Friday, November 17, 2023

Research in Lake Superior reveals how sulfur might have cycled in Earth’s ancient oceans

The findings focus attention on the role organic sulfur compounds play in this biogeochemical cycle.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

Geochemist Alexandra Phillips has sulfur on her mind. The yellow element is a vital macronutrient, and she’s trying to understand how it cycles through the environment. Specifically, she’s curious about the sulfur cycle in Earth’s ancient ocean, some 3 billion years ago.

Fortunately, the nutrient-poor waters of Lake Superior offer a welcome glimpse into the past. “It’s really hard to look back billions of years,” said Phillips, a former postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara and University of Minnesota, Duluth. “So this is a great window.” She and her co-authors discovered a new type of sulfur cycle in the lake. Their findings, published in Limnology and Oceanography, focus attention on the role organic sulfur compounds play in this biogeochemical cycle.

The sulfate ion (SO4) is the most common form of sulfur in the environment, and a major component of seawater. In the bottoms of oceans and lakes, where oxygen becomes unavailable, some microbes make their living by turning sulfate into hydrogen sulfide (H2S). The fate of this hydrogen sulfide is complex; it can be consumed quickly by microorganisms during respiration, or it can be retained in sediments for millions of years. Converting sulfate into hydrogen sulfide is a time-honored profession; genomic evidence suggests microbes have been doing it for at least 3 billion years.

But scientists believe sulfate didn’t become abundant until around 2.7 to 2.4 billion years ago, when photosynthetic activity of newly evolved cyanobacteria began pumping massive amounts of oxygen into the ocean and atmosphere. So where were these ancient microbes getting their sulfate?

Alexandra Phillips is a marine and climate scientist with expertise in oceanography, geochemistry, and geobiology. Her research focuses on organic sulfur in oceans and lakes as well as how social media can display diverse role models for women in STEM. Phillips also serves as a science communicator and policy officer.

Mulling over this quandary, Phillips turned her attention toward organic sulfur, molecules in which sulfur is bound to a carbon compound. These include sulfo-lipids, and sulfur amino acids. In the modern ocean, sulfate is almost a million times more abundant than organic sulfur. “But in a system where there’s not very much sulfate, all of a sudden organic sulfur matters a lot more,” she said.

“For a long time, our thinking was dominated by what we could learn from modern oceans, which are sulfate-rich,” said senior author Sergei Katsev, a professor at University of Minnesota’s Large Lakes Observatory. Katsev served as the senior scientist of the National Science Foundation-funded project. “Understanding early Earth, however, requires looking at processes that emerge when sulfate is scarce, and this is where organic sulfur can change the whole paradigm.”

It just so happens that Lake Superior has very little sulfate, nearly a thousand times less than the modern ocean. “In terms of sulfate, Lake Superior looks a lot closer to the ocean billions of years ago and may help us understand processes we can’t go back in time to observe directly,” Phillips said. The early oceans had very little sulfate because there was much less free oxygen available to form SO4.

The great lake serves as an analog for the ancient ocean, enabling Phillips to see how the sulfur cycle may have been playing out back then under similar chemistries. She had three questions in mind:

If sulfate reduction is happening, which microbes are responsible?
If organic sulfur is fueling this process, what types of compounds do microbes prefer?
And, what happens to the hydrogen sulfide that’s produced?

Phillips and her collaborators headed out to Lake Superior to trace organic sulfur from source to sink. The team took water and sediment samples back to the lab for analysis from two sites: one with plentiful oxygen in the sediment and one without. Sulfate reduction usually occurs in anoxic parts of the environment. Oxygen is a great resource, so organisms prefer to use oxygen instead of sulfate when they can. The team used shotgun metagenomics to look for microbes with genes involved in sulfate reduction. And they found plenty, precisely in the layer where sulfate levels peaked in the sediment. In all, they identified eight sulfate-reducing taxa.

The researchers then set off to determine what variety of organic sulfur the microbes preferred. They gave different forms of organic sulfur to separate microbial communities and observed the results. The authors found the microbes produced most of their sulfate from sulfo-lipids, rather than the sulfur amino acids. Although this process takes some energy, it’s much less than the microbes can get from the subsequent reduction of sulfate to hydrogen sulfide.

Not only were the sulfo-lipids preferred for this process, they were also more abundant in the sediment. Sulfo-lipids are produced by other microbial communities, and drift to the lake bottom when they die.

With the “who” and the “how” answered, Phillips turned her attention to the fate of the hydrogen sulfide. In the modern ocean, hydrogen sulfide can react with iron to form pyrite. But it can also react with organic molecules, producing organic sulfur compounds. “And we found that there is a ton of organic matter sulfurization in the lake, which is really surprising to us,” she said. “Not only is organic sulfur fueling the sulfur cycle as a source, but it’s also an eventual sink for the hydrogen sulfide.”

This cycle — from organic sulfur to sulfate to hydrogen sulfide and back — is completely new to researchers. “Scientists studying aquatic systems need to start thinking about organic sulfur as a central player,” Phillips said. These compounds can drive the sulfur cycle in nutrient-poor environments like Lake Superior, or even the ancient ocean.

This process may also be important in systems with high sulfate. “Organic sulfur cycling, like what we see in Lake Superior, is probably ubiquitous in marine and freshwater sediments. But in the ocean sulfate is so abundant that its behavior swamps out most of our signals,” said senior author Morgan Raven, a biogeochemist at UC Santa Barbara. “Working in low-sulfate Lake Superior lets us see how dynamic the sedimentary organic sulfur cycle really is.” Organic sulfur seems to serve as an energy source for microbial communities as well as preserve organic carbon and molecular fossils. Combined, these factors could help scientists understand the evolution of early sulfur-cycling microorganisms and their impact on Earth’s chemistry.

Some of the earliest biochemical reactions likely involved sulfur, Phillips added. “We’re pretty sure that sulfur played an important role in really early metabolisms.” A better understanding of the sulfur cycle could provide insights on how early lifeforms harnessed this type of redox chemistry.

JOURNAL

Limnology and Oceanography

2023 Canadian wildfires impacted air quality as far away as Europe, China

The whole of the northern hemisphere suffered deterioration of air quality as a result of 2023’s record-setting Canadian wildfires, while Canada’s own ten-year greenhouse gas reduction plan has essentially been erased as a result of emissions from this

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Wildfire in Canada — IMAGE:
THE COVER OF ADVANCES IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES FEATURING AN IMAGE OF A WILDFIRE IN YUKON TERRITORY OF CANADA.
view more
CREDIT: ADVANCES IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

Numerical air quality models have described the extent of severe negative impacts on air quality resulting from the record 2023 Canadian wildfires, demonstrating that almost the whole of the Northern Hemisphere, not just Canada and the northern United States, were affected.

A paper describing the findings was published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on November 17.

Canadian record-setting wildfires in 2023 made headlines around the world not just for their extent—the largest area burnt in the country’s history—but also for how severely they impacted air quality across this very large country, and even deep into the United States. Smoke from the fires produced repeated severe air quality alerts and even evacuations in many locations.

But it was not known how far beyond Canada and the northern US such dangerous air pollution had reached, and even within North America, the understanding of the dispersal of the most harmful pollutants was limited.

“There were photographs from New York City in July in news outlets around the world that showed the city trapped in an almost unbreathable orange haze like something out of a dystopian movie,” said Zhe Wang, lead author of the study and a researcher with the State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics at Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of Chinese Academy of Sciences. “But what we know about long-range transport of particulate matter means that the fires likely impacted Europe and Asia as well. We just didn't know to what extent.”

So Dr. Wang and other researchers from IAP set out to calculate the full global reach of this threat to public health by using numerical air quality model models. Similar to climate models, air quality models use mathematical techniques to simulate how weather and chemical reactions impact the dispersal of air pollutants.

For this work, the IAP scientists used the Aerosol and Atmospheric Chemistry Model of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP-AACM), a computer model developed in house as a module within the broader Chinese Academy of Sciences Earth System Model (CAS-ESM).

The researchers found that while Canada was most severely affected, almost the whole of the northern hemisphere was subject to marked significant declines in air quality due to long-range wind transport of pollutants.

There were six main widespread air pollution episodes over the course of Canada’s wildfire ‘season’: May 15-22, June 5-9, June 24-July 1, July 12-19, August 17-15, and August 17-22. In addition to Canada itself, the first such episode affected air quality in the central northern parts of the US. The second episode impacted the northeastern US, and particularly badly.

The model results here match real-world observations. The concentration of fine particles with diameters of 2.5 microns or less (termed ‘PM2.5’—the particulate matter that is most dangerous, as compared to larger but less harmful particles with a diameter of 10 microns, or PM10) on June 7 was found by 11 monitoring sites in New York City to have reached the worst air quality level for more than 50 years.

During the third main episode of severe air pollution, the model suggested that PM2.5 pollutants were transported to Europe, while the fourth such episode concentrated its severest presence in western Canada and the central northern US once again. The fifth episode mainly affected northern Canada, while the sixth episode affected both western and eastern coast regions of the USA. Due to the northward movement of the wildfires, high concentrations of PM2.5 were transported to the Arctic region over the course of the mid and late summer.

PM2.5 concentrations higher than the World Health Organization air-quality guidelines of 15 micrograms per cubic meter mainly occurred over North America, with an excess of 40 pollution days exceeding this limit over western and eastern Canada, as well as more than 10 such days over the northeastern USA.

But due to the wildfire plumes being transported by prevailing westerly winds across the Atlantic Ocean, vast swathes of Europe and western, central and east Asia suffered from increases in such concentrations. This meant that maximum PM2.5 concentrations exceeded 1 microgram per cubic meter over most areas of the Northern Hemisphere—lower than the WHO guideline but not without impact. PM2.5 concentration in the northwest region of China increased to roughly two micrograms per cubic meter.

Western and eastern Canada were most severely impacted, suffering PM2.5 concentration over 150 PM2.5, some ten times the WHO maximum.

While focussing on air quality, the researchers also used computer modelling to investigate the global distribution of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by the Canadian fires. They found that the conflagration had resulted in an increase in carbon dioxide levels mainly over North America in May, and also over Europe and northwestern Asia in June. The wildfire-related CO2 concentrations exceeded 0.1 part per million (ppm) over most Northern Hemisphere areas except southeast Asia, India and southern China in July, and increased to more than 0.2 ppm in August.

This increase in GHGs due to the fires has two major consequences. First, its production of enhanced warming in these regions atop existing global warming increases the likelihood of the sort of conditions that exacerbated wildfires. In other words, more wildfires means even more wildfires.

Second, the level of wildfire-related greenhouse gas emissions in Canada in 2023 were more than twice the country’s legislated plan for cumulative reductions in human-caused GHGs over the next ten years.

“Canada's 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan has been wiped out by a single year of wildfires,” said Zifa Wang, corresponding author of the study.

DOI

10.1007/s00376-023-3241-0

ARTICLE TITLE

Severe global environmental issues caused by Canada's record-breaking wildfires in 2023

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2023

Epidemic-economic model provides answers to key pandemic policy questions

Is lockdown an effective response to a pandemic, or would it be better to let individuals spontaneously reduce their risk of infection? These two highly-debated options lead to similar outcomes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Is lockdown an effective response to a pandemic, or would it be better to let individuals spontaneously reduce their risk of infection? Research published today suggests these two highly-debated options lead to similar outcomes.

A ground-breaking economic-pandemic model, created by an international team of researchers, addresses some of the key policy debates of the Covid-19 pandemic but it will, in future, enable governments and policymakers to take tough decisions - and assess effective actions.

The modelling, designed by the team, including Oxford experts, has been tested using data from New York city responses to Covid-19 - and it accurately predicted both death rates and the impact on the city's economy of the first wave of the pandemic.

Professor Doyne Farmer, Director of the Complexity Economics Programme at INET Oxford, says the research paper is timely, given the Covid-19 inquiries across the world, 'We are seeing governments across the globe begin their 'moments of reckoning', reviewing the effectiveness of a great variety of policies brought in during Covid-19.

‘According to some, lockdowns were not imposing any trade-off between health and the economy because, if the virus got out of control, the economy would be equally damaged. According to others, letting at-risk individuals spontaneously reduce their risk of infection would have led to the best epidemic and economic outcomes, with no trade-off. These debates have remained contested and unresolved.’

Professor Farmer continues, 'Our quantitative research helps provide evidence-based answers to these questions, suggesting that both lockdowns and spontaneous behaviour change lead to similar trade-offs between health and the economy. Those that claimed that there was no trade-off between health and the economy were not basing their belief in a quantitative model. '

The health-economy trade-off modelling, in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, is the culmination of years of work from an interdisciplinary team of researchers with backgrounds in economics and epidemiology, as well as physics, computer science, and applied mathematics, all united by a shared expertise in complexity science.

The research paper makes a number of conclusions on the effectiveness of government interventions, including:

Both stricter lockdown and strong behaviour change lead to more unemployment and fewer Covid-19 deaths.
They lead to more jobs lost and to more lives saved among low-income workers, while they make less of a difference to high-income workers.
Closing non-customer-facing industries such as manufacturing has little impact on infections but significantly increases unemployment;
Delaying the start of protective measures does little to help the economy and worsens epidemic outcomes in all scenarios;

Dr François Lafond, Deputy Director of INET Oxford's Complexity Economics Programme at the Oxford Martin School, says the model is a big step forward in helping governments prepare for future pandemics, 'Thanks to the level of detail of the model, we could show that low-income workers were affected more by policy decisions, on either side of the health-economy trade-off. Of course, the trade-offs might be different for future crises, but to evaluate these we will need the same kind of interdisciplinary collaboration, building computational models of behaviour to simulate realistic synthetic populations in real time.

Led by Marco Pangallo of CENTAI Institute, the international research group combined economic modelling with epidemic data, to create a holistic tool that can predict health-economy outcomes from pandemic policy decisions. The model's accuracy has been proven in predicting death rates and impact on the economy in the first wave of the pandemic in New York City.

JOURNAL

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-023-01747-x

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The unequal effects of the health-economy trade-off during the COVID-19 pandemic

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Nov-2023

Air cleaners don’t stop you getting sick, research shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

Peer reviewed - systematic review - humans

Air filtration systems do not reduce the risk of picking up viral infections, according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

A new study published today reveals that technologies designed to make social interactions safer in indoor spaces are not effective in the real world.

The team studied technologies including air filtration, germicidal lights and ionisers.

They looked at all the available evidence but found little to support hopes that these technologies can make air safe from respiratory or gastrointestinal infections.

Prof Paul Hunter, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Air cleaners are designed to filter pollutants or contaminants out of the air that passes through them.

“When the Covid pandemic hit, many large companies and governments - including the NHS, the British military, and New York City and regional German governments - investigated installing this type of technology in a bid to reduce airborne virus particles in buildings and small spaces.

“But air treatment technologies can be expensive. So it’s reasonable to weigh up the benefits against costs, and to understand the current capabilities of such technologies.”

The research team studied evidence about whether air cleaning technologies make people safe from catching airborne respiratory or gastrointestinal infections.

They analysed evidence about microbial infections or symptoms in people exposed or not to air treatment technologies in 32 studies, all conducted in real world settings like schools or care homes. So far none of the studies of air treatment started during the Covid era have been published.

Lead researcher Dr Julii Brainard, also from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “The kinds of technologies that we considered included filtration, germicidal lights, ionisers and any other way of safely removing viruses or deactivating them in breathable air.

“In short, we found no strong evidence that air treatment technologies are likely to protect people in real world settings.

“There is a lot of existing evidence that environmental and surface contamination can be reduced by several air treatment strategies, especially germicidal lights and high efficiency particulate air filtration (HEPA). But the combined evidence was that these technologies don’t stop or reduce illness.

“There was some weak evidence that the air treatment methods reduced likelihood of infection, but this evidence seems biased and imbalanced.

“We strongly suspect that there were some relevant studies with very minor or no effect but these were never published.

“Our findings are disappointing - but it is vital that public health decision makers have a full picture.

“Hopefully those studies that have been done during Covid will be published soon and we can make a more informed judgement about what the value of air treatment may have been during the pandemic.”

This research was led by the University of East Anglia with collaborators at University College London, the University of Essex, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Trust, and the University of Surrey.

It was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Health Protection Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response, led by Kings College London and UEA in collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency.

‘Effectiveness of filtering or decontaminating air to reduce or prevent respiratory infections: A systematic review’ is published in Preventive Medicine.

JOURNAL

Preventive Medicine

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Effectiveness of filtering or decontaminating air to reduce or prevent respiratory infections: A systematic review

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2023

Plants that survived dinosaur extinction pulled nitrogen from air

Nitrogen fixing bacteria may have helped some cycads survive to the present day

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

Nanaimo Cycad Fossil — IMAGE:
A FOSSILIZED CYCAD SPECIMEN THAT WAS SAMPLED FOR NITROGEN ISOTOPES THAT WOULD INDICATE THE ATMOSPHERE IT GREW IN.
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CREDIT: MICHAEL KIPP – DUKE UNIVERSITY

DURHAM, N.C. -- Once a favored food of grazing dinosaurs, an ancient lineage of plants called cycads helped sustain these and other prehistoric animals during the Mesozoic Era, starting 252 million years ago, by being plentiful in the forest understory. Today, just a few species of the palm-like plants survive in tropical and subtropical habitats.

Like their lumbering grazers, most cycads have gone extinct. Their disappearance from their prior habitats began during the late Mesozoic and continued into the early Cenozoic Era, punctuated by the cataclysmic asteroid impact and volcanic activity that mark the K-Pg boundary 66 million years ago. However, unlike the dinosaurs, somehow a few groups of cycads survived to the present.

A new study appearing Nov. 16 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution has concluded that the cycad species that survived relied on symbiotic bacteria in their roots, which provide them with nitrogen to grow. Just like modern legumes and other plants that use nitrogen fixation, these cycads trade their sugars with bacteria in their roots in exchange for nitrogen plucked from the atmosphere.

What originally interested lead author Michael Kipp is that the tissues of nitrogen-fixing plants can provide a record of the composition of the atmosphere they grew up in. He combines geochemistry with the fossil record to try to understand the Earth’s climate history.

Knowing already that modern cycads are nitrogen-fixers, Kipp began analyzing some very old plant fossils during his Ph.D. work at the University of Washington to see if he could get a different look at ancient atmospheres. Most of the old cycads revealed that they weren’t nitrogen-fixers, but these also turned out to be the extinct lineages.

“Instead of being a story about the atmosphere, we realized this was a story about the ecology of these plants that changed through time,” said Kipp, who spent nearly a decade on this finding, first at UW and then as a postdoctoral researcher at CalTech.

Kipp is joining the Duke faculty this year as an assistant professor of Earth and Climate Sciences in the Nicholas School of the Environment to continue using the fossil record to understand Earth’s climate history so that we can understand its possible future.

Much of what we know about ancient atmospheres comes from chemical studies of ancient sea life and sediments, Kipp said. Applying some of those methods to terrestrial plants is a new wrinkle.

“Going into the project, there were no published nitrogen isotope data from fossilized plant foliage,” Kipp said. It took a while for him to fine-tune the method and to secure samples of precious plant fossils that museum curators were reluctant to see vaporized to get the data.

“In the few fossil samples that are of surviving (cycad) lineages, and that are not so old -- 20, 30 million years -- we see the same nitrogen signature as we see today,” Kipp said. That means their nitrogen came from symbiotic bacteria. But in the older and extinct cycad fossils, that nitrogen signature was absent.

What is less clear is how nitrogen fixation helped the surviving cycads. It may have helped them weather the dramatic shift in climate or it may have allowed them to compete better with the faster-growing angiosperm plants that flourished after the extinction, “or it could be both.”

“This is a new technique that we can do a lot more with,” Kipp said.

A fossil of a veined leaf from the same strata as an extinct cycad was used for comparison of nitrogen isotopes.

CREDIT

Michael Kipp – Duke University

Funding for this study came from: The Paleontological Society, the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, and NASA Exobiology grant NNX16AI37G.

CITATION: “Nitrogen Isotopes Reveal Independent Origins of N2-Fixing Symbiosis in Extant Cycad Lineages,” Michael A. Kipp, Eva E. Stüeken, Caroline A. E. Strömberg, William H. Brightly, Victoria M. Arbour, Boglárka Erdei, Robert S. Hill, Kirk R. Johnson, Jiří Kvaček, Jennifer C. McElwain, Ian M. Miller, Miriam Slodownik, Vivi Vajda, & Roger Buick. Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nov. 16, 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02251-1

JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-023-02251-1

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Nitrogen Isotopes Reveal Independent Origins of N2-Fixing Symbiosis in Extant Cycad Lineages

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Nov-2023

Children’s brains shaped by their time on tech devices, research to-date shows

After analyzing 23 years of studies involving more than 30,000 under 12s, experts recommend more help for parents from governments

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Time spent watching television or playing computer games has measurable and long-term effects on children’s brain function, according to a review of 23 years of neuroimaging research, which while showing negative impacts also demonstrates some positive effects.

However, the researchers stop short of advocating limits on screen time, which they say can lead to confrontation. Instead, they urge policymakers to help parents navigate the digital world by promoting programs which support positive brain development.

The evidence review, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Early Education and Development, is an analysis of 33 studies which use neuroimaging technology to measure the impact of digital technology on the brains of children under the age of 12. In total, more than 30,000 participants are included.

In particular, the research finds screen time leads to changes in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is the base of executive functions such as working memory and the ability to plan or to respond flexibly to situations. It also finds impacts on the parietal lobe, which helps us to process touch, pressure, heat, cold, and pain; the temporal lobe, which is important for memory, hearing and language; and the occipital lobe, which helps us to interpret visual information.

“It should be recognized by both educators and caregivers that children's cognitive development may be influenced by their digital experiences,” says the study’s corresponding author, Chair Professor Hui Li, from the Faculty of Education and Human Development Faculty of Education and Human Development, at The Education University of Hong Kong. “Limiting their screen time is an effective but confronting way, and more innovative, friendly, and practical strategies could be developed and implemented.

“Those in policymaking positions should supply suitable guidance, involvement and backing for children's digital use.”

The research team, which as well as experts from the Education University of Hong Kong, included those from the Shanghai Normal University in China and Macquarie University in Australia, wanted to know how digital activity affected the brain’s plasticity – or malleability – during critical periods of development. It is known that visual development mostly takes place before the age of eight, while the key time for language acquisition is up to 12.

They synthesized and evaluated studies on children’s digital use and associated brain development published between January 2000 and April 2023, with the ages of participants ranging from six months upwards.

Screen-based media were the most commonly used by the participants, followed by games, virtual visual scenes, video viewing and editing, and internet or pad use.

The paper concludes that these early digital experiences are having a significant impact on the shape of children’s brains and their functioning.
This was deemed as both potentially positive and negative, but mainly more negative.

For example, negative impacts were witnessed in some studies with how screen time influences the brain function required for attention, executive control abilities, inhibitory control, cognitive processes, and functional connectivity. Other studies suggested that higher screen time is associated with lower functional connectivity in brain areas related to language and cognitive control, potentially adversely affecting cognitive development.

Some device-based research were assessed in the research pool. Tablet device users were found to have worse brain function and problem-solving tasks. Video gaming and high internet users were found, in four studies, to produce negative changes in brain areas, impacting intelligence scores and brain volume.

And general “intensive media usage” was shown to potentially impact visual processing and higher cognitive function regions.

There were six studies, however, demonstrating how these digital experiences can positively impact a child’s brain functionality.

Such as, one found improved focusing and learning abilities in the frontal lobe of the brain. Meanwhile, another study suggested playing video games can increase cognitive demand, potentially enhancing children’s executive functions and cognitive skills.

Overall Chair Professor Li’s team conclude that policymakers must act on these findings to support evidence-based practice for teachers and parents.

Lead author, Dr Dandan Wu of the Education University of Hong Kong, states: “This investigation contains significant implications for practical improvement and policymaking. Foremost, it should be recognized by both educators and caregivers that children’s cognitive development may be influenced by their digital experiences. As such, they should supply suitable guidance, involvement, and backing for children’s digital use.

“It is imperative for policymakers to develop and execute policies grounded in empirical evidence to safeguard and enhance brain development in children as they navigate the digital era.

“This could involve offering resources and incentives for the creation and examination of digital interventions aimed at bolstering brain growth in children.”

A limitation of the study, the authors comment, is the lack of research reviewed, which they state may be because this topic is “novel and emerging, and research technologies are also evolving”. Additionally, “this scoping review”, they add, “has not addressed the critical questions, such as whether it is the early digital use (for example, screen time) or the cognitive processes (i.e., learning experience) that have driven the change of brain function and structure, and whether there are different effects of digital equipment types and the mode of use.”

Therefore, the authors recommend future research should explore techniques such as longitudinal research on the impact of screens on brain functions.

JOURNAL

Early Education and Development

DOI

10.1080/10409289.2023.2278117

ARTICLE TITLE

How Early Digital Experience Shapes Young Brains During 0-12 Years: A Scoping Review

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Nov-2023

Social media helping to protect biodiversity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

Red-base jezebel — IMAGE:

RED-BASE JEZEBEL (DELIAS PASITHOE).
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CREDIT: DR SHAWAN CHOWDHURY

Nature photographers posting to social media are helping improve biodiversity conservation mapping in South Asia, and the method could go global.

Dr Shawan Chowdhury from UQ’s School of the Environment led an international team which scoured images on Facebook nature photography groups in Bangladesh, to add to the existing Global Biodiversity Information Facility database.

“We found 44,000 photos of almost 1,000 animal species, including many birds and insects, 288 of which are considered threatened in Bangladesh,” Dr Chowdhury said.

“This has vastly improved habitat mapping across the country where only 4.6 per cent of land is designated as protected.

“We identified many more high-priority areas for conservation, spanning 4,000 square kilometres for birds and 10,000 square kilometres for butterflies.

“We’d been missing out on the distribution data of hundreds of endangered species in Bangladesh so this is a big result.

“This could change the way scientists gather biodiversity information in the future, especially in regions where there is a lack of reliable and up-to-date structured monitoring to inform conservation efforts."

In Australia, social media posts are being used to track pest species.

“A South Asian butterfly, called the tawny coster, entered Australia in 2012,” Dr Chowdhury said.

“We’ve searched for additional locality records from Facebook to analyse the movement, ecology and colonisation status of this species and shown that it expanded at about 135 kilometres per year in Australia between 2012 and 2020.”

Co-author Professor Richard Fuller from UQ said while Facebook had been helpful, there are some big opportunities for social media companies.

“There is currently no automated way to collect this information, and it was a very arduous task for us to do it manually.” Professor Fuller said.

“We hope our research can inspire the development of technology such as an app that transfers biodiversity data posted on Facebook directly to the global biodiversity databases.

“This way, conservation scientists can easily access that data and use it.”

The research is published in Bioscience, One Earth, and Conservation Biology.

Dr Chowdhury is also a researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

Spotted deer or chital (Axis axis) numbers are declining in regions without protected areas.

Red-whiskered bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus), a passerine bird native to Asia.

CREDIT

Dr Shawan Chowdhury

JOURNAL

One Earth

DOI

10.1016/j.oneear.2023.08.025

US lawmakers pressure FDIC chief over misconduct allegations

November 17, 2023

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Friday renewed public calls for an investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment and other workplace misconduct at the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The announcements came as FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg this week faced calls for his resignation following Wall Street Journal reporting according to which the agency had failed to eradicate widespread harassment in its workforce and spotlighting Gruenberg's personal role in cases of alleged harassment and discrimination.

The FDIC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Gruenberg has said in testimony he found the reports deeply troubling and vowed to take corrective action as a top priority.

Friday's announcements suggest lawmakers will continue to pile pressure on Gruenberg over revelations about a key agency in the Biden administration's financial reform agenda.

In a letter, Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee on Friday publicly notified Gruenberg of a probe announced earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee released a letter demanding an investigation by the FDIC's Office of Inspector General (OIG), saying the reports of misconduct were "nothing short of appalling."

An FDIC OIG representative told Reuters on Friday the office had received the Senate Democrats' request and was reviewing it.

"Chairman Gruenberg, the viability of your leadership is in question," wrote House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry and senior members Bill Huizenga and Andy Barr, all Republicans. "The Committee will use its full arsenal of oversight and investigative tools, including compulsory mechanisms, to ensure that our banking system remains safe and sound."

(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/11/lawmakers-grill-fdic-chief-after-sexual.html