Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Indigenous Mexicans find little cheer in independence bicentennial

Issued on: 22/09/2021
Mexican woman from the Otomi indigenous community are seen in the occupied National Institute of Indigenous Peoples building in Mexico City
 PEDRO PARDO AFP

Mexico City (AFP)

Two centuries after their country won independence from Spain, indigenous Mexicans like Fidel Flores say that poverty, marginalization and territorial disputes mean there is little reason for them to celebrate.

Some even say that indigenous Mexicans suffer more today than during colonial times.


In the central state of Puebla, Flores and hundreds of indigenous Nahua residents last month took over a well operated by a foreign-owned bottling company they accuse of overexploitation.

The water coming up from the ground in the shadow of the majestic Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl volcanoes "is a divine gift" and not the property of a private firm, said the 74-year-old.

"Whoever tries to profit from the water will receive the punishment of the people!" a banner warns at the site, where protesters have put up barricades using car tires.

Flores said that before the "peaceful seizure" of the spring, the residents reported the case to the authorities because other wells were drying up, but they were ignored.

"We're suffering more than in colonial times," because at least then indigenous people did not have to fight to protect natural resources, he said.

Bottling company Bonafont, owned by the French group Danone, told AFP that the well's operation was not connected to the surface water sources used by the community.


- Chronic poverty -


Nearly 70 percent -- 8.4 million -- of Mexico's indigenous people live in poverty, and 28 percent are in extreme poverty, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy.

That is far above the figure for the non-indigenous population, 39 percent of which lives below the poverty line and around five percent in extreme poverty, in a country of 126 million.

Members of Mexico's indigenous communities guard a bottling plant they have occupied in the central state of Puebla
 PEDRO PARDO AFP

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in 2018 with an indigenous ceremony, has apologized for historical wrongs and emphasizes that states with large indigenous populations receive more social investment than many others.

But some communities complain that their situation has worsened due to the president's mega infrastructure projects like the Tren Maya rail link through the Yucatan Peninsula.

"It will destroy the environment, but the president is determined. Our opinion doesn't matter to him," said indigenous activist Pedro Uc.

"All this talk of ending marginalization of the indigenous people is still just talk" because the people still face "poverty, marginalization, racism and contempt," he said.

Uc, who has received anonymous death threats in the past, is adamant that his people have "nothing to celebrate" during the government's bicentennial events this month.

Lopez Obrador has asked Spain and the Catholic Church to apologize for the abuses committed during the conquest and evangelization.

But the president's rhetoric "contradicts his search for economic development in conventional capitalist terms," said Federico Navarrete, an expert in indigenous issues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

After the armed uprising of the Zapatista guerrillas in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas in 1994 to fight for more rights, reforms allowed the creation of autonomous indigenous governments.

Nearly 70 percent of Mexico's indigenous people live in poverty, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy 
PEDRO PARDO AFP

However, rights such as access to education in indigenous languages are still not recognized in some parts of the country.

To make themselves heard, hundreds of families from the Otomi community in need of housing have occupied the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples building in Mexico City for nearly a year ago.

The bureaucrats' cubicles now serve as dormitories, a tortilla oven has been set up in the parking lot and a handicraft workshop has been installed.

"The government has never wanted to listen to us," said 54-year-old Isabel Valencia from the town of Amealco in the central state of Queretaro.

No government spokesperson responded to AFP's requests for an interview about the matter.

"There have been years of waiting and knocking on their doors while they pretend to listen to us," Valencia said.

© 2021 AFP
Rare Australia eathquake causes panic in Melbourne

Issued on: 22/09/2021 
Emergency and rescue officials examine a damaged building in the popular shopping area of Chapel Street in Melbourne on September 22, 2021.
 © William West, AFP

Text by: NEWS WIRES


A rare quake rattled southeastern Australia early Wednesday, shaking buildings, knocking down walls and sending panicked Melbourne residents running into the streets.

The shallow tremor hit east of the country's second-largest city just after 9:00am local time (2300 GMT) and was felt hundreds of kilometres (miles) away.

The US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake at 5.8, later revised up to 5.9, and said it struck at a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles).

With Melbourne beginning its eighth week of pandemic lockdown and bracing for a third straight day of violent anti-vaccine protests, most residents were at home when the quake struck.

Zume Phim, 33, owner of Melbourne's Oppen cafe, said he rushed onto the street when the temblor hit.


"The whole building was shaking. All the windows, the glass, was shaking -- like a wave of shaking," he told AFP.

"I have never experienced that before. It was a little bit scary."

In a popular shopping area around Melbourne's Chapel Street, masonry debris tumbled from buildings and littered the roads.

Bricks and rubble surrounded Betty's Burgers and large sheets of metal hung off the restaurant awning.

"We were fortunate that nobody was in the restaurant at the time," the restaurant said in a Facebook post.

Sizable earthquakes are unusual in Australia.

"It was quite violent but everyone was kind of in shock," Melbourne cafe worker Parker Mayo, 30, told AFP.

'Very disturbing event'


At magnitude 5.9, this was "the biggest event in southeast Australia for a long time" Mike Sandiford, a geologist at the University of Melbourne told AFP.


"We had some very big ones at magnitude six in the late 1800s, though precise magnitudes are not well known."


A quake of this size is expected every "10-20 years in southeast Australia, the last was Thorpdale in 2012" he said. "This is significantly bigger."


Geoscience Australia reported the initial quake was followed by a series of four smaller ones, ranging from magnitude 2.5 to 4.1.


Sandiford said Australians should expect "many hundreds of aftershocks, most below human sensitivity threshold, but probably a dozen or more that will be felt at least nearby".

The quake "would have caused many billions of dollars in damage had it been under Melbourne", he added.

The mayor of Mansfield, near the quake epicentre, said there was no damage in the small town but it had taken residents by surprise.

"I was sitting down at work at my desk and I needed to run outside. It took me a while to work out what it was," Mark Holcombe told public broadcaster ABC.

"We don't have earthquakes that I am aware of -- none of the locals I spoke to this morning had that experience with earthquakes here before -- so it is one right out of left field."

Emergency services said they had received calls for help as far away as Dubbo, about 700 kilometres (435 miles) from the quake epicentre, with fire and rescue crews dispatched to help.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, speaking from New York, said there were no initial reports of injuries.

"It can be a very, very disturbing event for an earthquake of this nature," he said. "They are very rare events in Australia."

Recovery efforts may be complicated by the ongoing pandemic lockdown and ongoing protests.

Hundreds of demonstrators wearing work boots and hi-visibility jackets again rampaged through central Melbourne Wednesday in protest against vaccine requirements for construction workers.

Police on Tuesday fired pepper spray, foam baton rounds and rubber ball grenades to disperse the crowd and warned further protests would "not be tolerated".

(AFP)
UN agency: Innovation continued even as coronavirus emerged


Mon., September 20, 2021, 5:36 a.m.·2 min read

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.'s intellectual property agency said Monday that innovation marched forward last year despite the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Technology, pharmaceuticals and biotech industries boosted their investments, even as hard-hit sectors like transport and travel eased back on spending.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, which helps coordinate and approve international patents, trademarks and other intellectual property, also warned that change in the overall “innovation landscape” was happening too slowly, saying a broader array of countries should benefit from it as the world rebuilds after the pandemic ebbs.

The findings released Monday emerged from WIPO’s latest innovation index report for 2020, which ranked Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Britain, and fast-climber South Korea — driven partly from creativity like K-Pop music — as the most innovative economies. China and France edged up in the rankings, which continue to be dominated by Asia, Europe and North America.

“Innovation is resilient — and even more resilient than we expected,” said WIPO Director General Daren Tang.

“What COVID has done is that it has disrupted certain industries, but it has accelerated certain industries,” Tang said in an interview in his office overlooking Lake Geneva. “It comes as no surprise that communications, hardware, software, ICT, these are sectors have done well” as well as the medical and biotech sectors.

The index ranks 132 countries, plus economies such as Hong Kong, and comes a year after WIPO said investments in innovation hit a record high in 2019 — an annualized rate of gain of 8.5 percent.

Top technology companies like Apple, Microsoft and Huawei increased investment on average about 10 percent last year, and venture capital investment surged — a trend that is continuing this year, WIPO said.

While the United States and China have largely driven the rise in R&D in recent years, other countries like Turkey, Vietnam, India and the Philippines — the so-called TVIP countries — have been rising consistently in the rankings over the past five years. Switzerland has consistently led the rankings for the past five years.

Overall, the WIPO report on the index said, “the global innovation landscape is changing too slowly. … There is urgent need for this to change.”

Jamey Keaten, The Associated Press
THE AUTHORITARIAN NATURE OF THE FAMILY 
Parents in China laud rule limiting video game time for kids

Mon., September 20, 2021




Li Zhanguo’s two children, ages 4 and 8, don’t have their own smartphones, but like millions of other Chinese children, they are no strangers to online gaming.

“If my children get their hands on our mobile phones or an iPad, and if we don’t closely monitor their screen time, they can play online games for as long as three to four hours each time,” he said.

Not anymore.

Like many other parents, Li is happy with new government restrictions that limit children to just three hours weekly of online gaming time — an hour between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday most weeks.

The restrictions, which took effect earlier this month, are a tightening of 2019 rules that banned children from gaming overnight and limited them to 90 minutes most weekdays.

Experts say it’s unclear if such policies can help prevent addiction to online games, since children might just get engrossed in social media instead. Ultimately, they say, it’s up to parents to nurture good habits and set screen time limits.

The new rules are part of a campaign to prevent kids from spending too much time on entertainment that communist authorities consider unhealthy. That also includes what officials call the “irrational fan culture” of worshipping celebrities.

The technology restrictions reflect growing concern over gaming addiction among children. One state media outlet has called online games “spiritual opium,” an allusion to past eras when addiction to the drug was widespread in China.

“Adolescents are the future of the motherland, and protecting the physical and mental health of minors is related to the vital interests of masses, and in cultivating newcomers in the era of national rejuvenation,” the Press and Publications Administration said in a statement, alluding to a campaign by Chinese President Xi Jinping to cultivate a healthier society for a more powerful China.

Government reports in 2018 estimated that one in 10 Chinese minors were addicted to the internet. Centers have sprung up to diagnose and treat such problems.

Under the new regulations, the responsibility for ensuring that children play only three hours a day falls largely on Chinese gaming companies like NetEase and Tencent, whose wildly popular Honor of Kings mobile game is played by tens of millions across the country.

Companies have set up real-name registration systems to prevent young users from exceeding their game time limits, and have incorporated facial recognition checks that require users to verify their identities.

In some cases, companies will do sporadic facial recognition checks while people are playing, and they’ll be booted out of the game if they fail.

Regulators also ordered gaming companies to tighten examination of their games to ensure they don’t include harmful content such as violence.

And they've set up a platform that allows people who hold Chinese ID cards to report on gaming companies they believe are violating restrictions.

It’s unclear what penalties companies may face if they fail to enforce the regulations.

And even if such blanket policies are enforced, it is also unclear whether they can prevent online addiction, given that game companies design their products to entice players to stay online and come back for more, said Barry Ip, a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire in England who has researched gaming and addiction. Children may just switch to other apps if they are forced to stop playing games.

“There are many forms of digital platforms that could potentially hold a young person’s attention just as well as gaming,” Ip said. “It’s just as easy for a young person to spend four hours on TikTok in the evening rather than play games if their time is uncontrolled.”

Short-video apps such as Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, are extremely popular in China and are not subject to the same restrictions as games, though they do have “youth mode” features enabling parents to limit what children watch and for how long.

Douyin and TikTok developer ByteDance announced recently that users under 14 in China will automatically be in youth mode and limited to 40 minutes a day on Douyin. They also won't be able to access the app between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

“Many parents attribute their children’s suffering grades to gaming, but I disagree with this sentiment,” said Liu Yanbin, mother of a 9-year-old daughter in Shanghai. “As long as children don’t want to study, they will find some way to play. Games may be restricted now but there’s always short video, social media, even television dramas.”

Tao Ran, director of the Adolescent Psychological Development Base in Beijing, which specializes in treating internet addiction, expects about 20% of kids will find workarounds for the rules.

“Some minors are too smart, if you have a system in place to restrict them from gaming they will try to beat the system by borrowing accounts of their older relatives and find a way around facial recognition,” Tao said.

The new rules, he said, are a “last resort.”

Instead of relying on the government to intervene, parents need to take responsibility for limiting time spent on games, social media or the internet, experts say.

“The focus should be made on prevention, for example, informing parents about how games function, so that they are in a better position to regulate the involvement of their children,” said Joël Billieux, a psychology professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Li, the father of two young children, said he plans to arrange piano lessons for his daughter, since she has shown an interest in learning the instrument.

“Sometimes due to work, parents may not have time to pay attention to their children and that’s why many kids turn to games to spend time,” he said. “Parents must be willing to help children cultivate hobbies and interests so that they can develop in a healthy manner.”

___

Associated Press researcher Chen Si in Shanghai and video producer Caroline Chen in Beijing contributed to this story.

Zen Soo, The Associated Press


Photos: Ancient India through a geologist’s eyes



The secrets to how we got here lurk all around us. Finding and deciphering them takes time and a bit of luck. Thanks to the unrelenting work of geologists and archaeologists, both Indian and foreign, we know more each year, about how our nation took shape. 

The ancients left behind their own clues that are both fascinating and revelatory. See how India has evolved over billions of year  

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST7 Photos
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3.2 billion years Before Present: The Aravallis, India’s oldest mountain range, begin to take shape, as tectonic plates push against one another. Erosion over the next 2 billion years will mould them into the shape you see today. The mountains stretch 692 km, from Gujarat to Delhi, passing through Rajasthan and Haryana. The name comes from the Sanskrit words ‘ara’ and ‘vali’, which means line of peaks. (Wikimedia Commons)

3.2 billion years Before Present: The Aravallis, India’s oldest mountain range, begin to take shape, as tectonic plates push against one another. Erosion over the next 2 billion years will mould them into the shape you see today. The mountains stretch 692 km, from Gujarat to Delhi, passing through Rajasthan and Haryana. The name comes from the Sanskrit words ‘ara’ and ‘vali’, which means line of peaks. (Wikimedia Commons)

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST
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65 million years Before Present: The Rajasaurus, a fierce dinosaur native to the Narmada valley, goes extinct. This carnivore with a horned crest probably even ate other dinosaurs. The Rajasaurus was probably one of the last dinosaur species to survive on the subcontinent, as around the world too, the age of the dinosaurs drew to a close. In the photo is a replica of the skull of a Rajasaurus, at the Regional Museum of Natural History in Bhopal.(Swapnil Karambelkar via Wikimedia Commons)

65 million years Before Present: The Rajasaurus, a fierce dinosaur native to the Narmada valley, goes extinct. This carnivore with a horned crest probably even ate other dinosaurs. The Rajasaurus was probably one of the last dinosaur species to survive on the subcontinent, as around the world too, the age of the dinosaurs drew to a close. In the photo is a replica of the skull of a Rajasaurus, at the Regional Museum of Natural History in Bhopal.(Swapnil Karambelkar via Wikimedia Commons)

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST
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47 million years Before Present: The birth of the Himalayas. As the Indian Plate collides with the Eurasian Plate at the astonishing speed of 15 cm per year, the world’s highest peaks are formed. The plates continue to collide to this day, causing the Himalayas, including Mount Everest, to grow ever higher.(Landsat 7 Satellite / NASA)

47 million years Before Present: The birth of the Himalayas. As the Indian Plate collides with the Eurasian Plate at the astonishing speed of 15 cm per year, the world’s highest peaks are formed. The plates continue to collide to this day, causing the Himalayas, including Mount Everest, to grow ever higher.(Landsat 7 Satellite / NASA)

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST
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1.5 million - 385,000 years Before Present: At Attirampakkam near present-day Chennai in Tamil Nadu, early man leaves behind hand-axes and cleavers. Over the next million years, things progress to the middle stone age, when tools become smaller, sleeker, sharper.(Courtesy Sharma Centre for Heritage Education)

1.5 million - 385,000 years Before Present: At Attirampakkam near present-day Chennai in Tamil Nadu, early man leaves behind hand-axes and cleavers. Over the next million years, things progress to the middle stone age, when tools become smaller, sleeker, sharper.(Courtesy Sharma Centre for Heritage Education)

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST
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500,000 - 600,000 years Before Present: The Narmada human dies. Geologist Arun Sonakia finds just a skull cap on the banks of the Narmada at Hathnora, a village in Madhya Pradesh, in 1982. It is the only early human (Homo erectus) fossil found in India. From it we know that India was a home, even before the Homo sapiens.  (Photo by Arun Sonakia)

500,000 - 600,000 years Before Present: The Narmada human dies. Geologist Arun Sonakia finds just a skull cap on the banks of the Narmada at Hathnora, a village in Madhya Pradesh, in 1982. It is the only early human (Homo erectus) fossil found in India. From it we know that India was a home, even before the Homo sapiens.  (Photo by Arun Sonakia)

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST
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8,000 years Before Present: The Indus Valley Civilisation stretches from present-day Afghanistan, through Pakistan and into northwestern India, making it the most extensive of the world’s three earliest civilisations (the other two being in Egypt and Mesopotamia). In the photo is a view of the great bath and granary from Mohenjo Daro, one of the Indus Valley Civilisation’s busy cities, currently in Pakistan’s Sindh province.(Harappa.com / Jonathan Mark Kenoye)

8,000 years Before Present: The Indus Valley Civilisation stretches from present-day Afghanistan, through Pakistan and into northwestern India, making it the most extensive of the world’s three earliest civilisations (the other two being in Egypt and Mesopotamia). In the photo is a view of the great bath and granary from Mohenjo Daro, one of the Indus Valley Civilisation’s busy cities, currently in Pakistan’s Sindh province.(Harappa.com / Jonathan Mark Kenoye)

UPDATED ON SEP 19, 2021 04:37 PM IST
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3,200 years Before Present: The Thamirabarani River civilisation takes root in the Tirunelveli region of present-day Tamil Nadu. There is evidence of trade between this and the Indus Valley civilisation.(Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department)

3,200 years Before Present: The Thamirabarani River civilisation takes root in the Tirunelveli region of present-day Tamil Nadu. There is evidence of trade between this and the Indus Valley civilisation.(Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department)

Scientists finally have an explanation for the most energetic explosions in the universe

The brightest explosions in the universe could be the work of ancient, dying stars.


By Brandon Specktor about 10 hours ago


Gamma rays (magenta) blast out of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant in this composite satellite image. New research suggests the most mysterious gamma-ray bursts in the universe may form in a similar way. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the brightest, most energetic blasts of light in the universe. Released by an immense cosmic explosion, a single GRB is capable of shining about a million trillion times brighter than Earth's sun, according to NASA — and, for the most part, scientists can't explain why they happen.

Part of the problem is that all known GRBs come from very, very far away — usually billions of light-years from Earth. Sometimes, a GRB's home galaxy is so far-flung that the burst's light appears to come from nowhere at all, briefly blipping out of the black, empty sky and vanishing seconds later. These "empty-sky" gamma-ray bursts, as some astronomers call them, have presented an ongoing cosmic mystery for more than 60 years. But now, a new study, published Sept. 15 in the journal Nature, offers a compelling mathematical explanation for the powerful bursts' origins.


Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe

According to the study researchers — who modeled the interactions between gamma rays and other powerful energy sources, such as cosmic rays — all those nebulous empty-sky bursts could be the results of massive stellar explosions in the disks of distant galaxies.


"We modeled the gamma-ray emission from all the galaxies in the universe … and found that it is star-forming galaxies that produce the majority of [empty-sky] gamma-ray radiation," lead study author Matt Roth, an astrophysicist at Australian National University in Canberra, said in a statement.

A map of the gamma-ray sky, taken with NASA's Fermi telescope. The so-called empty-sky GRBs appear far above and below the map's center, which shows the center of our galaxy. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)



Blasts from the past


Astronomers favor two leading explanations for the empty-sky gamma-ray mystery. In one explanation, the rays occur when gas falls into the supermassive black holes that sit at the centers of all galaxies in the universe. In this scenario, as gas particles get sucked into the black hole, a small fraction escape and instead radiate in large, near-light-speed jets of matter. It's thought that these powerful jets could be responsible for gamma-ray bursts.


The other explanation points to stellar explosions called supernovas. When large stars run out of fuel and erupt in these violent supernovas, they can send nearby particles blasting away at near-light speed. These highly energetic particles, called cosmic rays, may then collide with other particles sprinkled through the gassy hinterland between stars, producing gamma-rays.


In their new study, the researchers focused on that second explanation by modeling the interactions between cosmic rays and interstellar gas in various types of star-forming galaxies. They found that the rate of gamma-ray emissions was influenced by several key factors, including the size of the galaxy, the rate of star formation (which affects the rate of supernovas) and the initial energy of the cosmic rays created by each supernova.


Once the team had a model that predicted the rate of GRBs for every size of galaxy, they compared their model to a real survey of gamma-ray radiation compiled by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The researchers found that their calculations fit with the observations and that supernovas in star-forming galaxies could explain most, if not all, empty-sky GRBs.

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"It's a significant milestone to finally discover the origins of this gamma-ray emission, solving a mystery of the universe astronomers have been trying to decipher since the 1960s," Roth said.


Black holes are probably still responsible for some of the gamma-rays that our satellites pick up, the researchers added. But when it comes to the mysterious empty-sky GRBs, the hungry holes are simply not necessary; exploding stars in faraway corners of the universe are sufficient to explain the phenomenon.

 

How to use marine ecosystem models to improve climate change impact forecasts

marine ecosystem
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Millions of people depend on oceans for food and income. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that at least 83 percent of the ocean's surface will continue to warm this century, which will negatively affect lives and livelihoods. Additionally, a new international study that includes research from LSU found that higher resolution data are critical to predict how ocean warming will impact various marine species and ecosystems.

The study suggests that while marine ecosystem models are the key tools used to understand how  change could impact marine food webs and fisheries in the future, how those models represent key processes that drive the marine ecosystem's response to climate change differ widely. These researchers believe this uncertainty could be causing models to underestimate future climate change impacts on the world's marine ecosystems.

LSU scientist Cheryl Harrison co-coordinated the team of 23 international researchers from the U.S., Australia, Europe and Canada, who produced this milestone paper for marine climate change impact projections. She is an assistant professor in the LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences within the College of the Coast & Environment and in the LSU Center for Computation & Technology.

"Global ocean modeling of marine ecosystem and fisheries impacts under climate change is a relatively new field of study, and one that is very important for understanding both societal and conservation impacts of climate change. This study aims to improve understanding of major differences in various marine ecosystem models and how they work by separating out the data on how the fish respond to changes in temperature and the amount of available food," Harrison said.
The researchers explored the many mechanisms behind how  respond to climate change in eight global marine ecosystem models from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project, or FishMIP. While the models in this study generally show that climate change will cause the world's marine animal populations to decline as oceans warm, the magnitude and details of temperature impacts are uncertain due to the large number of biological and ecosystem processes that temperature controls. The implication is that the models together may be underestimating the impact of ocean warming on fisheries.

"Additionally, how marine ecosystem models respond to climate change depends greatly on assumptions about the best variable from climate models to use to represent fish food," Harrison said. "Some use new growth of marine algae while others look at the total amount of biomass or more complicated formulations. However, new growth and biomass respond very differently to climate change, mostly due to the 'tropicalization of the ocean' as it warms, which is the marine equivalent to desertification. In , there is more growth but more turnover, and less biomass to support larger organisms. These differences are amplified in the marine ecosystem responses."

This study takes the first step in reconciling those differences. According to the study's lead author, Ryan Heneghan from Queensland University of Technology's School of Mathematical Sciences, they plan to use their results as a roadmap for the global scientific community to increase its understanding of the world's marine  now and in the future.

How future fish stocks are affected by phytoplankton and iron uptake
More information: Ryan F. Heneghan et al, Disentangling diverse responses to climate change among global marine ecosystem models, Progress in Oceanography (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2021.102659
Provided by Louisiana State University 
Congruent trophic pathways underpin global coral reef food webs
View ORCID ProfileChloé Pozas-Schacre, View ORCID ProfileJordan M. Casey, View ORCID ProfileSimon J. Brandl, View ORCID ProfileMichel Kulbicki, View ORCID ProfileMireille Harmelin-Vivien, View ORCID ProfileGiovanni Strona, and View ORCID ProfileValeriano Parravicini

See all authors and affiliations
PNAS September 28, 2021 118 (39) e2100966118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100966118

Edited by M. Aaron MacNeil, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, and accepted by Editorial Board Member James A. Estes July 28, 2021 (received for review January 25, 2021)


Article
Figures & SI
Info & Metrics
PDF

Significance

Species loss can weaken the trophic interactions that underpin ecosystem functioning. Coral reefs are the world’s most diverse marine ecosystem, harboring interaction networks of extraordinary complexity. We show that, despite this complexity, global coral reef food webs are governed by a suite of highly consistent energetic pathways, regardless of regional differences in biodiversity. All networks are characterized by species with narrow dietary preferences, arranged into distinct groups of predator–prey interactions. These characteristics suggest that coral reef food webs are robust to the loss of prey resources but vulnerable to local extinctions of consumer species.

Abstract

Ecological interactions uphold ecosystem structure and functioning. However, as species richness increases, the number of possible interactions rises exponentially. More than 6,000 species of coral reef fishes exist across the world’s tropical oceans, resulting in an almost innumerable array of possible trophic interactions. Distilling general patterns in these interactions across different bioregions stands to improve our understanding of the processes that govern coral reef functioning. Here, we show that across bioregions, tropical coral reef food webs exhibit a remarkable congruence in their trophic interactions. Specifically, by compiling and investigating the structure of six coral reef food webs across distinct bioregions, we show that when accounting for consumer size and resource availability, these food webs share more trophic interactions than expected by chance. In addition, coral reef food webs are dominated by dietary specialists, which makes trophic pathways vulnerable to biodiversity loss. Prey partitioning among these specialists is geographically consistent, and this pattern intensifies when weak interactions are disregarded. Our results suggest that energy flows through coral reef communities along broadly comparable trophic pathways. Yet, these critical pathways are maintained by species with narrow, specialized diets, which threatens the existence of coral reef functioning in the face of biodiversity loss.
food web
coral reef
interaction network

Footnotes
1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: valeriano.parravicini@ephe.psl.eu or pozaschloe@gmail.com.


2G.S. and V.P. contributed equally to this work.


Author contributions: C.P.-S., J.M.C., G.S., and V.P. designed research; C.P.-S., J.M.C., S.J.B., G.S., and V.P. performed research; M.K. and M.H.-V. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.P.-S., G.S., and V.P. analyzed data; and C.P.-S., J.M.C., S.J.B., M.K., M.H.-V., G.S., and V.P. wrote the paper.


The authors declare no competing interest.


This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. M.A.M. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.


This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2100966118/-/DCSupplemental.

Data Availability

All data and scripts have been deposited in a publicly accessible GitHub repository (https://github.com/ChloePZS/foodweb) and are also available on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/5341340#.YS3ikt8682w). All other study data are included in the article and/or supporting information.
Accepted July 28, 2021.


Published under the PNAS license.

REFERENCES

 

Scores of internet-providing satellites will soon streak across Canada's skies, but at what cost?

Scores of internet-providing satellites will soon streak across Canada's skies, but at what cost?
Researchers at U of T, UBC and the University of Regina are studying the light pollution
 that would be created by tens of thousands of new internet satellites scheduled to be 
launched in the coming years. Credit: Dave Mantel/iStockphoto

The night sky is going to get much busier thanks to thousands of new internet satellites set to launch over the next few years—and researchers say it's going to affect Canada more than most places on Earth.

Researchers from the University of Toronto, the University of Regina and the University of British Columbia found that most  pollution is expected to happen near 50 degrees latitude north and south due to the orbits of the new satellites.

This means the skies near most large Canadian cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg could be affected.

"As with any new technology, it's important to look at all of the possible impacts," says Hanno Rein, an associate professor at U of T Scarborough and a co-author of the new research.

"This is such a fundamental change to our view of the sky that it requires greater scrutiny."

Several internet-service companies are planning to launch tens of thousands of satellites in the near future, resulting in a 20-fold increase of these objects in the Earth's lower orbit. It's estimated the number of orbiting satellites could reach 65,000 over the next few years, compared to about 5,000 today.

This flood of satellites presents a major challenge for astronomers (and amateur stargazers) who have to contend with light pollution from the thousands of new points of light. Rein says about eight percent of all the light in the night sky might soon come from these satellites. What will be most noticeable for the average person is the hundreds of new lights slowly moving across the night sky at any given time.

The researchers say these satellites will also contribute to atmospheric pollution from rocket fuel during launch and on re-entry when they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

More satellites also increase the threat of low orbit collisions, contributing to what's known as the Kessler Syndrome. This is where the number of objects in low orbit is high enough that a collision becomes more likely, leading to a cascading effect where space debris increases the probability of further collisions. There is currently no method of cleaning up space debris, which means certain space activities and the use of other satellites could be prevented for long periods of time.

"If these satellites collide it gets much brighter because the surface area increases from all the small fragments of debris that get created," says Rein, whose research focuses on exoplanets and developing mathematical methods used in astrophysics.

While this technology has been touted by companies as a way to deliver high-speed internet to rural areas, Rein notes that the service is expensive and that only a relatively small group of people living in wealthy countries will enjoy the benefits.

"The light and environmental pollution impact, on the other hand, will be experienced by everyone," he says.

He says another consideration is what happens if these companies go bankrupt and can no longer manage satellites already in orbit.

The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, has been submitted to The Astronomical Journal. Rein also helped develop a web app that allows people to select a latitude, season and time of night to find out how many satellites will be in the night sky and how bright they will be.

"The sky plays an important cultural and scientific role in people's lives," he says. "You cannot escape this technology—you will always see these satellites flying above you, no matter where you are in the world."Russian Soyuz rocket launches 34 new UK satellites

More information: Visibility Predictions for Near-Future Satellite Megaconstellations: Latitudes near 50 Degrees will Experience the Worst Light Pollution, arXiv:2109.04328 [astro-ph.EP] arxiv.org/abs/2109.04328

Journal information: Astronomical Journal 

Provided by University of Toronto 

 

New discovery about meteorites informs atmospheric entry threat assessment

New discovery about meteorites informs atmospheric entry threat assessment
Figure 1. Setup for μ-CT experiments of the Tamdakht (top) and Tenham (bottom) 
meteorite samples. Credit: DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac1749

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign watched fragments of two meteors as they ramped up the heat from room temperature to the temperature it reaches as it enters Earth's atmosphere and made a significant discovery. The vaporized iron sulfide leaves behind voids, making the material more porous. This information will help when predicting the weight of a meteor, its likelihood to break apart, and the subsequent damage assessment if it should land.

"We extracted samples from the interiors that had not already been exposed to the high heat of the entry environment," said Francesco Panerai, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at UIUC. "We wanted to understand how the microstructure of a meteorite changes as it travels through the atmosphere."

Panerai and collaborators at NASA Ames Research Center used an X-ray microtomography technique that allowed them to observe the samples in place as they were heated up to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and create images in three dimensions. The experiments were performed using the synchrotron Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"The iron sulfide inside the meteorite vaporized as it heated. Some of the grains actually disappeared leaving large voids in the material," Panerai said. "We were surprised by this observation. The ability to look at the interior of the meteorite in 3D, while being heated, led us to discover a progressive increase of material porosity with heating. After that, we took cross sections of the material and looked at the chemical composition to understand the phase that had been modified by the heating, changing its porosity.

"This discovery provides evidence that meteorite materials become porous and permeable, which we speculate will have an effect on its strength and propensity for fragmentation."

NASA selected Tamdakht as , a meteorite that landed in a Moroccan desert a few years ago. But the team of researchers wanted to corroborate what they'd seen so they repeated experiments on Tenham to see if a meteorite with different composition would behave in the same way. Both specimens were from a similar class of meteorite called chondrites, the most common among the meteorite finds that are made up of iron and nickel, which are high-density elements.

"Both became porous, but the porosity that develops depends upon the content of the sulfides," Panerai said. "One of the two had higher iron sulfides, which is what evaporates. We found that the vaporizing of iron sulfides happens at mild entry temperatures. This is something that would happen, not at the external fusion crust of the meteorite where the temperature is a lot higher, but just underneath the surface."

The study was motivated by the potential threat meteorites pose humans—the clearest example being the Chelyabinsk meteor that blasted the Earth's atmosphere over Russia in 2013 and resulted in about 1,500 people being injured from indirect effects such as broken glass from the shock wave. After that incident, NASA created the Asteroid Threat Assessment Program to provide  that can help decision makers understand potential meteorite threats to the population.

"Most of the cosmic material burns away as it enters. The atmosphere protects us," Panerai said. "But there are significant sized meteorites that can be harmful. For these larger objects that have a non-zero probability of hitting us, we need to have tools to predict what damage they would do if they would hit Earth. Based on these tools, we can predict how it enters the atmosphere, its size, how it behaves as it goes through the atmosphere, etc. so  can take counter measures."

Panerai said the Asteroid Threat Assessment Program is currently developing models to show how meteorites behave and models require a lot of data. "We used machine learning for the data analysis because the amount of data to analyze is huge and we need efficient techniques.

"We are also using tools refined over the years for the design of hypersonic entry vehicle and transferring this knowledge to the study of meteoroids, the only hypersonic systems in nature, which is very exciting. This provides NASA with critical data on the microstructure and morphology of how a common  behaves during heating, so that those features can be integrated in those models

Experiments may help assess risks posed by falling space rocks
More information: Francesco Panerai et al, Morphological Evolution of Ordinary Chondrite Microstructure during Heating: Implications for Atmospheric Entry, The Planetary Science Journal (2021). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac1749
Journal information: The Planetary Science Journal 
Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign