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Extinction and the Integrated Liberal Arts
Although you may never have heard of Benjamin, I'm willing to bet that his story will interest you. He lived a tough and lonely life in Australia. His death, 80 years ago today on September 7, 1936, came after years of abuse. On his last day he suffered from dehydration during an unseasonably warm spell and he died during the night having been kept from his bed due to the neglect of those charged with his care. When he died in Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo the world lost more than just Benjamin, though, because Benjamin was the last of his kind. Benjamin was a thylacine, a Tasmanian tiger, but not just any thylacine. No, Benjamin was, by all accounts, the very last thylacine. When he died 80 years ago, the 25 million-year-long thylacine lineage went extinct.

Benjamin left behind a small trace of himself, however. Three years before Benjamin's death Australian naturalist David Fleay filmed him in his small, stark enclosure. The 45 second clip gives you a sense of Benjamin and his meagre existence.

What you can't see is what happened after the film ends. The opened mouthed gape or yawn Benjamin displays, it turns out, was characteristic of thylacine behavior when it felt threatened. The tripod with a camera on it with Fleay behind covered by a curtain triggered fear in Benjamin and he bit Fleay on the butt - twice.

There's no doubt that we are in the midst of a massive extinction event with many species going extinct every year. How many? It's impossible to know, partly because we don't know how many species actually exist. But what we do know is that since humans came on the scene extinctions have increased significantly and today the rate is likely between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural extinction rate. That means that we are probably losing at least 200 species and perhaps as many as 100,000 species each year.

It's difficult for many of us to fully process what that means, partly because the numbers are so large and partly because we don't know much, if anything, about most of the species that are being lost. But we know Benjamin and our knowledge of him makes his loss more personal, perhaps moving some of us to act.

I hasten to point out that Benjamin was not alone in being the last of his kind to have been lost, lost not in obscurity but lost under our control as named individuals.

Celia, the last Pyrenean ibex, died on January 6, 2000 in the Spanish Pyrenees.
Incas, the last Carolina parakeet, died on February 21, 1918 in the Cincinnati Zoo.
Orange Band, the last dusky seaside sparrow, died on June 17, 1987 at Walt Disney Resort, Bay Lake, Florida.
Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island Tortoise, died on June 24, 2012 at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos.
Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo.

The extinction of a species that each of these deaths represent is just a drop more poignant to most of us because, as I said, we have personal knowledge of the individuals involved.

But even as we might grieve for these individuals and the species they represent, does it really matter that because of our collective actions the world is losing species at a dizzying rate? I believe it matters a great deal, for a host of reasons. I'll summarize just three such reasons.

Natural environments are composed of interrelated webs of interactions. As various species are removed via extinction, the integrity of the entire ecosystem is at risk conceivably leading to increased extinction or collapse of ecosystem functioning.
From a completely utilitarian perspective, it's worth remembering that every day we discover fascinating natural products, including medicines, that benefit humans. These opportunities disappear as species are lost.
We lose a bit of our humanity with every species that we drive into oblivion. We have a moral and spiritual obligation to consider those with whom we share the planet.

Species extinction is but one of many complex problems we face as a society. While telling people about the large number of species going extinct each year will rouse some to action and sharing information about Benjamin, Celia, Martha and the rest will stir others, action must be informed by knowledge. It is important to recognize that addressing the myriad problematic issues we face today requires us to think holistically. To develop a citizenry capable of solving wicked problems of this sort, educators have been making progress in transforming the way students are taught by looking beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries while, at the same time, understanding that different perspectives offer different insights and attempting to integrate those perspectives.

Biologists alone will not be able to slow the rate at which we are driving species into oblivion. Knowledge gained from climatologists, from natural resource managers and from physicists is needed. Fully understanding the importance species play in the world requires the expertise of sociologists, psychologists, drug developers, theologians, artists and humanists.

Increasingly educators are recognizing the criticality of the full stretch of the liberal arts and, even more than that, the importance of teaching students how to integrate the different insights that each discipline offers. Such a perspective can be very powerful and will likely lead to unexpected and positive results.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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New CERN LHC Experiments --"Predict a Boson Beyond the Higgs That Could Unlock Clues to Existence of Dark Matter"

Two separate experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, on the French-Swiss border, appear to confirm the existence of a subatomic particle, the Madala boson, that for the first time could shed light on one of the great mysteries of the universe - dark matter.

The Madala boson follows the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 "but the particles differ remarkably," said the team leader Bruce Mellado of South Africa's Witwatersrand University School of Physics. The Madala boson is heavier and disintegrates into the Higgs boson. "The Higgs boson in the Standard Model of physics is not able to explain several things, such as dark matter," Mellado added.

"The Madala boson is important for our understanding of the universe. Through this we can communicate with dark matter - we don't have an object that can do that. This could be the first," said Mellado. The boson appears to interact with energy that cannot be explained.

Mellado will summarize the reappearance of these features in the features in the proton-proton collision data collected during Run I by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider that were used to formulate the Madala hypothesis, and its implications.

These features in the data were interpreted as being due to the existence of a new scalar, the Madala boson, with a mass around 270 GeV. A conservative statistical combination yielded a three sigma effect. The ATLAS and CMS collaboration have just released new data at the international conference ICHEP2016.

In particular, Mellado will discuss a prediction, namely of the production of anomalously large 4 W bosons, leading to a striking and unequivocal signature.

Dark matter is the new frontier in physics, Mellado said, and scientists were racing to work out what it is. The Chinese and Japanese had declared intentions of building colliders that could be used to search for the identity of dark matter and dark energy. A team of 35 University of the Witwatersrand scientists today hosts a series of seminars about the Madala boson (Zulu for "old"), followed by other seminars in the US, UK, China and India.

The Daily Galaxy via wits.ac.za

Image credit: CERN

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China Speeding Efforts to Build a Manned Oceanic “Space Station”

China is accelerating efforts to design and build a manned deep-sea platform to help it hunt for minerals in the South China Sea, one that may also serve a military purpose in the disputed waters, joining an exclusive club of countries that are capable of achieving human access to the deep sea. The other countries are the United States, Russia, France and Japan. The achievement will allow China to explore more than 99.8% of the ocean floor, Liu Cigui, director China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA), told the media.

China is accelerating efforts to design and build an oceanic “space station” would be located as much as 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) below the surface of the South China Sea, according to a recent Science Ministry presentation viewed by Bloomberg.

The project was mentioned in China's current five-year economic plan released in March and ranked number two on a list of the top 100 science and technology priorities.

"Having this kind of long-term inhabited station has not been attempted this deep, but it is certainly possible," said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Manned submersibles have gone to those depths for almost 50 years. The challenge is operating it for months at a time."

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the South China Sea has proved and probable reserves of about 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. China Cnooc chairman estimated the South China Sea holds around 125 billion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Modern nuclear attack submarines like the American Seawolf class are estimated to have a test depth of 490 m (1,600 ft), which would imply a collapse depth of 730 m (2,400 ft). Test depth is the maximum depth at which a submarine is permitted to operate under normal peacetime circumstances, and is tested during sea trials.

In June 2012, China's manned submersible Jiaolong successfully completed its deepest test dive, to 7,020 meters in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.

Researchers at Shanghai Ocean University have also developed a submersible movable laboratory capable of operating at more than 13,000 feet underwater.

Deepsea challenger has gone to the bottom of the ocean On March 26, 2012, James Cameron reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. The maximum depth recorded during this record-setting dive was 10,908 meters (35,787 ft).

Nearly 50% of the world's oceans are deeper than 4 kilometers, which provides vast areas for concealment and storage. Concealment provided by the sea also provides the opportunity to quickly engage remote assets that may have been dormant and undetected for long periods of time, while its vastness allows simultaneous operation across great distances.

The Daily Galaxy via Bloomberg, Nextbigfuture, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, DARPA

Rocky Planet with a 3-Day Orbit --"Only 21 Light-Years Away"

NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory --A New "Systems" Approach to the Search for Alien Life

"Our Early Solar System Harbored SuperEarths" (Weekend Feature)

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Early Earth Collided With a Mercury-Sized Planet --"Set the Stage for Carbon-Based Life"

Scientists are speculating that virtually all of Earth's life-giving carbon could have come from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between Earth and an embryonic planet similar to Mercury, approximately 100 million years after Earth formed.

In a new study this week in Nature Geoscience, Rice petrologist Rajdeep Dasgupta and colleagues offer a new answer to a long-debated geological question: How did carbon-based life develop on Earth, given that most of the planet's carbon should have either boiled away in the planet's earliest days or become locked in Earth's core?

“The challenge is to explain the origin of the volatile elements like carbon that remain outside the core in the mantle portion of our planet,” said Dasgupta, who co-authored the study with lead author and Rice postdoctoral researcher Yuan Li, Rice research scientist Kyusei Tsuno and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute colleagues Brian Monteleone and Nobumichi Shimizu.

Dasgupta's lab specializes in recreating the high-pressure and high-temperature conditions that exist deep inside Earth and other rocky planets. His team squeezes rocks in hydraulic presses that can simulate conditions about 250 miles below Earth's surface or at the core-mantle boundary of smaller planets like Mercury.

“Even before this paper, we had published several studies that showed that even if carbon did not vaporize into space when the planet was largely molten, it would end up in the metallic core of our planet, because the iron-rich alloys there have a strong affinity for carbon,” Dasgupta said.

Earth's core, which is mostly iron, makes up about one-third of the planet's mass. Earth's silicate mantle accounts for the other two-thirds and extends more than 1,500 miles below Earth's surface. Earth's crust and atmosphere are so thin that they account for less than 1 percent of the planet's mass. The mantle, atmosphere and crust constantly exchange elements, including the volatile elements needed for life.

If Earth's initial allotment of carbon boiled away into space or got stuck in the core, where did the carbon in the mantle and biosphere come from?

“One popular idea has been that volatile elements like carbon, sulfur, nitrogen and hydrogen were added after Earth's core finished forming,” said Li, who is now a staff scientist at Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Any of those elements that fell to Earth in meteorites and comets more than about 100 million years after the solar system formed could have avoided the intense heat of the magma ocean that covered Earth up to that point.

“The problem with that idea is that while it can account for the abundance of many of these elements, there are no known meteorites that would produce the ratio of volatile elements in the silicate portion of our planet,” Li said.

In late 2013, Dasgupta's team began thinking about unconventional ways to address the issue of volatiles and core composition, and they decided to conduct experiments to gauge how sulfur or silicon might alter the affinity of iron for carbon. The idea didn't come from Earth studies, but from some of Earth's planetary neighbors.

“We thought we definitely needed to break away from the conventional core composition of just iron and nickel and carbon,” Dasgupta recalled. “So we began exploring very sulfur-rich and silicon-rich alloys, in part because the core of Mars is thought to be sulfur-rich and the core of Mercury is thought to be relatively silicon-rich.

schematic of proto Earth's merger with a Mercury-like planetary embryo
A schematic depiction of proto Earth's merger with a potentially Mercury-like planetary embryo, a scenario supported by new high pressure-temperature experiments at Rice University.

Magma ocean processes could lead planetary embryos to develop silicon- or sulfur-rich metallic cores and carbon-rich outer layers. If Earth merged with such a planet early in its history, it could explain how Earth acquired its carbon and sulfur.

“It was a compositional spectrum that seemed relevant, if not for our own planet, then definitely in the scheme of all the terrestrial planetary bodies that we have in our solar system,” he said.

The experiments revealed that carbon could be excluded from the core — and relegated to the silicate mantle — if the iron alloys in the core were rich in either silicon or sulfur.

“The key data revealed how the partitioning of carbon between the metallic and silicate portions of terrestrial planets varies as a function of the variables like temperature, pressure and sulfur or silicon content,” Li said.

The team mapped out the relative concentrations of carbon that would arise under various levels of sulfur and silicon enrichment, and the researchers compared those concentrations to the known volatiles in Earth's silicate mantle.

“One scenario that explains the carbon-to-sulfur ratio and carbon abundance is that an embryonic planet like Mercury, which had already formed a silicon-rich core, collided with and was absorbed by Earth,” Dasgupta said. “Because it's a massive body, the dynamics could work in a way that the core of that planet would go directly to the core of our planet, and the carbon-rich mantle would mix with Earth's mantle.

“In this paper, we focused on carbon and sulfur,” he said. “Much more work will need to be done to reconcile all of the volatile elements, but at least in terms of the carbon-sulfur abundances and the carbon-sulfur ratio, we find this scenario could explain Earth's present carbon and sulfur budgets.”

The research was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The Daily Galaxy via Rice University

Rocky Planet with a 3-Day Orbit --"Only 21 Light-Years Away"

"The Behemoth" --Immense Cloud of Hydrogen Observed Bleeding From Alien Planet

Kepler Mission's "Top 20" --Identifies Best Earth-Like Candidates

Exo-Planet Discovered With Chemistry Vastly Different than Earth --A Surface of Graphite and Diamond - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Strange Alien Atmosphere of the "Diamond Planet"

NASA: Probabilty of Alien Life in the Milky Way Increasing Exponentially (Today's Most Popular) - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

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Evidence of Planet 9 --"May Already Exist"

“Actually, it's quite possible that the planet has already been in some way imaged,” says Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institute. “That happened with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — they were observed but not understood before they were actually detected. Who knows, proof of Planet X {or Planet 9} may already exist in some observatory archive.”

Scott Shepard's team has been se arching for proof of Planet 9 using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tollolo Inter-American Observatory in the southern Atacama region of Chile (below) . They have also collected data on distant solar system objects with the Japanese Hyper Surpime Camera on the 8-meter Subaru telescope in Hawaii. (National Optical Astronomical Observatory)

Shepard is considering an alternative theory that involves a Planet 9 exoplanet that had been been kicked out of another nearby solar system that formed in the general vicinity of ours. Such things are known to happen.

“If this turned out to be the case, then we'd know that there were other suns being formed nearby our sun,” Shepard said. “It would have to be a very dense solar environment, and that would also tell us a lot about the formation of our solar system.”

Object V774104 shown at the top of the page was discovered in late October, 2015, and is one of the most distant objects ever detected in the solar system. It appears to be about half the size of Pluto, but with an orbit two to three times wider than Pluto's. (Scott Sheppard, Chad Trujillo and Dave Tholen: Subaru Telescope)

Sheppard's team is conducting the deepest survey so far for objects beyond Neptune and the Kuiper Belt, a circumstellar disk that lies some 30 to 50 times as far as the Earth is from the sun. It is filled with dwarf planets asteroids, comets, and balls of frozen compounds — remnants of the earliest days of the evolution of the solar system. The Kuiper Belt is the region that includes Pluto, the now dwarf planet demoted with heated debate several years ago.

The team has observed nearly 10 percent of the sky using some of the largest and most advanced telescopes and cameras in the world. As they find and confirm these distant and faint objects, they analyze whether their discoveries fit into the larger theories about how interactions with a massive distant planet could have shaped the outer Solar System.

“Right now we are dealing with very low-number statistics, so we don't really understand what is happening in the outer Solar System,” Sheppard said. “Greater numbers of extreme trans-Neptunian objects must be found to fully determine the structure of our outer Solar System.”

He said that although astronomers believe there are thousands of these small objects, only about 15 have been positively identified. One discovered by Sheppard and Trujillo in 2014 — designated 2012 VP113 but nicknamed “Biden” — has the most distant known orbit in our solar system.

At the same time, Sheppard and Trujillo noticed that the handful of known extreme trans-Neptunian objects all clustered together and moved at similar orbital angles. These unusual dynamics lead the astronomers to propose that a substantial planet might be shepherding the smaller objects through its gravitational pull.

The search for Planet 9 is not the first to use the orbits of other bodies as a signpost to another planet. Indeed, Sheppard said that “we are now in a similar situation as in the mid-19th century when Alexis Bouvard noticed Uranus' orbital motion was peculiar, which eventually led to the discovery of Neptune.”

The other team most deeply involved with the Planet 9 hunt is led by Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology. They are the ones who made a big splash earlier this year with their predictions of a Planet 9, again based on the orbits of smaller objects.

In an email, we said that the newly detected object “fit perfectly into our Planet 9 hypothesis, so we remain pretty confident that the planet we predicted is indeed the right planet.”

Other groups searching the trans-Neptunian region for planets and information about the early solar system include the Canadian Outer Solar System Origins Survey and the international Dark Energy Survey.

Sheppard said that while the teams searching for Planet 9 are definitely in competition — a discovery would, after all, re-write the textbooks — they are also cooperating in terms of reporting back to each other if a region of the sky they study comes up with nothing to report. That way, he said, the teams won't duplicate efforts where there is no promise of reward.

While Sheppard's and Brown's teams have the advantage of access to more sophisticated instruments to work with, it is certainly possible that one of the others will make breakthroughs, and possibly THE breakthrough.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA and Marc Kaufmann

Young Solar System Observed Around a Nearby Star

"There Could be At Least Two Unknown Planets Hidden Well Beyond Pluto"

Enormous Volcanoes Detected on Pluto that Spew Ice, Not Lava --"Nothing Like This Has Been Seen in the Deep Outer Solar System" - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

NASA's First Encounter With the 'Last Planet' --"A New Class of Worlds"

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Mystery Alien Signal from Hercules Constellation --"Was from a Russian Military Satellite" --Russian News Agency TASS

Mysterious alien signals from a star system 94 light years from Earth picked up by Russian scientists last year did not come from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, but from an old Soviet military satellite, says Russian news agency TASS, much to the disappointment of astronomers and alien enthusiasts across the world. But was it?

The originally reported source of the signal HD 164595 is a solar system which is a few billion years older than our own, but is centered on a star of a similar brightness and size to our Sun. The signal was picked up by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia shown below.

However, significant number of people around our globe are not convinced by TASS' version, believing it is one of the many cover ups aimed at deceiving us regarding the existence of advanced alien life from beyond our Solar System. They question Russia's motives for the denial of the signals validity --you'll have to draw your own conclusions.

The Russian scientists who originally intercepted the enigmatic signals, said they believed that they came from a cluster of stars ninety-four light years away in the Hercules constellation. The signals' frequency and power suggested there was a good chance they were messages from smart extraterrestrials. Excitement in the scientific community suddenly spiked.

Scientists say that HD 164595 has a Neptune-sized planet that is about seventeen times the mass of Earth. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, says its orbit is too tight it is too close to its sun for life as we know it to exist.

“We, indeed, discovered an unusual signal," said Alexander Ipatov, who works at the Russian Academy of Sciences in an interview with TASS. "However, an additional check showed that it was emanating from a Soviet military satellite, which had not been entered into any of the catalogs of celestial bodies. It can be said with confidence that no sought-for signal has been detected yet.”

On August 29th, we reported that an international team of astronomers detected signals coming from almost 100 light years away, that appeared to be a strong candidate for extraterrestrial contact, according to a document circulated by Alexander Panov, a theorectical physicist at Lomonosov Moscow State University --"a strong signal in the direction of HD164595, a planet system in the constellation Hercules was detected on May 15, using the RATAN-600 radio telescope (above) in the Russian Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia."

Subsequently, Eric Korpela, an astronomer with Berkeley SETI, downplayed the hype over this latest signal in a note reported by VOX on the Berkeley SETI website. "All in all, it's relatively uninteresting from a SETI standpoint." Korpela continued:

"I looked over the presentation. I was unimpressed. In one out of 39 scans that passed over star showed a signal at about 4.5 times the mean noise power with a profile somewhat like the beam profile. Of course SETI@home has seen millions of potential signals with similar characteristics, but it takes more than that to make a good candidate. Multiple detections are a minimum criterio

"Because the receivers used were making broad band measurements, there's really nothing about this "signal" that would distinguish it from a natural radio transient (stellar flare, active galactic nucleus, microlensing of a background source, etc.) There's also nothing that could distinguish it from a satellite passing through the telescope field of view. All in all, it's relatively uninteresting from a SETI standpoint."

"If the transient claimed originates from beyond the Earth, then, given what we currently know of the parameters of the RATAN search, such events ought to be common. The fact that they are not frequently seen in continuum imaging surveys suggests that the RATAN transient is likely due to instrumental interference or to some other artifact of human technology. While absence of evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence is by no means evidence of absence, our GBT observations did not detect ongoing emission from the direction of HD 164595 between9.1 and 11.6 GHz to a sensitivity of ∼ 10 mJy (10σ).

"Single-epoch transients are by their nature hard to confirm ordeny, illustrating the need for confirming followup, either at a later time, or as part of the observing strategy (whether triggered follow-up of interesting sources, or some form of onoff observing). We intend to re-observe HD 164595 as part of the Breakthrough Listen target list, along with ongoing observations of targets selected using a range of criteria."

The Berkeley SETI team concluded that they "welcome opportunities for partnership in order to quickly validate and analyze candidate signals, to continue to develop tools and techniques, and to share our excitement with those who, like us, seek to answer the question, “Are we alone?”.

Eleven Elliptical Galaxies Found Flying Free in Space Beyond Their Home Clusters

"Our Early Solar System Harbored SuperEarths" (Weekend Feature)

Jupiter's Eerie Voice --NASA's First Juno Mission Flyby: "Unlike Anything in Our Solar System" (LISTEN)

Planet Nine --"Could Spell Doom for Our Solar System"

The 'Monster' of Our Solar System --"In the Milky Way Alone, a Billion Jupiter-Like Worlds Could Be Orbiting Stars"

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Dear IUCN Congress: Lead On Gender Equality!
The 2016 IUCN International World Conservation Congress kicked off a few days ago here in Honolulu, Hawaii. The conference theme is 'Planet at the Crossroads', and a series of journeys, from 'Business' to 'Biosecurity' have been highlighted as key issue areas to frame dialogues and conversations during the Congress.

As an estimated 8,000 advocates, scientists and conservationists convene to advance the protection of our world's natural resources, we also see that people and cultures are inextricably linked to these efforts, as stewards of their lands.

Our planet is at a crossroads, and people are also at a crossroads. We must be willing to take urgent and bold action to challenge unsustainable systems in our societies, and recognize how power and privilege underpin environmental degradation and resource extraction.

People are really at the heart, or should be at the heart, of our sharing and learning here at the IUCN Congress. And further, an understanding that people's interactions with nature, in communities and households, is very much framed by intersections such as race, class, culture and, in particular, gender.

Why Gender & Conservation?

Gender is a social construct. While not immutable nor universal, gender shapes expectations, attributes, roles, capacities and rights of women and men around the world- and in turn, experiences and interactions with the natural environment. Women, compared to men, often have limited access to resources, more restricted rights, limited mobility, and a muted voice in shaping decisions and influencing policy. At the same time, gender roles generally ascribed to women such as informal, reproductive work often relate to caregiving for households and communities, caretaking of seeds and soils, maintaining traditional agricultural knowledge, and responsibility for natural resource management such as firewood and water, and thus these roles create opportunity for engagement as women bring diverse and critical solutions to conservation.

IUCN as a Gender Champion

As one of the leading environmental organizations in the world, IUCN has been at the forefront of recognizing women's rights and gender equality as a critical element of conservation and sustainable development. Since its founding in 1948, over 40 Congress resolutions have recognized women's role in resource management and at least 16 have emphasized the need for gender analysis and planning in conservation work.

Following a resolution in 1996 to develop a gender policy, the approved policy was passed in 1998 and included the creation of a Global Senior Gender Adviser Office (GGO), which almost 20 years later, now includes a global staff of over 15 people, conducting technical work with IUCN members around the world. This work has included support to mainstreaming gender into international environmental policy frameworks, and support to members at national level, creating action plans on gender in climate change and biodiversity planning. In addition to the Global Gender Office, IUCN has also established regional Gender Focal Points to monitor implementation of the IUCN Gender Policy at all levels.

This institutional recognition of gender issues is quite noteworthy for an intergovernmental organization such as IUCN, as it has taken many decades for other environmental frameworks and mechanisms to begin developing policies to integrate social issues into their work. This is beginning to shift across the board, and in particular, in 2015, where both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement, placed gender equality as central to all actions.

As highlighted in the Opening Session of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, this is the largest global meeting of decision-makers and practitioners since the major global development agreements of 2015--and an important opportunity to focus on implementation and action. It is a moment for IUCN to highlight its strong history and work on gender equality, which the Congress seemingly recognized: "The IUCN Congress 2016 aims to be the most gender-responsive Congress in IUCN's history. It will comply with the Union's Gender Policy as well as the various mandates adopted by IUCN's General Assemblies. The IUCN Congress Gender Mainstreaming Strategy was created to ensure that IUCN's policies and actions reflect the importance of gender equality in all of the Union's work."

Measuring Success

In reflecting on the first few days of the 2016 IUCN Congress, there are some glaring challenges to achieving the goal of being the most 'gender-responsive' Congress in IUCN's history.

Motions. As stated above, this Congress marks a critical moment for building towards action and implementation from the big agendas decided in 2015. The Congress intends to leave with a Conservation Agenda - to help achieve a series of goals. It would seem unquestionable given progress on gender, and IUCN's history on this work, that gender equality would be a pillar of this agenda. However, the 2016 Congress will actually mark the first Congress in decades where out of 99 resolutions, there is not a single reference to gender.

Visibility. It's also surprising that out of the 17 journeys/ topics identified as critical issues for this 'planet at a crossroads', it seems that the concerns of people and communities, and in particular, gender issues are very hidden within the agenda. IUCN certainly has the expertise, partnerships and knowledge for gender equality, women's rights and the role of local communities / indigenous peoples to be critical journey not only as part of the themes of the conference but woven throughout all of the conference.

Influence. While much progress still needs to be made in integrating gender into the efforts of environmental conservation groups such as the members of IUCN, many do have gender advisors or advocates working within these organizations. In discussions with fellow gender advocates here at the Congress on the lack of gender issues in the motions as well as in events, there seems to be some shared experiences of either not being fully engaged in preparations for sessions and motions in relation to the World Congress but also challenges in support or political will among the organizations to see gender, women rights and the rights of indigenous peoples as priority issues. This suggests a need for continued opportunities for capacity building and knowledge sharing on how gender is central to all conservation work, and not simply an 'add-on'.

Voice. Most significant is an observation that many panels / sessions of the IUCN Congress have not included or prioritized people most impacted by environmental degradation, or leading conservation efforts, in particular, indigenous women. Beyond this, there is a lack of space for these important voices to be heard in the first place. As an example, an incredible group of indigenous women from Kenya, Thailand, Guatemala, Hawaii, Fiji and Russia, part of the Indigenous Women's Biodiversity Network (IWBN) held an event offsite on Friday, September 2nd, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The organizers explained that they did not know in time about funding availability to be able to apply for an official side event slot. This sharing of experiences of resources management and conservation via traditional knowledge was worthy of a High-Level Panel at the IUCN Congress, but at minimum, more flexibility and space to ensure the participation and voice of indigenous women, peoples and frontline communities should be guaranteed in this type of space.

This is not to diminish the good work that is going on to highlight gender in the IUCN Congress, particularly via the efforts of the Senior Global Gender Office, as well as the many gender experts, advocates and indigenous women activists who are here organizing and sharing their experiences. However, with such a rich history in leadership on gender issues, and with a specific policy for gender mainstreaming, one would expect a much stronger coordination and emphasis on the topic. In addition, a much more progressive understanding that for the Congress to be truly gender responsive and also responsive to human rights, we must work to ensure that gender balance is only a first step. In addition to ensuring men and women in equal number we must also make space and prioritize frontline communities who are leading resilience efforts- to voice their challenges and their solutions for conservation and sustainable development.

Achieving Success

As the IUCN Congress moves from the Forum to the Members Assembly on Tuesday, there are a number of things which can be done over the coming days and in the future to ensure the Congress is fulfilling IUCN's role as a champion of gender issues.

Raise your voice. IUCN members should use the opportunity of the Assembly to raise the importance of gender equality and women's rights in conservation and sustainable development, in line with the big agreements of 2015 and IUCN mandates and policies. Members should highlight that this is the first Congress where gender has been absent from motions, and that it must not be absent in the future conservation agenda.

Reflect. Members should also reflect on the motions/events submitted and planning for the Congress and whether there were opportunities to engage with gender advisors and staff which were not utilized or explored.

Engage. Congress participants should join in the conversation on gender issues. Advocates at the Congress have been using the hashtag #IUCNGender to highlight some critical conversations. In addition, anyone interested in these issues is welcome to join an open and informal 'women and gender caucus' which meets at 8am each morning on level 3.

Lead. Finally, IUCN must ensure gender equality, and their leadership on this issue, remains as a guiding principle for the organization. Articulated in enhanced collaboration with women's groups and gender advocates around the world, greater coherence to its internal mainstreaming policies, and continued support to members on technical training and capacity building around gender issues.

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Judge Threads Needle on Dakota Access Pipeline Temporary Restraining Order
A federal judge has granted in part and denied in part the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's request to temporarily stop work on a portion of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline. At issue is the Sioux Nation's attempt to protect ancient prayer and burial grounds.

U.S. District Judge Boasberg said that work will temporarily stop between State Highway 1806 and 20 miles east of Lake Oahe, but that work will continue west of the highway. At issue is whether The United States Army Corps of Engineers has any jurisdiction on the private land.

This means that the site of mass grave and artifact desecration by contractors at the site of a violent confrontation between protestors and Energy Transfer Inc.'s security forces over the holiday weekend is not resolved. Women and children were maced, pepper sprayed, and attacked by security dogs, according to Tribal Leaders. Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said in a press release, "Sacred places containing ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe were destroyed Saturday by Energy Transfer Partners.

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier is calling on all members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe to avoid traveling to or doing business in the Mandan-Bismarck area until this crisis is resolved. "I fear for my people's safety, the Chairman said in a press release.

Attorneys for Energy Transfer Partners denied that workers destroyed any cultural sites, but evidence filed by the Plaintiffs and the Sioux Nation indicate otherwise.

Testimony in support of the Temporary Restraining Order against DALP interests filed by Tim Mentz reads, in part:

The elders say that reburying can help deal with the loss and hurt of disturbing these graves. These are people whose graves are in some cases known about and who have family connections in Cannon Ball. We want an opportunity to rebury our relatives. We normally are given this opportunity if gravesites are disturbed.

I do not believe that the timing of this construction was an accident or coincidence. Based on my observations, the nearest area of construction in the right of way west of Highway 1806 is around 20 miles away. It appears that DAPL drove the bulldozers approximately 20 miles of uncleared right of way to access the precise area that we surveyed and described in my declaration. The work started very early in the morning and they were accompanied by private security with dogs and with a helicopter overhead, indicating that the work was planned with care and that controversy was expected.

Immediately recognizing the need to stop this process, on August 4, 2016 the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe along with attorneys from Earth Justice filed a motion with supporting documents for a preliminary injunction against the DAPL. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) issued the initial permitting for the pipeline. Federal Judge James E. Boasberg rejected the motion to ignore the injunction request and ordered a status conference on September 14, leaving room for discussion after his ruling September 9.

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Obama Cements His Climate Legacy
After promising to slow the rise of the oceans in 2008, president Barack Obama has finally cemented his climate legacy.

Over the weekend, the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the U.S. and China formally ratified the Paris climate change pact. The move is being hailed as a crucial step in the fight against global warming. Speaking together with China's Xi Jinping, Obama said:

"Just as I believe the Paris agreement will ultimately prove to be a turning point for our planet, I believe that history will judge today's efforts as pivotal. We have a saying in America that you need to put your money where your mouth is. And when it comes to combating climate change that is what we are doing ... we are leading by example."

Painstakingly crafted and agreed to by more than 190 nations last December, the treaty is the by product of over 20 years of fraught negotiations. In the past, Beijing and Washington locked horns over who should take responsibility for the cuts: the U.S., the largest emitter historically, or China, the biggest polluter at present?

But, in 2014 as the science behind climate change grew ever more frightening, the two super powers joined forces to spreadhead a new global effort.

The move came six months after the UN released its most terrifying climate report yet: world temperatures are set to race past the four degrees Celsius mark before the turn of this century. And, whilst this may not sound like much, its enough to usher in a mass extinction event as it brings about changes not seen the last Ice Age.

"When the two largest emitters lock arms to solve climate change, that is when you know we are on the right track," said David Waskow from the World Resources Institute: "Never before have these two countries worked so closely together to address a global challenge. There's no question that this historic partnership on climate change will be one of the defining legacies of Obama's presidency."

The move came as monthly temperatures continue to smash records: July was the hottest July on record.

With less than 11 weeks before Americans head to the polls, the Obama administration is desperate to solidify the deal in the event of a Donald Trump presidency.

In his signature louche manner, the former Apprentice star has dismissed climate change as a
hoax and threatened to pull the U.S. out the pact if he wins the White House this November.

But, it was purposely structured in such that it would take years to unwind once it goes into effect. However, this can only happen one month after 55 nations representing some 55% of emissions rubber stamp it. Up until last weekend, only 24 countries covering a meager 1.08% of emissions had done so. The U.S. and China only account for 38% of emissions.

Over 30 other nations have indicated that they will sign up this year, and in a bid to fast track the process, the U.N. is hosting a special summit in New York this month which may lead to a ratification surge. According to some campaigners, the treaty may even come into effect before the UN climate summit in Marakkesh this November.

Once the accord comes into force, all nations will have to slash their emissions according to the targets laid out last December. And, although the sum total of those pledges is not enough to stave off dangerous climate change, the accord does promise to ratchet up ambition every 5 years.

Six years ago, world leaders promised to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. But, the latest estimates indicate that we are in danger of surpassing that limit within the next 15 years.

According to a NASA funded study, civilizations in the past have collapsed because of:

"The stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity and the economic stratification of society into Elites and Masses. In unequal societies, Elites grow and consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society."

Interestingly, at the end of last weekend's G20 summit, the head of the International Monetary Fund concluded that "growth has been too low for too long for too few." This in part has given rise to populist politics on both sides of the Atlantic: namely Brexit and Trump.

Since the financial crisis 8 years ago, prolonged stagnant growth has only caused the inequality gap to widen whilst the strain on the planet has deepened. So, we can either continue along this business as usual path and veer towards collapse, or we can squarely confront both crises by firing up the green energy sector.

This will create both jobs and growth whilst simultaneously saving our climate. With only 15 years left before we experience dangerous climate change, all nations must urgently step up to the plate. In the words of Pope Francis: "If we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us."

As actor Leonardo di Caprio reminded world leaders at the UN two years ago: "You can make history or be vilified by it." To paraphrase the great Martin Luther King: "Although the arc of the universe is long, may it bend towards justice."

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Disasters And Biodiversity: Integrating The Environment Into Recovery And Reconstruction For A Resilient Tomorrow
The devastating floods in Louisiana and the wildfires in California are a sober reminder of climate change's destructive path. We're facing a harsh reality: frequent and extreme weather events are now the norm for more and more people here at home and abroad.

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Nepal Earthquake. Photo Credit: © Judy Oglethorpe / WWF

As the number and scale of natural disasters around the globe increase, the connection between World Wildlife Fund's environmental work, disasters and humanitarian action has never been more urgent.

Healthy ecosystems not only play an important role in supporting recovery and reconstruction after a disaster, but in reducing future disaster risk.

When governments and vulnerable communities combine environmental conservation practices with humanitarian efforts after natural disaster strikes, it's possible to "build back safer" and improve resilience - for both people and the environment.

The need for environmental disaster response work first became apparent to me after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. I was there during the rebuilding. My involvement began with something unexpected: fish. It never occurred to me that disaster response was a conservation issue, then I saw fisheries being rebuilt post-tsunami. Many builders were using outdated and potentially environmentally destructive methods.

Building materials were needed to rebuild shelters and infrastructures - the need for massive amounts of timber, sand and gravel in a short period of time, poses a serious threat of habitat destruction, and a lack of appropriate spatial planning can expose people to flooding and landslide risk. In Sri Lanka, a community was inadvertently placed in harm's way by relocation from the coastline to an area that was an elephant migratory route.

Our workshop at the World Conservation Congress will examine the concept of ''building back safer and greener'' after natural disasters, and we'll be sharing our Green Recovery and Reconstruction Training Toolkit - the only toolkit of its kind. Its purpose: to guide environmentally responsible rebuilding after a natural disaster and utilize healthy ecosystems to reduce future risk.

The toolkit is a result of our work with the American Red Cross and covers a wide range of topics some of them include: how to assess the environmental impacts of a disaster, strategic site selection and development in the rebuilding process and water and sanitation better practices.

Historically, environmental and humanitarian professionals have worked in isolation. But now, we're routinely meeting each other on the ground. Humanitarian agencies working with disaster survivors are increasingly realizing that a healthy environment is critical to a healthy community. Although challenging at times, bringing together diverse skill sets and perspectives adds strength to every effort. It's in the interest of both of our sectors to work more successfully together in advance of the next crisis -- rather than trying to figure it out afterwards.

The future holds many unknowns regarding how the world is going to be impacted by climate change. What we do know is that unpredictable and intense weather extremes are going to increase. So today, we have to continually learn, adapt and improve as we go. Embrace the uncertainty of tomorrow and work to collectively make the future less scary -- by including the environment in disaster management and providing as many sustainable options as we can.

This post is part of a series on the World Conservation Congress taking place this week. Held every four years, it brings together about 6,000 people, including heads of state, government officials, business leaders, representatives from indigenous groups, scientists, academics, influencers, educators, artists and NGOs, from all over the world to discuss and decide on solutions to the world's most pressing environmental challenges. To read all the posts in this series click here.

A man walks past a boat washed ashore on a beach after Typhoon Haiyan hit on Malapascua Island, off the north coast of Cebu, Philippines in 2013. Photo Credit: © Pablo Sanchez / WWF

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Indonesia tsunami. Photo Credit: © Anita Van Breda / WWF

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WWF staff assesses the building materials being used to reconstruct a community center in Aceh, Indonesia. Photo Credit: © Anita Van Breda / WWF

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Sri Lanka. Photo Credit: © Anita Van Breda / WWF

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Human vs. Pathogen: The Art of Battling Infectious Disease

Mankind vs. Pathogen.

This idea--the ages-old, microscopic battle between parasites, bacteria, viruses and human immune systems--is the essence of the science performed by myself and so many other infectious disease researchers.

Winning this battle, advancing the knowledge and cures necessary to ultimately defeat global diseases, is precisely where our work is focused.

Inspired by the battle our scientists wage against deadly disease-causing pathogens, we have developed a series of posters to capture the spirit of this battle of "Human vs. Pathogen". Our aim is to highlight the creativity, imagination, and passion that infectious disease scientists bring to this battle each day--and the optimism we see right at the epicenter of the struggle.

The posters were a true collaboration between art and science, developed by our team at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and our design partner, Motive. The design muse stemmed from a combination of World War-era public health propaganda posters, classic movie posters, and comic book imagery.

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We are scientists. That's to say, this kind of art-driven project is entirely new for us. At the most basic level, we hope to capture a few imaginations, pique curiosity, and ultimately encourage more people to be advocates for infectious disease science, in every medium.

Why is this important?

It is an interesting time to work in the field of infectious diseases. Zika and Ebola captured the world's attention and concern like nothing we've seen since the dawn of the AIDS pandemic.

With the eyes of the world on these diseases, mountains were moved. Research dollars flowed in, red tape was cut, and the resulting forward progress over the ensuing months and years--researching and understanding the viruses, developing a pipeline of potential cures--amounts to more than has occurred in the previous decades for these diseases.

What this plainly demonstrated to me was the importance of public attention. When our will is there, when we are focused, when we have the imagination to see that life can fundamentally improve, we achieve great results for our collective health and safety.

The problem is that we perpetually find ourselves reacting to crises, when it is already too late to prevent tragedy. What this represents is a crisis of imagination--and it's one of the biggest challenges we face.

"Old news" diseases are often relegated to the back page. The tidal wave of attention we've seen for Zika and Ebola is precisely what we need for other global diseases that quietly continue to have an astronomical, sustained human impact, such as HIV, TB, and malaria. Infectious diseases claim the lives of 14 million people each year. To put that in perspective, this is somewhere near the population of the four biggest cities in the US. Combined.

Our reactive human nature also undercuts the best opportunity we have to combat these diseases: scientific research.

Improving our world's health starts with science. Period.

We cannot combat infectious diseases if we don't understand how they operate and interact with our immune systems. Despite this, little to no research was conducted on the Zika virus, even though it was first discovered in 1947. Centuries later, many unanswered questions remain with tuberculosis and malaria as well.

Today, science is propelling new discoveries every day that hold the potential to save lives. Right now our teams at the Center are performing experiments with potential drugs for Zika, while also prepping a promising malaria vaccine candidate for early next year. These are just two examples.

We know the great influence we can have when more of us pay attention and raise our voice. There is no better time than right now to "join the fight" and champion the science necessary to create a healthier, safer world.

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You can support life-saving science by reaching out to your local elected officials.

Receive your own high-resolution digital version of the "Human vs. Pathogen" poster series with a $25 donation here. All proceeds will benefit the work of the Center for Infectious Disease Research.

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Clarifications, Re: Fish Sustainability

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Image Credit: Huffington Post Images

I take responsibility for what I write, always. Therefore, I offer a few clarifications and additional explanations to my previous article, "Sustainable Fish Do Not Exist."

In my previous article, I stated that 80% of fish are overfished or overexploited. This 80% figure did come from a FAO report. However, 1) this report was a little outdated, and 2) I did incorrectly state the terms "overfished" and "overexploited" figure.

I do appreciate fisheries management groups for pointing this outdated information to me, along with my misnomers.

In reviewing the most recent FAO report from 2016, What I should have written was that close to 90% of fish are fully-exploited or overfished. To be more specific still, 58% are fully exploited and 31% are overfished.

What this means is that 58% of fish stocks are already at their maximum-production yield with little to no room (if any) to grow in extraction. 31% of fish stocks are already overfished or overexploited, and this figure has been growing since 1974 and continues growing every year (see FAO graph below).

While it is worth noting that 10% of fish stocks globally are underfished, this percentage been falling since 1974.

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Image Credit: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2016) - State of World Fisheries.

Meanwhile, world population is expected to grow by another third by 2050 - nearing 9.7 Billion people (see chart below), and some fish stocks are already on the verge of collapse.

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Image Credit: United Nations (2015) World Population Prospects

In fact, a recent 2016 FAO report - "Fish to 2030" states, "Supplying fish sustainably--producing it without depleting productive natural resources and without damaging the precious aquatic environment--is a huge challenge. We continue to see excessive and irresponsible harvesting in the capture fisheries and in aquaculture. Disease outbreaks among other things, have heavily impacted production..."

So, while aquaculture and fish farming are growing and now represent about 1/2 of all fish produced in the world, there do remain some problems including pollution, disease outbreak, and some excessive use of wild fish as food for farmed fish, though this too, is improving.

Thus, it is remains difficult for me to understand how increased overexploitation and an increased world population who desires to consume more fish, could remain sustainable.

What's more, several fish species have been declared as critically endangered and threatened with extinction by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

And, to exacerbate the lack of sustainability in fisheries it has further been reported by the National Institutes of Health fish oils may not be as beneficial as believed. They are certainly not detrimental, but they don't really provide any major benefits.

According to the Institutes of Medicine, only the plant-based sources of omega-3s, Alpha Linolenic Acid (ALA) and Linolenic Acid (LA) have reference intake values known as adequate intake levels, essentially meaning the minimum level we should be striving to eat every day. Meanwhile, DHA and EPA, the "famous omega-3s," those found in fish, do not. Besides that, DHA can be obtained from algal sources of omega-3.

Finally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, climate change is expected to create problems with ocean health and fisheries health, through acidification (increasing mortality of certain shellfish and corals), temperature changes (displacing fish stocks), changes to important ocean currents, and even by worsening or increasing oceanic dead zones.

So, to conclude: I did mis-report some figures on overfishing. However, with overfishing growing and underfishing declining, with world population growing, climate change, and some overfishing and collapse of fisheries already present, I still believe that sustainable fish are hard to come by.

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On Finding a Rare and Special Bosque Treasure
During my regular excursions into the Bosque, the nearby grove of cottonwoods that border the Rio Grande (the largest such grove in New Mexico, North America, and supposedly the world), I'm always on the lookout for something remarkable and memorable -- something to revisit or to show to my Bosque-buddies. Most of these memorabilia are living, like a friendly coyote that hangs out in the same area, a school of carp in a ditch, or a certain Cooper's hawk that is sure to return to her nest every spring and with her mate conceive and nurture that year's nestlings. Others are unliving, like the stump that others and I had previously written about: a holy place for prayer, meditation, and meeting new friends.

Two days ago on a new path, I came on a very special Bosque treasure. It was a group of beautiful and healthy flowers (it's monsoon season in New Mexico). They are lily-like, tall, white, and proud. In the high desert where flowers - especially large, showy ones -- are scarce and thus looked upon with much admiration. No wonder the natives of the Southwest were enticed by the Jimson Weed (datura) to interact with it in several ways just as I was; however, for me, that meant learning about this beautiful find in the Internet.

For example, Peruvian-born American author Carlos Castaneda in his writings beginning with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968 wrote extensively about this plant, in which he claimed that a "Yaqui Man of Knowledge" named Don Juan instructed him in the preparation and uses of all parts of the plant, roots, leaves, flowers and seeds for recreational and spiritual purposes.

Jimson Weed (Datura stramonium) is also called Sacred Thorn Apple, Sacred Datura, Devil's Snare, Angel Tulip, Mad Apple, Peru Apple, and Locoweed) is the name of a poisonous perennial plant and ornamental flower of southwestern North America. The leaves and seeds are used to make medicine as well as in spiritual practices around the world. Despite serious safety concerns, jimson weed is used to treat asthma, cough, flu (influenza), swine flu, and nerve diseases. Some people use it as a recreational drug to cause hallucinations and a heightened sense of well-being (euphoria).

Here are some interesting tidbits I harvested on the web about my new-found flower:

In 1676, a group of soldiers in Jamestown, Virginia accidentally dined on a salad made from D. stramonium leaves. They proceeded to exhibit very bizarre behavior. Thus the name became Jamestown Weed, which morphed into Jimson Weed.
Many North American peoples blend datura leaves with other herbs and kinnikinnick smoking blends to assist in "vision quests" (a rite of passage in some Native American cultures consisting of a series of ceremonies led by Elders including a complete fast while alone at a sacred site in nature.)
Anglophone settlers in California often called it "Indian whiskey" because of its ritual intoxicating use by many tribes; the name "sacred datura" has the same origin.
The Mixo of Oaxaca, Mexico believe that the plant spirit of datura is an elderly wise woman. When they harvest the seeds of the plant, they pray that she may heal the illness of the individual for whom the seeds are being harvested. The seeds are then consumed ritually.
Among the Zuni people, the powdered root is given as an anesthetic and a narcotic for surgery. They also apply a poultice of root and flower meal applied to wounds to promote healing. The Zuni people also use the plant for ceremonial and magical purposes. The root pieces are chewed by a robbery victim to determine the identity of the thief. The powdered root is used by rain priests in a number of ways to ensure fruitful rains.
"I asked Aunt Bett why we couldn't pick that beautiful white flower that bloomed in the evening and on into the night. She sat me down right then and there and told me the story of near death and destruction brought about by the misuse of the Devil's Plant. And she made me promise to never touch Devil's Plant no matter what, 'cause the devil got ahold of anybody who did." [from an Appalachian journalist]

So, in conclusion, I will be revisiting and paying my respects to the patch of Jimson weeds, until they retire for the winter; I will show them to my Bosque buddies; and I will eagerly await their return each late summer monsoon season; but what I won't do - I promise - is give their leaves, seeds, or roots a taste - or even a feel

Seedpods to carry about with you:

From Aldo Leopold: The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
From Henry David Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow.
From George Washington Carver: I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
From Carlos Castaneda: For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length--and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.

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Just Stop Hurting Elephants
It's undeniable; elephants are majestic, captivating, inspiring, and magnificent. People across the globe pay attention to their well-being and their plight.

They amaze us as they traverse the African savannah or navigate the Asian tropical forests in matriarchal herds: grandmothers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters, aunts, nieces, and cousins, all living together in strong family systems. They disperse vital seeds, ensuring an enhanced and viable ecosystem. They mourn the dead in poignant burial rituals.

Yet, despite our profound love for elephants and amazement at their very existence, humans have a unique, inexplicable capacity to bring pain and suffering to individual elephants as we simultaneously engage in behaviors that hasten their demise in the wild.

Captive elephants suffer inexplicable indignity. They are forced to "live" in small enclosures that prevent their naturally gregarious and inquisitive behaviors. They languish with comparable immobility, never able to walk the long distances that their wild cousins do. They are forced to perform insane tricks for gawking onlookers that include balancing on a ball, walking on their back legs, perching their front legs on the elephant before them, and carrying thoughtless humans around a ring.

They don't do this willingly. They are "trained." This training is often accomplished with the use of the barbaric bullhook: a stick with a metal spike at the tip that is plunged behind the elephant's ear or into her leg. It's used to induce action; the right action; the action that the cruel trainer is seeking.

In California, no more.

This week, California governor Jerry Brown signed into law legislation introduced by state senator Ricardo Lara from Bell Gardens that prohibits keeping elephants anywhere that uses a "bullhook, ankus, baseball bat, axe handle, pitchfork, or other device designed to inflict pain for the purpose of training or controlling the behavior of an elephant."

Absolutely amazing! I extend my thanks and congratulations to The Humane Society of the United States, Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), and Oakland Zoo for sponsoring this important bill.

It's quite simple, isn't it? In 2016, there is no excuse for keeping elephants in captivity anywhere. They belong in the wild. But, in 2016, if an elephant is to be kept in captivity, there is no excuse for using a bullhook to control her. If you can't manage without a bullhook, get out of the elephant business.

California follows Rhode Island in making this compassionate legislative change. As far as I'm concerned, that's two states down--and 48 to go.

I certainly hope this puts more and more elephant attractions out of business. That said, there are still so many elephants sadly clinging to deprived lives in American zoos, bullhook or not. The San Antonio Zoo, for instance, has been expanding its captive elephant group by pulling elephants "on loan" from the Ringling Bros. circus elephant center in Florida. Imagine: an elephant is grotesquely forced to do stupid and demeaning tricks in a circus, shuttled around the country by rail. She's chained, year after year. When she's FINALLY "retired" to a comparatively peaceful new home in Florida, she's suddenly sent to a zoo in San Antonio. I think the phrase is something about adding insult to injury.

Again, an enlightened society should be moving elephants out of circuses and zoos, and into peaceful sanctuary life immediately and permanently. No excuses. They suffer in captivity, psychologically and physically. They die young in captivity.

Stop beating them with bullhooks. Stop incarcerating them in a living hell. Just stop.

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,

Adam

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Do You Have a Negative Attitude about Aging?
By Kate Wheeling

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Everyone reacts differently to stressful events, but new research, published last week in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, shows that our outlook on aging could affect how we deal with the stress of daily life.

Past research on how older adults react to stress has produced a mixed bag of results, according to Jennifer Bellingtier, a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University, and lead author on the new study. Some studies show that older individuals handle stress better compared to their younger peers, while others find older adults are worse off. Some show that both groups fare about the same. "We thought aging attitudes could be a factor that explains why these results are all over the place," Bellingtier says.

"The research base is definitely building that it's important to have positive attitudes toward aging," she explains. Adults who hold a more negative view of aging report lower levels of life satisfaction, well-being, and social supports, and they're more likely to be hospitalized or to die young.

To find out if aging attitudes could also influence stress responses day to day, the researchers sent nine days' worth of surveys to 43 adults between 60 and 96 years old. On day one, the survey assessed participants' general attitudes toward aging ("I am as happy now as I was when I was younger," for example). For the remaining eight days, participants filled out surveys before bed about any stressful events -- such as disagreements or health problems -- and their moods.

As the team predicted, stressful events had little effect on the moods of adults with positive attitudes toward aging. On the other hand, participants with more negative views about aging had stronger emotional reactions to daily stressors.

The takeaway, according to Bellingtier, is that it's not just hypothetical, future events like hospitalizations that attitude can influence. "What we're adding is that it's also affecting how you respond to daily life," Bellingtier says. "It's going to affect you right now."

There are, however, several factors that affect the generalizability of these results. The participants were mostly women, and the study group was relatively small (though Bellingtier notes that the team has nine data points for almost every participant, which makes the data set more statistically powerful than other studies with a similarly small sample size). Additionally, all the study participants were from the United States.

"When you're looking at aging attitudes, those are always in a cultural context," Bellingtier says. In the U.S., growing older is not typically seen as a positive thing; in the media, for example, older adults tend to be portrayed as a burden or the butt of jokes. Many other cultures view their elders as wise and worthy of respect. More research is needed to find out if those attitudes protect older adults in other cultures from day-to-day stress as well.

But given the growing evidence that what goes on in our minds can influence what goes on in our bodies, maybe we could all use an attitude adjustment.

This article was originally published on Pacific Standard. Read the original article.

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Autism Causes

By Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog

A diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or ASD in a child can be devastating for parents. Scientists have been seeking the cause of ASD for decades but it still remains elusive. ASD is a group of neurodevelopmental disorders that result in a wide range of symptoms, disabilities and skills. The official categorization of ASD includes three primary diagnoses: Autistic Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Delays - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) and Asperger syndrome. The diagnosis of Autistic Disorder must include impairments in three cardinal domains: communication abnormalities, impaired social functions and repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. Autistic Disorder is more on the severe end of the spectrum with impairments in all three domains. Autistics exhibit marked problems with social interactions, they have delayed and abnormal communications development with as many as 50% not speaking at all. Behaviorally, those affected can be insistent in maintaining routines, resist change and can engage in repetitive behaviors such as hand flapping or rocking.

People with PDD-NOS have some but not all of the symptoms of AD or another Pervasive Developmental Disorder. While those with Asperger's Syndrome have problems with social interaction and respond unusually to their environment much like individuals with autism. However, they do not have the communication and cognitive deficits. They can exhibit unusual idiosyncratic interests in very limited things, for example train schedules, snakes or the weather.

So what causes autism? Twin studies have revealed that there is a strong genetic component to autism. If one identical twin is affected with Autistic Disorder there is a 36-95% chance that the other twin will also be affected. While the risk for fraternal twins is 5-20% which is also the chance of a couple with an autistic child having a second child with autism. The second clue that there is a genetic component is that there are other known genetic disorders in which there are higher autism rates including Downs Syndrome, Turner Syndrome and duplications in chromosome 15.

The search for the gene(s) involved has been underway for many years. There are close to 800 genes that have been found altered in people with autism. It appears that different genes or combinations of altered genes lead to autism in different people. No two autistic individuals are likely to have the same genetic alterations leading. It has been determined that 5-10% of autistic individuals have acquired new mutations not present in their parents' genes. Gene alterations may couple with environmental exposures in causing autism. For example, gestational diabetes, folic acid deficiency at conception, in utero exposure to certain drugs, living near a city with air pollution all increase the risk for autism. There is also some evidence to suggest that the gut microbiome plays an important role in development and disruptions in the normal flora may also contribute to the development of ASD.

Scientists are working hard to understand the complex genetic and environmental factors that are involved in ASD. Unfortunately, the causes of ASD are very heterogeneous. One fact is irrefutable, autism is not caused by vaccinations.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

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With Our Planet At The Crossroads, The Future Of Conservation Depends On Science
This week, conservation takes center stage as 6,000 global experts dive deep into the issues that will define the physical future of our planet. And with the all the far-reaching impacts of these decisions affecting the long-term sustainability of our planet, it's a gathering that cannot come soon enough.

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Photo Credit: © Michel Roggo / WWF

The World Conservation Congress is the single largest conservation event in the world. It brings together a broad cross-section of conservation minds. Leaders and decision-makers from governments, businesses, indigenous organizations, academia, and NGOs are here to identify evolving trends, current threats, and innovative solutions to the challenges we collectively face in safeguarding biodiversity and protecting ecosystems that provide life-supporting services like clean water and air.

Expectations are high as momentum is on our side. Last year, international leaders set a collective agenda to end poverty and ensure sustainability remains front and center when they adopted the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. And, some 195 nations came together in a concerted effort to combat climate change and prepare our communities for its impacts, with the signing of the Paris Agreement. On the heels of these two ambitious agreements, this year's Congress looks to set a global agenda for how we manage our natural environment for human, social and economic development - and do so in a way that lives up to the promise set by these pacts.

It's no small task. And like all significant challenges the world faces today, we need the right mix people with the right kind of talent and a diversity of perspectives to drive the kinds of innovative solutions needed to get us back on course. At the Congress, delegates are building relationships among unlikely partners - from local communities to multi-national companies to global NGOs - to identify the kinds of disruptive solutions we need.

We are sharing our insights into new technologies that can help plan for future growth, making sure the pace of development does not exceed the pace of conservation. We're driving solutions with unleashed creativity, grounding them in sound science, and redefining the way we approach conservation at scale.

I'm here talking about how WWF works with our partners to help drive conservation, using science to accelerate biodiversity protections while helping improve local communities.

We're ramping up high-tech solutions for combatting wildlife poaching. The illegal taking of wildlife has sky-rocketed in recent years, largely driven by demand in Asia. It's an incredible threat to tigers, rhinos, elephants, gorillas and other extraordinary wildlife in Africa and Asia. With sky-high price tags for horns, tusks and other body parts, these animals don't stand a chance unless we can stem the tide and reverse these trends.

Made possible by a grant from Google.org, WWF's Wildlife Crime and Technology Project is using adapted and new technologies to create seamless systems to protect wildlife from poachers. We are arming parks and reserves with thermal cameras and human-detection software, equipping rangers with devices to track the presence and movement of wildlife, and aggressively testing new uses for drones as part to our anti-poaching efforts. By deploying these and other technologies, we are leveling the playing field for rangers and actively protecting threatened species.

Science can also quench the thirst of a water-loving planet. Across the globe, climate-driven droughts are increasing in frequency and intensity. In recent years, heat waves and droughts in the Midwestern US, India, Brazil, and California set records. As these events grow more severe, we'll likely see increased conflicts among industry, farmers, city-dwellers and the environment as the amount of water available for consumption progressively declines.

We need to manage these resources with a transparent and collaborative science-based approach. It's our best hope for escaping future water wars and the scarcity trap. We need to embrace these new approaches, such as WWF's community-based Basin Report Cards, in which participants create a shared knowledge base to actively manage their local water supply sustainably and adaptively over time, even in the face of a changing climate.

We must continue conserving the reefs that foster biodiversity and feed local communities. For 3.1 billion people around the world, fish is an essential source of protein, accounting for almost 20 percent of the annual intake of animal protein. For those who are highly dependent on marine sources of protein, the local fish market is the nearest coral reef. Coral reefs provide the most diverse habitat of all marine ecosystems, housing one quarter of marine species in only one-tenth of the ocean's surface area. In these places, we must meet human dietary needs while ensuring the long-term persistence of the diversity of species. This requires a mix of social and natural science to get the balance right.

In Indonesia, WWF and its partners have established Marine Protected Areas designed to safeguard biodiversity, ensure productive fisheries and increase human well-being. Carefully established monitoring programs for social and environmental outcomes indicate that in many cases, the triple bottom line is possible and sustainable.

As this week's Congress points out, it's not an understatement to say our planet is at a crossroads when it comes to conserving nature. Decisions we make in the coming years - and even this week - will have long-term impact on the health and sustainability of the world we leave to those who follow in our steps. As we discuss, debate, and decide on those actions, it's critical we ensure good science guides the way.

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With Our Planet At The Crossroads, The Future Of Conservation Depends On Science
This week, conservation takes center stage as 6,000 global experts dive deep into the issues that will define the physical future of our planet. And with the all the far-reaching impacts of these decisions affecting the long-term sustainability of our planet, it's a gathering that cannot come soon enough.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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I, Trigger
In August, the Dean of my alma mater, the University of Chicago, sent a letter to its freshmen nixing trigger warnings and such. The ban hit the headlines , provoking lively debate ("PC or not PC?") in comment-land. Lively, but unfocussed, because "trigger" is a looking-glass word. Besides, the issue goes much deeper. To nudge the conversation toward clarity, I offer my personal experience, not with triggers but as one.

Imagine this. I'm talking with people I've never met before, say at a college reception. They're all articulate, accomplished: a sociologist, a biologist, a psychologist, and a historian. "What do you do?" someone eventually asks me politely. I say "Mathematics" and they all start trembling. Not in awe, but in fear. Their eyes brim with tears. And then, one by one, they confess. "My algebra teacher was wonderful but geometry made no sense to me." Or "I loved math up to sixth grade, but after that, I was blocked." Or "My brother was good at it." Or "I wanted to be a doctor but I failed calculus."

Their confessions perplex me. I'm neither a therapist nor a priest. Should I have warned them that my answer might upset them, and offered them earplugs? Or smiled politely and said, "That's all right, dear, you have other talents?" No. As a staunch UC alum I challenge them: "Why are you telling me this? "

Silence. I push on: "When you meet a violinist, do you turn pale and say you couldn't play a note!? When you meet an economist, do you blush beet red and stammer that you dropped the course?" No, they admit, they do not. "So why do you confess to me?" They laugh nervously, then steer the conversation back to their own terrains.

What's going on? It seems I've rung a bell -- the school bell. Let's ponder the metaphor. The English have rung bells from time immemorial so I looked up "ring, v " in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, expecting to find a long and interesting history. But no! The metaphor is just eighty-four years old! Here are the first two entries under "c. to ring a bell : to awaken a memory":

1934 A. Huxley Beyond Mexique Bay. Why should the Local Pavlov have
chosen to ring just those particular bells which happen to be rung?
1933 L. Thayer Counterfeit iii. Wait a second, Ray... Why does that name ring
a bell with you?

Why did this metaphor emerge when it did? What happened just about then, besides the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, and the first sighting of the Loch Ness Monster? Here's one: Ivan Pavlov's work on conditioned reflexes was diffusing to the English-reading public.

The famous Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) won the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his work on mammalian digestive systems. But the bell that rings when we hear "Pavlov" isn't a stomach rumbling, it's the literal bell he used in his later work on dogs. As the Nobel Foundation website explains to children,

...he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close
association with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.

Maybe that's it! People who quake when they learn what I do are conditioned! Not to drool at the sound of a bell, but to tremble and weep at the sight of a math teacher! Think about it. Year after year, children stress out on timed tests. Decades later, when they meet me, stress-behavior kicks in reflexively.

Nonsense, you may be thinking. These adults are grown up; they got over that long ago. But maybe they haven't. Maybe they can't. I wasn't surprised to learn, from the OED , that Aldous Huxley made the Pavlovian connection. He was interested (to say the least) in drugs and visited physicians who studied them. My father was one such doctor but don't I think Huxley paid us a call. Dad worked in the Addiction Research Center at the Narcotic Farm, a federal prison/hospital near Lexington, Kentucky. The Narcotic Farm was indeed both prison and hospital: inmates served time on dope charges, but they were also there to be cured. After detox, they were counseled and taught useful trades-farming, carpentry, and so on-to prepare them for clean, productive lives on the outside. Yet most of them returned one, two, or even ten years after their release, addicted all over again. The relapse rate was ninety per cent.

What is relapse, and why is it time-independent? Dad, a disciple of Pavlov, thought
addiction might be a form of conditioning. Just like in dogs, but with drugs instead of food, and syringes instead of bells. Indeed, ex-addicts were cured if they didn't go home again. They didn't relapse in new lives in new places. But, hanging out with the old gang even for a day, or setting foot on the old street corner, brought on the old craving full force. I learned about conditioned reflexes at the family dinner table; what I know about that science, I learned then. But, naive though I must be, I'll put it out there anyway: I trigger relapse!

With this insight, I'll take another tack next time. I won't warn or soothe or challenge my weeping interlocutors. Instead, I'll invite them all -- the sociologist, the biologist, the psychologist, the historian, the violinist and the economist -- to join forces and work together to understand triggers in addiction, PTSD, math anxiety, literature and much more. That's a conversation for a college.

Note: This blog draws on my essay "Bells and Whistles," in P. Casazza, S. G. Krantz, and R. D. Ruden, I, Mathematician, II, COMAP, Bedford, MA, 2016.

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Small Island States with Big Ocean Visions
Over the next two weeks I will be representing the world's smallest nation, the Republic of Nauru, at a meeting at the United Nations aimed at protecting the world's greatest natural asset, the ocean. For the people of small islands, understanding the importance of the ocean to human survival is as natural as breathing. If the ocean is healthy, we are healthy; if the future of the ocean is uncertain, so is ours. It is therefore alarming to witness the warming, rising and acidification of the sea around us due to climate change, and the increasing pressure on tuna and other fish stocks we depend on, and it has made Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like mine among the loudest voices calling for international action.

Along with our fellow SIDS, Nauru has been working for years to encourage all governments to prioritize ocean health, and we celebrated a year ago when a coalition of states and organizations succeeded in securing a strong Sustainable Development Goal for the ocean, SDG 14. Over the coming days our task at this Prepcom meeting is to begin translating our shared visions for addressing threats to the ocean into the terms of a breakthrough international agreement to conserve and sustainably use biological diversity in areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction (the BBNJ), or the high seas. This is vital as what happens on the high seas directly affects territorial waters. Neither fish, nor pollution, nor the impacts of climate change pay any attention to the 200 nautical mile demarcation lines that divide national from international waters. If we are serious about protecting the ocean, and meeting the targets contained in SDG 14, we must agree on how to effectively, sustainably and fairly govern and manage the high seas. And we must do so without delay.

Negotiating a new, legally-binding international agreement on marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction is an immensely complex undertaking, but when completed it will take its place as one of the great international legal instruments of our time. It is a responsibility that delegates meeting in New York do not take lightly, but also one that we must execute with a degree of urgency. Maintaining the status quo will not keep us comfortably ticking along; it will leave the high seas - half the surface of the Earth - in continued peril of unregulated exploitation, and hold back efforts to boost the resilience of the ocean to climate change. For vulnerable island and coastal communities this spells disaster. Fortunately, the successful negotiation of the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 gives us momentum, and offers hope that a robust High Seas Biodiversity Agreement can be swiftly reached. The task before us may be complex, but much of what should constitute the foundations of the agreement has already been laid by marine scientists and the negotiators of earlier agreements.

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©ChristianVizl/MarinePhotobank

The High Seas Biodiversity Agreement should focus on how the high seas can be jointly governed in order to meet the SDG 14 targets and all the goals agreed to under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These targets include to "sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts, including by strengthening their resilience"; to "end overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based management plans"; and to "conserve at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas." The BBNJ can be a key partner in implementing this ambitious, and essential, agenda, but only if it lives up to the challenge by including the mechanisms needed to eliminate harmful and illegal fishing, and establish marine protected areas, including reserves, on the high seas so that biodiversity and ecosystems can flourish. It must also contain provisions that ensure that access to and benefits from the natural resources of the high seas are equitably shared among all nations, large or small.

When we take our seats at the discussions on the substance of the new High Seas Biodiversity Agreement at the UN this week, the delegates from SIDS may represent only a tiny proportion of the world's population, but we feel that we also speak for the ocean. We hope that all states will seize this exciting opportunity to forge a new future of responsible, science-based high seas governance that benefits all people and conserves the blue heart of the ocean. We believe it is a vision well within our reach.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post in partnership with Ocean Unite, an initiative to unite and activate powerful voices for ocean-conservation action. The series is being produced to coincide with the UN's Preparatory Committee Meeting (Aug 26-Sept 9) on an internal legally binding instrument on marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction and is a part of HuffPost's "What's Working" initiative, putting a spotlight on initiatives around the world that are solutions oriented. To read all the posts in the series, read here.

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Driverless Vehicles: Ways to Improve Safety and Accelerate Environmental Progress Together
Are autonomous "driverless" vehicles truly the "next big thing" to transform our transportation system? If so, how soon, and what are the consequences for both safety and environmental values?

Federal policies to advance autonomous vehicle use should go hand-in-hand with policies to accelerate zero and low emissions vehicles and implement the Phase 2 CAFÉ standards that require much higher vehicle fuel efficiency.

Federal oversight agencies are initially focusing on autonomous vehicle safety, but they can do more than one thing at a time. Consistent with the Obama Administration's overall climate change policy solutions, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should assess ways in which autonomous vehicle use can reduce greenhouse gas pollution. This should be a "both-and": the technological advances that are spurring development of autonomous vehicles can create opportunities to both reduce fatalities on roadways and reduce pollution that harms our health and environment.

If federal policies are crafted with a broader view to address climate change solutions, driverless cars can significantly help the United States to reach the greenhouse gas pollution reduction goals set at the United Nations COP21 meeting in Paris where our nation pledged to achieve a 28 percent domestic reduction in greenhouse gas pollution by 2025. The new vehicle technologies developed and deployed here can also be transferred and exported to advance global climate change solutions. As a matter of climate change science, it doesn't matter for the atmosphere whether carbon pollution comes from Indiana, India or Indonesia.

Transportation is the second largest source of greenouse gas pollution. Promoting the development of driverless cars that include an emphasis on vehicles with zero or low carbon emissions is an important climate change solution.

Optimizing driving efficiency - for example, through smooth acceleration - which has been shown to cut emissions as much as 60 percent. Autonomous vehicles can be programmed to reduce "heavy-footed" driving.

"Platooning" - where a group of vehicles follows each other very closely on a highway - can increase fuel efficiency by 5-20 percent. This vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology can precede the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles.

Alleviating congestion, especially in city centers, to enable freer-flowing traffic and less start-and-stop driving that burns more fuel and creates more pollution.

Reducing vehicle weight. If driverless cars prove as safe as developers claim, then smaller, lighter, more efficient vehicles become more possible.

This is not, however, a one-way street. Adding more gas-powered driverless vehicles on the highways also presents the risk of reversing decades of progress in policy work to reduce vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and pollution. The ease of not-driving while reading a book, chatting with friends and family, or snoozing in a driverless car can facilitate longer commutes, more vehicles and more congestion on the highways, more exurban sprawl, and more VMTs. Unless there are accompanying fuel efficiency improvements through better vehicle technologies that substantially reduce pollution, there is a risk of moving backward (or at least not moving as far forward) in achieving greenhouse gas pollution reduction goals.

Simply put, policies to advance autonomous vehicle use should work together with federal policies to accelerate zero and low emissions vehicles and to ensure progress implementing the Phase 2 CAFÉ standards for higher vehicle fuel efficiency in order to reduce pollution. .

These opportunities and challenges are ripe for discussion. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced in January that the NHTSA intends to work with automakers and state governments to remove barriers by developing prototype laws and regulations. While the initial U.S. DOT and NHTSA discussions are focused on setting safety standards, the agencies should also engage the U.S. EPA at the table and infuse climate change considerations into the discussions and resulting guidelines over the next six months.

EPA's recent draft Technical Assessment Report on the CAFÉ standards begins to address greenhouse gas pollution impacts of autonomous vehicles: "EPA, NHTSA, and CARB are beginning to explore research on the potential emissions and fuel economy impacts of emerging transformational technologies and transportation trends."

That's a step in the right direction for devising the best policy roadmap for incorporating autonomous vehicles into our national transportation system in a way that improves both safety and environmental quality for us all.

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Apple set to control homes through new connected home app

Apple will be launching an app this autumn, which will allow users to control multiple home appliances through speaking to their smartphone.

The Home app will roll out with Apple's latest iOS 10 update in September, and aims to enhance the company's existing platform HomeKit, which until now has worked by connecting different device apps together.

A hub to “control your home”

Now, Home will be a hub where users can access all of their connected home products, including lighting, locks, heating and cooling, plugs and switches, blinds and sensors for appliances such as kettles.

Home will rival smart thermostat apps such as British Gas's Hive and Alphabet's Nest, and connected home hub Samsung's SmartThings.

Apple describes the new app as a “simple and secure way to manage home automation products in one place”, and to “set up, manage and control your home”.

Voice activated through Siri

The app links up with Apple's Siri feature so will be voice activated. Users can choose whether they want to manage home devices individually or group certain ones together, such as lighting, locks and heating, and control them with a single command.

Users can also organise their day into “scenes”, for example “I'm home”, “Good morning” and “Good night”, which when selected will trigger a series of actions, such as lights and heating coming on when they get home.

Can be used remotely

The app will also show specific details, such as the exact temperature of a thermostat at a given time, or the percentage at which dimmer lights are lit.

The app allows devices to be controlled remotely away from the home, or alternatively through other devices such as the Apple TV. It will also be possible to set timer triggers, and also event triggers for example, requesting the heating to come on only if the temperature in a room drops below 20°C.

The app will be available for £10.99 through the iTunes Store this autumn for users of iPhone 5 and later editions. An exact release date for iOS 10 is yet to be revealed.

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Channel 4 TV show Hollyoaks undergoes rebrand

Channel 4 TV show Hollyoaks has had a brand revamp, taking on a new logo and new title sequence.

The redesign is the soap opera's first major one in six years, and has been completed by the design and graphics team at Lime Pictures, the production company for the show.

The new logo replaces one implemented in 2011, which was made up of a 3D sans-serif typeface that used two interchangeable colours.

Prior to this, the soap had a flat logo which incorporated plus sign and arrow gender symbols, implemented in 2007.

The new logo sees a return to flat typography, which still makes use of two shades but without 3D elements.

The two colours are interchangeable depending on context, but are most commonly seen as white and grey, used against various title sequence backdrops.

Lime Pictures says the new logo has “clean lines and a modern feel” but also a “slightly retro look to recognise the show's heritage”.

The new branding has also been applied online and across social media applications, using a revamped “H” icon as the motif.

The new title sequences aim to be “vibrant, fun and glossy”, says the show's executive producer Bryan Kirkwood, and include shots of new characters on the show. Lime Pictures say the sequences aim to “move away from CGI” and more towards film.

Music accompanying the title sequence has also been reworked, completed by musician A Skillz.

2016 marks the soap's 21st year on Channel 4. The new title sequences and branding roll out this week.

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V&A director Martin Roth steps down

Director of the V&A Martin Roth, who set up the museum's design, architecture and digital department, has announced that he will stand down from his post this year.

61-year-old Roth leaves after five years doing the job, and was behind many of the museum's most successful exhibitions including David Bowie is and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

His tenure also saw the museum's highest ever recorded visitor number of 3.3 million in 2014.

“We will have to get used to living without European funds”

Roth leaves his post after reportedly telling German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in June that the UK's vote to leave the European Union was a “personal defeat”.

On how the decision would affect the cultural sector, he said: “On a national level, we will have to get used to living without European funds. That will especially affect research.”

He added that he felt affected “on an ideological level more than an economic one”, and that the phase of exiting the EU would be “horrible”.

The V&A was unable to confirm at the time of publishing whether Brexit played a part in Roth's decision to step down, but says there are “various reasons” for his departure.

“A significant contribution” to the museum's success

Roth, who was born in Germany, was previously president of the German Museums Association, and before that held director and curator roles at various science and history museums in Germany.

Roth himself says: “It's been an enormous privilege and tremendously exciting to lead this great museum…Our recent accolade as Art Fund Museum of the Year feels like the perfect moment to draw to a close my mission in London and hand over to a new director to take the V&A forward to an exciting future.”

He is set to step down this autumn, and the V&A's board of trustees is currently seeking a new director.

Nicholas Coleridge, chairman of the trustees of the V&A, adds: “Martin's tenure as director has been marked by a highly successful period of creativity, expansion and re-organisation of the V&A. He has made a significant contribution to the success of this museum.”

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The 1900 World's Fair Helped Shape How We Talk About Tech Today
Debates rage today about the risks and benefits of modern technology -- driverless cars, robots and drones in warfare and commerce, surgery by robotic rather than human hands, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation of food, organisms and even human beings.

The National Institutes of Health recently announced that it plans to end the ban on funding research for part-human, part-animal embryos, raising urgent ethical questions like: What if this produces an animal with a partly human brain?

But the origins of these very modern concerns date back more than a century, with lively discussions about "modernization" underway as early as the world's fair in Paris in 1900. One especially compelling, yet largely forgotten, analysis was penned by Henry Adams, the son of a congressman and diplomat, descendant of two U.S. presidents, a highly regarded historian and a conflicted technology enthusiast. His reflections were contained in his posthumously published autobiography, "The Education of Henry Adams."

What if this produces an animal with a partly human brain?

In a chapter titled "The Dynamo and the Virgin," he ponders the implications of the machine age, expressing deep concern over what he sees as a dangerous clash between the seductive grandeur of modern science and technology -- what he calls "the Dynamo" -- and the essential undergirding of humanity, religion and traditional values, which he christens "the Virgin."

More introspective than descriptive, "The Education of Henry Adams" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. It tops the Modern Library's list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century, outranking Booker T. Washington's "Up From Slavery," Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."

Today, Adams's work is not nearly as widely known as those, but not for lack of merit and timeliness. Indeed, one could argue that it is even more relevant today than it was when it was written.

"paris

The Galerie des Machines at the 1900 world's fair in Paris. (Photo12/UIG/Getty)

After studying exhibitions on art, science and technology at the world's fair in Paris, Adams concluded that -- despite his own appreciation of the merits of "progress" -- Americans were too ready to embrace new technology at the cost of traditional values. This raised for him a disquieting question for the dawning century: Will the human spirit survive the new age of the machine?

Adams was anxious that American culture was about to take a fateful turn, sacrificing traditional values on the altar of technology. Prompting his reflections was a visit to the Hall of Electrical Machines. He fixated in particular on one of the gigantic dynamos on display. Its purpose was beside the point. Adams's focus -- and his fear -- centered on its size and mechanism, its "huge wheel, revolving within arm's-length at some vertiginous speed" while making hardly a sound. Its workings, he wrote, were an unfathomable but seductive mystery -- one that left him in awe. The dynamo became for him the incarnation of modernity and a symbol of the "revolution of 1900" -- interwoven revolutions in science and technology that ushered in, most impressively, the new age of electricity, along with automated production, the car and the airplane.

And then there was the art. Adams contrasted the dynamo with the figure of the Virgin, which he suggested was the central inspiration behind much of what he had viewed in the fair's acclaimed art pavilions. The Virgin became his symbol for Christian tradition and, equated by Adams to the Roman mythological Venus, the female force in general. Looking to the future, he wondered if the god of technology, the dynamo's apotheosis, was on the verge of replacing, as he put it, the church and the cross. Adams was in fact seeking a middle ground between religion and science.

Will the human spirit survive the new age of the machine?

Adams's guide through the Hall of Electrical Machines was a leading American scientist, S. P. Langley, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Although holding Langley in the highest esteem, he wrote of being puzzled and a bit disturbed by the scientist's laser-like focus on machines and forces, to the exclusion of the art displays and all else that was non-scientific at the fair. "Langley," he wrote, "with the ease of a great master of experiment, threw out of the field every exhibit that did not reveal a new application of force, and naturally threw out, to begin with, almost the whole art exhibit."

Adams, writing in the third person about his experiences, described how Langley taught him to appreciate, if not really understand, recent discoveries in radioactivity, radio and electricity. "[Adams] wrapped himself in vibrations and rays which were new, and he would have hugged Marconi and Branly [the inventor of the Branly coherer, one of the earliest radio wave detectors] had he met them, as he hugged the dynamo."

Long fascinated by modern physics, Adams later experimented with applying physical theories to the theory of human history, even in the face of skeptical feedback from scientist friends. But it was the dynamo that excited his strongest reactions at the Paris fair: "As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the 40-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross ... Before the end, one began to pray to it."

"the

Adams plays with his dog in an undated photograph. (Bettmann via Getty)

Indeed, Adams later did pray to it, composing a poetic tribute, "Prayer to the Dynamo: Mysterious Power! Gentle Friend! Despotic Master! Tireless Force!" he wrote, with more than a hint of ambivalence.

The rush of discoveries in science and technology sometimes left him longing for the solace of tradition, security and unity that he associated with medieval society and the church. That people who now seemed to be turning away from the Virgin worried him, for he believed it could mean the end of the great artistic traditions that were propelled by the power of Christian faith, "the highest energy ever known to man," surpassing even the power of the steam engine and the dynamo.

Adams noted that in Europe, the "force of the Virgin was still felt at Lourdes and seemed to be as potent as X-rays," while "in America, neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as force." Despite his personal religious skepticism (he was attracted to religion but remained agnostic, never really reconciling the truths of science and religious faith), he regretted that his countrymen were apparently throwing in their lot with the machine worshippers.

'Before the end, one began to pray to it.'

So, what does Adams have to say to us today as we confront the dilemmas of our own technological revolution? Adams was enthusiastic about modern science and technology -- today we might refer to him as an early adopter -- but he remained an essentially 19th century man, mindful of the challenges to society posed by 20th century technology. His hope was that dynamo and Virgin would ultimately join together in support of both our spiritual and material lives.

To be sure, we no longer speak of dynamos and Virgins, much less of "hugging dynamos." Yet, in many ways, Adams was extraordinarily prescient. With today's advances in artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation, we face the very existential crisis that Adams foresaw.

Precisely 100 years after Adams toured the Paris Exposition of 1900, Bill Joy, the co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, wrote his now famous essay in Wired magazine, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," projecting a dystopian future in which "our most powerful 21st-century technologies -- robotics, genetic engineering and nanotech -- are threatening to make humans an endangered species." Adams was not half so gloomy as Joy. From the vantage of the revolution of 1900, he welcomed our technological future, but with a crucial caveat: make sure our technology has a soul, not in the sense of superseding us as sentient human beings, but of living in spiritual harmony with our better selves.

This was produced by Zocalo Public Square.

Also on WorldPost:

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Deliveroo unveils new kangaroo as part of rebrand

DesignStudio has rebranded food delivery service Deliveroo, introducing a new kangaroo character while overhauling typography and staff uniforms.

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 in London and has since expanded to 12 countries and more than 100 cities.

Old logo designed by friends

The original logo was designed by friends of Deliveroo co-founder Will Shu, who says that it was necessary to rebrand following the rapid expansion of the company as the identity now needs to work a lot harder.

Shu says that when Deliveroo started out he did the deliveries and his co-founder and childhood friend Greg Orlowski handled the tech and development.

“Our customers were my ex colleagues and our office was my flat. Back then, our logo was something that a couple of friends drew” says Shu.

The original brand was designed with the Deliveroo website, rider boxes and business cards in mind. Since then advertising campaigns have been launched and the most visible part of the brand has become the thousands of riders who work for the company.

DesignStudio rode Deliveroo bikes

After a pitch process DesignStudio was selected and in its research phase took part in customer service shifts, became riders and according to Deliveroo's in-house design team “ate enough to get a sense of what restaurant delivery really means.”

DesignStudio's semiotics analysis focused on what the Deliveroo logo meant in other cultures and countries while workshops across the business considered where staff could see the identity being used in the future.

A range of different routes were initially worked on, some of which kept the kangaroo, while others looked for a new direction. As part of the wider process it was established that the kangaroo was loved both internally and externally, according to Deliveroo's in-house design team.

A new “bold and impactful kangaroo” has been developed and made deliberately angular so that it can dovetail with a broader graphics system across other touchpoints such as the website and rider kits.

“A symbol recognised as a character”

DesignStudio executive strategic creative director James Hurst says: “We have created a symbol that can be recognised as a character the roo irrespective of what language you speak while the minimalist aesthetic reduces established cultural associations that might be positive in one culture but controversial in another.

“This is a mark that Deliveroo will imbue with meaning over the next few years.”

The rider kit has been designed with rider safety in mind, says Deliveroo, and developed in consultation with road safety organisation Brake and the riders themselves so they feel happy wearing it.

There is hyperreflective material on the waist, shoulders and wrists of jackets to demonstrate the movement of riders at night while the rest of the material has been designed to be visible by day.

Meanwhile riders in warm climates wanted to be cool and riders in cold climates wanted to be warm and protected from the elements so this has all been accounted for with a range of clothing.

Typographic direction

Typography also takes its cue from the angular “roo”, particularly headlines which use a customised version of Stratos, “which echoes the angles and shape within the symbol and is brimming with personality for bold punchy headlines,” says Hurst.

He adds: “Its the same type used across the rider jackets and while its been worked into, is also the basis for the wordmark.”

A photography style has been developed across the brand, which focuses on the colour and texture of food and this has been art directed to appear real, messy and up-close, according to Deliveroo.

A roll out begins this Friday and Hurst says: “There is much more still to come.”

"2016_Deliveroo_Kit_F6A8069_CalverFinal"

"2016_Deliveroo_Kit_F6A9311_CalverFinal"

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"201607_Firmwide-Sparrow_FixSlides_Closeup2-1606"

"201607_Firmwide-Sparrow_FixSlides_Closeup-1650"

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Climate Denial and Sea Level Rise
Like those who do not think the Holocaust took place, men landed on the moon, or President Obama is an American, there are equally deluded people who think that climate science is a hoax or some kind of left-wing conspiracy. As the New York Times reported last week, parts of Florida are already having 'sunny-day floods' due to the impact of sea level rise during some high tides. Last weekend I left my Long Island summer home early to return to the safety of Morningside Heights, a full 121 feet above sea level. The south shore of Long Island is no stranger to flooding, but where we once saw a 6-12 inch storm surge last weekend we saw a surge of 1-3 feet, from a storm that did not really come close to my summer home.

Scientists at Columbia's Earth Institute in our Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Center for Climate Systems Research, Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, and Center for International Earth Science Information Network have been studying each aspect of climate change for decades. They study tree rings, geology, soil sediments and arctic ice melts among many other forms of research to understand the human impact on climate change. They have analyzed historical data and have built models to project our possible climate future. The problem is real, and now the impacts have begun. The time for denial is over. But the political power of climate deniers continues.

The worldwide alarm over climate change was demonstrated last week when despite a great deal of disagreement on many issues, President Barack Obama and China's President Xi Jinping signed the Paris Climate Accord in a ceremony in Hangzhou, China. According to New York Times reporters Mark Landler and Jane Perlez:

At a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront city, the two leaders hailed the adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to bringing it into force worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in the legal process, the move could provide a boost to those who want to build momentum for further climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect as soon as possible. Countries accounting for 55 percent of the world's emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of the world's emissions.

In the United States, our federal legal and political system represents places as well as people. We are very good at responding to local problems that can be seen, touched and smelled. Toxics, air pollution and water pollution are obvious and undeniable and much easier to act on. Climate change is a global problem that is caused everywhere and much of the impact will take place in the future. But in an excellent report in last week's New York Times, Justin Gillis reported that some of the impacts of climate change have already started to affect some of our coastal cities. According to Gillis:

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding -- often called "sunny-day flooding" -- along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too...Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Miami Beach is leading the way, increasing local fees to finance a $400 million plan that includes raising streets, installing pumps and elevating sea walls. In many of the worst-hit cities, mayors of both parties are sounding an alarm.

The need to adapt to the current impact of climate change is already obvious in many cities and work is already underway to make cities more resilient to extreme weather events. New York City has begun to implement a resiliency plan that will cost at least $20 billion over the next decade. My hope is that the need to adapt to current climate impacts will lead to the deep understanding needed to develop political support to mitigate climate change.

The path to political understanding is not always direct. We often require visible, direct impacts to delve deeper into an issue. To John and Robert Kennedy, civil rights initially concerned them because they were worried about losing the votes of southern white democrats. Then television brought us the images of African American peaceful protestors and bystanders being attacked by dogs and fire hoses. JFK thought more deeply on the evils of segregation and gave a live TV address defining civil rights as a moral issue. The mere presence of racism and segregation should have been enough to foster change, but it required a dramatic visible image to bring the point home. Visible local impacts are often a prerequisite for action in our political process.

Climate adaptation may well be the path to climate mitigation. You don't need to understand or agree with climate science or computer models to invest in infrastructure to reduce damage from extreme weather events. This is a little ironic. When scientists at Columbia's Earth Institute and throughout the world first started studying climate adaptation, some scientists and activists considered it a distraction from the more important work of preventing human induced climate change. Like many other political issues, dealing with immediate visible impacts can lead to an attack on the causes of the problems we are addressing. We may provide food stamps to prevent starvation, but then some people start to look at the causes of poverty. This leads to an emphasis on education and job opportunities. I think we are seeing this political dynamic with climate change as well.

If we are going to make the transition to a renewable resource based, sustainable economy we will need a sophisticated partnership between government and the private sector. That will need to be informed by an understanding of ecology, earth systems science, and climate science. When your streets keep getting flooded you first work to stop the flood, and then you ask: Why is this happening?

The ideology of denying climate science does not prevent investment in resiliency infrastructure, but does prevent an objective search for causes. Just as civil rights are still subject to political struggle, we can expect a long battle with climate deniers in the United States. Fortunately, climate denial is mainly an American problem, and in a global economy other nations matter a great deal.

The way around climate denial has been carved out by the Obama team: Use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. The next step will be to do the basic research needed to develop renewable energy technologies that will drive fossil fuels from the market place. Even climate deniers will buy energy that is cheaper but as reliable as fossil fuels. This R&D must include dramatic increases in funding for renewable energy technology research by our national labs and research universities, along with substantial tax breaks for companies bringing this technology to the market and for individuals who replace fossil fuels with renewables.

Climate denial is an ideology based on the fear of losing the benefits of our energy intensive economy. It builds on the fear that government will take away our SUVs and air conditioners. Taking climate denial on directly is necessary but futile. The end run is to make climate denial irrelevant. The key is energy efficiency, distributed generation through microgrids and smart grids, and renewable energy. These are realistic and feasible updates to our aging energy infrastructure. They are also a stimulator of employment and economic growth. If we are able to develop a more modern and cost effective energy system, climate denial and sea level rise should slowly recede into history.

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Want To Prevent Lone Wolf Terrorism? Promote A 'Sense of Belonging' Among Immigrants
Robert F. Barsky, Vanderbilt University

This September, as they start the school year, French children aged 14 years old and upwards are going to get lessons on how to deal with a terrorism attack on their school. Meanwhile, the debate over the ban on wearing burkinis and whether they are, in the words of France's prime minister, "a political sign of religious proselytising" continues.

The big question, however is this: Why are we seeing a rash of these attacks in Europe and especially in France, and are such measures effective in countering them?

What have we learned from the horrors of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the murder of 130 people in and around Paris last November, the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice and the killing of an 85-year-old priest inside of a church in Normandy?

Examining the reactions of French authorities, we can conclude there are only limited actions that can be taken to prevent such atrocities.

Security can been heightened by extending the state of emergency that it declared last November. Intelligence efforts can be redoubled. Such efforts are raising concern about civil liberties being curtailed. But the Nice attack is also a dire warning that these measures aren't effective as a means of protecting citizens from continued attacks.

Police guard the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where Father Jacques Hamel was killed.
Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

The point is that none of the above policies could have prevented Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel and Abdelmalik Petitjean from carrying out their violent actions. Thousands if not millions of people living in Europe have similar profiles. Tunisian or Algerian descent and French citizenship are not enough to tip off authorities that a person could run over 84 people with a truck or slit the throat of a priest.

So how can we hope to prevent future attacks? We need to change our focus, in my opinion, to examining these perpetrators' "sense of belonging" rather than looking for reasons to detain or expel them because they don't belong.

A Canadian case study

A number of years ago, while working at the National Institute for Scientific Research in Montréal, I was invited to join a research team studying the integration of refugees and immigrants into Québec society.

This led me to work on research projects that looked at a broad range of questions - from why people claim refugee status to how immigrants use storytelling to talk about their displacement and assimilation into Canada.

A scene from a play by Lebanese Canadian writer Wajdi Moawad.
Nicolas M. Perrault, CC BY

My first project was focused upon immigrant literary works - especially novels and short stories - that were a largely untapped source of information to help officials understand the complex process of integrating into Quebec society, and in particular, as a way to understand relationships between immigrants and individuals from the host country.

There's a pretty large body of so-called immigrant literature in Québec. Interestingly, many of these narratives include graphic and sometimes even pornographic descriptions of encounters between native-born and immigrant protagonists.

A broad reading of these stories made me realize that developing relationships with friends and lovers contributed to the migrant's "sense of belonging." They helped him or her to forget their country of origin and forge a new beginning in the host society.

In fact, I came to believe that these immigrants' ability to adapt had something to do with the very process of exchange. Or, put another way, the many acts of giving and receiving that they committed each day helped them to feel connected to society.

Measuring belonging

In order to evaluate this process of adaptation, I turned to work by French biblical scholars called the Groupe d'Entrevernes, which focuses upon how narratives "make sense": that is, how a story creates meaning in the context of the text, but also in regards to the world to which it refers.

This approach focuses on looking for meaning by analyzing particular actions, notably "who does what to whom where." So in the case of immigrant literature, a group of us looked in minute detail at the complex interactions between characters, with special focus upon how relationships begin and end, and what is gained in the process. We also assessed characters' attitudes prior to and after each interaction, with an eye to understanding the effect of the exchange.

Our goal was to assess which specific actions help foster a sense of belonging, in a new country and which alienate the character from his or her society.

The signing of a lease, the acquisition of immigrant status (whether a work visa or a green card) or being hired for a job all foster a sense of belonging. Being kicked out of an apartment, divorced or deported are all examples of loss of belonging.

Implications for policymakers

The advantage of research like this for a case like Nice is that it forces the investigator to examine all of the concrete details of the perpetrators' lives leading up to the horrific event, rather than just focusing upon the act of violence.

It's not sufficient to know that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had a violent relationship with his wife, or that Abdelmalik Petitjean visited Turkey just prior to entering a church in Normandy.

What's more important is to understand what they wanted for themselves in the longer term. As difficult as it now seems in light of their murderous actions, we would gain a lot by undertaking meticulous investigations into these individuals' sense that they didn't belong in France, and that they had to destroy what it represents.

By creating concrete conditions for different communities to feel they belong, policymakers can help their diverse populations feel connected to, and thus protective of, their societies.

Many of the analyses of recent terrorist events have focused upon the "lone-wolf" quality of the perpetrators. These lone wolves are difficult to predict, because they are acting independently, and without any contact with extremist organizations or individuals.

The work of policymakers, then, is to figure out how to prevent these individuals from acting impulsively, on the basis of some unpredictable trigger. My sense is that the only way to do this is to build a sense of belonging that will prevent them from feeling destructive. If they feel alienated from their society and feel they don't belong there, then they can also feel that other people deserve to suffer or die.

Following the logic of this approach, we can try to figure out which actions serve to reinforce belonging and which hinder it and then develop policies that build on the positive rather than the purely negative.

Our research in Quebec indicated that most of these actions are quite simple and achievable. They range from providing federal funds for ethnic celebrations and translations for pamphlets about available social services to encouraging local tolerance for so-called "foreign" customs such as the wearing of burkinis (something that has not happened in France) or Sikh turbans. In the Quebec example, our reading of the literature also indicated that undue bureaucratic wrangling that hinders the process of procuring basic necessities, like a driver's license, or that made access to social services such as health care or daycare difficult, can become sources of frustration and alienation.

At the same time, it is crucial to explain which of these customs can lead to severe punishment in the host country. Such actions as Latin Americans shooting off guns during parties or immigrants from Africa and the Middle East sending children abroad for female genital mutilation can become grounds for serous punishments.

Most importantly, our research suggested that successful integration generally occurs through individual incentive and personal relationships, fostered, whenever possible, by the community or the government. The 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act formalized a policy to encourage multicultural diversity and develop a sense of tolerance through recognition and understanding. One result of our own research was to help contribute to a higher profile for the Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities and to support their championing of diversity and inclusion.

A minute of silence July 18 in Nice.
Eric Gaillard/Reuters

I may have traveled to Nice this summer with my family in order to celebrate Bastille Day, because it's a beautiful setting, a city where we dream of the passion, luxury and the sultry pleasures of the French Riviera. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel may have decided to target those same celebrations for exactly the same reasons, because while we might feel like sharing in that sense of belonging, he most certainly didn't.

Robert F. Barsky, Professor of English and French Literatures, and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Critical But Overlooked: ICU Patients' Gut Bacteria

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^{Paul Wischmeyer}

Our bodies are full of bacteria, and when we get sick, those microbial populations change. Hospitals monitor patients' bloodwork and vitals, so why not track the makeup of their microbiomes too? Paul Wischmeyer and his collaborators are conducting research that could allow them to do just that, opening the door for microbiome diagnostic indicators and probiotic measures to restore patients' normal bacterial signatures. We asked him about the research, and what he's learned so far.

This text was edited for length. Read the full interview on ResearchGate News.

ResearchGate: How did you first get involved in this field?

Paul Wischmeyer: My passion for the research I do started when I was a teenager. At 15, I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. I had been a very healthy kid until I took antibiotics for strep throat and began to bleed and had other gastrointestinal symptoms. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis shortly thereafter, and it progressed rapidly. I spent six months in the hospital and was given steroids and other medicines that never really made me better. I ultimately ended up losing my colon, getting quite sick, and being put in the ICU. Many surgeries later, it's still a part of my life. But it was at that age that I realized I wanted to study treatments that worked with the body, not against it, and to find ways to restore normalcy to the body after illness.

RG: And what was the impetus for this particular study of microbiomes of ICU patients?

Wischmeyer: Any of us who work with the microbiome will say we're far more bacterial as humans than we are human as humans. More than 50 percent of the cells that exist in our body are bacterial cells, and 99 percent of the genetic material in our body is bacterial rather than human. So the role those organisms play in who we are as healthy or sick individuals is probably enormous.

So I reached out to Rob Knight and explained that we have this large nutrition research platform with Daren Heyland in a number of hospitals that collect quite a bit of data, and do it largely for free. I said we'd love to start collecting microbial samples along with the other data, and we really can't do that without someone who's a true microbiome expert like he is. Rob and his lab said, that's great, because we have thousands of healthy people's data from the American Gut Project, but we don't know much about disease and how it changes the microbiome. And so the collaboration began. With essentially no funding, we worked together to initiate a project involving four medical centers across the US and Canada and multiple ICUs, generating an initial data set of 115 patients. It appears right now to be the largest survey of the microbiome in critical illness published to date.

RG: And how did you collect the samples?

Wischmeyer: In each of the participating hospitals, if patients had been on a ventilator for 48 hours and were expected to stay in the ICU at least three days, they met inclusion criteria and we collected samples from them, anonymizing the data. The samples were collected by nurses and dieticians at the hospitals using techniques that mimic those of the American Gut Project, because we knew that would be the large control group we'd compare against.

We collected the first sample at around 48-72 hours after ICU admission, and we'd collect another sample at discharge from the ICU, or day 10, to look for change over time. It was basically a small swab of the stool of the patient, a small swab of the oropharyngeal region--avoiding the teeth, which have quite a distinct microbiome--and then a skin swab across the forehead, looking at changes in the skin microbiome.

RG: And what have you learned so far?

Wischmeyer: Our initial results have really supported the hypothesis that critical illness would lead to a loss of diversity of the microbiome and that this loss of diversity would correlate with adverse outcomes. Patients lose significant, significant amounts of their normal flora, the families of bacterial species that make up a healthy gut or oropharynx. They're largely replaced by pathogens or proteobacteria; like staph, proteus, and other bacteria we associate with GI-associated bacterial translocation. Under normal circumstances, the human gut is made up of many different species. Our patients often start out with that normal appearance, but within just a few days we saw that in some patients 95 percent of bacteria in the gut were one taxa, and often this was a pathogen that dominated. One bacterial taxa overwhelms the rest, or grows because the others have been wiped out by antibiotics or other interventions. The lack of diversity that can occur is severe.

One of the bacteria we noted was quite depleted in the sick patients is a Faecalibacterium, which is a very important bacterium that makes short-chain fatty acids and helps nourish and protect the gut under normal and stress circumstances. It's been shown to be deficient in inflammatory bowel disease, and probably plays a role in controlling inflammation in the gut. Significant depletion of this bacterium had not to our knowledge been well-described before in critical illness, so that's one of the first results. Faecalibacterium is likely a bacterial species we should be studying as a replacement for our patients, because it probably plays a key role physiologically, and it becomes quite depleted in acute illness.

The microbiomes of critically ill patients also mirrored some known bacterial compositions in ways that were often quite unexpected. In many patients, the bacteria began to revert back to what an early neonatal gut looks like. In other cases, the gut and the mouth--especially the gut--would resemble samples taken from corpses found at outdoor crime scenes or around autopsy sites.

RG: Does the type of illness matter in terms of the expected impact on the microbiome?

Wischmeyer: That's another question we're trying to answer. At the moment, we aren't seeing those patterns emerge yet. This is very initial, but it appears that perhaps the microbiome's response to illness is not necessarily related to the disease we have, but may also be linked to other factors, such as the types of antibiotics people are treated with. In some of the more recent research we've done, we used a standardized score that quantitated some of the pressures that different antibiotics exert--some are much more broad in their killing activities than others--and it appears that antibiotic pressure may relate to some of the bacterial changes we're seeing. It doesn't appear to be all antibiotic related, but the treatments we give are fairly common across different diagnoses of patients, and do seem to drive some of these changes. That's one of the next steps: to look at the data and really break out diagnoses groups and identify the trends that actually drive microbiome patterns. As I move my research program to Duke University's Department of Anesthesiology, we hope to embark on answering many of these questions.

RG: Do you think the composition of the microbiome could become the standard way we look at illness in ICUs?

Wischmeyer: We hope it becomes part of it. I think you could imagine a day where we follow patients' microbiomes on a daily or weekly basis, much like we would blood cultures, blood pressure, or other laboratory markers. This could allow us to predict which ICU patients are at risk for adverse outcomes or have undiagnosed infections. It could also tell us who needs to be treated aggressively and early with restoration therapies--we call it "resodding the lawn." We could tell individually, patient to patient, what bacteria need to be given back based on a sample collected at admission.

We can save just about anybody in the ICU from just about anything and get them out of the hospital. But the reality is these patients are so depleted, they're never able to go back to their lives as normal. Many of them, because of their weakened state and the other things we've done to their bodies and microbiomes, will die within a year, never having held their grandkids again, never having walked down the street with their spouse again. With all of our advances in critical care, we must ask ourselves, are we creating survivors or are we creating victims, people who will never really go home and back to the quality of life they had before? Now that we've gotten good enough to save people from severe disease and injury, we need to work on ways of restoring health and life and normalcy. By creating effective methods of restoring the microbiome, together with nutrition and exercise, we hope we can begin to give people their lives back.

Want to receive updates on this project? Follow it on ResearchGate.

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