Half of world's largest lakes losing water

Climate change, human consumption and sedimentation contributing to decline

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

 

IMAGE: LOOKING NORTHEAST, THE IMPERIAL VALLEY AND SALTON SEA IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IS PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE EARTH-ORBITING GEMINI-5 SPACECRAFT. PHOTO CREDIT: NASA. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: NASA

More than 50 percent of the largest lakes in the world are losing water, according to a groundbreaking new assessment published today in Science . The key culprits are not surprising: warming climate and unsustainable human consumption.

But lead author Fangfang Yao, a CIRES visiting fellow, now a climate fellow at University of Virginia, said the news is not entirely bleak. With this new method of tracking lake water storage trends and the reasons behind them, scientists can give water managers and communities insight into how to better protect critical sources of water and important regional ecosystems.

“This is the first comprehensive assessment of trends and drivers of global lake water storage variability based on an array of satellites and models,” Yao said. 

He was motivated to do the research by the environmental crises in some of Earth's largest water bodies, such as the drying of the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. 

So he and colleagues from the University of Colorado Boulder, Kansas State University, France, and Saudi Arabia created a technique to measure changes in water levels in nearly 2,000 of the world’s biggest lakes and reservoirs, which represent 95 percent of the total lake water storage on Earth. 

The team combined three decades of observations from an array of satellites with models to quantify and attribute trends in lake storage globally. 

Globally, freshwater lakes and reservoirs store 87 percent of the planet's water, making them a valuable resource for both human and Earth ecosystems. Unlike rivers, lakes are not well monitored, yet they provide water for a large part of humanity – even more than rivers.

But despite their value, long-term trends and changes to water levels have been largely unknown – until now.

“We have pretty good information on iconic lakes like Caspian Sea, Aral Sea and Salton Sea, but if you want to say something on a global scale, you need reliable estimates of lake levels and volume,” said Balaji Rajagopalan, a CIRES fellow, professor of engineering at CU Boulder, and co-author. “With this novel method …we are able to provide insights into global lake level changes with a broader perspective.” 

For the new paper, the team used 250,000 lake-area snapshots captured by satellites between 1992-2020 to survey the area of 1,972 of Earth’s biggest lakes. They collected water levels from nine satellite altimeters and used long-term water levels to reduce any uncertainty. For lakes without a long-term level record, they used recent water measurements made by newer instruments on satellites. Combining recent level measurements with longer-term area measurements allowed scientists to reconstruct the volume of lakes dating back decades. 

The results were staggering: 53 percent of lakes globally experienced a decline in water storage. The authors compare this loss with the magnitude of 17 Lake Meads, the largest reservoir in the United States.

To explain the trends in natural lakes, the team leveraged recent advancements in water use and climate modeling. Climate change and human water consumption dominated the global net decline in natural lake volume and water losses in about 100 large lakes, Yao said. “And many of the human and climate change footprints on lake water losses were previously unknown, such as the desiccations of Lake Good-e-Zareh in Afghanistan and Lake Mar Chiquita in Argentina.” 

Lakes in both dry and wet areas of the world are losing volume. The losses in humid tropical lakes and Arctic lakes indicate more widespread drying trends than previously understood.  

Yao and his colleagues also assessed storage trends in reservoirs. They found that nearly two-thirds of Earth’s large reservoirs experienced significant water losses. 

“Sedimentation dominated the global storage decline in existing reservoirs,” said Ben Livneh, also a co-author, CIRES fellow, and associate professor of engineering at CU Boulder. In long-established reservoirs—those that filled before 1992—sedimentation was more important than droughts and heavy rainfall years.

While the majority of global lakes are shrinking, 24 percent saw significant increases in water storage. Growing lakes tend to be in underpopulated areas in the inner Tibetan Plateau and Northern Great Plains of North America and in areas with new reservoirs such as the Yangtze, Mekong, and Nile river basins. 

The authors estimate roughly one-quarter of the world’s population, 2 billion people, resides in the basin of a drying lake, indicating an urgent need to incorporate human consumption, climate change, and sedimentation impacts into sustainable water resources management. 

And their research offers insight into possible solutions, Livneh said. “If human consumption is a large factor in lake water storage decline, then we can adapt and explore new policies to reduce large-scale declines.” 

This happened in one of the lakes the team studied, Lake Sevan in Armenia. Lake Sevan has seen an increase in water storage, in the last 20 years, which the authors linked to enforcement of conservation laws on water withdrawal since the early 2000s.

For an interactive map illustrating the findings, click here.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abo2812 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Imaging analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-May-2023

Global analysis reveals widespread decline in lake water storage worldwide

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

The amount of water stored in more than half of the largest lakes and reservoirs worldwide is declining, according to a new study. This drying is largely attributable to a warming climate and increased human impacts. The findings underscore the importance of accounting for these impacts in future surface water resources management strategies. Although they cover roughly 3% of the global land area, lakes hold 87% of Earth’s liquid surface fresh water. These features also provide essential ecosystem services and are key components in global biogeochemical processes. Many of these benefits are modulated by lake water storage (LWS), which can naturally fluctuate in response to local precipitation. However, direct human activities, like damming and water consumption, as well as ongoing climate change, increasingly threaten these crucial water resources. While it’s well known that the amount of water stored in some of the world’s largest lakes and human-managed reservoirs has progressively declined over recent years, the drivers behind these losses – particularly those related to human impacts and climate change – are poorly understood at the global scale. Combining global satellite measurements with climate and hydrologic models, Fangfang Yao et al. built a global dataset of decadal-scale trends in LWS from 1992 to 2020 for nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs. Through their analysis, Yao et al. revealed a widespread decline in global LWS; according to the findings, 53% of these water bodies have experienced significant water losses over the last 28 years at a rate of roughly 22 gigatonnes (Gt) per year. The authors attribute much of the net volume loss in natural lakes to climate warming, increased evapotranspiration, and human water consumption, while sedimentation is to blame for storage loss in drying reservoirs. Yao et al. argue that the findings underscore the need for incorporating climate change and sedimentation impacts into sustainable water resources management. “Yao et al. estimated that nearly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in a basin with a large, drying lake,“ writes Sarah Cooley in a related Perspective. “Considering the importance of these lakes for ecosystem services, water supply, irrigation, and/or hydropower, the potential consequences of lake drying are both locally and globally important.”

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abo2812 

ARTICLE TITLE

Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-May-2023

Humanity’s earliest recorded kiss occurred in Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago

Written sources document that kissing was practiced by the peoples of the ancient Middle East 4,500 years ago, conclude researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University of Oxford in a new article published in the journal Science.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN - FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

 

IMAGE: BABYLONIAN CLAY MODEL SHOWING A NUDE COUPLE ON A COUCH ENGAGED IN SEX AND KISSING. DATE: 1800 BC. view more 

CREDIT: © THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Recent research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1.

But according to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago in the Middle East. And probably much earlier, moving the earliest documentation for kissing back 1,000 years compared to what was previously acknowledged in the scientific community.

“In ancient Mesopotamia, which is the name for the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times, just as kissing could be part of friendships and family members’ relations,” says Dr Troels Pank Arbøll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia.

He continues:

“Therefore, kissing should not be regarded as a custom that originated exclusively in any single region and spread from there but rather appears to have been practiced in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia.”

Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen adds:

“In fact, research into bonobos and chimpanzees, the closest living relatives to humans, has shown that both species engage in kissing, which may suggest that the practice of kissing is a fundamental behaviour in humans, explaining why it can be found across cultures.”

Kissing as potential transmitter of disease

In addition to its importance for social and sexual behaviour, the practice of kissing may have played an unintentional role in the transmission of microorganisms, potentially causing viruses to spread among humans.

However, the suggestion that the kiss may be regarded as a sudden biological trigger behind the spread of particular pathogens is more doubtful. The spread of the herpes simplex virus 1, which researchers have suggested could have been accelerated by the introduction of the kiss, is a case in point:

“There is a substantial corpus of medical texts from Mesopotamia, some of which mention a disease with symptoms reminiscent of the herpes simplex virus 1,” Dr Arbøll remarks.

He adds that the ancient medical texts were influenced by a variety of cultural and religious concepts, and it therefore must be emphasized that they cannot be read at face value.

“It is nevertheless interesting to note some similarities between the disease known as buʾshanu in ancient medical texts from Mesopotamia and the symptoms caused by herpes simplex infections. The bu’shanu disease was located primarily in or around the mouth and throat, and symptoms included vesicles in or around the mouth, which is one of the dominant signs of herpes infection.”

“If the practice of kissing was widespread and well-established in a range of ancient societies, the effects of kissing in terms of pathogen transmission must likely have been more or less constant”, says Dr Rasmussen.

Dr Arbøll and Dr Rasmussen conclude that future results emerging from research into ancient DNA, inevitably leading to discussions about complex historical developments and social interactions – such as kissing as a driver of early disease transmission - will benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.

Read the article “The ancient history of kissing” in Science.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adf0512 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The ancient history of kissing

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-May-2023

Ancient history of kissing and its role in disease transmission

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

In a Perspective, Troels Arbøll and Sophie Rasmussen review the ancient history of kissing, particularly the emergence of romantic-sexual kissing in Mesopotamia more than 4000 years ago and its role in the evolution and spread of orally transmitted diseases like herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). They say the kiss cannot be regarded as a sudden biological trigger causing a spread of specific pathogens, as some research has recently proposed. “Evidence indicates that kissing was a common practice in ancient times, potentially representing a constant influence on the spread of orally transmitted microbes, such as HSV-1,” write Arbøll and Rasmussen. Humans generally exhibit two main types of kissing – the friendly-parental kiss and the romantic-sexual kiss. Although research has suggested that friendly-parental kissing is a ubiquitous behavior among humans across time and geography, romantic-sexual kissing is not culturally universal and tends to occur in stratified societies; Arbøll and Rasmussen highlight a body of overlooked evidence of romantic-sexual kissing occurring in ancient Mesopotamian texts from 2500 BCE. Beyond its importance for social and sexual behavior, the emergence and act of this form of kissing may have had a secondary, unintended effect on disease transmission. Recent paleogenomics research has shown that common kiss-transmissible pathogens of today, including HSV-1, Epstein-Barr virus, and human parvovirus B19, were present in ancient historical and even prehistorical periods. Arbøll and Rasmussen review ancient DNA, cultural works of art, and ancient medical records to show that the presence of kissing-transmitted diseases may be more ancient and widespread than some recent studies have suggested. “It … seems unlikely that kissing would have arisen as an immediate behavioral adaptation in other contemporary societies, which inadvertently accelerated disease transmission,” they say.

This Perspective follows up on the conclusions of a July 2022 study published in Science Advances, which linked a shift in lineages of HSV-1 in ancient humans to the emergence of sexual-kissing behavior during the Bronze Age.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adf0512 

ARTICLE TITLE

The ancient history of kissing

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-May-2023

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