New plant discoveries could lead to climate-proof chocolate

By

 Knowridge

 -

July 8, 2024

Theobroma globosum. Credit: Kew Bulletin (2024).

Scientists have discovered three new plant species that are closely related to the tree from which chocolate is made.

This exciting find could lead to the development of “climate-proof” chocolate.

The research has been published in the journal Kew Bulletin.

The new species were found in the rainforests of South America and are close relatives of Theobroma cacao, the tree that produces cocoa beans.

These beans are crucial for making chocolate and other products.

The discovery was made by a team of scientists from University College Cork (UCC), the University of São Paulo, and the New York Botanical Garden.

Dr. James Richardson, a member of UCC’s School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences (BEES) and the Environmental Research Institute, explained the significance of their find.

“These new species were discovered by studying specimens in herbaria. This shows the importance of maintaining natural history collections, as many more species remain to be discovered.

The team found three new species within the section Herrania: T. globosum, T. nervosum, and T. schultesii. These plants are closely related to Theobroma cacao, which is vital for chocolate production. Dr. Richardson emphasized that their discovery highlights how much more work is needed to catalog Earth’s vast biodiversity.

The discovery of these new species could lead to the development of more climate-resilient cacao trees. This would help sustain the production of chocolate and other cacao-based products. “Cacao prices have tripled recently due to low production caused by a prolonged drought in West Africa, the largest cacao-producing region,” Dr. Richardson said.

“Finding new species expands the genetic resources available to us. This might allow us to produce drought-tolerant or disease-resistant cacao trees.”

The team conducted detailed examinations of the leaves, flowers, and fruits of these new species. They collaborated with multiple botanical institutions to achieve their discovery. This research underscores the importance of studying and preserving plant specimens, as many unknown species are still waiting to be found.

In summary, the discovery of these three new plant species could have a significant impact on the future of chocolate production.

By potentially developing more resilient cacao trees, we can help ensure a stable supply of chocolate despite changing climate conditions. This find also highlights the vast amount of undiscovered biodiversity on our planet and the importance of continued research in this field.

How dinosaur extinction helped grapes thrive: ancient seeds tell the story

By Field Museum
-July 7, 2024

Lithouva - the earliest fossil grape from the Western Hemisphere, ~60 million years old from Colombia. Top figure shows fossil accompanied with CT scan reconstruction. Bottom shows artist reconstruction. Credit: Fabiany Herrera, art by Pollyanna von Knorring.


If you’ve ever enjoyed a glass of wine or a handful of raisins, you might owe a thanks to the dinosaurs’ extinction.

Researchers have discovered ancient grape seeds that shed light on how grapes spread after the dinosaurs died out.

This fascinating study, published in Nature Plants, shows how the death of the dinosaurs may have paved the way for grapes to flourish.

Scientists found fossilized grape seeds in Colombia, Panama, and Peru, dating from 60 to 19 million years ago.

These are some of the oldest grape seeds ever found in the Western Hemisphere.

“These are the oldest grapes ever found in this part of the world, and they’re just a few million years younger than the oldest ones found elsewhere,” says Fabiany Herrera, the lead author of the study and an assistant curator at the Field Museum in Chicago.

“This discovery shows that grapes began to spread across the world after the dinosaurs went extinct.”

It’s rare for soft tissues like fruits to be preserved as fossils, so scientists usually study seeds, which fossilize more easily. The oldest known grape seed fossils were found in India and are about 66 million years old.

This timing is significant because it’s around when a massive asteroid hit Earth, causing a major extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and dramatically changed life on the planet.

“We often think about the dinosaurs, but this extinction event had a huge impact on plants too,” says Herrera. “The forests reset themselves, changing the types of plants that grew there.”

Herrera and his colleagues believe that the extinction of the dinosaurs helped reshape forests. “Large dinosaurs likely kept forests more open by knocking down trees,” says Mónica Carvalho, a co-author of the study. “Without the dinosaurs, forests became denser with more layers of trees.”

These new, dense forests created opportunities for plants like grapes. “In the fossil record, we start to see more plants that use vines to climb trees, like grapes, around this time,” says Herrera. The diversification of birds and mammals after the extinction may have also helped grapes by spreading their seeds.

In 2013, Herrera’s Ph.D. advisor, Steven Manchester, described the oldest known grape seed fossil from India. While no fossil grapes had been found in South America, Herrera suspected they existed. His persistence paid off in 2022, when he and Carvalho were conducting fieldwork in the Colombian Andes.

Carvalho spotted a fossil and exclaimed, “Fabiany, a grape!” The fossil, found in a 60-million-year-old rock, was the first South American grape fossil and one of the oldest in the world.

The tiny fossil seed was identified based on its shape, size, and other features. CT scans confirmed its identity. The team named the fossil Lithouva susmanii, or “Susman’s stone grape,” honoring Arthur T. Susman, a supporter of South American paleobotany.

Further fieldwork in South and Central America led to the discovery of nine new species of fossil grapes. These fossils, ranging from 60 to 19 million years old, tell the story of grapes spreading across the Western Hemisphere and enduring many extinctions and changes.

“The fossil record shows that grapes are a resilient group,” says Herrera. “They’ve suffered a lot of extinction in Central and South America but have adapted and survived elsewhere.”

Given today’s biodiversity crisis, studies like this are valuable for understanding how species adapt to major changes. “These little, humble seeds can tell us so much about the evolution of forests,” says Herrera.

High ceilings can harm exam scores: Here’s why

By

 Knowridge

 -

July 7, 2024

Graphical abstract. Credit: Journal of Environmental Psychology (2024).

Ever wondered why you didn’t do as well as you hoped in that final university exam, despite all your hard work?

If you sat in a huge gymnasium or massive hall, you might have a real reason—high ceilings.

Research from the University of South Australia and Deakin University shows a link between rooms with high ceilings and poorer exam results.

The study, led by Dr. Isabella Bower from the University of South Australia and Associate Professor Jaclyn Broadbent from Deakin University, was published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

It reveals that the design of a building affects our ability to perform tasks.

Dr. Bower and her team looked at data from 15,400 undergraduate students between 2011 and 2019 at three campuses of an Australian university. They compared students’ exam results with the ceiling heights of the rooms where the exams were held.

After considering differences between individual students and their previous coursework performance, they found that students scored lower than expected when they took exams in rooms with high ceilings.

The researchers also considered factors like the students’ age, sex, the time of year they took the exam, and whether they had previous exam experience in the courses.

Dr. Bower explains that it’s hard to tell if the lower scores are due to the room’s size or other factors like student density or poor insulation, which can affect temperature and air quality. These elements can impact both the brain and body.

“These spaces are often designed for things other than exams, like gymnasiums, exhibitions, events, and performances,” Dr. Bower says.

“The important point is that large rooms with high ceilings seem to put students at a disadvantage. We need to understand what brain mechanisms are involved and whether this affects all students equally.”

Dr. Bower’s findings are supported by experiments she conducted using virtual reality (VR). In these experiments, she measured brain activity of participants exposed to different room sizes, while controlling for factors like temperature, lighting, and noise.

Using a technique called electroencephalography (EEG), where electrodes are attached to the scalp to measure brain cell communication, her team changed the room sizes and recorded the brain’s response. They also measured heart rate, breathing, and perspiration to see if someone could unconsciously detect a change in the environment.

The VR experiments showed that just sitting in a bigger room caused brain activity linked to focusing on a difficult task. This made them wonder if task performance in large spaces is reduced.

“Based on these results, we wanted to see if being in a large space like a gymnasium while focusing on an important task would result in poorer performance,” Dr. Bower says.

“Exams have been a key part of our education system for over 1,300 years, shaping students’ career paths and lives,” says Assoc Prof Jaclyn Broadbent.

“In Australia, many universities and schools use large indoor spaces for exams to save on logistics and costs. It’s crucial to recognize the potential impact of the physical environment on student performance and make necessary adjustments to ensure all students have an equal opportunity to succeed,” she says.

“These findings will help us better design the buildings where we live and work, so we can perform to the best of our ability.”

Dr. Bower has recently returned from Zurich, where she was the first Australian to receive a NOMIS and  Science Young Explorer Award for her ongoing research into how building design affects brain function and mental health.

Indicators to complement global monitoring of safely managed on-site sanitation to understand health risks

• Freya Mills, 
• Tim Foster, 
• Antoinette Kome, 
• Rajeev Munankami, 
• Gabrielle Halcrow, 
• Antony Ndungu, 
• Barbara Evans & 
• Juliet Willetts 

Clean Water volume 7, Article number: 58 (2024) 

• Article
• Open access
• Published: 07 July 2024

• 
  details

Abstract

Halfway through the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) period, there has been little research on the criteria for monitoring safely managed sanitation under SDG target 6.2. For reporting against SDGs, global indicators are necessarily limited and exclude many safety aspects from a public health perspective. Primary survey data from 31,784 households in seven countries in Asia and Africa were analysed, comparing estimates of safely managed on-site sanitation based on global indicators with five complementary indicators of safety: animal access to excreta, groundwater contamination, overdue emptying, entering containments to empty and inadequate protection during emptying. Application of additional criteria reduced the population with safely managed sanitation by 0.4–35% for specific indicators, with the largest impact due to the risk of groundwater contamination, animal access, and containments overdue for emptying. Combining these indicators across the service chain, excluding transport and treatment, found almost three-quarters of on-site systems currently assessed as safely managed with global indicators were considered unsafe based on complementary indicators. A more comprehensive assessment of safety of on-site sanitation can be achieved through these indicators, which could be integrated into national monitoring systems and used to inform sanitation investments that address local health-related risks.

Introduction

Inadequate sanitation is associated with numerous and varied health risks1. There are multiple sources of faecal environmental contamination from inadequate sanitation systems and multiple pathways for exposure2,3. The presence of a toilet is therefore an insufficient measure to indicate whether positive health outcomes are likely to be achieved by sanitation improvements4, hence numerous authors critiqued the Millennium Development Goal target, expressed solely in terms of access to toilets5,6,7,8. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 6.2 of safely managed sanitation services aims to address these limitations by considering the management of excreta from the toilet to final treatment and disposal9. The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) led the development of global indicators and standardised core questions to enable consistent and practical classification of sanitation services for national and global monitoring (see Table 3)10. However, these indicators do not cover all aspects of safety, such as those outlined in WHO guidelines on sanitation and health1. The guidelines suggest countries agreeing to the SDG framework should routinely monitor and report on the global indicators, as a minimum, and suggest these are complemented by more nuanced and contextual regional and national indicators. The JMP proposed some expanded indicators, but these focus on expanded definitions of toilet access, for example, privacy of toilet use, and include limited expanded indicators related to the safe management of containments, emptying, conveyance and disposal10. Safely managed sanitation as defined for global monitoring, while a significant improvement in monitoring access to improved toilets, should not be assumed to indicate a service level that protects against many key faecal transmission pathways. Since what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed11,12, relying on global indicators to prioritise investment may result in sanitation improvements that do not address critical health risks.

Despite debate and research on other aspects of SDG 6.2, there has been little assessment of the indicators for safely managed sanitation services nor exploration of the complementary indicators that could address the gaps. Numerous publications have critiqued and suggested improvements to the classification of shared toilets as limited sanitation13, the monitoring of progress of lower service levels14, the means of implementation targets15,16, and explored alternatives for monitoring safely managed water services17. However, there has been little discussion on the formation and scope of the indicators for safely managed sanitation services, and even uncertainty about how services will be measured as safely managed16. The opinion piece by Rose et al. defined safe sanitation through a communal social lens as based on the ‘social construct that lies at the intersection of knowledge, societal engagement, and controls’18. Rose’s paper highlighted the role of the community in monitoring but did not review the indicators for safely managed sanitation or propose alternative indicators relevant to their definition18. Beard et al. highlighted the challenges to assessing on-site systems and the need for revised categories for improved sanitation facilities, yet they did not review indicators related to safe management across the service chain19. One paper proposed complementary indicators for safely managed sanitation services for national monitoring in Austria20. This provided valuable insights for high-income contexts with predominately sewerage services, yet was less applicable for low- and middle-income countries with predominantly on-site sanitation.

National and subnational decision-makers should not rely on global monitoring alone to inform investment. Globally defined indicators for water and sanitation may not adequately capture the national realities and challenges faced by individual countries or best suit the needs of individual countries to assess progress towards national goals20,21. Beard et al. argued that for urban sanitation, global monitoring efforts do not provide a clear picture of the challenge of managing excreta at the city scale and that the current indicators have a limited ability to inform policy and action19. This paper does not intend to critique the objective and approach of the SDGs or indicators used for global monitoring but to highlight that these indicators are an initial approach to define a ‘safely managed sanitation service’. Indeed, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recommends that global indicators be complemented by indicators at the regional and national levels, which will be developed by Member States22. The Guidelines on Sanitation and Health also suggest more indicators are needed at the utility and sub-national levels to inform local programmes and actions1. Although the number of countries able to report against safely managed sanitation has increased, significant data gaps remain, particularly regarding on-site sanitation23, making it an opportune time to inform the scope and approach to monitoring sanitation.

Beyond those currently assessed by the global indicators, there are a range of additional exposure pathways associated with inadequate sanitation systems and their management. Animal access to uncovered or inadequately protected faeces can transmit excreta and pathogens to people, surfaces and food, especially in dense settings or places where animals and humans are in close proximity24,25,26. Inadequate subsoil treatment of leachate from unsealed on-site sanitation can contaminate groundwater supplies used for drinking water, with contamination risk influenced by toilet and containment type, soil type, groundwater level and proximity to wells27. Poor operation and management of sanitation can also increase exposure to faecal pathogens. Infrequent emptying of on-site sanitation is associated with an increased likelihood of overflowing, malfunction or reduced performance2. Infrequent emptying can also lead to unsafe emptying practices, such as entering the pit to remove hardened sludge or informal emptying practices such as wash out, putting both the workers and public at risk of exposure2,28. The health risks sanitation workers face during emptying have been increasingly recognised, including direct exposure to faecal pathogens and risks from working in confined spaces29,30.

While environmental sampling and detailed health exposure studies and models have improved our understanding of health risks, household surveys can assess potential exposure pathways at a larger scale and lower cost. Several tools, models and detailed research studies have developed methods to investigate critical faecal exposure pathways25,31,32,33. While they have been valuable in demonstrating the high concentration of pathogens in the environment and need to consider multiple exposure pathways, they typically require high skills or equipment and can be difficult to conduct at scale. Household questionnaires, while limited in simple questions and self-reporting, benefit from capturing sanitation data at scale for a relatively low cost when included in broader surveys. Assessment of indicators of pathogen exposure pathways cannot ensure that a system provides 100% protection against human contact with excreta; however, it can point to common failures in sanitation systems that increase the risk of exposure to prioritise improvements or further in-depth investigation. There remains an opportunity to expand household monitoring to better assess and prioritise potential exposure pathways at a larger scale than the field-based exposure assessments.

Recognising that global monitoring is necessarily limited for simplicity and comparability, this paper proposes complementary indicators that could be incorporated into household monitoring to provide a more comprehensive assessment of on-site sanitation focusing on faecal exposure pathways. While research on other aspects of SDG 6.2 led to debate and refinement of indicators (e.g., shared sanitation) for the assessment of safely managed services, as noted above, previous research identified the need for complementary indicators yet did not suggest potential indicators relevant to areas with predominately on-site sanitation, such as is common in low- and middle-income countries. SNV, an international non-government organisation, conducted baseline monitoring between 2018–2019 in 34 urban and rural districts across seven countries to inform and monitor progress of their sanitation programmes. Trained enumerators conducted surveys of 31,784 households, which included global core questions and supplementary questions related to additional exposure pathways as well as qualitative assessments of service provision. The data from health-related household questions were assessed to compare five complementary indicators with the equivalent global sub-indicators for improved, contained and emptied on-site sanitation. This research evaluated the extent to which consideration of critical exposure pathways reduced the proportion of systems classified as safely managed on-site sanitation and analysed the contexts or conditions in which different indicators may be more or less important. This research aims to address the gap in tested complementary indicators relevant to on-site sanitation that could be incorporated into sanitation monitoring systems. The research is timely as national WASH monitoring frameworks continue to be updated to improve reporting against the SDGs, and these relevant complementary indicators to enhance understanding of local health risks and inform sanitation investments.

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WAR IS ECOCIDE

World War II shipwrecks are scattered all around Australia. Researchers fear they could be 'ticking time bombs'

By Liz Gwynn
ABC AUSTRALIA

They've been described as "ticking time bombs".

Several World War II shipwrecks in Australian waters, holding unknown quantities of oil and chemicals, have been deteriorating ever since they sank more than 80 years ago.

Some of them are close to popular tourist towns — and with their potential to leak toxic materials into sensitive marine areas, researchers are concerned about the potential to kill marine life and impact people's livelihoods.

"People have seen plastic bottles and ghost nets impacting the ocean, but these potentially polluting wrecks are what we call the biggest problem that people haven't heard of," says Matt Carter, a marine researcher with Major Projects Foundation, a conservation not-for-profit.


"Because of that, there just isn't the research behind it for us to understand the sheer impact."

World War II shipwrecks are scattered all around Australia but six have been identified as a serious environmental threat.(ABC News)

World War II shipwrecks are scattered all around Australia but six have been identified as a serious environmental threat.

They include three US-owned ships — the Lexington, Neosho, and Sims — which are sitting at the bottom of the Coral Sea Marine Park; a vessel called MV Limerick, just 18 kilometres east of Ballina in NSW; and two wrecks off Victoria's coast near Apollo Bay and Wilsons Promontory.

Dozens of wrecks have also been identified as a potential risk overseas in the Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands and Papua New Guinea.

"These wrecks are changing, and in a five-year period you can visibly see the decay of these shipwrecks," Dr Carter says.


"It's not a matter of if, but when they will collapse."
Dr Matt Carter says the wrecks are "the biggest problem people haven't heard of".(Supplied: Major Projects Foundation)

There are concerns that these vessels are at risk of breaking up in the near future — and when that happens, it has the potential to be an "unmitigated disaster".

"The fuel is contained for the time being, but if that structure collapses and collapses on a large scale, then it will release all of the contaminants into the water immediately," says Dr James Hunter from the Australian National Maritime Museum.

"If they are close enough to shore then it will have a knock-on effect, not only for the marine eco-system, but for sea birds and animals that might feed on marine animals."

Heritage Conservation Solutions director Ian MacLeod says the sudden release of fuel could spell "the end of fish breeding stocks".

"That could be the end of grade one status on fish exports and people will lose their livelihoods," he says.
What's being done to alleviate the risk World War II wrecks pose?

The Major Projects Foundation has teamed up with subsea oil engineers, marine archaeologists, and historians to carry out research and field work to better understand which wrecks are a threat and need oil removed.

Some of the work involves trawling through historical records to determine how much oil was onboard each ship and how much was lost when it sank decades ago — but it's proving to be a challenging and lengthy process.

"A lot of these records are part records, or they were lost during the war so there's not necessarily complete information and some of the records are in Japanese," Dr Carter says.


"One of our researchers taught himself to read Japanese so that he could go through the Japanese World War II archives."

It is unclear exactly when the wrecks might break up because added stressors such as storms, cyclones, or the depth of water have the potential to speed up the corrosion process

Ian MacLeod is director of Heritage Conservation Solutions.(Supplied)

"One of the things that surprised people on the deep wrecks of Titanic and HMAS Sydney, is that even at a depth of around four kilometres you've got strong ocean currents bringing dissolved oxygen to the wreck," Dr MacLeod says.

"That is making it corrode faster... even deepening a fishing channel nearby can cause an increase of 10-15 per cent in the corrosion rate."

Other factors such as the disposition of the vessel on the sea floor can also have an impact.

"A ship that should have been corroding at a rate of what you would expect at 40 metres, if you turn it upside, it would be corroding as if it was in 25 metres of water," he says.
There is a solution, but it isn't cheap
Experts say the cost of removing oil from a potentially polluting wreck is far less than cleaning up a spill.(AP: Suhaimi Abdullah)

The Major Projects Foundation estimates it would cost at least $3 million to decontaminate a single wreck. However, that figure could rise if the vessel is in deeper or more remote waters.

But the good news is, work to identify, risk assess and ultimately remediate sunken vessels has been successfully carried out overseas.


"What that looks like is sending down divers to drill holes in the hull and pump the oil out where it can then be removed and disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way," Dr Carter says.

Experts say the cost of removing oil from a potentially polluting wreck is far less than cleaning up a spill, which could be between $20 - $30 million.
Dr James Hunter says its not too late to invest in fixing the problem.(Supplied: Heather Berry/Silentworld Foundation)

"It's small enough that if you throw enough money at it, and throw the right methods and ideas at it, then you can actually take care of it before it becomes a massive problem," Dr Hunter says.


"Unlike global climate change and these sorts of broader issues, this is one of those things you can control."
Who's responsible?

It has been difficult to ascertain exactly who is responsible or liable for these potentially polluting wrecks.

According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, all shipwrecks and their associated relics that occurred 75 or more years ago are protected under the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018, regardless of whether their precise location is known.

An untold amount of black, toxic oil is contained within the corroding wrecks of the sunken World War II ships.

Australia has not engaged in work to remove oil from historic wrecks, despite this being a routine process in some parts of the world.

In a statement, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said it was not aware of any funding, or proposals for funding, to address such wrecks in Australian waters.

This lack of action has prompted calls for the government to respond before it's too late.

"There are ways of stopping this and it requires money and support from the federal government to be proactive in the management of these at-risk wrecks," Dr MacLeod says.


"Let's make history work for us and be smart and do the right thing."