Swarm of autonomous tiny drones can localize gas leaks

DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

IMAGE: A SWARM OF TINY DRONES ENTERING A BUILDING IN SEARCH OF A GAS LEAK. THE RESEARCH TEAM USED MODIFIED "CRAZYFLIE " DRONES, WHICH ARE 12 CM IN DIAMETER WEIGHED ONLY 37.5... view more 

CREDIT: MAVLAB/TU DELFT

When there is a gas leak in a large building or at an industrial site, human firefighters currently need to go in with gas sensing instruments. Finding the gas leak may take considerable time, while they are risking their lives. Researchers from TU Delft (the Netherlands), University of Barcelona, and Harvard University have now developed the first swarm of tiny - and hence very safe - drones that can autonomously detect and localize gas sources in cluttered indoor environments.

The main challenge the researchers needed to solve was to design the Artificial Intelligence for this complex task that would fit in the tight computational and memory constraints of the tiny drones. They solved this challenge by means of bio-inspired navigation and search strategies. The scientific article has now been made public on the ArXiv article server, and it will be presented at the renowned IROS robotics conference later this year. The work forms an important step in the intelligence of small robots and will allow finding gas leaks more efficiently and without the risk of human lives in real-world environments.

Autonomous gas source localization

Autonomous gas source localization is a complex task. For one, artificial gas sensors are currently less capable than animal noses in detecting small amounts of gas and staying sensitive to quick changes in gas concentration. Moreover, the environment in which the gas spreads can be complex. Consequently, much of the research in this area has focused on single robots that search for a gas source in rather small, obstacle-free environments in which the source is easier to find.

Swarms of tiny drones

"We are convinced that swarms of tiny drones are a promising avenue for autonomous gas source localization", says Guido de Croon, Full Professor at the Micro Air Vehicle laboratory of TU Delft. "The drones' tiny size makes them very safe to any humans and property still in the building, while their flying capability will allow them to eventually search for the source in three dimensions. Moreover, their small size allows them to fly in narrow indoor areas. Finally, having a swarm of these drones allows them to localize a gas source quicker, while escaping local maxima of gas concentration in order to find the true source."

However, these properties also make it very hard to instill the drones with the necessary artificial intelligence for autonomous gas source localization. The onboard sensing and processing is extremely limited, excluding the type of AI algorithms that make self-driving cars autonomous. Moreover, operating in a swarm brings its own challenges, since the drones need to be aware of each other for collision avoidance and collaboration.

Bio-inspired Artificial Intelligence

"Actually, in nature there are ample examples of successful navigation and odor source localization within strict resource constraints.", says Bart Duisterhof, who performed the research for obtaining his MSc thesis at TU Delft. "Just think of how fruitflies with their tiny brains of ~100,000 neurons infallibly locate the bananas in your kitchen in the summer. They do this by elegantly combining simple behaviors such as flying upwind or orthogonally to the wind depending on whether they sense the odor. Although we could not directly copy these behaviors due to the absence of airflow sensors on our robots, we have instilled our robots with similarly simple behaviors to tackle the task."

In particular, the tiny drones implement a new "bug" algorithm for their navigation, termed "Sniffy Bug". As long as no drone has sensed any gas, the drones spread out as much as possible over the environment, while avoiding obstacles and each other. If one of the drones senses gas at its location, it communicates this to the others. From that point on, the drones will collaborate with each other to find the gas source as soon as possible. Specifically, the swarm then performs a search for maximal gas concentration with an algorithm termed "particle swarm optimization" (PSO), with each drone being a "particle". This algorithm was originally modelled after the social behavior and motion of bird flocks. It has each drone moving based on its own perceived highest gas concentration location, the swarm's highest location, and an inertia in its current moving direction. As a search strategy, PSO has the advantage that it only requires measuring the gas concentration, and not the gas concentration gradient or wind direction. Furthermore, it allows the swarm to ignore local maxima that may occur in complex environments.

The path to real-world applications

"This research shows that swarms of tiny drones can perform very complex tasks.", adds Guido, "We hope that this work forms an inspiration for other robotics researchers to rethink the type of AI that is necessary for autonomous flight."

The development of this type of technology to a fully functioning product still requires further work. For instance, the current work does not yet tackle moving in three dimensions to locate gas sources at a height. Furthermore, the robustness of navigation should also be improved before deploying the drones in a real emergency scenario.

However, the current work is very promising. The developed algorithms are not only useful for detecting gas leaks in buildings, but also for scientific missions such as detecting methane on Mars or economical use such as the early detection of diseases or pests in greenhouses.

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More information

Scientific article:

Sniffy Bug: A Fully Autonomous Swarm of Gas-Seeking Nano Quadcopters in Cluttered Environments, by B.P. Duisterhof, S. Li, J. Burgués, V.J. Reddi, and G.C.H.E. de Croon, accepted at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2021 (IROS 2021). - Preprint available at the Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.05490

Video at: https://youtu.be/hj_SBSpK5qg

Video playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_KSX9GOn2P-J5qh90Y-9fw2ODcxYtFap

More information at: http://mavlab.tudelft.nl/

 

Personalised 3D printed knee implant could help thousands of arthritis sufferers

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Research News

IMAGE: THE BESPOKE IMPLANT PRESERVES THE EXISTING JOINT AND CAN BE USED AT AN EARLIER STAGE OF ARTHRITIS, BEFORE A KNEE REPLACEMENT IS NEEDED. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Pioneering 'printed metal' procedure to create bespoke treatment for early knee osteoarthritis set to be trialled in the UK following MHRA approval.

• World's first 3D printed high tibial osteotomy (HTO) device and procedure developed at University of Bath given approval for UK trials
• Bespoke titanium alloy HTO implants that fit perfectly are designed to reduce discomfort for knee osteoarthritis patients
• Sophisticated 3D scanning aims to make surgery quicker and safer
• New TOKA process could make earlier intervention possible - saving patients decades of pain before surgery becomes viable

Intro

A groundbreaking new treatment that uses 3D printed implants and that could bring relief to tens of thousands of knee osteoarthritis sufferers has received approval to be trialled in UK patients, following a virtual "in-silico" trial that demonstrated its safety.

The personalised early knee osteoarthritis treatment, developed by engineers at the University of Bath's Centre for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), uses state of the art 3D metal printing technology to make personalised medical-grade titanium-alloy plates that perfectly fit every patient.

The TOKA (Tailored Osteotomy for Knee Alignment) treatment improves the operative procedure and fit of high-tibial osteotomy (HTO) plates used to realign a patient's knee, making them more stable, comfortable and better able to bear weight than existing generic plates. The technique also simplifies HTO surgery, making operations quicker and therefore safer.

The HTO plates have already been safety tested virtually, in a computer-based trial using CT scan data from 28 patients. The in-silico clinical trial, the first in the world to demonstrate the safety of an orthopaedic device, modelled the stresses that would be exerted on the bespoke plates and showed that they would be comparable in safety to the standard treatment.

Professor Richie Gill, from the Centre for Therapeutic Innovation, says: "Knee osteoarthritis is a major health, social and economic issue and does not receive as much attention as it should. A quarter of women over 45 have it, and about 15 percent of men, so it's a significant burden that many live with.

"Knee replacement is only useful for end-stage osteoarthritis, so you can be in pain and have to live with a disability for a long time, potentially decades, before it's possible. We hope that the new TOKA process we've developed will change that."

Knee osteoarthritis patients undergoing TOKA will undergo a 3D CT scan of their knee, before a personalised 3D printed surgical guide and plate, both shaped to their tibia (shin) bone is created. The surgical guide simplifies the surgery, and is designed to improve surgical accuracy.

The process also sees the first implementation of 3D printed screw threads into the HTO plates, meaning they can be optimally positioned to help secure them against the bone.

Trials to begin once clinical centres reopen for elective surgery

When clinical centres return to carrying out elective surgery, expected later this year, the trials will begin. Hospitals in Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff will take part in a randomised control trial to compare patient outcomes with an existing generic HTO procedure.

Tests of the TOKA technique have already begun in Italy, where so far 25 patients received new personalised HTO plates as part of a trial at the Rizzoli Institute in Bologna.

High Tibial Osteotomy (HTO) surgery realigns the knee joint by making a cut to the tibia (shin bone) and opening a small gap, which needs to be stabilised by a metal plate. This realignment moves the loading to a less 'worn' part of the knee. Patient outcomes depend on how accurately the cut is made and the gap opened.

Prof Gill adds: "The HTO surgery has a long clinical history and it has very good results if done accurately. The difficulty surgeons have is achieving high accuracy, which is why we have created the TOKA method, which starts with a CT scan and digital plan.

"3D printing the custom knee implant and doing the scanning before operating means surgeons will know exactly what they'll see before operating and where the implant will go."

"In addition to a surgeon being able to precisely plan an operation, a surgical guide (or jig) and a plate implant, each personalised to the patient, can be 3D printed automatically based on the scanning data.

"Importantly this type of treatment relieves the symptoms of knee osteoarthritis while preserving the natural joint."

The pre-planning element greatly simplifies surgery and could cut the time on the operating table from two hours to around 30 minutes.

The work to date and UK trial is supported and funded by Versus Arthritis UK. The in silico trial has been published in Communications Medicine.

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New evidence of an anomalous phase of matter brings energy-efficient technologies closer

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Research News

Researchers have found evidence for an anomalous phase of matter that was predicted to exist in the 1960s. Harnessing its properties could pave the way to new technologies able to share information without energy losses. These results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

While investigating a quantum material, the researchers from the University of Cambridge who led the study observed the presence of unexpectedly fast waves of energy rippling through the material when they exposed it to short and intense laser pulses. They were able to make these observations by using a microscopic speed camera that can track small and very fast movement on a scale that is challenging with many other techniques. This technique probes the material with two light pulses: the first one disturbs it and creates waves - or oscillations - propagating outward in concentric circles, in the same way as dropping a rock into a pond; the second light pulse takes a snapshot of these waves at various times. Put together, these images allowed them to look at how these waves behave, and to understand their 'speed limit.'

"At room temperature, these waves move at a hundredth of the speed of light, much faster than we would expect in a normal material. But when we go to higher temperatures, it is as if the pond has frozen," explained first author Hope Bretscher, who carried out this research at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. "We don't see these waves moving away from the rock at all. We spent a long time searching for why such bizarre behaviour could occur."

The only explanation that seemed to fit all the experimental observations was that the material hosts, at room temperature, an "excitonic insulator" phase of matter, which while theoretically predicted, had eluded detection for decades.

"In an excitonic insulator, the observed waves of energy are supported by charge neutral particles that can move at electron-like velocities. Importantly, these particles could transport information without being hindered by the dissipation mechanisms that, in most common materials, affect charged particles like electrons," said Dr Akshay Rao from the Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research. "This property could provide a simpler route toward room-temperature, energy-saving computation than that of superconductivity."

The Cambridge team then worked with theorists around the world to develop a model about how this excitonic insulating phase exists, and why these waves behave in this way.

"Theorists predicted the existence of this anomalous phase decades ago, but the experimental challenges to see evidence of this has meant that only now we are able to apply previously developed frameworks to provide a better picture of how it behaves in a real material," commented Yuta Murakami, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, who collaborated on the study.

"The dissipationless energy transfer challenges our current understanding of transport in quantum materials and opens theorists' imaginations to new ways for their future manipulation," said collaborator Denis Gole�, from the Jozef Stefan Institute and University of Ljubljana.

"This work puts us a step closer toward achieving some incredibly energy-efficient applications that can harness this property, including in computers." concluded Dr Rao.

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Reference:

Hope M. Bretscher et al. 'Imaging the coherent propagation of collective modes in the excitonic insulator Ta2NiSe5 at room temperature', Science Advances (July 2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd6147

 

Cocoa bean DNA testing offers path to end slavery and child labour in chocolate industry

Research shows low-cost DNA biomarker technique can trace cocoa from a specific farm to the chocolate bar in your hand

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

VIDEO: MICHAEL ROGERSON DISCUSSES THE DNA RESEARCH AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BATH PRESS OFFICE/MICHAEL ROGERSON

A new method of DNA testing on cocoa beans could revolutionise the chocolate industry, offering consumers greater reassurance about the origins and ethics of their beloved confectionery, and giving the global cocoa industry a precision tool to help end slavery and child labour.

Researchers from the University of Bath, University of the West of England, and Surrey Business School have proven a low-cost method which compares DNA in chocolate products to the cocoa when it is farmed. This means cocoa can be reliably traced back from an individual chocolate bar to the specific farms which cultivated the cocoa in it, a major advance on current fairtrading, certification and sustainability practices.

"This has the potential to revolutionise sustainability in a market rife with environmental destruction and human misery in that firms will now be able to buy from a specific set of known farms which have approved labour and environmental standards and to prove that their chocolate is made with that cocoa," said Michael Rogerson, researcher at the University of Bath School of Management.

"And activists, NGOs, and governments, will be able to prove that the chocolate bar you buy in your local supermarket contains cocoa grown on farms which abuse the environment or employ child or forced labour. We know consumers care about this - but they need accurate, reliable information to make ethical choices," Rogerson said.

Rogerson said the research team had developed a method where the DNA sampling would cost around £5 per farm, putting this well within the reach of the $78 billion cocoa supply industry, and government and NGO foreign aid budgets.

"It would cost a tiny fraction of the industry's revenues to build such a database in Ghana and Ivory Coast, which is the source of more than 70% of the world's cocoa production. There are an estimated 2.2 million child labourers working on farms in West Africa and reports suggest the problems are worsening despite promises made by large chocolate producers," he said.

Rogerson said the research team's interviews of chocolate and cocoa industry stakeholders along the whole supply chain revealed a certain 'fatalism' about the child labour issue and a sense it was too great a problem to tackle.

The interviews also showed third-party ethical certification and labelling was regarded primarily as a marketing ploy, easily understood by consumers, considered desirable, but ultimately in need of improvement to be meaningful.

"What we are offering industry is a way to break out of that fatalism, and consumers the reassurance that when they pick an 'ethical' product that it is genuinely ethical. We could also see third-party certifiers like Fairtrade or the Rainforest Alliance strengthening their offering and credibility with this," he said.

Rogerson said the difficulty of tracing cocoa from farms to the end product was at the heart of the issue. The majority of the world's cocoa is collected by small-scale traders and taken to larger trading facilities, where vast quantities are traded on international markets. Tracing beans back to the farm of origin is a challenge due to the number of different parties aggregating and mixing crops early in the supply chain. He said current certification systems, while laudable in their intent, were not addressing the core issues.

"And this is not a new issue. During our research we found reports that in 1905 Cadbury investigated claims of abuses on cocoa plantations on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, in Central Africa. The industry has known of the problems for over 100 years, and not yet found a viable solution to trace cocoa through supply chains, perhaps until now," he said

Biomarkers - biochemical 'barcodes' extracted from plant DNA - offer a way to resolve this issue, Rogerson said.

Biomarkers are unique indicators of a plant and the particular environment in which it plant is grown. Biomarkers in cocoa beans are sufficiently hardy that they can survive the industrial processes used in chocolate making, allowing for the identification of individual cocoa farm beans from a mixture of different origins in final products.

Biomarkers are produced by isolating DNA at cocoa farms, enabling the creation of a database of those markers specific to each farm. Further biomarkers can be taken from the location of cocoa fermentation as these also have unique signatures. Once a database has been created with sufficient samples, chocolate bought anywhere in the world can be traced back to farms of origin. This enables a chocolate producer, or even a customer given access to the right technology, to know precisely where the cocoa in their chocolate comes from.

Rogerson said the solution had been proven in a small pilot study but the approach would need operationalization at scale, something the chocolate industry could accomplish, given the will or incentive to act.

"If the method can be scaled effectively there can be no excuses for continued abuses within chocolate supply chains. Claims that farms are too widespread or remote, or that the trading of cocoa through various intermediaries makes it impossible to trace become suddenly empty. I would like the chocolate industry and governments to honestly face this ethical challenge - we have developed a tool they can deploy in that fight," he said.

Notes to editors

* For further information please contact Tony Roddam at the University of Bath press office on +44 7971 500460 or press@bath.ac.uk

The University of Bath is one of the UK's leading universities both in terms of research and our reputation for excellence in teaching, learning and graduate prospects.

The University is rated Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), the Government's assessment of teaching quality in universities, meaning its teaching is of the highest quality in the UK.

In the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 research assessment 87 per cent of our research was defined as 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent'. From developing fuel efficient cars of the future, to identifying infectious diseases more quickly, or working to improve the lives of female farmers in West Africa, research from Bath is making a difference around the world. Find out more: http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/

Well established as a nurturing environment for enterprising minds, Bath is ranked highly in all national league tables. We are ranked 6th in the UK by The Guardian University Guide 2021, and 9th in The Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021 and 10th in the Complete University Guide 2021. Our sports offering was rated as being in the world's top 10 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject in 2021.

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A star in a distant galaxy blew up in a powerful explosion, solving an astronomical mystery

Giant explosion in space illuminates thousand-year mystery

TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE COLOR COMPOSITE OF THE ELECTRON-CAPTURE SUPERNOVA 2018ZD AND THE HOST STARBURST GALAXY NGC 2146 view more 

CREDIT: NASA/STSCI/J. DEPASQUALE; LAS CUMBRES OBSERVATORY

Dr. Iair Arcavi, a Tel Aviv University researcher at the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, participated in a study that discovered a new type of stellar explosion - an electron-capture supernova. While they have been theorized for 40 years, real-world examples have been elusive. Such supernovas arise from the explosions of stars 8-9 times the mass of the sun. The discovery also sheds new light on the thousand-year mystery of the supernova from A.D. 1054 that was seen by ancient astronomers, before eventually becoming the Crab Nebula, that we know today.

A supernova is the explosion of a star following a sudden imbalance between two opposing forces that shaped the star throughout its life. Gravity tries to contract every star. Our sun, for example, counter balances this force through nuclear fusion in its core, which produces pressure that opposes the gravitational pull. As long as there is enough nuclear fusion, gravity will not be able to collapse the star. However, eventually, nuclear fusion will stop, just like gas runs out in a car, and the star will collapse. For stars like the sun, the collapsed core is called a white dwarf. This material in white dwarfs is so dense that quantum forces between electrons prevent further collapse.

For stars 10 times more massive than our sun, however, electron quantum forces are not enough to stop the gravitational pull, and the core continues to collapse until it becomes a neutron star or a black hole, accompanied by a giant explosion. In the intermediate mass range, the electrons are squeezed (or more accurately, captured) onto atomic nuclei. This removes the electron quantum forces, and causes the star to collapse and then explode.

Historically, there have been two main supernova types. One is a thermonuclear supernova -- the explosion of a white dwarf star after it gains matter in a binary star system. These white dwarfs are the dense cores of ash that remain after a low-mass star (one up to about 8 times the mass of the sun) reaches the end of its life. Another main supernova type is a core-collapse supernova where a massive star -- one more than about 10 times the mass of the sun -- runs out of nuclear fuel and has its core collapsed, creating a black hole or a neutron star. Theoretical work suggested that electron-capture supernovae would occur on the borderline between these two types of supernovae.

That's the theory that was developed in the 1980's by Ken'ichi Nomoto of the University of Tokyo, and others. Over the decades, theorists have formulated predictions of what to look for in an electron-capture supernova. The stars should lose a lot of mass of particular composition before exploding, and the supernova itself should be relatively weak, have little radioactive fallout, and produce neutron-rich elements.

The new study, published in Nature Astronomy, focuses on the supernova SN2018zd, discovered in 2018 by Japanese amateur astronomer Koihchi Itagaki. Dr. Iair Arcavi, of the astrophysics department at Tel Aviv University, also took part in the study. This supernova, located in the galaxy NGC 2146, has all of the properties expected from an electron-capture supernova, which were not seen in any other supernova. In addition, because the supernova is relatively nearby - only 31 million light years away - the researchers were able to identify the star in pre-explosion archival images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Indeed, the star itself also fits the predictions of the type of star that should explode as an electron-capture supernovae, and is unlike stars that were seen to explode as the other types of supernovae.

While some supernovae discovered in the past had a few of the indicators predicted for electron-capture supernovae, only SN2018zd had all six - a progenitor star that fits within the expected mass range, strong pre-supernova mass loss, an unusual chemical composition, a weak explosion, little radioactivity, and neutron-rich material. "We started by asking 'what's this weirdo?'" said Daichi Hiramatsu of the University of California Santa Barbara and Las Cumbres Observatory, who led the study. "Then we examined every aspect of SN 2018zd and realized that all of them can be explained in the electron-capture scenario."

The new discoveries also illuminate some mysteries of one of the most famous supernovae of the past. In A.D. 1054 a supernova happened in our own Milky Way Galaxy, and according to Chinese and Japanese records, it was so bright that it could be seen in the daytime and cast shadows at night. The resulting remnant, the Crab Nebula, has been studied in great detail, and was found to have an unusual composition. It was previously the best candidate for an electron-capture supernova, but this was uncertain partly because the explosion happened nearly a thousand years ago. The new result increases the confidence that the historic 1054 supernova was an electron-capture supernova.

"It's amazing that we can shed light on historical events in the Universe with modern instruments," says Dr. Arcavi. "Today, with robotic telescopes that scan the sky in unprecedented efficiency, we can discover more and more rare events which are critical for understanding the laws of nature, without having to wait 1000 years between one event and the next."

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Dr. Arcavi is a member of the Global Supernova Project, and makes use of the Las Cumbres telescope network to study rare transient phenomena like supernovae, neutron star mergers, and stars torn apart by black holes.

Link to the original article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01384-2

 

'Greta Thunberg Effect' belies challenges for autistic community in going green

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Research News

Autistic people need extra help in going green say researchers behind a new study which argues for a more inclusive environmental agenda.

Climate action movements are gathering extraordinary pace due to international campaigners like Greta Thunberg, whose autism has been well documented. Being autistic has been used to explain and celebrate, but also diminish and denigrate, her activism.

Thunberg, for example, reports that being autistic is a psychological "gift" and "superpower" that underpins her environmental attitudes and behaviours. This has fuelled speculation - in the media and the general public - that autistic personality traits are intrinsically linked to environmentalism. But, until now, there was no investigation to test the autistic aspect of the so-called 'Greta Thunberg Effect'.

Now a new study from the universities of Bath, Cardiff, Essex, and King's College London, in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, suggests that autistic personality traits are unrelated to environmental attitudes. In contrast they can be linked to lower engagement in pro-environmental green behaviours.

Reflecting on their findings based on data from over 2,000 people in the UK and US, they discuss several reasons why people with autistic traits might face challenges going green. This includes sensory challenges that can act as a barrier to using noisy and crowded public transport, as well as issues over changing diet to reduce meat consumption.

The researchers conclude that autism spectrum conditions can present obstacles for pro-environmental action and are calling for greater support for people with autism and mental health conditions as well as more research on the topic.

Practical support might include adapting cognitive behavioural therapy, which is commonly used to facilitate behaviour change in people with mental health conditions, to support pro-environmental behaviours. They suggest it is also important to consider early environmental education for families and teachers supporting children with neurodevelopmental and metal health conditions.

Dr Punit Shah, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Bath and the GW4 Neurodevelopmental Neurodiversity Network, explained: "The 'Greta Thunberg Effect' has powerfully emerged in recent years, with many focussing on her autism diagnosis to explain her environmental activism.

"Intuitively, the speculation between autism and environmentalism has resonated with the public, including autistic adults who helped co-produce our new research. We also know from research that interests in animals, nature, and the environment, are widely reported by autistic individuals, which enhances their subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction.

"However, our findings show the link between autism and environmentalism is not clear cut. Given our results, we strongly recommend a move away from 'Thunberg-driven' autism-based narratives, whether positive or negative, of recent advances in climate policy.

Emily Taylor, lead author of the article said: "Our research is some of the first on how neurodevelopmental or mental health conditions may influence environmental attitudes and behaviour, and climate change beliefs. We focussed on autistic traits, but many other psychological differences and difficulties are likely to be associated with barriers to personal action on climate change. For instance, those with anxiety, or high levels of stress more generally, may be unable to move towards pro-environmental behaviours, for example using public transport, and have difficulty sustaining any changes they make.

"We need to think harder about supporting people to manage stress and mental health difficulties, which might then give them the cognitive resources to direct towards engaging in green behaviours. Mental health and environmental science are often thought about separately, but greater coherence - in terms of research and policy - will be crucial for both people's mental wellbeing and the environment."

Dr Shah added: "The United Nations recently called for a 'disability-inclusive' approach to climate action. Although there is some understanding of how 'physical' health impairments are linked to difficulties with engagement in environmental behaviours, there is little understanding of how 'mental' health problems or 'hidden disabilities' may have the same effect.

"Based on our findings, we speculate that the psychological and financial support required for autistic people and people with other mental health conditions to engage in pro-environmental activities is underestimated and must be a focus in the future - for a fairer, more inclusive environmental agenda."

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Experts tackle modern slavery in Greek strawberry fields using satellite technology

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Research News

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IMAGE: WORKER CONDITIONS IN NEA MANOLADA, GREECE LACKING KITCHEN, TOILETS, AND HEATING view more 

CREDIT: IOANNIS KOUGKOULOS, KORNILIA HATZINIKOLAOU

A consortium of modern slavery experts, led by the University of Nottingham, have assisted the Greek government to tackle a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the strawberry fields of southern Greece.

Using satellite technology to identify migrant settlements - a technique pioneered by the university's Rights Lab - and working with the Greek authorities, the experts then developed a decision model for which they could prioritise victims that were at highest risk.

Leading the study, the Rights Lab combined different data sources and methods to build a set of criteria measuring the extent of labour exploitation in a settlement. The academics then validated these criteria with a government agency and a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) involved in fighting labour exploitation.

By combining earth observation data with operations management techniques, this method has been successfully used to address labour exploitation in areas where strawberries are harvested.

This approach is a world-first in the humanitarian sector, with the study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), being published in the journal of Production and Operations Management.

The strawberry fields of Nea Manolada have been in the human rights spotlight since May 2013, when three local field guards shot and injured 30 Bangladeshi migrant workers. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the workers had been subjected to forced labour and that Greece had violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not preventing human trafficking of irregular migrant workers. Following a high-stake ruling by the Court, the Greek government was mandated to ramp-up its fight against labour exploitation.

Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos led the study while at the Rights Lab. He said: "The use of seasonal workers, the relatively low level of skills required, a strong reliance on outsourcing and agent-based recruitment of workers increase the likelihood of labour exploitation. Forced migration caused by crises around the world exacerbates this phenomenon. Refugees and migrants often live-in illegality and experience serious financial distress, which puts them at high risk of becoming victims of labour exploitation.

"Governments are responsible for ensuring equal treatment for migrant and national workers on their territory, and to protect migrants from being employed under substandard working conditions."

Dr Doreen Boyd, a co-author, Rights Lab Associate Director, and Professor of Earth Observation at the University of Nottingham led the ESRC grant that supported this work. She said: "We have demonstrated how remote sensing data enables the identification and location of informal settlements of workers in potential situations of labour exploitation over a large geographic area (140km2). Identifying these settlements from the ground would require driving around the entire study area in search of possible settlements, which would be costly and ineffective, since many settlements are not visible from the road.

"Our approach can be replicated in other labour-intensive agricultural activities where cheap labour is abundant, such as the Italian tomato fields or tobacco-producing regions in Argentina. Future studies could extend our approach to different applications in humanitarian operations, for example, to study migration flows, by combining remote sensing with a decision-making tool such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for identifying and assessing risks of settlements of forcibly displaced persons in highly fluid conflict situations, like the South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo."

In the paper, the researchers report that fighting labour exploitation in the agricultural sector requires time-intensive fieldwork, as it involves visiting suspected farms and informal worker settlements, which governments and humanitarian organisations often lack resources to do.

Using remote sensing, a form of satellite technology, for real-time data collection allowed the academics to overcome one of the major challenges of research in humanitarian operations, namely the difficulty of accessing data due to safety and logistical issues limiting access to the field.

Once areas of potential exploitation had been identified through satellite imagery, these settlements were investigated and verified - known as 'ground-truthing'. On the ground, the inspection teams collected data from each settlement using questionnaires to address all criteria required for the decision analysis model that the academics had prepared.

Next, the academics used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), a recognised method in the operations sector for decision-making to formalise and address the problem of competing decision objectives - a common characteristic of humanitarian operations.

Each settlement was then ranked, using the MCDA model, to assist the government and humanitarian organisations intervene in the top-priority settlements (starting with the riskiest settlement and moving toward the less risky) and allocate resources to the most vulnerable migrant workers to improve their living conditions.

CAPTION

Inappropriate worker conditions, Nea Manolada, Greece

CREDIT

Ioannis Kougkoulos, Kornilia Hatzinikolaou

The research team involved in this project was Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos (at the Rights Lab during this study, now at LAMSADE-CNRS); Selim Cakir (Rights Lab); Nathan Kunz (University of North Florida); Doreen Boyd (Rights Lab), Alexander Trautrims (Rights Lab); Kornilia Hatzinikolaou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki); and Stefan Gold (University of Kassel).

More information is available from Professor Doreen Boyd in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham at Doreen.Boyd@nottingham.ac.uk or; Katie Andrews in the Press Office at the University of Nottingham at katie.andrews@nottingham.ac.uk or 0115 9515751.

 

Banishing bandits: Other countries bear the cost

ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CORAL REEF STUDIES

Research News

 

IMAGE: PURSUIT AND APPREHENSION OF A VIETNAMESE 'BLUE BOAT' BY AUSTRALIAN BORDER FORCE AND AUSTRALIAN FISHERIES MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY (AFMA) ON LIHOU REEF, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA, 9 FEBRUARY 2017. THESE WOODEN HULLED VESSELS... view more 

CREDIT: AUSTRALIAN FISHERIES MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY.

A new study reveals the strategies that stop bandits from illegally fishing in Australian waters--but warns there is a cost to the region's poorer countries.

Co-author Dr Brock Bergseth, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said poachers are simply following the recurring history of human fishing: intensively fish and devastate local resources, then move further afield to--in these cases--fish illegally or poach in other countries' waters.

"Millions of people rely on fish and seafood and when offered no alternative choice, will chose banditry and illegal fishing to get by," Dr Bergseth said.

"But without a regional strategy and investments for rebuilding and managing countries' fisheries, this just becomes one big game of whack-a-mole: you deal with the problem in one area, only for it to pop up in another," he said.

The study shows how Vietnamese poaching boats, or 'blue boats', encroached into Australian waters between 2013 and 2017.

Under a jointly signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 2017, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the Vietnamese Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Development designed and delivered a series of workshop interventions to deter illegal fishing by Vietnamese fishers in Australia between 2017 and 2018.

Both before and after the workshops, 82 fishers were surveyed to understand why they were coming to Australia and also whether the workshop's explanations of the penalties were effective in shifting perceptions related to reducing illegal fishing.

"The main reason these fishers engaged in banditry was their displacement from their traditional fishing grounds in the South China Sea," Dr Bergseth said. "This is just one of the implications of an expanding Chinese territory, and it affects countries as far away as Australia."

Lead author Dr Chris Wilcox, from Australia's national science agency CSIRO, said since the workshops, there hasn't been a single sighting of a Vietnamese fishing boat illegally fishing in Australian or Pacific waters.

But, he cautions, while an understanding of the penalties might deter fishers from poaching in Australian waters, they also lose their access to economically viable fish resources.

Captains and their crews opt to fish in other locations, legal or not, even in the face of penalties for doing so.

"Australia can build a wall of steel with patrol boats and surveillance aeroplanes to protect our waters--but without improvements in fish stocks in their legal fishing grounds, Vietnamese vessels will be under pressure to leave in pursuit of revenue. This is creating ongoing issues for our regional neighbours," Dr Wilcox said.

Reports continue to surface of Vietnamese fishers captured in other regional countries including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vanuatu.

Dr Wilcox said regional action on the root causes of the problem can solve the issue for everyone. And though this is a long-term project, it also has the best potential for the highest long-term return on investment in terms of reducing illegal fishing.

"Incursions will continue as long as the number of fishing vessels across the region exceeds what the resources can support," Dr Wilcox said. "While it is essential to keep the enforcement pressure on, this is where coordination across the region could have a positive effect."

However, he also said tension amongst South East Asian countries over sea borders and other issues still precludes effective coordinated action on illegal fishing.

"Addressing the state of resources in the waters of countries across the region and their ability to collaborate to address vessels illegally crossing borders to fish are the two key ingredients for solving this problem," Dr Wilcox said.

Dr Bergseth said otherwise, things will only get worse as ocean resources dwindle.

"The decisions we make in the next 5-10 years could well chart the state of our oceans for the next 100," he said.

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PAPER

Wilcox C, Bergseth B. (2021). 'Effectiveness of interventions to shift drivers of roving banditry and reduce illegal fishing by Vietnamese blue boats'. Conservation Letters. DOI: 10.1111/conl.12823

 

Solar radio signals could be used to monitor melting ice sheets

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: THE EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND TEST SITE AT STORE GLACIER, GREENLAND. RESEARCHERS CONCEPTUALIZED A BATTERY-POWERED RECEIVER WITH AN ANTENNA PLACED ON THE ICE THAT CAN MEASURE ICE THICKNESS USING THE SUN'S... view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: SEAN PETERS

The sun provides a daunting source of electromagnetic disarray - chaotic, random energy emitted by the massive ball of gas arrives to Earth in a wide spectrum of radio frequencies. But in that randomness, Stanford researchers have discovered the makings of a powerful tool for monitoring ice and polar changes on Earth and across the solar system.

In a new study, a team of glaciologists and electrical engineers show how radio signals naturally emitted by the sun can be turned into a passive radar system for measuring the depth of ice sheets and successfully tested it on a glacier in Greenland. The technique, detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on July 14, could lead to a cheaper, lower power and more pervasive alternative to current methods of collecting data, according to the researchers. The advance may offer large-scale, prolonged insight into melting ice sheets and glaciers, which are among the dominant causes of sea-level rise threatening coastal communities around the world.

A sky full of signals

Airborne ice-penetrating radar - the primary current means for collecting widespread information about the polar subsurface - involves flying airplanes containing a high-powered system that transmits its own "active" radar signal down through the ice sheet. The undertaking is resource-intensive, however, and only provides information about conditions at the time of the flight.

By contrast, the researchers' proof of concept uses a battery-powered receiver with an antenna placed on the ice to detect the sun's radio waves as they travel down to Earth, through the ice sheet and to the subsurface. In other words, instead of transmitting its own signal, the system uses naturally occurring radio waves that are already traveling down from the sun, a nuclear-powered transmitter in the sky. If this type of system were fully miniaturized and deployed in extensive sensor networks, it would offer an unprecedented look at the subsurface evolution of Earth's quickly changing polar conditions, the researchers say.

"Our goal is to chart a course for the development of low-resource sensor networks that can monitor subsurface conditions on a really wide scale," said lead study author Sean Peters, who conducted research for the study as a graduate student at Stanford and now works at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. "That could be challenging with active sensors, but this passive technique gives us the opportunity to really take advantage of low-resource implementations."

A random advantage

In addition to visible and other kinds of light, the sun is constantly emitting radio waves across a wide, random spectrum of frequencies. The researchers used this chaos to their advantage: They recorded a snippet of the sun's radioactivity, which is like an endless song that never repeats, then listened for that unique signature in the echo that's created when the solar radio waves bounce off the bottom of an ice sheet. Measuring the delay between the original recording and the echo allows them to calculate the distance between the surface receiver and the floor of the ice sheet, and thus its thickness.

In their test on Store Glacier in West Greenland, the researchers computed an echo delay time of about 11 microseconds, which maps to an ice thickness of about 3,000 feet - a figure that matches measurements of the same site recorded from both ground-based and airborne radar.

"It's one thing to do a bunch of math and physics and convince yourself something should be possible - it's really something else to see an actual echo from the bottom of an ice sheet using the sun," said senior author Dustin Schroeder, an assistant professor of geophysics at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

From Jupiter to the sun

The idea of using passive radio waves to collect geophysical measurements of ice thickness was initially proposed by study co-author Andrew Romero-Wolf, a researcher with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as a way of investigating Jupiter's icy moons. As Schroeder and Romero-Wolf worked together with others on a mission, it became clear that radio waves generated by Jupiter itself would interfere with their active ice-penetrating radar systems. At one point, Romero-Wolf realized that instead of a weakness, Jupiter's erratic radio emissions might actually be a strength, if they could be turned into a source for probing the subsurface of the moons.

"We started discussing it in the context of Jupiter's moon Europa, but then we realized it should work for observing Earth's ice sheets too if we replace Jupiter with the sun," Schroeder said.

From there, the research team undertook the task of isolating the sun's ambient radio emissions to see if it could be used to measure ice thickness. The method involved bringing a subset of the sun's 200- to 400-megahertz radio frequency band above the noise of other celestial bodies, processing massive amounts of data and eliminating man-made sources of electromagnetism like TV stations, FM radio and electronic equipment.

While the system only works when the sun is above the horizon, the proof-of-concept opens the possibility of adapting to other naturally occurring and man-made radio sources in the future. The co-authors are also still pursuing their original idea of applying this technique to space missions by harnessing the ambient energy emitted by other astronomical sources like the gas giant Jupiter.

"Pushing the frontiers of sensing technology for planetary research has enabled us to push the frontiers of sensing technology for climate change," Schroeder said. "Monitoring ice sheets under climate change and exploring icy moons at the outer planets are both extremely low-resource environments where you really need to design elegant sensors that don't require a lot of power."

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Schroeder is also an assistant professor, by courtesy, of electrical engineering and a center fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Study co-authors include Winnie Chu of the Georgia Institute of Technology; Davide Castelletti of the Department of Geophysics, now with Capella Space; Mark Haynes of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Poul Christoffersen of the Scott Polar Research Institute and Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge.

This research was partially funded by NASA Cryospheric Sciences.