Friday, July 26, 2024

FIRST OPINION

Without federal oversight, nursing homes will put profit ahead of care

By Melissa Batchelor and Diana J. Mason

July 26, 2024

JULIE BENNETT/AP

About 5% of Americans require skilled care at some point as they age. The horrific reports of more than 200,000 deaths of nursing home residents and staff during the Covid-19 pandemic put the nursing home industry under intense national scrutiny. But not all nursing homes experienced this level of tragedy and loss. One major reason why some fared better than others was adequate nurse staffing.

Nursing homes exist primarily to deliver 24/7 care when an individual’s needs overwhelm what family and friends can provide. Residents receive care from licensed registered nurses and other nursing staff, including licensed practical nurses and nurse aides. The 1.2 million older adults who call nursing homes “home” are both short-stay residents needing rehabilitation and long-stay residents. Most are not in nursing homes by choice, but because they are the sickest, frailest older adults in the country and have multiple, complex conditions.

After four decades of research and advocacy about how nurse staffing standards impact resident care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finally published an evidence-based final rule on standards for nurse staffing in nursing homes in May 2024. The part of the new rule getting the most fanfare is the requirement that at least one registered nurse must be on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

An RN is the only type of nurse with the educational background and legal authority to assess, plan, and supervise care delivery, and monitor the health of nursing home residents to avoid an outcome that lands them in the emergency room, or worse. Ensuring that at least one RN is available around the clock reduces the risk of preventable safety events for residents, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations.

Related: Nursing homes sue over Biden administration’s minimum staffing rule

So why is the nursing home industry — the collective of for-profit and nonprofit nursing homes — trying to reverse this federal rule in a way that would ensure that no administration can ever set minimum staffing standards?

A bit of background first. Most nursing homes get the bulk of their funding from Medicare and Medicaid, which is why a rule from CMS could have such an impact. The rule would require states to track how nursing homes spend their Medicaid dollars.

The nursing home industry claims:

The industry cannot afford to improve staffing. Today, nursing home corporations have zero accountability for how taxpayer Medicaid dollars are spent or how much is spent on direct care (staffing). This is particularly egregious given that 71% of nursing homes are for-profit. Fines for dangerously low staffing levels are viewed by nursing homes as merely a part of the cost of doing business. Many nursing homes are owned by private equity firms that modify operations to maximize profits; the average nursing home’s profit margin is nearly 9%, a margin most hospitals would covet. In 2023, nursing homes saw total net revenues of $126 billion and profits of $730 million. On average, nursing homes spend 27% of this revenue on nursing, 39% on direct care other than nursing, and 34% on administration.

Related: Listen: Covid turned the nation’s eyes to nursing homes. Have we already looked away?

The CMS proposal would require states to do more to track how much money each home spends on direct care billed to Medicaid. Such tracking could help identify homes that are shortchanging their employees and residents.

There is no one to hire. In September 2023, CMS announced a $75 million campaign to increase the number of nurses working in nursing homes with recruitment efforts such as financial incentives to individual nurses, tuition reimbursement, and developing career pathway programs for individuals to get the education and skills needed to go from a nurse’s aide to a registered nurse.

Annual nurse staffing turnover rates range from 40% to 60% due to the combination of low pay, few benefits, and poor working conditions, all of which fuel a vicious cycle of understaffing and workforce development. These turnover rates indicate the bigger issue is workforce retention. With more corporate investment in better pay, benefits, and working conditions, nursing homes could attract and retain quality staff.

And nursing homes will have time to restructure their hiring practices and benefits. Non-rural facilities will have until May 10, 2027 to come into compliance with the new rule, while rural facilities will have until 2028.

Government overreach. As an agency of the executive branch of government, CMS has set the quality and safety oversight standards for the nursing home industry for the past 40 years. In our experience, few nursing home corporations will go above and beyond to enhance patient care. They will, however, comply with the minimum standards required by regulations.
Why you should be concerned

Two joint resolutions were introduced in Congress in 2024 (H.J.Res.139 and S.J.Res.91), as well as two bills (H.R. 7513 and S. 3410), to not only overturn the rule but to prevent any administration from ever developing any staffing standards. These Congressional Review Acts — tools Congress can use to overturn the actions of a federal agency — also aim to overturn the new rule’s Medicaid Institutional Payment Transparency reporting. With profit margins nearing 9%, taxpaying citizens have the right to know how and where Medicare and Medicaid dollars are being spent.

Covid-19 may have temporarily crippled the ability of nursing homes to provide a safe environment for residents and deliver the care they needed. But shame on the country if now, without a pandemic to blame, nursing home residents are harmed because Congress caved to lobbying by the nursing home industry to dismantle CMS’s new staffing rule, rather than working to protect the lives of nursing home residents. Without CMS’s final rule on staffing, the nursing home industry is likely to continue to exploit this vulnerable population and put profits ahead of care.

Melissa Batchelor, Ph.D., R.N., is a professor of nursing and director of the Center for Aging, Health, and Humanities at The George Washington University (GW) School of Nursing. Diana J. Mason, Ph.D., R.N., is the Senior Policy Service Professor for the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement at the GW School of Nursing.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Can Florida’s orange growers survive another hurricane season?

A perfect storm of hurricanes, diseases, and water scarcity threatens to wipe out the state's famed citrus industry.

Grist / Getty Images

Ayurella Horn-Muller

Staff Writer
Jul 26, 2024

Oranges are synonymous with Florida. The zesty fruit can be spotted adorning everything from license plates to kitschy memorabilia. Ask any Floridian and they’ll tell you that the crop is a hallmark of the Sunshine State.

Jay Clark would be quick to agree. He’s 80 and a third-generation grower working land his family has owned in Wauchula since the 1950s. But he’s not sure how much longer he can keep at it. Two years ago, Hurricane Ian pummeled trees already weakened by a virulent and incurable disease called citrus greening. It took more than a year to recover after the “whole crop was basically blown off” by 150 mph winds. “It’s a struggle,” said Clark. “I guess we’re too hard-headed just to quit totally, but it’s not a profitable business right now.”

His family once owned almost 500 acres in west central Florida, where they grew oranges and raised beef. They’ve sold much of that land in recent years, and have scaled back their citrus groves. “We’re concentrating more on the cattle,” he said. “Everybody’s looking for an alternative crop or solution.”

The state, which grows roughly 17 percent of the nation’s oranges, grapefruit, and other tangy fruit, produced just 18.1 million boxes during the 2022 to 2023 growing season, the smallest harvest in almost a century. That’s a 60 percent decrease from the season before, a decline driven largely by the compounding impacts of mysterious pathogens and hurricanes. This year, the USDA’s just-released final forecasts for the season reveal an 11.4 percent spike in production over last year, but that’s still not even half of what was produced during the 2021 to 2022 season.

Consumers across the country have felt the squeeze from these declines, which have been compounded by floods throttling harvests in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of orange juice. All of this has pushed the cost of the beverage to record highs.

As climate change makes storms increasingly likely, diseases kill more trees, and water grows harder to come by, Florida’s nearly $7 billion citrus industry faces an existential threat. The Sunshine State, which was once among the world’s leading citrus producers and until 2014 produced almost three-quarters of the nation’s oranges, has weathered such challenges before. Its citrus growers are nothing if not resilient. Some have faith that ongoing research will find a cure for citrus greening, which would go a long way toward recovery. But others are less optimistic about the path ahead, as the dangers they face now are harbingers of the future.

“We’re still here, but it’s not a good situation. We’re here, but that’s about it,” said Clark. “It’s bigger than just our family as citrus growers. If a solution isn’t found, there will be no citrus industry.”

Oranges lie on the ground under a tree in an orange grove managed by Larry Black, due to impacts from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole, in December of 2022 in Alturas, Florida. Black said the hurricanes, which hit the state in September and November, caused damage throughout his 2,300 acres of citrus. Paul Hennessy / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Citrus greening, an incurable disease spread by insects that ruins crops before eventually killing trees, has imperiled Florida’s citrus industry since the ailment took hold in a grove in Miami nearly two decades ago. It appeared a few years after an outbreak of citrus canker disease, which renders crops unsellable, and led to the loss of millions of trees statewide. Although greening has appeared in other citrus powerhouses like California and Texas, it hasn’t widely affected commercial groves in either state. The scope of the blight in Florida is by far the largest, and most costly — since 2005, it has cut production by 75 percent. The Sunshine State’s year-round subtropical climate allows the infestation to spread at a higher clip. But as warming continues to increase global temperatures, the disease is expected to advance northward.

“You see so many abandoned citrus groves on the highways, all of the roads,” said Amir Rezazadeh, of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Most of those trees are just dead now.”

Rezazadeh acts as a liaison between university scientists scrambling to solve the problem and citrus growers in St. Lucie County, one of the state’s top producing areas. “We have so many meetings, visits with growers every month, and there are so many researchers working to develop resistance varieties,” he said. “And it’s just really making these citrus growers nervous. [Everyone] is waiting for the new research results.”

The greatest promise lies in antibiotics created to lessen the effects of greening. Despite encouraging early results at reducing symptoms, therapies like oxytetracycline are still in preliminary stages and require growers to inject the treatment into every infected tree. More importantly, it is not a cure, merely a stopgap — a way to keep afflicted trees alive while researchers race to figure out how to beat this mysterious disease.

“We need more time,” said Rezazadeh. Growers in St. Lucie County started using the antibiotic last year. “There are some hopes that we keep them alive until we find a cure.”

The state’s total citrus acreage suffered a massive blow in the 1990s when an eradication program for canker disease, then the industry’s biggest foe, resulted in the culling of hundreds of thousands of trees on private properties. In the years since citrus greening took hold, the ripple effects of the blight have compounded with an ever-present barrage of hurricanes, floods, and drought threatening growers.

Hurricanes do more than uproot trees, scatter fruit, and shake trees so violently it can take them years to recover. Torrential rain and flooding can inundate groves and deplete the soil of oxygen. Diseased trees face particular risk because illness often impacts their roots, weakening them. Ray Royce, executive director of Highlands County Citrus Growers Association, likens it to a pre-existing medical condition.

“I’m an old guy. I get a cold, or I get sick, it’s harder for me to recover at 66 than it was at 33. If I had some underlying health issues, it’s even harder,” he said. “Greening is kind of this negative underlying health condition that makes anything else that happens to the tree, that stresses that tree, just further magnified.”

It doesn’t help that climate change is bringing insufficient rainfall, higher temperatures, and record-setting dry seasons, leaving soils with less water. A lack of precipitation has also dried up wells and canals in some of the state’s most productive regions. All of this can reduce yields and cause fruit to drop prematurely.

Of course, healthy trees have a higher chance of withstanding such threats. But the tenacity of strong groves is being tested, and once-minor events like a short freeze can be enough to end any already on the verge of demise.

“We all of a sudden had a little bit of a run of bad luck. We had a hurricane. Then after the hurricane, we had a freeze,” said Royce. “Now we’ve just gone through a drought which will no doubt negatively impact the crop for next year. And so we, in a way, need to catch a couple of good breaks and have a few good years where we’re getting the right amount of moisture, where we don’t have hurricanes, or freezes, that are negatively impacting trees.”

AI-assisted analysis suggests elephant-like species extinction rates grew when humans arrived

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

AI-assisted analysis suggests proboscidean species extinction rates grew when humans arrived — Analysis of the proboscidean fossil record using the BDNN model.

A pair of paleobiologists at the University of Fribourg and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, in Switzerland, working with a colleague from Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, in Spain, has found evidence suggesting that humans were responsible for proboscidean species extinction rates increasing over the past 1.8 million years.

In their paper, published in the journal Science Advances, Torsten Hauffe, Daniele Silvestro and Juan Cantalapiedra, describe how they used an AI application to provide insight into extinction rates for proboscidean species over a nearly 2-million-year span.

Prior research has suggested that hunting by early modern humans and climate change were responsible for the demise of several species of proboscideans, which included wooly mammoths and mastodons. In this new study, the researchers found evidence suggesting that the evolution of humans led to the extinction of nearly 30 species of trunked animals over millions of years.

Understanding the factors that cause an animal to go extinct, especially in the distant past, can be challenging to say the least. In most cases there were multiple factors, such as changes to an environment or ecosystem, changes in physiology, or the introduction of a new predator.

Because of this, most studies on the extinction of a given creature from the distant past have focused on a single factor. To overcome this problem, the researchers used a neural network-based AI system that allowed extinction assessments using large numbers of factors.

To use the system, the research team input fossil and other data for 2,118 proboscidean species going back 35 million years. They also fed the system 17 physiological and environmental factors that could have impacted the chances of a species' survival. This included the arrival of the first humans on the scene approximately 1.8 million years ago, and the ascent of modern humans 129,000 years ago.

When the team ran the system, it showed the largest single factor involved in raising extinction rates for up to 30 species of proboscideans, was the presence of humans—and it began shortly after humans arrived on the scene. The system also showed that rates of extinction grew even faster after modern humans arrived. Today, just three elephant species survive.

More information: Torsten Hauffe et al, Trait-mediated speciation and human-driven extinctions in proboscideans revealed by unsupervised Bayesian neural networks, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl2643

Journal information: Science Advances

Scientists figure out why there are so many colorful birds in the tropics and how these colors spread over time

by Field Museum

The ancestor of all modern birds probably had iridescent feathers — A blue-headed sunbird in the Albertine Rift: an example of a tropical bird with iridescent,

The color palette of the birds you see out your window depends on where you live. If you're far from the Equator, most birds tend to have drab colors, but the closer you are to the tropics, you'll probably see more and more colorful feathers.

Scientists have long been puzzled about why there are more brilliantly-colored birds in the tropics than in other places, and they've also wondered how those brightly-colored birds got there in the first place: that is, if those colorful feathers evolved in the tropics, or if tropical birds have colorful ancestors that came to the region from somewhere else.

In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists built a database of 9,409 birds to explore the spread of color across the globe.

They found that iridescent, colorful feathers originated 415 times across the bird tree of life, and in most cases, arose outside of the tropics– and that the ancestor of all modern birds likely had iridescent feathers, too.

"For decades, scientists have had this hypothesis that there are brighter or more colorful species of birds in the tropics," says Chad Eliason, a research scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago and the paper's lead author.

"We wanted to find the mechanism to help us understand these trends— how these bright colors got there and how they spread across the bird family tree over time."

There are two main ways that color is produced in animals: pigments and structures. Cells produce pigments like melanin, which is responsible for black and brown coloration. Meanwhile, structural color comes from the way light bounces off different arrangements of cell structures. Iridescence, the rainbow shimmer that changes depending how light hits an object, is an example of structural color.

Tropical birds get their colors from a combination of brilliant pigments and structural color. Eliason's work focuses on structural color, so he wanted to explore that element of tropical bird coloration. He and his colleagues combed through photographs, videos, and even scientific illustrations of 9,409 species of birds— the vast majority of the 10,000-ish living bird species known to science. The researchers kept track of which species have iridescent feathers, and where those birds are found.

The scientists then combined their data on bird coloration and distribution with a pre-existing family tree, based on DNA, showing how all the known bird species are related to each other. They fed the information to a modeling system to extrapolate the origins and spread of iridescence. "Basically, we did a lot of math," says Eliason.

Given how modern species are related to each other and where they're found, and overall patterns of how species form and how traits like colors change over time, the modeling software determined the most likely explanation for the bird colors we see today: colorful birds from outside the tropics often came to the region millions of years ago, and then branched out into more and more different species. The model also revealed a surprise about the ancestor of all modern birds.

For background, birds are a specialized group of dinosaurs— the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived 140 million years ago. A sub-group of birds called Neornithes evolved 80 million years ago, and this group became the only birds (and dinosaurs) to survive the mass extinction 66 million years ago.

All modern birds are members of Neornithes. The model produced by Eliason and his colleagues suggests that the common ancestor of all Neornithes, 80 million years ago, had iridescent feathers that still glitter across the bird family tree.

"I was very excited to learn that the ancestral state of all birds is iridescence," says Eliason.

"We've found fossil evidence of iridescent birds and other feathered dinosaurs before, by examining fossil feathers and the preserved pigment-producing structures in those feathers. So we know that iridescent feathers existed back in the Cretaceous—those fossils help support the idea from our model that the ancestor of all modern birds was iridescent too."

The discovery that the first Neornithes was likely iridescent could have important implications for paleontology. "We're probably going to be finding a lot more iridescence in the fossil record now that we know to look," says Eliason.

While this new study sheds light on how iridescence spread through the bird family tree over the course of millions of years, some big questions remain. "We still don't know why iridescence evolved in the first place," says Eliason.

"Iridescent feathers can be used by birds to attract mates, but iridescence is related to other aspects of birds' lives too.

"For instance, tree swallows change color when the humidity changes, so iridescence could be related to the environment, or it might be related to another physical property of feathers, like water resistance. But knowing more about how there came to be so many iridescent birds in the tropics might help us understand why iridescence evolved."

More information: Transitions between colour mechanisms affect speciation dynamics and range distributions of birds, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-024-02487-5

Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution

Provided by Field Museum Scientists discover how birds and dinosaurs evolved to dazzle with colourful displays

Ice 0: Researchers discover a new mechanism for ice formation

by University of Tokyo

A rare form of ice at the center of a cool new discovery about how water droplets freeze — Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have found

Ice is far more complicated than most of us realize, with over 20 different varieties known to science, forming under various combinations of pressure and temperature. The kind we use to chill our drinks is known as ice I, and it's one of the few forms of ice that exist naturally on Earth.

Researchers from Japan have recently discovered another type of ice: ice 0, an unusual form of ice that can seed the formation of ice crystals in supercooled water.

The formation of ice near the surface of liquid water can start from tiny crystal precursors with a structure similar to a rare type of ice, known as ice 0.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the Social Cooperation Research Department "Frost Protection Science," at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo showed that these ice 0-like structures can cause a water droplet to freeze near its surface rather than at its core. This discovery resolves a longstanding puzzle and could help redefine our understanding of how ice forms.

Crystallization of ice, known as ice nucleation, usually happens heterogeneously, or in other words, at a solid surface. This is normally expected to happen at the surface of the water's container, where liquid meets solid.

However, this new research shows that ice crystallization can also occur just below the water's surface, where it meets the air. Here, the ice nucleates around small precursors with the same characteristic ring-shaped structure as ice 0.

"Simulations have shown that a water droplet is more likely to crystallize near the free surface under isothermal conditions," says lead author of the study Gang Sun. "This resolves a longstanding debate about whether crystallization occurs more readily on the surface or internally."

Ice 0 precursors have a structure very similar to supercooled water, allowing water molecules to crystallize more readily from it, without needing to directly form themselves into the structure of regular ice.

The tiny ice 0 precursors are formed spontaneously, as a result of negative pressure effects caused by the surface tension of water. Once crystallization begins from these precursors, structures similar to ice 0 quickly rearrange themselves into the more familiar ice I.

Senior author, Hajime Tanaka stresses the wide-ranging implications of this study, noting that, "The findings regarding the mechanism of surface crystallization of water are expected to contribute significantly to various fields, including climate studies and food sciences, where water crystallization plays a critical role."

A more detailed understanding of ice and how it forms can give invaluable insight into a variety of areas of study.

This work may have particular importance in meteorology, for example, where ice formation via ice 0-like precursors may have a much more noticeable effect in small water droplets like those found in clouds. Understanding ice can have benefits in technology too, from food sciences to air conditioning.

More information: Surface-induced water crystallization driven by precursors formed in negative pressure regions, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50188-1

Journal information: Nature Communicatio

Provided by University of Tokyo Researchers measure crystal nucleation in supercooled atomic liquids

Why Do Some Animals Have A “Third Eye”?

Chester Zoo’s new 200-million-year-old tuataras have one sitting on top of their heads.

RACHAEL FUNNELL
Edited by Maddy Chapman

A tuatara's third eye can just about be seen on top of its head.
Image credit: Chester Zoo

Chester Zoo recently announced the arrival of tuataras – a group of reptiles they describe as one of nature’s “greatest marvels” having lived on the planet for around 200 million years, since before dinosaurs existed – which have “three eyes”. It’s a lot of information to take in, but if that “third eye” fact is the one that has your eyes tripping, may we introduce you to the parietal eye?

Why do some animals have a “third eye”?

In nature, there exist some animals that you would describe as having two eyes, and yet in biology textbooks writers are referencing a “third eye”. This light-sensitive organ is found in many animals, including lots of lizards, as well as some frogs and fish.

It’s similar to a true eye in having a cornea, lens, and retina, but it can’t see like a true eye does. This is because the retina is a simplified take on the one you find in a true eye and so it’s thought they can only detect changes in light. There’s still much we don’t know about what, if any, function the parietal eye has, but some have hypothesized it could be a way for these animals to steer using the Sun, while others have suggested it could regulate the circadian rhythm.

The parietal eye of Anolis carolinensis can be seen on top of its head.
Image credit: TheAlphaWolf - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

What do you mean Chester Zoo has a 200-million-year-old reptile?

The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is one of the world’s oldest surviving species, having lived on Earth before the dinosaurs and endured all the way to the modern era. Today, their native home is New Zealand, but Chester Zoo in the UK has become the first to ever successfully breed these reptiles in a foreign land.

“Tuataras are one of nature’s greatest marvels and provide an incredible window into our planet’s prehistoric past,” said Karen Lambert, Lead Keeper on the zoo’s Ectotherms department, in a statement. “Having somehow survived for around 200 million years, these unique animals are crucial to our understanding of reptilian evolution.”

“They're notoriously difficult to care for but, after nearly four decades, we finally perfected our efforts and have subsequently found success with a number of successful hatchlings following in 2017 and 2020. This really showcases the extraordinary lengths we will go to safeguard a species.”

You might ask why a species that’s survived since before the dinosaurs needs our help, but unfortunately tuataras are threatened in the wild due to invasive species arriving on the small islands they inhabit, and environmental changes driven by climate change. It’s hoped that Chester Zoo’s new resident tuataras can raise awareness about the challenges they’re facing in the wild, helping to secure the future of this remarkable “three-eyed” species.

Indigenous People Brought Native Potato Species to Southern Utah, Genetic Analysis Reveals

The nutritious crop would have been a highly valued trade item and crucial in the lean winter months.

News
Published: July 25, 2024
| Original story from the University of Utah

Credit: Tim Lee/NHMU.

A new study shows that a native potato species was brought to southern Utah by Indigenous people in the distant past, adding to an ever-growing list of culturally significant plant species that pre-contact cultures domesticated in the Southwestern U.S.

The team of researchers, led by Red Butte Garden and the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) at the University of Utah, used genetic analysis to reveal how and where tubers of the Four Corners potato (Solanum jamesii) had been collected, transported and traded throughout the Colorado Plateau. The findings support the assertion that the tuber is a “lost sister,” joining maize, beans and squash—commonly known as the three sisters—as a staple of crops ingeniously grown across the arid landscape.

“Transport is one of the early crucial steps in the domestication of native plants into crops,” said Dr. Lisbeth Louderback, curator of archaeology for NHMU, associate professor of anthropology at the U and coauthor of the study. “Domestication can begin with people gathering and replanting propagules in a new location.”

The authors collected DNA samples from modern Four Corners potato populations near archaeological sites and from non-archaeological populations within the potato’s natural range in the Mogollon Rim of central Arizona and New Mexico. The findings indicate that the potato was transported and cultivated, likely by the ancestors of modern Pueblo (Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, Zia), Diné, Southern Paiute and Apache tribes.

“The Four Corners potato, along with maize, cacao, and agave, reflects the significant influence of humans on plant diversity in the landscape over millennia,” said Dr. Bruce Pavlik, former director of conservation at Red Butte Garden and lead author of the study.

The paper published on July 12, 2024, in the American Journal of Botany.

S. jamesii has twice the protein, calcium, magnesium and iron content than an organic red potato, and a single tuber can grow to yield up to 600 small tubers in just four months. The nutritious crop would have been a highly valued trade item and crucial in the lean winter months.While the unique distribution of the Four Corners potato came as a surprise to scientists and researchers, local Tribal members suspected this all along.

“The Southwest was an important, overlooked secondary region of domestication. Ancient Indigenous People were highly knowledgeable agriculturalists tuned into their regional ecological environs who traded extensively and grew the plants in many different environments,” said Wendy Hodgson, herbarium curator and research botanist at the Desert Botanical Garden. “Such studies highlight the need to learn from Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives, ethnographic reports, and to view landscapes and some plant species from a cultural, rather than ‘natural’, perspective.”

The lost sister

The Mogollon Rim region encompasses southcentral Arizona, extending east and north into the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico. Jagged limestone and sandstone cliffs break up the ponderosas, pinyons and junipers scattered across the high-altitude terrain. S. jamesii is widely distributed across the Rim—the plants thrive in conifer woodlands, and thousands of small tubers can grow beneath a single pinyon pine canopy. These “non-archaeological” populations lack an association with artifacts, grow to be quite large and are continuously distributed across the habitat.

In contrast, “archaeological populations” of the potato occur within 300 meters of ancient habitation sites and tend to be smaller than in the species’ central distribution. The sparse, isolated populations across the Colorado Plateau exhibit a genetic makeup only explained by human gathering and transport.

“Tribes of the Four Corners region have nurtured a connection to food and landscape biodiversity since time immemorial,” said Alastair Lee Bitsóí (Diné), a Navajo journalist who grows and reports on the Four Corners potato. “I’ve grown spuds from Bears Ears, Grand Staircase and Mesa Verde region at my family’s farm in the Navajo Nation, and from them a new generation has been born. Like the ancestors, I am a dispersal agent for its transport and cultivation.”

To reproduce sexually—that is, to create viable seeds—flowers must receive pollen from a different plant with specific, compatible genetic factors. Without the right companion, plants will clone themselves by sprouting from underground stems to create a genetically identical daughter plant. Its cloning capability allows S. jamesii to persist even when conditions are far from ideal. It also provides a genetic stamp marking where each population originated. This signature is common in potatoes carried to locations with few other individuals and persists for hundreds of generations.

Researchers collected DNA samples from 682 individual plants across 25 populations of the Four Corner potato—14 populations were near archaeological sites, while 11 were from non-archaeological areas in its natural distribution. The results showed that the most genetically diverse populations of S. jamesii were concentrated around the Mogollon Rim. Conversely, populations from archaeological sites exhibited reduced genetic diversity because the transported tubers may have only contained a fraction of the available genes.

Tracing the origins of archaeological populations

The authors found that populations of S. jamesii in Escalante Valley in Southern Utah have two different origins—one directly from the Mogollon Rim region and one related to Bears Ears, Mesa Verde and El Morro. These archaeological sites form a genetic corridor suggesting ancient people transported the tubers south to north

Despite being close geographically, four archaeological populations around Escalante Valley show distinct origins. The genetic signatures could indicate that people transported potatoes to new locations multiple times in the distant past in a pattern likely corresponding to ancient trade routes.

“The potato joins a large assemblage of goods that were traded across this vast cultural landscape,” said Louderback. “For millennia, people of the southwest participated in social networks, migration and trade routes in the region.”

What is clear is that the species has been transported and grown far from its center of natural distribution. Scientists from the USDA Potato Gene Bank have been sampling the genetics of the Four Corner’s potato for decades and were intrigued by the diversity of genetic patterns along the geographic range.

“We used to wonder about the patterns of genetic diversity distribution of Solanum jamesii,” said Dr. Alfonso del Rio, plant geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Potato Genebank and coauthor of the study. “It wasn’t clear to us that humans had altered its range, but now we have evidence confirming just that.”

The researchers interpret the transport of the Four Corners potato as early stages of domestication, however, they plan to analyze specific gene sequences to learn more about S. jamesii.

“We’d like to look at specific genetic markers for certain desirable traits such as taste, tuber size and frost tolerance,” said Pavlik. “It’s entirely possible that Indigenous people were preferring certain traits and thus trying to encourage favorable genes.”

“Agave, the Four Corners potato, and other domesticated species are excellent candidates for arid land cultivation at a time when we are faced with many challenges including food security and water resource availability,” said Hodgson. “As illustrated in this and other studies, protecting and understanding the distribution, and ecological and cultural roles of these plants requires interdisciplinary collaboration between botanists, archaeologists, federal agencies and Indigenous Peoples.”

Reference: Pavlik BM, Del Rio A, Bamberg J, Louderback LA. Evidence for human‐caused founder effect in populations of Solanum jamesii at archaeological sites: II. Genetic sequencing establishes ancient transport across the Southwest USA. Am J Bot. 2024;111(7):e16365. doi: 10.1002/ajb2.16365

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Revolutionary grid-scale wave energy generator deployed in Hawaii

By David Szondy
July 26, 2024
https://newatlas.com/

The OE-35 uses a Wells turbine

Ocean Energy
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Ocean Energy has deployed its 826-tonne wave energy converter buoy OE-35 at the US Navy's Wave Energy Test Site off the coast of the island of Oahu ahead of it being hooked up to Hawaii's electricity grid.

Measuring 125 x 59 ft (38 x 18 m) with a draft of 31 ft (9 m), the OE-35 was already a familiar sight in Kaneohe Bay on the Windward side of Oahu. Fixed just north of Mōkapu Peninsula, which is home to a US Marine Corps base that I became very familiar with years ago when its F-18 fighters used to go blasting over my anchored boat in the early morning.

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