Thursday, March 05, 2020

Tunnel fire safety: With only minutes to respond, fire education really counts

by University of South Australia
Tunnel fire safety: with only minutes to respond, fire education really counts
Credit: Shutterstock
Global risk management experts are calling for fire education initiatives to be included in driver safety programs so that drivers are better prepared for an emergency if faced with it on the roads.
The call follows a new research study where researchers from University of South Australia and the National Technical University of Athens assessed fire  mechanisms of  tunnels, finding that risks to human life could be reduced through greater awareness and education.
Using a newly developed evacuation model, researchers were able to simulate the behaviors of trapped-commuters and their movement to estimate potential outcomes and fatalities following a fire in a .
UniSA Adjunct Associate Professor Konstantinos Kirytopoulos says being able to forecast human behavior in a fire-risk scenario provides critical information for safety analysts and tunnel managers.
"To mitigate potential fire accidents and  in road tunnels, safety analysts not only have to fulfill standard regulatory requirements, but also need to conduct a complex risk assessment which includes defining the issues, identifying hazards, calculating and prioritizing risks, and doing so for different environments," Assoc Prof Kirytopoulos says.
"An evacuation simulation model such as ours is particularly valuable because it lets analysts thoroughly inspect all parameters within an emergency.
"Uniquely, it also simulates human behavior and movement in conjunction with the use of safety mechanisms, letting us project the likelihood of successful evacuations under different combinations of human behavior, safety procedures implementation and safety infrastructure employed, which provide an extremely useful tool for tunnel safety analysts.
"Safety levels are dictated by the operation of the whole system—organization, technical and human elements—so anything we can do to increase the success rates of these individual factors can have a massive impact on the whole.
"Having a familiarity with emergency protocols in a confined or enclosed space such as a road tunnel can help trapped-commuters to appropriately respond, and this, we believe will improve successful evacuations."
Road tunnels are fundamental elements of road transport systems contributing to profitable economies and societies. Given the sheer number of vehicles on the road—about 262 million passenger cars in the European Union; more than 272 million vehicles in the United States; and an estimated 19 million vehicles in Australia—safety is paramount.
Fire accidents in tunnels can have disastrous consequences in terms of human loses and structural damage. Although tunnel safety has increased significantly since previous fire tunnel tragedies such as the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire (France,1999 with 39 fatalities), Fréjus tunnel fire (France, 2005 with 2 fatalities and 21 injuries) and Yanhou Tunnel fire (China, 2014 with 40 fatalities), these incidences highlight the severity of potential impacts and provide insights for mitigating future risks.
Assoc Prof Kirytopoulos says commuters are the most variable factor in the event of a tunnel fire because they're the first to confront the consequences of the  and in most cases are inadequately trained for such circumstances.
"When the tunnel operator calls for an emergency evacuation through public address systems, radio rebroadcast or electronic tunnel message signs, people should respond immediately and evacuate, without any delay," Assoc Prof Kirytopoulos says.
"Fires are very complex phenomena, and when in an enclosed tunnel environment, they're characterized by turbulence, combustion irregularity and high radiation. Tunnels fires are also known to have an incredibly intense heat release rate—even four times the intensity of fires in an open environment—as well as large amounts of toxic fumes and smoke.
"In an emergency, time is crucial. The evacuation of the tunnel should be as quick and efficient as the evacuation of an airplane after crash landing. Educating drivers on what they should do as well as making them aware of the evacuation systems which are in place are the best means for mitigating risk and ensuring a safe outcome."
Top 10 longest tunnels around the world:
In Australia, the longest road tunnels reach no more than 7 kilometers in distance, with Australia's longest  being the 6.7 km Airport Link Tunnel in Brisbane.
Meet TIM, the LHC tunnel's robot
More information: Panagiotis Ntzeremes et al. Quantitative Risk Assessment of Road Tunnel Fire Safety: Improved Evacuation Simulation Model, ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering (2019). DOI: 10.1061/AJRUA6.0001029
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US, China clash over head of UN intellectual property agency

by Jamey Keaten
Dozens of countries are voting Wednesday in a pivotal phase of an election to choose the next head of the U.N.'s intellectual property agency, a contest for a key post in the Digital Age that has pit the United States against China's candidate.\The results of the closed-door voting by 83 states on a key committee of the World Intellectual Property Organization to choose its next director-general could come later Wednesday. WIPO's general assembly has final say in May, but it has never rejected a committee nominee since the agency was created in 1967.
After the year began with 10 candidates in the race, only five—from China, Colombia, Ghana, Peru and Singapore—remained as voting got under way on Wednesday. A sixth candidate from Kazakhstan dropped out just as the election was set to begin.
Top U.S. officials including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and others have spoken out against China's candidate, veteran WIPO official Weng Binyang, from becoming head of the money-making agency that counts 192 member states.
China's ambassador in Geneva and other officials have fired back against a U.S. "attack" on a Chinese candidate who would become WIPO's first woman director-general—and the pullout of Kazakhstan's Saule Tlevlessova means Weng is the only woman left in the running.
The showdown marks a new face-off between the United States—the world's biggest economic and military power—and China, the fast-growing Asian behemoth vying to become the world's No. 1 economy. Both countries have been lobbying publicly and privately in Geneva as part of the standoff.
The United States and other Western allies have long expressed concerns about China's approach to , with Trump administration officials accusing Beijing of outright theft of Western know-how through its requirements of companies that want to operate in China's explosive market.
The standoff to replace Director-General Francis Gurry of Australia, who is not standing for re-election, comes as China has been flexing its intellectual muscle in recent years. By WIPO's own count late last year, China alone accounted for nearly half of all patent filings worldwide.China dominates top Western economies in patent applications
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Households in Switzerland could feasibly be energy self-sufficient by 2050

by Public Library of Science
switzerland
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
By 2050, photovoltaic technologies that convert sunlight into electricity could enable many single- and multi-family buildings in Switzerland to produce enough energy to meet their own consumption needs, including the charging of electric vehicles. Ursin Gstöhl and Stefan Pfenninger of ETH Zürich report these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on March 4, 2020.
Reducing reliance on fossil fuels is a major focus of efforts to mitigate climate change. Photovoltaics offer a promising alternative that could also increase energy  at the level of individual households. While previous studies have explored various aspects of households that produce their own energy, none have taken a big-picture view of their feasibility in a temperate country like Switzerland.
To address this gap, Gstöhl and Pfenninger evaluated the technical and financial feasibility of energy self-sufficiency for households that switch to electric vehicles and turn to photovoltaic electricity to power all their needs, including heating. Using already-available data, the researchers explored a range of different building types and energy demands.
The analysis suggests that total self-sufficiency is technically feasible by 2050 for single- and multi-family buildings in Switzerland across a range of scenarios. Self-sufficiency is easily attainable for single-family households with behavioral change to lower  and with urban vehicle use patterns. In contrast, a multi-family  with conventional energy demand and rural vehicle use patterns would require advancements in the efficiency of photovoltaic technology.
The predicted financial feasibility of self-sufficiency depends on several factors, including government incentives and the cost of  storage technologies. Fully self-sufficient buildings are more expensive than buildings that are fully electrified but still connected to the grid, but so are households that still use  for heating and vehicles. In other words, electrification is definitely economically beneficial for households, with self-sufficiency coming at an additional cost premium.
Still, the combination of falling storage costs, rising fossil fuel prices, and political measures could result in increased prevalence of fully self-sufficient households in Switzerland. These findings could also apply to other highly industrialized countries with temperate climates.
Solar panels plus lead-acid batteries to increase electricity self-sufficiency
More information: Gstöhl U, Pfenninger S (2020) Energy self-sufficient households with photovoltaics and electric vehicles are feasible in temperate climate. PLoS ONE 15(3): e0227368. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227368

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Uber loses French case, driver declared employee


One lawyer said the ruling puts Uber's business model at risk over the long term in France
One lawyer said the ruling puts Uber's business model at risk over the long term in France
France's top civil court dealt ride-hailing giant Uber a setback on Wednesday with a key ruling that it had effectively employed one of its drivers.
Uber has long argued it is merely a platform linking self-employed drivers with riders, a model which allows for avoidance of certain taxes and social charges as well as paid vacations.
However that practice, which underpins the gig economy, has increasingly come under legal attack in many countries.
The French Court of Cassation ruled against Uber's appeal of a 2019 decision that a former driver who sued the firm effectively had a work contract.
The court found that Uber BV had control over the driver by his connection to the app which directs him to clients, and thus should not be considered an independent contractor but an employee.
"This is a first and it will impact all platforms inspired by Uber's model," said Fabien Masson, the lawyer for the former driver.
The ruling does not force Uber to automatically sign contracts, and drivers will have to go to court to obtain requalification as employees.
But for the estimated 150 Uber drivers who have already filed cases, "these drivers will benefit from this ruling", said Masson.
Another lawyer who represents a dozen Uber drivers, Kevin Mention, said the ruling will eventually put the gig economy model at risk in France as it clearly described practices that are common to all firms that use it.
"If they don't change their model today they are heading straight for the wall as it is certain qualification" for those who challenge their status as contractors.
Uber said the ruling missed many of the changes it has made.
"During the past two years we have made many changes that give drivers more control over how they use the app as well as better social protection," said a spokeswoman.
She said drivers choose Uber for the independence and flexibility it allows them and noted the Court of Cassation ruling contradicted its earlier decisions that said without an obligation to work there was no effective employment.
In the French case, the driver, who stopped working for Uber in 2016 after providing some 4,000 trips in under two years, sued to have his "commercial accord" reclassified as an employment contract.
He was seeking reimbursement for holidays and expenses as well as payment for "undeclared work" and unfair contract termination.
The former driver sued after Uber deactivated his account, "depriving him of the possibility to get new reservations", according to the court.
French court backs Uber driver in key gig-economy case (Update)


French court rules against Uber to class drivers as employees, not independent contractor

Issued on: 04/03/2020
 
An advert for the Uber ride-sharing service is seen on a bus stop in Paris, France, March 11, 2016. © Charles Platiau, REUTERS
Text by:NEWS WIRES

France’s top civil court dealt ride-hailing giant Uber a setback on Wednesday with a ruling that it had effectively employed one of its drivers.

Uber has long argued that it is merely a platform linking self-employed drivers with riders, a model which allows it to avoid paying certain taxes and social charges as well as provide paid vacations.

However that practice, which underpins the gig economy, has increasingly come under legal attack in many countries.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the French Court of Cassation rejected Uber’s appeal against a 2019 decision that found a former driver who sued the firm effectively had a work contract.

The court found that Uber BV had control over the driver by his connection to the app which directs him to clients, and thus should not be considered an independent contractor but an employee.

“This is a first and it will impact all platforms inspired by Uber’s model,” said Fabien Masson, the lawyer for the former driver.

The ruling does not force Uber to automatically sign contracts, and drivers will be forced to go to court to obtain requalification as employees.

But for the estimated 150 Uber drivers who have already filed cases, “these drivers will benefit from this ruling”, said Masson.

Gig economy at risk

Another lawyer who represents a dozen Uber drivers, Kevin Mention, said the ruling will eventually put the gig economy model at risk in France as it clearly described practices that are common to all firms that use it.

“If they don’t change their model today they are heading straight for the wall as it is certain qualification” for those who challenge their status as contractors.

Uber, for its part, said the ruling missed many of the changes it has made.

“During the past two years we have made many changes that give drivers more control over how they use the app as well as better social protection,” said a spokeswoman.

She said drivers choose Uber for the independence and flexibility it allows them and noted the Court of Cassation ruling contradicted its earlier decisions that said without an obligation to work their was not effective employment.

In the French case, the driver, who stopped working for Uber in 2016 after providing some 4,000 trips in under two years, sued to have his “commercial accord” reclassified as an employment contract.

He was seeking reimbursement for holidays and expenses as well as payment for “undeclared work” and unfair contract termination.

The former driver sued after Uber deactivated his account, “depriving him of the possibility to get new reservations”, according to the court.

(AFP)
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PINK MARTINI HEY EUGENE

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Pink Floyd Ummagumma


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Who was… Peter Kropotkin?


The Russian nobleman-turned-anarchist was also a biologist whose research in Siberia laid the groundwork for modern biological studies of co-operation, writes Tom Ireland

The Biologist 66(3) p26-31

Kropotkin was away for five years and travelled 50,000 miles, mostly on horseback and with few possessions

Kropotkin initially wondered if nature in Siberia was just different to that in the rest of the world

Although he believed intelligence was one of the great advantages that higher animals had in terms of their ability to co-operate, Kropotkin recognised that co-operation occurred “even amidst the lowest animals”

Nowadays, co-operation is recognised as fundamental in order for evolution to construct new levels of organisation

Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin was born in Moscow in 1842 to a family of Russian aristocrats. At a time when Russia’s archaic feudal system was creaking under pressure to reform, the Kropotkin family ‘owned’ nearly 1,200 peasant labourers, or serfs. According to his memoirs, the young Kropotkin’s life was one of lavish feasts, country retreats, horse-drawn sledges, and parlour games in ‘jewel-covered costumes'.

Half a century later Kropotkin would be a celebrated anarchist philosopher who had spent many years in exile in remote communes or disguised as a peasant.

However, he was also a naturalist and biologist who made an important contribution to the controversial theory that society was still trying to understand and interpret – evolution by natural selection.

As a young man Kropotkin excelled in exactly the sort of career path expected of him, attending an elite military academy in St Petersburg and rising to various senior positions in the army of the Russian emperor, Alexander II. However, Kropotkin, like many of his generation, was becoming disillusioned by the cruelty of serfdom and imperial rule in Russia. He secretly began reading and writing for revolutionary journals and newspapers.

Kropotkin in 1864. He served in various senior military and state positions during the reign of Alexander II, before moving into a role that allowed him to join geographical expeditions to Siberia.

An opportunity arose for him to take a government role that would require him to travel to a recently annexed corner of eastern Siberia, one of the most inhospitable and far-flung regions of the Russian empire. According to Kropotkin biographer Oren Harman, it would become his polar version of Darwin’s voyage aboard the Beagle [2].

Kropotkin was away for five years and travelled 50,000 miles, mostly on horseback and with few possessions.

He at first intended to work on a geological theory of mountain chains and high plateaus but was also keen to find evidence of Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in 1859. As well as being fascinated by the theory, he was aghast that philosophers and politicians were increasingly misusing Wallace and Darwin’s concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ to justify the horrors of slavery, poverty and war in their own countries.

Such ideologies exaggerated the degree to which evolution was driven by conflict between members of the same species, Kropotkin believed. It “raised the pitiless struggle for personal advantage to the height of a biological principle,” he wrote.

In his travels through the Siberian wilderness Kropotkin saw little to no conflict between animals of the same species. What he did see, everywhere, was collaboration: wolves hunting in packs, birds helping one another feed or stay warm, deer finding new pastures in unison, horses forming defensive formations against predators. “Wherever I saw animal life in abundance, I saw mutual aid and mutual support ”, [3] he wrote.
Kropotkin embarked on epic surveys of eastern Russia and Siberia. Although he was expected to help enact administrative reforms in the far-flung region, he soon began to focus on his scientific studies.

Kropotkin initially wondered if nature in Siberia was just different to that in the rest of the world.

Darwin and Wallace had formed their theory through studying nature in the “shrieking hullabaloo of the tropics” [2], and in this land of brutal winters, where snow storms would glaze the vast, featureless tundra in miles of ice, collaboration rather than conflict seemed to be the best strategy for survival.

In On the Origin of Species, Darwin had recognised that “the struggle for life” could be a battle against any number of things, from competition with members of one’s own species or attacks from predators to a lack of nutrients or damage from the elements. Naturalists before Kropotkin had also noted many instances of animals co-operating, from social insects to packs of dogs. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus, had written in the previous century about how the common crab stations ‘sentinels’ to guard fellow crabs that are moulting and therefore vulnerable.

However, Kropotkin wanted to ensure the significance of co-operation in “the struggle for existence” was recognised. He theorised that if the environment in which animals lived was harsh enough to be the main enemy, animals might seek ways other than conflict to manage such struggle.

In Russia particularly, perhaps the fight against the elements was so great it had led to co-operation and collaboration, rather than the bloody squabbles that ensued where heat, light, water and food were bountiful.

Like Darwin, Kropotkin returned from his long adventure with his overarching theory not yet fully coalesced. His observations of nature had also unquestionably become entangled with his political views, with each seemingly driving the other.

When the death of his father allowed him to abandon any pretence that he was still in a government role, Kropotkin became a full-on revolutionary, declaring himself an anarchist. He believed that people should live in small, self-organised communities with no central rule, and preached co-operation instead of conflict. He began attending meetings in disguise and continued his writing in exile from within various communes in Europe.
Kropotkin, pictured in 1900, aged 57.

When Darwin died in 1882, Kropotkin wrote an obituary for his own revolutionary paper Le Révolté, writing that Darwin’s work surely proved that “animal societies are best organised in the community-anarchist manner”.

Kropotkin went on to write five essays between 1890 and 1896 that would be published as the book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution in 1902. His research had expanded from the Siberian steppes to consider eusocial insects such as bees and ants, co-operating lizards, hierarchies of hyenas and shoaling fish. “I saw mutual aid and mutual support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and evolution,” he wrote.

There were endless tales from around the globe to support his theory – of top predators such as white-tailed eagles crying out to others when a meal was spotted; pelicans hunting together; penguins huddling en masse; and, of course, the great hordes of mammals and birds gathering in indescribable numbers across the Americas – “for all of whom, mutual aid is the rule” [3].

Although he believed intelligence was one of the great advantages that higher animals had in terms of their ability to co-operate, Kropotkin recognised that co-operation occurred “even amidst the lowest animals”.
Burying beetles (Nicrophorus) are mainly solitary but work 
together with other individuals when burying large decaying 
animals for their young to feed on.

He was particularly interested in burying beetles (Nicrophorus), a genus of Coleoptera that bury decaying flesh in the ground for their larvae to feed on. They are mostly solitary insects, but occasionally acquire assistance from other beetles in order to bury lumps of flesh that are too big for them to deal with single-handedly. “As a rule, they live an isolated life,” wrote Kropotkin, “but when one of them has discovered a corpse of a mouse or bird, which it can hardly manage to bury itself, it calls four, six, or 10 other beetles to perform the operation with united efforts.”

Many decades before the complexity of microbial communities was understood, Kropotkin’s speculations about organisms he could not see were also prescient. “We must be prepared to learn, some day, from the students of microscopic pond-life, factors of unconscious mutual support, even in the life of microorganisms.” Microbiologists have since found fascinating examples of co-operation within microbial communities, including mutualism, symbiosis, altruism, and dynamic shifts between selfish and selfless strategies.

The opening chapters of Mutual Aid compile evidence of co-operation in the animal world, but later chapters look at mutual aid among what Kropotkin calls “savages” and “barbarians” and in medieval cities, and how the concept of mutual aid could be applied in Russia and the rest of the world. As such, the book became a fundamental text in anarchist communities, but was also read with cautious interest by many natural scientists. In the second edition of his book Kropotkin writes that “12 years have passed since the first edition and it can be said that its fundamental idea – the idea that mutual aid represents in evolution an important progressive element – begins to be recognised by biologists”.

However, a simplistic view of evolution as ‘survival of the fittest’ in a ruthless, individualistic sense persisted – and to some extent persists to this day in the parlance and understanding of evolution. It would take many decades for co-operation to be fully accounted for in evolutionary theory.

In the 1930s and 1940s ecologists began to study co-operation more methodically, with entomologists such as William Morton Wheeler considering how ants seemed to act together as a ‘superorganism’. During the Cold War game theorists studied the logic behind co-operation and altruism in terms of optimal decision making and behaviour.

It was not until the 1960s and 1970s, when evolutionary biologist William Hamilton explored the genetics of co-operative and altruistic behaviours, that mechanisms were deduced to explain how such behaviour could evolve in families even when it lessens the reproductive fitness of the actor doing it (for example, a squirrel sounding an alarm call that draws attention to itself). Sociobiologist Robert Trivers expanded on this to help explain how co-operation between unrelated individuals could evolve.

Nowadays, co-operation is recognised as fundamental in order for evolution to construct new levels of organisation.
The emergence of genomes, cells, multicellular organisms, social insects, complex ecosystems and, indeed, human society are all based on co-operation. The idea of biological systems working in alignment with others is such a basic aspect of ecology and evolution that it is remarkable to think its importance might have been overlooked for even longer were it not for a nobleman-turned-anarchist wandering the snowy steppes of Siberia.

Kropotkin’s contribution was important, although the interconnectedness of his evidence gathering with his political views would be frowned upon in today’s world; he went looking for something to prove that life was more than “a war of each against all” [3]. Yet the evidence he compiled was undeniably clear, and helped recalibrate Darwin’s great theory when it was on the verge of being irredeemably distorted by politics.

His observations of nature, in turn, only strengthened his radical political views, which determined how he lived the rest of his life. As well as being an interesting case of ‘riches to rags’, there can be few biologists in the history of science who have sought to emulate, so literally, the natural processes they studied.

References
1) Kropotkin, P. Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Houghton Mifflin, 1899).
2) Harman, O. & Dietrich, M. R. (eds). Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
3) Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902).


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Excerpt on Kropotkin from ‘Rollback’
Noam Chomsky
International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 43, Issue 6, December 2014,
Page 1688, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyu208

Published:
21 October 2014

The editors of the Times Book Review, mostly committed liberals no doubt, selected three books on science in their annual list of “Best Books” for 1994, all devoted to a single science. The choices were so obvious that there was little dispute, they report. “The science is, broadly, evolutionary biology or specifically, sociobiology, which, once it gets into your brain, can really spook you about genetics.” What “spooks you” is human sociobiology, not the study of complex molecules and ants, about which science actually has something to say.

One choice is a memoir by Edward Wilson, “one of the founders of sociobiology” with “his seminal 1975 book `Sociobiology'” – which has interesting material on simpler organisms, and ends with a few pages of speculations on human sociobiology. The field was actually founded 85 years earlier by the leading anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin, also a natural scientist, in seminal work that led to his classic Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution, published in 1902. His studies criticized the conclusions on “struggle for existence” drawn by the noted Darwinian T.H. Huxley, who never responded publicly, though in private he wrote that Kropotkin's prominently-published work was “very interesting and important.” Kropotkin's Darwinian speculations about the possible role of cooperation in evolution, with their implications for anarchist social organization, remain about as solid a contribution to human sociobiology as exists today. But somehow this work has not entered “the canon”; one can hardly imagine why.

1 From Chomsky, N. Rollback, Z Magazine January–May, 1995. URL: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199505–.htm [accessed 26.9.14]. Reprinted with permission.

© The Author 2014; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association
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Songbird study reveals changes in fall migration
By
Brooks Hays
(0)


New research suggests black-throated blue warblers, a passerine species that travels back and forth between the Caribbean and the forests of the Eastern United States, have shifted the timing of both their spring and fall migrations during the last fifty years. Photo by Kyle Horton

 (UPI) -- As a number of previous studies have revealed, the timing of spring bird migrations in North America has shifted in response to climate change over the last several decades. Now, new research suggests fall migrations are being affected, too.

The new analysis, published this week in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances, showed the fall migration of black-throated blue warblers is getting longer.

"This means that some birds are leaving earlier while others are leaving later," lead researcher Kristen Covino, an avian biologist at Loyola Marymount University, told UPI in an email. "So while the peak of fall migration is staying the same, the period during which these birds are migrating is getting longer."

For the study, Covino and her colleagues utilized data from the North American Bird Banding Program. The program, administered jointly United States Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service, boasts one of the most expansive historical data sets on migratory birds.

RELATED DNA from ancient packrat nests reveals Earth's ecological history

Scientists decided to study movement patterns of the black-throated blue warbler because the long-distance traveler may be representative of other species. The wealth of data on the species was also a motivating factor. Covino and her research partners were able to analyze more than 150,000 records of individual black-throated blue warblers.

"Also for this species, it is relatively straightforward to determine age and sex of individuals during both spring and fall, so we were confident in the reliability of those pieces of information since the data were initially collected by so many different field researchers," Covino said.

Scientists confirmed -- as previous studies have shown -- that birds have been flying north to their breeding grounds earlier and earlier each spring, an average of a day earlier each decade.

RELATED Study pinpoints the timing of earliest human migration

Researchers suspect that the changes in the bird's spring migratory patterns could be responsible for the lengthening of the species' fall migration period.

"One possibility is that the early departures are young from the first brood -- chicks from a nest -- of the earlier arriving adults and the later departures are a product of some adults attempting, and some succeeding, in a second brood or reproductive attempt in the same season," Covino said. "This species does not always attempt two nests in the same season so it is possible that the breeding season is getting longer and allowing for an increase in this behavior."

Because spring migration patterns are a significant driver of reproductive success, scientists have focused exclusively on the links between climate change and spring migration shifts. Covino hopes their latest research while inspired future studies to consider changes in both fall and spring migrations together.

RELATED Feeding bluebirds helps the songbirds fight off parasites

"We stress that investigations into migratory phenology should include both migratory seasons in order to holistically encompass all the changes occurring within a species," she said. "Our follow-up study is to expand this approach to include several additional species."

RELATED Tropical ecosystems face perfect storm of threats
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Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Climate Activist Greta Thunberg


THE 16-YEAR-OLD ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST GRETA THUNBERG, AND NEWLY ELECTED TIME MAGAZINE'S PERSON OF THE YEAR, NOW HAS A NEW SNAIL SPECIES NAMED AFTER HER. 


A newly identified species of land snail has been discovered in the southeast island nation of Brunei by a group of citizen scientists. Its sensitivity to drought, temperature extremes, and forest degradation sparked a creative namesake for the mollusk: Craspedotropis gretathunbergae, named for the famous Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

“We name this species in honor of the young climate activist Greta Thunberg, because caenogastropod microsnails from tropical rainforests, like this new species, are very sensitive to the droughts and temperature extremes that are likely to be more frequent as climate change continues,” write the researchers in Biodiversity Data Journal.
C. gretathunbergae was discovered by participants of Taxon Expeditions, a company that organizes scientific trips for citizen scientists, during a field course near the northern Borneo research facility Kuala Belalong Field Studies Centre. All of the specimens were found at the foot of a steep hill next to a riverbank and are characterized by a high spiraling conical shell. This group of land snails are important to the Bornean ecosystem but may be threatened due to their environmental sensitivities – much like future generations of global species facing climate change impacts.

The new species of snail has a high spiraling conical shell. Biodiversity Data Journal

"Naming this snail after Greta Thunberg is our way of acknowledging that her generation will be responsible for fixing problems that they did not create. And it's a promise that people from all generations will join her to help,” said citizen scientist J.P. Lim, who found the first individual snail, in a statement. In addition to the snail namesake, Thunberg has been named Time's 2019 person of the year and had a new species of beetle named after her.

So far, the team notes that they have recorded over 25 species of snail but expect there could be as many as 85.

“Taxon expeditions are a new concept in which a group of taxonomic experts and laypeople work together in a hybrid work form of field course and biodiversity discovery expedition to discover unknown species from a given area,” write the authors.

The same group named a water beetle species found in Malaysia after Leonardo DiCaprio, Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, in 2018.Craspedotropis gretathunbergae. Taxon Expeditions

Taxon Expeditions participant J.P. Lim collecting snails. Taxon Expeditions - Pierre Escoubas
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