New research reveals how 'home' affects psychological well-being in a mobile world

by Queen Mary, University of London

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

A typology of home in global consumer mobility.

 Credit: Journal of Consumer Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.1002/jcpy.1440

A new study by Zahra Sharifonnasabi, Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Co-Director of the MINDS Research Group at Queen Mary University of London, sheds light on the link between "home" and psychological well-being for people who frequently move across countries. The work is published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

The study, "Home and Psychological Well-being in Global Consumer Mobility," explores how individuals who travel or relocate often—like expatriates, digital nomads, or frequent international travelers—create and experience different types of "home." These findings offer important insights into how this impacts their mental well-being, sense of ownership, and identity.

Global consumer mobility refers to a lifestyle where individuals frequently move across borders for work, study, or personal reasons. This group often faces unique challenges, such as adjusting to new cultures and living environments, which can affect how they feel about "home" and their psychological well-being.

Different types of home

The study identified four main types of home, each with its own psychological benefits. These challenge the traditional idea of home as just one place:

• Emotional Home: A place that provides a deep sense of belonging and stability.
• Home Away from Home: Temporary comfort through familiar rituals and routines.
• Base of Operation: A location that supports work productivity and provides professional stability.
• Home on the Road: A flexible, temporary setup that offers a sense of groundedness while traveling.

These types of home reflect the fragmented and ever-changing nature of home in the lives of globally mobile individuals.

How people cope with global mobility

The study also looked at how people manage the challenges of constantly moving. Many rely on resources in the marketplace—like services, brands, or even local businesses—to help make different places feel like home. These "commercial friendships" and familiar consumption habits play a crucial role in easing the mental strain of mobility.

One study participant, Adam, a consultant, shared his experience: "I have a flat in London, which is my primary home. I spend about 60-70% of my time there. In Berlin, we have a house built in 1966 where my wife lives, and that's my emotional home, where I want to retire. Dubai, where I work part-time, is just a place to get the job done. It can be challenging… It's an isolated life in London or Dubai, as everyone is so focused on work. I've tried to connect more, like having coffee with a colleague or joining a choir. It helps."

What HR professionals can learn

This research offers valuable takeaways for HR professionals managing internationally mobile employees:

• Understanding Needs: Recognizing the different types of homes and their benefits can help HR understand the diverse needs of globally mobile workers.
• Support Systems: Providing resources that help employees manage multiple homes and offering access to local services can improve well-being.
• Flexible Work Policies: Offering remote work or short-term assignments that fit employees' mobile lifestyles can boost productivity and satisfaction.
• Cultural Sensitivity: Promoting an inclusive environment where cultural differences are valued can help internationally mobile employees feel more at home.
• Mental Health Support: Offering mental health resources tailored to the unique challenges of global mobility can help employees maintain well-being.

Zahra Sharifonnasabi explains, "Our study challenges the traditional idea of home. It shows that home is more complex and multifaceted, especially for people who move frequently. These insights are crucial for understanding their well-being and helping HR professionals manage a mobile workforce."

The study redefines what "home" means in today's world of constant mobility and offers practical ways to help people cope with the challenges it brings.

More information: Zahra Sharifonnasabi et al, Home and psychological well‐being in global consumer mobility, Journal of Consumer Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.1002/jcpy.1440

Journal information: Journal of Consumer Psychology 

Provided by Queen Mary, University of London Dutch survey study links air ventilation and other factors to work-from-home success

Neutron scientists wake a sleeping giant after nine-month nap and makeover

by Paul Boisvert, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

In preparation for building the new tunnel section, workers removed about 20,000 

cubic yards of dirt, weighing more than 40 million pounds, to expose where the 

extension would connect to the existing SNS beam transport tunnel. 

Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

What's the best way to wake a giant after a long nap? "Very carefully, and with a lot of planning," said a grinning John Galambos. He was the project director for the Proton Power Upgrade project, or PPU, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory until his retirement in July after more than 40 years at the lab. "It was an A-team effort that will benefit science and technology development for decades to come."

The "giant" Galambos referred to is the Spallation Neutron Source, or SNS, the nation's leading source of pulsed neutron beams for research, which was recently restarted after nine months of upgrade work. The planned extended outage permitted installing and testing seven additional cryogenic modules and their 28 additional power units, as well as the supporting systems—all designed to increase the power capabilities of the 362-yard-long linear accelerator complex, or linac.

The beefed-up linac will initially provide the First Target Station at SNS up to about 40% more power than its original 1.4 megawatts, as much as 2.0 megawatts. More power will produce more neutrons and increase the pace of scientific discovery across a wide range of materials and technologies. To handle the increased power, the accumulator ring and target at the SNS complex were also upgraded with new electronics and supporting systems.

Eventually, the linac will also power the SNS's Second Target Station, or STS, to produce the world's brightest "cold" neutrons and enable studies of smaller and more complex materials.

Neutrons are widely used in research, such as in developing new vaccines, analyzing advanced batteries and operating national security systems. Neutron scattering at the SNS and ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor, or HFIR, is an essential technique for advancing materials research to support the U.S. economy and offer solutions to challenges in energy, transportation, biotechnology, quantum and other research areas.

Overcoming obstacles

Despite the global pandemic, supply chain issues and other unprecedented challenges, the ORNL team still managed to complete the PPU project ahead of schedule and under budget.

"The PPU project exceeded all expectations in how it's come together nearly three years ahead of schedule despite enormous technological, logistical and even global health challenges," said Jens Dilling, associate laboratory director for the Neutron Science Directorate. "Thanks to the tremendous efforts of the ORNL staff and our collaborative partners at Jefferson Lab and Fermi National Laboratory, the SNS will continue to operate as the world's foremost center for pulsed neutron research."

The future looks brighter

The STS will produce the world's highest peak brightness of neutrons, tailored for probing soft matter such as polymers and biological materials, and complex engineering materials. STS will house up to 24 new instrument stations—starting with eight—for unprecedented experiments on complex matter.

Mark Champion is the new PPU project director after serving as project manager since PPU's inception in 2016. "We want to acknowledge and thank the project team for all of their hard work and dedication," he said. "But we don't plan to rest on our laurels. There's more 'gas in the tank,' and we need to keep pushing the technology to enable even more and better science in the future."

Jon Taylor, division director for ORNL's Neutron Scattering Division, said, "I know our neutron scientists and the external researchers working at the SNS are already benefitting from the record 1.7 megawatts enabled by the PPU project in 2023. They've seen the improvements that added accelerator power does for their experiments, and they really want the full 2.0 megawatts we're going to provide."

Traveling 167,000 miles per second

The linac uses electromagnetic fields to steer and accelerate protons to around 90% of the speed of light, or about 167,000 miles per second. These protons pass through large steering magnets that guide them into an accumulator ring that is 271 yards in circumference.

There they are bunched together and directed 60 times per second at a target filled with 20 tons of liquid mercury. This is where the protons knock neutrons loose from the mercury atoms. Finally, these "free" neutrons are steered down beamlines to instruments where the scientists conduct their experiments.

The first one-third of the linac operates at room temperature, while the remainder uses 81 superconducting cavities inside cryomodules cooled with liquid helium to just two degrees above absolute zero (minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit).

A key aspect of the project involved building a curved tunnel extension leading from the existing accelerator toward the location of the planned Second Target Station. Workers added about 3,000 square feet of concrete tunnel, capped off by an 18-foot-thick wall of more than 7,000 concrete blocks to provide radiation shielding during normal SNS beamline operations. Other tunnel extension-related construction tasks included installing associated structures, roofing, geomembrane liner, tunnel waterproofing, electrical, fire alarm, ventilation systems and controls.

The long installation outage at SNS concluded in April 2024. An external accelerator readiness review was conducted the following month, and authorization for beam commissioning and routine operations to resume was granted in early June. Beam commissioning was then completed in less than 30 days.

"The post-PPU power ramp up plan calls for a gradual increase in beam power on target and annual neutron production hours up to 2.0 MW and 5,000 hours, respectively, in fiscal year 2027. However, now that our sleeping giant is already fully awake and working hard, it may be possible to increase the beam power earlier, which would benefit the science productivity at the facility," said Champion.

The project is preparing a closeout report, lessons learned, and other documentation as required to support a U.S. Department of Energy project completion review in early 2025.

Provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory 

Spallation Neutron Source accelerator achieves world-record 1.7-megawatt power level

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Eviction filings can destabilize tenants' lives, even when they win their case

by Alexa Eisenberg, Kate Brantley, The Conversation

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

After Charla's landlord failed to repair leaks that caused the ceiling to collapse in her daughter's bedroom, she withheld her rent. Shortly after, her landlord filed an eviction case against her for nonpayment.

Though she won her court case, Charla and her family had to remain in unsafe conditions as she searched for new housing and was repeatedly denied. She says she spent at least US$2,000 on unsuccessful application fees.

"When we go to find new housing, we can't because we have these [filings] on our records, and that's wrong," said Charla, a pseudonym. "I won [my] case … It's still following me. Why?"

We are researchers who study housing policy and eviction. Our most recent research documents the far-reaching collateral costs of eviction filings for 29 Pennsylvania tenants who experienced a "best-case scenario" in court.

Each of the tenants included in our study had legal representation and had their case resolved with a dismissal, withdrawal or a win. No one received an eviction order in court. We asked tenants in our study to describe the costs and losses they had experienced since their landlord filed to evict them.

We found that regardless of a tenant's outcome in court, eviction filings led to immediate and long-term housing instability, income loss and job insecurity, harm to physical and mental health, and strained relationships with family and friends.


Permanent stains on tenant records

Rising rents and stagnant wages have turned eviction into a routine process for poor and working-class renters. In 2023, Pennsylvania residents needed to work the equivalent of 130 hours per week at minimum wage to afford the average cost of a two-bedroom rental.

After a significant reduction in eviction filings due to pandemic-era programs, filing rates in Pennsylvania have returned to pre-pandemic levels. In 2023, landlords filed more than 114,000 cases against Pennsylvania tenants. This is the equivalent of 7 in every 100 renter households.

When a landlord files an eviction complaint against a tenant, the court generates a public record. In Pennsylvania, these records remain public indefinitely—even when the records are incomplete or inaccurate, the case is never argued before a judge or the tenant wins in court.

Our research confirms that simply being named in an eviction complaint is enough to leave a permanent stain on a tenant's record that has lasting consequences for their well-being.
Future rental applications denied

Landlord filing and screening practices exacerbate the effects of Pennsylvania's housing crisis and make it nearly impossible for tenants with eviction records to find safe, decent and affordable housing for their families.

Growing research documents landlords' increasing reliance on the use of third-party tenant screening algorithms and internet searches to apply blanket denials of applicants with eviction records.

In our study, 8 in 10 participants said their eviction filing limited their future housing options. Nearly two-thirds of participants who moved after their eviction filing said a prospective landlord asked about their eviction record, and over half said a landlord explicitly denied their application because of it.

"[A] lot of people don't want to hear your backstory. They just see that you went to court and they think you are going to be a problem," another study participant said.

Because evictions in the U.S. are disproportionately filed against Black and Latina women and households with children, tenant screening practices that blacklist applicants based on eviction records perpetuate housing discrimination by preventing these groups from accessing future housing.


Cycle of instability

Though participants in our study did not receive eviction orders in court, the majority said they were forced to move after their eviction filing for reasons beyond their control. Most attributed this to their landlords' failure to make repairs, which rendered their units uninhabitable.

State laws allow tenants to withhold rent if their unit is unfit for habitation and are intended to protect them against retaliatory evictions for doing so. Still, 1 in 4 Pennsylvania tenants in our study faced eviction after withholding rent for repairs.

Charla said she developed stress-related medical conditions and was in and out of the hospital after her eviction filing.

Landlords "put us in situations where we have to move because they don't want to make repairs. Then they take us to court and try to make it seem like it's all our fault," she stated. "The system failed us."

An array of circumstances led to participants' evictions. Some faced prolonged pandemic-related hardships such as job loss, reduced work hours and deaths of loved ones. Others dealt with uninhabitable conditions, including lack of heat, running water and mold. In some cases, tenants described being sexually harassed or intimidated by their landlords. Some experienced serial eviction filings, with their landlord filing multiple eviction cases against them at the same property.

In other words, there was often much more to tenants' stories than simply the nonpayment of rent.

Roughly half of the tenants who moved after their eviction filing described a subsequent period of homelessness.

The desperate need for a stable place to live led some to accept substandard conditions from landlords who would rent to them despite their records. This aligns with prior research showing that landlord eviction practices and code violations concentrate tenants in housing and neighborhoods of last resort that can be detrimental to health and well-being.

Our research also showed that tenants with prior eviction records were often hesitant to assert their right to habitable housing. For example, 43% of participants reported being less willing to advocate for repairs after their eviction filing.
Efforts to seal eviction records

Due to the severity of the eviction crisis in the U.S., significant inaccuracies in eviction court data and widespread use of tenant screening services, at least 12 states, including California, Colorado and Oregon, limit public access to eviction records or regulate how landlords can consider eviction histories in tenancy decisions.

Because tenant screening companies can gather details from eviction records as soon as the information is public, legal scholars and organizations such as the American Bar Association, National Low Income Housing Coalition and Network for Public Health Law have recommended laws that automatically and permanently seal eviction records at the point of filing to keep the information private.

With support from housing justice advocates, Pennsylvania policymakers are considering legislation to seal eviction records but face resistance from the landlord lobby.

Just as Pennsylvania's Clean Slate legislation, passed in 2018, has enabled people with criminal records to access housing and economic opportunities, eviction record-sealing can remove unjust barriers for people with eviction records. We believe this is a necessary first step to promote access to the safe and stable housing that all Pennsylvanians deserve.


Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Explore furtherNew report details mental, physical impacts on tenants facing eviction in Oregon

Poor indoor air quality isn't just making us sick. It's also polluting our cities

by César Martín-Gómez, Arturo H. Ariño, The Conversation

 SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is one of the greatest environmental health challenges that we face today. Various studies have shown that in addition to the lungs, it affects essential organs like the heart and brain, and that those who suffer most from its consequences are the most exposed or vulnerable people in society. It is a pervasive issue that affects all of humanity, and reinforces entrenched inequalities.

While vehicles and industry pollute the air outside, indoors we are exposed to a range of chemical pollutants that—even in moderate amounts—can cause headaches, dizziness, fatigue and nausea. In the long term, they can lead to more serious health problems.

One of the key factors behind the deterioration of interior air quality is that new buildings are becoming more airtight in order to improve energy efficiency. In buildings with very well insulated façades, mechanical ventilation systems have to play a bigger role than more traditional ventilation methods like windows and drafts.

In hermetically sealed buildings, less fresh air gets in. This means indoor air is replenished less often and pollutants from internal sources—or those that come in from outside—become more concentrated.

Eventually, this polluted indoor air—which is making more than a third of the planet sick—is expelled into the surrounding environment. This raises the question of how buildings pollute the air around them, what pollutants they produce, and whether this expelled air is sufficiently diluted once outdoors.

In densely populated cities, we also have to consider the vicious cycle of ventilation systems reintroducing pollutants back into buildings, not unlike the way plastic waste is dumped into the ocean and then enters the food chain, eventually ending up in people's bodies.

Volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and methane

One source of indoor pollution is cleaning products, many of which release volatile organic compounds. The levels of these compounds expelled through ventilation systems rise and fall over the course of a normal day.

Another is particulate matter, which mainly comes from kitchens.

These two groups of pollutants—along with methane, a potent greenhouse gas made by decomposing organic matter—appear to be the main contributions that buildings make to urban air quality.

Other pollutants have sources that are less clear, and are less regular over time. Carbon monoxide, for instance, may come from tobacco smoke or other forms of combustion, as its main source—traffic—would not be found inside a dwelling. However, its presence in the air expelled from smoke-free homes would be a clear indicator of outdoor pollution entering the building and becoming concentrated in its ventilation system.

Pollution sensors

Monitoring and controlling the ventilation of buildings and dwellings is critical to ensuring the best possible indoor air quality. In particular, this means ventilation must be adjusted in relation to outdoor air conditions—increasing or decreasing the amount of outside air taken into a building depending on the difference in pollutant concentration between indoors and outdoors.

But perhaps the next revolution in building could come from low-cost, integrated sensors: a natural evolution of the systems already used in garages and boiler rooms for carbon monoxide detection, but extended to all homes.

Indeed, the WHO highlighted this issue in a 2016 statistical report entitled Monitoring Health for the Sustainable Development Goals, which set a target for 2030 of reducing the mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution. It notes that one of the main barriers to reducing mortality levels caused by air pollution is the "lack of monitoring of air pollution levels, sources and consequences on public health."

A detailed understanding of how buildings contribute to pollution in cities is essential. This will give public authorities, decision-makers and managers the tools to establish strategies, for example, to minimize pollution through devices similar to the catalytic converters required on all combustion-powered vehicles. Eventually, we may even be able to recover useful components of domestic air, such as waste methane, which could be redirected to energy generation

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Study finds urban office buildings pump out volatile chemicals to the outdoors, comparable to traffic emissions

Rugged Falklands landscape was once a lush rainforest, researchers say

by University of Southampton

 SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Rugged treeless landsacape of the Falkland Islands today. Credit: Dr. Zoë Thomas

A researcher from the University of Southampton (UK) has found evidence that the treeless, rugged, grassland landscape of the Falkland Islands was home to a lush, diverse rainforest up to 30 million years ago.A study by Dr. Zoë Thomas, leading an international team of scientists, reveals that the South Atlantic archipelago was once covered in cool, wet woodland—similar to the present day rainforests found in Tierra del Fuego, off the tip of South America.

Detailed findings of the research are newly published in the journal Antarctic Science.

The scientists conducted the research after clues to the whereabouts of buried remains of the ancient forest reached them via word of mouth in the tight-knit community of Port Stanley, the Falklands' capital. Chance conversations led them to find perfectly preserved prehistoric tree remains and pollen at a building site in early 2020.

"We were in the Falklands carrying out research for a different project when a fellow researcher, based on the island, mentioned they'd heard from a friend that something interesting had been dug up by a builder they knew," explains Dr. Thomas, an expert in physical geography at the University of Southampton.

She continues, "Excavators at the site of a new care home in Stanley had cut into a deep peat layer which was filled with large tree trunks and branches. These were so well preserved, they looked like they'd been buried the day before, but they were in fact extremely old.

"Our interest was immediately piqued, as finding tree remains here was baffling. For at least thousands—probably millions—of years, the Falkland Islands have not been able to sustain trees. It's too windy and the soil too acidic. This raised the intriguing question of just how old the wood from this forest bed was."

Dr. Zoë Thomas and Dr. Haidee Cadd examining ditch at Tussac House site where prehistoric tree remains were found. Credit: Dr. Zoë Thomas

With the help of members of the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) in Port Stanley, samples of the peat layers and deposits were removed from the site at Tussac House near Stanley Harbour. These were carefully transported to Australia for laboratory testing at the University of New South Wales, where the sediment was meticulously sampled, and the wood analyzed with specialized scanning electron microscopes.

The tree remains proved too old to obtain conclusive results from radiocarbon dating, so pollen spores were used instead. The scientists analyzed a variety of spores compacted and sealed in the same layers of peat as the wood. Pollen records led them to conclude the tree trunks and branches date to between 15 and 30 million years old.

The Falkland Islands are a British territory located 8,000 miles from the UK in the South Atlantic. Comprised of two main islands and 778 smaller ones, they cover an area just over half the size of Wales and are known for being wet, cold and windswept, with fast changing weather conditions. Their landscape is not dissimilar to Dartmoor in the UK.

Perfectly preserved wood sample from Tussac House site aged between 15 and 30 million years old. Credit: Dr. Zoë Thomas

Tens of millions of years ago, the climate in the South Atlantic was much warmer and wetter than today, and capable of supporting a rainforest environment. This would have been cooler than tropical rainforests we might typically think of—such as the Amazon rainforest—but still able to support a rich, diverse ecosystem of plant and animal life.

Many of the tree species growing on the Falklands at the time of the Tussac House sample are now extinct, but would have seeded on the islands by being carried on the prevailing westerly winds from rainforests that covered much of the southern hemisphere, including what is now mainland South America.

Scientists can't be sure what led to the eventual demise of the islands' rainforest and the transformation to peatlands, but it's reasonable to speculate it was due to a change in climate and a move to colder and drier conditions.

Dr. Thomas comments, "It's amazing to think that if we'd not had the chance to chat and engage with people in such a close community at that particular moment, we may never have recovered these pristinely preserved samples of tree. Until our visit and the construction worker's find, no one had any idea that six meters under their feet were perfectly preserved relics of an ancient rainforest and exquisite fossilized pollen. I'm so grateful to the friendly islanders, who, by being so welcoming and open, gave us this unique opportunity to investigate."

As for the future, Dr. Thomas says the islands are unlikely to see a return to a forest landscape anytime soon: "Current projections suggest the region will get warmer, but also drier—leading to concerns about the risk of erosion to the peatlands, which are sensitive to climate change."

More information: Zoë A. Thomas et al, Evidence for a floristically diverse rainforest on the Falkland archipelago in the remote South Atlantic during the mid- to late Cenozoic, Antarctic Science (2024). DOI: 10.1017/S0954102024000129

Provided by University of Southampton Modeling study explains why amazon is such a biodiverse paradise

Teamsters break 25-year streak: 

No presidential endorsement in 2024

THE MAJORITY WOULD VOTE FOR TRUMP

THE SCAB

Kamala Harris, who has branded herself as a staunch advocate for US labour, is snubbed by one of the largest and most influential American unions that could significantly impact the race against Donald Trump.



Reuters

Non-endorsement by Teamsters is a remarkable break from the influential union's decades-long tradition of backing of Democratic presidential candidates./ Photo: Reuters

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest and most influential US labour unions, has declined to make a presidential endorsement, breaking with a quarter-century tradition of backing Democratic White House hopefuls.

"Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business," Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien said in a statement on Wednesday.

The move is a blow to US Vice President Kamala Harris, this year's Democratic nominee who has positioned hers elf as a fierce defender of American labour. In the Teamsters' internal survey conducted in July, Biden held a 44-36 percent lead over Donald Trump. Today, Trump has surged ahead, commanding a 60-34 lead over Kamala Harris in a Teamster online and phone poll.

Blue and white collar workers

The Teamsters have previously backed GOP presidential candidates like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H W Bush. O’Brien's recent engagement with former President Trump and other Republicans had already fuelled speculation that the union might once again diverge from its usual alliances.

O'Brien has been actively forging connections with Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo), to push forward the union's key policy goals, such as the Protecting Workers’ Right to Organise (PRO) Act, which enhances workers' ability to unionise and negotiate, as well as resisting national right-to-work legislation.

Founded in 1903 through the merger of the Team Drivers International Union and the Teamsters National Union, the union currently represents a diverse range of blue and white collar workers in both public and private sectors, with approximately 1.3 million members as of 2015.

Plastic on your plate: EWG finds adults may ingest equivalent of up to 12 shopping bags a year


WASHINGTON – Adults may ingest up to 150,000 harmful plastic particles a year – equal to eating as many as 12 shopping bags annually, according to a new Environmental Working Group analysis.

There is growing concern about the various ways that large amounts of tiny plastic particles enter the human body and the potential health risks they pose. Some studies found a link between exposure to plastic particles and an increased risk of a stroke or heart attack. These particles have also been associated with inflammation, uncontrolled cell growth, immune system disruption and other health issues.

“Imagine eating as much plastic as a shopping bag every month in your meals – that’s essentially what we could be doing without realizing it,” said Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D., co-author and a senior scientist at EWG. “Our analysis shows that adults likely consume an alarming amount of plastic particles, with serious potential health consequences. The plastics we’re swallowing pose an urgent public health risk that demands immediate attention.”

EWG’s analysis advances the debate by assessing the latest scientific research on micro and nanoplastic particles, and how much people ingest through food and beverages.

EWG scientists reviewed studies published since 2020 on plastic particles. They focused on studies that provided both lower and upper estimates of annual plastic consumption, using conservative estimates. The findings reflect this range of data, giving a clearer picture of how much plastic people may consume each year.

“Nobody wants to be eating what could equate to one bag for every month in extreme cases,” said EWG Associate Scientist and co-author Varun Subramaniam, M.S.. “The good news is that some simple lifestyle and dietary changes accessible to everyone may lower exposures to plastic particles from diet.”

At the high end, EWG’s findings suggest that people may ingest the equivalent of 12 shopping bags per year, though exposure will vary from person to person and could be as low as three bags for some. The report details how EWG calculated how many grams of plastic particles people consume from water, food and containers. Then EWG equated that to the weight of a standard grocery shopping bag to estimate the range.

These findings focus on plastic exposure through diet, with plastic cutting boards as a significant source. However, people can also ingest plastic particles through drinking water, beverages, honey, meat, seafood and vegetables, as well as from using plastic cups and takeout containers.

Plastic is one of the most widely used materials in the world, found in everything from water pipes to product packaging. As it degrades, it breaks into increasingly smaller particles, often invisible to the human eye. A significant way people are exposed to these plastic particles is through their diet, which is the focus of the analysis.

Crops can absorb micro and nanoplastics from contaminated soil and water, while seafood is continuously exposed to floating plastic particles that can bioaccumulate and cling to tissue.

Plastic packaging also plays a major role, continuously exposing foods to tiny particles during transport, storage and even as they sit on kitchen shelves for days. Even after being removed from packaging, food can be exposed to other plastic materials in the kitchen.

Due to the widespread use of plastics, people unknowingly ingest plastic particles from food, beverages, consumer products and even the air. EWG’s report provides tips for reducing exposure from well known sources, such as reducing the use of plastic containers for food storage and reheating, using stainless steel water bottles, and replacing plastic cutting boards and plastic kitchen utensils with alternatives.

For lasting change, efforts must focus on larger systemic solutions. This includes requiring companies and governments to eliminate single-use plastic, minimize the use of plastic where possible and prevent plastic waste from polluting the environment.

“Companies won’t rethink their relationship with plastics overnight, so individuals can take shorter-term, manageable steps to reduce some of their plastic exposures,” said Stoiber. “These actions can help until we achieve much broader systemic change.”

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Even the heaviest particles experience the usual quantum weirdness, new experiment shows

The ATLAS detector under construction. CERN

THE CONVERSATION
Published: September 18, 2024 

One of the most surprising predictions of physics is entanglement, a phenomenon where objects can be some distance apart but still linked together. The best-known examples of entanglement involve tiny chunks of light (photons), and low energies.

At the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the world’s largest particle accelerator, an experiment called ATLAS has just found entanglement in pairs of top quarks: the heaviest particles known to science.

The results are described in a new paper from my colleagues and me in the ATLAS collaboration, published today in Nature.
What is entanglement?

In everyday life, we think of objects as being either “separate” or “connected”. Two balls a kilometre apart are separate. Two balls joined by a piece of string are connected.


When two objects are “entangled”, there is no physical connection between them – but they are not truly separate either. You can make a measurement of the first object, and that is enough to know what the second object is doing, even before you look at it.

The two objects form a single system, even though there is nothing connecting them together. This has been shown to work with photons on opposite sides of a city.

The idea will be familiar to fans of the recent streaming series 3 Body Problem, based on Liu Cixin’s sci-fi novels. In the show, aliens have sent a tiny supercomputer to Earth, to mess with our technology and to allow them to communicate with us. Because this tiny object is entangled with a twin on the alien homeworld, the aliens can communicate with it and control it – even though it is four light-years away.

That part of the story is science fiction: entanglement doesn’t really allow you to send signals faster than light. (It seems like entanglement should allow you to do this, but according to quantum physics this isn’t possible. So far, all of our experiments are consistent with that prediction.)

But entanglement itself is real. It was first demonstrated for photons in the 1980s, in what was then a cutting-edge experiment.

Today you can buy a box from a commercial provider that will spit out entangled pairs of photons. Entanglement is one of the properties described by quantum physics, and is one of the properties that scientists and engineers are trying to exploit to create new technologies, such as quantum computing.

Since the 1980s, entanglement has also been seen with atoms, with some subatomic particles, and even with tiny objects undergoing very, very slight vibrations. These examples are all at low energies.

The new development from Geneva is that entanglement has been seen in pairs of particles called top quarks, where there are vast amounts of energy in a very small space.
So what are quarks?

Matter is made of molecules; molecules are made of atoms; and an atom is made of light particles called electrons orbiting a heavy nucleus in the centre, like the Sun in the centre of the solar system. We already knew this from experiments by about 1911.

We then learned that the nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons, and by the 1970s we discovered that protons and neutrons are made up of even smaller particles called quarks.

There are six types of quark in total: the “up” and “down” quarks that make up protons and neutrons, and then four heavier ones. The fifth quark, the “beauty” or “bottom” quark, is about four-and-a-half times heavier than a proton, and when we found it we thought it was very heavy. But the sixth and final quark, the “top”, is a monster: slightly heavier than a tungsten atom, and 184 times the mass of a proton.

No one knows why the top quark is so massive. The top quark is an object of intense study at the Large Hadron Collider, for exactly this reason. (In Sydney, where I am based, most of our work on the ATLAS experiment is focused on the top quark.)

We think the very large mass may be a clue. Maybe the top quark is so massive because the top quark feels new forces, beyond the four we already know about. Or maybe it has some other connection to “new physics”.

We know that the laws of physics, as we currently understand them, are incomplete. Studying the way the top quark behaves may show us the way to something new.
So does entanglement mean that top quarks are special?

Probably not. Quantum physics says that entanglement is common, and that all sorts of things can be entangled.

But entanglement is also fragile. Many quantum physics experiments are done at ultra-cold temperatures, to avoid “bumping” the system and disturbing it. And so, up to now, entanglement has been demonstrated in systems where scientists can set up the right conditions to make the measurements.

For technical reasons, the top quark’s very large mass makes it a good laboratory for studying entanglement. (The new ATLAS measurement would not have been possible for the other five types of quark.)

But top quark pairs won’t be the basis of a convenient new technology: you can’t pick up the Large Hadron Collider and carry it around. Nevertheless, top quarks do provide a new kind of tool to conduct experiments with, and entanglement is interesting in itself, so we’ll keep looking to see what else we find.

Author

Bruce Yabsley
Associate Professor of Physics, University of Sydney
Disclosure statement
Bruce Yabsley works for the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, and receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland; and the Belle II Collaboration at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan.

Invasive species are reshaping aquatic ecosystems, one lake at a time

Invasive species (including the plant species, Eurasian watermilfoil, pictured here) pose a real risk to many of Canada’s freshwater habitats. (Shutterstock)

THE CONVERSATION
Published: September 18, 2024 

Freshwater ecosystems in Canada and around the world are under siege.

Lakes, rivers, ponds and wetlands face many environmental threats, but one that is changing them most rapidly is the spread of invasive non-native species.

In recent years, there have been numerous outbreaks of invasive species in Canadian lakes. Zebra mussels continue to spread in Québec and Manitoba. Chinese mystery snails are increasingly found in lakes in eastern Canada. Eurasian watermilfoil has spread to the maritime provinces. Meanwhile, goldfish have become superabundant in small lakes and ponds throughout the country.

Far from being isolated cases, these outbreaks are symptoms of a form of global change.

Our lakes: their secrets and challenges, is a series produced by La Conversation/The Conversation.

This article is part of our series Our lakes: their secrets and challenges. This summer, The Conversation and La Conversation invite you to take a fascinating dip in our lakes. With magnifying glasses, microscopes and diving goggles, our scientists scrutinize the biodiversity of our lakes and the processes that unfold in them, and tell us about the challenges they face. Don’t miss our articles on these incredibly rich bodies of water!
Rising invasion rates

Throughout the history of life, plants and animals have slowly dispersed through natural means to different areas of the world. However, with human assistance, species are now spreading beyond their historical ranges faster, farther and in greater numbers than ever before. They are invading ecosystems at unprecedented rates.

Freshwater ecosystems are highly prone to invasion and susceptible to human disturbances. Most non-native species are introduced through human activities or infrastructure. For example, ballast water release from cargo ships delivered more than half of all non-native species known in the Great Lakes.

The spread of species into lakes is also facilitated by canals, fish stocking, bait bucket dumping, recreational boating and pet release. Invasive aquatic plants are often snagged on the propellers and trailers of recreational boats moved between lakes; the plants themselves may carry attached zebra mussels, which can live out of water for several days during overland transport on boat trailers.

Zebra mussels covering rocks on the bottom of Lake Memphremagog, Que. (Brielle Comartin), Author provided (no reuse)

The release of aquarium pets is another driver of invasion. One study estimated that more than 10,000 fish purchased from Montréal pet stores are released into lakes and rivers annually.

Consequently, rates of invasion for freshwater ecosystems are among the highest of any habitat type and continue to increase.
Highly vulnerable ecosystems

Lakes, rivers and wetlands make up about one per cent of the Earth’s surface area but hold nearly 10 per cent of all living species, including more than half of all known fish species. This diversity is being eroded faster than that of terrestrial and coastal marine ecosystems, in part because of the impacts of invasion.

Although it can be challenging to disentangle the impacts of invasion from other human stressors, in various freshwater ecosystems the primary driver of declines of freshwater fishes has been revealed to be invasive species rather than habitat alteration.

Read more: Our lakes are teeming with parasites. Why that's good...and bad

One reason that lakes are more sensitive to invasive species is because they contain life that lack adequate defences to a broad range of invaders. For example, non-native trout that have been stocked in historically fish-less lakes in western North America have caused declines in native frogs that have evolved without pressure to adapt to large aquatic predators.

Similarly, zebra mussels overgrow and smother the shells of native freshwater mussels, which have no evolutionary experience with such fouling organisms. Many native mussel populations in the lower Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system and other invaded waterbodies have been decimated by the zebra mussel.
Cascading consequences

Aquatic invasive species threaten fisheries, water quality, local economies and human health. These impacts can extend well beyond the invaded lake. When the predatory peacock bass invaded Lake Gatun (Panama) in the late 1960s, it wiped out small insect-eating fishes that played an important role in suppressing mosquito larvae. Consequently, the adult mosquito population around the lake exploded, which increased the risk of malaria to humans in the area.

The unauthorized introduction of lake trout in Yellowstone Lake in the United States in the 1990s fundamentally altered the lake’s food web. These introduced trout caused the decline of a native fish that was a key food source for grizzly bear, forcing the bears to shift their diet toward land mammals (juvenile elk), putting these species in turn under increasing pressure.

The accidental introduction of the peacock bass to Lake Gatun in Panama caused considerable ecological impacts. (Shutterstock)

The European spiny waterflea, a predator that feeds on smaller zooplankton, invaded the Great Lakes through ballast water release in the 1980s and spread to inland lakes like Lake Mendota, where it attained enormous densities. Its voracious feeding caused a massive decline in native algae-eating waterfleas. The absence of these herbivores allowed phytoplankton to bloom and degrade water quality, thereby harming the aesthetic and recreational value of Lake Mendota.

In the lower Great Lakes, the filtration activities of invasive zebra and quagga mussels caused drastic increases in water clarity, which promoted excessive growth of algae on the lake bottom. When this mass of algae decomposed at the end of summer, it reduced the oxygen concentration in the bottom of the lake creating the perfect conditions for the proliferation of botulism. The bacteria accumulated in the mussels, which allowed their toxin to be transferred to mussel predators including an invasive fish called the round goby. Thousands of fish-eating birds died after consuming toxic gobies.

These cases demonstrate the extensive impacts that invasive species can have on lakes and surrounding ecosystems.

Stemming lake invasions

The Kunming-Montréal global biodiversity framework recognized “inland waters” as a distinct realm deserving conservation targets. Target 6 of the framework calls for rates of invasion to be reduced by 50 per cent by 2030.

Meeting this target will require new policies to control poorly regulated vectors such as those linked to the pet trade. An emerging threat from the pet trade is the marbled crayfish, which can generate a new population from just one asexually reproducing individual. A wild population of the crayfish was discovered in Ontario ponds last year.

Read more: Rafts of garbage, kelp and other debris could transport alien invaders to a warming Antarctica

A significant reduction in invasion rates would lower risks of ecosystem disruption and biodiversity loss. For lakes, this can be achieved in part through responsible decisions regarding the disposal of live bait and aquarium pets, inspections of boats and fishing gear for hitchhiking organisms, and reporting newly detected non-native species.

Stakeholder education is also essential. The same citizens whose livelihoods and well-being are affected by lake invasions can play an unwitting role in spreading invasive species.

Engagement involving the public, scientists, industry and government can help reach the Kunming-Montréal target. Fortunately, the Great Lakes offers an encouraging case study as an ecosystem whose invasion rate has been reduced as a result of stakeholders working together to develop and enforce an effective regulation to control ballast water invasions.

Author

Anthony Ricciardi
Professor, Department of Biology & Bieler School of Environment, McGill University
Disclosure statement
Anthony Ricciardi receives research funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from the Bieler School of Environment (McGill University). He is a member of the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en limnologie (GRIL).
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‘Side job, self-employed, high-paid’: behind the AI slop flooding TikTok and Facebook

THE CONVERSATION
Published: September 18, 2024 

TikTok, Facebook and other social media platforms are being flooded with uncanny and bizarre content generated with artificial intelligence (AI), from fake videos of the US government capturing vampires to images of shrimp Jesus.

Given its outlandish nature and tenuous relationship with reality, you might think this so-called “AI slop” would quickly disappear. However, it shows no sign of abating.

In fact, our research suggests this kind of low-quality AI-generated content is becoming a lucrative venture for the people who make it, the platforms that host it, and even a growing industry of middlemen teaching others how to get in on the AI gold rush.
When generative AI meets profiteers and platforms

The short explanation for the prevalence of these baffling videos and images is that savvy creators on social media platforms have worked out how to use generative AI tools to earn a quick buck.


But the full story is more complex. Platforms have created incentive programs for content that goes viral, and a whole ecosystem of content creators has arisen using generative AI to exploit these programs.

Much of the conversation around generative AI tools focuses on how they enable ordinary people to “create”. Many earlier digital technologies have also made it easier to participate in creative activities, such as how smartphones made photography ubiquitous.

But generative AI takes this a step further, as it can generate tailored images or videos from a simple text prompt. It makes content creation more accessible – and also opens the floodgates to mass production on social media.

To take just one example: if you search “pet dance motorcycle” on TikTok, you will find hundreds of AI-generated videos of animals doing the “motorbike dance”, all animated using the same AI template. Some accounts post dozens of videos like this every day.

Creators and platforms are making money

You may wonder why such repetitive, unimaginative content can go viral on TikTok. The answer lies in the platform’s own advice to aspiring creators: if you want your videos to be promoted, you should “continuously share fresh and diverse content” that “doesn’t require a big production budget”.

You may also wonder why some platforms don’t ban AI accounts for polluting the platform’s content stream. Other platforms such as Spotify and YouTube, which police intellectual property rights more aggressively than TikTok, invest considerable resources to identify and remove AI-generated content.

TikTok’s community guidelines do ban “inaccurate, misleading, or false content that may cause significant harm”, but AI-generated content – at least for now – does not qualify as causing “significant harm”.

Instead, this kind of content has become important for platforms. Many of those “pet dance motorcycle” videos, for example, have been viewed tens of millions of times. As long as users are scrolling through videos, they are getting exposed to the ads that are the platforms’ primary source of income.

Inside the AI ‘gold rush’

There is also a growing industry of people teaching others how to make money using cheap AI content.

Take Xiaonan, a social media entrepreneur we interviewed who runs six different TikTok accounts, each with more than 100,000 followers. As he revealed in a live-streaming tutorial with more than 1,000 viewers, Xiaonan earned more than US$5,500 from TikTok in July alone.

Xiaonan also hosts an exclusive chatting group where, for a fee, he reveals his most effective AI prompts, video headlines and hashtags tailored for different platforms including YouTube and Instagram. Xiaonan also reveals tricks for standing out in the platforms’ recommendation game and avoiding platform regulations.

Xiaonan says he established his “AI side job” after being laid off by an internet company. He now works with two partners selling classes and tutorials on making AI-generated videos and other types of spam for profit.

Creators posting AI content may not be the kind of people we expect. As Xiaonan told us, many of the people taking his AI tutorial – entitled “Side job, self-employed, high-paid” – are housewives, unemployed people and college students.

“Some of us also do Uber driving or street vending,” one creator told us. AI-generated content has become the latest trend for earning side income.

The rise of AI has coincided with global unemployment trends and the growth of the gig economy in the post-pandemic era.

Making AI-generated content is more pleasant work than driving passengers or delivering food, according to a creator who is also a stay-at-home mother. It’s easy to learn, almost zero cost, and can be done any time at home with just a phone.

As Xiaonan says, his method is to use AI to “earn from productivity gap” – that is, by producing far more content than people who don’t use AI .
The global AI-generated content factory

Our observations indicate many of these creators are from non-Western countries, such as India, Vietnam and China.

As one Chinese social media influencer told us:

An effective strategy mentioned by one creator is a kind of platform arbitrage involving popular videos from Douyin, the counterpart of TikTok in mainland China.

A creator will take one of these videos, add AI-generated translation, and post the result on TikTok. Despite clunky AI dubbing and error-riddled subtitles, many of these videos garner hundreds of thousands or even millions of views.

Creators often mute the original video and add AI-generated narration, translating the content into various languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian and Swedish. These creators often manage several or even dozens of accounts, targeting viewers in different countries in a strategy known as an “account matrix”.
This is only the beginning

We are only at the dawn of mainstream AI-generated content culture. We will soon face a situation in which content is effectively infinite, but human attention is still limited.

For platforms, the challenge will be balancing the engagement these AI-driven trends bring with the need to maintain trust and authenticity.

Social media platforms will soon respond. But before that, AI-generated content will continue to grow wildly – at least for a while.

Authors  

Jiaru Tang
PhD student, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

Patrik Wikström
Professor of Computational Communication, Queensland University of Technology
Disclosure statement
Patrik Wikström receives funding from the Australian Research Council.