Forensics used to reverse the decline of biodiversity in Europe

Staffordshire University is contributing forensic intelligence to an ambitious project which aims to protect endangered species like wolf, bear, lynx, and sturgeon in remote areas of Europe

Business Announcement

STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY

Staffordshire University is contributing forensic intelligence to an ambitious project which aims to protect endangered species like wolf, bear, lynx, and sturgeon in remote areas of Europe.

Funded by Horizon Europe, NATURE FIRST brings together 12 global partners to improve biodiversity and protect the habitats of many species which are being threatened by human activity.

Over the next three years, the project will develop predictive, proactive and preventative capabilities for nature conservation and law enforcement by combining forensic intelligence and remote sensing technologies into one system.

This new approach will draw on real-time data from satellites, drones, cameras and other sources to monitor protected locations affected by human activity.

Spanning Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia and Spain, the project will focus on biogeographical regions including the Carpathians, the Danube Delta, the Stara Planina mountains, the Os Ancares and O Courel.

Claire Gwinnett, Professor of Forensic and Environmental Science, explained: “The overall aim is to halt and reverse the decline of biodiversity in Europe. We want to improve natural habitats where certain species are an incredibly important part of the ecosystem. To achieve this, we need a better understanding of why and where biodiversity is declining and what the key triggers are.

“As most of the threats and pressures on biodiversity are man-induced, this project will combine ecology and forensic science. This novel approach will use remote sensing technologies, machine learning and wildlife forensic methods to detect and recognise traces of human activities that negatively affect the environment.”

Biodiversity is under severe pressure due to a myriad of problems, including habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, hunting, climate change, pollution and invasive species.

 

The exploitation of natural resources also brings with it illegal activities such as poaching of species of flora and fauna that have a high value on the black market, trafficking and trading of rare and exotic animals and plants and setting fire to forestry and natural areas to force land-use designation changes to agriculture or commercial uses.

NATURE FIRST’s continuous, model-driven form of ecosystem monitoring will help to find cause-effect relationships and better understand changes in the environment. The models, also called Digital Twins, will help to translate environmental data into facts and actionable information for site managers and policy makers.

Professor Gwinnett said: “The regions we are looking at cover vast land masses which can’t easily be monitored manually on the ground. The Digital Twins system will make use of digital technologies to detect wildlife crime and other threats to facilitate rangers or law enforcement officers so that they respond more effectively.

“We will also be looking at how people who use the area legitimately can report through the Digital Twins system to help trigger a response to any changes in the environment or illegal activity.”

Professor Gwinnett added: “The aim of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is to ensure that ecosystems are healthy, resilient to climate change and rich in biodiversity so that they can keep delivering the range of services essential to the prosperity and well-being of all of us. We are excited to be taking positive steps to help achieve this by working with such a fantastic group of global partners.”

The NATURE FIRST consortium members are 3EDATA INGENIERIA AMBIENTAL SL, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development, DotSpace, Semantic Web Company (SWC), Sensing Clues (coordinator), Staffordshire University, Sustainable Scale-up Foundation, Wageningen University & Research, Wildlife Forensic Academy, and WWF.

Deforestation and grassland conversion are the biggest causes of biodiversity loss

Researchers rank drivers of global biodiversity change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GERMAN CENTRE FOR INTEGRATIVE BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH (IDIV) HALLE-JENA-LEIPZIG

 

IMAGE: LAND USE CHANGES SUCH AS DEFORESTATION AND GRASSLAND CONVERSION ARE NOT ONLY THE MAIN CAUSE OF GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY LOSS, THEY ARE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR ABOUT A QUARTER OF GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS. view more 

CREDIT: ADOBE STOCKS

Whilst climate change has rightly attracted attention for its catastrophic consequences for the natural world, it is currently only the fourth largest driver of biodiversity loss on land, followed by invasive alien species in fifth place. “This major new study, published during the COP27 climate summit, demonstrates clearly that fighting climate change alone will not be enough to prevent the further loss of biodiversity, and with it our future”, says Dr Nicolas Titeux, one of the two first authors. “The various direct drivers should be addressed with similar ambition as the climate crisis and as a whole.” Titeux currently works at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology but conducted the biggest part of the study at the UFZ with funding from iDiv.

Greenhouse gasses have been known to be the leading cause of the climate crisis for decades but just as important is understanding what is behind the enormous and rapid decline in species. A million species of animal and plant are threatened with extinction within the next few decades without significant countermeasures. Ecosystems worldwide are changing away from their natural condition, which means that they are increasingly unable to provide crucial ecosystem services for human well-being.

The authors of the study, led by Dr Pedro Jaureguiberry from UNC in Argentina and Dr Nicolas Titeux, also found that climate change is already in second place as a direct driver of species loss in the oceans. Here, the exploitation of fish stocks plays the biggest role. However, based on current developments, the authors assume that the importance of climate change for species loss and the decline of ecosystem services will increase in the coming years and decades and move up in the ranking of direct drivers.

The authors of this study thus confirm and specify the facts that the Global Assessment of the World Biodiversity Council IPBES had already indicated in 2019. “Our publication shows the depth of the work, which was performed in the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), where only the main results could be shown”, says Josef Settele from UFZ and Co-chair of the Global Assessment of IPBES. “It indicates the profoundness of the IPBES work”.

Need for nature-based solutions

This major study should be a game-changer for understanding how to tackle biodiversity loss. Jaureguiberry says: “Our study brings comprehensive and rigorous information on which drivers cause the most damage to biodiversity at multiple levels, from regions and realms to the different facets of biodiversity, highlighting the importance of each driver in particular contexts. Hopefully, this will contribute to a more holistic approach to generate more efficient policies to reverse biodiversity loss.”

In particular, the research demonstrates the need for a more holistic approach that will tackle the twin threats of climate and the biodiversity crisis together. Titeux points out that “The current global agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change can focus too narrowly on one driver, overlooking or, in the worst-case, undermining solutions for others”.

Professor Andy Purvis from the Natural History Museum in London explains: “Climate change and biodiversity loss have been tackled largely separately, by different policies that haven't always considered the other problem. For example, biofuels are proposed as one way to get to net zero, but the expansion of plantations into natural forest that could result would be terrible for nature.”

The paper also highlights some of the ‘nature-positive’ solutions that tackle both climate change and biodiversity loss such as large-scale restoration of natural forests and effective protection of coastal wetlands.

Andy Purvis adds:” I’d love for 'nature-positive' to get into the public consciousness as much as 'net zero' has. If future generations are going to have the same birthright we had of a liveable, supportive planet, then all parts of society will have to transition as quickly as possible to being both net zero and nature-positive.”

The research was financed inter alia by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; FZT-118).

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abm9982 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Nov-2022

Immune system reboot in MS patients

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

Every day, one person in Switzerland is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s own immune system attacks the myelin sheath of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The disease leads to paralysis, pain and permanent fatigue, among other symptoms. Fortunately, there have been great advances in therapies in recent decades. A study by the Department of Neuroimmunology and MS Research at the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Department of Medical Oncology and Haematology Clinic at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ) has now pinpointed why the most effective currently available therapy – a stem cell transplant – works so well.

Wiping out unwanted immune cells

“80 percent of patients remain disease-free long-term or even forever following an autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant,” says recently retired Professor Roland Martin, study lead and last author. The treatment is particularly suitable for younger people with aggressive forms of the disease. Four years ago, thanks to the high effectiveness of the treatment and the now low mortality rate, Martin’s department together with the USZ clinic were granted approval to administer the therapy. It is the only clinic in Switzerland approved for this treatment.

During the treatment, several chemotherapies completely destroy the patients’ immune system – including the subset of T cells which mistakenly attack their own nervous system. The patients then receive a transplant of their own blood stem cells, which were harvested before the chemotherapy. The body uses these cells to build a completely new immune system without any autoreactive cells.

Systematic analysis of immune cells

“Previous studies have shown the basic workings of the method, but many important details and questions remained open,” says Martin. Some unclear aspects were what exactly happens after the immune cells are eliminated, whether any of them survive the chemotherapy, and whether the autoreactive cells really do not return.

In the recently published study, Martin’s team systematically investigated these questions for the first time by analyzing the immune cells of 27 MS patients who received stem cell therapy in Zurich. The analysis was done before, during and up to two years after treatment. This allowed the researchers to track how quickly the different types of immune cells regenerated

Successful reset of immune system

Surprisingly, the cells known as memory T cells, which are responsible for ensuring the body remembers pathogens and can react quickly in case of a new infection, reappeared immediately after the transplant. Further analysis showed that these cells had not re-formed, but had survived the chemotherapy. These remnants of the original immune system nevertheless pose no risk for a return of MS: “They are pre-damaged due to the chemotherapy and therefore no longer able to trigger an autoimmune reaction,” explains Martin.

In the months and years following the transplant, the body gradually recreates the different types of immune cells. The thymus gland plays an important role in this process. This is where the T cells go to school, so to speak, and learn to distinguish foreign structures, such as viruses, from the body’s own. “Adults have very little functioning tissue left in the thymus,” says Martin. “But after a transplant, the organ appears to resume its function and ensures the creation of a completely new repertoire of T cells which evidently do not trigger MS or cause it to return.”

Further studies needed for wider approval

These findings have enabled the researchers to understand why stem cell transplants are usually so successful. But lamentably, says Martin, the treatment is not approved in many countries, as phase III studies are lacking. “Phase III studies cost several hundred million euros, and pharmaceutical companies are only willing to conduct them if they will make money afterward.” This is not the case with stem cell therapy, as the drugs used are no longer patent-protected.

“I am therefore very pleased that we have succeeded in obtaining approval for the treatment from the Federal Office of Public Health and that health insurers are covering the costs,” Martin says. In the past, many MS sufferers from Switzerland had to travel to Moscow, Israel or Mexico to receive transplants.

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JOURNAL

Science Translational Medicine

DOI

10.1126/scitranslmed.abq1693 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamics of T cell repertoire renewal following autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in multiple sclerosis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Nov-2022

UK

Failing IT infrastructure is undermining safe healthcare in the NHS

Poorly functioning IT systems “a clear and present threat to patient safety,” warn experts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Joe Zhang at Imperial College London and colleagues point to a recent 10 day IT system outage at one of the largest hospital trusts in the NHS and warn that increasing digital transformation “means such failures are no longer mere inconvenience but fundamentally affect our ability to deliver safe and effective care.”

They argue that, unlike the procurement of electronic health records, for example, investment in IT infrastructure (which includes computers, servers, and networks) is rarely prioritised and easily viewed as a cost to keep down rather than an investment that increases productivity.

Yet the consequences are substantial, they write. A recent survey of NHS clinicians commissioned by NHS England shows that user experiences of electronic health records are generally poor, resulting from unreliable, slow IT.

The British Medical Association (BMA) estimates that a substantial proportion (27%) of NHS clinicians lose over four hours a week through inefficient IT systems. The BMA report also found deficiencies in investment and lack of clinician engagement in procurement.

Outdated infrastructure is a risk to data security, they add. It is unclear how many providers conform to national guidance by keeping multiple back-ups of data, including ‘off site.’

There is also a growing disconnect between government messaging promoting a digital future for healthcare (including artificial intelligence) and the lived experience of clinical staff coping daily with ongoing IT problems. 

“This digital future will not materialise without closer attention to crumbling IT infrastructure and poor user experiences,” they write.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but the NHS can learn from approaches taken elsewhere, they say. In the US, for example, the effect of health IT on end users is an active area of research, particularly on how functionality of IT systems affects clinician burnout and effectiveness, while federal oversight of healthcare IT infrastructure can identify problems and coordinate a response.

To facilitate a transformation of IT infrastructure in the NHS “we need to include systematic and transparent measurement of IT capabilities and functionality at the level of clinicians – the people actually using the systems” they explain, “as well as at the level of those procuring the systems.”

Armed with this understanding, quality improvement cycles must become routine in IT governance, as they are in clinical care, and government must provide the investment needed to identify and rectify poor performance but also demand accountability, with minimum standards for IT function and stability, they add. 

“We must not tolerate problems with IT infrastructure as normal,” they conclude. 

“Poorly functioning IT systems are a clear and present threat to patient safety that also limit the potential for future transformative investment in healthcare. Urgent improvement is an NHS priority.”

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2022-073166 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Failing IT infrastructure is undermining safe healthcare in the NHS

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Nov-2022

Rare, deadly genetic disease successfully treated in utero for first time

Toddler thriving after deaths of siblings with same disorder

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photos and video can be found in the media kit (tiny.ucsf.edu/187YiF) 

Using a protocol developed at UC San Francisco, physicians have successfully treated a fetus with a devastating genetic disorder for the first time, and the child is now thriving as a toddler, a case study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports. 

“This treatment expands the repertoire of fetal therapies in a new direction,” said co-senior and corresponding author Tippi MacKenzie, MD, a pediatric surgeon at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, co-director of UCSF’s Center for Maternal-Fetal Precision Medicine and director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. “As new treatments become available for children with genetic conditions, we are developing protocols to apply them before birth.”

The child’s disorder, infantile-onset Pompe disease, is one of several lysosomal storage diseases that begin to cause severe damage to major organs, such as the heart, before birth. By initiating enzyme replacement therapy during fetal development, physicians aimed for better outcomes than are typical with post-birth treatment—outcomes that can include death in early childhood, very low muscle tone or ventilator dependency.

After six prenatal enzyme replacement treatments at The Ottawa Hospital, the child, Ayla, was born at term. She is receiving postnatal enzyme therapy at CHEO (a pediatric hospital and research center in Ottawa, Canada), and doing well at 16 months of age. She has normal cardiac and motor function and is meeting developmental milestones. 

“When we were having Ayla, we didn't know if she'd be able to walk,” said Zahid Bashir, Ayla’s dad. “We didn't know if she'd be able to talk. We didn't know if she'd be able to eat. We didn't know if she'd be able to laugh. So, as she hits each of these milestones, we continue to be amazed at her progress. So, yeah, it's quite something, that I think sometimes we may take for granted, but most of the time we're quite aware that she's a miracle.”

A triumph of collaboration 

The successful treatment is a feat of collaboration between UCSF, where an ongoing clinical trial on the treatment is based; CHEO and The Ottawa Hospital, where the patient was diagnosed and treated; and Duke University, home to the world’s top experts on Pompe disease. 
 
 “We really needed this multidisciplinary group of people to lend their deep expertise to all aspects of care,” said MacKenzie, who holds a Benioff UCSF Professorship in Children’s Health and a John G. Bowes Distinguished Professorship in Stem Cell and Tissue Biology. “Enzyme replacement therapy is a new frontier in the field of fetal therapy; it has been exciting to see it grow from a research project in my laboratory to impact the outcome for this family ultimately. UCSF is considered the birthplace of fetal surgery, and it is a special privilege for us to continue to expand the technologies and treatments available to help families facing a difficult diagnosis during pregnancy.”

Under usual circumstances, the patient’s family would have traveled to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Fetal Treatment Center to participate in the clinical trial. When COVID-19 restrictions made international travel unfeasible, experts from the two Canadian and two American hospitals met the family as a team by video to discuss alternatives. UCSF shared the treatment protocol with the team in Ottawa, where the family lives. Throughout the process, the entire team met weekly by video to discuss the health of the mother and fetus and to monitor the response to treatment. 

“We have been treating our fetal patients using intrauterine therapy for more than 30 years,” said Karen Fung-Kee-Fung, MD, the family’s maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the Ottawa Hospital and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa. “The emergence of a new medical treatment to lift the burden of Pompe disease for this family, and potentially help other families affected by devastating genetic diseases, is both exciting and incredibly satisfying. We feel very privileged and honored to be a part of this international collaboration to help make this first-in-the-world treatment a reality.” 

Pranesh Chakraborty, MD, a pediatrician and metabolic geneticist at CHEO and co-lead of the case study, has provided care to the family for years.
 
"This treatment is very promising, and I am so happy for Ayla and her family,” said Chakraborty, who is also a researcher at the CHEO Research Institute and an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. “Having had the privilege and heartbreak of walking alongside families who have lost children to these devastating diseases, this work is very important to me.” 
 
A big step forward for fetal therapy 
  
Babies born with infantile-onset Pompe disease typically have enlarged hearts and die within two years if untreated. The disease is very rare, seen in less than 1/100,000 live births, and is caused by mutations in a gene that makes acid alpha-glucosidase, an enzyme that breaks down glycogen. Without it or with limited amounts, glycogen accumulates dangerously in the body. 
  
“From our long-standing work at Duke treating patients with Pompe disease, we know first-hand the critical importance of earlier initiation of treatment,” said Jennifer Cohen, MD, co-lead author of the study and assistant professor in the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine.  “Our ability to offer a new treatment opportunity to this family and potentially change the course of this difficult disease has made this collaboration and project groundbreaking,” added Cohen. 
 
Duke has played a pivotal role in many advances in the field of Pompe disease, including developing alglucosidase alfa as the first Food and Drug Administration-approved enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) for Pompe disease, identifying the role of high and sustained antibody titers to the ERT, using biomarkers to follow treatment response, and establishing immune tolerance induction protocols for the most severe patients, noted Priya Kishnani, MD, co-senior author, division chief of Medical Genetics at Duke University School of Medicine. 
 
“All of these advances were crucial to this particular patient’s treatment and response,” said Kishnani. “The intrauterine therapy represents a new frontier for patients with Pompe disease.” 

Pompe is one of eight lysosomal storage diseases that UCSF has received FDA approval to treat with enzyme replacement therapy in utero for a Phase 1 clinical trial of 10 patients. The other diseases are Mucopolysaccharidosis types 1, 2, 4a, 6 and 7, Gaucher disease types 2 and 3, and Wolman disease.  

The researchers hope the success of this first application and publication of the case study will increase awareness of the UCSF clinical trial among parents at known risk of passing on these diseases and the physicians who treat them. 

“Seeing how well Ayla is doing, it is important to pursue clinical trials to establish whether this kind of fetal therapy will be a good option for other families when treatment in the newborn period just isn’t early enough,” said Chakraborty, who directs the provincial program Newborn Screening Ontario based at CHEO. “We are working hard to try to improve access to this trial for other Canadian families.”  

Two additional patients with different lysosomal diseases have now been enrolled in the UCSF clinical trial and both have completed their course of prenatal enzyme replacement therapy. The first patient gave birth in late October 2022, and the second will deliver in early November 2022. Both are doing well. 

“It’s exciting to continue this research, which is an important step in the evolution of fetal therapy, from surgery for anatomic conditions to medical therapies for genetic conditions,” said MacKenzie.

Co-authors: Marisa Schwab, MD, and Billie Lianoglou, MS, in the UCSF Department of Surgery and Anita Moon-Grady, MD, and Paul Harmatz, MD, in the UCSF Department of Pediatrics, also contributed to this research. Please refer to the paper for additional co-authors.  

Funding: Please refer to the paper for full disclosures.  

Additional Media Contacts

Rebecca Abelson, The Ottawa Hospital, 343-576-0259 | rabelson@toh.ca
Sarah Avery, Duke, 919-724-5343 | sarah.avery@duke.edu

 

About UCSF Health: UCSF Health is recognized worldwide for its innovative patient care, reflecting the latest medical knowledge, advanced technologies and pioneering research. It includes the flagship UCSF Medical Center, which is ranked among the top 10 hospitals nationwide, as well as UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, with campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians and the UCSF Faculty Practice. These hospitals serve as the academic medical center of the University of California, San Francisco, which is world-renowned for its graduate-level health sciences education and biomedical research. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. Visit https://www.ucsfhealth.org/. Follow UCSF Health on Facebook or on Twitter

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JOURNAL

New England Journal of Medicine

Thirsty wheat needed new water management strategy in ancient China

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

Research from Washington University in St. Louis shows that a practice of purposeful water management, or irrigation, was adopted in northern China about 4,000 years ago as part of an effort to grow new grains that had been introduced from southwest Asia.

But the story gets more complex from there. Wheat and barley arrived on the scene at about the same time, but early farmers only used water management techniques for wheat. The results, reported Nov. 9 in the journal Antiquity, raise awareness that the dispersal of domesticated crops and the knowledge of best using them can be traced independently across time and space.

“Pioneering farmers who cultivated wheat in this region managed water to meet the higher demand of this newly introduced grain,” said Xinyi Liu, an associate professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, who collaborated on this study with researchers from several prominent institutions in China and Australia, including Guanghui Dong from Lanzhou University, who led the field expedition on the Loess Plateau. “The water management may have been achieved either by deliberate watering or by strategic planting in soils with higher water retention.”

On the other hand, early farmers were able to grow the other new grain, barley, in a rainfed system as if it were just another kind of millet — the locally domesticated and most commonly grown grain in northern China at the time — without using any form of irrigation.

Liu published the study with Washington University graduate student Yufeng Sun. Other co-authors include Haiming Li and Petra Vaiglova, former members of Liu’s lab group.

Introducing irrigation

Both wheat and barley were domesticated in an area known to archaeologists as the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent in southwest Asia, where they originally were grown as winter crops. Traditionally, farmers there sowed their seeds in autumn — to avoid the summer drought period — and harvested them in late spring or early summer before the next drought season.

When these Fertile Crescent crops, wheat and barley, were introduced to East Asia about 4,000 years ago, they would have encountered a markedly different climate compared with where they originated.

“Every summer, the East Asian monsoon brings rains from the Pacific Ocean to a region otherwise arid throughout the rest of the year. This environment is perfect for rainfed millet cultivation as these local grains are drought tolerant but need considerable water in the summer growing season,” Liu said. “But it is a different story if you try to grow wheat there, not only because it is water demanding, but also the growing cycle doesn’t match the rainy season.”

Liu and his colleagues wanted to know: Did the farmers who sought to grow the new grains in northern China also introduce new systems of irrigation to support them?

“The introduction of a new irrigation system is something that scholars have speculated about, but now we have the technology to seek direct evidence,” Liu said.

Using relatively new techniques, the actual growing conditions of past crops — including past water and soil conditions during plant growth — can be measured using the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions of charred plant remains. These methods initially were established in plant science for research concerning environmental conditions of modern-day agriculture and have been subsequently applied to archaeological research.

Previous studies using similar approaches have shed significant light on early crop management in Europe and the Middle East. This research is one of the first attempts to apply it to East Asian monsoon environments with innovative questions.

For this study, the scientists identified more than 35,000 charred seed remains of cereal plants, including wheat, barley and millet, from more than 50 archaeological sites excavated on the Loess Plateau of China spanning a timeframe over eight millennia. Selected plant remains from this collection were radiocarbon dated and isotopically measured.

The results showed major differences between wheat and barley.

Despite the arid local environment, the majority of the wheat samples from all time periods had isotopic values above an optimal watering threshold, indicating that their growth was not limited by water availability.

“We see this in the Qijia culture period, when wheat and barley were just introduced to this region,” Liu said. “The isotopic data of wheat show a significant level of water manipulation unambiguously since 4,000 years ago, indicating the new crop was introduced with water management strategies to support it.”

Simple ditches can be powerful

This evidence alone does not necessarily imply large-scale irrigation, Liu is quick to point out; instead, wheat crops may have been strategically sown in areas with the best water availability, either close to local springs or in soils with high water retention.

“In those locations, small ditches to diffuse water is sufficient,” Liu said. “This explains why there is no archaeological evidence of channels or other irrigation installations in the area until much later.”

Barley, on the other hand, appears to have been grown on the dry hills of the Loess Plateau without a special water management approach — a landscape and cultivation strategy that had been familiar to the Neolithic millet farmers since 8,000 years ago.

This and other evidence suggest to Liu and his collaborators that ancient farmers sought to optimize land use and crop yield by taking advantage of the different water demands of these two crops.

“Our results raise an awareness that the dispersal of domesticated crops and the knowledge of best using them can be traced independently across time and space,” Liu said.

“Central to our inquiry is the tension between non-native crops and indigenous farming practices,” he said. “When non-native innovations were adopted in another cultural and physical environment, they would have been transformed within the local context. How this happens is an enduring question that is relevant to globalization in the past and present.”

This study resonates with other archaeological investigations led by Liu’s research group, the Laboratory for the Analysis of Early Food-Webs at Washington University. For example, co-author Sun’s previous work with Washington University graduate student Melissa Ritchey demonstrated a similar geographic decoupling of the dispersal of grains and cuisines, such that wheat and barley dispersed into ancient China 4,000 years ago, but the western grinding-and-baking cuisines did not. The eastern movement of these grains involved selections of phenotypic traits adapted to ancient China’s cooking tradition of using steaming-and-boiling.

It has been a long time since some scholars assumed the association between the origin of bureaucracy and irrigation, and ancient China had been used as an example of “oriental despotism,” according to Liu. The “hydraulic empire” hypothesis speculated that a centralized government structure that maintained power would have been derived from the need for flood control and irrigation.

“Our results suggest otherwise, such that irrigation was a much more localized practice, which did not necessarily require central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy,” Liu explained. “Simple ditches and strategic planting can be as powerful as monopoly empires.”

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JOURNAL

Antiquity

DOI

10.15184/aqy.2022.138 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Water and soil management strategies and the introduction of wheat and barley to northern China: an isotopic analysis of cultivation on the Loess Plateau

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Nov-2022

New study suggests evolutionary forces are behind collective discrimination

Research paper recommends fostering environments in which desired behavior emerges naturally through evolutionary dynamics rather than regulating against undesired outcomes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR ANDREW W. LO, MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, IS THE CO-AUTHOR OF THE NEW RESEARCH PAPER, "THE WISDOM OF CROWDS VERSUS THE MADNESS OF MOBS: AN EVOLUTIONARY MODEL OF BIAS, POLARIZATION, AND OTHER CHALLENGES TO COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE" view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF MIT SLOAN

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 10, 2022–New research published in the inaugural issue of the academic journal Collective Intelligence suggests that evolutionary forces may be fueling collective tendencies to discriminate. MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Andrew W. Lo and Assistant Professor Ruixun Zhang of Peking University created a mathematical model of natural selection on behavior to study the controversial idea of “group selection,” in which evolutionary forces operate on groups of individuals. Their model shows that political polarization, bias and discrimination can emerge in environments where technological changes threaten the dominance of one group, while allowing newly emerging groups to rise in popularity.

The global rise of authoritarianism has intensified over the last few years, making their results more relevant than ever. The 2021 Freedom in the World Report found that countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties outnumbered those with gains by the largest margin in the past 15 years. Anti-immigration sentiment and policies have also continued or increased in many countries. (Gallup, September 2020) At the same time, social media use has continued to rise, with an estimated 470 billion users globally. (DataReportal, July 2020)

“One of the central ideas of economics—the Efficient Markets Hypothesis—is that the random interactions of many individuals can produce a remarkable degree of collective intelligence,” says Lo. “For instance, by harnessing this wisdom of crowds, financial markets fuel tremendous economic growth and innovation such as new cancer drugs, self-driving cars, smartphones, and the Mars rover among many others. But failures in collective intelligence also give us economic bubbles, crashes, and global financial crises—the madness of mobs rather than the wisdom of crowds.”

Groups can form based on hate—often unconsciously—through the forces of natural selection, and such alliances can reduce our collective intelligence and cause great societal harm, the researchers say.

Humans naturally tend to anchor toward their original beliefs. (Tversky and Kahnemen, 1974) Lo and Zhang’s research explores present-day implications of this principle. When people are presented with new information—whether via news services or social media posts—there will be a group that believes this information regardless of its accuracy. And despite the small size of the initial group, engagement-based recommender systems can quickly amplify these beliefs, causing exponential growth of populations with polarized beliefs via typical evolutionary dynamics.

“Simply put, evolution can drive our prejudices,” says Zhang. “Since Darwin’s publication of Origins of Species in 1859, we have known that groups compete in order to survive. Competition exists alongside cooperation in ways that can propel us to new heights—such as the global collaboration that produced our COVID-19 vaccines. But it can also plunge us to new lows—such as state-sponsored terrorism, societies with polarized opinions, and hate crimes toward underrepresented groups.”

The authors recommend fostering environments in which the desired behavior of collective intelligence will emerge naturally through evolutionary dynamics, rather than simply regulating against the undesired outcome—which could create selective pressures that make things worse. Strategies to encourage such environment include proactively providing social, educational and economic opportunities for underrepresented groups to counteract negative feedback loops, as well as providing lessons and activities for children to interact with each other with diverse backgrounds, to develop more accurate perceptions of people from other groups. The most effective policies will prevent negative feedback loops from emerging.

“Given today’s near-instantaneous transmission of news, it’s now more important than ever to make sure we have the right tools and the right environment in which the wisdom of crowds can emerge naturally to forestall the madness of mobs,” says Lo.

 

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JOURNAL

Collective Intelligence

DOI

10.1177/26339137221104785 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The wisdom of crowds versus the madness of mobs: An evolutionary model of bias, polarization, and other challenges to collective intelligence

New study finds our ancient relatives were not so simple after all

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have solved an important piece of the animal evolution puzzle, after a new study revealed that our ancient ancestors were more complex than originally thought

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have solved an important piece of the animal evolution puzzle, after a new study revealed that our ancient ancestors were more complex than originally thought. 

Way back in our distant evolutionary history, animals underwent a major innovation. They evolved to have a left and right side, and two gut openings. This brought about a plethora of significant advantages in terms of propelling themselves directly forward at increased speed through the early seas, from finding food and extracting nutrients to avoiding being eaten themselves. It was such a successful strategy that, today, we share our planet with a huge diversity of other animals with bilateral symmetry and two gut openings just like us humans. They include animals as diverse as starfish, sea cucumbers, elephants, crickets, and snails. They also include an enigmatic group of very simple marine worms called Xenacoelomorphs, who lack many of the complex features of their fancier looking cousins. 

For years, scientists have debated who is more closely related to who in this diverse collection of bilaterally symmetrical animals. Some experts argue that Xenacoelomorphs mark the first group to branch in that major jump in innovation from animals with circular body plans (e.g. jelly fish and corals) to bilateral symmetry. If this was the case, then the first bilaterian itself was also a very simple animal. Others argued for different placements of Xenacoelomorphs on the family tree.  

However, a research team, led by Dr Mary O’Connell at the University of Nottingham has found that Xenacoelomorphs branch much later in time. They are not the earliest branch on the bilaterian family tree and their closest relatives are far more complex animals, like star fish. This means that Xenacoelomorphs have lost many of the complex features of their closest relatives, challenging the idea that evolution leads to ever more complex and intricate forms. Instead, the new study shows that loss of features is an important factor in driving evolution.  

Dr Mary O’Connell, Associate Professor in Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham says: “There are many fundamental questions about the evolution of animals that need to be answered. Many parts of this family tree that are not known or not resolved. But what an exciting time to be an evolutionary biologist with the availability of exquisite genome data from the beautiful diversity of species we currently have on our planet, allowing us to unlock secrets of our most distant past.”  

The paper, titled ‘Filtering artifactual signal increases support for Xenacoelomorpha and Ambulacraria sister relationship in the animal tree of life’ has been published in the peer-reviewed journal, Current Biology. It details the application of a special phylogenetic technique to help in extracting signal from noise over deep time, showing increased support for Xenacoelomorphs being sister to ambulacraria (e.g. star fish) rather than being the deepest diverging of the bilateria.  

The research team at the University of Nottingham will now explore other challenging family trees and other connections between genome changes and phenotypic diversity.  

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Filtering artifactual signal increases support for Xenacoelomorpha and Ambulacraria sister relationship in the animal tree of life

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Nov-2022

Sub-hourly rainfall extremes are becoming more intense under climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

Rainfall extremes at sub-hourly timescales are intensifying much faster than those on longer hourly or daily timescales, researchers report. Since these intense short-duration precipitation events are often to blame for damaging environmental hazards like flash flooding, understanding how they are being affected by our changing climate is crucial for effective climate adaptation and mitigation. Climate change is expected to alter the intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall worldwide. However, despite advances in understanding the effects of a warming climate on rainfall extremes at daily or longer timescales, less is known about its effect on short-duration or sub-daily rain fall totals. Heavy precipitation at these scales is often responsible for destructive natural hazards, including flash floods, landslides, and debris flows in urban and rural regions. Because sub-daily rainfall extremes often occur over small areas, they can be missed by rain gauge networks, overlooked by satellite measurements, and are poorly predicted by regional climate models. To better understand how climate change impacts sub-hourly rainfall totals, Hooman Ayat and colleagues used satellite-calibrated observations from three ground-based weather radars surrounding greater Sydney, Australia to evaluate trends in extreme rainfall down to the 10-minute scale over the last 20 years. Ayat et al. discovered that these short-duration rainfall extremes are becoming more intense – rainfall totals during these sub-hourly events are increasing – much faster than those over longer periods. According to the findings, despite no evidence of positive trends on the hourly or daily scales, sub-hourly extreme rainfall extremes in the Sydney area has been rising by at least 20% per decade.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abn8657 

ARTICLE TITLE

Intensification of subhourly heavy rainfall

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Nov-2022

SOS SAVE OUR SHARKS

Tunas, billfishes recover yet sharks’ extinction risk rises

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

Although some tunas and billfishes are recovering after decades of decline from overfishing, due in large part to successful fisheries management and conservation actions, shark biodiversity continues to decline, according to a new study evaluating yearly changes in these species’ extinction risk for the last 70 years. The findings simultaneously illustrate the value of conservation and management in protecting large ocean species and underscore the immediate need for these protections to be extended to sharks. It’s estimated that intense fishing across the planet’s oceans has led to roughly half of all commercially harvested fish and invertebrate stocks becoming overfished during the 20th century, including iconic large predatory fishes like tuna, billfishes, and sharks. However, while intense fishing activity has been increasingly monitored and managed, its overarching effects on ocean biodiversity are generally poorly understood. Based on International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List categories and criteria, Maria José Juan-Jordá and colleagues created a continuous Red List Index (RLI) of yearly changes in extinction risk of oceanic tunas, billfishes, and sharks spanning the last 70 years to better understand the health of oceanic biodiversity as well as the overall impacts of fishing mortality and conservation efforts on these populations. Juan-Jordá et al. found that after more than half a century of increasing risk of extinction due to increasing fishing pressure, effective fisheries management and conservation strategies have allowed populations of tuna and billfish to recover over the past decade. However, the extinction risk for sharks, which remain largely undermanaged, continues to rise. The findings suggest that while target species are increasingly and successfully sustainably managed to ensure maximum catch, other functionally important species like sharks, which are often captured as bycatch in these fisheries, continue to decline because of insufficient management actions. “The conservation statuses of threatened target species can be improved by managing the fishing industry, which can benefit the industry economically in the long run while allowing the threatened species to recover,” write Matthew Burgess and Sarah Becker in a related Perspective. “However, the protection of high-vulnerability bycatch and nontarget species is expected to be more difficult because they will require fisheries to invest in better fishing gear and targeting practices, or reduce fishing efforts, without directly benefiting from these changes.”

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abj0211 

ARTICLE TITLE

Seventy years of tunas, billfishes, and sharks as sentinels of global ocean health

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Nov-2022