Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Possible future for Western wildfires: Decade-long burst, followed by gradual decline

In recent years, wildfires on the West Coast have become larger and more damaging. A combination of almost a century of fire suppression and hotter and drier conditions has created a tinderbox ready to ignite, destroying homes and polluting the air over large areas.

New research led by the University of Washington and the University of California, Santa Barbara, looks at the longer-term future of wildfires under scenarios of increased temperature and drought, using a model that focuses on the eastern California forests of the Sierra Nevada. The study, published July 26 in the journal Ecosphere, finds that there will be an initial roughly decade-long burst of wildfire activity, followed by recurring fires of decreasing area.

"That first burst of wildfire is consistent with what we're seeing right now in the West. The buildup of fuels, in conjunction with the increasingly hot and dry conditions, leads to these very large, catastrophic fire events," said lead author Maureen Kennedy, assistant professor at the University of Washington Tacoma. "But our simulations show that if you allow fire to continue in an area, then the fire could become self-limiting, where each subsequent fire is smaller than the previous one."

How climate change, tree growth and wildfires will interact over coming decades is only beginning to be explored, Kennedy said, through experiments and simulations. Existing models of vegetation often assume wildfires will strike at set intervals, like every 10 years, or based on past patterns of wildfire risk for that ecosystem. But those previous patterns may not be the best guide to the future.

"The big question is: What's going to happen with climate change? The relationships that we've seen between climate and wildfire over the past 30 years, is that going to continue? Or is there going to be a feedback? Because if we keep burning up these fuels, and with extreme drought that limits new growth, there will eventually be less fuel for wildfires," Kennedy said.

The new study used a model that includes those feedbacks among climate, vegetation growth, water flows and wildfire risk to simulate the Big Creek watershed outside Fresno, California, near the site of the September 2020 Creek Fire. Climate models suggest that here, as in other parts of the West, conditions will likely continue to get hotter and drier.

Results of the 60-year simulations show that under increased drought and rising temperatures, the large wildfires will continue for about a decade, followed by recurring wildfires that occur in warm and dry conditions, but are smaller over time. Even without wildfire the trees in the forest declined in number and size over time because they were less productive and more stressed in the hot and dry conditions. These findings would likely apply to other forests that experience drought, said Kennedy, who's now using the model on other regions.

What happens with wildfires over the longer term matters now for planning. Current understanding is that communities will have to coexist with wildfire rather than exclude it entirely, Kennedy said. A combination of prescribed burns and forest thinning will likely be the future of managing forests as they contend with both wildfires and climate change.

"With such high density in the forest, the trees are pulling a lot of water out of the soil," Kennedy said. "There is growing evidence that you can relieve drought stress and make more drought-resilient forests if you thin the forests, which should also help with, for example, reducing the impact of that initial pulse of wildfire."

After thinning out smaller trees, managers could then do controlled burns to remove kindling and smaller material on the forest floor. But knowing how to manage forests in this way requires understanding how local weather conditions, plant growth and wildfire risk will play out in future decades.

"It's important to include climate change so we have an idea of the range of variability of potential outcomes in the future," Kennedy said. "For example, how often do you need to repeat the fuels treatment? Is that going to be different under climate change?"

Kennedy was also a co-author of another recent study that uses the same model to tease apart how much climate change and fire suppression increase wildfire risk in different parts of Idaho.

"Our 'new normal' is not static," said Christina (Naomi) Tague, a professor at UC Santa Barbara who is a co-author on both studies and developed the RHESSys-FIRE model that was used in the research. "Not only is our climate continuing to change, but vegetation—the fuel of fire—is responding to changing conditions. Our work helps understand what these trajectories of fire, forest productivity and growth may look like

Climate change is fueling record-high heat, drought, wildfires in Western U.S.

More information: Maureen C. Kennedy et al, Does hot and dry equal more wildfire? Contrasting short‐ and long‐term climate effects on fire in the Sierra Nevada, CA, Ecosphere (2021). DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.3657

Journal information: Ecosphere

Provided by University of Washington

Wildfire smoke in New England is 'pretty severe from public health perspective'

by Kat J. McAlpine, Boston University

On Monday, the air quality in Boston and the greater New England area was so bad that it was only rivaled by the areas in Northern California and Oregon currently on fire. An interactive map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed how smoke from the wildfires out west were being carried across the continental US by winds and the jet stream. In response to the blanket of smoke engulfing the commonwealth's skies, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection issued an air quality alert.

Around Boston, people reported not only seeing a film of smoke in the skies, but also smelling the scent of wood burning. Firefighters across the state fielded calls from concerned residents who worried that a fire was burning nearby. This is the second time in the last two weeks that smoke from the western forest fires has been carried to New England—but the smoke was markedly thicker and more pungent this time around.

With scientists predicting that our climate will continue to get hotter and drier, exacerbating normal patterns of forest fires, The Brink reached out to Boston University environmental earth scientist Mark Friedl for help understanding what these changes mean for our planet and for human health. Friedl, an expert in using NASA satellite imaging to interpret large-scale environmental trends, recently published new research findings indicating that forest fires in Earth's northernmost forests could accelerate climate change—potentially locking the planet in a feedback loop where drier climate causes more fires and those fires, in turn, speed up global warming. "Fires are intensifying, and when forests burn, carbon is released into the atmosphere," Friedl says about those findings.

Friedl, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment and interim director of BU's Center for Remote Sensing, answers four questions posed by The Brink about the effects of western wildfire smoke over New England and the US.

The Brink: Based on your research and expertise in remote global sensing and monitoring, what do these current wildfires tell us about where Earth's climate is going?

Friedl: These fires are further evidence of how climate change is impacting ecosystems and forests. Fire is normal in forested ecosystems, especially in western forests that tend to be drier, and hence more fire-prone, relative to forests in the eastern US. That said, the increased frequency, intensity, and scale of fires we've seen in recent years is a clear by-product of climate change. They are the proverbial canary in the coal mine, telling us that the climate is changing, and it's going to increasingly impact our lives on a day-to-day basis.

Does this much smoke, spreading across the country, impact vegetation elsewhere besides the forests that are burning?

Smoke like we experienced today tends to be pretty short-lived and doesn't have much impact on vegetation across the country. Indeed, it's not entirely unheard of for smoke to travel long distances in the atmosphere, and it's not unprecedented for smoke from fires in the western US to make it all the way to the eastern US.

What about the effects on human health?

Most of the time, the smoke is diffuse and concentrated in the upper atmosphere, and so we just experience it as haze. What we experienced [Monday], with very poor air quality, is qualitatively different, and is pretty severe from a public health perspective. Hopefully, this is not a harbinger of things to come. It's also worth noting that at least some of the smoke we see right now is coming from fires in western and central Canada, and not just from the western US.

With wildfires becoming more common as the climate gets hotter and drier, what will happen if fires burn faster than forests can replenish themselves? Can you predict what the future dynamics look like in the West and Pacific Northwest forests?

If the climate continues to warm and becomes drier in the west, at some point some forests will not be able to recover. If there's a silver lining in these fires, it's that hopefully they provide a wake-up call for society to change and start to meaningfully address the climate crisis.

Explore further

Fire tornadoes explained

Provided by Boston University

New study reveals key factors for estimating costs to plug abandoned oil and gas wells

by Resources for the Future

In an analysis of over 19,500 orphaned oil and gas wells across the United States, scholars at Resources for the Future (RFF) find that the median cost of plugging and reclaiming a well is $76,000, although that figure can vary widely depending on the age, location, well depth, and other key factors.

The paper was published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology. To the research team's knowledge, the orphaned oil and gas wells analyzed represent the largest data set assembled on decommissioning costs.

Oil and gas wells can become "orphaned" when an operator goes bankrupt and does not set aside funds to cover decommissioning costs. Although regulators require companies to purchase bonds to ensure that a well can be plugged even if the company faces bankruptcy, these bonds are often too low to cover the full costs. As a result, hundreds of thousands—and perhaps more than one million—orphaned wells across the country lie idle and unplugged, often contaminating water, reducing property values, and emitting greenhouse gases like methane. The challenge of addressing orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells is likely to grow in the years to come: The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than two million wells in the United States that are not in use but have not been plugged. These wells run the risk of becoming orphaned in the future, particularly if policies dramatically reduce demand for oil and gas.

"The findings in this paper can help regulators adjust bonding requirements or other regulatory tools to match the characteristics of different wells, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach," lead author and RFF Fellow Daniel Raimi said. "Considerable cost variation can be a major problem for decisionmakers—our analysis of a variety of factors that affect decommissioning costs will hopefully lend nuance to this important topic."

In their analysis of the 19,500 wells, the researchers found that:

The median cost of plugging a well without restoring the surface is about $20,000.
Plugging and reclaiming the surface around the well—which may be done for aesthetic, environmental, or job creation reasons—increases the median cost to $76,000.
Each additional 1,000 feet of well depth increases costs by 20 percent.
Costs of plugging wells goes up with the age of the well itself—compared with wells that were more than 60 years old when decommissioned, wells aged 40 to 60 years old were 9 percent less expensive, and wells aged from 0 to 40 were roughly 20 percent less expensive to plug.
Natural gas wells are 9 percent more expensive than oil wells to plug.
Upon further analysis of almost 4,000 contracts, it appears that contracting plugging efforts in bulk pays off—each additional well per contract reduces decommissioning costs by 3 percent per well.

The paper focuses on orphaned oil and gas wells in Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Texas. These states were chosen because they differ in terms of geology, history, and regulatory structure, which helps ensure that the data is representative of more than just one region. Notably, there are significant differences in decommissioning costs across states.

"We need good data on orphaned oil and gas wells to accurately assess costs and enact effective policies," Raimi said. "As the United States embarks on an energy transition, taking care of these issues will only become more important. And to do that, we need a solid foundation of research."

Plugging orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells can create jobs, reduce pollution

More information: Daniel Raimi et al, Decommissioning Orphaned and Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells: New Estimates and Cost Drivers, Environmental Science & Technology (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c02234

Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology

Provided by Resources for the Future

Chile's ancient mummies added to UN heritage list

Chinchorro mummies were either painted red, black or wrapped in bandages.

Chile's Chinchorro mummies, the oldest in the world to have been purposefully preserved by humans, were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List on Tuesday.

The mummies, which were found in the north of Chile at the start of the 20th century, are more than 7,000 years old, meaning they pre-date the Egyptian mummies by two millennia.

The United Nations' cultural organization announced on Twitter that it had added the "settlement and artificial mummification of the Chinchorro culture" to its prestigious list during a virtual meeting chaired by China.

"UNESCO is validating on an international level, through different experts, that the settlements and artificial mummification of the Chinchorro culture has exceptional value, that it has a global importance," Chilean anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza told AFP.

The Chinchorro were fishers and hunter gatherers more than 7,000 years ago in an area where the desert and Pacific Ocean meet in what is today the south of Peru and north of Chile.

So far, more than 300 mummies have been found, including red, black and bandaged ones.

The mummification process consisted of removing the organs, intestines and tissue.

The skin was then ripped off the corpse and the body rebuilt using sticks and animal hair, while a thick head of black hair was sewn onto the scalp.

Finally the mummies were painted red or black using earth, pigments, manganese and iron oxide.

"These bodies are very finely made by specialists. There's a subtlety, a creativity by these first populations," added Arriaza, who is the director of the Chinchorro Center at the Tarapaca University in the city of Arica.

Why the Chichorro culture mummified their dead remains a mystery.

In 2005, Arriaza developed a theory that it could have been linked to high levels of arsenic poisoning in the water that could have produced premature births, miscarriages, underweight children and high infant mortality.

He suggested the mummification was "an emotional response from parents faced with these painful losses, so they painted them, dressed them up and every day this technique became more elaborate."

Scans unveil secrets of world's oldest mummies

Improving soil health starts with farmer-researcher collaboration

by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ask a farmer, a scientist, and a conservation professional to define soil health, and you might come up with three rather different answers. That mismatch may be at the root of lower-than-ideal adoption of soil conservation practices, according to a new study from the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University.

"We all use the term 'soil health,' but upon further discussion, it's often clear different groups don't really have the same working definition or interpretation of the term. When we keep talking past one another, assuming we know what the other person means, that's a potential barrier to greater adoption of good soil management practices," says Jordon Wade, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Crop Sciences at U of I, and lead author on the study. Wade conducted the research as a doctoral student at OSU.

Importantly, the study also finds farmers care far more about soil health than scientists and conservation professionals think.

"Many academics think farmers don't value soil health, but our results clearly show it's a major priority for them. We end up spending so much time trying to convince farmers that soil health is important, but they're already there," Wade says. "We need to move on and start recognizing farmers as our colleagues and our equals in what we're trying to achieve."

Wade and his colleagues sent paper and digital surveys to hundreds of Midwestern farmers, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) employees, and agricultural researchers, evaluating their conceptualizations and prioritization of soil health and common soil tests. The researchers employed a mental models approach, a type of survey method that tests assumptions about causal relationships among various concepts or factors.

In addition to finding farmers prioritized soil health at a higher level (8.5 out of 10) than academics and NRCS professionals expected (4.9 and 5.7, respectively), the survey revealed surprising agreement about how the groups conceptualized soil health.

"Famers, NRCS personnel, and agricultural researchers all agreed that soil health positively affected crop productivity and farm profitability," says Margaret Beetstra, co-author on the study and John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "And all groups reported bidirectional linkages, or feedback loops, between soil health and soil fertility, biological functioning, and soil physical functioning. This was an unexpectedly high degree of agreement across groups, which broadly refuted our hypothesis that farmers and academics conceptualize soil health differently."

The researchers noted slight differences in soil health conceptualization within groups, however, meaning there isn't necessarily one right way for groups to communicate about the topic.

"If I, as a researcher, am talking about improving soil health, I might be thinking about how this could reduce inputs, but an NRCS conservationist might not be," Wade says. "This means that our takeaways from a conversation about soil health could be quite different."

When asked about how they used and valued various soil tests, farmers and academics tended to be more similar than NRCS professionals, who, according to the survey, rely more heavily on in-field measurements (e.g., "by feel" or how the ground works up with a tractor) than standard agronomic soil tests (e.g., pH, organic matter, extractable nutrients). All groups said they value soil health tests that incorporate measurements of soil microbial activity, but the survey revealed farmers just aren't using them.

"Our finding that farmers find soil health tests valuable, but often don't use them suggests some kind of barrier exists, such as availability or cost of these tests," Wade says.

The study suggests communication and research strategies around soil health could focus less on whether or not soil health is important and more on the perceived benefits and how to measure them. "With more stakeholders pushing in a similar direction, the hope is that we keep improving soil health across the Midwest," Wade says.

Andrew Margenot, study co-author and Wade's current faculty advisor at U of I, works closely with Illinois farmers on soil health and fertility issues. He says, "Many farmers in Illinois with whom we worked have noted potential links between soil health and water quality for a given practice, and also, importantly, how some practices may yield benefits on soil health but not necessarily water quality. Given the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy goals of decreased nutrient export to surface waters, this study reinforces that we researchers should be more explicit in articulating—and working with farmers to quantify –how practices that improve water quality may also bolster soil health."

The article, "Soil health conceptualization differs across key stakeholder groups in the Midwest," is published in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation.

Soil health is as environmentally important as air and water quality, say microbiologists

More information: J. Wade et al, Soil health conceptualization differs across key stakeholder groups in the Midwest, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (2021). DOI: 10.2489/jswc.2021.02158

Journal information: Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

AMERICA

Research illuminates how energy costs vary nationwide

by Christina Nunez, Argonne National Laboratory

traffic — Credit: Scott Meltzer/public domain

Costs for energy are borne unequally across the U.S. population. Argonne research is providing key data that can help inform decisions about which technologies can reduce disparities.

Every U.S. household has at least one or two regular bills for energy, such as the monthly electric bill or spending for gasoline. But energy costs hit some Americans harder than others. One measure of the difference is energy burden, which is the share of total income spent on energy.

A recent study from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory illuminates another type of energy burden: Transportation costs, a complex but important factor in most Americans' household budgets. On average each year, U.S. households spend as much—and in some regions, more—at the gas pump as they do for household electricity and gas bills combined.

The impact of those fuel expenses on a household has less to do with the total bill and more to do with the share of total income.

"A rich household spending the average value of $2,000 per year on vehicle fuel is much less burdened by this cost than a lower-income household spending the same amount," said Yan (Joann) Zhou, an Argonne researcher who co-authored the report with colleagues Spencer Aeschliman and David Gohlke. Their work has been supported by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

In households with a high energy burden, fuel costs might amount to much less than that, but the total might represent a bigger share of income. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics compiled by Oak Ridge National Laboratory shows that on average, fuel costs amount to 3.3% of total income. Argonne's study found this share can reach as high as 23.3% for some communities.

Why so much variation in fuel costs? Fuel prices, along with how much people are driving, play a role. But the biggest contributing factor to a household's fuel costs, according to the Argonne analysis, is vehicle fuel economy. Any driver's gasoline bills depend significantly on how far they can get with that fuel—and wealthier households were found to enjoy better fuel economy in their cars. Improving fuel efficiency nationwide by just 3% from 2016 to 2018 would save drivers $8.2 billion in transportation energy costs, the researchers concluded.

Mapping costs for U.S. drivers

The Argonne study offers an exceptionally detailed and rigorous view of Americans' fuel spending as it relates to income, quantifying the energy burden for over 74,000 Census tracts, which are areas geographically defined by the Census Bureau.

The key research question of such an analysis, Zhou said, is estimating annual miles traveled. The researchers used machine-learning techniques, training a computer model to estimate annual vehicle miles traveled across Census tracts. The model combined existing self-reported data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey with average household income, number of workers, and number of vehicles in each tract to predict average annual vehicle miles traveled for households in different locations.

The researchers combined these miles-traveled estimates with high-fidelity regional data on fuel prices, average on-road vehicle fuel economy based on vehicle registrations and household income to identify the areas with the highest energy burden for transportation fuel.

"Our findings for affordability apply to households nationwide," said Gohlke. "We find high transportation energy burden in rural communities with long commutes using less efficient vehicles. We also see it in urban communities with high fuel prices and low incomes." The three states with the highest burden were South Dakota, Mississippi and California, he added. On the other end of the spectrum, Washington, D.C., and the state of New York have the lowest average burden, with higher shares of efficient vehicles and lower-than-average driving distances.

The study provides an important baseline to evaluate transportation energy burden going forward. Future research, Zhou added, could use the analysis framework to evaluate the impact of different strategies for promoting clean vehicle adoption on household energy burden. It could also look at transportation costs beyond fuel, such as vehicle purchase price and maintenance costs.

"In order to evaluate a transportation technology's impact on household costs tomorrow, we need to understand what's happening today," Zhou said. "This study provides a jumping-off point to explore the impact of changes in vehicle technology and identify who is most affected."

Re-think on energy charging could reduce bills for 70% of households

More information: Yan Zhou et al, Affordability of Household Transportation Fuel Costs by Region and Socioeconomic Factors, (2021). DOI: 10.2172/1760477

Provided by Argonne National Laboratory

Up to 78 million batteries will be discarded daily by 2025

by CORDIS

About 78 million batteries powering IoT devices will be dumped globally every day by 2025 if nothing is done to improve their lifespan. This dire statistic comes from EnABLES, an EU-funded project that's urging researchers and technologists to take action to ensure that batteries outlive the devices they power.

With devices ranging from temperature and CO2 sensors to asset tracking tags and smart bandages, IoT has the potential to tackle some of the world's biggest challenges. However, if they're to really benefit society, IoT innovations need to address the technology gap that exists in powering the rising number of IoT devices.

The EnABLES researchers outlined their key recommendations for improving IoT device battery lifespans in a recent position paper. The report stresses the need to harvest available energy from the environment to make batteries last longer, while also reducing IoT device energy consumption.

The way toward battery power autonomy

Dr. Giorgos Fagas of Tyndall National Institute at EnABLES project coordinator University College Cork, Ireland, stated in a news item posted on the project website: "Thanks to the EnABLES European Research Infrastructure and its partners, the European Union has already a well-established scientific and technological leadership position in this area. … The EnABLES Paper recommends additional actions to maintain easy and efficient access to the scientific expertise, state-of-the-art facilities and the technology platforms that are already available. To maintain the strategic advantage in Europe and the momentum already created by EnABLES, it is necessary to create a sustainable power IoT infrastructure in the longer term."

The goal is to achieve power autonomy through batteries that can sustainably recharge themselves. The project partners are working to promote "key 'power IoT' advances" to harvest ambient energies such as light, heat and vibration and convert them to electricity. At the same time, they're focusing on minimizing the energy consumed by IoT sensors. The news item provides a striking example of the benefits of sustainably powered IoT infrastructure: "[A] solar panel half the size of a credit card could power a temperature and humidity sensor in an office indefinitely," it states.

At the moment, most devices have an operational life of over 10 years, while the batteries that power them last 2 years or less. The result is multiple battery replacements, with the consequent economic and environmental drawbacks related to the fact that hundreds of millions of batteries need to be manufactured and disposed of every day. Another consequence is device downtime and maintenance trade-offs, and the existence of many unexploited opportunities to use IoT devices in areas such as medicine and environments where a reliable power source throughout the device's lifetime is critical.

"We need to revolutionize the way we design, make, use and get rid of things," observed Mike Hayes, also of Tyndall. "This means we need to think about battery life from the outset, in the early stages of product design. We need to advise key stakeholders and the general public on the implications of battery consumption based on the choices they make, and we need to work together with industry to identify potential for reducing power consumption and requirement." According to Hayes, for IoT sustainability to succeed, "it needs to be done collaboratively and across disciplines," as demonstrated with EnABLES (European Infrastructure Powering the Internet of Things).

A novel approach to wirelessly power wearable devices

Provided by CORDIS

Nimble robotic arms that perform delicate surgery may be one step closer to reality

by Peter Ramjug, Northeastern University

Researchers at Northeastern are working to eliminate the stiff, herky-jerky motions in robotic arms to make them graceful and deft enough to gently pick up an egg or sturdy enough to stack dinner plates. The findings could one day allow doctors to remotely perform surgery on a distant battlefield or help bomb disposal experts safely remove an explosive device.

A video demonstration of a university project involving a researcher wearing a C-shaped gripping claw attached to his right hand while a nearby robotic arm mimicked his exact movements showed the promise of hydraulic technology designed to be low friction.

The researcher in the video lowered and raised his arm, swept it left and right, and bent it at the wrist, smooth actions that were copied in tandem by the robotic arm. What was not readily apparent was how the human operator was able to feel the same forces as the mechanical arm when it closed on an object, allowing the user to get a sense of textured surfaces.

The Northeastern project involves building remote-controlled robot arms that do not have heavy motors traditionally installed in the wrist joints. Instead, they are placed in the base of the machine.

Credit: Northeastern University

"With no motors in the arm, they are much lighter than a traditional arm," says Peter Whitney, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern. "So now if you have a lighter arm, it's much easier to move it around."

The engineering advancement has the potential to overcome a fundamental obstacle humans face when controlling robots remotely—understanding the environment the machine is in.

"It's hard to perceive exactly where the robot is, relative to the environment—whether it's touching something or not, or how or how hard it is touching an object," explains Whitney, whose research is focused on the design of robots, the materials they are made of, and how they are operated and controlled.

"These are all factors that can influence how we can get good performance, but also maintain safety," he adds.

Researchers now have the ability to do machine learning with real-time information that tells how much force is being applied.

"So when we try to grasp an object or manipulate an object, we can actually make use of those contact forces, similar to how human muscles sense forces such as how heavy something is," says Whitney.

Machine learning is an active area of research among Northeastern faculty, Whitney says. He is working with Robert Platt, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, on a National Science Foundation project involving lightweight robots that are better designed for direct, intentional contact with an object.

Whitney is also collaborating with Taskin Padir, associate professor of electrical and computer Engineering, to study the potential for robots that are controlled remotely to be used to physically interact with friends and family, serving as a mechanical stand-in. The technology could allow people to hug a loved one in quarantine as one example of its potential, Whitney says.

Robots get a light touch

Provided by Northeastern University

Activision workers plan walkout to protest sexism

Activision Blizzard employees called for a protest over allegations of discrimination and harassment of female staff members.

Employees at Activision Blizzard planned a work stoppage on Thursday to protest sexism at the video game company, according to a rallying cry echoing on social media.

The Activision Blizzard Walkout for Equality is to last through the work day, with a live event during lunch time hours at the firm's campus in the Southern California city of Irvine.

Organizers expected about 50 people to take part in the campus protest, with others joining virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"It is the responsibility of leadership to stamp out toxicity and harassment in any form, across all levels of the company," Activision Blizzard chief and co-founder Mike Morhaime said in a post over the weekend.

"To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you."

Morhaime acknowledged in the post that harassment and discrimination are prevalent in the video game industry.

The call for a walkout came as workers blasted Activision Blizzard's response to a slew of sexism and harassment complaints in a letter calling its reaction "abhorrent."

Employees at the company demanded that executives "recognize the seriousness of these allegations and demonstrate compassion for victims," according to the letter posted online.

The letter had been signed by more than 2,000 employees by Tuesday, according to media reports.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a civil complaint last week claiming the maker of "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft" violated state laws by allowing a "pervasive frat boy workplace culture."

In the latest case highlighting claims of sexism in the video game industry, the lawsuit said the company "fostered a sexist culture and paid women less than men," according to a statement from the state agency.

Activision Blizzard pushed back on the allegations, saying that the lawsuit "includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard's past."

"In cases related to misconduct, action was taken to address the issue," it said.

The game company said it had been cooperative with the state agency but that it "rushed to file an inaccurate complaint, as we will demonstrate in court."

The employee letter condemned the remarks made by Activision in its defense as "abhorrent and insulting."

Activision did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Activision earnings boom on Call of Duty play

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ACTIVISION

Many parents still believe boys are better, more competitive at sports than girls

by University of Michigan

girl athlete — Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Female Olympian handballers fined for playing in shorts instead of bikini bottoms. A female Paralympian told by a championship official that her shorts were "too short and inappropriate." Olympic women gymnasts, tired of feeling sexualized, opted for full-length unitards instead of bikini-cut leotards.

"Women athletes' attire is constantly scrutinized," said Philip Veliz of the University of Michigan School of Nursing. "No one has ever said that a baseball or football player's pants are too tight."

Research from Veliz and colleagues found that gender stereotypes and double standards, where female athletes are treated differently or aren't taken as seriously as male counterparts, persist even among parents.

The researchers polled more than 3,000 boys and girls aged 7 to 17 and their parents/guardians across the country, and were surprised that roughly one third of parents (32%) believed that boys are better at sports than girls. And parents of youth who have never played sports are more likely to believe that girls are not as competitive as boys and that sports are more important to boys than girls.

While the study did not specifically look at the sexualization of girls in sports, Veliz said these stereotypes can lead to the type of sexualization of female athletes seen in the Olympic uniform controversy, where the Norwegian women's beach handball team was fined for refusing to play in skimpy, mandated bikini outfits.

The study found that gender stereotypes and the dearth of female coaches as role models are among the biggest reasons that girls quit or don't participate in sports, Veliz said.

"The average age that kids enter sports is 6, which requires heavy parental involvement," Veliz said. "If you believe that boys are better than girls, you may be taking girls to a different activity or not doing sports at all."

Girls (43%) are more likely to have never played sports than boys (35%) and less likely to be currently playing sports—36% of girls compared to nearly 46% of boys. Overall, about 40% of youth surveyed said they currently play sports.

"Sport is the most popular extracurricular activity in the United States for both boys and girls. Yet, we see this gender gap in participation persist, and parents may be driving some of this," said Veliz, a research assistant professor at the School of Nursing and Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and associate director of the Sport, Health, and Activity Research and Policy Center.

According to the study, African American and low-income youths overall, but especially girls, were least likely to be current players, and most likely to have never played or dropped out. Boys and girls both reported being teased, but for girls, the teasing was worse for teens than during their younger years.

Veliz said that another problem for girls is the relative lack of female coaches. Only 58% of girls had a female coach, compared to 88% of boys who reported having a male coach.

"We're seeing a big gender disparity between who's coaching boys and girls," he said. "We need to ask why we don't have more female coaches. We should have 88% of girls saying they have a female coach. However, we still see females being underrepresented in coaching at the youth level and beyond."

Veliz said it's important to convince parents that boys and girls are equally interested in sports, and also to eliminate barriers to entry for female coaches. As more female athletes have daughters, this will naturally improve, he said.

"If you have a mom who used to play sports, she will be more likely to say, 'I want my daughter to participate in these activities like I did,'" he said.

Another surprise was that few kids reported quitting sports because of injury for either boys or girls. However, of the 16% of kids who reported experiencing a concussion from sports, over a third quit. While this finding was not broken down by gender, it may be a factor that could differentially funnel girls out of sport, Veliz said.

Indeed, the study found that the average age of kids who quit sports for any reason was 11. This could mean that sports became something different or that it was no longer fun.

"One of the problems with sports in the United States is it's really about the competition, and some kids just want to play for fun," said Veliz, who would like to see kids play until they graduate. "Sports is really the main source of physical activity for kids. It will set the stage for them as they grow up."

The study, "Keeping Girls in the Game: Factors that Influence Sports Participation," is believed to be one of the first to examine factors that influence entry, participation and dropout rates in sports. It was published by the Women's Sports Foundation in partnership with The Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation. WSF was founded by tennis pro Billie Jean King.

Study co-authors are Nicole Zarrett of the University of South Carolina and Don Sabo of D'Youville College.

Playing sports can lead some boys to binge drink

More information: The study is available at www.womenssportsfoundation.org … ummary-FINAL-web.pdf

Provided by University of Michigan

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