Trees are not always a miracle cure for improving air quality

by Sandrine Perroud, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Donato Kofel has quantified the positive and negative effects of trees on outdoor air quality in Geneva Canton. His method can be used by city planners to design their large-scale planting programs more effectively.

For his EPFL Master's project in environmental sciences and engineering, Kofel delved into the world of geographic information systems (GIS), a type of advanced mapping software. "These maps convey a lot of information in a single image, in a way that lets people grasp it all immediately," he says.

For his Master's project at the end of his degree program, Kofel developed a new way to use the GIS application to study how trees in Geneva Canton are affecting the region's air quality. His work formed part of the broader URBTREES study being carried out by three labs at EPFL's School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC): the Extreme Environments Research Laboratory, headed by Julia Schmale; the Plant Ecology Research Laboratory, headed by Charlotte Grossiord; and the Design Studio on the Conception of Space, headed jointly by Dieter Dietz and Daniel Zamarbide.

Positive and negative effects

To conduct his research, Kofel drew on a Geneva Canton tree inventory containing around 240,000 "isolated" trees, or trees located outside of a forest. These can be trees lining a boulevard, for example, or planted in a city park. The isolated trees in the Geneva inventory make up around 25% of the canton's total trees. The inventory lists several tree characteristics such as the species, location, trunk height, trunk diameter and crown diameter.

"I used these data to generate maps of the trees' total leaf area, which in turn gives an indication of their ability to filter out particulate matter from the air," says Kofel. In parallel, he also studied another important process: the trees' role in ozone formation and deposition.

Trees naturally emit biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) at a rate that depends on factors such as the tree species, air temperature and humidity, amount of sunlight and whether the trees have been damaged or stressed. These BVOCs are then converted into ozone through photochemical oxidation with other compounds in the air that are emitted by human activities—and ozone is known to negatively affect our health and the environment. He estimated the ozone forming potential of the trees' emissions: "I was surprised to find out that trees can also have a detrimental effect on air quality under certain conditions," says Kofel.

Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

A quarter of particulate matter filtered

He began his Master's project by compiling the literature on the 51 most common tree species in Geneva Canton and using this information to calculate their hourly BVOC emission rates. He learns that some species of oak, the type of tree most often found along the canton's streets and in its parks, have some of the highest BVOC emission rates—and therefore the greatest ozone-forming potential—among all species he looked at.

Kofel worked with fellow EPFL Master's student Romana Paganini and scientist Ilann Bourgeois to run the data through the i-Tree Eco model. With this open-source application, they estimated how much particulate matter and ozone is filtered by the trees each year to emphasize the positive effect of urban trees.

Kofel's maps suggest that urban trees removed around 25% of particulate matter produced from anthropogenic activity in Geneva Canton (according to the 2014 emissions assessment for French-speaking Switzerland). He also found that the ozone-forming potential of these trees is around 10 times higher than their ozone-removing potential, and that they emit 130 metric tons of BVOCs per year—equal to around 18% of the VOCs emitted annually by road traffic.

The results show that anthropogenic activities emit enough nitrogen oxides for the right chemical reactions to happen. In other words, there is potential to reduce ozone formation coming from the trees by reducing human emissions of nitrogen oxides depending on the actual mix of BVOCs and nitrogen oxides.

No miracle cure in all conditions

So there's no clear-cut answer to just how good urban trees are for air quality when the combination with anthropogenic emissions can lead to additional air pollution. Kofel believes more in-depth studies are needed: "There are still some question marks surrounding our estimates, and I'm working to make them more robust. Also we did not take into account the formation potential of particulate matter from BVOCs," he says.

"But for now, our findings show that even though trees can make a major contribution to improving urban air quality, they're not a miracle cure in all conditions. The problem of air pollution needs to be tackled at the source by addressing the issue of road traffic and other emission sources." Kofel adds that once he has finalized his calculations, city officials can use his maps to determine which tree species are best suited for public areas in order to improve air quality in neighborhoods with the highest amount of air pollution.

One thing that motivated Kofel during his Master's project was knowing that Geneva Canton officials would be interested in his method and findings—he presented them twice to the air quality and noise pollution office of the canton's environment department. He's also preparing an article based on his Master's thesis for publication in a scientific journal.

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Throwing shade: Model maps NYC street trees' cooling benefits

They aren't just names': Survivors, activists remember women killed at Polytechnique


MONTREAL — Scaled-back ceremonies and pandemic-muted tributes did little to mask the raw emotion of those who gathered on Sunday to commemorate the 31st anniversary of a misogyny-motivated shooting at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Survivors and activists held sombre, physically distanced events to mark the occasion and redouble their calls for more urgent action on the long-standing issue of violence against women.

Nathalie Provost remembers holding classmate Nathalie Croteau's hand that day when a gunman motivated by a hatred of feminists opened fire on campus, killing 14 women and injuring a dozen other people.

“When it happened, we were there, side-by-side. Barbara [Klucznik-Widajewicz], too,” said Provost, who was shot four times in the attack on December 6, 1989.

Croteau and Klucznik-Widajewicz were among the day's victims, many of them engineering students, who were killed during the massacre.

“For me, they aren't just names," Provost said on Sunday during a small gathering to remember the women in a Montreal park named in their honour.

Even 31 years after they were killed, Provost said there can be no quiet mourning for the dead while the fight to prevent violence against women takes on increasing urgency.

"As a society, we still have struggles to lead that are too important," she said.

The Polytechnique killings are commemorated annually, but this year's events have been scaled down significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event in the park was streamed online.

Canada has designated Dec. 6 as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, a chance to mourn and demand concrete policies to protect women across the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a statement describing the Polytechnique massacre as "a tragic and senseless act of violence" that cut short the promising lives of "daughters, sisters and friends."

"We still have a lot of work to do to ensure that they can live without injustice, without misogyny, and without fear," he said.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault said all Quebecers remembered the tragedy.

"We have a duty to remember, but also a duty to act," he tweeted.

Sunday's events marked the culmination of 12 days of action organized by Quebec-based activists and community groups bent on combatting violence against women.

At Sunday afternoon's event, Sue Montgomery, the mayor of the Montreal borough where the park is located, said she had to fight to have the Polytechnique attack recognized as an act of femicide.

Last year, the language of a commemorative plaque in the park, known as Place du 6-decembre-1989, was changed to describe the events as an "antifeminist attack."

"These 14 human beings, these 14 women, were killed because they’re women," Montgomery said. "Because they had dreams, because they dared to dream to have careers and to make a difference in this world."

Several speakers also stressed the importance of combatting violence against marginalized women, including those identifying as Indigenous, disabled or as members of the LGBTQ community.

Jessica Quijano of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal said she could not name all the Indigenous women who have died in the city because the list is so long.

"My heart is so broken," she said.

Quijano called for government action to address the high rates of violence and systemic racism in provincial institutions that she said Indigenous women face as a matter of course.

"What is it going to take for our politicians to actually listen to the voices of Indigenous women and women … who have been talking about these issues for decades?" she said.

Marlihan Lopez, vice-president of the Federation des femmes du Quebec, echoed the sentiment and called for deeper understanding of how systemic racism contributes to gender-based violence.

"If we can't recognize what it is, we can't combat it," she said. "If we can't combat it, we won't be able to move forward in the fight against violence against women."

The sober, early-afternoon ceremony was not the only commemorative event set to honour the anniversary.

Fourteen beams of light, representing each of the Polytechnique victims, were projected into the sky from a lookout on Mount Royal on Sunday evening.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante, Polytechnique director Philippe Tanguy, and the sister of one of the victims, Catherine Bergeron, planned to lay a wreath of roses. Plante also encouraged local residents to light a candle in memory of the victims.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2020.

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL

Scaled-back, virtual ceremonies to mark 31st anniversary of Polytechnique killings

MONTREAL — The anniversary of the attack that cut short the lives of 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique has become a day to reflect and call for action to end gender-based violence, but this year those moments will largely take place alone rather than in groups.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Most of the traditional events, including wreath-layings, speeches and a ceremony to project beams of light into the sky from the Mount Royal lookout, will proceed either virtually or without crowds in what one survivor of the shooting says is sure to be a "difficult" year.

"There’s a lot of human warmth in my life surrounding Dec. 6, a lot of emotions linked to those gatherings, and this year it's a lot cooler," said Nathalie Provost, who was shot four times when a gunman stormed Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.

Fourteen women, many of them engineering students, were killed and more than a dozen people were injured in an attack motivated by the gunman's hatred towards women.

Provost, spokeswoman for gun control group PolySeSouvient, said the efforts to remember the event have gone on, even though health regulations mean people can't congregate in-person.

Earlier this week, a $30,000 scholarship known as the Order of the White Rose was presented to Cree student Brielle Chanae Thorsen, who Provost describes as an "amazing young woman" and engineering student.

And on Sunday at noon, Provost will join a panel of speakers at a park named in honour of the women for a commemoration that will be broadcast online.

But Provost fears participation may be lower this year, noting people are tired of staring at screens.

"Gatherings are important for mourning and for commemoration, and now we’re trying to do them virtually, and my impression is that it’s much harder to achieve," she said.

This diminished participation may come at a time when advocates say the issue of gender-based violence is more urgent than ever.

Elisabeth Fluet-Asselin, a spokeswoman for the Quebec Women's Federation, said the pandemic has led to increased demand for women's shelter space, difficulty in accessing services, and mental health struggles brought on by isolation. She said some groups are particularly affected, including Indigenous women, members of the LGBTQ community, women with disabilities and those in prison.

In addition to a Sunday ceremony at a Montreal park, the federation has organized a number of virtual events as part of its 12 days of action, including podcasts, videos, panel discussions, and art and poetry events -- all designed to highlight and denounce the systemic nature of gender-based violence.

"Violence against women is not just physical, domestic, or sexual, there are lots of other kinds and we can’t forget them, especially in the current context," Fluet-Asselin said in an interview.

Provost, for her part, worries about a rise in online abuse spread on social media, which she said can lead to real, violent consequences.

Over the years, Provost said her own emotions surrounding what happened to her during the massacre tend to ebb and flow.

This year, she mostly feels tired, and frustrated at the slow pace of change when it comes to gun control.

Provost said she was encouraged by a previously announced federal plan to ban some 1,500 types of assault-style firearms. But she said there's still much she'd like to see, including a ban on handguns, stronger tools for police to intervene in so-called "red flag" situations, and action to address the guns currently in circulation.

Eventually, she hopes to turn the page on the shooting, and let the anniversary become a day of quiet remembrance. Instead, she says the opposite seems to be happening as victims of shootings in Toronto, Quebec City and Nova Scotia add their voices to those calling for change.

"We don’t need any more commemorations," she said.

"We don’t want to create new ones. We want it to stop."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 5, 2020

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press

Liberal government's 'empty shell' firearms bill unlikely to curb violence, gun control advocate warns
Jesse Snyder 


OTTAWA — Gun control advocates are blasting Ottawa’s “empty shell” firearms legislation, saying its primary function is to provide Liberal talking points rather than curb gun violence through sensible reforms.

© Provided by National Post Ecole Polytechnique shooting survivor Heidi Rathjen: “The point of banning assault weapons is to say that these are guns that are too dangerous to leave in the hands of ordinary Canadians.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has drawn fierce criticism from both sides of the firearms debate with the tabling of Bill C-21, which extends some penalties for firearms-related offences. Many gun owners say the legislation arbitrarily targets law-abiding citizens, while gun control advocates say it fails to get guns out of the hands of potential risks to the public.

Perhaps most notably, the legislation does not enforce the Liberal government’s promised buyback program, instead allowing Canadians to keep their newly prohibited rifles but not use them.

“I don’t understand the political calculation, and it’s all the more baffling that the bill is an empty shell,” said Heidi Rathjen, who survived the 1989 mass shooting at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. The decision by the Liberal government to stop short of its mandatory buyback is evidence of a contradictory position by Ottawa, Rathjen said, who has repeatedly said prohibited firearms cannot be left in the possession of civilians.

“The point of banning assault weapons is to say that these are guns that are too dangerous to leave in the hands of ordinary Canadians,” said Rathjen, who founded Poly Remembers, a gun control advocacy group.

The firearms buyback program came as part of an order in council issued by the Trudeau government on May 1, which immediately outlawed 11 semi-automatic rifle styles, including well over 1,500 firearm variants. 

Ottawa had said it would buy back “all” citizen-owned firearms included under the order, following a two-year amnesty. The government has so far struggled to secure private-sector bidders to design the buyback, which some experts estimate could cost well over $1 billion.

Bill C-21 modestly expands a number of existing laws, like lengthened prison sentences for people who smuggle firearms or who manipulate gun magazines beyond their legal limit. Changes to “red flag” laws grant expanded powers to courts to search and seize the possessions of gun owners.

But most of the changes amount only to half measures, Rathjen said. A recommendation by Poly Remembers to ban the sale of any magazine that can be manipulated, for example, was dismissed by Ottawa, who instead introduced increased penalties that are unlikely to prevent would-be killers from using higher capacity clips.

“There’s so many of these little things that once you scratch the surface under the talking points, there’s not much underneath,” Rathjen said.

“Everything that we see is window dressing.”

Her comments were echoed by other gun control advocates, who say the Trudeau government used their talking points in the lead-up to the May 1 ban, only to disregard those policies in C-21.

Trudeau in October 2019 tweeted that Liberal gun control measures were the “strongest of all the parties,” quoting a Poly Remembers press release. However, Rathjen said, that was awarded strictly on the basis that the Liberals had promised to introduce an entirely mandatory buyback program.

“This is a total betrayal,” said Suzanne Laplante-Edward, whose daughter Anne-Marie Edward was one of 14 women killed in the 1989 shooting.

“They lied. They lied to us. They lied to Canadians,” she said in a statement Tuesday.

Trudeau on Tuesday said the Liberal ban was introduced explicitly to prevent shootings of the sort that took place in Montreal. “I remember where I was when I was 17 and heard the news of a massacre at the École Polytechnique. I’ve sat down with first responders, doctors and nurses who see every day the cost of gun violence,” he said.

Representatives of gun retailers and private gun owners, meanwhile, have likewise said that Liberal talking points are contradictory and unfounded, especially claims that so-called “military style” rifles are comparable to those used by the military.

Assault rifles have never been legal in Canada, and the firearms included under the Liberal ban are far from military grade. For years, sport shooters in Canada have instead used semi-automatic rifles that mimic the look of military firearms, but can carry a maximum of five rounds in their magazines.

The rifles included under the Liberal ban have been restricted in Canada since 1977, meaning they could only be shot at designated ranges, could only be transported directly to and from designated ranges, and required the owner to secure additional safety training before purchase.

Liberal ministers nonetheless claimed that their new legislation would outlaw military-grade firearms from public use.

Joël Lightbound, Liberal MP for the Quebec riding of Louis-Hébert, said the Liberals had outlawed “powerful and dangerous” rifles that “were designed to be used on a battlefield in the time of war.”

The current standard issue rifle used by the Canadian military is the Canada Colt C7, a variant of the M16 that fires at a rate of up to 900 rounds per minute from a 30-round magazine. Semi-automatic ARs of the type previously used by Canada citizens, by comparison, fire at roughly 100-120 rounds per minute, and carry a maximum of five rounds.

Repeating previous talking points, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday also said firearms included under the government’s ban were “designed for just one purpose: to kill people and to look like they can kill people.”

The federal union representing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has itself opposed Ottawa’s gun ban, saying it does little to address gang violence and gun smuggling at the Canada-U.S. border, which accounts for the majority of firearm-related violence.

Statistics Canada says the country had 678 homicides in 2019, of which 38 per cent were committed using firearms. Of those homicides, 60 per cent were committed using a handgun rather than a rifle. The majority of those homicides were a result of gang violence, which has increased 10 per cent since 2015, the RCMP bargaining group said in a press release last year.

CANADA'S WORST FEMICIDE

'It's heartbreaking': NAIT vigil remembers Polytechnique Montreal victims

Story by Hamdi Issawi • Yesterday 

A circle of 14 empty chairs served as a poignant reminder of the women killed in a mass shooting at Polytechnique Montréal 33 years ago, and the need to end misogyny.


To mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology installed 14 chairs on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, to remember the murdered victims of a mass shooting at Polytechnique Montreal in 1989.© Provided by Edmonton Journal

The installation appeared at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Feltham Centre in Edmonton to honour the 14 women who died in the massacre. On Dec. 6, 1989, a man motivated by a hatred of feminists shot and killed them, and injured 13 other people at the facility.

Tanya Fir, the Alberta government’s parliamentary secretary for the status of women, spoke at a noon vigil near the installation, where she recalled struggling to comprehend the senseless act of violence, being a junior high school student at the time.

“As I look over at those 14 empty chairs, I feel grief and anger, but also resolve,” Fir said. “Grief for the lives lost and all the family members and friends whose lives were forever changed on that day, anger that such an act of discrimination and hatred ever occurred, but resolve to do something about it.”

The vigil for those women coincides with the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, observed annually on Dec. 6 to remember the victims of gender-based violence.

About 50 people attended the service, although more, namely students, watched the event unfold overhead from behind the second-floor railing.

A few people wandered through the installation before and after the speakers delivered their remarks to peruse framed biographies of the victims and accompanying photos resting on the chairs.

Some of the seats were furnished with clothing and accessories, such as a red sweater, purple backpack and engineering textbooks. Most of the women killed in the Polytechnique Montréal shooting were engineering students.

Carrie Vos, program controller for Women Building Futures, tried to imagine the effects those women would have had on engineering, possibly as role models that would have attracted other women to a field where they are underrepresented. Her organization helps women find careers that pay more than just a living wage.

‘We still have so far to go’

“We will never know the true extent of this loss,” said Vos, a keynote speaker at the vigil. “But it’s important that we continue to work toward gender parity in engineering trades and technology. Everyone should have the opportunity to choose a career without being discouraged or restrained by others due to their gender.”

Felicia Ricard, a social worker in Edmonton who focuses on gender-based violence as well as missing and murdered women, found the remembrance both powerful and painful.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said standing next to one of the empty seats. “It’s been 33 years since this happened, and we’ve come a long way, but we still have so far to go.”

In 2017, there were 350,457 victims of police-reported violent crime in Canada (968 per 100,000 population), 53 per cent of whom were female, Statistics Canada reported in 2018. Among those reported acts of violence, 50 per cent were physical assault offences, 29 per cent were sexual offences, and 21 per cent were other violent offences, the agency reported.

However, a 2021 Statistics Canada report based on general social survey results found that the rate of violent victimization was nearly twice as high among women (106 incidents per 1,000 women) than men (59 incidents per 1,000 men) in 2019.

The vigil ended with a moment of silence and a reading of the victims’ names: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

— With files from The Canadian Press

hissawi@postmedia.com

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EMOTIONAL PLAGUE 

Carey Price Doubled Down On His Pro-Gun Stance After The Montreal Canadiens Apologized For Him

Story by Sofia Misenheimer • Yesterday 

ISSUED ON DEC 6  ANNIVERSARY

ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE MASSACRE 

BY MACHO MISOGYNIST  JOCK


Carey Price Doubled Down On His Pro-Gun Stance After The Montreal Canadiens Apologized For Him© Provided by MTL Blog

Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price is standing firm on his pro-gun statement posted days before the anniversary of the Polytechnique shooting.

While Price apologized to "those impacted most by the events here in 1989," he said he did "know about the tragedy" before his original post, partly refuting an official apology issued on his behalf by the NHL team the day before.

The original and follow-up posts have prompted a massive debate in public forums and on social media, with heated discussions about proposed government gun legislation (as well as the timing of Price's remarks and the legislation itself), but also about Indigenous rights, colonialism and government's reach.

On December 4, Price shared an Instagram photo holding a shotgun and decked out in camo. The caption read: "I love my family, I love my country and I care for my neighbour. I am not a criminal or a threat to society. What Justin Trudeau is trying to do is unjust. I support the CCFR to keep my hunting tools. Thank you for listening to my opinion."

Price was voicing his position on proposed federal bill C-21, which would ban handguns — along with some weapons used by hunters, according to the CBC.

Some fans and anti-gun groups have since questioned the assertion that hunting gear would be impacted by the bill and called out the timing of the goalie's post so close to the 33rd anniversary of the École Polytechnique shooting, which they say has overshadowed the commemoration of the 14 young women killed by a gunman.

Price has also been critiqued for supporting the pro-gun Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR), especially after the lobby group offered the discount code 'POLY' for store merch. The group later claimed that it had nothing to do with the shooting.

Price acknowledged the uncomfortable timing of his post on Tuesday and said Montrealers know he would never "intentionally cause pain to those impacted by gun violence."

A story on Carey Price's Instagram account.@cp0031 | Instagram

"Despite a previous statement released, I did in fact know about the tragedy… I acknowledge that amplifying the conversation around guns this week may have upset some of those impacted most by the events here in 1989 and to them I apologize," he wrote.

The goalie's follow-up statement counters part of an official apology by the Montreal Canadiens, released on December 5, which stated that Price "was not aware of the tragic events of Dec. 6, 1989."

Price's stance has sparked significant debate about the federal government's implementation of the C-21 bill, which is set to go into effect at midnight on December 6.

Many against the bill argue that its release on the anniversary of a national tragedy has stymied debate on gun rights in Canada, while proponents say it's the most appropriate way to honour the Polytechnique victims and prevent a similar mass shooting.

21ST CENTURY ALCHEMY

Unraveling the mysteries of glassy liquids

by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Map of the spatial relaxation in a two-dimensional liquid model. Brighter regions indicate 

locations where particles moved significantly during some time interval, in dark regions

 little motion occurred. This image reveals the fractal nature of the relaxation process,

 shaped both by thermal fluctuations and elastic interactions. 

Credit: Tahaei et al 2023.

Glass, despite its apparent transparency and rigidity, is a complex and intriguing material. When a liquid is cooled to form a glass, its dynamics slows down significantly, resulting in its unique properties.

This process, known as "glass transition," has puzzled scientists for decades. But one of its intriguing aspects is the emergence of "dynamical heterogeneities," where the dynamics become increasingly correlated and intermittent as the liquid cools down and approaches the glass transition temperature.

In a new study, researchers propose a new theoretical framework to explain these dynamical heterogeneities in glass-forming liquids. The idea is that relaxation in these liquids occurs through local rearrangements, which influence each other via elastic interactions. By investigating the interplay between local rearrangements, elastic interactions, and thermal fluctuations, the researchers have formulated a comprehensive theory for the collective dynamics of these complex systems.

The study is a collaboration between Professor Matthieu Wyart at EPFL and his colleagues at Max Planck Institute in Dresden, the ENS, the Université Grenoble Alpes, and the Center for Systems Biology Dresden. It is now published in Physical Review X.

The team developed a "scaling theory" that explains the growth of the dynamical correlation length observed in glass-forming liquids. This correlation length is linked to "thermal avalanches," which are rare events induced by thermal fluctuations, which then trigger a subsequent burst of faster dynamics.

The study's theoretical framework also provides insights into the Stoke-Einstein breakdown, a phenomenon where the viscosity of the liquid becomes uncoupled from the diffusion of its particles.

To validate their theoretical predictions, the researchers conducted extensive numerical simulations in various conditions. These simulations supported the accuracy of their scaling theory and its ability to describe the observed dynamics in glass-forming liquids.

The study not only deepens our understanding of glass dynamics but also suggests a new handle to tackle the properties of some other complex systems where the dynamics is intermittent and jerky- features known to occur in a range of situations, from the brain's activity or the sliding between frictional objects.

"Our work connects the growth of the dynamical correlation length in liquids to avalanche-type relaxations, well studied, for example, in the context of disordered magnets, granular materials, and earthquakes," says Matthieu Wyart. "As such, this approach builds unexpected bridges between other fields. Our description of how avalanches are affected by exogeneous fluctuations, including thermal ones, may thus be of more general interest."

More information: Ali Tahaei et al, Scaling Description of Dynamical Heterogeneity and Avalanches of Relaxation in Glass-Forming Liquids, Physical Review X (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.13.031034

Journal information: Physical Review X 

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Scientists theorize a hidden phase transition between liquid and a solid

Same Sex Marriage and Violence Against Women

December 6 is the day that will live in infamy in Canada the day that Mark Lepine hunted down and killed 14 women engineering students at L'Ecole polytechnique in Montreal.

It is a day that the Harpocrite government should have brought forward their plans to get rid of the gun registry which was created because of this incident. It is a day that men and women across Canada pledge to end violence against women.

So instead of honouring this day, because of course it would embarass them over their plans to neuter the gun registry, they bring forward their controversial motion to end Same Sex Marriage. A cheap attempt to sideline the issue of the day. Double the infamy. We should be outraged, the Tories have NO Shame.

See

Violence Against Women

Same Sex Marriage

SSM

Gun Registry


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Applying environmental genomics to coral conservation

by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

A coral reef in New Caledonia. Credit: Oliver Selmoni, EPFL

Oceans are a bellwether for the planet's health, absorbing over 90% of the sun's energy. They demonstrate the extent to which rising temperatures are threatening coral reefs and other vital ecosystems that support biodiversity. In 2016 and 2017, an abrupt rise in surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean caused mass bleaching on an unprecedented scale. Australia's Great Barrier Reef was especially hard-hit.

Bleaching occurs when heat stress disrupts the symbiotic relationship between corals and the tiny algae that live inside them, providing a source of nutrients for coral and giving them their color. Persistent bleaching can lead to coral death. In the past two decades, abnormal heatwaves caused entire sections of reef off the coast of Australia—measuring several kilometers in length—to turn white.

Scientists have already found that some reefs are better equipped to cope with recurring heat stress than others. For his thesis research, Oliver Selmoni, a doctoral assistant at EPFL's Laboratory of Geographic Information Systems (LASIG), applied the principles of environmental genomics to characterize this ability to adapt. Selmoni cross-referenced the results of genetic analyses of coral samples with ocean temperature data captured by satellites to determine what made some corals better able to withstand rising temperatures.

Building a study from the ground up

Having applied his method to pre-existing data on a coral species in Japan, Selmoni traveled to New Caledonia to build a new study from the ground up. He collected his own coral samples with the help of the IRD scientists based in Nouméa. The findings were published in Nature Scientific Reports on 12 November. "New Caledonia is home to the world's second-longest coral reef, expanding to over 1,000 km," says Selmoni. "This relatively compact ecosystem is exposed to dramatic contrasts in environmental conditions, which makes it an ideal candidate for studying climate adaptation."

The study aimed to test two hypotheses. The first is that coral populations learn to adapt to warmer seas after experiencing prolonged heat stress over many years. "The longer higher temperatures persist, the more likely it is that climate-resilient traits will develop and be passed down from generation to generation," explains Selmoni. The second hypothesis relates to connectivity: corals reproduce by releasing larvae into the water, which are then carried in ocean currents. "Corals rely on nearby populations for survival. When a reef is destroyed by environmental stressors or human activity, larvae from elsewhere are needed to kick-start repopulation," he adds.

Establishing marine protected areas

Selmoni's first task was to assess the composition of the marine environment in New Caledonia, using satellite data stretching back 30 years. After selecting 20 sites with the greatest temperature contrasts, he headed into the field to collect samples. "We focused on three flagship Pacific coral species that are susceptible to bleaching and relatively easy to find," he recalls. "It was a huge undertaking: 3,000 km by road and another 1,000 km by boat!" Selmoni shared details of his experience on the EPFL Out There blog.

Using environmental genomics methods at LASIG, he found that the field observations supported his connectivity and adaptation hypotheses. "As expected, we observed a correlation between likelihood of adaptation and prolonged exposure to high heat stress. Conversely, corals in locations that had never experienced heat stress showed no climate-adaptive traits," explains Selmoni.

Looking ahead, the maps developed in the study could be used to establish new marine protected areas (MPAs) - zones where fishing, tourism, industry and other human activities are restricted—in places where, through connectivity, heat-resistant coral strains could populate reefs around the archipelago. Another option could be to select and grow climate-adaptive corals, then transplant them into nearby reefs that are less able to withstand rising temperatures, thereby accelerating the process of natural selection. "Over time, these hardier strains can help rebuild damaged reefs or make existing coral populations more resilient to bleaching," adds Selmoni.


Explore further A new tool for identifying climate-adaptive coral reefs
More information: Oliver Selmoni et al, Coral cover surveys corroborate predictions on reef adaptive potential to thermal stress, Scientific Reports (2020).

 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-76604-2

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

 

New report details Switzerland's geo-energy potential

by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

When the Swiss government decided to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima accident on 11 March 2011, it also launched a major nationwide research program to explore alternative energy sources, with the goal of fully replacing the country's nuclear power with renewable energy by 2050. Some CHF 250 million in funding was deployed to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy. The nationwide research program entailed setting up eight Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCERs) to explore seven energy-related topics. Universities and research institutes from across the country, in association with around 900 businesses and public-sector organizations, conducted 1,500 research projects through these Centers between 2013 and 2020. Innosuisse was commissioned to evaluate the results of the projects, and it issued its final report on 22 July 2021.

As part of this nationwide research program, EPFL led the effort in the area of geo-energy, which included assessing Switzerland's potential for carbon storage and for deep and shallow geothermal energy. What are the main conclusions?

Carbon storage in Switzerland

"The research we've done over the past eight years shows that there's enough underground capacity in Switzerland to store large amounts of CO2, primarily in the Swiss Plateau, from Fribourg to Zurich," says Prof. Laloui. "In fact, the carbon storage process would be easier than burying nuclear waste." Experts involved in the project estimate that 50–700 million tons of CO2 could be stored in Switzerland's ground. These would mainly be emissions from the construction industry (cement and steel production), the biochemicals industry and agriculture. "Of the about 40 million tons CO2-eq emitted in Switzerland each year, some 12 million could potentially be stored underground. That means for those emissions the country could become carbon-neutral, or even achieve negative emissions, for 70 years," says Prof. Laloui. However, he also points out that reaching this goal would require that today's greenhouse gas emitters decarbonize their production chains.

Over 20% share of shallow geothermal energy by 2035

Prof. Laloui's research on shallow geothermal energy indicates that there's considerable potential for this type of renewable resource. "The Swiss government had set a target of having 11% of the energy used for its buildings' heating and cooling systems come from geothermal energy by 2035. The project outcomes show that this percentage could easily be doubled," he says. With regard to deep geothermal energy—that is, natural heat located one to three kilometers underground—The activities conducted in the context of the geo-energy SCCER-SoE project with the Geneva Canton public utility which found that if heat accumulated during the summer was stored below Lake Geneva, it could be used to warm up some of the Canton's buildings during the winter.

The geo-energy SCCER-SoE study also looked at the scope for using geothermal energy to generate electricity. For now, the results indicated that as something that could be an option in the future. "Many researchers have looked at how rocks can be fractured without triggering seismic movements, but more research is still needed. We'll surely be able to do it one day, but we're not there yet."

Prof. Laloui believes a lot of important findings have come out of these years of intensive research. Switzerland now ranks among Europe's top centers of excellence in geo-energy, and the joint effort by 250 scientists across the country has been highly effective. He now hopes that the research will be taken further. "I strongly encourage the Swiss government to set up a national research center on geo-energy and carbon storage in order to leverage the discoveries we've already made and keep our solid skills in this area within the country."

Pilot test planned in Iceland

The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is unequivocal: it is only by implementing a portfolio of measures that the signatories of the Paris Agreement will be able to meet their targets and cut their greenhouse gas emissions. One measure that's needed urgently is carbon storage, and Switzerland has not yet decided what steps it will take in this regard. However, on 20 July 2021, Switzerland and Iceland signed a statement of intent to jointly support and develop negative-emission technology—and this includes carbon storage. A pilot test to that effect will soon be carried out in Iceland. For now, Switzerland does not have any plans for underground carbon storage within its borders.

A carbon-neutral response to rising electricity demand

More information: Energy Funding Programme 2013-2020: Final Report and evaluation. www.innosuisse.ch/inno/en/home … programme-SCCER.html

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne 

How to compete with robots

by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

When it comes to the future of intelligent robots, the first question people ask is often: How many jobs will they make disappear? Whatever the answer, the second question is likely to be: How can I make sure that my job is not among them?

In a study just published in Science Robotics, a team of roboticists from EPFL and economists from the University of Lausanne offers answers to both questions. By combining the scientific and technical literature on robotic abilities with employment and wage statistics, they have developed a method to calculate which of the currently existing jobs are more at risk of being performed by machines in the near future. Additionally, they have devised a method for suggesting career transitions to jobs that are less at risk and require smallest retraining efforts.

"There are several studies predicting how many jobs will be automated by robots, but they all focus on software robots, such as speech and image recognition, financial robo-advisers, chatbots, and so forth. Furthermore, those predictions wildly oscillate depending on how job requirements and software abilities are assessed. Here, we consider not only artificial intelligence software, but also real intelligent robots that perform physical work and we developed a method for a systematic comparison of human and robotic abilities used in hundreds of jobs," says Prof. Dario Floreano, Director of EPFL's Laboratory of Intelligent System, who led the study at EPFL.

The key innovation of the study is a new mapping of robot capabilities onto job requirements. The team looked into the European H2020 Robotic Multi-Annual Roadmap (MAR), a strategy document by the European Commission that is periodically revised by robotics experts. The MAR describes dozens of abilities that are required from current robot or may be required by future ones, ranging, organized in categories such as manipulation, perception, sensing, interaction with humans. The researchers went through research papers, patents, and description of robotic products to assess the maturity level of robotic abilities, using a well-known scale for measuring the level of technology development, "technology readiness level" (TRL).

For human abilities, they relied on the O*net database, a widely-used resource database on the US job market, that classifies approximately 1,000 occupations and breaks down the skills and knowledge that are most crucial for each of them

After selectively matching the human abilities from O*net list to robotic abilities from the MAR document, the team could calculate how likely each existing job occupation is to be performed by a robot. Say, for example, that a job requires a human to work at millimeter-level precision of movements. Robots are very good at that, and the TRL of the corresponding ability is thus the highest. If a job requires enough such skills, it will be more likely to be automated than one that requires abilities such as critical thinking or creativity.

The result is a ranking of the 1,000 jobs, with "Physicists" being the ones who have the lowest risk of being replaced by a machine, and "Slaughterers and Meat Packers," who face the highest risk. In general, jobs in food processing, building and maintenance, construction and extraction appear to have the highest risk.

"The key challenge for society today is how to become resilient against automation" says Prof. Rafael Lalive. who co-led the study at the University of Lausanne. "Our work provides detailed career advice for workers who face high risks of automation, which allows them to take on more secure jobs while re-using many of the skills acquired on the old job. Through this advice, governments can support society in becoming more resilient against automation."

The authors then created a method to find, for any given job, alternative jobs that have a significantly lower automation risk and are reasonably close to the original one in terms of the abilities and knowledge they require—thus keeping the retraining effort minimal and making the career transition feasible. To test how that method would perform in real life, they used data from the US workforce and simulated thousands of career moves based on the algorithm's suggestions, finding that it would indeed allow workers in the occupations with the highest risk to shift towards medium-risk occupations, while undergoing a relatively low retraining effort.

The method could be used by governments to measure how many workers could face automation risks and adjust retraining policies, by companies to assess the costs of increasing automation, by robotics manufacturers to better tailor their products to the market needs; and by the public to identify the easiest route to reposition themselves on the job market.

Finally, the authors translated the new methods and data into an algorithm that predicts the risk of automation for hundreds of jobs and suggests resilient career transitions at minimal retraining effort, publicly accessible at https://lis2.epfl.ch/resiliencetorobots.Low-wage workers at risk for automation: study

More information: Antonio Paolillo et al, How to Compete with Robots: Assessing Job Automation Risks and Resilient Alternatives, Science Robotics (2022). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.abg5561. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abg5561

Journal information: Science Robotics 

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne 

 

Why do scientific discoveries take long to reach the general public?

by Nathalie Jollien, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

The retinal implant that Prof. Diego Ghezzi’s laboratory has been working on since 2015 is now ready for clinical trials. Credit: EPFL’s Neuroengineering Laboratory (LNE)

The results of scientific research can often bring considerable societal and economic benefits. But the path from the lab bench to a real-world application can take years, even for projects that are designed from the outset with a concrete use in mind. For instance, it took seven years for the pipetting robot developed by EPFL spin-off SEED Biosciences to reach the market, which it did in 2020. "Our robot lets scientists dispense cells one by one," says Eric Meurville, a SEED Biosciences co-founder who now works at EPFL's Technology Transfer Office. "The technology isn't really all that complicated, but it still took a long time to turn the idea we came up with in the lab into a commercial product."

New discoveries are often developed in response to a specific problem. "In my field, we first have to identify a concrete need," says Diego Ghezzi, who holds the Medtronic Chair in Neuroengineering at EPFL. "Then we come up with a way to meet that need. My lab typically relies on technological advances to overcome such challenges." Ghezzi and his research group have been working since 2015 on a new kind of retinal implant that can partially restore vision in blind people.

Once scientists have fleshed out an idea in the laboratory, the next step is to develop a tangible application. That usually starts with building and testing a prototype, and then performing different kinds of analyses to measure the prototype's properties and behavior. "There are several rounds of development and characterization before we are able to come up with a device that meets all our specifications and delivers optimal performance," says Ghezzi. "This process can take several years."

For biomedical devices, the testing step also includes biological trials. "We first tested our implants in vitro on animal retina, then in vivo on living organisms. That was of course after obtaining all the necessary approvals from the cantonal agencies," he says.

Reproducing results and getting them peer reviewed

Scientists must repeat their experiments many times to make sure their results are consistent and not just a fluke. An experiment to quantify a device's effectiveness, for example, could be repeated dozens of times. Exactly how many times depends on statistical criteria and numerous variables.

Peer review is another important milestone on the road to commercialization. As scientists work on a project, they usually publish their findings in journals and present them at industry conferences. This gives them valuable feedback and comments—both positive and negative—that help them orient their research. Most journals require articles to be peer reviewed before they are published. Peer reviewing entails having experts read and comment on a research paper, with the author generally incorporating the reviewers' suggestions.

Market launch

The next step in getting a product to market requires bringing on board experts from outside the scientific community. There are generally two ways researchers can commercialize their discoveries: by selling a license to an established firm, or—if the inventor has an entrepreneurial bent—by creating a startup.

"EPFL offers a range of support in both cases," says Meurville. "There's the enable program, for instance, which provides funding and know-how to help scientists quickly take their products to a level of maturity that could attract interest from companies in Switzerland and abroad. And there's the EPFL Startup Unit, which supplies both coaching and funding."

Scientists generally present their prototypes to potential customers and investors, explaining how their development meets a market need or offers a major competitive advantage over existing products.

Clinical trials

In addition, medical devices must undergo clinical trials to demonstrate they are both safe and effective in humans. But before the trials can even start, scientists have to prove their devices are manufactured to adequate health and safety standards—a level of testing and approval that isn't included in the prototyping step. In Switzerland, this approval is given by Swissmedic, the Swiss regulator for medical products and treatments. The first round of clinical trials usually involves one to five patients in a single hospital. If these trials are successful, further rounds are carried out with more hospitals and several dozen patients.

Next comes market approval. Products sold in the EU must bear the CE marking. In the US, drugs and medical devices must obtain FDA approval. These certifications indicate that a product has been thoroughly tested by its manufacturer and meets all requisite health, safety and environmental standards.

Turning a scientific breakthrough into a product that can enhance our everyday lives is a long process. "The amount of time required depends on how complicated the technology is and what industry it's intended for. New drugs and medical implants obviously take much longer," says Meurville. "But for a product to be successful, it has to hit the market at the right time—and fill a need that hasn't yet been met."

Retinal implants can give artificial vision to the blind

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Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne 

 

AI's new power of persuasion: Study shows LLMs can exploit personal information to change your mind

by Tanya Petersen, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Overview of the experimental workflow. (A) Participants fill in a survey about 

their demographic information and political orientation. (B) Every 5 minutes, 

participants are randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions. 

The two players then debate for 10 minutes on an assigned proposition, 

randomly holding the PRO or CON standpoint as instructed. (C) After the 

debate, participants fill out another short survey measuring their opinion 

change. Finally, they are debriefed about their opponent's identity. 

Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2403.14380

A new EPFL study has demonstrated the persuasive power of large language models, finding that participants debating GPT-4 with access to their personal information were far more likely to change their opinion compared to those who debated humans.

"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." That's the caption to a famous 1990s cartoon showing a large dog with his paw on a computer keyboard. Fast forward 30 years, replace "dog" with "AI" and this sentiment was a key motivation behind a new study to quantify the persuasive power of today's large language models (LLMs).

"You can think of all sorts of scenarios where you're interacting with a language model although you don't know it, and this is a fear that people have—on the internet are you talking to a dog or a chatbot or a real human?" asked Associate Professor Robert West, head of the Data Science Lab in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. "The danger is superhuman like chatbots that create tailor-made, convincing arguments to push false or misleading narratives online."

AI and personalization

Early work has found that language models can generate content perceived as at least on par and often more persuasive than human-written messages, however there is still limited knowledge about LLMs' persuasive capabilities in direct conversations with humans, and how personalization—knowing a person's gender, age and education level—can improve their performance.

"We really wanted to see how much of a difference it makes when the AI model knows who you are (personalization)—your age, gender, ethnicity, education level, employment status and political affiliation—and this scant amount of information is only a proxy of what more an AI model could know about you through social media, for example," West continued.

Human v AI debates

In a pre-registered study, the researchers recruited 820 people to participate in a controlled trial in which each participant was randomly assigned a topic and one of four treatment conditions: debating a human with or without personal information about the participant, or debating an AI chatbot (OpenAI's GPT-4) with or without personal information about the participant.

This setup differed substantially from previous research in that it enabled a direct comparison of the persuasive capabilities of humans and LLMs in real conversations, providing a framework for benchmarking how state-of-the-art models perform in online environments and the extent to which they can exploit personal data.

Their article, "On the Conversational Persuasiveness of large language models: A Randomized Controlled Trial," posted to the arXiv preprint server, explains that the debates were structured based on a simplified version of the format commonly used in competitive academic debates and participants were asked before and afterwards how much they agreed with the debate proposition.

The results showed that participants who debated GPT-4 with access to their personal information had 81.7% higher odds of increased agreement with their opponents compared to participants who debated humans. Without personalization, GPT-4 still outperformed humans, but the effect was far lower.

Cambridge Analytica on steroids

Not only are LLMs able to effectively exploit personal information to tailor their arguments and out-persuade humans in online conversations through microtargeting, they do so far more effectively than humans.

"We were very surprised by the 82% number and if you think back to Cambridge Analytica, which didn't use any of the current tech, you take Facebook likes and hook them up with an LLM, the Language Model can personalize its messaging to what it knows about you. This is Cambridge Analytica on steroids," said West.

"In the context of the upcoming U.S. elections, people are concerned because that's where this kind of technology is always first battle tested. One thing we know for sure is that people will be using the power of large language models to try to swing the election."

One interesting finding of the research was that when a human was given the same personal information as the AI, they didn't seem to make effective use of it for persuasion. West argues that this should be expected—AI models are consistently better because they are almost every human on the internet put together.

The models have learned through online patterns that a certain way of making an argument is more likely to lead to a persuasive outcome. They have read many millions of Reddit, Twitter and Facebook threads, and been trained on books and papers from psychology about persuasion. It's unclear exactly how a model leverages all this information but West believes this is a key direction for future research.

"LLMs have shown signs that they can reason about themselves, so given that we are able to interrogate them, I can imagine that we could ask a model to explain its choices and why it is saying a precise thing to a particular person with particular properties. There's a lot to be explored here because the models may be doing things that we don't even know about yet in terms of persuasiveness, cobbled together from many different parts of the knowledge that they have."

More information: Francesco Salvi et al, On the Conversational Persuasiveness of Large Language Models: A Randomized Controlled Trial, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2403.14380

Journal information: arXiv 

Provided by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne 

Large language models in health: Useful, but not a miracle cure