It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, February 14, 2020
Better protection for critical pipelines during land movement
Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have developed a cost-effective and practical method to protect pipelines and keep them operating during significant fault rupture incidents and large ground movements.
Australia's pipeline length of 50,000 km has a critical role in transporting water, gas and oil products, and transferring sewage to treatment plants.
UTS Associate Professor Behzad Fatahi (Head of Geotechnical and Transportation Discipline) supported by Habib Rasouli (Ph.D. Candidate) at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering developed an advanced three-dimensional computer model to assess the mechanical performance of a pipeline protected by proposed polymer blocks under a strike-slip (horizontal) faultrupture.
While Australia is a relatively stable continental region with low to moderate magnitude earthquakes expected, there are numerous active fault lines such as the Darling fault, extending over 1000 km in the west where most oil products—including 71% of crude oil and condensate—are produced.
"Polymeric geofoam blocks as an inexpensive and light material can offer a safer and cost-effective solution to the challenges faced by Australia engineers passing pipelines through fault lines, increasing Australian competitiveness in international market as well as safety and reliability," said Dr. Fatahi.
His findings prove pipes protected with geofoam blocks have a superior performance and remain operational under different strike-slip fault rupture scenarios, while the conventional buried pipelines suffer catastrophic damage. This proposed solution can save lives and reduce the potential environmental disaster due to content leakage.
"We can see how conventional pipelines buried in soil could be severely damaged under a strike-slip fault rupture due to excessive longitudinal compressive and tensile strains in the pipeline, or how the pipe section could be flattened due to bending of the pipeline," he said.
The unacceptable performance of buried water mains, sewage network, and oil and gas pipelines could all lead to environmental disasters due to content leakage.
More information: Habib Rasouli et al. Geofoam blocks to protect buried pipelines subjected to strike-slip fault rupture, Geotextiles and Geomembranes (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.geotexmem.2019.11.011
Researcher finds a mathematical pattern in human conflict using data science
Neil Johnson, a Columbian College of Arts and Sciences professor, recently co-authored a paper showing there is a unified mathematical pattern in human conflict. Credit: William Atkins/ GW Today
A Columbian College of Arts and Sciences professor used computational modeling to prove that human conflicts throughout history have a hidden pattern—a breakthrough that came to him while watching his son play video games.
This research shows there is a unified mathematical pattern in human conflict, said Neil Johnson, co-author of a new paper in the Journal of Computational Science. Humans engage in conflict in a way that is generally universal both within and across wars—and this common pattern can be used to predict casualties and plan strategies.
This research builds on the work of Lewis Fry Richardson, a 20th-century scholar and pacifist who served as a stretcher bearer in World War I. He later compiled data on the distribution of conflict sizes, measured by the total number of casualties. He discovered that across wars, these values were proportionally related— a concept called a power law. The findings, however, were largely ignored by the academic community, Dr. Johnson said.
In 2009, Dr. Johnson and his colleagues published a paper following Mr. Richardson's process but looking at individual clashes within conflicts. They discovered a power law within these conflicts as well and across terrorist attacks. But the power law had a different numerical value from Richardson's across wars, and they didn't know why.
It wasn't until he watched his son play multiplayer video games with friends that Dr. Johnson considered how these two power-law patterns could be related. The numbers for the real-time casualties for clashes during missions, and the aggregate score for entire missions, appeared to be changing in different but related ways.
"I asked him to plot out and analyze the numbers for me," Dr. Johnson said. "That gave me the first inclination that you can get a pattern on the scale of individual events inside a mission, and you get a different pattern overall from entire missions. I thought to myself, those numbers are connected in the game, so maybe they're connected in the real system."
Dr. Johnson was then able to show that the two numbers are connected using computational simulation. Dr. Johnson credits his 17-year-old son D. Dylan Johnson Restrepo for the breakthrough. He is listed as the first author on the paper.
This research has changed the way Dr. Johnson thinks about conflict and should be a "game changer" for social scientists, he said.
"We traditionally have these different ways of looking at conflict. There are complete wars throughout history, and then there's what happens within wars," he said. "People write separate books on those, but it should be just one book. They're completely the same thing, and no one noticed that."
More information: D. Dylan Johnson Restrepo et al. A computational science approach to understanding human conflict, Journal of Computational Science (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jocs.2020.101088
Better approaches needed to tackle informal gold mining
Photos of pits which are formed after gold bearing ore or rocks have been removed as part of mining activity, causing environmental damage. Credit: Graham Prescott
NUS ecologists found that current approaches involving enforcement and provision of alternative livelihoods are unlikely to succeed in deterring informal gold mining in Myanmar.
Gold symbolises power, wealth and beauty all over the world, but it comes at a price. Gold mining in the tropics is a contributor to environmental damage such as deforestation and mercury emissions, as well as a range of social outcomes including migration, increased health risks and even human rights abuses. Much of the world's gold is mined by individuals and small businesses that operate without legal permits. These miners, known as informal gold miners, were estimated in 2011 to number around 16 million and to have produced 380 to 450 tonnes of gold. The informal gold mining sector is economically significant but detrimental to biodiversity conservation and global health, as it is the largest source of mercury emissions caused by human activities.
The country of Myanmar is increasingly integrated into regional and global markets, and it has a rapidly expanding informal gold mining industry that has profound environmental impacts. Two widely espoused policies to mitigate the negative effects of informal gold mining are: (1) increasing enforcement to make it unprofitable, and (2) offering alternative livelihoods that can provide similar or better economic benefits. A research team led by Prof Edward WEBB, Department of Biological Sciences, NUS conducted the first-ever study of the costs imposed by enforcement, the level of enforcement required to make informal gold mining unprofitable, and the potential benefits associated with alternative agriculture-based livelihoods. They found that neither increasing enforcement nor improving agriculture-based livelihoods were likely to stop informal mining because it was simply too profitable.
Survey involving participants in the informal mining sector
In collaboration with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Myanmar and the Myanmar Forest Research Institute, the research team interviewed more than 225 respondents involved in the informal gold mining industry in Homalin township (in northern Myanmar) to understand the dynamics of informal gold mining activities (such as the motivation to participate in mining), assess the profitability of informal mining, and estimate losses associated with law enforcement. The survey participants included mine owners and workers in both the formal and informal sectors and local farmers.
The researchers found that while police inspections impose costs (due to lost equipment and lost time for mining), informal gold mining is so profitable that miners can rapidly recoup the costs involved. They also found that many of the miners already balance mining with agriculture, so government plans to provide agricultural land are unlikely to deter the miners. Furthermore, as many of the miners were internal migrants and willing to migrate again for economic opportunities, policies to replace informal mining might simply shift it to new regions within Myanmar.
Potential solutions to informal mining activities
Dr. Graham Prescott, a research fellow on the team said, "Given that most informal miners operate on mine sites abandoned by the formal sector, one approach could be to allow informal mining on these sites and focus instead on preventing the expansion of informal mining to forests and wetlands. Technologies that eliminate mercury emissions, such as the use of mining retorts could also be introduced to the informal mining communities."
"An important approach is to promote the formalization of the informal gold mining sector. Informal gold miners would benefit from the legitimization of their livelihood, protection against eviction and better health and safety practices, while society could benefit from the compliance with environmental regulation to prevent expansion of mining in environmentally sensitive areas and reduced mercury emissions," added Prof Webb.
Although goldmining in Myanmar is expected to continue, policies should be crafted and enforced to ensure that the industry is legal, formal and well-regulated for the benefit of all
More information: Graham W. Prescott et al. Gold, farms, and forests: Enforcement and alternative livelihoods are unlikely to disincentivize informal gold mining, Conservation Science and Practice (2020). DOI: 10.1111/csp2.142
Alternatives to antibiotics found in sheep poo and on human skin
by Teagasc
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Scientists at the APC Microbiome Ireland SFI Research Centre have added to their arsenal of new antimicrobials with discoveries of Nisin J, a new antimicrobial produced from staphylococcal bacteria found on human skin and actifensins produced by Actinomycetes isolated from sheep feces.
The researchers, based at University College Cork and Teagasc, have published two papers in the well-known microbiology journal, Journal of Bacteriology, where the actifensin paper is highlighted by the editor as an article of significant interest this month.
The latest antimicrobials fall into a class of small antimicrobial proteins called bacteriocins which represent versatile alternatives to some commonly used antibiotics.
Nisin J, which was isolated from Staphylococcus capitis, a strain of bacteria between the human toes, is a type of nisin, commonly used in the Food industry as a preservative. Nisin has been used since 1952 and was granted generally regarded as safe (GRAS) status in 1988 by the US Food and Drug Administration FDA. It is also approved by the World Health Organisation as a food additive and has the E-number E234.
Nisin J has antimicrobial activity against a range of harmful gram-positive bacteria including the superbug MRSA and Cutibacterium acnes which causes acne. As such NisinJ and other bacteriocins could contribute to the reduction of antibiotic usage for skin infections
"Nisin J is the first nisin to be isolated from a Staphyloccus species and the first produced from a bacterium found on human skin. It has eight amino acid changes compared to nisin A and is the longest nisin variant found to date; six of these substitutions are unique to Nisin J," said Julie O'Sullivan, postgraduate student who made the discovery.
Actifensin is another new bacteriocin found in a strain of Actinomyces ruminicola isolated from sheep feces. It is the first bacteriocin to be discovered that is produced by Actinomyces ruminicola.
"Actifensin has a broad range of antimicrobial activity against pathogens such as MRSA and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE)," said Ivan Sugrue, postgraduate student who made the discovery. "Peptides similar to this are known to be produced by higher organisms such as fungi, ticks and even oysters but it was not known that bacteria had such a potent defense mechanism."
Antimicrobial resistance poses one of the biggest threats to global health today. Globally, according to the United Nations, drug-resistant infections—caused by superbugs—result in about 700,000 deaths per year. Without effective antibiotics for the prevention and treatment of infections, many of the achievements of modern medicine such as organ transplantations, chemotherapy and surgeries such as cesarean sections become much more dangerous.
"The discovery of these latest antimicrobials forms part of the APC's overall strategy to develop precision biological tools to control harmful bacteria and as such provide efficacious alternatives to antibiotics," said Professor Paul Ross, who leads the research with Professor Colin Hill at the APC Microbiome Ireland SFI Research Centre in University College Cork and Teagasc. "As such, we plan to further develop these compounds which have important implications for human and animal health as part of the APC program Microbes to Molecules."Magic mold: Food preservative kills cancer cells, superbugs
More information: Ivan Sugrue et al. Actinomyces Produces Defensin-Like Bacteriocins (Actifensins) with a Highly Degenerate Structure and Broad Antimicrobial Activity, Journal of Bacteriology (2019). DOI: 10.1128/JB.00529-19
Julie N. O'Sullivan et al. Nisin J, a Novel Natural Nisin Variant, Is Produced by Staphylococcus capitis Sourced from the Human Skin Microbiota, Journal of Bacteriology (2019). DOI: 10.1128/JB.00639-19
From record-setting fires in the western United States to the devastating and still-blazing bushfires in Australia, it is increasingly apparent that society must forge a new relationship with fire. Factors that include changing climate, expanding human development, and accumulating fuels mean new approaches are needed, and many experts are calling for increasing resiliency by suppressing fewer fires and accelerating forest restoration.
Yes, you read that correctly—suppressing fewer fires.
Scientific evidence that's been accumulating for decades points to the ways that suppressing fire leads to unhealthy forests. Ongoing research by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shows how short-term gain from suppression can condition the landscape for future, even-greater fires burning in extreme conditions, and MIT Sloan Executive Education has had a hand in translating that thinking into action.
Matthew Thompson is a research forester at the U.S. Forest Service, where he works in the Human Dimensions Program at Rocky Mountain Research Station in Colorado and focuses on the human dimension of natural resource problems. An engineer by training, with a Ph.D. from Oregon State University in forest engineering, Thompson has worked with the agency for about a decade. Core to his work is understanding how best to catalyze desired changes in fire manager behavior in terms of individual fire events and over time. He believes that changes in fire manager decisions regarding response strategies and tactics will be necessary to change fire outcomes. To that end, Thompson enrolls in executive education courses whenever time allows to draw insights from the latest thinking at the intersection of management and science.
"Risk management and management science evolves," says Thompson. "I've found the best way to stay up-to-date is through continuing and executive education."
Bringing analytics to fire management
Thompson's professional development pursuits were in part propelled by earning the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2016. The funding he received as a result of this award enabled him to enroll in courses over several years, including Understanding and Solving Complex Business Problems and Analytics Management: Business Lessons from the Sports Data Revolution at MIT Sloan Executive Education.
"I think it's fair to say both courses were very influential in terms of my thinking and career trajectory," says Thompson, who attended the programs with his colleague David Calkin so that they could apply the concepts they learned in the classroom directly to their work and share a common language for their problem solving.
"Some will argue that fire is ultimately unique, but in these courses we encountered so many analogies to what we see in the fire management world," says Thompson, "including other disciplines that tend to emphasize reactively fixing problems over prevention, for example. The more we talked with managers and took courses, the more we encountered common problems and proactive solutions."
Thompson's attendance in Analytics Management in 2018 was part of an effort to bring data-driven decision-making to wildland fire management.
"Ben Shields introduced an analytics management framework and gave us opportunities to work through that framework hands-on," says Thompson. "We were able to more clearly define the challenges of bringing data analytics to bear in our respective organizations as a result of this exercise. Dave and I were there to solve a problem, and the opportunity to work collaboratively in this environment with the support of faculty was invaluable." Thompson added that he and his colleague went out for beers after class in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and kept working through the framework, assembling notes and strategies that would prove useful in the next phase of their work. Shields is a senior lecturer in managerial communication at the Sloan School of Management.
Thompson, Calkin, and their colleagues recently authored a paper, "Risk Management and Analytics in Wildfire Response," in which they demonstrate the real-world application of analytics to support response decisions and organizational learning.
"When it comes to fire management, we are not trying to discount the culture of experiential learning, which is of course critical," says Thompson. "But in Ben Shields' analytics course, we saw a direct parallel between the objections raised by sports team scouts, 20 year ago, to statistics and the fire managers who doubt how statistics can help. In sports, as in fire, decision-making was a job largely reserved for the trained eyes and gut instincts of grizzled veterans."
Thompson and his colleagues argue for a stronger adoption of data-driven decisions in fire management that they colloquially refer to as "'Moneyball' for fire," referencing the 2003 book by Michael Lewis chronicling the Oakland Athletics' use of advanced statistics. In the paper they introduce core analytics concepts, cite Ben Shields' analytics management framework, and make observations on implementing an analytics agenda within organizations.
The Forest Service is now developing Risk Management 101 courses for fire officers and designing new risk management doctrine to guide the agency. During fire season, they are experimenting with on-call analytics teams to assist incident commanders. Fire managers can use data to help prioritize where they put resources and determine where suppression efforts are likeliest to succeed. They are making steady progress toward designing the ideal response to a fire depending on when and where it happens.
A systems thinking approach to wildfires
Thompson and Calkin previously co-authored several papers on the application of enterprise risk management and systems thinking to wildfire management after completing John Sterman's two-day systems thinking course. Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
In "Rethinking the Wildland Fire Management System," the authors explain how systems thinking can help the fire management community be proactive rather than reactive by more fully characterizing the environment in which fire management decisions are made and anticipating factors that may lead to compromised decision-making.
"In the fire community, people have been moving toward this system perspective over time, but a lot of the analysis and perspectives are looking at the social and ecological perspective—thinning forests, reducing flammable material, engaging homeowners and communities, etc. Many of those social-ecological perspectives have failed to account for the fire management system itself, when in fact fire management might be where the most change needs to come from. Part of that is because, in the western U.S., we've been so good at suppression we've created forests that look entirely different from what they used to look like, and we can't treat our way out of the problem. We need to opportunistically manage ignitions in different way, use analytics to predict where on the landscape we can create curated fires that are going to be the right size, within pre-identified boundaries. There are success stories coming out of the Southwest, for example, where they have been able to create and control fires that have bought the landscape a restoration treatment that is good for the next 10-20 years. This can be a much more effective solution than logging, for example."
The sky's the limit for fire management solutions
Thompson is optimistic.
"The engineer in me is most interested in the technical challenges, and there is huge opportunity for growth in that area. With advances in remote sensing technology, AI, ML, the sky is the limit. For example, recent legislation was passed to equip suppression resources with tracking technology. With this temporal, high-resolution data, we can expand the universe of what we know about current efforts to manage fire and the degree of efficiency of these efforts. This will be a vast improvement on the currently limited amount of credible data we have."
Thompson is also emboldened by the amount and quality of research and resource sharing among the Forest Service, other agencies, and countries like Australia. "And we are also very fortunate to have just hired Nicholas McCarthy, a wildfire data scientist from Australia who is an expert on bushfire thunderstorms and AI applications to wildfire."
Thompson says that people often refer to fire as a wicked problem with no one solution. And while he has confidence in data and technology, he realizes it's not a silver bullet. He also cautions that one can't decouple the social from the technical. "Climate change is clearly a problem that is human-driven, and behavior change is central to mitigation. The adoption of risk management approaches and data analytics is also predicated on a cultural shift. If tomorrow we could track every firefighter and review suppression effectiveness, it might change nothing. You need leaders to value the role of data-driven decision-making and hold others accountable to it."
More information: Matthew P. Thompson et al. Risk Management and Analytics in Wildfire Response, Current Forestry Reports (2019). DOI: 10.1007/s40725-019-00101-7
Matthew P Thompson et al. Rethinking the Wildland Fire Management System, Journal of Forestry (2018). DOI: 10.1093/jofore/fvy020
