Scientists find new way global air churn makes particles

by Leah Shaffer, Washington University in St. Louis

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

You can think of our atmosphere as a big chemistry set, a global churn of gaseous molecules and particles that constantly bounce off and change each other in complicated ways. While the particles are very small, often less than 1% of the thickness of human hair, they have outsized impacts. For example, particles are the seeds of cloud droplets, and the abundance of the particles changes the reflectivity and the amount of clouds, rainfall and climate.

Now, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered something new in the sky, a mechanism that produces a large portion of particles in Earth's atmosphere.

The research, published in Science this month, was led by Jian Wang, professor and director of the Center for Aerosol Science and Engineering at WashU. The research team includes Lu Xu, assistant professor in WashU's Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering and scientists from NASA, NOAA, NCA, and European universities.

The conventional thinking was that most particle formation occurs in cloud outflow regions, where clouds float into the upper troposphere and eventually evaporate. In that process, clouds are getting wrung out and most particles are removed by rain. As a result, the air in the outflow regions is clear and clean, leaving some gaseous molecules with nowhere to go but form new particles.

"However, using the data collected from NASA's global-scale aircraft measurements, we found that most of the new particles are not formed in the outflow regions as previously thought," Wang said.

While puzzling over this surprising observation, Wang and colleagues ended up discovering a whole different mechanism taking place when the mixing of stratospheric and tropospheric air results in conditions that are ripe for particle formation.

"Stratosphere air often dips in troposphere due to meandering jet stream. As the ozone-rich stratospheric air and more moist tropospheric air mix, it leads to a high concentration of hydroxyl radical (OH), an important oxidant that helps produce the type of molecules that nucleate and form new particles," said Jiaoshi Zhang, first author on the study and a research scientist in Wang's lab.

"We found this phenomenon is widespread around the globe and likely occurs more frequently than the particle formation in the cloud outflows," he added.

Future field observations and modeling studies will be needed to confirm and further quantify the importance of this newly discovered mechanism of particle formation. Obviously, humans contribute their own particles in the form of air pollution, but Wang said what was discovered in this research is a natural process that occurs around the globe, even in remote and pristine regions.

There is also some evidence the stratospheric air will dip into troposphere more frequently in future climate, so this mechanism may become even more important, Wang said. Including this previously unknown process can improve climate models and may help better simulate climate change and predict future climate.

"While we are puzzled by the observation initially, once we put everything together, afterwards it was not so surprising," Wang said.

"It is well known that molecules forming new particles are generated through oxidation in the atmosphere. When the stratosphere and troposphere air mix, the OH concentration is very high, and it's primed for particle formation."

More information: Jiaoshi Zhang et al, Stratospheric air intrusions promote global-scale new particle formation, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adn2961

Journal information: Science 

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis Discovering a new way by which aerosols rapidly form and grow at high altitude

Archaeologists Unearth 4,000-Year-Old Ceremonial Temple in Peru

The structure appears to predate Machu Picchu, the country’s best-known archaeological site, by 3,500 years



Ella Feldman
Daily Correspondent

SMITHSONIAN

July 12, 2024 

Luis Muro Ynoñán poses with a carving of a mythological bird-like creature

. Ucupe Cultural Landscape Archaeological Project

Researchers in Peru say they have found the remains of a 4,000-year-old temple and theater, a discovery that could enrich historians’ understanding of ancient religious practices in the region.

“We still know very little about how and under which circumstances complex belief systems emerged in the Andes,” says Luis Muro Ynoñán, an archaeologist from Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University who led the team, in a statement. “Now we have evidence about some of the earliest religious spaces that people were creating in this part of the world.”

The ruins appear to predate Machu Picchu, the Inca settlement that is now Peru’s best-known archaeological site, by roughly 3,500 years. The researchers say they also predate pre-Inca cultures such as the Moche and Nazca.

“We don’t know what these people called themselves, or how other people referred to them,” Muro Ynoñan adds. “All we know about them comes from what they created: their houses, temples and funerary goods.”

Last month, researchers began excavating a 33- by 33-foot plot of land located near Zaña, a town in coastal Peru. Just six feet below the surface, they found evidence of ancient walls made of mud and clay.

The structure appears to have been a section of a larger temple, which may have been built into the mountainside. The team also found the remains of a small theater, which “could have been used to perform ritual performances in front of a selected audience,” per Muro Ynoñan.

The archaeologist tells Reuters’ Marco Aquino that he is still waiting for the results of radiocarbon testing, which will confirm the site’s age. In the meantime, he is estimating the date based in part on an elaborately carved image found along one of the theater’s staircases. The carving, which depicts a mythological bird-like creature, resembles other artworks from the Initial Period (around 2000 to 900 B.C.E.)—or about 4,000 years ago.

“The Initial Period is important because it’s when we first start to see evidence of an institutionalized religion in Peru,” says Muro Ynoñan in the statement. “The bird creature at this temple resembles a figure known from the Chavín region, nearly 500 years later. This new site could help reveal the origins of this religion.”

The team also unearthed large murals painted on the walls. Muro Ynoñán collected pigment samples, which he plans to analyze back in the lab. He hopes to determine where the paints came from, which would shed light on which groups the ancient site’s builders were trading with.

Additionally, the researchers found the skeletal human remains of three adults inside the temple, per Reuters. One was buried alongside offerings and appears to have been wrapped in some kind of cloth.

According to a statement from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, archaeologists also discovered a second ceremonial temple nearby. This site is considerably older, dating to between 600 and 700 C.E., and is likely connected to the Moche culture.

The Ocean Is Getting Sicker

Pathogens are surging and new diseases are emerging.

BY MARYN MCKENNA
July 12, 2024
 

At the end of January, Christina Pettan-Brewer’s WhatsApp chats started blowing up. Pettan-Brewer, a wildlife veterinarian at the University of Washington School of Medicine, was born—and earned her first degree—in Brazil, and the messages from scientist acquaintances were all about the Brazilian coast. A “red tide” was underway. The temperature-driven bloom of phytoplankton was staining the beaches of Pernambuco and Alagoas states.

Red tides, which are caused by harmful blooms of algae, are not unknown on the coast of Brazil. In 2022, one stretched for more than 120 miles near Rio de Janeiro and lasted for eight weeks. But the bloom this year was unusually intense: More than 500 people sought medical care for symptoms, including vomiting and skin irritation, caused by the algae’s toxins.

Are there truly more marine diseases now than in the past?

To Pettan-Brewer and her professional circle, the episode was the latest evidence of a trend they have worried about for years. The health of the ocean, they say, is failing. As human activities—including climate change—stress marine ecosystems, pathogens are surging out of balance and new diseases are emerging. And though researchers have become accustomed to viewing terrestrial disease emergence through a “One Health” lens, treating the environment, other animals, and humans as one interconnected system, they have only recently started to look at the ocean this way.

“The world is not thinking about the ocean,” Pettan-Brewer says. “Except for people who live on the coasts or work there, the ocean is largely out of view.”

That is changing. In 2022, Pettan-Brewer and other scientists gathered at Kiel University in Germany for the second International Ocean Health Symposium. (The first such conference, held in December 2020 in Monaco, was undercut by the COVID-19 pandemic.) Out of that meeting emerged an international project, Beyond One Ocean Health, based at Kiel University and supported by the United Nations Ocean Decade initiative, that is studying whether marine diseases are increasing in frequency and severity.

The collaborators in this new research suspect that the ocean is becoming not just unusually stressed—witness the hot-tub temperatures recorded in Florida coastal waters last year—but also newly vulnerable to disease, as demonstrated in outbreaks that affect species from mammals to shellfish to corals; in mass die-offs and species disappearances; and in population explosions such as that red tide bloom.

But that proposition remains to be empirically demonstrated. Are there truly more marine diseases now than in the past? Or might people in an increasingly crowded, connected world simply be more aware of them?

The health of the ocean, they say, is failing.

A challenge for the researchers is determining when disease outbreaks are doing the predictable work of promoting ecosystem resilience and function. Trematode parasites, for instance, help regulate populations of fish and shellfish, helping prevent any one species from overproliferating and destabilizing their community. “A healthy ecosystem may need disease as a control mechanism,” says Marie-Catherine Riekhof, an economist and director of Kiel’s Center for Ocean and Society.

Still, the number and variety of disease events recorded in recent decades suggest that more than predictable self-regulation is going on. Twenty years ago, researchers at Cornell University and the University of California, Santa Barbara surveyed the scientific literature for reports of disease outbreaks in marine plants and animals; after adjusting for more studies being published than in the past, they concluded that diseases had increased in turtles, corals, mammals, urchins, and molluscs since 1970. (They also found that diseases had decreased in fishes—but speculated that might be because, thanks to overfishing, there were simply fewer of them.)

Since that time, extensive disease outbreaks have been recorded in marine mammals, including Toxoplasma gondii (an organism carried by domestic cats) in whales and avian influenza killing sea lions. At least 67 bacterial diseases have been blamed for reducing harvests of wild and cultivated salmon and other farmed seafoods. Multiple diseases of corals, including those that led to severe bleaching, have been recorded in warming waters. Even infections in marine plants are reshaping ecosystems, such as an epidemic that halved local populations of eelgrass in waters off the Pacific Northwest coast.

Those outbreaks mirror the rise of infectious diseases on land over the same time period, arising as people encroach on wild places, degrade habitats, and keep domesticated animals close to wildlife. Marine events are similarly fueled by human activities.

Fertilizers, pesticides, sewage, pharmaceuticals, industrial waste, and microplastics all end up in the ocean, creating conditions favorable to the spread of disease. Ships release ballast water—and the organisms in it—into ecosystems far from the ships’ origins. The rise of aquaculture, which frequently involves the long-distance transport of finfish and shellfish, destabilizes ecosystems by also transporting those species’ parasites to new ranges. At-sea aquaculture pens, overcrowded with highly stressed fish, are incubators for pathogens, and the antibiotics fed to farmed fish to control diseases may disrupt local bacterial populations as well as increasing antibiotic-resistant infections in predators such as seabirds. And some work has shown that, as populations are overfished, parasite populations also shift, becoming predominated by opportunistic generalists capable of attacking many species.

What worries scientists even more is what they cannot observe.

These impacts are amplified by the effects of a changing climate, from rising water temperatures, to increases in acidity and changes in ocean salinity, to the physical effects of storms and cyclones reshaping near-shore and underwater geography. Warming waters create new disease threats for humans too, as when three people died in New York and Connecticut last year from infections with Vibrio vulnificus, an ocean pathogen that previously had not circulated that far north.

Such outbreaks, deaths, and ecosystem changes are known because they were detected. What worries scientists even more is what they cannot observe.

Identifying the movement of pathogens in the open ocean and measuring their impact on free-living organisms is extraordinarily difficult. Reliably detecting them would require creating new forecasting models and surveillance systems to predict their movement, as well as diagnostic tools that could be deployed when disease emergence is suspected. Those would be expensive to develop and use—but unless societies address their multiple disease-promoting effects on the ocean, they may be the most expedient response to the spread of disease.

“The ocean has been so poorly observed,” says Anya Waite, a biological oceanographer who heads the Ocean Frontier Institute at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. The decades during which the One Health model excluded the ocean, though it covers most of Earth’s surface and contains the majority of its phyla, have left ocean science behind—not just in perceiving how human activities affect marine life, but also in how those impacts are changing over time. What would seem to be basic concepts—what pathogens are present, how they move through the ocean, whether specific hot spots for infection exist or are shifting—remain to be explored.

Reframing the One Health concept to include the ocean could change that. “Diseases are part of many other types of impacts to the environment,” says Kevin Lafferty, a marine ecologist with the United States Geological Survey and University of California, Santa Barbara. “We need to study them on equal footing with things like overfishing and pollution.”

Lead photo: Alfred Rowan / Shutterstock

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Maryn McKenna
Posted on July 12, 2024
Maryn McKenna (Threads / X / Instagram) is a journalist specializing in public health and global health, based in Atlanta. She is the author of Big Chicken, Superbug, and Beating Back the Devil, and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University.

Cambodia clamps down on environmental activists

Observers see the threat to Cambodia's rule of law and civil society growing after members of an award-winning environmental group were convicted of conspiring against the state.


Tommy Walker

DW

JULY 12,2024

Civil society monitoring groups say Cambodia's civic space is 'repressed'

Heng Sinith/AP Photo/picture alliance

Ten members of the Cambodian environmental activist group Mother Nature were sentenced to six to eight years in prison in July for conspiring against the state.

Three of the members of the group were also convicted of insulting Cambodia's king, Norodom Sihamoni.

The young activists had long campaigned against the destruction of natural resources across the Southeast Asian country and had openly suggested links to corruption.

The group was charged with "plotting" against the state after investigating waste pollution in Phnom Penh's Tone Sap River in 2021. In addition, a group statement from an online meeting was found to be insulting to the king which led to the charges against three members.

Only five of the activists attended the trial. Four of them attended the sentencing and were swiftly arrested by authorities. One was not present for the sentencing and five other activists, including Spanish national Alejandro Gonzalez-Davison, the co-founder of Mother Nature, were convicted in absentia.

Despite the threat of arrest, activists openly displayed support for their jailed colleagues

 Heng Sinith/AP Photo/picture alliance

Jacob Sims, a Southeast Asia regional expert on transnational crime and rights issues, told DW that activists could face a harsh clampdown if they were seen as posing a threat to the interests of Cambodia's elites.

"The real power in Cambodia lies not in its formal institutions, but in its complex and shadowy web of oligarchs with close ties to the prime minister's family," Sims said. "Wherever activists — across any sector — jeopardize the economic interests of this ruling elite, they risk the wrath of the formal Cambodian state apparatus."

"That is what happened in the recent case of overt court weaponization against the Mother Nature activists," Sims said.
A threat to civil society

Mother Nature Cambodia was founded in 2012 with the aim of protecting Cambodia's natural environment and human rights. For years, members of the group faced intimidation and threats and in 2017 it was deregistered as a nongovernment organization.

The group continued to advocate and in 2023 won a prestigious Right Livelihood award for its work.

Cambodia evicts Angkor Wat locals 06:09

Sims said the clampdown on the group showed that civil society in Cambodia is under threat.

"If concerned governments, multilaterals, international NGOs and global brands do not find it within themselves to stand with these courageous local activists and rapidly inject some accountability into this situation, it may be too late," said Sims. "We are witnessing the systematic evisceration of Cambodian civil society in real-time."

Civil society monitoring groups say Cambodia's civic space is "repressed." Union leaders and land rights activists have been jailed in recent years while humanitarian organizations and other NGOs have been threatened with dissolution.
A powerful ruling ‘dynasty'

The ruling Cambodian People's Party has faced little political threat to its power, and, leading up to the 2023 elections, Cambodia's electoral commission had already disqualified the country's main opposition, Cambodia's Candlelight Party.

Critics call Cambodia's leaders the "Hun Dynasty." Former Prime Minister Hun Sen ruled the country for nearly four decades and was one of the longest-serving leaders in the world before power was handed over to his son Hun Manet in 2023.

Mekong River threatened by dams, climate change  03:18

Vanna Hay, leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Movement, now in exile in Japan, said trials like that of Mother Nature Cambodia showed that government corruption is severely threatening Cambodia's rule of law.

"Because the current government is totally corrupted, so-called systematic corruption, they protect those destroying the environment for their benefit," he said.

Edited by: Ole Tangen Jr

 

Investigating variation in the permafrost active layer over the Tibetan Plateau from 1980 to 2020

by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Glaciers and permafrost over the Tibetan Plateau. Credit: Weichen Tao

The Tibetan Plateau hosts the world's largest permafrost region in the middle and low latitudes. Compared to the high-latitude Arctic permafrost, the permafrost here is thinner, warmer, and more sensitive to global warming. The active layer is a crucial zone for energy exchange between permafrost and the atmosphere, effectively reflecting the impact of climate change on permafrost.

Studying changes in the active layer thickness (ALT) helps towards a better understanding of the hydrological environment in permafrost regions. However, due to the complex and variable environment of the Tibetan Plateau, the simulation of ALT remains a subject of debate.

Recently, Jinglong Huang, from Hohai University, and Prof. Chaofan Li, from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, utilized the China Meteorological Forcing Dataset to drive the Community Land Model, version 5.0, for simulating and studying changes in ALT from 1980 to 2020 on the Tibetan Plateau. Their findings have recently been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

The results show significant interdecadal changes in ALT on the Tibetan Plateau after the year 2000. The overall ALT of the plateau decreased from 2.54 m during 1980–1999 to 2.28 m during 2000–2020. This change took place mainly in the western permafrost region, displaying a sharp regional inconsistency with the eastern region where a persistent increasing trend was found, rather than an interdecadal change.

Additionally, the active layer area also displays an interdecadal change around the year 2000, characterized by a continuous decline before that year and almost no change thereafter. The study further found that the changes and regional differences in the active layer of the permafrost on the Tibetan Plateau are significantly influenced by environmental factors such as temperature and precipitation, reflecting the complex response to climate change under global warming.

"The terrain of the Tibetan Plateau is highly complex, and the calculation bias for permafrost in some areas is often large. Thus, we hope to simulate the ALT of the Tibetan Plateau using a high-performing land surface model combined with high-resolution meteorological forcing data to better approximate the actual situation," explains Dr. Li, the corresponding author of the study.

This result contributes to a better understanding of the transformation characteristics of the meteorological and hydrological environment in the permafrost regions of the Tibetan Plateau against the background of global warming, and to grasping the impact of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau's exchanges of water and heat.

More information: Jinglong Huang et al, Variation in the permafrost active layer over the Tibetan Plateau during 1980–2020, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.aosl.2024.100536

Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences Transformation and mechanisms of climate wet/dry change on the northern Tibetan Plateau under global warming

 

Impacts of extreme drought on forest ecosystems reveal species-specific adaptation differences in Northeast China

by KeAi Communications Co.

Tree growth is affected by the interaction of complex physiological processes among various

 organs, and resource availability is the key factor. Credit: Shi, Han, et al.

A recent study from China has shed light on the profound impacts of extreme droughts on forest ecosystems, particularly in water-limited regions. The findings revealed significant differences in how various tree species respond to such stressors.

Conducted in the Horqin Sandy Land of Northeast China, the research used dendrochronology and remote sensing techniques to examine the responses of both native maple-oak forests and introduced poplar plantations to extreme drought conditions. The study's findings, published in the journal Forest Ecosystems, underscore the critical role of precipitation and the self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) in influencing tree growth and vegetation health.

The severe droughts experienced between 2000 and 2004 led to notable declines in radial growth and vegetation index (NDVI) across the studied tree species. The impact was particularly severe on the poplar species, with fast-growing poplar species showing more dramatic declines in growth rates and vegetation health than native maple and oak species. This indicates a species-specific trade-off between drought resilience and growth rate, with fast-growing species like poplar being more vulnerable to drought conditions.

Moreover, the study discovered that while radial growth showed no significant correlation with scPDSI, NDVI demonstrated a significant positive correlation, highlighting the greater sensitivity of canopy performance to drought stress than on the scale of inter-annual events radial growth.

These insights are crucial for forest management and afforestation efforts, especially in the context of climate change. Understanding species-specific responses to extreme droughts can guide the selection of tree species that are better suited to withstand water-limited conditions, ensuring the sustainability and resilience of forest ecosystems.

More information: Han Shi et al, Resilience and response: Unveiling the impacts of extreme droughts on forests through integrated dendrochronological and remote sensing analyses, Forest Ecosystems (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.fecs.2024.100209. www.sciencedirect.com/science/ … 2197562024000459?via%3Dihub

Provided by KeAi Communications Co.Climate change impacts vary among tree species within the same habitat, finds study

 

Selection processes play dominant role in shaping coexisting assemblages of trees and soil fungi: Study

by Zhang Nannan, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Bubeng 20-ha tropical rainforest plot in Xishuangbanna. Credit: XTBG

Community assembly is shaped by four main processes: selection—fitness differences between organisms; dispersal—organisms' movement across space; drift—unpredictable variation in abundance; and diversification—new genetic variants. However, whether the dominant processes governing macro- and microbial communities are fundamentally different remains elusive.

In a study published in Fungal Diversity, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators investigated the contribution of the four processes to co-occurring tree and fungal communities in three approximately 20-hectare forest ecosystems in Yunnan Province, China.

They proposed a research approach to explore the four major processes influencing community assembly by analyzing distance pattern of similarity (DPS). Specifically, they investigated the DPS of tree and soil fungal communities in three approximately 20-ha forest plots covering climates from tropical to temperate in Yunnan Province, China.

Two models (a drift-inexplicit ordination model without considering the effect of drift and a drift-explicit baseline model with consideration of the effect of drift) were used to decipher the contribution of individual-based random sampling, selection, and/or dispersal to community assembly.

Using these two models, the researchers found that most soil fungi had shorter realized distribution ranges (RDR) than most trees. Because drift was explicitly incorporated into the selection baseline model and the DPS spanned wider ranges than RDR for most trees and fungi, these models were able to capture the DPS structure of trees and fungi at different spatial scales, as well as the DPS structure of fungi across taxonomic levels and fungal guilds in tropical, subtropical, and subalpine forest ecosystems.

It was assumed that the model framework, ecosystems, spatial scales, sample intensity, selection variables and dispersal variables were well unified, leading to the conclusion that the ubiquity of selection did not reveal any fundamental differences in assembly mechanisms between trees and soil fungi.

"Our study suggests that selection processes play a dominant role in shaping the coexisting assemblages of tree and soil fungal communities, and this process is similar for both organisms," said Hu Yuehua of XTBG.

More information: Yue-Hua Hu et al, Selection dictates the distance pattern of similarity in trees and soil fungi across forest ecosystems, Fungal Diversity (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s13225-024-00537-8

Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences Researchers evaluate impact of warming on soil respiration in different ecosystems

 

Marawi city study analyzes challenges and prospects for post-conflict peacebuilding in urban settings

by Hiroshima University

While many residents are still yet to return, morning joggers are allowed on the city’s newly 

built roads. Credit: Dahlia Simangan/Hiroshima University

Wars and conflicts leave devastating destruction in their wake. With so many conflicts now taking place in urban environments, scientists are studying how post-conflict peacebuilding happens in these urban settings.

Dahlia Simangan, an associate professor at The IDEC Institute, Hiroshima University, has analyzed the case of Marawi, a city in the Philippines, to better understand the urban environment's influence on post-siege reconstruction and peacebuilding.

The study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of peacebuilding by integrating conventional peacebuilding components and urban characteristics. The research was published in the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs on May 22, 2024.

Although urban warfare is not a new occurrence, it has changed in recent years as conflicts ranging from gang violence to terrorist attacks increasingly take place in urban environments. These conflicts occur in both developed and developing societies.

As the population in urban areas rises, people living in these areas are finding the consequences of the conflicts falling closer and closer to their homes. Where the population is dense in urban areas, the impact of the conflict is more widespread and the "enemies" are less easy to identify.

These urban conflicts today are impacting the lives of civilians in ways that the traditional wars of past years did not, and the ways lives are impacted are not always visible. Because of this, cities under siege need a unique set of rebuilding tools relevant to the urban environment, including the people, places, and practices that make them.

idly urbanizing world, the nature of conflicts has also taken up urban characteristics. This study aims to understand how post-conflict peacebuilding can effectively operate in urban environments," said Simangan.

The author conducted a field visit to Marawi City to document people’s perspectives about 

the reconstructed urban spaces. Credit: Dahlia Simangan/Hiroshima University

Simangan focused the study on the city of Marawi, where in 2017, a five-month battle between Islamic State-inspired militant groups and the Philippine military occurred, resulting in the longest urban warfare in the country since World War II. This "Battle of Marawi" or "Marawi Siege" claimed the lives of about 920 militants, including the group leaders, 165 soldiers, and 47 civilians.

Because of the conflict, 360,000 people from the city and neighboring areas were forcibly displaced. While the government has started an interagency reconstruction effort, the ruins of residential houses, commercial buildings, and places of worship are now part of Marawi's urbanscape.

The case of Marawi offers insights into how post-conflict peacebuilding can effectively operate in urban environments. Simangan explored how the urbanscape of Marawi influences its reconstruction and peacebuilding. She specifically examined the role of people, places, and practices in building or impeding security, justice and reconciliation, and economic development in post-siege Marawi.

This study advances an integrated framework for analyzing urban peacebuilding, using the conventional peacebuilding components of security, reconciliation, and development within Marawi City's people, places, and practices.

Simangan used focus group discussions to gather data, examining practical issues like security, for example, the clearance of unexploded ordnances. She examined reconciliation, especially the return of displaced persons, and explored development, specifically looking at how the people resumed their livelihoods.

"Urban spaces can facilitate everyday practices that can hinder or promote peace. Understanding the social significance and historical relevance of these spaces can guide the reconstruction and peacebuilding process of conflict-affected cities," said Simangan.

Simangan is also working with a group of peacebuilding scholars on a research project about citizen inclusion in peace settlements. "I would like to apply the integrated conceptual framework on urban peacebuilding lens that I developed from this study to understand the power dynamics surrounding post-conflict settlements in cities," Simangan said.

She will also continue the development of an urban peacebuilding geoportal documenting the transformation of conflict-affected cities by adding more case studies.

More information: Dahlia Simangan, Challenges and Prospects for Urban Peacebuilding in Post-Siege Marawi City, Philippines: People, Places, and Practices, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (2024). DOI: 10.1177/18681034241251864

Provided by Hiroshima University Philippines' counter-terrorism strategy still stalled after 7 years since the 'ISIS siege' on Marawi

An excavation in Kenya’s Kakapel Rockshelter has uncovered evidence of the types of crops grown by East Africa’s early farmers. 

Steven Goldstein

Burnt field pea from Kakapel Rockshelter

Image courtesy of Proc. Royal Soc. B

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI—According to a statement released by Washington University in St. Louis, an excavation in Kenya’s Kakapel Rockshelter has uncovered evidence of the types of crops grown by East Africa’s early farmers. 

The plant remains were recovered from a hearth at the rock shelter, which was first occupied more than 9,000 years ago. “We found a huge assemblage of plants, including a lot of crop remains,” said Natalie Mueller of Washington University. 

For example, the 2,300-year-old cowpeas, or black-eyed peas, recovered from the hearth are thought to have originated in West Africa and traveled to East Africa with Bantu-speaking peoples from Central Africa. 

The presence of this crop in the rock shelter reflects interactions between East Africa’s local herders and incoming Bantu-speaking farmers, explained Emmanuel Ndiema of the National Museums of Kenya.

 In addition, the study suggests that sorghum from northeastern Africa was introduced to East Africa about 1,000 years ago, when local millet was also cultivated. 

Field peas, a crop grown in Egypt, may have come to East Africa down the Nile River and through Sudan, but the sample may be an Abyssinian pea, which had been domesticated independently in Ethiopia, the researchers added.

 “Our work shows that African farming was constantly changing as people migrated, adopted new crops, and abandoned others at a local level,” Mueller concluded. 

Read the original scholarly article about this research in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. T

 read about ancient cultivation of millet and other crops in northern China, go to "The Ancient Promise of Water: Like Water for Wheat."

 

Restructuring middle managers—findings from a case study of a major bank

by David Bradley, Inderscience

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Middle managers play an important role in an organization undergoing structural change. They are the ones who must implement the changes, but conversely, as employees, they will be subject to the very changes they put in place. This can often put them in a place of conflicting demands, where they must manage their own stress and uncertainty while carrying out new directives that will affect their colleagues and subordinates.

A study in the International Journal of Work Organization and Emotion has taken a major bank as a case study in order to look at how middle managers might cope with this stress during corporate restructuring and what strategies they might use to overcome the stress and find their way around the many challenges.

Pravitha Jogie, Annemarie Davis, and Catherine Le Roux of the Department of Business Management at the University of South Africa in the City of Tshwane suggest that middle managers generally respond to corporate restructuring in one of two ways. They either cope or they "cop out" and evade the responsibilities placed on them in some way.

The team explains that coping usually involves proactive strategies such as positive reframing, where managers view themselves as agents of change and engage with the process. Positive reframing allows middle managers to perceive restructuring as an opportunity for growth and improvement.

By contrast, "copping out" refers to disengagement and withdrawal behavior, such as territorialism, where the middle manager protects their own interests and is perhaps involved in spreading rumors, all of which can disrupt the restructuring process but also provide something of a psychological escape route for the managers who engage in such behavior.

The business environment has always been marked by constant change where globalization, economic fluctuations, technological advancements, and international crises affect the way a company operates and its bottom line. The team explains that the financial services sector faces particularly intense competition, regulatory changes, and digital transformation. These factors have led to frequent organizational restructuring for many companies, which puts pressure on the middle managers to interpret, communicate, and implement new structures and strategies.

The research suggests that it is obviously better that middle managers cope rather than cop out, and points to the learning of new skills and networking with peers and mentors as being useful tools to help in this regard. They even suggest that engaging in hobbies or other "extracurricular" activities might be useful coping mechanisms. It is possible then for a manager to maintain a sense of control and purpose, as this is essential for their mental well-being and their productivity in the workplace, as well as ensuring the same for colleagues and subordinates.

However, the research often showed the converse. Middle managers might become withdrawn and disengage from the task at hand. This was especially common among managers who felt powerless or unsupported, indicating a need for organizations to foster a supportive environment to ensure smooth restructuring when this is needed.

More information: Pravitha Jogie et al, Middle managers' practices during organisational restructuring: coping or copping out, International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion (2024). DOI: 10.1504/IJWOE.2024.139912

Provided by Inderscience Top IT industry managers are divided on the need for face-to-face communication in the workplace

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