Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Brexit built borders inside British-European families, new report found

Brexit has had ‘real life consequences’ for those in mixed British-European families, says new research co-led by Lancaster University and the University of Birmingham.

Reports and Proceedings

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

From joining different queues at airport security to holding different immigration status in their country of residence, the shift from a common status as EU citizens to family members having different rights to residence has evoked strong emotions.

Brexit has had ‘real life consequences’ for those in mixed British-European families, says new research co-led by Lancaster University and the University of Birmingham.

The study ‘British-European families after Brexit’, completed as part of the ESRC-funded project ‘Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit’, highlights how Brexit has introduced different rights and conditions concerning residence between spouses and partners, children and parents.

Many families worry about how these differences in status will impact on their future movements between the UK and EU.

Since the end of the Brexit transition period, moving from the UK to the EU has become more complex for such families. As British family members no longer have the right to freedom of movement, in the absence of work, their right to move and settle in the EU may be dependent on that of their EU family member(s).

Until recently, the ‘Surinder Singh’ route permitted foreign nationals to enter and settle in the UK on the basis that they were family members of a British citizen and living with them in an EU or EEA country or Switzerland prior to 31st December 2020.

The closing of this route after Brexit means that such families are no longer exempt from standard immigration controls and have to apply and pay for family visas before they can settle in the UK.

The new findings draw on responses to the ‘Migration and Citizenship after Brexit’ survey, the first major insight, by Lancaster University and the University of Birmingham, of how Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have impacted on the lives of those moving between the UK and EU.

Of the 2,024 survey respondents, 418 (21 per cent) British, EU/EEA and non-EU/EEA nationals living in the UK or the EU, identified they were part of a mixed-status family (families with at least one close member holding a different citizenship or migration status from the others).

Among them, the difference in status that Brexit had introduced was often presented as a cause for concern.

As one Hungarian woman, in her 40s living in the UK, explained, this had forced her: “To choose between me being a second-class citizen or my husband risking not being able to get permanent residency and risk being unable to receive pension.”

For British citizens living in the EU/EEA, concerns about the terms on which they would be able to return to the UK with non-British family members were a common response to the Brexit-borne differentiation of statuses with families.

As a British woman, in her 30s, living in France, said: “It means I can't leave for more than a few months if something happens to family overseas. My partner can't come to the UK without applying for a visa even to care for a relative. We're worried we'll get separated at the airport.”

Lead author of the report Dr Elena Zambelli, of Lancaster University, said: “Overall, the picture that emerges shows that, for some, Brexit introduced borders into their lives. Families that previously shared the rights to Free Movement within the EU, remade as mixed-status families with differentiated rights to mobility.

“For other families, who already had mixed migration statuses, Brexit deepened the impacts of the borders on their lives. This reveals further impacts of Brexit at the level of the family, making, fracturing and reconstituting their members’ ties within one or multiple countries and affecting their mobility and settlement options as a family.

“The survey showed their concerns are often accompanied by strong negative feelings, in consequence of Brexit finding themselves for the first time questioned about their entitlement to live and move in and out of their country of choice based on will and/or need.”

Other findings show:

‘Family’ represents the main reason given by respondents who changed their country of residence since 2016, and its frequency was almost double that in the overall survey sample (+ 14%).
Three out of four respondents (75%) reported that, since the Brexit referendum, citizenship/migration status differences within their family had been an issue of concern; half (50%) relayed that these had affected their decisions to move or stay put.
For British citizens in the EU who secured temporary residence and EU citizens in the UK who secured pre-settled status under the Withdrawal Agreement, there remain lingering uncertainties as to what will happen when it lapses and what effects it will have on the mixed-status families they are part of.

The survey is part of a wider research project ‘Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit (MIGZEN)’ (www.migzen.net), led by Professor Michaela Benson at Lancaster University and Professor Nando Sigona at the University of Birmingham. The project is funded by UKRI Economic and Social Research Council as part of the ‘Governance After Brexit’ programme and explores the long-term impacts of Brexit and Britain’s shifting position on the world stage on migration to and from the UK.

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.6834639

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

British-European families after Brexit

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Jul-2022

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute and the Pasteur Network partner to strengthen global disease surveillance

Business Announcement

INSTITUT PASTEUR

Washington, D.C., Paris | July 26, 2022 – The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute (PPI) and the Pasteur Network have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to advance early detection and reporting for emerging and reemerging diseases and build a robust decentralized global surveillance network that strengthens local capacity for sharing high-quality data across countries. The collaboration aims to enhance the effectiveness of the Pandemic Prevention Institute and the Pasteur Network’s 33 member institutions in both addressing infectious diseases, such as COVID-19 and monkeypox, and informing interventions against them.

“Our work with the Pasteur Network will undoubtedly make a transformational impact on global health security, leveraging the ability to advance equitable data-sharing practices that will provide key stakeholders and decision-makers with timely, more accurate and relevant information to make critical health and policy decisions,” said Dr. Rick Bright, CEO of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute. “Our collective aim is to advance access to pathogen surveillance, genomic sequencing, analytics, and data sharing tools in low- and middle-income countries and to foster sentinel laboratory networks for early disease detection.”

“This MoU is a major milestone in our collaboration with The Rockefeller Foundation and the PPI that could lead to significant impact in epidemic and pandemic preparedness. Together, the Pasteur Network and PPI are an effective combination of complementary talents and capacity to address global health threats said Dr. Amadou Sall, President of the Pasteur Network.

“We are proud to support this initiative. This important, historic partnership will provide much-needed support to capacity building and epidemic intelligence,” said Professor Stewart Cole, President of the Pasteur Network foundation that contributes to the Pasteur Network’s development.

Over the coming years, the partnership will focus primarily on the following areas:

Advancing global equitable data sharing to provide key stakeholders and decision-makers with an analytical toolset that leverages timely, more accurate and relevant data and information
Bolstering epidemiological and genomic surveillance in low- and middle-income countries to track emerging pathogen variants and transmission for real-time analyses, as well as advancing access to pathogen surveillance and analytical tools, such as digital apps
Enhancing discovery of emerging and reemerging high consequence pathogens, generating a diversity of essential disease surveillance data streams in areas such as zoonosis, anti-microbial resistance and water borne diseases
Building fit for purpose data analytics and disease discovery and forecasting systems, informed by the organizations’ partner networks, that are relevant, sustainable, and equitable at the local, state, and pan-regional level

The partnership will also focus on interdisciplinary research projects addressing the causes of outbreaks and epidemics. The combined networks will maintain local and regional structures to foster a permanent operational force and share technologies, systems, practices, and techniques with their networks.

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About the Pasteur Network
Pasteur Network, previously known as the Institut Pasteur International Network, is a worldwide network of members which contribute to global health. This unique model of cooperation brings together, beyond the independent public or private structures that form the Network, a human and scientific community collectively mobilized for both local, regional and global health priorities. The members of Pasteur Network share the same mission to improve health through biomedical research, public health activities, training, and innovation. For more information, visit: https://pasteur-network.org/en/about/who-we-are/ and follow-on Linkedin: Pasteur Network and Twitter:@InstitutPasteur

About the Pandemic Prevention Institute
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute (PPI) is mission-driven to contribute to the crucial work of building systems that detect, prevent and mitigate pandemic threats, leading to rapid, effective containment. PPI is pursuing its mission through the integration of cutting-edge technology and analytic approaches that turn data into action that drives life-saving decisions; a federated network of data users and holders with global representation; and collaborative leadership at the global level. For more information on partners, data solutions and more visit www.ppi.org and follow us on Twitter: @PPI_Insights and LinkedIn: The Pandemic Prevention Institute..

About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on collaborative partnerships at the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation to enable individuals, families, and communities to flourish. We work to promote the well-being of humanity and make opportunity universal. Our focus is on scaling renewable energy for all, stimulating economic mobility, and ensuring equitable access to healthy and nutritious food. For more information, sign up for our newsletter at rockefellerfoundation.org and follow us on Twitter @RockefellerFdn.

Wine-drinkers of the world rejoice! New research, led by UMass Amherst, finds key to billion-dollar problem

International research collaboration unlocks the mystery of Grapevine Trunk Diseases

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

GTD’s cause in excess of $1.5 billion in losses annually. Barry Goodell enjoying the fruits of his research. — IMAGE: GTD’S CAUSE IN EXCESS OF $1.5 BILLION IN LOSSES ANNUALLY. BARRY GOODELL ENJOYING THE FRUITS OF HIS RESEARCH. view more
CREDIT: BARRY GOODELL

AMHERST, Mass. – Grapevine Trunk Diseases, or GTDs, are the bane of vineyard owners worldwide, and as of 2012, were responsible for more than $1.5 billion in annual economic damages. While researchers have long known that a host of pathogenic fungi combine to gang up on grapevines, the mechanics of how these GTD-causing fungi work has remained a mystery.

Recently, an international cohort of researchers, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, announced a previously unknown mechanism that is deployed by a group of pathogenic fungi working in concert and which are responsible for the death of the grapevines. Thankfully, it would seem that a fairly easy, cost-effective solution may be on the horizon.

GTDs have been known to devastate up to 30% of the vines in a single vineyard each year, and typically attack older, well-established vines. In California alone, annual GTD-related losses amount to 14% of the total value of the wine grapes produced.

GTD-causing fungi typically enter the vine’s system through pruning wounds and, once established, develop a rotting canker that gradually expands, dissolving the woody part of the vine from the inside out and killing the plant. It’s no easy feat to dissolve the tough cellulose and lignin framework that make up woody plants, but a consortium of fungi have figured out how to do it, perplexing scientists.

“The missing ingredient,” says Barry Goodell, professor of microbiology at UMass Amherst, and the paper’s senior author, “is an understanding of what very small compounds produced by the fungi are actually doing to the grapevines.”

In particular, Goodell and his UMass Amherst colleagues and students, along with collaborating scientists from the University of Florence in Italy, the Université de Lorraine and the Université de Haute-Alsace, both in France, and the University of Concepción in Chile, as well as vineyard owners in both France and Italy, have discovered that some of the GTD-causing fungi produce different types of small compounds that are released into the wood of the vine. One of those compounds is responsible for reducing iron. Normally, we encounter iron as the chemical compound, Fe3+. Reducing iron from Fe3+ to Fe2+ sets the stage for some nasty grapevine problems.

“But that’s not the whole story,” Goodell says. “We also discovered that there’s another set of small compounds that are produced by other fungi in the consortia, and these compounds are really good at producing hydrogen peroxide. When hydrogen peroxide meets reduced iron—BOOM! – the reaction releases a host of oxygen radicals that damage the woody tissue causing an almost cancer-like disease.”

In short, different fungi, each producing one of the two types of small compounds needed for an extracellular bomb, figured out how to get together, mix their respective chemicals, and use them to blow apart the cellulose walls of the grapevine’s cells. Once the cell walls are breached, the fungi can feast on the sugar-rich fluid that once was the cellular structure supporting the vine’s own growth.

Luckily, there’s a potential fix, which is so common consumers probably eat it every morning with cereal: antioxidants and low-toxicity chelators. Often added to food products to preserve freshness, they also interrupt the production of reduced iron and hydrogen peroxide. They also scavenge the oxygen radicals the fungi produce. “In addition,” Goodell points out, “there are some select bacteria and fungi that produce these antioxidant and chelating compounds. Our research shows that we may be able to manage and stop GTDs through ‘bio-control’ treatments by increasing the natural presence of these antagonistic organisms on the vines.”

“Of course, there’s still work to be done,” says Goodell. “Vineyard pathologists need to test our research in the field, and other microbiologists will want to verify our work. But we already have colleagues as part of our larger team that are doing this, and we’re confident that this research represents a breakthrough in ways that we understand this devastating disease of vineyards and how to control that devastation.”

The research was recently published in the journals Fungal Biology and Frontiers in Plant Science, and was supported by the USDA-NIFA Hatch Multistate Program and the Microbiology Department at UMass, the French/European VitEST project and Laboratoire Vigne Biotechnologies et Environnement at University Haute-Alsace, and DAGRI at the University of Florence, Italy.

Contacts: Barry Goodell, bgoodell@umass.edu

Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Plant Science

DOI

10.3389/fpls.2022.921961

ARTICLE TITLE

Oxygen Radical-Generating Metabolites Secreted by Eutypa and Esca Fungal Consortia: Understanding the Mechanisms Behind Grapevine Wood Deterioration and Pathogenesis

Heaviest neutron star to date is a ‘black widow’ eating its mate

Observations of faint, planet-size star helps weigh it’s millisecond pulsar companion

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY

Location of pulsar and companion star — IMAGE: ASTRONOMERS MEASURED THE VELOCITY OF A FAINT STAR (GREEN CIRCLE) THAT HAS BEEN STRIPPED OF NEARLY ITS ENTIRE MASS BY AN INVISIBLE COMPANION, A NEUTRON STAR AND MILLISECOND PULSAR THAT THEY DETERMINED TO BE THE MOST MASSIVE YET FOUND AND PERHAPS THE UPPER LIMIT FOR NEUTRON STARS. THE OBJECTS ARE IN THE CONSTELLATION SEXTANS. view more
CREDIT: W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY, ROGER W. ROMANI, ALEX FILIPPENKO

A dense, collapsed star spinning 707 times per second — making it one of the fastest spinning neutron stars in the Milky Way galaxy — has shredded and consumed nearly the entire mass of its stellar companion and, in the process, grown into the heaviest neutron star observed to date.

Weighing this record-setting neutron star, which tops the charts at 2.35 times the mass of the sun, helps astronomers understand the weird quantum state of matter inside these dense objects, which — if they get much heavier than that — collapse entirely and disappear as a black hole.

“We know roughly how matter behaves at nuclear densities, like in the nucleus of a uranium atom,” said Alex Filippenko, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. “A neutron star is like one giant nucleus, but when you have one-and-a-half solar masses of this stuff, which is about 500,000 Earth masses of nuclei all clinging together, it's not at all clear how they will behave.”

Roger W. Romani, professor of astrophysics at Stanford University, noted that neutron stars are so dense — 1 cubic inch weighs over 10 billion tons — that their cores are the densest matter in the universe short of black holes, which because they are hidden behind their event horizon are impossible to study. The neutron star, a pulsar designated PSR J0952-0607, is thus the densest object within sight of Earth.

The measurement of the neutron star’s mass was possible thanks to the extreme sensitivity of the 10-meter Keck I telescope on Maunakea in Hawai'i, which was just able to record a spectrum of visible light from the hotly glowing companion star, now reduced to the size of a large gaseous planet. The stars are about 3,000 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Sextans.

Discovered in 2017, PSR J0952-0607 is referred to as a “black widow” pulsar — an analogy to the tendency of female black widow spiders to consume the much smaller male after mating. Filippenko and Romani have been studying black widow systems for more than a decade, hoping to establish the upper limit on how large neutron stars/pulsars can grow.

“By combining this measurement with those of several other black widows, we show that neutron stars must reach at least this mass, 2.35 plus or minus 0.17 solar masses,” said Romani, who is a professor of physics in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. “In turn, this provides some of the strongest constraints on the property of matter at several times the density seen in atomic nuclei. Indeed, many otherwise popular models of dense-matter physics are excluded by this result.”

If 2.35 solar masses is close to the upper limit of neutron stars, the researchers say, then the interior is likely to be a soup of neutrons as well as up and down quarks — the constituents of normal protons and neutrons — but not exotic matter, such as “strange” quarks or kaons, which are particles that contain a strange quark.

“A high maximum mass for neutron stars suggests that it is a mixture of nuclei and their dissolved up and down quarks all the way to the core,” Romani said. “This excludes many proposed states of matter, especially those with exotic interior composition.”

Romani, Filippenko and Stanford graduate student Dinesh Kandel are co-authors of a paper describing the team’s results that has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

CAPTION

A spinning neutron star periodically swings its radio (green) and gamma-ray (magenta) beams past Earth in this artist's concept of a black widow pulsar. The pulsar heats the facing side of its stellar partner to temperatures twice as hot as the sun's surface and slowly evaporates it.

CREDIT

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

How large can they grow?

Astronomers generally agree that when a star with a core larger than about 1.4 solar masses collapses at the end of its life, it forms a dense, compact object with an interior under such high pressure that all atoms are smashed together to form a sea of neutrons and their subnuclear constituents, quarks. These neutron stars are born spinning, and though too dim to be seen in visible light, reveal themselves as pulsars, emitting beams of light — radio waves, X-rays or even gamma rays — that flash Earth as they spin, much like the rotating beam of a lighthouse.

“Ordinary” pulsars spin and flash about once per second, on average, a speed that can easily be explained given the normal rotation of a star before it collapses. But some pulsars repeat hundreds or up to 1,000 times per second, which is hard to explain unless matter has fallen onto the neutron star and spun it up. But for some millisecond pulsars, no companion is visible.

One possible explanation for isolated millisecond pulsars is that each did once have a companion, but it stripped it down to nothing.

“The evolutionary pathway is absolutely fascinating. Double exclamation point,” Filippenko said. “As the companion star evolves and starts becoming a red giant, material spills over to the neutron star, and that spins up the neutron star. By spinning up, it now becomes incredibly energized, and a wind of particles starts coming out from the neutron star. That wind then hits the donor star and starts stripping material off, and over time, the donor star’s mass decreases to that of a planet, and if even more time passes, it disappears altogether. So, that's how lone millisecond pulsars could be formed. They weren't all alone to begin with — they had to be in a binary pair — but they gradually evaporated away their companions, and now they're solitary.”

The pulsar PSR J0952-0607 and its faint companion star support this origin story for millisecond pulsars.

“These planet-like objects are the dregs of normal stars which have contributed mass and angular momentum, spinning up their pulsar mates to millisecond periods and increasing their mass in the process,” Romani said.

“In a case of cosmic ingratitude, the black widow pulsar, which has devoured a large part of its mate, now heats and evaporates the companion down to planetary masses and perhaps complete annihilation,” said Filippenko.

Spider pulsars include redbacks and tidarrens

Finding black widow pulsars in which the companion is small, but not too small to detect, is one of few ways to weigh neutron stars. In the case of this binary system, the companion star — now only 20 times the mass of Jupiter — is distorted by the mass of the neutron star and tidally locked, similar to the way our moon is locked in orbit so that we see only one side. The neutron star-facing side is heated to temperatures of about 6,200 Kelvin, or 10,700 degrees Fahrenheit, a bit hotter than our sun, and just bright enough to see with a large telescope.

Filippenko and Romani turned the Keck I telescope on PSR J0952-0607 on six occasions over the last four years, each time observing with the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer in 15-minute chunks to catch the faint companion at specific points in its 6.4-hour orbit of the pulsar. By comparing the spectra to that of similar sun-like stars, they were able to measure the orbital velocity of the companion star and calculate the mass of the neutron star.

Filippenko and Romani have examined about a dozen black widow systems so far, though only six had companion stars bright enough to let them calculate a mass. All involved neutron stars less massive than the pulsar PSR J0952-060. They’re hoping to study more black widow pulsars, as well as their cousins: redbacks, named for the Australian equivalent of black widow pulsars, which have companions closer to one-tenth the mass of the sun; and what Romani dubbed tidarrens — where the companion is around one-hundredth of a solar mass — after a relative of the black widow spider. The male of this species, Tidarren sisyphoides, is about 1% of the female’s size.

“We can keep looking for black widows and similar neutron stars that skate even closer to the black hole brink. But if we don't find any, it tightens the argument that 2.3 solar masses is the true limit, beyond which they become black holes,” Filippenko said.

“This is right at the limit of what the Keck telescope can do, so barring fantastic observing conditions, tightening the measurement of PSR J0952-0607 likely awaits the 30-meter telescope era,” added Romani.

Other co-authors of the ApJ Letters paper are UC Berkeley researchers Thomas Brink and WeiKang Zheng. The work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC17K0024, 80NSSC17K0502), the Christopher R. Redlich Fund, the TABASGO Foundation, and UC Berkeley’s Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.

JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal Letters