Astronomers probe layer-cake structure of brown dwarf’s atmosphere

Peer-Reviewed Publication

W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY

 

IMAGE: ARTIST’S CONCEPT OF 2MASS J22081363+2921215, A NEARBY BROWN DWARF. THOUGH ONLY ROUGHLY 115 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY, THE BROWN DWARF IS TOO DISTANT FOR ANY ATMOSPHERIC FEATURES TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED. INSTEAD, RESEARCHERS USED W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY’S MOSFIRE INSTRUMENT TO STUDY THE COLORS AND BRIGHTNESS VARIATIONS OF THE BROWN DWARF’S LAYER-CAKE CLOUD STRUCTURE, AS SEEN IN NEAR-INFRARED LIGHT. MOSFIRE ALSO COLLECTED THE SPECTRAL FINGERPRINTS OF VARIOUS CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTAINED IN THE CLOUDS AND HOW THEY CHANGE OVER TIME. view more 

CREDIT: NASA, ESA, STSCI, LEAH HUSTAK (STSCI), GREG T. BACON (STSCI)

Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Jupiter may be the bully planet of our solar system because it’s the most massive planet, but it’s actually a runt compared to many of the giant planets found around other stars.

These alien worlds, called super-Jupiters, weigh up to 13 times Jupiter’s mass. Astronomers have analyzed the composition of some of these monsters, but it has been difficult to study their atmospheres in detail because these gas giants get lost in the glare of their parent stars.

Researchers, however, have a substitute: the atmospheres of brown dwarfs, so-called failed stars that are up to 80 times Jupiter’s mass. These hefty objects form out of a collapsing cloud of gas, as stars do, but lack the mass to become hot enough to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, which powers stars.

Instead, brown dwarfs share a kinship with super-Jupiters. Both types of objects have similar temperatures and are extremely massive. They also have complex, varied atmospheres. The only difference, astronomers think, is their pedigree. Super-Jupiters form around stars; brown dwarfs often form in isolation.

A team of astronomers, led by Elena Manjavacas of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, has tested a new way to peer through the cloud layers of these nomadic objects. The researchers used an instrument at W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi to study in near-infrared light the colors and brightness variations of the layer-cake cloud structure in the nearby, free-floating brown dwarf known as 2MASS J22081363+2921215.

The Keck Observatory instrument, called the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE), also analyzed the spectral fingerprints of various chemical elements contained in the clouds and how they change with time. This is the first time astronomers have used MOSFIRE in this type of study.

These measurements offered Manjavacas a holistic view of the brown dwarf’s atmospheric clouds, providing more detail than previous observations of this object. Pioneered by Hubble observations, this technique is difficult for ground-based telescopes to do because of contamination from Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs certain infrared wavelengths. This absorption rate changes due to the weather.

"The only way to do this from the ground is by using Keck’s high-resolution MOSFIRE instrument because it allows us to observe multiple stars simultaneously with our brown dwarf,” said Manjavacas, a former staff astronomer at Keck Observatory and the lead author of the study. “This allows us to correct for the contamination introduced by the Earth’s atmosphere and measure the true signal from the brown dwarf with good precision. So, these observations are a proof-of-concept that MOSFIRE can do these types of studies of brown dwarf atmospheres.”

She decided to study this particular brown dwarf because it is very young and therefore extremely bright. It has not cooled off yet. Its mass and temperature are similar to those of the nearby giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris b, discovered in 2008 near-infrared images taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile.

“We don’t have the ability yet with current technology to analyze in detail the atmosphere of Beta Pictoris b,” Manjavacas said. “So, we’re using our study of this brown dwarf’s atmosphere as a proxy to get an idea of what the exoplanet’s clouds might look like at different heights of its atmosphere.”

Both the brown dwarf and Beta Pictoris b are young, so they radiate heat strongly in the near-infrared. They are both members of a flock of stars and sub-stellar objects called the Beta Pictoris moving group, which shares the same origin and a common motion through space. The group, which is about 33 million years old, is the closest grouping of young stars to Earth. It is located roughly 115 light-years away.

While they're cooler than bona fide stars, brown dwarfs are still extremely hot. The brown dwarf in Manjavacas’ study is a sizzling 2,780 degrees Fahrenheit (1,527 degrees Celsius).

The giant object is about 12 times heavier than Jupiter. As a young body, it is spinning incredibly fast, completing a rotation every 3.5 hours, compared to Jupiter’s 10-hour rotation period. So, clouds are whipping around the planet, creating a dynamic, turbulent atmosphere.

Keck Observatory’s MOSFIRE instrument stared at the brown dwarf for 2.5 hours, watching how the light filtering up through the atmosphere from the dwarf’s hot interior brightens and dims over time. Bright spots that appeared on the rotating object indicate regions where researchers can see deeper into the atmosphere, where it is hotter. Infrared wavelengths allow astronomers to peer deeper into the atmosphere. The observations suggest the brown dwarf has a mottled atmosphere with scattered clouds. If viewed close-up, the planet might resemble a carved Halloween pumpkin, with light escaping from the hot interior.

Its spectrum reveals clouds of hot sand grains and other exotic elements. Potassium iodide traces the object’s upper atmosphere, which also includes magnesium silicate clouds. Moving down in the atmosphere is a layer of sodium iodide and magnesium silicate clouds. The final layer consists of aluminum oxide clouds. The atmosphere’s total depth is 446 miles (718 kilometers). The elements detected represent a typical part of the composition of brown dwarf atmospheres, Manjavacas said.

She and her team used computer models of brown dwarf atmospheres to determine the location of the chemical compounds in each cloud layer.

The study will be published in The Astronomical Journal and is available in pre-print format on arXiv.org.

Manjavacas’ plan is to use Keck Observatory’s MOSFIRE to study other atmospheres of brown dwarfs and compare them to those of gas giants. Future telescopes such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory scheduled to launch later this year, will provide even more information about a brown dwarf’s atmosphere.

“JWST will give us the structure of the entire atmosphere, providing more coverage than any other telescope,” Manjavacas said.

She hopes that MOSFIRE can be used in tandem with JWST to sample a wide range of brown dwarfs and gain a better understanding of brown dwarfs and giant planets.

“Exoplanets are so much more diverse than what we see locally in the solar system,” said Keck Observatory Chief Scientist John O’Meara. “It’s work like this, and future work with Keck and JWST, that will give us a fuller picture of the diversity of planets orbiting other stars.”

CAPTION

AThis graphic shows successive layers of clouds in the atmosphere of a nearby, free-floating brown dwarf. Breaks in the upper cloud layers allowed astronomers to probe deeper into the atmosphere of the brown dwarf called 2MASS J22081363+2921215. Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets but too small to sustain nuclear fusion, which powers stars. This illustration is based on infrared observations of the clouds' colors and brightness variations, as well as the spectral fingerprints of various chemical elements contained in the clouds and atmospheric modeling.

CREDIT

NASA, ESA, STScI, Andi James (STScI)

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ABOUT MOSFIRE

The Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE), gathers thousands of spectra from objects spanning a variety of distances, environments and physical conditions. What makes this large, vacuum-cryogenic instrument unique is its ability to select up to 46 individual objects in the field of view and then record the infrared spectrum of all 46 objects simultaneously. When a new field is selected, a robotic mechanism inside the vacuum chamber reconfigures the distribution of tiny slits in the focal plane in under six minutes. Eight years in the making with First Light in 2012, MOSFIRE's early performance results range from the discovery of ultra-cool, nearby substellar mass objects, to the detection of oxygen in young galaxies only two billion years after the Big Bang. MOSFIRE was made possible by funding provided by the National Science Foundation.

ABOUT W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY

The W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes are among the most scientifically productive on Earth. The two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes atop Maunakea on the Island of Hawaiʻi feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrometers, and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.

For more information, visit www.keckobservatory.org

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JOURNAL

The Astronomical Journal

 

Analysis: US Federal cannabis legalization would reduce arrests, but could put some social equity licensees out of business

Reports and Proceedings

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Prohibitions on cannabis have created disparate harms, especially for Black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC). This has occurred largely through disparities in arrests for possession and the effects of those disparities. A new analysis describes options available for using reforms to cannabis policy to address these disparities.

The analysis concludes that federal efforts to legalize cannabis, while reducing arrests, could hinder some efforts at social equity. It also concludes that expunging or sealing convictions for cannabis possession could affect many more BIPOC than other reforms, thus advancing social equity.

The study, entitled “Cannabis legalization and social equity: some opportunities, puzzles, and trade-offs”, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the RAND Corporation, appears in the Boston University Law Review.

“Cannabis legalization is not a single, well-defined option, but rather a complex and multifaceted challenge with hundreds of policy decision points, each of which presents opportunities to narrow or widen disparities,” explains Jonathan P. Caulkins, professor of operations research and public policy at CMU’s Heinz College, who coauthored the study. “Organizations focused on legalization disagree about the potential effects on social equity outcomes, so it’s important to have research-based evidence about how cannabis policy influences inequities.”

In their analysis, Caulkins and his colleagues examine the effect on inequities in six areas: arrests and penalties, previous cannabis offences, licensing preferences, diversity in the cannabis workforce, government revenue, and health. They also detail a case study of Virginia, which legalized possession of small amounts of cannabis in July 2021; the authors look at how many people from communities disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition could benefit from expungement of records as well as from entrepreneurship and employment opportunities in the cannabis industry.

The authors recommend that those seeking to use cannabis policy reform to address social inequities clearly define the populations they want to help and the outcomes they seek to achieve. This will help policymakers choose from the many options available and address potential tradeoffs.

One of the options is increasing cannabis business opportunities for members of communities who have been disproportionately affected, especially BIPOC communities. Some states and localities are issuing social equity licenses, but progress has been slow. Proposed federal legislation to legalize cannabis could impact these efforts. Companies that produce and distribute cannabis could operate across state lines or out of the country entirely, and online cannabis shopping might provide stiff competition to retail stores. These, in turn, could drive many existing cannabis companies out of business, including those operated by equity licensees.

While not all states are poised to legalize cannabis, those keeping it illegal can take steps to address inequities, suggest the authors. In the case study of Virginia, the authors show that sealing or expunging convictions would benefit far more BIPOC than would prioritizing these individuals for entrepreneurship and employment opportunities in a legal cannabis market. Expunging records could improve the employment prospects of hundreds of thousands of people, while increasing employment opportunities for individuals in disproportionately affected communities to work in the cannabis industry could benefit thousands, and equity programs directed at the owners of cannabis businesses could directly help several dozen BIPOC, the authors note.

“Discussions about how cannabis legalization can be used to influence social equity outcomes have become more prominent and more detailed in recent years,” notes Beau Kilmer, director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, who led the study. “Our analysis should be of interest to decision makers in states that have legalized cannabis, as well as those considering alternatives to cannabis prohibition.”

The analysis was funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

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Summarized from an article in Boston University Law Review, Cannabis Legalization and Social Equity: Some Opportunities, Puzzles, and Trade-Offs by Kilmer, B (RAND Corporation), Caulkins, JP (Carnegie Mellon University), Kilborn, M (Independent Researcher), Priest, M (RAND Corporation), and Warren, KM (RAND Corporation). Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.

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ARTICLE TITLE

Cannabis Legalization and Social Equity: Some Opportunities, Puzzles, and Trade-Offs

 

nTIDE June 2021 COVID Update: Unemployment numbers stabilizing at higher than pre-pandemic numbers

National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) – issued semi-monthly by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire

Business Announcement

KESSLER FOUNDATION

 

IMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC COMPARES THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON PEOPLE WITH AND WITHOUT DISABILITIES, CAPTURING PRE-PANDEMIC AND CURRENT UNEMPLOYMENT DATA FOR JANUARY 2020 TO JUNE 2021. THE MAIN TAKEAWAY IS THAT WHILE UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUES TO DECLINE, LEVELS REMAIN WELL ABOVE PRE-PANDEMIC LEVELS. view more 

CREDIT: KESSLER FOUNDATION

East Hanover, NJ. July 28, 2021. For two consecutive months, the number of people unemployed has increased, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) COVID Update, as economic recovery continues to face the ongoing challenges of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated an unprecedented rise in furloughs and people looking for work, prompting the addition of this mid-month nTIDE COVID Update in the spring of 2020. The mid-month nTIDE follows two key unemployment indicators – furloughs, or temporary layoffs, and the number of people looking for work, comparing trends for people with and without disabilities.

June’s nTIDE COVID Update graphic shows that the number of unemployed people with and without disabilities has stabilized, but at levels higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to economist Andrew Houtenville, PhD, research director of the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability, and co-author of nTIDE. The levels are substantial, with increments of 200,000 for people with disabilities, and approximately 3 million for people without disabilities, indicating that many people have not yet returned to the labor market.

Dr. Houtenville pointed out the sharp contrast with past trends: “This time of the year is traditionally the height of the summer hiring season, but in 2021, we are not seeing the usual impact of seasonal jobs for May and June. Delayed rebound in the entertainment and dining sectors may be one of the factors, and some workers may still be hesitant to return due to safety concerns.” 

Data for June show that furloughs continue at relatively low levels, approaching pre-pandemic levels, a positive sign for people with and without disabilities. Public health concerns, however, warrant caution. “Spread of the delta variant, which is more contagious and causes more serious illness, could trigger lockdowns in areas of the country where vaccination rates are low,” Dr. Houtenville noted. “If that occurs, we may see an increase in furloughs.”

Notes from the Field

Disability employment expert John O’Neill, PhD, shared the experiences of a vocational service provider that is working to maintain jobs for workers with disabilities. Dr. O’Neill, director of the Center for Employment and Disability Research at Kessler Foundation, sits on the board of Job Path NYC, a New York City-based nonprofit that provides customized employment services for people with autism and developmental disabilities. In December 2020, 70 out of 250 of Job Path’s clients were furloughed. The subsequent rate of return to work has been slow, with 42 out of 250 clients still waiting to be called back in July.  

Many of these workers have jobs in theaters, schools, and restaurants, which are slowly reopening, which may contribute to prolonged furloughs. Another factor relates to the structure of customized placements. “These jobs often rely on supports across an organization, which may be harder to restart, especially when workplaces are undergoing radical changes.”

Dr. O’Neill cautioned against extrapolating these observations, emphasizing that customized employment involves a minority of workers with disabilities. Regardless of employment type, Drs. Houtenville and O’Neill agreed on the importance of early intervention when workers with disabilities lose their jobs. “The longer they are disconnected from their employer, the harder it is to re-enter the workforce,” said Dr. Houtenville.  “State programs that emphasize rapid response to job loss are good resources for helping return-to-work and stay at work,” added Dr. O’Neill.

As the economy evolves, Dr. O’Neill pointed out the prospects for different types of jobs. “By maintaining their connections to employers, workers with disabilities will be better positioned to take advantage of new opportunities in the workplace.”

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Register for next month’s nTIDE webinars: August 6, 2021, nTIDE Jobs Report, and our August 20, 2021, COVID Update at https://researchondisability.org/home/ntide

This COVID Update is an extra edition of National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE), a joint project of Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability, co-authored by Dr. Houtenville and John O'Neill, PhD, of Kessler Foundation. The nTIDE team closely monitors the job numbers, issuing semi-monthly nTIDE reports, as the labor market continues to reflect the many challenges of the pandemic.

Funding: Kessler Foundation and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) (90RT5037)

About Kessler Foundation

Kessler Foundation, a major nonprofit organization in the field of disability, is a global leader in rehabilitation research that seeks to improve cognition, mobility, and long-term outcomes -- including employment -- for people with neurological disabilities caused by diseases and injuries of the brain and spinal cord. Kessler Foundation leads the nation in funding innovative programs that expand opportunities for employment for people with disabilities. For more information, visit KesslerFoundation.org.

About the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire

The Institute on Disability (IOD) at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) was established in 1987 to provide a coherent university-based focus for the improvement of knowledge, policies, and practices related to the lives of persons with disabilities and their families. For information on the NIDILRR-funded Employment Policy and Measurement Rehabilitation Research and Training Center, visit ResearchonDisability.org.

Interested in trends on disability employment? Contact Carolann Murphy to arrange an interview with our experts: cmurphy@kesslerfoundation.org.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

 

Icy waters of 'Snowball Earth' may have spurred early organisms to grow bigger

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

 

IMAGE: CARL SIMPSON INSPECTS A FOSSIL OF BROOKSELLA ALTERNATA, AN INVERTEBRATE ANIMAL THAT SWAM IN THE OCEAN ROUGHLY 500 MILLION YEARS AGO. view more 

CREDIT: GLENN ASAKAWA/CU BOULDER

A new study from CU Boulder finds that hundreds of millions of years ago, small single-celled organisms may have evolved into larger multicellular life forms to better propel themselves through icy waters.

The research was led by paleobiologist Carl Simpson and appears today in the journal The American Naturalist. It hones in on a question that’s central to the history of the planet: How did life on Earth, which started off teeny-tiny, get so big?

“Once organisms get big, they have a clear ecological advantage because the physics around how they capture food become totally different,” said Simpson, assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at CU Boulder and the CU Museum of Natural History. “But the hard part for researchers has been explaining how they got big in the first place.”

In his latest study, Simpson draws on a series of mathematical equations to argue that this all-important shift may have come down to hydrodynamics—or the pursuit of a more efficient backstroke.

Roughly 750 million years ago, and for reasons that scientists are still debating, the planet became suddenly and dramatically colder—a period of time called “Snowball Earth.” To adapt to these frigid conditions, which can make swimming more difficult, small organisms like bacteria may have begun to glom together to form larger and more complex life.

Simpson still has a lot of work to do before he can prove his theory. But, the geologist said, the results could help to reveal how the ancestors of all modern multicellular life, from flowers to elephants and even people, first arose on Earth. 

“By swimming together, these cells could remain small on an individual level but still produce more power,” Simpson said. “They become both bigger and faster as a group.”

CAPTION

Two fossils of Brooksella alternata, an invertebrate animal that swam in the ocean roughly 500 million years ago.

CREDIT

Glenn Asakawa/CU Boulder

Snowball Earth

Those successes took place at a seemingly inhospitable time in the planet’s past.

During “Snowball Earth,” the globe may have been all but recognizable. Ice sheets a half-mile thick or more may have blanketed the planet for as much as 70 million years, while temperatures in the oceans plummeted to less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit. 

But even amid those frigid conditions, something spectacular happened: The first organisms made up of many different cells, not just one, began to emerge around the planet. Scientists still aren’t sure what those ancient multicellular organisms might have looked like. One theory suggests that they resembled Volvox, a type of algae that are common in oceans today and are shaped like a hollow sphere or snow globe.

“That’s something that has lodged in my mind for years,” Simpson said. “How do Snowball Earth and the rise of multicellular organisms go together?”

The answer to that counterintuitive problem may hinge on a little-known property of water.

Simpson explained that when saltwater gets colder, it also becomes several times thicker, or more viscous. Humans are too big to notice the change. But for organisms the size of modern-day bacteria, the difference can be huge. 

“When you’re small, you’re stuck,” he said. “The water moves you.”

Taking a swim

The geologist ran a series of calculations to gauge how organisms of various shapes and sizes might fare in the oceans of Snowball Earth. And, in this case, bigger might be better. 

Simpson said that modern-day bacteria and other single-celled organisms move around in aquatic environments using two different sets of tools: There are cilia—which are wavy, hair-like projections—and flagella—think the “tails” on sperm cells. Both of these tools would have been painfully slow in frigid ocean conditions, his results show.

If individual cells joined forces to make a bigger organism, in contrast, they could produce a lot more swimming power while keeping the energy needs of each cell low. 

“The advantage of the multicellular strategy is that each cell stays small and has low metabolic requirements, but these cells can swim together,” Simpson said.

He’s currently testing the theory using experiments with modern algae in a lab and by digging deeper into Earth’s fossil record. One thing is clear, Simpson said: Once life forms got big, a whole new world of possibilities became available to them. Primitive animals like sponges, for example, survive not by floating in the ocean but by actively pumping water through their bodies. 

“When you’re big, you now can move the water rather than the other way around,” Simpson said.

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JOURNAL

The American Naturalist

DOI

10.1086/716634

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Adaptation to a viscous Snowball Earth Ocean as a path to complex multicellularity

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Jul-2021

 

Indian women’s nutrition suffered during COVID-19 lockdown

Reports and Proceedings

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A YOUNG WOMAN PREPARES A MEAL IN HER HOME IN INDIA. view more 

CREDIT: TATA-CORNELL INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURE AND NUTRITION/PROVIDED

ITHACA, N.Y. - The 2020 nationwide lockdown India imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruptions that negatively impacted women’s nutrition, according to a new study from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition.

Published in the journal Economia Politica, the study shows that women’s dietary diversity – the number of food groups consumed – declined during the lockdown compared to the same period in 2019. Most concerningly, the drop was due to decreased consumption of foods like meats, eggs, vegetables and fruits, which are rich in micronutrients that are crucial to good health and development.

“Women’s diets were lacking in diverse foods even before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has further exacerbated the situation,” said Soumya Gupta, a research economist at TCI who coauthored the study along with Prabhu Pingali, TCI director; Mathew Abraham, assistant director; and consultant Payal Seth. “Any policies addressing the impact of the pandemic on nutritional outcomes must do so through a gendered lens that reflects the specific, and often persistent, vulnerabilities faced by women.”

The Indian government instituted a national lockdown to slow down the spread of COVID-19 on March 24, 2020. Disruptions to agricultural supply chains subsequently led to price fluctuations, especially for nonstaple foods. The lockdown was lifted on May 30, 2020, though some restrictions remained in certain areas of the country.

TCI analyzed surveys of food expenditures, dietary diversity and other nutrition indicators at the national, state and district levels in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. They found that food expenditures significantly declined during the lockdown, especially in less developed districts. Nearly 90% of survey respondents reported having less food, while 95% said they consumed fewer types of food. The largest drop in food expenditures was for micronutrient-rich fresh and dried fruits, as well as animal products such as meat, fish and eggs.

Expenditures returned to pre-lockdown levels in June 2020 at the national and state levels but remained low at the district level. Gupta and her co-authors said this suggests that underdeveloped regions were disproportionately affected by access and availability constraints.

Surveys also suggest a decrease in the quantity and quality of nutritious foods consumed by women during the pandemic. For example, some women said that during the lockdown they halved the amount of dal, or red lentils, that they prepared, or that they prepared thinner dals.

“The decline in women’s diet diversity combined with a likely decrease in quantities consumed points to a greater risk for micronutrient malnutrition as compared to before the pandemic,” Gupta said. “Due to the spillover effects of maternal malnutrition, that risk poses a threat not only to women’s productivity and well-being, but also that of their children.”

Nutrition security declined across the board during the lockdown, but researchers found reason to believe that women’s nutrition was disproportionately impacted. The number of women consuming vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables dropped by 42%.

While the data analyzed in the study does not allow for direct comparisons between women and other members of their families, a previous TCI study showed that Indian women eat less diverse diets than their households.

Many factors have been associated with gender differences in food allocation across the world, including income, bargaining power, social status, interpersonal relationships, tastes and preferences. Uneven food allocation within households has also been associated with the role of women in different family systems, including women eating after all other members have eaten.

“How food is distributed between members of the household depends in part on social norms, but also on how much food the household has to begin with,” Gupta said. “That in turn depends on income, access to markets and prices. All of these were adversely impacted during the early stages of the lockdown.”

The unequal burden on women was also caused in part due to the closure of India’s aanganwadi centers during the lockdown, the researchers said. The centers, which provide take-home rations and hot cooked meals to nursing and expecting mothers, are an important source of nutrition for women and children. According to the study, 72% of eligible households lost access to those services during the pandemic.

Policymakers should recognize the disproportionate impact of the pandemic and other disruptive events on women’s nutrition by bolstering safety-net programs to ensure they meet the needs of women and other marginalized groups, the researchers said.

The researchers also recommended market-oriented reforms, such as the removal of rules that restrict the movement of products between markets and state boundaries, commercialization of small farms, and investments in infrastructure like refrigerated supply chains.

“While it is a long-standing issue, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the relative lack of affordable nutritious foods in India to the fore,” Pingali said. “Broad reforms are needed to diversify the country’s food system and ensure that women and other marginalized groups have access to nutritious diets during the pandemic and beyond.”

TCI is part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and hosted by the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Pingali is also a professor in the Dyson School, with joint appointments in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Global Development in CALS. The Division of Nutritional Sciences is shared by CALS and the College of Human Ecology.

 

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JOURNAL

Economia Politica

DOI

10.1007/s40888-021-00233-9

US Department of Energy announces $7.7 million for earth & environmental systems Modeling

Efforts aim to enhance understanding of earth system predictability

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $7.7 million in funding for 11 studies to improve understanding of Earth system predictability and DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), a state-of-the-science climate model.

The E3SM is the first comprehensive model of the Earth system to take full advantage of the world-leading supercomputing capabilities at DOE's national laboratories. The goal of DOE’s model development and analysis efforts within Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling program is to assert and maintain an international scientific leadership position in the development of Earth system models and providing transformative insights on Earth systems, at time scales ranging from sub-seasonal to centennial, delivering knowledge foundations and science-based tools for the Nation’s planning of next-generation, resilient energy, environmental, and economic systems and infrastructures.

“By improving key elements of our Earth system model in climate-sensitive regions, we have an opportunity to model environmental systems with greater precision and predictive power than ever before by using DOE’s world-class supercomputers,” said Sharlene Weatherwax, DOE Associate Director of Biological and Environmental Research. “These studies will help provide DOE and the nation with more accurate predictions of climate change and its impacts to our infrastructures, economies, and our most vulnerable population groups.”

Studies are intended to benefit the public through increased understanding and modeling of the Earth system and climate change and will focus on a range of different topics, from improved representation of ecological systems and cloud-aerosol interactions, to quantifying uncertainties across a range of processes, scales, time horizons, and regional impacts.

Projects were selected for award in FY 2021 by competitive peer review through a DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement that was issued in FY 2020 under the Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling Program, sponsored by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), within the Department’s Office of Science.

Funding totals $7.7 million in Fiscal Year 2021 dollars for 11 projects lasting three years in duration. A list of projects can be found at the BER website under “What's New.”

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New Research Helps Explain the Diversity of Life and the 'Paradox of Sex'

New UArizona research finds that sexual reproduction and multicellularity drive diversity among different species.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

There are huge differences in species numbers among the major branches of the tree of life. Some groups of organisms have many species, while others have few. For example, animals, plants and fungi each have over 100,000 known species, but most others – such as many algal and bacterial groups – have 10,000 or less. 

A new University of Arizona-led study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, tested whether sexual reproduction and multicellularity might help explain this mysterious pattern. 

"We wanted to understand the diversity of life," said paper co-author John Wiens, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Why are most living things animals, plants and fungi?"

To address this, Wiens worked with a visiting scientist in his lab, Lian Chen from Nanjing Forestry University in China. They estimated rates of species proliferation in 17 major groups that spanned all living organisms, including bacteria, protists, fungi, plants and animals. The hard part was to estimate how many species in each group were multicellular versus unicellular and how many reproduced sexually versus asexually. For five years, Chen sifted through more than 1,100 scientific papers and characterized the reproductive modes and cellularity of more than 1.5 million species.

They found that both multicellularity and sexual reproduction helped explain the rapid proliferation of animal, plant and fungal species. The rapid proliferation of these three groups explains why they now include more than 90% of Earth's known species.

The duo also found that the rapid proliferation of sexual species may help explain the "paradox of sex." The paradox is why so many species reproduce sexually, despite the disadvantages of sexual reproduction.  

"For sexual species, only half the individuals are directly producing offspring. In an asexual species, every individual is directly producing offspring," Wiens said. "Sexual reproduction is not as efficient. Another disadvantage of sexual reproduction is that you do need two individuals to make something happen, and those two individuals have to be the right sexes. Asexual species, on the other hand, only need one individual to reproduce."

Chen and Wiens found a straightforward answer to the paradox of sex. The reason why there are so many sexual species is because sexual species actually proliferate more rapidly than asexual species. This had not been shown across all of life before.

They also found that another explanation for the large number of sexual species is that sexual reproduction and multicellularity are strongly associated across the tree of life, and that multicellularity helps drive the large number of sexual species.

"Multicellularity is actually more important than sexual production. We did a statistical analysis that showed it is probably at least twice as important for explaining these patterns of diversity as sexual reproduction," Wiens said.

And while this study alone can't pinpoint exactly why multicellularity is so important, researchers have previously suggested that it has to do with the variety of cell types within a multicellular organism.

"If you're a single cell, there's not much variety there," Wiens said. "But multicellularity allows for different tissues or cell types and allows for diversity. But how exactly it leads to more rapid proliferation will need more study."

Chen and Wiens also tested how their conclusions might change if most living species on Earth were species of bacteria that are still unknown to science.

"Most bacteria are unicellular and asexual. But because bacteria are much older than plants, animals and fungi, they have not proliferated as rapidly, even if there are billions of bacterial species," Wiens said. "Therefore, multicellularity and sexual reproduction still explain the rapid proliferation of animals, plants and fungi."

Future work will be needed to understand how multicellularity and sexual reproduction drive biodiversity. Wiens is also interested in how some groups are both multicellular and reproduce sexually yet don't proliferate rapidly.

"We have some ideas," he said. "One example is rhodophytes, the red algae. These are mostly marine, and we know from animals that marine groups don't seem to proliferate as rapidly."

###

---

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2021.1265

ARTICLE TITLE

Multicellularity and sex helped shape the Tree of Life

 

Synthetic fuels: Successful coupled operation of container plant system at KIT

Power-to-liquid plant with optimized reactor design at Energy Lab 2.0 - Synthesis gas production from CO2 combined with fuel production

Business Announcement

KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FÜR TECHNOLOGIE (KIT)

 

IMAGE: THE CONTAINER PLANT AT ENERGY LAB 2.0 PRODUCES UP TO 200 L SYNTHETIC FUEL MIX PER DAY. (PHOTO: AMADEUS BRAMSIEPE, KIT) view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO: AMADEUS BRAMSIEPE, KIT)

Use of synthetic fuels can minimize greenhouse gas emissions of aircraft and heavy-duty transport in future. Thanks to a power-to-liquid plant built set up by INERATEC, which Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and its spin-off operate together at Energy Lab 2.0, this appears to be within reach. The modular plant is accommodated in a container and planned to be produced in series by INERATEC.

“This is the last step on the way towards its industrial use,” says Professor Roland Dittmeyer from KIT’s Institute for Micro Process Engineering. “Plants of this design will contribute to making the global transport sector and chemical industry more sustainable with e-fuels and e-chemicals.” The plant is located at Energy Lab 2.0 on KIT’s Campus North. It produces a synthetic fuel mix, called syncrude, from carbon dioxide (CO2) and renewable hydrogen (H2). This syncrude can then be processed to synthetic kerosene, diesel, and gasoline. “Two reactor stages are required. We have coupled them for the first time and operate them with an improved design at a scale relevant to technology development,” Dittmeyer says. “We can produce up to 200 l of fuel per day.”

 

Innovative Technology by INERATEC

In one of the reactor stages, the long-chain hydrocarbons of the syncrude are produced from synthesis gas that mainly consists of carbon monoxide (CO) and H2 by means of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FT synthesis). The synthesis gas is produced by reverse water gas-shift reaction (RWGS) in the other upstream reactor. The RWGS reactor consists of microstructured plates that ensure flexible operation of the plant and enhance efficiency. The new plate design has now been demonstrated successfully in coupled operation. “With the optimized RWGS reactor, reactions can be controlled more precisely and the process is improved significantly,” says Dr. Tim Böltken, one of the managing directors of INERATEC. Every hour, up to 3 kg of hydrogen from electrolyzers can be processed. “This corresponds to an input of 125 kilowatts and sets new standards worldwide,” Böltken adds.

 

Series Production in the Next Step

Demonstration of INERATEC’s RWGS reactor technology on this scale represents the last important step in university research. The company plans to start series production soon and to quickly supply inexpensive power-to-X technology by further scaling, standardization, and reproduction. The corresponding IMPOWER2X project of KIT’s spinoff is funded with EUR 2.5 million by the European Union.

Already in 2019, during the first funding phase of the Kopernikus project P2X, the world’s first fully integrated plant for the production of “fuel from air and green power” was taken into operation at KIT. The plant produced about 10 l of synthetic fuels per day and combined CO2 separation from air with high-temperature electrolysis for synthesis gas production, FT synthesis, and product processing to fuel. Now, in the second funding phase of P2X, also this alternative process chain will be scaled to 250 kilowatts at Energy Lab 2.0. From 2022, it will produce about 200 to 300 l fuel per day directly from the air’s CO2. (mhe)

###

More information:https://www.elab2.kit.edu/english/193.php

More about the KIT Energy Center:https://www.energy.kit.edu/

 

Contact for this press release:

Dr. Martin Heidelberger, Press Officer, Phone: +49 721 608-41169,martin heidelberger∂kit edu

 

Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,600 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 23,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.

FIRST STEP; PROVE NK HAS NUKES
New Approaches to Verifying and Monitoring North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal

ANKIT PANDA, TOBY DALTON, THOMAS MACDONALD, MEGAN DUBOIS

JULY 27, 2021

Summary: While hopes remain for a reboot of nuclear talks with North Korea, a crucial but oft-overlooked question is how compliance with any negotiated agreement would be monitored and verified.

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FULL TEXT (PDF)


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Designing a Verifiable Freeze on North Korea’s Missile Programs
JOSHUA H. POLLACK

Designing Gradual, Successive Safeguards for North Korea’s Nuclear Program
MARC-GÉRARD ALBERT

Monitoring North Korean Nuclear Warheads
ALEX GLASER

The Merits of Probabilistic Verification in Complex Cases Like North Korea
THOMAS MACDONALD


Using Open-Source Intelligence to Verify a Future Agreement With North Korea
MELISSA HANHAM


A Nodal Monitoring System for Onsite Monitoring and Verification in North Korea
PABLO GARCIA


Lessons From the Iran Deal for Nuclear Negotiations With North Korea
TOBY DALTON, ANKIT PANDA


A Point-of-Entry Approach for Monitoring North Korean Imports and Exports
VANN H. VAN DIEPEN

In May 2021, following its classified review of U.S. policy toward North Korea, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden announced its intention to pursue “a calibrated, practical approach that is open to and will explore diplomacy with [North Korea].” While the administration retains the long-standing objective of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it acknowledges that it seeks to “make practical progress” to increase the security of the United States, that of U.S. forces on and around the Korean Peninsula, and that of U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan. If North Korea agreed to pursue practical steps toward risk reduction, negotiators would face a range of challenges as they broke new ground, among the thorniest of which would be the need for novel methods to monitor and verify compliance with agreed-upon restraints.

THE VERIFICATION CHALLENGES NORTH KOREA POSES

In recent years, North Korea’s nuclear and missile forces have made tremendous qualitative advances. In 2018, before the country’s leader Kim Jong Un turned to international diplomacy with South Korea, the United States, China, and others, he called for North Korea to “mass produce” ballistic missile and nuclear warheads. Official assessments since then, including by the U.S. intelligence community and the United Nations (UN) Panel of Experts pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1874, have suggested that Kim’s directive has been implemented and continues to remain in effect. At military parades in October 2020 and January 2021, Kim further unveiled new missile capabilities, including a new intercontinental ballistic missile possibly capable of carrying multiple warheads. In the meantime, Kim has continued to emphasize that nuclear weapons represent the cornerstone of North Korea’s national defense strategy.

Because the scope of North Korea’s nuclear complex has grown substantially since the failures of prior negotiated agreements to cap its capabilities (such as the 1994 Agreed Framework and the Six Party Talks in the mid-2000s), a comprehensive agreement resulting in the country’s rapid total disarmament is not a realistic near-term prospect. If Washington and Pyongyang resume either direct bilateral talks or multilateral talks on matters related to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the most realistic formula for progress would involve initial caps on parts of North Korea’s programs of concern—including its nuclear and missile programs—before a long-term move toward reductions and, eventually, elimination.

Negotiators and political decisionmakers sitting across from their North Korean counterparts would seek to maximize the verifiability of each phase of any agreement that is reached. Verification and monitoring would be critically important not only to the political viability of any potential future agreement but also to generating measurable progress toward denuclearization. As history shows, orthodox approaches to verification—with robust onsite inspections and other well-defined protocols—are anathema for Pyongyang. While North Korea at times has allowed limited, ad hoc inspections and onsite access, it has only done so after protracted and difficult negotiations—and the last time it did so was when its capabilities were considerably more limited. Notably, North Korea’s checkered history with the International Atomic Energy Agency has shown no signs of improving since agency inspectors were evicted from the country in April 2009. Further, given the near total lack of trust between the United States and North Korea, policymakers cannot expect ideal verification conditions for potential near-term agreements. Even so, they should recall that verification is not an end in itself: it is a means of assessing and ensuring compliance with any number of potential agreements while also building confidence and sustainability along the way.

NOVEL WAYS OF VERIFYING AND MONITORING NORTH KOREA

The Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with support from the Korea Foundation, convened a group of international experts over several workshops in early 2021 to study novel tools and approaches to the verification and monitoring of a range of possible nuclear and missile restraints on North Korea. Their findings and proposals are summarized in this compilation. The experts broadly addressed potential accountable items in North Korea, including missiles, fissile material stocks, and warheads; piecemeal and probabilistic approaches to general verification and nuclear safeguards; open-source intelligence techniques that might support verification and confidence-building efforts; import-export monitoring; and lessons from other monitoring regimes, including the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. Given the technical focus of this volume, the included chapters do not assess the political viability of any specific potential agreements or the sorts of concessions that North Korea may seek during implementation. The fundamental objective of this volume is to facilitate policymakers’ understanding of a range of verification and monitoring approaches to facilitate practical and incremental progress on denuclearization.

While orthodox approaches to verification are unquestionably the preferred standard for any potential agreement, near-term political realities require flexibility and tempered expectations. The ideas contained in this volume are intended to fit this purpose. Over time, as agreements are implemented with these approaches and tools, broader confidence building with North Korea may facilitate a more favorable political environment that enables the application of more standard verification approaches.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Toby Dalton is the co-director and a senior fellow of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. An expert on nonproliferation and nuclear energy, his work addresses regional security challenges and the evolution of the global nuclear order.

Thomas MacDonald is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Megan DuBois is a research assistant in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank Megan Dubois and Tobin Hansen for their support in editing and collecting the compilation. Additionally, Carnegie’s communications team provided substantial editorial assistance with this volume. The authors are grateful in particular to Ryan DeVries, Haley Clasen, and Sam Brase for their work in refining and editing this compilation.

AS READERS WILL KNOW I DO NOT BELIEVE NK HAS NUKES, IT HAS INSTEAD DEVELOPED VERY EFFECTIVE HIGH EXPLOSIVES THAT CAN MIMIC THE SEISMIC MEASURES OF A HALF TON OR 1-6 TON NUKE.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2017/04/north-korea-nuke-free-white-house.html

Ocasio-Cortez: Democrats can't blame GOP for end of eviction moratorium

BY MYCHAEL SCHNELL - 08/01/21

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on Sunday that Democrats cannot “in good faith blame the Republican Party” for the federal eviction moratorium expiring overnight because Democrats hold the majority in the lower chamber.

"I think there's a couple of issues here. First of all, you are absolutely correct in that the House and House leadership had the opportunity to vote to extend the moratorium, and there were many, and there was, frankly, a handful of conservative Democrats in the House that threatened to get on planes rather than hold this vote," Ocasio-Cortez told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s "State of the Union" when asked who is to blame for the moratorium expiring.

"And we have to really just call a spade a spade. We cannot in good faith blame the Republican Party when House Democrats have a majority," the progressive lawmaker added.



The federal eviction moratorium expired at midnight on Saturday, leaving millions of Americans at risk of being removed from their homes as COVID-19 cases begin to increase largely because of the highly infectious delta variant.

President Biden called on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium on Thursday, three days before it was set to expire.

A number of House progressive lawmakers slept outside the Capitol on Friday to protest the moratorium's expiration.

Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday hit the White House for waiting until three days before the moratorium's expiration date to call for an extension, arguing that the House was put into a “needlessly difficult situation.”

“There is something to be said for the fact that this court order came down on the White House a month ago, and the White House waited until the day before the House adjourned to release a statement asking on Congress to extend the moratorium,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to a Supreme Court order on the moratorium.

“I sit on the [House] Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over housing. ... We asked the Biden administration about their stance, and they were not being really forthright about that advocacy and that request until the day before the House adjourned, and so the House was put into a, I believe, a needlessly difficult situation,” she added.

The Democratic lawmaker said the House of Representatives, which adjourned for a weeks-long recess on Friday, should reconvene to extend the moratorium.

“The fact of the matter is that the problem is here. The House should reconvene and call this vote and extend the moratorium. There's about 11 million people that are behind on their rent at risk of eviction. That's one out of every six renters in the United States,” she said.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), however, did not reveal any plans to call the House back into session in a letter to her caucus sent on Saturday night.