Thursday, August 13, 2020



Revisiting Facial Recognition Technology And Privacy Concerns – Analysis

 August 14, 2020  By Sagnik Chakraborty* GATEWAY HOUSE

In June 2020, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon decided to stop selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies, in light of potential misuse of the technology. IBM went a step further and stopped the development of the technology altogether.

No other company or entity, however, is taking the high moral ground on facial technology. The use of facial recognition by governments around the world has become quite prevalent. China has used it enforce quarantine in Beijing[1] and to crack down on protestors in Hong Kong.[2] Dubai’s Ooyun project uses facial recognition for smart policing.[3] Russia has used it against protestors[4] as well as to track citizens’ movements during the coronavirus lockdown.[5]

It is now so prevalent that ordinary citizens know that they are being watched from all angles, public and private. For example, even when Facebook prompts a name to be tagged in a photo, it uses facial recognition algorithm to determine their presence in an image.

Facial recognition technology analyses facial images and interprets the identity of a person. The surface and features of a face are broken down into several data points to derive the output, with the precision of a plastic surgeon. For instance, the distance between the nose and lips; the width and breadth of a lip; protrusion of cheek bones and several other such conditions are used. Facial recognition tech is an Artificial Intelligence driven system. This is because when two unequal entities such as one version of person’s facial expression is compared to his many photos taken across different time intervals, the system makes an intelligent judgement on whether it matches with the person’s face.

The source of a facial image can be both physical – such as street cameras – and digital, such as social media. The captured image is then compared with thousands of images collected in a database made out of social media profiles, photographs provided for social identification cards such as Social Security, driver’s licenses, passport etc. Technology companies can scrape the internet for images and videos containing faces, group them and map them to a single person. More data helps to train the facial recognition algorithm better, as every feature and expression is captured. For instance, it can recognise both a straight face and a laughing image of the same person. The more posts that are uploaded on Instagram, the more the facial recognition algorithm learns about the face.


The primary purpose of this technology is authentication and identification of a person. Authentication of an individual is a one-to-one verification process where the authenticating agency knows what it is searching for. For instance, at an immigration counter, the face of a traveller is scanned against the face of the person who he claims to be in the system. Identification of an individual is a one-to-many process where the identifier does not know the person being searched, like the identification of a suspect within a database of criminals.

There are two categories of players in this game – big tech and social media companies and the State.

Being a tech and social media giant like Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft is a huge advantage. Massive amounts of voluntary, in-coming facial images have created a global database. Facebook’s facial recognition system known as DeepFace[6] uses the tech to enrich the user experience on its platform. The rate of accuracy with which Facebook prompts the user with the name of the person in an image, has increased significantly over the years, and trained on large datasets of faces to reach an accuracy of 97.35% today.

Streaming services such as Amazon Prime Videoleverages an in-house Amazon product called X-Ray[7] to help the viewer identify the celebrity of screen. It uses the movie cataloguing website IMDB, also owned by Amazon, as the backend database for this process.

Amazon sells its facial recognition software called, Rekognition.[8] Amazon Rekognition claims to identify objects, people, scenes. It can also detect emotions such as happiness or sadness on people’s faces.Microsoft provides an API (Application Programmig Interface) called Face,[9] a re-usable code which can be downloaded by a customer for facial analysis. Age, emotion, pose, smile, facial hair and other features can be determined with Microsoft Face.

These companies have major customers: governments across the world.[10] [11] Their many agencies use facial recognition to provide government services and national security. The recent controversy surrounding police departments in the U.S using ClearviewAI software, a U.S. based surveillance company, to quell public protests,[12] [13] has brought to the forefront of the wide usage of such technology.

Facial recognition tech is a favourite policing tool because all current identification systems require close proximity between the person and the device. For instance, fingerprints require a person to touch a scanner; iris scanner, though contactless, requires a person to be near the scanner. Facial recognition allows identification from afar, eliminating the need for person-device proximity.

This gives the state unprecedented power over its citizens. The virtuous use of tracking and identifying criminals can easily convert into profiling citizens taking part in protests. For this very reason, the Chinese government banned the use of masks in the Hong Kong protest.[14] It’s easier to pick protestors once their facial image from a protest is captured and mapped against a database of citizen’s photos.

This problem multiplies manifold when the tech companies and government are intertwined. The Chinese government uses Face++ a product from Megvii,[15] a Facial recognition AI software company based in Beijing. Other Chinese companies such as Yitu[16] and SenseTime[17] also produce this tech which can be easily used for mass surveillance. China is accused of using this technology for the religious profiling of its Uighur population.[18] The fear of such abuse has resulted in many states in the U.S. such as Californiato ban this technology in police body cameras.[19] Regional bodies like the European Union are still debating whether to adopt this technology[20] or not.

Others are moving ahead. Russian courts in March 2020[21] have struck down a challenge to the use of facial recognition tech.[22] [23] Malaysia, Uganda, Zimbabwe have tied up with Chinese companies to implement facial recognition.[24] India’s National Crime Records Bureau plans to implement a country wide automated facial recognition system (AFRS). It has released a tender for proposals from tech companies for it.[25]

The technology has still not been perfected, though. A major challenge is the problem of misidentification, especially for women and individuals with darker skin tone. For instance, Amazon’s Rekognition falsely identified 28 non-white U.S. lawmakers as criminals. A study by MIT and Microsoft found an error rate of 35% for darker skinned women.[26] [27]

The fear of a dystopian world is legitimate, especially if the technology is not fool-proof. Though facial images are considered sensitive biometric data as per Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and India’s Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, these regulations exempt government agencies from their purview, on grounds of public safety and national security. India needs to be particularly careful because it is a heterogenous country, with varied ethnicities and facial types. Till the technology matures, facial recognition should be used only as a medium of screening individuals, along with other identity verification methods.

*About the author: Sagnik Chakraborty is Researcher, Cybersecurity Studies, and Manager, Management Office, Gateway House.

Source: This article was written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

References:

[1] Borak Masha, ‘Beijing considers using facial recognition to fight a new Covid-19 outbreak’, South China Morning Post, 17 June 2020, https://www.scmp.com/abacus/tech/article/3089378/beijing-considers-using-facial-recognition-fight-new-covid-19-outbreak

[2] Doffman Zak, ‘Hong Kong Exposes Both Sides of China’s Relentless Facial Recognition Machine’, Forbes, 26 Aug 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/26/hong-kong-exposes-both-sides-of-chinas-relentless-facial-recognition-machine/#1995dd1b42b7

[3] ‘Dubai Police Launch “Oyoon” AI Surveillance Programme’, 28 Jan 2018, https://www.dubaipolice.gov.ae/wps/portal/home/mediacenter/news/details/A70

[4] ‘Russia: Intrusive facial recognition technology must not be used to crackdown on protests’, Amnesty International, 31 January 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/01/russia-intrusive-facial-recognition-technology-must-not-be-used-to-crackdown-on-protests/

[5] Marrow Alexander, ‘Russia’s lockdown surveillance measures need regulating, rights group say’, Reuters, 24 April 2020, https://in.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-russia-facial-recogni/russias-lockdown-surveillance-measures-need-regulating-rights-groups-say-idINKCN2260CF

[6] TaigmanYaniv, Yang Ming, Ranzato Aurelio Marc’, Wolf Lior, ‘DeepFace: Closing the Gap to Human-Level Performance in Face Verification’, Facebook AI Research, Tel Aviv University, https://research.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/deepface-closing-the-gap-to-human-level-performance-in-face-verification.pdf

[7] Staff One Day, ‘Behind the scenes with X-Ray’, The Amazon Blog, 27 June 2018, https://blog.aboutamazon.com/entertainment/behind-the-scenes-with-x-ray

[8] Amazon Rekognition, https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/?blog-cards.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&blog-cards.sort-order=desc

[9] Microsoft Azure, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/cognitive-services/face/#demo

[10] AI Global Surveillance (AIGS) Index, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, https://carnegieendowment.org/files/AI_Global_Surveillance_Index1.pdf

[11] Feldstein Steven, ‘The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 17 September 2019,https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/17/global-expansion-of-ai-surveillance-pub-79847

[12] Markey J Edward, ‘United States Senate’, 8 June 2020, https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Clearview%20protests%2006.08.20.pdf

[13] Haskins Caroline, Mac Ryan, ‘Here Are The Minneapolis Police’s Tools To Identify Protesters’, Buzzfeed News, 29 May 2020, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/george-floyd-protests-surveillance-technology

[14] Doffman Zak, ‘Honk Kong Exposes Both Sides of China’s Relentless Facial Recognition Machine’, Forbes, 26 August 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/26/hong-kong-exposes-both-sides-of-chinas-relentless-facial-recognition-machine/#3856916042b7

[15] Simonite Tom, ‘Behind the Rise of China’s Facial Recognition Giants’, Wired, 9 March 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/behind-rise-chinas-facial-recognition-giants/

[16] Yitu, https://www.yitutech.com/en

[17] Sense Time, https://www.sensetime.com/en/technology-detail?categoryId=1030

[18] Doffman Zak, ‘China Is Facial Recognition To Track Ethnic Minorities, Even In Beijing’, Forbes, 3 May 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/05/03/china-new-data-breach-exposes-facial-recognition-and-ethnicity-tracking-in-beijing/#7fc2455234a7

[19] California Legislative Information, United States Government, http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1215

[20] Wiewiorowski, Wojciech, ‘AI and Facial Recognition: Challenges and Opportunities’, European Data Protection Supervisor, 21 February 2020, https://edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/blog/ai-and-facial-recognition-challenges-and-opportunities_en

[21] Courts of General Jurisdiction Moscow City, https://www.mos-gorsud.ru/rs/tverskoj/services/cases/kas/details/8f0ad27b-ba67-4e50-84eb-c3c5d788ef6c?participants=%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2

[22] ‘Russian court rejects call to ban facial recognition technology’, DW https://www.dw.com/en/russian-court-rejects-call-to-ban-facial-recognition-technology/a-51135814

[23] Society, ‘В Москвесудотказалсяпризнатьнезаконнымиспользованиенамитингахкамер с распознаваниемлиц’, Novayagazete, 3 March 2020 https://novayagazeta.ru/news/2020/03/03/159500-v-moskve-sud-otkazalsya-priznat-nezakonnym-ispolzovanie-na-mitingah-kamer-s-raspoznavaniem-lits

[24] Feldstein Steven, ‘The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 17 September 2019, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/17/global-expansion-of-ai-surveillance-pub-79847

[25] National Crime Records Bureau, http://www.ncrb.gov.in/TENDERS/AFRS/RFP_NAFRS.pdf

[26] Buolamwini Joy, GebruTimnit, ‘Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification’, Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf

[27] Crumpler William, ‘The Problem of Bias in Facial Recognition’, Center for Strategic & International Studies’, 1 May 2020, https://www.csis.org/blogs/technology-policy-blog/problem-bias-facial-recognition

Home » Revisiting Facial Recognition Technology And Privacy Concerns – Analysis

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Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations is a foreign policy think-tank established in 2009, to engage India’s leading corporations and individuals in debate and scholarship on India’s foreign policy and its role in global affairs. Gateway House’s studies programme will be at the heart of the institute’s scholarship, with original research by global and local scholars in Geo-economics, Geopolitics, Foreign Policy analysis, Bilateral relations, Democracy and nation-building, National security, ethnic conflict and terrorism, Science, technology and innovation, and Energy and Environment.
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"One-Size-Fits-All" Approach to Clean Energy Could Cause Social Inequalities


According to a new study, a “one-size-fits-all” approach for generating cleaner energy based only on expenses could lead to social inequalities.

Spain’s solar and wind farms may not be the best option for everyone.
 Image Credit: Imperial College London.
The goal of the Paris Agreement is to maintain the increase in global temperature for this century less than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to continue measures to restrict it to 1.5 °C. One main way to realizing this is for countries to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050—by either producing zero emissions or eliminating the same amount that they produce.
To achieve this goal, a combination of alternatives to fossil fuels in energy production with sustainable alternatives such as wind and solar power, as well as the deployment of technologies that eliminate carbon dioxide either instantly from the air or from power plant emissions, would be required.
Various existing models for identifying the ideal combination of schemes that can be adopted by a country tend to focus on the projected costs of the technologies. In a new study published recently in the Joule journal, scientists from Imperial College London argue that the “one-size-fits-all” strategy disregards the current state of a country’s industrial strengths and energy economy, which could result in social inequalities.

The Right Energy Mix

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The research team considered the example of three countries—the United Kingdom, Poland, and Spain–and performed an analysis that involved the social and economic impact of various energy combinations, and the technology costs.
For instance, in Poland, 80% of energy generation is based on coal and there is no in-country expertise in solar power. Therefore, technologically, even if the deployment of solar power is the most cost-effective option, the effect on the workforce would be huge, as it would be hard to retrain such a huge part of the workforce. This could lead to social inequality and economic upheaval.
Therefore, for Poland, the team contends that a better choice might be to continue the use of coal in the majority, but to install carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies that eliminate the carbon dioxide from the power plant emissions.
On the other hand, Spain already has a solid wind and solar power industry, which implies that an analysis based only on expenses is similar to the analysis that involves socio-economic effects, as it would be much less disruptive to install more wind and solar power.
Although the United Kingdom has a flourishing offshore wind industry, it would face issues with irregular power from an energy combination totally based on renewables, so the installation of CCS power stations continues to be a priority.

Avoiding Social Divisions

The transition to net zero needs to be technically feasible and financially viable, but should also be socially equitable, avoiding any potentially regressive outcomes, perceived or otherwise, that might be caused by changes in the labour market.
Dr Piera Patrizio, Study First Author, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London
According to Professor Niall Mac Dowell, lead author of the study, from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial, “If countries fail to account for the national situation; what resources are available both technically and in the labour market, they risk energy transitions that results in deeper social divisions, which, in the long term, will affect growth, productivity, wellbeing, and social cohesion.”
At present, the researchers are extending their analysis throughout the European Union, and to the United States, taking into account policies such as the latest thrust to adopt hydrogen fuel technologies and how that might impact several countries. In addition, they will consider the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and how decisions about the transition to net-zero could influence recovering economies.

Journal Reference:

Patrizio, P., et al. (2020) Socially Equitable Energy System Transitions. Joule. doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2020.07.010.

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Scientists Identify Successful and Cost-Effective Ways to Restore Coral Reefs


The most successful and cost-effective ways to restore coral reefs have been identified by an international group of scientists, after analysing restoration projects in Latin America.
The University of Queensland's Dr Elisa Bayraktarov led the team that investigated 12 coral reef restoration case studies in five countries.
"Coral reefs worldwide are degrading due to climate change, overfishing, pollution, coastal development, coral bleaching and diseases," Dr Bayraktarov said.
"Coral reef restoration - or rebuilding what we have lost - may become critical, especially for coral species that are threatened with extinction.
"Much of this work is led by environmental non-Government organisations (ENGOs), tourism operators, community groups, national resource management groups and governments who rarely publish their great depth of knowledge.
"So we decided to bridge the gap between academia, ENGOs and other groups that restore coral reefs."
The researchers analysed the motivations and techniques used for each project, providing estimates on total annual project cost per unit area of reef restored, project duration and the spatial extent of interventions.
The team found the most successful projects had high coral survival rates or an increase in coral cover, but that they also offered socioeconomic benefits for their surrounding communities.
"Projects that train local fishermen or recreational divers to participate in restoration, or engage with dive operators or hotels to support the maintenance of the coral nurseries, were much more effective and long-lived," Dr Bayraktarov said.

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"We also found that coral reef restoration efforts in Latin American countries and territories were cheaper than previously thought - with the median cost of a project around US$93,000 (~AUD$130,000) to restore one hectare of coral reef.
A one-year-old coral "The projects also had run for much longer than assumed, with some active for up to 17 years.
"And best of all, an analysis of all the studied projects revealed a high likelihood of overall project success of 70 per cent."
Co-author Dr Phanor Montoya-Maya, director and founder of the Colombian-based organisation Corales de Paz, said he was excited about the project's collaborative nature.
"Twenty-five Latin-American coral reef restoration scientists and practitioners from 17 institutions in five countries worked on this research," he said.
"We wanted to showcase the efforts of Spanish-speaking countries that depend on their local coral reefs to the global coral reef restoration community.
"And to share the diversity of objectives, techniques, tools used, and methods to measure success in Latin America to encourage others to carry out similar work.
"We're providing critical project information - such as total annual project cost per unit area of reef restored, spatial extent of restored site and duration - on how to best save our degraded reefs.
"Collaboration and communication is helping make their futures brighter."
The research has been published in PLOS One (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228477). See a full list of supporting organisations.
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Human CAPITALIST Influence Identified as Key Agent of Future Ocean Warming Patterns


The oceans play an important role in regulating our climate and its change by absorbing heat and carbon.
The implications of their results, published today in Nature, are significant because regional sea level, affecting coastal populations around the world, depends on patterns of ocean warming. In this study they show how these patterns are likely to change.
The results imply widespread ocean warming and sea level rise, compared to the past, including increased warming near the Eastern edges of ocean basins leading to more sea level rise along the Western coastlines of continents in the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Co-author, Laure Zanna, Visiting Professor in Climate Physics at Oxford University and Professor in the Center of Atmosphere Ocean Science at NYU Courant, said: 'In the future, the imprint of rising atmospheric temperatures on ocean warming will likely dominate that of changes in ocean circulation. Initially, we might think that as the climate warms more, changes in ocean currents and their impact on ocean warming patterns will become larger. However, we show that that this is not the case in several regions of the ocean.'
A new method, developed by scientists at Oxford University, uses climate models to suggest that ocean warming patterns will increasingly be influenced by simple uptake of atmospheric warming - making them easier to predict. This is in contrast to now and the past when circulation changes were key factors in shaping ocean warming patterns.
Changes in ocean warming due to the simple uptake of atmospheric warming are easier to model and so the scientists hope that where previous models have struggled, they might become more accurate for future projections.
Lead author, Dr Ben Bronselaer, who began conducting this research while a PhD student at Oxford University, said: 'I think it is an encouraging possibility that climate models, which struggle to simulate past ocean warming, might be better at predicting future warming patterns. Better prediction of warming patterns implies better prediction of regional sea level rise, which will help to mitigate climate impacts such as flooding on individual communities. Of course, we do need to understand predictions of ocean circulation better to solidify this result.
'During our research, we found a surprising relationship between ocean heat and carbon storage which appears to be unique. While there is a connection between these two quantities that is not yet fully understood, we think we have made significant progress towards uncovering it.'

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The Nature study shows that the global ocean heat and carbon uptake go hand-in-hand, and the uptake rates are set by the present state of the ocean. This relationship is at the core of the method developed in this study. As humans change the ocean state by adding more heat and carbon, the ability of the ocean to take up both heat and carbon will be altered. A possible implication could be that the later emissions are reduced, the slower the reductions in atmospheric surface temperature are likely to be, due to the coupling between heat and carbon uptake by the ocean.
These results highlight a deep and fundamental connection between ocean and carbon uptake, which has implications for atmospheric heat and carbon. While ocean carbon and heat are separate systems, this study shows that they are deeply interconnected, via the capacity of the ocean to absorb these quantities. These results help explain why atmospheric warming depends linearly on cumulative carbon emissions.
Prof Laure Zanna said: 'We find that the ocean's capacity to absorb heat and carbon are coupled, and constrained by the ocean state. This implies that the present ocean state will regulate surface warming whether CO2 emissions continue to rise or decline.
'The rates of ocean warming over the past 60 years have been significantly altered by changes in ocean circulation, particularly in the North Atlantic and parts of the Pacific Ocean, where we can identify cooling over some decades. However, in the future changes in ocean currents appear to play a smaller role on patterns of ocean warming, and the oceans will transport the excess anthropogenic heat in the ocean in a rather passive manner in these regions.'
The modelling in this study relied on a set of creative simulations done by colleagues at The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), and other published work. Using these simulations, the scientists were able to draw hypotheses on how the patterns of heat and carbon are related and how they differ.
Building on this research, the scientists will now attempt to understand how the storage of heat and carbon in the ocean will affect the decline of atmospheric temperature and CO2 levels if carbon emissions start going down.
They will also use the component of ocean warming that is driven by circulation changes to better understand ocean circulation changes, which are difficult to measure directly, and their impact on regional sea level in the Tropics.
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Study Finds Traces of Plastic in All Seafood Samples

A study of five different seafoods has found traces of plastic in every sample tested.
Researchers bought oysters, prawns, squid, crabs and sardines from a market in Australia and analysed them using a newly developed method that identifies and measures five different plastic types simultaneously.
The study - by the University of Exeter and the University of Queensland - found plastic levels of 0.04 milligrams (mg) per gram of tissue in squid, 0.07 mg in prawns, 0.1 mg in oysters, 0.3 mg in crabs and 2.9 mg in sardines.
"Considering an average serving, a seafood eater could be exposed to approximately 0.7 mg of plastic when ingesting an average serving of oysters or squid, and up to 30 mg of plastic when eating sardines, respectively," said lead author Francisca Ribeiro, a QUEX Institute PhD student.
"For comparison, 30 mg is the average weight of a grain of rice.
"Our findings show that the amount of plastics present varies greatly among species, and differs between individuals of the same species.
"From the seafood species tested, sardines had the highest plastic content, which was a surprising result."
Co-author Professor Tamara Galloway, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said: "We do not fully understand the risks to human health of ingesting plastic, but this new method will make it easier for us to find out."

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The researchers bought raw seafood - five wild blue crabs, ten oysters, ten farmed tiger prawns, ten wild squid and ten wild sardines.
They then analysed them for the five different kinds of plastics that can be identified by the new method.
All of the plastics are commonly used in plastic packaging and synthetic textiles and are frequently found in marine litter: polystyrene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene and poly(methyl methacrylate).
In the new method, edible tissues are treated with chemicals to dissolve the plastics present in the samples. The resulting solution is analysed using a highly sensitive technique called Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry which can identify the different kinds of plastic in the sample at the same time.
Polyvinyl chloride was found in all samples, while the plastic found in highest concentrations was polyethylene.
Microplastics are very small pieces of plastic that pollute much of the planet, including the sea where they are eaten by marine creatures of all types, from small larvae and planktonic organisms to large mammals.
Studies to date show that microplastics not only enter our diet from seafood, but also from bottled water, sea salt, beer and honey, as well the dust that settles on our meals.
The new testing method is a step towards defining what microplastic levels can be considered harmful and assessing the possible risks of ingesting microplastics in food.
The paper, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, is entitled: "Quantitative Analysis of Selected Plastics in High-Commercial-Value Australian Seafood by Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry."

High Concentrations of Microplastics can Impact the Marine Food Web

Tiny plastic particles measure around 0.1 mm in length, the same size as that of phytoplankton, which happens to be the favorite food of the copepods.
Image Credit: DTU Aqua.
Scientists from the DTU Aqua, DTU Environment, Aalborg University, and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources detected such microplastics in water sampled from the fjord Nuup Kangerlua (or Godthåbsfjorden), running beyond Nuuk and further into the sea west of Greenland.
The researchers discovered around 1 particle for each 10 L of water, the concentration of which was similar to the one previously detected in seawater elsewhere in the North Atlantic.
However, the team had anticipated finding relatively higher concentrations, because German scientists have quantified extremely high concentrations of microplastics in ice and snow on the glaciers that are melting into Nuup Kangerlua.
The study results were recently published in Environmental Pollution—a scientific journal.
There’s plastic in the fjord. Not as much as we would have expected based on the concentrations found by the Germans in snow and ice. But it’s there. And the plastic particles are generally very small. They are exactly of a size that the copepods in the area can eat, which means they can enter the marine food webs that way.
Torkel Gissel Nielsen, Professor, DTU Aqua
Nielsen emphasizes that plastic concentrations that have been detected so far may not have considerable adverse impacts. However, if these concentrations become relatively worse, this may lead be a serious problem.
We can also see that there are 10,000 times as many phytoplankton in the water as there is plastic. So assuming that the copepods eat whatever they come across and given the abundance of food available to them, they are unlikely to end up ingesting too many plastic particles at all. And so the risk of the MPs entering the marine food webs and being distributed around is infinitely small.
Torkel Gissel Nielsen, Professor, DTU Aqua

Pumps Caught Much Smaller Particles than Nets

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The research team from the VELUX project, called MarinePlastic, obtained samples from five locations along Nuup Kangerlua. They employed uniquely designed pumps featuring filters that can collect even the smallest microplastics.
However, for comparative reasons, the team also used conventional Bongo nets to collect samples. Such Bongo nets can collect a thousand times fewer microplastics when compared to the pumps. The nets only trapped microplastics that measured above 300 μm.
Nielsen added, “Using pumps like we’ve done in this case, you’ll find far higher concentrations of very small MPs—which is what is most bio-available and potentially able to enter the marine food webs via copepods.”

Nuuk is a Point Source of Plastic

The research vessel cruised from inside the fjord, wherein the glacier water runs into the fjord, beyond Nuuk, and finally reaches the mouth of the fjord. In five locations, along the route, samples were gathered, and the highest concentration of microplastics was detected around Nuuk and also further out towards the sea.
Nuuk is the largest city in Greenland and has around 18,000 inhabitants. However, it lacks effective sewage treatment plants.
Polyester, the most abundant kind of plastic, is utilized, for instance, in plastic bottles and synthetic fabrics. Nylon or polyamide is the second-most abundant type of plastic and is used in fishing nets, for instance.
We also found that MP concentrations were roughly comparable with concentrations previously found in the North Atlantic, about 1 particle per 10 litres of water. And Nuuk was identified as a point source. Compared to the measuring stations further into the fjord, MP abundance—and especially the smallest size fractions of MPs—increased close to Nuuk.
Torkel Gissel Nielsen, Professor, DTU Aqua

Journal Reference:

Rist, S., et al. (2020) Quantification of plankton-sized microplastics in a productive coastal Arctic marine ecosystem. Environmental Pollution. doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115248.
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Warming Climate in Tropical Forests Could Increase Harmful Emissions of Soil Carbon


Billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide risk being lost into the atmosphere due to tropical forest soils being significantly more sensitive to climate change than previously thought.
Carbon emissions from soils in tropical forests - which store one quarter of the world's soil carbon - could increase dramatically if temperatures continue to rise in line with current predictions, researchers say.
A new experiment conducted in Panama suggests these harmful emissions of soil carbon could rise by 55 per cent if the climate warms by four degrees Celsius.
Carbon dioxide is released naturally by soils through decomposition and plant root activity. However, the release of so much extra carbon dioxide - which the study found was coming from increased decomposition of soil organic matter - could trigger further global warming.
Previous research has shown that rising temperatures threaten to release carbon locked away in cooler or frozen soils - such as in the Arctic tundra. Until now, tropical soils were thought to be less sensitive to the effects of climate warming.
A team led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh conducted a large-scale experiment in a tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal.
They built heating devices and buried them one metre into the forest soil. Over a two-year period the equipment - fitted with heating cables and a thermostat - kept the experimental areas four degrees warmer than the surrounding soil.

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The findings show that as much as an extra eight tonnes of soil carbon could be released as carbon dioxide from every hectare of tropical forest each year at the higher temperatures.
Researchers expect the rate of emissions will eventually decline in the experimentally warmed soils, but they do not yet know how long this will take, or the long-term impact of soil warming on climate change.
They will continue the experiment - known as the Soil Warming Experiment in Lowland Tropical Rainforest, or SWELTR - to better understand how tropical forests respond to a warming world.
The study, published in the journal Nature, also involved researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and the Australian National University (ANU). It was funded by the European Union and the Natural Environment Research Council, the Smithsonian Institution and STRI, and ANU-Biology.
Dr Andrew Nottingham, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who led the study, said: "The results demonstrate the high sensitivity of these ecosystems to warming. It should be a wake-up call for us to take action to mitigate climate change and preserve tropical forests, which are one of the most important components in Earth's carbon cycle."
Study co-author Professor Patrick Meir, also of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh and the Australian National University, said: "The high carbon emissions from warmed tropical forest soil differ from expectations, and indicate a need to re-examine current predictions".
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Social Protection Programs to Alleviate Hunger are Shaping the Success of Environmental Targets

Social protection programs can facilitate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but can also create trade-offs across divergent social and environmental goals that can undermine their effectiveness, say the authors of new research published in the journal PNAS. This is one of the largest studies on the sustainability implications of social protection, funded by the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at The University of Sheffield .
Focusing on Brazil's flagship Zero Hunger (ZH) social protection scheme, designed to alleviate food insecurity and hunger through cash transfers and agricultural support, the study highlights the importance of considering the social and environmental outcomes of development policies. The authors used data spanning 13 years (2000-2013) and covering around 4,000 rural municipalities in Brazil. Their results draw out implications for Brazil's progress towards the SDGs, specifically: no poverty (SDG 1), zero hunger (SDG 2), good health and wellbeing (SDG 3) and life on land (SDG 15).
The ZH program was implemented in 2004 with the primary target beneficiaries being small-scale family farmers with the goal of lifting 44 million Brazilians out of poverty and food insecurity. This is a globally important group with 12% of the world's agricultural land managed by some 475 million smallholders. The programme has been praised for playing a key role in enabling Brazil to meet its Millennium Development Goals in 2015.
The study found that successful elements of the ZH program include evidence of an increase in food production (SDG 2) and slightly reduced poverty (SDG 1). However, this can be contrasted with more variable outcomes in food security dimensions across regions, depending on whether cash transfer or agricultural support were used. In addition, they were widespread trade-offs with other sustainable development goals, notably environmental protection (SDG 15).
Dr. Cecilie Dyngeland (who conducted the research as part of her PhD at the University of Sheffield) said:
"Alleviating poverty is essential, but we rarely think about the unintended environmental consequences of poverty alleviation policies. A key strength of our analysis is that it allows us to understand how policies affect multiple social and environmental outcomes simultaneously."

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Despite these evident shortcomings, the authors suggest there are ways to balance human development with environmental integrity.
Dr. Johan Oldekop (at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester) said:
"We find that the same programme can lead to contrasting outcomes in different regions of Brazil. It is critical for us to understand what processes have enabled joint positive social and environmental outcomes, in order to learn from these synergies and develop incentives that avoid trade-offs."
The research team's analysis of the ZH programme provides insights on how to achieve multiple sustainability outcomes whilst being directly relevant to the design and implementation of social protection mechanisms around the world. This is particularly salient in Africa, where social protection programs based on ZH currently operate in several countries. The research compared two different types of protection programmes and found that cash transfers were less likely than agricultural support to generate synergies across development and environmental objectives.
As Dr Karl Evans (from the Animal and Plant Science Department at the University of Sheffield) added,
"This research demonstrates that development policies can enhance or degrade the natural environments which are vital for the well-being and livelihoods of many vulnerable people. Development policies need to focus on strategies that enhance rather than degrade this capacity. Linking social protection to environmental conditionalities is one potential mechanism to achieve poverty alleviation without degrading the natural environment."
Governments, international donors and financial organisations are making large investments in social protection to mitigate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. For social protection programmes to continue to contribute to progress on multiple development objectives, their trade-offs and synergies will need to be at the front and centre of the design and implementation of poverty alleviation strategies moving forward.
To ensure robust policy impact evaluation, the measurement of intended and unintended sustainable development outcomes of initiatives needs to become the norm.
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