Cambridge University receives $72 million gift for habitat restoration projects across Europe’s land and seas

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

 

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THE FIVE-YEAR Cumbria Connect PROJECT, LED BY THE RSPB, LAUNCHED IN JULY 2023 FUNDED BY THE ELSP. 

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CREDIT: GOSIA NIEMCZURA

Arcadia has made a major new philanthropic donation to the University of Cambridge, taking its total support for the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme to over $138 million.

The Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme supports the large-scale restoration of Europe’s most treasured but endangered ecosystems, enriching biodiversity while revitalising local economies. 

The work recognises humanity’s dependence on healthy, functioning ecosystems - for example in preventing urban flooding, and reducing the impacts of climate change. 

The Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme is managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a partnership between the University of Cambridge and ten of the world’s leading international biodiversity conservation organisations.

The Programme supports partners across Europe to deliver ambitious, large-scale restoration projects, aiming to inspire an inclusive and impactful approach. Through partnerships between local communities, policy makers and landowners, projects work to reverse environmental declines to create places where people and nature can thrive.

The new funding includes over $30 million dedicated specifically to efforts to restore Europe’s seas. This will be reflected in the retitled ‘Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme’. 

Seas regulate the Earth’s climate, generate oxygen, and provide livelihoods and food for hundreds of millions of people. But Europe’s seas are suffering from pollution, biodiversity loss, seabed damage, overfishing, underwater noise, ocean warming, acidification, and spread of invasive species. 

In the EU, 46% of coastal waters suffer from eutrophication - a process that causes excessive plant and algae growth leading to oxygen depletion, and 79% of the coastal seabed is disturbed due to bottom trawling. 

The funding will support up to eight new seascape restoration projects that will start the process of restoring damaged marine ecosystems.

Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, founders of Arcadia, said: “The Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme has become a vibrant network of nature-restoration projects and practitioners across Europe. We are inspired by the commitment of the projects’ teams, and are grateful to them, to the programme’s panel and to the coordinating team, for their invaluable role in realising the programme’s vision.

“As the programme launches its third phase, we look forward to seeing new projects join the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme network, helping to create resilient, self-sustaining and biodiverse ecosystems that benefit nature and people.”

Dr David Thomas, Director of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme, said: “Restoring ecosystems at scale is urgent if we are to address the linked biodiversity and climate emergencies. This new funding from Arcadia will allow a significant expansion of the projects supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme. 

“It’s especially exciting that we will now be able to fund more projects focused on Europe’s seas, where many habitats are in poor condition and species are in decline. Experience shows that with the right interventions, marine ecosystems can recover.”

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University, said: “It is now widely accepted that reversing the damage humans have done to our natural landscapes and seas is vital for our future prosperity. With this magnificent gift from Arcadia, the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme can increase investment in projects that help restore ecosystems on a large scale.”

Natural ecosystems support all life on earth, and the damage that has been done to them by human activities has huge costs to our lives and wellbeing. We have reduced nature’s capacity to support us through ecosystem services, such as climate regulation, and provision of clean water and fresh air that we all depend on.

Existing projects funded by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme include dam removal in the Danube delta to support migratory fish and vegetation recovery, and work to restore marine ecosystem connectivity in south-western Turkey. Already, these are demonstrating the benefits from restoring nature at the landscape scale.

All projects are underpinned by capacity development, lesson-learning, and robust monitoring to determine what does and doesn’t work in restoration, with results made available through open access to help build knowledge in the wider restoration field.

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs from 2021 to 2030, is motivating action to restore the world’s degraded ecosystems. And the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference has set ambitious targets to have restoration completed or underway on at least 30 percent of the world’s lands, inland waters, coastal areas and oceans by 2030. The new funding will provide a much-needed boost for delivery of these goals.

Marine ranger enforces no-fishing zone near Kas, Turkiye

A restoration project along 700km of Turkish Mediterranean coastline was one of the first to receive funding from the ELSP in 2019.

These waters, from Gökova Bay to Cape Gelidonya, have long provided local people with sustainable livelihoods through fishing. But mass tourism and global sea temperature rise, combined with overfishing, have damaged habitats and led to sharp reductions in fish catch.

The project enforces highly restricted no-fishing zones using ranger patrols. Already, fish biomass is increasing and local fishers around these zones are seeing their incomes recover.

CREDIT

Zafer Kizilkaya

Fish survey at Kas, Turkiye 

A restoration project along 700km of Turkish Mediterranean coastline was one of the first to receive funding from the ELSP in 2019.

Already, fish biomass is increasing and local fishers around these zones are seeing their incomes recover.

CREDIT

AKD

 

Ex-football players with medical and mental health conditions at higher odds of receiving premature CTE diagnosis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

 

IMAGE: 

SHAWN EAGLE, PH.D.

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 4, 2023 – Former professional American football players who have medical and mental health conditions including depression, anxiety or sleep apnea are more likely to receive an unverified diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, compared to those without those conditions, report researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Harvard University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Sports Medicine today.

Receiving a CTE diagnosis that cannot be verified until after death could further exacerbate mental health conditions in former players due to the current lack of treatments for the disease, the experts caution.

“We agree that CTE neuropathology is real, yet the current narrative about CTE and health after football, in general, is incomplete,” said co-lead author Shawn Eagle, Ph.D., research assistant professor of neurological surgery at Pitt. “Currently, a definitive causal link between brain health issues experienced in life and CTE-associated brain changes seen in autopsies has yet to be established.”

CTE is a neurodegenerative disease associated with a history of repetitive head impacts and is characterized by the presence of toxic protein aggregates and brain tissue degeneration seen at autopsy. By definition, it is impossible to confirm a CTE diagnosis in a living individual, yet prior research by co-lead author Rachel Grashow, Ph.D., M.S., and colleagues from the Football Players Health Study (FPHS) at Harvard University showed that 3 in every 100 former football players report being diagnosed with CTE by a medical professional.

“It is important for the next generation of players to know the long-term health risks they may face, and that is the ultimate goal of CTE research,” said Eagle. “There is still a lot to be learned, and, in the meantime, we want people to receive proven treatments for conditions that may mimic CTE, such as hypertension, sleep apnea, depression and anxiety, among others.”

This research was supported by the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, which is funded by the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). The NFLPA had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and interpretation of the data; preparation, review or approval of the manuscript; nor the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. This research is in collaboration with the Brain Health Initiative at the University of Pittsburgh, which receives funding from the National Football League Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC, and Harvard Medical School, Harvard University and its affiliated academic health care centers.

Other authors of the study are David Okonkwo, M.D., Ph.D., of Pitt; Douglas Terry, Ph.D., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Rachel Grashow, Ph.D., M.S., Heather DiGregorio, B.S., Aaron Baggish, M.D., Marc Weisskopf, Ph.D., Sc.D., and Ross Zafonte, D.O., all of Harvard University.

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JOURNAL

Sports Medicine

DOI

10.1007/s40279-023-01942-w 

ARTICLE TITLE

Interaction of Medical Conditions and Football Exposures Associated with Premortem Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Diagnosis in Former Professional American Football Players

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Oct-2023

 

Climate change brings earlier arrival of intense hurricanes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA

 

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AERIAL VIEW OF FLOODING IN TEXAS FROM HURRICANE HARVEY, 2017.

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CREDIT: HARRIS COUNTY SHERIFF OFFICE.

Intense tropical cyclones are one of the most devastating natural disasters in the world due to torrential rains, flooding, destructive winds, and coastal storm surges. New research co-authored by a University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa atmospheric scientist revealed that since the 1980s, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes (maximum wind speed greater than 131 miles per hour) have been arriving three to four days earlier with each passing decade of climate change. Their findings were published recently in Nature. 

“When intense tropical cyclones occur earlier than usual, they cause unexpected problems for communities,” said Pao-Shin Chu, atmospheric sciences professor in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and Hawai‘i State Climatologist. “Moreover, the earlier advance of these storms will overlap with other weather systems, for example local thunderstorms or seasonal monsoon rainfall, and can produce compounding extreme events and strain the emergency response.”

Changes in many characteristics of intense hurricanes under a warming climate, for example, the number, intensity, and lifespan, are fairly well-studied. However, little is known about changes in the seasonal cycle of these intense events.

Using satellite data, historical tropical cyclone tracks, NOAA rainfall records, and various statistical methods, Chu and co-authors found that there has been a significant shift of these intense tropical cyclones from autumn to summer months since the 1980s in most tropical oceans. The effect was particularly observed in the eastern North Pacific off the coast of Mexico, where most hurricanes near Hawai‘i come from; the western North Pacific; the South Pacific; the Gulf of Mexico; and the Atlantic coast of Florida and the Caribbean.  

“It was surprising to consistently see earlier arrivals when we independently assessed satellite data and conventional ground-based observations of intense tropical cyclones,” said Chu.

In August 2017, for example, Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 hurricane, made landfall on Texas and Louisiana and inflicted catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths.  

Using simulations from multiple global climate models (e.g., high-resolution CMIP6 models), the team detected warmer oceanic conditions developed earlier, which favored the earlier onset of intense tropical cyclones. Further, they found that the warming was primarily driven by greenhouse gas forcing. 

“In a future with high carbon dioxide emissions, the earlier shifting trend is projected to be amplified,” said Chu. 

In South China and the Gulf of Mexico, the earlier onset of intense tropical cyclones contributes significantly to an earlier onset of extreme rainfall. 

“Given the seasonal advance of intense tropical cyclones, as shown in this study, the potential for simultaneous occurrence with other high-impact weather events should be a serious concern for the society,” said Chu. “Understanding potential changes in hurricane activity in response to global warming is important for disaster prevention, resource management and community preparedness.”

Satellite view of Hurricane Harvey, 2017. 

CREDIT

NASA

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-023-06544-0 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Seasonal advance of intense tropical cyclones in a warming climate

 

USTC researchers revolutionize understanding of supermassive black hole accretion radiation in quasars

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA

Associate Professor CAI Zhenyi and Professor WANG Junxian from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), through the study of the optical to extreme ultraviolet radiation generated by the accretion of supermassive black holes at the centers of quasars, have discovered that their spectral energy distribution is independent to the intrinsic brightness of quasars, overturning the traditional understanding in this field. Furthermore, their study unveils a substantial departure of the average extreme ultraviolet spectral energy distribution of quasars from the predictions of the classical accretion disk theory. This discovery challenges the classical model and provides substantial support for models that incorporate widespread accretion disk winds. The results were published online on October 5, 2023 in Nature Astronomy.

Quasars are a class of extremely bright extragalactic objects where massive supermassive black holes at their centers continuously devour the gas in the core regions of their host galaxies. The immense gravitational potential energy is released on the accretion disk formed by the gas, converting into thermal energy and electromagnetic radiation, resulting in an abnormally bright nucleus of the galaxy. Quasars are also referred to as "cosmic behemoths" due to their exceptionally high intrinsic luminosity. According to the standard accretion disk theory, accretion disks produce the well-known "big blue bump" in the spectral energy distribution, with the peak expected in the extreme ultraviolet. The larger the central black hole's mass, the lower the expected temperature of the accretion disk, and the softer the extreme ultraviolet spectrum. Observations have revealed that more luminous quasars (with larger supermassive black hole masses) exhibit relatively weaker emission lines (explained by softer extreme ultraviolet spectra), known as the famous Baldwin Effect, which appears to be consistent with the classical accretion disk model.

Associate Professor CAI Zhenyi and Professor WANG Junxian's research focuses directly on the optical-to-ultraviolet spectral energy distribution of large sample quasars. This study utilizes observational data from the ground-based SDSS and space-based GALEX, controlling for the incompleteness of the ultraviolet detection. They found that the average ultraviolet spectral energy distribution of quasars do not depend on their intrinsic brightness, which not only suggests that differences in intrinsic brightness cannot explain the Baldwin effect but also challenges the predictions of standard accretion disk theory. At the same time, the researchers propose a possible new physical origin for the Baldwin effect: more luminous quasars have weaker accretion disk temperature fluctuations, thus unable to launch more emission line clouds. 

In addition, the study corrects for the effects of intergalactic medium absorption and finds that the average extreme ultraviolet spectrum of quasars is softer than all previous research results. This discrepancy poses a significant challenge to the standard accretion disk model but aligns well with predictions from the model involving an accretion disk wind, suggesting the prevalence of disk winds in quasars.

The results of this study have broad implications for a deeper understanding of various aspects of supermassive black hole accretion physics, black hole mass growth, cosmic reionization, the origin of broad-line regions, extreme ultraviolet dust extinction, and more. In the future, satellite projects with ultraviolet detection capabilities, such as the Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST, http://nao.cas.cn/csst/), will greatly enhance our understanding of the physical properties of quasars and similar celestial objects.

Paper link：https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02088-5

 

Contact:

Jane FAN Qiong

Tel: +86-551-63607280

E-mail:englishnews@ustc.edu.cn

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ARTICLE TITLE

USTC Researchers Revolutionize Understanding of Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Radiation in Quasars

 

Fathers’ parental leave might protect men against alcohol-related morbidity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY

Men who have been on parental leave have a significantly reduced risk of being hospitalized due to alcohol consumption. This is shown by a study published in Addiction from researchers at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.

The aim of the study was to assess whether fathers’ parental leave influences alcohol-related morbidity and mortality. In order to try to find out if that is the case, the researchers have investigated the effects of parental leave policy that was implemented in Sweden in 1995. The policy encouraged fathers to use parental leave by reserving 30 days of leave for their use alone and resulted in the proportion of fathers using parental leave increasing from 43 percent to 75 percent.

“Our findings were pretty remarkable considering the severity of the studied outcome. Although alcohol-related hospitalizations were rather uncommon, we found that after the policy was implemented there was a 34% decrease   in these hospitalizations among fathers in the two years after birth, as well as smaller decreases up to 8 and 18 years after birth”, says Helena Honkaniemi, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.

“Most changes were found among hospitalizations for alcohol intoxication and alcohol-related mental and behavioral disorders. Additional analyses evaluating actual changes in parental leave use from before to after the policy suggest that these health consequences could be explained by the increase in fathers’ parental leave use,  rather than other underlying trends", says Helena Honkaniemi.

However, no changes were found for alcohol-related mortality.

Co-author Associate Professor Sol Juárez believes that the results of the study could be useful for policymakers. 

“Policymakers should consider that fathers’ parental leave not only promotes more gender-equal participation in childcare, but can also reduce alcohol-related harms", Juárez says.

The study Alcohol-related morbidity and mortality by fathers’ parental leave: A quasi-experimental study in Sweden draws on Swedish register data of all fathers of singleton children born from January 1992 to December 1997, three years before and after the policy was implemented.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16354

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JOURNAL

Addiction

DOI

10.1111/add.16354 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Alcohol-related morbidity and mortality by fathers’ parental leave: A quasi-experimental study in Sweden

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Oct-2023

 

A 130g soft robot gripper lifts 100kg?

Developing a soft robotic gripper that mimics a woven structure. Achieve high performance, cost-effectiveness, and process efficiency in a soft robotic gripper.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

 

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GRIPPER SCHEMATIC WITH WEAVE STRUCTURE

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CREDIT: KOREA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Utilizing soft, flexible materials such as cloth, paper, and silicone, soft robotic grippers is an essential device that acts like a robot's hand to perform functions such as safely grasping and releasing objects. Unlike conventional rigid material grippers, they are more flexible and safe, and are being researched for household robots that handle fragile objects such as eggs, or for logistics robots that need to carry various types of objects. However, its low load capacity makes it difficult to lift heavy objects, and its poor grasping stability makes it easy to lose the object even under mild external impact.

Dr. Song, Kahye of the Intelligent Robotics Research Center at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), along with Professor Lee, Dae-Young of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), have jointly developed a soft gripper with a woven structure that can grip objects weighing more than 100 kg with 130 grams of material.

To increase the loading capacity of the soft robot gripper, the research team applied a new structure inspired by textiles, as opposed to the conventional method of developing new materials or reinforcing the structure. The weaving technique they focused on involves tightly intertwining individual threads to create a strong fabric, which can reliably support heavy objects and has been used for centuries in clothing, bags, and industrial textiles. The team used thin PET plastic The grippers were designed to allow the strips to intertwine and unwind into a woven structure.

The resulting woven gripper weighs 130 grams and can grip an object weighing 100 kilograms. Conventional grippers of the same weight can lift no more than 20 kilograms at most, and considering that a gripper that can lift the same weight weighs 100 kilograms, the team succeeded in increasing the load capacity relative to its own weight.

Also, the soft robot gripper developed by the research team uses plastic, which costs only a few thousand won per unit of material, and can be used as a universal gripper that can grip objects of various shapes and weights, making it highly competitive in price. In addition, since the soft robot gripper can be manufactured by simply fastening a plastic strip, the manufacturing process can be completed in less than 10 minutes, and it is easy to replace and maintain, so the process efficiency is excellent.

In addition to PET, which is the main material used by the research team, the gripper can also be made of various materials such as rubber and compounds that possess elasticity, allowing the team to customize and utilize grippers suitable for industrial and logistics sites that require strong gripping performance or various environments that need to withstand extreme conditions.

"The woven structure gripper developed by KIST and KAIST has the strengths of a soft robot but can grasp heavy objects at the level of a rigid gripper," said Dr. Song. It can be manufactured in a variety of sizes, from coins to cars, and can grip objects of various shapes and weights, from thin cards to flowers, so it is expected to be used in fields such as industry, logistics, and housework that require soft grippers."

  

Gripper behavior and performance

Comparison of gripper weight to payload (maximum weight the robot can lift) for the woven gripper, soft gripper, and rigid gripper

CREDIT

Korea Institute of Science and Technology

KIST was established in 1966 as the first government-funded research institute in Korea. KIST now strives to solve national and social challenges and secure growth engines through leading and innovative research. For more information, please visit KIST’s website at https://eng.kist.re.kr/

KAIST is the first and top science and technology university in Korea. KAIST has been the gateway to advanced science and technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and our graduates have been key players behind Korea’ innovations. KAIST will continue to pursue advances in science and technology as well as the economic development of Korea and beyond. (https://www.kaist.ac.kr/en)

The research was supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Lee Jong-ho) through the KIST Major Project and the Korea Research Foundation Basic Research Program, the Overseas Advanced Scientist Invitation Program, and the Basic Research Laboratory Support Program. The results of the study were published on August 2 in the international journal Nature Communications (IF:16.6, top 8.2% in JCR) and were selected as Editors' Highlights, which introduces the best 50 papers in each field.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-40358-y 

ARTICLE TITLE

Grasping through dynamic weaving with entangled closed loops

 

Our sense of smell changes the colors we see, show scientists

Unconscious associations with odor can distort perception of colors

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

Our five senses bombard us with environmental input 24/7. One way our brain makes sense of this abundance of information is by combining information from two or more senses, such as between smells and the smoothness of textures, pitch, color, and musical dimensions. This sensory integration also causes us to associate higher temperatures with warmer colors, lower sound pitches with less elevated positions, and colors with the flavor of particular foods – for example, the taste of oranges with the color of the same name.

Now, a study in Frontiers in Psychology has shown experimentally that such unconscious 'crossmodal' associations with our sense of smell can affect our perception of colors.

“Here we show that the presence of different odors influences how humans perceive color,” said lead author Dr Ryan Ward, a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, UK.

Sensory-deprived room

Ward and colleagues tested for the existence and strength of odor-color associations in 24 adult women and men between 20 and 57 years of age. The participants were seated in front of a screen in a room devoid of unwanted sensory stimuli for the duration of the experiments. They wore no deodorants or perfumes, and none reported being color-blind or having an impaired sense of smell.

All ambient odors in the isolation room were purged with an air purifier for four minutes. Then one of six odors (chosen at random from caramel, cherry, coffee, lemon, and peppermint, plus odorless water as a control) was broadcast into the room with an ultrasonic diffuser for five minutes.

“In a previous study, we had shown that the odor of caramel commonly constitutes a crossmodal association with dark brown and yellow, just like coffee with dark brown and red, cherry with pink, red, and purple, peppermint with green and blue, and lemon with yellow, green, and pink,” explained Ward.

Participants were presented with a screen that showed them a square filled with a random color (from an infinite range) and were invited to manually adjust two sliders – one for yellow to blue, and another for green to red – to change its color to neutral grey. After the final choice had been recorded, the procedure was repeated, until all odors had been presented five times.

Overcompensating for unconscious associations

The results showed that participants had a weak but significant tendency to adjust one or both of the sliders too far away from neutral grey. For example, when presented with the odor of coffee, they wrongly perceived ‘grey’ to be more of a red-brown color than true neutral grey. Likewise, when presented with the odor of caramel, they wrongly perceived a color enriched in blue as grey. The presence of the smell thus distorted the participants’ color perception in a predictable manner.

An exception was when the odor of peppermint was presented: here, the participants’ choice of hue was different from the typical crossmodal association demonstrated for the other odors. As expected, the participants’ selection likewise corresponded to true grey when presented with the neutral scent of water.

“These results show that the perception of grey tended towards their anticipated crossmodal correspondences for four out of five scents, namely lemon, caramel, cherry, and coffee,” said Ward.

“This 'overcompensation' suggests that the role of crossmodal associations in processing sensory input is strong enough to influence how we perceive information from different senses, here between odors and colors.”

Questions remain

The researchers emphasize the need to investigate how far-reaching such crossmodal associations between odors and colors are.

“We need to know the degree to which odors influence color perception. For example, is the effect shown here still present for less commonly encountered odors, or even for odors encountered for the first time?” said Ward.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175703 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Odors modulate color appearance

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Oct-2023