Friday, July 12, 2024

Complex impact of large wildfires on ozone layer dynamics unveiled

Bushfire — Credit: Vladyslav Dukhin from Pexels

In a revelation that highlights the fragile balance of our planet's atmosphere, scientists from China, Germany, and the U.S. have uncovered an unexpected link between massive wildfire events and the chemistry of the ozone layer. Published in Science Advances, this study reveals how wildfires, such as the catastrophic 2019/20 Australian bushfires, impact the stratosphere in previously unseen ways.

The ozone layer, a crucial shield protecting life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, has been on a path to recovery thanks to the Montreal Protocol. This landmark international treaty, adopted in 1987, successfully phased out the production of numerous substances responsible for ozone depletion.

Over the past decades, the ozone layer has shown significant signs of healing, a testament to global cooperation and environmental policy.

However, the stability of this vital atmospheric layer is now facing a new and unexpected challenge. During the 2019/20 Australian wildfires, researchers observed a dramatic increase in stratospheric aerosols—tiny particles that can influence climate, health and atmospheric chemistry.

Utilizing advanced satellite data and numerical models, the research team successfully demonstrated the impact of wildfires through a novel phenomenon: the smoke-charged vortex (SCV).

"The SCV is a powerful, smoke-laden whirlpool that transports wildfire emissions into the stratosphere, reaching altitudes of up to 35 kilometers," explained Prof. Hang Su from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the corresponding authors of the study.

"This process led to at least a doubling of the aerosol burden in the southern hemisphere's middle stratosphere. These aerosols, once reaching such high altitudes, initiated a series of heterogeneous reactions that impacted ozone concentrations."

The international team discovered that these wildfire-induced aerosols facilitated heterogeneous chemical reactions, which paradoxically led to both ozone depletion and ozone increase at different atmospheric layers.

While the lower stratosphere experienced significant ozone loss, they found that the enhanced chemical reactions on aerosols at higher altitudes, i.e., the middle stratosphere, lead to increase of ozone. In Southern Mid-Latitudes, this complex interplay managed to buffer approximately 40% (up to 70%) of the ozone depletion observed in the lower stratosphere in the following months of the mega-bushfire events.

So why does this matter?

"Our study demonstrates an unexpected and crucial mechanism, by which the absorbing aerosols in wildfire smoke, such as black carbon, can induce and sustain enormous smoke-charged vortices spanning thousands of kilometers," said Prof. Yafang Cheng, another corresponding author from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.

"These vortices can persist for months, carrying aerosols deeply into the stratosphere and affecting the ozone layer in distinct ways at different altitudes. This highlights the need for continued vigilance and research as climate change progresses."

The ozone layer's role in filtering UV radiation is crucial for protecting all life forms on Earth. The Montreal Protocol's success in reducing ozone-depleting substances was a monumental achievement, but the new findings highlight that natural events, exacerbated by climate change, pose additional risks to this fragile layer.

With the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires driven by global warming, the formation of SCVs and their impact on the stratosphere could become more common, threatening the delicate balance of the ozone layer.

This study opens new avenues for research into how wildfire and other climate-driven events might influence stratospheric chemistry and ozone dynamics in the future.

More information: Chaoqun Ma et al, Smoke-charged vortex doubles hemispheric aerosol in the middle stratosphere and buffers ozone depletion, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn3657. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3657

Journal information: Science Advances

Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Spillover of tropospheric ozone is affecting measurements of stratospheric ozone recovery more than previously realized

CALIFORNIA
Air-pollution study finds San Joaquin Valley residents pay millions on ‘completely preventable’ medical costs

by Vivienne Aguilar,

Central Valley Journalism Collaborative

July 12, 2024

A plume of smoke from a fire started by a lightning strike burns near Highway 26. In Calif., on June 24, 2024. (Vivienne Aguilar/CVJC via Bay City News)

Air in he San Joaquin Valley costs a fortune.

So say researchers at UC Merced, who found that three prevalent air pollutants in the region can cost San Joaquin Valley residents more than $700 million dollars per year in medical expenses, school absences and lost productivity.

“People do understand money,” said lead researcher Gilda Zarate-Gonzalez, a Fresno-based health economist and doctor of philosophy in public health. “They do understand the dollar signs, and I want to empower a community to see how much we’re paying for things that are completely preventable.”

The study, “Costs of Air Pollution in California’s San Joaquin Valley: A Societal Perspective of the Burden of Asthma on Emergency Departments and Inpatient Care,” was published in March in the Journal of Asthma and Allergy.

Previous studies have found that the San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the U.S. For her research, Zarate-Gonzalez used 2016 data from hospitals and emergency departments in six of the Valley’s eight counties. Stanislaus County and Kings County did not provide data.

Researchers focused on data from 2016 because that year California experienced fewer wildfires, and therefore better air quality, than four of the five years leading up to the start of their work.

The study took three years to complete. First, Zarate-Gonzalez and her team assessed the impact of asthma on quality of life. Next, they used the hospital data to track exposures to specific pollutants known to increase the risk of asthma — particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone and nitrogen dioxide. Finally, they used education and Social Security data to calculate the number of school and work days people missed due to respiratory illnesses.

In 2016, estimated costs related to emergency department visits totaled $498,014,124. Costs related to hospital admissions totaled $223,552,720.

They do understand the dollar signs, and I want to empower a community to see how much we’re paying for things that are completely preventable.GILDA ZARATE-GONZALEZ, UC MERCED LEAD RESEARCHER

Researchers estimated that, in 2016, even a reduction of one part-per-billion in each of the three pollutants they studied would have prevented about 21,000 visits to emergency departments and about 19,000 hospitalizations. The resulting cost savings would have been almost $137 million, including $93,651,220 related to adults, $14,891,329 related to seniors and $28,179,332 related to school-aged children.

“When a child gets sick, a parent or a caretaker is going to have to take them to the emergency room,” Zarate-Gonzalez said. “And so that productivity of that adult being with the child, caring for the child, it’s also a cost for society.”

Schools also take a financial hit when children get sick, because when kids miss class, schools lose money.

“Attendance, daily attendance, average attendance is how schools get reimbursed for children to actually demonstrate that they’re in school and learning,” Zarate-Gonzalez said. “And so those are losses for our region.”

Because Zarate-Gonzalez was unable to get data on asthma-related visits to primary care physicians, she said, the actual cost of air pollution in the Valley is likely higher than her research shows.

In fact, she said, more people should be treated for asthma in primary care settings than in hospitals because preventative care measures associated with more routine doctor visits often lead to better health outcomes.

The ratio of doctors to patients in the San Joaquin Valley is far lower than the state average. The shortage of doctors means that the work of preventative care often falls to community based organizations that try to supplement infrequent doctor appointments.

Zarate-Gonzalez said insurance companies also have a role to play in getting ahead of the worst outcomes for people living with asthma.

“I want health insurance to look at this and say, oh, yeah, it’s costing us a lot of money,” she said. “Because emergency department and hospitalization is a lot more costly than managing asthma in the primary care setting.”

Zarate-Gonzalez, whose son lives with asthma, said there’s no safe time of year to breathe air in the Valley because different seasons present different risks to respiratory health. During summer, for example, raw gasses heated by sunlight turn into ozone, causing asthma attacks and other respiratory problems.

Nitrogen dioxide “is the one that’s sending people to the emergency department and to contribute hospitalizations in the warm season,” Zarate-Gonzalez said. “And then, obviously, particulate matter is a big problem in the winter.

Major causes of air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley stem from agriculture and the diesel fuel emissions that go with it.

Zarate-Gonzalez pointed out that county needs assessments in the Valley have found that residents want to address air pollution and respiratory health.

“They want clean air,” she said. “But how public health departments are going to do that, I really don’t know.”

Who’s supposed to clean the air?

Determining who is responsible for improving air quality in the Valley is more complicated than it sounds. State and local agencies can implement policies that address pollution and related health outcomes, but lawmakers have to enact those policies, and unlock the funding that goes with them. Getting them to do that often requires advocacy by residents and local nonprofits.

“It is really community based organizations that are the strongest advocates in the public health sector to clean up the air,” Zarate-Gonzalez said. “I really haven’t seen a lot of public health departments involved.”

Elaine Labson, executive director of Little Manila Rising, a nonprofit in Stockton focused on education and public health, said public agencies in the Valley purport to address asthma in the Valley, but don’t prioritize it.

“It’s hard to activate (the) county, it’s hard to activate the city when they’re not even really engaged into it unless you see, like, a giant funding stream coming in,” she said. “And that’s when they start paying attention to it.”

In 2017, lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 617 to address dangerous air quality in landlocked regions of California. The bill required the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to work with communities that were nominated to receive grants and have their burden of air pollution exposure studied over the next five years.

From 2018 to 2023, CARB awarded about $35 million in grants to monitor air quality, collect data, create local emission reduction plans and engage community stakeholders across the state. To date, CARB has nominated more than a dozen communities in the Valley to participate in the programs. Local air districts distribute the money to community-based organizations that sit on steering committees and meet monthly to discuss goals and where to invest resources.

Little Manila Rising joined the Stockton steering committee in 2020, and formed DAWN, short for Decreasing Asthma Within Neighborhoods. The program is named after Dr. Dawn Mabalon, co-founder of Little Manila Rising, who died of an asthma attack while on vacation with her family in 2018.

DAWN’s program director, Jazmarie LaTour, said her team’s work is “grounded in knowing that her life could have been saved. And so in the work that we do, we know that we have the power to save lives.”

It is really community based organizations that are the strongest advocates in the public health sector to clean up the air.GILDA ZARATE-GONZALEZ, UC MERCED LEAD RESEARCHER

Together, Labson and LaTour have five family members who live with asthma.

As part of the steering committee, Little Manila Rising collects the stories and concerns of residents living with asthma and brings them to local health officials. The group also educates local residents on mitigating the impacts of air pollution in their daily lives by using air purifiers and weatherizing their homes.

Of course, the cost of those measures puts them out of reach for many Valley residents. And for people who work outside all day, including the Valley’s massive population of farm workers, options for reducing exposure to air pollution are essentially limited to wearing masks.

LaTour said her team also works to increase access to medications that treat respiratory problems.

“The going rate for an inhaler on the street is $70,” she said. “You know, people buy inhalers from other people. And that’s either because of a diagnosis that they hadn’t been able to get or been telling their doctor about or, or don’t have insurance, or they simply just can’t afford the cost of an inhaler.”

Zarate-Gonzalez was unable to address disproportionate health outcomes based on income and race in her study because the data included limited demographic information. But AB-617 requires CARB to do exactly that.

“California has made many gains in improving air quality in the state,” Kevin Olp, who leads CARB’s office of reporting, assessment and strategy said in an email. “But there are still many communities that are disproportionately impacted by poor air quality, in part, because of racist land use practices and policies.”

Olp said in an email statement that race is a determining factor in choosing which communities receive state air quality grants because research has shown that disproportionate harm is caused by poor air quality in low-income communities and communities of color.

“Exposure to air pollution, the presence of sensitive populations such as children or the elderly, and vulnerability measures, such as poverty and unemployment are the defining factors of nomination,” Olp said.

Zarate-Gonzalez said that in her upcoming work she hopes to demonstrate how air pollution disproportionately affects Black, Latin, Asian, Indigenous and other communities of color.

“I want to be specific about what we’re talking about when it comes to air pollution, race and ethnicity,” she said.

Vivienne Aguilar is the health equity reporter for the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative in collaboration with the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF).

TEMPER TANTRUM

Elon Musk Demands "Criminal Prosecution" of People Who Won't Give Him Money

He still thinks the left is conspiring against him.

Image by Getty /

Futurism

JUL 12, 2024

VICTOR TANGERMANN

X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk is very unhappy with advertisers, who are opting out of giving him money. In fact, Musk — the self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" — is calling for them to be criminally prosecuted for, um, exercising the mild free speech of not paying him.

"Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution," he tweeted, responding to a video of conservative pundit Ben Shapiro accusing "legacy media" of lying to "preserve left-leaning narratives."

Shapiro was testifying in front of a House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, which released a report this week, accusing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) of conspiring to suppress conservative voices on the internet, an increasingly common talking point among Republicans.

Now that Musk has surrounded himself with pundits sympathetic to his increasingly right-wing beliefs, he was quick to chime in.

"Extremely concerning!" Musk tweeted in response to the report.

"Having seen the evidence unearthed today by Congress, X has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket," he wrote.

Basically, Musk essentially wants it to be illegal for companies to refuse to advertise on his platform.

But who could blame them for leaving in droves following his chaotic $44 billion acquisition in 2022? The company has quickly turned into a cesspool of disinformation and hate speech — a nosedive accelerated by Musk's own racist tirades.

And it's not just advertisers. Data suggests users are also jumping ship in droves.

Meanwhile, Musk has attempted to stem the bleeding by begging advertisers to return. That's despite quite literally telling them to "go fuck yourselves" during the New York Times DealBook Summit last year.

It's a precarious situation for the company, which has already been reeling from plummeting revenue. Last month, Bloomberg reported that ad revenues were down almost 40 percent in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.

And Musk's kneejerk lawsuits aimed at nonprofits that fight hate speech online aren't going well, either. The infamously litigious CEO had been accusing these groups of scaring away advertisers — somehow forgetting his own role in the exodus.

His suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate was dismissed in March, for example, with a judge finding that Musk was trying to "punish" the group for exercising free speech. Another lawsuit he filed against Media Matters for America is scheduled for a trial in April next year — but the nonprofit maintains that the complaint is already dead in the water.

Whether Congress will agree with Musk's provocative insinuation that advertisers who boycott X should be criminally prosecuted remains dubious at best.

For its part, GARM maintains that it didn't do anything wrong, telling Ars Technica in a statement that it "has continually demonstrated that it will cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee in good faith" and that it remains "steadfast in the conviction that GARM enhances transparency in previously opaque practices relative to ad placements in digital social media."

The situation is especially awkward for X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who has historically supported GARM, a flagship partner of the World Economic Forum, to which she has strong ties.

Now, Yaccarino is desperately trying to pick up the pieces and put out Musk's fires.

On July 1, X announced that it had "reinstated our relationship" with GARM. "X is committed to the safety of our global town square and proud to be part of the GARM community!"

Whether Musk would agree with that sentiment remains to be seen.

AMERIKA

Study: Gun laws help reduce suicides, not murders, among children

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News
July 12,2024

Restrictive gun laws can decrease suicide rates among children and teenagers, but they don't seem to lower their risk of being murdered, a new study says. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

Restrictive gun laws can decrease suicide rates among children and teenagers, but they don't seem to lower their risk of being murdered, a new study says.

States with laws requiring safe storage of firearms and mandatory waiting periods had lower suicide death rates among kids younger than 18, researchers report.

However, no gun laws appeared to lower children's risk of being murdered by a firearm, even those that prohibit access for people at risk of harming themselves and others, result show.

"It was surprising to me that no laws appear to be impacting the rates of homicide in children, not even safe access," said lead researcher Dr. Krista Haines, an assistant professor of surgery and population health sciences at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. "It's sad and shocking."

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 17,000 child firearm deaths that occurred between 2009 and 2020, including more than 6,700 suicides and more than 10,200 murders.

They compared 36 different state-level firearm laws to see if any appeared to reduce or increase the risk of suicide or homicide for children.

The analysis "suggests that we do actually have some laws that work," Haines said in a news release.

"But there are very few of these laws, and they only appear to work for suicide, not for homicide," she continued. "Our study clearly points to a need for more laws and controlled access to these guns, especially given the high rates of death among children in the United States."

Interestingly, "stand your ground" laws that protect people who use guns in self-defense appeared to increase children and teens' risk of suicide, researchers found.

Laws setting minimum ages for possession or purchase of firearms did not significantly reduce suicide death rates, results show.

The U.S. accounts for more than 90% of child firearm deaths worldwide, researchers said in background notes. More studies are needed to understand the risk to kids, they argue.

"This is a very early study, and we need to continue to use this kind of research to advance better policies," senior researcher Dr. Suresh Agarwal, chief of trauma, acute and critical care surgery at Duke University, said in a news release. "What we have in place now has limited impact, particularly with regard to homicides."

The new study was published Thursday in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

More information

KFF has more about child and teen firearm deaths.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

2023 Rolling Hills Estates landslide likely began the winter before

by University of California, Los Angeles

Californians are familiar with landslides that occur around storms, when saturated soil and rock loses its grip and slips from its perch on the substrate. These types of landslides can be triggered by intense rainfall, and incoming storms can be a warning that neighborhoods need to evacuate.

Landslides that happen during the hot, dry summers, though, tend to take people by surprise. In July 2023, for example, a landslide seemed to come out of nowhere to devastate a neighborhood in Rolling Hills Estates, located on the northern side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County.

Now, landslide researchers at UCLA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, have published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters that shows that the 2023 Rolling Hills Estates event was a slow-moving, progressive landslide that began the winter before, when unusually heavy rainfall infiltrated into the slope and reduced its strength. The researchers used satellite data to measure minute shifts in the surface of the affected area before, during and after the slide and concluded that this method could be used to detect future landslides before they become catastrophic.

"Movement on the Palos Verdes Peninsula's Portuguese Bend Landslide has been recorded since the late 1950s," said paper co-author Alexander Handwerger, a research scientist at UCLA's Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering and JPL. "But there was no discernible movement in this region of the nearby Rolling Hills Estates before 2023. People began reporting movement, as indicated by cracks in houses, in April 2023, which matches our observations. There was initial slow movement that accelerated progressively, culminating in complete collapse several months later."

The study, led by UCLA postdoctoral researcher Xiang Li, used satellite radar and optical data taken over Los Angeles every few weeks to measure ground motion over time. The satellite radar data for Rolling Hills Estates from 2016 to July 2023 revealed that after very slight movement during the 2019 rainy season, the ground remained stable until heavy winter rainfall, starting in December 2022, kickstarted movement in February. By June, the area had moved 0.04 meters, or about 1.6 inches, and on July 8—a sunny, dry day preceded by 40 dry days—around 10 meters, or 33 feet, of horizontal motion occurred, destroying 12 homes.

The likely reason for the delay between initial movement in February and complete failure in July is that it took time for increased instability to develop. The researchers hypothesize that as water seeped through the ground, a sliding surface formed, causing the landslide body, including the ground surface, to slide progressively until the entire landslide moved rapidly all at once.

"Formation of the sliding surface will induce some movement, while the collapse will only occur when the sliding surface is fully developed," Li said. "The progression can happen over hours, months or years."

The researchers then attempted to determine if the Rolling Hills Estates landslide could have been predicted. By computing the displacement over time, they arrived at a predicted failure date on July 11, three days after the real landslide on July 8. They note that although their results are encouraging, predicting landslides using satellite remote sensing data needs further refinement, and landslides in areas without good historical satellite data might not be possible to predict in this way.

Li said that one of the challenges in forecasting landslides is the time period over which the progression takes place. Accurate forecasting requires continuous historical and ongoing satellite radar or in-situ measurements.

Handwerger is a core member of a project at JPL that is building an analysis-ready surface displacement database from satellite radar data for the entire United States, U.S. territories, Canada within 200 km of the U.S. border, and all mainland countries from the southern U.S. border up to and including Panama. The project, called Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis, or OPERA, will contain analysis-ready data for near real-time monitoring and, possibly, landslide prediction.

"These motions can be quite subtle before they begin to move fast," Li said. "Cracks in structures are what people tend to notice first. In fact, local residents in Rolling Hills Estates first reported cracks in their houses starting in April 2023. Signs of active movement require caution and monitoring because they could signal a progressive failure in the future."

More information: Xiang Li et al, Exploring the Behaviors of Initiated Progressive Failure and Slow‐Moving Landslides in Los Angeles Using Satellite InSAR and Pixel Offset Tracking, Geophysical Research Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024GL108267

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters

Provided by University of California, Los Angeles City sprawl responsible for acceleration of deep landslide movement, finds study

Just a Category 1 hurricane? Don't be fooled by a number—It could be more devastating than a Cat 5

by Brendan Farrington

Here's a troubling phrase hurricane forecasters hate but often hear: "It's just a Category 1. Nothing to worry about."

Or even worse: "Tropical storm? Just some wind and rain."

But look at Hurricane Beryl, which hit Texas this week as a "mere" Category 1 storm—far weaker in wind strength than when it swept through the Caribbean as a Cat 5 just days earlier—yet still knocked out power to 2.7 million customers. The storm has been blamed for eight deaths in the U.S.

Beryl is not the only example. By the numbers, Tropical Storm Fay in 2008 didn't even register on the scale of dangerous storms before it made four separate landfalls in Florida. In this case, it was not Fay's strength, but its speed—or lack thereof—that turned out to be the key. The listless storm parked itself over the state for days, dumping as much as 25 inches (64 centimeters) of rain in some places. Floods killed crops and destroyed homes. Roads were so flooded that alligators swam alongside first responders as they rescued people stranded in their homes.

On a scale of 1 to 5

The Saffir-Simpson Scale—which measures the strength of a hurricane's winds on a scale of Category 1 to Category 5, with 5 being the strongest—was introduced to the public in 1973, the year that gas prices spiked from 39 cents to 55 cents a gallon and Tony Orlando and Dawn had the #1 hit of the year with "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree."

In other words, times have changed, and so should the way people think about how dangerous a storm is when it's heading their way.

Or think about it in terms of your health: While it's important to check your blood pressure, it's only one of many measures that determine how fit you are.

When monitoring storms, "Don't focus on the category," advises Craig Fugate, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who also was emergency management director in Florida during some of the state's worst storms. "We really need to talk about the hurricane's impacts, not a number" that applies only to wind strength.

Forecasters developed the Saffir-Simpson scale—and other tools such as flood maps and storm prediction cones—as a type of shorthand to easily and quickly convey a storm's severity and reach, but they have taken on oversize roles, Fugate said.

"We're finding that there's a lot of things in emergency management where we didn't really think through how we're going to communicate, and we ended up stuck with these legacy descriptions that are hard to shake," he said.

The circumference of a storm, how fast it's moving and the amount of rain it delivers are all factors that matter, as is the place where it hits: its geography, its population and the quality of its infrastructure. Also, it's important to remember that tornadoes can form regardless of a storm's size.

Size is as Important as Strength and Speed

A Category 5 storm that's compact and moving quickly could cause far less damage than a weaker, wetter storm with a huge circumference that stalls over a populated area, Fugate notes.

For example, Hurricane Charley and Hurricane Ida were both Category 4 storms. But Charley, which struck Florida's southwest Gulf Coast in 2004, was compact and lost strength quickly as it moved inland. Ida, which came ashore in Louisiana in 2021, spawned deadly tornadoes and catastrophic flooding as far away as the northeastern United States. Sixty people were killed in New York and New Jersey alone. It also turned out to be the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, surpassed only by Hurricane Katrina.

"Charley was a Cat 4 and was very devastating where it made landfall, but Hurricane Ida was a much bigger storm and caused much more widespread devastation," Fugate noted.

Watch local forecasts

It's fine to follow The Weather Channel and watch updates from the National Hurricane Center when a storm forms and starts making its way toward land, but the closer it gets, the better it is to seek out local weather information, Fugate says.

"Everyone focuses on the Hurricane Center," he said. "They're responsible for storm intensity and track. They're not necessarily going to have all the local impacts."

A better place to go as a storm approaches, Fugate says, is the National Weather Service's homepage, where you can type in a ZIP code and see what's happening in your area.

"Your (regional) National Weather Service office is taking all that information and they're localizing it so they can tell you what kind of wind you can expect, what kind of flooding you can expect," Fugate says. "Are you in a storm surge area? When are the high tides?"

Don't Make Assumptions

Relying on FEMA flood zone maps to determine a storm's potential impact is as ill-advised as depending solely on the Saffir-Simpson scale, Fugate warns.

"People think, 'Well, it's a flood map. If I don't live in the zone, I don't flood.' No! It's an insurance rate map. Not being in that special risk area doesn't mean you don't flood, it just means the insurance is cheaper."

Also, don't be fooled by the term "100-year-flood zone." It does not, as many assume, mean that the zone only floods every 100 years; rather that there is a 1% risk of flooding, Fugate notes.

Finally, don't be misled by the forecast cone.

The cone—which for a reason is called the "cone of uncertainty"—shows where the center of a hurricane might go, but not how far out storm-force winds will extend.

People can be injured, killed or have heavy property losses outside the cone—a lesson that residents in the Northeast learned during Ida.

One mistake is to look at the graphic and think, "'I'm not in the cone, I'm good,'" Fugate says. "That's not what it means!"

Hurricane Beryl, first of 2024 season, bears down on Caribbean

THE INDUS SCRIPT: Recognition as an Alphabet

This paper introduces a ground-breaking approach to deciphering the Indus script, employed by the Indus Valley Civilization . Moving beyond previous methods, my research delves into the intricate structure of the script's signs, aiming to definitively settle the debate regarding its categorization.

Published in Arts & Humanities
Jul 12, 2024

Mahaveer H Muhammad Abro
Independent Researcher, Indus Civilization

Read the paper
THE INDUS SCRIPT Recognition as an alphabet

This paper introduces a groundbreaking approach to deciphering the Indus script, employed by the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) from c. 3300 to 1900 BCE. Movin

This paper introduces a ground-breaking approach to deciphering the Indus script, employed by the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) from c. 3300 to 1900 BCE. Moving beyond previous methods, my research delves into the intricate structure of the script's signs, aiming to definitively settle the debate regarding its categorization. Specifically, I investigate whether the Indus script functions as an alphabet, presenting compelling evidence for the number of primary signs it comprises.

My methodology meticulously examines over 400 signs, encompassing the entire corpus rather than relying on limited samples. This holistic approach utilizes a novel grid-based decomposition technique to visually dissect compound signs, identify diacritics with consistent usage patterns, and uncover the underlying principles of sign extraction. Through this rigorous analysis, I successfully isolate the essential primary signs and illuminate their potential phonetic representations within an alphabetic system.

However, I acknowledge the intricate variations in writing styles present across the Indus corpus. These stylistic subtleties, encompassing formation, composition, and combination strategies, contribute to the apparent plurality of signs. Nonetheless, my findings reveal a core set of only 40 fundamental signs, suggesting a remarkably concise system beneath the surface complexity.

By presenting this new paradigm for understanding the Indus script, I pave the way for further advances in its decipherment. Continued exploration of the identified core signs and their phonetic associations holds immense potential for unlocking the linguistic insights encoded within this enigmatic script, shedding light on a crucial chapter in human history.

GOING WITH THE FLOW —

Much of Neanderthal genetic diversity came from modern humans

Neanderthals' low diversity means their population was even smaller than we thought.

JOHN TIMMER - 7/12/2024,

Enlarge
Halamka 15

The basic outline of the interactions between modern humans and Neanderthals is now well established. The two came in contact as modern humans began their major expansion out of Africa, which occurred roughly 60,000 years ago. Humans picked up some Neanderthal DNA through interbreeding, while the Neanderthal population, always fairly small, was swept away by the waves of new arrivals.

But there are some aspects of this big-picture view that don't entirely line up with the data. While it nicely explains the fact that Neanderthal sequences are far more common in non-African populations, it doesn't account for the fact that every African population we've looked at has some DNA that matches up with Neanderthal DNA.

A study published on Thursday argues that much of this match came about because an early modern human population also left Africa and interbred with Neanderthals. But in this case, the result was to introduce modern human DNA to the Neanderthal population. The study shows that this DNA accounts for a lot of Neanderthals' genetic diversity, suggesting that their population was even smaller than earlier estimates had suggested.

Out of Africa early

This study isn't the first to suggest that modern humans and their genes met Neanderthals well in advance of our major out-of-Africa expansion. The key to understanding this is the genome of a Neanderthal from the Altai region of Siberia, which dates from roughly 120,000 years ago. That's well before modern humans expanded out of Africa, yet its genome has some regions that have excellent matches to the human genome but are absent from the Denisovan lineage.

One explanation for this is that these are segments of Neanderthal DNA that were later picked up by the population that expanded out of Africa. The problem with that view is that most of these sequences also show up in African populations. So, researchers advanced the idea that an ancestral population of modern humans left Africa about 200,000 years ago, and some of its DNA was retained by Siberian Neanderthals. That's consistent with some fossil finds that place anatomically modern humans in the Mideast at roughly the same time.

There is, however, an alternative explanation: Some of the population that expanded out of Africa 60,000 years ago and picked up Neanderthal DNA migrated back to Africa, taking the Neanderthal DNA with them. That has led to a small bit of the Neanderthal DNA persisting within African populations.

To sort this all out, a research team based at Princeton University focused on the Neanderthal DNA found in Africans, taking advantage of the fact that we now have a much larger array of completed human genomes (approximately 2,000 of them).

The work was based on a simple hypothesis. All of our work on Neanderthal DNA indicates that their population was relatively small, and thus had less genetic diversity than modern humans did. If that's the case, then the addition of modern human DNA to the Neanderthal population should have boosted its genetic diversity. If so, then the stretches of "Neanderthal" DNA found in African populations should include some of the more diverse regions of the Neanderthal genome.

There and back again

In this work, non-Africans acted as a control group. The researchers identified the regions of the Neanderthal genome that they carry and checked how diverse those are within the Neanderthal genomes. They then made the same comparison with the sections of Neanderthal DNA that are found in African populations. This showed there was a clear difference: the Neanderthal DNA carried in Africans tended to come from areas of the Neanderthal genome that were much more diverse. (Meaning the six Neanderthal chromosomes we have sequences from are more likely to have differences between their DNA bases in these areas.)

A second analysis focused in on the most diverse regions of the Neanderthal genome (the top fifth percentile). Fully 60 percent of these regions were included in the Neanderthal DNA identified in African populations. By contrast, they accounted for only 23 percent of the Neanderthal DNA in non-African populations. The team also reran the analysis without the top 10 percent of diverse Neanderthal sequences and found that the matches with African genomes largely disappeared.

So, it's clear that the most diverse parts of the Neanderthal genome are largely shared with human genomes in African populations. The conclusion is that this isn't Neanderthal DNA that somehow made its way to Africans. Instead, it's modern human DNA that was picked up by Neanderthals and maintained in their population. Overall, the researchers estimate that roughly 3 to 4 percent of Neanderthal genomes consist of modern human DNA from this early interbreeding.

This doesn't explain all of the matches with Neanderthal DNA found in African populations, though—the researchers estimate that there is still somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of these matching sequences it doesn't account for. This suggests that some Neanderthal DNA did arrive in Africa through back-migration of populations that had left during the out-of-Africa expansion.

This modern human→Neanderthal shows up in the populations that left Africa, as well. But it only accounts for about 10 percent of the DNA they share with Neanderthals. All of the rest is distinctly Neanderthal→modern human DNA that was picked up during the expansion out of Africa.

A vanishing population

The converse of this finding is that the distinctly Neanderthal portions of the genome are much less diverse than the complete Neanderthal genome. And that's significant, because genetic diversity is a measure of the effective population size—small populations tend to be much less genetically diverse, in part because there are simply fewer chromosomes overall, and in part because it's more likely that individuals will mate with distant relatives.

In the case of Neanderthals, the existing estimates of genetic diversity from the genomes we had suggested that the Neanderthal population was small, far smaller than those of contemporary modern humans. The new work suggests that about 20 percent of that diversity came through interbreeding with modern humans, implying that the Neanderthal population was even smaller than those estimates.

The two other Neanderthal genomes we have date from around the time of the major out-of-Africa expansion of modern humans. And the new analysis suggests that they'd also picked up a tiny bit of additional human DNA at this time. But the researchers propose that the population was so small that this made very little difference. "The assimilation of Neanderthals into modern human populations as they spread throughout Eurasia would have effectively increased the size of modern human populations while simultaneously decreasing the size of an already at-risk Neanderthal population," the authors suggest.

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adi1768 (About DOIs).

JOHN TIMMERJ

ohn is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

TOXIC TAMPONS
Multiple metals detected in tampons, new study finds

Sixteen potentially harmful metals can be found in tampons sold by two dozen unique brands, a new study finds, highlighting concerns about exposure for people who use them.

The levels of the metals found in the 30 different tampons sampled were low. But 12 of the 16 metals identified were detected in all of the tampons. The study, by researchers with Columbia University, the University of California Berkeley and Michigan State University, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Environment International.
Absorbing metals in our bodies

It’s possible the metals in tampons can be absorbed through contact, since the skin of and around the vagina is more sensitive than other parts of the body. A separate peer-reviewed paper noted that tampons can cause tiny tears in the vagina, which may allow chemicals to enter the body.

The study’s 30 tampons included those made from cotton, rayon or a mix of cotton, rayon and viscose. There’s limited data on this risk, but one 2019 study published in Environmental Health observed that concentrations of blood mercury were higher among tampon users. This suggests metals may enter the body as a result of tampon use.

The cotton used to make tampons commonly contains heavy metals from the soil in which it was grown. Authors of the Environmental International study also say some metals are added intentionally for odor control, lubrication or color or as preservatives, citing several tampon patents that mention the addition of metals in their design.
EDC exposure in tampons

Heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury are also endocrine disruptors, or EDCs. Exposure to these chemicals is linked to a suite of health problems, including adverse reproductive effects and cardiometabolic consequences.

Metals are not the only EDCs detected in tampons and other menstrual products: Studies have also reported levels of the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, in addition to phthalates and parabens.

Adolescents are starting to menstruate earlier and earlier, and EDC exposure during this time may be more harmful than later in life.

Despite the low levels of metals found in tampons, stricter regulation is necessary, given the mixture of chemicals found in the products and concerns about their impact – especially during critical periods of development like adolescence.
How tampons are regulated

Tampons are regulated as medical devices in the U.S., so manufacturers don’t have to disclose their chemical ingredients. Labeling requirements for tampons include warnings about toxic shock syndrome and absorbency information, but not ingredients.

Tampons from vending machines are exempt from any federal labeling requirements.

The Food and Drug Administration advises tampon companies to avoid use of pesticides and certain dioxins. But it hasn’t explicitly banned harmful chemicals for use in tampons.

Nor does the FDA require ingredients used in menstrual products like tampons to meet any kind of safety standard.

That’s why it can be difficult to know which products are safer. The FDA should pursue new rules to keep harmful chemicals out of menstrual products, require ingredient disclosure and set safety standards for ingredients.

And although the metal levels detected in the new study were low, the findings suggest a potential need to also revisit safety standards for metals in tampon material
What you can do

Until there are adequate tampon labeling requirements, consumers’ best option is to contact brands directly to ask what ingredients they use. It’s also important to support calls for new federal and state regulations to improve the safety of menstrual products.

CONVICTED

SCHOOLCHILDREN SENTENCED FOR AI-GENERATING NUDES OF THEIR CLASSMATES

JUL 12, 2024
byMAGGIE HARRISON DUPRÉ

"THE MINORS USED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS TO OBTAIN MANIPULATED IMAGES..."

GETTY / FUT

Perp Walk

A Spanish court has sentenced 15 teenagers to one year of probation for using AI to create fake nude images of female classmates, The Guardian reports.

The perpetrators, all aged 13 to 15, were convicted in Badajoz, Spain on 20 counts of creating child abuse images and 20 counts of "offenses against their victims' moral integrity," according to the Guardian. They were tried as minors, and their collective conviction marks one of the first in a growing pool of cases involving minors and the creation and dissemination of nonconsensual, AI-driven deepfake pornography in middle and high schools.

"The sentence notes that it has been proved," the court told the Guardian in a statement, "that the minors used artificial intelligence applications to obtain manipulated images of [other minors] by taking girls' original faces from their social media profiles and superimposing those images on the bodies of naked female bodies."

Case by Case

News of the incident surfaced last September when the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that a cohort of school-aged girls had discovered that classmates had created sexually explicit AI-generated images of them and circulated those photos throughout four schools via two WhatsApp groups.

"Mom, they say there's a naked photo of me going around," one impacted student told her mother, as quoted by El Pais. "That they did it with an artificial intelligence app. I'm scared."

At the time of the El Pais report, prosecutors were still investigating whether AI-generated nude images of minors, also generated by minors, constituted a crime. In the US and abroad, laws and regulations that shroud the use of AI to generate fake nude images often live in legal gray area — it's an obviously repugnant and invasive act that can leave lasting negative impacts on victims, but not always necessarily illegal. This grayness has also been reflected in uncertain and flat-footed school responses, which in some cases have been heavily criticized. Following a recent incident at an affluent New Jersey high school, for example, school officials were accused of attempting to sweep wrongdoing under the rug.

"It seems as though the Westfield High School administration and the district," Dorota Mani, the mother of an impacted student, at a school board meeting in March, according to an April New York Times report, "are engaging in a master class of making this incident vanish into thin air."

But as the number of incidents continues to rise, whether such incidents are considered criminal, and what punishment looks like, continues to take firmer shape. In March, Wired reported that two Miami teenagers were charged with felonies for creating AI nudes of classmates. The same month, the FBI declared that AI-generated sexual imagery of minors is indeed illegal.

Sadly, though, as laws and norms around emerging AI technologies continue to develop, we're likely to see more similar cases.

More on AI deepfakes: Police Investigating AI-Generated Nudes of New Jersey High Schoolers

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