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)
Wednesday, December 04, 2024
FEMICIDE, MIOGYNY, HOMOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA
Study exposes high injury rates in transgender women
Radiological Society of North America
image:
35-year-old transgender woman presents with (A) a 3D CT reformation of the face in the sagittal plane showing a left mandibular fracture (arrow). (B) An axial head CT image from one of three head CT studies over the last two years revealing right periorbital soft tissue swelling (arrow). The radiologist reader suspected intimate partner violence based on radiology reports, which was subsequently confirmed through clinical note examination.
Credit: Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and Rohan Chopra.
CHICAGO – A new study found that injury rates among transgender women are significantly higher than injuries among cisgender women, based on radiological imaging. The findings will be presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
‘Cisgender’ is a term used to describe people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth, while ‘transgender’ describes people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
“Transgender women have been reported to experience alarmingly high rates of violence,” said lead researcher Rohan Chopra, an undergraduate student at Northeastern University in Boston and a research intern at the Trauma Imaging Research and Innovation Center (TIRIC) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “They also frequently endure discrimination, hate crimes, psychological abuse and social isolation, which not only increases their vulnerability but also creates significant barriers in reporting violence and escaping abusive situations.”
The first-of-its-kind study, conducted by TIRIC, employs a case-control design to quantify and compare the burden of injuries evident on imaging between transgender women and a control group of cisgender women.
For the study, researchers selected a cohort of 263 trans-female patients, aged 18 and older, from the Research Patient Data Registry. All patients had undergone at least one imaging exam at a Massachusetts General Brigham affiliated hospital. From the same registry, a control group was selected of 525 cisgender female control patients, matched for age, race and ethnicity, who also underwent at least one imaging exam.
Among the transgender women, 67 (25.4%) sustained 141 injuries, compared to 77 (14.7%) of cisgender women who sustained 98 injuries. Transgender women in the study group suffered eight times as many head injuries as the controls, 36 times as many facial injuries and five times as many chest injuries.
“Transgender women were five times more likely to undergo imaging in the emergency department compared to cisgender women and were nearly twice as likely to get imaged overnight and on weekends,” Chopra said. “Most importantly, transgender women were three times as likely to sustain injuries compared to cisgender women.”
Of the 67 transgender women with injuries confirmed by a radiological exam, 41.8% (28 of 67) reported being involved in interpersonal violence and 28.4% (19 of 67) confirmed intimate partner violence (IPV). However, 25 (37.3%) of the 67 transgender patients were not screened for IPV.
Two radiologists, blinded to the purpose of the study and the transgender status, were also asked to predict the likelihood of IPV based on the radiology reports. The radiologists correctly identified IPV in about one-third of the transgender individuals who reported it.
“The significantly higher injury rates in transgender women, particularly to the head, face and chest, with frequent presentations to emergency departments indicate an elevated risk of violence and highlight gaps in preventive care,” said Bharti Khurana, M.D., M.B.A., the study’s principal investigator and founder and director of TIRIC. “By recognizing these patterns, radiologists can help identify at-risk patients and facilitate timely IPV screening and support for this vulnerable population.”
Other co-authors are Krishna Patel, M.P.H., Tatiana C. Rocha, M.D., Maria Duran-Mendicuti, M.D., Jessica C. Loftus, L.I.C.S.W., Jacqueline Savage Borne, L.I.C.S.W., Lauren Kourabas, L.I.C.S.W., Bernard Rosner, Ph.D., M.S., and Ole-Petter R. Hamnvik, M.D.
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Note: Copies of RSNA 2024 news releases and electronic images will be available online at RSNA.org/press24.
RSNA is an association of radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists promoting excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and technologic innovation. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Illinois. (RSNA.org)
For patient-friendly information on emergency radiology, visit RadiologyInfo.org.
ROUND-UP READY
Study reveals lasting effects of common herbicide on brain health
Glyphosate exposure exacerbates Alzheimer's disease-like pathology in mice even after a significant pause from exposure
Arizona State University
image:
Glyphosate, one of the most widely used herbicides, is sprayed on crops worldwide. A new study in mice suggests glyphosate can accumulate in the brain, causing damaging effects linked with Alzheimer's disease.
The human brain is an incredibly adaptable organ, often able to heal itself even from significant trauma. Yet for the first time, new research shows even brief contact with a common herbicide can cause lasting damage to the brain, which may persist long after direct exposure ends.
In a groundbreaking new study, Arizona State University researcher Ramon Velazquez and his colleagues at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), part of City of Hope, demonstrate that mice exposed to the herbicide glyphosate develop significant brain inflammation, which is associated with neurodegenerative disease. The findings suggest the brain may be much more susceptible to the damaging effects of the herbicide than previously thought. Glyphosate is one of the most pervasive herbicides used in the U.S. and worldwide.
The research, which appears today in the Journal of Neuroinflammation, identifies an association between glyphosate exposure in mice and symptoms of neuroinflammation, as well as accelerated Alzheimer’s disease-like pathology. This study tracks both the presence and impact of glyphosate’s byproducts in the brain long after exposure ends, showing an array of persistent, damaging effects on brain health.
Glyphosate exposure in mice also resulted in premature death and anxiety-like behaviors, which replicates findings by others examining glyphosate exposure in rodents. Further, the scientists discovered these symptoms persisted even after a 6-month recovery period during which exposure was discontinued.
Additionally, the investigation demonstrated that a byproduct of glyphosate —aminomethylphosphonic acid—accumulated in brain tissue, raising serious concerns about the chemical’s safety for human populations.
“Our work contributes to the growing literature highlighting the brain’s vulnerability to glyphosate,” Velazquez says. “Given the increasing incidence of cognitive decline in the aging population, particularly in rural communities where exposure to glyphosate is more common due to large-scale farming, there is an urgent need for more basic research on the effects of this herbicide.”
Velazquez is a researcher with the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center at the ASU Biodesign Institute and an assistant professor with the School of Life Sciences. He is joined by first author Samantha K. Bartholomew, a PhD candidate in the Velazquez Lab, other ASU colleagues, and co-senior author Patrick Pirrotte, associate professor with the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and researcher with the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in California.
According to the Centers for Disease Research, farm laborers, landscape workers, and others employed in agriculture are more likely to be exposed to glyphosate through inhalation or skin contact. Additionally, the new findings suggest that ingestion of glyphosate residues on foods sprayed with the herbicide potentially poses a health hazard. Most people living in the U.S. have been exposed to glyphosate during their lifetime.
“My hope is that our work drives further investigation into the effects of glyphosate exposure, which may lead to a reexamination of its long-term safety and perhaps spark discussion about other prevalent toxins in our environment that may affect the brain,” Bartholomew says.
The team’s findings build on earlier ASU research that demonstrates a link between glyphosate exposure and a heightened risk for neurodegenerative disorders.
The previous study showed that glyphosate crosses the blood-brain barrier, a protective layer that typically prevents potentially harmful substances from entering the brain. Once glyphosate crosses this barrier, it can interact with brain tissue and appears to contribute to neuroinflammation and other harmful effects on neural function.
The EPA considers certain levels of glyphosate safe for human exposure, asserting that the chemical is minimally absorbed into the body and is primarily excreted unchanged. However, recent studies, including this one, indicate that glyphosate, and its major metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid, can persist in the body and accumulate in brain tissue over time, raising questions about existing safety thresholds and whether glyphosate use is safe at all.
Herbicide may attack more than weeds
Glyphosate is the world’s most heavily applied herbicide, used on crops including corn, soybeans, sugar beets, alfalfa, cotton and wheat. Since the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant crops (genetically engineered to be sprayed with glyphosate without dying) in 1996, glyphosate usage has surged, with applications predominately in agricultural settings.
The U.S. Geological Survey notes approximately 300 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually in the United States alone. Although glyphosate levels are regulated on foods imported into the United States, enforcement and specific limits can vary. Due to its widespread use, the chemical is found throughout the food chain. It persists in the air, accumulates in soils, and is found in surface and groundwater.
Despite being considered safe by the EPA, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” and emerging research, including this study, points to its potential role in worsening neurodegenerative diseases by contributing to pathologies, like those seen in Alzheimer’s disease.
The chemical works by inhibiting a specific enzyme pathway in plants that is crucial for producing essential amino acids. However, its impact extends beyond the intended weed, grass and plant targets, negatively affecting the biological systems in mammals, as demonstrated by its persistence in brain tissue and its role in inflammatory processes.
“Herbicides are used heavily and ubiquitously around the world,” says Pirrotte, associate professor in TGen’s Early Detection and Prevention Division, director of the Integrated Mass Spectrometry Shared Resource at TGen and City of Hope, and senior author of the paper. “These findings highlight that many chemicals we regularly encounter, previously considered safe, may pose potential health risks. However, further research is needed to fully assess the public health impact and identify safer alternatives.”
Is glyphosate safe to use at all?
The researchers hypothesized that glyphosate exposure would induce neuroinflammation in control mice and worsen neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s model mice, causing elevated Amyloid-β and tau pathology and worsening spatial cognition after recovery. Amyloid-β and Tau are key proteins that comprise plaques and tau tangles, the classic diagnostic markers of Alzheimer’s disease. Plaques and tangles disrupt neural functioning and are directly linked to memory loss and cognitive decline.
The experiments were conducted over 13 weeks, followed by a six-month recovery period. The main metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid, was detected in the brains of both normal and transgenic mice with Alzheimer’s pathology. Transgenic mice are genetically modified to carry genes that cause them to develop Alzheimer’s-like symptoms as they age. This allows researchers to study the progression and effects of the disease in a controlled laboratory setting.
The researchers tested two levels of glyphosate exposure: a high dose, similar to levels used in earlier research, and a lower dose that is close to the limit used to establish the current acceptable dose in humans.
This lower dose still led to harmful effects in the brains of mice, even after exposure ceased for months. While reports show that most Americans are exposed to glyphosate daily, these results show that even a short period could potentially cause neurological damage.
Glyphosate caused a persistent increase in inflammatory markers in the brain and blood, even after the recovery period. This prolonged inflammation could drive the progression of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, indicating even temporary glyphosate exposure can lead to enduring inflammatory processes that affect brain health.
The data emphasizes that glyphosate exposure may be a significant health concern for human populations. The researchers stress the need for continued vigilance and intensified surveillance of glyphosate neurological and other long-term negative health effects.
“Our goal is to identify environmental factors that contribute to the rising prevalence of cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases in our society,” Velazquez says. “By unveiling such factors, we can develop strategies to minimize exposures, ultimately improving the quality of life for the growing aging population.”
The National Institutes on Aging, National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and ASU Biodesign Institute funded this study.
Glyphosate exposure exacerbates neuroinflammation 1 and Alzheimer’s disease-like 2 pathology despite a 6-month recovery period in mice
Article Publication Date
4-Dec-2024
A new catalyst can turn methane into something useful
MIT chemical engineers have devised a way to capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and convert it into polymers.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Although it is less abundant than carbon dioxide, methane gas contributes disproportionately to global warming because it traps more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, due to its molecular structure.
MIT chemical engineers have now designed a new catalyst that can convert methane into useful polymers, which could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“What to do with methane has been a longstanding problem,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study. “It’s a source of carbon, and we want to keep it out of the atmosphere but also turn it into something useful.”
The new catalyst works at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, which could make it easier and more economical to deploy at sites of methane production, such as power plants and cattle barns.
Daniel Lundberg PhD ’24 and MIT postdoc Jimin Kim are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Nature Catalysis. Former postdoc Yu-Ming Tu and postdoc Cody Ritt also authors of the paper.
Capturing methane
Methane is produced by bacteria known as methanogens, which are often highly concentrated in landfills, swamps, and other sites of decaying biomass. Agriculture is a major source of methane, and methane gas is also generated as a byproduct of transporting, storing, and burning natural gas. Overall, it is believed to account for about 15 percent of global temperature increases.
At the molecular level, methane is made of a single carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms. In theory, this molecule should be a good building block for making useful products such as polymers. However, converting methane to other compounds has proven difficult because getting it to react with other molecules usually requires high temperature and high pressures.
To achieve methane conversion without that input of energy, the MIT team designed a hybrid catalyst with two components: a zeolite and a naturally occurring enzyme. Zeolites are abundant, inexpensive clay-like minerals, and previous work has found that they can be used to catalyze the conversion of methane to carbon dioxide.
In this study, the researchers used a zeolite called iron-modified aluminum silicate, paired with an enzyme called alcohol oxidase. Bacteria, fungi, and plants use this enzyme to oxidize alcohols.
This hybrid catalyst performs a two-step reaction in which zeolite converts methane to methanol, and then the enzyme converts methanol to formaldehyde. That reaction also generates hydrogen peroxide, which is fed back into the zeolite to provide a source of oxygen for the conversion of methane to methanol.
This series of reactions can occur at room temperature and doesn’t require high pressure. The catalyst particles are suspended in water, which can absorb methane from the surrounding air. For future applications, the researchers envision that it could be painted onto surfaces.
“Other systems operate at high temperature and high pressure, and they use hydrogen peroxide, which is an expensive chemical, to drive the methane oxidation. But our enzyme produces hydrogen peroxide from oxygen, so I think our system could be very cost-effective and scalable,” Kim says.
Building polymers
Once formaldehyde is produced, the researchers showed they could use that molecule to generate polymers by adding urea, a nitrogen-containing molecule found in urine. This resin-like polymer, known as urea-formaldehyde, is now used in particle board, textiles and other products.
The researchers envision that this catalyst could be incorporated into pipes used to transport natural gas. Within those pipes, the catalyst could generate a polymer that could act as a sealant to heal cracks in the pipes, which are a common source of methane leakage. The catalyst could also be applied as a film to coat surfaces that are exposed to methane gas, producing polymers that could be collected for use in manufacturing, the researchers say.
Strano’s lab is now working on catalysts that could be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and combine it with nitrate to produce urea. That urea could then be mixed with the formaldehyde produced by the zeolite-enzyme catalyst to produce urea-formaldehyde.
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The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
'Concerted methane fixation at ambient temperature and pressure mediated by an alcohol oxidase and Fe-ZSM-5 catalytic couple
Article Publication Date
4-Dec-2024
ALBERTA NEEDS TO DO THIS
AI helps researchers dig through old maps to find lost oil and gas wells
Undocumented orphaned wells pose hazards to both the environment and the climate. Scientists are building modern tools to help locate, assess, and pave the way for ultimately plugging these forgotten relics.
Scattered across the United States are remnants from almost 170 years of commercial drilling: hundreds of thousands of forgotten oil and gas wells. These undocumented orphaned wells (UOWs) are not listed in formal records, and they have no known (or financially solvent) operators. They are often out of sight and out of mind – a hazardous combination.
If the wells weren’t properly plugged, they can potentially leak oil and chemicals into nearby water sources or send toxic substances like benzene and hydrogen sulfide into the air. They can also contribute to climate change by emitting the greenhouse gas methane, which is about 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere on a hundred-year timescale (with even higher global warming potential over shorter periods).
To find UOWs and measure methane emissions in the field, researchers are using modern tools, including drones, laser imaging, and suites of sensors. But the contiguous United States covers more than 3 million square miles. To better predict where the undocumented wells might be, researchers first pair the new with the old: modern artificial intelligence (AI) and historical topographic maps.
“While AI is a contemporary and rapidly evolving technology, it should not be exclusively associated with modern data sources,” said Fabio Ciulla, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and lead author of a case study on using artificial intelligence to find UOWs published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. “AI can enhance our understanding of the past by extracting information from historical data on a scale that was unattainable just a few years ago. The more we go into the future, the more you can also use the past.”
Since 2011, the United States Geological Survey has uploaded 190,000 scans of historical USGS topographic maps made between 1884 and 2006. Crucially, the maps are geotagged, meaning each pixel corresponds to coordinates that can be easily referenced.
Ciulla pulled together quadrangle maps, rectangular maps that cover a set amount of latitude and longitude and were mapped at a scale where one inch represents 2000 feet. Between 1947 and 1992, these maps also used consistent symbols for oil and gas wells: a hollow black circle.
“For a human being, looking at this circle and recognizing it is extremely easy,” Ciulla said. “Until recently, this was the only available method to extract information from these maps – but that strategy does not scale well if we want to apply it to thousands of maps. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play.”
For this approach to work, the Berkeley Lab research team needed to teach the AI how to identify the correct symbols amidst all the other visual information. It also needed to work on maps with different terrain and colors, as well as maps in different conditions (old, new, stained, pristine).
“This problem is equivalent to finding a needle in a haystack, since we are trying to find a few unknown wells that are scattered in the midst of many more documented wells,” said Charuleka Varadharajan, a scientist at Berkeley Lab and senior author of the study.
Researchers used a digital tool to manually mark oil wells on nearly 100 maps from California and create a training set for the AI. Once taught to find the hollow circles and to ignore false positives (such as cul-de-sacs or symbols with circular patterns, like the number 9 or letter “o”), the algorithm could be applied to any of the USGS maps with the same symbols. And because the maps were georeferenced, the algorithm could take the coordinates for the oil wells marked on the map and compare them with coordinates for documented wells.
To detect a potential undocumented orphaned well, the team selected well symbols that were more than 100 meters from a known well to account for potential errors in well coordinates. They also built a novel tool that lets a human quickly vet what the algorithm finds, double checking that the AI is correctly interpreting the symbols on the map.
Researchers used the AI algorithm to scour four counties of interest that had substantial early oil production – Los Angeles and Kern counties in California, and Osage and Oklahoma counties in Oklahoma – and found 1,301 potential undocumented orphaned wells. So far, researchers have verified 29 of the UOWs using satellite images and another 15 from surveys in the field; additional investigation on the ground will be needed to confirm other potential wells.
“With our method, we were conservative about what would be considered as a potential undocumented orphaned well,” Varadharajan said. “We intentionally chose to have more false negatives than false positives, since we wanted to be careful about the individual well locations identified through our approach. We think that the number of potential wells we’ve found is an underestimate, and we might find more wells with more refinement of our methods.”
From the map to the field
The first pass at verifying an undocumented well happens remotely. Researchers consult satellite images and historical aerial photos, looking for features like oil derricks and pump jacks (or their shadows), lifting equipment, oil pads, storage tanks, or disturbed ground.
In many cases, wells were capped at or below the surface level, leaving no obvious sign in reference images. Instead, researchers need to head into the field with equipment to confirm whether a well exists.
At a predicted well location, researchers look for any surface well structures. If there aren’t any, they walk in a grid or spiral pattern carrying a magnetometer, which measures magnetic fields. Buried metal well casings disturb the magnetic field, allowing researchers to home in on the well. Once they finish surveying the area, researchers save the magnetometer file, record whether or not a well was found, and – if so – take a picture of the site, record GPS coordinates, and check for methane leaks.
For the wells they could verify, the Berkeley Lab team found the UOWs were located an average of 10 meters from where the algorithm and map predicted. They believe the AI approach is the first that can identify the precise locations for potential UOWs at county scales. And with the bounty of maps covering the United States, the technique can be scaled up and translated to other regions of interest.
The AI mapping and verification effort is part of a much larger project to address UOWs: the Consortium Advancing Technology for Assessment of Lost Oil & Gas Wells (CATALOG). The program is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory and includes research teams from Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.
It’s a big collaboration to address an equally sprawling problem: The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission estimated in 2021 that there are somewhere between 310,000 and 800,000 undocumented orphaned wells across the United States.
Regulations for drilling and plugging emerged at different times in different states, long after the first wells were drilled. In early years of drilling, many wells were left open or filled with questionable plugs, making it possible for oil, gas, brine, or chemicals to later escape. Once identified, wells can be properly “plugged and abandoned” by filling the borehole with cement, keeping oil out of water and methane out of the atmosphere.
CATALOG aims to improve ways to find wells, detect and measure methane, rapidly screen wells for their condition, unite information from different sources, and prioritize wells for plugging. The goal is to create tools (like AI well prediction) that can be used anywhere in the United States and are inexpensive enough to be adopted.
At nearly 1.5 million acres, the Osage Nation acts as one proving ground for CATALOG’s technology and techniques. Partners from the Osage Nation provide essential feedback, evaluating the pros and cons of the equipment used in the field and the accuracy of the information generated.
“The collaboration between the Osage Nation and CATALOG has been mutually beneficial and productive,” said Craig Walker, director of Osage Nation Natural Resources. “Utilizing AI and state-of-the-art detection equipment has filled data gaps in records and led to the discovery of some undocumented wells in the area, and has streamlined various processes within the Osage Nation Orphan Well Program.”
Berkeley Lab scientist Sebastien Biraud, who leads the CATALOG project at Berkeley Lab, heads the effort to assess sensors and new methods to detect and quantify methane emissions. Groups investigating orphaned wells need to quickly assess how much methane is leaking, but high-tech methane sensors are expensive.
Biraud’s team is working on how lower-cost, off-the-shelf sensors can be combined as an alternative. The setup includes an anemometer to measure wind speed, a fan (for quick flow rate), a gas analyzer, GPS, and the crucial calculations that let a user factor in the distance to the well to determine roughly how much methane coming out.
“We don’t need to know if it’s leaking exactly 2.3 grams per hour,” Biraud said. “We need to know if it’s not leaking, if it’s leaking between 10 and 100 grams per hour, or if it’s leaking kilograms per hour. And we need to be able to do it in five minutes.”
A quick way to measure methane leaks is essential for triaging newly discovered UOWs, and also for efforts to plug known wells.
“There’s a requirement now to quantify emissions before and after plugging an oil and gas well,” Biraud said. “Both because you want to make sure the plugging is done right, and you also want to quantify the impact of the program itself on our climate mitigation strategies – particularly for methane emissions, which can cause global warming impacts more quickly than carbon dioxide.”
From the field to the sky
Researchers in CATALOG are also investigating ways to scale up undocumented well detection and verification using drones equipped with different sensors. Preprogrammed with set fly routes, the drones can semi-autonomously survey a larger area than researchers could easily access on the ground.
Groups are pursuing several different kinds of sensors, each with their own challenges and benefits. To use a magnetometer from a drone, researchers have to suspend the sensor from a 9-foot cable. If it’s placed closer to the drone, the electronics will interfere with capturing the magnetic signature from a well.
A separate drone carries a methane sensor that sips air as it flies, and can factor in methane concentration, wind speed, and wind direction to pinpoint a well location. Yet another technique is flying hyperspectral cameras that look for wavelengths (not visible to human eyes) associated with plumes of methane. And Berkeley Lab researchers are developing a drone-mounted technology that can pick up hard-to-find oil wells, such as those built with wood casings or wells where the metal was stripped for other uses.
There are still other ways to pick up clues for lost wells. Planes with laser systems known as LIDAR can image the ground. Thermal cameras can point toward hidden leaks. CATALOG members are even developing an app that uses a smartphone’s magnetometer to search for wells.
“The right way to attack this problem is a multi-layer approach,” said Ciulla. “We can layer the information from all these different sources almost as if it were a cake. I can give my contribution with historical maps, someone else can do computations for historical oil production, others bring images or satellites or sensor data. It’s a beautiful mix of the old and the new, and I’m fascinated that maps, something that seems so old-fashioned and static, can give us so much useful information if correctly used with the help of current technology.”
CATALOG’s work to build up tools to curb methane emissions and hazards from undocumented orphaned wells is ongoing.
“We, as a society, really like energy,” Biraud said. “But we need to find solutions that limit our emissions. And working with local stakeholders like Native American tribes, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. National Parks Service, we’re seeing that this is one way we can have an impact.”
The mapping AI tool used resources provided by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science user facility.
This work was supported as part of the Consortium Advancing Technology for Assessment of Lost Oil & Gas, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, Office of Resource Sustainability, Methane Mitigation Technologies Division’s Undocumented Orphan Wells Program.
USGS Quadrangle Map
On USGS quadrangle maps from 1947-1992, oil wells are marked by hollow black circles.
Berkeley Lab scientist Sebastien Biraud leads the field team of researchers looking for lost wells. He carries a backpack-mounted sensor to measure magnetic fields, which can help find the buried metal structure of a well casing.
The trace gas sensors measure methane, methane isotopes, tracers such as ethane, windspeed, and GPS coordinates.
Yuxin Wu and Jiannan Wang from Berkeley Lab fly a drone carrying a magnetic sensor.
Credit
Jeremy Snyder/Berkeley Lab
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to delivering solutions for humankind through research in clean energy, a healthy planet, and discovery science. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Graphic assembled by The Maple staff using photo by Peter Pryharski via Unsplash and photo by Ryan via Unsplash.
Canada’s leading business lobby group is recommending deep government spending cuts to help pay for a massive boost in Canada’s military budget.
In a report published last week and titled “Security & Prosperity: The Economic Case for a Defence Industrial Base Strategy,” the Business Council of Canada (BCC) called on the federal government to invest “in a strong and sovereign defence industrial base,” and to increase military spending toward three per cent of Canada’s GDP after 2034/2035.
The three per cent GDP target exceeds the two per cent minimum required by members of NATO, the 32-member military alliance that Canada has been a member of since 1949. The two per cent target was first set in 2006, and today Canada is among eight NATO members that spend below that threshold.
The BCC wants Canada to hit the two per cent target by 2030, two years ahead of the Trudeau government’s currently promised schedule. “By doing so strategically, it can also supercharge Canada’s broader economic security and prosperity,” the report argues.
The report also warns that “Canada’s military rivals are investing heavily in their armed forces,” and refers to a “new, more tumultuous geopolitical reality,” fuelled by conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.
As previously noted by The Maple, BCC’s members include executives from defence aircraft manufacturer Bombardier, CAE Canada, which develops training services for the Canadian Forces, and BlackRock, a multinational investment company with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in arms companies that have Canadian operations, such as L3 Harris and RTX (formerly Raytheon).
The Trudeau government has drastically increased military spending since it took office, but its pledge to hit the NATO two per cent target by 2032 has been called into question due to the government’s allegedly inaccurate economic forecasts.
The 2024 federal budget stated that Canada’s total defence budget had increased from $18.5 billion in 2015 to a forecasted $33.8 billion per year in 2024-25. The Trudeau government plans to hit $49.5 billion of defence spending by 2030.
In July, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) estimated that by 2030, Canadian military expenditures falling under NATO’s definition would be even higher, at $52.2 billion.
In October, the PBO said that Canada would need to spend $81.9 billion annually to achieve the Trudeau government’s two per cent GDP spending goal by 2032 — nearly double what the Department of National Defence (DND) currently spends.
Achieving the BCC’s recommendation of hitting the two per cent target two years earlier would require $75 billion of annual military spending by 2030. The BCC report said that amount is “$15 billion more that year than currently planned.”
However, the July PBO report indicates the difference would actually be at least $17 billion.
Buried further down in the BCC report, the group recommends some ways to help pay for that massive spending increase. In one suggestion, the BCC states: “The Government of Canada can immediately commit to a comprehensive review of its current programming, like the one initiated by the Chrétien government in 1995 or the one launched by the Harper government in 2011. This program review would ensure that the lion’s share of new investments in Canada’s defence industrial base are offset by a decrease in government spending elsewhere.”
It continues: “For context, the 1995 program review generated $29 billion in savings over a three-year period. If that program review were to occur today, at a time when federal spending is 70% greater than 1995 levels, it could generate nearly $90 billion in savings over three years.”
The 1995 federal budget was infamous for its deep spending cuts. The budget document’s introductory remarks stated: “The budget will fundamentally reform what the government does and how it does it. It will bring a permanent change in the way government operates.”
The austerity measures included major spending cuts to social programs. In particular, the budget created a new provincial transfer system that pledged to cut transfers for provincial social programs by $2.5 billion over two years, forcing the provinces to make up shortfalls with their own cuts.
Ironically, the 1995 budget also included sharp cuts in military spending, with a pledge to slash the defence ministry’s budget by “$1.6 billion between 1994-95 and 1997-98.” Veterans Affairs was also cut by $232 million over three years.
Those cuts were accompanied by promises to terminate 45,000 public service jobs, widespread privatization of government operations and cuts to business subsidies.
David Macdonald, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, noted that the additional $15 billion that the BCC claimed is needed to meet NATO’s target by 2030 would be a major expenditure.
In an interview with The Maple, Macdonald pointed out that figure is double the amount currently earmarked for the national childcare plan for that year, half of all employment insurance payments and half of all Canada Child Benefit payments.
Macdonald said it would not be feasible to find $15 billion in savings simply by cutting government personnel.
“It’s not a feasible plan; It’s not a reasonable plan. The impacts on services would be severe,” he explained, stressing that if the savings were found exclusively through personnel cuts, “it wouldn’t just be some Coast Guard offices which closed under the Harper cuts; it would be a severe change.”
Expenditures of government personnel are likely to reach between $60-65 billion by the end of the decade, Macdonald said. Cutting $15 billion out of that “would have tremendous and dire consequences for service levels.”
The BCC also recommends more strategic investments “with the aim of generating outsized returns” in tax revenues, and retargeting some of the federal government’s current investments — such as its holdings in research and development, and infrastructure — to help cover military spending hikes.
Rachel Small, an organizer with World Beyond War, told The Maple that the proposed military spending figures are almost unfathomably large.
“We’re actually talking about doubling Canada’s already inflated, bloated military budget,” she explained.
The BCC report noted that aiming for three per cent GDP of military expenditure would align Canada “with key allies – like the U.S. – who have committed to a similar benchmark.” But emulating the Americans, Small said, would drastically alter both Canada’s domestic policy and its role in the world, given that the U.S. is one of the world’s largest military superpowers.
She noted that the Trudeau government’s planned spending for DND is already nearly 15 times more than its planned spending for Environment and Climate Change Canada’s “core responsibilities” and “internal services.”
“If we’re looking at real and concrete threats to the safety and security of people in this country, beyond even talking about the price of groceries or the lack of housing, I think we have to be looking at the climate crisis,” said Small.
She added that defence industry lobbyists are “constantly” pressuring government officials to shape Canadian policy in ways that necessitate the procurement of costly military equipment, such as the F-35 fighter jet.
“It comes back to a very strong interest by these multinational weapons companies, and largely American weapons companies, to drive spending,” Small explained.
“It requires just an obscene amount of propaganda and really fear mongering to even begin to try to convince people that to keep them safe we need to starve society of resources for far more pressing social needs, and instead spend them on the military.”
Besides calling for major increases in military spending and investing in Canada’s “defence industrial base,” the BCC report calls for the Canadian government to “meaningfully enhance the defence industrial base’s ‘voice’ in government policymaking.”
“Industry can be given an enhanced ‘voice’ by the Government of Canada expanding, or creating new, fora for proactive and ongoing public-private dialogue,” the report continues.
The BCC did not respond to an emailed request from The Maple, which included a question about whether the above recommendation amounted to a call for defence and related industry lobbyists to have more contact with federal policymakers. Critical Minerals
The report also calls for the government to give a “special focus” on critical minerals, “recognizing they are a vital resource, contributing to both the economic and national security of Canada, the U.S., and other important allies.”
“Canada is in the fortunate position of possessing significant amounts of many of the world’s most critical minerals,” the report notes. “The Government of Canada will [...] need to reform project approval and permitting processes, including to allow for streamlined approvals where a project is deemed essential to Canada and its allies’ national security interests.”
Last year, a report published by the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies stated that “mining and the processing of minerals are [...] crucial in maintaining the [U.S.] military’s technological edge.”
At least one of those companies has struck a major deal amid the new “tumultuous geopolitical reality” referenced in the BCC report.
Cameco signed a 12-year deal last year to supply the Ukrainian government with uranium to power all of its nuclear reactors, which ran on Russian fuel prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Currently, Ukraine controls nine of its nuclear reactors. If Ukraine were to break the current military stalemate with Russia and recapture the six reactors in territory that is held by the Russian military, Cameco would be given the opportunity to supply those reactors too.
In a Cameco press release announcing the deal in February 2023, the Saskatchewan-based company acknowledged several “material risks” that could affect the contract, including the fact that “the continuation or outcome of the conflict between the Ukraine and Russia may prevent Cameco from satisfying the terms of this supply contract, or realizing the expected benefits to Cameco, or have other adverse consequences to Cameco.”
According to a report by Reuters last year, the war in Ukraine helped ease a “more than decade-long slump” in the uranium sector.
The Maple contacted Cameco for comment via its online contact form, but did not receive any response. Ukraine ‘An Unprecedented Opportunity’
The federal government has viewed the war in Ukraine as an important opportunity for Canadian businesses.
In briefing documents obtained by The Maple through an access to information request, former international development minister Harjit Sajjan was instructed to offer Cameco’s CEO Tim Gitzel congratulations for securing the uranium deal during a “Ukraine Recovery Conference” held last year.
Other briefing notes for the event included a “top-line message” stating that the destruction of Ukraine and its rebuilding efforts represented an “unprecedented commercial opportunity for Canadian business in the infrastructure, energy and resource sectors, among others.”
However, the briefing documents acknowledged that “corruption” and “excessive bureaucracy and regulations” created the perception of a “poor business climate” in Ukraine.
The briefing notes also name-checked BlackRock, which the documents noted acted “as an advisor to Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy, [and] are also putting forward ideas aimed at mobilizing capital into Ukraine’s reconstruction.”
More recently, the Trudeau government has shown little interest in pushing for peace talks with Russia in its deadlocked war with Ukraine, with the Canadian prime minister declaring that he opposes Ukraine conceding “an inch” of territory to Russia in order to end the war.
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Canada has committed more than $19.5 billion in aid to Ukraine, including $4.5 billion in military assistance.
The BCC report, meanwhile, lamented: “Despite NATO countries pouring billions of dollars over the last three years into increased production capacity, decades of policymakers failing to take serious warnings about the sorry condition of the alliance’s munitions industry has meant that NATO countries are still unable to adequately supply Ukraine with the thousands of shells they need daily to shift the war in their favour.”
Despite determined calls from Canada and its leaders for the war in Ukraine to continue, an increasing number of Ukrainians appear to see things differently.
A recent poll published by Gallup found that 52 per cent of Ukrainians “would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible.” Support for continuing the war has dropped to as low as 27 per cent in regions where the fighting is most intense.
A majority, 52 per cent, of Ukrainians who favour a rapidly negotiated end to the conflict also agree that Ukraine “should be open to making some territorial concessions as a part of a peace deal to end the war.”
