Are Singaporean workers really losing jobs to Indian expats due to Ceca free-trade deal?
IMPERIALISM THE HIGHEST FORM OF CAPITALISM

As Singapore stares into its Covid-fuelled deepest recession, job anxiety is fuelling a sudden new wave of resentment over a deal dating back to 2005

Read social media and it seems the immigration floodgates have opened, but the figures tell a different story. Experts say jobs are being created, not lost

Kok Xinghui and Dewey Sim in Singapore
Published: 8:00am, 12 Sep, 2020

Office workers in Singapore. Photo: Reuters

As Singapore’s economy slows amid the coronavirus pandemic and job losses mount, people’s anxieties over their livelihoods have found a convenient target: a free-trade agreement Singapore signed with India in 2005. On social media, the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (Ceca) is being blamed for willy-nilly letting Indian nationals into Singapore to steal jobs from locals – no matter how many times the government says it is not true.

On a Facebook post of a news article explaining that Ceca did not give Indians automatic access to citizenship, permanent residency or employment, Stephanie Low commented: “Our jobs are taken by Ceca! Wait till the ministers’ jobs are also taken by them, then they will know!”

Others, like Emran Rahman, disparagingly referred to Indians as Ceca, saying: “Everywhere CECA! Even housing estates have them around!”

As virus batters Singapore’s economy, lost jobs loom as long-term headache
13 Aug 2020


On the public group SG Opposition, Michael da Silva said the government was letting professional Indians in to give them citizenship and eventually gain their vote for the ruling party.

These worries have become more pronounced as Singapore battles its worst recession and countries around the world continue struggling to contain the
Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite multiple clarifications from the authorities that Ceca does not give Indian jobseekers a free pass into Singapore, disgruntled citizens have latched onto two areas within the 16 chapters of the agreement that came into force in 2005. Their points of contention: intra-corporate transfers that let companies bring India-based staff into Singapore for a maximum term of eight years without having to first advertise the jobs to locals, and a list of 127 professions covered by the deal that range from database administrator, to accountants to financial analysts to medical specialists.

People cross a street in the shopping district of Orchard Road, Singapore. Photo: Reuters

Victor Tan, for example, who requested a pseudonym fearing a backlash that could hurt his career, insisted that job woes were caused by Ceca’s “free flow” of Indian nationals coming to Singapore.

He said his 14 years in the relocation industry – helping expatriates move in and out of Singapore – let him see that since 2016, the proportion of nationalities had shifted from being mostly Australian and British, to Indian.

To Tan, the free-trade agreement was “lopsided”. “We don’t see any of our Singapore locals going over to India to hold high positions. Instead, a lot of them are coming here, holding high positions,” he said. “When I was job searching, I didn’t see any opportunities in India for Singaporeans to go over.”

His sweeping views of the free-trade agreement are not based on truth. But they do reflect sentiments on social media.

This “obsession”, said Nanyang Technological University sociologist Laavanya Kathiravelu, should be seen within the context of rising economic uncertainty, with Singapore’s economy
expected to shrink by up to 7 per cent this year, even with a financial stimulus of about S$93 billion (US$68 billion).

Singapore on course for worst recession since independence
26 May 2020



Kathiravelu said: “With the local and global economies experiencing sluggish growth, and many Singaporeans losing their jobs or having to go on reduced pay, the seeming preference for hiring foreigners becomes a higher-stakes issue. It’s being conceived as a zero-sum game, where a job given to a foreigner means one less job for a Singaporean.”

It is not the first time there has been unhappiness over Ceca. Ceca grabbed headlines last year when a man was captured shouting at his
condominium’s security guard and netizens immediately assumed he was an Indian expatriate – in fact, he was born in India but now has Singapore citizenship. Vitriol against Indian nationals since then has grown among opposition voices who use Ceca as an anti-immigration scapegoat and call for it to be abolished.


Political analyst Woo Jun Jie said the debate over foreign labour was long-standing but he sensed a shift in the conversation from when the issue became a political hot potato before the 2011 general election. In the years before that vote the population had grown from 4 million in 2000 to 5 million in 2010, but during the same time frame the number of permanent residents and foreigners almost doubled (from 287,000 PRs and 754,000 foreigners in 2000 to 541,000 PRs and 1,305,000 foreigners in 2010).

A vegetable stall in the Little India district of Singapore. Photo: EPA

While the discussion back then focused on the strain the growing pool of foreigners was placing on public infrastructure, this time the debate revolved around issues of inequality and access.

“Specifically, the public discontent now seems to be centred around job availability and pay levels, particularly for local PMETs [professionals, managers, executives and technicians],” he said.

Consequently, when Singapore’s 14th parliament opened last month, much of the debate was on how best to strike a balance between saving jobs for Singaporeans and not cutting out the foreigners needed to beef up Singapore’s small workforce of just 2.33 million and burnish its reputation as a global city.

Those from the ruling People’s Action Party and the opposition gave many suggestions, from enacting anti-discrimination legislation to naming and shaming companies that favoured foreigners to setting a quota for employment passes, while the authorities took the chance to share statistics.

Intra-corporate transferees, for example, account for less than five per cent of all who hold employment passes (a work pass for higher-skilled workers that carries a minimum salary requirement of S$3,900 or about US$2,850). That worked out to about 9,500 workers, and Indian nationals were but “a small segment” of those, said the ministry of trade and industry.

Still, those like Tan remain unhappy and unelected politician Lim Tean continues to fiercely campaign for Ceca to be abolished.


IS CECA REALLY THAT DIFFERENT?


While public displeasure has zeroed in on Ceca, the free-trade agreement – which has helped trade between Singapore and India grow by S$7.6 billion since 2005 – is not much different from the 24 others that Singapore has signed when it comes to the movement of workers.

In an interview with This Week in Asia, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Trade and Industry said most free-trade agreements had commitments on the movement of workers, including on intra-corporate transferees. 

Only the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) did not include intra-corporate transferees.

“The purpose behind that is to facilitate companies when they invest overseas. When you invest overseas, you will want to bring some of your own employees to start off the investment,” said the spokesperson.

Explained: the CPTPP trade deal
19 Feb 2019

Minister of Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing had told local media that Singapore’s Ceca commitments were not unique, and that most of the 164 World Trade Organisation members also had commitments on the entry of intra-corporate transferees under the General Agreement on Trade in Services. He said Singapore companies also made use of the intra-corporate transferees provision to take their employees along when starting out overseas.

Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing. Photo: Facebook


Contrary to what Victor Tan and Lim Tean believe, agreements like Ceca benefit Singapore just as they benefit India, the government has maintained. Ceca allows Singapore banks DBS and UOB to set up shop in India, meaning Singapore companies can easily access these banks’ financial services when doing business in India. And there are many doing business in India. Chan said that by 2018, more than 650 Singapore companies had invested in the country.

What is unique about Ceca compared to other free-trade agreements is the annex of 127 professions. But while the list spells out what qualifies as a “profession”, it does not mean that those professionals get free entry into Singapore, or that they are prioritised over others.


“All foreign professionals – including Indian nationals – who wish to come to Singapore must meet work-pass qualifying criteria, including relevant education and professional qualifications, before they are allowed to work in Singapore,” said the Ministry of Trade and Industry spokesperson.


The inclusion of the list, the spokesperson said, was “a negotiated outcome” between Singapore and India.

There have also been many accusations that the finance industry is predominantly filled with Indian nationals. A Facebook user, for example, shared a photo of DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta, a naturalised Singaporean, with Indian staff behind him. The user asked viewers to “find a Singaporean or Chinese” in the photo. Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong rebuked the social media user, saying the photo was taken in India where DBS had opened a new office.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. File photo

“The person who put up the post surely knew this, yet he irresponsibly misused the [photo] to insinuate that DBS in Singapore was not being fair to Singaporeans,” said Lee in a speech in parliament.

While Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh’s request in parliament for data on the breakdown of new jobs that went to citizens, foreigners and permanent residents earlier this year was met with wariness, the discontent over claims of foreigners dominating Singapore’s financial services sector seemed to prompt the government to release more data.


Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung, who sits on the board of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, told parliament that financial services employed 171,000 workers and seven in 10 were Singaporean. Just 16 per cent were foreigners while 14 per cent were permanent residents.

From Indian community to Chinese , Singapore feels the strain of immigration
20 Dec 2019



The percentages shift for senior roles, where 44 per cent are Singaporeans, 20 per cent are permanent residents and 36 per cent are foreigners. The foreigners in senior roles, however, are not made up of one nationality.


Ong said: “They come from over 50 countries, the largest group comes from Europe, with other significant nationalities from across Asia and North America.”

Banks in Singapore also shared their employment data with This Week in Asia. Citi Singapore said Singaporeans and permanent residents (PRs) made up around 80 per cent of its total direct hires in the city state, while this number was 95 per cent at its consumer banking department.

Jacinta Low, the head of human resources planning at OCBC Bank, said more than 90 per cent of the bank’s 7,000-strong workforce in Singapore were citizens or PRs. Citizens also account for 82 per cent of the bank’s senior leaders.

For the London-headquartered Standard Chartered bank, 83 per cent of its Singapore workforce were citizens or PRs, as were 90 per cent of its management team, while DBS Bank said over 90 per cent of its 12,000-strong Singapore workforce were Singaporeans and PRs. All 16 members of its top leadership team were Singaporeans.

Standard Chartered’s Singapore office. Photo: Reuters

Academics say the government’s concern that data could be twisted and misinterpreted is not entirely unfounded but sociologist Kathiravelu pointed out that fine-grained data could also help combat speculation based on anecdotes. This could be in the form of a breakdown of non-Singaporeans in specific sectors such as IT or banking, and a further breakdown by income and job title, when there was a perception that there was an over-representation of foreigners.

But opposition politician Lim Tean said the government could opt to cherry-pick data it released and this would not help give Singaporeans the full story. “I am very sceptical of the figures that the government is producing, I make no bones about that,” he said.


QUOTAS, PENALTIES, REGULATIONS

Singapore’s freshly minted parliamentarians raised several suggestions to stem anxieties at last month’s week-long parliamentary session.

Particularly, labour member of parliament (MP) Patrick Tay from the ruling People’s Action Party suggested that Singapore should consider raising the minimum-salary criteria for foreign workers in the IT and professional services sector, referring to how there are generally more firms from the two sectors on the hiring discrimination watch list.

His comments followed the authorities’ recent move to raise the minimum qualifying salary for new Employment Pass holders from S$3,900 to S$4,500. Those in financial services would need to have a minimum salary of S$5,000. The salary floors are also pegged to years of experience, so candidates in their 40s would have to earn around double the minimum qualifying salary. This was largely backed by economists and academics as a step in the right direction to restrict the number of foreign hires.


Tay, who is also the assistant secretary general of the National Trades Union Congress, said harsher penalties could be meted out to firms with discriminatory hiring practices, suggesting the authorities disallow these companies from winning public-sector contracts.

Singapore pairs citizens with jobs and training amid recession
11 Aug 2020


The manpower ministry could also name and shame firms that repeatedly undermined the government’s efforts to protect its Singaporean workforce, he said, while more legal power could be given to the agency in charge of addressing workplace discrimination and harassment known as the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices.

Tay also said the authorities could impose a two-tiered quota – one for higher-skilled professionals with higher salaries, and another for mid-skilled executives. This way, companies would still be able to hire foreign talents with specialised skill sets to drive technology-based initiatives, he said.

Singh the opposition leader also called for the government to consider enacting anti-discrimination laws to punish errant companies that discriminated against Singaporean workers.

Singapore’s Manpower Minister Josephine Teo. Photo: AFP

But Manpower Minister Josephine Teo defended the city state’s current laws, saying that punishments, including the curtailment of work-pass privileges, would put pressure on firms.

“Not so many businesses are able to operate with a 100 per cent local employment workforce so this kind of a penalty is much more painful than if we were to, say, introduce a fine,” she said in parliament.

With Singapore seen as a potential beneficiary from businesses seeking to relocate or shift operations amid geopolitical uncertainties, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing, at a business forum on Tuesday, said the city state would continue to be open to “top international talent”. But this would be done in a “calibrated manner” to enable businesses to plan for the future and for Singaporeans to learn from them.

“Our foreign worker policies will shift increasingly towards quality rather than quantity,” added Chan.

EASY TARGETS

Meanwhile, the fallout from the polarised debate over Ceca is complex. Indian nationals in the city state feel that they are being unfairly targeted while ethnic Indians – who form 7 per cent of the 3.5-million-citizen population – have expressed frustration at an ethnic group being the focus of racist vitriol, even as they have reservations about new migrants and professionals from India who are perceived to be more class conscious.

IN THE GHETTO
Kathiravelu, the sociologist from Nanyang Technological University, suggested that Indian professional migrants were highly visible because they lived in “residential enclaves” and gravitated towards specific sectors such as IT and banking. 

Even as early as a decade ago, English-language broadsheet The Straits Times reported that Indian families occupied 250 out of the 502 units at The Waterside, an upmarket condominium located in eastern Singapore. Lim, who heads opposition party Peoples Voice, also noted this trend, saying that many residential developments in the East Coast neighbourhood were populated by Indian nationals.

Joggers run near the Merlion Park in Singapore. Photo: Reuters

He said he felt “disturbed” when he visited Changi Business Park, where many financial institutions, including DBS Bank, Citi Group, UBS, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered Bank, park their back-end operations and call centres.

“I went there quite a number of times, and I was one of the first to say that when you go there, it feels that you are in a totally different country,” Lim told This Week in Asia. Some Singaporeans have coined the term Chennai Business Park when referring to the industrial area due to the large crowds of Indian nationals working there.

This visibility, said Kathiravelu, made Indians the targets of xenophobia as they were seen as dominating specific industries and not integrating into the social life of the country.
They were also seen as competing with Singaporeans for resources in a way that white or European expatriates were not, she added. “This is perhaps an expression of structural
racism and a colonial hangover where there is still a perception that white expats may be better qualified and suitable for jobs than their Indian or Asian counterparts.”

DBS: Covid-19 could widen income gap, threaten workers aged 35-44
18 Aug 2020


Still, Lim stressed he was not “against Indians” or xenophobic but felt that Singaporeans should question why many Indian workers were taking up jobs he believed could be done by locals.

While the nativism that Singapore is grappling with is not unique – opportunistic politicians the world over have flogged such sentiments as countries turn inward – the rise of these feelings is a headache for a city state that relies on an open economy to survive.

Alex Capri, a visiting senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Business School, felt this was more of a political issue than an economic one. “This sort of thing plays well in the media. But if looked at objectively, there’s an overall net benefit for Singapore as the multinational enterprises as a whole contribute to Singapore’s economy and create local jobs,” said Capri.

He added that if there were increased regulations to FTAs including Ceca, the city state’s reputation as an open and free hub could be compromised.

Kathiravelu said in times of recession, exclusionary sentiments like xenophobia had been known to rise. “People look for easy targets to blame rather than understanding structural issues for change,” she said.

In an opinion piece in The Straits Times, editor-at-large Han Fook Kwang said Singaporeans’ angst with the immigration policy ultimately came down to insecurities about livelihoods, standards of living and retirement security.

“The more secure they feel, the more open they will be to foreigners. Obviously, no government can guarantee absolute security, but a country’s social safety net plays a major role in providing a minimum level of support,” said Han.

Political analyst Woo Jun Jie said the perception of unfair hiring – such as when 47 employers were placed on a watch list for discriminatory practices – must be dealt with.

Woo said it was good that the government raised the qualifying salaries for foreigners to work in Singapore, but it was “not possible to keep using these as tools to control the foreign worker population, or even to encourage fair employment practices”. Woo said tougher penalties were needed for employers who did not give fair consideration to Singaporean candidates so that companies were nudged towards “organically developing a stronger pro-Singaporean stance, without the need for frequent state interventions”.

“This more organic and ground-up approach may be able to help prevent the emergence of populist politics or racism,” he said. ■

GREEN CAPITALISM #ESG

Widodo’s jobs bill poses threat to forests, global investors warn Indonesia


In a letter, 35 investors said the legislation could hamper efforts to protect the country’s tropical forests

The government says the bill, passed by parliament on Monday, is needed to streamline regulations in Indonesia


Reuters Published: 5 Oct, 2020

A demonstrator sets up scarecrows for keeping social distancing during a protest outside the Indonesian parliament against the Omnibus bill in Jakarta last month. Photo: Reuters

Global investors managing US$4.1 trillion in assets have warned

Indonesia’s government that a contentious job creation bill passed by parliament on Monday could pose new risks to the country’s tropical forests.

In a letter, 35 investors expressed their concerns, including Aviva Investors, Legal & General Investment Management, the Church of England Pensions Board, Netherlands-based asset manager Robeco and Japan’s largest asset manager, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management.

Why are Indonesians protesting the ‘job-creating’ Omnibus Law?
20 Aug 2020

“While we recognise the necessity for reform of business law in Indonesia we have concerns about the negative impact of certain environmental protection measures affected by the
Omnibus Bill on Job Creation,” Peter van der Werf, senior engagement specialist at Robeco, said in a statement.
With President
Joko Widodo’s coalition controlling 74 per cent of seats, parliament passed the bill that the government says is needed to improve the investment climate and streamline regulations in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

FASCISM

The new law would ensure the “state’s presence” in the relationship between employers and workers, Airlangga Hartarto, chief economics minister, told parliament on Monday.

 

A coalition of 15 activist groups, including trade unions, earlier condemned the bill and called on workers to join a planned national strike on October 6-8.

Yusri Yunus, a spokesman for Jakarta police, said that a permit for the protest had not been approved and due to the
Covid-19 situation “we advise all of them not to demonstrate”.

THE WORKERS FLAG IS DEEPEST RED FOR THE BLOOD WE HAVE SHED

Indonesians protest against the Omnibus bill in January. Photo: Joe Cochrane

While recent rallies against the bill have been relatively small, some vowed to press on with protests.

“We will continue to strike nationwide,” said Nining Elitos, chairwoman of the labour group KASBI.

Ahmad Jumali, chairman of the Tanggerang chapter of the Federation of Metal Workers (FSPMI), also said workers planned to shut down production to protest the law.

Workers opposing the bill argue that the legislation would be a “red carpet for investors, widening the power of the oligarchy” that will not only hurt labour protection but also taking land from farmers and indigenous communities.

The investors said they feared the legislation could hamper efforts to protect Indonesia’s forests, which would in turn undermine global action to tackle biodiversity loss and slow
climate change.

Indonesia’s scrapping of migrant worker placement fees: blessing or curse?
28 Sep 2020


“While the proposed regulatory changes aim to increase foreign investment, they risk contravening international best practice standards intended to prevent unintended harmful consequences from business activities that could deter investors from Indonesian markets,” said the letter, sent hours before the bill was passed.

With concerns over environmental breakdown rising up the investor agenda, some asset managers have begun to take a more public stance in urging governments in developing countries to protect the natural world.

In a similar intervention in July, 29 investors managing US$4.6 trillion wrote to Brazilian embassies to demand meetings to call on right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s government to stop soaring deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

Cambodian soldiers stand at Ream Naval Base in Preah Sihanouk province in July 2019. Photo: EPA

Cambodia has demolished a US-built facility on the country’s largest naval base, according to images published by an American think tank on Friday, amid increasing concern in Washington about China’s access to military bases in the nation.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published images that it said showed that the Cambodian government last month demolished a building that the United States had built at Ream Naval Base.
Last year the Pentagon had asked Cambodia to explain why it
turned down an offer to repair the base, saying the decision had raised speculation of possible plans for hosting China’s military.

Cambodia has demolished a U.S.-built facility at the country’s Ream Naval Base, according to satellite imagery collected on October 1. The demolition seems to confirm that changes are underway at Ream and raises questions about rumored Chinese access:
https://t.co/C1w5qeqneU
pic.twitter.com/HU7E5K11kJ
— AMTI (@AsiaMTI)
October 2, 2020

The Pentagon on Friday said it was concerned about reports that the US-funded Cambodian Navy tactical headquarters facility had been demolished and had asked the Cambodian government for an explanation.

“We have concerns that razing the facility may be tied to Cambodia government plans for hosting People’s Republic of China (PRC) military assets and personnel at Ream Naval Base,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The Cambodian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Cambodian government has denied reports that China had reached a secret deal with Cambodia to let it place forces at the base, saying that hosting foreign forces would be against Cambodia’s constitution.

The base is southeast of the port city of Sihanoukville, centre of a Chinese-led casino boom and a Chinese-run Special Economic Zone.

Cambodia is one of China’s closest allies in Southeast Asia and has received billions of dollars of Chinese aid as well as political backing for authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen in the face of Western criticism.

Cambodia has been wary of superpower rivalry since being devastated by fighting between US and Chinese proxy forces in the 1970s that culminated in the Khmer Rouge genocide.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: US fears Beijing link to razing of facility

BACKGROUNDER 

When did coronavirus breach US president’s bubble? Inside a big Trump mystery

Trump interacted with dozens of aides and hundreds of supporters throughout a series of widely attended events over the past week

Now his team is trying to figure out how widely the virus may have spread in his orbit


POLITICO Published: 6:56am, 3 Oct, 2020


US President Donald Trump is seen in silhouette against a US flag as he speaks during a rally in Minnesota in September. Photo: AFP

The first sign of trouble sent a wave of worry through US President Donald Trump’s team travelling on Air Force One: a beloved top White House aide, Hope Hicks, had fallen ill during a campaign trip to Minnesota.

After a fundraiser early Wednesday evening, Hicks stayed aboard the presidential aircraft as other Trump aides watched the airport rally that evening from the sidelines. She later isolated herself on the plane for the return trip to Washington.

By Thursday morning, Hicks had tested positive for Covid-19 – triggering a frenzy throughout the White House to handle a bombshell that would upend the final month of the 2020 campaign and reshape the president’s posture toward a virus that had already killed more than 208,000 Americans on his watch.



US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump test positive for Covid-19

As the White House and campaign scrambled to chart a new plan for October with a hospitalised president, Trump’s aides and medical team were launching their highest-profile contact tracing exercise yet: dissecting the movements and interactions of the president, dozens of aides and perhaps hundreds of supporters throughout a series of widely attended events, from a Supreme Court nominee unveiling last Saturday to the first presidential debate in Ohio on Tuesday to a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday, hours after the president already knew about the threat lurking within his team.

By Friday afternoon, it remained far from clear whether Hicks or Trump himself or someone else entirely was the source of bringing the virus into the White House bubble.

The result of the sprawling effort carries high stakes for the president in the final stretch of a turbulent year. A detailed contact tracing effort could uncover more positive tests across Trump world, putting more staffers in quarantine with just over four weeks left until Election Day.

Yet a failure to successfully recreate the steps of Trump and those in his orbit could allow a constant drip of Covid-19 news in the coming weeks that leaves the administration looking ill-prepared – especially after it faced criticism for a lacklustre effort to fund and encourage robust contact tracing systems across the nation.

“This whole situation is tragic in that this was all preventable,” said former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. “What makes Trump reckless is that he has access to the greatest, unlimited medical attention. Proper testing could have avoided all of this for him and others. Trump is now Covid-positive because of ignorance and arrogance.”

Even on Friday, once the world knew about the positive tests for the president, first lady and Hicks, the White House was still struggling to appear like it took the threat of the virus seriously. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows briefed reporters maskless – though most of the White House had been instructed to work from home.


“Why the f*** isn’t Meadows wearing a mask to brief?” one White House official asked.


“It’s just dangerous for everyone,” another White House official said. “They put people’s lives in danger. They’re all trying to get on the same message. Some people are scared. Some people are pissed off because they were put into this position.”

Some aides were tracing their steps back to the events of the prior weekend, when Trump unveiled his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, in the White House Rose Garden. Some guests interacted at gatherings both inside and outside the White House before and after the event.

World leaders wish Trump and Melania speedy recovery from Covid-19

A Friday announcement by Senator Mike Lee of his positive diagnosis led some attendees to wonder whether they may have been exposed there. Hundreds of largely unmasked guests attended the event, some of them seen hugging after the announcement.

The University of Notre Dame president, who announced his positive diagnosis on Friday, said he had been tested before the Rose Garden event and “told that it was safe to remove our masks”. (Health officials say the virus could take up to 14 days to lead to a positive test.) Numerous officials who attended Saturday have since tested negative.

Following the Rose Garden ceremony on Saturday, several top aides and close advisers attended a small celebration in the Diplomatic Room of the White House alongside Barrett and her family to celebrate her nomination. Barrett had been diagnosed with Covid-19 over the summer but has since recovered, according to a person familiar with the situation.

On Sunday, the president held a news conference and a private candlelight reception with Gold Star families on the State Floor.


While Trump held other events Monday, including an announcement to repackage an earlier message about his coronavirus testing strategy, attention has focused squarely on a stretch from Tuesday’s presidential debate – which Hicks also attended – to Wednesday’s events in Minnesota to Trump’s Bedminster trip on Thursday.



Ahead of the debate on Tuesday in Cleveland, the president prepared at the White House with personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Aides and family members then travelled with Trump to Ohio to square off with Biden.

Speaking on ABC Friday morning, Christie said no one wore masks while in the room with the president as he got ready for the debate. Christie also said he tested negative on Friday.

Notably missing in Tuesday’s debate hall was Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who tested positive for the virus on Wednesday after a family member also tested positive. (She had been at home in Michigan last Saturday, the RNC said. A day earlier, last Friday, McDaniel and Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York had visited the Trump 2020 headquarters. according to a campaign staff member.

Later Tuesday night on the debate stage, the president said wearing a mask is “OK,” arguing he wears one “when needed”. But then he went on to mock the former vice-president for excessive mask wearing.


“I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him he’s got a mask,” Trump said of Biden.

The same attitude was reflected by most members of Trump’s own family, who took off their masks after walking into the debate hall. The first lady did wear a mask during the debate.

Asked about the atmosphere of mask-wearing in the White House, one White House official said: “Some people wear them because they think it’s important. And I think some are probably embarrassed to wear them because there are some who think it’s dumb and they’re pretty loud about that.”


A person close to the White House added that staff have been trying to follow Trump’s lead and his profound scepticism about the importance of mask-wearing. “It had less to do with weakness and more to do with reflecting the president’s behaviour,” the person said. “The president’s behaviour has a large impact on the staff.”


On Wednesday night, staffers started sensing that one of the closest people in Trump’s orbit was ill. The president travelled to Duluth, Minn. – for a fundraiser at a private home followed by a campaign rally – with a group of aides that included chief of staff Meadows and senior advisers Hicks, Stephen Miller and Derek Lyons.

Trump only spoke for about 45 minutes at the rally that night, an unusually short amount of time for the president’s freewheeling speeches.


When asked why the rally was brief, one aide scoffed and said it was still 47 minutes long. Still, reporters travelling with Trump that night were struck by the short length of his speech – often the president will speak without a prompter for over 90 minutes.

(From top) The US president’s family members Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, US first lady Melania Trump, Tiffany Trump and Donald Trump Jr are seen ahead of the first presidential debate in Cleveland on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

On the flight back, Hicks displayed symptoms, according to a person familiar, and self-quarantined aboard Air Force One. She had travelled with the first family on Marine One earlier in the day. The next morning, a Covid-19 test came back positive.

News of Hicks’ diagnosis was closely held among a small group of aides at the White House. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a briefing for reporters late Thursday morning at the White House, and has said she did not learn that Hicks tested positive for coronavirus until later that afternoon.


But soon after that news, the president was back aboard Marine One heading to another event. Some aides had been pulled from the trip as top White House officials grappled with the implications and sent some staffers home.

Only a handful of officials – including Tony Ornato, Brian Jack, John McEntee and Judd Deere – travelled with Trump to New Jersey, where the president gathered among dozens of donors outdoors at his Bedminster golf club.

That night, Trump said in a taped message to the Al Smith dinner that “the end of the pandemic is in sight”. THAT'S NOT TRUE AND IT'S NOT FUNNY


Hours later, as word of Hicks’ positive test results spread publicly, Trump went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News programme to discuss her situation and say he was awaiting his own test results.


“The first time I realised that something was up with him personally was the Hannity hit,” one White House official said. “He did sound a little different … He just sounded a little bit congested to me.”


Trump announced his own results in a tweet early Friday morning, just before 1am.


Anita Kumar and Gabby Orr contributed to this report. SCMP.COM 

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Daniel Lippman, Nancy Cook and Meredith McGraw on 
politico.com on October 2, 2020

As atmospheric carbon rises, so do rivers, adding to flooding

by Kristin Strommer, University of Oregon

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

When it comes to climate change, relationships are everything. That's a key takeaway of a new UO study that examines the interaction between plants, atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising water levels in the Mississippi River.

Published recently in the Geological Society of America's journal GSA Today, the study compared historical atmospheric carbon data against observations of herbarium leaf specimens to quantify the relationship between rising carbon levels and increasingly catastrophic floods in the American Midwest.

Using data covering more than two centuries, researchers demonstrated that as carbon levels in the atmosphere have risen due to the burning of fossil fuels, the ability of plants to absorb water from the air has decreased. That means more rainfall makes its way into rivers and streams, adding to their potential for damaging floods.

Co-authored by UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History geologist Greg Retallack and earth sciences graduate student Gisele Conde, the study focused on Ginkgo biloba leaf specimens representing a time span of just over 260 years.

The team examined the leaves' stomata, tiny pores that deciduous plants use to take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In low-carbon environments, plants increase the density of stomata so they can take in enough carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, but they need relatively few stomata in carbon-rich environments.

"Variations in stomatal density, which we observed using microscopic imaging, reflect corresponding changes in atmospheric carbon over the 264-year span," said Retallack, director of the museum's Condon Fossil Collection and a professor of earth sciences.

Stomatal density also governs the degree of transpiration, the process by which plants absorb water and give off water vapor; the fewer the stomata, the lower the transpiration potential. In the leaf specimens under examination, the researchers observed an overall decline in stomatal density and transpiration potential over the 260-year timespan, with a 29 percent reduction from 1829 to 2015.

The authors note that the reduction has directly contributed to the devastating floods that increasingly plague the Midwest, since less transpiration means more water running off into streams and rivers, and in turn, greater flooding risk.

"The devastation of individual floods is still related to that year's weather, but the steady rise of carbon levels is driving the average level of the Mississippi River up by a stunning 2 centimeters per year," Retallack said.

The study also points to a need for revised planning efforts and insurance concepts in the region.

"Rising carbon levels aren't always considered in flood prediction and risk analyses," Retallack said. "We hope the study will help clarify the danger that climate change and attendant flooding pose to agricultural communities around the Mississippi River, and help inform new insurance and zoning policies there."


Explore further

The revolt of the plants: The arctic melts when plants stop breathing

More information: Gregory Retallack et al. Flooding Induced by Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, GSA Today (2020). DOI: 10.1130/GSATG427A.1

Provided by University of Oregon

Historic Amazon rainforest fires threaten climate and raise risk of new diseases

by Kerry William Bowman, The Conversation

The South American tapir is in steep decline due to habitat fragmentation from deforestation, agriculture and human habitation. Credit: Shutterstock

The fires in the Amazon region in 2019 were unprecedented in their destruction. Thousands of fires had burned more than 7,600 square kilometers by October that year. In 2020, things are no better and, in all likelihood, may be worse.


According to the Global Fire Emissions Database project run by NASA, fires in the Amazon in 2020 surpassed those of 2019. In fact, 2020's fires have been the worst since at least 2012, when the satellite was first operated. The number of fires burning the Brazilian Amazon increased 28 percent in July 2020 over the previous year, and the fires in the first week of September are double those in 2019, according to INPE, Brazil's national research space agency.

Despite the surge in fires, international attention has waned in 2020, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the degradation of the Amazon rainforest has profound consequences from climate change to global health.

Global climate implications

The Amazon rainforest covers approximately eight million square kilometers—an area larger than Australia—and is home to an astounding amount of biodiversity.

It helps balance the global carbon budget by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and plays a key role in the global water cycle, stabilizing global climate and rainfall. A nine nation network of Indigenous territories and natural areas have protected a massive amount of biodiversity and primary forest.

Yet these lands are under siege. As of 2019, an estimated 17 percent of the Amazon's forest cover has been clear-cut or burned since the 1970s, when regular measurements began and the Amazon was closer to intact.


As the rainforest bleeds biomass through deforestation, it loses its ability to capture carbon from the atmosphere and releases carbon through combustion. If the annual fires burning the Amazon are not curtailed, one of the world's largest carbon sinks will progressively devolve into a carbon faucet, releasing more carbon dioxide than it sequesters.

While the global impacts are dire, the local impacts of these fires are also significant. Persistent poor air quality, which extends far into Brazil and other regions of South America, including in metropolitan centers like São Paulo, can lead to health problems.

As roads are built and forests are cleared for timber production and agriculture, a checkerboard of tropical forest edges is created. These destructive activities can lead to rapid extinctions and a severe loss of species richness anywhere that human encroachment occurs.

Many researchers predict that deforestation is propelling the Amazon towards a tipping point, beyond which it will gradually transform into a semi-arid savanna. If the deforestation of the rainforest continues past a threshold of 20-25 percent total deforestation, multiple positive feedback loops will spark the desertification of the Amazon Basin.

Global health implications

Zoonotic diseases, like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are on the rise. Understanding the root causes of these spillover events that move viruses from animals to humans gives us insight into how to prevent future zoonotic outbreaks. The degradation and fragmentation of tropical rainforests such as the Amazon may be a key factor in this process.

The checkerboard of forest edges increases the potential points of contact between humans and wildlife, which in turn increases the likelihood of viral transmission and the emergence of novel human diseases. Intact forests and high levels of biodiversity, on the other hand, can provide a "dilution effect" associated with a lower prevalence and spread of pathogens.

The present pandemic may well have had an environmental genesis. Maintaining the Amazon's current high level of biodiversity is vital, both for the health of the global ecosystem and because, otherwise, the Amazon could become a future hotspot of emerging diseases. When we protect the global ecosystem, we also protect ourselves from emerging zoonotic diseases.

Interventions are complex, but the protection of Indigenous territories, the restoration of already degraded lands and, most importantly, continued international awareness of political dynamics and consumer choices, all offer us ways to avert oncoming tragedy. If we do not take a longer view of this pandemic and look upstream for drivers and causes, pandemics will continue to emerge.


Explore further Fires 'poisoning air' in Amazon: study

Provided by The Conversation

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

Fires spike in Brazil's Amazon, scientists say

by Louis Genot

A member of an Indigenous group fights a forest fire in Brazil, which has seen an increase in wildfires over last year

The number of forest fires in Brazil's Amazon increased sharply in September, figures released Thursday show, fueling growing criticism of President Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policies.


The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) said satellite imagery showed an increase of 61 percent in the number of fires in September, compared to the same period last year.

Satellites used by the institute detected 32,017 outbreaks last month in the Amazon, compared to 19,925 in the same month in 2019.

In the first nine months of the year, the total number of fires increased by 14 percent over the same period in 2019, the INPE said.

Despite the data from INPE, a world-renowned public body, Bolsonaro has continued to denounce a campaign of "disinformation" about the Pantanal and the Amazon.

On Wednesday, Bolsonaro—an ally of US President Donald Trump—lashed out at US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for "disastrous and unnecessary" comments on destruction of the rainforest.

Biden said during the first presidential debate that if elected in November, he would raise $20 billion to help Brazil to "stop tearing down" the Amazon, threatening "significant economic consequences" if it did not.

Bolsonaro backlash

Smoke rises from an illegally lit fire in the Amazon rainforest south of Novo Progresso in Brazil's Para State, in August 2020

Later, in a video address to a UN biodiversity summit, Bolsonaro said Brazil was "firm in its commitment to sustainable development and preserving our environmental wealth."

He accused "certain non-governmental organizations" of perpetrating "environmental crimes" to stain the country's image.

Most of the Amazon fires consist of agricultural burning on illegally deforested areas, even though the government banned all burning for four months from July.

Further south, in the Pantanal—the world's largest wetlands—the number of fires have almost tripled to 8,106, making September 2020 the worst month since the INPE began compiling statistics on the fires in 1998.

"Brazil is in flames. From the Amazon to the Pantanal, the environmental heritage of all Brazilians is being reduced to ashes," Christiane Mazzetti of Greenpeace in a statement.

"The is a consequence of the policy of the Bolsonaro government, which despite the predictions of drought in the Pantanal, has not used the necessary means of fire protection," she said.


The situation in the Pantanal, straddling Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, has been exacerbated by the worst drought in half a century.

The fires have ravaged 23 percent of the Brazilian part of the Pantanal, acording to data collected by scientists at the Laboratory for the Application of Environmental Satellites (LASA).

An aerial view of a deforested area close to Sinop, in Brazil's Mato Grosso State in August 2020

Growing investor pressure

The wildfires that devastated the rainforest last year triggered an international outcry, forcing Bolsonaro onto the defensive. He ultimately deployed the army to the Amazon to fight the fires.

So far this year, despite an increase in fires, the deforestation rate is down by about five percent.

But Brazil is coming under increasing pressure from allies, trading partners, international investors and powerful voices in the business world over the scale of the deforestation.

In June, 29 global investment firms managing nearly $4 trillion in assets sent an open letter to Bolsonaro, urging him to change policies blamed for accelerating the destruction of the rainforest.

Environmental destruction by Brazilian agribusiness firms is also threatening a long-sought trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur bloc, of which Brazil is a member.


Explore further Fires triple in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands in 2020

New research explores how multinational firms can manage corruption

by Emily Collins, Lehigh University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

For many developing countries, it is difficult to break the cycle of corruption on their own. Historically, multinational firms have assumed that they have two options available when dealing with corruption in developing countries: "play the game," meaning pay bribes or engage in corrupt activities, or "leave the table" by avoiding investing in countries where corruption is widespread. New research from Charles E. Stevens, associate professor of management in Lehigh's College of Business, shows firms taking a third approach-managing corruption by promoting positive engagement with the host country.


The study, "Avoid, acquiesce ... or engage? New insights from sub-Saharan Africa on MNE strategies for managing corruption," funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant, is published in the latest issue of Strategic Management Journal.

Using an inductive, qualitative research design, Stevens, in collaboration with Aloysius Newenham-Kahindi, associate professor at the University of Victoria, was able to better understand how and why issues relating to corruption arose and how firms dealt with them. According to Stevens, firms may typically "tread lightly," but his research shows firms having success by making deeper, long-term commitments.

"Within the last decade, a number of developing country firms, many of them from China, were taking a different approach that we termed an engagement strategy that, in many ways, was unexpected and counter-intuitive because it tended to involve greater commitment and greater investment to countries where there was more corruption," said Stevens.

Stevens and Newenham-Kahindi were curious to see if these firms were less concerned with corruption, but research found that was not the case.

"Many of these firms were following rather interesting and complex strategies, many that involved multiple actors that were designed at minimizing the ability of host-country actors to request bribes by maximizing their bargaining power or by minimizing the motivation of host-country actors to request bribes by increasing their legitimacy," explained Stevens.

Facing challenges related to studying corruption due to the illegal activity often being hidden, Stevens and Newenham-Kahindi surveyed those who experience dealing with corruption directly. Among those interviewed for the study were 445 individuals representing industries such as construction, mining, manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications in both developed and developing country firms; 126 host country government officials and employees; 34 local private sector employees; 44 local institutional researchers; and 142 members of the general public.

According to Stevens, this paper fills an important gap in corruption literature by increasing the understanding of the options and strategies that firms have at their disposal when they invest in countries where corruption is a greater problem.

With this study, the researchers are hoping to change policies and practices by both firms and governments.

"We hope that this research allows firms, governments, and the general public to achieve economic prosperity, reduce corruption, and create mutually-beneficial solutions through investment and growth," said Stevens. "Firms shouldn't automatically be afraid to invest in countries where risks like corruption are present. Such countries present many challenges, but for firms that go in with a comprehensive plan, are prepared to make a long-term commitment, and find ways to leverage partnerships with governments and other firms, the rewards can be worth the risks."

Explore further

State-level public corruption affects firm value, transparency: study

More information: Charles E. Stevens et al, Avoid, acquiesce … or engage? New insights from sub‐Saharan Africa on MNE strategies for managing corruption, Strategic Management Journal (2020). DOI: 10.1002/smj.3228

Provided by Lehigh University

Forest darkness helps stave off effects of nitrogen pollution – but this is set to change

by Aisling Irwin, Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine

The life that grows underfoot accounts for 80% of the biodiversity in a temperate forest. Credit: pikist.com/licenced under CC0

Europe's forests are sitting on a pollution timebomb which could rewrite their ecology when it explodes, say researchers.

Delicate forest floor plants such as wood sorrel or violet, and the balance among the tree species that tower above them, are all threatened by decades of accumulated nitrogen pollution. A study has found that the darkness of the forest has subdued the effects of nitrogen. But forests are destined to let in more light in the future as trees succumb to drought and disease.

Forests cover 40% of the European Union's land area and are expanding in some countries, mostly because of active restoration or the abandonment of agricultural land. Forests provide services such as controlling erosion and cycling water but they are also increasingly threatened by droughts and diseases such as ash dieback.

To understand how they are responding to these challenges it is vital to study the forest floor, says Professor Kris Verheyen, an ecologist at Ghent University in Belgium.

"This herb layer is very often forgotten. Some people call it the step-over layer—you step over it to look at the trees," he said.

Yet, in temperate forests, the life underfoot includes 80% of a forest's biodiversity. The herb layer cycles key nutrients such as phosphorous, potassium and nitrogen, helps decompose tree litter and filters the next generation of trees—since seedlings need to pass through it to embark on their journey to the canopy, says Prof. Verheyen.

Records

In trying to understand more about the forest floor, he led a team that retrieved records, going back in some cases as far as 50 years, of 4,000 forest plots across Europe. For those whose locations were easily identified, the researchers visited to make updated measurements.

The team also carted forest soils from around the continent to their research station where they incorporated them into outdoor experimental environments, called mesocosms, in which they varied the plants' access to nitrogen, temperature and light.


"The basic question we wanted to answer was how do multiple global change drivers determine the trajectories of change over time," says Prof. Verheyen, who led the project, known as PASTFORWARD.

Forest dieback can open up protective canopies. When more light is let in, forests can succumb to drought and disease. Credit: High Contrast/Wikimedia, licenced under CC BY 3.0 DE

Overall, the team found that the key controlling factor in forest life was light, which acts as a bottleneck preventing other changes from exerting an effect.

Nitrogen pollution

One powerful example of this was the way it has held back the effects of nitrogen pollution.

Nitrogen deposition is a chronic problem caused by ammonia emissions from agricultural fertiliser and the creation of nitrogen oxides as a by-product of burning fossil fuels. It draws certain nutrients out of soils, acidifies land, and causes algae to grow in waterways.

The researchers found plenty of nitrogen deposition in forests and documented its consequences for species. But 'the effects are not as strong as we expected because … the nitrogen is available but the plants (on the forest floor) can't really benefit because they are limited by the amount of light that is available," said Prof. Verheyen.

Some plants—types that tend to be widespread and can survive in a variety of environments including non-native species—have the machinery to take advantage of an excess of nitrogen and grow more; others—which tend to be specialists with small ranges—do not. In shaded forests they are on an equal footing. But as soon as the canopy opens up and light pours in, those that can exploit the nitrogen pollution have an advantage.

As a result, European forests are already losing their more specialist species and thus experiencing a drop in biodiversity. Prof. Verheyen is concerned that forest canopies are in danger of opening up as trees die from drought and disease which may open the floodgates to nitrogen.

"That will lead to rapid and very large changes in the herb layer," he said.

Drought—itself a result of climate change—has had a 'massive' effect killing trees in spruce forests in Germany, Belgium and France in recent years although broadleaf forests have been more resistant for now.

This does not mean that broadleaf forests are free from canopy-opening—one example is ash dieback disease. "We do have evidence that because of the dying off of the ash you get a lot of light and then the understorey really explodes because light is no longer a limiting resource," said Prof. Verheyen.

Some experts consider there to be seven layers in a forest, while Prof. Verheyen's team have based their work on three interconnected layers. Credit: Horizon

"These large and probably abrupt changes that may happen in the herb layer will affect the tree regeneration and will certainly determine which species will be able to pass the herb layer filter and which not. It will have its consequences for nutrient cycling because this herb layer really impacts rate of decomposition."

Buffering

The researchers also discovered that forests have so far done a remarkable job of buffering plants against the broader climate change going on outside them.

Temperature measurements revealed that forests often have significantly different temperatures from what weather stations—always placed far from trees—record. In summer, for example, they are on average 4°C cooler. This is not only because thick canopies keep out the light, but also because evapotranspiration of water through the leaves and into the atmosphere sucks heat out of the forest, and the vegetation keeps out breezes that would mix warm air into the cool.

Climate models don't take into account this buffering, despite the fact that two thirds of the world's species live in forests and forest processes such as carbon and nutrient cycling depend on temperature, says Professor Pieter de Frenne, a bioscientist also at Ghent University, who is leading the parallel FORMICA project investigating forest microclimates.

This, in turn, explains why, in intact forest, there has been less 'reshuffling' of forest species than was predicted as Europe warms, he says—forest-buffering has allowed many species to cling on.

"We would have expected that forest plants would have responded already to a stronger degree—so that more warm-adapted species would have come into the community and more cold affinity species would have declined or even become locally extinct."

But the effect can't last forever and if the canopy is opened up these species will have a rude awakening as their world warms up to the temperature outside the forest.

"Buffering is buying us time so species get a chance to adapt to the new climate," he said.

The work has practical implications for the way forests are managed and the PASTFORWARD and FORMICA teams are now hoping to develop a tool to help forest managers work out how much of the canopy they can remove—for example for harvesting or as part of the cycle of tree-thinning known as coppicing—without triggering this explosive growth.


Explore further

Satellite images display changes in the condition of European forests

Provided by Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine
18 shares

Crickets were the first to chirp 300 million years ago

by Wageningen University
 

Credit: Wageningen University & Research

An international team, led by Dr. Sabrina Simon (Wageningen University & Research) and Dr. Hojun Song (Texas A&M), succeeded in tracing the evolution of acoustic communication in the insect family of crickets and grasshoppers (Orthoptera). The results show that crickets were the first species to communicate, approximately 300 million years ago. The results are also significant because it was the first time this analysis has been done on such a large scale. The publication by Dr. Simon et al. appeared in the prominent scientific journal Nature Communications today.


"Insects have a vital role in terrestrial ecosystems. To understand how insects influence, sustain or endanger ecosystems, and what happens when they decline or even disappear, we first need to understand why insects are so species-rich and how they evolved," says Dr. Simon.

Orthoptera is a charismatic insect group of high evolutionary, ecological and economic importance such as crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers. They are a prime example of animals using acoustic communication. Using a large genomic dataset, the team established a phylogenetic framework to analyze how hearing and sound production originated and diversified during several hundred million years of evolution.

Chirping

The familiar sound of crickets was first experienced 300 million years ago, the researchers found. It was experienced because specialized and dedicated hearing organs were developed later. Sound production originally served as a defense mechanism against enemies, who were startled by the vibrating cricket in their mouths. Later on, the ability to produce sound started to play a prominent role in reproduction, because sound-producing crickets had a greater chance of being located by a female.

Insects are one of the most species-rich groups of animals. They are crucial in almost every ecosystem. The number of insects is rapidly declining. Insect species are becoming invasive or disappearing due to climate change. That—in itself—has an impact on ecosystems and eventually on humans. "We need to understand the evolutionary history of this amazingly successful animal group. This is also important for our (daily) economic life because only then can we understand what happens when insect species decline or even disappear," says Dr. Simon.

1KITE-project

"We have access to a lot of genomic data on crickets and grasshoppers, thanks to the 1KITE project and a collaboration with the Song Lab at Texas A&M University, U.S.," Dr. Simon says. "This enables us to sanalyse how different species relate to each other. We generated a genealogical tree of when what species of crickets, grasshoppers and their allies lived on earth. On top of that, we know what species were able to produce sound and hear. That allowed us to create a timeline that shows when the first crickets could communicate: around 300 million years ago."

The 1KITE (1K Insect Transcriptome Evolution) project aims to study the transcriptomes (that is the entirety of expressed genes) of more than 1,000 insect species encompassing all srecognised insect orders. Overall, scientists from eleven nations (Australia, Austria, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, UK and the US) are closely collaborating in the 1KITE project.


Explore further What did the katydids do when picking up bat sounds?

More information: Hojun Song et al. Phylogenomic analysis sheds light on the evolutionary pathways towards acoustic communication in Orthoptera, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18739-4
Provided by Wageningen University

Healthy corals in Biscayne Bay surprised scientists. They may help reefs survive

by Adriana Brasileiro

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

During a scouting mission to check on coral colonies in inshore Biscayne Bay last year, Caroline Dennison and a few other marine biology graduate students found something astounding: healthy populations of brain corals.


There were no signs of white spots or bleaching and the vivid yellowish brown colors indicated that the corals were untouched by yet another mysterious disease that's ravaging reefs along the Florida coast. Even more extraordinary was that these corals were thriving in shallow and warm water right off the seawall at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, near a bustling seaside metropolis.

"That was pretty amazing because you wouldn't imagine that type of coral living successfully in a foot of water, at that location, considering all the issues affecting reefs in the area," said Dennison, a coral researcher at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "It was just astonishing, I couldn't believe it."

What's protecting these corals? The discovery has opened up a world of research possibilities on what's killing Florida reefs and the water quality problems making it harder for corals to survive in troubled Biscayne Bay.

Dennison is hoping the thriving colonies will shed some light on a myriad of threats to corals: from the impact of rising temperatures and nutrient pollution on reefs to the relationship between corals and the algae that live within them. Findings could also help scientists develop new coral restoration strategies to replenish this key natural protection infrastructure for coastlines against erosion and storms.

The surprisingly good shape of the nearshore corals also highlighted Biscayne Bay's diverse ecosystem, which has pockets of healthy habitats. Not far from these corals, or an artificial reef right next to Port Miami, is the Coral City Camera, which livestreams a constant parade of colorful fish, manatees and sharks near a channel used by huge cruise ships.

Those areas with abundant marine life aren't far from where a massive fish kill happened in August.

The sight of thousands of fish carcasses floating in the northern part of the bay and the algae blooms that followed alarmed residents and triggered a reckoning over critical issues plaguing Miami-Dade's treasured turquoise waters: contamination from crumbling sewage pipes and failing septic tanks, stormwater runoff and a seagrass die-off that's drastically reducing the bay's ability to handle pollution and regenerate.


The Bay is very sensitive to nutrient pollution because historically it didn't have that much phosphorus and nitrogen going into its waters. The Everglades ecosystem filtered these nutrients before the water flowed to the coast. That means that plants and other bay organisms like corals grew slowly because of the nutrient limitation.

Once development and draining altered the flow of the Everglades and population growth led to a jump in nutrient pollution flowing to Florida's coasts, life began to change in Biscayne Bay: slow-growing turtle grass, for example, with its long and broad blades, was replaced by microalgae which grows faster. The bay has lost over 20 square miles of seagrass over the past decade.

"If things grow faster they are competitively dominant; what we've seen over the past decades is a change in species composition from slow-growing things to fast-growing things and now in the northern part of the bay we've gone over the edge," said Jim Fourqurean, a professor of biology and director of the Center for Coastal Oceans Research at Florida International University.

Slower-growing corals like the brain species, which used to be common over the Florida reef tract, have also suffered because of the apparent shift in the bay to a nutrient-rich system, he said during a virtual town hall organized by Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava earlier this week.

"We just gotta stop doing that, we have to stop putting nutrients into the bay so we can return to the system that we used to have," Fourqurean added.

To be sure, nutrient pollution is just one stress factor affecting Florida's coral reefs. A disease that was first observed in 2014 off Virginia Key has been destroying the soft tissue of many stony coral species, killing them within months of becoming infected. Colonies in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and as far as Mexico have been affected, and the disease has advanced along the Florida Keys. The causal agent is still unknown.

Brain corals are particularly vulnerable, and that's why Dennison was so ecstatic to find vigorous colonies just steps away from the hiking trail and fishing docks on the seawall at Bill Baggs park.

Water circulation patterns and big tidal variations are some of the environmental factors at play in the area, which led her to wonder if the colonies were ever exposed to what's causing the disease long enough or at high enough concentrations to become infected. Water temperatures in those shallow areas are also 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than in offshore reefs, which may have boosted the corals' resilience, she said.

"It also could do with turbidity, or sedimentation. Water quality factors change a lot when you come in from offshore Miami-Dade reefs into these indoor locations, so it could be any number of these environmental factors, either working alone or working together."

And then there's the complex relationship between the corals and their symbiotic algae. This could well be a disease of the algae, and how that symbiosis affects the hosts' immune systems, said UM Rosenstiel School Professor Andrew Baker.

"They seem to be less susceptible to the disease but it's still early days in our research; there are several hypotheses," he said.

One could be that the algae inside the coral are actually the targets of the disease, and when they become infected, "it causes the coral to freak out," Baker said. The symbiosis with corals is so tight that the algae actually live inside the cells of their hosts.

But it could also be that certain types of algae under certain conditions trigger vulnerabilities in the corals, he said. Answers to these questions will be hugely valuable for coral restoration efforts, which have taken on a heightened sense of urgency because of the fast-spreading disease.

"At the rate things are going, we humans need to help out corals. We need to interfere. And genetic manipulation is one way to strengthen these crucial species so they have a chance of surviving what's coming and what's already here," said Liv Williamson, a coral researcher at the Rosenstiel School.

This year, for the first time, UM researchers including Williamson watched the spawning of staghorn corals that had been raised in a lab and transplanted to a restoration reef off Key Biscayne. The corals released their eggs and sperm - gametes as those are collectively called - into the water where they fertilized and made little baby coral larvae in early August. The babies then settled on the reef and formed little new polyps with mouths and tentacles. And that's how they build brand new colonies.

Dennison also checked on her naturally resilient nearshore Biscayne Bay corals during the latest spawning event. Every evening during a whole week in September, she went diving with other researchers in the shallow waters of the bay looking for gametes. With the help of dive lights and equipped with nets and large syringes to collect specimens, small groups of researchers combed the area just off the seawall for hours each night, but no sign of coral sex, she said.

"We may have missed the window this time but we'll be watching these guys very closely," she said. "Finding them really gave us hope that they can teach us something about restoration and continue to help us answer questions about the disease outbreak and water quality issues."


Explore further Lab-grown and replanted corals to spawn in the Florida Keys

©2020 Miami Herald
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Exploring prediction errors that can influence human perceptions of time

by Ingrid Fadelli , Medical Xpress
  

Image showing activation in the Basal Ganglia. In the highlighted location, brain activation is opposite for positive and negative prediction errors in correct/incorrect time perception. The researchers suggest that the bias in time perception due to the presence of prediction errors might have originated from the interaction between time and PE in this brain region. Credit: Toren, Aberg & Paz.

Humans can sometimes perceive the passing of time differently, for instance, feeling as though an hour passed very quickly or that a few minutes went by extremely slowly. This suggests that the human perception of time is subjective and can be affected by many factors that can cause people to perceive the same amount of time as longer or shorter than it actually is.

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have recently carried out a fascinating study exploring if and how prediction errors can bias how different individuals perceive the passing of time. Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, shows that time perception can be influenced by both positive and negative prediction errors, while also identifying the putamen as a brain region responsible for biased time perception.

"Our lab studies, among other things, the process of learning from errors (reinforcement learning)," Rony Paz, head of the lab that carried out the study, told MedicalXpress. "Dopaminergic brain activation in a structure called the basal ganglia (BG) is known to be related to reinforcement learning in general, and reward prediction errors processing in particular. BG activation is also related to time perception required for motor functions that our brain controls."

For many years, time perception and human prediction errors were seen as almost entirely independent processes. The study by Paz and his colleagues challenges this idea, suggesting that these two elements are, in fact, deeply interlinked.

"Time perception and prediction error computation have often been considered to be mostly independent processes," Paz said. "The core idea of our study was to challenge this notion. Since the perception of time is subjective and was shown to be biased by many factors, and since both functions are processed in the same brain circuits, the two might interact and either aid or interfere with each other."
  

The main behavioral result collected by the researchers (i.e., how participants estimated time in different conditions). Higher location in the plot indicates higher error-rate in time perception. The orange line shows time perception when outcome is expected, while red/blue lines are time perception during PE-/PE+ respectively. It can be seen that time perception is biased for both PE-/PE+ (compared to expectation PE0) but in opposite directions. Credit: Toren, Aberg & Paz.

The key objective of the recent work by Paz and his colleagues was to investigate whether time perception is influenced by prediction errors, and if it is, to identify the neural underpinnings of this process. To achieve this, the researchers designed a behavioral task executed inside an fMRI scanner, in which participants are presented with different pairs of images on a screen, displayed for various amounts of time.


During each trial, the group of participants they recruited were asked to decide which of two images they saw on the screen was displayed for the longer amount of time. The images were overlaid with numbers that represented monetary gains and losses, as these would lead to predictions and errors.

"This design allowed us to measure time perception with a wide range of time differences, and importantly, in the presence of predicted vs. unpredicted outcomes," Paz explained. "The use of monetary gains and losses offers the possibility to differentiate between positive prediction errors (i.e., getting more than you expect) and negative prediction errors (i.e., getting less than you expect)."

As those who took part in their experiment were inside an fMRI scanner, the researchers were able to collect brain imaging data that could shed some light on the neural underpinnings of biased time perception. They then used computational modeling approaches to analyze the data they collected and investigate brain activation in the presence of positive or negative prediction errors. These analyses yielded a number of interesting results, highlighting the link between time perception and positive/negative prediction errors and identifying the putamen (located within the BG) as the brain region responsible for this interaction.

"Firstly, we found that prediction errors do indeed bias time perception, which was not known before," Paz said. "Moreover, we were able to identify the characteristics of this cognitive bias: Time is overestimated when positive errors occur (i.e., when a user receives more than he expected) and is underestimated when negative errors occur. The observation that two different functions processed in the same brain circuits can interact might have implications on many other processes executed in similar brain circuits."

Paz and his colleagues are among the first to provide evidence of the interaction between time perception and human prediction errors, while also identifying the brain region where this interaction 'takes place' (i.e., the putamen). The results they gathered could serve as a basis for other studies exploring the neural underpinnings of time perception biases. In addition, this study could shed light on the complexities and neural dynamics of diseases associated with dysfunctions of the BG, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), which affects people's ability to learn and accurately perceive the passing of time.


Explore further Why visual perception is a decision process

More information: Ido Toren et al. Prediction errors bidirectionally bias time perception, Nature Neuroscience (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0698-3
Journal information: Nature Neuroscience

Researchers probe how aggression leads to more aggression

by Lori Dajose, California Institute of Technology
 

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Like a champion fighter gaining confidence after each win, a male mouse that prevails in several successive aggressive encounters against other male mice will become even more aggressive in future encounters, attacking faster and for longer and ignoring submission signals from his opponent.


This phenomenon is interesting to people who study the neuroscience of behavior, because aggression is an innate, hard-wired behavior in the brain. This means that a mouse does not need to learn aggressive behaviors before it engages in them; aggression is instinctive upon reaching adulthood. However, experiences (say, repeated successful aggressive encounters) are able to alter this innate behavior.

Now, a team of Caltech researchers has discovered that hard-wired neural circuits governing aggression in mice are strengthened following their victories in aggressive encounters, and has identified a learning mechanism operating in the hypothalamus—a brain region traditionally viewed as the source of instincts, rather than learning.

The research was conducted in the laboratory of David Anderson, Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology, Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience Leadership Chair, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and director of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.

A paper describing the research appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 24.

There is a difference between innate behaviors and those that are learned. For example, mice can be taught that performing certain behaviors (for example, pulling a lever) can result in a positive outcome (such as receiving food). On the other hand, innate behaviors like aggression are instinctive to male mice; the mice do not need to learn how to lunge and attack when confronted with other mice they deem a threat—they just react.

Previous studies have shown that a male mouse, once it has won in several aggressive encounters with other males, will exhibit increased aggression in future encounters. In other words, an innate behavior is altered by experience. This effect is termed "aggression training."


Led by postdoctoral scholar Stefanos Stagkourakis, the Caltech team examined a particular connection in the mouse brain where a group of synapses transfer signals from a little-studied region at the junction between the amygdala (a brain region notable for its role in fear-related behaviors) and the hippocampus (which plays a role in short-term memory) to a specific subdivision of the hypothalamus called the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH), which controls aggressive behaviors in mice. (The hypothalamus also contains neurons in other subdivisions that mediate other social and homeostatic behaviors, such as mating, parental behavior, feeding, and thermoregulation, but these were not studied.)

The team found that after aggression training, these synapses show signs of long-term potentiation (LTP), which is similar to turning the volume knob up on the signal. Instead of just talking to the neurons in the hypothalamus, these synapses are shouting at them, causing them to react more strongly.

Using the Caltech Brain Imaging Center, the team studied the dendrites of neurons, protrusions extending from neurons that receive signals from other neurons, and in particular the dendrites' spines, structures that act like miniature radio antennae on the hypothalamic neurons to detect input from other brain regions. They examined the number, size, and shape of these structures before and after aggression training. They found that aggression training caused the growth of many additional dendritic spines on hypothalamic neurons. Such structural changes are expected to make these neurons more sensitive to incoming signals, and therefore more easily activated.

The team also experimentally prevented LTP from forming on these synapses during aggression training, and found that aggression-training no longer led to an increase in aggressive behaviors in these mice.

Although all of the male mice tested were genetically identical, about 25 percent never showed aggression and also were "immune" to the behavioral changes caused by aggression training. The authors further found that such behavioral heterogeneity among genetically identical mice is due to naturally occurring variations in serum testosterone levels: the non-aggressive mice had, on average, lower levels of testosterone than their aggressive siblings. Administration of supplemental testosterone to the non-aggressive mice caused both the appearance of aggressive behavior and LTP at the amygdala-hypothalamic synapses.

This work identifies changes in a very specific brain region after aggression training, but the adaptations that mediate the behavioral effect of aggression training likely occur at multiple sites in the brain. In future work, the team will examine how neural activity in different brain areas changes following social experience and will attempt to identify brain nodes of high significance in the neural circuit of aggression. The team also hopes to investigate how testosterone levels can vary among otherwise genetically identical mice, since the hormone is synthesized by genetically encoded enzymes.

The paper is titled "Experience-dependent plasticity in an innate social behavior is mediated by hypothalamic LTP."


Explore further

Neural circuit for detecting male pheromone cues relevant to inter-male aggression
More information: Stefanos Stagkourakis et al. Experience-dependent plasticity in an innate social behavior is mediated by hypothalamic LTP, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2011782117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences


Provided by California Institute of Technology

Songbirds sing, like humans flock, for opioid reward

by University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dosed with the opioid fentanyl, swallows like these would “sing like crazy” — but fall silent when researchers switched off their brains’ opioid receptors. Credit: Lauren Riters

What do songbirds and humans have in common? We crave social interaction, and the chemical rewards that flood our brain when we get it.

In a study recently published in Scientific Reports, University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers led by Lauren Riters, professor of integrative biology, found that when songbirds sing during non-mating seasons, it's because singing releases an opioid naturally produced in their brain —that's right, a compound with the same biological makeup of the highly addictive painkillers.

People have naturally-produced—or endogenous—opioids in our brain released in certain situations, like social situations, that make us feel good. That's why we like hanging out with friends, Riters says.

These naturally produced, feel-good compounds are also why many songbirds like to sing in large flocks, says Riters, after years of careful study.

"Animals—including birds, including humans—we produce our own endogenous opioids, and they reward behaviors naturally, like sexual behavior or feeding behavior," Riters says. "Studies show that endogenous opioids also make play rewarding. Songbirds learn their songs, and must practice. When we listened to birds practicing in flocks, it almost sounded as if they were playing around with the notes. Darwin even suggested that birds in flocks may be singing for 'their own amusement.' So, we thought if singing is a playful behavior, it should involve opioids."

About six years ago, a researcher in Riters' lab found a way to reduce the resonse of the Mu opioid receptors in European Starlings, a type of songbird. This receptor, a protein on the surface of a nerve cell, controls responses to endogenous opioids, and they wanted to figure out if it might regulate what sounded like playful song in birds.

To put this to the test, they had to develop a method in starlings to measure reward associated with singing. Riters' team used a method called CPP, a conditioned place preference test, where they trained the birds to associate a certain cage with singing. Later, when given a choice between two cages, birds showed a preference for the cage that they learned to associate with their own singing behavior. This shows that birds think of singing in flocks as a positive experience, Riters says.


"How do you ask a bird if it's feeling good?" Riters says. "This method is really important to studies that we've been running. It comes from studies in psychology, and is commonly used to study reward associated with drug use. We adapted it to ask questions about reward associated with singing behavior."

Once they could recognize what the birds looked like in the reward state, they administered tiny doses of fentanyl, a type of opioid that also binds to the Mu receptor, and found the drug made the birds "sing like crazy." Then they reduced the response of the opioid receptors and found that starlings no longer showed a CPP for song. This shows, Riters says, that endogenous opioids regulate intrinsically-rewarding bird song.

Riters' team ran tests over 2 years. They set up the experiment in an outdoor aviary where they'd observe the birds. Sometimes, Riters says, it proved challenging, since so many other factors contributed to the birds singing or not. Riters says her team had to make the environment as welcoming and relaxing as possible for the birds. For example, if a hawk landed near the aviary, the songbirds wouldn't sing because they'd get stressed out.

The results stood out amongst other research, because most studies of starling song involve the mating season and sexual selection, while the new study focused on song outside the breeding season in large flocks, and its connection with endogenous opioids.

"In terms of communication, not that many people are looking at the rewarding aspects, but definitely people are looking at dopamine, and how that regulates the motivation to communicate," Riters says. "Dopamine is something that, in humans, motivates your behavior and directs it towards reward."

She says her results might suggest that, in starlings, endogenous opioid-prompted song is evolutionarily advantageous, because singing in flocks allows them an opportunity to practice their song to prepare for the mating season. It might not be the most beautiful to listen to—Riters likened their chaotic song to freeform jazz—but that's okay. To them, it's just a warm-up for when they start looking for a mate.

"When the birds are singing they're also practicing motor patterns that they will later use in more serious adult contexts," Riters says. "They're also learning how to produce a vocalization that gets a social response, and they also learn how to attract a female, for example."

Riters thinks the release of opioids might also encourage sociable behavior for these songbirds. Humans have endogenous opioids that do just that, and Riters' research may also have implications for human sociality and even mental health. When humans interact in a social context, like hanging out with friends, their brains also release endogenous opioids, just like the songbirds.

Riters believes birds and mammals share the common ancestor in which these social rewards evolved, so there's a chance parts of their work can be generalized to humans.

In this case, the importance of sociality to both humans and songbirds cannot be understated. When humans don't receive enough social interaction, they might become depressed or experience other negative mental health conditions because their brains aren't producing those endogenous chemicals anymore. For example, people with social anxiety might not want to hang out in social groups, because they might have negative interactions. By studying birds, Riters says, maybe they can find ways to promote positive social interactions.

"We think that studying this kind of gregarious positive social play in songbirds is providing a unique way to come up with new ideas for treatments that might promote positive interactions in humans," Riters says. "During this pandemic and social distancing, we are missing our flockmates, right? And without contact with our flockmates, without socializing in our groups, I think we're really deprived of opioid release."


Explore further

Researchers ID chemical that influences songbirds' song choice
More information: Sharon A. Stevenson et al. Endogenous opioids facilitate intrinsically-rewarded birdsong, Scientific Reports (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67684-1

Journal information: Scientific Reports


Provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison