Prehistoric people occupied upland regions of inland Spain in even the coldest periods of the last Ice Age

15,000-21,000 years ago, inland Iberia may have been more populated than traditionally thought

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: VIEW FROM THE TOP OF THE CHARCO VERDE II ARCHEOLOGICAL DEPOSIT DURING THE 2021 EXCAVATION SEASON. view more 

CREDIT: ARAGONCILLO-DEL RÍO ET AL., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Paleolithic human populations survived even in the coldest and driest upland parts of Spain, according to a study published October 4, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño of the University of Alcalá, Spain, Javier Aragoncillo-del Rió of the Molina-Alto Tajo UNESCO Global Geopark, Spain and colleagues.

Research into ancient hunter-gatherer populations of the Iberian Peninsula has mainly focused on coastal regions, with relatively little investigation into the inland. A classic hypothesis has been that the cold and dry conditions of inland Iberia would have been too harsh for such populations to inhabit during the coldest periods of the Last Glacial, but recent findings have begun to challenge this view. In this study, researchers report new evidence for high-altitude human occupation from the Upper Paleolithic of Spain.

This evidence comes from a site called Charco Verde II, located in the Guadalajara province. This site is situated over 1,000 meters above sea level, in one of the coldest regions of Spain. Despite this, the abundance of tools and ornaments at the site reveals a recurring sequence of human occupation between around 21,000 and 15,000 years ago. This time span is especially notable since it includes two of the coldest periods of the Last Glacial.

This discovery further challenges the idea that Upper Palaeolithic humans avoided inland Iberia due to its harsh climate, and instead shows that the inland hosted complex and relatively dense settlements even during very cold and arid periods. These findings add to the growing evidence for Middle and Upper Paleolithic occupations throughout this region, altogether indicating that the historic lack of evidence for hunter-gatherer sites in inland Iberia is not an accurate reflection of prehistoric human distributions, but instead a result of modern research hitherto prioritizing study of coastal regions and neglecting the inland.

Selection of lithic artifacts collected at the Charco Verde II site. All come from Level 1 except number 3, which was found on the ground Surface of the archeological deposit, and number 6, recorded at the fluvial terrace below the slope. 1 & 4: Endscrapers on blades. 2, 3 & 6: Canted dihedral burins. 5 & 7: Large blades. 8: Unidirectional blade core. 9: Backed bladelet. 10: Denticulated backed bladelet. 11: Unidirectional bladelet core.

CREDIT

Aragoncillo-del Río et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291516

Citation: Aragoncillo-del Río J, Alcolea-González J-J, Luque L, Castillo-Jiménez S, Jiménez-Gisbert G, López-Sáez J-A, et al. (2023) Human occupations of upland and cold environments in inland Spain during the Last Glacial Maximum and Heinrich Stadial 1: The new Magdalenian sequence of Charco Verde II. PLoS ONE 18(10): e0291516. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291516

Author Countries: Spain

Funding: This research has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC) (https://erc.europa.eu/homepage) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 805478; MULTIPALEOIBERIA project: https://multipaleoiberia.com/; Principal Investigator: MA-C). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0291516 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Human occupations of upland and cold environments in inland Spain during the Last Glacial Maximum and Heinrich Stadial 1: The new Magdalenian sequence of Charco Verde II

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2023

Analysis of grinding tools reveals plant, pigment and bone processing in Neolithic Northern Saudi Arabia

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF GEOANTHROPOLOGY

 

IMAGE: 

RE-FIT OF A GRINDING STONE FROM JEBEL ORAF

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CREDIT: CERI SHIPTON

In recent years, studies have revealed that the now-arid region of northern Arabia was once much wetter and greener, providing Neolithic human populations with access to both water and game. The present aridity of the region, however, preserves little organic matter, making a reconstruction of the Neolithic lifestyle difficult.

Now, in a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Heritage Science (CNR ISPC), and University College London present use-wear analysis of grinding tools recovered from Jebel Oraf in the Nefud desert of Saudi Arabia, revealing new insights into this little-understood chapter of the human story. Use-wear analysis shows that grinding tools were used for the processing of bone, pigment and plants, and were sometimes re-used for different purposes during their life span, before finally being broken up and placed on hearths.

In the new study, researchers use high-powered microscopes to compare use-wear patterns on the archaeological tools with those on experimental tools. In experiments, the grinding of grains, other plants, bone or pigment produces distinctive macro- and micro-traces on the tools’ used surface, including fractures, edge rounding of individual grains, levelled areas, striations, and different types of polish. These distinctive traces were also identified on the Neolithic grinding tools, allowing the scientists to determine which materials were being processed. 

Although faunal remains have previously revealed that meat was cooked and consumed at Jebel Oraf, wear patterns indicate that meat and bones were first processed on grindstones, revealing the possibility that bones were broken to access bone marrow.

Grinding tools were also used to process plants. While there is no evidence for domesticated grains in northern Arabia in this period, the authors argue that wild plants were ground and perhaps baked into simple breads.

“The hearths where we found the grinding tools were extremely short-lived, and people may have been very mobile – breads would have made a good and easily transportable food for them,” says Maria Guagnin, researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and one of the study’s lead authors.

The researchers also found evidence of pigment processing, which they argue may be linked to Neolithic paintings. Their findings reveal that pigment was ground and processed on a much larger scale than previously assumed, suggesting there may have been more painted Neolithic rock art than the few surviving panels suggest.

“It is clear grinding tools were important for the Neolithic occupants of Jebel Oraf. Many were heavily used, and some even had holes in them that suggest they were transported. That means people carried heavy grinding tools with them and their functionality must have been an important element in daily life,” says Giulio Lucarini of the National Research Council of Italy, the study’s other lead author.

This type of analysis has only rarely been applied to archaeological materials from the Arabian peninsula, but can provide important information on the manufacture, use, and re-use of grinding tools, which in turn provides insight into the subsistence, economy, and art of the people who produced them.

Researchers involved in this study work in close partnership with the Saudi Ministry of Culture. Additional partners include King Saud University and key institutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0291085 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Plant, pigment, and bone processing in the Neolithic of northern Arabia – New evidence from use-wear analysis of grinding tools at Jebel Oraf

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2023

 

Early human migrants followed lush corridor-route out of Africa

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON

 

IMAGE: 

ONE OF TWO FLAKES, OR HAND TOOLS, SEEN FROM THREE DIFFERENT ANGLES, DISCOVERED IN THE JORDAN RIFT VALLEY. THE FLAKES HELPED SCIENTISTS DATE HUMAN MIGRATION.

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON

An international team of scientists has found early human migrants left Africa for Eurasia, across the Sinai peninsula and on through Jordan, over 80-thousand years ago.

Researchers from the University of Southampton (UK) and Shantou University (China), together with colleagues in Jordan, Australia and the Czech Republic(1), have proved there was a “well-watered corridor” which funnelled hunter-gatherers through The Levant towards western Asia and northern Arabia via Jordan.

Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, support previous research conducted in Arabia suggesting this green, overland route, which is now desert, was favoured by travelling Homo sapiens heading north.

‘Modern’ humans evolved in Africa between 300 and 200 thousand years ago and dispersed out of the continent in several stages. It’s thought that over tens of thousands of years they went on to populate Asia and then Europe.

For this latest research, the team conducted fieldwork in the Jordan Rift Valley where they uncovered hand tools, known as ‘flakes’, on the edge of wadis – now dry river channels which, tens of thousands of years ago, were full of water. The scientists used luminescence dating techniques to help establish the age of the sediment the tools were buried in. This method estimates how long it has been since sediment was last exposed to light.

The results showed the tools were likely to have been used approximately 84 thousand years ago and then abandoned on the banks of the wadis and subsequently buried over time.

Paul Carling, Professor of Geomorphology at the University of Southampton, comments: “It’s long been thought that when the sea level was low, humans used a southern crossing, via the Red Sea from the horn of Africa, to get to southwestern Arabia. However, our study confirms there was a well-trodden passage to the north, across the only land-route from Africa to Eurasia.

“Our newly published evidence is a key piece of the puzzle that shows humans migrated using a northern route – using small wetland areas as bases whilst hunting abundant wildlife in the drier grasslands.   Although previous studies have looked for large lakes as potential watering holes, in fact small wetlands were very important as staging posts during the migration.”

Dr Mahmoud Abbas, the study’s lead author from Shantou University, China, said: “The Levant acted as a well-watered corridor for modern humans to disperse out of Africa during the last interglacial, and we have now demonstrated this is the case in the Jordan Rift Valley zone.

“The paleohydrological evidence from the Jordan desert enhances our understanding of the environmental setting at that time. Rather than dry desert, savannah grasslands would have provided the much-needed resources for humans to survive during their journey out of Africa and into southwest Asia and beyond.”

The researchers say their study demonstrates the intimate relationship between climate change, human survival and migrations.

Ends

Notes to Editors

1. The institutions partnering on this research project are Shantou University (China), University of Southampton (UK), Czech Academy of Sciences, Yarmouk University (Jordan), University of Jordan, Jiaying University (China), Griffith University (Australia), University of Queensland (Australia) and Smithsonian Institute (USA).
    
2. The paper ‘Human dispersals out of Africa via the Levant’ is due to be published in the journal Science Advances – DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi6838. More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science Advances press package at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak/  
    
3. For interviews with Professor Paul Carling contact, Peter Franklin, Media Relations, University of Southampton. press@soton.ac.uk 07748 321087.
    
4. You can download images to accompany the embargoed press release and find captions and credits (in the jpg names) here: https://safesend.soton.ac.uk/pickup?claimID=bfGfUF8TfDZgHDgw&claimPasscode=F7YzqvjMJ8oNNntK&emailAddr=141258
    
5. The University of Southampton drives original thinking, turns knowledge into action and impact, and creates solutions to the world’s challenges. We are among the top 100 institutions globally (QS World University Rankings 2023). Our academics are leaders in their fields, forging links with high-profile international businesses and organisations, and inspiring a 22,000-strong community of exceptional students, from over 135 countries worldwide. Through our high-quality education, the University helps students on a journey of discovery to realise their potential and join our global network of over 200,000 alumni. www.southampton.ac.uk
    
6. For more about the School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton visit: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/about/faculties-schools-departments/school-of-geography-and-environmental-science

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A second flake, or hand tool, seen from three different angles, discovered in the Jordan Rift Valley. The flakes helped scientists date human migration.

Dr Mahmoud Abass (Shantou University) on left, Professor Paul Carling (University of Southampton) in centre and Dr John Jansen (Czech Academy of Sciences) on right, in the field in Jordan Rift Valley.

CREDIT

University of Southampton

General view of Wadi Gharandal riverine wetland along the Jordan Rift Valley.

Sampling for luminescence dating from Wadi Hasa area.

CREDIT

Dr Mohammed Alqudah/Yarmouk University

JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adi6838 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Human dispersals out of Africa via the Levant

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2023

 

Study investigates Australian climate interventions including solar geoengineering, introductions of adapted corals to the Great Barrier Reef and cloud forest conservation, identifying both synergies and trade-offs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

Study investigates Australian climate interventions including solar geoengineering, introductions of adapted corals to the Great Barrier Reef and cloud forest conservation, identifying both synergies and trade-offs.

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Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000221

Article Title: Coral reefs, cloud forests and radical climate interventions in Australia’s Wet Tropics and Great Barrier Reef

Author Countries: Denmark, UK, USA

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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DOI

10.1371/journal.pclm.0000221 

ARTICLE TITLE

Coral reefs, cloud forests and radical climate interventions in Australia’s Wet Tropics and Great Barrier Reef

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2023

 

Staying dry for months underwater

Researchers develop stable, long-lasting superhydrophobic surfaces

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: 

A AEROPHILIC SURFACE MADE FROM A COMMONLY USED AND INEXPENSIVE TITANIUM ALLOY WITH A LONG-LASTING PLASTRON KEEPS DRY DURING HUNDREDS OF DUNKS IN A PETRI DISH OF BLOOD. 

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CREDIT: CREDIT: ALEXANDER B. TESLER/FRIEDRICH-ALEXANDER-UNIVERSITÄT ERLANGEN-NÜRNBERG

A species of spider lives its entire life underwater, despite having lungs that can only breathe atmospheric oxygen. How does it do it? This spider, known as the Argyroneta aquatica, has millions of rough, water-repellent hairs that trap air around its body, creating an oxygen reservoir and acting as a barrier between the spider’s lungs and the water. 

This thin layer of air is called a plastron and for decades, material scientists have been trying to harness its protective effects. Doing so could lead to underwater superhydrophobic surfaces able to prevent corrosion, bacterial growth, the adhesion of marine organisms, chemical fouling, and other deleterious effects of liquid on surfaces. But plastrons have proved highly unstable under water, keeping surfaces dry for only a matter of hours in the lab.

Now, a team of researchers led by the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, and Aalto University in Finland have developed a superhydrophobic surface with a stable plastron that can last for months under water. The team’s general strategy to create long-lasting underwater superhydrophobic surfaces, which repel blood and drastically reduce or prevent the adhesion of bacterial and marine organisms such as barnacles and mussels, opens a range of applications in biomedicine and industry. 

“Research in bioinspired materials is an extremely exciting area that continues to bring into the realm of man-made materials elegant solutions evolved in nature, which allow us to introduce new materials with properties never seen before,” said Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science and Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at SEAS and co-author of the paper. “This research exemplifies how uncovering these principles can lead to developing surfaces that maintain superhydrophobicity under water.”

Aizenberg is also an associate faculty member of the Wyss Institute.

The research is published in Nature Materials. 

Researchers have known for 20 years that a stable, underwater plastron was theoretically possible but, until now, haven’t been able to show it experimentally.

One of the biggest issues with plastrons is that they need rough surfaces to form, like the hair of Argyroneta aquatica. But this roughness makes the surface mechanically unstable and susceptible to any small perturbation in temperature, pressure, or tiny defect. 

Current techniques to assess artificially made superhydrophobic surfaces only take into account two parameters, which don't give enough information about the stability of the air plastron underwater. Aizenberg, Jaakko V. I. Timonen and Robin H. A. Ras from Aalto University, and Alexander B. Tesler and Wolfgang H. Goldmann from FAU and their teams identified a larger group of parameters, including information on surface roughness, the hydrophobicity of the surface molecules, plastron coverage, contact angles, and more, which, when combined with thermodynamic theory, allowed them to figure out if the air plastron would be stable.

With this new method and a simple manufacturing technique, the team designed a so-called aerophilic surface from a commonly used and inexpensive titanium alloy with a long-lasting plastron that kept the surface dry thousands of hours longer than previous experiments and even longer than the plastrons of living species. 

“We used a characterization method that had been suggested by theorists 20 years ago to prove that our surface is stable, which means that not only have we made a novel type of extremely repellent, extremely durable superhydrophobic surface, but we can also have a pathway of doing it again with a different material,” said Tesler, a former postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and the Wyss Institute, and lead author of the paper. 

To prove the stability of the plastron, the researchers put the surface through the ringer — bending it, twisting it, blasting it with hot and cold water, and abrading it with sand and steel to block the surface remaining aerophilic. It survived 208 days submerged in water and hundreds of dunks in a petri dish of blood. It severely reduced the growth of E.coli and barnacles on its surface and stopped the adhesion of mussels altogether. 

“The stability, simplicity, and scalability of this system make it valuable for real-world applications,” said Stefan Kolle, a graduate student at SEAS and co-author of the paper. “With the characterization approach shown here, we demonstrate a simple toolkit that allows you to optimize your superhydrophobic surface to reach stability, which dramatically changes your application space.”

That application space includes biomedical applications, where it could be used to reduce infection after surgery or as biodegradable implants such as stents, according to Goldmann, senior author of the paper, and former Harvard fellow. It also includes underwater applications, where it could prevent corrosion in pipelines and sensors. In the future, it could even be used in combination with the super-slick coating known as SLIPS, the Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces, developed by Aizenberg and her team more than a decade ago, to protect surfaces even further from contamination. 

This paper was co-authored by Lucia H. Prado, Ingo Thievessen, David Böhringer, Lena Fischer, Mark Bruns, Anca Mazare, Ulrich Lohbauer, Sannakaisa Virtanen, Ben Fabry, Patrik Schmuki, and Wolfgang H. Goldmann of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany; and  Matilda Backholm, Bhuvaneshwari Karunakaran, Heikki A. Nurmi, Mika Latikka, Zoran M. Cenev, Jaakko V. I. Timonen and Robin H. A. Ras of Aalto University in Finland; and Shane Stafslien of North Dakota State University.

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JOURNAL

Nature Materials

 

Pandemic boosted gardening, hunting in NYS

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

A survey of New York state residents found that nearly half of respondents increased the amount of time they spent on wild and backyard food in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, confirming anecdotes about increases in activities such as sourdough baking, fishing and gardening. People also tended to eat the food they produced, researchers found, possibly buffering the generally less healthful eating that was common at the time.

“This was the period of 2020 when you couldn't find tomato cages, seeds were out of stock, and there were reports about record numbers of people hunting and fishing,” said Kathryn Fiorella, assistant professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University and senior author of “Wild and Backyard Food Use During COVID-19 in Upstate New York, United States,” published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition.

The researchers conducted a survey of more than 500 people across Broome, Cortland, Onondaga, Oswego, Cayuga and Seneca counties. Participants reported on their production and consumption of wild and backyard foods – from gardening, poultry rearing, foraging and hunting and/or fishing – during the pandemic compared with the previous year. Because respondents were recruited in a convenience sample, they likely overrepresented interest in these activities. They also tended to be whiter, more educated and wealthier than average New Yorkers.

Results showed that only a small number of participants were new to wild and backyard food-related pursuits, and across different activities, 40% to 46% of people increased the amount of time they invested. Conversely, a notable minority of respondents reduced their activities.

The researchers were especially interested to see whether people also consumed the food they produced. Indeed, they did. While diets generally worsened during the pandemic, gardening and poultry rearing for meat and eggs may have contributed to buffering those effects in the study region.

“People were actually consuming really meaningful quantities,” Fiorella said, including home-produced eggs and meat, and backyard-grown fruits and vegetables.

“People reported harvesting and eating wild and backyard foods to have more control over food availability, a key dimension of food insecurity, compared to before the pandemic,” said doctoral student Jeanne Coffin-Schmitt. “This was true even though the people we surveyed were almost entirely considered food secure based on their responses. We think this could show how much anxiety about conventional food systems the pandemic inspired.”

 

For additional information, read this Cornell Chronicle story. 

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.

 

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Nutrition

ARTICLE TITLE

Wild and backyard food use during COVID-19 in upstate New York, United States

 

Underappreciation of LGBT executives creates investment opportunity

A ‘rainbow ceiling’ contributes to LGBT-led companies being undervalued on the stock market, according to new research

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

GROUP PHOTO-LEFT TO RIGHT ARINA SKOROCHODOVA, DR MIKHAIL VASENIN, AND DR SAVVA SHANAEV.

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CREDIT: SIMON VEIT-WILSON

Academics from Northumbria University have uncovered an “extreme underappreciation” of firms with CEOs who are openly gay, lesbian, trans or bisexual – and they say it’s driven by discrimination.

According to the recently published study, ‘LGBT CEOs and stock returns: Diagnosing rainbow ceilings and cliffs’, conscious and unconscious biases against LGBT executives lead to stock market participants and investors failing to appreciate the financial performance and potential of LGBT-led firms.

As a result, such companies are reportedly substantially underestimated and undervalued on the stock market. This discrimination-driven effect, academics say, is leading to stocks of companies with LGBT leaders significantly outperforming the market by 0.69%-1.08% per month – a finding uncovered for the first time in the study.

Research lead Dr Savva Shanaev – Lecturer in Finance in the Accounting and Financial Management department of the university’s Newcastle Business School – describes this outperformance as a “hidden gem” of an investment opportunity, saying: “What’s powerful about this is that you could see an investment do well, and you can also do good at the same time.

“That’s the golden grail of socially responsible investing and it’s very rare to find.”

By highlighting this unexplored facet of the socially responsible investment industry, the academics hope to generate publicity and boost the market value of LGBT-led companies, meaning they may be able to attract funding more easily in the future. Dr Shanaev hopes any such ‘rainbow rush’ would ultimately bring about a levelling of the market and a positive step towards equality and better representation at a senior level.

Focusing on dozens of LGBT-led companies, Dr Shanaev and his colleagues – Northumbria University masters’ graduate Arina Skorochodova and lecturer Dr Mikhail Vasenin – documented ‘alphas’, a measure of risk-adjusted return that tells investors if an asset has performed better or worse than predicted.

In doing so, they found that the companies significantly outperformed the market, with those outperformances persisting even when adjusted for several factors. In the first study of its kind, the academics also found that portfolios formed from stocks with LGBT CEOs also robustly outperformed market indices.

“Once we’d discovered this,” explains Dr Shanaev, “we shifted our focus to look at why this was happening.

“We wanted to know, if this kind of opportunity exists, why has it not been exhausted yet? In finance research, this is one of the most important questions – is there really a free lunch here or is there some risk we haven’t accounted for that means it’s not the deal we thought it was?”

After carrying out robust eliminatory tests, the academics concluded that - in line with similar gender-based research – the consistent outperformance suggests “substantial” discrimination.

Generally, they suggest, investors and stock market participants do not see LGBT CEOs as equal to others and consequently, underestimate and undervalue their performance. This contributes to a “rainbow ceiling” effect that impacts upon LGBT people in business and is analogous to the glass ceiling hypothesis illustrating similar discrimination against women.

Dr Shanaev believes more awareness of the undervaluing of LGBT-led stocks will eventually see the income-boosting effect of discrimination vanish as the market levels out.

“If there is a flow of capital to these stocks in light of this research,” he explains, “the values will increase and the discrimination effect will eventually vanish.

“But that’s no bad thing, because ultimately the objective is to prove to the market that companies led by the LGBT community are, in essence, no different to any other.”

The full paper is available to read in the journal Research in International Business and Finance.

 

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JOURNAL

Research in International Business and Finance

DOI

10.1016/j.ribaf.2023.102063 

ARTICLE TITLE

LGBT CEOs and stock returns: Diagnosing rainbow ceilings and cliffs

 

Europe’s exascale supercomputer in its starting blocks

Business Announcement

FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM JUELICH

 

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JUPITER - EXASCALE IN EUROPE

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CREDIT: FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM JÜLICH

Following last year’s selection of Forschungszentrum Jülich as the hosting entity, it has now also been decided who will supply JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer: a bidding consortium by the German supercomputing and quantum computing company ParTec AG and Eviden, the advanced computing division of the French IT service provider Atos.

The “Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research,” or JUPITER for short, will be the first system in Europe capable of more than 1 exaflop/s. This number corresponds to one million times one million times one million – a “1” followed by 18 zeros – floating-point operations per second, which is the equivalent of the computing power of 10 million modern notebooks.

JUPITER is designed to tackle the most demanding simulations and compute-intensive AI applications in science and industry. Applications will include training large neural networks like language models in AI, simulations for developing functional materials, creating digital twins of the human heart or brain for medical purposes, validating quantum computers, and high-resolution simulations of our climate that encompass the entire Earth system.

The cost of the system and its operation for an expected six years amounts to 500 million euros. Half of JUPITER’s funding is provided by the European Union, and the other two quarters by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW-NRW), respectively.

Modular architecture for largest-scale simulations and AI workloads

JUPITER will be implementing the modular supercomputing architecture. The exascale-computer will consist of a highly scalable Booster Module and a tightly coupled general-purpose Cluster Module. The general-purpose cluster module will be based on SiPearl’s new Rhea processor made in Europe, a CPU with exceptionally high memory bandwidth for most complex workloads. The Booster Module will feature NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform designed for next-generation data center technologies to deliver extreme-scale computing power for AI and simulation workloads, for example, to train generative AI like large language models. The components will be integrated by Eviden into their highly energy-efficient, direct liquid-cooled BullSequana XH3000 platform, and the cluster and booster modules are dynamically operated as a unified supercomputer using ParTec's modular ParaStation Modulo operating system.

ParTec, Eviden, SiPearl and NVIDIA are collaborating with the European scientific community on JUPITER to provide researchers with the state-of-the-art AI and HPC resources they need to drive the next wave of breakthroughs in areas from climate to quantum computing. The first exascale supercomputer in Europe will pioneer new avenues of research and scientific discovery not only in Europe, but all over the world.

The installation of the system will start in early 2024. Beginning with the construction of JUPITER, users will be able to prepare for and test the system as part of the JUPITER Early Access Program, enabling a close cooperation of all involved parties to fabricate and configure the best possible version of the system for the scientific community.

More details and specifics about the system will be announced in November at this year's SC23 conference.

Statements

This news marks a pivotal step forward in the realisation of our endeavour to bring exascale computing to Europe. With the combined expertise of our partners and the EuroHPC JU’s continued commitment to bolstering European computing power, JUPITER will revolutionise the European HPC landscape and reinforce European excellence in HPC. Not only will JUPITER break the exaflop barrier, but the system will also use the European HPC processor Rhea developed under the European Processor Initiative by SiPearl.

    Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of EuroHPC JU

 

The signing of the contract for the construction of JUPITER is another major milestone on the way of Europe entering the exascale era. JUPITER will be one of the leading supercomputers in the world and will therefore become a symbol of the strength of European scientific cooperation. It will enable scientists to achieve scientific breakthroughs in various domains like health, climate, energy, materials and AI. We are proud to host this research infrastructure in Germany.

    Prof. Dr. Sabine Döring, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

 

The JUPITER exascale computer is a milestone for NRW as a research location. The fact that the first European supercomputer of this new performance class is being installed in NRW underlines our leading position in high performance computing. With its incredible computing power, JUPITER will help address the major societal challenges of our time. It will be particularly well suited for AI applications and further enhance Jülich´s focus on quantum computing in combination with the Jülich supercomputing architecture.

    Minister Ina Brandes, Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW NRW)

 

With JUPITER, our Supercomputing Centre at Forschungszentrum Jülich will offer an instrument of unprecedented size and capabilities, the result of years of outstanding systems- and user-oriented research. In its dual role as a leading simulation and AI-engine, as required for training large foundation models, JUPITER promises breakthroughs in many areas where pressing challenges are at stake, such as materials science, sustainable energy systems, or earth system science.

    Prof. Astrid Lambrecht, Chair of the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich

 

I am particularly proud that our specialists at Jülich, together with many European partners, succeeded in developing the new modular supercomputing concept as a genuine European technology, which is now the basis of JUPITER. Only thanks to the generous support of the European Commission since 2012 as well as EuroHPC JU and BMBF in the DEEP and SEA projects, such a development was possible in the first place.

    Prof. Thomas Lippert, Director of the JSC, Forschungszentrum Jülich

 

 

Computing time via established peer review procedures

The Jülich Supercomputing Centre will operate JUPITER as a member of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS), an association of the three national high-performance computing centers in Germany, to which the three data centers of Forschungszentrum Jülich (JSC), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (LRZ), and Stuttgart University (HLRS) belong. The computing time is allocated to national and European projects via established peer review procedures. GCS is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the German State of Baden-Württemberg, and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.