Researchers study how birds retweet news

THEY DON'T USE TWITTER 

by Courtney Brockman, University of Montana

Nora Carlson records a black-capped chickadee. She arrived at the University of Montana with an undergraduate degree in linguistics and the desire to translate bioacoustics. The nuthatch paper sprang from her UM senior thesis. Credit: University of Montana

Every social network has its fake news. And in animal communication networks, even birds discern the trustworthiness of their neighbors, a study from the University of Montana suggests.

The study, recently published in the top science journal Nature, is the culmination of decades' worth of research from UM alumni Nora Carlson and Chris Templeton and UM Professor Erick Greene in the College of Humanities and Sciences. It sheds a new light on bird social networks.

"This is the first time people have shown that nuthatches are paying attention to the source of information, and that influences the signal they produce and send along," Greene said.

Carlson, Templeton and Greene shared an interest in trying to crack the Rosetta Stone of how birds communicate and collected bird calls over the years.

Each bird species has a song, usually sung by the males, for "letting the babes know 'here I am,'" Greene said, as well as staking out real estate. Their loud and complex calls usually ring out during breeding season.

But for warning calls, each sound stands for a specific threat, such as "snake on the ground," "flying hawk" and "perched hawk." The calls convey the present danger level and specific information. They also are heard by all species in the woods in a vast communication network that sets them on high alert.

"Everybody is listening to everybody else in the woods," Greene said.

In the study, Greene and his researchers wanted to determine how black-capped chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches encode information in their calls.

In bird communication, a high-pitched "seet" from a chickadee indicates a flying hawk and causes a strong reaction—other birds go silent, look up and then dive in the bushes. Alarm calls can travel quickly through the woods. Greene said in previous experiments they clocked the speed of the calls at 100 miles per hour, which he likens to the bow wave on a ship.

"Sometimes birds in the woods know five minutes before a hawk gets there," Greene said.

A harsh, intensified "mobbing call" drives birds from all species to flock together to harass the predator. When the predator hears the mobbing call, it usually has to fly a lot farther to hunt, so the call is very effective.

"The owl is sitting in the tree, going, 'Oh crap!" Greene said.

Greene calls it "social media networks—the original tweeting."

For the study with chickadees and nuthatches, the researchers focused on direct information—something a bird sees or hears firsthand—versus indirect information, which is gained through the bird social network and could be a false alarm.

The researchers set up multiple microphones throughout the woods to pick up the birds’ calls, analyze their locations and map the “acoustic landscape” of the forest. Credit: University of Montana

"In a way, it kind of has to do with fake news, because if you get information through social media, but you haven't verified it, and you retweet it or pass it along, that's how fake news starts," Greene said.

Nuthatches and chickadees share the same predators: the great-horned owl and the pygmy owl. To the small birds, the pygmy owl is more dangerous than a great-horned owl due to its smaller turning radius, which allows it to chase prey better.

"If you are eating something that's almost as big as you are, it's worth it to go after it," Greene said.

Using speakers in the woods, the researchers played the chickadee's warning call for the low-threat great-horned owl and the higher-threat pygmy owl to nuthatches. The calls varied by threat level—great-horned owl versus pygmy owl—and whether they were direct (from the predators themselves) or indirect (from the chickadees).

What they discovered about the nuthatches was surprising.

Direct information caused the nuthatches to vary their calls according to the high threat and the low threat. But the chickadee's alarm call about both predators elicited only a generic, intermediate call from the nuthatch, regardless of the threat level.

Greene said the research points to the nuthatch's ability to make sophisticated decisions about stimuli in their environment and avoid spreading "fake news" before they confirm a predator for themselves.

"You gotta take your hat off to them," Greene said. "There's a lot of intelligence there."

The research, conducted by Carlson, Templeton and Greene around Montana and Washington throughout the years, wasn't without challenges.

Most of the set up happened during winter, and nuthatches had to be isolated from chickadees to ensure the warning calls were not a response to witnessing chickadees going crazy. Often a chickadee would appear after everything was set up, and the researchers had to take everything down and try a new location.

"It's quite hard to find nuthatches without chickadees somewhere in the area," Greene said. "That was the most difficult part—to find these conditions out in the wild."

But the results were worth the work.

Greene said the nuthatch study ultimately helps researchers better understand how animal communication networks work and how different species decode information, encode info and pass it along.

"We kind of wish people behaved like nuthatches," Greene said.Squirrels listen in to birds' conversations as signal of safety

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More information: Nora V Carlson et al, Nuthatches vary their alarm calls based upon the source of the eavesdropped signals, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14414-w

Proper-fitting fire-retardant workwear for women
by Bev Betkowski, University of Alberta

(From left) Textile scientists Patricia Dolez, Ankita Shroff and Mahsa Kalantari are working with entrepreneur Jess Black to create a durable fire-retardant fabric that can be used in women's workwear. Credit: Bev Betkowski

After bulky, ill-fitting coveralls caused her to have some near-misses in her job as a heavy equipment operator, Jess Black decided to take matters into her own hands and create a line of clothing for women working in heavy-duty industries like oil and gas, and construction.


Knowing that active wear is the preferred material worn as base layers on job sites, she set out to create a line that was also safe. While she could handle designing it, she knew that for the garments to be practical, they would also have to be fire-retardant.

She searched for experts to help her and eventually connected with University of Alberta textiles scientist Patricia Dolez and post-doctoral fellow Mahsa Kalantari to bring her idea to life.

The trio now have a first draft of fabric on the cutting table.

Once perfected, the fabric, which is being patented, will be used in a line of base layer leggings and shirts that Black's business plans to roll out later this year.

It wasn't easy to find the right formula, said Black, who began looking for a fire-retardant fabric three years ago, only to discover that what she wanted didn't exist.

"You can't find material like ours at all. Current active wear has some of the comfort levels, it's thin and flexible, but it's not fire-retardant," she said.

Backed by two years of funding from Mitacs, a non-profit national research organization, Black asked Kalantari, under Dolez's supervision, to create the one-of-a-kind fabric.

With the support of Quebec textile manufacturers, the U of A team formulated a fire-resistant material from manufactured fibres that provides a snug but moveable fit for women underneath their coveralls.

Men typically prefer a looser fit, but that poses a safety risk for women, Dolez noted.

"When you're moving around on the job, you need to have good coverage without gaps that expose skin to fire or other hazards."

"We wanted something fitted, but stretchy," said Kalantari, who earned a Ph.D. in engineering at the U of A and holds a master's degree in chemical textile engineering.

The clothing line will let women reduce the layers of protective clothing they need to wear, which also boosts safety.

"Multiple layers are a hazard because they can lead to conditions like heat exhaustion," said Black, who also works as a first responder.

The soft, flexible black cloth was tested in the U of A's Protective Clothing and Equipment Research Facility for durability and resistance to fire, heat and bacteria, with more testing to come in the year ahead to improve its qualities.

"We know what we need to work on and we're finalizing the decisions on how to improve it, but we have a very interesting product so far," said Dolez.

Textile design is an evolving field and ideas have to move with it, she added.

"We're starting to realize that one size doesn't fit all and that we need to take care of the people who are wearing the clothing, to put them into the equation, rather than just the material."

After the women's line launches next May, Black expects to roll out similar garments for men, as well as for women who work as first responders and in the military. Both will be marketed online.

Though there's still work to be done in developing the fabric, Kalantari is excited about helping fill a ground-floor gap as more women move into traditionally male-dominated jobs.

"I've always wanted to work on something that's really needed," she said. "And these women deserve it—they can still feel fashionable while working."

Explore furtherEnzyme discovery could keep tonnes of polyester from landfill

Provided by University of Alberta

Fires contained in hard-hit Australia state, but now floods threaten

by Holly Robertson, Andrew Leeson

The Australian bushfires raged for months, devastating tens of thousands of hectares

All the blazes in Australia's hard-hit state of New South Wales have been brought under control, firefighters said on Thursday, signalling the end of a "black summer" that claimed 33 lives nationwide.

But heavy rains that helped extinguish the blazes that have raged along the east coast since September are causing flash floods in parts of the state, posing new problems for some residents.

"Not all fires are out, there's still some fire activity in the far south of the state but all fires are contained so we can really focus on helping people rebuild," the state's fire service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said on Twitter.

"It is very good news," a Rural Fire Service spokesman told AFP.

Bushfires scorched more than 10 million hectares in the country's east and south, killing at least 33 people and an estimated one billion animals, while destroying more than 2,500 homes.

The crisis cloaked major cities including Sydney in smoke for weeks on end, saw towns cut off and prompted the deployment of the military to rescue stranded citizens.

Beleaguered volunteer firefighters have fought the blazes day-in-day-out in what has been described as Australia's "black summer".

The fires were exacerbated by prolonged drought and worsened by climate change in the country's hottest and driest year on record.

After months of devastating bushfires, parts of Australia are now battling flash floods brought by record rains

Not threatening

Days of recent rainfall have extinguished the largest fires and brought those that remain under control.

In the Australian Capital Territory around Canberra firefighters are still trying to bring one blaze under control, but it was not said to be threatening.

Attention has now turned to tackling flash flooding expected in the coming days following the heaviest rains in 30 years.

On Thursday dams near Sydney overflowed after days of torrential rain, a spectacular reversal from months of drought.

The Nepean dam was just a third full less than a week ago, but on Thursday video footage showing water cascading over the dam wall.

Hundreds of people have been rescued from floodwaters in recent days.

Wild weather is set to ramp up again from Friday, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting ex-Tropical Cyclone Uesi would bring "damaging to destructive winds" and heavy rainfall to remote tourist destination Lord Howe Island.

Senior meteorologist Grace Legge said storms were also expected for Queensland and New South Wales—with areas still recovering from bushfires likely to be hit again.

"Any showers and thunderstorms that do develop are falling on already saturated catchments, so there is a risk with severe thunderstorms of flash flooding," she said.

Dams overflow as Australia braces for more floods

What's behind Kenya's strange weather?

by Jennifer Fitchett, The Conversation

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Many parts of Kenya have been experiencing torrential rainfall for a couple of months now. This has resulted in floods and landslides.

The unusual weather can be attributed to the Indian Ocean Dipole. This is the difference in sea surface temperatures between the eastern and western tropical Indian Ocean.

In Kenya, when warmer sea surface temperatures are experienced heavy rainfall occurs, while hot dry conditions (conducive for wildfires) are experienced in Australia. When warmer sea surface temperatures are experienced off the West Coast of Australia, Australia is likely to experience heavy rainfall, while Kenya experiences drought conditions.

The larger the difference in temperatures between the eastern and western tropical Indian Ocean, the more severe the climatic effects will be.

This event is similar to the El Niño Southern Oscillation that occurs in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

Sea surface temperatures are measured by the Interagency Global Climate Observing System just off the coasts of Kenya and western Australia. In some years, temperatures will be warmer in the western half of the Indian Ocean and in other years they will be warmer in the eastern half. This dipole cycles between these extremes over three to five year periods, ordinarily with a 1°C difference in sea surface temperature. Between these extremes, temperatures will be fairly uniform across the tropical Indian Ocean.

When sea surface temperatures off Kenya are warmer than those off western Australia, it's called a positive Indian Ocean Dipole event. When sea surface temperatures off Australia are warmer than those off Kenya, it's referred to as a negative event.

The 2019 to 2020 dipole has been unusually strong, with a temperature differential of 2°C. This is more than double the intensity of the average event.

As a result there have been very strong low pressure systems over parts of the region, such as Kenya, inducing heavy and prolonged rainfall. It is also, in part, responsible for the very hot, dry conditions over western Australia which have contributed to the conditions suitable for wildfires.

Causes

The Indian Ocean Dipole is caused by changes in trade wind strength which can make the ocean cooler. Trade winds are permanent winds that blow from east-to-west in the Earth's equatorial region.

When trade winds blow, they push the surface water of oceans westwards. This causes upwelling – when deep, cold water rises towards the surface—off the west coasts of all southern hemisphere continents. Essentially, water is pulled away from the coastline, leaving a void which is filled by bottom water which moves up to the surface.

This upwelled water is not exposed to sunlight until it reaches the surface, and is therefore much colder than the surrounding surface water. So the water is colder along the western coast of Australia.

If the trade winds relax, the strength of upwelling is significantly reduced. This increases the temperature of these western coast areas, as the cooling effect of water from lower regions of the water column is reduced, and the sun has a larger impact in warming the sea surface.

The changes in trade wind strength can therefore result in the formation of tropical ocean dipoles.

Affecting the weather

The Indian Ocean Dipole can affect the weather because sea surface temperature in large water bodies affects the temperature and dynamics of the atmosphere above and adjacent to them.

Cold waters cool down the air directly above them, causing the cool, dense air to "sink" downwards and the formation of a high pressure system. By contrast, warm water heats up the air directly above it. This results in air molecules expanding, becoming less dense, and rising. This uplift brings on a low pressure system.

These systems then influence the surrounding continental and oceanic regions.

Low pressure cells—caused when oceans are warmer—are atmospherically unstable, resulting in moist air rising, condensing to form clouds, and precipitating as rainfall. High pressure cells—caused when oceans are cooler—inhibit rainfall, and result in hot, dry conditions due to the subsidence, when air "sinks" downwards.

The stronger the Indian Ocean Dipole, the stronger these pressure cells.

Future outlook

As of the end of January 2020, the Indian Ocean Dipole index returned to 0. This means that temperatures in the western and eastern tropical Indian Ocean are approximately equal, and that the low and high pressure systems will lose intensity.

This would signal the end of Indian Ocean Dipole-driven floods in eastern Africa and the very hot, dry conditions in Australia, likely for the rest of the season.

However, under climate change the frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events is increasing. We can therefore expect to experience strong 2°C Indian Ocean Dipoles more often in the years and decades to come.

The Australian winter was dry, the spring will likely be dry

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Provided by The Conversation 

Slavery is not a crime in almost half the countries of the world

AND WAGE SLAVERY IS NOT A CRIME

IN 100% OF THE COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD
by Katarina Schwarz and Jean Allain, The Conversation

François-Auguste Biard, Proclamation of the Abolition of 

Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848 (1849). 

Credit: Wikimedia Commons 

48 YEARS AFTER THE SLAVE REVOLT KNOWN AS THE 

HAITIAN REVOLUTION OF TOUSSAINT OVERTURE 

"Slavery is illegal everywhere." So said the New York Times, repeated at the World Economic Forum, and used as a mantra of advocacy for over 40 years. The truth of this statement has been taken for granted for decades. Yet our new research reveals that almost half of all countries in the world have yet to actually make it a crime to enslave another human being.

Legal ownership of people was indeed abolished in all countries over the course of the last two centuries. But in many countries it has not been criminalized. In almost half of the world's countries, there is no criminal law penalizing either slavery or the slave trade. In 94 countries, you cannot be prosecuted and punished in a criminal court for enslaving another human being.

Our findings displace one of the most basic assumptions made in the modern antislavery movement—that slavery is already illegal everywhere in the world. And they provide an opportunity to refocus global efforts to eradicate modern slavery by 2030, starting with fundamentals: getting states to completely outlaw slavery and other exploitative practices.

The findings emerge from our development of an anti-slavery database mapping domestic legislation against international treaty obligations of all 193 United Nations member states (virtually all countries in the world). The database considers the domestic legislation of each country, as well as the binding commitments they have made through international agreements to prohibit forms of human exploitation that fall under the umbrella term "modern slavery." This includes forced labor, human trafficking, institutions and practices similar to slavery, servitude, the slave trade, and slavery itself.

Although 96% of all these countries have some form of domestic anti-trafficking legislation in place, many of them appear to have failed to prohibit other types of human exploitation in their domestic law. Most notably, our research reveals that:
94 states (49%) appear not to have criminal legislation prohibiting slavery
112 states (58%) appear not to have put in place penal provisions punishing forced labor
180 states (93%) appear not to have enacted legislative provisions criminalizing servitude
170 states (88%%) appear to have failed to criminalize the four institutions and practices similar to slavery.

In all these countries, there is no criminal law in place to punish people for subjecting people to these extreme forms of human exploitation. Abuses in these cases can only be prosecuted indirectly through other offences—such as human trafficking—if they are prosecuted at all. In short, slavery is far from being illegal everywhere.


A short history

So how did this happen?

The answer lies at the heart of the great British abolition movement, which ended the transoceanic slave trades. This was a movement to abolish laws allowing the slave trade as legitimate commerce. During the 19th century, states were not asked to pass legislation to criminalize the slave trade, rather they were asked to repeal—that is, to abolish—any laws allowing for the slave trade.

This movement was followed up by the League of Nations in 1926 adopting the Slavery Convention, which required states do the same: abolish any legislation allowing for slavery. But the introduction of the international human rights regime changed this. From 1948 onwards, states were called upon to prohibit, rather than simply abolish, slavery.

As a result, states were required to do more than simply ensure they did not have any laws on the books allowing for slavery; they had to actively put in place laws seeking to stop a person from enslaving another. But many appear not to have criminalized slavery, as they had undertaken to do.

This is because for nearly 90 years (from 1926 to 2016), it was generally agreed that slavery, which was considered to require the ownership of another person, could no longer occur because states had repealed all laws allowing for property rights in persons. The effective consensus was that slavery had been legislated out of existence. So the thinking went: if slavery could no longer exist, there was no reason to pass laws to prohibit it.

This thinking was galvanized by the definition of slavery first set out in 1926. That definition states that slavery is the "status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." But courts the world over have recently come to recognize that this definition applies beyond situations where one person legally owns another person.

So let's dig into the language of that definition. Traditionally, slavery was created through systems of legal ownership in people—chattel slavery, with law reinforcing and protecting the rights of some to hold others as property. The newly recognized "condition" of slavery, on the other hand, covers situations of de facto slavery (slavery in fact), where legal ownership is absent but a person exercises power over another akin to ownership—that is, they hold the person in a condition of slavery.

This creates the possibility of recognizing slavery in a world where it has been abolished in law, but persists in fact. Torture, by analogy, was abolished in law during the 18th century, but persists despite being outlawed.
States in which slavery is currently criminalised. Credit: Katarina Schwarz and Jean Allain

Stories of slavery

Slavery may have been abolished, but there are still many who are born into slavery or brought into it at a young age and therefore do not know or recall anything different. Efforts by non-governmental organizations to free entire villages from hereditary slavery in Mauritania demonstrate this acutely, with survivors initially having no notion of a different existence and having to be slowly introduced to processes towards liberation.

This is a country in which the practice of buying and selling slaves has continued since the 13th century, with those enslaved serving families as livestock herders, agricultural workers, and domestic servants for generations, with little to no freedom of movement. This continues despite the fact that slavery was abolished.

Selek'ha Mint Ahmed Lebeid and her mother were born into slavery in Mauritania. She wrote about her experiences in 2006:

"I was taken from my mother when I was two years old by my master … he inherited us from his father … I was a slave with these people, like my mother, like my cousins. We suffered a lot. When I was very small I looked after the goats, and from the age of about seven I looked after the master's children and did the household chores—cooking, collecting water, and washing clothes … when I was ten years old I was given to a Marabout [a holy man], who in turn gave me to his daughter as a marriage gift, to be her slave. I was never paid, but I had to do everything, and if I did not do things right I was beaten and insulted. My life was like this until I was about twenty years old. They kept watch over me and never let me go far from home. But I felt my situation was wrong. I saw how others lived."

As this story shows, slavery turns on control. Control of a person of such an intensity as to negate a person's agency, their personal liberty, or their freedom. Where slavery is concerned, this overarching control is typically established through violence: it effectively requires the will of a person to be broken. This control need not be exercised through courts of law, but may be exercised by enslavers operating outside legal frameworks. In the case of Mauritania, legal slavery has been abolished since 1981.

Once this control is established, other powers understood in the context of ownership come into play: to buy or sell a person, to use or manage them, or even to dispose of them. So slavery can exist without legal ownership if a person acts as if they owned the person enslaved. This—de facto slavery—continues to persist today on a large scale.

The stories of people around the world who have experienced extreme forms of exploitation testify to the continued existence of slavery. Listening to the voices of people who have been robbed of their agency and personal liberty, and controlled so as to be treated as if they are a thing that somebody owns, makes it clear that slavery persists.

In 1994, Mende Nazer was captured as a child following a militia raid on her village in Sudan. She was beaten and sexually abused, eventually sold into domestic slavery to a family in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. As a young adult she was transferred to the family of a diplomat in the UK, eventually escaping in 2002.

"Some people say I was treated like an animal," reflected Nazer, "But I tell them: no, I wasn't. Because an animal—like a cat or a dog—gets stroked, and love and affection. I had none of that."

Human trafficking

Because of this remarkably late consensus on what slavery means in a post-abolition world, only very specific practices related to severe human exploitation are currently covered under national laws around the world—primarily, human trafficking. And while most countries have anti-trafficking legislation in place (our database shows that 93% of states have criminal laws against trafficking in some form), human trafficking legislation does not prohibit multiple other forms of human exploitation, including slavery itself.

Human trafficking is defined in international law, while other catch-all terms, such as "modern slavery," are not. In international law, human trafficking consists of three elements: the act (recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving the person); the use of coercion to facilitate this act; and an intention to exploit that person. The crime of trafficking requires all three of its elements to be present. Prosecuting the exploitation itself—be it, for instance, forced labor or slavery—would require specific domestic legislation beyond provisions addressing trafficking.

So having domestic human trafficking legislation in place does not enable prosecution of forced labour, servitude or slavery as offenses in domestic law. And while the vast majority of states have domestic criminal provisions prohibiting trafficking, most have not yet looked beyond this to legislate against the full range of exploitation practices they have committed to prohibit.

Shockingly, our research reveals that less than 5% of the 175 states that have undertaken legally-binding obligations to criminalize human trafficking have fully aligned their national law with the international definition of trafficking. This is because they have narrowly interpreted what constitutes human trafficking, creating only partial criminalization of slavery. The scale of this failing is clear:
a handful of states criminalize trafficking in children, but not in adults
some states criminalize trafficking in women or children, specifically excluding victims who are men from protection
121 states have not recognized that trafficking in children should not require coercive means (as required by the Palermo Protocol)
31 states do not criminalize all relevant acts associated with trafficking, and 86 do not capture the full range of coercive means
several states have focused exclusively on suppressing trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, and thereby failed to outlaw trafficking for the purposes of slavery, servitude, forced labor, institutions and practices similar to slavery, or organ harvesting.

Our database

While there is no shortage of recognition of de facto slavery in the decisions of international courts around the world, the degree to which this understanding is reflected in national laws has not—until now—been clear. The last systematic attempt to gather domestic laws on slavery was published over 50 years ago, in 1966.
 

A protest rally in London raises awareness for the fight against human trafficking and slavery. Credit: John Gomez/Shutterstock.com

Not only is this report now outdated; the definition of slavery it tested against—slavery under legal ownership—has been thoroughly displaced with the recognition in international law that a person can, in fact, be held in the condition of slavery. This means that there has never been a global review of antislavery laws in the sense of the fuller definition, nor has there ever been such a review of laws governing all of modern slavery in its various forms. It is this significant gap in modern slavery research and evidence that we set out to fill.

We compiled the national laws relating to slavery, trafficking, and related forms of exploitation of all 193 UN member states. From over 700 domestic statutes, more than 4,000 individual provisions were extracted and analyzed to establish the extent to which each and every state has carried out its international commitments to prohibit these practices through domestic legislation.

This collection of legislation is not perfect. The difficulties of accessing legislation across all of the world's countries make it inevitably incomplete. Language barriers, difficulties of translating legal provisions, and differences in the structures of national legal systems also presented obstacles. But these challenges were offset by conducting searches in multiple languages, triangulating sources, and the use of translation software where necessary.

The findings

The results, as we've shown, are shocking. In 94 countries, a person cannot be prosecuted for enslaving another human being. This implicates almost half of all the world's countries in potential breaches of the international obligation to prohibit slavery.

What's more, only 12 states appear to explicitly set out a national definition of slavery that reflects the international one. In most cases, this leaves it up to the courts to interpret the meaning of slavery (and to do so in line with international law). Some states use phrases such as "buying and selling human beings," which leaves out many of the powers of ownership that might be exercised over a person in a case of contemporary slavery. This means that even in the countries where slavery has been prohibited in criminal law, only some situations of slavery have been made illegal.

Also surprising is the fact that states who have undertaken international obligations are not significantly more (or less) likely to have implemented domestic legislation addressing any of the kinds of exploitation considered in our study. States who have signed up to the relevant treaties, and those who have not, are almost equally likely to have domestic provisions criminalizing the various forms of modern slavery. Signing onto treaties seems to have no impact on the likelihood that a state will take domestic action, at least in statistical terms. However, this does not mean that international commitments are not a significant factor in shaping particular states' national antislavery efforts.

The picture is similarly bleak when it comes to other forms of exploitation. For example, 112 states appear to be without penal sanctions to address forced labor, a widespread practice ensnaring 25 million people.

In an effort to support their families, many of those forced into labour in developed countries are unaware they are not taking up legitimate work. Travelling to another country for what they believe to be decent work, often through informal contacts or employment agencies, they find themselves in a foreign country with no support mechanism and little or no knowledge of the language. Typically, their identity documents are taken by their traffickers, which limits their ability to escape and enables control through the threat of exposure to the authorities as "illegal" immigrants.

They are often forced to work for little or no pay and for long hours, in agriculture, factories, construction, restaurants, and through forced criminality, such as cannabis farming. Beaten and degraded, some are sold or gifted to others, and many are purposefully supplied with drugs and alcohol to create a dependency on their trafficker and reduce the risk of escape. Edward (not his real name) explains:

"I felt very sick, hungry and tired all the time. I was sold, from person to person, bartered for right in front of my face. I heard one man say I wasn't even worth £300. I felt worthless. Like rubbish on the floor. I wished I could die, that it could all be behind. I just wanted a painless death. I finally decided I would rather be killed trying to escape."

Our database also reveals widespread gaps in the prohibition of other practices related to slavery. In short, despite the fact that most countries have undertaken legally-binding obligations through international treaties, few have actually criminalized slavery, the slave trade, servitude, forced labor, or institutions and practices similar to slavery.

A better future

Clearly, this situation needs to change. States must work towards a future in which the claim that "slavery is illegal everywhere" becomes a reality.

Our database should make the design of future legislation easier. We can respond to the demands of different contexts by analyzing how similar states have responded to shared challenges, and adapt these approaches as needed. We can assess the strengths and weaknesses of different choices in context, and respond to problems with the type of evidence-based analysis provided here.

To this end, we are currently developing model legislation and guidelines meant to assist states in adapting their domestic legal frameworks to meet their obligations to prohibit human exploitation in an effective manner. Now that we have identified widespread gaps in domestic laws, we must move to fill these with evidence-based, effective, and appropriate provisions.

While legislation is only a first step towards effectively eradicating slavery, it is fundamental to harnessing the power of the state against slavery. It is necessary to prevent impunity for violations of this most fundamental human right, and vital for victims obtaining support and redress. It also sends an important signal about human exploitation.

The time has come to move beyond the assumption that slavery is already illegal everywhere. Laws do not currently adequately and effectively address the phenomenon, and they must.


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Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As groundwater depletes, arid American West is moving east

by University of Arizona

Depletion of groundwater will be more disruptive to vegetation, streams and rivers in the eastern US than in the arid Southwest, where deep groundwater already is largely disconnected from surface waters, illustrated here by the Colorado River meandering through red sandstone in northern Arizona. Credit: Daniel Stolte

Even under modest climate warming scenarios, the continental United States faces a significant loss of groundwater—about 119 million cubic meters, or roughly enough to fill Lake Powell four times or one quarter of Lake Erie, a first-of-its-kind study has shown.

The results, published today in Nature Communications, show that as warming temperatures shift the balance between water supply and demand, shallow groundwater storage can buffer plant water stress—but only where shallow groundwater connections are present, and not indefinitely. As warming persists, that storage can be depleted—at the expense of vital connections between surface water, such as rivers, streams and water reservoirs underground.

"Even with a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming case, we're likely to lose a lot of groundwater," said Reed Maxwell, professor of hydrology at the Colorado School of Mines, who co-authored the paper with Laura Condon of the University of Arizona and Adam Atchley of Los Alamos National Laboratory. "The East Coast could start looking like the West Coast from a water standpoint. That's going to be a real challenge."

Most global circulation models don't take into account the lateral movement of water in the subsurface. Typically, they only include limited up-and-down movement, such as rain percolating from vegetation into the soil and roots pulling up water from the ground. In addition, these models tend to limit their scope to mere meters above or below ground.

This new study goes beyond that to simulate how water moves in the subsurface and connects with the land surface.

"We asked what would the response look like if we included the entire complexity of subsurface water movement in a large-scale simulation, and we think this is the first time this has been done," said Condon, lead author of the paper and assistant professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona.

The calculations revealed a direct response of shallow groundwater storage to warming that demonstrates the strong and early effect that even low to moderate warming may have on groundwater storage and evapotranspiration.

In the western U.S., changes in groundwater storage may remain masked for a long time, the study revealed, because the groundwater there is already deep, and dropping levels would not have as great an effect on surface waters. Additionally, the region's vegetation is already largely water limited and adapted to being disconnected from deep groundwater sources.

However, the eastern U.S. will be much more sensitive to a lowering of the water table. Groundwater and surface water are more closely linked, and depleting the groundwater will be more disruptive to vegetation, streams and rivers. Many of the systems that have been put in place in the western U.S. for handling and managing water shortage are lacking in the eastern part of the country, as well.

The study revealed that regions in the eastern U.S. may reach a tipping point sooner rather than later, when vegetation starts to lose access to shallow groundwater as storage is depleted with warming.

"Initially, plants might not be experiencing stress because they still have existing shallow groundwater available, but as we continue to have warmer conditions, they can compensate less and less, and changes are more dramatic each year," Condon said. "In other words, shallow groundwater is buffering the response to warming, but when it's depleted, it can't do that anymore."

The study's simulations were set up to keep precipitation patterns the same and only increase atmospheric temperatures according to projections ranging from 1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius. Even with a modest 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, 119 million cubic meters of storage were lost from groundwater—or four times the volume of Lake Powell, the largest reservoir in the Upper Colorado basin. At 4 degrees Celsius, groundwater losses were projected at 324 million cubic meters—roughly 10 times the volume of Lake Powell or enough to fill nearly three-quarters of Lake Erie.

"We are facing a crisis in global groundwater storage," Condon said. "Huge groundwater reservoirs are drying up at an alarming rate, and that's a problem because they nourish major growing regions around the world."

The research paper, "Evapotranspiration depletes groundwater under warming over the contiguous United States," is published in the open-access journal Nature Communications.Groundwater pumping has significantly reduced US stream flows

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More information: Laura E. Condon et al. Evapotranspiration depletes groundwater under warming over the contiguous United States, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14688-0

70% of Americans rarely discuss the environmental impact of their food

ADD CANADIANS AND IT'S TRUE FOR NORTH AMERICANS

by Yale University

American consumers are hungry for more climate-friendly plant-based diets, but they need more information, according to results from a national survey released today by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) and the Earth Day Network (EDN).

The report, titled "Climate Change and the American Diet," found that half (51 percent) of Americans surveyed said that they would eat more plant-based foods if they had more information about the environmental impacts of their food choices. However, 70 percent rarely or never talk about this issue with friends or family. Nearly two-thirds of the Americans surveyed report having never been asked to eat more plant-based foods, and more than half rarely or never hear about the topic in the media.

However, the report found that more than half of Americans are willing to eat more vegetables and plant-based alternatives and/or less red meat. Additionally, consumers are already changing their diets and purchasing habits in favor of plant-based foods. 

Although four percent of Americans self-identify as vegan or vegetarian, 20 percent choose plant-based dairy alternatives about two to five times a week or more often. Roughly the same percentage choose not to buy products from food companies that are not taking steps to reduce their environmental impact.

"Many American consumers are interested in eating a more healthy and climate-friendly diet," said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. "However, many simply don't know yet which products are better or worse—a huge communication opportunity for food producers, distributors and sellers."

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication conducts research on public climate change knowledge, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior, and on the underlying psychological, cultural, and political factors that influence them. It is based at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Americans identified other barriers to eating more plant-based foods, including perceived cost, taste and accessibility. About half (49 percent) of Americans think a meal with a plant-based main course is more expensive than a meal with a meat-based main course. 

The research, a nationally representative survey of 1,043 American adults, also showed that Americans would eat more plant-based foods if they cost less than meat options (63 percent) and if they tasted better (67 percent). Barriers of cost and access, including distance from grocery stores and access to fresh produce, impact lower-income households in particular. 

"This data is a wake-up call for the climate movement," said Jillian Semaan, Food and Environment Director, Earth Day Network. "Animal agriculture is one of the major drivers of our climate crisis, we need to provide people with the relevant information that connects food choices, animal agriculture and climate change.'Is 'impossible' meat too good to be true?

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More information: The report can be found here: climatecommunication.yale.edu/ … d-the-american-diet/

Geothermal energy: Drilling a 3,000-meter-deep well

by University of Geneva

The view of the Venelle-2 well. The well was designed to sample supercritical fluids. Credit: © Riccardo Minetto

Although stopping climate change is challenging, it is imperative to slow it down as soon as possible by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But how can we meet the growing energy demand while reducing our use of polluting fossil fuels? Geothermal energy is an efficient, non-polluting solution but in certain cases geothermal operations must be handled with care. Reaching the most powerful sources of available energy means drilling deep into the layers of the earth's crust to find geothermal fluids with high energy content (hot water and gas released by magma). Yet, the deeper we drill, the greater are the subsurface unknowns controlling the stability of the Earth's crust.

Destabilising the precarious equilibrium at depth with geothermal wells may reactivate geological layers causing earthquakes. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working in collaboration with the University of Florence and the National Research Council (CNR) in Italy, have studied the seismic activity linked to geothermal drilling in search of supercritical fluids. They discovered that the drilling did not cause uncontrolled seismic activity. This drilling under such critical conditions suggests that the technology is on the verge of achieving practical geothermal energy, paving the way for new sources of non-polluting heat and electricity. You can read all about the results in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The scientific community agrees that CO2 emissions need to drop by 45% by 2030 and that 70% of our energy must be renewable by 2050. But how can these targets be met? Geothermal power—a renewable form of energy—is part of the solution. A number of countries, including Switzerland, are already exploiting geothermal energy to produce heat from shallow wells. Until 1,500 metres deep such technology normally presents little risk. "To generate electricity, however, we have to drill deeper, which is both a technological and a scientific challenge," points out Matteo Lupi, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences in UNIGE's Faculty of Science. In fact, drilling deeper than 1,500 metres requires special care because the unknown factors relating to the subsurface increase. "Below these depths, the stability of the drilling site is more and more difficult and poor decisions could trigger an earthquake."

A first success at Larderello-Travale in Italy?

The Larderello geothermal field in Tuscany—the world's oldest—currently produces 10% of the world's total geothermal electricity supply. We know that at about 3,000 metres depth, we reach a geological layer marked by a seismic reflector, where it is thought that supercritical fluids may be found. Supercritical fluids yield an enormous amount of renewable energy. The term supercritical implies an undefined phase state—neither fluid nor gaseous—and boast a very powerful energy content. "Engineers have been trying since the 1970s to drill down to this famous level at 3,000 metres in Larderello but they still haven't succeeded," explains Riccardo Minetto, a researcher in UNIGE's Department of Earth Sciences. "What's more, we still don't know exactly what this bed is made up of: is it a transition between molten and solid rocks? Or does it consist of cooled granites releasing fluids trapped at this level?" The technology is becoming ever more sophisticated. Because of this geothermal drilling in search of supercritical conditions has been attempted once more at Larderello-Tavale. The aim? Deepening a wellbore a few centimetres wide to a depth of 3,000 metres to tap these supercritical fluids. "This drilling, which formed part of the European DESCRAMBLE project, was unique because it targeted the suggested transition between rocks in a solid and molten state," continues professor Lupi.

The Geneva team set up eight seismic stations around the well within a radius of eight kilometres to measure the impact of the drilling on seismic activity. As the drilling progressed, the geophysicists collected the data and analysed each difficulty that was encountered. "The good news is that for the very first time, drilling in search of supercritical fluids caused only minimal seismic disturbance, which was a feat in such conditions and a strong sign of the technological progress that has been made," explains professor Lupi. His team used the eight seismic stations to distinguish between the natural seismic activity and the very weak events caused by the drilling. The threshold of 3,000 metres, however, was not reached. "The engineers had to stop about 250 metres from this level as a result of the extremely high temperature increase—over 500 degrees. There's still room for technical progress on this point," says Minetto.

This study indicates that the supercritical drilling went well and that the technology is close to being mastered. "Until now, anyone who had tried to sink a well in supercritical conditions did not succeed because of the high temperatures, but the results here are extremely encouraging," says professor Lupi. Switzerland is itself very active in promoting geothermal energy. This renewable source of energy if developed further would share some of the burden of the country's hydropower, solar and windpower. "Geothermal energy could be one of the main sources of energy of our future, so it's only right to promote future investments to develop it further and safely," concludes the Geneva-based researcher.Geothermal power potential seen in Iceland drilling project

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More information: Riccardo Minetto et al, Tectonic and Anthropogenic Microseismic Activity While Drilling Toward Supercritical Conditions in the Larderello‐Travale Geothermal Field, Italy, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (2020). DOI: 10.1029/2019JB018618

Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research 

Reshaping modern play spaces for children's health

by University of South Australia

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A world first review of the importance of nature play could transform children's play spaces, supporting investment in city and urban parks, while also delivering important opportunities for children's physical, social and emotional development.

Conducted by the University of South Australia the systematic review explored the impacts of nature play on the health and development of children aged 2-12 years, finding that nature play improved children's complex thinking skills, social skills and creativity.

Led by UniSA masters student Kylie Dankiw and researcher Associate Professor Katherine Baldock, this study is the first to provide evidence that supports the development of innovative nature play spaces in childcare centres and schools.

"In recent years, nature play has become more popular with schools and childcare centres, with many of them re-developing play spaces to incorporate natural elements, such as trees, plants and rocks. But as they transition from the traditional 'plastic fantastic' playgrounds to novel nature-based play spaces, they're also looking for empirical evidence that supports their investments," Dankiw says.

"Our research is the first to rigorously, transparently and systematically review the body of work on nature play and show the impact it has on children's development. We're pleased to say that the findings indicate a positive connection between nature play and children's development.

"For early childhood educators, health practitioners, policymakers and play space designers, this is valuable information that may influence urban play environments and re-green city scapes."

Comprising a systematic review of 2927 peer-reviewed articles, the research consolidated 16 studies that involved unstructured, free play in nature (forest, green spaces, outdoors, gardens) and included natural elements (highly vegetated, rocks, mud, sand, gardens, forests, ponds and water) to determine the impact of nature play on children's health and development.

It found that nature play improved children's levels of physical activity, health-related fitness, motor skills, learning, and social and emotional development. It also showed that nature play may deliver improvements in cognitive and learning outcomes, including children's levels of attention and concentration, punctuality, settling in class (even after play), constructive play, social play, as well as imaginative and functional play.

"Nature play is all about playing freely with and in nature. It's about making mud pies, creating stick forts, having an outdoor adventure, and getting dirty," Dankiw says.

"These are all things that children love to do, but unfortunately, as society has become more sedentary, risk averse and time-poor, fewer children are having these opportunities.

"By playing in nature, children can build their physical capabilities—their balance, fitness, and strength. And, as they play with others, they learn valuable negotiation skills, concepts of sharing and friendships, which may contribute to healthy emotional and social resilience."If in doubt, let them out: Children have the right to play

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More information: Kylie A. Dankiw et al, The impacts of unstructured nature play on health in early childhood development: A systematic review, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229006

Journal information: PLoS ONE