern region of Catalonia, which declared a drought emergency in February, anger is growing over the pressure exerted on depleted water reserves by hotels on the Costa Brava.
"Our concern is to continue to grow tourism in Spain so that it is sustainable and does not generate social revulsion," the vice president of tourism association Exceltur, Jose Luis Zoreda, told a news conference on Tuesday when asked about the protest movements.
The group said it expects Spain's tourism sector will post record revenues of 202.65 billion euros ($215.4 billion) this year.
- Loudspeaker ban -
Before the Covid-19 pandemic brought the global travel industry to its knees in 2020, protest movements against overtourism had already emerged in Spain, especially in Barcelona.
Now that pandemic travel restrictions have been lifted, tourism is back with a vengeance — Spain welcomed a record 85.1 million foreign visitors last year.
In response, several cities have taken measures to try to limit overcrowding.
The northern seaside city of San Sebastian last month limited the size of tourist groups in the centre to 25 people and banned the use of loudspeakers during guided tours.
The southern city of Seville is mulling charging non-residents a fee to enter its landmark Plaza de Espana while Barcelona had removed a bus route popular with tourists from Google Maps to try to make more room for locals.
Housing Minister Isabel Rodriguez said over the weekend that "action needs to be taken to limit the number of tourist flats" but stressed the government is "aware of the importance of the tourist sector", which accounts for 12.8 percent of Spain's economic activity.
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'Miracle' weight-loss drugs could have reduced health disparities. Instead they got worse
Karen Kaplan Mon, April 15, 2024 Wegovy is part of a new generation of weight-loss medications that made some doctors optimistic about reversing longstanding racial and ethnic disparities in obesity. So far, the pricey drugs seem to have made those disparities worse.
(Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / Associated Press)
For the record: 9:10 p.m. April 15, 2024: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Dr. Serena Jingchuan Guo of the University of Florida as Jigchuan.
Americans are most familiar with their brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound. They are the medications that have revolutionized weight loss and raised the possibility of reversing the country's obesity crisis.
Obesity — like so many diseases — disproportionately affects people in racial and ethnic groups that have been marginalized by the U.S. healthcare system. A class of drugs that succeeds where so many others have failed would seem to be a powerful tool for closing the gap.
Instead, doctors who treat obesity, and the serious health risks that come with it, fear the medications are making this health disparity worse.
“These patients have a higher burden of disease, and they’re less likely to get the medicine that can save their lives,” said Dr. Lauren Eberly, a cardiologist and health services researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “I feel like if a group of patients has a disproportionate burden, they should have increased access to these medicines."
Why don't they? Experts say there are a multitude of reasons, but the primary one is cost. The injectable drug Ozempic sparked a revolution in obesity care. (David J. Phillip/Associated Press)
Ozempic, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help people with Type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar and reduce their risk of serious cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes, has a list price of $968.52 for a 28-day supply. Wegovy, a higher dose of the same medicine that's FDA-approved for weight loss in people with obesity or who are overweight and have a weight-related condition such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, goes for $1,349.02 every four weeks.
Mounjaro is a similar drug approved by the FDA to improve blood sugar levels in Type 2 diabetes patients, and it comes with a list price of $1,069.08 for 28 days of medicine. Zepbound, a version of the same drug approved for weight loss, has a slightly lower price tag of $1,059.87 per 28 days. For now, at least, all the new drugs are meant to be taken indefinitely.
Few health insurance programs cover the medications when prescribed to help people reach and maintain a healthy weight. Federal law requires that weight loss drugs be excluded from basic coverage in Medicare Part D plans, and as of early 2023, only 10 states included an antiobesity medication in the formularies for their Medicaid programs.
“If everybody had equal access, then this would be a way to help,” said Dr. Rocio Pereira, chief of endocrinology at Denver Health. “But without equal access — which is what we have now — it’s likely this is going to increase the disparity we see.”
U.S. obesity rates have been rising for decades, and they're consistently higher for Black and Latino Americans. Among adults 20 and older, 49.9% of Black Americans and 45.6% of Hispanic Americans have a body mass index of 30 or greater, compared with 41.1% of white American adults and 16.1% of Asian American adults, according to age-adjusted data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity rates are also associated with income. In 2022, the age-adjusted rate was 38.4% for adults with household incomes between $15,000 and $24,999, compared with 34.1% for those with household incomes of $75,000 or more.
The two are related, said Pereira, who studies health disparities in diseases related to obesity. Black and Latino Americans are more likely to live in lower-income neighborhoods, where fast food is usually cheaper and more convenient than grocery stores.
"If you look at a map of the U.S. and plot out the neighborhoods where there's no grocery store within a mile and there's a high percentage of people who have no car, those are the areas where there's the highest rates of obesity," she said.
There's also the time factor, she said: "Can you afford to cook your own meals, or do you have to work two jobs?"
An unusual experiment by the Department of Housing and Urban Development demonstrated the degree to which physical surroundings can influence obesity risk, Pereira said. In the 1990s, hundreds of mothers who were living in public housing were offered housing vouchers they could use only in wealthier neighborhoods. Ten to 15 years later, the women randomly assigned to receive the windfall had significantly lower rates of severe obesity (14.4%) than women in a control group who weren't offered vouchers (17.7%). They were also less likely to have a body mass index of 35 or higher (31.1% vs. 35.5%). Two women talk in New York. (Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)
Some people with obesity are able to lose weight by changing their diets and burning more calories through exercise. But that doesn't work for people who have developed resistance to leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite.
"If you try to lose weight with diet and exercise, your body is going to fight you," said Dr. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. "Your leptin levels go down, and when leptin goes down, a signal goes to the brain that you don’t have enough fat to survive." That prompts the release of another hormone, ghrelin, that triggers feelings of hunger.
Leptin resistance also makes exercise less worthwhile.
"Your body fights you by decreasing your total energy expenditure," Apovian said. "When your muscles work, they work more efficiently. If you want to lose 10 pounds, you’re going to get really, really hungry. And you can’t fight that. Your body thinks it’s starving to death."
The "breakthrough" drugs counteract this by impersonating a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, that's involved in appetite regulation. Inside cells, the drugs bind with the same receptors as GLP-1, reducing blood sugar and slowing digestion. They also last longer than their natural counterparts. Oprah Winfrey credits the new generation of medications for helping her keep her weight under control. (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)
The first so-called GLP-1 receptor agonist was approved in 2005 to treat diabetes, and early versions had to be injected once or twice a day. Ozempic improved on this by requiring an injection only once a week. After clinical trials showed that the drug helped people with obesity achieve substantial, sustainable weight loss, the FDA approved Wegovy as a weight management drug in 2021.
Linda Morales credits Ozempic and Mounjaro for helping her lose 100 pounds and drop from a size 22 to a size 14. The 25-year-old instructional aide at Lankershim Elementary School in North Hollywood said she started to become overweight in middle school and carried 293 pounds on her 5-foot, 5-inch frame when she was referred to the Center for Weight Management and Metabolic Health at Cedars-Sinai two years ago.
She is no longer breathless when she climbs stairs, has an easier time when she goes bowling and fits comfortably into the seat on the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios. Thanks to the medications, she is no longer on a path toward Type 2 diabetes.
Her job with the Los Angeles Unified School District comes with health insurance that covers the pricey drugs and charges her a copay of $30 a month for her Mounjaro prescription. She said she could swing a monthly payment of up to $50, but beyond that she'd have to stop taking the drug and hope the lifestyle changes she'd made would be enough to sustain the weight loss she's achieved so far.
“It would definitely get hard for me, for sure,” Morales said.
In one study, Eberly and her colleagues examined insurance claims for nearly 40,000 people who received a prescription for GLP-1 copycats. Patients who had to pay at least $50 a month to fill their prescriptions were 53% less likely to get most of their refills over the course of a year compared to patients whose copayments were less than $10. Even patients whose out-of-pocket costs were between $10 and $50 were 38% less likely to buy the medicine regularly for a full year, the team found.
In another study of insured patients with Type 2 diabetes, those who were Black were 19% less likely to be treated with these drugs than those who were white, while Latino patients were 9% less likely to get them, Eberly and her colleagues reported.
In some parts of the country, Black patients with diabetes are only half as likely as white patients to get GLP-1 drugs, according to research by Dr. Serena Jingchuan Guo at the University of Florida, who studies health disparities in pharmaceutical access. The disparity was greatest in places with the highest overall usage of the medications, including New York, Silicon Valley and south Florida.
“In those places, the drug is actually widening the gap,” she said.
“We get excited every time a new, effective treatment becomes available," Gasoyan said. "But we should be equally concerned that this new and effective treatment reduces disparities between the haves and have-nots.”
Mike Wall Mon, April 15, 2024 A pallet of silvery batteries is seen in space against the blue ocean of Earth, with a white robotic arm to its right.
The mysterious object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has confirmed.
That home, in the seaside city of Naples, belongs to Alejandro Otero. Shortly after the March 8 incident, Otero said he thought the offending object was part of a cargo pallet packed with 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms) of aging batteries jettisoned from the ISS in March 2021.
And he was right, according to a new NASA analysis of the object, which was performed at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
"Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet," agency officials wrote in an update today (April 15).
The cylindrical piece of space junk is made of a metallic alloy called Inconel, they added. It weighs 1.6 pounds (0.7 kg) and measures 4 inches (10 centimeters) high by 1.6 inches (4 cm) wide.
closeup of a blackened, metallic cylindrical object held by a purple-gloved hand
The nickel-hydride batteries were dumped after new lithium-ion versions were delivered to the ISS for a power-supply upgrade. The pallet and the batteries were expected to burn up completely in Earth's atmosphere, NASA officials said in today's update — yet that didn't happen, and the agency wants to learn why.
"The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and reentry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed," NASA officials wrote in today's update.
"NASA specialists use engineering models to estimate how objects heat up and break apart during atmospheric reentry," they added. "These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is found to have survived atmospheric reentry to the ground."
Otero's experience serves as a reminder that there's a tremendous amount of hardware whizzing over our heads.
According to the European Space Agency, Earth orbit hosts about 36,500 pieces of space junk at least 4 inches (10 cm) wide, and a whopping 130 million objects at least 1 millimeter in diameter. Even these tiny shards pose a danger to satellites and other orbiting assets, given the tremendous speeds at which they travel. For example, at 250 miles (400 kilometers) up — the average altitude of the ISS — orbital velocity is about 17,000 mph (27,400 kph).
And, as has been demonstrated, some of this junk comes crashing back to Earth from time to time. For instance, the 23-ton core stages of China's powerful Long March 5B rocket routinely fall in an uncontrolled fashion a week or so after their launches, to the consternation of the international space community.
NASA's new analysis may have financial consequences for the agency and for Otero, by the way.
"I eagerly await communication from the responsible agencies, as their assistance is crucial in resolving the damages from this deliberate release. But more importantly how in the future to arrange the payload so it will burn in its entirety as it reenters," Otero wrote via X on March 8, shortly after his home was hit.
RIGHT WING HAIR ON FIRE
Embedding First Nation knowledge and practices in primary/middle school mathematics and science
Authentic and sometimes confronting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content is helping the next generation of Australian teachers be more socially responsible and inclusive, say University of South Australia experts.
In a UniSA study, researchers found that pushing pre-service teachers outside their comfort zones helped educate them about the injustices faced by First Nations' people—including racism, prejudice and discrimination—and to more confidently integrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content into their lessons. The study is published in the International Journal of Science Education.
Encouraging pre-service teachers to prioritize First Nations knowledges into their teaching is an essential element of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL) to deliver the best possible educational opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
It also stipulates that teachers must engage all Australian students with current, accurate and culturally robust knowledge about First Nations histories cultures and languages.
But it's not always easy, especially when most Australian teachers, pre-service teachers, and teacher-educators come from European-Australian backgrounds, says UniSA Adjunct Associate Professor Kathy Paige.
"Teachers, pre-service teachers and teacher educators in Australia are predominately European Australian with a small minority of First Nations people," says Assoc Prof Paige.
"What this means is that their knowledge of Australian histories and living cultures is limited by what they've been exposed to.
"In this study, we challenged pre-service teachers to explore their own attachments to place, identity and belonging as a stepping-stone towards engaging with First Nations cultures, histories, Country, and identities.
"They then engaged in a range of authentic learning practices that helped reframe deficit views of Aboriginal students, parents, and communities as intractable problems to be overcome, to people who are capable, intelligent and valuable. This is vital for professional teachers."
The pre-service teachers also planned integrated mathematics and science units of work that identified key concepts and incorporated First Nations knowledges and ways of thinking. Some of these involved creating lesson plans to explore the biodiversity of the school grounds to help native butterflies flourish or investigating angles and shadows in a topic to minimize light pollution.
Co-researcher and UniSA Associate Director of Regional Engagement, Dr. Sam Osborne, says while the interventions indicated greater confidence levels among many pre-service teachers to embed First Nations content into their school curriculum, some students expressed lower confidence levels.
"This dip in confidence might seem negative, but it simply shows us that some pre-service teachers 'don't know what they don't know,' which is to be expected for many people of a European-Australian background," Dr. Osborne says.
"Despite the professional and ethical responsibility to embed Australian histories and living cultures into schools, most pre-service teachers have limited first-hand experiences and understanding of First Nations ways of knowing, which can make the process difficult for some.
"As passionate, experienced educators, we intentionally push the boundaries to ensure our teaching graduates have a sense of self-regulation to determine what they need to do to upskill and build confidence to locate and embed authentic First Nations voices, experiences, and knowledges across the curriculum.
"Empowering pre-service teachers to take on this responsibility, and understand the importance of doing so, is critical for a strengthened and more-just Australian identity for all Australian students."
More information: Kathryn Paige et al, Silence is not an option: pre-service teachers embedding First Nation knowledge and practices in primary/middle mathematics and science, International Journal of Science Education (2023). DOI: 10.1080/09500693.2023.2217986
Biden plans sweeping effort to block Arctic oil drilling
by Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg NewsAPRIL 12, 2024 Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
The U.S. set aside 23 million acres of Alaska's North Slope to serve as an emergency oil supply a century ago. Now, President Joe Biden is moving to block oil and gas development across roughly half of it.
The initiative, set to be finalized within days, marks one of the most sweeping efforts yet by Biden to limit oil and gas exploration on federal lands. It comes as he seeks to boost land conservation and fight climate change—and is campaigning for a second term on promises to do more of it.
The changes wouldn't affect ConocoPhillips's controversial 600-million-barrel Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. But oil industry leaders say the plan is more expansive than initially anticipated and threatens to make it nearly impossible to build another megaproject in the region.
That's spooking oil companies with holdings in the National Petroleum Reserve, which—along with the rest of Alaska's North Slope—was viewed as a major growth engine for the industry before the shale boom. Interest has surged again in recent years, fed by mammoth discoveries. Tapping the region's reservoirs could yield decades of production.
Company executives and Alaska lawmakers have increasingly raised alarm over the plan, saying it could thwart oil and gas development across much of the reserve, even on existing leases. The opposition has united a broad spectrum of foes, from Alaska Natives to lower-48 oil producers.
Santos Ltd., which leases more than a million acres within the reserve and is developing the nearby Pikka Unit joint venture with Repsol SA, said in a filing with the Bureau of Land Management that the proposal would infringe on its holdings, with impacts "as extensive as whole projects being denied."
ConocoPhillips, which has 156 leases in the reserve, warned the regulation would violate its contracts and "drive investment away from the NPR-A." And Armstrong Oil & Gas Inc., whose leases there span 1.1 million gross acres, said the measure could block it from building the infrastructure needed to access those tracts.
The proposed rule would effectively nationalize the company's leases, Chief Executive Officer Bill Armstrong told White House officials in a March 21 meeting, according to people familiar with the discussion. A company spokesman declined to comment on the matter.
Administration officials argue the changes are necessary to balance oil development with the protection of sensitive landscapes that provide habitat for polar bears, migratory birds and the 61,500-strong Teshekpuk caribou herd. "We must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in announcing the measure last year.
The regulation would limit future oil development in some 13 million acres (20,000 square miles) of designated "special areas" within the Indiana-sized reserve, including territory currently under lease. There'd be an outright prohibition on new leasing in 10.6 million acres.
The proposal would create a formal program for expanding protected areas at least once every five years—while making it difficult to undo those designations. And it would raise the bar for future development elsewhere in the reserve.
The Interior Department said in a preamble the regulation wouldn't affect existing leases. But the proposed rule text doesn't offer similar, explicit assurance. Instead, it proposes to give the government broad authority to limit or bar access to existing leases, "regardless of any existing authorization." Oil leasing and infrastructure development would be presumed not to be permitted unless specific information clearly demonstrates the work can be done with "no or minimal adverse effects" on the habitat.
Environmentalists and some Alaska Natives have widely praised Biden for setting aside territory for conservation.
"These are resources that once they're gone, they're gone forever, and we can't wait until they have disappeared to go and get them back," said Rachael Hamby, policy director for the Center for Western Priorities. "We need to manage now to protect those resources and values for present and future generations."
The Interior Department says the proposal would not have a significant effect on the nation's energy supply. Still, the reserve could be a notable source of fuel, with the rock formations beneath it holding an estimated 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to a 2017 assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey. Enthusiasm for the region picked up after recent discoveries in the Nanushuk field, and the state of Alaska expects crude production from the reserve to climb from 15,800 barrels per day in fiscal 2023 to 139,600 barrels per day in fiscal 2033.
Opponents say the plan would shift the role of the reserve to conservation instead of oil development, contrary to congressional intent. "The current statute says that the primary purpose is to increase domestic oil supply as expeditiously as possible," said Kara Moriarty, president of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. "But the rule takes a completely different premise."
2024 Bloomberg L.P. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Environmental groups grateful but vigilant after Key Bridge collapse
by Christine Condon, The Baltimore Sun
APRIL 12, 2024
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
When Alice Volpitta watched the video of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and the trucks tumbling into the Patapsco River in the darkness, she thought first for the people who had fallen.
And as her mind raced, the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper thought of the river.
"What's on that ship?" thought Volpitta, of environmental nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore.
As it turned out, the massive container ship that struck the bridge carried more than 1 million gallons of fuel and 4,679 shipping containers, 56 of them filled with hazardous materials.
But, for the most part, two weeks after the collapse, environmental advocates are breathing a sigh of relief.
Cleanup officials have maintained the wreck doesn't pose an environmental threat, and have kept existing fish consumption restrictions the same for that section of the Patapsco. They've been testing air and water at the collapse site periodically since the wreck. The first rounds of water testing from the crash site, obtained by the Baltimore Sun, show no evidence of fuel or hazardous materials leaching into the river from aboard the ship.
"It could have been a lot worse," said Bill Dennison, a marine science professor and interim president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
In the initial days after the collapse, officials did report a visible sheen on top of the water near the ship, and crews deployed thousands of feet of protective booms. At the time, authorities attributed the sheen to a possible fuel discharge following the collision.
Dennison, who has spent time at the Unified Command center coordinating the collapse response as an adviser, said he heard the sheen could have been a small amount of "hydraulic fluid from the ship's bow thruster."
"It's a very contained, small leak, considering the magnitude of what was carried on the ship," Dennison said. "They were ready to go to Sri Lanka. They had a full load of fuel."
Officials from the Unified Command center overseeing the cleanup and rescue operation declined to specify the nature of the fluid, but said "the safety of first responders and protection of the environment is a priority" for the Coast Guard and the command center.
Crisis was averted by a combination of luck and design, said Stefano Brizzolara, a professor specializing in ship design in Virginia Tech's aerospace and ocean engineering department.
Modern ships like the Dali, a Singapore-flagged vessel built in 2015, typically locate fuel tanks close to the engine room, which is situated toward the stern. Regulations dictate how far from the sides and bottom of the ship they can be placed, he said.
And since the ship's bow struck the bridge, fuel wasn't likely to escape, though pipes in that area carrying lubricating fluid may have been damaged, causing the sheen. And the strike also left the ship miraculously upright.
"It was a lucky accident for the ship. It could have been worse if it was maybe at mid-ship … on just one side," Brizzolara said. "If large, watertight compartments were flooded with water, the ship could have healed on a side."
While small leaks often dissipate quickly, Dennison envisioned the nightmare scenario—a massive fuel spill—when he heard about the wreck.
"It would have covered the entire Inner Harbor, Middle Branch, the marshes, the pilings, the floating wetlands that the National Aquarium is installing," Dennison said. "Also, the tide would have gone out into the bay, and who knows how far. But presumably, it could have been devastating to the Chesapeake Bay."
Of the 56 hazmat containers aboard the Dali, 14 were breached during the crash, according to Unified Command. All 56 were accounted for.
"The hazardous materials onboard that spilled from 14 damaged or destroyed containers were lithium metal batteries, soap products, perfume products, or not otherwise specified resin. There is no threat to wildlife," read a statement from the command center.
"When you hear soap and perfume as potential contaminants, you worry about the soap. Soap can be not very healthy for the environment. So we definitely would be watchful if any of that soap or perfume came out of those hazmat containers," Dennison said.
But now, amid good sampling results, environmental advisers and advocates have largely turned their attention to the next possible ecological challenge, Dennison said.
"At this point, the attention has turned mostly to the sediments," he said.
Ungrounding the ship's bow, which is lodged in the mud, and lifting the fallen bridge from the river bottom is certain to kick up plenty of sediment, Dennison said. And as officials clear the channels for ships, it's possible they will need to dredge.
And buried within that sediment are legacy contaminants from Baltimore's industrial past.
To the west of the bridge site sits Wagner's Point, Curtis Bay and Hawkins Point, which host numerous industrial sites, from coal piers to incinerators and chemical plants. To the east lies the Port of Baltimore's Seagirt Marine Terminal. And just southeast is Sparrows Point, land heavily polluted by more than a century of steelmaking.
One site on Bear Creek, near the bridge site, had sediments so polluted with heavy metals that the EPA designated it a Superfund site, adding it to a list of the most polluted locations in the nation. Earlier this year, EPA unveiled careful dredging plans for the area, involving sediment screens, booms and treatment technology.
"In a typical dredge operation, there are mitigation efforts they can deploy," Volpitta said. "They can use things like dredge curtains to reduce the amount of sediment that's kicked up … The problem is, those types of measures may not be suitable to use, like specifically around the salvage efforts, because those curtains can get wrapped up in the debris, things like that."
After initial rounds of river sampling screened for fuel and hazardous materials aboard the ship, such as battery acid, the Maryland Department of the Environment has expanded its testing to include metals, "to assess whether any of the activities might be causing contaminants in the river bed to be resuspended," said spokesman Jay Apperson in a statement.
"Based on the results, which include a showing that levels are slightly higher upriver of the bridge, there is no indication that the activities are affecting those levels," Apperson said.
Typically, dredging occurs only during the winter, to avoid interfering with underwater plants and wildlife as temperatures warm. But given the timing of the collapse, dredging could be needed during warm weather, Dennison said.
Migratory, spawning fish making their way up the Patapsco could be impacted by sediment clouds, as could underwater grasses, a critical habitat for bay life. If the water is too cloudy, the grasses will not get enough light to grow and reach the surface.
When it comes to crabs and oysters, the Chesapeake's "cash crops," the greater worry is for oysters, which are locked in place, Dennison said. If the water is too cloudy, sediment could smother the filter-feeding mollusks. And amid a rainy spring, extra runoff likely already has clouded the waters, he said.
The good news is that most of the bay's life isn't in the deep channel, where the Dali is sitting. Such channels aren't known for abundant wildlife.
"The life that lives down at the bottom of that channel is just worms," he said. "Most of the life on the Chesapeake Bay is on the edges—in the shallows."
There's also the question of where material dredged from the collapse site would go. There are two existing dredge material containment facilities nearby the Key Bridge.
Volpitta said she would like to see dredged materials tested before they are brought to storage sites.
"I understand that the dredging might need to happen quickly, but instead of just turning around and putting that material somewhere else, we need to temporarily store it and house it so that it can be properly tested before it then gets disposed," Volpitta said.
For some residents of communities downstream of the Key Bridge in Anne Arundel County, including Stoney Beach and Riviera Beach, the collapse was followed by an "initial period of a lot of fear," said John Garofolo, a Stoney Beach resident and watershed steward.
The neighborhood was overrun at times by journalists and gawkers, eager to see the devastation, he said.
Soon after the crash, debris started to wash ashore, said Garofolo, who walks the neighborhood nearly every day. The community often sees debris on its beach, especially after storms or after the Conowingo Dam opens its gates, he said. But this debris was unique. Wooden pieces from the bridge, life vests and fire extinguishers.
Residents wondered, he said, if those things were flowing into Stoney Beach, what else was? Could the fuel and hazardous materials aboard the ship reach the community, too?
As the days passed, and environmental officials shared the good results, that fear ebbed a bit, but Garofolo said he's still planning to treat the water with caution as springtime turns into summer.
Stiil, Grafolo said, "I wouldn't swim in the water or fish or crab here myself, personally, for the next six months at least."
The science fiction television series 3 Body Problem, the latest from the creators of HBO's Game of Thrones, has become the most watched show on Netflix since its debut last month. Based on the bestselling book trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past by Chinese computer engineer and author Cixin Liu, 3 Body Problem introduces viewers to advanced concepts in physics in service to a suspenseful story involving investigative police work, international intrigue, and the looming threat of an extraterrestrial invasion.
Yet how closely does the story of 3 Body Problem adhere to the science that it's based on? The very name of the show comes from the three-body problem, a mathematical problem in physics long considered to be unsolvable.
Virginia Tech physicist Djordje Minic says, "The three-body problem is a very famous problem in classical and celestial mechanics, which goes back to Isaac Newton. It involves three celestial bodies interacting via the gravitational force—that is, Newton's law of gravity. Unlike mathematical predictions of the motions of two-body systems, such as Earth-moon or Earth-sun, the three-body problem does not have an analytic solution."
Both the novels and the Netflix show contain a visualization of the three-body problem in action: a solar system made up of three suns in erratic orbit around one another. Virginia Tech aerospace engineer and mathematics expert Shane Ross discussed the liberties the story takes with the science that informs it.
"There are no known configurations of three massive stars that could maintain an erratic orbit," Ross said. "There was a big breakthrough about 20 years ago when a figure eight solution of the three-body problem was discovered, in which three equal-sized stars chase each other around on a figure eight-shaped course. In fact, Cixin Liu makes reference to this in his books. Building on that development, other mathematicians found other solutions, but in each case, the movement is not chaotic."
Ross elaborated, "It's even more unlikely that a fourth body, a planet, would be in orbit around this system of three stars, however erratically—it would either collide with one or be ejected from the system. The situation in the book would, therefore, be a solution to the 'four-body problem,' which I guess didn't have quite the right ring to use as a title."
"Furthermore, a stable climate is unlikely even on an Earth-like planet. At last count, there are at least a hundred independent factors that are required to create an Earth-like planet that supports life as we know it," Ross said.
"We have been fortunate to have had about 10,000 years of the most stable climate in Earth's history, which makes us think climate stability is the norm when, in fact, it's the exception. It's likely no coincidence that this has corresponded with the rise of advanced human civilization."
University at Buffalo researchers have created what they say is the highest quality reference genome to date of the world's most popular coffee species, Arabica. Credit: University at Buffalo
The key to growing coffee plants that can better resist climate change in the decades to come may lie in the ancient past.
Researchers co-led by the University at Buffalo have created what they say is the highest quality reference genome to date of the world's most popular coffee species, Arabica, unearthing secrets about its lineage that span millennia and continents.
Their findings, published in Nature Genetics, suggest that Coffea arabica developed more than 600,000 years ago in the forests of Ethiopia via natural mating between two other coffee species. Arabica's population waxed and waned throughout Earth's heating and cooling periods over thousands of years, the study found, before eventually being cultivated in Ethiopia and Yemen, and then spread over the globe.
"We've used genomic information in plants alive today to go back in time and paint the most accurate picture possible of Arabica's long history, as well as determine how modern cultivated varieties are related to each other," says the study's co-corresponding author, Victor Albert, Ph.D., Empire Innovation Professor in the UB Department of Biological Sciences, within the College of Arts and Sciences.
Coffee giants like Starbucks and Tim Hortons exclusively use beans from Arabica plants to brew the millions of cups of coffee they serve everyday, yet, in part due to a low genetic diversity stemming from a history of inbreeding and small population size, Arabica is susceptible to many pests and diseases and can only be cultivated in a few places in the world where pathogen threats are lower and climate conditions are more favorable.
"A detailed understanding of the origins and breeding history of contemporary varieties are crucial to developing new Arabica cultivars better adapted to climate change," Albert says.
From their new reference genome, accomplished using cutting-edge DNA sequencing technology and advanced data science, the team was able to sequence 39 Arabica varieties and even an 18th century specimen used by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus to name the species.
The reference genome is now available in a publicly available digital database.
Humanity's favorite coffee evolved without people's help
Arabica is the source of approximately 60% of the world's total coffee products, with its seeds helping millions start their day or stay up late. However, the initial crossbreeding that created it was done without any intervention from humans.
Arabica formed as a natural hybridization between Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides, whereupon it received two sets of chromosomes from each parent. Scientists have had a hard time pinpointing exactly when—and where—this allopolyploidization event took place, with estimates ranging everywhere from 10,000 to 1 million years ago.
To find evidence for the original event, UB researchers and their partners ran their various Arabica genomes through a computational modeling program to look for signatures of the species' foundation.
The models show three population bottlenecks during Arabica's history, with the oldest happening some 29,000 generations—or 610,000 years—ago. This suggests Arabica formed sometime before that, anywhere from 610,000 to 1 million years ago, researchers say.
"In other words, the crossbreeding that created Arabica wasn't something that humans did," Albert says. "It's pretty clear that this polyploidy event predated modern humans and the cultivation of coffee."
Coffee plants have long been thought to have developed in Ethiopia, but varieties that the team collected around the Great Rift Valley, which stretches from Southeast Africa to Asia, displayed a clear geographic split. The wild varieties studied all originated from the western side, while the cultivated varieties all originated from the eastern side closest to the Bab al-Mandab strait that separates Africa and Yemen.
That would align with evidence that coffee cultivation may have started principally in Yemen, around the 15th century. Indian monk Baba Budan is believed to have smuggled the fabled "seven seeds" out of Yemen around 1600, establishing Indian Arabica cultivars and setting the stage for coffee's global reach today.
"It looks like Yemeni coffee diversity may be the founder of all of the current major varieties," Descombes says. "Coffee is not a crop that has been heavily crossbred, such as maize or wheat, to create new varieties. People mainly chose a variety they liked and then grew it. So the varieties we have today have probably been around for a long time."
How climate impacted Arabica's population
East Africa's geoclimatic history is well documented due to research on human origins, so researchers could contrast climate events with how the wild and cultivated Arabica populations fluctuated over time.
Modeling shows a long period of low population size between 20–100,000 years ago, which roughly coincides with an extended drought and cooler climate believed to have hit the region between 40–70,000 years ago. The population then increased during the African humid period, around 6–15,000 years ago, when growth conditions were likely more beneficial.
During this same time, around 30,000 years ago, the wild varieties and the varieties that would eventually become cultivated by humans split from each other.
"They still occasionally bred with each other, but likely stopped around the end of the African humid period and the widening of the strait due to rising sea levels around 8,000 to 9,000 years ago," says Jarkko Salojärvi, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and another co-corresponding author of work.
Low genetic diversity threatens Arabica
Cultivated Arabica is estimated to have an effective population size of only 10,000 to 50,000 individuals. Its low genetic diversity means it could be completely decimated, like the monoculture Cavendish banana, by pathogens, such as coffee leaf rust, which causes $1–2 billion in losses annually.
The reference genome was able to shed more light on how one line of Arabica varieties obtained strong resistance to the disease.
The Timor variety formed in Southeast Asia as a spontaneous hybrid between Arabica and one of its parents, Coffea canephora. Also known as Robusta and used primarily for instant coffee, this species is more resistant to disease than Arabica.
"Thus, when Robusta hybridized itself back into Arabica on Timor, it brought some of its pathogen defense genes along with it," says Albert, who also co-led sequencing of the Robusta genome in 2014. Albert and collaborators' current work also presents a highly improved version of the Robusta genome, as well as new sequence of Arabica's other progenitor species, Coffea eugenioides.
While breeders have tried replicating this crossbreeding to boost pathogen defense, the new Arabica reference genome allowed the present researchers to pinpoint a novel region harboring members of the RPP8 resistance gene family as well as a general regulator of resistance genes, CPR1.
"These results suggest a novel target locus for potentially improving pathogen resistance in Arabica," Salojärvi says.
The genome provided other new findings as well, like which wild varieties are closest to modern, cultivated Arabica coffee. They also found that the Typica variety, an early Dutch cultivar originating from either India or Sri Lanka, is likely the parent of the Bourbon variety, principally cultivated by the French.
"Our work has not been unlike reconstructing the family tree of a very important family," Albert says.
More information: Jarkko Salojärvi et al, The genome and population genomics of allopolyploid Coffea arabica reveal the diversification history of modern coffee cultivars, Nature Genetics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41588-024-01695-w
