Experts recommend a varied and moderate consumption of sushi limiting quantities of tuna

A research group from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute have analysed the concentration of various toxic elements in these foods and evaluated the risk of consuming them in infant, adolescent and adult population

UNIVERSITAT ROVIRA I VIRGILI

Research News

Eight pieces of salmon-based maki, nigiri or sashimi or maki unagi (eel) is the safest combination of sushi for adult and adolescent populations. That is one of the findings of TecnATox (Centre for Environmental, Food and Toxicological Technology), a joint research group from the URV and the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV), which has analysed the presence of arsenic and various heavy metals in sushi. The consumption of sushi has increased significantly since the start of the 21st century, as has the number of restaurants offering it throughout the region. Although eating fish is recommended because of its high nutritional value, it can also lead to exposure to contaminants, such as heavy metals. Likewise, rice is a food that provides many nutrients and fibre and is low in fat, but it too can be source of pollutants such as arsenic.

The research group analysed the concentrations of various toxic elements (cadmium, nickel, lead, mercury, inorganic arsenic and methylmercury) and iodine in a hundred pieces of sushi, specifically those known as sashimi (raw fish), maki (a seaweed roll stuffed with rice, raw fish or other ingredients) an nigiri (balls of rice with fish or seafood on top). The researchers also calculated dietary exposure to all of these contaminants in various population groups (infants, adolescents and adults) and evaluated the risks to health.

The main results show a significantly higher concentration of inorganic arsenic in maki and nigiri, compared to sashimi, a finding associated with the presence of rice. They also show higher levels of mercury and methylmercury in sushi that contains tuna due to the bioaccumulation and biomagnification of this metal.

The research group also wanted to determine how consumption of this foodstuff varied in different groups of the population. They examined an average intake of 8 pieces of sushi in adults and adolescents and an average intake of 3 pieces in infants and found an increase in exposure to nickel and lead, although this remained within safe established levels. "The most worrying finding concerns methylmercury, a highly neurotoxic compound, for which there was an estimated exposure of 0.242 μg per kg of bodyweight in adolescents, a value higher than the safe daily limit established by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)", explained Montse Marquès, one of the researchers who worked on the study. By the same token, although not as high as in adolescents, the exposure levels calculated for adults and infants also suggest a relatively high intake of methylmercury.

Finally, the results were analysed as a whole to determine which combinations of sushi do not represent a risk. "We recommend that people combine 8 pieces of salmon-based maki, nigiri or sashimi or maki containing unagi (eel) and limit their consumption of any type of sushi containing tuna", warned Marquès.

The researchers stressed that the amounts of sushi analysed constitute only one of the five recommended meals a day. This means that the consumption of other foods throughout the day may also lead to exposure to certain toxic elements, such as arsenic (present in rice and rice-based foods), mercury (present in tuna and swordfish) or nickel (present in vegetables, pulses and cereals).

Due to its nutritional benefits, the researchers still recommend the consumption of sushi, but they also stress the need to do so in moderation in order to minimise the intake of certain food toxins.

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How fishing communities are responding to climate change

Wellesley professor examines how fishers are adapting to climate-related changes in species distribution and location

WELLESLEY COLLEGE

Research News

 

IMAGE: LARGER FISHING TRAWLERS ARE SEEN IN POINT JUDITH, RHODE ISLAND. COMMUNITIES OF VESSELS HAVE VARYING RESPONSES TO SHIFT IN SPECIES' DISTRIBUTION, BASED IN PART ON THE RELATIVE SIZE OF VESSELS. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF EVA PAPAIOANNOU

What happens when climate change affects the abundance and distribution of fish? Fishers and fishing communities in the Northeast United States have adapted to those changes in three specific ways, according to new research published in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Becca Selden, Wellesley College assistant professor of biological sciences, and a team of colleagues examined how fishing communities have responded to documented shifts in the location of fluke and of red and silver hake. The team found that fishers made three distinct changes to their approaches: following the fish to a new location; fishing for a different kind of fish; and bringing their catch to shore at another port of landing.

Selden began this research as a postdoctoral scholar at Rutgers University in New Jersey with Eva Papaioannou, now a scientist at GEOMAR. They combined quantitative data on fish availability from surveys conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a unique geographic information system database from fishing trip records developed for this project. The researchers then interviewed fishers in 10 ports from North Carolina to Maine.

They explored three dominant strategies, and found that fishers throughout the Northeast were more likely to shift their target species. In interviews, the researchers learned that targeting a mix of species is a critical option for adaptation. Doing so can be complicated, however, because in many cases regulations and markets (or the lack of a market) constrain fishers' ability to take advantage of a changing mix of species in fishing grounds. For example, in Point Pleasant, N.J., fishers can't capitalize on an increase in dogfish in the region because of strict conservation measures that have been in place since 1988, when the species was declared over-fished, and the resulting absence of a market for those fish.

"Most communities tend to fish where they have fished for generations, and therefore, for any fishery management plan to be more climate-ready in the future, it needs to take that into account," Selden said. "They're less likely to move where they fish, more likely to switch what they fish, but only if they can, and regulations play a big role in that being successful."

The researchers also learned about a previously undescribed strategy in which fishers change where they bring the fish ashore to sell. This is particularly common for vessels coming from northern fishing communities that sell fluke in Beaufort, N.C. "Had we not combined the quantitative data with the in-depth interviews with community members, we would have totally missed the phenomenon we saw come to light in Beaufort," Papaioannou said. "It made for such a powerful way of analyzing the data, so that we were really using it to influence the questions we would ask in each interview, and the interviews would drive what we would examine in the quantitative data. I think that approach really made for a much more complete look at the impact of changes in species distribution and fishers' adaptations."

Of the fishing communities they studied, only the one in Beaufort used the tactic of following fish to new grounds. Unlike communities in the north, fishers in Beaufort have targeted fluke heavily in the past, and because the port is on the southern edge of the range for this species they are more vulnerable as the species shifts north. "Beaufort fishers have gone to tremendous lengths to keep fishing fluke," Selden said, "and following fish to new grounds brings its own constraints and concerns." These include the cost of increased fuel use, safety issues due to vessel size, and the local environmental knowledge needed to fish successfully in new locations.

All of these responses are intertwined, Selden said, so as we learn more about the effects of climate change on the future of fishing, understanding, predicting, and planning for any one of them will require examining all three together.

The researchers focused on the Northeast because it has been a hotspot of recent ocean warming, especially in the Gulf of Maine, and in some ways it is a harbinger of what other areas might be experiencing soon, Selden said. Along the East Coast, she said, "you have species that have these state-by-state regulations, you're passing through different jurisdictions and three different fisheries management councils, and species are crossing boundaries all over the place. This all has an impact on fishers, their behavior, and their communities."

Selden plans to continue this work on the West Coast--where there are only three states and one fishery management council--to compare how stable their fishing grounds are and how much fishers are switching species versus shifting where they fish.

"Fisheries are really on the frontline of climate impacts," Selden said. "It's really a bipartisan issue, and there are stakeholders across party lines. That was my motivation to focus on how communities are adapting, how they've adapted to past change. We need to be able to understand how they might adapt to future change and potentially how we would need to change management to facilitate some of the adaptations that they are already demonstrating."

The team is building a website that fishers and communities can use to see some of these patterns and learn more about what their counterparts elsewhere are doing about them. Community leaders and fishery management officials could also use the information to promote a broader understanding of the issues and potentially prioritize fishery development projects or plan for where a species will go next.

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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for t

 

To predict underwater volcano eruptions, scientist looks at images from space

A new study monitored satellite images to obtain sea discoloration data as a novel indicator in detecting if an underwater volcano's eruption is imminent.

HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THIS PHOTO SHOWS A SAMPLE OF THE (FE + AL)/SI DISTRIBUTION AS A VOLCANIC ACTIVITY INDEX FROM MAY 16 TO JUNE 25 AROUND NISHINOSHIMA ISLAND: (A) MAY 16-23, 2020, (B)... view more 

CREDIT: JAXA/YUJI SAKUNO

A new study suggests sea discoloration data obtained from satellite images as a novel criterion in predicting if eruption looms for an underwater volcano.

There have been frequent eruptions of submarine volcanoes in recent years. The past two years alone recorded the explosions of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, White Island in New Zealand, and Nishinoshima Island in Japan. Observing signs of volcanic unrest is crucial in providing life-saving information and ensuring that air and maritime travel are safe in the area.

Although predicting when a volcano will erupt can be difficult as each behaves differently, scientists are on the lookout for these telltale signs: heightened seismic activity, expansion of magma pools, increases in volcanic gas release, and temperature rises.

For submarine volcanoes, Yuji Sakuno, remote sensing specialist and associate professor at Hiroshima University's Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, proposed a new indicator -- sea color.

The relationship between the chemical composition of discolored seawater and volcanic activity has been known for a long time. Still, there have been very few quantitative studies that used remote sensing to explore it. And among these few studies, only the reflectance pattern of discolored seawater has been analyzed.

"This is an extremely challenging research result for predicting volcanic disasters that have frequently occurred in various parts of the world in recent years using a new index called sea color," Sakuno said.

"I was the first in the world to propose the relationship between the sea color information obtained from satellites and the chemical composition around submarine volcanoes."

The findings of the study are published in the April 2021 issue of the journal Water.

Sakuno explained that volcanoes release chemicals depending on their activity, and these can change the color of the surrounding water. A higher proportion of iron can cause a yellow or brown discoloration, while increased aluminum or silicon can stain the water with white splotches.

One problem, however, is that sunlight can also play tricks on sea color. The study looked at how past research that chromatically analyzed hot spring water overcame this hurdle and fixed brightness issues. A relational model between seawater color and chemical composition was developed using the XYZ colorimetric system.

Sakuno examined images of Nishinoshima Island captured last year by Japan's GCOM-C SGLI and Himawari-8 satellites. Himawari-8 was used to observe volcanic activity and GCOM-C SGLI to get sea color data. GCOM-C SGLI's short observation cycle -- it takes pictures of the ocean every 2-3 days -- and high spatial resolution of 250 m makes it an ideal choice for monitoring.

Using the new indicator, Sakuno checked satellite data from January to December 2020 and was able to pick up signs of looming volcanic unrest in Nishinoshima Island approximately a month before it even started.

"In the future, I would like to establish a system that can predict volcanic eruptions with higher accuracy in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Maritime Security Agency, which is monitoring submarine volcanoes, and related research," he said.

CAPTION

This image illustrates the colorimetric data of discolored seawater in four directions (north, east, south, and west) around Nishinoshima Island in 2020. The study investigated the color characteristics of the water to validate if the data obtained by SGLI accurately captures the actual conditions of the discolored seawater. It detected significant fluctuations in the distribution of chemicals in Nishinoshima Island, estimated from SGLI data, about one month even before the volcano became active.

CREDIT

Photo courtesy of Yuji Sakuno

 

Seismic monitoring of permafrost uncovers trend likely related to warming

SEISMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Research News

 

IMAGE: FIELD WORK AT SVALBARD : INSTALLATION OF THE TEMPORARY SEISMIC NETWORK AROUND THE ADVENTDALEN VALLEY IN MAY 2014. view more 

CREDIT: JULIE ALBARIC

Seismic waves passing through the ground near Longyearbyen in the Adventdalen valley, Svalbard, Norway have been slowing down steadily over the past three years, most likely due to permafrost warming in the Arctic valley. The trend, reported in a new study published in Seismological Research Letters, demonstrates how seismic monitoring can be used to track permafrost stability under global climate change. The study is part of a focus section in an upcoming issue of the journal on Arctic and Antarctic seismology.

Julie Albaric of the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté, while employed at NORSAR (Norway), and colleagues used data collected from a variety of seismic networks and active seismic experiments to learn more about the seismic environment of the Adventdalen valley of Svalbard, and to understand more about the dynamics of permafrost in the region.

The researchers were able to detect seasonal variations in seismic wave velocity, which they attribute to changes in the ice content of shallow (2 to 4 meters deep) permafrost. Seismic waves move faster through solid materials like rock and ice, and slower through more liquid or softer material.

Shallow permafrost is sensitive to seasonal temperature changes, which would explain the seasonal variations in seismic velocity uncovered by Albaric, Daniela Kühn at NORSAR and their colleagues. But the researchers also found a linear decreasing trend in velocity between 2009 and 2011 after analyzing data collected by a permanent seismic network in the area, indicating an increasingly melted permafrost layer.

"To our knowledge it's the first study showing this long-term velocity trend," said Albaric. "Our study demonstrates that it is worth maintaining permanent observatories, such long-term data collections are precious, and that options for data use may turn up that were not the focus of the original installation."

Researchers are looking for ways to monitor permafrost because its stability can have a significant impact on global climate, with widespread melting potentially leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

Seismic monitoring can be a powerful tool to detect permafrost changes, especially since data are recorded continuously unlike some other geophysical methods, Albaric said. "In addition, seismic methods are very sensitive and depending on the network geometry, they allow us to target different depths and to cover large areas, allowing us to extend the very localized observations provided by borehole temperature measurements."

The ambient seismic activity noise on Svalbard consists of body waves (which move through the interior of the Earth), along with intermittent surface waves that occur when the average temperature rises above the freezing point. These surface waves have a cryogenic origin, the research team suggests.

The challenging Arctic environment makes it difficult to deploy, maintain and retrieve data from the networks, Kühn noted. "In the summer, for instance, the valley fills with a broad, braided river that limits where permanent seismometers can be installed. In the winter, cold temperatures, snow and ice are harsh on equipment and shrink the time when power can be supplied by solar panels."

"Meteorological conditions obviously make field work challenging," added Albaric, "particularly when installing the stations and using a keyboard without gloves at temperatures below -30°C."

CAPTION

The site of the SPITS array, Svalbard.

CREDIT

NORSTAR

Model predicts when rivers that cross faults will change course

Researchers created a model that uses the movement at fault lines to understand river flow and vice versa

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA CRUZ

Research News

IMAGE: THIS AERIAL IMAGE OF THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT IN THE CARRIZO PLAIN SHOWS NUMEROUS CURVED DRAINAGES WHERE FAULT SLIP HAS STRETCHED STREAM CHANNELS TO THE LEFT. EVENTUALLY, THE CHANNELS GET... view more 

CREDIT: KELIAN DASCHER-COUSINEAU/B4 LIDAR PROJECT

As tectonic plates slip past each other, the rivers that cross fault lines change shape. The shifting ground stretches the river channels until the water breaks its course and flows onto new paths.

In a study published July 9 in Science, researchers at UC Santa Cruz created a model that helps predict this process. It provides broad context to how rivers and faults interact to shape the nearby topography.

The group originally planned to use the San Andreas fault in the Carrizo Plain of California to study how fault movement shapes the landscapes near rivers. But after spending hours pouring over aerial imagery and remote topographic data, their understanding of how the terrain evolves began to change. They realized that rivers play a more active role in shaping the area than once thought.

"The rivers are their own little beasts, and they interact in really interesting ways with the kinematics and the motion along these faults," said Kelian Dascher-Cousineau, seismology Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz and lead author on the study.

As the offset of a fault grows, it elongates river channels and slows the flow of water. With lower speeds, the river carries less sediment. The material builds up and eventually blocks the path, forcing the water to change course in a process known as avulsion.

This diversion happens rapidly, and the unexpected flooding can easily become destructive for nearby communities.

Over the last few years, geomorphologists have gained a clearer idea of how these avulsions happen in different types of rivers. But identifying long-term patterns in the way that rivers respond to fault movement still proves challenging.

"You can't really observe channels for thousands of years at a time," said Dascher-Cousineau. To make up for that inability, the researchers used the well-studied past of the San Andreas Fault at the Carrizo Plain to test their model.

"We have a history that we actually know really well from the earthquakes, and we can use that as a natural experiment to see what the channels are doing over these geomorphologically relevant timescales," said Dascher-Cousineau.

The group closely examined images and maps of the Carrizo Plain and began testing complex models of river flow and sediment transport. They slowly removed variables, eventually identifying the most important elements in the system. The resulting model introduces a new framework for thinking about how rivers and active fault-lines interact.

"Most seismologists typically have a view that the surface of the Earth is a passive thing that just responds to the faulting," said Noah Finnegan, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and co-author on the study.

"This paper embraced the fact that rivers are constantly changing and was able to show that the coevolution of the fault-offset and the river provides us with information that we weren't able to get previously," he said. "You get a richer understanding of how the system works by recognizing that there's an interesting coupling going on there."

In addition to predicting when fault-crossing rivers will abandon their original channels, the model can also help scientists estimate how quickly the sides of a fault are moving past one another--an important question to many seismologists that can be difficult to measure accurately.

"If you know something about how the river works, you can get quantitative constraints on the rate of slip on the fault, which is something that is a common goal of studies of faults," said Finnegan. "Alternatively, if you know something about the rate at which the fault is slipping, you can learn something about how efficient the river is at moving sediment, which is a basic question in almost every study of rivers and is almost impossible to know in a really accurate way."

Although it addresses complex questions, the model itself is surprisingly straightforward.

"Like with a lot of discoveries, once you see it in the right way, there's incredible simplicity," said Finnegan. "I'll never look at these landscapes in the same way again."

The group created the model while working entirely virtually--a challenge that Finnegan said inspired creativity.

"We were forced to look at remote topographic data and aerial imagery that made us think in a more synoptic way about this," he said.

How the model will fit different regions and the fault at a larger scale remains to be seen.

"We've outlined the set of physics that should operate in one range of conditions," said Dascher-Cousineau. Next, they will turn their focus to new types of topography.

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Emily Brodsky, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UCSC, is also a coauthor of the paper, in addition to Dascher-Cousineau and Finnegan. This research was supported by the NASA FINESST fellowship and the Southern California Earthquake Center.

Continental pirouettes

Supervolcano fed from Earth's mantle caused crustal plates to rotate

GFZ GEOFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM POTSDAM, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE 3-D ILLUSTRATION SHOWS THE SO-CALLED MANTLE PLUME FEEDING THE SUPER VOLCANO WHICH FORCED THE PLATES APART. THE ARROWS INDICATE THE DIFFERENT MOVEMENTS. view more 

CREDIT: ALISHA STEINBERGER

The plates of the Earth's crust perform complicated movements that can be attributed to quite simple mechanisms. That is the short version of the explanation of a rift that began to tear the world apart over a length of several thousand kilometers 105 million years ago. The scientific explanation appears today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

According to the paper, a super volcano split the Earth's crust over a length of 7,500 kilometers, pushing the Indian Plate away from the African Plate. The cause was a "plume" in the Earth's mantle, i.e. a surge of hot material that wells upwards like an atomic mushroom cloud in super slow motion. It has long been known that the Indian landmass thus made its way northward and bumped into Eurasia. But a seemingly counterintuitive east-west movement of the continental plates was also part of the process. This is supported by calculations by a team led by Dutch scientist Douwe van Hinsbergen (Utrecht University) and Bernhard Steinberger (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences).

According to the findings, the Indian Plate did not simply move away from Africa, but rotated in the process. The reason for this is the subcontinent, whose land mass acts on the much larger continental plate like an axis around which the entire plate rotates. In the south, the scissors opened, in the north they closed - there, mountain-building processes and the subduction of crustal plates were induced.

This has dramatic effects up to the present time: The subduction processes continue and trigger earthquakes again and again in the Mediterranean region between Cyprus and Turkey. The traces of the plume and the supervolcano can still be identified today. They are flood basalts on Madagascar and in the southwest of India. They testify to immense volcanic activity fed by the mantle plume.

Bernhard Steinberger has calculated the movement and pressure that the super volcano near present-day Madagascar could cause further north on the Arabian Peninsula and in what is now the Mediterranean. He has also published a "kitchen table experiment" on Youtube, which illustrates the movements. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VzCzg2KRgg

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Original study:

Douwe J.J. van Hinsbergen, Bernhard Steinberger, Carl Guilmette, Marco Maffione, Derya Gürer, Kalijn Peters, Alexis Plunder, Peter McPhee, Carmen Gaina, Eldert L. Advokaat, Reinoud L.M. Vissers, Wim Spakman, "A record of plume-induced plate rotation triggering subduction initiation", Nature Geoscience https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00780-7.

Icequakes likely rumble along geyser-spitting fractures in Saturn's icy moon Enceladus

Seismic activity could give scientists a read on the thickness of the ice encasing the moon and the oceans believed to lie beneath

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

Research News

IMAGE: ICE SHELVES FLOATING ON EARTH'S SOUTHERN OCEAN RISE AND FALL WITH TIDES, CAUSING RIFTS, FRACTURES. ICEQUAKES OCCUR MOST FREQUENTLY WHEN FALLING TIDES PULL THE RIFTS APART. MODELS SUGGEST SEISMIC ACTIVITY... view more 

CREDIT: AGU/ JGR: PLANETS

WASHINGTON--Tidal stresses may be causing constant icequakes on Saturn's sixth largest moon Enceladus, a world of interest in the search for life beyond Earth, according to a new study. A better understanding of seismic activity could reveal what's under the moon's icy crust and provide clues to the habitability of its ocean.

Enceladus is about 500 kilometers in diameter and almost entirely covered in ice. The moon is nearly 10 times as far away from the Sun as Earth and its bright surface reflects most sunlight, making it very cold, yet researchers have long speculated that the ice encases an underlying liquid ocean.

The moon likely experiences massive tidal forces caused by Saturn and the planet's other, larger moons--similar to the way Earth's Moon causes tides on Earth. These tidal motions inside Enceladus warm its interior, crack the surface and sometimes squeeze tall geysers of water vapor through notable cracks called the tiger stripe fractures.

The new study used observations of Antarctic ice shelves to suggest tides on Enceladus may also cause small quakes in the ice at the moon's fractures, like icequakes observed on Antarctica's floating ice sheets.

"[Moons like] these are places that are exciting because they might have life," said Kira Olsen, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She said that since life is thought to have first developed in our oceans, liquid oceans under the ice of other worlds could be a good place to search for life. The icy crust of Enceladus might also protect the water below from radiation, making it more habitable.

The new study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, AGU's journal for research on the formation and evolution of the planets, moons and objects of our solar system and beyond.

"We have ideas of how thick the ice could be, but we don't have direct observation. Studying ice quakes is a way to get at that information," Olsen said.

Internal tides

To learn more about how Enceladus' tiger fractures might be moving, Olsen and her colleagues turned to floating ice shelves in Antarctica as the closest analogue on Earth for the types of activity they were seeing on Enceladus. They could then use their knowledge about how certain surface features on our planet produce seismic activity to estimate what kind of seismic activity is happening on the distant moon.

The researchers analyzed data collected by seismometers along the Ross Ice Shelf in the southern continent between 2014 and 2016 and compared these to satellite images of the area. They paid particular attention to two seismometers placed next to large rifts on the ice slab.

They related the seismic activity to the stress occurring along these rifts. The majority of icequakes on the Ross Ice Shelf occurred when the rifts were pulling apart, which happens when tides are falling.

We have no measurements of seismic activity on Enceladus, but Olsen and her colleagues created models that compared the types of fractures they saw on the moon's surface with those on the Ross Ice Shelf.

These models showed that the largest amount of seismic activity on Enceladus likely corresponded to the tides. Peak seismic activity there occurs when Enceladus is 100 degrees past the nearest approach to Saturn during its orbit. The ocean underneath the ice at this point acts something like water inside a sloshing balloon. The ice fractures are created at the points of highest stress, where the balloon would break apart.

The icequakes aren't massive along these cracks, even at the peak periods of stress. Olsen describes them more like "almost continuous little pops and fractures.

Mark Panning, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved in the new study, said that while the Cassini spacecraft revealed the moon is geologically active, it's difficult to tell how that translates to seismic activity. "The study represents a really key way of investigating what seismicity on Enceladus and other tidally activated icy worlds may look like by looking at the best analogs we can find on Earth," he said.

Olsen said scientists should aim to place seismometers within 10 kilometers of these fractures in any future missions to Enceladus to learn more about what's going on below.

"It's not a quiet out of the way place, but it's a pretty good place to study," she said.

More information about the seismic activity could then teach us more about the thickness of the ice crust on Enceladus. For now, no missions to Enceladus have been planned, but the European Space Agency is planning the JUICE mission to one of Jupiter's icy moons, Europa.

Olsen said that similar work could then be conducted on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, a world also covered with ice that may conceal liquid oceans and is another top pick for potential extraterrestrial life. NASA's Dragonfly mission is scheduled to visit Titan in 2036.

"This kind of work is one of the best ways to try to get an idea of what behaviors we may see on a planetary body that would be an incredible place to do more science," Panning said.

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AGU (http://www.agu.org) supports 130,000 enthusiasts to experts worldwide in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, we advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

Paper title:

"Projected seismic activity at the tiger stripe fractures on Enceladus, Saturn, from an analog study of tidally modulated icequakes within the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica"

 

When bosses are abusive, how employees interpret their motives makes a difference: study

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Research News

A new UBC Sauder School of Business study shows that depending on how employees understand their boss' motivation, employees can feel anger or guilt, and consequently, react differently to abusive supervision.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a famously harsh corporate leader, one who pushed his employees to extremes to achieve the company's lofty aims.

But while many aspiring leaders still believe that the "tough love" approach is effective, a new study from UBC Sauder shows that, even when abusive leadership is meant to push employees to new heights, it can land them in deep lows in the long term.

Abusive supervision -- which includes behaviours like yelling at employees, giving them the silent treatment, or putting them down in front of their coworkers -- has long been linked with psychological distress, increased turnover and decreased performance.

But a key question hadn't been properly examined: do employees respond differently when their supervisor's abuse is motivated by different reasons?

For the study, titled The Whiplash Effect: The (Moderating) Role of Attributed Motives in Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Abusive Supervision, researchers conducted three studies on three continents.

For the first, which involved 1,000 soldiers and officers in the Chinese military, subordinates filled out surveys about the supervision they experienced, the emotions they felt, and how they responded.

The second was a laboratory experiment that involved 156 students and employees at a large American university. There, participants were given different roles as subordinates in a consulting firm, and were subjected to different forms of supervision -- some abusive and some non-abusive -- and were given hints about their supervisors' motivations.

They were also given the opportunity to participate in deviant behaviours against the supervisor, or engage in more positive "organizational citizenship behaviours," or OCBs (helpful actions that go beyond an employee's contract, such as assisting a co-worker with a project, or participating in workplace charity drives).

A third study had 325 employees and supervisors at a Swedish luxury car company fill out daily surveys for three weeks -- for the subordinates, about the abusive supervision they experienced and the emotions they felt, and for the supervisors, about the OCBs and deviant behaviours they observed.

Across all three studies, the researchers found that when employees think their supervisors' abusive actions are motivated by a desire to inflict harm, they are more likely to feel angry.

When subordinates believe their leaders are prodding employees to improve performance, however, they are more likely to feel guilt.

"When you feel like your supervisor is pushing you really hard, it's abusive, and you feel angry. But when they want to motivate you and improve your performance, employees have a strong feeling of guilt," explains UBC Sauder Assistant Professor Lingtao Yu (he, him, his), who named the study after the Oscar-winning film Whiplash, which follows an abusive band teacher and a student he's pushing to extremes.

"They think, 'Maybe there is a gap between what I do and what they expect. Maybe there's room for me to improve.'"

Those different emotions, in turn, lead to different behaviours. Employees who feel their bosses are "out to get them" are more likely to engage in devious or destructive behaviours and less likely to engage in more positive organizational citizenship behaviours, or OCBs.

Those who feel their leaders are pushing them to do better are less likely to act deviously and more drawn to positive corporate behaviours.

"People feel there's something they've done, or that they haven't done enough, so it's not entirely attributed to the other person. They may take some responsibility," explains Professor Yu, who coauthored the study with University of Minnesota Professor Michelle Duffy.

"So, guilt will actually trigger more prosocial behaviors, because the employee wants to do something to rebuild the relationship with the supervisor."

The findings are especially important given that, according to previous research, a third of U.S. employees are estimated to experience abusive supervision, and 45 percent of Europeans can recall an instance when they were either the target of supervisory abuse or observed it.

The study also found people's feelings of guilt don't last, so Professor Yu emphasizes that while the results-driven form of abusive supervision can sometimes have short-term benefits, in the long run it simply doesn't pay -- especially since abusive leadership can cost companies millions in lawsuits, health expenses, and productivity loss.

"Even if you have good intentions, you still want to be more mindful about your leadership behaviour -- and there are many other tools you can use to stimulate your employees' performance," he says. "Abusive leadership should not be the one you choose."

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The outsized impacts of rudeness in the workplace

New study finds rudeness can boost negative emotions, narrowing workers' perceptions and incurring biases in judgment

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Rude behavior is a common form of insensitive and disrespectful conduct that harms employees' performance in the workplace. In a new study, researchers examined the impact of rude behavior on how individuals make critical decisions. The study found that in certain situations, these behaviors can have deadly consequences.

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the University of Florida (UF), the University of Maryland, Envision Physician Services, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

The researchers looked at the effect of rudeness on workers' tendency to engage in a judgment bias called anchoring, which is the tendency to rely too heavily or fixate on one piece of information when making a decision.

"While small insults and other forms of rude behavior might seem relatively harmless compared to more serious forms of aggression, our findings suggest that they can have serious consequences," says Binyamin Cooper, a Postdoctoral Fellow at CMU's Tepper School of Business and a member of the Collaboration and Conflict Research Lab, who led the study. "Our work demonstrates how dangerous these seemingly minor behaviors can be, whether they are experienced directly or even if people just observer incidental rudeness.

"Let's say that a doctor walks into a patient's room for the first time, and a family member says 'I think he's having a heart attack,'" says Cooper. "Our findings suggest that if on the way to see the patient, the doctor witnessed a rude event between two other people, he or she would be significantly more likely to settle on a diagnosis of a heart attack, even if that is incorrect."

Cooper and his colleagues tested the effects of rudeness on anchoring in four studies across different settings--from medical simulations to negotiations and general judgment tasks. In one study, anesthesiology residents participated in a simulation on life-sized anatomical human models. The simulation was set up to suggest that a patient could have an allergic reaction to one of his medications, which served as the anchor. Before the simulation started, half the residents witnessed a senior doctor enter the room and yell at their instructor for missing a meeting, while the other half witnessed a neutral interaction.

When the patient's condition began to deteriorate later in the simulation, the residents who were exposed to the rude interaction were more likely to diagnose allergic shock, when in reality the patient was bleeding internally, and the diagnosis affected how they administered care. The study also showed that the reason rudeness was so harmful was that it is related to increased high arousal of negative emotions (such as irritability and distress), which predicted the tendency to engage in anchoring.

The practical implications of the study's findings are many, the authors note. For example, physicians exposed to rudeness may incorrectly treat patients for ailments they do not have, while being unaware of their incorrect diagnosis or the reasons underlying it. "Making the wrong decision at a critical moment means that people end up spending too much time going down the wrong path," explains Cooper. "If there's not enough time to realize the error and make up for it, this could be deadly."

In demonstrating that encounters with rudeness cause anchoring, the authors call on managers and organizations to take steps to reduce rudeness among employees, particularly in high-stakes situations where consequences of judgment errors associated with anchoring can be catastrophic. The authors also identified steps organizations can take to mitigate the effects of rudeness.

For example, organizations can train employees to use two skills--perspective taking and information elaboration--to better equip them to deal with the pernicious effects of exposure to rudeness. Because exposure to rude behavior makes people more likely to narrow their perspectives on their own personal experience, having employees imagine themselves viewing the same problem from another's point of view distances them from the strong feelings that they would overwise experience, according to the authors.

Another option is to practice information elaboration by having employees practice identifying the task at hand, and then taking a few moments to stop and think what information they need to help them make a decision.

"These active steps may seem small, but our work shows that organizations can use them to mitigate the harmful consequences associated with rudeness, which can make a big difference," suggests Cooper. "And they can be used in fields other than medicine, including negotiations, legal sentencing, financial forecasting, social exchange relationships, and pricing decisions."

The authors acknowledge several limitations to their study. First, they focused on anchoring as one of the most common decisions-making biases, but it remains to be seen if the effect of rudeness affects other decision-making biases. Second, except for perspective taking and information elaboration, their study did not examine empathy, experience, or other dispositional and contextual factors that may influence the relationship between rudeness and negative emotions.

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More than half of university students surveyed have tried a meat alternative

Top reasons for trying meat alternatives were liking to try new foods, hearing a lot about alternatives, and being curious, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

ELSEVIER

Research News

 

AUDIO: LEAD AUTHOR ELIZABETH DAVITT, MS, FOOD SCIENCE AND HUMAN NUTRITION, COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES, COLLEGE OF HUMAN SCIENCES, IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY, DISCUSSES A NEW STUDY THAT DETERMINED POSITIVE... view more 

CREDIT: JOURNAL OF NUTRITION EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR

Philadelphia, July 8, 2021 - Fifty-five percent of Midwest university students had tried a plant-based meat alternative and attributed this choice to the enjoyment of new food, curiosity about the products, and environmental concern, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier.

For several decades, there has been a steady growth in consumer concerns about the environmental sustainability of the global food supply, animal welfare ethics, and human health consequences of red meat intakes. To assess the prevalence of plant-based alternatives to meat consumption in students; describe associations between demographics, environmental concern attitudes, and consumption; and determine variables statistically associated with trying the plant-based alternatives, researchers studied enrolled students aged 18-30 at Iowa State University.

"Among the 1,400 students surveyed, we found about 55 percent had tried a plant-based alternative to meat. Individuals who ate plant-based products were more environmentally conscious, more likely to be vegetarian, and more likely to be out-of-state students--so not from Iowa," said lead author Elizabeth Davitt, MS, Food Science and Human Nutrition, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Sciences, Iowa State University, Ames, IA.

When evaluating why there is a correlation between out-of-state students and willingness to try plant-based alternatives to meat, Davitt suggests considering where the study is conducted. "This university in-state is well known for its agriculture degree programs. Iowa is also a top producer of hogs and chickens as well as a top grower for livestock feed. So, that could add some nuance to that result."

Respondents' motivation for trying plant-based alternatives to meat also included enjoying and trying new foods, being curious about these products, thinking they would taste good, and receiving encouragement from family and friends. Individuals who did not consume plant-based alternatives to meat had a less favorable view of meatless meals.

"There are many reasons people chose the foods they eat, but we did find that having a more positive attitude about the environment was associated with having tried a plant-based meat alternative in college students," Davitt said.

https://eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/media/270185.mp3