Posts by AltonParrish:
- Manganese is associated with diminished intellectual function and impaired motor skills
- Solvents are linked to hyperactivity and aggressive behavior
- Certain types of pesticides may cause cognitive delays
Native American city on the Mississippi was America’s first melting pot
March 7th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Cahokia was an early experiment in urban life, said Thomas Emerson, who led the new analysis. Emerson is Illinois state archaeologist and the director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois.
Researchers have traditionally thought of Cahokia as a relatively homogeneous and stable population drawn from the immediate area, he said. “But increasingly archaeologists are realizing that Cahokia at AD 1100 was very likely an urban center with as many as 20,000 inhabitants,” he said. “Such early centers around the world grow by immigration, not by birthrate.”
The new analysis, reported in the Journal of Archaeological Research, tested the chemical composition of 133 teeth from 87 people buried at Cahokia during its heyday. The researchers looked specifically at strontium isotope ratios in the teeth and in the remains of small mammals from the same area.
“Strontium isotope ratios in rock, soil, groundwater and vegetation vary according to the underlying geology of a region,” the researchers wrote. “As an animal eats and drinks, the local strontium isotope composition of the water, plants and animals consumed is recorded in its skeletal tissues.” Strontium signatures may not be unique to a location, Emerson said, but the ratios in a person’s teeth can be compared to those of plants and animals in the immediate environment.
“Teeth retain the isotopic signature of an individual’s diet at various periods of life depending on the tooth type sampled, ranging from in utero to approximately 16 years of age,” the researchers wrote. The strontium signature in the teeth can be compared to that of their place of burial, to determine whether the person lived only in that vicinity. Early teeth and later teeth may have different strontium signatures, an indication that the person immigrated.
By analyzing the teeth of those buried in different locations in Cahokia, Emerson, state archaeological surveybioarchaeologist Kristin Hedman and graduate student Philip Slater discovered that immigrants formed one-third of the population of the city throughout its history (from about AD 1050 through the early 1300s).
“This indicates that Cahokia as a political, social and religious center was extremely fluid and dynamic, with a constantly fluctuating composition,” Emerson said.
The findings contradict traditional anthropological models of Cahokian society that are built on analogies with 19th-century Native American groups, Emerson said.
“Cahokia, because it was multiethnic and perhaps even multilingual, must have been a virtual ‘melting pot’ that fostered new ways of living, new political and social patterns and perhaps even new religious beliefs,” he said.
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10,000 years on the Bering land bridge: Earliest Americans in Beringia
March 4th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that after the ancestors of Native Americans left Asia, they spent 10,000 years in shrubby lowlands on a broad land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska. Archaeological evidence is lacking because it drowned beneath the Bering Sea when sea levels rose.
University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O’Rourke and two colleagues make that argument in the Friday, Feb. 28, issue of the journal Science. They seek to reconcile existing genetic and paleoenvironmental evidence for human habitation on the Bering land bridge – also called Beringia – with an absence of archaeological evidence.
University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O’Rourke co-authored a Perspective column in the journal Sciencearguing that genetic, ancient environmental and archaeological evidence can be reconciled in support of the idea that the ancestors of Native Americans spent some 10,000 years living in brushy refuges on the Beringland bridge en route from Siberia to the Americas. Contrary to common misperception, the “bridge” really was a landmass 1,000 miles wide from north to south and covered most of the area now shown as ocean on the map around, behind and above O’Rourke’s head.
Credit: Lee J. Siegel, University of Utah.
O’Rourke says cumulative evidence indicates the ancestors of Native Americans lived on the Bering land bridge “in the neighborhood of 10,000 years,” from roughly 25,000 years ago until they began moving into the Americas about 15,000 years ago once glacial ice sheets melted and opened migration routes.
O’Rourke co-authored the Science Perspective column – titled “Out of Beringia?” – with archaeologist John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Scott Elias, a paleoecologist at the University ofLondon. Perspective columns in Science don’t feature research by the authors, but instead are meant to highlight and provide context for exciting new research in a field or across fields.
“Nobody disputes that the ancestors of Native American peoples came from Asia over the coast and interior of the land bridge” during an ice age called the “last glacial maximum,” which lasted from 28,000 to at least 18,000 years ago, O’Rourke says,
The ice sheets extended south into the Pacific Northwest, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Ohio. Large expanses of Siberia and Beringia were cold but lacked glaciers.
The absence of archaeological sites and the inhospitable nature of open, treeless landcape known as tundra steppe mean that “archaeologists have not given much credence to the idea there was a population that lived on the Bering land bridge for thousands of years,” he adds.
O’Rourke and colleagues say that in recent years, paleoecologists – scientists who study ancientenvironments – drilled sediment cores from the Bering Sea and Alaskan bogs. Those sediments contain pollen, plant and insect fossils, suggesting the Bering land bridge wasn’t just barren, grassy tundra steppe but was dotted by “refugia” or refuges where there were brushy shrubs and even trees such as spruce, birch, willow and alder.
“We’re putting it together with the archaeology and genetics that speak to American origins and saying, look, there was an environment with trees and shrubs that was very different than the open, grassy steppe. It was an area where people could have had resources, lived and persisted through the last glacial maximum in Beringia,” O’Rourke says. “That may have been critical for the people to subsist because they would have had wood for construction and for fires. Otherwise, they would have had to use bone, which is difficult to burn.”
A Frozen, Isolated Dawn for the Earliest Americans
This map shows the outlines of modern Siberia (left) and Alaska (right) with dashed lines. The broader area in darker green (now covered by ocean) represents the Bering land bridge near the end of the last glacial maximum, a period that lasted from 28,000 to 18,000 years ago when sea levels were low and ice sheets extended south into what is now the northern part of the lower 48 states. University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O’Rourke argues in the Feb. 28 issue of the journal Science that the ancestors of Native Americans migrated from Asia onto the Bering land bridge or “Beringia” some 25,000 years ago and spent 10,000 years there until they began moving into the Americas 15,000 years ago as the ice sheets melted.
Credit: Wlliam Manley, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado.
During the last glacial maximum, thick glacial ice sheets extended south into what now is the northern United States, sea levels dropped some 400 feet, O’Rourke says. As the glaciers melted, sea levels began to rise, reaching current levels 6,000 years ago.
During the long glacial period, Siberia and Alaska were linked by the Bering land bridge, which contrary to the name’s implication, really was a huge swath of land north, between and south of Siberia and Alaska, at thepresent sites of the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea, respectively.
At its largest extent, Beringia measured as much as 1,000 miles from north to south and as much as 3,000 miles from Siberia’s Verkoyansk Range east to the Mackenzie River in in Canada.
The theory that humans inhabited the Bering land bridge for some 10,000 years “helps explain how a Native American genome (genetic blueprint) became separate from its Asian ancestor,” O’Rourke says.
“At some point, the genetic blueprint that defines Native American populations had to become distinct from that Asian ancestry,” he explains. “The only way to do that was for the population to be isolated. Most of us don’t believe that isolation took place in Siberia because we don’t see a place where a population could be sufficiently isolated. It would always have been in contact with other Asian groups on its periphery.”
“But if there were these shrub-tundra refugia in central Beringia, that provided a place where isolation could occur” due to distance from Siberia, O’Rourke says.
Genetic and Paleoenvironmental Evidence
O’Rourke and colleagues point to a study of mitochondrial DNA – genetic information passed by mothers – sampled from Native Americans throughout the Americas. The study found that the unique genome or genetic blueprint of Native Americans arose sometime before 25,000 years ago but didn’t spread through the Americas until about 15,000 years ago.
“This result indicated that a substantial population existed somewhere, in isolation from the rest of Asia, while its genome differentiated from the parental Asian genome,” O’Rourke says. “The researchers suggested Beringia as the location for this isolated population, and suggested it existed there for several thousand years before members of the population migrated southward into the rest of North and, ultimately, South America as retreating glaciers provided routes for southern migration.”
“Several other genetic-genomic analyses of Native American populations have resulted in similar conclusions,” he adds.
“For a long time, many of us thought the land bridge was a uniform tundra-steppe environment” – a broad windswept grassland devoid of shrubs and trees, O’Rourke says. But in recent years, sediment cores drilled in the Bering Sea and along the Alaskan coast – the now-submerged lowlands of Beringia – found pollens oftrees and shrubs.
That “suggests Beringia was not a uniform tundra-steppe environment, but a patchwork of environments, including substantial areas of lowland shrub tundra,” O’Rourke says. “These shrub-tundra areas were likely refugia for a population that would be invisible archaeologically, since the former Beringian lowlands are now submerged.”
“Large herd animals like bison or mammoths likely lived on the highland steppe tundra because they graze. Many smaller animals, birds, elk and moose (which browse shrubs instead of grazing on grass) would have been in the shrub tundra,” he adds.
Other research indicates “that much of Beringia – particularly the lowlands – appears to have had average summer temperatures nearly identical (or only slightly cooler in some regions) to those in the region today,” O’Rourke says. “The local environments likely were not as daunting as many have assumed for years. They probably hunkered down pretty good in the winter though. It would have been cold.”
The idea that rising sea levels covered evidence of human migration to the Americas has long been cited by researchers studying how early Native Americans moved south along the Pacific coast as the glaciers receded and sea levels rose. O’Rourke says the idea hasn’t been used before to explain the scarcity of archaeological sites in Alaska and Siberia, which were highlands when the land bridge was exposed.
But O’Rourke and his colleagues say archaeological sites must be found in Beringia if the long human layover there is to be confirmed. Although most such sites are underwater, some evidence of human habitation in shrub tundra might remain above sea level in low-lying portions of Alaska and eastern Chukotka (in Russia).”
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European flood risk could double by 2050
March 4th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Losses from extreme floods in Europe could more than double by 2050, because of climate change and socioeconomic development. Understanding the risk posed by large-scale floods is of growing importance and will be key for managing climate adaptation.
Credit: Max Mayorov
Current flood losses in Europe are likely to double by 2050, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change by researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Institute for Environmental Studies in Amsterdam, and other European research centers. Socioeconomic growth accounts for about two-thirds of the increased risk, as development leads to more buildings and infrastructure that could be damaged in a flood. The other third of the increase comes from climate change, which is projected to change rainfall patterns in Europe.
“In this study we brought together expertise from the fields of hydrology, economics, mathematics and climate change adaptation, allowing us for the first time to comprehensively assess continental flood risk and compare the different adaptation options,” says Brenden Jongman of the Institute for Environmental Studies in Amsterdam, who coordinated the study.
The study estimated that floods in the European Union averaged €4.9 billion a year from 2000 to 2012. These average losses could increase to €23.5 billion by 2050. In addition, large events such as the 2013 European floods are likely to increase in frequency from an average of once every 16 years to a probability of once every 10 years by 2050.
The analysis combined models of climate change and socioeconomic development to build a better estimate of flood risk for the region. IIASA researcher Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler led the modeling work on the study.
He says, “The new study for the first time accounts for the correlation between floods in different countries. Current risk-assessment models assume that each river basin is independent. But in actuality, river flows across Europe are closely correlated, rising and falling in response to large-scale atmospheric patterns that bring rains and dry spells to large regions.”
“If the rivers are flooding in Central Europe, they are likely to also be flooding Eastern European regions,” says Hochrainer-Stigler. “We need to be prepared for larger stress on risk financing mechanisms, such as the pan-European Solidarity Fund (EUSF), a financial tool for financing disaster recovery in the European Union.”
For example, the analysis suggests that the EUSF must pay out funds simultaneously across many regions. This can cause unacceptable stresses to such risk financing mechanisms. Hochrainer-Stigler says, “We need to reconsider advance mechanisms to finance these risks if we want to be in the position to quickly and comprehensively pay for recovery.”
IIASA researcher Reinhard Mechler, another study co-author, points out the larger implications arising from the analysis. He says, “There is scope for better managing flood risk through risk prevention, such as using moveable flood walls, risk financing and enhanced solidarity between countries. There is no one-size-fits all solution, and the risk management measures have very different efficiency, equity and acceptability implications. These need to be assessed and considered in broader consultation, for which the analysis provides a comprehensive basis.”
Hochrainer-Stigler presented testimony based on this research at a recent public hearing on the EUSF with the European Commission.
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What has happened to the TSUNAMI debris from Japan?
February 24th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
The animation is at http://tiny.cc/vw0mbx
Shortly after the tsunami struck, Maximenko and Hafner used the IPRC Ocean Drift Model to predict where the debris from the tsunami would go. Their computer model is based on trajectories of real satellite-tracked drifting buoys and satellite-measured winds.The model has now been charting the possible paths of the tsunami driftage for nearly 3 years.
No formal marine debris observing systems exist to verify the model simulations. The model paths for tsunami debris, however, agree with reports of such debris washing up on the shores of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and theHawaiian Islands, as well as with observations by sailors crossing the North Pacific.
Credit: Carl Berg and Surfider Foundation Kauai Volunteers.
The model predicted both the timing and the type of material that has washed up along windward shores of Hawaii: the first tsunami driftage came in August – September 2012, about 1½ years after the tragedy. These were very buoyant pieces, for example, oyster buoys, crates, small fishing boats like the one picked up by Pallada, and parts of small refrigerators.
Then 2½ years after the tsunami, materials sitting lower in the water and less buoyant than the previous driftage arrived: poles and beams with mortise and tenon features. Experts on lumber, who have analyzed cross-cuts of several of these wood pieces, agree that it is Sugi, a species of cypress endemic to Japan. One piece of wood is of very old timber and must have been cut 100 or more years ago.
The IPRC Ocean Drift Model has recently shown to be useful in another dramatic event at sea: validating the El Salvadoran castaway’s ordeal. In January 2014, Jose Salvador Alvarenga washed ashore in the Marshall Islands after enduring a 13-month journey from the shores of southern Mexico. The paths of floating objects in the IPRC Ocean Drift model, driven with the currents and wind conditions, lend strong support to this rather improbable odyssey. Details are athttp://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/news/marine_and_tsunami_debris/2014/14_02_Maximenko_fisherman.pdf.
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Vibration energy the secret to self-powered electronics
February 21st, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
A multi-university team of engineers has developed what could be a promising solution for charging smartphone batteries on the go — without the need for an electrical cord.
Incorporated directly into a cell phone housing, the team’s nanogenerator could harvest and convert vibration energy from a surface, such as the passenger seat of a moving vehicle, into power for the phone. “We believe this development could be a new solution for creating self-charged personal electronics,” says Xudong Wang, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Credit: University of Wisconsin
Wang, his Ph.D. student Yanchao Mao and collaborators from Sun Yat-sen University in China, and theUniversity of Minnesota Duluth described their device, a mesoporous piezoelectric nanogenerator, in the January 27, 2014, issue of the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
The nanogenerator takes advantage of a common piezoelectric polymer material called polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF. Piezoelectric materials can generate electricity from a mechanical force; conversely, they also can generate a mechanical strain from an applied electrical field.
Rather than relying on a strain or an electrical field, the researchers incorporated zinc oxide nanoparticles into a PVDF thin film to trigger formation of the piezoelectric phase that enables it to harvest vibration energy. Then, they etched the nanoparticles off the film; the resulting interconnected pores — called “mesopores” because of their size — cause the otherwise stiff material to behave somewhat like a sponge.
That sponge-like material is key to harvesting vibration energy. “The softer the material, the more sensitive it is to small vibrations,” says Wang.
The nanogenerator itself includes thin electrode sheets on the front and back of the mesoporous polymer film, and the researchers can attach this soft, flexible film seamlessly to flat, rough or curvy surfaces, including human skin. In the case of a cell phone, it uses the phone’s own weight to enhance its displacement and amplify its electrical output.
The nanogenerator could become an integrated part of an electronic device — for example, as its back panel or housing — and automatically harvest energy from ambient vibrations to power the device directly.
Wang says the simplicity of his team’s design and fabrication process could scale well to larger manufacturing settings. “We can create tunable mechanical properties in the film,” he says. “And also important is the design of the device. Because we can realize this structure, phone-powering cases or self-powered sensor systems might become possible.”
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River shows signs of new potential “Superbug”
February 20th, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
The spread of antibiotic-resistance to one of the most pristine locations in Asia is linked to the annual human pilgrimages to the region, new research has shown.
Experts from Newcastle University, UK, and the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT-Delhi), sampled water and sediments at seven sites along the Upper Ganges River, in the foothills of the Himalayas.
They found that in May and June, when hundreds of thousands of visitors travel to Rishikesh and Haridwar to visit sacred sites, levels of resistance genes that lead to “superbugs” were found to be about 60 times greater than other times of the year.
Publishing their findings today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, the team say it is important to protect people visiting and living at these sites while also making sure nothing interferes with these important religious practices.
They argue that preventing the spread of resistance genes that promote life-threating bacteria could be achieved by improving waste management at key pilgrimage sites.
“This isn’t a local problem – it’s a global one,” explains Professor David Graham, an environmental engineer based at Newcastle University who has spent over ten years studying the environmental transmission of antibiotic resistance around the world.
“We studied pilgrimage areas because we suspected such locations would provide new information about resistance transmission via the environment. And it has – temporary visitors from outside the region overload local waste handling systems, which seasonally reduces water quality at the normally pristine sites.
“The specific resistance gene we studied, called blaNDM-1, causes extreme multi-resistance in many bacteria, therefore we must understand how this gene spreads in the environment.
“If we can stem the spread of such antibiotic resistant genes locally – possibly through improved sanitation and waste treatment – we have a better chance of limiting their spread on larger scales, creating global solutions by solving local problems.”
Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the aim of the research was to understand how antibiotic resistance was transmitted due to a specific human activity. Local “hot-spots” of antibiotic resistance exist around the world, particularly densely-populated regions with inconsistent sanitation and poor water quality.
By comparing water quality of the Upper Ganges in February and again in June, the team showed that levels of blaNDM-1 were 20 times higher per capita during the pilgrimage season than at other times.
Monitoring levels of other contaminants in the water, the team showed that overloading of waste treatmentfacilities was likely to blame and that in many cases, untreated sewage was going straight into the river where the pilgrims bathe.
“The bugs and their genes are carried in people’s guts,” explains Professor Graham. “If untreated wastes get into the water supply, resistance potential in the wastes can pass to the next person and spiralling increases in resistance can occur.”
Worldwide, concern is growing over the threat from bacteria that are resistant to the so-called “last resort” class of antibiotics known as Carbapenems, especially if resistance is acquired by aggressive pathogens.
Of particular concern is NDM-1, which is a protein that confers resistance in a range of bacteria. NDM-1 was first identified in New Delhi and coded by the resistant gene blaNDM-1.
Until recently, strains that carry blaNDM-1 were only found in clinical settings, but in 2008, blaNDM-1 positive strains were found in surface waters in Delhi. Since then, blaNDM-1 has been found elsewhere in the world, including new variants.
There are currently few antibiotics to combat bacteria that are resistant to Carbapenems and worldwide spread of blaNDM-1 is a growing concern.
Professor Graham, who is based in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University, UK, said the team had planned to repeat their experiments last year, but the region was hit by massive floods in June and the experiments were abandoned.
The team has since returned to Rishikesh and Haridwar and hope their work will prompt public action to improve local sanitation, protecting these socially important sites. On a global scale, they want policymakers to recognise the importance of clean drinking water in our fight against antibiotic resistance.
“What humans have done by excess use of antibiotics is accelerate the rate of evolution, creating a world of resistant strains that never existed before” explains Graham.
“Through the overuse of antibiotics, contamination of drinking water and other factors, we have exponentially speeded-up the rate at which superbugs might develop.
“For example, when a new drug is developed, natural bacteria can rapidly adapt and become resistant; therefore very few new drugs are in the pipeline because it simply isn’t cost-effective to make them.
“The only way we are going to win this fight is to understand all of the pathways that lead to antibiotic resistance. Clearly, improved antibiotic stewardship in medicine and agriculture is crucial, but understanding how resistance transmission occurs through our water supplies is also critical. We contend that improved waste management and water quality on a global scale is a key step.”
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Interactive map reveals your genetic history
February 18th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
A global map detailing the genetic histories of 95 different populations across the world, showing likely genetic impacts of European colonialism, the Arab slave trade, the Mongol Empire and European traders near the Silk Road mixing with people in China, has been revealed for the first time.
The interactive map, produced by researchers from Oxford University and UCL, details the histories of genetic mixing between each of the 95 populations across Europe, Africa, Asia and South America spanning the last four millennia.
A portion of the interactive map
The study, published this week in Science, simultaneously identifies, dates and characterises genetic mixing between populations. To do this, the researchers developed sophisticated statistical methods to analyse the DNA of 1490 individuals in 95 populations around the world. The work was chiefly funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society.
“DNA really has the power to tell stories and uncover details of humanity’s past.” said Dr Simon Myers of Oxford University’s Department of Statistics and Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, co-senior author of the study.
“Because our approach uses only genetic data, it provides information independent from other sources. Many of our genetic observations match historical events, and we also see evidence of previously unrecorded genetic mixing. For example, the DNA of the Tu people in modern China suggests that in around 1200CE, Europeans similar to modern Greeks mixed with an otherwise Chinese-like population. Plausibly, the source of this European-like DNA might be merchants travelling the nearby Silk Road.”
A genetic atlas of human admixture history
Companion website for “A genetic atlas of human admixture history“, Hellenthal et al, Science (2014).
The powerful technique, christened ‘Globetrotter’, provides insight into past events such as the genetic legacy of the Mongol Empire. Historical records suggest that the Hazara people of Pakistan are partially descended from Mongol warriors, and this study found clear evidence of Mongol DNA entering the population during the period of the Mongol Empire. Six other populations, from as far west as Turkey, showed similar evidence of genetic mixing with Mongols around the same time.
A genetic atlas of human admixture history 
“What amazes me most is simply how well our technique works,” said Dr Garrett Hellenthal of the UCL Genetics Institute, lead author of the study. “Although individual mutations carry only weak signals about where a person is from, by adding information across the whole genome we can reconstruct these mixing events. Sometimes individuals sampled from nearby regions can have surprisingly different sources of mixing.
“For example, we identify distinct events happening at different times among groups sampled within Pakistan, with some inheriting DNA from sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps related to the Arab Slave Trade, others from East Asia, and yet another from ancient Europe. Nearly all our populations show mixing events, so they are very common throughout recent history and often involve people migrating over large distances.”
The team used genome data for all 1490 individuals to identify ‘chunks’ of DNA that were shared between individuals from different populations. Populations sharing more ancestry share more chunks, and individual chunks give clues about the underlying ancestry along chromosomes.
“Each population has a particular genetic ‘palette'”, said Dr Daniel Falush of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, co-senior author of the study. “If you were to paint the genomes of people in modern-day Maya, for example, you would use a mixed palette with colours from Spanish-like, West African and Native American DNA. This mix dates back to around 1670CE, consistent with historical accounts describing Spanish and West African people entering the Americas around that time. Though we can’t directly sample DNA from the groups that mixed in the past, we can capture much of the DNA of these original groups as persisting, within a mixed palette of modern-day groups. This is a very exciting development.”
As well as providing fresh insights into historical events, the new research might have implications for how DNA impacts health and disease in different populations.
“Understanding well the genetic similarities and differences between human populations is key for public health,” said Dr Simon Myers. “Some populations are more at risk of certain diseases than others, and drug efficacy is also known to vary significantly. Rare genetic mutations are particularly likely to show strong differences between populations, and understanding their role in our health is an area of intense current research efforts. We hope in future to include even more detailed sequencing, to spot these rare mutations and better understand their global spread. Our method should be even more powerful when applied to these future data sets, providing rich opportunities for future work.”
The research was funded by the Oxford University John Fell Fund, the National Institutes of Health (USA), the Wellcome Trust, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the joint Royal Society/Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellowship.
Clare Ryan
University College London
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Theory on origin of animals challenged: Animals needs only extremely little oxygen
February 18th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
One of science’s strongest dogmas is that complex life on Earth could only evolve when oxygen levels in the atmosphere rose to close to modern levels. But now studies of a small sea sponge fished out of a Danish fjord shows that complex life does not need high levels of oxygen in order to live and grow.
Sea sponge Halichondria panicea was used in the experiment at the University of Southern Denmark.
Credit: Daniel Mills/SDU
The origin of complex life is one of science’s greatest mysteries. How could the first small primitive cells evolve into the diversity of advanced life forms that exists on Earth today? The explanation in all textbooks is: Oxygen. Complex life evolved because the atmospheric levels of oxygen began to rise app. 630 – 635 million years ago.
However new studies of a common sea sponge from Kerteminde Fjord in Denmark shows that this explanation needs to be reconsidered. The sponge studies show that animals can live and grow even with very limited oxygen supplies.
In fact animals can live and grow when the atmosphere contains only 0.5 per cent of the oxygen levels in today’s atmosphere.
“Our studies suggest that the origin of animals was not prevented by low oxygen levels”, says Daniel Mills, PhD at the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the University of Southern Denmark.
Together with Lewis M. Ward from the California Institute of Technology he is the lead author of a research paper about the work in the journal PNAS.
A little over half a billion years ago, the first forms of complex life – animals – evolved on Earth. Billions of years before that life had only consisted of simple single-celled life forms. The emergence of animals coincided with a significant rise in atmospheric oxygen, and therefore it seemed obvious to link the two events and conclude that the increased oxygen levels had led to the evolution of animals.
“But nobody has ever tested how much oxygen animals need – at least not to my knowledge. Therefore we decided to find out”, says Daniel Mills.
Sea sponge Halichondria panicea was used in the experiment at University of Southern Denmark.
The living animals that most closely resemble the first animals on Earth are sea sponges. The species Halichondria panicea lives only a few meters from the University of Southern Denmark’s Marine Biological Research Centre in Kerteminde, and it was here that Daniel Mills fished out individuals for his research.
“When we placed the sponges in our lab, they continued to breathe and grow even when the oxygen levelsreached 0.5 per cent of present day atmospheric levels”, says Daniel Mills.
This is lower than the oxygen levels we thought were necessary for animal life.
The big question now is: If low oxygen levels did not prevent animals from evolving – then what did? Why did life consist of only primitive single-celled bacteria and amoebae for billions of years before everything suddenly exploded and complex life arose?
“There must have been other ecological and evolutionary mechanisms at play. Maybe life remained microbial for so long because it took a while to develop the biological machinery required to construct an animal. Perhaps the ancient Earth lacked animals because complex, many-celled bodies are simply hard to evolve”, says Daniel Mills.
His colleagues from the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution have previously shown that oxygen levels have actually risen dramatically at least one time before complex life evolved. Although plenty of oxygen thus became available it did not lead to the development of complex life. Read more about this work here:
http://sdu.dk/en/Om_SDU/Fakulteterne/Naturvidenskab/Nyheder_2013/2013_10_16_oxygenfossil.
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$23.9 billion European APP market to reach $86 billion and create 5 million jobs in Europe by 2018
February 18th, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
The €63 billion app boom. Nearly 5 million jobs in European app sector by 2018, says EU report
The EU’s app sector has gone from zero to digital superhero in less than five years. By 2018 it could employ 4.8 million people and contribute €63 billion to the EU economy according to a report presented in Brussels today. The study, carried out by GIGAOM and NUI Galway for the European Commission, shows that Europe’s app developers are up to the challenge of taking the global lead. Currently, EU and North Americandevelopers generate the same levels (42% each) of app revenues in crucial EU and US markets. Although the future is bright, developers have raised concerns about the skills gap, connectivity and fragmentation which could put the app boom at risk.
Today the app economy employs 1 million developers, and 800,000 people in marketing & support posts. This could rise to 2.7 million developers + 2.1 million support staff by 2018. EU buyers and advertisers spent €6.1 billion on apps in 2013, 30% of total global app spending, growing to €18.7 billion in 2018. Consumer spending combined with advertising and contract work could lead to €63 billion annual revenue for the app sector within five years.
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, said “In the face of increasing youth unemployment, these figures give me new hope. The app sector is one area of the digital economy where Europe can really lead. But we have to address concerns about connectivity and fragmentation – yet another reason to complete the telecom single market!”
The study shows that:
EU games app developers lead the field: 28 EU leading companies created 40% of the top 100 grossing apps in the EU and US. Three of the top-five companies are Nordic games developers (1st King.com, 2nd,Supercell, 5th Rovio)with German, French, Spanish and UK app developers also finding success outside their native markets.
Growing market, growing jobs: In 2013, developers earned €11.5 billion making apps for consumer goods, banking, media, retail and other clients. They can expect to earn up to €46 billion through contracts of this nature in 2018. The app boom is creating jobs, for example contract developers Golden Gekko(London/Barcelona) plans to grow its staff 40-50% next year and London-based Grapple Mobile was a 3-person firm three years ago, employs 120 now, and intends to double next year.
Addressing the digital skills shortage: roughly 38% of independent and in-house developers said EU companies had difficulties competing with US salaries, 31% and 33% said that developer education was lagging, around 30% said startup developers lacked business expertise, and quarter of all surveyed said there were not enough developers. Worryingly only 9% of developers are female.
The Commission is tackling Europe’s digital skills crisis in a number of ways. Firstly, by partnering withindustry and other organisations in the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs (see IP/2014/40). In parallel, by working with schools to bring digital skills right into the connected classroom (see IP/13/859andMEMO/13/813). Finally, by supporting grassroots initiatives such as EU Code week, organised by Neelie Kroes’ young advisors. The first ever EU Code Week reached 10,000 people in 26 countries in November 2013. This year’s Code week will take place on 11-17 October 2014
Technical bottlenecks and fragmentation were also a cause for concern. Roughly a quarter of developers wanted to see 4G develop more quickly in Europe. Around 35% were frustrated by the lack of interoperability between platforms like Android, iOS, Facebook. A majority of developers complained of their de facto total dependence on platforms developed by American giants, with subsequent revenue impact.
Neelie Kroes said “All apps and all mobile devices rely on broadband networks. Yet today, the framework for European telecoms is shattered and constrained. Meaning poor wireless connectivity, connections that can’t easily cross borders, apps and services that are blocked or throttled by network operators, prohibitive surcharges to use your mobile abroad. In tomorrow’s world, where even cars are connected, where we rely onmobile apps even for our healthcare – resolving them will be absolutely critical. ”
Background
The report, “Sizing the EU App Economy” was presented at a workshop in Brussels where Neelie Kroes,Rovio’s Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka and representatives of the digital community discussed the future of the EU app economy.
Apps are self-contained programs or pieces of software which are mostly often designed for mobile devices or social platforms. For example, apps can advise you on the most efficient public transport route, help you bank online, track your runs or bike rides, match you with a potential partner, give health advice, games to entertain and relax. On the business side, many companies develop apps in house, or through contractors to support their main business, whether they are in financial services, consumer goods retail, media, etc. They use apps to add to their customer experience and utility, and to help market and sell their goods and services. According to estimates, 94.4 billion apps were downloaded globally during 2013.
A digital single market of more than 500 million EU consumers has huge potential for Europe’s digital business and app developers, but many are frustrated by inconsistencies which make it hard to sell their bright ideas across borders. The Commission is working to simplify EU rules on copyright and licensing to deliver greater access to online content. An ongoing consultation will feed into a white paper on copyright due before Summer 2014. Greater connectivity, including the high-speed 4G and broadband connections which fuel apps, are among the targets of the Commission’s proposals to deliver a Connected Continent, currently being debated by the European Parliament. (See MEMO/13/779 and IP/13/828),
The study is part of Startup Europe, a Digital Agenda initiative supported by Neelie Kroes to promote ICT and web entrepreneurship in Europe and to help the companies flourish in Europe.
It includes six activities: The Accelerator Assembly, the European Crowdfunding Network, The Web Investors Forum, the Leaders Club, the Startup Europe Partnership and improving Web Skills via MOOCS (being launched in 2014) Activities to map the startup ecosystem, such as this study, support Startup Europe and help define evidence-based policies which can help web entrepreneurs to start and stay in Europe.
In addition, a the Public Private Partnership on the Future Internet can help with funding and mentoring web entrepreneurs that use the technologies developed in previous projects. Funding is also available through Horizon 2020 http://youtu.be/RoTXYainAQIMEMO/13/1154
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America’s only clovis skeleton reveals clues to origins of native Americans
February 16th, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
They lived in America about 13,000 years ago where they hunted mammoth, mastodons and giant bison with big spears. The Clovis people were not the first humans in America, but they represent the first humans with a wide expansion on the North American continent – until the culture mysteriously disappeared only a few hundred years after its origin.
Stone and bone tools unearthed from the only known Clovis burial. The site was discovered in 1968, and the tools are found with Clovis boy whose genome reveals a close relationship with all contemporary American Indians.
Photo : Sarah Anzick
Who the Clovis people were and which present day humans they are related to has been discussed intensely and the issue has a key role in the discussion about how the Americas were peopled. Today there exists only one human skeleton found in association with Clovis tools and at the same time it is among the oldest human skeletons in the Americas. It is a small boy between 1 and 1.5 years of age – found in a 12,600 old burial site, called the Anzick Site, in Wilsall, Montana, USA. Now an international team headed by Danish researcher Eske Willerslev has mapped his genome thereby reviving the scientific debate about the colonization of the Americas.
Stone and bone tools unearthed from the only known Clovis burial. The site was discovered in 1968, and the tools are found with Clovis boy whose genome reveals a close relationship with all contemporary American Indians.
Photo : Sarah Anzick
Roughly estimated some 80 % of all present-day Native American populations on the two American continents are direct descendants of the Clovis boy’s family. The remaining 20 % are more closely related with the Clovis family than any other people on Earth, says Lundbeck Professor Eske Willerslev from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. T
his surprising result has now been published in the scientific journal Nature. The discovery is so decisive that Nature has chosen to send the article to the press at a later time than usual as they fear the media embargo may be broken. A comprehensive international telephone press conference has been arranged and will be held in the Crow tribe’s reservation in Montana – close to where the boy was found. Behind the results are a group of international researchers led by Professor Eske Willerslev from Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum at University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
The missing link
It is almost like finding the ‘missing link’ to the common ancestor of the Native Americans. The Clovis boy’s family is the direct ancestor to roughly estimated 80 % of all present day Native Americans. Although the Clovis culture disappeared its people are living today. Put simply it is a sensation that we succeeded in finding an approximately 12,600 year old boy whose closest relatives can be regarded as the direct ancestor to so many people, Eske Willerslev says and adds:
Photo : Sarah Anzick
This also means that Clovis did not descend from Europeans, Asians or Melanesians, a theory that a number of scientists have advocated. They were Native Americans – and the Native American ancestors were the first people in America. This is now a fact.
Shane Doyle, a historian from the Apsaalooke (Crow) tribe, who helped the team with consultations to the Montana tribes agrees:
This discovery by Eske and his team proves something that tribal people have never doubted – we’ve been here since time immemorial and all the ancient artifacts located within our homelands are remnants from our direct ancestors. But the discovery is only part of the importance of this study. The other part being Eske and his team’s respectful commitment to interacting face to face with tribal communities and listening to Native American leaders, which has lead directly to the reburial of this little boy.”
Also Sarah Anzick, a molecular biologist in the study and the steward of the remains that were found on private land is excited:
After 46 years since the discovery on my family land, we are finally hearing this child’s story through his genetic legacy. I find it remarkable that the descendants of the Clovis culture, which seemed to have vanished 12,600 years ago, are still alive and thriving today.
Interestingly, the teams find that Native American ancestors coming in from Siberia split into two groups. One group is ancestors to the Native Americans presently living in Canada and the other one – which is represented by the Clovis boy – is the ancestor to virtually all Native Americans in South America and Mexico. The US is still a white spot on the map when it comes to genome-wide data from Native Americans. The team members hope to be able to accessing such data in the future to understand the full picture.
The study validates the concept of continuity in the history of Native Americans, and suggests that modern Native Americans are direct descendants of the first people occupying this land, says Rasmus Nielsen, a co-author on the study and a Professor at UC Berkeley, who developed the method used for determining that many modern native Americans are direct descendants of the Clovis boy’s family.
An Asian homeland for the First Americans
The first humans came from Siberia via the so-called Beringia Land Bridge, which during the latest ice age connected Siberia with North America and did not bring the Clovis culture with them. The Clovis culture arose after they arrived in America and the boy from Anzick was more a descendant of the first immigrants.
Michael Waters, the key archaeologist connected to the study and who has worked on many Clovis and older sites in North America elaborates:
The genetic findings mesh well with the archaeological evidence to confirm the Asian homeland of the First Americans, more clearly define their genetic heritage, and is consistent with occupation of the Americas a few thousand years before Clovis. The findings do not support a western European origin of the First Americans as suggested by the Solutrean hypothesis. The genetic information provided by the Anzick boy is part of the larger story of modern human dispersal across the Earth and is shedding new light on the last continent to be explored and settled by our species.
Then who were the first immigrants? We don’t know. Yet. Maybe a Native American, maybe an ancestor related to the Mal’ta boy from Siberia and another one who was East Asian. We don’t know. But our results eliminate all other theories about the origins of the first people in America. The first people in America were the direct ancestors of Native Americans, says Professor Willerslev and continues:
We can see that the Clovis boy shares about 1/3 of his genes with the 24,000 year old child from Mal’ta at the Siberian Lake Baikal who we have analyzed previously. The same goes for all present day Native Americans. Therefore the encounter between East Asians and the Mal’ta group happened before Clovis.
The Mal’ta boy was related to people who later migrated across Beringia to the Americas.
Picture: G.Grullon/Science
The human remains from the Anzick site will be reburied sometime this year in cooperation with Native American tribes in Montana. Eske Willerslev has in connection with the genome work on the Clovis boy visited several of Montana’s Native American tribes with Crow historian Shane Doyle to discuss the findings. All the members of the research team hope that the Anzick study leads to more and enhanced cooperation between Native peoples and scientists. Therefore he has also chosen the Crow reservation in Montana to hold thepress conference.
Burial of the MA-1 Mal’ta child redrawn from Gerasimov (1935), with photos of the plaque and swan from the burial and a representative Venus figurine from the excavation.
Credit: Kelly E. Graf
The genome sequence of a 24,000-year-old Siberian individual has provided a key piece of the puzzle in the quest for Native American origins. The ancient Siberian demonstrates genomic signatures that are basal to present-day western Eurasians and close to modern Native Americans. This surprising finding has great consequences for our understanding of how and from where ancestral Native Americans descended, and also of the genetic landscape of Eurasia 24,000 years ago. The breakthrough is reported in this week’s Nature (Advance Online Publication) by an international team of scientists, led by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark (University of Copenhagen).
Clovis culture is named town of Clovis, New Mexico, where in 1930 was the first large and very distinctive spearheads of flint – the so-called Clovis points.
Clovis people is one of the oldest people in America, they supported themselves include by hunting mammoths and mastodons (past elephants), and the culture was spreading quickly across the Americas.
Clovis settlements have been identified in most of the U.S., Mexico and Central America, and there have been many theories as to why the culture suddenly disappeared almost simultaneously with the mammoth and other megafauna and were replaced by other cultures
Was it the Clovis culture refined hunting techniques that took the lives of the large animals? Or was it disease, a large asteroid impact or changes in climate.
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Growing numbers of chemicals linked with brain disorders in children
February 16th, 2014
By Harvard University.
Toxic chemicals may be triggering the recent increases in neurodevelopmental disabilities among children—such as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and dyslexia—according to a new study from HarvardSchool of Public Health (HSPH) and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The researchers say a new global prevention strategy to control the use of these substances is urgently needed.
“The greatest concern is the large numbers of children who are affected by toxic damage to brain development in the absence of a formal diagnosis. They suffer reduced attention span, delayed development, and poor school performance. Industrial chemicals are now emerging as likely causes,” said Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at HSPH.
The report follows up on a similar review conducted by the authors in 2006 that identified five industrial chemicals as “developmental neurotoxicants,” or chemicals that can cause brain deficits. The new study offers updated findings about those chemicals and adds information on six newly recognized ones, including manganese, fluoride, chlorpyrifos and DDT (pesticides), tetrachloroethylene (a solvent), and the polybrominated diphenyl ethers (flame retardants).
The study outlines possible links between these newly recognized neurotoxicants and negative health effectson children, including:
Grandjean and co-author Philip Landrigan, Dean for Global Health at Mount Sinai, also forecast that many more chemicals than the known dozen or so identified as neurotoxicants contribute to a “silent pandemic” of neurobehavioral deficits that is eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviors, and damaging societies. But controlling this pandemic is difficult because of a scarcity of data to guide prevention and the huge amount of proof needed for government regulation. “Very few chemicals have been regulated as a result of developmental neurotoxicity,” they write.
The authors say it’s crucial to control the use of these chemicals to protect children’s brain development worldwide. They propose mandatory testing of industrial chemicals and the formation of a new international clearinghouse to evaluate industrial chemicals for potential developmental neurotoxicity.
“The problem is international in scope, and the solution must therefore also be international,” said Grandjean. “We have the methods in place to test industrial chemicals for harmful effects on children’s brain development—now is the time to make that testing mandatory.”
Contacts and sources:
Todd Datz
Harvard School of Public Health
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Crocodiles climb trees, alligators do it too
February 13th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
When most people envision crocodiles, they think of them waddling on the ground or wading in water—not climbing trees. However, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, study has found that the reptiles can climb trees as far as the crowns.
Credit: Kristine Gingras with permission.
Dinets and his colleagues observed crocodile species on three continents—Australia, Africa and North America—and examined previous studies and anecdotal observations. They found that four species climbed trees—usually above water—but how far they ventured upward and outward varied by their sizes. The smaller crocodiles were able to climb higher and further than the larger ones. Some species were observed climbing as far as four meters high in a tree and five meters down a branch.
“Climbing a steep hill or steep branch is mechanically similar, assuming the branch is wide enough to walk on,” the authors wrote. “Still, the ability to climb vertically is a measure of crocodiles’ spectacular agility on land.”
The crocodiles seen climbing trees, whether at night or during the day, were skittish of being recognized, jumping or falling into the water when an approaching observer was as far as 10 meters away. This response led the researchers to believe that the tree climbing and basking are driven by two conditions: thermoregulation and surveillance of habitat.
“The most frequent observations of tree-basking were in areas where there were few places to bask on the ground, implying that the individuals needed alternatives for regulating their body temperature,” the authors wrote. “Likewise, their wary nature suggests that climbing leads to improved site surveillance of potential threats and prey.”
The data suggests that at least some crocodile species are able to climb trees despite lacking any obvious morphological adaptations to do so.
“These results should be taken into account by paleontologists who look at changes in fossils to shed light on behavior,” said Dinets. “This is especially true for those studying extinct crocodiles or other Archosaurian taxa.”
Dinets collaborated with Adam Britton from Charles Darwin University in Australia and Matthew Shirley from the University of Florida.
Research by Dinets published in 2013 found another surprising crocodile characteristic—the use of lures such as sticks to hunt prey. More of his crocodile research can be found in his book “Dragon Songs.”
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JFK could have been impeached in 2nd term, says author
February 12th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
President Kennedy’s marital infidelities, secret medical treatments and covert actions put him in political peril after he escapes 11/22/63 assassination attempt in Bryce Zabel’s new alternate-history novel.
If JFK had survived the assassination attempt on November 22, 1963, he would still have had to fight for his political life as his enemies tried to finish what they started in Texas.
That’s the provocative premise of Bryce Zabel’s controversial new novel, “Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?”, available through Amazon and other retailers as a trade paperback, eBook, andaudiobook.
“Even though the public never knew it then, President Kennedy was living one scandalous headline away from disaster,” says Zabel. “If he escaped Dallas unscathed, his presidency might still have been threatened by his enemies attacking him by exposing his risky private behavior.
“As difficult as it is to imagine, Kennedy might even have faced impeachment,” concludes Zabel, an award-winning screenwriter who spent a decade meticulously researching the 35th president’s fabled life and tragic death.
In Zabel’s fast-paced “alternate history” of the Sixties, John F. Kennedy’s dark personal and political secrets lead to shocking but plausible plot surprises.
“Investigations triggered by the attempt on Kennedy’s life would not have been colored by respect and grieving for a martyred President as they were in our timeline,” says Zabel. “They could easily have led to published revelations of the President’s extramarital affairs, secret medical ailments and covert actions. In such an environment, a bruising political battle could have had his foes clamoring for impeachment.”
In time for the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, the award-winning Hollywood screenwriter/producer cleverly portrays the twists that history would have taken if the shots missed — and JFK (and his attorney-general brother Bobby) fought back against the forces out to destroy him.
“Had he survived, Kennedy would have woken up on November 23rd knowing that somebody had tried to execute him in broad daylight on a public street,” argues Zabel. “Life would not have returned to normal — not for the Kennedy administration nor for the forces that tried to murder him.”
Zabel’s novel takes its inspiration from the large majority of Americans who have always believed JFK died as a result of a conspiracy and continue to feel that way even today. If JFK survived Dallas, he believes, “John and Bobby Kennedy might well have become the nation’s first conspiracy theorists. They would have considered numerous suspects from rogue elements of the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, U.S. military and even the Soviet Union and both pro- and anti-Castro Cubans.”
“Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?” is cleverly presented as a commemorative 50th-anniversary retrospective assembled by contemporaneous journalists on the staff of a fictitious newsmagazine, Top Story. Its narrative incorporates artfully designed faux-magazine covers depicting scenes from this parallel universe, including JFK with the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
The novel’s iconic cast of 1960s luminaries also features Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong, Cassius Clay, Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald, F. Lee Bailey, Lenny Bruce, and J. Edgar Hoover, among others.
Zabel is creator of NBC’s Emmy Award-winning “Dark Skies” and four other primetime TV series, a recent Chairman of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and a former CNN correspondent.
“Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas?” an alternate-history novel by Bryce Zabel, is available as a Mill City Press trade paperback online and in bookstores; as a Publish Green eBook through Kindle, iBook, Nook and other vendors; and as an Audible.com audiobook narrated by Edd Hall (“The TonightShow”).
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Massive neutrinos solve a cosmological conundrum
February 11th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
The recent Planck spacecraft observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – the fading glow of the Big Bang – highlighted a discrepancy between these cosmological results and the predictions from other types of observations.
Credits: ESA/ LFI & HFI Consortia
The CMB is the oldest light in the Universe, and its study has allowed scientists to accurately measure cosmological parameters, such as the amount of matter in the Universe and its age. But an inconsistency arises when large-scale structures of the Universe, such as the distribution of galaxies, are observed.
Professor Richard Battye, from The University of Manchester School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “We observe fewer galaxy clusters than we would expect from the Planck results and there is a weaker signal from gravitational lensing of galaxies than the CMB would suggest.
“A possible way of resolving this discrepancy is for neutrinos to have mass. The effect of these massive neutrinos would be to suppress the growth of dense structures that lead to the formation of clusters of galaxies.”
Neutrinos interact very weakly with matter and so are extremely hard to study. They were originally thought to be massless but particle physics experiments have shown that neutrinos do indeed have mass and that there are several types, known as flavours by particle physicists. The sum of the masses of these different types has previously been suggested to lie above 0.06 eV (much less than a billionth of the mass of a proton).
In this paper, Professor Battye and co-author Dr Adam Moss, from the University of Nottingham, have combined the data from Planck with gravitational lensing observations in which images of galaxies are warped by the curvature of space-time. They conclude that the current discrepancies can be resolved if massive neutrinos are included in the standard cosmological model. They estimate that the sum of masses of neutrinos is 0.320 +/- 0.081 eV (assuming active neutrinos with three flavours).
Dr Moss said: “If this result is borne out by further analysis, it not only adds significantly to our understanding of the sub-atomic world studied by particle physicists, but it would also be an important extension to the standard model of cosmology which has been developed over the last decade.”
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Fatality rate for heroin and cocaine users is 14 higher than for the general population
February 9th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
A new study analyses the risk factors and excess mortality among heroin and cocaine consumers admitted totreatment in Spain. The results reveal that the fatality rate among consumers of both drugs is 14.3 times higher than for the general population, while among those only using cocaine, it is 5.1 times higher.
In Spain the majority of deaths related to cocaine are not correctly certified and therefore up until now very fewstudies have been carried out that analyse the consequences of consuming these drugs in terms of mortality.
“Death certificates rarely include any reference to these substances in the information contained therein,” SINC was informed by Gregorio Barrio, a researcher at the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid and one of the authors of this new study.
This, says Barrio, is because very often the immediate cause of death in these cases is an unspecified health problem, such as a myocardial infarction or suicide, which may be caused by factors unrelated to cocaine or a number of reasons.
“Also, when signs of cocaine consumption before death are revealed during possible forensic and toxicological investigations, the original certified cause of death generally goes uncorrected, thus being included in mortality statistics devoid of the surname ‘cocaine’,” adds the researcher.
Faced with the difficulty of directly quantifying the deaths related to cocaine based on general mortality statistics, the researchers compared mortality rates among a group of heroin and cocaine users with that of people among the general population of the same age and sex.
For this study, published in the ‘Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment’, two groups of cocaine users were taken, one of 8,825 people that also consumed heroin and another of 11,905 people who did not use this substance.
Credit: Wikipedia
All the participants were admitted to treatment for psychoactive drug abuse or dependence in Madrid or Barcelona between 1997 and 2007; they were aged between 15 and 49 years at the time of being recruited and were cross-referenced with the general mortality register for the 1997-2008 period, in order to observe their vital condition.
Excess mortality – adjusted death rate ratio between participants and the general population – was considerable in both groups of participants. In fact, the death rate among those who also consumed heroin was 14.3 times higher than for the general population, while among those who did not consume this substance, it was 5.1 times higher.
The results also revealed that was a greater chance of men dying than women among those who also consumed heroin (1.5 times), while no differences were found according to sex among those who did not consume this substance.
The authors stated that the excess mortality found is within the range of the results published in the past in other countries (4-12 times higher).
Other related factors
Apart from the use of heroine, other factors related to the greater risk of death were identified, such as the absence of regular employment, drug use by injection or consuming cocaine on a daily basis.
“This excess mortality may be due to the consumption of cocaine or heroin, but there are also other factors that may be different among the general population and the participants, such as mental disorders, personality traits, social conditions, etc.,” said Barrio.
Credit: Wikipedia
Another interesting finding was that the excess mortality with regard to the general population of the same age and sex was significantly higher among women than among men, particularly among those who consumed cocaine but not heroin (8.6 times in women compared with 3.5 times in men).
“This information does not mean that female cocaine consumers have a significantly greater risk of death than their male counterparts, but that the relative increased risk of female cocaine consumers compared with women in the general population of their same age (with a very low death risk) is higher than the relative increase of consumers compared with men among the general population,” he clarified.
For the authors, the conclusions of this work are important because they will enable better estimates to be obtained for mortalities attributable to cocaine and they also show that interventions need to be increased in order to reduce the consumption of these substances and the damage caused by them..
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Water supply: Most pressing U.S. environmental problem
February 6th, 2014
By Alton Parrish.
Water supply is the most pressing environmental issue facing the United States according to a survey of policy makers and scientists revealed in a new publication in BioScience by researchers at the University of York and the University of California, Davis.
A question on the water supply necessary to sustain human populations and ecosystem resilience was ranked as having the greatest potential, if it was answered, to increase the effectiveness of policies related to natural resource management in the United States. The publication comes as California suffers its worst drought in nearly half a century.
The question emerged from a previous collaboration among decision makers and scientists that yielded 40 research questions that most reflected the needs of those with jurisdiction over natural resources. That research also was published in BioScience.
The survey, by Dr Murray Rudd of the Environment Department at York and Dr Erica Fleishman, of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at UC Davis, asked managers, policymakers and their advisers, and scientists to rank the questions on the basis of their applicability to policy.
The 602 respondents included 194 policymakers, 70 government scientists, and 228 academic scientists.
Other questions that were ranked as of high importance to policy included those on methods for measuring the benefits humans receive from ecosystems; the effects of sea-level rise, storm surge, erosion and variable precipitation on coastal ecosystems and human communities; and the effect on carbon storage and ecosystem resilience of different management strategies for forests, grasslands, and agricultural systems.
Dr Rudd said, “We found a significant difference in research priorities between respondents. Importantly, there was no evidence of a simple science–policy divide. Priorities did not differ between academics and government employees or between scientists (academic and government) and policymakers.
“Our results suggest that participatory exercises such as this are a robust way of establishing priorities to guide funders of research and researchers who aim to inform policy.”
Dr Fleishman added, “The consensus in priorities is even more striking as California’s current drought leads to unprecedented reductions in water supply and delivery.”
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Mysterious phenomenon: Vortex rings created by tornadoes, dolphins, neutron stars
February 4th, 2014By Alton Parrish.
But in one of the largest super-computing calculations ever performed, UW physicists Aurel Bulgac andMichael Forbes and co-authors have found this to be a case of mistaken identity: The heavy solitons observed in the earlier experiment are likely vortex rings – a sort of quantum equivalent of smoke rings.
“The experiment interpretation did not conform with theory expectations,” said Bulgac. “We had to figure out what was really happening there. It was not obvious it was one thing or another — thus it took a bit of police work.”
A vortex ring is a doughnut-shaped phenomenon where fluids or gases knot and spin in a closed, usually circular loop. The physics of vortex rings is the same as that which gives stability to tornadoes, volcanic eruptions and mushroom clouds. (Dolphins actually create their own vortex rings in water for entertainment.)
“Using state-of-the-art computing techniques, we demonstrated with our simulation that virtually all aspects of the MIT results can be explained by vortex rings” said Forbes, an UW affiliate professor who in January became an assistant professor of physics at Washington State University.
He said the simulations they used “could revolutionize how we solve certain physics problems in the future,” such as studying nuclear reactions without having to perform nuclear tests. As for neutron stars, he said the work also could lead to a better understanding of “glitches,” or rapid increases in such a star’s pulsation frequency, as this may be due to vortex interactions inside the star.
“We are now at a cusp where our computational capabilities are becoming sufficient to shed light on this longstanding problem. This is one of our current directions of research — directly applying what we have learned from the vortex rings,” Forbes said.
The computing work for the research — one of the largest direct numerical simulations ever — was performed on the supercomputer Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee, the nation’s most powerful computer for open science. Work was also performed on the UW’s Hyak high-performance computer cluster.
Bulgac and Forbes published their findings in a January issue of Physical Review Letters. Co-authors areKenneth Roche of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the UW; Gabriel Wlazłowski of the WarsawUniversity of Technology and the UW; and Michelle Kelleyof the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Ancient Carthaginians really did sacrifice their children
February 4th, 2014By Oxford University.
A collaborative paper by academics from institutions across the globe, including Oxford University, suggests that Carthaginian parents ritually sacrificed young children as an offering to the gods.
The paper argues that well-meaning attempts to interpret the ‘tophets’ – ancient infant burial grounds – simply as child cemeteries are misguided.
And the practice of child sacrifice could even hold the key to why the civilisation was founded in the first place.
The research pulls together literary, epigraphical, archaeological and historical evidence and confirms the Greek and Roman account of events that held sway until the 1970s, when scholars began to argue that the theory was simply anti-Carthaginian propaganda.
The paper is published in the journal Antiquity.
Dr Josephine Quinn of Oxford University’s Faculty of Classics, an author of the paper, said: ‘It’s becoming increasingly clear that the stories about Carthaginian child sacrifice are true. This is something the Romans and Greeks said the Carthaginians did and it was part of the popular history of Carthage in the 18th and 19th centuries.
‘But in the 20th century, people increasingly took the view that this was racist propaganda on the part of the Greeks and Romans against their political enemy, and that Carthage should be saved from this terrible slander.
‘What we are saying now is that the archaeological, literary, and documentary evidence for child sacrifice is overwhelming and that instead of dismissing it out of hand, we should try to understand it.’
The city-state of ancient Carthage was a Phoenician colony located in what is now Tunisia. It operated from around 800BC until 146BC, when it was destroyed by the Romans.
Children – both male and female, and mostly a few weeks old – were sacrificed by the Carthaginians at locations known as tophets. The practice was also carried out by their neighbours at other Phoenician colonies in Sicily, Sardinia and Malta. Dedications from the children’s parents to the gods are inscribed on slabs of stone above their cremated remains, ending with the explanation that the god or gods concerned had ‘heard my voice and blessed me’.
Dr Quinn said: ‘People have tried to argue that these archaeological sites are cemeteries for children who were stillborn or died young, but quite apart from the fact that a weak, sick or dead child would be a pretty poor offering to a god, and that animal remains are found in the same sites treated in exactly the same way, it’s hard to imagine how the death of a child could count as the answer to a prayer.
‘It’s very difficult for us to recapture people’s motivations for carrying out this practice or why parents would agree to it, but it’s worth trying.
‘Perhaps it was out of profound religious piety, or a sense that the good the sacrifice could bring the family or community as a whole outweighed the life of the child.
‘We have to remember the high level of mortality among children – it would have been sensible for parents not to get too attached to a child that might well not make its first birthday.’
Dr Quinn added: ‘We think of it as a slander because we view it in our own terms. But people looked at it differently 2,500 years ago.
‘Indeed, contemporary Greek and Roman writers tended to describe the practice as more of an eccentricity or historical oddity – they’re not actually very critical.
‘We should not imagine that ancient people thought like us and were horrified by the same things.’
The backlash against the notion of Carthaginian child sacrifice began in the second half of the 20th century and was led by scholars from Tunisia and Italy, the very countries in which tophets have been found.
Dr Quinn added: ‘Carthage was far bigger than Athens and for many centuries much more important than Rome, but it is something of a forgotten city today.
‘If we accept that child sacrifice happened on some scale, it begins to explain why the colony was founded in the first place.
‘Perhaps the reason the people who established Carthage and its neighbours left their original home of Phoenicia – modern-day Lebanon – was because others there disapproved of their unusual religious practice.
‘Child abandonment was common in the ancient world, and human sacrifice is found in many historical societies, but child sacrifice is relatively uncommon. Perhaps the future Carthaginians were like the Pilgrim Fathers leaving from Plymouth – they were so fervent in their devotion to the gods that they weren’t welcome at home any more.
‘Dismissing the idea of child sacrifice stops us seeing the bigger picture.’
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The PTSD crisis that is being ignored: Americans wounded in their own neighborhoods
February 4th, 2014By Lois Beckett, ProPublica.
Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has one of the busiest trauma centers in the nation, treating about 2,000 patients a year for gunshots, stabbings and other violent injuries.
So when researchers started screening patients there for post-traumatic stress disorder in 2011, they assumed they would find cases.
They just didn’t know how many: Fully 43 percent of the patients they examined – and more than half of gunshot-wound victims – had signs of PTSD.
“We knew these people were going to have PTSD symptoms,” said Kimberly Joseph, a trauma surgeon at the hospital. “We didn’t know it was going to be as extensive.”
What the work showed, Joseph said, is, “This is a much more urgent problem than you think.”
Joseph proposed spending about $200,000 a year to add staffers to screen all at-risk patients for PTSD and connect them with treatment. The taxpayer-subsidized hospital has an annual budget of roughly $450 million. But Joseph said hospital administrators turned her down and suggested she look for outside funding.
“Right now, we don’t have institutional support,” said Joseph, who is now applying for outside grants.
A hospital spokeswoman would not comment on why the hospital decided not to pay for regular screening. The hospital is part of a pilot program with other area hospitals to help “pediatrics patients identified with PTSD,” said the spokeswoman, Marisa Kollias.“The Cook County Health and Hospitals System is committed to treating all patients with high quality care.”
Right now, social workers try to identify patients with the most severe PTSD symptoms, said Carol Reese, the trauma center’s violence prevention coordinator and an Episcopal priest.
“I’m not going to tell you we have everything we need in place right now, because we don’t,” Reese said. “We have a chaplain and a social worker and a couple of social work interns trying to see 5,000 people. We’re not staffed to do it.”
A growing body of research shows that Americans with traumatic injuries develop PTSD at rates comparable to veterans of war. Just like veterans, civilians can suffer flashbacks, nightmares, paranoia, and social withdrawal. While the United States has been slow to provide adequate treatment to troops affected by post-traumatic stress, the military has made substantial progress in recent years. It now regularly screens for PTSD, works to fight the stigma associated with mental health treatment and educates military families about potential symptoms.
Few similar efforts exist for civilian trauma victims. Americans wounded in their own neighborhoods are not getting treatment for PTSD. They’re not even getting diagnosed.
Studies show that, overall, about 8 percent of Americans suffer from PTSD at some point in their lives. But the rates appear to be much higher in communities – such as poor, largely African-American pockets of Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia – wherehigh rates of violent crime have persisted despite a national decline.
Researchers in Atlanta interviewed more than 8,000 inner-city residents and found that about two-thirds said they had been violently attacked and that half knew someone who had been murdered. At least 1 in 3 of those interviewed experienced symptoms consistent with PTSD at some point in their lives – and that’s a “conservative estimate,” said Dr. Kerry Ressler, the lead investigator on the project.
“The rates of PTSD we see are as high or higher than Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam veterans,” Ressler said. “We have a whole population who is traumatized.”
Post-traumatic stress can be a serious burden: It can take a toll on relationships and parenting, lead to family conflict and interfere with jobs. A national study of patients with traumatic injuries found that those who developed post-traumatic stress were less likely to have returned to work a year after their injuries.
It may also have a broader social cost. “Neglect of civilian PTSD as a public health concern may be compromising public safety,” Ressler and his co-authors concluded in a 2012 paper.
For most people, untreated PTSD will not lead to violence. But “there’s a subgroup of people who are at risk, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, of reacting in a violent way or an aggressive way, that they might not have if they had had their PTSD treated,” Ressler said.
Research on military veterans has found that the symptom of “chronic hyperarousal” – the distorted sense of always being under extreme threat – can lead to increased aggression and violent behavior.
“Very minor threats can be experienced, by what the signals in your body tell you, as, ‘You’re in acute danger,’ ” said Sandra Bloom, a psychiatrist and former president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Another issue, wrote researchers at Drexel University, is that people with symptoms of PTSD may be more likely to carry a weapon in order to “restore feelings of safety.”
Hospital trauma centers, which work on the front lines of neighborhood violence, could help address the lack of treatment. Indeed, the American College of Surgeons, which sets standards for the care of patients with traumatic injuries, is set to recommend that trauma centers“evaluate, support and treat” patients for post-traumatic stress.
But it’s not a requirement, and few hospitals appear to be doing it.
ProPublica surveyed a top-level trauma center in each of the 22 cities with the nation’s highest homicide rates. Just one, the Spirit of Charity Trauma Center in New Orleans, currently screens all seriously injured patients for PTSD. At another, Detroit Receiving Hospital, psychologists talk with injured crime victims about PTSD.
Other hospitals have a patchwork of resources or none at all. At two hospitals, in Birmingham, Alabama and St. Louis, Missouri, trauma center staff said they hope to institute routine PTSD screening by the end of the year.
Doctors in Baltimore, Newark, Memphis, and Jackson, Miss., said they wanted to do more to address PTSD, but they do not have the money.
They said adding even small amounts to hospital budgets is a hard sell in a tough economic climate. That’s especially true at often-cash-strapped public hospitals.
In order to add a staff member to screen and follow up on PTSD, “Do I lay someone else off in another area?” asked Carnell Cooper, a trauma surgeon at Maryland Shock Trauma in Baltimore.
Many public hospitals rely on state Medicaid programs to cover treatment of low-income patients. But several surgeons across the country said they did not know of any way they could bill Medicaid for screenings.
The federal government often provides guidance to state Medicaid programs on best practices for patient care and how to fund them. But a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the agency has given states no guidance on whether or how hospitals could be reimbursed for PTSD screenings.
Hospitals are often unwilling to foot the bill themselves.
Trauma surgeons and their staffs expressed frustration that they know PTSD is having a serious impact on their patients, but they can’t find a way to pay for the help they need.
“We don’t recognize that people have PTSD. We don’t recognize that they’re not doing their job as well, that they’re not doing as well in school, that they’re getting irritable at home with their families,” said John Porter, a trauma surgeon in Jackson, Miss., which has a per-capita homicide rate higher than Chicago’s.
“When you think about it, if someone gets shot, and I save their life, and they can’t go out and function, did I technically save their life? Probably not.”
When RAND Corp. researchers began interviewing violently injured young men in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, they faced some skepticism that the men, often connected to gangs, would be susceptible to PTSD.
“We had people tell us that we’d see a lot of people who were gang-bangers, and they wouldn’t develop PTSD, because they were already hardened to that kind of life,” said Grant Marshall, a behavioral scientist who studied patients at a Los Angeles trauma center. “We didn’t find that to be the case at all. People in gangs were just as likely as anyone else to develop PTSD.”
In fact, trauma appears to have a cumulative effect. Young men with violent injuries may be more likely to develop symptoms if they have been attacked before.
The Los Angeles study found that 27 percent of the men interviewed three months after they were injured had symptoms consistent with PTSD.
“Most people still think that all the people who get shot were doing something they didn’t need to be doing,” said Porter, the trauma surgeon from Jackson, Miss. “I’m not saying it’s the racist thing, but everybody thinks it’s a young black men’s disease: They get shot, they’re out selling drugs. We’re not going to spend more time on them.”
While post-traumatic stress often does not show up until several months after an injury, experts say many trauma centers are missing the chance to evaluate patients early for risk of PTSD and to use clinical follow-ups – when patients come back to have their physical wounds examined – to check if patients are developing symptoms.
Doctors say hospitals are unlikely to make significant progress until the American College of Surgeons makes systematic PTSD screening a requirement for all top-level trauma centers.
An ACS requirement would be “a much better hammer to show the administration,” said Michael Foreman, chief of trauma surgery at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. Baylor, one of the few trauma centers to have a full-time psychologist on staff, surveyed 200 patients and found that roughly a quarter experienced post-traumatic stress. But Foreman said the center would not systematically screen all its patients until the ACS mandates it.
It’s not clear when that will happen. The organization’s recognition of PTSD screening as a recommended practice is a first step. Those new guidelines will be released in March 2014, according to Chris Cribari, who chairs the subcommittee that evaluates whether hospitals are meeting ACS standards. Cribari declined to say when PTSD screening might become a requirement. He said the timing will depend on what hurdles hospitals encounter – such as patient privacy – when some of them start screenings.
Cribari acknowledged that at some hospitals, “unless it’s a regulation, they’re not going to spend the money on it.”
At minimum, experts say, hospitals should provide all trauma patients with basic education about post-traumatic stress.
“The number one thing we do,” is simply “tell everybody in the trauma center about PTSD,” said John Nanney, a Department of Veterans Affairs researcher who developed a program for violently injured patients at the Spirit of Charity in New Orleans.
Without education about symptoms, patients who have flashbacks or constant nightmares may have “these catastrophic beliefs” about what is happening to them, Nanney said. “Just say, ‘This is something you might notice. If you do notice it, it doesn’t mean you’re going crazy. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. This is something that happens—don’t freak out.’ ”
The city of Philadelphia has begun to focus on trauma as a major public health issue. Philadelphia is working with local mental health providers to screen for PTSD more systematically – and to focus on post-traumatic stress as part of drug and alcohol treatment. The city has also paid to train local therapists in prolonged exposure, a proven treatment for PTSD– the same kind of training the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has paid for its therapists to receive.
For violently injured Philadelphia residents, there’s also Drexel University’s Healing Hurt People, a program that’s become a national model for addressing trauma and PTSD.
Healing Hurt People reaches out to violently injured adults and children at two local hospitals and offers them intensive services. The program accepts a broad range of patients — from high-schoolers to siblings of young men who have been shot to former drug dealers. (One of Healing Hurt People’s clients talked about his post-traumatic stress in 2013 on This American Life.)
The program’s social workers screen all clients for PTSD symptoms and host discussions in which clients can share their experiences with one another. It’s a way of fighting stigma around mental-health symptoms. Instead of thinking that they’re going crazy, the conversations help them realize, “OK, this is normal,” as one client put it.
One of the program’s central goals is to discourage victims of crimes from retaliating against their attackers and to help them focus on staying safe and rebuilding their own lives.
The program’s therapists and social workers remind clients that the aftereffects of trauma may make them overreact and help them plan how to identify and avoid events that might trigger them. In one discussion last fall, a therapist sketched a cliff on a whiteboard, with a stick man on the top, close to the edge. The question: How do you recognize when you’re getting close to the cliff edge—and learn to walk away?
“Our thing is education,” social worker Tony Thompson said. The more clients “understand what’s going on in their body and their mind, the more prepared they are to deal with it.”
Intensive casework like this has shown good results, but it’s not cheap. Healing Hurt People is relatively small: Its programs served 129 new clients in 2013 and offered briefer education or assistance to a few hundred more. Its annual budget in 2013 was roughly $300,000, not including the cost of the office space that Drexel donates to the program.
Other researchers have been working to develop quicker, more modest interventions for PTSD, including some that use laptops and smartphones—programs that could easily be extended to more patients and still have some positive effect.
Whatever the approach, there “is untapped potential,” said Joseph, the surgeon at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. Healing Hurt People is a model for what she wants to create. “These are kids, for the most part. When a 17-year-old kid crashes their parents’ car, and they were drinking, we don’t say, ‘Oh, that kid’s hopeless, let’s just give up on them.’ ”
“We’ve certainly had decades of trying to apply political solutions and social solutions to our inner cities’ financial problems and violence problem, and they haven’t been successful,” said Ressler, the Atlanta researcher. “If we could do a better job of identification, intervention and treatment, I think there would be less violence, and people would have an easier time doing well in school, getting a job.
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Gathering wild food in the city: Rethinking the role of foraging in urban ecosystem
February 2nd, 2014By Alton Parrish.
Productive practices were defined as rural and, therefore, inappropriate inside the city and city parks. Thus, cities such as Columbus, Ohio materially and discursively erased subsistence gardening and rulesprohibiting foraging in parks became commonplace (McLain et al.) Further, development and maintenance of the great urban parks demanded centralization and professionalization of their care. Decision-making powers and management authority were vested in municipal governments and professional park managers.
With the popularization of the concept of sustainable development in the late 1980s, planners saw the need for community involvement. They began to experiment with green space policies that explicitly seek to integrate social, economic, and ecological concerns in urban environments, recognizing and incorporating interstitial, raw, or ‘feral’ lands into park creation and protection. Such places, including the street trees and other vegetation that characterize these spaces, are important for meeting the community and ecosystem needs of low income urban neighborhoods that do not have large expanses of undeveloped land or existing parks. These shifts in the conceptualization of urban nature and human roles in it have, to some extent, created openings for the return of productive practices such as farming, horticulture and bee-keeping to public green spaces. However, urban foraging has received little attention in by planners of urban green spaces
Today, foragers in this unique study In Baltimore, Seattle, NYC and Philadelphia ranged from less than 5 years in Baltimore to more than 80 years in Seattle. Income levels varied widely ranging from less than US$10,000 to more than US$250,000 and ethnic and racial diversity is common. Foraged products consisted of whole plants (or fungi) or were derived from a variety of native and non-native species, above- and below-ground parts: bark, flowers, fruit, leaves, roots, stems, etc.
In some cases, foragers’ ethnicity and/or place of origin appear to condition which products are foraged. For example, Chinese immigrants sought ginkgo nuts (G. biloba) in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia; African-Americans in Baltimore and Philadelphia foraged young pokeweed shoots (Phytolacca americana); and American Indians in Seattle harvested evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) and nettle leaves (Urtica dioica). Managers in the Philly II study also describe talking with foragers of Italian, Hispanic, and Eastern European origin, many seeking prized species for family recipes (e.g. morel mushrooms (Morchella spp.) and greens common in Europe) or carrying on traditions of foraging practiced in their sending countries (e.g. harvesting mushrooms).
Most conservation practitioners interviewed in these studies had a negative or, at best, ambivalent view about the desirability of allowing or encouraging foraging, particularly in parks or natural areas. Of the four cities, Seattle and Philadelphia are the furthest along in rethinking the role of foraging in urban green spaces. The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department is actively seeking to rehabilitate former apple orchards in city parks, trees that it had neglected for decades.
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