It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Mayor of the occupied city of Hebron, Taysir Abu Sneineh, said that the Israeli military has turned the city and nearby towns in the southern occupied West Bank into a “large prison”,
Anadolu Agency quoted Abu Sneineh as saying that the Israeli army “turned the city into something akin to a large prison and imposed a policy of collective punishment.”
This imprisonment has been carried out by multiplying mulitary checkpoints, erecting iron gates, and closing all roads and entrances to cities and towns in the West Bank.
In addition, the medical teams were unable to transport patients by road, making it necessary to transfer patients onto another vehicle at checkpoints.
The mayor said basic services like waste collection had been halted due to the closures.
“People want to live with their rights in security and safety; removing those rights could lead to an explosion,” Abu Sneineh warned.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said at least 39 people have been killed in the West Bank since August 28 when Israeli forces launched a large-scale incursion into several towns and cities. It added that at least 150 people have been wounded.
The casualties were 21 Palestinians from Jenin, eight Palestinians from Tubas, seven from Tulkarem, and three in Hebron. This brings the total number of Palestinians killed across the West Bank since October 7 to 691.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli forces were using “lethal war-like tactics” in the West Bank and that Palestinian children were among those killed.
The military raids, mostly concentrated in Tulkarm and Jenin, constitute Israel’s largest assault on the occupied territory since the second Intifada in the early 2000s.
Microplastics discovered in human brains for the first time: What it means for our health
Plastic is in our clothes, cars, mobile phones, water bottles and food containers. But recent research adds to growing concerns about the impact of tiny plastic fragments on our health.
A study from the United States has, for the first time, found microplastics in human brains. The study, which has yet to be independently verified by other scientists, has been described in the media as scary, shocking and alarming.
But what exactly are microplastics? What do they mean for our health? Should we be concerned? What are microplastics? Can you see them?
We often consider plastic items to be indestructible. But plastic breaks down into smaller particles. Definitions vary but generally microplastics are smaller than five millimetres.
This makes some too small to be seen with the naked eye. So, many of the images the media uses to illustrate articles about microplastics are misleading, as some show much larger, clearly visible pieces.
Microplastics have been reported in many sources of drinking water and everyday food items. This means we are constantly exposed to them in our diet.
Such widespread, chronic (long-term) exposure makes this a serious concern for human health. While research investigating the potential risk microplastics pose to our health is limited, it is growing. How about this latest study?
The study looked at concentrations of microplastics in 51 samples from men and women set aside from routine autopsies in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Samples were from the liver, kidney and brain.
These tiny particles are difficult to study due to their size, even with a high-powered microscope. So rather than trying to see them, researchers are beginning to use complex instruments that identify the chemical composition of microplastics in a sample. This is the technique used in this study.
The researchers were surprised to find up to 30 times more microplastics in brain samples than in the liver and kidney.
They hypothesised this could be due to high blood flow to the brain (carrying plastic particles with it). Alternatively, the liver and kidneys might be better suited to dealing with external toxins and particles. We also know the brain does not undergo the same amount of cellular renewal as other organs in the body, which could make the plastics linger here.
The researchers also found the amount of plastics in brain samples increased by about 50% between 2016 and 2024. This may reflect the rise in environmental plastic pollution and increased human exposure.
The microplastics found in this study were mostly composed of polyethylene. This is the most commonly produced plastic in the world and is used for many everyday products, such as bottle caps and plastic bags.
This is the first time microplastics have been found in human brains, which is important. However, this study is a “pre-print”, so other independent microplastics researchers haven’t yet reviewed or validated the study. How do microplastics end up in the brain?
Microplastics typically enter the body through contaminated food and water. This can disrupt the gut microbiome (the community of microbes in your gut) and cause inflammation. This leads to effects in the whole body via the immune system and the complex, two-way communication system between the gut and the brain. This so-called gut-brain axis is implicated in many aspects of health and disease.
We can also breathe in airborne microplastics. Once these particles are in the gut or lungs, they can move into the bloodstream and then travel around the body into various organs.
Microplastics also migrate to the brains of wild fish. In mouse studies, ingested microplastics are absorbed from the gut into the blood and can enter the brain, becoming lodged in other organs along the way.
To get into brain tissue, microplastics must cross the blood-brain-barrier, an intricate layer of cells that is supposed to keep things in the blood from entering the brain.
Although concerning, this is not surprising, as microplastics must cross similar cell barriers to enter the urine, testes and placenta, where they have already been found in humans. Is this a health concern?
Aside from the effects of the microplastic particles themselves, microplastics might also pose risks if they carry environmental toxins or bacteria into and around the body.
But microplastics and their effects are difficult to study. In addition to their small size, there are so many different types of plastics in the environment. More than 13,000 different chemicals have been identified in plastic products, with more being developed every year.
Microplastics are also weathered by the environment and digestive processes, and this is hard to reproduce in the lab.
A goal of our research is to understand how these factors change the way microplastics behave in the body. We plan to investigate if improving the integrity of the gut barrier through diet or probiotics can prevent the uptake of microplastics from the gut into the bloodstream. This may effectively stop the particles from circulating around the body and lodging into organs. How do I minimise my exposure?
Microplastics are widespread in the environment, and it’s difficult to avoid exposure. We are just beginning to understand how microplastics can affect our health.
An easy place to start is to avoid foods and drinks packaged in single-use plastic or reheated in plastic containers. We can also minimise exposure to synthetic fibres in our home and clothing.
The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.
It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15 percent of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said — a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.
Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, a Leeds environmental engineering professor. The other biggest plastic polluting cities are New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah, Egypt.
India leads the world in generating plastic pollution, producing 10.2 million tons a year (9.3 million metric tons), far more than double the next big-polluting nations, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often villainized for pollution, ranks fourth but is making tremendous strides in reducing waste, Velis said. Other top plastic polluters are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight nations are responsible for more than half of the globe’s plastic pollution, according to the study’s data.
The United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons (47,600 metric tons) and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tons (4,600 metric tons), according to the study.
In 2022, most of the world’s nations agreed to make the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans. Final treaty negotiations take place in South Korea in November.
The study used artificial intelligence to concentrate on plastics that were improperly burned — about 57 percent of the pollution — or just dumped. In both cases incredibly tiny microplastics, or nanoplastics, are what turn the problem from a visual annoyance at beaches and a marine life problem to a human health threat, Velis said.
Several studies this year have looked at how prevalent microplastics are in our drinking water and in people’s tissue, such as hearts, brains and testicles, with doctors and scientists still not quite sure what it means in terms of human health threats.
“The big time bomb of microplastics are these microplastics released in the Global South mainly,” Velis said. “We already have a huge dispersal problem. They are in the most remote places … the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench in the ocean, in what we breathe and what we eat and what we drink.”
He called it “everybody’s problem” and one that will haunt future generations.
“We shouldn’t put the blame, any blame, on the Global South,” Velis said. “And we shouldn’t praise ourselves about what we do in the Global North in any way.”
It’s just a lack of resources and ability of government to provide the necessary services to citizens, Velis said.
Outside experts worried that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than overall production, lets the plastics industry off the hook. Making plastics emits large amounts of greenhouse gas that contribute to climate change.
“These guys have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as really just macroplastics that are emitted into the environment after the consumer, and it risks us losing our focus on the upstream and saying, hey now all we need to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary but it’s not the whole story.”
Theresa Karlsson, science and technical advisor to International Pollutants Elimination Network, another coalition of advocacy groups on environment, health and waste issues, called the volume of pollution identified by the study “alarming” and said it shows the amount of plastics being produced today is “unmanageable.”
But she said the study misses the significance of the global trade in plastic waste that has rich countries sending it to poor ones. The study said plastic waste trade is decreasing, with China banning waste imports. But Karlsson said overall waste trade is actually increasing and likely plastics with it. She cited EU waste exports going from 110,000 tons (100,000 metric tons) in 2004 to 1.4 million tons (1.3 million metric tons) in 2021.
Velis said the amount of plastic waste traded is small. Kara Lavender Law, an oceanography professor at the Sea Education Association who wasn’t involved in the study, agreed, based on U.S. plastic waste trends. She said this was otherwise one of the more comprehensive studies on plastic waste.
Officials in the plastics industry praised the study.
“This study underscores that uncollected and unmanaged plastic waste is the largest contributor to plastic pollution and that prioritizing adequate waste management is critical to ending plastic pollution,” Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council on Chemical Associations, said in a statement. In treaty negotiations, the industry opposes a cap on plastic production.
The United Nations projects that plastics production is likely to rise from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) a year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons, saying “our planet is choking in plastic.”
Jennifer McDermott contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.
Mexican bat found to have photoluminescent feet
UV-induced photoluminescent bristles in the feet of a Tadarida brasiliensis individual from Milpa Alta: (a) dorsal view, white light; (b) dorsal view, UV light; (c) ventral view, white light; (d) ventral view, UV light. Scale in millimeters. Credit:Mammalian Biology(2024). DOI: 10.1007/s42991-024-00441-3
A small team of zoologists and ecologists with members from Instituto de Ecología and Soluciones Ambientales en Sustentabilidad Ambiental, both in Mexico, and the University of Texas at Austin, has found that a certain species of bat living in Mexico has photoluminescent bristles on their feet.
In their paper published in the journal Mammalian Biology, the group describes how they accidentally discovered the unique feature in the bats and suggest a possible reason for its evolution.
Three years ago, two members of the group were attempting to catch bats from a roost near Mexico City. They were using long strands of fine filament as nets to catch several bats at a time. All of those they caught were carried to a place 30 kilometers to the north, where they were released into another roost.
The aim was to find out if individuals from the two roosts moved back and forth between them. To that end, the researchers dusted the specimens they caught with a powder that could be easily seen using a UV light. That effort failed, the researchers note, but they did find something else—the feet of the bats were lighting up under the lamp, and it was not because of any dust that had been applied.
Prior research has shown that the feet of the Mexican free-tailed bats are unique—they have what are described as spoon-shaped bristles along the outer edges of their toes—making them look like a character drawn by Dr. Seuss. To date, no one has been able to figure out why. Now it appears that those spines are unique in another way—they reflect a blue-green hue under a UV light.
Wanting to make sure the finding was truly unique, the researchers tested and found the same phenomenon in 25 other specimens from both roosts. They also found it on a museum specimen. They have not yet figured out why the spines are photoluminescent, though they suspect the bats can see the glow, but only at dusk or dawn or when basking in the moonlight.
The team plans to conduct experiments to find out if the creatures are using their feet as a way to communicate at night when they are bunched up in colonies that have up to a million bats.
More information: Fernando Gual-Suárez et al, Ultraviolet-induced photoluminescent bristles on the feet of the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis), Mammalian Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s42991-024-00441-3
Climate change and planetary health concentration launches
September 4, 2024 – A new interdisciplinary concentration in climate change and planetary health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is aimed at preparing students to deal with the consequences of human-caused changes to the climate and the planet, such as extreme weather, the spread of infectious diseases, and negative impacts on food production.
The hope is that the 10-credit concentration will make it easier for students to navigate studies in climate change and planetary health and strengthen the School’s community of scholars in the nascent field while providing a roadmap for how to create an effective program.
“It is clear that the impacts of harming our planet and climate change are among the greatest public health threats we face,” said Gaurab Basu, director of education and policy for Harvard Chan School’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE) and an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health, who co-directs the new concentration along with Christopher Golden, associate professor of nutrition and planetary health. “Creating a concentration in climate change and planetary health is an important marker at the School to recognize the fact that this isn’t only an engineering or an entrepreneurial or technological issue, but that health really needs to be at the middle of this conversation.”
He added, “There’s been a real clamoring for this among students and increased interest among faculty to contribute to the knowledge base and to develop solutions.”
“In order to adequately prepare, adapt, and create resilience against these upcoming threats, we are bringing together faculty with different skill sets from across the School to teach in the program,” said Golden. “We are excited to prepare the next generation of leaders to tackle this existential crisis that touches every domain of public health, from infectious disease to noncommunicable disease to mental health to nutrition and beyond.”
The concentration includes four core courses. Golden will teach “An Introduction to Planetary Health” and Basu will teach “Climate Change and Global Health Equity.” The other two—“Climate Change, Health, and Environmental Justice: Focusing on Policy and Solutions” and “Human Health and Global Environmental Change”—will be taught, respectively, by Kari Nadeau, John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies and chair of the Department of Environmental Health, and Caleb Dresser, an instructor in the department and director of healthcare solutions for C-CHANGE.
Students in the concentration will be able to choose from among nearly 40 courses from one of two tracks, research methodologies and research translation, and will also have a choice of electives on topics such as societal response to disaster and how the built environment impacts health. Nearly 50 faculty from multiple departments and centers are affiliated with the new concentration.
PhD student Hervet Randriamady (in baseball cap) conducts a focus group on mental health in Madagascar in the summer of 2022.
Hervet Randriamady, a fourth-year PhD student from Madagascar in Population Health Sciences at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin School of Arts and Sciences, and Momi Afelin, a student from Hawaii who just earned her MPH and is beginning a PhD, plan to pursue the new concentration at Harvard Chan School. Randriamady is focusing on the intersection of climate change and drought-driven crop failures, and the impacts those have on mental health, and Afelin is looking at the effect of environmental changes on subsistence food practices in Hawaii. Both of them have seen how environmental change has impacted livelihoods and health in their home communities.
Randriamady said that in his country, droughts in farming areas have caused crop failures, and intense winds in fishing communities have sometimes made it too dangerous for fishing boats to go out. These problems—both driven by climate change—have led to uncertainty about livelihoods, food insecurity, and mental health issues, he said.
Momi Afelin
Noted Afelin, “Where I come from, environmental changes driven by climate change are happening right on our doorsteps, and these changes can impact subsistence practices such as hunting, fishing, and farming. Our communities deserve for us, as researchers, to be fully equipped with tools and knowledge to study these environmental changes and health impacts and to co-develop solutions and policy to address them. I hope this concentration will help prepare me for that.”
If you are interested in learning more about the concentration, please reach out to Skye Flanigan, programs director at C-CHANGE (flanigan@hsph.harvard.edu).
Heat waves and droughts cause billions of dollars in global economic losses, research finds
Severe weather costs the global economy billions of dollars a year, highlighting the costs of climate change and the value of mitigating extreme weather, according to a new analysis of weather and economic data.
"This research gives guidance to policymakers to consider what kind of extreme events we should adapt to," said Berkay Akyapi, Ph.D., co-author of the new study and a professor of business at the University of Florida. "If we don't do anything to respond to these climate shocks, we are hurting the economy."
An increase in extreme heat and severe droughts lops off about 0.2% of a country's GDP. Climate change is also decreasing the number of days that have mild temperatures, which the economists found also hurts economic activity by a similar amount. Although a small percentage, it is a larger weather-driven effect than many economists had previously calculated and adds up to billions of dollars at risk across the global economy.
Akyapi, a professor in the UF Warrington College of Business, collaborated with Matthieu Bellon, Ph.D., at the European Stability Mechanism and Emanuel Massetti, Ph.D., at the International Monetary Fund to perform the analysis, which included billions of weather observations across hundreds of countries over a 40-year stretch. Their findings are forthcoming in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics.
Previous studies had primarily looked at average temperatures, which are increasing over time but were not correlated very strongly with economic growth. Average temperatures hide a lot of events that can hurt the economy.
"When you take the average temperature across time and space, the weather looks nicer than it actually is," Akyapi said. "But those average readings could hide that you have a heat wave in Florida and a cold snap in Michigan."
Akyapi and his collaborators instead plugged in hundreds of different weather measurements into a machine-learning algorithm to identify which factors correlated with economic growth or contraction.
Countries with agricultural economies fared worse than industrial economies in response to high temperatures—those over 95 degrees Fahrenheit—and droughts. As more countries industrialize, the effects of severe weather may decrease over time, the economists said. Governments tend to respond to these extreme weather events by spending more money, likely on relief efforts, which can also mitigate the economic effect of disasters, but increase a country's debt.
"Weather is still not the main driver of economic growth," Akyapi said. "But the frequency of these weather-related shocks is increasing over time."
Xingzhao Sun: "Rabbit dung is especially beneficial for grass species in plant communities." Credit: Mary Gillham Archive Project
Xingzhao Sun of the research group Wildness, biodiversity and ecosystems under change of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) explored the complex ecological interactions between herbivore dung and plant communities, providing new insights into the role of nutrients and microbial communities in ecosystems. The study is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
For her study, Dr. Sun collected dung samples from five herbivore species—European bison, horse, fallow deer, rabbit, and Scottish Highland cattle—during a field study conducted in Zuid-Kennemerland National Park in the Netherlands in early 2020. These samples were then analyzed in the lab for nutrient content, such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, as well as for microbial community composition. The research also included greenhouse and garden experiments to observe how different plant species responded to the various types of dung.
"One of our key findings is that the quality of dung varies significantly across different herbivore species." Dr. Sun explains. "Factors such as body size, digestive system type, and dietary preferences all contribute to these differences. For instance, rabbit dung is particularly high in nitrogen and has a unique microbial composition compared to other herbivore dung. Rabbits have a unique digestive process where they engage in coprophagy: they re-ingest their dung to maximize nutrient absorption. The high nitrogen content in their dung turns out to be especially beneficial for grass species in plant communities."
However, Dr. Sun emphasizes that no single type of dung can be deemed universally "best" for all plants, saying, "The impact of dung on plant communities depends on various factors, including species-specific plant-microbe symbiotic relationships and the specific nutrient needs of different plants.
"For example, legumes, known for their nitrogen-fixing ability, benefited more from dung with a lower nitrogen-to-phosphorus ratio, such as that from European bison or horses. The study not only advances our understanding of the ecological roles of herbivores but also highlights the complexity of their contribution to nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems dung deposition."
More information: Xingzhao Sun et al, Microbial community composition in the dung of five sympatric European herbivore species, Ecology and Evolution (2024). DOI: 10.1002/ece3.11071
Anti-pollution law to threaten water bosses with jail
Jonah Fisher
BBC
Environment correspondent
Raw sewage spilled into England's waterways for millions of hours last year
Water company bosses could be banned from receiving bonuses and even sent to prison under new government legislation to combat pollution.
The proposed laws will apply in England and Wales and give increased powers to regulators to tackle companies who pollute and make it easier for them to be fined.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed said the measures would “end the disgraceful behaviour of water companies and their bosses”.
But some campaigners for cleaner waters have criticised the new legislation, with one telling BBC News it amounted only to “window dressing”.
Water companies have been widely criticised for giving multi-million pound pay packages to their executives while continuing to regularly spill sewage into lakes, rivers and the sea.
The new Water (Special Measures) Bill will see harsher penalties for law-breaking, with prison sentences of up to two years for executives who fail to cooperate or obstruct investigators.
The burden of proof in civil cases will be lowered so that the Environment Agency can more easily bring forward criminal charges against bosses.
Regulators will also be given the power to stop bonus payments to water bosses if they fail to meet high standards to protect the environment, their consumers and their company's finances.
“Banning the payment of bonuses for bosses who are overseeing failure and making them personally criminally liable if they refuse to comply with investigations will focus them on cleaning up our rivers not lining their pockets,“ Mr Reed said. 'Think again'
Some campaigners for cleaner waters criticised the new legislation.
Many pointed out that there is already widespread rule-breaking in the water industry and said the real issue was a failure of the water regulator, Ofwat, and the Environment Agency to enforce them properly.
Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that in 2022 every major English water company reported discharges of raw sewage when the weather was dry – a practice which is potentially illegal.
“If the secretary of state believes that the few one-off actions announced today, such as curtailing bosses' bonuses however appealing they may sound are going to fix the underlying causes of our poisoned waterways, then he needs to think again,” Charles Watson of River Action said.
The Conservatives said the proposed measures were "simply playing politics".
"Labour are attempting to pass off measures implemented under the Conservatives - like banning bonuses for water company bosses whose companies who commit serious breaches - as their own," said shadow environment minister Robbie Moore.
Decades of under-investment has left sewage infrastructure frequently unable to cope with the volume of rainwater and sewage, which then leads to spilling.
Last year there was 3.6m hours of spills in England. Only 14% of England's rivers are assessed to have good ecological status.
Responding to the new legislation a spokesman for Water UK, which represents the water companies, said it agreed the system was “not working”.
They called on the regulator Ofwat to back its £105bn five-year investment plan for water and sewage infrastructure.
That will ultimately have to be paid for through higher customer bills, and negotiations are continuing with Ofwat as to how much companies will be allowed to put them up by.
The new legislation will also give the regulators the power to recover costs from water companies for enforcement action.
Ofwat will be required to set rules that ensure companies appoint directors and chief executives, and allow them to remain in post, only when they meet the highest standards of "fitness and propriety".
The government says there will be more legislation in the future that will make more fundamental changes to the water industry, speed up infrastructure upgrades, deliver reliable water supply and better tackle pollution.
Last voyage of an ocean drilling ship? Here's why scientists don't want to see the JOIDES Resolution mothballed
The JOIDES Resolution leaves Honolulu in 2009. Credit: IODP/Wikipedia, CC BY
My favorite place in the world isn't a fixed location. It's the JOIDES Resolution, an internationally funded research ship that has spent its service life constantly on the move, from deep in the Antarctic to high in the Arctic.
Since 1985, scientific expeditions on this one-of-a-kind oceangoing laboratory have drilled 230 miles (370 kilometers) of sediment and rock cores—long cylindrical samples that provide a unique view of the ocean floor. The cores come from a thousand different locations, enabling scientists from many universities around the world to explore changes within the Earth.
They also provide a window into our planet's history. The ocean floor preserves a geological library that documents millions of years of climate change and evolution.
Sadly, the JOIDES Resolution, also known as the JR, may have sailed for the last time. On Aug. 2, 2024, it docked in Amsterdam, with no clear path to raise the US$72 million per year that's needed to operate the vessel. Most of this funding comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation, which announced in 2023 that it would not fund the JR beyond 2024 because contributions from international partners were not keeping up with rising costs. Crews have started removing scientific equipment from the ship.
The National Science Foundation says it will support ongoing research using existing core samples and work with scientists to plan the future of scientific ocean drilling. But for me and many other scientists, the cost of operating the JR pales compared with the damage caused by a single large earthquake—such as Japan's 2011 Tohuku-Oki quake, estimated at $220 billion—or the trillions of dollars in damages resulting from climate change. Ocean core research helps scientists understand events like these so that societies can plan for the future.
The JR's dynamic positioning system enables it to stay fixed exactly in one spot for days or weeks at a time. Just two other ships in the world have this capability: the Chikyu, a larger vessel operated by Japan in Japanese waters, and a new Chinese drilling ship called the Mengxiang.
I've spent eight two-month expeditions on the JOIDES Resolution, primarily at high latitudes near the poles exploring past climates. Each trip was staffed with about 60 scientists and technicians and 65 crew members. Once the ship left port, operations ran 24 hours per day, every day. We all worked 12-hour shifts. Decades of ocean drilling have helped scientists understand the history and behavior of Antarctica’s ice sheets. Ice shelf loss is a major driver of global sea level rise.
These voyages could be grueling. Usually, though, the excitement of new and often unexpected discoveries, and camaraderie with fellow participants, made time speed by. Insights from JR expeditions
As early as the 1960s, geologists began to understand that Earth's continents and oceans were not static. Rather, they are part of moving plates within the Earth's crust and upper mantle. Movement of the plates, especially where they collide with one another, creates earthquakes and volcanoes.
Marine sediment cores can penetrate a mile or more into the Earth's crust. They provide the only opportunity to investigate continuous changes in tectonic plate interactions, study climate and marine evolution, and explore the limits of terrestrial life. Here are four areas where the details of these processes have begun to emerge: Tectonic plate creation
Oceanic crust is fundamentally different from the crust that lies under the continents. When I first learned about it in the 1970s, the model for its formation and structure was simple:
—Lava rose from magma chambers beneath chains of seafloor volcanoes, known as ocean ridges.
—It poured out onto the seafloor, creating a dark, often glassy, volcanic rock called basalt.
—Within the deeper, slowly cooling magma chamber, crystalline minerals formed, creating rocks with a texture similar to granite. Technicians describe what it’s like to work with researchers on the JOIDES Resolution.
—Over millions of years, this new crust moved away from the ridges, becoming cooler and denser.
These insights changed scientists' basic understanding of how our planet is structured.
Climate records in ocean crust
My particular interest is in sediments that accumulate on the ocean crust. These deposits contain tiny microfossils of plankton, including organisms such as diatoms and coccolithophores that live on or near the ocean's surface. As they photosynthesize, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce half of all the oxygen that we breathe.
Types of plankton vary with the temperature and chemistry of seawater. When they die and fall to the sea floor, they preserve an excellent record of past climates. Scientists use them to understand how Earth's climate has warmed and cooled in the past.
Another information source is sediments that fall out of melting icebergs. Glaciers pick up rocks as they flow over land. When they reach the sea, parts of them break off to become icebergs. The ice melts when it is exposed to warmer ocean water, and the rocks fall to the seafloor. These rock deposits in sediments are a record of past transitions between warm and cold climates.
This cross section shows the basic structure of Earth’s interior. Credit: Volcan26/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA Plate destruction and recycling
Most of the Pacific Ocean and some regions of the Atlantic Ocean lie over zones called convergent margins, where tectonic plates crunch against each other. This process forces some ocean crust and sediment down into the Earth, where it melts and eventually is recycled into new crust, often as volcanoes.
Giant faults along these margins can create enormous earthquakes, such as the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan. Cores taken near such faults help scientists understand the forces that cause these events. They also create openings where instruments can be inserted to monitor for future earthquakes.
Cores recovered from convergent margin areas have also begun to reveal how volcanoes are created and how they modulate long-term climate change by producing carbon dioxide emissions. The limits of terrestrial life
In the late 1970s, exotic new forms of terrestrial life were discovered in the Pacific Ocean in zones where ocean crust formed. At plate boundaries, cold seawater percolated down through cracks in the crust. There, it was reheated by hot magma and jetted upward through openings that scientists named hydrothermal vents.
The hot water contained minerals, which cooled when they touched cold seawater and hardened into chimneylike structures around the vents. Hundreds of life forms, including microbes, mussels and tube worms, colonized these structures, thriving near zones of intense pressure and temperatures as hot as 248 degrees Fahrenheit (120 Celsius).
JR coring has subsequently revealed other life forms that survive deep in the subfloor of the ocean, in conditions of extreme oxygen and energy deprivation. Scientists know almost nothing about the diversity of these organisms, or the metabolic strategies they use to survive in their challenging environment. Understanding how they thrive could inform missions to other planets, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, that have subsurface oceans that might support life. What next for scientific ocean drilling?
The National Science Foundation has created a committee to consider what capabilities a new drilling ship should have, and Congress may provide funding for additional JR expeditions in 2025. Given how much scientists still don't know about Earth's history, and the challenges humanity faces in adapting to climate change, I and my colleagues hope the JOIDES Resolution can still sail again, and that a new ship will eventually take up its mission.
Infographic for "Association Between Periprosthetic Joint Infection and Mortality Following Primary Total Hip Arthroplasty" Credit: ICES
Patients who develop a periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) after a total hip replacement have more than a five-fold increased risk of mortality within 10 years, according to new research published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
In one of the largest studies to date of patients with PJI after total hip arthroplasty (THA), researchers from ICES, Sunnybrook Research Institute and the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto's Temerty Faculty of Medicine looked at the long-term (10 year) mortality risk of PJI for 175,432 adults receiving their first hip replacement in Ontario, Canada.
About 1 in 7 Canadian adults live with osteoarthritis, a number that is expected to grow as baby boomers age and life expectancies increase. Joint replacement procedures can lessen pain and improve quality of life for people who are dealing with this progressive disease.
"Most hip replacement surgeries are very successful, but unfortunately, about one to two percent of patients develop infections of the prosthetic joint. It is well established that such infections impact patient health over the long-term, but this research provides compelling evidence that it can even lead to death," says lead author Dr. Raman Mundi, an assistant professor in Temerty Medicine's Department of Surgery and a surgeon-scientist in the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
The researchers found that among adults receiving their first hip replacement from 2002 to 2021, 868 patients (0.5%) required further surgery for a PJI within one year of hip replacement
Patients with a PJI within the first year had a significantly higher 10year mortality rate than those who didn't develop an infection (11.4% versus 2.2%)
"Our findings underscore the need for arthroplasty surgeons and infectious disease experts to work together on prevention efforts and follow best practice guidelines for patient care," says senior author Dr. Bheeshma Ravi, an adjunct scientist with ICES, surgeon-scientist with the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and assistant professor of surgery at Temerty Medicine.
The authors provide several reasons for why they believe the association between PJI and mortality is likely causal and not correlational.
First is that the association was quite strong, with the authors controlling for variables such as age, sex, income and health status. Second is that there is precedent that major orthopedic events (for example, hip fractures) can directly increase risk of mortality. And finally, this study builds on existing evidence that used smaller cohorts of patients and shorter follow-up times.
"Ultimately, we need to develop effective strategies to prevent and cure these infections to reduce the long-term risk to patients," adds Ravi.
More information: Raman Mundi et al, Association Between Periprosthetic Joint Infection and Mortality Following Primary Total Hip Arthroplasty, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (2024). DOI: 10.2106/JBJS.23.01160
