How coronavirus might change farming

The COVID-19 shutdowns severely disrupted many of our vital sectors – not least agriculture. From cracking down on factory farming to a rise in urban gardening, here's how the pandemic could transform our food chain.

DW PHOTO ESSAY

Factory farming on the outWhile scientists don't yet know exactly how COVID-19 originated, recent pandemic virus threats such as swine flu and bird flu almost certainly evolved at pig and chicken factory farms. With a link already established between intensive animal agriculture and an increased pandemic risk, it might be the moment to rethink factory farming at its current scale.

Meat industry exposed

The pandemic has also cast a light on the poor conditions in the meat processing industry. Germany has seen several coronavirus outbreaks among meat factory employees, and has even put two districts in western Germany in quarantine after more than 1,550 workers at the Tönnies slaughterhouse were infected with the disease. Calls are growing for better regulations throughout the meat branch.

Moving away from wildlife farming

Experts believe the coronavirus likely came from wildlife sold at a wet market in Wuhan, China. In the wake of the pandemic, China clamped down on the wildlife trade, shutting down almost 20,000 wildlife farms. Some Chinese provinces are now offering government support to help wildlife farmers transition away from the practice, and switch to growing crops or raising pigs or chickens instead.

A more resilient sector

The pandemic has impacted our food supply chain. An industry evolved to feed a globalized world has been scaled back to the local level in some cases. From reduced access to animal fodder to shortages of labor, farmers are having to consider how to adapt to a new and uncertain future.

Urban farming flourishes

Forced to spend more time at home, increasing numbers of people have been trying their hand at growing their own food. This could be a positive development in the long run. With more than two-thirds of the world's population projected to live in cities by 2050, urban farming will become more crucial - and it requires less fossil fuel for transport and less land than conventional agriculture.

Giving land back to nature

With our planet's population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, there's no escaping the fact that food production around the world needs to increase. While opening up more land was once seen as an obvious solution to this problem, a stronger focus on urban farming and concerns over the consequences of encroaching into nature could spark a rethink of how we use land.

Switching to plant-based

As awareness of the potential health costs of the meat market grows, China has witnessed an increasing interest in plant-based products. The West has already experienced a trend towards plant-based diets over the past few years, and that is likely to continue as consumers become more concerned over the origins of meat products.

Increasing food security in developing countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to impact developing countries heavily – particularly in terms of food security. The UN has already warned of famine "of biblical proportions" as resources become scarcer. Alongside immediate aid, mitigating widespread famine in the long-term will require better land protection, more diversified crops and more support for smallholder farmers who are most at risk

German labor minister demands meat company pay coronavirus compensation

More than 1,300 people have tested positive at a Tönnies slaughterhouse, causing Germany's transmission rate to rocket. Germany's labor minister says the firm should pay compensation.

German Labor Minister Minister Hubertus Heil demanded the meat processing company behind a massive coronavirus outbreak should pay damages, in comments on Sunday evening.

More than 1,300 people have tested positive for the virus after an outbreak at the Rheda-Wiedenbrück meat processing plant, in the district of Gütersloh near Bielefeld, operated by German meat giant Tönnies.

"There must be a civil liability of the company," Heil told a Bild online broadcast, adding that the company had "taken an entire region hostage" by violating the coronavirus rules.

Heil said that his trust in the Tönnies company was "equal to zero." He said that the company not only endangered its own employees, but also "public health."

Read more: Coronavirus: German slaughterhouse outbreak crosses 1,000

Reproduction rate surges

Regional officials said the virus had largely been contained to the factory's mostly Romanian and Bulgarian workers, but the outbreak has prompted fears of wider community transmission and a return to large scale lockdowns.

The plant's 6,500 workers, who live in cramped company-provided accommodation, have been forced into quarantine. However, authorities have been hampered by poor documentation by the company.

Schools and daycare centers in the area have been ordered to shut and the plant has been closed.

Following the outbreak, Germany's coronavirus all-important reproduction rate surged to 2.88 — almost three times what it needs to be to contain the outbreak. The reproduction rate, or 'R' value, estimates how many people an infected person passes the virus to. Experts say a rate of less than 1 is needed to eliminate the disease.

The 7-day 'r' value, which tends to fluctuate less dramatically, increased from 1.55 on Saturday to 2.03 on Sunday.

Read more: NRW's Laschet walks back 'Romanians and Bulgarians' coronavirus commen

Tönnies blames its workers

Company boss Clemens Tönnies, who initially blamed his Eastern European workers for the outbreak, publicly apologized on Saturday saying he was "fully responsible," but refused to step down.

Green faction leader Anton Hofreiter appealed to the billionaire to cover the costs incurred by the virus outbreak from his own coffers.

If Tönnies meant his apology seriously, "he would pay the costs out of his private assets — not out of the company's assets," Hofreiter told the same show.

Calls for change

Heil told the broadcast: "The exploitation of people from Central and Eastern Europe, which has obviously taken place there, is now becoming a general health risk in the pandemic with considerable damage." Therefore, "there has to be a fundamental change in this industry."

Heil's colleague and SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans called for higher meat prices and a debate on distributive justice in Germany.

"Meat is a product that is produced with a high input of energy and other raw materials. Its value and price are often in stark disproportion," Walter-Borjans told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group.

He said the Tönnies case showed "how little attention is paid to the question of how food — our most important basis of life — is produced." Everything is "subordinated to the pursuit of profit and efficiency."

Read more: Germany's meat industry under fire after COVID-19 outbreaks

aw/msh (AFP, dpa, epd)

DW RECOMMENDS

'Employees are not to blame' for coronavirus outbreaks

Labor adviser Elena Strato says meatpacker Tönnies is cynically trying to pin blame for a coronavirus outbreak on foreign workers. She says companies must be forced to sustainably improve dangerous working conditions. (19.06.2020)

Coronavirus: Over 600 people test positive at German slaughterhouse

Yet another German slaughterhouse has registered a massive outbreak of the coronavirus. Roughly two-thirds of the test results so far have come back positive. (17.06.2020)

How does Germany's meat industry work?

Germany's meat industry is a valuable part of its economy, but it is being heavily criticized following multiple coronavirus outbreaks. DW looks at the money big companies make, and conditions for workers. (19.06.2020)

Japan confirms scrapping US missile defence system

Issued on: 25/06/2020 -
 

Japanese Defence Minister Taro Kono apologised that the situation with Aegis Ashore 'has come to this' Eric BARADAT AFP

Tokyo (AFP)

Japan has scrapped the deployment of a multi-billion-dollar US anti-missile system, the government confirmed Thursday, days after saying the programme had been suspended.

Interceptors for the Aegis Ashore system were to be placed in two regions under the costly and controversial programme.

But the government reversed course under pressure from local residents concerned about the risks posed by a missile defence system in their backyard.

"The National Security Council discussed this matter and reached the conclusion that the deployment of Aegis Ashore in Akita and Yamaguchi is to be rescinded," Defence Minister Taro Kono told a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

"I want to deeply apologise that it has come to this."

Later Thursday, Kono said Tokyo and Washington were discussing how to fend off missile threats from Pyongyang after dropping the defence system plan.

"There's a threat coming from North Korea," Kono told reporters.

"We have been talking with the United States on how to improve our ballistic missile defence capability or integrated air-missile defence capability," he added.

"So we are trying to make maximum use of what we have contracted with the United States."

The government had originally guaranteed that interceptor missile gear would not land in residential areas near where the system was based.

But last week, when initially announcing that deployment of the system had been suspended, Kano said maintaining that promise would require a costly and time-consuming hardware upgrade.

The Aegis Ashore system, the purchase of which was approved in 2017, was estimated to cost Japan $4.2 billion over three decades.

However, there have been competing claims about whether initial estimates would fall short of the real cost.

The deal to buy the system was seen both as part of attempts by Tokyo to bolster defensive capabilities after North Korean missile launches, as well as a way to foster closer ties with Washington.

US President Donald Trump has pushed allies to buy more American products, including military equipment.

Japan's armed forces have long been restricted to self-defence and the country relies heavily on the US under a bilateral security alliance.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week his government was committed to considering alternatives to the Aegis Ashore system.

"There should not be a gap in our country's defences. We want to hold discussions on the necessary measures," he said.

© 2020 AFP

THE RESCUE OF THE FABULOUS LOST LIBRARY OF DEIR AL-SURIAN 




By Philip McCouat

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF BEING LOST

On the morning of 29 December 1935, the French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry took off from Paris en route to Cochin-China, as a participant in the long-distance Paris-to-Saigon air race. That night, flying towards Casablanca across the dark vastness of the Sahara Desert, with no landmarks, he got lost and crashed. Although the crash site was not far from the isolated ancient monastery settlement of Wadi el-Natrun, it was four days before the parched and ravenous St Exupéry and his co-pilot, exhausted and delusional, would finally be rescued by Bedouin tribesmen [1].


For Saint-Exupéry, it must have seemed like an all-time low – out of the air race, physically and mentally depleted, and with his plane a wreck. But at least he was alive, and the incident would later pay substantial dividends – it would form the basis of his famous book Wind Sand and Stars, and inspire his classic The Little Prince, later voted as the best novel of the 20th century in France. In retrospect, getting lost was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.


More articles on Egypt
Egyptian blue: the colour of technologyEgyptian Blue: the Colour of Technology
Elsheimer’s Elsheimer’s Flight into Egypt: how it changed the boundaries between art, religion and science
The Life and Death of Mummy Brown
Lost Masterpieces of Egyptian Art 

Fig 1: Saint-Exupéry standing at the wreck of Caudron C630 Simoun (Bureau d’Archives des Accidents d’Avions)
Strangely enough, in a quite different context, Wadi el-Natrun itself – and, in particular, its legendary library – would also come to experience the benefits of getting lost. In this case, those benefits would turn out to be virtually priceless. To understand why, we have to backtrack, quite a few millennia.

AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PASTNowadays, Wadi el-Natrun has been nominated for status as a World Heritage site [2] and is quite easily accessible – you will eventually come upon it if you travel from Cairo, into the great Western Desert, and head towards the Mediterranean seaport of Alexandria. ​

Fig 2: Approaching the Syrian Monastery at Wadi el-Natrun
It’s best known now as a destination for travellers wishing to see the four stunning Coptic Christian monasteries, the only survivors of dozens that were built as part of a Christian settlement at the Wadi dating back to the 4th century -- St Macarius, St Pshoi, the Monastery of the Romans and the Monastery of the Syrians [3].

Fig 3: Inside the Syrian Monastery at Wadi el-Natrun
As old as these buildings are, however, the human history of the Wadi goes back even further, in fact over 4,000 years, to the ancient Egyptians. Back then, the Wadi was one of the principal sources of “natron”, the salt which gives the Wadi its name [4]. This natron occurs in solution in a number of seasonal alkaline lakes dotted round the surrounding desert, fed from an underground water table that stretches from the Nile Delta, where the Nile reaches the Mediterranean. These lakes dry out during summer, leaving white evaporitic deposits of natron forming a crust around their edges and in deposits on their bottom [5].

Fig 4: Otto Pilny, At the Wadi Natron Salt Lake (1901), showing evaporative deposits
For the ancient Egyptians, and later the Romans, natron was a precious commodity. It was used to make glass and ceramics, as a soldering agent, medicines, soap and cleaning, toothpaste, mouthwash and food preservative. In addition, as we have discussed elsewhere, the Egyptians used natron as an ingredient in the creation of a blue pigment that was used extensively in Egyptian art (see our article on Egyptian Blue). Even more importantly, natron’s most prominent use was in the process of mummification, a central aspect of Egyptian religious practice, as detailed in our article on Mummy Brown. This central role in both business and cultural life led to the Wadi being known to the Egyptians as the “Field of Salt” and becoming part of a major trade route [6]. 

READ ON http://www.artinsociety.com/the-rescue-of-the-fabulous-lost-library-of-deir-al-surian.html

PETITE BOURGEOIS MORALITY

FROM THE ROKEBY VENUS TO FASCISM
PT 1: WHY DID SUFFRAGETTES ATTACK ARTWORKS?

By Philip McCouat

THE ATTACK ON THE ROKEBY VENUS

Just on 100 years ago, a small soberly-dressed woman carrying a sketch book entered the National Gallery in London and physically attacked one of the most famous nude paintings in the world (Fig 1). 

Fig 1: Diego Velásquez, Venus at her Mirror (1647-51)

It was just after 10 o’clock on the morning of 10 March 1914 [1]. The painting, Velásquez’s so-called “Rokeby Venus” [2], was standing on an easel in Room 17, temptingly accessible. The woman stepped forward, took a narrow meat chopper which had been concealed up her sleeve and began swinging, getting in what she later described as several “lovely shots”, smashing the protective glass and making numerous large slashes in the painted canvas (Fig 3). The room attendant’s initial belief that the breaking glass was coming from a skylight gave the woman precious time to carry out the attack, and the delay in stopping her was compounded by the attendant slipping on the recently-polished floor when running to intervene. However, the attacker was eventually restrained, and arrested. On the next day, now identified as the well-known militant suffragette Mary Richardson (Fig 2), she was convicted on charges of malicious damage, and sentenced to the maximum penalty of six months imprisonment.

Fig 2: Mary Richardson

Fig 3: The slashed canvas

After Richardson’s arrest, she explained her actions on the basis that, “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas” [3]. “Mrs Pankhurst” was Emmeline Pankhurst, the campaigner for women’s voting rights and leader of the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), who had been arrested in extraordinarily violent circumstances the day before. Richardson’s view was that if people were outraged about her own attack on the painting, which was a mere representation of physical beauty, they should be equally or more outraged over the government’s treatment of Pankhurst, a real embodiment of moral beauty.

Richardson insisted that as a student of art herself it had been difficult for her to damage such a beautiful work, but that her hand had been forced by the government’s indifference to the suffragist cause [4]. She also added “You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs Pankhurst" [5]. In her autobiography [6], Richardson also said that the high financial value of the painting made it a suitable surrogate for the high value of Mrs Pankhurst. A less elevated consideration emerged in an interview Richardson gave some decades later: “I didn’t like the way men visitors to the gallery gaped at it all day” [7].

“A BODY FOR DON JUANESQUE FANTASIES” 

In many ways the Rokeby Venus was an ideal target for suffragette attack. As the commentators Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen say, it was originally painted to display “a body for Don Juanesque fantasies” in a country (Spain) in which extreme machismo was the hallmark and women were regarded as “inferior, voiceless and … easy prey”. They add that “few other paintings celebrate, so aesthetically and alluringly, the reduction of Woman to a physical body, to the object of male desire. Venus's face, which might reveal something of her individuality and mind, is blurred in the mirror, while her curving pelvis is placed in the centre of the composition. The dark sheet sets off Venus's skin to particular advantage and is almost like a dish on which the beautiful goddess is presented” [8].

Although being regarded as the first known painting of a nude by a Spanish artist [8A] – the next one would not be until Goya's Naked Maja more than a century later – the Venus escaped censure from the Inquisition only by the fact that it was nominally of a mythological subject, and had been painted under the personal protection of the licentious Spanish King Philip IV. All in all, then, the idea of attacking it could well seem attractive to a fighter for women's rights. As an added bonus, attacking the painting would enable Richardson to come as near as possible to blood-shedding without actually infringing the suffragettes’ policy of not endangering human life [9].

READ ON 

http://www.artinsociety.com/from-the-rokeby-venus-to-fascism-pt-1-why-did-suffragettes-attack-artworks.html

BRITISH ARYANISM BECOMES POLICING
FROM THE ROKEBY VENUS TO FASCISM
PART 2: THE STRANGE ALLURE OF FASCISM

By Philip McCouat
THE PATH TO A "GREATER BRITAIN"?
After the war, Mary Richardson, the hero/villain of the Rokeby Venus attack, adopted a son and settled in Cambridgeshire to raise ducks with a friend, and to pursue her literary career. It is difficult to imagine a more striking contrast with her earlier life of high excitement. Evidently, however, she still hankered for a public platform. She stood for Parliament a number of times, though with little success [49], and it must have seemed that her action days might be behind her. She was, however moving rapidly to the Right. In 1933, after previously flirting with the New Party in 1932, she joined the charismatic Oswald Mosley's recently- formed British Union of Fascists (BUF).
---------------------------------------
For Part 1 of this article, see here. and for other articles on art and war, see:
The Isenheim Altarpiece Pt 2: Nationalism, Nazism and DegeneracyThe Isenheim Altarpiece Pt 2: nationalism, nazism and degeneracy
Bellotto and the reconstruction of Warsaw
The shocking birth and amazing career of Guernica
------------------------------------------------

She quickly rose up through the BUF’s ranks. By 1934, she was Chief Organiser of the Women’s Section of the party, a highly prestigious and responsible position that had originally been held by Mosley's wife Cynthia. She opened a national Club for Fascist Women in London, spoke at BUF branch meetings, was a fiery chief speaker at outdoor and street corner meetings, wrote regularly for the Fascist press, and even organised the quaintly-named Blackshirt Cabaret Ball.

She said that she saw Fascism as the “only path to a 'Greater Britain'” and that she felt “certain that women will play a large part in establishing Fascism in this country” [50]. However, despite these high initial hopes, she ultimately left the BUF in 1935/6 for reasons that are disputed, but seem to have involved her having organised a meeting protesting against the unequal remuneration of women employed by the movement [51].

You may wonder why a person such as Richardson, who had dedicated and sacrificed herself to the cause of gaining the vote, would have joined an organisation which favoured an undemocratic, totalitarian government with ultimate power vested in a supreme leader. However, Richardson herself claimed that there was a logical continuity with her militant suffragette activities: “I was first attracted to the Blackshirts because I saw in them the courage, the action, the loyalty, the gift of service and the ability to serve which I had known in the suffragette movement. When I later discovered that Blackshirts were attacked for no visible cause or reason I admired them the more when they hit back and hit back hard” [52].

For Richardson, it was similar to the overwhelming almost-religious conversion she had experienced years earlier when she heard Mrs Pankhurst speak. She later recalled that at her first meeting with the BUF leader Mosley, “I cannot remember a single word of what was said on that momentous occasion. But the words did not matter. In some strange way I was inspired by the atmosphere of that great gathering. ‘We will fight’, I kept on repeating to myself”[53].

THE OTHER SUFFRAGETTE FASCISTS

Of course, the vast majority of ex-suffragettes did not embrace Fascism as Richardson did. Many, such as Sylvia Pankhurst, actively opposed it. But in addition to Richardson there were two other notable ex-suffragettes that later went on to prominent positions in the Fascist movement. They were Norah Elam [54] and Mary Sophia Allen [55]. The careers of both of these women are instructive in considering the motives, or claimed motives, of the various types of person that Fascism attracted.

For Allen, Mrs Pankhurst's closure of the militant campaign on the outbreak of war came as a “bewildering blow”. “I won’t pretend that we like it!” she wrote later. At the time, she said, she was “actively – and shall I admit it, delightedly – planning some further burnings of empty houses, in which we had been so successful of late” [67]. The change of focus left her bereft of adventurous ways of serving her country. Hardly surprisingly, she scorned the offer of a job as organiser for Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild (!), and along with a number of other suffragette women she joined the first Women Police Service (WPS) – a somewhat ironic choice, given her criminal record and history of resisting police. She became second-in-command to Margaret Dawson – who became her partner – and some years later took over as Commandant after Margaret died [68].

READ ON http://www.artinsociety.com/from-the-rokeby-venus-to-fascism-pt-2-the-strange-allure-of-fascism.html

PRIDE MONTH FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

REVOLUTIONARY LOVE 

 REVOLUTIONARY SOLIDARITY 

 "OUR ARMY IS AN ARMY OF LIBERATION

 OF THE PROLETARIAT"

J. STALIN 1939 

THE STATE HAS NO GEOGRAPHY

https://libcom.org/library/state-its-historic-role-peter-kropotkin

http://www.artinsociety.com/lost-in-translation-bruegelrsquos-tower-of-babel-new-page.html#

Dolphins learn in similar ways to great apes

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

DOLPHIN'S PROVE ADVANCED COGNITIVE TOOL MAKING, TOOL USING, FOR THOSE WITHOUT HANDS (NOT A DISABILITY A DIFFERENT ABILITY)  AND TEACHING ABILITIES TO OTHERS, TRANSFER  OF KNOWLEDGE, EPISTEMOLOGY BY ANY OTHER NAME 

ANOTHER THINKING MAMMAL WHERE HAVE WE HEARD OF THEM BEFORE

The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man

http://www.rawillumination.net/2018/07/intelligent-dolphins-and-illuminatus.html

     

Howard | The Illuminatus! Trilogy Wiki | Fandom

https://illuminatus.fandom.com › wiki › Howard

Howard is a dolphin,and one of the earliest allies of Hagbard Celine to appear in the trilogy...

https://www.media.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:bdc17949-71e7-447f-bec3-46435d800a1b/Delfin_Shelling_EN.mp4

VIDEO: DURING SHELLING, DOLPHINS TRAP FISHES INSIDE LARGE EMPTY GASTROPOD SHELLS. THEY ARE THEN BROUGHT TO THE SURFACE AND VIGOROUSLY SHAKEN SO THE FISH FALLS INTO THEIR OPEN MOUTH. view more 

CREDIT: SONJA WILD, DOLPHIN INNOVATION PROJECT

Dolphins use unusual techniques to obtain food: One of them, called "shelling", is used by the dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia. Dolphins in this population trap fishes inside large empty gastropod shells. The shells are then brought to the surface and vigorously shaken so that the water drains out and the fish falls into their open mouth. Using the empty shell in this manner is comparable to tool use in humans.

Dolphins learn directly from their peers

It was previously thought the only way dolphins could learn new foraging methods while with their mother, a process known as vertical social transmission. However, a study initiated by Michael Krützen, director of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Zurich (UZH), has now shown that "shelling" is mainly passed on between peers rather than across generations - that is, via horizontal transmission. "Our results provide the first evidence that dolphins are also capable of learning from their peers as adults," says Krützen. The analysis of extensive behavioral, genetic and environmental data spanning more than a decade led to these findings.

Cultural behavior similar to that of great apes

"This is an important milestone. It shows that cultural behavior of dolphins and other toothed whales is much more similar to the behavior of great apes, including humans, than was previously thought," says Krützen. Gorillas and chimpanzees also learn new foraging techniques through both vertical and horizontal transmission. Although their evolutionary history and their environments are very different, there are striking similarities between cetaceans and great apes, according to Krützen: "Both are long-lived mammals with large brains that are capable of innovation and of passing on cultural behaviors."

Behavioral observation over more than 10 years

The researchers made their discovery between 2007 and 2018 in the Western Gulf Zone of Shark Bay, where they observed Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) and documented how the shelling behavior was spread within the population. During this time, they identified more than 1,000 individuals from around 5,300 encounters with dolphin groups. "In total we documented 42 individual uses of shelling by 19 different dolphins," says study leader Sonja Wild, who completed her PhD at the University of Leeds, and is now a postdoc at the University of Konstanz.

Quicker adaptation to changing environments

This discovery that wild dolphins can learn new foraging techniques outside of the mother-calf bond significantly widens our understanding of how they can adapt to fluctuating environmental conditions through behavioral changes. "Learning from others allows for a rapid spread of novel behaviors across populations," says Wild.

For example, an unprecedented marine heatwave in 2011 was responsible for wiping out a large number of fish and invertebrates in Shark Bay, including the gastropods inhabiting the shells. "While we can only speculate as to whether the heatwave and subsequent prey depletion gave the dolphins a boost to adopt new foraging behavior from their associates, it seems quite possible that an abundance of dead shells may have increased learning opportunities for shelling behavior," says Sonja Wild.

Uganda's Ik are not unbelievably selfish and mean

Small ethnic group is cooperative and generous, contrary to 1972 book portrayal

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

IMAGE: IK WOMEN SHARING A MEAL. view more 

CREDIT: CATHRYN TOWNSEND

The Ik, a small ethnic group in Uganda, are not incredibly selfish and mean as portrayed in a 1972 book by a prominent anthropologist, according to a Rutgers-led study.

Instead, the Ik are quite cooperative and generous with one another, and their culture features many traits that encourage generosity, according to the study in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences.

"The Mountain People," an ethnography by anthropologist Colin M. Turnbull, made a big splash for an academic work. The New York Times and Time magazine reviewed the book, which inspired a stage play, and physician Lewis Thomas included an essay about the Ik in his bestselling book "The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher."

The Ik live in the far northeast corner of Uganda, near its borders with Kenya and South Sudan. A Rutgers-led team of scientists studied them as part of The Human Generosity Project, a transdisciplinary effort to better understand generosity and other forms of cooperation among people around the world.

The scientists included the Ik in their project because of Turnbull's claim that, far from being generous, the Ik were extraordinarily selfish and mean. He attributed the selfish behaviors he witnessed to a culture of selfishness.

Lead author Cathryn Townsend, a former Rutgers post-doctoral scientist and faculty member now at Baylor University, spent 2016 with the Ik and returned briefly in 2017 and 2018. She discovered that their culture includes many traits that encourage generosity. For example, a favorite Ik saying is tomora marang, which means "it's good to share," and many Ik believe that Earth spirits called kijawika monitor people's behavior, punish those who fail to share and reward the very generous.

Townsend also documented Ik generosity quantitatively using an experimental game, finding they're no less generous, on average, than any of the hundreds of other groups of people in the world who have played the same game.

Why, then, did Turnbull observe so much selfishness among the Ik? Although Turnbull was aware that they experienced a severe famine while he was there, he failed to appreciate the impact starvation has on human behavior. Instead, he followed a common tendency among cultural anthropologists to attribute all human behavior to culture.

"One implication of Townsend's work is that we must always consider the possibility that factors other than culture, including but not limited to starvation, can also shape human behavior," said senior author Lee Cronk, a professor in the Department of Anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Another implication is that we can no longer use the Ik as an example of a society that has embraced selfishness. Far from being an exception, the Ik are just as cooperative and generous as other people around the world. They do not deserve the reputation they have been given by Turnbull's book."

Townsend plans to return to the Ik to continue her studies of how they cooperate. She will be looking in particular at how they are interdependent with one another.

###

Coauthors include Athena Aktipis at Arizona State University and Daniel Balliet at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

CHILE
Papers concludes that incentives to afforestation can be harmful to the environment

UNIVERSIDAD DE CONCEPCIÓN

IMAGE: SATELLITE IMAGE OF THE BIOBIO AND ARAUCANÍA COAST view more 

CREDIT: CRISTIAN ECHEVERRÍA

"Through a counterfactual analysis, we showed that between 1986 and 2011 the incentives to afforestation in Chile caused an increase in forest plantations, but reduced the extent of native forests", explains the academic from the Faculty of Forest Sciences at the Universidad de Concepción, UdeC, Dr. Cristian Echeverría, about the main conclusions of the paper Impacts of Chilean forest subsidies on forest cover, carbon and biodiversity, published by the journal Nature Sustainability, co-written with academicians Robert Heilmayr from the U. of California, and Eric F. Lambin of Stanford University, both from the United States.

For the UdeC researcher, this international collaboration was of the "highest scientific standard, with great strictness and close cooperation in the stages of formulation of the idea, preparation of the manuscript and data analysis", he sustains and explains that the idea of the study emerged "about seven years ago, when the other authors got interested in my research related to deforestation in Chile. After publishing a joint paper about land use changes in Chile, we decided to continue the collaboration between the Landscape Ecology Laboratory, LEP, and U. Stanford to answer new scientific questions"

In the same way, the study -which aims to assess the impacts of an incentive to afforestation on carbon sequestration, forest cover and biodiversity- was possible thanks to various sources of financing and information, given that "having classified maps of satellite images was an immense task of the three universities", says Echeverría, adding that they had "financing from various Fondecyt projects and from the LEP's own resources and other funds obtained by the leading author, Robert Heilmayr, during his PhD studies", he details.

Regarding the main scientific conclusions of the recent study, Echeverría details that the increasing establishment of exotic plantations caused "small negative impacts on the total carbon stored in the above-ground biomass. Additionally, the policy produced the substitution of native forests for plantation which resulted in a significant decrease in the richness of species of flora and fauna".

In the researcher's opinion, based on the results of this study, it is possible to "strengthen research in the evaluation of the impact of environmental policies on other components, such as, for example, ecosystem services; evaluating current policies on native forests and other environmental matters; identifying the most critical areas of biodiversity loss for the design of restoration plans. In addition, contributing with new evidence on the future impacts that the NdC (Nationally Determined Contributions) of Chile would have on the design of mitigation measures and adaptation to climate change".

"The reforestation and restoration policies that the country is currently pursuing need to be carefully designed and firmly applied to ensure the protection of natural ecosystems. Such safeguards can improve the benefits of a policy, as well as its impacts on carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation", states the UdeC academician.

###

Researchers identify N95 respirator decontamination method using microwave-generated steam

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY

 

Washington, DC - June 25, 2020 - Due to the rapid spread of COVID-19, there is an increasing shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) crucial to protecting health care workers from infection. N95 respirators are recommended by the CDC as the ideal protection method from COVID-19 and, although traditionally single-use, PPE shortages have necessitated the need for reuse. New research published this week in mBio an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, describes an effective, standardized method of decontamination for hospitals and health care centers facing N95 respirator shortages.

The researchers, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, have detailed a reproducible decontamination approach that all health care workers would be able to utilize. "We identified an effective method of N95 decontamination by microwave-generated steam utilizing universally accessible materials. Our method resulted in almost complete sterilization after only 3 min of treatment and did not appear to affect the integrity of N95 filtration or fit with repeated treatment," the researchers write.

###

Please email communications@asmusa.org for a copy of the study or to arrange an interview with the researchers.

The American Society for Microbiology is one of the largest professional societies dedicated to the life sciences and is composed of 30,000 scientists and health practitioners. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences.

ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications and educational opportunities. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences.

KUNG-FU FIGHTING

Tiny brains, big surprise: Eavesdropping wasps gain insights about fighting abilities of potential rivals

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Paper wasps eavesdrop on fighting rivals to rapidly assess potential opponents without personal risk. This new finding adds to mounting evidence that even mini-brained insects have an impressive capacity to learn, remember and make social deductions about others.

Many vertebrate animals--including some birds and fish and numerous primates--minimize the costs of conflict by using "social eavesdropping" to learn about the fighting ability of potential rivals before interacting with them personally.

Keeping track of a network of individually differentiated social relationships is thought to be cognitively challenging and, until recently, was considered to be beyond the reach of lowly insects like paper wasps, which have brains a million times smaller than the human brain.

But a growing body of evidence suggests that the miniature nervous systems of insects do not limit sophisticated behaviors. The capacity for complex insect behavior may be shaped more by social environment than brain size, according to University of Michigan biologist Elizabeth Tibbetts, senior author of a paper scheduled for publication June 25 in the journal Current Biology.

"It is surprising that wasps can observe and remember a complex network of social interactions between individuals without directly interacting with them," said Tibbetts, a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Complex social relationships are thought to favor the evolution of large brains and increased social intelligence, but paper wasp brains are relatively small."

In the study, Tibbetts and her students collected female Polistes fuscatus paper wasps from sites around Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the early spring.

Unlike a honeybee colony--which has a single queen and multiple equally ranked female workers--paper wasp colonies contain several reproductive females called foundresses. These females battle their rivals and form complex, linear dominance hierarchies based on the outcomes of those fights. A wasp's rank in the hierarchy determines its share of reproduction, work and food.

In the laboratory, the researchers used enamel to mark all foundresses with unique color patterns on the thorax. Then, two at a time, "fighter" wasps were placed in a small container known as the fighting arena while two "bystander" wasps observed the pair through clear plastic partitions.

All trials were videotaped, and a research assistant assigned scores to each fighter using an aggression index that awards points for behaviors like biting, mounting, grappling and stinging. Dominance rank was determined using the number of mounts--a dominance behavior in which the dominant wasp drums her antennae on the subordinate while the subordinate crouches and lowers her antennae--during a fight.

Later, bystander wasps were paired in the fighting arena either with a wasp they had observed (experimental trial) or a fighter they had never seen before (control trial). Tibbetts and her students compared the behaviors in the experimental and control trials to determine the role of social eavesdropping.

They found that bystander wasps were more aggressive when paired with an individual that was the victim of lots of aggression in a previous bout, as well as individuals who initiated very little aggression in the previous fight.

By comparing experimental and control trials, the researchers were also able to reject non-eavesdropping explanations for the observations, including phenomena called priming and winner/loser effects.

"The results show that P. fuscatus wasps use social eavesdropping," Tibbetts said. "Bystanders observe other individuals fight, and they use information about the fight to modulate subsequent behavior."

In previous studies over more than a decade, Tibbetts and her colleagues showed that paper wasps recognize individuals of their species by variations in their facial markings, and they behave more aggressively toward wasps with unfamiliar faces.

They also demonstrated that paper wasps have surprisingly long memories and base their behavior on what they remember of previous social interactions.

But the previous work focused on how wasps use individual recognition during direct interactions and did not test--as this new study did--whether wasps learn about other individuals via observation alone.

###

In addition to Tibbetts, the authors of the Current Biology paper are Ellery Wong and Sarah Bonello of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Elizabeth Tibbetts

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16Mnm_5tFd9nanRwkt3KD4WM2nI3DgMij

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b-JEtsLyxfYHJDv8tF-CESMGb5Rk1AbO/view

Women underrepresented in academic hospital medicine leadership roles, study finds

JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE

 

IMAGE: A NEW STUDY BY JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE RESEARCHERS SHOWS THAT WOMEN ARE UNDERREPRESENTED AS DIRECTORS AND FULL PROFESSORS IN ACADEMIC HOSPITAL MEDICAL PROGRAMS ACROSS THE NATION. view more 

CREDIT: M.E. NEWMAN, JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE

In recent years, the number of women who entered U.S. medical school surpassed the number of men. But gender inequities still exist in many areas of medicine. Of academic hospital medicine programs, 79% are run by men, Johns Hopkins researchers report in a new paper published March 3 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and male hospitalist leaders are more likely to have attained the rank of full professor than women leaders.

"Despite making a number of strides in medicine when it comes to gender bias, this is an area where we still haven't reached full equality," says Carrie Herzke, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and associate vice chair for clinical affairs in the Department of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Previous studies found that, in academic medicine, women comprise only 39% of full-time faculty and 22% of full-time professors. They are also significantly underrepresented in hospital leadership positions, and there are gender disparities regarding career advancement and compensation.

Hospital medicine as a dedicated medical specialty is a relatively young field. "Hospitalists" who are trained in internal medicine and focus their work on hospitalized patients rather than outpatient settings have only existed for about two decades. Due to how new the field is, some speculate it may have fewer gender imbalances than more established fields of medicine.

In collaboration with the Society of Hospital Medicine, Herzke and her colleagues conducted a survey of all U.S. academic hospital programs associated with the Association of American Medical Colleges. After identifying 135 programs, surveys were sent electronically to academic hospitalist leaders of each program. Participants were asked about the gender of the hospitalist program leader, the program's size and organization, faculty characteristics, and perceptions about promotion and faculty development.

"We had a sense that there were some gender issues when people had looked at these areas before," says Herzke. "Obviously, our hope was that we would see fewer inequities in our data."

Of the 135 programs, 80 responded to the survey, and responding programs did not differ significantly from nonresponding programs in terms of funding, region, age or type of institution. While programs reported approximately equal numbers of male and female faculty members, 79% of program directors were male. Moreover, 37% of male hospitalist leaders were full professors while no female hospitalist leaders held that rank.

"Even in this new specialty, we don't have gender parity," says Herzke. "There have been numerous studies suggesting that programs, and society in general, do better when we have more diverse teams and diverse leadership."

###

Herzke and her colleagues plan more studies to look at promotion and faculty development in academic hospital medicine. Also, they plan similar studies to understand if there are issues with racial inequity in leadership in academic hospital medicine. This topic in particular, says Herzke, is incredibly important to evaluate and, if inequality exists, address.

In addition to Carrie Herzke, authors of the Journal of General Internal Medicine paper are Amanda Bertram, Hsin-Chieh Yeh, Ariella Apfel and Joseph Cofrancesco Jr. of Johns Hopkins and Joanna Bonsall of Emory University.

The authors received no financial support for the research