Study gauges healthcare worker stress during pandemic

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: HEALTHCARE WORKER LOOKING PRESSURED AND UPSET. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: MULYADI, UNSPLASH, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

Healthcare workers, women, and people under age 50 experienced especially high levels of stress during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study published October 6th in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sebastien Couarraze of University Hospital of Toulouse, France, and colleagues.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the cause of considerable stress for people around the globe. Healthcare workers, including paramedical staff, have been on the front lines during this health crisis. Many studies have focused on the stress and concern of healthcare professionals during this time but relatively fewer studies have compared the stress of physicians to paramedical staff or fully assessed other risk factors for stress.

In the new study, Couarraze and colleagues used data from COVISTRESS, an international questionnaire distributed online that has collected demographic and stress-related information during the pandemic. The researchers analyzed 10,051 workers—including 1379 healthcare workers, 631 medical doctors and 748 paramedical staff—from 44 countries who completed the survey from January to June 2020.

The stress levels during the first wave of the pandemic—on a visual analog scale from 0 to 100—were 57.8 ± 33 in the whole cohort, 65.3 ± 29.1 in medical doctors and 73.6 ± 27.7 in paramedical staff. Healthcare professionals demonstrated an increased risk of very high stress levels (over 80 on the scale) compared to other workers (OR=2.13, 95% CI 1.87-2.34) and the risk for very high stress was higher for paramedical staff than doctors (1.88, 1.50-2.34). Across occupations, the risk of very high stress was also found to be increased in women compared to men (1.83, 1.61-2.09, p<0.001) and those under age 50 compared to older adults (1.45, 1.26-1.66, p<0.001). The authors say that continuing to monitor work-related stress and its effect on healthcare workers is crucial for post-pandemic planning.  

The authors add: “The health crisis caused by Covid-19 is unprecedented in the history of health. The effects on workers and in particular on their stress levels must be explored in order to put in place appropriate preventive measures. The results of our study show that workers have been particularly affected and that healthcare professionals have been the most affected. Among health professionals, nurses in particular had very high levels of stress.”

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0257840 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The major worldwide stress of healthcare professionals during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic – the international COVISTRESS survey

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Oct-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Study looks at pandemic changes, health care worker burnout

Research to be presented at the 2021 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS

Research to be presented at the 2021 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition finds that technology changes during pandemic may have contributed to burnout

ITASCA, IL – A survey of health care providers at a regional pediatric health care network found that the practice changes made in response to the pandemic may contribute to burnout among health care professionals.

The study abstract, “The Impact of COVID-19 and the Rapid Adoption of Telehealth on Provider Burnout in a Pediatric Healthcare Organization,” to be presented during the virtual American Academy of Pediatrics 2021 National Conference & Exhibition, found that those experiencing burnout are more likely to have negative perceptions about telehealth visits.

This may be because the switch to telehealth was done on an emergency basis during the pandemic, and there may not have been enough policies in place to support health care providers, especially for those already experiencing burnout, the authors write. The study also found that institution-level policies to reduce burnout are more likely to be perceived as insufficient by those experiencing burnout.

“Change is hard. The pandemic created the necessity for a massive shift to the adoption of telehealth in health care organizations. There was no time to follow all the rules of change management. Survival and leadership strength fueled change. Recovery must include awareness of the burden of rapid change, plus a crisis, placed on the health care team,” said study author Kenneth Grant, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Children’s Health Orange County.

Previous research on burnout among health care providers has shown that it can have serious negative consequences for health care providers and patients, with clinicians experiencing burnout being more likely to make medical errors, the authors note.

For this study, a brief questionnaire was designed by a multidisciplinary team and sent to all 378 providers at Children’s Health Orange County in June 2020. Eighty-four responded. The survey found that 56% of respondents reported that they were experiencing burnout. The survey also found that 84.5% of respondents believed that their patients seem satisfied with service provided through telehealth.  However, more negative perceptions of telehealth increased the odds of reporting burnout by 47%.

The data show that, when controlling for the other variables in the model, the self-reported experience of burnout is predicted by three perceptions: COVID-19 has exacerbated provider burnout, the benefits of telehealth do not outweigh the challenges, and there is insufficient institutional support to reduce burnout.

Adequate institutional resources for promoting provider well-being, and combating provider burnout, during these difficult times are important, the authors note.

Dr. Tera Reynolds will present the study abstract on Oct. 9, 2021, at 9:55 a.m.

 

Please note: Only the abstract is being presented at the meeting. In some cases, the researcher may have more data available to share with media or may be preparing a longer article for submission to a journal. 

# # #

The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit www.aap.org.

ABSTRACT BELOW

Program Name:

Abstract Title: The Impact of COVID-19 and the Rapid Adoption of Telehealth on Provider Burnout in a Pediatric Healthcare Organization

Tera Reynolds

Minneapolis, MN, United States

Saturday, October 9, 2021: 9:55 AM –

Clinician burnout is a serious problem in healthcare, which could be exacerbated by the consequences of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, including the abrupt shifts in clinical practice (e.g., rapid increase in telehealth services). It is within this context that we conducted a survey of clinicians at a safety-net pediatric hospital to understand how these factors may have affected providers’ experiences with and perceptions of burnout.

The brief structured questionnaire was designed by a multidisciplinary team and was sent to all 378 providers at CHOC Children’s in June 2020. Questions included demographics, experiences with and perceptions of burnout, and factors that may contribute to or mitigate burnout. After performing descriptive analyses, we used a binomial logistic regression model to test the primary hypotheses of this study: burnout is predicted by both providers’ perceptions of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and their perceptions of the consequent transition to telehealth. Provider burnout was measured by the statement, “I am experiencing burnout,” with response options on a Likert scale from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree. This was converted to a binary variable for our analyses. Of note, and as others have done, we chose not to use the 22-item validated measure of burnout to avoid over-burdening clinicians. The study was reviewed and approved by the CHOC Institutional Review Board (#200675).

Eighty-four providers responded (22%), which is typical for surveys of clinicians. The majority of respondents identified as female (57%). Additionally, 70% of participants were between 35 and 54 years old, with about 10% <35 years and 20% >54 years. Almost all respondents (92%) were married or in a domestic partnership. Approximately 46% of respondents were Specialists, 33% General Pediatricians, and 20% Hospitalists. Fifty-six percent of respondents reported that they were experiencing burnout (N=84). Table 1 summarizes key descriptive results, and Figure 1 presents the results of the multivariable logistic regression model predicting self-reported provider burnout. The data show that, when controlling for the other variables in the model, the self-reported experience of burnout is predicted by three perceptions: COVID-19 has exacerbated provider burnout (p<0.001), the benefits of telehealth do not outweigh the challenges (p=0.045), and there is insufficient institutional support to reduce burnout (p<0.001). We also identified a statistically significant interaction, with those perceiving both sufficient institutional support and telehealth to be beneficial being less likely to report experiencing burnout (p=0.045).

Increased institutional support should be provided to clinicians both now, as clinical practice continues to evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic, and more proactively during the inevitable future periods of crisis in an effort to reduce clinician burnout in these difficult times. Future research should assess the effectiveness of different institutional measures on clinician wellbeing.

For release: 12:01 a.m. ET, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021

AAP contact: Emily Rosenbaum at erosenbaum@aap.org

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SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Study Looks at Pandemic Changes, Health Care Worker Burnout

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Oct-2021

Disclaimer: AAA

Travelling fires pose an underestimated risk to open building spaces

Peer-Reviewed Publication

 NEWS RELEASE 4-OCT-2021

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

With more and more large office spaces designed as open-plan, the researchers say their findings should be taken into particular consideration when designing spaces like offices and warehouses larger than 100m2. 

The lesser-known ‘travelling fires’, which travel within large building compartments rather than engulfing whole rooms at once, can cause at least as much structural damage and potential building collapse as typical fires. They are likely to be especially prevalent in large spaces with ample fuel and fewer doors and interior walls, like open-plan offices and warehouses. 

Structural engineers design buildings to survive fires use guidelines like standard fire and Eurocode parametric fires. Using these guidelines, they typically focus on the fires that engulf whole rooms at once, known as flashover fires. 

This new research, published today in the journal Fire Technology, shows that open spaces are also vulnerable to travelling fires - a lesser-known fire type that burns locally and moves across an entire floor over time. 

Senior author of the paper Professor Guillermo Rein of Imperial’s Department of Mechanical Engineering said: “Previous fire experiments have found that designing against flashover fires is key for buildings with smaller spaces separated by walls and doors. However, now that structural engineers are designing large open-plan spaces more frequently, it’s important to better understand how fires behave in these spaces. 

“We found that buildings with open plans are in fact vulnerable to travelling fires, but this fire type is not yet weighted as heavily as flashover fires when designing buildings. We want engineers to understand that protecting against travelling fires could be just as important as protecting against more typical ones. By considering both fire types, engineers can be confident that they are considering the worst-case scenario.” 

Travelling fires 

Traditional engineering guidelines for assessing fire safety in new buildings are based on observational experiments of fire dynamics in compartments much smaller than 100m2. These experiments have led to the assumption that flashover fires should be the main objective in structural design against fire. However, due to the lack of experiments in larger compartments, the potential significance of travelling fires in larger compartments is poorly understood. 

To put travelling fires to the test, Imperial researchers designed the largest compartment fire experiment ever conducted, known as x-ONE. Using a disused 380m2 open-space concrete farm building in Poland, they started a fire at one end and measured its behaviour as it spread across the 35.5-metre-long compartment. Before doing so, they applied fire protection to columns to prevent structural damage and laid down a bed of fuel to feed the fires. 

Within 12 minutes, the fire had spread the length of the compartment and had increased in speed from 0.33 to 16.7 centimetres per second as the size of the fire increased. It burned out after 25 minutes. Despite the size increase, the fire did not reach flashover. 

The researchers reported that the fire dynamics observed during x-ONE differed greatly from the fire dynamics reported in small-scale compartment fires in previous studies. The findings also challenge flashover fires as the sole worst-case scenario in designing buildings.  

They say this highlights the need for further experiments in large compartments to understand open-space fire dynamics and continue improving the safe design of modern buildings. 

Dr Egle Rackauskaite, who led the work while at Imperial’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and is now at Arup, said: “Despite the lack of advanced studies, travelling fires have been observed in real incidents - for example, in the World Trade Centre towers after the 11 September 2001 attacks. However, these fires have rarely been studied on an experimental basis. At the same time, some modern structures have open-plan spaces between four and 50 times larger than the largest compartment fire experiments conducted to date. This highlights a key knowledge gap in fire engineering design which must be addressed with further research.” 

This research was supported by Centre d’Étudeset de Recherches de l'Industrie du Béton (CERIB, France), Ove Arup and Partners Limited (UK), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, UK), and Educational & Scientific Foundation of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE, USA) in collaboration with Imperial College London, Instytut Techniki Budowlanej (ITB, Poland), and The Main School of Fire Service (Poland) 

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JOURNAL

Fire Technology

The least sympathetic people in the entire world?

They just may be the super rich who’ve bought mega-million condos in midtown Manhattan’s now infamous needle towers.

By

 Sam Pizzigati

 -

October 7, 2021

Have you heard about the people in that new condo building over at 432? They’re having quite a spat with the developer. Floods from the plumbing. Scary noises and vibrations. The whole building had to empty out for an overhaul of the electrical system, and plenty of folks living there fear getting stuck — for hours — on the elevators. Such a shame.

Imagine some friend of yours shared this grisly tale of condo woe. You’d naturally feel some sympathy with the poor souls that corner-cutting developer had taken to the cleaners, right? Well, that troubled building does actually exist, at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan. But the victims aren’t getting much sympathy. In fact, those victims — fabulously rich gazillionaires all — just may be the world’s least sympathetic people.

The super rich started taking up residence at 432 Park when the place opened up in 2015. At nearly 1,400 feet high, 432 Park then rated as the world’s tallest residential structure, the most amazing of the slim, incredibly tall residential skyscrapers then popping up just south of Central Park in midtown Manhattan. These “needle towers” had started multiplying in the years right after the Great Recession, high-rise totems for a giddy, fabulously wealthy new age.

“In buildings with just one sprawling residence per floor,” gushed one commentator on the needle-tower phenomenon, “the owner shares the views only with passing falcons.”

Inside 432 Park, that reviewer continued, “monumental windows and 12.5-foot-high ceilings conjure a modernist baronial grandeur,” with “residential amenities” galore, everything from studio apartments for whatever household help the tower’s rich want at their beck and call to a private restaurant complete with a Michelin-star chef and free daily breakfasts.

A residence at 432 Park, not surprisingly, quickly became a must-have for top 0.1 percenters the world over. The tower’s 125 units sold quickly, with three-bedrooms starting at $20 million and the penthouse up on the top going for well over four times that.

But few average New Yorkers took any satisfaction from all the needle tower buzz. They didn’t see 432 Park — of any of the other nearby needles — as inspired additions to New York’s built environment. They saw these super-slims as edifices devoted to avarice, high-tech concrete baubles for the richest of the rich that were casting ugly shadows deep into Central Park, the city’s most prized public space.

Architectural critics have expressed similar displeasure. Oliver Wainwright has likened New York’s “beanpole” towers to “raw extrusions of capital piled up” until they hit the clouds. Other analysts have zoned in on the greed and grasping that’s driving developers to build ever higher. Luxury developers, New York magazine’s Justin Davidson has observed, now realize that ever nicer bathtubs can only bump up prices so much. They’ve learned that only a truly “scarce and irreproducible resource” — “an aerial view of Central Park,” for instance — can justify a “hyper-super-ultra-deluxe” price.

But that sort of view will always ultimately disappoint. From high up on a needle tower, as Davidson points out, “Shakespeare in the Park looks like a flea circus.”

Apartment owners at 432 Park and other needle towers, for their part, could care less about all the kvetching from average New Yorkers and critics like Justin Davidson. Many of the owners aren’t even spending any appreciable time in their sky-high New York luxury lairs. Their condos sit empty for huge stretches of each year. They haven’t, in effect, purchased homes. They’ve purchased safe-deposit boxes in the sky, as Vanity Fair explains, “commodities for investment” sold to limited-liability companies “created to shield the identities” of their globe-trotting rich owners.

What do the owners at 432 Park care about? The value of their investments, of course. And that value is trending the wrong way. Only one condo sale at 432 has closed since January, and that one unit went for less than 1 percent more than the owner paid five years ago. One big reason for the sales stagnation: A New York Times exposé this past February. The Times coverage revealed that life at 432 Park had become a series of frustrating encounters with “leaks” and “creaks” and “breaks.”

The Times put part of the blame for those aggravations on cutting-corner moves during 432’s construction. But other problems seemed to stem from the sheer folly of trying to build beanpoles into the clouds.

For 432’s super rich, this new reporting created a psychic crisis of sorts. They had bought into the needle-tower universe for the status of it all, for still another opportunity to be envied for the drop-dead luxuriousness of their daily existence. But real life in 432 Park wasn’t, after the Times exposé, inviting envy. Real life at 432 Park was inviting snickers. Owners were looking like sad-sack fools as media outlets rushed to follow up on the Times revelations.

Those free breakfasts from a Michelin-star chef? Residents, news reports related, were now paying for all their restaurant meals, on top of an annual fee that had jumped twelve-fold over the previous six years.

And those elevators! The super-tall, super-skinny 432 Park tower sways in high winds, and engineers designed the elevators to shut down whenever the swaying gets too severe. The elevators can stall, condo owners have discovered to their horror, with residents trapped inside.

And the noise! One owner’s meeting surfaced complaints about “banging and clicking” in 432’s apartments — and a trash chute “that sounds like a bomb” when garbage gets tossed. At one point, the building did suffer an actual explosion, after contractors trying to fix one of the tower’s chronic plumbing problems drilled into wiring and killed the building’s power.

All these discomforts — and the high visibility these discomforts have gained — have now pushed the 432 Park’s apartment owners over the edge. Their condo board has filed a lawsuit demanding the developers pay $125 million in damages, the cost of fixing what they count as some 1,500 construction and design defects.

“Far from the ultra luxury spaces that they were promised,” the lawsuit reads, “unit owners were sold a building plagued by breakdowns and failures that have endangered and inconvenienced residents, guests, and workers, and repeatedly been the subject of highly critical accounts in the press and social media.”

That $125 million the condo board is seeking doesn’t include the millions more in punitive damages that individual resident lawsuits will also likely be seeking. The residents clearly want “justice”!

But real justice in housing — in Manhattan and throughout the United States — would mean relief for chronically squeezed working and middle class families.

Close to 50 percent of U.S. workers, a National Low Income Housing Coalition concluded this past summer, can’t afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Just since January, researchers at Apartment List report, median rents nationally have soared 16.4 percent. These rising rents reflect an increasingly intense shortage of affordable housing. In New York, 80 percent of the city’s apartments under construction in 2019 were sitting in luxury buildings.

And what “luxury” itself means, says Jonathan Miller of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, “has changed” as more and more wealth has concentrated at America’s economic summit.

“In the ’50s,” Miller notes, “you had mid-rise buildings that were called ‘luxury’ because they had an elevator and a doorman. You’d see signs: ‘Air conditioning, doorman and elevators — luxury building.’ Now you’re on the 96th floor, and you have a pool and a slew of amenities.”

We’re “seeing the results of the incredible growth of inequality between the rich, the super rich, and the absolutely ridiculously, obscenely rich,” adds City University of New York Grad Center sociologist Philip Kasinitz.

So what can be done? In Europe, voters in Berlin have just okayed an advisory referendum that calls on the city to buy about 15 percent of the city’s private housing stock and convert the purchased units into affordable public housing.

Elsewhere in Europe and across the United States, local and state governments have begun experimenting with a host of taxes on luxury real estate. These various approaches, notes Institute for Policy Studies inequality program director Chuck Collins, are aiming to “calm the disruptive impact of surging luxury markets” and generate revenue for improving public services.

In New York City, for instance, lawmakers enacted a “progressive mansion tax” in 2019, a levy that kicks into effect when properties transfer owners. A bolder approach for New York, an annual “pied-a-terre” tax aimed at luxury second homes, sank that same year under pressure from real-estate interests. The measure would have had owners of $10-million properties paying an extra $45,000 a year in taxes.

Activists see reforms like this “pied-a-terre” tax as steps we can take toward a broader goal: shrinking grand private fortunes down to a much more socially responsible size.

By concentrating riches at the economic summit, the sage British scholar R. H. Tawney noted way back in 1920, inequality “diverts energy from the creation of wealth to the multiplication of luxuries.” And that diversion invariably undermines, in every unequal era, society’s capacity to satisfy basic consumer needs. Especially that most basic consumer need of all, the home. In a housing market where price has become no object for some people, prices will eventually be higher for all people.

Buildings, too. The faster wealth has concentrated in our modern era, the higher our towers have soared. Since 2001, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat research shows, the world’s 100 tallest buildings have seen their average height soar 41 percent.

Sam Pizzigati

Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org. His latest books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970. Follow him at @Too_Much_Online.

WHY WE WASH & DISINFECT FLOORS

C. difficile is everywhere

Even on the bottom of footwear

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

 

IMAGE: KEVIN W. GAREY, PROFESSOR OF PHARMACY PRACTICE AT THE UH COLLEGE OF PHARMACY view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Clostridium difficile or C. diff – a bacteria that causes inflammation of the colon and severe diarrhea – is widely prevalent in non-healthcare settings in the United States and around the world, according to University of Houston researchers who presented at Infectious Disease Society of America IDWeek. 

In a worldwide sample, 26% of environmental samples from health care and non-health care sites tested positive for C. diff strains. Shoe soles had the highest positivity rates, with 45% of samples testing positive for the bacteria. 

C. diff is responsible for nearly half a million infections and 15,000 deaths in the United States each year. Until now, its presence in community settings has been largely overlooked. 

“C. diff infection was known historically as a hospital-associated infection, and efforts to reduce the infection and control its spread have been focused on hospitals and long-term care facilities,” said Jinhee Jo, a postdoctoral infectious disease fellow at the University of Houston and presenting author. “Recently, cases of community-acquired C. diff have been increasing, which suggests the need for broader community stewardship.”    

From 2014 to 2017, researchers collected samples from public areas, health care settings, and shoe soles in the United States and 11 other countries. They compared the rates of C. diff positivity between settings, including shoe soles, which were investigated for their potential role in environmental transmission. 

“The results of this study shift our understanding of C. diff, including where it is found, how it is transmitted, and who it affects,” said Kevin W. Garey, professor of pharmacy practice at the UH College of Pharmacy. “We can no longer think of C. diff as only existing in health care settings, and the population at risk is no longer just the very sick patient in the hospital. Identifying that person at risk anywhere in the world should become a priority regardless of whether the person is in a hospital or the community.” 

Everyone can take action to prevent infection and reduce the spread of C. diff in the community. Simple measures include practicing proper hand hygiene, cleaning surfaces with chemical disinfectants, and removing shoes before entering a home or common space. 

“The bottoms of your shoes aren’t clean,” said Jo. “They may introduce harmful bacteria into your bathroom or kitchen, which could make you sick. The next time you’re coming in from outside, take off your shoes before you enter a highly trafficked room and help reduce the risk of catching C. difficile.” 

The study is part of an ongoing effort by University of Houston researchers focused on better understanding C. difficile prevalence worldwide and represents a promising first step toward more effective surveillance, stewardship, and protection. 

In addition to Jo and Garey, Anne J. Gonzales-Luna is a co-author of the study. 

IDWeek is the joint annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP). 

Record-breaking Texas drought more severe than previously thought

New study from The University of Texas at Austin improves method for tracking drought severity and impact

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

 

IMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC REFLECTS DROUGHT AREA AND SEVERITY IN TEXAS FROM 2010 TO 2013. THE BOTTOM GRAPH SHOWS THE FINDINGS OF THE U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR, THE CURRENT STANDARD FOR DESIGNATING DROUGHT ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. THE TOP GRAPHIC REFLECTS THE FINDINGS OF AN UPDATED MODEL THAT INCORPORATED ADDITIONAL SOIL MOISTURE-RELATED DATA FROM SATELLITES. THE UPDATED MODEL SIMULATION SHOWED THAT MORE AREAS IN TEXAS WERE EXPERIENCING SEVERE DROUGHT LONGER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT. D0-D4 ARE DROUGHT LEVELS THAT GROW IN SEVERITY AS THE NUMBER INCREASES. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS JACKSON SCHOOL OF GEOSCIENCES

In 2011, Texas experienced one of its worst droughts ever. The dry, parched conditions caused over $7 billion in crop and livestock losses, sparked wildfires, pushed power grids to the limit, and reduced reservoirs to dangerously low levels.

And according to a recent study led by geoscientists at The University of Texas at Austin, the drought was worse than previously thought.

The study, published in the Journal of Hydrology, incorporated additional soil moisture-related data from gravity and microwave sensors on satellites into a land surface model used by scientists to determine the severity of droughts. According to the updated model simulation, severe drought was more widespread and longer lasting than judged by the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), which is the current standard for designating drought across the United States.

“The development of technology has allowed us to gain more real-time observation, and this observation can more accurately reflect the ground conditions,” said Weijing Chen, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences.

Even though the 2011 drought is now a decade gone, the study results are important because they show that incorporating new sources of data related to soil moisture into an existing land surface model can more accurately predict the severity and impact of droughts.

Soil moisture is a key indicator of drought and one of the most important factors when it comes to a drought’s impact on agricultural production.

The USDM incorporates a number of indexes, expertise and data sources to make its findings, including a hydrological model that gives an estimate of an area’s soil moisture. The UT researchers took their model a step further by using data assimilation technology to incorporate a combination of real-time satellite measurements related to soil moisture into their model. The microwave satellite data gave measurements of the top 2 inches of soil moisture. Adding in the gravity satellite data gave them soil moisture measurements in the rest of the root zone – down to about 40 inches.

“Soil moisture in the root zone is very important because it determines the water supply for vegetation,” Chen said.

The USDM releases a map every week that shows what parts of the U.S. are in drought. It is produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Its results are used to trigger disaster declarations and other federal, state and local responses.

Chen and her team incorporated the satellite data into an existing land surface model used by researchers around the world. They then zeroed in on what that meant for Texas drought from 2010 to 2013. 

The updated model simulation and the USDM were in agreement when it came to the geographical extent of the drought. But the updated model simulation showed that more areas were experiencing more severe drought than determined by the USDM, particularly in the western half of the state. The new model also found that widespread drought started in 2010, much earlier than the USDM.

The results also differ in what was the worst week of the historic drought. For the USDM it was the week of Oct. 4, 2011, with the most severe category of drought gripping 87.99% of the state. For the new model, it was the week of April 5, 2011, with 95.1% of the state experiencing the most severe category of drought.

The researchers said that developing methods for better understanding droughts is important to Texas as policymakers try to determine how the state’s water resources will be affected by climate change and population growth.

“Using measurement from space is a clever way to be able to more realistically detect and monitor droughts,” said co-author Zong-Liang Yang, a professor at the Jackson School.

The study was also co-authored by Chunlin Huang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the UT Austin-Portugal MAGAL Constellation Project.

 COOPERATION IS BETTER THAN COMPETITION

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Hydrology

DOI

10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126802 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

More severe drought detected by the assimilation of brightness temperature and terrestrial water storage anomalies in Texas during 2010–2013

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Dec-2021

#ECOCIDE UPDATED

Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery leak stops, but road closures remain in Texas City

KTRK 13 hrs ago

A tank at a Texas City refinery that was spewing crude oil has stopped leaking, officials said Thursday.

However, the Texas City Office of Emergency Management said Loop 197 next to the Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery is expected to remain closed for the next two days as clean-up gets underway.

Officials add all spilled crude oil was contained on site and is being removed and properly treated.

The leak began Wednesday morning, and it was blamed on the failure of a pump seal at the facility, according to Bruce Clawson, interim director of Homeland Security for Texas City. No injuries were reported.

The Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery has a refining capacity of 593,000 barrels of oil per day, according to company documents.

It wasn't clear how much oil had spilled. Video from SkyEye showed a large amount of fluid spewing from a large tank at the site Wednesday.

"The refinery has deployed air monitoring in the community as a precaution, and there is no indication of risk to the community," Marathon Petroleum Corporation communications manager Jamal Kheiry said in a statement.

Kheiry also said an investigation is planned to determine what caused the spill.

Marathon Texas Refinery Works to Contain Day-Old Oil Leak

Barbara Powell and Sergio Chapa
Thu., October 7, 2021, 10:08 a.m.·


(Bloomberg) -- Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s huge oil refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast continues to try to contain a crude leak more than 24 hours after crude began gushing from a storage tank on site, a regulatory filing from the company showed.

The crude release at the Galveston Bay facility in Texas City began early Wednesday after a valve flange on the tank failed and oil began pouring into the tank’s containment dike, the filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality showed. Marathon is emptying the tank as quickly as possible to minimize pollution. The company said there were no injuries.

Energy research and consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie estimated the crude tank’s capacity is 400,000 barrels. Marathon declined to discuss the size of the tank.

The leak at the 593,000 barrel-a-day refinery is being contained within an earth dike and foam is being applied to reduce vapors. Equipment to remove the oil for processing and disposal is being deployed. Cleanup is underway and the crude spill remains on-site.

Crude oil released from the storage tank remains contained on-site, and there has been “no indication of risk to the community,” spokesman Jamal T. Kheiry said in an emailed statement on Thursday. The company still doesn’t have an estimate on how much oil has been lost, he added.

Shares of Marathon, the largest independent U.S. refiner, rose as much as 2.4% at 11:56 a.m. in New York.

The incident started at 7:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday and is expected to be over by 7:30 p.m. Thursday, the filing showed. It estimated the leakage at 5,000 pounds of volatile organic compounds.

A road running by the site was closed because of odors emanating from the spill, Bruce Clawson, emergency manager for Texas City, said Wednesday.

Video Shows Oil Gushing Out of Gaping Hole in Texas Refinery

VIDEO Crude oil leak at Marathon Petroleum refinery in Texas City prompts road closures, cleanup, officials say (click2houston.com)

Khaleda Rahman 

 17 hrs ago

A video has been released showing crude oil gushing from a giant storage tank after a leak at the second-largest refinery in the U.S.

© Go Nakamura/Getty Images A road is closed after an oil leak at Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery on October 6, 2021 in Texas City, Texas.

The leak was reported at Marathon Petroleum's Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas, on Wednesday morning.

Aerial video broadcast by local television stations showed what appeared to be gallons of brown crude oil spilling from the tank at the 593,000-barrel-a-day refinery, filling an earthen berm that is designed to contain spills.

VIDEO: A crude oil leak at the Marathon Petroleum refinery in Texas City has prompted road closures in the area, officials say. Stay tuned to KPRC 2 as the story develops: KPRC 2 Houston (@KPRC2) October 6, 2021

The Texas City Emergency Management Department closed roads near the refinery to all but essential traffic on Wednesday in response to the leak, according to Click2Houston.

The department reported that the tank had stopped leaking by early Thursday, but said roadways would remain close as clean-up efforts continue.

"The crude oil tank has stopped leaking," the department said in a Twitter post. "However, the south loop remains closed and will remain closed for the next two days while crews clean up the site."

The tweet added: "All spilled crude oil was contained on the site and will be removed, properly treated and the roadway safely reopened."

Joe Gannon, a spokesperson for Marathon Petroleum, told Newsweek that all spilled oil had been contained on-site and there appears to be no risk to the public.

"In response to a crude oil release from one of its Galveston Bay refinery storage tanks yesterday, October 6, Marathon Petroleum personnel implemented measures to control the source of the release and have begun to conduct cleanup activities," Gannon said in a statement. "There have been no injuries, and crude oil released from the storage tank remains contained on-site."

If you have any questions regarding this incident please contact Marathon at 419-421-3577.— City of Texas City Emergency Management (@CityofTC_EM) October 7, 2021

Gannon said the refinery "deployed air monitoring in the community as a precaution, and the monitoring continues," but added that "there has been no indication of risk to the community."

The company does not yet have an estimate on how much oil was leaked, Gannon said.

He added: "Regulatory notifications were made and an investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the release. The safety of our employees, responders, and the community is our top priority as we respond to the release, conduct cleanup activities, and continue to coordinate with local, state, and federal regulatory officials."

According to a regulatory filing from the company with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the leak was caused by a failure of a valve flange, Bloomberg reported.

The filing estimated the leakage at 5,000 pounds of volatile organic compounds.

Research reveals earliest evidence yet of huge hippos in Britain

Palaeobiologists have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of hippos in the UK.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

 

IMAGE: FOSSILISED TOOTH OF HIPPOPOTAMUS ANTIQUUS, WHICH ROAMED ACROSS EUROPE IN WARM PERIODS DURING THE ICE AGE. THIS SPECIMEN IS BELIEVED TO BE ONE MILLION YEARS OLD. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER/NEIL ADAMS

Palaeobiologists have unearthed the earliest evidence yet of hippos in the UK.

Excavations at Westbury Cave in Somerset, led by University of Leicester PhD student Neil Adams, uncovered a million-year-old hippo tooth which shows the animal roamed Britain much earlier than previously thought.

In a new study published in the Journal of Quaternary Science and co-authored with researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, the tooth is identified as belonging to an extinct species of hippo called Hippopotamus antiquus, which ranged across Europe in warm periods during the Ice Age.

It was much larger than the modern African hippo, weighing around 3 tonnes, and was even more reliant on aquatic habitats than its living relative.

Research demonstrates that the fossil is over one million years old, eclipsing the previous record of hippo in the UK by at least 300,000 years and filling an important gap in the British fossil record.

Neil Adams, PhD researcher in the Centre for Palaeobiology Research at the University of Leicester and Earth Collections Project Officer at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said:

“It was very exciting to come across a hippo tooth during our recent excavations at Westbury Cave. It is not only the first record of hippo from the site, but also the first known hippo fossil from any site in Britain older than 750,000 years.

“Erosion caused by the coming and going of ice sheets, as well as the gradual uplift of the land, has removed large parts of the deposits of this age in Britain. Our comparisons with sites across Europe show that Westbury Cave is an important exception and the new hippo dates to a previously unrecognised warm period in the British fossil record.”

Scientists know remarkably little about the fauna, flora and environments in Britain between about 1.8 and 0.8 million years ago, a key period when early humans were beginning to occupy Europe.

But new research at Westbury Cave is helping to fill in this gap. It shows that during this interval there were periods warm and wet enough to allow hippos to migrate all the way from the Mediterranean to southern England.

Professor Danielle Schreve, Professor of Quaternary Science at Royal Holloway and co-author of the study, said:

“Hippos are not only fabulous animals to find but they also reveal evidence about past climates. Many megafaunal species (those over a tonne in weight) are quite broadly tolerant of temperature fluctuations but in contrast, we know modern hippos cannot cope with seasonally frozen water bodies.

“Our research has demonstrated that in the fossil record, hippos are only found in Britain during periods of climatic warmth, when summer temperatures were a little warmer than today but most importantly, winter temperatures were above freezing.”

By examining the European fossil record, the research team show that the Westbury Cave hippo was likely to have lived during a particularly warm period around 1.1 to 1.0 million years ago.

Hippo remains of this age are known from Germany, France and the Netherlands and the new fossil from Somerset represents a previously unknown part of this colonisation of northwest Europe.

This research was supported by the Palaeontological Association and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Researchers at the University of Leicester have previously discovered the first-ever evidence of an aquatic dinosaur, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, and have investigated the relationship between humans and animals, dating back thousands of years.

‘An Early Pleistocene hippopotamus from Westbury Cave, Somerset, England: support for a previously unrecognised temperate interval in the British Quaternary record’ is published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.

Explore more of the University’s work examining our cultural and natural heritage.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Quaternary Science

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3375 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

An Early Pleistocene hippopotamus from Westbury Cave, Somerset, England: support for a previously unrecognised temperate interval in the British Quaternary record

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Oct-2021

Taweret - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taweret

In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret (also spelled Taurt, Tuat, Tuart, Ta-weret, Tawaret, Twert and Taueret, and in Greek, Θουέρις – Thouéris, Thoeris, Taouris and Toeris) is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" (Tȝ-wrt) means "she who is great" or simply "great one", a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is t…