The brain network driving changes in consciousness

Activity of brain network linked to changes in connectedness for both sleep and anesthesia

SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE

Research News

 NEWS RELEASE 28-DEC-2020

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IMAGE: DIFFERENCES IN BRAIN ACTIVITY BETWEEN CONNECTED AND DISCONNECTED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIED WITH POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY (PET) IMAGING. ACTIVITY OF THE THALAMUS, ANTERIOR (ACC) AND POSTERIOR CINGULATE CORTICES (PCC), AND... view more 

CREDIT: SCHEININ ET AL., JNEUROSCI 2020

The loss and return of consciousness is linked to the same network of brain regions for both sleep and anesthesia, according to new research published in JNeurosci.

The biological basis of consciousness has confounded scientists for centuries. Our experimental techniques falter, as the effects of sleep and anesthetic drugs alter brain activity beyond changes in consciousness. In addition, behavior does not always reveal someone's state of consciousness. An unresponsive person might still be aware of their surroundings (connected), or unaware but still experiencing their internal world (disconnected).

Scheinin et al. sought networks associated with human consciousness by measuring the brain activity of adult males with PET as they fell asleep and went under anesthesia. The research team woke participants mid-experiment to interview them and confirm their state of connectedness. Changes in connectedness corresponded to the activity of a network comprised of regions deep inside the brain: the thalamus, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyri. These regions exhibited less blood flow when a participant lost connectedness and more blood flow when they regained it. The pattern held true for both sleep and anesthesia, indicating the changes corresponded to connectedness rather than the effects of sleep or drugs, and that the network may be imperative for human consciousness.

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Manuscript title: Foundations of Human Consciousness: Imaging the Twilight Zone

About JNeurosci

JNeurosci, the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.

About The Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.

Big bumblebees learn locations of best

flowers

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Research News

IMAGE: A BUMBLEBEE ON A FLOWER. view more 

CREDIT: NATALIE HEMPEL DE IBARRA

Big bumblebees take time to learn the locations of the best flowers, new research shows.

Meanwhile smaller bumblebees - which have a shorter flight range and less carrying capacity - don't pay special attention to flowers with the richest nectar.

University of Exeter scientists examined the "learning flights" which most bees perform after leaving flowers.

Honeybees are known to perform such flights - and the study shows bumblebees do the same, repeatedly looking back to memorise a flower's location.

"It might not be widely known that pollinating insects learn and develop individual flower preferences, but in fact bumblebees are selective," said Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, Associate Professor at Exeter's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour.

"On leaving a flower, they can actively decide how much effort to put into remembering its location.

"The surprising finding of our study is that a bee's size determines this decision making and the learning behaviour."

In the study, captive bees visited artificial flowers containing sucrose (sugar) solution of varying concentrations.

The larger the bee, the more its learning behaviour varied depending on the richness of the sucrose solution.

Smaller bees invested the same amount of effort in learning the locations of the artificial flowers, regardless of whether sucrose concentration was high or low.

"The differences we found reflect the different roles of bees in their colonies," said Professor Hempel de Ibarra.

"Large bumblebees can carry larger loads and explore further from the nest than smaller ones.

"Small ones with a smaller flight range and carrying capacity cannot afford to be as selective, so they accept a wider range of flowers.

"These small bees tend to be involved more with tasks inside the nest - only going out to forage if food supplies in the colony are running low."

The study was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of Sussex.

The bees were observed in greenhouses at the University of Exeter's award-winning Streatham Campus, and Professor Hempel de Ibarra thanked the university's Grounds and Gardens team for their continued support.

The study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

The paper, published in the journal Current Biology, is entitled: "Small and large bumblebees invest differently when learning about flowers."

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My great-grandfather denounced Stalin. Here's how to survive the next autocrat.

© Provided by NBC News

Soon-to-be ex-President Donald Trump has proven that even the United States, which has long touted its “city upon a hill” universal appeal, is not immune to authoritarianism. In recent memory, there have been other threats to U.S. democracy, yet none so dangerous as Trump’s Twitter tyranny.

When we think about surviving autocracies, we often focus on fighting the autocrats and their agents. But one way to combat tyrants is by limiting their power over people through reading. Books make it harder for despots to capture our “hearts and minds.” Appealing to our intellect and imagination, stories are a great weapon against a slogan or a soundbite. When common sense is in short supply, reading helps us deal with chaos and uncertainty. There is a feeling of control when morals and justice are restored, a reflective narrative becoming a road map of how to be or not to be.

For almost a century, the United States' leadership in world affairs made it an indisputable “first,” a superpower opposing undemocratic forces elsewhere. It has not been always benevolent, but by and large it has been beneficial to the globe.

VIDEO Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Trump isn't a madman. He's been following the authoritarian playbook since day one

Trump has pushed another “America First” to justify his self-serving nationalism — tearing up trade deals and stepping back from global institutions. This slogan, once associated with opponents of the U.S. entering World War II, now illustrates how even this nation can suffer from dictatorial urges, a scenario already imagined in the 1935 fine piece of literature "It Can’t Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. And reading Philip Roth’s "The Plot Against America," we recognize the outgoing White House occupant — almost a caricature textbook despot — as the present-day version of Roth’s “America First Party” fictional president Charles Lindbergh.

The United States of America is a far cry from the traditional Hitler- or Stalin-type authoritarianism, characterized by complete state domination over people’s lives. But it is no longer the America of everyone’s dream that won the Cold War — the laissez-faire land of individual freedoms, enhanced efficiency, advanced technology and alluring popular culture.

There is such a problem as too much of a good thing, and perhaps America's triumph has led to its defeat. Back in 1953, Ray Bradbury warned about such an outcome in “Fahrenheit 451”: Efficiency was reduced to simplification, technology replaced reality with a digital screen and an occasional amusement devolved into a constant quest for entertainment in a country that has become addicted to and mediated by reality television.

As early as 380 BC, Plato explained that though democracy is seen as providing protection against absolute power, you can have both: “Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” And in 1835, describing “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed the country's potential weakness: the tyranny not of a dictator but of a majority that falls for easy answers and seeks excitement and undemanding catchphrases framed as ultimate truths. The “omnipotent” power of the crowd — the uncritical jumping on a bandwagon of other people’s assertions — in America can constrain “freedom of mind,” he wrote, hampering debate and making enemy of opposing opinions.
This is part of a special series looking at how we survived 2020 — and how we can keep surviving in 2021. Read more here.

Now, the crowd-pleasing president has become a vehicle of the extreme entertainment and outrageous claims that de Tocqueville feared could demoralize American democracy. Trump’s tweeting not only caters to simplistic solutions, but also oppresses from the top, just like actual tyrants in traditionally despotic states. His unprecedented efforts to overturn the presidential election are now almost indistinguishable from other fellow autocrats, following the dictatorial scripts of Russia, Turkey or Venezuela.

The United States still has what those others do not: a legal system that is mostly independent from the authority of the executive and legislative branches. With elections now officially certified for President-elect Joe Biden, democracy has prevailed, so far. But each of America’s undemocratic cycles brings it closer to conventional authoritarianism.

In the 1970s, the efforts of Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon to undermine opponents by spying on them resulted in his impeachment trial and resignation. Yet Dick “the Dicktator” Cheney, the real mastermind behind the George W. Bush administration’s unjustified wars and policy of torture, has become one of the patriarchs of the Republican party. And now Trump, another almost-impeached president, is able to assault democratic elections with the support of almost half of the country.

What if democracy cannot withstand the pressure next time? Trump may or may not be done with politics, but the people who emulate and support him aren’t done with America.

So how can we make sure another Trump doesn’t rise to power? You probably can’t. Russia has tried many times. In 1956, my great-grandfather Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin, an ultimate dictator responsible for millions imprisoned and killed in the Soviet Gulag labor camps. Mikhail Gorbachev continued on with those denunciations during his 1980s perestroika (restructuring). Today, however, the shadow of Stalinism looms large over the strong-armed autocracy of Vladimir Putin.

And here’s where reading comes in. Trump spreading his freewheeling fictions takes full advantage of this culture of willful ignorance. This may sound banal, but reading confronts simple-mindedness.

Knowledge can help prevent taking at face value easily digestible and cliché-affirming soundbites. After all, the end of global communism was arguably brought on less by the Kremlin’s bad politics and more by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s powerful “The Gulag Archipelago,” his eyewitness account of the horrors of Stalin’s rule.

In the United States, politics has become a product less dependent on policy than on PR and performance. Yet, politicians should not be defined by our desire to have a beer with them, but rather by knowledge, professionalism and public service, qualities sorely missing in the last four years of American life. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser described in their very timely biography of James Baker III, a secretary of state in the waning years of the Cold War, this kind of leader as a deliberative doer rather than a silly showman. Baker’s expert handling of foreign affairs helped smooth disagreements between George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev, which hastened the fall of Soviet-era communism. This example certainly merits our attention.

Books don’t only make us wiser, generously allowing us to absorb the experience of others. They also tell us there are limits to despotism — a populist message of self-aggrandizement is not forever. When the message doesn’t correspond to reality long enough, change can prevail.

Related:
THINKing about how we survived one of the worst years ever — and what happens next

My mother's death isn't something I survived. It's something I'm still living though.

Congresswoman-elect Cori Bush reflects on her Black Lives Matter roots and why she ran for Congress

The Missouri native never saw herself as an activist. Then, Michael Brown died.

ByBrad Billington andAnthony Rivas
28 December 2020,



Rep.-elect Cori Bush on progress of racial justice in 2020, where we need to go
“It's all over the place that black lives matter. It's a fad,” Bush said. “But what we need to do is no...

Representative-elect Cori Bush did not envision herself as an activist -- let alone the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress -- when she took to the streets in 2014 to protest the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Brown, a Black 18-year-old, was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, on Aug. 9, 2014. The incident sparked nationwide protests and marked a national recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement.


"I didn't set out to become an activist. That wasn't even a thing back then," Bush, a former nurse and pastor who lived six minutes away from where Brown died, told ABC News' "The Year: 2020." "I was watching my community in rage. I was watching my community just look a way and feel a way that I was unfamiliar with."

Six years later, Bush unseated longtime incumbent William Lacy Clay Jr. in the Democratic primaries to represent Missouri's 1st Congressional District, which includes Ferguson. She will be sworn in Jan. 3.


ABC News
Democratic Representative-elect Cori Bush of Missouri reflects on her activist beginnings in the w...

During an interview with ABC News, Bush reflected on how the Black Lives Matter movement has grown and why she decided to run for Congress.

In 2014, she said, the protesters weren't seeking to build a movement, but rather, get justice.

"We met out there in a situation of trauma, and we were just out there seeking justice," she said. "We weren't seeking a name. We weren't seeking to build a movement. We weren't seeking likes on social media. We were out there to get justice for Michael Brown Jr. and his family, and then not only that, [but also] to see how we could stop what's happening in this country as it relates to policing and Black bodies."

Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police Department in November 2014, the same month a grand jury chose not to indict him for Brown's death. In March 2015, the U.S. Justice Department also declined to prosecute him, citing evidence and witnesses supporting Wilson's claims that Brown attacked him.

Bush lamented the number of Black people who've died at the hands of police since Brown was killed, including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd this year. Nevertheless, she acknowledged the impact of their deaths on the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Seeing that video of that police officer, Derek Chauvin, with his knee on the neck of George Floyd out there on the ground in public, in front of all those people with other officers around and that man begging for his life, and his life still taken from him in that moment," she said, "that shook the world, and rightfully so."

Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images, FILE
In this June 12, 2020, file photo, Missouri Democratic congressional candidate Cori Bush leads pr...

With corporations endorsing Black Lives Matter in advertisements and the words being printed on clothing, however, Bush said the movement is "all over the place," as if it were just a "fad."

"But what we need to do now is not allow it to be a fad," she said. "We need it to be fact because when it's fact, we get to live."

Black Lives Matter today is different than it was in 2014, because unlike previous years, people from diverse backgrounds seem to have committed to a sustained movement, Bush said.

"What we saw this time here in 2020, we saw young folks out. The number of young folks that were out on the street from every walk of life, every color, every background, every religious belief, or no belief at all. All of us were out there together and fierce -- fighting," she said. "That's what we needed to see, and hopefully the world woke up. We'll see."

MORE: 5th anniversary of black teen Michael Brown's death in Ferguson returns focus to police shooting

Protesting is just one tool for people to create the change they want to see, Bush said, pointing out that electing people who will create that change into office is another.

"We were giving up our time and our energy and our hearts out there, but what we were missing was people who were in positions of power who were listening to us, who were writing bills and who were taking what we were saying and using that to inform legislation," she said


Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images, FILE
In this Aug. 3, 2020, file photo, Missouri Democratic congressional candidate Cori Bush speaks to...

Bush was one of at least 115 women of color to run for Congress this year.

But it wasn't an easy road. Bush ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 and the House in 2018 before her victory this year. She claims she was sexually assaulted three weeks after her loss in the 2016 primaries, and she has spoken about it onTwitter and in Elle magazine. Nevertheless, she said, she still decided to run for office.

"I was violently sexually assaulted and went through a really, really, really tough spot," she said. Four months after that, someone asked me to run for Congress for the House seat, and all I could think about was like, 'Why would I do this? I'm still trying to heal from what I went through. I can't do this.'"

MORE: Cori Bush makes history as 1st Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress

But she said that when she thought about what she'd endured, as well as the potential danger her children faced every day, she decided to run.

"I've been abused by the police. I've gone through so many things. I've been harassed. I've been heavily surveilled. ... And now, to take that voice and that experience and walk that into Congress, that's where that other change is going to come from," she said. "That's how we turn it from being a fad into being actual change in our communities."

Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images, FILE
Congresswoman-elect Cori Bush speaks during her election-night watch party on Nov. 3, 2020, 

Now that she's headed to the halls of Congress, Bush said her goal is to "make sure that Black lives are saved" by fighting for the resources needed to change policing, health care, wages, housing and the environment for the better.

"I don't care if people don't like it. I don't care if they call me names," she said. "This one right here is going to bring some change that people who look like me can actually feel."

 Khennedi Meeks is sharing her story after resisting coming forward for months to tell the world, beyond family and friends or the occasional stranger who asked, that she was the woman on one knee in an epic Black Lives Matter protest photo. https://www.eastbaytimes.com/

Oakland: Sculpture honoring Breonna Taylor smashed to pieces downtown

Oakland police say they are investigating the vandalism, which was reported Saturday

By ALDO TOLEDO | atoledo@bayareanewsgroup.com |
PUBLISHED: December 27, 2020 at 2:33 p.m. | UPDATED: December 28, 2020 at 1:58 a.m.

OAKLAND — A bust sculpted in honor of Breonna Taylor was smashed to pieces on Saturday just two weeks after it was installed downtown, prompting police to launch a vandalism investigation.

Sculptor and Oakland resident Leo Carson called the vandalism an act of “racist aggression” against Taylor, a figure that propelled millions of people across the country to protest police brutality and call for defunding the police. He said made the sculpture to honor the legacy of the Black Lives Matter movement and its influences on contemporary political art, and was “super upset” about the vandalism.

“I’ve put in hours and hours of my work and built it by hand,” Carson said. “Before the pandemic I was a waiter so I paid for this out of my own pocket. It wasn’t cheap and it was incredibly hurtful personally. But it was also an attack on Breonna Taylor and the Black Lives Matter movement. That is racist aggression.”

OAKLAND, CA – DECEMBER 27: A pedestrian walks past a broken bust of Breonna Taylor on Sunday, Dec. 27, 2020, in Oakland Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

Oakland police said in a statement that they are aware of the vandalism and are investigating after a police report was filed. The sculpture was installed at Latham Square two weeks ago, right in front of the wedge-shaped Cathedral Building downtown.

The vandalism comes months after massive protests sparked across the Bay Area in large part based on both the killing of Taylor by Louisville, Ky. police officers during a botched drug raid while executing a “no-knock” warrant and by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

While all three police officers involved in Floyd’s killing were charged, in September grand jurors brought only one indictment against one of the officers who shot Taylor for reckless use of his firearm. The officer was charged with three counts of “wanton enlargement” but the other two officers who also shot Taylor were not charged.

Though the Black Lives Matter movement saw a resurgence in the summer of 2020, Carson said he has been inspired also by the movement’s beginnings in 2015. He said that just as the BLM movement faces threats today, so has the civil rights movement and the black liberation movement that came before it.

“This is a struggle that will continue to go on so I want my art to help encourage that process and encourage people to fight longer, fight harder and be more passionate,” Carson said. 

“Those protests have the power to really change things.”

Carson, a thirty-year-old Bay Area native, has long associated with artists of his ilk and political leaning. He said that the recent protests and movements to protect Black lives have sparked “one of the most incredible art movements of modern times.”

“The art community that we have now, it originally sprung up around the Black Lives Matter struggle and it has since then completely transformed the city of Oakland,” he said. “It has really connected with the movement and so I really want my art to be a part of that course to change history.”

While he believes that his art can inspire people to protest against the police, Carson said fostering mass movements of everyday people is what’s important in the end.

“The way we fight racism is with solidarity,” he said. “Every working class person who wants to smash racism should get involved in the fight against it. Art is powerful, but it’s mass protests that actually shift the earth."

OAKLAND, CA – DECEMBER 27: A pedestrian walks past a broken bust of Breonna Taylor 

on Sunday, Dec. 27, 2020, in Oakland Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group) 

IN NEED OF #SOLIDARITY
Louisville woman known for giving food to Breonna Taylor protesters loses home in fire
Emma Austin
Louisville Courier Journal

Chaunda Lee walked through her Louisville home Sunday afternoon for the first time since Christmas Day, when a fire destroyed nearly everything inside.

Stepping over broken glass and ashes littered across her porch, Lee carried with her one of her few possessions that hadn’t been ruined by the flames: a poster of Breonna Taylor.

Lee, 41, is known for providing free food to the thousands of protesters who’ve taken to the streets this year calling for justice for Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed by police in her apartment on March 13. On Christmas, Lee had been “house-hopping” to see family before receiving a text that night and learning of the fire at her own home.

“It wasn’t real. I don’t know, I just sat there in silence for a long time,” she recalled as she stood in front of the Shawnee home on Vermont Avenue Sunday.

Lee said she hadn’t been able to make herself go into the house until then, when she walked through slowly alongside friends she’s made at the demonstrations. As she surveyed the damage for the first time, Lee said she felt glad she and her kids hadn’t been home at the time.

Read more:Systemic racism simmered in Louisville for generations. Then Breonna Taylor died

Lee said she doesn't know anything about what caused the fire but remembered being asked by investigators if she had a fight with anyone recently.

Bobby Cooper, spokesman for the Louisville Fire Department, said it took about 20 minutes for 25 firefighters to bring the fire under control.

"No civilians or firefighters were injured during the incident," Cooper said. "LFD Arson Investigators are working to determine the cause."

Tara Bassett, an independent journalist who livestreams footage of the demonstrations over Taylor’s death and a friend of Lee’s, said there was no one less deserving of such a tragedy.

“This woman is one of my sisters, and we’ve been together for what, 215 days,” Bassett said as she held an arm around Lee, referring to the number of days protesters have been demanding justice for Taylor. “We kind of live as a family, you know, we all take care of ourselves.”  

Emanuel Mitchell, a friend of Lee’s who lived in her home for a period of time this year, said he got a call from a family member Friday night about the fire and rushed over to see multiple fire trucks and the entire rear of the house in flames.

“I sat right here watching this house burn to the ground, and I couldn’t throw a cup of water on it to put it out … It’s sad,” Mitchell said.

Lee, who’s staying in a hotel while she looks for a new home, set up a GoFundMe to help recuperate her losses.

“I hate asking for any help, but right now I’m in desperate need,” she wrote on the fundraising website. “I’ve lost everything I owned in this house tonight.”

Lee said she didn't have renters' insurance and would accept any help people could offer. In addition to contributing to the GoFundMe, Bassett suggested donating gift cards and clothes for her kids.

The GoFundMe had raised $7,305 from nearly 100 contributors by early Sunday evening.

"Just two years ago I was homeless," Lee said through tears. "Me and my kids was on the street, and now here I am. ... This is really messed up."

UPDATE

World's largest iceberg continues to break up off the coast of South Georgia

It has now split into 4 distinct pieces.

The expedition ship M/S Explorer inches up to the edge of Iceberg A-68a with a humpback whale breaching the surface in the Weddell Sea.
(Image: © Henry Páll Wulff, CC BY 4.0)

By Harry Baker - Staff Writer 20 hours ago

The world's (former) largest iceberg continues to break apart into smaller pieces on the doorstep of a major marine wildlife haven and home to millions of macaroni and king penguins in Antarctica.

This comes less than a week after the mammoth iceberg, known as A68a, first split in two, Live Science recently reported.

Scientists at the U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) spotted the two newest pieces, A68e and A68f, on Dec. 22 using images from the Sentinel-1A satellite, according to a USNIC statement. This means that there are now four separate iceberg fragments, including A68d, which will eventually drift away from one another.

A68a became the world's largest iceberg when it split from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017, Live Science previously reported. The massive chunk of ice has been drifting northward ever since. As recently as April, it measured 2,000 square miles (5,100 square kilometers), or just over the size of the state of Delaware.

Related: In photos: Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf through time

In the spring of 2020, A-68a set its sights on South Georgia Island, a wildlife refuge in the South Atlantic Ocean that's home to millions of penguins, seals and other marine wildlife. Experts feared that if it were to get stuck on the island's shallow sub-continental shelves, it could majorly interfere with the animals' ability to hunt for food.

Images  5

Sentinel-1A satellite image of Iceberg A-68E and A-68F, in Dec. 22, 2020. (Image credit: European Space Agency)



Mapping experts at British Antarctic Survey are tracking the route of the A-68a iceberg from satellite imagery. (Image credit: British Antarctic Survey)



A map shows how A-68a has moved since cracking off of Larsen C. The blue lines show the historical tracks of other icebergs. (Image credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA; Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database)



A Dec. 17 image shows A-68a after its big split, likely due to a collision with shallow seabed off the shore of South Georgia. (Image credit: ESA)



A series of images taken over the course of more than two weeks show A-68a approaching South Georgia, then cracking and rotating after impacting an area of shallow seabed offshore. (Image credit: ESA)

"The actual distance [the animals] have to travel to find food (fish and krill) really matters," Geraint Tarling, an ecologist with the British Antarctic Society, said in a statement. "If they have to do a big detour, it means they're not going to get back to their young in time to prevent them starving to death in the interim."

However, it appears that those underwater shelves are actually what has caused it to start breaking apart. Before splitting in two, the iceberg began spinning clockwise, suggesting one end had been caught on the shelf. The force of this snag is believed to be behind that split and the more recent fracturing as well.

Laura Gerrish, a GIS (geographic information system) mapping specialist at the British Antarctic Survey, estimated the areas of the new fragments, according to her post on Twitter:
A-68a: 1,004 square miles (2,600 square km)
A-68d: 56 square miles (144 square km)
A-68e: 253 square miles (655 square km)
A-68f: 87 square miles (225 square km)

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It is now hoped that the biggest pieces will be carried north of the island on a fast-moving current known as the Southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current Front. However, if any of the pieces, or any potential new pieces, were to get caught on the shelves, they could still be big enough to cause disruption to the local wildlife, according to the BBC.

Researchers will now continue to monitor the situation over the holiday season, while the island's inhabitants will hope for a non-white Christmas.

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Taiwan Textile makers turn plastic waste from oceans into clothing

28 December, 2020
John Van Trieste

Taiwanese textile companies working under the direction of the Environmental Protection Administration have successfully created clothing from marine garbage.

The companies started with 84,000 tons of garbage gathered during beach cleanups in seven cities and counties around Taiwan. After sifting through the garbage for plastic PET bottles and shredding the bottles they found, the companies were left with 38,000 tons of shredded plastic to work with.

From this, they made 1,500 pieces of clothing. 96% of the material in the finished product comes from plastic bottles that had been in the ocean.

Oil rises to touch $52 after Trump signs aid bill

By Alex Lawler


BUSINESS NEWS
DECEMBER 28, 2020

FILE PHOTO: A Marathon Oil well site is seen, as oil and gas activity dips in the Eagle Ford Shale oil field due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the drop in demand for oil globally, in Texas, U.S., May 18, 2020. Picture taken May 18, 2020. REUTERS/Jennifer Hiller/File Photo

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil rose to hit $52 a barrel on Monday as U.S. President Donald Trump’s signing of a coronavirus aid package and the start of a European vaccination campaign outweighed concern about weak near-term demand.

Trump, whose presidency is set to end next month, had earlier threatened to block the $2.3 trillion aid and spending package. Europe, meanwhile, launched a mass vaccination drive on Sunday.

Brent crude was up 68 cents, or 1.3%, at $51.97 a barrel at 1020 GMT, after trading as high as $52.02, reversing an earlier decline. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude added 69 cents, or 1.4%, to $48.92.

“The signing of the U.S. stimulus bill, with the possibility of an increased size, should put a floor under oil prices in a shortened week,” said Jeffrey Halley, analyst at broker OANDA.

Oil has recovered from historic lows reached earlier this year as the emerging pandemic hammered demand. Brent reached $52.48 on Dec. 18, its highest since March.

But, the emergence of a new variant of the virus, first seen in Britain and now detected in other countries, has led to movement restrictions being reimposed, hitting near-term demand and weighing on prices.

Oil remains vulnerable to any further setbacks in efforts to control the virus, said Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at Axi, in a note.

Also coming into focus will be a Jan. 4 meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a group known as OPEC+. The group is slowly tapering record oil output cuts made this year to support the market.

OPEC+ is set to boost output by 500,000 barrels per day in January and so far there is no sign of wavering on going ahead with the supply increase.


Additional reporting by Koustav Samanta and Naveen Thukral; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Susan Fenton