The new paradigm in volunteering -- and how organizations can adapt to "neither-growing-nor-fading" brand relationships

News from the Journal of Marketing

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Researchers from Emlyon Business School and HEC Montreal published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines the new breed of volunteers who often show a weaker sense of affiliation with organizations and how best to engage them for mutual benefit.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Managing Brand Relationship Plurality: Insights from the Nonprofit Sector” and is authored by Verena Gruber and Jonathan Deschênes.

Volunteers stand as vital pillars in the operation and survival of nonprofit organizations. Across the globe, over 850 million volunteers give their time to support a variety of causes, according to a 2021 report by United Nations Volunteers.

Traditionally, volunteers were thought to be motivated by the altruistic act of giving, and many chose nonprofits based on a strong sociocultural fit and personal convictions. However, volunteers now interact differently with brands in the nonprofit sector. Individuals devote fewer hours to their causes and want flexible schedules. They seek opportunities for personal growth and pick activities with potential work-related benefits. These new volunteers often show a weaker sense of affiliation with organizations.

This raises an important question: How can organizations effectively cultivate relationships with volunteers whose interests and motivations are shifting?

A new Journal of Marketing study finds that entertaining more distant relationships can mutually benefit nonprofit organizations and volunteers. Drawing on an in-depth analysis of the Red Cross in Vienna, Austria, this research demonstrates that organizations can effectively manage both traditional and new types of volunteers by adopting tailored relationship management practices.

Relationship Growth for Traditional Volunteers

Nonprofit brands continue to need the vision, commitment, and initiative of traditional, growth-oriented volunteers who provide the backbone of organizational activities. To allow these relationships to thrive, managers should focus on a solid material presence.

Nonprofits should establish a physical infrastructure so that volunteers can gather, socialize, and bond. Managers should provide training and competence-building activities to assist the intensification of the brand relationship. They should supply branded clothing to facilitate easy visual identification of members and communicate with members by leveraging high-quality content such as exclusive print magazines.

In addition, managers need to carefully create documentation that clearly presents the brand’s history and values as well as provide a comprehensive and clear description of what volunteering entails in terms of expectations and duties. Communicating a compelling narrative consistently throughout the volunteer’s journey is crucial to sustain the path of growth and intensification.

These brand relationship practices will enable volunteers to ascend, over time, to strategic roles within the organization, including mentoring and training of future generations of volunteers. These growth-oriented volunteers, when supported with the right managerial practices, progressively become practice champions and thus constitute valuable assets for the organization.

Activating New Volunteers

New volunteers seek flexibility and opportunity; they help out when they have time and when the task fits their agenda. Adopting a pragmatic approach to the relationship is crucial for nonprofit organizations. “This involves accepting a certain degree of distance to and from these volunteers, who may be less emotionally attached to the organization, and respecting their desire for intermittent engagement. What matters is not their unwavering loyalty but their existing skills,” Gruber explains.

Consequently, the managerial focus needs to shift to acquiring and activating volunteers as needed. Organizations should initially build a diverse pool of volunteers whom they can subsequently activate as needed. The key lies in utilizing systems to identify potential volunteers and communicate with those possessing desired characteristics for specific tasks. The integration of a mobile application could greatly facilitate this process.

Such practices will allow nonprofit organizations to deploy the right volunteers, in the right quantity, at the right time.

Lessons for Managers

Deschênes says that “our research offers insights for nonprofit managers grappling with the management of volunteer relationships. We show the value that lies in distant, non-escalating relationships when managed in symbiosis with classic growth-oriented relationships. Our results point to broader implications for brand relationship management, applicable to both nonprofit and for-profit entities.”

Traditional volunteering mirrors consumer–brand relationships in which individuals develop strong ties with brands and often integrate in brand communities. This type of relationship permeates marketing and consumer studies. The new volunteers resemble consumers who maintain a more distant and seemingly disinterested relationship with brands that they consume sporadically but regularly, without a desire to intensify the relationship. The researchers call this a “Neither Growing nor Fading” (NGNF) relationship. NGNF relationships arguably represent a significant proportion of the interactions that consumers typically have with brands, yet there is little research to date that has focused on them.

Here are some strategies for managers to acquire and activate NGNF members:

• Actively embrace the new volunteering logic and accept that volunteers become dormant between activations.

• Develop partnerships with broadcasters to reach large audiences and communicate the organization’s volunteering story and needs via social media to generate traffic on the organization’s platforms.

• Know volunteer needs by identifying volunteer profiles for each specific volunteer job. Identify key skillset information to include in the registration form, such as education and training.
• Develop some material element to identify volunteers during their activation (light jackets, baseball caps, etc.). These materials could be lent to volunteers for the duration of their activation.

Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429241253193

About the Journal of Marketing 

The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Shrihari (Hari) Sridhar (Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership, Professor of Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
https://www.ama.org/jm

About the American Marketing Association (AMA) 

As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what is coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences.
https://www.ama.org

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JOURNAL

Journal of Marketing

DOI

10.1177/00222429241253193 

ARTICLE TITLE

Managing Brand Relationship Plurality: Insights from the Nonprofit Sector

 

Trust, more than knowledge, critical for acceptance of fully autonomous vehicles

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

PULLMAN, Wash. –  While not yet on the market, fully autonomous vehicles are promoted as a way to make road travel dramatically safer, but a recent study found that knowing more about them did not improve people’s perception of their risk. They needed to have more trust in them too.

This study adds to the evidence from other research that knowledge alone is not enough to sway people’s attitudes toward complex technology and science, such as gene editing or climate change. In this case, Washington State University researchers found that trust in the autonomous vehicles’ reliability and performance played the strongest role in improving perceptions of the technology’s risk.

That may be critical to whether this technology will ever be realized, said Kathryn Robinson-Tay, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Risk Research.

“Autonomous vehicles are such consumer-oriented products. Whether they are used or not is really dependent on whether people will buy them,” said Robinson-Tay, a doctoral student in WSU’s Murrow College of Communication. “We found there was no significant relationship between people’s knowledge and their risk perceptions of autonomous vehicles—without the mediation of trust.”

While some cars with autonomous features, like Tesla’s adaptive cruise control, are on the roads now, fully driverless vehicles are not yet available. By some estimates, if they do become available, they could improve traffic safety by 90%. But that likely depends on their wide-adoption, and currently, perceptions of their safety are very low. A 2022 Pew Research poll showed 44% of Americans have a negative view of autonomous vehicles.

For this study, Robinson-Tay and her advising professor Wei Peng conducted a representative, cross-sectional survey of 323 adults in the U.S. using Census-based quotas for age, gender and race to ensure a diverse sample. The participants answered questions about their knowledge and perceptions of autonomous vehicles and their risk. While trust emerged as the most influential factor, people’s desire to experience using fully autonomous vehicles also indirectly led to improved perceptions of risk.

The fact that fully autonomous vehicles are not yet available even to try out may be part of the problem, but their very autonomous nature may also hinder their acceptance, said Peng, a WSU communications researcher.

“It’s basic psychology that people want to interact with the things they use. They want to control them through physical touch. With fully autonomous vehicles, you do not need to touch them, so people may feel they are very risky or unsafe,” he said.  

News reports about accidents with partially autonomous vehicles has also likely hurt perceptions, the researchers said.

“Accidents happen all the time on the road every day, but people tend to overestimate the risk of something that’s new, or that they're less familiar with,” Peng said.

Regardless, this study’s findings point to the need to build trust with the public if fully autonomous vehicles are to ever take to the roads.

“Proponents should do their best to communicate the benefits, and the risks, of autonomous vehicles in an effort to increase both knowledge and trust,” said Robinson-Tay. “It’s really important to communicate as honestly as possible so people can have a balanced understanding of what they’re exactly getting into with purchasing one.”

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JOURNAL

Journal of Risk Research

DOI

10.1080/13669877.2024.2360923 

ARTICLE TITLE

0 CrossRef citations to date 0 Altmetric Research Article The role of knowledge and trust in developing risk perceptions of autonomous vehicles: a moderated mediation model

 

Scientists discover how to improve vaccine responses to potentially deadly bacterium

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have taken a leap forward in understanding how we might fight back against the potentially deadly MRSA bacterium. They have shown in an animal model that targeting a key suppressive immune molecule (IL-10) during the delivery of a vaccine improves the ability of the vaccine to protect against infection.

The bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is one of the leading causes of community- and hospital-acquired bacterial infection, and is associated with over one million deaths worldwide each year. Unfortunately, antibiotics are becoming increasingly less effective against this bacterium with the antibiotic-resistant form, MRSA, responsible for the highest number of deaths in high-income countries that are attributable to antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections.

As a result, scientists are keenly focused on finding solutions to turn the tide in fighting S. aureus-related infections. One hugely appealing option is a vaccine but, while some progress has been made on that front in recent years, a number of major hurdles remain. One of these appears to be the bacterium’s ability to dampen the immune response by turning on one of the natural breaks that exists within the immune system, an important immune-suppressive molecule known as Interleukin-10 (IL-10), which acts to reduce inflammation in the body. 

The interesting thing about S. aureus is that in addition to being a deadly pathogen, forms of this bacteria live in and on our bodies without causing harm. During these asymptomatic interactions the bacterium is, however, shaping the immune response – meaning that when a vaccine against S. aureus is administered the immune system struggles to respond appropriately.

Here, in the work just published in leading journal JCI Insight, the researchers showed in the animal model that if they immunised subjects with a vaccine that primed their immune systems to respond to infection in tandem with antibodies that neutralised IL-10, the immune response (via specialised T cells) was improved and bacterial clearance was likewise improved following subsequent infection.

The research team was led by Rachel McLoughlin, Professor in Immunology in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Biochemistry and Immunology. Rachel, who is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, said: “Taken in combination, our results offer significant promise for what would be a novel strategy for improving the efficacy of vaccines developed with the aim of suppressing S. aureus infection.

“Our work also strongly suggests that prior exposures to this bacterium may create a situation whereby our immune system no longer sees it as a threat and thus does not respond appropriately to a vaccine due to the creation of this immune-suppressed state. Again, this underlines why immunisation delivered with something that helps neutralise IL-10 offers renewed hope for effective vaccines against S. aureus.”

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JOURNAL

JCI Insight

Why some abusive bosses get a pass from their employees


Workers may accept ‘tough love’ from successful leaders

THE SLAVES SHALL SERVE

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Why do employees sometimes accept working for an abusive boss?

A new study suggests that when a leader is seen as a high performer, employees are more likely to label abuse as just “tough love.”


Results showed that workers were less likely to show hostility to abusive bosses when the leader’s performance was high, and employees were even likely to think their career could be boosted by a successful – if abusive – boss.



The findings suggest that employees may be reluctant to call a successful boss abusive – even if the behavior warrants it, said Robert Lount, lead author of the study and professor of management and human resources at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.



“If employees see their boss as a successful leader, that seems to be incompatible with being abusive,” Lount said. “So they label the abuse as something more positive, like ‘tough love.’”



The study was published recently in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.



The researchers conducted two studies. One involved a three-wave study of 576 workers in a variety of industries across the United States. Participants completed online surveys three times, each two weeks apart. They were asked about abusive behaviors by their boss, and how they would rate their leader’s overall effectiveness.



For those participants who reported abuse, other questions aimed to find if employees would label their boss as an abuser, or if they thought he or she was more of a “tough love” type of leader. In the survey, tough love bosses were described as “stern but caring,” “insensitive but nurturing” and “rough but well-meaning.”



The results showed that when employees rated their bosses as higher on use of abusive behavior – like using ridicule and saying an employee’s thoughts and feelings were stupid – the label they put on their supervisor depended somewhat on performance.



When they rated the boss as a high performer, workers were more likely to label their abusive boss as a “tough love” kind of supervisor. But when the boss’s performance was seen as lower, employees were more likely to give them the abuser label.



Why might abusive bosses be seen differently if they are successful?

Study co-author Bennett Tepper, also a professor of management and human resources at Ohio State, said employees may be looking for a silver lining of sorts.



“These bosses may treat employees harshly, but presumably their intent is to help their followers realize their potential – that’s the ‘tough love’ part,” Tepper said.



“And if the leaders have high performance, that suggests they are successful at bringing out the skills of their followers.”



Employees of abusive but successful bosses may not have liked the abuse – but they reported that they expected something good to come out of their bad situation. Findings showed these workers were more likely than others to think they would be promoted within their organization – presumably because of their experience working for a successful boss.



In addition, employees were less likely to lash out at abusive bosses who were high performers, by disobeying them or giving them the silent treatment.



A second study examined how the dynamic of working for an abusive and successful leader plays out in real time in a lab experiment.



In this case, 168 undergraduate students participated in a study in which they were told they were working in teams online led by an MBA student. Teams would compete against each other to solve a campus problem. (In actuality, there were no teams or leaders.)



Participants in the study read a message on their computer screen that was supposedly from their team leader, but was actually from the researchers. The researchers sent participants one of two messages – either abusive or not.



The abusive message supposedly from the MBA leader told the undergrads, “Don’t waste my time coming up with stupid ideas! Do better than a typical undergrad and don’t embarrass us!” The non-abusive message simply encouraged participants to “try hard.”



Participants developed ideas which were then supposedly assessed by their team leader and sent on to experts for evaluation. Later, all participants received one of two messages: one said that their team performed well above average compared to the other teams, according to the experts. The other said their team performed well below average.



Participants were then asked to evaluate their leader. And sure enough, participants who received the abusive message tended to give their leader a lower score on being abusive when their team was above average than when it was below average.



“We found that in a very short amount of time, you could quickly abate abusive labeling of a boss with high performance,” Lount said.



“Just finding out your team did better because of your leader’s judgment really dampened the willingness to label that person as abusive – even though your leader made the exact same statements as the other leaders who were called abusive after a below-average performance.”



Lount and Tepper emphasized that their study isn’t saying that abusive behavior can make some leaders successful. There is overwhelming evidence from years of research that abusive leadership is not good for employees or organizations, they said.



In fact, other research suggests that successful bosses known for their “tough love” approach might be even more successful if they used more accepted management techniques.



Instead, this study is about how employees respond to abusive supervision, according to the researchers.



“I think our data really speak to how followers react to leaders who are both abusive and successful. They’re hesitant to call them abusive. Employees think they can’t be abusive because they are successful,” Lount said.



The findings may also suggest why, even today, some abusive bosses can have long careers, Tepper said.



“The bosses who get away with abusive behavior may be those who somehow find a way to get high performance despite their behavior,” Tepper said.



“Their high performance insulates them from the consequences because even their employees say he’s just a ‘tough love’ kind of boss.”



Woohee Choi, who received her PhD from Ohio State and who is now an assistant professor at Providence College, was also a co-author of the study.
JOURNAL


Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
DOI


10.1016/j.obhdp.2024.104339
METHOD OF RESEARCH


Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH


People
ARTICLE TITLE


“Abuser” or “Tough Love” Boss?: The moderating role of leader performance in shaping the labels employees use in response to abusive supervision

MASOCHISM

Theodor Reik | Schlemiel Theory (schlemielintheory.com)

 

Companies that mitigate climate change reduce their cost of capital

Going green pays off. New research shows that when companies disclose their environmental impact—and work to mitigate it—they earn investor trust.

KYUSHU UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCHERS AT KYUSHU UNIVERSITY FOUND THAT REDUCING CO2 EMISSIONS AND FOLLOWING TCFD GUIDELINES CAN LOWER THE COST OF EQUITY FOR COMPANIES WHERE CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MAJOR CONCERN. HOWEVER, THIS EFFECT WAS NOT SEEN IN INDUSTRIES LIKE EDUCATION, WHERE CLIMATE CHANGE IS LESS CRITICAL. NO CLEAR EVIDENCE LINKS ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENTS OR SCOPE 3 EMISSIONS DISCLOSURE (INDIRECT EMISSIONS FROM THE VALUE CHAIN) TO REDUCED COST OF CAPITAL.

view more 

CREDIT: KYUSHU UNIVERSITY

Fukuoka, Japan —The climate crisis is hitting home with more frequent extreme weather events. Companies, particularly those in high-emission industries, are major contributors to global carbon emissions, therefore making them key players in the fight against climate change. Recognizing this responsibility, many businesses are now taking proactive measures to reduce their carbon footprint, by reducing carbon emissions and transparently sharing their environmental strategies and data.

The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) offers companies a framework to share climate-related financial information, allowing them to better navigate the risks and opportunities of climate change. In recent years, support for TCFD has surged, and Japan stands out as a leading proponent of such disclosures. However, how TCFD disclosures improve a company's financial performance and provide tangible benefits remains underexplored.

To address this gap, a research team from Kyushu University analyzed data from approximately 2,100 Japanese listed companies over five years, from 2017 to 2021. This study, one of the first to use holistic TCFD and corporate data in Japan, was published in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management on May 20, 2024.

The research focused on the impact of corporate climate change actions, including carbon performance, climate-related disclosures, and corporate commitments. Researchers analyzed how these actions affect the cost of capital, which refers to the costs incurred by a company to finance its operations. The results show that companies with higher carbon emissions face higher costs for borrowing and raising money. However, those that follow TCFD guidelines and openly share climate-related information benefit from lower capital costs. Additionally, simply making promises about climate action does not significantly impact financial costs. Stakeholders are more concerned with what companies actually do rather than what they say.

One key finding is that high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increase climate change risks, both physical risks, such as extreme weather events, and transition risks, like regulatory changes. These increased risks create uncertainties that drive investors and lenders to demand higher returns, resulting in higher costs of equity (CoE) and debt (CoD). CoE is the return that investors expect for buying a company's stock, while CoD is the fees a company pays to borrow money from lenders such as banks.

To reduce these uncertainties and avoid unexpected losses, investors seek to make more informed decisions by understanding and assessing a company's climate change risks. Transparency in climate change-related data thus becomes crucial. As Siyu Shen, a graduate student at Kyushu University's Graduate School of Economics and the paper's second author, explains, “When companies share climate-related data, it gives investors and consumers a clearer picture of their environmental efforts, making them more likely to invest. We found that this kind of openness is particularly important in energy sectors like electricity and oil, where climate change is a major issue.”

Notably, while the study found that following TCFD guidelines effectively reduced the cost of equity, it did not have a significant impact on the cost of debt. This might be attributed to Japan's negative interest rate policy during the study period, where the Bank of Japan kept borrowing costs low by injecting large amounts of funds into the market. With the end of this policy in March 2024, interest rates in the Japanese bond market are expected to rise. In this context, sustainable linked loans, which provide loans for decarbonising energy transition at low interest rates, are becoming increasingly popular. In 2024 and beyond, corporate climate change mitigation actions in Japan could have the potential to lower the cost of dept.

Although this study focuses on Japan, it provides valuable insights for investors, companies, and policymakers worldwide by highlighting the connection between climate disclosures and capital costs. From 2022, companies listed in Japan's prime markets have been mandated to follow TCFD guidelines. While more companies are engaging in climate mitigation, it’s time for them to consider additional strategies to differentiate their carbon performance.

A series of environmental economic studies, including this one, have spurred research collaborators Professor Shunsuke Managi and Associate Professor Alexander Ryota Keeley from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering to establish aiESG, a start-up that utilizes AI-based system to analyze the sustainability of global supply chains. Looking ahead, the research team plans to expand their analysis globally to see how regulations and cultural differences impact the relationship between climate change, carbon performance, and capital costs in various regions. They aspire to become one of the leading teams in climate impact research.

Collaboration among investors, companies, academics, and policymakers is indispensable for tackling the global climate crisis and achieving carbon neutrality. “We hope our research provides the scientific evidence needed to support companies in developing new strategies, changing behaviors, and ultimately reducing emissions,” notes Hidemichi Fujii, Professor at Kyushu University's Faculty of Economics and the corresponding author of the study.

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For more information about this research, see “How corporate climate change mitigation actions affect the cost of capital,” Yizhou Wang, Siyu Shen, Jun Xie, Hidemichi Fujii, Alexander Ryota Keeley, Shunsuke Managi, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2853

 

About Kyushu University 

Founded in 1911, Kyushu University  is one of Japan's leading research-oriented institutes of higher education, consistently ranking as one of the top ten Japanese universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World Rankings. The university is one of the seven national universities in Japan, located in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu—the most southwestern of Japan’s four main islands with a population and land size slightly larger than Belgium. Kyushu U’s multiple campuses—home to around 19,000 students and 8000 faculty and staff—are located around Fukuoka City, a coastal metropolis that is frequently ranked among the world's most livable cities and historically known as Japan's gateway to Asia. Through its VISION 2030, Kyushu U will “drive social change with integrative knowledge.” By fusing the spectrum of knowledge, from the humanities and arts to engineering and medical sciences, Kyushu U will strengthen its research in the key areas of decarbonization, medicine and health, and environment and food, to tackle society’s most pressing issues. 

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JOURNAL

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management

DOI

10.1002/csr.2853 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

How corporate climate change mitigation actions affect the cost of capital

 

Brain size riddle solved as humans exceed evolution trend

UNIVERSITY OF READING

The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains - with humans bucking this trend - a new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution has revealed.

Researchers at the University of Reading and Durham University collected an enormous dataset of brain and body sizes from around 1,500 species to clarify centuries of controversy surrounding brain size evolution.

Bigger brains relative to body size are linked to intelligence, sociality, and behavioural complexity – with humans having evolved exceptionally large brains. The new research, published today (Monday, 8 July), reveals the largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains, challenging long-held beliefs about brain evolution.

Professor Chris Venditti, lead author of the study from the University of Reading, said: “For more than a century, scientists have assumed that this relationship was linear – meaning that brain size gets proportionally bigger, the larger an animal is. We now know this is not true. The relationship between brain and body size is a curve, essentially meaning very large animals have smaller brains than expected."

Professor Rob Barton, co-author of the study from Durham University, said: “Our results help resolve the puzzling complexity in the brain-body mass relationship. Our model has a simplicity that means previously elaborate explanations are no longer necessary – relative brain size can be studied using a single underlying model.”

Beyond the ordinary

The research reveals a simple association between brain and body size across all mammals which allowed the researchers to identify the rule-breakers – species which challenge the norm.

Among these outliers includes our own species, Homo sapiens, which has evolved more than 20 times faster than all other mammal species, resulting in the massive brains that characterise humanity today. But humans are not the only species to buck this trend.

All groups of mammals demonstrated rapid bursts of change – both towards smaller and larger brain sizes. For example, bats very rapidly reduced their brain size when they first arose, but then showed very slow rates of change in relative brain size, suggesting there may be evolutionary constraints related to the demands of flight.

There are three groups of animals that showed the most pronounced rapid change in brain size: primates, rodents, and carnivores. In these three groups, there is a tendency for relative brain size to increase in time (the “Marsh-Lartet rule”). This is not a trend universal across all mammals, as previously believed.

Dr Joanna Baker, co-author of the study also from the University of Reading, said: “Our results reveal a mystery. In the largest animals, there is something preventing brains from getting too big. Whether this is because big brains beyond a certain size are simply too costly to maintain remains to be seen. But as we also observe similar curvature in birds, the pattern seems to be a general phenomenon – what causes this ‘curious ceiling’ applies to animals with very different biology.”

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-024-02451-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Co-evolutionary dynamics of mammalian brain and body size

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jul-2024

Study: Weaker ocean circulation could enhance CO2 buildup in the atmosphere

New findings challenge current thinking on the ocean’s role in storing carbon

 NEWS RELEASE 8-JUL-2024
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

As climate change advances, the ocean’s overturning circulation is predicted to weaken substantially. With such a slowdown, scientists estimate the ocean will pull down less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, a slower circulation should also dredge up less carbon from the deep ocean that would otherwise be released back into the atmosphere. On balance, the ocean should maintain its role in reducing carbon emissions from the atmosphere, if at a slower pace. 

However, a new study by an MIT researcher finds that scientists may have to rethink the relationship between the ocean’s circulation and its long-term capacity to store carbon. As the ocean gets weaker, it could release more carbon from the deep ocean into the atmosphere instead. 

The reason has to do with a previously uncharacterized feedback between the ocean’s available iron, upwelling carbon and nutrients, surface microorganisms, and a little-known class of molecules known generally as “ligands.” When the ocean circulates more slowly, all these players interact in a self-perpetuating cycle that ultimately increases the amount of carbon that the ocean outgases back to the atmosphere. 

“By isolating the impact of this feedback, we see a fundamentally different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric carbon levels, with implications for the climate,” says study author Jonathan Lauderdale, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “What we thought is going on in the ocean is completely overturned.”

Lauderdale says the findings show that “we can’t count on the ocean to store carbon in the deep ocean in response to future changes in circulation. We must be proactive in cutting emissions now, rather than relying on these natural processes to buy us time to mitigate climate change.”

His study will appear in the journal Nature Communications.

Box flow

In 2020, Lauderdale led a study that explored ocean nutrients, marine organisms, and iron, and how their interactions influence the growth of phytoplankton around the world. Phytoplankton are microscopic, plant-like organisms that live on the ocean surface and consume a diet of carbon and nutrients that upwell from the deep ocean and iron that drifts in from desert dust. 

The more phytoplankton that can grow, the more carbon dioxide they can absorb from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and this plays a large role in the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon. 

For the 2020 study, the team developed a simple “box” model, representing conditions in different parts of the ocean as general boxes, each with a different balance of nutrients, iron, and ligands — organic molecules that are thought to be byproducts of phytoplankton. The team modeled a general flow between the boxes to represent the ocean’s larger circulation — the way seawater sinks, then is buoyed back up to the surface in different parts of the world. 

This modeling revealed that, even if scientists were to “seed” the oceans with extra iron, that iron wouldn’t have much of an effect on global phytoplankton growth. The reason was due to a limit set by ligands. It turns out that, if left on its own, iron is insoluble in the ocean and therefore unavailable to phytoplankton. Iron only becomes soluble at “useful” levels when linked with ligands, which keep iron in a form that plankton can consume. Lauderdale found that adding iron to one ocean region to consume additional nutrients robs other regions of nutrients that phytoplankton there need to grow. This lowers the production of ligands and the supply of iron back to the original ocean region, limiting the amount of extra carbon that would be taken up from the atmosphere. 

Unexpected switch

Once the team published their study, Lauderdale worked the box model into a form that he could make publicly accessible, including ocean and atmosphere carbon exchange and extending the boxes to represent more diverse environments, such as conditions similar to the Pacific, the North Atlantic, and the Southern Ocean. In the process, he tested other interactions within the model, including the effect of varying ocean circulation. 

He ran the model with different circulation strengths, expecting to see less atmospheric carbon dioxide with weaker ocean overturning — a relationship that previous studies have supported, dating back to the 1980s. But what he found instead was a clear and opposite trend: The weaker the ocean’s circulation, the more CO2 built up in the atmosphere. 

“I thought there was some mistake,” Lauderdale recalls. “Why were atmospheric carbon levels trending the wrong way?” 

When he checked the model, he found that the parameter describing ocean ligands had been left “on” as a variable. In other words, the model was calculating ligand concentrations as changing from one ocean region to another. 

On a hunch, Lauderdale turned this parameter “off,” which set ligand concentrations as constant in every modeled ocean environment, an assumption that many ocean models typically make. That one change reversed the trend, back to the assumed relationship: A weaker circulation led to reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide. But which trend was closer to the truth? 

Lauderdale looked to the scant available data on ocean ligands to see whether their concentrations were more constant or variable in the actual ocean. He found confirmation in GEOTRACES, an international study that coordinates measurements of trace elements and isotopes across the world’s oceans, that scientists can use to compare concentrations from region to region. Indeed, the molecules’ concentrations varied. If ligand concentrations do change from one region to another, then his surprise new result was likely representative of the real ocean: A weaker circulation leads to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“It’s this one weird trick that changed everything,” Lauderdale says. “The ligand switch has revealed this completely different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric CO2 that we thought we understood pretty well.” 

Slow cycle

To see what might explain the overturned trend, Lauderdale analyzed biological activity and carbon, nutrient, iron, and ligand concentrations from the ocean model under different circulation strengths, comparing scenarios where ligands were variable or constant across the various boxes.

This revealed a new feedback: The weaker the ocean’s circulation, the less carbon and nutrients the ocean pulls up from the deep. Any phytoplankton at the surface would then have fewer resources to grow and would produce fewer byproducts (including ligands) as a result. With fewer ligands available, less iron at the surface would be usable, further reducing the phytoplankton population. There would then be fewer phytoplankton available to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and consume upwelled carbon from the deep ocean.

“My work shows that we need to look more carefully at how ocean biology can affect the climate,” Lauderdale points out. “Some climate models predict a 30 percent slowdown in the ocean circulation due to melting ice sheets, particularly around Antarctica. This huge slowdown in overturning circulation could actually be a big problem: In addition to a host of other climate issues, not only would the ocean take up less anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere, but that could be amplified by a net outgassing of deep ocean carbon, leading to an unanticipated increase in atmospheric CO2 and unexpected further climate warming.” 

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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News 

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-49274-1 

ARTICLE TITLE

“Ocean iron cycle feedbacks decouple atmospheric CO2 from meridional overturning circulation changes”

 

Air pollution linked to a decrease in IVF birth rate success, new study shows

A study has revealed that exposure to fine particulate matter prior to the retrieval of oocytes during IVF can reduce the odds of achieving a live birth by almost 40%

EUROPEAN SOCIETY OF HUMAN REPRODUCTION AND EMBRYOLOGY

A pioneering study, presented today at the ESHRE 40th Annual Meeting in Amsterdam, has revealed that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) prior to the retrieval of oocytes (eggs) during in vitro fertilisation (IVF) can reduce the odds of achieving a live birth by almost 40% [1].

The study analysed PM10 exposure in the two weeks leading up to oocyte collection, finding that the odds of a live birth decreased by 38% (OR 0.62, 95% CI 0.43-0.89, p=0.010) when comparing the highest quartile of exposure (18.63 to 35.42 µg/m3) to the lowest quartile (7.08 to 12.92 µg/m3).

Conducted over an eight-year period in Perth, Australia, the research analysed 3,659 frozen embryo transfers from 1,836 patients. The median female age was 34.5 years at the time of oocyte retrieval and 36.1 years at the time of frozen embryo transfer. The study examined air pollutant concentrations over four exposure periods prior to oocyte retrieval (24 hours, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 3 months), with models created to account for co-exposures.

Increasing PM2.5 exposure in the 3 months prior to oocyte retrieval was also associated with decreased odds of live birth, falling from 0.90 (95% CI 0.70-1.15) in the second quartile to 0.66 (95% CI 0.47-0.92) in the fourth quartile.

Importantly, the negative impact of air pollution was observed despite excellent overall air quality during the study period, with PM10 and PM2.5 levels exceeding WHO guidelines on just 0.4% and 4.5% of the study days, respectively.

Dr Sebastian Leathersich, lead author of the study, explains, "This is the first study that has used frozen embryo transfer cycles to separately analyse the effects of pollutant exposure during the development of eggs and around the time of embryo transfer and early pregnancy. We could therefore evaluate whether pollution was having an effect on the eggs themselves, or on the early stages of pregnancy."

“Our results reveal a negative linear association between particulate matter exposure during the 2 weeks and 3 months prior to oocyte collection and subsequent live birth rates from those oocytes. This association is independent of the air quality at the time of frozen embryo transfer. These findings suggest that pollution negatively affects the quality of the eggs, not just the early stages of pregnancy, which is a distinction that has not been previously reported.”

Ambient (outdoor) air pollution is one of the greatest environmental risks to health and is estimated to cause over 4 million premature deaths per year worldwide [2]. Exposure to fine particulate matter is associated with a range of adverse health conditions, including cardiovascular and respiratory diseases [3]. In 2021, 97% of the urban EU population was exposed to concentrations of PM2.5 above the WHO annual guideline (5 µg (microgram) /m3) [4]. Although epidemiological data show a clear correlation between pollution and poorer reproductive outcomes, the mechanisms remain unclear [1].

Dr Leathersich furthers, “Climate change and pollution remain the greatest threats to human health, and human reproduction is not immune to this. Even in a part of the world with exceptional air quality, where very few days exceed the internationally accepted upper limits for pollution, there is a strong negative correlation between the amount of air pollution and the live birth rate in frozen embryo transfer cycles. Minimising pollutant exposure must be a key public health priority.”

Professor Dr Anis Feki, Chair-Elect of ESHRE, comments, "This important study highlights a significant link between air pollution and lower IVF success rates, with a notable reduction in live births associated with higher particulate matter exposure before oocyte retrieval. These findings emphasise the need for ongoing attention to environmental factors in reproductive health.”

The study abstract will be published today in Human Reproduction, one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals.

 

ENDS

 

Notes to editors:

A reference to the ESHRE Annual Meeting must be included in all coverage and/or articles associated with this study.

For more information or to arrange an expert interview, please contact the ESHRE Press Office at: press@eshre.eu

 

About the study author:

Dr Sebastian J Leathersich is a Fertility Specialist and Gynaecologist from Perth, Western Australia. He works at Fertility Specialists of Western Australia, part of City Fertility, and King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women in Subiaco, Australia. He is currently undertaking a PhD and a clinical Fellowship at Dexeus Fertility, Hospital Universitario Dexeus, Barcelona, Spain, and at the Universitat de Barcelona.

 

About the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology

The main aim of ESHRE is to promote interest in infertility care and to aim for a holistic understanding of reproductive biology and medicine.

ESHRE collaborates world-wide and advocates universal improvements in scientific research, encourages and evaluates new developments in the field, and fosters harmonisation in clinical practice. It also provides guidance to enhance effectiveness, safety and quality assurance in clinical and laboratory procedures, psychosocial care, and promotes ethical practice. ESHRE also fosters prevention of infertility and related educational programmes and promotes reproductive rights regardless of the individual’s background. ESHRE’s activities include teaching, training, professional accreditations, mentoring and career planning for junior professionals, as well as developing and maintaining data registries. It also facilitates and disseminates research in human reproduction and embryology to the general public, scientists, clinicians, allied personnel, and patient associations.

Website: https://www.eshre.eu/

 

About Human Reproduction

Human Reproduction is a monthly journal of ESHRE and is one of the top three journals in the world in the field of reproductive biology, obstetrics and gynaecology. It is published by Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press.

Prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution and cerebral palsy

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: In this large cohort study of singleton full term births in Canada, prenatal ambient PM2.5 exposure was associated with an increased risk of cerebral palsy in offspring. Further studies are needed to explore this association and its potential biological pathways, which could advance the identification of environmental risk factors of cerebral palsy in early life. 

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Carmen Messerlian, Ph.D., email cmesser@hsph.harvard.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.20717)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.20717?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=070924

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

 

References:

1. Leathersich S.J, et al (2024). Particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) exposure prior to oocyte collection is associated with decreased live birth rates in subsequent frozen embryo transfers. Human Reproduction.
2. World Health Organization. (2022). Ambient (outdoor) air quality and health. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health
3. Health Organization. (2021). What are the WHO air quality guidelines? Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/what-are-the-who-air-quality-guidelines
4. European Environment Agency. (2023). Air pollution levels across Europe still note safe, especially for children. Retrieved from https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/news/air-pollution-levels-across-europe#:~:text=EEA%20monitoring%20update%202022%3A%20air,particulate%20matter%20(PM2.5)