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)
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Ancient tectonic plate discovered beneath Canada, geologists claim By Michael Irving October 20, 2020
The team used a method called slab unfolding, which allows them to work backwards from the remains of a subducted plate and work out what it looked like on the surface, millions of years ago University of Houston
The face of the Earth has changed drastically over its life, with plates shifting and sinking. Now, geologists at the University of Houston claim to have found the remains of an ancient tectonic plate beneath Canada that was pushed under the surface tens of millions of years ago.
It’s long been known that in the early Cenozoic Era – around 60 million years ago – there were two major tectonic plates, called Kula and Farallon, in the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of North America. But debate has raged about whether they were joined by a third, oddly named Resurrection, which would have since sunk beneath the surface. And now, the geologists on the new study say they’ve found this missing plate.
When plates push against each other, one of them will often end up sliding underneath the other, sinking down into the mantle – a process called subduction. Over time, the intense heat and pressure there will melt it and change its shape. To try to find the remains of the Resurrection plate, the team started by studying existing tomography images of the mantle below North America.
Next, they applied a technique called slab unfolding, which can identify subducted plates, then unfold and stretch them to roughly figure out their original shapes. Using this method, the team mapped out several large chunks of rock, and worked backwards to identify the original plates they came from.
Two of the objects they studied are already known – the Alaska and Cascadia slabs, which are still attached to each other. The Alaska slab sits beneath the Aleutian Islands and is thought to be the remains of the Kula plate, while the Cascadia slab lies under southern California and represents the remains of Farallon.
But intriguingly, the team identified a third slab detached from the others, about 400 to 600 km (250 to 370 miles) below the surface of northern Canada. They call it the Yukon Slab, and when the clock is wound back it appears to fit the calculated shape of the old Resurrection plate. A diagram of the original locations and shapes of the tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean, off the western coast of North America. The Resurrection plate's existence has been debated, but the new study claims to have found it University of Houston
“When ‘raised’ back to the earth’s surface and reconstructed, the boundaries of this ancient Resurrection tectonic plate match well with the ancient volcanic belts in Washington State and Alaska, providing a much sought after link between the ancient Pacific Ocean and the North American geologic record,” says Jonny Wu, co-author of the study.
The team’s model suggests that the Yukon slab gradually made its way northeast after the Resurrection plate was first subducted some 40 million years ago.
“We believe we have direct evidence that the Resurrection plate existed,” says Spencer Fuston, co-author of the study. “We are also trying to solve a debate and advocate for which side our data supports.”
Cannabis may reduce acute OCD symptoms, but long-term effects unclear By Rich Haridy October 20, 2020
New research from WSU is among the first to investigate real-world uses of cannabis to treat symptoms of OCD TeriVerbickis/Depositphotos
Research from Washington State University (WSU), and published in The Journal of Affective Disorders, is reporting some people find their symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) dramatically drop after smoking cannabis. The study suggests the improvements may only be beneficial in the short-term, and more research is necessary to understand the long-term effect of cannabis use on OCD.
Despite the broad interest in cannabis’ therapeutic effects over recent years there has been surprisingly little study focusing specifically on the drug’s relationship with OCD. The results from very first placebo-controlled study on the subject, published earlier this year, found smoking cannabis had the same effect on OCD symptoms as a placebo. However, several animal studies have found doses of CBD may inhibit certain compulsive behaviors.
This new WSU study is not a controlled clinical trial, but instead it relies on self-reported user data gathered by a smartphone app called Strainprint. This Canadian app was designed to offer personalized information for patients, enabling real-time tracking of medical symptoms against specific strains of cannabis.
In this case, subjects can report the severity of their OCD symptoms, before and after cannabis use, offering researchers a way to follow the efficacy of cannabis as a treatment in real-time, and in relation to the varying THC or CBD levels from strain to strain. The WSU team has produced three prior studies analyzing Strainprint data, most notably finding many cannabis users self-administer the drug to treat severe headaches and migraines.
The new study tracked data from 87 subjects with OCD symptoms using the Strainprint app. Over 31 months these subjects logged more than 1,800 cannabis sessions, allowing the researchers to infer valuable long-term use data, as well as examining the shorter, more acute effects.
OCD symptoms were divided into three categories (intrusions, compulsions, and anxiety), with each user rating their symptoms from 0 to 10, both before and after a cannabis session. Overall, the study found subjects reported a 60 percent drop in compulsions, a 49 percent drop in intrusions, and a 52 percent drop in anxiety from before to after smoking cannabis.
Reductions in OCD symptoms relating to compulsions and anxiety remained relatively stable over time, but reductions in intrusions seemed to grow smaller with continued cannabis use. The researchers hypothesize a tolerance to the effects of cannabis may build with long-term use.
“The results overall indicate that cannabis may have some beneficial short-term but not really long-term effects on obsessive-compulsive disorder,” explains Carrie Cuttler, corresponding author on the new study. “To me, the CBD findings are really promising because it is not intoxicating. This is an area of research that would really benefit from clinical trials looking at changes in compulsions, intrusions and anxiety with pure CBD.”
The Strainprint app tracks THC and CBD concentrations in particular strains of cannabis, allowing the researchers to effectively investigate whether cannabinoid levels influence symptomatic outcomes. As Cuttler indicates, the study reveals a distinct correlation between higher CBD levels and greater drops in compulsive OCD symptoms.
This finding certainly gels with earlier animal studies investigating compulsive behavior and CBD, however more targeted human trials are necessary to validate them.
The study is clear to note a number of caveats with this kind of self-reported study, particularly referencing what is called the “expectancy effect” whereby the Strainprint users' positive responses are potentially driven by prior expectations about the benefits of CBD in relation to OCD.
Sampling bias is another particular caveat cited in the study, limiting any broad conclusions about the efficacy of cannabis treating OCD symptoms.
“Specifically, it seems likely that the sample predominantly comprises individuals who find cannabis effective in managing their symptoms,” the researchers write in the study. “Individuals who find it ineffective and/or who do not tolerate its side effects would likely stop using cannabis and the app to track such use. This is further supported by evidence of individual differences in the efficacy of cannabis in reducing symptoms.”
None of this means the study is entirely useless. The researchers note the unique nature of the Strainprint app allows for extraordinary insights into real-world uses of cannabis. And despite the self-reported nature of the data, the ability to track the effect of the drug in single users over long periods of time offers researchers novel perspectives.
The ultimate conclusion of the new study is that cannabis may offer those with OCD some level of acute symptomatic relief in the short-term but there is evidence those benefits can diminish over time. And, the long-term effect of cannabis on OCD is still profoundly unclear.
OSIRIS-REx is leaking asteroid samples due to jammed lid
By David Szondy October 23, 2020 T Images confirmed that the sampler head had collected an abundance of material and was leaking NASA V
Images returned by NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid explorer have confirmed that the spacecraft's sample collector head is slowly leaking some of the material it gathered from the surface of the asteroid Bennu on October 20, 2020.
When OSIRIS-REx's Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) head made contact with Bennu, its one job was to release a blast of nitrogen gas to stir up soil and small rocks, which it would then collect. Since this autonomous operation was completed and the spacecraft withdrew to a safe distance from the asteroid, NASA scientists have been examining images sent back by cameras to determine if the exercise was successful.
It turned out to be a case of good and bad news. The good news is that the TAGSAM head worked perfectly at just the right angle to the asteroid's surface, collecting material to a depth of several centimeters.
The bad news is that, while the apparatus did collect enough material beyond the minimum of 2 oz (60 g) to meet one of the main mission requirements, it turns out that some larger pieces of rock jammed open the mylar flap that forms the lid of the sampler, and soil is slowly leaking out. Asteroid sample material slowly leaking from the sampler head NASA
To prevent more sample material being lost, the mission team has decided to alter the scheduled program to avoid any movement of the spacecraft. Instead of carrying out Saturday's Sample Mass Measurement activity and a course correction burn on Friday, the team will now concentrate on shifting the sample to the Sample Return Capsule (SRC) for safekeeping on the return to Earth.
Meanwhile, the spacecraft is reported to be in good health.
"Bennu continues to surprise us with great science and also throwing a few curveballs," says Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science. "And although we may have to move more quickly to stow the sample, it’s not a bad problem to have. We are so excited to see what appears to be an abundant sample that will inspire science for decades beyond this historic moment."
IMAGE: A ROOKERY OF SOUTHERN ROCKHOPPER PENGUINS (EUDYPTES CHRYSOCOME CHRYSOCOME) NEST BETWEEN A ROCKY SLOPE AND A TUSSAC GRASSLAND AND BRING IN NUTRIENTS FROM THE OCEAN DIRECTLY TO THE GRASSES AT... view more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY DULCINEA GROFF
Orono, Maine -- The Falkland Islands are a South Atlantic refuge for some of the world's most important seabird species, including five species of penguins, Great Shearwaters, and White-chinned Petrels. In recent years, their breeding grounds in the coastal tussac (Poa flabellata) grasslands have come under increasing pressure from sheep grazing and erosion. And unlike other regions of the globe, there has been no long-term monitoring of the responses of these burrowing and ground nesting seabirds to climate change.
A 14,000-year paleoecological reconstruction of the sub-Antarctic islands led by University of Maine researchers has found that seabird establishment occurred during a period of regional cooling 5,000 years ago. Their populations, in turn, shifted the Falkland Islands ecosystems through the deposit of high concentrations of guano that helped nourish tussac, produce peat and increase the incidence of fire.
This terrestrial-marine link is critical to the islands' grasslands conservation efforts going forward, says Dulcinea Groff, who led the research as a UMaine Ph.D. student in ecology and environmental sciences, and part of a National Science Foundation-funded Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Research Traineeship (IGERT) in Adaptation to Abrupt Climate Change (A2C2). The connection of nutrients originating in the marine ecosystem that are transferred to the terrestrial ecosystem enrich the islands' nutrient-poor soil, thereby making the Falkland Islands sensitive to changes in climate and land use.
The terrestrial-marine linkage in the Falkland Islands was the focus of Groff's dissertation in 2018.
"Our work emphasizes just how important the nutrients in seabird poop are for the ongoing efforts to restore and conserve their grassland habitats. It also raises the question about where seabirds will go as the climate continues to warm," says Groff, who conducted the research in the Falkland Islands during expeditions in 2014 and 2016 led by Jacquelyn Gill, an associate professor of paleoecology and plant ecology in the UMaine Climate Change Institute.
"Our 14,000-year record shows that seabirds established at Surf Bay during cooler climates. Seabird conservation efforts in the South Atlantic should be prepared for these species to move to new breeding grounds in a warmer world, and those locations may not be protected," says Groff, who is now a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Wyoming.
The UMaine expedition team, which included Kit Hamley, then a master's student in Quaternary studies and a Climate Change Institute Fellow, collected a 476-centimeter peat column from Surf Bay, East Falkland. The 14,000-year record revealed in the undecomposed tussac leaves of the peat column "captures the development of a terrestrial-marine linkage that supports some of the most important breeding colonies of seabirds in the Southern Ocean today," according to the research team, which published its findings in the journal Science Advances.
The absence of seabirds at the East Falklands site prior to 5,000 years ago suggests that seabirds may be sensitive to warmer mediated sea surface temperatures, which can impact their food supply, according to the research team. With a warming South Atlantic today, the question is whether the Falkland Islands, about 300 miles east of South America, will continue to be a seabird breeding "hot spot."
"Our work suggests that as the Southern Ocean continues to warm in the coming decades, the Falkland Islands seabird communities may undergo abrupt turnover or collapse, which could happen on the order of decades," according to the research team, which, in addition to Groff, Hamley (now a UMaine doctoral student) and Gill, involved Trevor Lessard and Kayla Greenawalt of UMaine, Moriaki Yasuhara of the University of Hong Kong, and Paul Brickle of the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute, all co-authors on the American Association for the Advancement of Science journal article.
The Falkland Islands are at the boundary of a number of potential climate drivers, note the researchers. And P. flabellata peatlands have the world's highest accumulation rates, "providing an unusually high-resolution record capable of recording abrupt change" -- preserved charcoal, seabird guano and pollen data that can be used to analyze fire history, seabird population abundance and vegetation composition, respectively.
In the Falklands, where there are no native mammals or trees, settlers introduced sheep in the 17th century. Today, residents make their livelihoods from fishing, sheep farming and tourism.
The 14,000-year record from East Falkland revealed that for 9,000 years before the arrival of seabirds, the region was dominated by low levels of grasses, a heathland of ferns and dwarf Ericaceous shrubs. About 5,000 years ago, the researchers say, an "abrupt transition" appears to occur. Concentrations in bio-elements such as phosphorus and zinc increase. Grass pollen accumulation rates skyrocket, indicating the establishment of tussac grasslands within 200 years of the establishment of seabird colonies on the island. Also found in the core: increased accumulation rates of peat and charcoal.
It's clear that the addition of seabird populations bringing nutrients from the marine environment to the island drove changes in the terrestrial plant community structure, composition and function, according to the researchers, as well as increased fire activity and nutrient cycling.
What remains unclear is what drove the abrupt ecosystem shift, says Gill, one of the world's leading authorities on paleo-ecosystems, including the impacts of climate change and extinction, and the geographical distribution of living things through space and time.
"We know seabirds arrived at Surf Bay during a time when the climate was becoming cooler in the South Atlantic, though we still don't know for sure what it was they were tracking. We also don't know where these birds took refuge when climates were warmer, and that's concerning as the South Atlantic gets hotter into the future," says Gill, an NSF CAREER researcher who most recently was named a 2020 Friend of the Planet by the National Center for Science Education.
"Our study is also a powerful reminder of why we need to understand how different ecosystems are connected as the world warms," says Gill. "We know that many seabirds in the South Atlantic rely on these unique coastal grasslands, but it turns out that the grasses also depend on the nutrients seabirds provide. Because they rely on ecosystems in the ocean and on land for their survival, seabirds are really good sentinels of global change. We just don't have good long-term monitoring data for most of these species, so we don't know enough about how sensitive they are to climate change. The fossil record can help us fill in the gaps."
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DNA in fringe-lipped bat poop reveals unexpected eating habits
IMAGE: HYPOTHESIZED APPROACH OF A SLEEPING WHITE-NECKED JACOBIN, FLORISUGA MELLIVORA, BY THE FRINGE-LIPPED BAT, TRACHOPS CIRRHOSUS. view more
CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY AMY KOEHLER
Poop is full of secrets. For scientists, digging into feces provides insights into animal diets and is particularly useful for understanding nocturnal or rare species. When animals eat, prey DNA travels all the way through animal digestive tracts and comes out again. Poop contains very precise information about the prey species consumed. At the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), a team explored the eating habits of the fringe-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus) by examining its poop.
Bats hunt at night. This makes it challenging to observe their foraging behavior in nature. Analyzing DNA traces in bat guano offers a more specific way to explore how bats feed in the wild and to study how bat behavior changes depending on their eating habits.
"Because bats forage at night, and in the dense forest, you can't observe what they are eating the way you can with a diurnal bird or mammal," said Patricia Jones, former STRI fellow, assistant professor of biology at Bowdoin College and main author of the study. "It feels so momentous, therefore, to have a glimpse into the diet of this species that we thought we knew so much about, to discover they are eating prey we had no idea were part of their diet."
The fringe-lipped bat, also known as the frog-eating bat, is well adjusted to hunting frogs. The bats' hearing is adapted to their low-frequency mating calls, and their salivary glands may neutralize the toxins in the skin of poisonous prey. Fringed-lipped bats also feed on insects, small reptiles or birds and other bats. Researchers knew that these bats often find their prey by eavesdropping on mating calls, but it was unknown if they could find prey that was silent.
As expected, most of the DNA recovered from the poop samples in the study belonged to frog species and plenty of lizards, but researchers also found evidence that the bats were eating other bats and even a hummingbird. In additional experiments, wild-caught fringe-lipped bats exposed to recordings of prey sounds and stationary prey models were able to detect silent, motionless prey, as well as prey that made sounds. This led researchers to conclude that the fringe-lipped bat is more capable of locating prey by echolocation than previously thought.
"This is interesting because we didn't know that these bats were able to detect silent, still prey," said May Dixon, STRI fellow, doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study. "Detecting silent, still prey in the cluttered jungle is thought to be a really hard task for echolocation. This is because when the bats echolocate in the jungle, the echoes of all the leaves and branches bounce back along with the echoes of their prey, and they 'mask' the prey."
These results may offer a new line of research on the sensory abilities and foraging ecology of T. cirrhosus. It also adds to a growing body of work that suggests that, in the tropics, bats may be important nocturnal predators on sleeping animals like birds. The team also found unexpected frog species among its common prey.
"We found T. cirrhosus were often eating frogs in the genus Pristimantis," Jones said. "I think this will open new avenues of research with T. cirrhosus, because Pristimantis call from the canopy and their calls are hard to localize, so if T. cirrhosus are consuming them it means that they are foraging differently than we understood before."
Going forward, this novel combination of dietary DNA analysis with behavioral experiments may be used by other ecologists interested in the foraging behaviors of a wide range of animal species.
"It's really exciting to see the doors that open when animal behavior is combined with metabarcoding," said STRI staff scientist Rachel Page. "Even though we have studied Trachops intensely for decades, we actually know very little about its behavior in the wild. It was completely surprising to see prey items show up in the diet that we never anticipated, such as frog species whose mating calls seemed to lack acoustic parameters helpful for localization and, more surprising, prey that it seems the bats must have detected by echolocation alone, like hummingbirds. This work makes us rethink the sensory mechanisms underlying this bat's foraging behavior, and it opens all kinds of new doors for future questions."
Most of the DNA recovered from the poop samples in the study belonged to frog species and plenty of lizards, but researchers also found evidence that the bats were eating other bats and even a hummingbird.
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Members of the research team are affiliated with STRI, Bowdoin College, SWCA Environmental Consultants and the University of Texas at Austin. Research was funded by the Smithsonian, the National Science Foundation DDIG #1210655 and a P.E.O. Scholar Award.
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. The institute furthers the understanding of tropical biodiversity and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems.
Wildfires can cause dangerous debris flows
Study highlights need for more robust hazard forecasting systems
IMAGE: HOUSE DAMAGED BY DEBRIS FLOWS GENERATED IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY'S MULLALLY CANYON IN RESPONSE TO A RAINSTORM ON FEBRUARY 6, 2010. view more
CREDIT: SUSAN CANNON/USGS
Wildfires don't stop being dangerous after the flames go out. Even one modest rainfall after a fire can cause a deadly landslide, according to new UC Riverside research.
"When fire moves through a watershed, it creates waxy seals that don't allow water to penetrate the soil anymore," explained environmental science doctoral student and study author James Guilinger.
Instead, the rainwater runs off the soil surface causing debris flows, which are fast-moving landslides that usually start on steep hills and accelerate as they move.
"The water doesn't behave like water anymore, it's more like wet cement," Guilinger said. "It can pick up objects as big as boulders that can destroy infrastructure and hurt or even kill people, which is what happened after the 2018 Thomas fire in Montecito."
Guilinger and his team of mentors and collaborators wanted to understand in detail how multiple storm cycles affect an area that's been burned by wildfire, since Southern California tends to have much of its rain in the same season.
The team headed to the burn scar caused by the 23,000-acre Holy Fire near Lake Elsinore to observe this phenomenon, and their results have recently been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface.
"It's only recently that technology has advanced to the point that we can directly monitor soil erosion at extremely small scales," said Andrew Gray, assistant professor of watershed hydrology and Guilinger's advisor. Gray's laboratory works to understand how wildfire impacts the movement of water and sediment through landscapes after wildfire.
Even with the latest technology, the data was not easy to obtain. To deploy their ground-based laser scanner, which uses visible and infrared waves to reconstruct surfaces down to millimeter accuracy, the scientists had to climb steep hill slopes. They also deployed drones in collaboration with Nicolas Barth, assistant professor of geomorphology, in order to zoom out and see up to 10 hectares of land after the storms.
What they found is that most of the soil in channels at the bottom of valleys between hill slopes eroded during the first few rains, even though the rains were relatively modest. The channels fill with material during the years between fires as well as in response to fire, with rain then causing rapid erosion resulting in the debris flows.
"This proves the first storm events that strike an area are the most critical," Guilinger said. "You can't really mitigate them at the source. Instead, people downstream need to be aware of the dangers, and land managers need hazard modeling tools to help them respond effectively and create a plan to catch the sediment as it flows."
U.S. Geological Survey models incorporate widely available 10-meter data for watershed slopes and information about burn severity from satellite images to estimate the probability and magnitude of debris flow that would occur under a given amount of rainfall.
However, elevation data at the 1-meter scale is becoming more widely available in fire-prone areas like California. This more refined data could allow the researchers to extract finer-scale information, such as variations in hill slope gradient and the shape of water channels that may play a large role in controlling debris flows.
"We can use data like these and the results of studies like ours to inform dynamically updating hazard models in the future," Guilinger said. "Rather than have a single set of predictions for the entire wet season, we may be able to update these models after each storm."
Guilinger plans to use funding from the federal Joint Fire Science Program to improve upon existing hazard models.
"This could prove very useful to land managers either immediately affected by or planning to mitigate the dangerous aftermath of wildfires," he said.
Time lapse images of a 2019 debris flow in the burn scar of the Holy Fire near Lake Elsinore.
Study finds field of forensic anthropology lacks diversity
Pathways for success for students and practitioners from diverse backgrounds needs to be created
(Boston)--The field of forensic anthropology is a relatively homogenous discipline in terms of diversity (people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with mental and physical disabilities, etc.) and this is highly problematic for the field of study and for most forensic anthropologists.
At the core of the forensic sciences are basic sciences and the STEM fields, which have struggled with increasing diversity and inclusion. The lack of diversity in the STEM fields and the forensic sciences is concerning because it can limit the types of questions being asked in research.
"As forensic practitioners, we do not reflect the demographics of the highly dynamic populations that we serve across the country. Relevant and successful research relies on a diversity of ideas, perspectives and experiences, and without such diversity, the field stagnates and does not keep up with important issues that are relevant to society," explained corresponding author Sean Tallman, PhD, RPA, assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM).
In order to explore the demographics of the forensic anthropological community and perceptions of diversity and inclusion, an anonymous survey was sent out to the Anthropology Section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), which included more than 500 individuals. The survey consisted of 48 questions that asked about demographic information; whether participants believe that diversity exists in various educational contexts; their experience with diversity, inclusion, and harassment at the AAFS annual meetings; and what the field could do to increase diversity and inclusion.
The data then was analyzed for trends in order to propose actionable measures that could produce meaningful change that positively impacts diversity and inclusion in forensic anthropology. According to the researchers they found many forensic anthropologists had experienced or witnessed discriminatory behavior within the AAFS, which is the scientific society that most forensic practitioners maintain membership in the U.S. "Problematically, many individuals in forensic anthropology do not know how to report incidents of discrimination or harassment that occur at the AAFS," added Tallman.
While the discipline has been slow to address issues of diversity, inclusion and discrimination, Tallman believes the field can mitigate these issues through regular tracking of membership demographics by the AAFS, reassessing graduate admission requirements and indicators of success, creating mechanisms for reporting discrimination and harassment, targeted outreach, and developing mentorship opportunities.
"Striving for a culture of diversity through inclusion in forensic anthropology helps to reflect the greater populations that we serve and encourages us to challenge our own assumptions and inherent biases that can complicate the analysis of skeletal remains in forensic casework. Diversity and inclusion initiatives should be substantial and well-supported, rather than merely token gestures to increase the number of minorities or underrepresented groups."
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These findings appear online in the journal Forensic Anthropology.
Seeing no longer believing: the manipulation of online images
Online images are not always what they seem, especially on social media
IMAGE: A MANIPULATED IMAGE SHARED WIDELY ON SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THE 2019-2020 AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES. view more
CREDIT: DR T.J. THOMSON, QUT'S DIGITAL MEDIA RESEARCH CENTRE
A peace sign from Martin Luther King, Jr, becomes a rude gesture; President Donald Trump's inauguration crowd scenes inflated; dolphins in Venice's Grand Canal; and crocodiles on the streets of flooded Townsville - all manipulated images posted as truth.
Image editing software is so ubiquitous and easy to use, according to researchers from QUT's Digital Media Research Centre, it has the power to re-imagine history.
And, they say, deadline-driven journalists lack the tools to tell the difference, especially when the images come through from social media.
Their study, Visual mis/disinformation in journalism and public communications, has been published in Journalism Practice. It was driven by the increased prevalence of fake news and how social media platforms and news organisations are struggling to identify and combat visual mis/disinformation presented to their audiences.
"When Donald Trump's staff posted an image to his official Facebook page in 2019, journalists were able to spot the photoshopped edits to the president's skin and physique because an unedited version exists on the White House's official Flickr feed," said lead author Dr T.J. Thomson.
"But what about when unedited versions aren't available online and journalists can't rely on simple reverse-image searches to verify whether an image is real or has been manipulated?
"When it is possible to alter past and present images, by methods like cloning, splicing, cropping, re-touching or re-sampling, we face the danger of a re-written history - a very Orwellian scenario."
Examples highlighted in the report include photos shared by news outlets last year of crocodiles on Townsville streets during a flood which were later shown to be images of alligators in Florida from 2014. It also quotes a Reuters employee on their discovery that a harrowing video shared during Cyclone Idai, which devastated parts of Africa in 2019, had been shot in Libya five years earlier.
An image of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's reaction to the US Senate's passing of the civil rights bill in 1964, was manipulated to make it appear that he was flipping the bird to the camera. This edited version was shared widely on Twitter, Reddit, and white supremacist website The Daily Stormer.
Dr Thomson, Associate Professor Daniel Angus, Dr Paula Dootson, Dr Edward Hurcombe, and Adam Smith have mapped journalists' current social media verification techniques and suggest which tools are most effective for which circumstances.
"Detection of false images is made harder by the number of visuals created daily - in excess of 3.2 billion photos and 720,000 hours of video - along with the speed at which they are produced, published, and shared," said Dr Thomson.
"Other considerations include the digital and visual literacy of those who see them. Yet being able to detect fraudulent edits masquerading as reality is critically important.
"While journalists who create visual media are not immune to ethical breaches, the practice of incorporating more user-generated and crowd-sourced visual content into news reports is growing. Verification on social media will have to increase commensurately if we wish to improve trust in institutions and strengthen our democracy."
Dr Thomson said a recent quantitative study performed by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) found a very low usage of social media verification tools in newsrooms.
"The ICFJ surveyed over 2,700 journalists and newsroom managers in more than 130 countries and found only 11% of those surveyed used social media verification tools," he said.
"The lack of user-friendly forensic tools available and low levels of digital media literacy, combined, are chief barriers to those seeking to stem the tide of visual mis/disinformation online."
Associate Professor Angus said the study demonstrated an urgent need for better tools, developed with journalists, to provide greater clarity around the provenance and authenticity of images and other media.
"Despite knowing little about the provenance and veracity of the visual content they encounter, journalists have to quickly determine whether to re-publish or amplify this content," he said.
"The many examples of misattributed, doctored, and faked imagery attest to the importance of accuracy, transparency, and trust in the arena of public discourse. People generally vote and make decisions based on information they receive via friends and family, politicians, organisations, and journalists."
The researchers cite current manual detection strategies - using a reverse image search, examining image metadata, examining light and shadows; and using image editing software - but say more tools need to be developed, including more advanced machine learning methods, to verify visuals on social media.
The original photo of US President Donald Trump (left) and the edited version of him (right) that he shared on his official Instagram and Facebook accounts.
CREDIT
Dr T.J. Thomson, QUT's Digital Media Research Centre.
Extruded grains may be better for pigs
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
URBANA, Ill. - Extrusion is the norm in the pet and aqua feed industries, yet it remains unusual for swine feed in the United States. But the technology can improve energy and protein digestibility in pigs, according to research from the University of Illinois.
"We're not doing this much in the U.S., partly because the extrusion equipment typically is not installed in feed mills producing pig feeds. If a feed company decided they wanted to extrude diets or extrude grain by itself, as we did in this case, it would add cost. So the only way it would be economical would be if the pigs performed better with extruded grains," says Hans H. Stein, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Illinois and co-author on a study in Animal Feed Science and Technology.
Stein and his research team compared pig diets containing either extruded or unprocessed corn, wheat, and sorghum to determine ileal starch and amino acid digestibility, as well as total tract digestibility of energy and fiber. One source of each grain was ground and then divided in two batches, with one batch left as is and the other extruded in a single-screw extruder with an exit temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. Grains were ground and extruded at Kansas State University, but extrusion equipment at the new Feed Technology Center at Illinois will facilitate future research to help meet the growing global demand for animal protein.
"In extruded corn and wheat, we saw a nice improvement in amino acid digestibility. Corn in particular," Stein says. "And we observed increases for energy in extruded corn and sorghum, but not in wheat."
Starch digestibility also increased in extruded grains, compared with unprocessed grains.
"Starch is already well digested by pigs, but by extruding it, we increase its digestibility even more. And we have seen in quite a few other experiments, every time we increase starch digestibility, we increase energy digestibility," Stein says. "There's a very, very close relationship between the two."
The mechanical process of extrusion, which involves heat, pressure, and steam, leads to gelatinization of starch, which explains the link between starch and energy digestibility.
"In the extruded grains, 90% of the starch was gelatinized," Stein says. "Gelatinization opens the starch molecule, making it easier for enzymes to break down every bond within the starch. That leads to greater energy digestibility and absorption."
Fiber digestibility didn't change markedly in extruded grains versus unprocessed grains, but more of the fiber content became soluble with extrusion. "That means some of the insoluble fibers were solubilized. But because fiber digestibility didn't increase overall, that didn't have as much of an impact as we had expected," Stein says.
With pigs extracting more energy and protein from extruded grains, Stein sees a potential economic benefit that could justify the cost of adding extruding equipment to feed mills.
"If feed manufacturers can increase the energy as much as we did in our study, then there certainly is value in extruding grain for pig diets," he says.
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The article, "Digestibility of amino acids, fiber, and energy by growing pigs, and concentrations of digestible and metabolizable energy in yellow dent corn, hard red winter wheat, and sorghum may be influenced by extrusion," is published in Animal Feed Science and Technology [DOI: 10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2020.114602]. Authors include Diego A. Rodriguez, Su A. Lee, Cassandra K. Jones, John K. Htoo, and Hans H. Stein. The research was supported by Evonik Nutrition & Care.
The Department of Animal Sciences, the Division of Nutritional Sciences, and the Feed Technology Center are part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.
PTSD and alcohol abuse go hand-in-hand, but males and females exhibit symptoms differently
In rodent experiments modeled to mimic real-life circumstances, scientists revealed brain mechanisms that could lead to targeted treatments.
LA JOLLA, CA--Through intricate experiments designed to account for sex-specific differences, scientists at Scripps Research have collaborated to zero in on certain changes in the brain that may be responsible for driving alcohol abuse among people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
In studies with rodents, researchers found that males and females exhibit their own distinct symptoms and brain features of PTSD and alcohol use disorder. Such differences are not typically accounted for in laboratory-based studies yet could lead to more successful clinical treatments.
The findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, also present a new model for identifying biomarkers that may indicate a person with PTSD is more likely to develop alcohol use disorder.
"Having PTSD significantly increases the risk of developing alcohol use disorder, as individuals use alcohol to cope with stress and anxiety. Yet the underlying biology of comorbid disorders is generally not well understood," says Dean Kirson, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in neurophysiology in the lab of professor Marisa Roberto, PhD, and a co-lead author with Michael Steinman, PhD. "We hope our new knowledge of sex-specific changes in the brain will help propel the development of more targeted treatments."
About 7 percent to 8 percent of the country's population will have PTSD at some point in their life, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Causes include combat exposure, physical abuse, an accident or other forms of trauma. Alcohol abuse disorder is also common, affecting some 15 million people in the United States. Those with stress and anxiety disorders such as PTSD are not only more likely to abuse alcohol, but also have increased alcohol withdrawal symptoms and relapse risk.
"Most people know or will know someone struggling with one or both of these disorders and may try to help them. However, there are very few effective treatments currently," Roberto says. "Both are complex disorders that affect similar brain circuitry. My lab has been studying addiction and stress separately, so here we teamed up with the Zorrilla lab to apply a novel translationally-relevant behavioral model to examine what changes occur when these disorders are comorbid."
The joint study between Roberto and Eric Zorrilla, PhD--who are co-senior authors--examined behavior, sleep patterns, inflammatory immune responses and levels of a neurotransmitter known as GABA (short for gamma-Aminobutyric acid), which lowers anxiety and increases feelings of relaxation and is a common feature of alcohol dependence
For both male and female rats, traumatic stress and alcohol exacerbated other behaviors common in PTSD, such as social avoidance startle reactions and defensive behavior. Those who were identified as "drinking-vulnerable" prior to trauma most strongly showed avoidance of trauma-reminiscent places.
However, the scientists noted key differences in how males and females behave following trauma and saw markedly different patterns of GABA signaling. For example, males showed increased GABA receptor function, while females showed increased GABA release.
"This may be important because there is growing awareness that medicines could potentially have different levels of effectiveness in male and female patients and understanding the biology that explains why these differences exist could improve outcomes," Steinman says.
The team also found that males exhibited an immune-based biomarker--small proteins known as cytokines, which are secreted by immune cells--that determined vulnerability to alcohol use disorder. The females did not.
"We identified profiles of specific cytokines, many not previously linked to stress behaviors, that strongly related to poor drinking outcomes," says Zorilla, associate professor
In the Department of Molecular Medicine. "These may be important clinically or even mechanistically, but they were unique to males, so we have work ahead of us to find similar biomarkers for females."
The Roberto and Zorrilla labs plan to conduct additional research into the mechanisms behind the biological changes they observed and test which brain systems can be targeted to treat both PTSD and alcohol abuse.
"We also plan to further investigate the role of the immune system in these disorders," Roberto says. "These distinct biomarkers may aid in targeted treatment."
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The study, "Importance of sex and trauma context on circulating cytokines and amygdalar GABAergic signaling in a comorbid model of posttraumatic stress and alcohol use disorders," was authored by Michael Steinman, Dean Kirson, Sarah Wolfe, Sophia Khom, Shannon D'Ambrosio, Samantha Spierling Bagsic, Michal Bajo, Roman Vlkolinský, Noah Hoang, Anshita Singhal, Suhas Sureshchandra, Christopher Oleata, Ilhem Messaoudi, Eric Zorrilla and Marisa Roberto.
Support for this study was provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA027700, AA013498, P60 AA006420, AA017447, AA021491, AA015566, K99 AA026638 and T32 AA007456), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21 DA046865) and the Pearson Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Research.
