DEFENDING BENEFITS FROM CLAWBACK

Pension protesters target Paris bistro favoured by Macron

Laurent Berger, French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT) union's general secretary and Sophie Binet, newly elected CGT trade union general secretary, sit prior to talks between Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and inter-unions representatives at Hotel de Matignon in Paris, France April 5, 2023 after a pensions reform was pushed through parliament by the French government without a vote, using the article 49.3 of the constitution. 

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt arrive for talks with inter-unions representatives at the Hotel de Matignon in Paris, France April 5, 2023 after a pensions reform was pushed through parliament by the French government without a vote, using the article 49.3 of the constitution. 

Bertrand Guay/Pool via REUTERS POOL▲

Updated Apr 6, 2023
By Antony Paone, Sarah Meyssonnier and Ingrid Melander

PARIS (Reuters) -Clashes erupted in Paris next to a Left Bank brasserie favoured by French President Emmanuel Macron as protesters torched garbage cans and smashed two banks during the eleventh day of nationwide demonstrations against pension reform.

The bistro La Rotonde, whose awning was set alight as protesters threw bottles and paint at police, is known in France for hosting a much-criticised celebratory dinner for Macron when he led the first round of the 2017 presidential election.

Protests against the flagship reform of Macron's second term, which lifts the retirement age by two years to 64, began in mid-January and have coalesced widespread anger against the president.

Labour unions on Thursday evening called for another day of nationwide protests on April 13.

"Strike, blockade, Macron walk away!" protesters chanted in the western city of Rennes, where police fired tear gas at protesters who threw projectiles at them and set bins on fire.

The street protests have become increasingly violent since the government pushed the pension legislation through parliament without a final vote due to a lack of support among lawmakers.

But police estimates indicate the number of people taking part may be falling.

On Thursday, black-clad anarchists smashed the windows of two banks and engaged riot police in cat-and-mouse skirmishes along the route of the street protest.

One police officer briefly lost consciousness after being struck on the helmet by a rock.

A total of 77 police force members were injured and 31 people were arrested as of 1820 GMT in Paris, police said.

Polls show a wide majority of voters oppose the pension legislation. But a source close to Macron said that was not what mattered.

"If the role of a president of the republic is to make decisions according to public opinion, there is no need to have elections," the source said. "Being president is to assume choices that may be unpopular at a given time."

'WITHDRAW THE REFORM'

Union leaders and protesters said the only way out of the crisis was for the legislation to be scrapped, an option which the government has repeatedly rejected.

"There is no other solution than withdrawing the reform," the new leader of the hardline CGT union, Sophie Binet, said at the start of the Paris rally.

The number of people striking in schools and disruption to train traffic was down on Thursday from a week earlier. On the streets, the hardline CGT said about 400,000 people joined the protest in Paris, down from 450,000 the week before. The interior ministry said 57,000 people attended in Paris, down sharply from the 93,000 reported a week earlier.

Nationwide, 570,000 people marched against the reform on Thursday, down from 740,000 a week earlier.

The numbers could bring some hope to officials who say they believe the rallies may be losing steam.

Laurent Berger, the leader of the moderate CFDT union told France 5 television that the figures were hefty for an eleventh day of protests.

"The real issue is that there is widespread resentment and social anger," Berger said, adding he condemned the violence.

A crucial date on the issue looms on April 14, when the Constitutional Council delivers its verdict on the pension bill. Constitutional experts say the council is unlikely to strike the legislation down, which may help weaken protests.

"Mobilisation will continue, one way or another ... It's a long distance race," the CGT's Binet said.

At the Paris rally, nurse Soraya Bouadouia said: "I will be here until the withdrawal of the pension reform, which is a completely unacceptable reform."

With Macron on an official trip to Beijing, one protester held a banner that read: "Macron resign. You will hear us all the way to China."

(Additional reporting by Stephane Mahe, Silvia Aloisi, Tassilo Hummel, Lucien Libert, Noemie Olive, Elizabeth Pineau, Michel Rose, Benoit Van Overstraeten; Alain Acco, Dominique Vidalon ; writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Hugh Lawson, Mark Heinrich, Nick Macfie and Deepa Babington)

GEMOLOGY
Estrela de Fura: Largest Ever Ruby to be Auctioned for $30m

ByTasos Kokkinidis
April 7, 2023

The “once in a century” find is shaking up the gemstone industry.

 Credit: Sotheby’s

The largest ever ruby to be sold at auction, named Estrela de Fura – Fura Star in Portuguese will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York this summer.

The auction house is describing the gem, which was found in July 2022 in Mozambique as “an exceptional treasure.”

The 55.22-carat gem is unusual not only for its size and purity but also for its location. Until the discovery of Estrela de Fura, it was thought that only Burma held rubies of such color and clarity.

Some analysts said the “once in a century” find was shaking up the gemstone industry.

Sotheby’s has placed an estimate of more than $30 million that, if achieved, could make it the most valuable ruby ever sold at auction.

Sotheby’s said that even in its rough, 101-carat untouched state, the ruby “was considered by experts as an exceptional treasure of nature.”

It is celebrated “for its fluorescence, outstanding clarity and vivid red hue, known as ‘pigeon’s blood’ — a color traditionally associated only with Burmese rubies.”

Size and quality of the ruby is “almost unimaginable”

Quig Bruning, head of Sotheby’s Jewelry America, said the find had changed perceptions of African gems, putting them on par with Burmese.

“It is undoubtedly positioned to become the standard bearer for African rubies – and gemstones in general, bringing global awareness to their ability to be on par with, and even outshine, those from Burma, which have traditionally been the most desirable and recognizable source for rubies,” he said.

The Gubelin Gem Lab, one of two laboratories that graded the gem, said the size and the quality of the ruby was “almost unimaginable.”

“To see a natural ruby of this size, with such a combination of quality characteristics spared from treatment was considered almost unimaginable,” the New York-based firm said.

“The natural ruby of 55.22-carat is setting a new record not only for Mozambican rubies, but also for rubies in general.”

The other gem lab, Swiss Gemmological Institute (SSEF), also based in New York, wrote that the gem displays “vivid red hues due to multiple internal reflections.”

They said that a natural ruby from Mozambique of this size and quality can be considered very rare and thus an exceptional treasure of nature.

The current world record for a ruby sold at auction is held by the Sunrise Ruby, a 25.59 carat Burmese stone, which was auctioned at Sotheby’s Geneva in May 2015 for $30.3 million.

This price also established a new record for any ruby per carat ($1,185,451 per carat) at the time.

The ruby was found in an area of Mozambique, Cabo Delgado province, which has seen attacks from ISIS-inspired Islamist militants.

The town of Montepuez was attacked in October, with hundreds of people fleeing their homes, according to Human Rights Watch.

Two mines operating in the area – not run by Fura – were forced to cease operations amid the attacks.

Some people living near Colombian volcano loathe to evacuate

Credit: REUTERS/STRINGER
April 06, 2023 — 
Written by Andres Camilo Valencia for Reuters

BOGOTA, April 6 (Reuters) - Colombia's government is trying to speed up the evacuation of some 2,500 families living closest to the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, which is being monitored for a possible eruption, but some residents are refusing to leave.

The volcano's eruption in 1985 killed more than 25,000 people in Colombia's biggest-ever natural disaster, with avalanches of earth and rock fragments burying entire settlements.

The government has raised the volcano's alert level to orange, following a surge in seismic activity that suggests a heightened chance of an eruption in the coming days or weeks, and begun some preventative evacuations.

President Gustavo Petro has asked for evacuations to move more quickly and disaster officials have said livestock - critical to many livelihoods in the rural area - may be moved as well, or farmers will be allowed to return during the day to care for them.

But some residents, including families who survived the devastating 1985 eruption by the Nevado del Ruiz, which straddles the border between Tolima and Caldas provinces, say they will not go.

"It doesn't scare me because it already exploded," said Evelio Ortiz, a potato farmer who survived the 1985 eruption with his wife and five children. "What was going to erode eroded."



 Evelio Ortiz, a farmer who grows potatoes, plows the land in a field near the Arenas crater, after authorities declared an orange alert at the Nevado del Ruiz volcano and asked the population for a preventive evacuation in Herveo, Colombia April 5, 2023. 

 Evelio Ortiz, a farmer who grows potatoes, poses for a photo holding some potatoes in a field near the Arenas crater, after the authorities declared an orange alert at the Nevado del Ruiz volcano and asked the population for a preventive evacuation in Herveo, Colombia April 5, 2023. 

 Evelio Ortiz, a farmer who grows potatoes, looks for signal on his cell phone while walking through a field near the Arenas crater, after the authorities declared an orange alert at the Nevado del Ruiz volcano and asked the population for a preventive evacuation in Herveo, Colombia April 5, 2023. 

REUTERS/Andres Camilo Valencia

Some 57,000 people live in the volcano's hazard zone, which is spread across parts of six provinces, according to the national disaster management agency.

The preventative evacuations are necessary because poor communication infrastructure may make it difficult to contact those living closest to the volcano in the event of an imminent eruption, authorities have said.

The 1985 tragedy is the fourth-deadliest volcanic eruption in human history, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Nevado del Ruiz is a stratovolcano or composite volcano.

(Reporting by Andres Camilo Valencia; Writing by Luis Jaime Acosta and Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Colombia informal miners end month of protests, will dialogue with govt

Reuters | April 7, 2023 |


Informal miners in northern Colombia have ended more than a month of sometimes-violent protests, agreeing to talks with the government to try and improve labor conditions and formalize their operations, the government said on Thursday.


The protests, which began in early March, have included roadblocks which at one point were affecting hundreds of thousands of residents in two provinces, causing shortages of fuel, food and medicine.

The government has accused major crime gang the Clan del Golfo of inciting violence at the demonstrations and of deadly attacks on security forces, leading President Gustavo Petro to call off a ceasefire with the group.

“The suspension of the miners strike in Bajo Cauca and the northeast of Antioquia is a positive decision of communities taking the reins of their own destiny,” Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez said on Twitter, adding security forces would remain in the area.

Talks will focus on finding technological alternatives for informal gold extraction, the interior ministry said in its own statement, as well as formalization of mining operations and attention for people living in the area.

Much of Colombia’s gold output comes from either subsistence miners – who scrap a living panning in rivers or working in dangerous tunnels – or illegal operations run by armed groups.

The armed forces destroyed at least 13 excavators during the protests in a bid to hit illegal operators, whose use of heavy equipment and mercury are considered serious threats to the environment.

(By Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

U.S. arrests retired Salvadoran officer implicated in atrocities

April 06, 2023 

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - U.S. agents arrested a retired Salvadoran military officer this week on charges of participating in a brutal massacre of civilians during El Salvador's grinding civil war in the 1980s, according to a statement on Thursday.

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Roberto Garay on Tuesday in the state of New Jersey, the agency said.

Garay served as section commander of a special military unit known as the Atlacatl Battalion from 1981 to 1985.

Retired Salvadoran general Juan Rafael Bustillo acknowledged in 2020 that Atlacatl was responsible for the notorious 1981 El Mozote massacre, in which more than 1,0000 villagers, mostly women and children, were slaughtered.

The battalion carried out extrajudicial executions at El Mozote, as well as in three other massacres in which "hundreds of noncombatant civilians" were killed, ICE said.

Garay then "willfully" misrepresented his involvement in the massacre from an immigration application he had submitted, according to the statement.

Reuters was not immediately able to locate Garay's lawyer.

One of several bloody Central American conflicts linked to the Cold War, El Salvador's 1980-1992 civil war pitted the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels against the army of the U.S.-backed right-wing government.

The war left some 75,000 dead and another 8,000 missing.

Touting the agency's investigation team that aims to hold accused war criminals accountable, ICE stressed that individuals like Garay must be investigated, prosecuted and expelled from the United States.

"Individuals who have committed atrocities overseas will not find safe haven in the United States," Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security John K. Tien said in the statement.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Valentine Hilaire; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Rosalba O'Brien)

By Nelson Renteria

Sheep Creek Montana rare earth deposits selected by USGS for exploration and mapping

Amanda Stutt | April 7, 2023

 
US Critical Mineral’s Crowley Adit #3 at Sheep Creek, Montana, showing banded carbonatite exposed near the top of the right rib. Credit: US Critical Minerals.

As part of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Mapping Resource Initiative (EMRI), the USGS, in cooperation with the Montana Bureau of Mines, announced it is conducting a high-resolution flyover, an aeromagnetic and aero-radiometric survey at US Critical Materials Corp.’s Sheep Creek property in southwest Montana.


Detailed geologic mapping and geochemical sampling will also be conducted to further define rare earth mineralization already identified. The total claim block held by US Critical Materials is 7 square miles.

US Critical Materials announced in February that rare earth samples from 125 feet underground at its flagship Sheep Creek Montana property reported grades that exceed any other domestic rare earth resource.

The Salt-Lake City, Utah-based privately held company said results from Activation Labs in Ontario, Canada confirm over 10% of total rare earth oxides, (TREO) including high levels of neodymium and praseodymium.

Sheep Creek also has exceptionally low radioactive thorium, which will allow for more environmentally friendly extracting and processing, the company said.

US Critical Materials has nearly 90% TREO (89,932 ppm), far ahead of any other domestic rare earth resource. The deposit also has readings of 2.4% (23,810 ppm) combined neodymium and praseodymium, which are both essential for the green economy.

Critical Materials president Jim Hedrick, a former rare earth commodity specialist for the USGS, said the combination of high-grade rare earths, low thorium, and carbonatites 125 feet below surface is a geological phenomenon that “does not exist in other reported US deposits.”

Hedrick said the pre-resource-stage deposit is valued at a “conservative” $43 billion.

“Over the course of my career independently evaluating rare earth properties within the US, I have never encountered a property with the grades being generated by Sheep Creek,” Hedrick told MINING.COM in an interview in February.

“The company’s geologists have discovered multiple carbonatites and believe there may be a common underground source for these carbonatites,” Hendrick said.

He added that the company’s geologists found 50 carbonites over 800 acres, and they believe there is a ‘continuous source’ underground that ties it all together.

“The goal of Earth MRI is to improve our knowledge of the geologic framework in the United States and to identify areas that may have the potential to contain undiscovered critical mineral resources,” the USGS said in a statement.

“Enhancement of our domestic mineral supply will decrease the nation’s reliance on foreign sources of minerals that are fundamental to our security and economy.”

Column: Is it time to embrace Congo’s artisanal cobalt miners?

Reuters | April 7, 2023 |

(Image courtesy of Enough Project | Flickr)

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)


The problems around artisanal cobalt mining in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will take “a coalition to solve”, according to Microsoft.

The $1.9 trillion US tech giant was recently in the DRC to see what the other end of the consumer electronics supply chain looks like.

Microsoft chief of staff, tech and corporate responsibility Michele Burlington paid a visit in December to the Mutoshi artisanal mining site, where up to 15,000 miners, including children, are working in highly dangerous conditions.

The irony is that Mutoshi was a highly successful pilot scheme for formalizing artisanal workers until it was closed in 2020 due to coronavirus restrictions.

The site’s subsequent deterioration sums up the Congolese government’s struggle to realise its vision of integrating the entire artisanal cobalt workforce into the official sector.

Yet the West still needs Congo’s cobalt and everyone agrees that formalization is the solution to the high human and economic costs of artisanal mining.

Microsoft’s reference to a coalition suggests a collective rethink is under way, not least by a US government desperate to loosen China’s grip on the cobalt market.
Ethical dilemma

The ethical dilemma facing Western cobalt users, which is just about everyone with a mobile phone, is headline news again after the publication of “Cobalt Red” by Siddarth Kara.

The book’s subtitle – “How the blood of the Congo powers our lives” – captures both the horrors of informal cobalt mining and the near impossibility of keeping tainted ore out of the formal supply stream.

Kara’s searing first-hand accounts of artisanal life are validated by an independent report published in February by Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, the director of the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights, on the current conditions at Mutoshi.

The report noted an increase in artisanal miners from 5,000 under the two-year formalization scheme to 15,000, a renewed exclusion of the female workforce, the return of child workers and a rapid deterioration in safety conditions as miners switched back from open-cast to tunnel mining.

The local artisanal cooperative reported five deaths in November alone, compared with zero under the formalization experiment.

The ore that was once sold for processing directly to Chemaf, owner of the site, and its marketing partner, Trafigura, is now being sold to middle men, mostly Chinese, for onward sale to processors, also mostly Chinese.

Mutoshi’s artisanal miners have lost their collective pricing power and their cobalt is once again flowing down opaque channels into the industrial supply chain, the report claims.

Most of the country’s estimated 150,000-200,000 cobalt miners have never even had the chance of formalization.

The government launched the Enterprise Generale du Cobalt in 2021, aiming to formalize the entire sector and buy all its output, but the initial drive ran aground in Congo’s regional power politics.

A critical dependence

The Western response to its cobalt dilemma has been either to try to not use it at all or to avoid any supply tainted with artisanal mining in Congo.

Apple, for example, has said that 13% of the cobalt shipped in its products in 2021 came from recycling.

Electric vehicle (EV) makers are embracing non-cobalt battery chemistries such as lithium-iron-phosphate.

But around 74% of the EV battery market is still using the metal for its energy density, safety and performance attributes, according to The Cobalt Institute, and the EV sector is still expanding fast.

Global usage surged by 22% in 2021 and is forecast by the Institute to grow by around 13% a year for the next five years.

The world is going to need a lot more cobalt and right now it’s China that will supply it.

The country accounts for around 72% of global processing capacity, much of it fed with Congolese ore, both from Chinese industrial operators and the informal sector via the shadow middle-man market.
Western coalition

China’s supply-chain dominance is a headache for both the United States and Europe, which have identified cobalt as a critical mineral.

A collapse in the cobalt price from over $40 per lb a year ago to a current $17 per lb, largely due to over-production in Congo, has made it more difficult to bring on new Western supply.

Jervois Global has just announced the suspension of the final construction stage of its Idaho cobalt project due to the combination of low price and higher input costs.

The only obvious source of immediate large-scale supply remains Congo, which accounts for around 70% of global production.

Congo’s metallic riches place it at the heart of the great game that is playing out between West and East as they seek control of the critical minerals needed to decarbonise.

The United States signed in December a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Congo and Zambia to jointly develop a supply chain for EV batteries.

The MOU “opens the door for open and transparent investment to build value-added and sustainable industry in Africa and creating a just energy transition for workers and local communities,” the US State Department said.

One local community just happens to account for around 12% of cobalt production in the world’s largest producing nation. It is the same community at the heart of the West’s ethical dilemma about artisanal working conditions.

Formalizing the sector could help solve both problems.

It will, as Microsoft pointed out, need a coalition of government, industrial producers prepared to offer sites for artisanal workers, battery makers and the big brands at the end of the cobalt supply chain.

And us, the ultimate consumer.

Integrating artisanal mining is expensive. Chemaf used industrial excavation equipment to create the open pits mined under the pilot scheme at Mutoshi. It was much safer than tunnelling but expensive at $50,000 per round and had to be repeated every six months, according to Baumann-Pauly’s report.

The Western consumer’s desire to pay a premium for responsibly sourced cobalt may be the ultimate test of whether a Western coalition can simultaneously loosen China’s grip on the cobalt market and alleviate the plight of Congo’s artisanal miners.

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

Easter bunnies, cacao beans and pollinating bugs: A basket of 6 essential reads about chocolate

The Conversation
April 07, 2023

Chocolate Bunny with Chocolate Eggs (Shutterstock)

Tens of millions of chocolate bunnies get sold in the U.S. every Easter. Here are six articles about chocolate from The Conversation’s archive – great reading while you’re nibbling the ears off your own bunny (if you’re one of the three-quarters of Americans who start at the top).

1. Food scientist on cocoa chemistry

Chocolate bunnies don’t grow on trees – but cacao pods do. It takes a lot of processing to get from the raw agricultural input to the finished output.

Food scientist Sheryl Barringer from The Ohio State University wrote about various chemical reactions that are part of the transformation of beans into chocolate. One is the Maillard reaction, the same thing that gives the browned bits on roasted meats or a bread’s golden crust their flavor. Barringer also explains that weird white stuff – known as bloom – that might appear on your Easter chocolates if they hang around for a while. (Don’t worry, it’s still edible.)

2. Chocolate is a fermented food

Food science Ph.D. candidate Caitlin Clark from Colorado State University focuses her research on the microbes responsible for much of chocolate’s flavor. As a fermented food, chocolate depends on yeast and bacteria to help turn a raw ingredient into the treat you can recognize.

Clark described how the microorganisms that occur naturally in a given geographical location can give high-end chocolates their “terroir” – “the characteristic flair imparted by a place” you might be more used to thinking about with regard to wine.


Tiny flies spread pollen from one cacao tree to another.

dimarik/iStock via Getty Images Plus

3. Pollinators are important part of process

Cacao growers rely on another tiny ally to pollinate their crop. Entomologist DeWayne Shoemaker from the University of Tennessee described the mini flies – particularly biting midges and gall midges – that get the job done. “Pollinators must pick up pollen from the male parts of a flower of one tree and deposit it on the female parts of a flower on another tree,” Shoemaker wrote.

But up to 90% of cacao flowers don’t get pollinated at all. People can hand-pollinate the little flowers, but it remains a mystery which other insects might do the job in the wild.
4. Child labor is chocolate’s bitter secret

Harvesting and processing cacao is labor-intensive. To meet this need, some farmers turn to child labor. Cultural anthropologist Robert Ulin from the Rochester Institute of Technology described how the global chocolate industry is tied to inequality via exploitative labor practices.

“The largest chocolate companies signed a protocol in 2001 that condemned child labor and childhood slavery,” Ulin wrote. But he noted that consumers may want more information to make sure their purchase power supports “fair labor practices in the chocolate sector.”


Do not share your chocolates with your pooch. 

F.J. Jimenez/Moment via Getty Images

5. Not safe for furry family members

Eating a ton of chocolate is probably not a healthy choice for anyone. But even a little bit of chocolate can be deadly for dogs and cats.

In an article about all kinds of holiday foods that are unsafe for pets, veterinarian and researcher Leticia Fanucchi from Oklahoma State University explained the chemicals in this human delicacy that can cause fatal “chocolate intoxication.” Don’t delay getting veterinary help if your pet does raid your Easter basket.

6. An enslaved chocolatier in colonial America

An enslaved cook named Caesar, born in 1732, was one of the first chocolatiers in the American colonies. Historical archaeologist Kelley Fanto Deetz from the University of California, Berkeley described how Caesar “would have had to roast the cocoa beans on the open hearth, shell them by hand, grind the nibs on a heated chocolate stone, and then scrape the raw cocoa, add milk or water, cinnamon, nutmeg or vanilla, and serve it piping hot.”

Cocoa was a hot commodity for Virginia’s white elite during this period, when it was a culinary component – along with pineapples, Madeira wine, port, champagne, coffee and sugar – of the Columbian Exchange.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Maggie Villiger, Senior Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation

The man in the monkey nut coat: how a 1940s scientist made ‘vegan wool’ from peanuts

The extraordinary life of William Astbury: a pioneer of genetics, fashion, and animal welfare. 

Canva/Shutterstock

The Conversation
April 07, 2023

Woollen clothing has been around for as long as humans have been wearing clothes and sheep have been domesticated. Indeed, our distant ancestors used sheep for three things: food, clothing and shelter – wool makes good insulation and helps to keep in the warmth.

The UK is still one of the largest wool producers in the world and has more than 60 different breeds of sheep.

But with the rise of veganism, many people are now questioning whether it’s ethical to use wool in clothing and fabrics. Vegans don’t wear wool as it is often a by-product of the meat industry.

This is why the charity Peta (The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has launched a US$1 million (£844,000) vegan wool challenge to find the first individual, group, or company that can create a vegan wool material that is “visually, textually and functionally akin to or better than sheep’s wool.”

But it seems that back in the 1940s, textile physicist William Astbury was already on the case and making newspaper headlines for wearing what would today be considered a vegan coat.

For Astbury’s jacket was woven not from wool or other conventional textile materials, but from Ardil, a fibre made from monkey nut, or peanut proteins.

The monkey nut coat

In my book The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and How Wool Wove a Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix, I tell the story of Astbury (and that famous coat), who with his colleague Florence Bell laid the foundations for the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Scientists James Watson and Francis Crick are famous for having first worked out the structure of DNA. But their success came 15 years after Astbury and Bell had first shown that X-rays could actually reveal DNA’s structure.


A Daily Mail article on the coat made of peanuts, published in 1944 Author provided

And this work had a surprising origin, for Astbury’s aim was not to answer grand questions about the secrets of life, but to study the humble wool fibre while working as a lecturer in textile physics at the University of Leeds.

Ever since the Middle Ages, wool and textiles were the economic lifeblood of this Yorkshire city – with mills a major source of employment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1928 Astbury came to Leeds and used X-rays to reveal the molecular shape of the proteins in wool fibers. He found that they could be compacted or elongated – rather like a slinky toy. This change in their molecular architecture explained the stretchiness of wool – a property that made it so attractive to the textile industry.

And through it, Astbury left another powerful scientific legacy – thanks to his sporting of that rather unusual “peanut” overcoat.

A future wool?

From the mid-1930s onwards, Astbury, along with his collaborators Albert Chibnall and Kenneth Bailey, filed patents on a process that used solvents such as urea to unravel the precise 3D shape of proteins found in seeds – like the peanut. Their method then refolded them by a kind of molecular origami into insoluble fibers, creating a cheap and abundant raw material for the textile industry.

Sharing his optimism, the company Imperial Chemical Industries bought these patents and built a pilot production plant in Scotland to produce a new textile fibre from peanuts, which they called Ardil and gifted Astbury an overcoat made from it.

During the second world war, wool shortages encouraged investment in Ardil and campaigns were launched to persuade the British public of its benefits. This drive to develop new textile fibers at the time may also have inspired a storyline in the 1951 British comedy film The Man in the White Suit.

In the film, an altruistic chemist invents a fabric that resists wear and stain, but (spoiler alert) his dreams come crashing down when management realizes the fabric must be suppressed for economic reasons as it threatens their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, much like the fictional fibre, Ardil did not live up to its promise of saving the British textile industry. But Astbury and his overcoat left an important scientific legacy.

His work remains important because it showcased his lifelong belief that understanding living systems requires solving their molecular architecture. While Ardil did not succeed, Astbury’s research laid the foundation for future innovations in molecular biology and materials science.

This approach, known as structural biology, has since allowed us to understand how the blood protein haemoglobin can carry oxygen around the body, how muscles contract and more recently how the spike protein on the surface of SARS-CoV2 allows the virus to bind and enter human cells.

When Astbury died in 1961, his friend and colleague, the botanist R.D. Preston, fondly remembered him as “a man of many parts – scientist, scholar, musician, bon viveur, humorist, in some ways, a swashbuckler…boisterous to the end with every morning still a Christmas morning.” Maybe to this list of accolades, we should also add a posthumous nomination for the $1 million vegan wool prize.

Kersten Hall, Author and Honorary Fellow, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds

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

WHY STRAIGHT MEN LIKE LADY BOYS
Gynandromorph research offers insight into the complexities of male sexual attraction
2023/04/07


New research sheds light on heterosexual men’s attraction to gynandromorphs (feminine-presenting individuals assigned male at birth who retain their penises). The findings suggest that men have the capacity to become aroused by gynandromorphic individuals because of the presence of female-typical sex traits. The study has been published in Biological Psychology.

The term gynandromorph is used to describe individuals with both male and female physical characteristics. Gynandromorphs in Western culture usually identify as transgender women, while in some non-Western cultures there are specific categories of gynandromorphs who are considered non-binary, neither male nor female. Examples of non-binary gynandromorphs include muxes in southern Mexico, hijra in India, and bissu in Indonesia.

Psychologists are interested in studying gynandromorphs because they can provide insight into the complex relationship between biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Additionally, gynandromorphs allow researchers to investigate how individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles are perceived and treated by society. Studying gynandromorphs may also shed light on the psychological processes underlying attraction and sexual orientation.

“I have always had an interest in psychophysiology and human evolution. This area of research has allowed me to satisfy my own curiosities while contributing to our understandings of male sexual behaviour in humans,” said study author Lambert C. Heatlie, a graduate student at the University of Lethbridge.

The new research included a sample of 65 cisgender males (average age 23.12) who were recruited from a small university In Canada. The study only included participants who reported being exclusively attracted to adult cisgender females. Those who reported either bisexuality or arousal to cisgender males were excluded.

The participants were presented with a text screen notifying them that they would be shown images and asking them to rate how sexually arousing they found each model using a 7-point scale that ranged from 1 (“not at all arousing”) to 7 (“very arousing”).

The participants viewed 44 nude images depicting females who appeared to be cisgender, males who appeared to be cisgender, and gynandromorphs with, and without, breasts. The presentation of the stimuli was randomized. Pupil size was estimated using a Tobii X120–3 near infrared eye-tracker, and participants’ heads were stabilized using a chin rest during the study.

As expected, the male participants reported being most attracted to cisgender females. Gynandromorphs with breasts were ranked as more attractive than those without breasts and cisgender males. But the difference between cisgender males and gynandromorphs without breasts was not statistically significant. (The average subjective sexual arousal scores were 5.38 for cisgender females, 2.22 for gynandromorphs with breasts, 1.57 for gynandromorphs without breasts, and 1.71 for cisgender males.)

The researchers observed a similar pattern when examining pupillary responses. Men’s average change in pupil size was 0.25 when viewing cisgender females, 0.1 when viewing gynandromorphs with breasts, 0.03 when viewing gynandromorphs without breasts, and -0.05 when viewing cisgender males.

“This study demonstrates that heterosexual males’ arousal patterns are influenced not only by obvious sex-based characteristics, but also by gender-based ones. When there are incongruencies between the two (e.g., a feminine individual with male genitals), gender-based traits may override sex-based traits to some extent,” Heatlie told PsyPost.

“Overall, however, sex-based traits appear to be far more effective in eliciting sexual arousal. This runs parallel with past research, which has consistently demonstrated that heterosexual males exhibit some capacity to become aroused by sexual stimuli depicting feminine males.”

The findings are mostly in line with a previous study, which included 51 heterosexual men and 19 gay men. But the fact that cisgender males and gynandromorphs without breasts were viewed as equally attactrive was not expected.

“It was surprising to find that feminine individuals with penises only elicited sexual arousal when they had breasts, a female-typical secondary sex trait,” Heatlie said. “Past research has found that images of feminine individuals with penises, with or without breasts, elicit somewhat more sexual interest and subjective arousal from heterosexual males than do images of cisgender males.”

The researchers suggest using more dynamic visual materials to study gynandromorphophilia (attraction to people with both male and female characteristics) in future research. They also propose studying the behavioral characteristics of gynandromorphs, such as sexual assertiveness and openness, in relation to the sexual arousal patterns of men.

“It is important to note that we used static images, rather than audiovisual stimuli,” Heatlie explained. “Audiovisual sexual stimuli tend to be more effective at eliciting sexual arousal. This is because such stimuli contain more information (e.g., vocal cues; gait). It would be informative to explore the extent to which these cues modulate heterosexual males’ sexual response to stimuli depicting feminine males.”

“It is important to note that this research was conducted on men predominantly recruited from a Canadian university,” the researcher noted. “Until this work is replicated in non-Western and community samples, it is unclear whether men from other contexts would respond similarly.”

The study, “Heterosexual men’s pupillary responses to stimuli depicting cisgender males, cisgender females, and gynandromorphs“, was authored by Lambert C. Heatlie, Lanna J. Petterson, and Paul L. Vasey.

© PsyPost