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Tuesday, January 25, 2022

New study calls into question the importance of meat eating in shaping our evolution

Quintessential human traits such as large brains first appear in Homo erectus nearly 2 million years ago. This evolutionary transition towards human-like traits is often linked to a major dietary shift involving greater meat consumption. A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, calls into question the primacy of meat eating in early human evolution. While the archaeological evidence for meat eating increases dramatically after the appearance of Homo erectus, the study authors argue that this increase can largely be explained by greater research attention on this time period, effectively skewing the evidence in favor of the "meat made us human" hypothesis.

"Generations of paleoanthropologists have gone to famously well-preserved sites in places like Olduvai Gorge looking for—and finding—breathtaking direct evidence of early humans eating meat, furthering this viewpoint that there was an explosion of meat eating after 2 million years ago," W. Andrew Barr, an assistant professor of anthropology at the George Washington University and lead author on the study, said. "However, when you quantitatively synthesize the data from numerous sites across eastern Africa to test this hypothesis, as we did here, that 'meat made us human' evolutionary narrative starts to unravel."

Barr and his colleagues compiled published data from nine major research areas in eastern Africa, including 59 site levels dating between 2.6 and 1.2 million years ago. They used several metrics to track hominin carnivory: the number of zooarchaeological sites preserving animal bones that have cut marks made by stone tools, the total count of animal bones with cut marks across sites, and the number of separately reported stratigraphic levels.

The researchers found that, when accounting for variation in sampling effort over time, there is no sustained increase in the relative amount of evidence for carnivory after the appearance of H. erectus. They note that while the raw abundance of modified bones and the number of zooarchaeological sites and levels all demonstrably increased after the appearance of H. erectus, the increases were mirrored by a corresponding rise in sampling intensity, suggesting that intensive sampling—rather than changes in human behavior—could be the cause.

"I've excavated and studied cut marked fossils for over 20 years, and our findings were still a big surprise to me," Briana Pobiner, a research scientist in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and co-author on the study, said. "This study changes our understanding of what the zooarchaeological record tells us about the earliest prehistoric meat-eating. It also shows how important it is that we continue to ask big questions about our evolution, while we also continue to uncover and analyze new evidence about our past."

In the future, the researchers stressed the need for alternative explanations for why certain anatomical and behavioral traits associated with modern humans emerged. Possible alternative theories include the provisioning of plant foods by grandmothers and the development of controlled fire for increasing nutrient availability through cooking. The researchers caution that none of these possible explanations currently have a strong grounding in the archaeological record, so much work remains to be done.

"I would think this study and its findings would be of interest not just to the paleoanthropology community but to all the people currently basing their dieting decisions around some version of this meat-eating narrative," Barr said. "Our study undermines the idea that eating large quantities of meat drove evolutionary changes in our early ancestors."

In addition to Barr and Pobiner, the research team included John Rowan, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Albany; Andrew Du, an assistant professor of anthropology and geography at Colorado State University; and J. Tyler Faith, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.Early modern human from Southeast Asia adapted to a rainforest environment

More information: No sustained increase in zooarchaeological evidence for carnivory after the appearance of, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2115540119

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by George Washington University

The Tonga volcanic eruption reveals the vulnerabilities in our global telecommunication system

by Dale Dominey-Howes, The Conversation

The Tonga volcanic eruption has revealed the vulnerabilities in our global telecommunication system — Tonga is connected to the rest of the world via a global network of submarine

In the wake of a violent volcanic eruption in Tonga, much of the communication with residents on the islands remains at a standstill. In our modern, highly-connected world, more than 95% of global data transfer occurs along fiber-optic cables that criss-cross through the world's oceans.

Breakage or interruption to this critical infrastructure can have catastrophic local, regional and even global consequences. This is exactly what has happened in Tonga following Saturday's volcano-tsunami disaster. But this isn't the first time a natural disaster has cut off critical submarine cables, and it won't be the last.

The video below shows the incredible spread of submarine cables around the planet—with more than 885,000 kilometers of cable laid down since 1989. These cables cluster in narrow corridors and pass between so-called critical "choke points" which leave them vulnerable to a number of natural hazards including volcanic eruptions, underwater landslides, earthquakes and tsunamis.

What exactly has happened in Tonga?

Tonga was only connected to the global submarine telecommunication network in the last decade. Its islands have been heavily reliant on this system as it is more stable than other technologies such as satellite and fixed infrastructure.

The situation in Tonga right now is still fluid, and certain details have yet to be confirmed—but it seems one or more volcanic processes (such as the tsunami, submarine landslide or other underwater currents) have snapped the 872km long fiber-optic cable connecting Tonga to the rest of the world. The cable system was not switched off or disconnected by the authorities.

This has had a massive impact. Tongans living in Australia and New Zealand can't contact their loved ones to check on them. It has also made it difficult for Tongan government officials and emergency services to communicate with each other, and for local communities to determine aid and recovery needs.

Telecommunications are down, as are regular internet functions—and outages keep disrupting online services, making things worse. Tonga is particularly vulnerable to this type of disruption as there is only one cable connecting the capital Nuku'alofa to Fiji, which is more than 800km away. No inter-island cables exist.

Animation of spread of global submarine cable network between 1989 and 2023.

Risks to submarine cables elsewhere

The events in Tonga once again highlight how fragile the global undersea cable network is and how quickly it can go offline. In 2009, I coauthored a study detailing the vulnerabilities of the submarine telecommunications network to a variety of natural hazard processes. And nothing has changed since then.

Cables are laid in the shortest (that means cheapest) distance between two points on the Earth's surface. They also have to be laid along particular geographic locations that allow easy placement, which is why many cables are clustered in choke points.

Some good examples of choke points include the Hawaiian islands, the Suez Canal, Guam and the Sunda Strait in Indonesia. Inconveniently, these are also locations where major natural hazards tend to occur.

Once damaged it can takes days to weeks (or even longer) to repair broken cables, depending on the cable's depth and how easily accessible it is. At times of crisis, such outages make it much harder for governments, emergency services and charities to engage in recovery efforts.

Many of these undersea cables pass close to or directly over active volcanoes, regions impacted by tropical cyclones and/or active earthquake zones.

In many ways, Australia is also very vulnerable (as is New Zealand and the rest of the world) since we are connected to the global cable network by a very small number of connection points, from just Sydney and Perth.

In regards to Sydney and the eastern seaboard of Australia, we know large underwater landslides have occurred off the coast of Sydney in the past. Future events could damage the critical portion of the network which links to us.

How do we manage risk going forward?

Given the vulnerability of the network, the first step to mitigating risk is to undertake research to quantify and evaluate the actual risk to submarine cables in particular places on the ocean floors and to different types of natural hazards. For example, tropical cyclones (hurricanes/typhoons) occur regularly, but other disaster such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen less often.

Currently, there is little publicly available data on the risk to the global submarine cable network. Once we know which cables are vulnerable, and to what sorts of hazards, we can then develop plans to reduce risk.

At the same time, governments and the telecommunication companies should find ways to diversify the way we communicate, such as by using more satellite-based systems and other technologies.Flights sent to assess Tonga damage after volcanic eruption

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The metaverse is money and crypto is king: Why you'll be on a blockchain when virtual-world hopping

by Rabindra Ratan, Dar Meshi, The Conversation

In the metaverse, your avatar, the clothes it wears and the things it carries belong to you thanks to blockchain. Credit: Duncan Rawlinson - Duncan.co/Flickr, CC BY-NC

You may think the metaverse will be a bunch of interconnected virtual spaces—the world wide web but accessed through virtual reality. This is largely correct, but there is also a fundamental but slightly more cryptic side to the metaverse that will set it apart from today's internet: the blockchain.

In the beginning, Web 1.0 was the information superhighway of connected computers and servers that you could search, explore and inhabit, usually through a centralized company's platform—for example, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Around the turn of the millennium, Web 2.0 came to be characterized by social networking sites, blogging and the monetization of user data for advertising by the centralized gatekeepers to "free" social media platforms, including Facebook, SnapChat, Twitter and TikTok.

Web 3.0 will be the foundation for the metaverse. It will consist of blockchain-enabled decentralized applications that support an economy of user-owned crypto assets and data.

Blockchain? Decentralized? Crypto-assets? As researchers who study social media and media technology, we can explain the technology that will make the metaverse possible.

Owning bits

Blockchain is a technology that permanently records transactions, typically in a decentralized and public database called a ledger. Bitcoin is the most well-known blockchain-based cryptocurrency. Every time you buy some bitcoin, for example, that transaction gets recorded to the Bitcoin blockchain, which means the record is distributed to thousands of individual computers around the world.

This decentralized recording system is very difficult to fool or control. Public blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are also transparent—all transactions are available for anyone on the internet to see, in contrast to traditional banking books.

Ethereum is a blockchain like Bitcoin, but Ethereum is also programmable through smart contracts, which are essentially blockchain-based software routines that run automatically when some condition is met. For example, you could use a smart contract on the blockchain to establish your ownership of a digital object, such as a piece of art or music, to which no one else can claim ownership on the blockchain—even if they save a copy to their computer. Digital objects that can be owned—currencies, securities, artwork—are crypto assets.

Items like artwork and music on a blockchain are nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Nonfungible means they are unique and not replaceable, the opposite of fungible items like currency—any dollar is worth the same as, and can be swapped with, any other dollar.

Importantly, you could use a smart contract that says you are willing to sell your piece of digital art for US$1 million in ether, the currency of the Ethereum blockchain. When I click "agree," the artwork and the ether automatically transfer ownership between us on the blockchain. There is no need for a bank or third-party escrow, and if either of us were to dispute this transaction—for example, if you claimed that I only paid $999,000—the other could easily point to the public record in the distributed ledger.

What does this blockchain crypto-asset stuff have to do with the metaverse? Everything! To start, the blockchain allows you to own digital goods in a virtual world. You won't just own that NFT in the real world, you'll own it in the virtual world, too.

In addition, the metaverse isn't being built by any one group or company. Different groups will build different virtual worlds, and in the future these worlds will be interoperable—forming the metaverse. As people move between virtual worlds—say from Decentraland's virtual environments to Microsoft's—they'll want to bring their stuff with them. If two virtual worlds are interoperable, the blockchain will authenticate proof of ownership of your digital goods in both virtual worlds. Essentially, as long as you are able to access your crypto wallet within a virtual world, you will be able to access your crypto stuff.

The metaverse doesn’t exist yet, but that hasn’t stopped a land rush as people and businesses grab virtual real estate.

Don't forget your wallet

So what will you keep in your crypto wallet? You will obviously want to carry cryptocurrencies in the metaverse. Your crypto wallet will also hold your metaverse-only digital goods, such as your avatars, avatar clothing, avatar animations, virtual decorations and weapons.

What will people do with their crypto wallets? Among other things, shop. Just as you likely do on the web now, you will be able to purchase traditional digital goods like music, movies, games and apps. You'll also be able to buy physical-world items in the metaverse, and you'll be able to view and "hold" 3D models of what you are shopping for, which could help you make more informed decisions.

Also, just like you can use ye old leather wallet to carry your ID, crypto wallets will be linkable to real-world identities, which could help facilitate transactions that require legal verification, such as buying a real-world car or home. Because your ID will be linked to your wallet, you won't need to remember login information for all the websites and virtual worlds that you visit—just connect your wallet with a click and you are logged in. ID-associated wallets will also be useful for controlling access to age-restricted areas in the metaverse.

Your crypto wallet could also be linked to your contacts list, which would allow you to bring your social network information from one virtual world to another. "Join me for a pool party in FILL IN THE BLANK-world!"

At some point in the future, wallets could also be associated with reputation scores that determine the permissions you have to broadcast in public places and interact with people outside of your social network. If you act like a toxic misinformation-spreading troll, you may damage your reputation and potentially have your sphere of influence reduced by the system. This could create an incentive for people to behave well in the metaverse, but platform developers will have to prioritize these systems.

Big business

Lastly, if the metaverse is money, then companies will certainly want to play too. The decentralized nature of blockchain will potentially reduce the need for gatekeepers in financial transactions, but companies will still have many opportunities to generate revenue, possibly even more than in current economies. Companies like Meta will provide large platforms where people will work, play and congregate.

Major brands are also getting into the NFT mix, including Dolce & Gabbana, Coca-Cola, Adidas and Nike. In the future, when you buy a physical world item from a company, you might also gain ownership of a linked NFT in the metaverse.

For example, when you buy that coveted name-brand outfit to wear to the real-world dance club, you might also become the owner of the crypto version of the outfit that your avatar can wear to the virtual Ariana Grande concert. And just as you could sell the physical outfit secondhand, you could also sell the NFT version for someone else's avatar to wear.

These are a few of the many ways that metaverse business models will likely overlap with the physical world. Such examples will get more complex as augmented reality technologies increasingly come into play, further merging aspects of the metaverse and physical world. Although the metaverse proper isn't here yet, technological foundations like blockchain and crypto assets are steadily being developed, setting the stage for a seemingly ubiquitous virtual future that is coming soon to a 'verse near you.

Nike buys virtual sneaker firm as metaverse buzz grows

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

CANADA

Report indicates moving rapidly from financial stress to financial comfort may be possible

by University of Western Ontario

house — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

If a new report from the Financial Wellness Lab of Canada at Western University is any indication, moving from a financially stressed situation to a more comfortable level in a relatively short period of time may not be an impossible feat.

While financial stress might feel inescapable, the report, "Financial Wellness Lab—State of the Nation—December 2021," has found that 16.1 percent of Canadians whom the research determined were financially stressed in 2020 were able to move into the financially comfortable category in one year. While this is not an indication that moving from financially stressed to being financially comfortable is easy or obstacle-free, the report does provide some hope for those who might be feeling despair.

The report is an early output from the Lab, which aims to develop a science-based, big-picture understanding of financial wellness and deliver information and tools to help Canadians improve or maintain their financial fitness.

"Up until now, our understanding of financial wellness has looked at specific aspects of the topics," said Matt Davison, dean of science at Western. "At the Financial Wellness Lab of Canada, we are combining leading analytics tools and methodology, a multi-disciplinary approach and deep data sets furnished by industry partners to draw connections between research that have already deen done, and articulate a road map towards financial wellness. This includes identification of factors that can either slow or accelerate one's journey."

Spectrum of financial wellness

While it can be complex to determine a household's financial positioning, the report confirms that Canadians generally fall into three categories of financial well-being: financially comfortable, financially coping and financially stressed.

"Where one falls on this spectrum depends on a variety of factors, but savings habits, spending and debt seem to be especially predictive," said Adam Metzler, associate professor at Laurier University, a partner institution in the Financial Wellness Lab.

While each cluster is distinct, the comfortable and coping clusters seem to be 'closer together,' meaning they share more common traits. As a result, movement between these clusters is more frequent relative to moving out of the stressed group. Interestingly, the research has indicated that while making more money can help, it does not necessarily correlate to improved financial wellness.

"Because savings, spending and debt are so interconnected, it may be impossible for us to fully understand financial wellness by studying them in isolation," adds Metzler. "Improving these habits, and moving to a more 'comfortable' cluster, is far from simple. They are impacted by personal circumstances and external factors that are seemingly out of our control, like the cost of housing which is an area that we should all be concerned about."

Home ownership factor

As one of Canadians' most significant expenses, the cost of housing can have a disproportionate impact on financial wellness. This is especially true in light of the current real-estate boom and the low-interest rates, of which so many have taken advantage, and the ability to work remotely to purchase a new home.

While home ownership does not distinguish the clusters from one another, there are significant differences in the percentage of monthly income spent on housing costs. Fifty-eight percent of the comfortable group spend less than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing costs, while 66 percent of the stressed cluster spend more than 40 percent. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) have set 39 percent of monthly income allocated to housing as the threshold for mortgage approval.

Recent data analyzed by the Lab also shows that housing affordability and its associated debt is of paramount concern for Canadian households. Even within the comfortable category, 29 percent are concerned about their debt load, and 23 percent are spending more on housing than CMHC's recommended threshold.

From these data points, it appears that housing costs are straining the finances of far too many. And, given that most housing purchases are made possible by taking on debt, an interest rate increase has the potential to add significant financial hardship for those who were only able to purchase their home because rates were low.

Path to financial wellness

Despite the obstacles ahead, it is possible for Canadians to make a plan and chart a course toward improving their financial wellness. It requires knowing where you are—a determination that is not always easy because of certain complexities.

"We're often told that the answer to financial wellness is to spend less and save more," said Davison, "But that seemingly simple advice can be challenging for people to put into action without specific and personalized guidance. Where the Lab can help is to show Canadians specific tools that can help them make better decisions and take small, meaningful steps towards financial resilience, backed by real, objective data."

In partnership with the Lab, the Canadian Payroll Association has developed a new Financial Fitness Evaluator to help Canadians determine their financial wellness. After receiving their analysis, respondents are provided with tools and resources to help make meaningful changes to their financial habits. The results are anonymous, and the tool is free to use.Student loans linked to greater harm for parents who borrow for their children than people who borrow for themselves

More information: Report: news.westernu.ca/wp-content/up … on-December-2021.pdf

Calculator: financiallyfit.ca/

Provided by University of Western Ontario

UK government: 4°C warming by 2100

"can't be ruled out"

by University of Exeter

As required by the Climate Change Act 2008, the government has today submitted the Third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) to Parliament.

The CCRA3 is partly based on an independent Technical Report by a large team of experts led by the University of Exeter, in partnership with the Met Office.

Professor Richard Betts MBE, who led this team, says that ""ne of the key conclusions from the University of Exeter's work was that current worldwide policies could result in up to 4°C warming by 2100."

"The agreements made at the COP26 climate summit in November have reduced the likelihood of this, but it remains possible."

The Technical Report concluded that global warming is already bringing substantial risks to the UK's natural environment, infrastructure, human health, communities and businesses.

It also concluded that the UK is subject to international risks relating to issues such as security, migration and supply chains.

All these risks are expected to be higher at global warming of 2°C, and would be even greater if warming were to reach 4°C.

Professor Betts continued that "COP26 fell short of its aims, and it is becoming less likely that we will be able limit global warming to low levels. The Paris Agreement's 1.5°C goal is slipping out of reach."

"We need to be better prepared for the climate changes we have already caused."

Professor Betts, of the University of Exeter and the Met Office, welcomed the publication of the CCRA3.

"We are glad to see our science included in this key report, which does not shy away from the high levels of warming that could occur," he added.

The Technical Report, the findings of which were presented by Professor Betts at COP26 in Glasgow, involved more than two years of work, drawing on numerous scientific papers and other reports as well as new research.

It also involved extensive engagement with a large number of stakeholders in government, the private sector and civil society organizations with responsibility for adapting to climate change or expertise in how this can take place.

The CCRA3 report published today also relied on independent advice from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) on the risks posed to the UK from climate change, and the extent to which the UK is unprepared.

Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chair of the CCC's Adaptation Committee, says that "expert input to CCRA3 process was vital to ensure that the assessment is based on sound evidence."

"The team led by the University of Exeter produced a robust, authoritative Technical Report which provided a solid foundation for the CCC's advice to government, and provides crucial information for the UK to act on under the National Adaption Programme."

Professor Lisa Roberts, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter, said that "we are proud to have played a leading role in this vital piece of climate change work."

"This was achieved by working together with the Met Office, the CCC and other universities and organizations, to bring together the required expertise and viewpoints from a wide range of disciplines."

"Adapting and responding to life-changing climate change is the biggest challenge of our generation and that is why the University of Exeter has brought together the strength and power of more than 600 of our researchers working on the climate and ecological crisis at the heart of our 2030 strategy."

"We are committed to working in partnership with governments, businesses and communities in the critical decade ahead."

Experts from many institutions, including Exeter, are already working on research that will underpin the next CCRA.

UN science panel to release key report on climate change

More information: CCRA3: assets.publishing.service.gov. … -assessment-2022.pdf

Provided by University of Exeter

ANOTHER PANDEMIC

Antimicrobial resistance is a leading cause of death globally

In 2019, 1.27 million deaths were due to treatment-resistant infections

Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae (shown here in a culture dish) and Staphylococcus aureus were the top three among the bacteria responsible for fatal drug-resistant infections worldwide in 2019.

By Aimee Cunningham

Bacterial infections that don’t respond to treatment are a leading cause of death around the world.

In 2019, antimicrobial resistance caused an estimated 1.27 million deaths, researchers report January 19 in the Lancet. More people died from untreatable bacterial infections that year than from HIV or malaria.

Overall, bacterial antimicrobial resistance played a role in an estimated 4.95 million deaths globally, including the 1.27 million directly caused by resistant infections, the study found. The estimates are based on an analysis of hospital, surveillance and other sources of data covering 204 countries and territories by an international group of researchers called the Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators.

Resistance to two classes of antibiotics, beta-lactams (which include penicillin) and fluoroquinolones, was behind more than 70 percent of resistance-caused deaths. Those drugs are the first-line options for many bacterial infections (SN: 4/30/14).

Among the bacteria responsible for fatal drug-resistant infections, the top three were Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus, the researchers found. These pathogens can cause dangerous infections in health care settings in people with weakened immune systems.

Worldwide, 64 deaths per 100,000 people were associated with treatment-resistant bacterial infections and 16.4 deaths per 100,000 people were caused by such infections, the group found. Notably, western sub-Saharan Africa had the highest mortality rates: 114.8 deaths per 100,000 people were associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance and 27.3 deaths per 100,000 people were due to resistance.

Overall, the mortality rate from bacterial antimicrobial resistance was higher in places with fewer health care resources. This illustrates that solutions need to consider regional differences, the research group says. Limits on antibiotic use to deter resistance is key in many places. But in western sub-Saharan Africa, for example, increasing access to antibiotics may lessen the mortality burden from resistance, since second-line antibiotics needed after first-line drugs fail aren’t readily available.