Brazil’s October Elections Will Be the Biggest Test of Its Democracy Yet

Sanya Mansoor - Thursday

Brazil heads to the polls on Oct. 2 for crucial general elections in Latin America’s largest economy and most populous country that will determine the next President, Vice President, and National Congress. The key question on everyone’s minds is whether the right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro will get another term, or whether the left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will return to office as part of a resurgent pink tide in the region that has recently seen leftists take power in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and elsewhere.

The choice between the two men could not be more stark.

Over the last four years, incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro has questioned the role of the Supreme Court and repeatedly suggested without evidence that the electoral system is rigged. He has compared COVID-19 to “a little flu,” and approved destructive environmental policies that have devastated the Amazon rainforest.

Lula ruled from 2003 to 2010 after winning two four-year terms in office and helped lift millions out of poverty, making him one of the country’s most popular leaders. “Lula is running on nostalgia to win his old job back,” says Gustavo Ribeiro, journalist and founder of English-language politics site The Brazilian Report.

However, Lula is also controversial but in different ways. In September 2016, he was slapped with corruption charges that originated from a money laundering investigation known as Operation Car Wash, which set out to root out corruption among high-ranking Latin American political and business leaders. In July 2017, he was found guilty and a court ruled he was not allowed to run for reelection in 2018. But in In March of last year, Brazil’s Supreme Court overturned the conviction, citing some technicalities and saying Lula’s right to a fair trial had been compromised by a biased judge—allowing him to run for President this time around.


Brazilian presidential candidate and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, speaks during an election rally about sustainable development in Manaus, Brazil, on August 31, 2022. 

Michael Dantas/AFP

Lula has held up the Supreme Court’s verdict as proof of his innocence: he argues that the corruption charges were cooked up by right-wing forces to keep him out. But recent surveys have found that public opinion in split.

Read More: Brazil’s Most Popular President Returns From Political Exile With a Promise to Save the Nation

Either way, polls suggest Lula will comfortably defeat Bolsonaro, although it’s unclear whether he will have enough votes to avoid a run-off vote on Oct. 30. In Brazil, if no presidential candidate gets more than 50% of the total vote, it triggers a head-to-head competition between the two frontrunners, almost certainly this year Bolsonaro and Lula.

Brazil’s democratic backslide

“Bolsonaro has eroded accountability institutions, he is rotting the state from within,” Ribeiro says. Bolsonaro did, however, make a rare admission Monday on a podcast that he would step down if defeated. “If that is God’s will I will continue, but if it is not, I will pass the presidential sash and retire.”

That rhetoric has not quelled concerns that the transition of power if Bolsonaro loses may not go smoothly, although experts say it’s unlikely he has the power to overthrow the election. “I don’t think he has the institutional support to pull that off,” Ribeiro says. But even an attempt to suggest he was wronged could help him retain considerable influence in Brazil. “Everybody thinks Bolsonaro might try a January 6 in Brazil if he loses. We are not so sure… if this will be a coup d’etat. I don’t think so but it could just be a way of leaving power but still keeping his people with him,” says Thomas Traumann, a Brazilian journalist and political analyst.

Fueling some of these fears is Bolsonaro’s call last September for tens of thousands of his supporters to protest against the court after his dispute with the judiciary over changes to the voting system that involved the President’s attempts to push for paper voting receipts. Brazilian and international media compared the incident to the Jan. 6 insurrection at Capitol Hill. While some may point to Bolsonaro as taking a page out of U.S. President Donald Trump’s playbook, it may well be the other way around, according to Ribeiro. “Bolsonaro attacked the system way before Trump became President… He has threatened time and again not to recognize the results if he doesn’t believe they are fair and square.”

Civil rights advocates fear a second Bolsonaro term could lead to a democratic backsliding, or worse.

Bolsonaro’s record in office

There are concerns the pace of the Amazon’s deforestation could reach a tipping point where it turns into a dry savanna under a second Bolsonaro term. That would in turn accelerate global climate change; the Amazon has long functioned as a sink for draining carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and absorbs about 2 billion tons of CO2 per year (or 5% of emissions). Data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research showed that more than 3,980 square kilometers were deforested in the first six months of this year, the highest amount since 2016.

Under Bolsonaro, laws around deforestation have been loosened and environmental agencies have seen staffing and budget cuts. “There has been very little monitoring or fining or attempt to regulate deforestation,” says Amy Erica Smith, an associate professor of political science and expert on Brazilian politics at Iowa State University. What’s more, Ribeiro says: “Bolsonaro incentivizes the use of Indigenous lands, environmental protection areas for mining, for cattle ranching.”

Bolsonaro has also been criticized for his management of the COVID-19 pandemic, and spreading misinformation about the virus and vaccines. Brazil has over 685,000 recorded COVID deaths, which is one of the highest death tolls globally.

What do voters really care about?

Although Bolsonaro has triggered concerns about Brazil’s democracy, it’s unlikely this will be on the mind of the average Brazilian voter, experts say. More than one third of Brazilian families are dealing with food insecurity, according to a study published in May by the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a Brazilian academic institution.


A customer counts money at a fruit and vegetables stall in a market in Salvador, Bahia State, Brazil, on August 26, 2022

 Rafael Martins/AFP

“People are really struggling,” Ribeiro says. “That’s why Bolsonaro has broken the bank to increase social spending.”

Bolsonaro has cut fuel taxes to reduce prices after they shot up in part because of Russia’s war in Ukraine. He increased aid payments to the countries’ poorest through a program called Auxilio Brasil, or Brazil Aid; in August, he started giving out $120 monthly cash payments to 20 million families. Inflation has not been as big a problem in Brazil as in the U.S. and Europe either, because of lower energy prices. But wages are still shrinking and unemployment is still high, though decreasing.

Bolsonaro is also particularly popular among evangelical Christians, who make up almost one-third of the country’s population, according to the Datafolha polling firm. (In 2018, about 70% of these voters backed Bolsonaro.) “There are enough evangelicals that they could really matter,” Smith says.

“Bolsonaro is the first candidate that really embraced them,” Traumann says. He gave them key ministerial positions as well as appointed a Supreme Court judge who was evangelical. Lula, on the other hand, faced pushback from many evangelicals following remarks he made earlier this year that abortion should be viewed as a public health issue, instead of a religious one. Bolsonaro has repeatedly stressed his commitment to ensure most abortions remain illegal in Brazil.

That’s not to say all evangelicals vote in a bloc. Some female voters in particular may be put off by what experts say is Bolsonaro’s misogyny. Smith doubts evangelicals will come out as strongly as they did for Bolsonaro in 2018 because “they will be evaluating him not only on culture war issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights but also his performance on the economy and pandemic,” she says.

But if polls are correct, and Lula prevails either on Oct. 2 or Oct. 30, Brazilians—and much of the world—will be tuning in to see what comes next.

HI TECH UNICORN

China Aims to Have Nuclear Fusion Energy in Six Years With New 'Mega Lab'

Ed Browne - Thursday

A "mega-lab" that will aim to generate nuclear fusion power within just six years has been approved by the Chinese government.


. Nuclear fusion involves joining atomic nuclei together to generate energy, and China aims to do so with a new reactor by 2028.

© aleksandarnakovski/Toa55/Getty

Once it's operational, the machine will generate 50 million amps of electricity, which is about twice as much as the Z Pulsed Power Facility operated by Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico—the current record-holder for a machine of its type.

China's plans were set out by Peng Xianjue, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics and one of the country's top nuclear weapons experts, in an online meeting organized by the Techxcope think tank on September 9.

According to his presentation, as reported by the South China Morning Post, Chinese researchers will try to create a fusion reaction by using an incredibly strong electric charge to ignite two types of hydrogen isotopes—deuterium and tritium.

The intense energy and pressure released by the charge will fuse the atomic nuclei together, releasing further energy that will then be harnessed to produce power for the grid.

In the meeting, Peng said: "Fusion ignition is the jewel in the crown of science and technology in today's world."

Scientists around the world have been trying to develop a functioning nuclear fusion power plant for decades. Though fusion has been achieved in the lab, no-one has yet managed to generate more electricity from fusion reactions than the electricity needed to produce the reaction in the first place.

Fusion involves forcing atomic nuclei to join together under intense conditions, creating a heavier nucleus than before. The mass of the heavier nucleus is not quite as heavy as the two nuclei were before they joined, and this leftover weight is transformed into energy.

If scientists can overcome the hurdles, fusion promises to be a clean, powerful, and abundant source of energy.

There are many approaches to fusion, including magnetic confinement and powerful lasers. One approach involves a reactor called a Z pinch machine, which uses an electrical current inside a hot gas known as plasma to generate a magnetic field. This magnetic field then compresses—pinches—the plasma to create the conditions necessary for fusion.

For years, Z pinch machines were used to simulate the effects of nuclear weapons. Now, there are parallels between that research and the potential energy applications of fusion.

China's reactor, known as Z-FFR, will be based in a "mega lab" according to the South China Morning Post. It's due to be built by 2025 in Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan. It may then produce power as soon as 2028 before becoming commercially operational by 2035, according to a reported estimate by Peng's team.

There will be downsides to the approach, however. For one, it will need several high-performance power capacitors and a reaction chamber that can cope with the strain of thousands of explosive electric shocks each day, once every ten seconds or so.

China's approach will also be a sort of mixture between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission. Instead of the power produced from the fusion reactor going straight to the grid, it will power a flow of particles that will hit some uranium and generate a fission reaction—in which nuclei are split apart rather than being joined together.

China's goals of generating power by 2028 and commercialization by 2035 are on the optimistic side of the general consensus that commercial fusion power is at least a decade or two away.

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? It's losing ice faster than forecast and now irreversibly committed to at least 10 inches of sea level rise

Alun Hubbard, Professor of Glaciology, Arctic Five Chair, University of Tromsø

 9/1/2022

THE CONVERSATION

© Ted Giffords A turbulent melt-river pours a million tons of water a day into a moulin, where it flows through the subglacial environment to ultimately reach the ocean.

I’m standing at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, mesmerized by a mind-blowing scene of natural destruction. A milewide section of glacier front has fractured and is collapsing into the ocean, calving an immense iceberg.

Seracs, giant columns of ice the height of three-story houses, are being tossed around like dice. And the previously submerged portion of this immense block of glacier ice just breached the ocean – a frothing maelstrom flinging ice cubes of several tons high into the air. The resulting tsunami inundates all in its path as it radiates from the glacier’s calving front.

Fortunately, I’m watching from a clifftop a couple of miles away. But even here, I can feel the seismic shocks through the ground.

© Alun Hubbard A fast-flowing outlet glacier calves a ‘megaberg’ into Greenland’s Uummannaq Fjord.

Despite the spectacle, I’m keenly aware that this spells yet more unwelcome news for the world’s low-lying coastlines.

As a field glaciologist, I’ve worked on ice sheets for more than 30 years. In that time, I have witnessed some gobsmacking changes. The past few years in particular have been unnerving for the sheer rate and magnitude of change underway. My revered textbooks taught me that ice sheets respond over millennial time scales, but that’s not what we’re seeing today.

A study published Aug. 29, 2022, demonstrates – for the first time – that Greenland’s ice sheet is now so out of balance with prevailing Arctic climate that it no longer can sustain its current size. It is irreversibly committed to retreat by at least 59,000 square kilometers (22,780 square miles), an area considerably larger than Denmark, Greenland’s protectorate state.

Even if all the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming ceased today, we find that Greenland’s ice loss under current temperatures will raise global sea level by at least 10.8 inches (27.4 centimeters). That’s more than current models forecast, and it’s a highly conservative estimate. If every year were like 2012, when Greenland experienced a heat wave, that irreversible commitment to sea level rise would triple. That’s an ominous portent given that these are climate conditions we have already seen, not a hypothetical future scenario.

Our study takes a completely new approach – it is based on observations and glaciological theory rather than sophisticated numerical models. The current generation of coupled climate and ice sheet models used to forecast future sea level rise fail to capture the emerging processes that we see amplifying Greenland’s ice loss.
How Greenland got to this point

The Greenland ice sheet is a massive, frozen reservoir that resembles an inverted pudding bowl. The ice is in constant flux, flowing from the interior – where it is over 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) thick, cold and snowy – to its edges, where the ice melts or calves bergs.

In all, the ice sheet locks up enough fresh water to raise global sea level by 24 feet (7.4 meters).

Greenland’s terrestrial ice has existed for about 2.6 million years and has expanded and contracted with two dozen or so “ice age” cycles lasting 70,000 or 100,000 years, punctuated by around 10,000-year warm interglacials. Each glacial is driven by shifts in Earth’s orbit that modulate how much solar radiation reaches the Earth’s surface. These variations are then reinforced by snow reflectivity, or albedo; atmospheric greenhouse gases; and ocean circulation that redistributes that heat around the planet.

We are currently enjoying an interglacial period – the Holocene. For the past 6,000 years Greenland, like the rest of the planet, has benefited from a mild and stable climate with an ice sheet in equilibrium – until recently. Since 1990, as the atmosphere and ocean have warmed under rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Greenland’s mass balance has gone into the red. Ice losses due to enhanced melt, rain, ice flow and calving now far exceed the net gain from snow accumulation.

What does the future hold?

The critical questions are, how fast is Greenland losing its ice, and what does it mean for future sea level rise?

Greenland’s ice loss has been contributing about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) per year to global sea level rise over the past decade.

This net loss is split between surface melt and dynamic processes that accelerate outlet glacier flow and are greatly exacerbated by atmospheric and oceanic warming, respectively. Though complex in its manifestation, the concept is simple: Ice sheets don’t like warm weather or baths, and the heat is on.

© Alun Hubbard Meltwater lakes feed rivers that snake across the ice sheet - until they encounter a moulin.

What the future will bring is trickier to answer.

The models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict a sea level rise contribution from Greenland of around 4 inches (10 centimeters) by 2100, with a worst-case scenario of 6 inches (15 centimeters).

But that prediction is at odds with what field scientists are witnessing from the ice sheet itself.

According to our findings, Greenland will lose at least 3.3% of its ice, over 100 trillion metric tons. This loss is already committed – ice that must melt and calve icebergs to reestablish Greenland’s balance with prevailing climate.

We’re observing many emerging processes that the models don’t account for that increase the ice sheet’s vulnerability. For example:

Increased rain is accelerating surface melt and ice flow.

Large tracts of the ice surface are undergoing bio-albedo darkening, which accelerates surface melt, as well as the impact of snow melting and refreezing at the surface. These darker surfaces absorb more solar radiation, driving yet more melt.

© European Space Agency In August 2021, rain fell at the Greenland ice sheet summit for the first time on record. Weather stations across Greenland captured rapid ice melt.

Warm, subtropical-originating ocean currents are intruding into Greenland’s fjords and rapidly eroding outlet glaciers, undercutting and destabilizing their calving fronts.

Supraglacial lakes and river networks are draining into fractures and moulins, bringing with them vast quantities of latent heat. This “cryo-hydraulic warming” within and at the base of the ice sheet softens and thaws the bed, thereby accelerating interior ice flow down to the margins.

The issue with models

Part of the problem is that the models used for forecasting are mathematical abstractions that include only processes that are fully understood, quantifiable and deemed important.

Models reduce reality to a set of equations that are solved repeatedly on banks of very fast computers. Anyone into cutting-edge engineering – including me – knows the intrinsic value of models for experimentation and testing of ideas. But they are no substitute for reality and observation. It is apparent that current model forecasts of global sea level rise underestimate its actual threat over the 21st century. Developers are making constant improvements, but it’s tricky, and there’s a dawning realization that the complex models used for long-term sea level forecasting are not fit for purpose.

© Alun Hubbard Author Alun Hubbard’s science camp in the melt zone of the Greenland ice sheet.

There are also “unknown unknowns” – those processes and feedbacks that we don’t yet realize and that models can never anticipate. They can be understood only by direct observations and literally drilling into the ice.

That’s why, rather than using models, we base our study on proven glaciological theory constrained by two decades of actual measurements from weather stations, satellites and ice geophysics.
It’s not too late

It’s an understatement that the societal stakes are high, and the risk is tragically real going forward. The consequences of catastrophic coastal flooding as sea level rises are still unimaginable to the majority of the billion or so people who live in low-lying coastal zones of the planet

.

© Alun Hubbard A large tabular iceberg that calved off Store Glacier within Uummannaq Fjord.

Personally, I remain hopeful that we can get on track. I don’t believe we’ve passed any doom-laden tipping point that irreversibly floods the planet’s coastlines. Of what I understand of the ice sheet and the insight our new study brings, it’s not too late to act.

But fossil fuels and emissions must be curtailed now, because time is short and the water rises – faster than forecast.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Paleontologists Discover New Crocodile Species With Thickest Eggs Ever

Joseph Golder, Zenger News 9/2/2022


Paleontologists have discovered a new species of crocodile that lived with the last dinosaurs and laid the thickest eggs on record.

© Manuel Perez Pueyo/Zenger

 This undated photo shows Pachykrokolithus excavatum shell fragments. They were found in La Ribagorza, Spain, and dated within the 250,000 years of the Cretaceous period, close to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

A group of paleontologists from the University of Zaragoza in Spain, working with colleagues at the NOVA University Lisbon and the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, discovered eggshells belonging to the new species of crocodile in the Ribagorza area in the province of Huesca, in northeastern Spain.

The research was published July 21 in the peer-reviewed academic journal Historical Biology, with the university just issuing a statement Wednesday about the discovery.

In their study, the scientists detail how they recovered more than 300 eggshell fragments near Biascas de Obarra, in the municipality of Beranuy, in Huesca.

Zenger News obtained a statement Wednesday from the University of Zaragoza that read: "The fragments found correspond to the thickest crocodile shells that have been found in the fossil record worldwide. Its discovery increases the paleontological wealth of the Ribagorza region and reaffirms its importance worldwide to study the end of the Cretaceous extinction."

The expert said that the eggshells date back to the Upper Cretaceous period and that the "fragments were part of the eggs laid by crocodiles that lived with the last Iberian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous."

They added that they "appear in the sedimentary rocks of the Tremp Formation, which outcrops in this sector of the Pyrenees. The most recent dates of these outcrops place these rocks within the last 250,000 years of the Cretaceous, very close in time to the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary, when there was a meteorite impact against planet Earth and the extinction of the dinosaurs."

They said the new species has been named Pachykrokolithus excavatum. In the Historical Biology article, the experts compared the fragments to "other crocodile egg shells, both current and fossil from other areas of the world, such as Portugal or the United States."

They said that this was how they were able to confirm that these new eggshells are the "thickest crocodile eggshells that exist in the fossil record."

It was published under the title "A new crocodylomorph related ootaxon from the late Maastrichtian of the Southern Pyrenees (Huesca, Spain)" and it was authored by Miguel Moreno-Azanza, Manuel Perez-Pueyo, Eduardo Puertolas-Pascual, Carmen Nunez-Lahuerta, Octavio Mateus, Blanca Bauluz, Beatriz Badenas and Jose Ignacio Canudo.

 This undated photo shows the cross-sectional view of a Pachykrokolithus excavatum shell observed with light microscopy. The shell fragments were found in La Ribagorza, Spain, and dated within the 250,000 years of the Cretaceous period, close to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

 Manuel Perez Pueyo/Zenger

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

Sleeping fish? From sharks to salmon, guppies to groupers, here's how they grab a snooze

9/6/2022
 The Conversation

© Giordano Cipriani/The Image Bank via Getty Images A large group of yellowfin tuna swimming off the coast of Italy. Like all fish, they sleep, but it's not like human sleep.

Could you explain how fish sleep? Do they drift away on currents, or do they anchor themselves to a particular location when they sleep? – Laure and Neeraj, New York

From the goldfish in your aquarium to a bass in a lake to the sharks in the sea – 35,000 species of fish are alive today, more than 3 trillion of them.

All over the world, they swim in hot springs, rivers, ponds and puddles. They glide through freshwater and saltwater. They survive in the shallows and in the darkest depths of the ocean, more than five miles down.

© Xiáng Zhèng/EyeEm 

 Stingrays are a type of fish too, but they are boneless.

Just like you, fish need to sleep

Of those trillions of fish, three major types exist: bony fish, like trout and sardines; jawless fish, like the slimy hagfish; and sharks and rays, which are boneless – instead, they have skeletons made of firm yet flexible tissue called cartilage.

And all of them, every last one, needs to rest. Whether you’re a human or a haddock, sleep is essential. It gives a body time to repair itself, and a brain a chance to reset and declutter.

As a marine biologist, I’ve always wondered how fish can rest. After all, in any body of water, predators are all over the place, lurking around, ready to eat them. But somehow they manage, like virtually all creatures on Earth.

Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)

How they do it

Scientists are still learning about how fish sleep. What we do know: Their sleep is not like ours.

For one thing, people are pretty much out of it when they sleep. While a loud noise might wake you up, you’re mostly unaware of your surroundings. But fish stay aware enough to detect an approaching predator – at least most of the time.

It does appear that most fish have sleep cycles like us. Aquarium fish sleep between seven to 12 hours each day. Many fish are active during daylight and sleep at night, though for some, like numerous types of eels, rays and sharks, it’s the reverse.

How can you tell if a fish is asleep? Most fish don’t have eyelids, so their eyes don’t close. That alone makes it hard to tell when they’re resting.

But if you watch fish in an aquarium, look closely. You’ll see how they stop swimming around and remain very still, sort of hovering in the water. Their gills will pump less too. For fish, that’s sleeping.

Sleeping with the enemy

Where do fish sleep? Sometimes right out in the open. But often they’re at or near the bottom. If they can, they squeeze in a spot near rocks or plants so predators can’t get them and currents can’t sweep them away.

Some fish go even further. Parrotfish wrap a cocoon of mucus around themselves and sleep in the coral. Sounds like a lot of effort – essentially, making your own sleeping bag every night – but the cocoon protects the parrotfish not just from predators, but from parasites.


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How sharks sleep

There are, however, many species of fish that must swim constantly just to breathe. Think about that – stop swimming, and you die. This is true for many sharks, like great whites.

So how do they sleep if they’re always on the move? Instead of stopping altogether, sharks simply slow their swimming, or swim into a current. That’s sort of like sleep – at least the sharks seem less aware of what’s going on around them.

There are species of shark, like the draughtsboard shark, that breathe without swimming. Scientists recently observed this shark – which is 3 feet (1 meter) long and has a flat head – sleeping on the bottom.

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Whales and dolphins

Whales and dolphins are not fish – they’re mammals, like cats, dogs and people. They spend their lives in the ocean, but they can’t breathe underwater. Instead, they periodically rise to the surface and take in air through their blowhole, which is on the top of their heads.

If they went into a deep sleep, the way people do, whales and dolphins would drown; they wouldn’t be aware enough to come to the surface to breathe. So they sleep by resting one half of their brain at a time. The other half remembers to rise to the surface, breathe and stay just alert enough to spot danger.

Is it possible that some fish might do the same thing? Scientists are trying to find out, but still don’t know. There is so much more to learn about how fish sleep. Marine biologists like me have many questions, and we spend our careers in oceans, rivers, lakes and laboratories trying to find answers. But I’ll leave you with this, something I’ve always wondered about: Do fish dream?

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

Saudi Arabia Launches Falcon Conservation Program With Global Ambition

Joseph Hammond, Zenger News 9/7/2022


RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Three seconds. Saudi Arabia's ambitious falcon reintroduction program often hinges on the brief moment when a falcon is shown it new home for the first time.

© Saudi Falcon Club/Zenger 

A rare falcon for sale at the 2022 International Saudi Falcons and Hunting Exhibition near Riyadh. Saudi Arabian authorities have launched a number of conservation efforts for the rare birds of prey.

Under new protocols being developed within the program, a falcon is brought to its potential habitat for the first time under a hood. Bred in captivity, a falcon can find the Saudi Arabian wilderness at first mysterious. The birds must be introduced slowly to the habitat.

"You uncover the hood for three seconds. Then you cover it back and take it home," said Hussam Al-Huzaimi, the CEO of the Saudi Falcons Club. "Then three days later you bring it back and do something different. This way you start to intrigue the bird. It starts to get interested in what it is seeing and feel safe."

Saudi Arabia's Hadad program for the reintroduction of falcons to Saudi Arabia is a partnership between researchers, falconers, and wildlife volunteers who are developing new and researched based methods to repopulate the kingdom with birds of prey, techniques they hope to one day apply elsewhere around the globe. The program brings together multiple Saudi entities as well as international entities, including aviary experts from Oregon State University.

The migratory nature of the birds makes their lives peripatetic. When a falcon is introduced into Saudi Arabia's nature reserves, there is no guarantee the bird will stay. Each new site is chosen carefully and researchers have to pick up on careful clues, like stained rocks that suggest at one point in the past the site was home to a falcon nest. Numerous site across Saudi Arabia suggest it could support a larger falcon population in the future.

During the first year of the program in 2021, 33 female falcons bred in captivity were introduced to areas with male falcons already present. The eventual couplings produced 47 chicks. This year, another 24 females were introduced, which was equally successful. So far the breeding program has produced 151 chicks.

The 2022 International Saudi Falcons and Hunting Exhibition attracted some 500,000 visitors to a specially-designed exhibition facility in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Falcon Club/Zenger

The Hadad program was recognized in 2021 for its efforts at falcon preservation at a conference of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Marseille which was opened by French President Emmanuel Macron. The accolades are important for the Hadad program in part because it is the ambition of the Saudi Falcon Club to fund similar falcon reintroduction efforts around the globe.

There are four species of falcon present in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia: the Barbary falcon and the Lanner falcon, while the Saker falcon and peregrine are transient visitors.

Today it's estimated that roughly half of the world's falconers call the Middle East home. Like any sport, the participants are always looking for a competitive edge. As such, the 2022 International Saudi Falcons and Hunting Exhibition brought half a million visitors to a purpose-build exhibition hall north of Riyadh. Among them were many local falconers seeking to improve the ability of their hunting birds.

UFO, a new drone factory that focuses solely on drones for falconry applications and is supported by two Italian falconers and researchers, made a popular presentation during the event.

For many falconers, the bond built with their birds is a special one. 

Saudi Falcon Club/Zenger

"This technology is used to muscle up the hawks and making them more competitive against a non-biological target. It also helps rehabilitate hawks," said Giovanni Granati, an Italian falconer and developer of the UFO drone factory.

Drones used as practice game can help keep falcons training while local populations of game birds like the houbara bustard replenish. Indeed, both falcons and many of their traditional prey are endangered or threatened species in various parts of the world.

The Imam Turki bin Abdullah Royal Nature Reserve Development Authority announced in August that it had launched a houbara breeding center, the latest chapter in the kingdom's decades old effort to help the species.

The Saudi Falcon Club enforces rigorous standards to ensure the birds on display and for sale are no longer being captured in the wild, as traditionally captured falcons were often released at the end of the season. A starter bird could be had for just a few thousand while the most expensive can bring in hundreds of thousands at auction. Last year, gyrfalcon earned a record $500,000 during the exhibition's auction.

Deep Roots

A few hours drive from Riyadh where the Saudi Falcons Club and the exhibition center are based are several archeological sites associated with the Neolithic Al Magar civilization.

 Hussam Al-Huzaimi, the CEO of the Saudi Falcons Club, is passionate about the need to preserve falcons, their prey, and their habitat for future generations. Saudi Falcon Club/Zenger

Al-Huzaimi is quick to point out that among the remains found deep in the desert is evidence of horse domestication and dog domestication. Archaeologists working in the desert found evidence of falconry as well.

Yet, you never really can domesticate a bird of prey, he points out.

"You have to build a bond and it can be lost in an instant. Even a bird you have had for 10 or even 20 years, it can leave you just like that for any reason," Al-Huzaimi said with a soft snap of his fingers.

Falconers must spend time with their birds daily to build a strong bond to avoid such an eventuality. Each bird takes much care and when traveling internationally from Saudi Arabia they must have an aviary passport to protect against illegal trafficking. For Al-Huzaimi and the thousands of falconers around the world, the hard work associated with the hobby is worth it.

"When you have a bird of prey, a living falcon just sitting on your arm looking right back at you, the feeling is just incomparable," Al-Huzaimi said.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

Cancer screening gaps highlight urgent need to address health inequities, according to NCCN policy summit

National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s #NCCNPolicy Summit, featuring White House Moonshot Coordinator and representatives from CDC, NCI, and USPSTF, examines critical need for improvements in cancer prevention and early detection across the United States

Meeting Announcement

NATIONAL COMPREHENSIVE CANCER NETWORK

 

IMAGE: DR. DANIELLE CARNIVAL, WHITE HOUSE MOONSHOT COORDINATOR, ADDRESSES CROWD AT NCCN POLICY SUMMIT. view more 

CREDIT: NCCN

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [September 16, 2022] — Today, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) hosted a policy summit to examine practice changes and trends in legislative and regulatory efforts that affect patient access to cancer screening and risk reduction. Speakers included Danielle Carnival, PhD, Coordinator, White House Moonshot Initiative; Lisa Richardson, MD, MPH, Director, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Philip Castle, PhD, MPH, Director, Division of Cancer Prevention, Senior Investigator, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute (NCI); and Carol M. Mangione, MD, Chair, United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), Barbara A. Levey & Gerald S. Levey Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

During the summit, speakers and panelists explored the current landscape for cancer screening and early detection, along with the continued evolution of risk identification and risk-reduction strategies. The conversations were dominated by several hot topics in health care, including:

• COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Screening Access
• Equity and Disparities
• Social Determinants of Health
• Personal, Practice, and Population-Level Interventions (e.g. smoking cessation, human papillomavirus vaccination)
• Lifestyle Factors (e.g. exercise and nutrition)
• Potential Benefits and Harms of Novel Technology (e.g. multi-cancer early detection)
• Digital User Experience (e.g. telehealth)
• Updated Screening Guidelines
• Coverage and Reimbursement

For panel member Maimah Karmo, Founder & CEO, Tigerlily Foundation, the conversation was particularly personal: “I am Black woman who was diagnosed with aggressive, Stage 2B breast cancer at a young age. I am alive today because I had a mother who educated me about my body, breast health, and about the importance of self-advocating. Due to early detection, I found a lump early, and even though I was dismissed by a healthcare provider, I insisted upon screening and a biopsy, which led to my diagnosis and treatment, and I am alive today. I made a promise to God that I would do everything in my power to ensure young women and women facing disparities had every access to education, screening, and resources that enable them to be proactive with their health, and have a high quality of care and life. This work, Tigerlily, is my living legacy. I am living proof that early detection can save lives.”

“There is significant evidence supporting the fact that screening saves lives,” noted Robert W. Carlson, MD, Chief Executive Officer, NCCN. “Appropriate screening allows us to detect cancer at earlier stages, when there are more options for treatment and a higher likelihood for better outcomes. Sometimes screening can even prevent cancer by identifying pre-cancerous cells. This is why it is so important to address any setbacks in policy, communication, or resources that could result in people missing out on evidence-based, guideline-recommended cancer screenings.”

“We know a great deal about how to advance health and prevent cancer and other chronic diseases; the challenge now is more about implementation than discovery,” said panel member Ernest Hawk, MD, MPH, Vice President and Division Head of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “Impactful prevention has to be intentionally designed and must consistently reach all, especially those most in need, in order to achieve benefits across the lifespan. Effective implementation begins with communication, but cannot end there. It must be strategically prioritized and implemented through combinations of evidence-based actions operating at multiple levels and motivated by both personal and shared social responsibilities to effectively promote health and wellness.”

Addressing Disparities

The theme of disparities in care and how to address them continued during discussions throughout the day, with a particular focus on communication, outreach, and the allocation of resources.

“Racial and ethnic minorities and other socially- and economically-disadvantaged groups continue to experience a disproportionate share of avoidable deaths from cancer,” pointed out Chyke Doubeni, MBBS, MPH, Chief Health Equity Officer, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “As we address ongoing public health threats, it is critical to direct resources to under-resourced communities to make evidence-based cancer preventive services accessible to people regardless of individual social or economic circumstances. We should focus on eliminating social and structural barriers that limit access to early detection and treatment and pay attention to how the ‘digital divide’ could deepen inequities. Insurance coverage should be provided for all follow-up tests needed to get the benefits of screening.”

“It’s all about equity. Everyone in every community deserves to be screened for cancer and not have to worry about challenges and barriers getting in the way,” said Nikia Clark, Senior Community Outreach and Engagement Manager, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Cancer centers must meet people where they are. Start with the basics of providing tailored cancer information to communities most in need, work with community stakeholders and organizations to help champion the effort and prioritize funding and resources for outreach initiatives for community engagement that will lead to earlier detection and lowering cancer risk.”

Looking Toward the Future

Speakers examined how cancer treatment and prevention has become more personalized over time, and where it is headed from here.

“Evolving genetic and genomic testing technologies are allowing individual cancer risks to be more precisely quantified; one-size-fits-all prevention approaches are being replaced by tailored strategies,” explained Michael Hall, MD, MS, Chair, Department of Clinical Genetics, Fox Chase Cancer Center. “Our improving understanding of genetic risks, environmental factors, and social determinants of health, combined with knowing a person’s history of adverse exposure (such as smoking or human papillomavirus) allows us to tailor to individuals and populations. This helps make sure limited public health resources are focused on the greatest needs, while sparing lower-risk individuals from unnecessary medical procedures. Genetic risk stratification is the long game for effective and efficient cancer prevention.”

Lisa Schlager, Vice President, Public Policy for Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered (FORCE) agreed: “Prevention and early detection are critical as we strive to reduce the U.S. cancer burden—especially in underserved, underrepresented populations. While we don’t know why many people get cancer, those affected by hereditary cancers are the poster children for prevention and early detection. NCCN has comprehensive guidelines on how to manage individuals with—or at increased risk of—hereditary cancers, who can be identified based on personal or family history of disease. We must be innovative and do more to facilitate effective risk stratification, identifying those at increased risk of cancer and ensuring that they have affordable access to the recommended screening and risk-reducing interventions. Ultimately, this will reduce health disparities and improve health outcomes.”

“One of the most important challenges in fighting cancer occurs well before diagnosis—ensuring effective screening,” said Eric Gratias, MD, FAAP, Chief Medical Officer, eviCore. “Even though early detection often leads to better outcomes, many patients still don’t get the regular screenings that they should. At eviCore, we’re focused on working with health plans and providers to break down barriers to care by providing patients with proactive education and hands-on support to make sure they get the right cancer screenings on the right schedule.”

The summit featured Clifford Goodman, PhD, The Lewin Group, as moderator. Dr. Carlson introduced the program while NCCN Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer Wui-Jin Koh, MD provided closing thoughts. Kate Mevis, Executive Director, U.S. Federal & State Vaccine Policy at Merck, Inc. provided perspective on the role of vaccination in cancer prevention.

The NCCN Policy Program will be hosting its annual Patient Advocacy Summit on December 2, 2022, examining Best Practices and Policies for Addressing the Health Needs of LGBT+ Cancer Patients and Survivors. Visit NCCN.org/summit for more information, and join the conversation with the hashtag #NCCNPolicy.

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About the National Comprehensive Cancer Network

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) is a not-for-profit alliance of leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education. NCCN is dedicated to improving and facilitating quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care so all patients can live better lives. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) provide transparent, evidence-based, expert consensus recommendations for cancer treatment, prevention, and supportive services; they are the recognized standard for clinical direction and policy in cancer management and the most thorough and frequently-updated clinical practice guidelines available in any area of medicine. The NCCN Guidelines for Patients® provide expert cancer treatment information to inform and empower patients and caregivers, through support from the NCCN Foundation®. NCCN also advances continuing education, global initiatives, policy, and research collaboration and publication in oncology. Visit NCCN.org for more information and follow NCCN on Facebook @NCCNorg, Instagram @NCCNorg, and Twitter @NCCN.

Image Permanence Institute at RIT receives significant grant to research plastic deterioration

Award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services provides more than $700,000 of support

Grant and Award Announcement

ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

The Image Permanence Institute (IPI), housed in RIT’s College of Art and Design, received a National Leadership Grant for Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a research project titled, “Mapping Environmental Conditions That Prevent Plastic Deterioration While Contributing to Sustainable Preservation and Environmental Management.”

The grant funds three years of research into plastic deterioration of modern heritage collections, specifically their physical response to storage and display environments. The funds will support a 30-month post-doctoral researcher position and enable the purchase of advanced analytical instrumentation, namely a dynamic mechanical analyzer that can measure how objects physically respond to certain environmental conditions.

While the general perception of plastics is one of prevalence and persistence, their chemical and physical forms are known to change overtime, presenting a variety of challenges for their long-term care and preservation in collections.

“Cultural institutions and museums are trying to preserve materials that were not designed for long- term storage and display. Plastic objects were often mass-produced and manufacturers would change the plastics’ composition on a fairly regular basis,” said Emma Richardson, director of research at IPI. “So, trying to predict the lifetime of these objects can be challenging.”

Plastics have long been present in museums and cultural institution collections, but there is little research regarding how an object’s physical responses to its environment is influenced by the object’s material composition. These physical responses are not always problematic, according to Richardson, and this research aims to find the “tipping point” of when these responses may cause issues in a collection.

“If we can start to find a relationship between the different ingredients of the plastics and how these relate to the moisture content, temperature, and dimensional changes of the object, we may be able to predict when we get dimensional changes that are problematic within certain storage environments,” said Richardson. “Then, we can start to tailor the storage environments accordingly to the composition of our objects.”

Richardson says the outcome of this research may also enable museums and cultural institutions to employ more sustainable climate control protocols in their collection vaults, reducing an institution’s environmental impact.

Other staff members at IPI who will contribute to the research include Meredith Noyes, research scientist, and Al Carver-Kubik, preservation researcher.

IPI has conducted research about plastics in cultural institution collections in the past. However, as with most preservation research globally, the previous work has primarily focused on how plastics degrade chemically.

For more information about IPI, or to inquire about the research, go to the IPI website or contact Emma Richardson.

Study shows hay fever among school children leads to worse asthma outcomes

Half of children diagnosed with both asthma and hay fever were not receiving proper care and medication for their condition

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER

A study of school children conducted by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers has found that the majority of children with asthma also reported having allergic rhinitis, or hay fever. Symptoms of hay fever include runny nose, sneezing, congestion and sinus pressure, and can contribute to asthma. The study, led by Jessica Stern, M.D., an assistant professor in the department of Pediatrics and division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, found that children with both asthma and hay fever had worse asthma outcomes.

This study reviewed data from three NIH-funded trials (led by Jill Halterman, M.D., professor in the department of Pediatrics) of 1,029 Rochester school children with asthma. The primary goal of the trials was to evaluate whether providing children with preventive asthma medications in school would improve their asthma symptoms. While most children participating in these trials had improved asthma symptoms when they received their medications, a subgroup of children did not improve. This prompted the researchers to look at other health concerns that might have prevented the children from having a full treatment response.

“Through our study, we found that many of the children who did not report improved symptoms had allergic rhinitis in addition to asthma, and these children had more asthma symptoms, used their rescue medication more, and missed more school days compared to those without allergic rhinitis,” said Stern.

Importantly, less than half of the children with hay fever were receiving proper treatment for their symptoms, including nasal sprays and recommended anti-histamines; nor had they been seen by asthma or allergy specialists.

“This is critical because it highlights gaps in care and needed treatments, which may contribute to the disparities in asthma outcomes that we see in children who primarily identify as Black or Latino, or are from low resourced communities,” said Stern. “These findings also encourage a focus on contributing environmental factors and the social determinants of health for these children. The burden of allergic disease is often under-recognized and undertreated in historically marginalized populations, and we have an opportunity and obligation to address this to improve outcomes.”

Dr. Stern will be continuing this work to understand the multiple influences in a child’s life that impact their asthma. She has grant funding from the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Award, NHLBI, and the URMC Quality Institute.  

 “We are working to create a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to overcome structural obstacles to equitable care for children with asthma. This will involve collaboration with caregivers and patients to plan systems of care that work for them. We understand that families are the experts, and we have to listen to what they think,” said Stern.

From analog to digital

How a University of Missouri researcher and colleagues have helped advance the field of anatomical research from scalpels, scissors to 3D models using artificial intelligence.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

 

IMAGE: CONTRAST IMAGING DATA AND MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES CAN NOW MODEL THE 3D ARCHITECTURE OF JAW MUSCULATURE. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

There was once a time, not so long ago, when scientists like Casey Holliday needed scalpels, scissors and even their own hands to conduct anatomical research. But now, with recent advances in technology, Holliday and his colleagues at the University of Missouri are using artificial intelligence (AI) to see inside an animal or a person — down to a single muscle fiber — without ever making a cut.

Holliday, an associate professor of pathology and anatomical sciences, said his lab in the MU School of Medicine is one of only a handful of labs in the world currently using this high-tech approach.

AI can teach computer programs to identify a muscle fiber in an image, such as a CAT scan. Then, researchers can use that data to develop detailed 3D computer models of muscles to better understand how they work together in the body for motor control, Holliday said.

Holliday, along with some of his current and former students, did that recently when they began to study the bite force of a crocodile.

“The unique thing about crocodile heads is that they are flat, and most animals that have evolved to bite really hard, like hyenas, lions, T. rexes and even humans have really tall skulls, because all those jaw muscles are oriented vertically,” Holliday said. “They’re designed that way so they put a big vertical bite force into whatever they're eating. But a crocodile’s muscles are oriented more horizontally.”

The 3D models of muscle architecture could help the team determine how muscles are oriented in crocodile heads to help increase their bite force. Helping to lead this effort is one of Holliday’s former students, Kaleb Sellers, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago.

“Jaw muscles have long been studied in mammals with the assumption that relatively simple descriptors of muscle anatomy can tell you a great deal about skull function,” Sellers said. “This study shows how complex jaw muscle anatomy is in a reptile group.”

Holliday’s lab first began experimenting with 3D imaging several years ago. Some of their early findings were published in 2019 with a study in Integrative Organismal Biology that showed the development of a 3D model of the skeletal muscles in a European starling.

Transitioning into a digital world

Historically, Holliday said anatomical research — and much of what he did growing up — involved dissecting animals with a scalpel or scissors, or what he calls an “analog” approach. He was first introduced to the benefits of using digital imaging to study anatomy when he joined the “Sue the T. rex” project in the late 1990s. To date, it remains one of the largest and most well-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever discovered.

Holliday recalls the moment when the T. rex’s giant skull was transported to Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California to be imaged in one of the aerospace company’s massive CAT scanners normally used to scan jet engines on commercial airplanes.

“At the time, it was the only CAT scanner in the world big enough to fit a T. rex skull, and also had the power needed to push X-rays through rocks,” Holliday said. “Coming out of college I had looked at becoming a radiology technician, but with the Sue project I was learning all about how they CAT scanned this thing, and that really caught my fancy.”

Nowadays, Holliday said many of his current and former students at MU are learning to understand anatomy by using the “cutting edge” imaging and modeling methods that he and his colleagues are creating. One of those students is Emily Lessner, a recent MU alumna who developed her passion for “long-dead animals” by working in Holliday’s lab.

“The digitization process is not only useful to our lab and research,” Lessner said. “It makes our work shareable with other researchers to help hasten scientific advancement, and we can also share them with the public as educational and conservation tools. Specifically, my work looking at the soft tissues and bony correlates in these animals has not only created hundreds of future questions to answer, but also revealed many unknowns. In that way, not only did I gain imaging skills to help with my future work, but I now have more than a career-worth of avenues to explore.”

Holliday said plans are also in the works to take their 3D anatomical models a step further by studying how human hands have evolved from their evolutionary ancestors. The project, which is still in its early stages, recently received a grant from the Leakey Foundation. Joining Holliday on the project will be two of his colleagues at MU, Carol Ward, a Curators Distinguished Professor of pathology and anatomical sciences, and Kevin Middleton, an associate professor of biological sciences.

While about 90% of the research done in Holliday’s lab involves studying things that exist in the modern world, he said the data they collect can also inform the fossil record, like additional knowledge about how the T. rex moved and functioned.

“With better knowledge of actual muscle anatomy, we can really figure out how the T. rex could really do fine motor controls, and more nuanced behaviors, such as bite force and feeding behavior,” Holliday said.

Editor’s Note:

“New frontiers in imaging, anatomy, and mechanics of crocodylian jaw muscles,” was published in The Anatomical Record. Other authors include Kaleb Sellers, Emily Lessner, Kevin Middleton and Conner Verhulst at MU, Corrine Cranor at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Stephan Lautenschlager at University of Birmingham and Matthew Brown and Matthew Colbert at University of Texas-Austin. Funding was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation (EAR/SEB 1631684, NSF IOS PMB 1457319, EAR-1762458 and DBI-1902242), Missouri Research Board, University of Missouri Research Council and Jackson School of Geosciences Geology Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.

CAPTION

Contrast imaging data and machine learning approaches can now model the 3D architecture of jaw musculature

CREDIT

University of Missouri

JOURNAL

The Anatomical Record

DOI

10.1002/ar.25011