'Nightmare': Workers, students decry Japan virus entry ban

"It seems to be almost xenophobia."

1More than 370,000 people have been left in limbo by Japan's coronavirus border rules, which bar almost all new arrivals and are the strictest in the G7 (AFP/Philip FONG)

Etienne Balmer and Katie Forster
Mon, January 24, 2022,

Yanita Antoko has been waiting for over a year in Indonesia to join her husband in Japan. She has her papers and has closed her business selling homemade spice mixes, but remains shut out.

The 30-year-old is one of more than 370,000 people left in limbo by Japan's coronavirus border rules, which bar almost all new arrivals and are the strictest in the G7.

Even as other countries with tough virus restrictions like Australia reopen, Japan still bans tourists and business visitors as well as new foreign workers, students and their dependents.

"It's really, really upsetting me," said Antoko, whose Indonesian husband works as an engineer in central Japan.

"When you get married, of course you want to have children. That's the main reason we want to live together."

But there is no clarity on when that might be possible.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has extended the current measures, which polls show are popular with the public, until at least late February.

That leaves people like 28-year-old Santosh from Nepal in an agonising position.

He holds a business degree from Japan, speaks Japanese, and has been offered a job in the international marketing division of a Japanese company. But he has been stuck in Nepal since 2020, waiting for permission to move.

"If I cancel my plans to work in Japan, then my six years of studies there will have been for nothing," Santosh, who asked to be identified without his surname, told AFP.

"So I'm waiting and waiting."

Others like French student Leeloo Bos are facing similar difficulties in keeping their dreams alive.

The 21-year-old, whose fiance is in Japan, is attending her Japanese classes at night due to the time difference.

"It's a nightmare," she told AFP, describing language lessons that end at 4:00 am.

And while she still hopes to build a career promoting Japanese bands, she said being apart from her Japanese fiance left her "feeling empty, as though half my soul had been removed."

- 'Out of touch' -

Academics and business leaders warn Japan is losing out with its intransigent border rules.

"Expertise is declining" because companies cannot bring in foreign workers, said Michael Mroczek, president of the European Business Council in Japan.

With infections already spreading in Japan, the restrictions "appear to some extent irrational," he told AFP.

"It seems to be almost xenophobia."

Japan has recorded a relatively low 18,500 deaths during the pandemic, despite never imposing a full lockdown or pursuing a "zero-Covid" policy like neighbouring China.

A foreign ministry official defended the "stringent (border) measures" as helping explain the "significant difference between Japan and other countries" in the number of infections involving the virus's Omicron variant.

But in Japan's business world, there is frustration, with the head of the powerful Keidanren business lobby on Monday comparing the rules to Japan's self-imposed isolation from the 17th to 19th century.

The measures are "out of touch with reality," said Masakazu Tokura, urging Kishida to reconsider.

In an open letter to the prime minister last week, scholars involved in Japan-US exchange also warned the entry ban "undercuts Japan's diplomatic objectives and status as an international leader."

- Students looking elsewhere -

Davide Rossi, an Italian entrepreneur living in Japan, campaigns for the nearly 150,000 students official figures show are stuck outside the country.

"They've been in this limbo for two years but still don't have a timeline or a plan, which is the very minimum the government should give them," he told AFP.

He described frustration as those shut out watched tens of thousands of foreign athletes, officials and media enter Japan for the Olympics last year.

Students are "100 percent willing" to test and quarantine like returning citizens and residents, said Rossi.

But so far, there have been limited humanitarian exemptions, and just 87 government-sponsored students allowed into the country.

With no end in sight, many students are now looking elsewhere, including South Korea.

Hana, a first-year PhD veterinary science student from Iran, is studying remotely with a Japanese university, but she can't complete her essential lab research from afar.

She has reluctantly set herself a deadline of April to get to Japan.

After that, "I will consider another country, maybe Canada or the US," the 29-year-old said.

"If we can't enter, most of us will give up on Japan".

etb-kaf-tmo/sah/cwl/ser

Portugal's flourishing far right target Roma ahead of vote

 

ROMA AND PORTUGAL FLAGS

Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa has insisted there is "no problem" with the Roma who have lived in Portugal "for centuries" (AFP/PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA)

Thomas CABRAL
Tue, January 25, 2022, 12:04 AM·4 min read

Portugal's far-right Chega party has adopted a harsh line against the country's Roma population ahead of Sunday's snap election, accusing the community of welfare benefits abuse and crime.

And with polls suggesting the upstart faction, which has just one seat in the outgoing parliament, could emerge from the election as the third-largest party, many Roma are worried about the impact this will have on their lives.

Jose Fernandes, a restaurant owner and head of Techari, a group that represents the roughly 4,000 Roma people in Loures, a town just north of Lisbon, said the party has brought to the fore the "hidden racism" that has always existed in Portugal.

"I fear for the future... the incitement, the hatred, the retaliation against our children in schools," said the 58-year-old.

It was in Loures that Chega's leader, tough-talking former TV sports commentator Andre Ventura, first made a name for himself in 2017 by accusing the Roma of being "addicted" to welfare benefits and seeing themselves as "above the law".

At the time he was running for mayor of Loures as a candidate for the centre-right PSD, one of the two main parties that have dominated the political landscape since the 1974 revolution ended decades of right-wing dictatorship.

In 2019, he founded Chega -- or "Enough" -- which won 1.3 percent of the vote that year, securing one seat in parliament in the first such win for a far-right faction since the dictatorship.

Polls suggest the party could win around seven percent of Sunday's vote, taking more than a dozen new seats and mirroring gains by the far right elsewhere in Europe.

- 'Politically incorrect' -

The party sparked controversy the following year with a proposal to create a "specific confinement plan for Roma communities during the Covid-19 pandemic".

"The goal was to make it understood that there is a community in Portugal that has a lot of difficulty in respecting the rules of confinement," Ventura told AFP.

The community has a "chronic problem of dependence on benefits, delinquency and violence," the 39-year-old said.

Ventura said he left the PSD and founded Chega in order to spark a "politically dynamic, and sometimes politically incorrect" debate.

Maria Cardoso, a Roma housewife living in a slum in Loures and whose family of six survives on monthly benefit payments of 512 euros ($580) says she hasn't followed the election campaign.

But she has a strong opinion about Ventura.

"He is a racist, he shouldn't discriminate against the Roma," she said.

Their home, a building with bare brick walls and a corrugated iron roof covered in plastic sheets, is in one of the last slums in Loures which has gradually moved the residents into public housing.

"The Roma want to integrate but those who could give us work don't give us opportunities," said the 48-year-old who never got beyond primary school.

She was recently denied a position as a house cleaner and was once let go a day after getting a job when her employers discovered she was Roma.

- 'Scapegoat' -

The Roma population in Europe is estimated to number over 10 million and many suffer from social exclusion and extreme poverty, according to the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog.

There are 30,000 Roma in Portugal, a nation of around 10 million people, according to a 2014 study by the High Commissioner for Migration based on estimates from local authorities.

This figure only includes Roma who are "visible", meaning in camps or in social housing, said sociologist Olga Magano, one of the study's authors, adding there was "great animosity" in Portugal towards the Roma.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa, whose Socialist party is tipped to win Sunday's election while falling short of a majority, has hit back at Ventura, insisting there was "no problem with the Roma community" which has lived in Portugal "for centuries".

With migrants long coming from former colonies such as Brazil and Angola, Portugal has become accustomed to a flow of newcomers, immigration has not been such an appealing issue for the far-right as in other European nations, analysts said.

"Chega has adapted the classic xenophobic discourse of the far-right to the Portuguese context," said political scientist Alexandre Afonso of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

For Portugal's far-right, the Roma are the "most practical scapegoat", he said.

tsc/ds/hmw/bp/lc

China police response to lockdown domestic violence case sparks uproar


The response by police in China's Xi'an to a recent domestic violence case has sparked outrage on social media (AFP/Frederic J. BROWN) (Frederic J. BROWN)


Tue, January 25, 2022

A viral video of a man beating his wife in China, and police's handling of the case, has renewed a debate online in the country over how to punish domestic abusers.

Last week, a home security video that showed a man from the northwestern city of Xi'an assaulting his wife during a citywide Covid-19 lockdown spread on Chinese social media.

The police response to the incident triggered an even wider uproar, with a related hashtag racking up more than 3.6 million views.


Over the weekend, Xi'an police said the man, surnamed Wang, would be kept in custody for five days then released without criminal charge.

Under a Chinese domestic violence law passed in 2016, perpetrators can be punished with no more than 20 days of police detention. Tougher punishments can only be meted out if there are serious injuries and criminal intent is proved.

The Xi'an video showed the man repeatedly hitting his partner as a child watches from a few feet away.

It was first posted by the woman's relatives and colleagues, then later picked up by official Chinese media.

"Domestic abusers only get punished with five days' detention, and you wonder why Chinese women don't want to get married or have babies?," read one comment on Weibo.

According to police, a fight over family chores had escalated due to the wife's "extreme words and deeds". The statement added that officers had since "criticised and educated" the woman -- a move that triggered a swift online backlash.

"It's no use relying on the law for protection against domestic violence when all they do is criticise the victim," another Weibo commentator said.

The woman "sustained soft-tissue damage," the police said without giving details of her injuries.

The incident happened while Xi'an, a megacity with more than 13 million residents, was under lockdown to curb a coronavirus outbreak.

Wang's employer, a state-owned trading company in Xi'an, issued a notice Saturday saying it had fired him for violating Communist Party rules.

Domestic violence remains pervasive and under-reported in China, especially in rural communities.

There have also been concerns that a recent change to China's divorce laws -- which introduced a mandatory 30-day "cooling-off" period for couples wishing to untie the knot -- could make it harder for victims to leave abusive marriages.

About one in four married Chinese women have experienced domestic abuse, according to a 2013 survey by the All-China Women's Federation.

Last October, a Chinese man was sentenced to death for murdering his ex-wife as she live-streamed on social media in a case that shocked the nation.

prw/jta/cwl/lb

Kurds locked in tense Syria prison standoff with jihadists


US troops are seen on the ground near the prison in the Kurdish-controlled Syrian city of Hasakeh where Islamic State group fighters are holed up (AFP/Gihad DARWISH)

Tue, January 25, 2022, 2:20 AM·2 min read

US-backed Kurdish forces tightened the noose around armed jihadists hunkering down inside a Syrian prison Tuesday, with both sides facing a bloodbath or talks to end the five-day-old standoff.

Around 100 Islamic State fighters attacked Ghwayran prison in the northeastern city of Hasakeh on January 20, in their biggest military operation since their "caliphate" was defeated in 2019.

The ensuing clashes with the Kurdish forces running northeastern Syria have left more than 160 people dead, including 45 in Kurdish ranks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Some of the estimated 3,500 IS prisoners inside the facility have already been bused out to other detention centres in recent hours but it was unclear how many remained holed up inside Ghwayran.

Some of the hundreds of minors detained in the prison were transferred on Monday, the Observatory said.

"If there is no deal for a swap, there will be a massacre, hundreds of people will be killed," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish administration's de-facto army, have not confirmed reports that several prison guards were being held by IS fighters.

SDF forces operating with air support from the US-led coalition present in the region have deployed elite units and armoured vehicles in and around the converted school that became one of the world's largest IS prisons.

An assault has looked imminent since early Monday but the Observatory said Kurdish forces were reluctant to move in due to the presence of hostages inside.

The SDF is counting on the besieged jihadist fighters running out of ammunition and supplies, Abdel Rahman said.

He said talks were taking place for some of the Kurdish forces and prison staff trapped inside to be freed in exchange for medical treatment for wounded jihadist fighters.

The Observatory put the number of hostages held inside the prison at 27 with around 40 people whose whereabouts are unknown.

bur-aya/jmm/kir

Webb telescope reaches final destination, a million miles from Earth

by Issam Ahmed

In this file photo taken on August 30, 2007 this NASA artist's rendition shows the 

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its cosmic parking spot a million miles away, bringing it a step closer to its mission to unravel the mysteries of the Universe, NASA said Monday.

At around 2:00 pm Eastern Time (1900 GMT), the observatory fired its thrusters for five minutes to reach the so-called second Lagrange point, or L2, where it will have access to nearly half the sky at any given moment.

The delicate burn added 3.6 miles per hour (1.6 meters per second) to Webb's overall speed, just enough to bring it into a "halo" orbit around L2, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

"Webb, welcome home!" said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement.

Webb will begin its science mission by summer, which includes using its high resolution infrared instruments to peer back in time 13.5 billion years to the first generation of galaxies that formed after the Big Bang.

At L2, it will stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the Sun, allowing Webb's sunshield to protect its sensitive equipment from heat and light.

For the giant parasol to offer effective protection, it needs the Sun, Earth and Moon to all be in the same direction, with the cold side operating at -370 degrees Fahrenheit (-225 Celsius).

The thruster firing, known as an orbital burn, was the third such maneuver since Webb was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket on December 25.

This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second

 Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth on

 January 24, 2022. Credit: NASA

The plan was intentional, because if Webb had gotten too much thrust from the rocket, it wouldn't be able to turn around to fly back to Earth, as that would expose its optics to the Sun, overheating and destroying them.

It was therefore decided to slightly underburn the rocket firing and use the telescope's own thrusters to make up the difference.

The burns went so well that Webb should easily be able to exceed its planned minimum life of five years, Keith Parrish Webb observatory commissioning manager told reporters on a call.

"Around 20 years, we think that's probably a good ballpark, but we're trying to refine that," he said. It's hypothetically possible, but not anticipated, that a future mission could go there and refuel it.

Webb, which is expected to cost NASA nearly $10 billion, is one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and its predecessor telescope, Hubble

Halo orbit

But while Hubble orbits the Earth, Webb will orbit in an area of space known as a Lagrange point, where the gravitational pull from the Sun and Earth will be balanced by the centrifugal force of the rotating system.

An object at one of these five points, first theorized by Italian French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, will remain stable and not fall into the gravity well of the Sun and Earth, requiring only a little fuel for adjustments.

Graphic overview of Lagrange point 2, 1.5 million kms from Earth, around the James Webb 

space telescope will orbit.

Webb won't sit precisely at L2, but rather go around it in a "halo" at a distance similar to that between the Earth and Moon, completing a cycle every six months.

This will allow the telescope to remain thermally stable and to generate power from its solar panels.

Previous missions to L2 include the European Space Agency's Herschel and Planck observatories, and NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

Webb's position will also allow continuous communications with Earth via the Deep Space Network—three large antennas in Australia, Spain and California.

Earlier this month, NASA completed the process of unfolding Webb's massive golden mirror that will collect infrared signals from the first stars and galaxies that formed a few hundred million years after the Universe began expanding.

Visible and ultraviolet light emitted by the very first luminous objects has been stretched by the Universe's expansion, and arrives today in the form of infrared, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.

Its mission also includes the study of distant planets, known as exoplanets, to determine their origin, evolution and habitability.

Next steps include aligning the telescope's optics and calibrating its scientific instruments. It is expected to transmit its first images back in June or July.

© 2022 AFP

COLLECTIVISM

Seed production and recruitment of juvenile trees affect how trees are migrating due to climate change

by Talia Ogliore, Washington University in St. Louis

Seed trap in the oak-hickory forest at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s

 environmental field station near Eureka, Mo. Credit: Jonathan Myers

A new study co-authored by Jonathan Myers, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, provides key insights into how and why tree populations migrate in response to climate change at the continental scale.

Suitable habitats for forest trees may be shifting fast with recent climate change. Across North America, most tree species in the northern part of the continent already show evidence for northward migrations due to warming temperatures. But the actual mechanics of how trees move into new areas appears to be different depending on whether the trees are found in the West or the East.

In this study led by Duke University, researchers separated out the effects of seed production—the sheer number of seeds that certain tree species create—and the establishment of juvenile trees to identify larger patterns. The results, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide the first continental-scale evidence for migration and geographic shifts in the processes that control migration.

The researchers discovered that in the interior mountain West, high seed production and the recruitment of juvenile trees—basically, how well baby trees do when they are just getting started—both contribute to migration. In the Northeast, on the other hand, migration is limited by seed production, but facilitated by high recruitment.

The study taps data from the MASTIF network, which features a massive synthesis of seed-production data from over 130 research sites across North America. It includes seven years of data from the Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) Forest Dynamics Plot at Washington University's field station, Tyson Research Center.

"As part of a long-term study of seed production and dispersal—also known as 'seed rain'—our research team has collected, counted and identified seeds of every woody plant species in 200 seed traps distributed across the Tyson ForestGEO Plot each year since 2012," Myers said.

"Interestingly, around 30% of the 81 tree species examined in this study have been collected in our seed traps at Tyson Research Center," he said. "As one of only two research sites located in the central forests grasslands ecoregion, the Tyson ForestGEO Plot helps to bridge an important biogeographic gap in the MASTIF network."

In the new study, the southeastern United States emerges as a fecundity hotspot, but it is situated south of tree population centers where high seed production could contribute to poleward population spread. By contrast, seedling success is highest in the West and North, serving to partially offset limited seed production near poleward frontiers.

The evidence of fecundity and recruitment control on tree migration can be used to inform conservation planning.

Tree fecundity and biological aging

More information: Shubhi Sharma et al, North American tree migration paced by climate in the West, lagging in the East, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2116691118

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis 

Gender disparities may be widening for physicians due to COVID-19

Women doctors published fewer studies during stay-at-home orders, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

As people transitioned to working from home at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, journal submissions from academics increased across the board. But a new study from Northwestern University found as men’s scholarly productivity increased, women physicians were submitting less.

The research reflects wider trends in academic publishing and is the first study to find such patterns in family medicine. The study contributes to a growing body of evidence that the pandemic caused unique career disruptions for women as they became stretched thin during remote work, causing stress, burnout and anxiety.

“The worry is that these problems will compound,” said Katherine Wright, the paper’s corresponding author and the director of research in the department of family and community medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “As men were able to submit more, they may benefit from more citations, promotions, funding and career opportunities as women fall further behind.”

The paper, “COVID-19 and Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship,” will be published Jan. 24 in the journal Annals of Family Medicine.

Wright said the study was conceived in part because of observations about her own department, where she saw roles changing dramatically and many doctors attempting to play dual roles between childcare or eldercare and work. Santina Wheat, co-first author and program director of the Northwestern-McGaw family medicine residency at Erie Family Health Center in Humboldt Park, emphasized the impact of shifting schedules on her own life.

“All of a sudden we were doing telehealth at all hours of the day, and hours of the clinics shifted significantly and quickly,” Wheat said. “There was also always the sense you may need to cover for someone else, which impacted your ability to think about the academic side — or mentor others to do the same.”

To conduct the study, the team performed a bibliometric analysis of journal submissions to see how submission rates changed during the pandemic. With access to the last five years of submission data from the Annals of Family Medicine, the top-ranked primary care journal, the scientists reviewed submission data before and during the pandemic. They examined submission volume by gender in addition to distribution of author’s gender by submission type (such as original research versus special reports, which impact tenure differently).

The paper found the Annals of Family Medicine received 41.5% of its submissions from women during the early months of the pandemic — the period analyzed by scientists — marking a widening gender gap in the field.

The paper warns the gap is “troubling” and may result in long-term repercussions for women in the medical field because of how tenure decisions are made. Wright’s hope is that adding this research to the growing body of data will catalyze change in these fields.

“Publications are still the hallmark of tenure and promotion decisions, so we want to make sure women aren’t at risk of falling further behind,” Wright said. “Our hope is this data might be used by promotion and tenure committees to reevaluate promotion criteria.”

For example, Wright said, women tend to be more involved in creating curriculum and service, so weighting activities like these more equally with publications could help balance the scales. She added that there’s both a childcare and eldercare crisis in the country, and that parents and caretakers need strengthened support to thrive in their roles. Wright said without intervention, these impacts will reverberate beyond the pandemic.

Beyond advocacy, the team hopes to look at other metrics of diversity in the data and see if other populations have been impacted disproportionately by the pandemic. They’re also currently analyzing the gender composition of peer reviewers, the gatekeepers of the work accepted by scientific journals.

Deborah Smith Clements, chair of the department of family and community medicine, the Nancy Warren Furey Professor of Community Medicine and a professor of medical education, also is a co-author, along with Deborah Edburg, a professor and physician at Rush University.

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JOURNAL

The Annals of Family Medicine

DOI

10.1370/afm.2756 

ARTICLE TITLE

COVID-19 and Gender Differences in Family Medicine Scholarship

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jan-2022

Performance enhancing substances linked to eating disorder symptoms

Findings show use of appearance- and performance- enhances drugs and substances is associated with eating disorder symptoms in U.S. college students

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

With increasing value and emphasis being placed on muscularity and leanness as today’s body ideal, the use of appearance- and performance- enhancing drugs and substances (APEDS), such as whey protein and steroids, has become increasingly prevalent among college-age men and women. Few studies have been completed to explore associations between certain APEDS use and eating disorder symptoms, however a new study published in the Eating and Weight Disorders – Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity journal aimed to fill this research gap by exploring this relationship.

Analyzing over 7,000 U.S. college and university students from the 2020-2021 Healthy Minds Study, researchers found that a lifetime history of APEDS use is associated with eating disorder symptoms, specifically when using protein supplements, creatine supplements, and diuretics or water pills. 

“Many people use multiple APEDS to help them achieve their desired body, but this can be problematic, given our findings that use of multiple substances significantly increased the risk of eating disorder symptoms,” says lead author Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

APEDS are most commonly used to aid in the development of increased muscle mass, tone, and definition, in efforts to achieve specific body ideals.

“Our study emphasizes the need for healthcare professionals to remain aware of changing body ideals among youth and young adults, as well as the association between APEDS use and eating disorder symptoms,” said co-author Jason M. Nagata, MD, MSc, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Pediatrics. “Appropriate prevention, assessment, and treatment must be made readily available to individuals accessing healthcare services.” 

These researcher’s findings are particularly salient given the documented increased prevalence of eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It’s important that healthcare professionals and members of the public understand that APEDS, which are marketed to be “healthy” and “safe”, can have consequences, particularly when used to achieve an unrealistic body ideal,” Ganson said. “There needs to be a greater emphasis on public health efforts to increase the public’s awareness of the risks associated with APEDS use. Our findings also underscore the importance of regulations, such as those currently under consideration in Massachusetts and California, to diminish APEDS consumption among youth and young adults.”

 

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JOURNAL

Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia Bulimia and Obesity

DOI

10.1007/s40519-022-01364-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Use of appearance and performance enhancing drugs and substances is associated with eating disorder symptomatology among U.S. college students

New economic model finds wetlands provide billions in filtration value

Wetlands in Southern Ontario provide $4.2 billion in water filtration services each year

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

Southern Ontario wetlands provide $4.2 billion worth of sediment filtration and phosphorus removal services each year, keeping our drinking water sources clean and helping to mitigate harmful and nuisance algal blooms in our lakes and rivers.

A new study from the University of Waterloo uses economic valuation to help us understand the importance of Southern Ontario’s wetlands for water filtration – particularly as these sensitive ecosystems continue to be lost by conversion to agriculture or urban development.

“Wetlands naturally filter out phosphorus and sediments from water, but their value is often greatly overlooked,” said Tariq Aziz, who carried out the study during his PhD and postdoctoral work in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science. “By calculating the economic value of wetland filtration and comparing it to the costs of engineered interventions, we hope to reinforce the importance of protecting our wetlands.”

The total value of $4.2 billion in sediment and phosphorus filtration services was found based on the average rate of sediment accretion in each type of wetland in Southern Ontario and estimating how much the removal and disposal of the same amounts of sediment and phosphorus in stormwater management facilities in Ontario would cost.

This is the first economic valuation study to separate the values of the major types of wetlands in Southern Ontario: marshes, bogs, swamps, and fens. “We found that marshes were the most valuable wetland type for sediment and phosphorus filtration, based on the removal rates per hectare,” said Aziz. “However, because swamps make up 87 per cent of Southern Ontario’s wetlands, they contribute about 80 per cent of the overall filtration services we benefit from, at a value of about $3.4 billion per year.”

This study also calculated how much it would cost to replace wetlands’ existing phosphorus filtration function with three different human-engineered solutions. Building artificially constructed wetlands would cost an average of $2.9 billion per year to replace the free phosphorus filtration service our natural wetlands currently provide. Implementing agricultural Best Management Practices to remove an equivalent phosphorus load would cost society $13 billion annually, while expanding current wastewater treatment capacity to replace wetlands’ filtration service would cost $164 billion per year.

The study “Economic valuation of suspended sediment and phosphorus filtration services by four different wetland types: A preliminary assessment for southern Ontario, Canada,” authored by Aziz and his supervisor professor Philippe Van Cappellen was published in the journal Hydrological Processes.

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JOURNAL

Hydrological Processes

New strategic partnership to explore four-dimensional first order controls on nickel mineral systems

Researchers at the University of Leicester have signed a major research agreement with BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies, to identify new areas for the discovery of metals critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

 

IMAGE: A RESEARCHER HOLDS A PIECE OF NICKEL ORE. view more 

CREDIT: DAVID HOLWELL/UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

Researchers at the University of Leicester have signed a major research agreement with BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies, to identify new areas for the discovery of metals critical to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

Dr David Holwell from the Centre for Sustainable Resource Extraction in the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, will work in partnership with BHP to explore deposits of nickel and copper.

The two-year project, ‘Craton Margin Exploration Targeting 4D’, also involves colleagues at the University of Western Australia (UWA), Perth, and Macquarie University, Sydney. It is funded by BHP’s Resource Centre of Excellence and Metals Exploration and will support three post-doctoral research fellows located in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Dr Holwell said: “We are delighted to have agreed this partnership with BHP. It is particularly exciting to have the opportunity to apply some of our recent and ongoing research on nickel-copper-platinum group metal deposits directly to exploration targeting. We have a truly international and diverse team with complementary expertise and I am very excited to get started!”

The project and partnership with BHP has developed directly from recent work by the Leicester-UWA group that has shed new light on the processes involved in the sources and transport mechanisms of metals through the lithosphere in magmatic systems, published in Nature Communications (Holwell et al., 2019; Blanks et al., 2020) and Lithos (Chong et al., 2021).

This innovative work will be coupled with novel advances in experimental petrology and tectonic modelling to highlight ‘sweet spots’ of crust that have undergone a series of favourable processes through geological time.

The collaborative research project will challenge scientists’ current understanding of the nickel mineral system, potentially opening up new exploration search space for nickel across the globe. Nickel is a major component in the lithium-ion battery cathodes used in the manufacture of EVs, and is therefore vital to the EV revolution.

Alongside Dr Holwell, the international project team involves Professor Marco Fiorentini and Dr Weronika Gorczyk at UWA, Professor Steven Foley at Macquarie University, with Dr Daryl Blanks taking up the position of BHP Research Fellow at Leicester. The BHP project team includes Dr Libby Sharman and Dr Nicole Januszczak.

Professor Fiorentini added: “We are very proud to collaborate with BHP to tackle key knowledge gaps that currently hamper successful exploration of metals needed for the green future of our planet.”