Mongolians fight plastic pollution in vast steppe

by Khaliun Bayartsogt and Oliver Hotham

Mongolia is among the world's top per capita producers of plastic waste, and without a

 centralized recycling program, campaigners say some 90 percent of it ends up in

 landfills.

Mongolian herder Purev Batmunkh sighs as he picks through waste strewn across a field—the refuse of an unsightly and deadly waste pollution problem affecting swathes of the steppe.

His country is among the world's top per capita producers of plastic waste, and without a centralized recycling program, campaigners say some 90 percent of it ends up in landfills.

"Most people live in the moment and they don't really think about the future and just throw their garbage," Batmunkh told AFP in the Khishig-Undur district of Mongolia's northern Bulgan province.

"They don't know how long this garbage will stay, for how many years."

Illegal dumping is common and some of it then blows into pastoral lands, where it is eaten by livestock.

Batmunkh said one of his cows had been "drooling and could not really move".

"A few days passed and it died," he said.

"We gutted the cow and we found that all the way from its neck to its intestines and bladder, there was a plastic raincoat inside it."

Mongolia introduced a ban on single-use plastic bags in 2019.

But in the steppe, it appears to have had little effect.

In a nearby field, a mountain of multicolored plastic waste, from fizzy drink bottles to tires and shopping bags, lies festering just a few meters from where the horses graze.

Illegal dumping is common and some of it then blows into pastoral lands, where it is eaten 

by livestock.

'Zero-waste'

Annual plastics production worldwide has more than doubled in 20 years to 460 million tonnes, and is on track to triple within four decades if left unchecked.

Only nine percent is recycled, and according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, its contribution to global warming could more than double by 2060—having accounted for 3.4 percent of global emissions in 2019.

But, in rural Mongolia, some are trying to help.

Since 2018, local NGO Ecosoum has organized one of the area's first recycling facilities—encouraging herders and others to pick up local waste and bring it to them for processing.

Partially funded by the European Union, it is seeking to turn Khishig-Undur into Mongolia's first "zero-waste" district.

"These kinds of plastics are all over Mongolia," Batkhuyag Naranbat, technical coordinator at the recycling facility, told AFP, columns of processed bottles piled high behind him.

"Livestock go out and eat these plastics and even die eating plastic," he said.

Since 2018, local NGO Ecosoum has organized one of Khishig-Undur's first recycling f

acilities -- encouraging herders and others to pick up local waste and bring it to them for 

processing.

"We need to stop."

For Naranbat, work starts bright and early, when he and his colleagues head out to collect waste from those who can't bring it to the facility themselves.

They then separate the plastics into what can be re-used and what can't.

The plastic is then pressed into one-ton cubes, placed on a truck and sent to the capital Ulaanbaatar for processing.

People in the areas used to dump plastic in giant pits or burn it, Naranbat said.

"But when we learned about how this plastic pollution is detrimental, not only for the world but for our own country, we asked: 'what have we done?'" he said.

"We are the ones who caused the problem, we should be the ones to solve the issue."

Herder Batmunkh, who is 58, also decided to help, heading out on his horse every week to scour the steppe for rubbish to pick up and deliver to Ecosoum.

Herder Purev Batmunkh picks through waste strewn across a field in rural Mongolia.

"While I'm herding, I'll spot a bit of garbage and I'll put it in the bag that I have," he said.

His diligence hasn't always made him friends.

"When I tell my neighbors to take care of the garbage, they mock me and say, 'Batmunkh rambles on about nonsense,'" he said.

"They don't care."

'Large companies' to blame

While individual habits need to change, Naranbat said the companies that produce the plastic must be held accountable.

"They need to change and start using other forms of material, like aluminum—those things are recyclable," he said.

A fourth and penultimate round of UN-led negotiations on a world-first pact to solve global plastic pollution wrapped up in Canada in April.

Talks are set to conclude in November in South Korea, though a proposed cap on plastic production did not make it into the draft text and remains a major sticking point.

A worker at a plastic processing plant where bottles are recycled to make pet resin in 

Ulaanbaatar.

But Batmunkh said he felt everyone needed to play a role in helping make Earth a better place.

"The things that separate us from animals is our rationality –- that makes us human," he said, his young grandson, hanging on his every word, pulling on his arm.

"As humans who are living on this Earth, all of us need to bear the responsibility of caring for our planet."

© 2024 AFP

Plastic pollution talks move closer to world-first pact

Urgent warning over 'Doomsday wreck' at the bottom of the Thames: 

SS Richard Montgomery is deteriorating faster than feared - and could unleash a tsunami towards London if it explodes, report warns

Ship sank in Thames Estuary in 1944 with 1,400 tons of WW2 explosives

New survey has revealed 'concerning' signs of decay in the body of the ship

By SHIVALI BEST FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 26 July 2024

A 'Doomsday wreck' stuffed with 1,400 tons of WW2 explosives is collapsing, threatening the Thames with a tsunami, a new survey of the ship has revealed.

The SS Richard Montgomery sank in the Thames Estuary in August 1944, coming to rest at a depth of roughly 49ft, about a mile-and-a-half from Sheerness, Kent.

Her masts still loom above the water line and plans are in place to remove them, lest they should collapse on to the wreck and trigger an explosion.

But now a new survey of the vessel has revealed 'concerning' signs of decay in the body of the ship, all observed in the year since the last survey.

The new report warns that 'the deck space near hold three appears to have started to collapse on the port side. This appears to be recent'.


A 'Doomsday wreck' stuffed with 1,400 tons of WW2 explosives is collapsing, a sobering new survey of the ship has revealed, threatening the Thames with a tsunami


The SS Richard Montgomery sank in the Thames Estuary in August 1944, coming to rest at a depth of roughly 49ft, about a mile-and-a-half from Sheerness, Kent


Meanwhile, the 'whole forward section of the wreck', which lies in two halves on the bottom, 'appears to have an increase in lean' of 10 to 15cm.

This growing lean eastwards, the report says, raises a 'a potential concern' about the wreckage 'being undercut as supporting sediment is eroded away'.

The survey also observed that a crack along the second cargo hold had grown 5cm wider and 37cm longer in a year, and was 'significantly buckled' further down.

This gives 'the appearance that the forward part of the wreck is splitting in two', the survey noted, causing the deck above to collapse up to 20cm in a year.

Her masts still loom above the water line and plans are in place to remove them, lest they should collapse on to the wreck and trigger an explosion


The SS Richard Montgomery sank off Medway in Kent and has lain on the seabed for nearly 80 years

Read More
Return to the Titanic: Expedition to wreck sets sail just one year after the OceanGate 

Making matters worse, the back of the ship is 'like the forward section… potentially breaking in two about halfway along its length'.

Here, the report said, a stretch of deck six metres long had collapsed over half a metre in one year.

The revelations were made in the 2023 survey report, which was released last week.

In a statement, the Department for Transport said its priority was to 'ensure the safety of the public and reduce any risk posed by the SS Richard Montgomery'.

It continued: 'Experts have carried out vital surveying work to the wreckage and, based on their findings, we are revising our initial timeframe for removing the masts in the safest manner possible.



The 'whole forward section of the wreck', which lies in two halves on the bottom, 'appears to have an increase in lean' of 10 to 15cm


In a statement, the Department for Transport said its priority was to 'ensure the safety of the public and reduce any risk posed by the SS Richard Montgomery'




The survey observed that a crack along the second cargo hold had grown 5cm wider and 37cm longer in a year, and was 'significantly buckled' further down. This gives 'the appearance that the forward part of the wreck is splitting in two', the survey noted, causing the deck above to collapse up to 20cm in a year
TRENDING

'The aim is to remove the masts as soon as possible should it be possible to establish a safe and effective operational methodology for doing so.'

Rich Lehmann, who chairs the environment committee at Swale Borough Council, which covers Sheerness, said the local authority was keeping a close watch.

He said: 'The deterioration of the wreck is concerning, and the council are monitoring the situation closely.

'Officers are in dialogue with the Department for Transport, who manage the wreck, and other relevant agencies to ensure that all necessary precautions are in place to mitigate any potential risks.

'The safety of our community and the protection of our marine environment remain our top priorities.'

Rich Lehmann, who chairs the environment committee at Swale Borough Council, which covers Sheerness, said the local authority was keeping a close watch




The SS Richard Montgomery was an American vessel carrying munitions for the allies in the Second World War


She ran aground on a sandbank and broke her back on it when the tide went out, sinking before all of her cargo could be recovered. It's feared she still holds enough explosive power to unleash a tidal wave in the Thames, earning her the nickname 'Doomsday wreck'

He continued: 'The SS Richard Montgomery is an integral part of Sheerness's history and holds a special place in the hearts of our residents.

'Any masts or artifacts removed from the wreck should rightfully be brought to Sheppey, and specifically to Sheerness, to preserve this significant chapter of our island's history.

'The wreck is not only a historical landmark but also a beloved symbol of our community's resilience and heritage.'

The SS Richard Montgomery was an American vessel carrying munitions for the allies in the Second World War.

She ran aground on a sandbank and broke her back on it when the tide went out, sinking before all of her cargo could be recovered.

It's feared she still holds enough explosive power to unleash a tidal wave in the Thames, earning her the nickname 'Doomsday wreck'.

What is the SS Montgomery and why is it dangerous?


The SS Richard Montgomery was a US Liberty Ship built in 1943 to transport cargo across the Atlantic

The 7,200-tonne vessel safely crossed the Atlantic on convoy HX-301 without incident and was ordered to anchor off Sheerness.

The vessel was carrying some 7,000 tonnes of munitions and it was due to carry on to Cherbourg to unload its cargo.

However, on August 20, 1944, the Montgomery dragged her anchor and ran aground on a sandbank around 250 yards from the Medway Approach Channel.



The SS Richard Montgomery, pictured, sank in 1944 off the coast of Kent carrying 7,000 tonnes of munitions that were due to be shipped to Cherbourg for invasion of Europe



The SS Richard Montgomery dragged its anchor on August 20, 1944 and ran aground on a sandbank before her hull cracked and started flooding

A major salvage operation was launched to unload the vessel's deadly cargo although, within 24 hours cracks began appearing across the hull and the forward areas began flooding.

By September 25, the salvage operation had to be abandoned after the entire vessel flooded.

The Richard Montgomery was one of 2,700 Liberty ships built during the war.

Science needs to get its house in order when it comes to energy use and waste

BY PATRICK WALTER

26 JULY 2024

Water, water, everywhere… but in labs most goes down the sink. That’s the sad truth in chemistry where water-cooled condensers – essential for preventing the escape of reaction products during heating – waste huge amounts of this increasingly valuable resource. A single condenser can use over 2 million litres per year. This issue is part of the paradox that afflicts science: while the world looks to it to provide new technologies to cut energy consumption and shepherd scarce resources, labs themselves are resource hungry and produce large volumes of waste.

Labs consume far more water and energy than similar-sized buildings: they account for around 60% of a university’s total water use and as much as 65% of a university’s total energy consumption. All the labs in the world also generate 2% of plastic waste and each chemist produces, on average, 4–15 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

Chemists are not blind to this dilemma. A global survey recently found that 84% of chemists want to reduce their lab’s environmental footprint, and many of them are taking action. Chemistry World has recently looked at the first paper that compares different air-cooled condensers. It provides a handy way for chemists to see which solution might work best for them when conducting reactions under reflux. Promisingly, even relatively low-tech and cheap options perform quite well, offering cost-effective ways to save water and money.

Another recent paper, from the lab of Nobel prize winner Ben Feringa, outlines and quantifies the benefits of going green with simple solutions such as closing the sash on fume hoods (reducing air flow by two-thirds and saving on heating), insulating rotary evaporators’ water baths (cutting energy use by 56%) and idling electron microscopes at night (saving 40% of their energy use). This saves the faculty thousands of euros per year.

Such work is part of a growing trend of scientists thinking much more about their environmental footprint and ways to shrink it. The Royal Society Of Chemistry’s recent Sustainable Laboratories programme is one of those initiatives, with the first grants released earlier this year to cover small changes that make labs more sustainable.

To make these kinds of changes in labs commonplace what’s needed is education. The authors of the air-cooled condenser paper urge tutors to include such devices in organic chemistry practicals so students are aware of them from the off. Educational programmes of this kind are already being rolled out at many universities. Such simple measures can bed in the concept so that the scientists of the future are already primed to make their labs greener. That way change becomes second nature.



Patrick Walter
Patrick is the news editor for Chemistry World, having previously had various stints on science journals, writing for society newsletters and editing and writing jobs.

Archaeological dig at Tycho Brahe’s island lab reveals some of his alchemical secrets

BY JULIA ROBINSON

26 JULY 2024

Analysis of glass and ceramic shards retrieved from an archaeological excavation in Sweden could reveal new insights into alchemical experiments carried out by the Renaissance astronomer, Tycho Brahe. The researchers found traces of nine chemical elements on the inner and outer surfaces of the fragments including copper, gold, zinc and tungsten.

Brahe, who lived between 1546 and 1601, is well-known as an astronomer, but he also had a less well-documented interest in alchemy. In 1576, King Frederik II of Denmark offered Brahe the island of Ven as a lifelong fief, saying he wanted to support Brahe’s work. Brahe accepted and between 1576 and 1580 he erected Uraniborg, a unique combination of palace, observatory and alchemical laboratory





Uraniborg

Source: © Kaare Lund Rasmussen and Poul Grinder‑Hansen 2024

Brahe has his own observatory and lab built on an island in what is now Sweden after he found favour with the Danish king

‘It was like the Cern of the day,’ says Kaare Lund Rasmussen, professor emeritus in the department of physics, chemistry and pharmacy at the University of South Denmark, and one of the researchers leading the study.

Related stories

Pioneering preservative removal from ancient Greek ship allows accurate dating


There’s more to alchemy than its mystical nature


Colourant chemistry identifies ancient Greek workshop for Tyrian purple

While Brahe published books and articles on his astronomical work, very little is known about his alchemical studies at Uraniborg. ‘The story about Tycho is always written about the astronomy,’ Rasmussen says. ‘And the reason is that he wrote very little about his alchemy – he wanted to keep [it] secret – whereas the astronomy he published books … and that came out to the world, whereas the medicine making did not.’

After his death, Brahe’s palace and observatory on Ven was demolished and the stones reused for new, humbler buildings. However, in 1824, the remains of the observatory were unearthed, along with traces of two ovens from his laboratory. A further archaeological dig in 1988–1990, which concentrated on the garden and surrounding buildings, unearthed fragments of glass and ceramics that may have come from the laboratory.





Source: © Bildagentur/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Tycho Brahe is well known as one of the last – and most influential – astronomers working before the advent of the telescope. Far less is known about his alchemical work as he kept a secret

Rasmussen and Poul Grinder-Hansen, a historian at the National Museum of Denmark, were then tasked with convincing the museum in Lund, Sweden, who had possession of hundreds of shards taken from the site, to allow them to carry out analysis on them. ‘They weren’t all too eager to do that,’ says Rasmussen. ‘[But] they gave me five shards.’

Cross sections of the shards were analysed for 31 trace elements with the aim of detecting any traces of the chemical substances on the inside or outside of the shards. ‘[We were] very lucky in the sense that [for] one shard there was nothing on either side of it,’ says Rasmussen. ‘The others, there were different elements that were clearly increased or enriched and so for the first time, we have this light cast into this laboratory.’





Source: © Kaare Lund Rasmussen and Poul Grinder‑Hansen 2024

The shards of the alchemical reaction vessels were found to contain a number of elements, including some that were virtually unknown at the time

The researchers found traces of nine chemical elements on the inner and outer surfaces of the fragments – copper, antimony, gold, mercury, nickel, zinc, tin, tungsten and lead.


The presence of copper, antimony, gold and mercury was consistent with previous research suggesting they may have been used in three of Brahe’s medical preparations. One for the prevention and treatment of an epidemic disease or other infectious contagion, a second for the treatment of epileptic diseases and a third for diseases affecting the skin and blood, such as scabies, chronic venereal diseases and elephantiasis.

‘Copper, antimony, gold and mercury were known to be used in the recipes,’ says Rasmussen. ‘But the other ones, nickel, zinc, tin, tungsten and lead, they were not mentioned anywhere. So, something else must have happened in the alchemy lab … but tungsten, that is really, really hard, because that was hardly invented [at that time].’

The researchers speculate that a tungsten-containing mineral may have been used in the laboratory because of mistaken identification or its chemical composition being unknown.

Umberto Veronesi, an archaeologist and heritage scientist based in Lisbon, Portugal, says what he found ‘particularly interesting and exciting’ about the study was that it was talking about a ‘very high profile person’ – which he says is ‘a rare occurrence’ in archaeology. ‘The beauty of archaeology is that it very often speaks to us about anonymous people – especially when it comes to this kind of scientific laboratories … we don’t really know the names and the interests of the people who are working there, they are usually quite anonymous,’ he adds. ‘That’s the big contribution of this paper, because it is like an open window, a very rare opportunity to look into what a very important person in the history of science was doing.’


Veronesi says that, having worked with similar materials before, he wasn’t surprised by the identified elements as they were consistent with someone interested in alchemy.

‘What’s important is that they found certain elements on the surfaces, especially the inner surfaces of these vessels, and that these are related to operations that could be metallurgical operations, but they equally could be medical operations,’ he says.

He adds that it would have been useful for the researchers to discuss in more detail the findings of their analysis that did not have a clear explanation.

‘They mentioned that there are some elements, like copper, like zinc, which cannot be matched to Brahe’s recipes and that’s exactly where I would have tried to dig a little more – it could tell us something, for example that Tycho Brahe was also working with copper alloys for whatever purpose, or sometimes they were trying to make alloys in order to understand how single elements and single metals work when, when treated in specific ways.’


References

K L Rasmussen and P Grinder-Hansen. Herit. Sci., 2024, DOI: 10.1186/s40494-024-01301-6

Julia Robinson
Julia joined the Chemistry World team as Science correspondent in May 2023. She previously spent eight years leading the clinical and science content at The Pharmaceutical Journal, the official journal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, a membership body for pharmacists.View full profile

Chemical analyses find hidden elements from renaissance astronomer Tycho Brahe's alchemy laboratory

Date: July 25, 2024

Source: University of Southern Denmark

Summary:

Danish Tycho Brahe was most famous for his contributions to astronomy. However, he also had a well-equipped alchemical laboratory where he produced secret medicines for Europe's elite.


FULL STORY

In the Middle Ages, alchemists were notoriously secretive and didn't share their knowledge with others. Danish Tycho Brahe was no exception. Consequently, we don't know precisely what he did in the alchemical laboratory located beneath his combined residence and observatory, Uraniborg, on the now Swedish island of Ven.

Only a few of his alchemical recipes have survived, and today, there are very few remnants of his laboratory. Uraniborg was demolished after his death in 1601, and the building materials were scattered for reuse.

However, during an excavation in 1988-1990, some pottery and glass shards were found in Uraniborg's old garden. These shards were believed to originate from the basement's alchemical laboratory. Five of these shards -- four glass and one ceramic -- have now undergone chemical analyses to determine which elements the original glass and ceramic containers came into contact with.

The chemical analyses were conducted by Professor Emeritus and expert in archaeometry, Kaare Lund Rasmussen from the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark. Senior researcher and museum curator Poul Grinder-Hansen from the National Museum of Denmark oversaw the insertion of the analyses into historical context.

Enriched levels of trace elements were found on four of them, while one glass shard showed no specific enrichments. The study has been published in the journal Heritage Science.

"Most intriguing are the elements found in higher concentrations than expected -- indicating enrichment and providing insight into the substances used in Tycho Brahe's alchemical laboratory," said Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

The enriched elements are nickel, copper, zinc, tin, antimony, tungsten, gold, mercury, and lead, and they have been found on either the inside or outside of the shards.

Most of them are not surprising for an alchemist's laboratory. Gold and mercury were -- at least among the upper echelons of society -- commonly known and used against a wide range of diseases.

"But tungsten is very mysterious. Tungsten had not even been described at that time, so what should we infer from its presence on a shard from Tycho Brahe's alchemy workshop?," said Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

Tungsten was first described and produced in pure form more than 180 years later by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Tungsten occurs naturally in certain minerals, and perhaps the element found its way to Tycho Brahe's laboratory through one of these minerals. In the laboratory, the mineral might have undergone some processing that separated the tungsten, without Tycho Brahe ever realizing it.

However, there is also another possibility that Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen emphasizes has no evidence whatsoever -- but which could be plausible.

Already in the first half of the 1500s, the German mineralogist Georgius Agricola described something strange in tin ore from Saxony, which caused problems when he tried to smelt tin. Agricola called this strange substance in the tin ore "Wolfram" (German for Wolf's froth, later renamed to tungsten in English).

"Maybe Tycho Brahe had heard about this and thus knew of tungsten's existence. But this is not something we know or can say based on the analyses I have done. It is merely a possible theoretical explanation for why we find tungsten in the samples," said Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

Tycho Brahe belonged to the branch of alchemists who, inspired by the German physician Paracelsus, tried to develop medicine for various diseases of the time: plague, syphilis, leprosy, fever, stomach aches, etc. But he distanced himself from the branch that tried to create gold from less valuable minerals and metals.

In line with the other medical alchemists of the time, he kept his recipes close to his chest and shared them only with a few selected individuals, such as his patron, Emperor Rudolph II, who allegedly received Tycho Brahe's prescriptions for plague medicine.

We know that Tycho Brahe's plague medicine was complicated to produce. It contained theriac, which was one of the standard remedies for almost everything at the time and could have up to 60 ingredients, including snake flesh and opium. It also contained copper or iron vitriol (sulphates), various oils, and herbs.

After various filtrations and distillations, the first of Brahe's three recipes against plague was obtained. This could be made even more potent by adding tinctures of, for example, coral, sapphires, hyacinths, or potable gold.

"It may seem strange that Tycho Brahe was involved in both astronomy and alchemy, but when one understands his worldview, it makes sense. He believed that there were obvious connections between the heavenly bodies, earthly substances, and the body's organs. Thus, the Sun, gold, and the heart were connected, and the same applied to the Moon, silver, and the brain; Jupiter, tin, and the liver; Venus, copper, and the kidneys; Saturn, lead, and the spleen; Mars, iron, and the gallbladder; and Mercury, mercury, and the lungs. Minerals and gemstones could also be linked to this system, so emeralds, for example, belonged to Mercury," explained Poul Grinder-Hansen.


Kaare Lund Rasmussen has previously analyzed hair and bones from Tycho Brahe and found, among other elements, gold. This could indicate that Tycho Brahe himself had taken medicine that contained potable gold.


Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Southern Denmark. Original written by Birgitte Svennevig. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:Kaare Lund Rasmussen, Poul Grinder-Hansen. Chemical analysis of fragments of glass and ceramic ware from Tycho Brahe’s laboratory at Uraniborg on the island of Ven (Sweden). Heritage Science, 2024; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s40494-024-01301-6


Cite This Page:MLA
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University of Southern Denmark. "Chemical analyses find hidden elements from renaissance astronomer Tycho Brahe's alchemy laboratory." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 July 2024. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240725154836.htm>.

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.”

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Human-induced climate change means that the respite Royce desperately hopes for is improbable. In fact, forecasters expect this to be the most active hurricane season in recorded history. Researchers have also found that warming will increase the pressures of plant diseases, like greening, in crops worldwide.

Although “almost every tree in Florida” is afflicted with the disease, and the reality of warming temperatures spreading pathogens is a growing concern, the state’s citrus producing days are far from over, said Tim Widmer, a plant pathologist who specializes in crop diseases and plant health. “We don’t have the solution yet,” he said. “But there are things that look very, very promising.” A windfall of funding has been devoted to the hunt for answers to a befuddling problem. Florida’s legislature earmarked $65 million in the 2023-2024 budget to support the industry, while the 2018 federal farm bill included $25 million annually, for the length of the bill, toward combating the disease.

Widmer is a contractor at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, which is devising an automated system (known as “symbiont technology”) that would “pump” therapies like antimicrobial peptides that destroy pathogens in a host tree, which allows growers to no longer have to manually administer injections. Think of it “kind of like a biofactory that produces the compounds of interest and delivers them directly into the tree,” said Widmer. But they’ve only just begun testing it in a 40-acre grove this spring. Other solutions scientists are pursuing include breeding new varieties of citrus that could be more blight-tolerant. “It takes anywhere from 8 to 10 to 12 years to develop a long-term solution for [greening], and also for some of the climate change factors that will impact citrus production,” said Widmer.

Time is something many family-owned operations can’t afford. In the last couple of years, a mounting number of Florida citrus groves, grower associations, and related businesses have closed for good. Ian was the breaking point for Sun Groves, a family business in Oldsmar that opened in 1933.

“We definitely suffered from freezes, hurricanes … and tried for as long as we could to stay in business in spite of all the challenges,” said Michelle Urbanski, who was the general manager. “When Hurricane Ian struck, that was really the final blow where we knew we had to close the business.”

The financial loss was too much, putting an end to the family’s almost century-long contribution to Florida’s enduring, now embattled, citrus legacy. “It was heartbreaking for my family to close Sun Groves,” she said. Amid a torrent of crippling infestations and calamitous storms, it’s a feeling many others may soon come to know.

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

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Analysis of the proboscidean fossil record using the BDNN model. 

Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl2643

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

© 2024 Science X NetworkSlower metabolism of warm-blooded animals on islands correlated with higher risk of anthropogenic extinction

 

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

by Field Museum

A blue-headed sunbird in the Albertine Rift: an example of a tropical bird with iridescent, 

colorful feathers. Credit: John Bates, Field Museum

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."

Birds-of-paradise in the Field Museum's collections. Credit: Kate Golembiewski, Field Museum

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.

Lead author Chad Eliason with hummingbirds in the Field Museum's collections. Credit: Kate Golembiewski, Field Museum

"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