CANADA

Employees are leaving food service jobs just as things reopen

Andrew Coppolino - 4h ago 
cbc.ca


© Andrew Coppolino/CBC

Grant Holdbrook's change in family status led him to change his outlook about a long-term career in the restaurant industry, and go back to school.

It is estimated that more than 110,000 because of the pandemic.

Waterloo Region is no exception to that statistic, but food service owners and managers are anticipating that some laid-off employees will be returning to their jobs when patios and dining rooms can re-open.

However, some food service employees have decided that job security is risky. The pandemic has prompted them to make a career change and exit from a demanding role that traditionally pays lower wages.

Brittain Brown, president of Givex, a restaurant technology company, says some restaurant staff will find jobs in other parts of the industry.

"There are definitely people who are establishing if they are going to take a different line of work," Brown said. "One of those different lines could very well be as a delivery driver versus a server. That's the kind of thing people might think of more."
COVID layoff '180-ed me'

Having spent his adult life in food service, starting as a busboy at Toronto's Old Spaghetti Factory, Matteo Giordano was a waiter and front-of-house manager with a small restaurant group in Waterloo and Cambridge.

For him, Covid-19 meant he was laid off in March 2020, making caring for his young family difficult.

"When the pandemic hit and all work stopped, my entire income essentially stopped," said Giordano. "It totally 180-ed me."

Giordano is now working outside of the hospitality industry and finds blending work with family more manageable. "This is a total night-and-day [change] of what it once was," he said. "The work-life balance is a lot easier to maintain."

He adds that the shutdown was such that with restaurants going out of business, it wasn't an option for him to look for work within the industry.

According to Laura Umbrio, general manager of Waterloo's Proof Kitchen and Lounge, a few employees have moved on to other jobs, and some full-time employees might only return part-time.

"I certainly understand that, but I also fear it might cause an issue of labour shortage when we do open up," Umbrio said in an email.

Focus shift alters staff need

Video: Despite May job losses, employers worry workers won’t return (cbc.ca)

A popular food take-away and culinary teaching business, The Culinary Studio, has recently relocated from their Kitchener venue to a location in Waterloo and re-routed their business entirely to online cooking instruction.

They have left the business of serving food to the general public, says co-owner Kirstie Herbstreit.

"This change was driven by the pandemic, 100 per cent," said Herbstreit, co-owner of The Culinary Studio with Jody O'Malley. "The feedback we get is that people enjoy learning cooking techniques in their own homes."

Skilled trades that support food and beverage venues have felt the impact, too.

Peter Dedes, an HVAC/R and natural-gas technician, has left the business after years installing and servicing a wide range of kitchen cooling and cooking equipment locally.

"In my current position, I won't be fully focussed on the hospitality industry any longer. I'm going to miss it," Dedes said.


© Andrew Coppolino/CBCReeghan Peister graduated from Conestoga College School of Hospitality and Culinary Arts and has been a cook his entire adult life. Until the pandemic changed his outlook.

Former TWH Social chef Grant Holdbrook became a father in May of 2020. He says that during the pandemic, he made the decision to change careers.

"I was able spend a lot of time at home with the family. I weighed my options for what the long term goal with cooking was, and it was tough to figure out what was at the end of the tunnel," said Holdbrook. "I wanted to achieve more financial security and more flexible scheduling."

Holdbrook is currently in school training in the HVAC/R trade.

Some cooks and food-and-beverage veterans have indicated they might choose to work in a restaurant as a side hustle or as a second and occasional job.

Reeghan Peister graduated from Conestoga College School of Hospitality and Culinary Arts and has been a cook his entire adult life, most recently with a large hospitality group based in Cambridge.

He has left that job working day-to-day in catering and says Covid-19 was the catalyst in his decision making.

"Just before the pandemic, I was looking at a five-year plan," Peister said. "I'm 35 years old, and was thinking what can I transition to out of this gruelling industry but still use my skills?"

It wasn't long after that the decision was a much easier one, according to Peister. "As soon as the pandemic hit and we were six or seven months in, I knew there was no return."

Peister re-configured and renovated his Kitchener home's basement into a bakery, bought a professional deck oven and got the required certification. He calls his new business Tough as They Crumb, a bread-by-subscription bakery.
Comeback conundrum

Will these former restaurant workers return to the industry? Giordano says it doesn't make sense for him, practically, at this moment.

"With the restrictions that are in place in the current situation we're in right now, I would say no."

Peister, the new baker, doesn't see a return either, citing the hours away from family as a major issue in an industry that "you have to love, or you don't do it."

"I've found a kind of peace where I'm at right now. I'm a real bread head, I'm not going to lie. I don't think I'll ever go back."

G-7 nations sign key pact to make tech giants

pay  fair  taxes

© Provided by The Canadian Press

G-7 nations sign key pact to make tech giants pay fair taxes

LONDON (AP) — The Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed Saturday to support a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15% in order to deter multinational companies from avoiding taxes by stashing profits in low-rate countries.

G-7 finance ministers meeting in London also endorsed proposals to make the world's biggest companies - including U.S.-based tech giants - pay taxes in countries where they have lots of sales but no physical headquarters.

Britain’s Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, the meeting's host, said the deal would “reform the global tax system to make it fit for the global digital age and crucially to make sure that it’s fair, so that the right companies pay the right tax in the right places.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who attended the London meetings, said the agreement “provides tremendous momentum” towards reaching a global deal that “would end the race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation, and ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the U.S. and around the world.”

France cheered Saturday’s agreement and claimed credit for acting as its catalyst.

“We made it! After 4 years of battle, a historic accord was reached with G7 member states,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire tweeted. “France can be proud!”

The meeting of finance ministers came ahead of an annual summit of G-7 leaders scheduled for June 11-13 in Cornwall, England. The U.K. is hosting both sets of meetings because it holds the group’s rotating presidency.

The endorsement from the G-7 could help build momentum for a deal in wider talks among more than 140 countries being held in Paris as well as a Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Venice in July.

The G-7 has also been facing pressure to provide vaccines for low-income countries facing new surges of COVID-19 infections and to finance projects to combat climate change. A statement Saturday from the two-day finance ministers' meeting said only that they welcomed increased funding commitments by member countries and looked forward to more.

International discussions on the tax issue gained momentum after U.S. President Joe Biden backed the idea of a global minimum of at least 15% on corporate profits.

The tax proposals endorsed Saturday have two main parts. The first part lets countries tax a share of the profits earned by companies that have no physical presence but have substantial sales, for instance through selling digital advertising.

The G-7 statement echoes a U.S. proposal to simply let countries tax part of the earnings of the largest and most profitable companies — digital or not — if they are doing business within their borders. It also supported awarding countries the right to tax 20% or more of profit exceeding a 10% profit margin.

Part of the agreement is that countries such as France that have imposed digital services taxes would remove them in favor of the global agreement. The U.S. considers those unilateral digital taxes to be unfair trade measures that single out big U.S. tech companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.

The other main part of the proposal is for countries to tax their home companies' overseas profits at a rate of at least 15%. That would deter the practice of using accounting schemes to shift profits to a few very low-tax countries.

Nations have been grappling with the question of how to deter companies from legally avoiding paying taxes by resorting to tax havens — typically small countries that entice companies with low or zero taxes, even though the firms do little actual business there.

___

McHugh contributed from Frankfurt, Germany.

Kelvin Chan And David Mchugh, The Associated Press

Mine-sniffing rat Magawa ends years of DANGEROUS hard work in Cambodia

BUT STILL HELD CAPTIVE


© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mine-sniffing rat Magawa ends years of hard work in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — After five years of sniffing out land mines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia, Magawa is retiring.

The African giant pouched rat has been the most successful rodent trained and overseen by a Belgian nonprofit, APOPO, to find land mines and alert his human handlers so the explosives can be safely removed. Last year, Magawa won a British charity’s top civilian award for animal bravery — an honor so far exclusively reserved for dogs.

“Although still in good health, he has reached a retirement age and is clearly starting to slow down,” APOPO said. “It is time.”

Magawa has cleared more than 141,000 square meters (1.5 million square feet) of land, the equivalent of some 20 soccer fields, sniffing out 71 land mines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance, according to APOPO.

While many rodents can be trained to detect scents and will work at repetitive tasks for food rewards, APOPO decided that African giant pouched rats were best suited to land mine clearance because their size allows them to walk across mine fields without triggering the explosives — and do it much more quickly than people. They also live up to eight years.

Magawa is part of a cohort of rats bred for this purpose. He was born in Tanzania in 2014, and in 2016, moved to Cambodia’s northwestern city of Siem Reap, home of the famed Angkor temples, to begin his bomb-sniffing career.

In retirement, Magawa will live in his same cage as before and follow the same daily routine, but won’t be going out to the minefields anymore, said Lily Shallom, an APOPO spokeswoman, contacted by phone at the organization’s operational headquarters in Tanzania.

He’ll be fed the same food, have playtime every day and get regular exercise and health checks. He eats mostly fresh fruit and vegetables, said Shallom, supplemented with small sun-dried fish for protein and imported pellets for vitamins and fiber. For 20-30 minutes a day, he is released into a larger cage with facilities such as a sandbox and a running wheel.

APOPO also works with programs in Angola, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to clear millions of mines left behind from wars and conflicts.

More than 60 million people in 59 countries continue to be threatened by land mines and unexploded ordinance. In 2018, landmines and other remnants of war killed or injured 6,897 people, the group said.

Sopheng Cheang, The Associated Press

 REACTIONARY BOURGEOIS INDIVIDUALISM

Social identity within the anti-vaccine movement

Researchers found a significant portion of Americans socially identify with the 

anti-vaxx label, presenting potential implications for public health

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

A study of more than 1,000 demographically representative participants found that about 22 percent of Americans self-identify as anti-vaxxers, and tend to embrace the label as a form of social identity.

According to the study by researchers including Texas A&M University School of Public Health assistant professor Timothy Callaghan, 8 percent of this group "always" self-identify this way, with 14 percent "sometimes" identifying as part of the anti-vaccine movement. The results were published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities.

"We found these results both surprising and concerning," Callaghan said. "The fact that 22 percent of Americans at least sometimes identify as anti-vaxxers was much higher than expected and demonstrates the scope of the challenge in vaccinating the population against COVID-19 and other vaccine-preventable diseases."

Researchers also found that participants who scored high on the anti-vaccine identity measure were less trusting of scientific experts and more individualistic. Additionally, study results show that there is increased opposition to childhood vaccine requirements among those who self-identify as anti-vaxxers.

The study serves as a "blueprint" for other researchers to further examine how socially identifying as an anti-vaxxer impacts health policies and public health. Callaghan notes that Americans socially identifying as anti-vaxxers adds another layer of complexity to mitigating the anti-vaccine movement. Changing a core feature of one's underlying social identity is a difficult task -- one that likely cannot be fixed with traditional public health messaging.

Moving forward, Callaghan and other members of the research team hope to investigate how endorsement of the anti-vaccine label varies across the country based on states and levels of rurality, as well as interventions that might reduce individuals' social attachment to the label.

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Soft tissue measurements critical to hominid reconstruction

UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE

Research News

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IMAGE: THE SOFT TISSUE FOR THESE APPROXIMATIONS OF HOMINID FACES WAS PREDICTED USING EQUATIONS DEVELOPED BY THE AUTHORS. NO FACIAL FEATURES ARE PRESENT IN THE ANCIENT HOMINID (C), AS THE AUTHORS... view more 

CREDIT: RYAN M. CAMPBELL.

Accurate soft tissue measurements are critical when making reconstructions of human ancestors, a new study from the University of Adelaide and Arizona State University has found.

"Reconstructing extinct members of the Hominidae, or hominids, including their facial soft tissue, has become increasingly popular with many approximations of their faces presented in museum exhibitions, popular science publications and at conference presentations worldwide," said lead author PhD student Ryan M. Campbell from the University of Adelaide.

"It is essential that accurate facial soft tissue thickness measurements are used when reconstructing the faces of hominids to reduce the variability exhibited in reconstructions of the same individuals."

Hominids have been readily accepted to line the halls of even the most trusted institutions. They are predominantly used for disseminating scientific information to the public in museum displays and students in university courses, which will influence the way humanity is perceived and defined more generally.

"Up until now soft tissue reconstruction has been based on mean tissue depth measurements which does not take into account variation in tissue depths between individuals," says Mr Campbell.

In this study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the authors have formulated a facial soft tissue thickness dataset for adult chimpanzees, and a set of regression equations that can be used to reconstruct the soft tissues for ancient hominids, such as those dated from 4.0 to 1.2 million years ago.

The study was co-authored by Gabriel Vinas, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Arizona State University who handles the sculpting in the lab.

"Correlations have been found and multiple regression models have been used to generate equations for improving estimations of soft tissue thickness from craniometrics in modern humans," he said.

"We looked at tissue depths in present day chimpanzees to identify correlations in skin and bone."

This article represents the first time that such a collection of tissue depth data has been collected and presented for chimpanzees in a systematic manner.

"The soft tissue thickness data for chimpanzees are freely available for anyone to download on Figshare.

"The equations, which resulted directly from this research, are also included and can be implemented in future practitioners' reconstructions," said Mr Campbell.

"This research is invaluable for future efforts reconstructing ancient hominids, as well as for comparative studies within and outside the discipline of biological/physical anthropology."

CAPTION

Cephalometric landmarks -- measurements of the skull -- are critical for accurate measurements of facial soft tissue such as in these numerous landmarks positioned on the skull of a chimpanzee.

CREDIT

Ryan M. Campbell

 

Study of past South Asian monsoons suggests stronger monsoon rainfall in the future

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE RESEARCH VESSEL JOIDES RESOLUTION DRILLED SEDIMENT CORES FROM THE BAY OF BENGAL, WHICH WERE USED TO RECONSTRUCT PAST MONSOON RAINFALL. THOSE DATA WERE USED TO TEST PREDICTIONS OF FUTURE... view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF STEVEN CLEMENS

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study of monsoon rainfall on the Indian subcontinent over the past million years provides vital clues about how the monsoons will respond to future climate change.

The study, published in Science Advances, found that periodic changes in the intensity of monsoon rainfall over the past 900,000 years were associated with fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), continental ice volume and moisture import from the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean. The findings bolster climate model predictions that rising CO2 and higher global temperatures will lead to stronger monsoon seasons.

"We show that over the last 900,000 years, higher CO2 levels along with associated changes in ice volume and moisture transport were associated with more intense monsoon rainfall," said Steven Clemens, a professor of geological sciences (research) at Brown University and lead author of the study. "That tells us that CO2 levels and associated warming were major players in monsoon intensity in the past, which supports what the models predict about future monsoons -- that rainfall will intensify with rising CO2 and warming global temperature."

The South Asian monsoon is arguably the single most powerful expression of Earth's hydroclimate, Clemens says, with some locations getting several meters of rain each summer. The rains are vital to the region's agriculture and economy, but can also cause flooding and crop disruption in years when they're particularly heavy. Because the monsoons play such a large role in the lives of nearly 1.4 billion people, understanding how climate change may affect them is critical.

For several years, Clemens has been working with an international team of researchers to better understand the major drivers of monsoon activity. In November 2014, the research team sailed aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution to the Bay of Bengal, off the coast of India, to recover sediment core samples from beneath the sea floor. Those core samples preserve a record of monsoon activity spanning millions of years.

The rainwater produced by the monsoons each summer eventually drains off the Indian subcontinent into the Bay of Bengal. The runoff creates a layer of dilute seawater in the bay that rides atop the denser, more saline water below. The surface water is a habitat for microorganisms called planktonic foraminifera, which use nutrients in the water to construct their shells, which are made of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). When the creatures die, the shells sink to the bottom and become trapped in sediment. By taking core samples of sediment and analyzing the oxygen isotopes in those fossils, scientists can divine the salinity of the water in which the creatures lived. That salinity signal can be used as an indicator of changing rainfall amounts over time.

Other data from the samples complement the foraminifera data. River runoff into the bay brings sediment from the continent with it, providing another indicator of rain intensity. The carbon isotopic composition of plant matter washed into the ocean and buried in sediment offers yet another rainfall-related signal that reflects changes in vegetation type. The hydrogen isotope composition of waxes on plant leaves varies in different rainfall environments, and that signature can be reconstructed from sediment cores as well.

"The idea is that we can reconstruct rainfall over time using these proxies, and then look at other paleoclimate data to see what might be the important drivers of monsoon activity," Clemens said. "That helps us to answer important questions about the factors driving the monsoons. Are they primarily driven by external factors like changes in Earth's orbit, which alter the amount of solar radiation from the sun, or are factors internal to the climate system like CO2, ice volume and moisture-transporting winds more important?"

The researchers found that periods of more intense monsoon winds and rainfall tended to follow peaks in atmospheric CO2 and low points in global ice volume. Cyclical changes in Earth's orbit that alter the amount of sunlight each hemisphere receives played a role in monsoon intensity as well, but on their own could not explain monsoon variability. Taken together, the findings suggest that monsoons are indeed sensitive to CO2-related warming, which validates climate model predictions of strengthening monsoons in relation to higher CO2.

"The models are telling us that in a warming world, there's going to be more water vapor in the atmosphere," Clemens said. "In general, regions that get a lot of rain now are going to get more rain in the future. In terms of the South Asians monsoons, that's entirely consistent with what we see in this study."

CAPTION

The research vessel JOIDES Resolution drilled sediment cores from the Bay of Bengal, which were used to reconstruct past monsoon rainfall. Those data were used to test predictions of future monsoon rain as the climate changes. The data suggests that future rainfall could increase as CO2 levels rise.

CREDIT

Courtesy of Steven Clemens

The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE1634774), the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JPMXS05R2900001 and 19H05595), the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; NE/L002493/1), the United States Geological Survey, and Technology and Research Initiative Fund (Arizona Board of Regents).

 

NTU scientists establish new records of Singapore's sea-level history

Nation's ability to predict sea-level rise boosted with record going back to 10,000 years ago

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE NTU ASIAN SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT TEAM BEHIND THE STUDY OF SINGAPORE'S SEA-LEVEL INCLUDE (L-R): ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ADAM SWITZER, RESEARCH FELLOW DR STEPHEN CHUA AND DIRECTOR OF THE EARTH... view more 

CREDIT: NTU SINGAPORE

Climate scientists at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU, Singapore) have extended the known record of Singapore's sea-level to almost 10,000 years ago, providing a more robust dataset to aid future predictions of sea-level rise.

One of the main challenges in researching climate change is to reconstruct its history over thousands of years. To have a better sense of the potential causes and effects of future changes, scientists need to learn from and understand the past.

Extracting ancient sediments from a depth of up to 40 m underground at a site at Singapore's Marina South, an international team led by NTU researchers put the samples through rigorous laboratory methods (e.g., identifying microfossils such as foraminifera) and statistical analysis to obtain data to reconstruct Singapore's sea level history.

For climate scientists, the further the sea-level record goes back in time, the clearer the picture can be for future predictions. The transition at the beginning of the Holocene (10,000-7,000 years ago) represented the last major episode of natural global warming in Earth's history, when melting ice sheets and warming oceans led to a 20 m rise in sea level. For the last 3,000 years, the sea level in Singapore had been stable, before the recent acceleration in the 20th century due to climate change.

Lead author, Dr Stephen Chua, who completed the study as part of his doctoral work at the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) and Asian School of the Environment (ASE) at NTU Singapore said, "By dating the Singapore sea-level record to 10,000 years ago, we retrieved crucial new information from the early Holocene period. This is a period that is characterised by rapid sea-level rise yet remains poorly understood - until now."

"This more refined sea-level record also has wider implications. For instance, it would lead to more robust and accurate local projection of sea-level rise, offering a strategic guide for Singapore as it moves to adapt to climate change."

Professor Maureen Raymo, Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University, who was not involved in the study, said: "This is the type of crucial information needed to effectively plan adaptation measures in the face of ongoing sea level rise due to global warming. Our past does inform our future."

Why Marina South site for investigations?

Developing an accurate ancient sea-level record required sediment extraction from an 'ideal' site where deposits such as marine mud and mangrove peats are present.

To pick the best possible coring site for accurate results, researchers looked through thousands of available borehole logs - records of holes that have been drilled into the ground for infrastructure projects.

Associate Professor Adam Switzer who leads the Coastal Lab at ASE and EOS and who was Dr Chua's supervisor, said, "Finding the right place to drill was a huge effort. Stephen spent well over a year going over old borehole information from a variety of construction efforts over the last 30 years just to find records that might be suitable. As a result, our understanding of the geology of the whole area has also dramatically improved."

Findings useful for Singapore's coastal defence plan against rising sea levels

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal The Holocene on 4 June 2021, also found the first conclusive evidence that mangroves only existed in the Marina South area for around 300 years before succumbing to flooding associated with rising sea level at the time.

At a depth of 20 m below modern sea level, researchers found abundant mangrove pollen indicating that a mangrove shoreline existed in southern Singapore almost 10,000 years ago. The NTU findings reveal that sea-level rise during that time was as high as 10 - 15 mm per year which likely led to the mangrove's demise.

The findings provide Singapore with useful insights for current and future adaption methods as the island nation looks to go beyond engineering solutions and to incorporate natural methods to safeguard the country's coastlines.

Despite its adaptability and effectiveness as a coastal defence, the study highlights the limitations of mangroves in the event of rapid sea-level rise. This confirms an earlier study co-authored by NTU showing that mangroves will not survive if sea-level rise goes beyond 7 mm per year under a high carbon emissions scenario.

Co-author of the study, Professor Benjamin Horton, Director of EOS, said, "Sea-level rise is a potentially disastrous outcome of climate change, as rising temperatures melt ice sheets and warm ocean waters. Scenarios of future rise are dependent upon understanding the response of sea level to climate changes. Accurate estimates of past sea-level variability in Singapore provide a context for such projections".

Providing an independent comment on the research, Professor Philip Gibbard, a Quaternary geologist from the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, underscored the importance of records from localities distant from the glaciated regions such as Singapore.

"They offer a model of the process of sea-level change uncomplicated by factors associated with deglaciation, meltwater discharge and more. This important systematic contribution from Singapore and the region provides a valuable record that spans the post-glacial Holocene period, thus allowing a general pattern of sea-level change in the region to be established. This record can then be further refined as more studies become available in the future."

CAPTION

The research team examines a core sample, which was extracted from a depth of up to 40 m underground at a site at Singapore's Marina South.

CAPTION

A close up of the core sample. The sample is put through rigorous laboratory methods and statistical analysis to obtain data to reconstruct Singapore's sea level history.

CREDIT

NTU Singapore

 

Underground storage of carbon captured directly from air -- green and economical

New study shows that geological storage of low-purity carbon dioxide mixed with oxygen and nitrogen from direct air capture is an environmentally friendly and economically viable approach to remove carbon from the atmosphere

KYUSHU UNIVERSITY, I2CNER

Research News

 

IMAGE: SCHEMATIC IMAGE OF LOW-PURITY CO2 STORAGE WITH THE MEMBRANE-BASED DIRECT AIR CAPTURE (DAC). view more 

CREDIT: TAKESHI TSUJI

Fukuoka, Japan - The global threat of ongoing climate change has one principal cause: carbon that was buried underground in the form of fossil fuels is being removed and released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2). One promising approach to addressing this problem is carbon capture and storage: using technology to take CO2 out of the atmosphere to return it underground.

In a new study published in Greenhouse Gases Science and Technology, researchers from Kyushu University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, investigated geological storage of low-purity CO2 mixed with nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2), produced by direct air capture (DAC) using membrane-based technology.

Many current carbon capture projects are carried out at localized sources using concentrated CO2 emissions, such as coal-fired power plants, and require intensive purification storage owing to the presence of hazardous compounds such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide. They also have high transportation costs because viable geological storage sites are typically far from the sources of CO2. In contrast, direct air capture of CO2 can be performed anywhere, including at the storage site, and does not require intensive purification because the impurities, O2 and N2, are not hazardous. Therefore, low-purity CO2 can be captured and injected directly into geological formations, at least in theory. Understanding how the resulting mixture of CO2, O2, and N2 behaves when it is injected and stored in geological formations is necessary before underground storage of low-purity CO2 from direct air capture can be widely adopted. As the study's lead author, Professor Takeshi Tsuji, explains, "It is difficult to capture high-purity CO2 using DAC. We performed molecular dynamic simulations as a preliminary evaluation of the storage efficiency of CO2-N2-O2 mixtures at three different temperature and pressure conditions, corresponding to depths of 1,000 m, 1,500 m, and 2,500 m at the Tomakomai CO2 storage site in Japan."

Although further research is still needed, such as investigations of the chemical reactions of injected O2 and N2 at great depths, the results of these simulations suggest that geological storage of CO2-N2-O2 mixtures produced by direct air capture is both environmentally safe and economically viable.

According to Professor Tsuji, "Because of the ubiquity of ambient air, direct air capture has the potential to become a ubiquitous means of carbon capture and storage that can be implemented in many remote areas, such as deserts and offshore platforms. This is important both for reducing transportation costs and ensuring social acceptance."

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The article, "Geological storage of CO2-N2-O2 mixtures produced by membrane-based direct air capture (DAC)," is published in Greenhouse Gases Science and Technology at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ghg.2099

Corals tell Arabian Sea story of global warming

HOKKAIDO UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: COLLECTING CORAL SAMPLES IN THE WATERS OFF OMAN (PHOTO: TSUYOSHI WATANABE). view more 

CREDIT: TSUYOSHI WATANABE

Coral insights into 1,000 years of seasonal changes in the Arabian Sea warn of significant impacts caused by global warming.

Every year, the southwesterly winds of the summer monsoon sweep down the Arabian Peninsula, pushing the surface waters of the Arabian Sea away from the coast and driving an upwelling of deep waters to the surface. This rising seawater is colder and less saline than the surface water and is rich in nutrients, providing energy for the various organisms living in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

Scientists from Japan, Taiwan and Germany, including coral reef scientist Dr. Tsuyoshi Watanabe of Hokkaido University, have uncovered evidence from corals off the coast of Oman suggesting that global warming is causing changes to the Arabian Sea that could impact the climate, ecosystems and socioeconomics of the densely populated areas surrounding the Indian Ocean. The findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Stronger summer monsoon winds lead to a stronger upwelling in the Arabian Sea. Stronger winds form when the air over the Indian subcontinent warms more rapidly than the air over the Indian Ocean. Recently, however, the opposite has been happening. Scientists wanted to know how this change affects the Arabian Sea upwelling, but the phenomenon has not been monitored continuously, so available measurements aren't enough to tell the whole story.

Watanabe and his colleagues analysed fossil and modern corals off an Omani island in the Arabian Sea. They identified the ages of the corals they collected and established a correlation between coral data and seawater temperature changes over a very fine timescale, and used that information to extrapolate salinity changes. The four fossil corals they used dated to approximately 1167 CE, 1624 CE, 1703 CE and 1968 CE, respectively. They took samples from the corals at different depths towards their cores, and then analysed the ratio of strontium to calcium in the samples, as well as the amounts of oxygen and carbon isotopes. The growth rate of the corals is steady over centuries, and the skeletons contain a record of the changes in elements. Generally, as water temperatures rise, the strontium-to-calcium ratio and isotope oxygen-18 in coral decrease.

The results showed that the summer Arabian Sea upwelling was relatively stable through the warmer period of the medieval climate anomaly in the 12th century; the cooler little ice age, which extended between the 14th and 19th centuries AD; and up until the mid-20th century. After this period, however, the scientists observed a clear weakening of the Arabian Sea upwelling. They reason this can most likely be explained by faster warming of the northern Indian Ocean, caused by greenhouse gases, and slowed warming of the Indian subcontinent, caused by the absorption of sunrays by aerosol emissions over South Asia. This then weakens the summer monsoon winds, impacting the strength of the Arabian Sea upwelling.

"The seasonal upwelling is vital for commercial fishing and has significant impacts on the regional climate, ecosystems and socioeconomics," says Tsuyoshi Watanabe. "Our findings imply that weakening of the Arabian Sea upwelling is likely to continue along with global warming, impacting monsoon rainfalls, sea levels, fisheries and even agricultural production."

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CAPTION

Warming trends of the northern Indian Ocean and the Indian subcontinent. The Arabian Sea has warmed to a much larger extent than the Indian subcontinent. The star indicates the sample site of modern and fossil Arabian Sea corals used in this study (Takaaki K. Watanabe, et al. Geophysical Research Letters. May 24, 2021).

CREDIT

Takaaki K. Watanabe, et al. Geophysical Research Letters. May 24, 2021

CAPTION

Tsuyoshi Watanbe, corresponding author of the current study, in Oman (Photo: Tsuyoshi Watanabe).

CREDIT

Tsuyoshi Watanbe

 

Fungus creates a fast track for carbon

Stanford scientists find epidemics of fungal infections in algae alter carbon cycling

STANFORD'S SCHOOL OF EARTH, ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Research News

 

IMAGE: FUNGUS CREATES AN UNDERAPPRECIATED EXPRESS LANE FOR CARBON, "SHUNTING " AS MUCH AS 20 PERCENT OF THE CARBON FIXED BY DIATOMS OUT OF THE MICROBIAL LOOP AND INTO THE FUNGAL PARASITE. view more 

CREDIT: KLAWONN ET AL. 2021, PNAS

Tiny algae in Earth's oceans and lakes take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and turn them into sugars that sustain the rest of the aquatic food web, gobbling up about as much carbon as all the world's trees and plants combined.

New research shows a crucial piece has been missing from the conventional explanation for what happens between this first "fixing" of CO2 into phytoplankton and its eventual release to the atmosphere or descent to depths where it no longer contributes to global warming. The missing piece? Fungus.

"Basically, carbon moves up the food chain in aquatic environments differently than we commonly think it does," said Anne Dekas, an assistant professor of Earth system science at Stanford University. Dekas is the senior author of a paper published June 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that quantifies how much carbon goes into parasitic fungi that attack microalgae.

Underwater merry-go-round

Researchers until now have predicted that most carbon fixed into colonies of hard-shelled, single-celled algae known as diatoms then funnels directly into bacteria - or dissolves like tea in the surrounding water, where it's largely taken up by other bacteria. Conventional thinking assumes carbon escapes from this microbial loop mainly through larger organisms that graze on the bacteria or diatoms, or through the CO2 that returns to the atmosphere as the microbes breathe.

This journey is important in the context of climate change. "For carbon sequestration to occur, carbon from CO2 needs to go up the food chain into big enough pieces of biomass that it can sink down into the bottom of the ocean," Dekas said. "That's how it's really removed from the atmosphere. If it just cycles for long periods in the surface of the ocean, it can be released back to the air as CO2."

It turns out fungus creates an underappreciated express lane for carbon, "shunting" as much as 20 percent of the carbon fixed by diatoms out of the microbial loop and into the fungal parasite. "Instead of going through this merry-go-round, where the carbon could eventually go back to the atmosphere, you have a more direct route to the higher levels in the food web," Dekas said.

The findings also have implications for industrial and recreational settings that deal with harmful algal blooms. "In aquaculture, in order to keep the primary crop, like fish, healthy, fungicides might be added to the water," Dekas said. That will prevent fungal infection of the fish, but it may also eliminate a natural check on algal blooms that cost the industry some $8 billion per year. "Until we understand the dynamics between these organisms, we need to be pretty careful about the management policies we're using."

Microbial interactions

The authors based their estimates on experiments with populations of chytrid fungi called Rhizophydiales and their host, a type of freshwater algae or diatom named Asterionella formosa. Coauthors in Germany worked to isolate these microbes, as well as bacteria found in and around their cells, from water collected from Lake Stechlin, about 60 miles north of Berlin.

"Isolating one microorganism from nature and growing it in the laboratory is difficult, but isolating and maintaining two microorganisms as a pathosystem, in which one kills the other, is a true challenge," said lead author Isabell Klawonn, who worked on the research as a postdoctoral scholar in Dekas' lab at Stanford. "Only a few model systems are therefore available to research such parasitic interactions."

Scientists surmised as early as the 1940s that parasites played an important role in controlling the abundance of phytoplankton, and they observed epidemics of chytrid fungus infecting Asterionella blooms in lake water. Technological advances have made it possible to pick apart these invisible worlds in fine and measurable detail - and begin to see their influence in a much bigger picture.

"We're realizing as a community that it's not just the capabilities of an individual microorganism that's important for understanding what happens in the environment. It's how these microorganisms interact," Dekas said.

The authors measured and analyzed interactions within the Lake Stechlin pathosystem using genomic sequencing; a fluorescence microscopy technique that involves attaching fluorescent dye to RNA within microbial cells; and a highly specialized instrument at Stanford - one of only a few dozen in the world - called NanoSIMS, which creates nanoscale maps of the isotopes of elements that are present in materials in vanishingly small amounts. Dekas said, "To get these single-cell measurements to show how photosynthetic carbon is flowing between specific cells, from the diatom to the fungus to the associated bacteria, it's the only way to do it."

The exact amount of carbon diverted to fungus from the microbial merry-go-round may differ in other environments. But the discovery that it can be as high as 20 percent in even one setting is significant, Dekas said. "If you're changing this system by more than a few percent in any direction, it can have dramatic implications for biogeochemical cycling. It makes a big difference for our climate."

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Stanford coauthors include Alma E. Parada and Nestor Arandia-Gorostidi, postdoctoral research fellows in the Department of Earth System Science at the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). Additional coauthors are affiliated with Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Potsdam University. Klawonn is now affiliated with Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research.

The research was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, the Simons Foundation and the German Research Foundation.