POLITICAL ECOLOGY

Call for Canada, US to braid Indigenous rights, endangered species laws

Indigenous leaders, UBCO researchers say current recovery targets do not support culturally vital harvest

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA OKANAGAN CAMPUS

 

IMAGE: CARIBOU FROM THE KLINSE-ZA HERD IN NORTHEASTERN BC GRAZE IN THIS HANDOUT PHOTO. LINE GIGUERE, WILDLIFE INFOMETRICS. view more 

CREDIT: LINE GIGUERE, WILDLIFE INFOMETRICS.

Climbing caribou numbers in northeastern British Columbia prove that collaborations between Indigenous and colonial governments can reverse decades-long declines, but focus needs to shift to culturally meaningful recovery targets, a consortium of researchers and community members say in a new paper published this week in Science.

UBC Okanagan’s Dr. Clayton Lamb and West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Willson co-lead the paper, Braiding Indigenous Rights and Endangered Species Law, alongside nine others for the influential journal.

“Abundance matters. There are many cases where endangered species laws have prevented extinction, but the warning signs of decline can appear long before the laws take effect. People who live and work on the land see these changes – we need to listen and act with them to prevent declines,” says Lamb, a biologist and MITACS postdoc in UBCO’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science. “There is a large gap between what the laws see as species recovery and what communities need for health, food security, and cultural well-being.”

The policy paper builds on collaborations between UBCO’s Lamb and Dr. Adam Ford, who have previously published research highlighting recovery efforts of the Klinse-Za caribou herd near the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations. They also looked at evolving bison and salmon recovery efforts in North America.

Researchers heard stories from West Moberly Elders about a “sea of caribou” once looking like “bugs on the landscape,” but only 38 animals remained in 2013. Those numbers climbed to 115 a decade later thanks to interventions led by Indigenous groups. While these early signs of recovery are cause for immense celebration, the herd remains much smaller than historic levels.

“We need to move past a life support mentality for biodiversity,” says Ford, head of UBCO’s Wildlife Restoration Ecology Lab. “We must restore nature and the time-honoured ways people interact with the land.”

Canada and the United States have endangered species laws that are designed to recover species abundance to levels that will minimize the chance of extinction, but these recovery targets do not take into account culturally meaningful abundance or distributions of plants and animals, the authors say.

The paper highlights the current caribou count would only provide about three animals, or one meal per person, per year for Saulteau and West Moberly First Nations. The culturally significant count would require a herd of over 3,000 animals, an abundance more reflective of the historic “sea of caribou” level.

Naomi Owens-Beek, manager of Treaty Rights and Environmental Protection for Saulteau First Nation, contributed to the research and the policy paper.

She says the collaboration between Canadian and Indigenous leaders is essential to preserving traditional ways of life. Some Elders in the region have never tasted caribou, yet it was a staple of their ancestors and provided vital nutrition, material, spirituality, and a sense of place.

“We looked out at the land and thought, 'What do these caribou need to be once again the great herds our Elders spoke about?' We first reduced predation to make sure the caribou weren’t lost. Now we’re focusing on protecting and restoring habitat,” she says.

“Caribou habitat has long been mistreated, and now there’s so few caribou. These herds need space to thrive, and that’s why we’re working with the nations, the province of British Columbia and Canada, to heal these lands and increase the population so we can one day go back into the mountains and hunt caribou.”

The paper also examined efforts to restore salmon and bison habitat in North America. Chief Willson says each species shows modest signs of recovery, but that isn’t nearly the progress needed.

"Braiding Indigenous rights with laws protecting endangered species can enable nations to respect and safeguard the rights of Indigenous communities, curb the threat of species loss, and ultimately confer broad societal advantages," he says.

Lamb, Willson, Ford and Owens-Beek were joined by Allyson Menzies (School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph), Michael Price (Earth to Ocean Research Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University), Scott McNay (Wildlife Infometrics), Sarah Otto (Department of Zoology & Biodiversity Research Centre at UBC), Mateen Hessami (Wildlife Science Center—Biodiversity Pathways at UBCO), Jesse Popp (School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph) and Mark Hebblewhite (Wildlife Biology Program, University of Montana).

Permalink: https://news.ok.ubc.ca/2023/05/18/call-for-canada-to-braid-indigenous-rights-with-endangered-species-law/

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adg9830 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

ARTICLE TITLE

Braiding Indigenous rights and endangered species law

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-May-2023

Transboundary cultural resources: Sacred wildlife, Indigenous emotions, and conservation decision-making




Authors: Blake Corvin (Idaho State University) , Morey Burnham  (Idaho State University) , Georgia Hart-Fredeluces  (Idaho State University) , Margaret du Bray  (University of Northern Colorado) , Darci Graves  (Idaho State University)


Abstract

For many Indigenous communities in North America, the grizzly bear is a symbol associated with tribal medicine, spirituality, history, and knowledge. Despite its cultural importance to Indigenous communities and also federal trust responsibilities, Indigenous Peoples are rarely consulted in conservation decision-making concerning grizzly bears, and the emotional outcomes of these decisions are poorly understood. In 2017 grizzly bears were removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Drawing from emotional political ecology and emotional geography, we use the concepts of cultural resources and 'networked space' to investigates how conservation decisions about transboundary cultural resources affect the emotions of Indigenous Peoples inside and outside of policy-targeted areas such as Yellowstone. The bears are non-subsistence resources that also carry cultural meanings for people who live beyond their current range. We find that conservation decisions affecting transboundary cultural resources transcend time and space and can have strong emotional consequences for our research participants who live outside of the policy-targeted area. In connection with the psychological dimension of emotional political ecologies, we also find that our participant's emotional responses to the delisting were animated by the historical traumas imposed by living in a colonial state.

Keywords: Conservation, Indigenous, transboundary cultural resources, emotions, wildlife

How to Cite:

Corvin, B. & Burnham, M. & Hart-Fredeluces, G. & du Bray, M. & Graves, D., (2023) “Transboundary cultural resources: Sacred wildlife, Indigenous emotions, and conservation decision-making”, Journal of Political Ecology 30(1), 219–239. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5604

Rising rates of induced labor need to be reconsidered in the context of the UK maternity services staffing crisis, study suggests

New study suggests that already pressured maternity services may underestimate the workload impact of induction of labor services

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON

A new study suggests that increasing rates of induction of labour (IOL) of pregnant women and people in the UK, without considering the accompanying, real-world impact on staffing workloads and patient care, may have unintended consequences.

The study from City, University of London, the University of Edinburgh and others highlights the limited evidence around the delivery of home-based IOL services, which were seen as an important step to reducing maternity staff workload.

It finds large gaps in knowledge on how to deliver home-based care, with workload perceived to be increased in some cases, relative to hospital-based services.

Around one-third of pregnant women and people underwent IOL in the UK in 2021.  Rates have surged in recent years due to new evidence on safety and efficacy, and vary considerably between maternity services, with some rates as high as fifty per-cent.

However, earlier this year, a survey reported by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) found that UK senior midwives are relying significantly on the goodwill of staff working extra hours to ensure safe services, amidst plummeting staff retention and recruitment rates that they say have reached “boiling point”.

The RCM said that midwives are leaving the profession “because they cannot deliver the quality of care they so desperately want to because of their falling pay, and because they are exhausted, fragile and burnt-out.”

IOL, or starting labour artificially, is offered when the risks of the pregnancy continuing are believed to outweigh the risks of artificially starting labour. For those deemed at lower risk, maternity services are offering this as an ‘outpatient’ service where the woman returns home in the first stage of induction, despite limited evidence on its acceptability to pregnant women, birth partners and maternity staff, and how different approaches work in practice.

The current study explored IOL from the perspectives of 73 clinicians: including 49 midwives, 22 obstetricians and two other maternity staff from five maternity services across the UK. Specifically, it investigated the recommended first stage of induction known as “cervical ripening” (CR) and the option of the pregnant person to return home from hospital during that process.

CR is either the use of topical medication (prostaglandin) or mechanical means (balloon catheter or osmotic dilator) to help dilate the pregnant person’s cervix.  Following this first stage, further steps are generally necessary to stimulate the onset of labour.

In the study, clinicians were either interviewed directly by the researchers or took part in focus groups to elicit their views, which then formed part of a thematic analysis to reveal common themes in their responses.

A wide range of practices and views regarding induction were recorded, suggesting that the integration of home CR into care is far from straightforward, and demonstrating that whether provided at hospital or home, IOL care is complex and represents a significant workload to maternity services staff.

The study follows closely on the heels of findings of a sister study which surveyed 309 women who had undergone IOL in the UK, and which was published earlier this month. The women reported receiving little information about IOL and being routinely impacted by delays at every stage of the care pathway, which they widely attributed to staffing shortages.

Professor Christine McCourt leads the Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research at City, University of London, and co-authored the study. She said:

“This study shows that well-intentioned interventions may have unintended consequences for quality of care and staff workload. Efforts are needed to target induction of labour effectively and ensure genuine informed choice; meanwhile, maternity services must be adequately resourced to ensure safe care.”

The study is published online in the journal, PLOS ONE.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

To speak to Professor Christine McCourt or Dr Cassandra Yuill (corresponding author), contact Dr Shamim Quadir, Senior Communications Officer, School of Health & Psychological Sciences, City, University of London. Tel: +44(0) 207 040 8782 Email: shamim.quadir@city.ac.uk.

                                                                
To read a copy of the embargoed manuscript for the study article:

Clinicians’ perspectives and experiences of providing cervical ripening at home or in-hospital in the United Kingdom

please request it, in confidence, from Dr Shamim Quadir, Senior Communications Officer, School of Health & Psychological Sciences, City, University of London.

The article will go live at this URL once the embargo lifts:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284818

Read the sister article (as part of the wider CHOICE study) published in the BMJOpen:

Experience of induction of labour: a cross-sectional postnatal survey of women at UK maternity units

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/13/5/e071703.full

City, University of London

• City, University of London is a global higher education institution committed to academic excellence, with a focus on business and the professions and an enviable central London location.
• City’s academic range is broadly-based with world-leading strengths in business; law; health sciences; mathematics; computer science; engineering; social sciences; and the arts including journalism and music.
• City has around 20,000 students (46% at postgraduate level) from more than 160 countries and staff from over 75 countries.
• In the last REF, City doubled the proportion of its total academic staff producing world-leading or internationally excellent research.
• More than 140,000 former students from over 180 countries are members of the City Alumni Network.
• The University’s history dates from 1894, with the foundation of the Northampton Institute on what is now the main part of City’s campus.  In 1966, City was granted University status by Royal Charter and the Lord Mayor of London became its Chancellor. In September 2016, City joined the University of London and HRH the Princess Royal became City’s Chancellor.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0284818 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Clinicians’ perspectives and experiences of providing cervical ripening at home or in-hospital in the United Kingdom

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-May-2023

‘Third space’ offers clearer insights into ancient and modern Chinese issues

Book Announcement

PENN STATE

NEWS RELEASE 16-MAY-2023

 

IMAGE: THE CHINESE CHARACTER FOR 'KING' CONTAINS THREE HORIZONTAL STROKES REPRESENTING HEAVEN, THE PEOPLE AND EARTH, AND A VERTICAL LINE, REPRESENTING THE EMPEROR, CONNECTING ALL THREE. A NEW BOOK BY XIAOYE YOU, LIBERAL ARTS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND ASIAN STUDIES, EXAMINES DOCUMENTS FROM CHINA'S HAN DYNASTY (206 B.C. TO 220 A.D.) TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE HAN RULERS USED RHETORIC TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN AN EMPIRE. THE TEXTS CAN OFFER INSIGHTS INTO CONTEMPORARY ISSUES. view more 

CREDIT: PATRICK MANSELL / PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Ancient Chinese texts can offer insights into contemporary issues if examined from the right perspective, according to Xiaoye You, Liberal Arts Professor of English and Asian Studies at Penn State.

You’s new book, “Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China,” examines letters, court edicts, commentaries and other documents from the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.) using a “third space” perspective. The approach studies the texts from both ancient Chinese and Western cultural lenses to better understand how the Han rulers used rhetoric to build and maintain an empire.

“If you study ancient Chinese rhetoric solely from a Western perspective, you tend to see what you already have in mind,” said You. “It is unavoidable to bring in an American or Western perspective, but to understand ancient Chinese rhetoric it’s necessary to step into the ancient Chinese perspective as much as possible and use their terms, concepts and logic. The perspective that I’m using to write about non-Western texts in the United States is not completely American, not completely Chinese, but a third space that allows the two perspectives to come together.”

The research, said You, can help shed light on contemporary issues.

Legitimacy questions

When the Han came to power, somewhat ordinary people found themselves ruling an empire that at its peak covered an area nearly half the size of the United States. The title of emperor came with many responsibilities and stress, especially regarding questions of legitimizing imperial power.

“Oftentimes, Han emperors wrote announcements that would say: 'I fall asleep late and rise early. I work so hard. Still there are signs, like earthquakes and famines, that tell me I’m not doing my job well enough. Where’s my legitimacy?'” said You. “That’s a question that the Chinese Communist Party today has to answer.”

The Han rulers turned to Confucian scholars to establish their legitimacy, said You. The scholars developed a heaven-human correspondence theory that recognized the emperor as the son of heaven. The Chinese character they created, which translates to "king," contains three horizontal strokes representing heaven, the people and Earth. A vertical line, representing the emperor, connects all three.

The scholars used additional terms such as “the Way” – or how the universe operates – and “yin yang” – how the world strikes a natural balance – to help the emperor interpret natural phenomena and understand how well he is serving his subjects.

Modern Chinese politicians answer the legitimacy question in a similar way. The government calls itself the savior or protector of the people, and the party’s motto is “serving the people,” You said. He noted that the Chinese government justified its zero-COVID-19 policy with the intention of protecting the people.

“I think, overall, most Chinese were happy to see strict health measures until last year, when they saw other countries starting to open their borders,” he said. “Then people started complaining, and eventually China lifted its travel restrictions.”

State enterprise vs. free market economy

Discussions regarding the state’s role in economic production date back to the Han emperor Wu. Prior to and during Wu’s reign (141–87 B.C.), the Chinese economy strengthened and industries developed. Han rulers had maintained peace with their neighbors largely through marriage-based treaties, but nomadic tribes near the northern borders sporadically attacked Chinese settlements.

Emperor Wu wanted to create a northern buffer zone, so he shifted the empire’s foreign policy to one based on military might. To enhance the economy and finance military campaigns, the state took over businesses and created monopolies, specifically in salt, liquor and iron production. Although military conflicts funded by state monopolies had the desired effect of establishing peace, they hurt the common person and led to small businesses going bankrupt. In response, the Han imperial court began to discuss the role of government in the economy.

“What became known as the debate on salt and iron is an early example of discussions about the Chinese government’s involvement in economic production,” You said. “To what extent should the government get involved in economic activities? How do you strike a balance between state-related and private enterprises? This debate is taking place today.”

The Chinese government’s involvement in economic activities acts like a pendulum that has been swaying back and forth for millennia, explained You. The state played a larger role in the economy when Mao Zedong was in power compared to the period after his death when China began to open up. When Xi Jinping became president and tensions with the United States rose, the state tightened control over the economy.

Now that China has lifted its COVID-19 restrictions, the pendulum is swinging the other way and the government is giving private enterprises more room, said You.

“On the surface, it looks like nobody can criticize the government, but the Chinese way is different,” he said. “Open criticism does not always help. What matters is the negotiation and debate happening behind closed doors among government think tanks. China’s economic policy will continue to swing back and forth based on external and internal pressures, but the government’s direct involvement in economic activity and production will continue.”

Air pollution particles trigger cellular defense mechanisms

New research from the Keck School of Medicine of USC shows that air pollution particles activate a cellular defense mechanism known as autophagy, which may reduce the ability of cells to fight off other harms.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KECK SCHOOL OF MEDICINE OF USC

The link between air pollution and lung disease has long been recognized. Now a new USC study reveals one biological process that may be behind that link — a discovery which could provide new insights on better ways to treat or prevent diseases related to pollution exposure.

"We know that diseases, especially lung diseases, can result from air pollution exposure. What we don't know are the mechanisms by which that occurs," said Edward Crandall, PhD, MD, professor of pathology, member of the Hastings Center for Pulmonary Research and director of the Will Rogers Institute Pulmonary Research Center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

In their research, Crandall and his team discovered a key step along the path between air pollution exposure and disease. Exposure to ambient nanoparticles, or very small pollutants in the air, limits the ability of cells to defend themselves against other potential harms. The findings were published in the journal Autophagy Reports.

Crandall, the study's senior author, and his colleagues studied a cellular defense process known as autophagy, which cells use to destroy damaged or abnormal internal materials. For the first time, the researchers found that, when exposed to nanoparticles, autophagy activity in cells seems to reach an upper threshold. 

"The implication of these studies is that autophagy is a defense mechanism that has an upper limit, beyond which it can't defend the cell any further," Crandall said.

An upper threshold

The researchers conducted a series of tests using lung adenocarcinoma cells. They first exposed the cells to nanoparticles, then to rapamycin (a chemical known to stimulate autophagy), then to both nanoparticles and rapamycin. In every case, autophagy activity reached the same upper threshold and did not increase further.

Consequently, cells may lack the ability to further boost autophagy to defend against other dangers, such as smoke inhalation or a viral or bacterial infection. This may help explain why air pollution increases a person's risk for a number of acute and chronic lung diseases, including lung cancer, interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

As part of the research, Crandall and his team also developed a new method of studying autophagy, which can support future studies on the subject. They used a combination of fluorescent dyes and a powerful imaging method, known as confocal microscopy, to document the amount of autophagy taking place inside individual cells.

"What's special is that we can now measure the autophagic activity of single living cells in real time. It's a novel method for studying autophagy," said Arnold Sipos, MD, PhD, assistant professor of research pathology at the Keck School of Medicine and the study's first author.

More research on autophagy

The new findings can help support ongoing research on autophagy, including for cancer treatment. While autophagy is a boon for healthy cells, it makes cancer cells harder to destroy. Developing methods to raise or lower autophagy in cells could be a key way to protect against and treat disease.

"The more we know about the mechanisms by which diseases occur, the more opportunity we have to find places in the pathway where we can intervene and prevent or treat the disease," Crandall said.

Next, Crandall, Sipos and their colleagues will conduct further research to test whether adding nanoparticles to a cell directly increases its vulnerability to other threats, such as an infection. They plan to study the link in both healthy cells and cancer cells.

About this study

In addition to Crandall and Sipos, the study's other authors are Kwang-Jin Kim of the Department of Pathology, Keck School of Medicine of USC and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Constantinos Sioutas, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

This work was supported by the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation; Whittier Foundation; Hastings Foundation; and the National Institutes of Health [R01ES017034, U01HL108364, P01AG055367].

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JOURNAL

Autophagy Reports

DOI

10.1080/27694127.2023.2186568 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

Kinetics of autophagic activity in nanoparticle-exposed lung adenocarcinoma

Online search data shows Russian morale remained low and ‘tacit dissent’ spiked after invasion of Ukraine

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

• Study of search trends from Google and Yandex shows an absence of “rally round the flag” effect in the Russian population, as claimed by state-sanctioned polling.
• Wellbeing among Russians is at lowest since invasion and close to ten-year low of pandemic, while military mobilisations saw huge spikes in anti-regime web searches.
• Search trends track official polling for years preceding invasion, then diverge wildly from early 2022, suggesting Russian polling is now highly unreliable. 

A new study analysing online search terms used every day by millions of Russians suggests that – contrary to official data from Russian polling agencies – the invasion of Ukraine did not lead to a national “war rally” in happiness and life satisfaction among the Russian population.

In fact, levels of wellbeing and public morale in Russia may be close to their lowest in a decade, with internet search data revealing a “limited appetite among ordinary Russians for the war”, according to a University of Cambridge report.

Research shows that web searches related to anti-war and anti-Putin sentiment surged during the early invasion, and continued to spike at points of military mobilisation involving mass conscription. This has tapered off since the Kremlin switched to relying on mercenaries and prison recruits.

However, the study also suggests that Western economic sanctions had little effect on Russian households, with the financial situation of consumers and businesses appearing to stabilise rapidly in the spring of 2022.  

State-sanctioned polling from the Russian Federation is no longer reliable, say political scientists, with data skewed by public fear of speaking against the war or Putin, as well as suspected government manipulation and dubious changes to methodology.

Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Surrey analysed data collected through Google Trends on a daily basis from 2012 until April 2023, and cross-referenced it with the last 12 months of search data from Russian tech giant Yandex, to assess public sentiment in Russia.

They found that, for several years preceding Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine, web search trends closely matched the data from major Russian pollsters such as the Levada Center and VCIOM*. From early 2022, however, results dramatically diverged.

Russian polling after the invasion saw Putin’s ratings leap to 80%, with self-reported life satisfaction apparently closing in on record highs earlier this year. Yet search engine data shows public mood deteriorating, while searches for terms linked to “tacit dissent” rose sharply. 

The report’s authors plan to continue updating their dataset, arguing that online search trends are now a more accurate proxy for Russian public opinion than data from the country’s leading survey institutes. The initial report is published by Cambridge’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

“Online search data has been proven to be a powerful tool for inferring the beliefs and attitudes of national populations,” said Dr Roberto Foa, report co-author from the University of Cambridge. “Unlike social media data, online searches represent a much wider section of the population.”

“Web searches are felt to be private, and often reflect internal thoughts and anxieties that people would not wish to broadcast. Such data provides insight into the public consciousness within repressive states, where truth is hidden by a fog of fear and disinformation.”   

“Polling from agencies within Russia shows the war boosted morale, but our research suggests that the national public mood is near its lowest level for a decade,” said Foa.

“Online search data shows the Russian people are not simply passive subjects. The legitimacy of the regime is being eroded by failure in war and the demand for personal sacrifice at the altar of Putin’s dictatorship.” 

The researchers tracked rates at which certain words and phrases were web-searched. These included mental health symptoms such as ‘depression’ and ‘insomnia’ to indicate wellbeing, and terms related to personal finance emergencies such as ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘eviction’ to measure the state of household finances.

Wellbeing search trends closely matches the pattern of VCIOM polling on life satisfaction right up to February 2022, when VCIOM data leapt by fifteen percentage points, while online search data for wellbeing flatlined.

The detailed nature of the web search data allowed researchers to create a weekly rolling average of national wellbeing in Russia, which shows a continual overall decline following the onset of war.

A mild bump in public sentiment occurred right at the point of invasion – but was extinguished as soon as 4 March 2022, when the Kremlin passes the War Censorship Act.

By April of this year, public mood among Russians was at its lowest since the invasion and only marginally higher than a 2021 nadir during the worst of Russia’s coronavirus crisis.

Google and Yandex data shows levels of financial stress quickly bounced back to pre-war levels, with initial shocks from Western sanctions only lasting throughout March 2022 for Russian households.

However, the financial impact of the pandemic on Russians was severe, with little government help, and sanctions “blunted” what had been a steady recovery, say researchers, who found no lift in economic sentiment since the war. Yet official polling has financial satisfaction at a five-year high.  

The study also looked at anti-war searches such as ‘pacifism’, ‘no war’ and anti-Putin phrases – the portmanteau ‘Putler’, for example – to gauge the extent to which many Russians privately contemplate political dissent when online.

Searches for names of outspoken Putin critics Boris Nemtsov (assassinated) and Alexei Navalny (imprisoned) as well as famously anti-authoritarian writers – from Orwell to Solzhenitsyn – were included in the analysis.

Anti-war and anti-regime online searches saw huge spikes around conscription announcements, such as the call-up of aging reservists in May 2022 and last September’s partial mobilisation order**, along with smaller but still significant jumps during periods of heightened Russian casualties.      

“Ordinary Russians are more likely to think critically of the regime and search online for opposition movements when the chances increase that they or their loved ones will be sent to fight,” said co-author Dr Roula Nezi from the University of Surrey.

“Russia may have a vast population to draw on, but the Kremlin risks a tipping point of public dissent if it keeps forcing Russian citizens to fight in Ukraine. This could explain a growing reliance on aerial bombardment and use of convicts in the fighting,” said Nezi.

Web search data tallies with this shift in Russian tactics. Since last autumn, what researchers describe as “cognitive dissent” has stayed at much lower levels while the Kremlin has been emptying prisons onto frontlines and leaning on long-range assault rather than mobilising its citizens.

 

NOTES:

*The Levada Center is a politically independent Russian polling and research organisation that branched off from the Public Opinion Foundation in 2003. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) emerged in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. It is the oldest polling institution in Post-Soviet Russia.  
** In the week following a mobilisation announcement, online searches using keywords categorised by researchers as ‘dissent’ terms rose by 1.845 standard deviations.

• The proportion of internet users in Russia is high by international standards: 85% of the population (the same as France). Google only accounts for a third of Russian internet users, while Russian search engine Yandex accounts for much of the rest. The researchers pulled a year’s worth of data from Yandex using the Wordstat tool to check for discrepancies, but found little difference in results from the two search engines.
• To check whether fears of government monitoring were causing self-censorship bias in searches by Russian citizens, data from within Russia was compared with searches conducted in the Russian language but appearing to emanate from Germany, concentrated around major VPN hubs such as Frankfurt. They found little difference in results between Russians who had and had not disguised their location using VPNs.    

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Piercing the Fog of War: Measuring Russian public opinion via online search data

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-May-2023

Study finds carrying pollen heats up bumble bees, raises new climate change questions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

A new study from North Carolina State University finds carrying pollen is a workout that significantly increases the body temperature of bumble bees. This new understanding of active bumble bee body temperatures raises questions about how these species will be impacted by a warmer world due to climate change.

Spend a bit of time at a nearby flower patch and you will spot a fuzzy bumble bee with yellow bumps on her back legs. These yellow bumps are solid packets of pollen that have been carefully collected during the bees’ foraging trip for transport back to their nests. And while bees may seem to move from flower to flower with ease, these pollen packets can weigh up to a third of their body weight. This new study found that – after accounting for environmental temperature and body size – the body temperature of bumble bees carrying pollen was significantly hotter than the temperature of bees that were empty-legged.

Specifically, the researchers found that bee body temperatures rose 0.07°C for every milligram of pollen that they carried, with fully laden bees being 2°C warmer than unladen bees.

Like ants and other ectotherms, the body temperature of a bumble bee is mostly determined by the environment. Among bees, bumble bees are exceptionally cold tolerant and will shiver to warm up during cold days. However, not much is known about how they can tolerate heat. Since pollen-laden bumble bees are hotter than unladen ones, this could mean that carrying a full load of pollen on a hot day puts bees at greater risk of reaching the potentially lethal end of their temperature tolerance.

“Getting warmer from carrying pollen could put bumble bees in the range of those stressful, critically hot temperatures,” says Malia Naumchik, a former applied ecology minor undergraduate and lead author of the study. “This has important implications for bumble bees and climate change. As environmental temperatures increase, the bees’ operational range of temperatures could shrink significantly.”

Bumble bee numbers and species diversity is on the decline across the world, particularly in areas that are warming up due to climate change. But the exact mechanics of how climate change is impacting bumble bees are not yet fully understood. This finding could be one piece of that puzzle.

Pollen is crucial for every stage of a bumble bee’s life history. Newly emerged queens in the spring need to feed themselves and then feed their sister workers. Those workers then take over feeding the colony, larvae and future queens. Without pollen, or enough pollen, colonies will not thrive – risking future colonies and the species as a whole. This may also have implications for pollination in general, and could impact agriculture and ecosystems alike.

“We need to know how bumble bees may change their behavior, to better understand how this could affect how much pollen they collect and how much pollination they perform during hot days,” says Elsa Youngsteadt, a professor in applied ecology and supervisor of Malia’s research. “Whether it’s carrying smaller loads of pollen or foraging for shorter times, it could result in less pollen coming to the colony and fewer plants being pollinated. This is particularly important since bumble bees provide critical ecosystem services and are key pollinators for agriculture, especially in the United States and Europe.”

The paper, “Larger pollen loads increase risk of heat stress in foraging bumblebees” will be published May 17 in Biology Letters. This study was supported by North Carolina State University, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture award #2020-67013-31916, and USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Project #1018689.

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JOURNAL

Biology Letters

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Larger pollen loads increase risk of heat stress in foraging bumblebees

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-May-2023

Pre-primary education “chronically” underfunded as richest nations drift further away from 10% aid goal

New research shows proportion of international education aid for early childhood learning fell to just 1.1% post-pandemic, far short of an agreed 10% target.

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

International aid for pre-primary education has fallen further behind an agreed 10% spending target since the COVID-19 outbreak, according to new research.

The report, compiled by academics at the University of Cambridge for the global children’s charity, Theirworld, highlights “continued, chronic” underfunding of pre-primary education in many of the world’s poorest nations, after years of slow progress and pandemic-related cuts.

Early childhood education is widely understood to be essential to children’s successful cognitive and social development and to breaking cycles of poverty in poorer countries. In 2017, Cambridge research for Theirworld resulted in UNICEF formally recommending that 10% of education aid should be allocated to pre-primary education. Last year 147 United Nations member states signed a declaration agreeing to the target.

According to the new report’s findings, aid spending is falling far short of this goal and any progress towards the target ground to a halt following the COVID-19 outbreak. The most recent figures, from 2021, indicate that the proportion of education aid spent on pre-primary education internationally during the pandemic dropped by approximately (US)$19.7 million: from 1.2% to 1.1%.

The report identifies several reasons for the decline, notably spending cuts by the World Bank’s International Development Association, EU Institutions, and by the governments of wealthy nations, such as the UK.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education said: “Hundreds of millions of children around the world are missing out on high-quality pre-primary education despite clear evidence that prioritising this will improve their life chances. The overall trend is very worrying.”

“Although some progress has been made towards the 10% target, it started from a very low base. Other education levels are still being prioritised amid a general decline in aid spending. International commitments to pre-primary education are good, but we need concrete action.”

The United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals include the ambition to provide all children with proper childcare and pre-primary education. Over the past seven years, Theirworld and the REAL Centre have systematically monitored aid spending, tracking progress towards this goal.

The new report was compiled using the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s creditor report system, which gathers information about the aid contributions of both individual countries and international agencies such as UNICEF and the World Bank.

It shows that over the past two decades, the proportion of education aid spending that goes to pre-primary education has never exceeded 1.2%. Between 2020 and 2021, spending on the sector dropped from $209 million to $189.3 million: a decrease of 9.4%, compared with a 6.9% fall in education aid overall and a 0.9% decline in total aid spending. In 2021, aid spending on post-secondary education – the vast majority of which never leaves donor countries – was 27 times higher than that spent on pre-primary, despite widespread acknowledgement of the need to invest in the early years.

The report nevertheless also shows that the 10% target is attainable. UNICEF, which has consistently prioritised pre-primary education, spent 30% of its education aid budget on the sector in 2021. Italy increased spending from $2.6 million to $38 million. The majority of this was allocated to the ‘National Strategy on Human Resource Development’ which focuses on supporting the Jordanian government in strengthening its education system.  

The research shows that pre-primary aid is highly concentrated from a few donors, leaving early childhood development in poorer countries particularly vulnerable to sudden fluctuations in those donors’ spending.

Much of the pandemic-induced drop in spending, for instance, occurred because the World Bank cut its investment in pre-primary education from $122.8 million to $70.7 million. Other donors, such as Canada, EU Institutions, France, Norway and the UK, also reduced spending in this area. In 2021, eight of the top 35 education donors allocated no funds to pre-primary education at all.

The UK’s contribution was lacklustre for the world’s sixth largest economy, due in part to the Government’s controversial decision to reduce overall aid spending from the UN-recommend target of 0.7% of Gross National Income to 0.5%. Between 2020 and 2021, its education aid spending dropped from $703.67 million to $584.95 million. Aid to pre-primary was particularly badly hit, falling from an already low $5.6 million in 2020 to just $1.8 million in 2021, equivalent to a mere 0.3% of its reduced education aid budget.

The report also shows that pre-primary education spending tends to be focused on lower-middle income countries rather than the very poorest nations. In 2021, just 15% of aid in this area went to countries classified as “low income”, while 52.7% was allocated to lower-middle income countries.

As a result, some of the world’s least-advantaged children have little prospect of receiving pre-primary support. Eritrea and Sudan, for example, received no pre-primary education aid in 2021. In many other poorer countries – such as the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger and Syria – the amount of aid per primary school-aged child was less than $5.

Rose said the finding pointed to the need for a model of “progressive universalism”, where those most in need receive a greater proportion of aid spending. “The biggest gaps are in the poorest countries, and particularly among the very poorest and least advantaged,” she said. “Increasing spending on pre-primary alone will not be enough. We also have to make sure those in greatest need are prioritised.”

The full report will be available on the Theirworld website.

Otago researchers reveal impact of ancient earthquake

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

 

IMAGE: THE RAISED ‘BENCH’ ABOVE THE WATERLINE AT RARANGI WAS ORIGINALLY FORMED AT SEA LEVEL BUT WAS UPLIFTED BY EARTHQUAKE ACTIVITY. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

By combining the scientific powerhouses of genetics and geology, University of Otago researchers have identified a new area of coastal uplift, which had been hiding in plain sight.

The previously unknown region of earthquake uplift, in Rarangi, Marlborough, was discovered using a combination of new data from laser mapping and kelp genetics.  

Co-author Professor Jon Waters, of the Department of Zoology, says the study gives new insights into the changes in Aotearoa’s landscapes and the recent history of earthquake impacts.

“In a geologically well studied country like New Zealand, there is still a lot to learn about our history of earthquakes and changing landforms,” he says.

The paper, just published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, utilised LiDAR mapping (remote sensing technology used to model ground elevation) and genetic analysis of bull kelp from the uplifted section of coast.

The team identified a previously unrecognised area of uplifted rocky coastline – a bench about 1m above sea level – and a genetic anomaly in kelp below that bench. The kelp’s genetics indicate the species went extinct in the area following an earthquake, before being recolonised by kelp which drifted from 300km south.

The group believe the earthquake responsible occurred about 2000 to 3000 years ago, showing the potential for kelp to record geological disturbance events.

“The area is close to a well-known active fault and several big, past earthquakes have been well quantified by other researchers, but this coastal uplift zone was not previously known – the evidence for it is extremely clear now we’ve had a chance to look more closely.

“Rarangi is also a very popular summer swimming spot, rather than some obscure or remote location, and the evidence of coastal uplift was hiding in plain sight,” Professor Waters says. 

The research is the latest output from the group’s Marsden-funded project assessing earthquake impacts on coastal species.

“Our work uses a combination of genetics and geology, and it’s quite exciting that these combined approaches have allowed us to pinpoint a previously unknown site of coastal uplift in New Zealand.

“This work serves to highlight again just how dynamic our country is – and how earthquake uplift leaves long lasting signatures in our coastal species.”

By combining the scientific powerhouses of genetics and geology, University of Otago researchers have identified a new area of coastal uplift, which had been hiding in plain sight.

The previously unknown region of earthquake uplift, in Rarangi, Marlborough, was discovered using a combination of new data from laser mapping and kelp genetics.  

Co-author Professor Jon Waters, of the Department of Zoology, says the study gives new insights into the changes in Aotearoa’s landscapes and the recent history of earthquake impacts.

“In a geologically well studied country like New Zealand, there is still a lot to learn about our history of earthquakes and changing landforms,” he says.

The paper, just published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, utilised LiDAR mapping (remote sensing technology used to model ground elevation) and genetic analysis of bull kelp from the uplifted section of coast.

The team identified a previously unrecognised area of uplifted rocky coastline – a bench about 1m above sea level – and a genetic anomaly in kelp below that bench. The kelp’s genetics indicate the species went extinct in the area following an earthquake, before being recolonised by kelp which drifted from 300km south.

The group believe the earthquake responsible occurred about 2000 to 3000 years ago, showing the potential for kelp to record geological disturbance events.

“The area is close to a well-known active fault and several big, past earthquakes have been well quantified by other researchers, but this coastal uplift zone was not previously known – the evidence for it is extremely clear now we’ve had a chance to look more closely.

“Rarangi is also a very popular summer swimming spot, rather than some obscure or remote location, and the evidence of coastal uplift was hiding in plain sight,” Professor Waters says. 

The research is the latest output from the group’s Marsden-funded project assessing earthquake impacts on coastal species.

“Our work uses a combination of genetics and geology, and it’s quite exciting that these combined approaches have allowed us to pinpoint a previously unknown site of coastal uplift in New Zealand.

“This work serves to highlight again just how dynamic our country is – and how earthquake uplift leaves long lasting signatures in our coastal species.”

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JOURNAL

Journal of The Royal Society Interface

DOI

10.1098/rsif.2023.0105 

ARTICLE TITLE

Integrating kelp genomic analyses and geological data to reveal ancient earthquake impacts

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-May-2023

High-quality satellite imagery swiftly reveals post-earthquake details

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KEAI COMMUNICATIONS CO., LTD.

 

IMAGE: THE DATA USED FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SEISMIC ZONE AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE INTERPRETED RUPTURE ZONES. view more 

CREDIT: THE AUTHORS

Remote sensing imagery is widely used in disaster response due to its easy accessibility and timeliness and can clearly reflect changes in features caused by earthquakes using pre- and post-earthquake image comparisons.

The Mw 7.8 and Mw 7.5 earthquakes that occurred in Turkey on 6 February 2023 caused severe loss of life and destruction of roads and buildings. This event was the biggest earthquake to strike the Eastern Anatolian Fault Zones (EAFZ) since the 1990s. To gain a timely and in-depth insight into the earthquakes, a team of researchers from the Institute of Earthquake Forecasting in Beijing, China, used high-resolution Maxar and GF-2 satellite data to obtain spatial interpretations of part of the rupture zone in the epicenter of this earthquake, as well as seismic landslides and soil liquefaction developed around the rupture zone.

“We searched for feature dislocations and measuring the amount of dislocations, which provided a timely and comprehensive understanding of the earthquake damage caused by this earthquake,” shared Yueren Xu, corresponding author of the study.

The team initially interpreted a rupture zone of approximately 75 km in length and found that the surface showed a gradual widening of the spreading width and a gradual decrease in the amount of horizontal dislocations to immeasurable levels.

“Secondary hazards such as liquefaction are mainly found in rivers or low-lying terrain at the end of the rupture zone, and landslides are found in valley areas near the rupture zone,” said Xu.

The findings are published in the KeAi journal Earthquake Research Advances.

The researchers proposed that earthquakes in Turkey will not have a direct response on significant magnitude seismic activity in western China. This is due to the continental collision involving various plates across plus their contrastive seismically active zones throughout the world.

“Despite both China and Turkey being part of the same Eurasian seismic region, they variably exhibit tectonic mechanism dissimilarities,” added Xu.

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Contact the author: Xu Yueren, Key Laboratory of Earthquake Prediction, Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration, xuyr@ief.ac.cn.

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 100 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

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JOURNAL

Earthquake Research Advances

DOI

10.1016/j.eqrea.2023.100219 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Preliminary report of coseismic surface rupture (part) of Turkey's Mw7.8 earthquake by remote sensing interpretation