Italy: Migrants paid 8,000 euros each for 'voyage of death'

Rescue teams have pulled more bodies from the sea, bringing the death toll from Italy’s latest migrant tragedy to 65

ByPAOLO SANTALUCIA and LUIGI NAVARRA 

Associated Press
February 28, 2023


CROTONE, Italy -- Rescue teams pulled more bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Italy’s latest migration tragedy to 65, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged 8,000 euros (nearly $8,500) for each person making the “voyage of death” from Turkey to Italy.

Authorities delayed a planned viewing of the coffins to allow more time for identification of the bodies, as desperate relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone in hope of finding their loved ones, some of whom hailed from Afghanistan.

“I am looking for my aunt and her three children," said Aladdin Mohibzada, adding that he drove 25 hours from Germany to reach the makeshift morgue set up at a sports stadium. He said he had ascertained that his aunt and two of the children died, but that a 5-year-old survived and was being sheltered in a center for minors.

“We are looking into possibilities to send (the bodies) to Afghanistan, the bodies that are here,” he told The Associated Press outside the morgue. But he complained about a lack of information as authorities scrambled to cope with the disaster. “We are helpless here. We don’t know what we should do.”

At least 65 people, including 14 minors, died when their overcrowded wooden boat slammed into shoals 100 meters (yards) off the shore of Cutro and broke apart early Sunday in rough seas. Eighty people survived, but many more are feared dead since survivors indicated the boat had carried about 170 people when it set off last week from Izmir, Turkey.

Aid groups at the scene have said many of the passengers hailed from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled two bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the toll to 65, police said.

Premier Giorgia Meloni sent a letter to European leaders demanding quick action on the continent’s longstanding migration problem, insisting that migrants must be stopped from risking their lives on dangerous sea crossings.

“The point is, the more people who set off, the more people risk dying,” she told RAI state television late Monday.

Meloni’s right-wing government, which swept elections last year in part on promises to crack down on migration, has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy’s northern coasts. That means the vessels need more time to return to sea after bringing migrants aboard and taking them safely to shore.

But aid groups’ rescue ships don’t normally operate in the area of Sunday’s shipwreck, which occurred off the Calabrian coast in the Ionian Sea. Rather, the aid groups generally operate in the central Mediterranean, rescuing migrants who set off from Libya or Tunisia — not from Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.

Crotone prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia confirmed investigators had identified three suspected smugglers, a Turk and two Pakistani nationals. A second Turk is believed to have escaped or died in the wreck.

Italy’s border police said in a statement that organizers of the crossing charged 8,000 euros (around $8,500) each for the “voyage of death.”

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi pushed back at suggestions that the rescue was delayed or affected by government policy discouraging aid groups from staying at sea to rescue migrants.

The EU border agency Frontex has said its aircraft spotted the boat off Crotone at 10:26 p.m. Saturday and alerted Italian authorities. Italy sent out two patrol vessels, but they had to turn back because of the poor weather.

Piantedosi told a parliamentary committee that the ship ran aground and broke apart at around 5 a.m. Sunday.

“There was no delay,” Piantedosi told Corriere della Sera. “Everything possible was done in absolutely prohibitive sea conditions.”

The Italian Coast Guard issued a statement on Tuesday saying Frontex had indicated that the migrants' boat was “navigating normally” and that only one person could be seen above deck.

It added that an Italian border police vessel, “already operating in the sea” set out to intercept the migrant boat.

"At about 4:30 a.m., some indications by telephone from subjects on land, relative to a boat in danger a few meters from the coast, reached the Coast Guard,'' the statement said.

At that point, a Carabinieri police boat which had been alerted by border police “informed the Coast Guard about the shipwreck."

In contrast to similar cases of migrant vessels in distress, “no phone indication ever came from migrants aboard” to the Coast Guard, the statement noted.

Not rarely, migrants aboard a vessel in distress contact Alarm Phone, a humanitarian support hotline which relays indications of boats in trouble in the Mediterranean to maritime authorities.

When briefing lawmakers, the interior minister cited figures supporting Italy's long-held frustration that fellow European Union nations don't honor pledges to accept a share of asylum-seeking migrants who reach Italy.

Piantedosi said that while these pledges covered some 8,000 migrant relocations from June last year through this month, only 387 people actually were transferred to other EU nations, with Germany taking in most of them.

Mexican President López Obrador says Tesla to build plant in Mexico



By — Mark Stevenson, Associated Press

 Feb 28, 2023 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that electric car company Tesla has committed to building a plant in the industrial hub of Monterrey in northern Mexico.

READ MORE: Mexico may accept more migrants expelled by U.S., López Obrador says

López Obrador said the promise came in phone calls he had Friday and Monday with Tesla head Elon Musk.

López Obrador had previously ruled out placing such a plant in the arid northern state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is the capital, because he didn’t want any water-hungry factories in a region that has suffered severe water shortages. But he said Musk’s company had offered several commitment to address those concerns, including using recycled water.

“There is one commitment that all the water used in the manufacture of electric automobiles will be recycled water,” López Obrador said.

READ MORE: Tesla workers at New York plant fired after labor push, union says

López Obrador did not specify the size of the investment or what the plant would produce, noting that the company planned to release more details on Wednesday.

But he said “this is going to mean a considerable investment and many, many jobs.”

“My understanding is that it will be very big,” López Obrador said, but it was unclear if the plant would produce batteries, noting that “the batteries are still pending.”

Tesla already has two plants outside the United States, one in Shanghai and another near Berlin.

Monterrey is highly industrialized and close to the U.S. border, and had long been considered the frontrunner for any Tesla investment.

But the city suffered such severe water shortages in 2022 that many homes went weeks with intermittent or no water supply in 2022. The government is building a 60-mile (100 kilometer) pipeline to bring more water in from a dam to increase the supply.

READ MORE: Mexico’s former public security chief convicted in U.S. drug case

López Obrador had previously said his government “simply won’t grant permits” for any new plants there. But apparently Musk’s proposal overrode the president’s stance.

The announcement was a disappointment for more water-rich southern states which had begun jockeying for the Tesla plant after López Obrador’s comments last week.

The governor of Nuevo Leon state, where billboards went up last year saying “Welcome Tesla,” crowed about Tuesday’s announcement.

“Mexico won, Nuevo Leon (NL) won, WE ALL WIN!” Gov. Samuel García wrote in his Twitter account.

Musk at times has floated the idea of building a $25,000 electric vehicle that would cost about $20,000 less than the current Model 3, now Tesla’s least-expensive car. Many automakers build lower-cost models in Mexico to save on labor costs and protect profit margins.

López Obrador said Mexico wouldn’t match any U.S. subsidies to win the Tesla plant, referring to U.S. incentives under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

“A subsidy like that, we cannot give subsidies like that,” the president said, adding “Mr. Musk was very attentive, respectful” of Mexico’s position.

SFI Press reissues Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information

The proceedings of a workshop held at the Santa Fe Institute, it contains many ideas that are as relevant today as it was when first published in 1990

Book Announcement

SANTA FE INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: ON FEBRUARY 28, THE SFI PRESS RELEASED A TWO-VOLUME REPRINT OF THE SEMINAL BOOK OF PROCEEDINGS “COMPLEXITY, ENTROPY & THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION” EDITED BY WOJCIECH H. ZUREK. view more 

CREDIT: SANTA FE INSTITUTE

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

For a few days early in the summer of 1989, roughly 80 physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and curious others flocked to St. John’s College in Santa Fe for what, in hindsight, was a foundational meeting on the physics of information. 

The workshop was hosted by the Santa Fe Institute, then just five years old, and brought together researchers who shared common convictions about the centrality of information. In the late 1940s, Claude Shannon had described a kind of grand theory of communication — the mathematical rules for how information is transmitted. His work, and that of others, sparked decades of excitement among scientists, but by the 1980s the hype had largely deflated, giving way to deep theoretical and experimental work. 

The workshop attracted “scientists who took Shannon seriously, and who instituted a new science of physics and complexity based on information theory,” according to quantum mechanical engineer Seth Lloyd, who attended the workshop just after finishing his Ph.D. The participants shared brave new ideas about how information theory could be applied to solving problems in a raft of fields ranging from art to biology to society. 

The workshop proceedings, Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information, were originally published in 1990, but contain many ideas that are still relevant today. In early 2023, the SFI Press issued a reprint of the proceedings as part of its mission to make important works of complexity science affordable and accessible. This re-publication also includes a new foreword by Lloyd. 

The original proceedings begin with a “manifesto” that borrows from Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto. “The specter of information is haunting sciences,” wrote theoretical physicist Wojciech Zurek, who organized the workshop. Indeed, the proceedings describe a sprawling spectrum of ideas. They connect the natural sciences to the science of computation, and they characterize the emergence of classical physics from the quantum realm in the early universe. 

Heady topics like these — and dozens of others — seemed, at the time, almost revolutionary. “These ideas were very much in the thin air back then,” says Zurek, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “But it was very clear to us who attended that this was the beginning of something big. It didn’t feel fringe to us.” 

Many of the ideas would prove to be transformative. “Some of the ideas that people were talking about then became the foundations for novel ways of thinking about computation,” says Lloyd, now at MIT, whose says his own interest in information theory, in the 1980s, isolated him from other researchers. At SFI, “I thought, oh my God, there’s a community working on this, and it’s my community.” 

Zurek says that a reissue of the proceedings is both a historical nod to the importance of the papers and a possible source of inspiration. “A lot of ideas are in that book,” he says. “Some of them have been explored. But some of them are seeds which haven’t germinated completely. These ideas may yet develop into something influential and interesting, and intellectually satisfying.” 

Book Details

Book: Complexity, Entropy & the Physics of Information
Edited by Wojciech H. Zurek
$10.99 (Paperback)
Publisher and imprint: The SFI Press Archive Series
444 pages (volume I); 416 pages (volume II)
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-947864-27-6 (volume I); 978-1-947864-30-6 (volume II)
Publication Date: February 28, 2023
Available on Amazon
Volume I: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947864270
Volume II: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947864300

Novel method of analyzing microplastic particle pollution can facilitate environmental impact assessment

Microplastic particles separated from a sediment sample from the Guarapiranga reservoir in metropolitan São Paulo show different particle sizes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY AIMS TO CONTRIBUTE TO PROGRESS IN THIS FIELD BY PROPOSING A NOVEL PERSPECTIVE ON PARTICLE MORPHOLOGY view more 

CREDIT: CRISTIANO R. GEROLIN/UNIFESP

In the last decade, growing numbers of researchers have studied plastic pollution, one of the world’s most pressing environmental hazards. They have made progress but still face challenges, such as the comparability of results, especially with regard to microplastic particles.

There is no standard sample collection and analysis methodology, for example. Most studies present conclusions based on numbers of particles as if they were environmentally equivalent regardless of size, volume, mass or surface area.

An article by three Brazilian researchers published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research aims to contribute to progress in this field by proposing a novel perspective on particle morphology.

Using a theoretical approach, the authors argue that including morphological attributes in the analysis can reveal significant differences between samples of microplastic particles, demonstrating that samples initially considered equivalent because they contain the same number of particles actually have different environmental impacts because of variations in particle size and shape.

Microplastic particles (MPs) are artificial polymers with a length of between 0.001 and 5.0 millimeters, or 1-5,000 micrometers (μm), and are found in all kinds of environment. Few studies of pollution by MPs have been published in Brazil, especially regarding inland aquatic areas.

“Most of the research that’s been done on MPs reports the number of particles in terms of the unit adopted for the sample type, ranging from volume in the case of water, to mass when the analysis involves soil and sediment, and individuals for biota. We’ve been researching MPs in the laboratory for several years, and we’ve confirmed that size is important and makes a difference. We measure particle size in all samples. In this study we found samples with similar numbers of MPs but significant variations in particle size and very different levels of plastic pollution based on particle mass and volume,” Décio Semensatto, first author of the article, told Agência FAPESP. He is a professor at the Federal University of São Paulo’s Institute of Environmental, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences (ICAQF-UNIFESP). 

The other authors of the article are Professor Geórgia Labuto and Cristiano Rezende Gerolin, a former researcher at UNIFESP.

According to Semensatto, the group is finalizing an article on the Guarapiranga reservoir, a source of drinking water for São Paulo and two nearby towns, Itapecerica da Serra and Embu-Guaçu. “We collected samples in the wet and dry seasons and found more MPs in one season than another, with an even greater difference in terms of each sample’s mass and total volume of plastic. Using only numbers of particles as a parameter focuses on just one dimension and ignores that fact that different particle sizes have different effects on ecosystems,” he said.

Semensatto is supported by FAPESP via the project “Microplastics in the water and sediments from the estuary of the Amazon River (AmazonMicroplast)”, analyzing the presence of MPs in the lower part of the estuary and their role as vectors of metals in aquatic environments. The team will analyze 52 water samples and 12 sediment samples collected in December 2021 and July 2022 in the vicinity of Macapá, the state capital of Amapá (North Brazil).

Comparisons

According to the recent article, the researchers analyzed seven samples with 100 MPs each. These would be considered equivalent based on conventional pollution metrics. However, the comparisons made showed that their impact on the environment would be very different. In one sample, the MPs were larger in terms of volume, mass and specific surface area. It therefore had more plastic than the others and was likely to give rise to a larger number of even smaller particles when broken down by physical and chemical degradation. 

In another comparison, they analyzed samples with 100 MPs and 10 MPs respectively, noting that if only the number of particles were considered, the conclusion would be that the former had ten times more plastic than the latter, although both had the same total mass and volume of plastic, while particle size and specific surface area were larger in the former.

The authors also highlight the question of morphology or particle shape. Samples containing fibers had less volume, mass and surface area, for example.

“We also explore the question of specific surface area, which is highly relevant, especially when studying MPs as carriers of other pollutants, such as metals or pharmaceuticals,” Semensatto said. “Particle size influences the surface area available for adsorption of these pollutants. In addition, MPs also form a plastisphere that serves as a substrate for organisms and disperses these organisms to other environments, with consequences for global health.”
The plastisphere is the community of bacteria, fungi, algae, viruses and other microorganisms that have evolved to live on man-made plastic.

“By considering particle volume, mass and specific surface area, we can better understand how MPs pollute water bodies and transport other agents responsible for pollution, including microorganisms,” Semensatto said. “Analyzing all attributes of samples brings new possibilities into view and extends the comparability of the results.”

The vast scale of the problem

World production of plastic reached 348 million metric tons in 2017, up from only 2 million tons in 1950. The global plastic industry is valued at USD 522.6 billion, and its capacity is expected to double by 2040, according to a report by The Pew Charitable Trusts and SystemIQ, partnering with Oxford and Leeds Universities in the UK.

Plastic production and pollution affect human health and fuel greenhouse gas emissions. Plastic can be ingested by more than 800 marine and coastal species or cause accidents involving them. Some 11 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year.

In 2022, 175 countries represented at the UN General Assembly adopted a historic resolution to sign up by 2024 to a legally binding commitment to end global plastic pollution. To this end, they established an intergovernmental negotiating committee, which held its first session in December.

“With this study, we set out to contribute to academic efforts to develop routines and methodologies for dealing with plastic pollution,” Semensatto said. “Our article proposes a discussion within the academic community. The proposal is open to debate. We're inviting other scientists to measure MPs and report their morphological attributes, as a contribution to the discussion of their environmental significance.” 

In this context, a group at UNIFESP linked to Semensatto are working with the São Paulo State Environmental Corporation (CETESB) to develop protocols for collecting water samples and analyzing MPs in the coastal region of the state. The main aim is to find a way to compare results so that MPs can become part of continuous environmental monitoring, which they are not right now in São Paulo.

This project is being conducted under the aegis of Rede Hydropoll, a network of researchers at various institutions engaged in studying water source pollution.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science and Pollution Research

DOI

10.1007/s11356-022-24567-4 

ARTICLE TITLE

The importance of integrating morphological attributes of microplastics: a theoretical discussion to assess environmental impacts

People spend 1/6th of their lifetime on enhancing their appearance

And not only to find the love of their life!

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

An international team including HSE researchers has conducted the largest ever cross-cultural study of appearance-enhancing behaviours. They have found that people worldwide spend an average of four hours a day on enhancing their beauty. Caring for one's appearance does not depend on gender, and older people worry as much about looking their best as the young do. The strongest predictor of attractiveness-enhancing behaviours appears to be social media usage. The study findings have been published in Evolution and Human Behaviour.

People have always valued beauty. Throughout history, we have gone to great lengths to enhance our physical appearance. Early homo sapiens are known to have applied pigment to decorate their bodies, and ancient civilizations widely used cosmetics, ornate clothing, and jewellery. According to some scholars, our tendency for appearance enhancement might have originated from primate self-grooming behaviours.

But what exactly motivates us to spend time trying to look more physically attractive? From an evolutionary perspective, this may be part of mating behaviour, since good looks indicate good health and good genetics, maximising the chances of having healthy offspring; therefore, physical appearance is one of the key criteria in selecting a mate. From this perspective, women are assumed to be more interested in enhancing their physical attractiveness than men, and younger unmarried women are thought to be particularly concerned with their appearance.

There are a few other theories explaining people’s preoccupation with their physical attractiveness. One of them, the pathogen prevalence theory, suggests that people in countries with a high prevalence of dangerous infections such as leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis, malaria, and leprosy are likely to spend more time improving their appearance, in particular to conceal visual imperfections which may be perceived as signs of disease. Sociocultural characteristics, such as gender inequality or individualistic vs. collectivist attitudes, and the influence of mass media or social media usage can also impact on how much time people invest in their appearance.

An international team of scientists including HSE researchers have tested the a range of these theories to determine which factors have the greatest impact on beauty-enhancing behaviour. The authors surveyed more than 93,000 people across 93 countries about the amount of time they spend every day enhancing their physical appearance. To date, it is the largest study carried out in in evolutionary psychology.

"We were able to collect data on almost 100,000 people across a very large sample in terms of age, education and income level, including many participants from non-industrial countries for which we had no previous data" Dmitrii Dubrov, Study co-author, Research Fellow of the HSE Centre for Sociocultural Research.

According to the evolutionary hypothesis, people want to look good to improve their chances of finding a suitable mate. The survey found both men and women spend an average of about four hours a day on behaviours designed to enhance their physical attractiveness. In addition to putting on makeup, grooming their hair grooming and selecting clothes, such behaviours include caring for body hygiene, exercising or following a specific diet for the purpose of improving one’s appearance (as opposed to taking care of one’s health, for example).

It has also been found that older people spend about as much time as younger ones enhancing their attractiveness. People in early romantic relationships tend to spend more time enhancing their appearance compared to those who are married or have been dating for a while.

The pathogen prevalence hypothesis was only partly confirmed: individuals with a history of serious pathogenic diseases were likely to spend more time enhancing their appearance, e.g. by applying makeup to mask traces of the disease, but no association was found between one's investment in beauty and living in a country where certain pathogens occur. The reason may be better healthcare, even in poorer countries which used to struggle with severe infections in the past.

As expected, women from countries with pronounced gender inequality tend to invest more time and effort in beauty enhancement than women in countries which have advanced gender equality. The same is true of countries and cultures with traditional attitudes towards gender roles.

Individualistic cultures that value individual accomplishments over those of the collective also emphasise the importance of enhancing one's physical attractiveness.

Social media usage appears to be the strongest predictor of attractiveness-enhancing behaviours. Active social media users – in particular, those who strive for unrealistic beauty standards and become concerned when their pictures get fewer likes – have been found to invest more time in improving their appearance than those who spend less or no time on social networks.

"In this paper, we tested five existing theories that shed light on people's attractiveness-enhancing behaviours. These theories are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. We confirmed certain assumptions and came up with some interesting and less expected results. This study is an important step in evolutionary and sociocultural research that will allow a better understanding of human psychology and our attitudes towards beauty", Dmitrii Dubrov, Study co-author, Research Fellow of the HSE Centre for Sociocultural Research. 

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JOURNAL

Evolution and Human Behavior

DOI

10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.08.003 

ARTICLE TITLE

Predictors of enhancing human physical attractiveness: Data from 93 countries

Centuries of whaling data highlight likely climate change effect

Centuries-old whaling records show how southern right whales, or Tohorā, are altering their feeding habits.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

Southern right whales adjusted their foraging grounds over the past 30 years as climate change altered where prey could be found, according to a University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau scientist.

Dr Emma Carroll, of the School of Biological Sciences, was senior author of a paper which used data gleaned from contemporary whale skin samples along with whaling records stretching back to 1792. Over the past three decades, the whales increased their use of mid-latitude foraging grounds in the south Atlantic and southwest Indian oceans in the late summer and autumn, according to Carroll and dozens of collaborators including lead author Solène Derville, of Oregon State University.

The whales also slightly increased their use of high latitude foraging grounds in the southwest Pacific, according to the article, published in the journal PNAS. Southern right whales, or Tohorā, live south of the equator, eating krill and copepods, which are small crustaceans. Chemical analysis of skin samples revealed the whales’ feeding patterns in recent decades. The main source of historic data was the American whaling fleet's detailed records of where and what species were observed and killed in the Southern Hemisphere from the 18th to the early 20th century.

The whales' history and efforts to support Aotearoa's population are detailed on the website Tohorā Voyages. 

Tohorā were hunted to near extinction, with global numbers falling to as low as 500. By 2009, an estimated 2,200 of the creatures were in New Zealand waters, moving between the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands (Maungahuka) and Campbell Island (Motu Ihupuku), and occasionally around mainland New Zealand including Stewart Island (Rakiura).

Southern right whales live from about 30 degrees South to more than 60 degrees South, the edge of the Antarctic. Large and slow-moving, the whales are mostly black in colour and easily identified by white growths on their heads called callosities. They have no dorsal fin and a V-shaped blowhole spray.

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2214035120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-term stability in the circumpolar foraging range of a Southern Ocean predator between the eras of whaling and rapid climate change

Mysterious new behavior seen in whales may be recorded in ancient manuscripts

Feeding strategy recently discovered in whales may explain strange creatures described in Classical and Norse eras.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: COD. 318FOL. 15V: HTTPS://WWW.E-CODICES.UNIFR.CH/EN/LIST/ONE/BBB/0318 CC BY 4.0, COLOR AND CONTRAST CORRECTED). view more 

CREDIT: COD. 318FOL. 15V: HTTPS://WWW.E-CODICES.UNIFR.CH/EN/LIST/ONE/BBB/0318 CC BY 4.0, COLOR AND CONTRAST CORRECTED).

In 2011, scientists recorded a previously unknown feeding strategy in whales around the world. Now, researchers in Australia think they may have found evidence of this behaviour being described in ancient accounts of sea creatures, recorded more than 2,000 years ago.

They believe that misunderstandings of these descriptions contributed to myths about medieval sea monsters.

Whales are known lunge at their prey when feeding, but recently whales have been spotted at the surface of the water with their jaws open at right angles, waiting for shoals of fish to swim into their mouths. A clip of this strategy was captured in 2021 and went viral on Instagram.

This strategy seems to work for the whales because the fish think they have found a place to shelter from predators, not realising they are swimming into danger.

It’s not known why this strategy has only recently been identified, but scientists speculate that it’s a result of changing environmental conditions - or that whales are being more closely monitored than ever before by drones and other modern technologies.

Dr John McCarthy, a maritime archaeologist in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, first noticed intriguing parallels between marine biology and historical literature while reading about Norse sea monsters.

“It struck me that the Norse description of the hafgufa was very similar to the behaviour shown in videos of trap feeding whales, but I thought it was just an interesting coincidence at first. Once I started looking into it in detail and discussing it with colleagues who specialise in medieval literature, we realised that the oldest versions of these myths do not describe sea monsters at all, but are explicit in describing a type of whale, says Dr McCarthy.

“That’s when we started to get really interested. The more we investigated it, the more interesting the connections became and the marine biologists we spoke to found the idea fascinating.

Old Norse manuscripts describing the creature date from the 13th century and name the creature as a ‘hafgufa’.

This creature remained part of Icelandic myths until the 18th century, often included in accounts alongside the more infamous kraken and mermaids.

However, it appears the Norse manuscripts may have drawn on medieval bestiaries, a popular type of text in the medieval period. Bestiaries describe large numbers of real and fantastical animals and often include a description of a creature very similar to the hafgufa, usually named as the ‘aspidochelone’.

Both the hafgufa and aspidochelone are sometimes said to emit a special perfume or scent that helps to draw the fish towards their stationary mouths. Although some whales produce ambergris, which is an ingredient of perfume, this is not true of such rorquals as the humpback.

Instead, researchers suggest this element may have been inspired by the ejection of filtered prey by whales, to help attract more prey into a whale’s mouth.

Research co-author Dr Erin Sebo, an Associate Professor in Medieval Literature and Language in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, says this may be another example of accurate knowledge about the natural environment preserved in forms that pre-date modern science.

“It’s exciting because the question of how long whales have used this technique is key to understanding a range of behavioural and even evolutionary questions. Marine biologists had assumed there was no way of recovering this data but, using medieval manuscripts, we’ve been able to answer some of their questions.”

“We found that the more fantastical accounts of this sea monster were relatively recent, dating to the 17th and 18th centuries and there has been a lot of speculation amongst scientists about whether these accounts might have been provoked by natural phenomena, such as optical illusions or under water volcanoes. In fact, the behaviour described in medieval texts, which seemed so unlikely, is simply whale behaviour that we had not observed but medieval and ancient people had.” 

The new paper on ancient descriptions of whales is: McCarthy, J., Sebo, E. and Firth, M., 2023. Parallels for cetacean trap feeding and tread-water feeding in the historical record across two millennia. Marine Mammal Science, pp.1-12. Accessible in full at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.13009

The original 2017 description of the tread-water feeding behaviour by whales in the Gulf of Thailand is: Iwata, T., Akamatsu, T., Thongsukdee, S., Cherdsukjai, P., Adulyanukosol, K. and Sato, K., 2017. Tread-water feeding of Bryde’s whales. Current Biology, 27(21), pp.R1154-R1155. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982217312435 

A digital reconstruction of a humpback whale trap feeding (J. McCarthy).

CREDIT

John McCarthy, Flinders University

Icelandic Physiologus (c.1200) depiction of the Apsido feeding 

(Reykjavík AM 673 a II 4to fol. 3v Public Domain, color and contrast corrected).

Above: Ortelius's 1658 map of Iceland showing various mythological sea creatures. Below, a detail of a sea creature labelled H, ‘the greatest of whales’ which could not chase fish but caught them through cunning 

(Public Domain, color and contrast corrected).

VIDEOS

Bryde's Whales engaging in tread-water feeding in the Gulf of Thailand 2 (video courtesy of Surachai Passada, Department of Marine and Coastal Resources)

Bryde's Whales engaging in tre [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

Bryde's Whales engaging in tread-water feeding in the Gulf of Thailand Close Up

Bryde's Whales engaging in tre [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

JOURNAL

Marine Mammal Science

DOI

10.1111/mms.13009 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Parallels for cetacean trap feeding and tread-water feeding in the historical record across two millennia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

School-based wellness initiative shown to reduce average student BMI

Researchers at MUSC’s Boeing Center for Children’s Wellness report in the Journal of School Health that participation in its school-based wellness initiative is associated with decline in average student BMI over time in a diverse array of schools

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

 

IMAGE: PHYSICAL ACTIVITY OPPORTUNITIES LED BY PE TEACHER, “MR. C”. AT FLOWERTOWN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IN SUMMERVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA. view more 

CREDIT: MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE MUSC BOEING CENTER FOR CHILDREN'S WELLNESS.

Health impacts students’ ability to learn. Leaders at  MUSC’s Boeing Center for Children’s Wellness (MUSC BCCW) believe that lessons on healthy living can be part of every student’s school experience.

“Healthier students are better learners, and better learners actually live healthier adult lives,” said Kathleen Head, M.D., MUSC BCCW associate medical director.

In a recent study published in the Journal of School Health, a research team led by Head and BCCW director Janice Key, M.D., compared the average student body mass index (BMI) in schools both participating and not participating in the MUSC BCCW School-based Wellness Initiative. The team used BMI data from the SC FitnessGram project, a statewide program to collect and track student health and fitness data in public schools.

Schools participating in the initiative saw their average student BMIs decrease significantly over time, regardless of school type. The average student BMI in the schools that used more wellness tools and programs was up to 15% lower than the schools that used fewer.

Implementing the School-based Wellness Initiative

Between 2014 and 2018, 103 South Carolina schools across five counties participated in  the School-based Wellness Initiative. The program targets policy, systems and environmental (PSE) change, such as schoolwide gardening projects or classwide stress reduction strategies, instead of solely individual changes.

To achieve this, the initiative uses the School Wellness Checklist (SWC). The SWC features seven categories of evidence-based strategies that schools can use to promote a culture of wellness  that includes getting started, nutrition, physical activity, social-emotional wellness, wellness culture, staff wellness and sustainability. Schools can choose which SWC items work best for them, and they are assigned points based on how many they use. One goal of the study is to determine which of these seven categories is most associated with average student BMI decreases.

Designing a wellness plan for a school using the SWC is a community effort. Head said that each school’s Wellness Committee designs a wellness plan specific to that school’s needs, explaining that the committee includes teachers, staff, administrators and parents, as well as community members, some of whom may have children at the school or just live in the area and are invested in advocacy.

She emphasized that the school-based nature of the initiative is particularly important. “The environment surrounding us as humans is critically important to our overall wellness,” she explained. “Children spend the majority of their day, five days per week, in school, eating, learning and playing.”

Bringing the initiative to schools also ensures program equity, as school-based programs reach all children regardless of medical access. “We want to reach all children and provide more than we can at a doctor visit,” said Key. “The BCCW must go where children are, which is school.”

Defining wellness in childhood

Over the past 40 years, childhood obesity rates have gone up 240%. Obesity is the state of having a BMI greater than 30, and the term overweight applies to those with BMIs between 25 and 30. This category changed in 1998 from a BMI between 27 and 30, shifting 25 million Americans from the normal weight to the overweight category.

About one third of the students in the study had a BMI in the obese or overweight category. Because children are still growing, their weights cannot be measured against preset ranges. Instead, pediatric BMIs are grouped together based on age and sex. Children in the 85th to 95th percentile of their group are considered overweight, and those above the 95th percentile are considered obese.

Though having an overweight or obese BMI is not a one-to-one guarantee of a negative health outcome, Head said that children who are categorized as obese are four times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes by the time they’re age 25.

Key expressed that there are instances in which the BMI does not give an accurate picture of a child’s body composition, such as in an athletic student who may carry above average muscle mass.

“For something that is simple and easy to check for a whole classroom of kids, height and weight is the best we’ve got,” she said. “But when you’re looking at an individual patient, you would go beyond that.”

Building equitable and effective systems of wellness

Average BMIs went down in schools that participated in the initiative and went up in schools that did not. Additionally, in schools that participated for two years or more, a higher SWC score was associated with greater BMI decreases. Students in schools that scored 250 SWC points were 15% less likely to have overweight or obese BMIs than students in schools that earned only 50 SWC points.

Just as importantly, however, results were spread evenly across schools, Head explained.

“Our results were the same regardless of if the school was elementary, middle or high school, or if it was rural or urban, or if it was a Title I school or a non-Title I school,” she said.

Past school wellness programs have failed to deliver health benefits across different types of schools.

Though physical activity had the largest association with decreased BMI, followed by social-emotional wellness and staff wellness, nutrition education did not. “The disappointment to us was that decreased BMI wasn't associated with the score of nutrition interventions,” Key said.

She explained that this may be because students can actively practice physical activity and social-emotional wellness at school. However, food choice does not happen in the same way. Most food choices and options for students, such as nightly dinners, happen outside of the school and the wellness initiative.

Despite such challenges, Key said that they will not give up on nutrition.

Team members also want to diversify the data they track to monitor the effectiveness of their program. “In the future,” Head explained, “we’d like to measure knowledge, attitudes and behaviors associated with some of our interventions rather than skipping straight to BMI.

 

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About MUSC

Founded in 1824 in Charleston, MUSC is the state’s only comprehensive academic health system, with a unique mission to preserve and optimize human life in South Carolina through education, research and patient care. Each year, MUSC educates more than 3,000 students in six colleges – Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy – and trains more than 850 residents and fellows in its health system. MUSC brought in more than $297.8 million in research funds in fiscal year 2022, leading the state overall in research funding. For information on academic programs, visit musc.edu.

As the health care system of the Medical University of South Carolina, MUSC Health is dedicated to delivering the highest quality and safest patient care while educating and training generations of outstanding health care providers and leaders to serve the people of South Carolina and beyond. Patient care is provided at 14 hospitals with approximately 2,500 beds and five additional hospital locations in development, more than 350 telehealth sites and connectivity to patients’ homes, and nearly 750 care locations situated in all regions of South Carolina. In 2022, for the eighth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report named MUSC Health the No. 1 hospital in South Carolina. To learn more about clinical patient services, visit muschealth.org.

MUSC and its affiliates have collective annual budgets of $5.1 billion. The nearly 25,000 MUSC team members include world-class faculty, physicians, specialty providers, scientists, students, affiliates and care team members who deliver groundbreaking education, research and patient care.

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JOURNAL

Journal of School Health

DOI

10.1111/josh.13292 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People