Nuclear weapons cannot solve the crises of our time

It’s time to step up our campaigning for peace and disarmament, 

writes JEREMY CORBYN MP

ON Hiroshima Day each August we remember the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which indiscriminately killed over 100,000 civilians and military personnel.

Still today, many survivors live with the horrific humanitarian consequences, including cancer caused by the exposure to nuclear radiation.

We must never forget these atrocities, and we must never give up on the mission to rid our world of nuclear weapons.

Hiroshima Day is so important because it involves us collectively thinking about what a nuclear weapon actually is.

It is a weapon of mass destruction that if ever used can only kill large numbers of civilians.

If a nuclear war ever again took place, there would be mass destruction on both sides of the conflict and the humanitarian effects would be disastrous.

Within this context, for those of us campaigning for peace and disarmament we should see the 2021 review of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as an opportunity to push our demands back up the agenda.

The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated many things in a way that years of campaigning could not.

It has shown that people across our planet are interdependent on each other and there is no complete hiding place from a hitherto unknown virus.

Crucially it has shown how all the weapons in the world are useless in the face of a dangerous virus.

Alongside this, the economic impact of Covid-19 is enormous. Even in the better-off Western societies the inequalities have been stark. A huge increase in foodbank usage is but one example.

In poorer societies the extremely poor have become destitute and in the refugee camps around the world the fear of the unknown future is compounded by the fear of a virus with no defence.

With this new reality the next NPT will be held and we must put the issue of nuclear disarmament back on the agenda in the run-up to it.

The NPT, groundbreaking in the 1960s, was designed to create, ultimately, a world without nuclear weapons.

Obviously at the grand level of the elimination of nuclear weapons it has not succeeded, but enormous progress has been made.

I was part of a fascinating Zoom conference with the UN disarmament commissioner Itzumi Nakamitsec and Jonathan Granoff from the American Bar Association in discussion about global security.

Jonathan made the point that the NPT of 1968, done at an intense period of the cold war, had succeeded in creating nuclear-free zones in Africa, Latin America and central Asia.

The conference next year will be faced with huge issues. The six-party talks on Korea were at least engagement, and bizarre as the circumstances were, Donald Trump meeting Kim Jong Un was a form of progress and one hopes that there can be progress towards a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

This would require a significant reduction in the tensions between the US and China, and Trump pulling back from his inflammatory anti-Chinese rhetoric when it comes to the coronavirus crisis.

The denuclearisation of the conflict between India and Pakistan must be accompanied by a peace process over Kashmir, and the rights and needs of the people of Kashmir must be secured as part of that process.

The Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone has been an active debating point at every NPT review conference since 2010 and is given more urgency by the Trump administration continuing to impose sanctions on Iran and end the multilateral agreement.

A strong declaration in support of the agreement will give impetus to a wider conference including Israel and its nuclear weapons.

Article VI of the NPT requires the five declared nuclear weapons states to take steps towards disarmament.

The UN general assembly has voted by a huge majority on the principle of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

The baton now passes back to the five permanent members of the security council.

Despite the binding obligation under the NPT to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and technology, many nuclear weapons states including Britain are failing to live up to this commitment and some are even attempting to undermine efforts.

This is hard to justify when we reflect on the horrors of nuclear mass destruction.

All the nuclear weapons states and members of the security council face huge economic issues, as does the whole world, post-Covid.

It would be a strange sense of priorities for all countries if — at a time of desperate need for an effective global health system, support for the 65 million refugees around the world and attention needed on the environment — the result was yet another round of rearmament.

Now more than ever we must redouble our efforts to build a world that genuinely meets the security needs of its people.

Poverty, human rights abuses, environmental destruction, cyber-terrorism and disease are all security threats. None of these issues can be solved by nuclear weapons or the threat of their use.

When the NPT reconvenes next year, surely there must be a realisation that an interdependent world needs to direct resources and skills at saving, preserving and extending life in addition to addressing the global environmental challenge.

Here in Britain the next strategic defence and security review is due this year, and we need to argue for an end to wasteful spending on nuclear weapons, through defence diversification and with greater public procurement in Britain to protect jobs and industries.

I first joined CND when I was 16 years old and I’m still a member today. It is up to all of us to ensure the debate in the year ahead is focused on peace and disarmament, and the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons for good.

UPDATED
Coronavirus latest: Government contracts for PPE worth millions including 50m unusable face masks to be investigated
One £252m contract for PPE included 50 million face masks subsequently deemed unusable in the NHSBy Katie Grant, Jane Merrick
August 6, 2020 10:28 pm

Investigation into Government PPE contracts to be launched, following i’s investigation (Photo: Jacob King/PA Wire)


The National Audit Office (NAO) is to investigate government contracts for personal protective equipment (PPE) handed out at the height of the pandemic after an i report earlier this week revealed desperate attempts to source the vital kit.

One £252m contract for PPE included 50 million face masks subsequently deemed unusable in the NHS. It is believed more than £150m was spent on the masks, ordered by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) from investment firm Ayanda Capital, but the coverings were rejected when it became clear they had ear loops, which are less safe than head loops. Tim Horlick, CEO of Ayanda Capital, insisted the masks were not unsafe or unusable, claiming none of the firm’s products have ever been rejected by the DHSC.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer demanded an inquiry into the contract, saying: “For months, we were told that the Government was purchasing the right equipment for the front line. Yet again it hasn’t happened. There needs now to be an investigation, an inquiry, into what went wrong with this particular contract because it’s just not good enough to people who need that protective equipment that we find ourselves in this position.”

The i politics newsletter cut through the noise


Calls to investigate

Rachel Reeves, shadow minister for the Cabinet Office (Photo: Michael Drummond/PA Wire)

It has since emerged that the NAO is to launch an investigation. In a letter to Rachel Reeves, shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, sent on 31 July, the Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove wrote that “the NAO has already written to DHSC to inform the department of its wish to start such an investigation,” according to The Times. “The Government looks forward to working closely with the NAO on this.” Mr Gove also expressed his belief that officials “balanced the urgent need for PPE with the requirement to obtain value for public money”.

The development comes after an investigation by i revealed that, at the height of the coronavirus outbreak, desperate NHS trusts paid huge sums of money to suppliers ranging from an artisan gin distiller to a costume jewellery company to secure PPE for staff and patients. The Good Law Project and EveryDoctor, which are suing the Government over its Ayanda contract, estimate the 50 million masks would have cost more than £150m.


Read More
PPE chaos: Layla Moran demands Government set out ‘clear and transparent’ strategy to avoid fresh shortages for NHS and care homes

Mr Horlick said his company supplied DHSC with the masks they requested, approved and ordered, adding that it may be that the internal NHS requirements changed as things were moving fast at the time.

Court papers show the Government awarded the £252.5m contract to Ayanda on 29 April, with £41.25m payable on commencement to secure the manufacturing capacity.

NHS outsourcing and the 50 million faulty face masks fiasco

NHS staff protest over pay and working conditions
THE wretched saga of the government’s purchase of 50 million unusable face masks has all the hallmarks of a classic Tory scandal.

 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/nhs-outsourcing-and-50-million-faulty-face-masks-fiasco

Wearily we note that ministers insist there is no conflict of interest when the person who brokered the sale, Andrew Mills, is both a government adviser and sits on the board of Ayanda Capital, the firm that sold the substandard equipment to the state and made between £25 and £50 million doing so.

The revelation that the masks could not be used over concerns they were unsafe comes as part of the Good Law Project’s lawsuit against the government over the Ayanda Capital contract and others.

The lawsuit is driven by concerns that the Tories are handing contracts to cronies without any relevant experience in delivering what they say they will: project director Jolyon Maugham, previously more famous for repeated bids to have the EU referendum overturned in the courts and for boasting about beating a fox to death while wearing a kimono, points out reasonably enough that there is “cause for alarm” when PPE contracts of over £100m each are signed with “a pest control company, a confectioner and a family hedge fund.”

Labour calls for an inquiry. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves says the National Audit Office ought to investigate the government’s mishandling of personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies.

A ticking off from the National Audit Office will no doubt force ministers to change their ways, as it did when it condemned universal credit in 2018, or pointed out that benefit sanctions cost more than they save in 2016, or slapped George Osborne on the wrist for pretending loss-making sales of public assets were actually profitable in 2013.

Setting in motion the tired constitutional machinery by which ministers’ decisions are scrutinised and criticised after the fact is not an adequate response to this sordid deal, because its roots lie — as Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy points out — in the government’s entire outsourcing strategy.

Asking a wealth advisory firm like Ayanda to supply face masks is typical of a government that awards Brexit ferry contracts to a company with no ships, or gives serial outsourcers Serco a lucrative test-and-trace contract despite it having no track record in the field and having been fined over £1m just months before for bungling its last government contract. (Junior health minister Edward Argar used to be a lobbyist for Serco, but, of course, there is no conflict of interest).

The catastrophic failure to supply front-line workers with PPE, which has cost uncounted lives, has been exposed by campaign group We Own It as a consequence of the impact of privatisation and outsourcing on the NHS supply chain, creating “a chaotic mish-mash of private contractors managing the purchasing process,” in the words of director Cat Hobbes.

The campaign group’s investigation study Privatised and Unprepared: the NHS Supply Chain, published in May, pointed out that “this isn’t just a story about bad apples. It is a story of a flawed system that has helped turn the pandemic into an utter disaster.”

Labour remains theoretically committed to cleansing our NHS of private-sector providers, whose creeping infestation of the service undermines quality and accountability, enables the superexploitation of outsourced workers and puts patients at risk.

But like so much that was bold and ambitious in the party’s prospectus, that demand is no longer raised, with criticism of the government carefully kept from implying criticism of the system itself.

Even if the courts demonstrate wrongdoing over a handful of contracts, such abuses are written into the process, especially given the revolving door between government and the businesses that bid for government contracts.

Cleaning the Augean stables requires a rather more radical challenge to the status quo, one that insists that public services should be publicly owned, publicly controlled and publicly delivered.

Malaria: Parasite resistance to artemisinin derivatives now affecting Africa

INSTITUT PASTEUR

 

Resistance to artemisinin, the main component of the current antimalarial treatments recommended by WHO, is already widespread in South-East Asia, but it had not previously been described in Africa. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with the National Malaria Control Program in Rwanda (Rwanda Biomedical Center), the World Health Organization (WHO), Cochin Hospital and Columbia University (New York, USA), recently detected the emergence and spread of malaria parasites capable of resisting artemisinin derivatives for the first time in Rwanda. The results of the research were published on August 3, 2020 in Nature Medicine.

Malaria, caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium, represents a major public health problem. Almost 3.2 billion people (virtually half the world's population) in 89 countries are at risk of contracting the disease, for which there is currently no vaccine. Every year, over 200 million cases and over 400,000 deaths are recorded.

For more than 15 years, treatment of malaria episodes (typical cycles of the disease alternating between fever, shivering and chills, and severe sweating) caused by Plasmodium falciparum has depended on artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), which combine a fast-acting artemisinin derivative and a partner drug with a long half-life. Since 2008, parasites capable of resisting artemisinin derivatives in South-East Asia (Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos) have become increasingly prevalent. This resistance, which leads to a delay in the clearance of parasites from the bloodstream of individuals treated with an ACT, is currently a serious threat that may hinder efforts to tackle the disease. A major concern is that these resistant parasites will spread through Sub-Saharan Africa, the continent most affected by malaria (>90% of cases), as was the case with previous generations of antimalarial treatments (chloroquine and folic acid antagonists). In the 1980s, the reduced efficacy of chloroquine is thought to have contributed to several million additional deaths from malaria in young African children.

Since 2014, the geographical distribution of artemisinin resistance has been monitored based on the detection of mutations in the Kelch13 gene in parasites. These mutations are believed to reduce the function of the Kelch13 protein, thought to be involved in hemoglobin degradation in infected red blood cells. Currently, the most widespread resistant parasites in South-East Asia have the C580Y mutation. Recently, C580Y mutant parasites have also been detected in Guyana and Papua New Guinea. In Africa, where ACTs remain very effective, Kelch13 mutant parasites have remained rare. For instance, the KARMA study, the first global map of artemisinin resistance, showed that less than 5% of African samples had mutations and that more than 50% of the mutants detected had only been observed once. Scientists also demonstrated that the most frequently observed mutation in Africa (A578S) did not confer artemisinin resistance to gene-edited Asian parasites.

Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, involved in a WHO-supported project on molecular monitoring of resistance in Africa, recently identified the first signs of emergence of artemisinin-resistant Kelch13 mutant parasites in Africa. The results describe significant proportions of parasites carrying the R561H mutation in two locations 100km apart (prevalences of 7.4% in Masaka and 0.7% in Rukara, respectively). Whole-genome sequencing of these parasites indicates that the R561H mutants were selected from Rwandan parasite populations and that they had not spread from Asian parasites (from Thailand or Myanmar, where the R561H mutation has previously been observed). "These unexpected results contrast with previous scenarios in which the emergence of chloroquine- or pyrimethamine-resistant parasites in Africa was caused by the spread of resistant parasites from South-East Asia. It was thought that a similar scenario would apply for the emergence of artemisinin-resistant parasites in Africa," explains Didier Ménard, Head of the Malaria Genetics and Resistance Unit at the Institut Pasteur. The fact that this resistant strain has spread between several places in Rwanda and its ability to resist artemisinin in vitro have major public health implications. In the absence of effective measures to contain the spread of resistant parasites in Rwanda and neighboring countries, there is a risk that over time they will acquire the ability to resist the partner drugs used in ACTs. This would mean that the only available treatments would become ineffective, as has occurred in South-East Asia. A model of this scenario, in which no measures are taken, recently predicted that the inefficacy of ACTs in Africa could be responsible for 78 million additional cases and 116,000 additional deaths over a five-year period.

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This research was supported by the Institut Pasteur, the World Health Organization, the World Bank (via the East African Public Health Laboratory Networking Project), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Grant OPP1140599), the United States Department of Defense (W81XWH-19-1-0086) and the National Institutes of Health (R01 AI109023).

Increased global mortality linked to arsenic exposure in rice-based diets

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

 

Rice is the most widely consumed staple food source for a large part of the world's population. It has now been confirmed that rice can contribute to prolonged low-level arsenic exposure leading to thousands of avoidable premature deaths per year.

Arsenic is well known acute poison, but it can also contribute to health problems, including cancers and cardiovascular diseases, if consumed at even relatively low concentrations over an extended period of time.

Compared to other staple foods, rice tends to concentrate inorganic arsenic. Across the globe, over three billion people consume rice as their major staple and the inorganic arsenic in that rice has been estimated by some to give rise to over 50,000 avoidable premature deaths per year.

A collaborating group of cross-Manchester researchers from The University of Manchester and The University of Salford have published new research exploring the relationship, in England and Wales, between the consumption of rice and cardiovascular diseases caused by arsenic exposure.

Their findings, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, shows that - once corrected for the major factors known to contribute to cardiovascular disease (for example obesity, smoking, age, lack of income, lack of education) there is a significant association between elevated cardiovascular mortality, recorded at a local authority level, and the consumption of inorganic arsenic bearing rice.

Professor David Polya from The University of Manchester said: "The type of study undertaken, an ecological study, has many limitations, but is a relatively inexpensive way of determining if there is plausible link between increased consumption of inorganic arsenic bearing rice and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Polya from The University of Manchester said "The study suggests that the highest 25 % of rice consumers in England and Wales may plausibly be at greater risks of cardiovascular mortality due to inorganic arsenic exposure compared to the lowest 25 % of rice consumers.

"The modelled increased risk is around 6 % (with a confidence interval for this figure of 2 % to 11 %). The increased risk modelled might also reflect in part a combination of the susceptibility, behaviours and treatment of those communities in England and Wales with relatively high rice diets."

While more robust types of study are required to confirm the result, given many of the beneficial effects otherwise of eating rice due to its high fibre content, the research team suggest that rather than avoid eating rice, people could consume rice varieties, such as basmati, and different types like polished rice (rather whole grain rice) which are known to typically have lower inorganic arsenic contents. Other positive behaviours would be to eat a balanced variety of staples, not just predominately rice.

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The lead author, Ms Lingqian Xu, is a President's Doctoral Scholarship Award recipient from the University of Manchester and supervised by Professor David Polya (The University of Manchester) and Dr Debapriya Mondal (University of Salford). Mr Qian Li is a former Masters of Pollution and Environmental Control (MPEC) student from The University of Manchester.

Methanol synthesis: Insights into the structure of an enigmatic catalyst

In the past, the catalyst for the production of methanol had eluded all attempts to clarify its surface structure

RUHR-UNIVERSITY BOCHUM

 

IMAGE: HOLGER RULAND, DANIEL LAUDENSCHLEGER AND MARTIN MUHLER (LEFT TO RIGHT) COLLABORATED FOR THE STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: RUB, MARQUARD

Methanol is one of the most important basic chemicals used, for example, to produce plastics or building materials. To render the production process even more efficient, it would be helpful to know more about the copper/zinc oxide/aluminium oxide catalyst deployed in methanol production. To date, however, it hasn't been possible to analyse the structure of its surface under reaction conditions. A team from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI CEC) has now succeeded in gaining insights into the structure of its active site. The researchers describe their findings in the journal Nature Communications from 4 August 2020.

In a first, the team showed that the zinc component of the active site is positively charged and that the catalyst has as many as two copper-based active sites. "The state of the zinc component at the active site has been the subject of controversial discussion since the catalyst was introduced in the 1960s. Based on our findings, we can now derive numerous ideas on how to optimise the catalyst in the future," outlines Professor Martin Muhler, Head of the Department of Industrial Chemistry at RUB and Max Planck Fellow at MPI CEC. For the project, he collaborated with Bochum-based researcher Dr. Daniel Laudenschleger and Mülheim-based researcher Dr. Holger Ruland.

Sustainable methanol production

The study was embedded in the Carbon-2-Chem project, the aim of which is to reduce CO2 emissions by utilising metallurgical gases produced during steel production for the manufacture of chemicals. In combination with electrolytically produced hydrogen, metallurgical gases could also serve as a starting material for sustainable methanol synthesis. As part of the Carbon-2-Chem project, the research team recently examined how impurities in metallurgical gases, such as are produced in coking plants or blast furnaces, affect the catalyst. This research ultimately paved the way for insights into the structure of the active site.

Active site deactivated for analysis

The researchers had identified nitrogen-containing molecules- ammonia and amines - as impurities that act as catalyst poisons. They deactivated the catalyst, but not permanently: if the impurities disappear, the catalyst recovers by itself. Using a unique research apparatus that was developed in-house, i.e. a continuously operated flow apparatus with an integrated high-pressure pulse unit, the researchers passed ammonia and amines over the catalyst surface, temporarily deactivating the active site with a zinc component. Despite the zinc component being deactivated, another reaction still took place on the catalyst: namely the conversion of ethene to ethane. The researchers thus detected a second active site operating in parallel, which contains metallic copper but doesn't have a zinc component.

Since ammonia and the amines are bound to positively charged metal ions on the surface, it was evident that zinc, as part of the active site, carries a positive charge.

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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Dear Dr... how our email style reveals much about our personalities

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

 

A new theory from psychologists at the University of Bath argues that how we communicate online, including via email and social media, reveals much about our personality and character types.

In an open letter for the journal Molecular Autism, the researchers at Bath and Cardiff highlight clear differences in electronic communication styles between autistic and non-autistic people. And they say these findings have wider relevance about how we communicate online and for being respectful of others' communication styles.

By looking at the ways in which email style differed between two groups, the researchers observed fewer social niceties and less preamble in emails from autistic people (e.g. 'I hope you are well'), yet a stronger and polite observance of formal address, (e.g. 'Dear Dr...').

In autistic people, they noticed considerable attention to detail, often demonstrated by participants correcting the researcher, by highlighting grammatical errors or broken hyperlinks. But autistic people were also more open to correcting themselves, for example if they found spelling mistakes in their previous emails. Non-autistic people rarely seemed to make these corrections, likely fearing they would appear rude or silly.

They also noted that many autistic people communicated in precise, though socially unconventional ways (for example referring to their arrival time for a meeting as 14:08 or describing a meeting point with map coordinates). Such interactions almost never occurred when emails were exchanged with non-autistic people.

The analysis, say the researchers, is important for all of us - not just those with autism - in thinking about how we might better adapt our own styles and be more respectful of others. The researchers say that the autistic email style is far from a weakness and that we could benefit from adopting a more direct, efficient, and precise autistic-like style in our emails.

Dr Punit Shah from the Department of Psychology at Bath explained: "There is no right or wrong way to email, but there are definitely different email styles and that can be revealing of a whole host of characteristics. Our work only looked at the differences between non-autistic and autistic people, but this topic has much wider relevance and application. In a world where we are increasingly reliant on email communication, how we communicate online really matters.

"Some people may bash off emails in seconds, with little care for polite preamble, formalities, or spelling. But we must try not to read too much into how something is said and focus more on its function. We should also be more willing to give people 'the benefit of the doubt' if they seem rude as we don't know about their social-communication differences, potentially related to autism, or other contextual factors that might have influenced their electronic communication, for example managing child care while emailing remotely from home.

"On the other hand, for some people with autism and many others in society more generally, writing emails to friends and colleagues, or posting to social media can be challenging. For some people, this can create a block where, for fear of an 'email faux pas', they become unresponsive online. This can be problematic, potentially leading to feelings of stress and anxiety.

"In our fast-paced online world we will hopefully become as tolerant and respectful of different electronic communication styles as we are of social differences in face-to-face communications."

To read the open letter 'Electronic communication in autism spectrum conditions' see https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-020-00329-2.

How the seafloor of the Antarctic Ocean is changing - and the climate is following suit

ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH

 

The glacial history of the Antarctic is currently one of the most important topics in climate research. Why? Because worsening climate change raises a key question: How did the ice masses of the southern continent react to changes between cold and warm phases in the past, and how will they do so in the future? A team of international experts, led by geophysicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), has now shed new light on nine pivotal intervals in the climate history of the Antarctic, spread over 34 million years, by reconstructing the depth of the Southern Ocean in each one. These new maps offer insights into e.g. the past courses of ocean currents, and show that, in past warm phases, the large ice sheets of East Antarctica reacted to climate change in a similar way to how ice sheets in West Antarctica are doing so today. The maps and the freely available article have just been released in the online journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a publication of the American Geological Union.

The Southern Ocean is one of the most important pillars of the Earth's climate system. Its Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the most powerful current on the planet, links the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and has effectively isolated the Antarctic continent and its ice masses from the rest of the world for over 30 million years. Then and now, ocean currents can only flow where the water is sufficiently deep and there are no obstacles like land bridges, islands, underwater ridges and plateaus blocking their way. Accordingly, anyone seeking to understand the climate history and glacial history of the Antarctic needs to know exactly what the depth and surface structures of the Southern Ocean's floor looked like in the distant past.

Researchers around the globe can now find this information in new, high-resolution grid maps of the ocean floor and data-modelling approaches prepared by a team of international experts led by geoscientists from the AWI, which cover nine pivotal intervals in the climate history of the Antarctic. "In the course of the Earth's history, the geography of the Southern Ocean has constantly changed, as continental plates collided or drifted apart, ridges and seamounts formed, ice masses shoved deposited sediments across the continental shelves like bulldozers, and meltwater transported sediment from land to sea," says AWI geophysicist and co-author Dr Karsten Gohl. Each process changed the ocean's depth and, in some cases, the currents. The new grid maps clearly show how the surface structure of the ocean floor evolved over 34 million years - at a resolution of ca. 5 x 5 kilometres per pixel, making them 15 times more precise than previous models.

Dataset reflects the outcomes of 40 years of geoscientific research in the Antarctic

In order to reconstruct the past water depths, the experts gathered geoscientific field data from 40 years of Antarctic research, which they then combined in a computer model of the Southern Ocean's seafloor. The basis consisted of seismic profiles gathered during over 150 geoscientific expeditions and which, when put end-to-end, cover half a million kilometres. In seismic reflection, sound waves are emitted, penetrating the seafloor to a depth of several kilometres. The reflected signal is used to produce an image of the stratified sediment layers below the surface - a bit like cutting a piece of cake, which reveals the individual layers. The experts then compared the identified layers with sediment cores from the corresponding regions, which allowed them to determine the ages of most layers. In a final step, they used a computer model to 'turn back time' and calculate which sediment deposits were already present in the Southern Ocean at specific intervals, and to what depths in the seafloor they extended in the respective epochs.

Turning points in the climate history of the Antarctic

They applied this approach to nine key intervals in the Antarctic's climate history, including e.g. the warm phase of the early Pliocene, five million years ago, which is widely considered to be a potential template for our future climate. Back then the world was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer on average than today, partly because the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was as high as 450 ppm (parts per million). The IPCC (IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, 2019) has cited this concentration as the best-case scenario for the year 2100; in June 2019 the level was 415 ppm. Back then, the Antarctic ice shelves now floating on the ocean had most likely completely collapsed. "Based on the sediment deposits we can tell, for example, that in extremely warm epochs like the Pliocene, the large ice sheets in East Antarctica reacted in a very similar way to what we're currently seeing in ice sheets in West Antarctica," reports Dr Katharina Hochmuth, the study's first author and a former AWI geophysicist, who is now conducting research at the University of Leicester, UK.

Accordingly, the new maps provide data on important climatic conditions that researchers around the world need in order to accurately simulate the development of ice masses in their ice-sheet and climate models, and to produce more reliable forecasts. Researchers can also download the corresponding datasets from the AWI's Earth system database PANGAEA.

In addition to researchers from the AWI, experts from the following institutions took part in the study: (1) All Russia Scientific Research Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the Ocean, St. Petersburg, Russia; (2) St. Petersburg State University, Russia; (3) University of Tasmania, Australia; (4) GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand; and (5) the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics, Italy.

The grid maps depict the geography of the Southern Ocean in the following key intervals in the climate history and glacial history of the Antarctic:

(1) 34 million years ago - transition from the Eocene to the early Oligocene; the first continental-size ice sheet on Antarctic continent
(2) 27 million years ago - the early Oligocene;
(3) 24 million years ago - transition from the Oligocene to the Miocene;
(4) 21 million years ago - the early Miocene;
(5) 14 million years ago - the mid-Miocene, Miocene Climatic Optimum (mean global temperature ca. 4 degrees Celsius warmer than today; high carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere);
(6) 10.5 million years ago - the late Miocene, major continental-scale glaciation;
(7) 5 million years ago - the early Pliocene (mean global temperature ca. 2 - 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today; high carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere);
(8) 2.65 million years ago - transition from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene;
(9) 0.65 million years ago - the Pleistocene.

The data on sediment cores was gathered in geoscientific research projects conducted in connection with the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP).

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The study was released in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems under the following title:

K. Hochmuth, K. Gohl, G. Leitchenkov, I. Sauermilch, J.M. Whittaker, G. Uenzelmann- Neben, B. Davy, L. De Santis: The evolving paleobathymetry of the circum-Antarctic Southern Ocean since 34 Ma - a key to understanding past cryosphere-ocean developments, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, DOI: 10.1029/2020GC009122

The freely available datasets corresponding to the maps can be found at the PANGAEA data portal (http://www.pangaea.de) or downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.918663.

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM PAYS 

Study reveals impact of powerful CEOs and money laundering on bank performance

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

 

Banks with powerful CEO's and smaller, less independent, boards are more likely to take risks and be susceptible to money laundering, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The study tested for a link between bank risk and enforcements issued by US regulators for money laundering in a sample of 960 publicly listed US banks during the period 2004-2015.

The results, published in the International Journal of Finance and Economics, show that money laundering enforcements are associated with an increase in bank risk on several measures of risk. In addition, the impact of money laundering is heightened by the presence of powerful CEOs and only partly mitigated by large and independent executive boards.

Researchers Dr Yurtsev Uymaz and Prof John Thornton at UEA, and Dr Yener Altunbas of Bangor University, conclude that banks with powerful CEOs warrant the particular attention of regulators engaged in anti-money laundering efforts, especially when boards of directors are small and not independent.

The study is believed to be the first to show that money laundering is also a significant driver of bank risk, alongside banks' business models and ownership structures, the regulatory and supervisory framework, and market competition.

Previously banking research on the determinants of risk-taking has largely ignored the potential role of money laundering, which the authors say is surprising given combatting money laundering is a major focus of US, and other, bank regulators concerned with the stability of the financial system.

For example, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency views it as posing risks to the safety and soundness of the financial industry and the safety of the nation more generally as terrorists employ money laundering to fund their operations.

The Financial Action Task Force, the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, also cites changes in money demand and increased volatility of international capital flows and exchange rates due to unanticipated cross-border asset transfers as being among the potential adverse economic consequences of money laundering.

Lead author Dr Uymaz, of UEA's Norwich Business School, said: "It is important to understand all possible risks, given those from money laundering have been increased by the growth in volume of cross-border transactions that have made banks inherently more vulnerable.

"They are also impacted by the fact that regulators are continually revising rules as their focus expands from organized crime to terrorism, while governments have expanded their use of economic sanctions to target individual countries, entities, and even specific individuals as part of their foreign policies.

"Money laundering exposes banks to serious reputational, operational, and compliance risks that could result in significant financial costs, for example through fines and sanctions by regulators, claims against the bank, investigation costs, asset seizures and freezes, and loan losses. It also results in the diversion of valuable management time and operational resources to resolve money laundering-related problems.

"We show that board size and independence can mitigate but not fully offset the impact of money laundering on bank risk, and that powerful CEOs impact adversely on bank risk taking and accentuate the negative impact of money laundering on risk."

The authors use three measures of bank risk. The first is default risk, the assumption being that money laundering enforcements could lead to the failure of an individual bank because of reputational damage and/or the impact of severe financial penalties on bank capital.

The second measure is systematic risk, where, for example, money laundering in the banking sector could be so widespread so as not to be diversifiable against within the sector.

The final one is a measure of systemic risk, which captures the reaction of individual banks to systemic events, for example if financial penalties and other costs associated with enforcements because of money laundering have debilitated the bank.

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The study 'Money laundering and bank risk: evidence from US banks', Yurtsev Uymaz, John Thornton and Yener Altunbas, is published in the International Journal of Finance and Economics.

Between shark and ray: The evolutionary advantage of the sea angels

Threatened with extinction despite perfect adaptation

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

 

The general picture of a shark is that of a fast and large ocean predator. Some species, however, question this image - for example angel sharks. They have adapted to a life on the bottom of the oceans, where they lie in wait for their prey. In order to be able to hide on or in the sediment, the body of angel sharks became flattened in the course of their evolution, making them very similar to rays, which are closely related to sharks.

Flattened body as indication for a successful lifestyle

The oldest known complete fossils of angel sharks are about 160 million years old and demonstrate that the flattened body was established early in their evolution. This also indicates that these extinct angel sharks already had a similar lifestyle as their extant relatives - and that this lifestyle obviously was very successful.

Angel sharks are found all over the world today, ranging from temperate to tropical seas, but most of these species are threatened. In order to understand the patterns and processes that led to their present low diversity and the possible consequences of their particular anatomy, the team has studied the body shapes of angel sharks since their origins using modern methods.

Today's species are very similar

For this purpose, the skulls of extinct species from the late Jurassic period (about 160 million years ago) and of present-day species were quantitatively analysed using X-ray and CT images and prepared skulls employing geometric-morphometric approaches. In doing so, the evolution of body shapes could be explained comparatively, independent of body size.

The results show that early angel sharks were different in their external shape, whereas modern species show a comparably lower variation in shape. "Many of the living species are difficult to identify on the basis of their skeletal anatomy and shape, which could be problematic for species recognition," explains Faviel A. López-Romero.

Angel sharks are well adapted, but react slowly to environmental changes

It has been shown that in living species the individual parts of the skull skeleton are more closely integrated than in their extinct relatives. This led to a reduced variability in appearance during the evolution of angel sharks. "The effect of integrating different parts of the skull into individual, highly interdependent modules can lead to a limited ability to evolve in different forms, but at the same time increases the ability to successfully adapt to specific environmental conditions," explains Jürgen Kriwet.

In the case of the angel sharks, increasing geographical isolation resulted in the development of different species with very similar adaptations. "But modular integration also means that such animals are no longer able to react quickly to environmental changes, which increases their risk of extinction," concludes Jürgen Kriwet.

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Publication in Scientific Reports:

Evolutionary trends of the conserved neurocranium shape in angel sharks (Squatiniformes, Elasmobranchii). López-Romero, F. A., Stumpf, S., Pfaff, C., Marramà, G., Johanson, Z. & Kriwet, J. in: Scientific Reports.

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-69525-7