White House Launches Climate Change Communication Tool that Treats Citizens Like Adults

Screenshot of an interactive map accessible from data.gov/climate showing expected inundation of areas of New York City based on different projections of sea level. (Source: NOAA and data.gov/climate)

A day after a major scientific organization released an embarrassingly ineffective report aimed at communicating the realities of climate change, the White House has launched something entirely different — and better.

For now, it is a web portal that serves as a kind of clearinghouse for all manner of information on how sea level rise is remaking our coasts and posing risks to those who live and work along them.

The screenshot above shows one of the interactive tools available on the site, data.gov/climate. In stunning graphic detail, it shows areas in the New York metro area that would become inundated in the future based on different projections of sea level rise. It’s one of just dozens of such tools available right now on the site.

And according to the White House, it is just the start of a major effort at climate change communication. The effort is designed to enable citizens to see how climate change is affecting them where they live and work, and what they might expect in the future, through interactive, graphics-based digital tools.

Yesterday’s report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science was, at its heart, a “We’re scientists, so listen to what we say” effort. In contrast, the initiative launched by the White House today treats people like grownups and gives them powerful tools to learn for themselves what’s happening. And unlike the AAAS report, its ultimate goal is to take full advantage of the power of digital technology — and visual communication — to empower people to plan for a future of climate change.

I’ve only had time to scratch the surface of the new web site. But so far, I’m impressed. And I know that it will be helpful in my future reporting on climate change.

To offer just one example, the web site offers access to an online, interactive tool from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that allows users to select a county and get a quick snapshot of its demographics, infrastructure and environment within flood zones. The results include a floodplain map, and graphics showing the overall population in floodplains, as well as the population over 65 years of age and in poverty that live in these areas, along with a plethora of other useful statistics and information.

I’ll be poking around the new site in coming days, and I may come back with an update on what I find.

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Giant "Chicken From Hell" is New Dinosaur Species

The big, bad, beaked stuff of nightmares, new dinosaur Anzu wyliei is described as “hell’s chicken” by the researchers who found it. Credit: Mark A. Klingler, Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Researchers announcing a newly described dinosaur called it the “chicken from hell,” “hell’s chicken” and “scary as well as absurd.”

More prosaically known as Anzu wyliei, the beaked dinosaur stood about ten feet tall and more than 11 feet long with a tall crest on its head and sharp claws. A. wyliei lived about 66 million years ago in what’s now North and South Dakota, possibly sharing the same habitat as the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops species. Researchers announced the new species this week.

Despite its vicious-looking claws, A. wyliei likely ate vegetation, small animals and possibly the eggs of other species. It lived on a floodplain and, while flightless, had a bird-like appearance with slender legs and a toothless jaw. Although no fossilized evidence of feathers were found, based on its relationship with other feathered species, researchers believe the animal had feathers on its tail and arms.

Illustration courtesy of Bob Walters.

Researchers estimate Anzu wyliei weighed perhaps 450-650 pounds, making it among the largest known oviraptorosaurs.

Oviraptorosaurs are feathered dinosaurs that belonged to the larger maniraptor group, from which modern birds evolved.

Aside from getting to put the phrase “chicken from hell” in a press release, researchers who described the new dinosaur today in the open-access journal PLoS One have good reason to be excited about the find. Their analysis is based on partial remains of three separate individuals found in the Hell’s Creek formation; together, the fossils form an almost complete A. wyliei skeleton. That’s important because the dinosaur belongs to the Caenagnathidae family, a mysterious offshoot of the oviraptorosauria subgroup previously known only from a handful of fragmentary bones.

Having a nearly-complete example of a Caenaghathid not only fills in a blank in the fossil record, it’s also rewriting the oviraptor family tree.

Already A. wyliei‘s remains have settled a debate about the relationship between different oviraptors species: “hell’s chicken” has shown North American oviraptors are much more closely related to each other than to similar species in Asia. At the same time, researchers believe an Asian oviraptor, the 26-foot-long Gigantoraptor, should be reclassified as a Caenaghathid based on similarities its shares with A. wyliei.

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Explore the Milky Way in Amazing 360-Degree Panorama

The Cat’s Paw Nebula. Credit: NASA/ESO/DSS2

Do you lack the time and funds for a fancy spring break getaway to some tropical clime? Well, NASA has the perfect intergalactic trip package for you. From the comforts of your desk chair, you can venture thousands upon thousands of light years into the Milky Way galaxy and return before your lunch break is over.

NASA’s Spitzer telescope spent the past decade snapping two million infrared photographs of our galaxy to stitch together a massive 360-degree panorama of the Milky Way. It’s the most detailed infrared panorama of our home galaxy ever made, and was derived from the GLIMPSE360 project.

Our galaxy is a flat, spiral disk about 100,000 light years in diameter. The GLIMPSE panorama only includes a small sliver of the sky — about 3 percent — but includes more than half of the stars in the Milky Way, which is due to our galaxy’s pancake shape.

When you take time to explore the panorama, you can find distant galaxies and areas of star formation. You’ll also notice that our galaxy is riddled with bubbles. These structures are cavities around massive stars, which blast wind and radiation into their surroundings. GLIMPSE also added navigation shortcuts so you can skip to popular destinations like Cat’s Paw Nebula, Canis Major and the galactic center (where a massive black hole resides).

However, the GLIMPSE data aren’t all for show. The data have helped astronomers create precise star maps of the Milky Way’s inner arms. The data will also guide NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to areas of star formation, where it will make even more detailed observations. The GLIMPSE panorama and Spitzer telescope mission are described in more detail in the video below.

While your friends and coworkers may tout their newly bronzed skin, you can brag about your tromp through the dark, unexplored backcountry of our galaxy where some of the faintest stars exist. Subsequently, your friends and family may suggest you take an actual vacation.

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Darker Skin Evolved To Reduce Cancer Risk

A reconstruction of a female Homo erectus. Reconstruction by John Gurche; photographed by Tim Evanson

A long-discounted theory about the evolution of skin color may have had it right all along, new research suggests.

Darker skin gives individuals much greater protection from UV light-induced skin cancer. Pale-skinned people are roughly 1,000 times more likely than individuals with dark skin to suffer from the three most common skin cancers. But for years, researchers believed the lowered risk was an incidental benefit, not one derived through the pressure of natural selection.

Even Charles Darwin poo-poohed the notion that pigmentation could be an adaptive trait. A new study, however, finds evidence that skin cancer was in fact a driving evolutionary force for early hominids to have darker skin.

The findings were based studying people with albinism in equatorial Africa, which has the highest UV radiation exposure on the planet. The study, based on medical records, found that more than 80 percent of people with albinism in this region developed terminal skin cancer before the age of 30, or roughly at one’s reproductive height. Thus, researchers say, individuals with light skin were likely to die sooner— and produce fewer offspring — than those with darker skin.

Researchers involved in the study believe that the earliest humans had pale skin containing pheomelanin, as do our close relatives, the chimpanzees. As our ancestors lost their body hair, likely to withstand the hot temperatures in the African savannah, that pale skin would have put them at great risk for early-onset skin cancers.

But those individuals who evolved to produce eumelanin — brown-black pigmentation — would have had a definite advantage because eumelanin affords natural protection from DNA damage — and skin cancer — caused by UV radiation. Darker-skinned early humans would have been less likely to die from skin cancer at a young age, and therefore more likely to live to produce more offspring, who would inherit their adaptive dark skin.

The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that dark skin arose between 1.2 and 1.8 million years ago in equatorial Africa — the same area where albinism so often leads to an early death from skin cancer today.

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Paved With Good Intentions: Mao Tse-Tung’s “Four Pests” Disaster

The public health game is a tough one to play. How do you achieve educating and transforming the public’s behavior for the common good without coming off as a bully or dour spoil-sport? The stakes are impossible: The indifferent audience, the management of the reproachful “tsk-tsk, you should know better” tone, and there’s only so many ways to proselytize a message of “getting one’s act together.” And where’s the cash for such endeavors?

“Eradicate pests and diseases and build happiness for ten thousand generations.” A poster from September 1960 by the Red Cross and the Health Propaganda Office of the Health Department of Fujian Province. Note the industrial skyline, the healthy crop of vegetables in the center of the poster and the four pests at the bottom. Source: US National LIbrary of Medicine. Click for source.

But in the 1940s, the governing officials in the People’s Republic of China bulldozed their way through these issues (and more) and succeeded in accomplishing one of the most difficult public health objectives, the eradication of disease and vermin. But in doing so, they created an environmental catastrophe that epitomizes the tenuous balance between doing what’s best for mankind with the quirks and vagaries of Mother Nature.

As the communists ascended to power in the fall of 1949, China was saturated with disabling infectious diseases. Tuberculosis, plague, cholera, polio, malaria, smallpox, and hookworm were endemic throughout much of the country. Roughly 10.5 million people were infected with the water-borne liver parasite schistosomiasis (1). Cholera epidemics raged through the population freely, some years killing tens of thousands (2).  Infant mortality was as high as 300 per 1000 live births (1).

“Exterminate the four pests!” A striking 1958 poster by Ding Hao. Image: International Institute of Social History/Stefan R. Landsberger Collections;. Click for source.

In this period of urgent political and social transition, creating a national public health system and eradicating entrenched diseases was an obvious first step in improving the  lives of the nation’s people. The Communist government began initiating massive vaccination campaigns against the plague and smallpox, vaccinating nearly 300 million people (1). Sanitation infrastructures for clean drinking water and waste disposal were implemented throughout the country. Emulating the Soviet Union’s model of healthcare, the government established subsets of medical and public health personnel to serve as health stewards to the population, directing them to venture into the rural areas and treat diseases as best as they could with what limited resources were available.

But physicians, immunizations and sanitation can only go so far. Something had to be done about the pests that transmit pestilence and diseases: the mosquitos responsible for malaria, the rodents that spread plague, and those ubiquitous airborne nuisances, flies. And what of those sparrows that eat the hard-won fruits from fields of grain and rice? These four pests – flies, mosquitos, rats and sparrows – were charged with public health treason and widespread irritation. Something had to be done, on a grand and monumental scale, and the Four Pests campaign was just the thing.

“A young propaganda troupe.” A poster from 1949 emphasizing the role of children in the “Four Pests” campaign. The pests can be seen in the pink and yellow banner near the top of the poster and the tools used for their eradication – swatters, nets, gongs and more – are held in the children’s hands. Source: US National LIbrary of Medicine. Click for source.

So began the initiation of the Great Leap Forward with a patriotic health campaign that would target vermin that spread disease, a carte blanche issued to the people to fulfill their duty to their nation through the massacre of small bothersome animals and insects. In 1958, the Chinese took up the cause with merciless efficiency and embarked upon an incredible slaughter of wildlife.

This public health good would be implemented by everyone – from troupes of children to the elderly – with beautifully illustrated posters released to the masses that encouraged the wielding of fly swatters, guns and gongs against the regime’s diminutive enemies.

Public health posters serve as billboards of knowledge and empowerment, but these particular forms of propaganda are also a historical snapshot, a birth announcement from a new political and public health system.

Source: US National LIbrary of Medicine. Click for source.

These Chinese posters epitomize the Republic’s principals, culture and history, of technological and aesthetic styles. Borrowing heavily from the Soviet Union’s highly refined systems of propaganda dissemination and their artistic styles of socialist realism, they radiate dynamism, good will and optimism. They’re a visual representation of one of the most ambitious public health movements in history but they also speak of gross tampering with delicate ecosystems, of an ignorance of the subtle bonds that hold the world around us together.

The causalities of this ambitious “Four Pests” public health campaign? Yes, many infectious diseases were eradicated and their scope diminished but also “1 billion sparrows, 1.5 billion rats, 100 million kilograms of flies and 11 million kilograms of mosquitos” were outright decimated (1). The public health campaign worked well. Too well. The sparrow’s intrinsic role in the ecological balance was unrealized and resulted in an unmitigated, well-orchestrated environmental disaster. Locusts came in droves and devoured fields of grain, their feeding left unencumbered by watchful, hungry sparrows. Novel agricultural techniques recently implemented through the Great Leap Forward further contributed to the disastrous effects of the campaign.

The mass deaths of sparrows and nationwide loss of crops resulted in untold millions starving and 20 to 30 million people dying from 1958 to 1962. A 1984 article on the mass famine put it simply: “China suffered a demographic crisis of enormous proportions” (3).

The “Four Pests” campaign was inordinately successful in achieving its primary goal of vermin eradication. But one of the most successful public health campaigns in history – in terms of establishing a goal and clearly achieving it – came at an extraordinarily grave cost for the Chinese, ecologically and demographically. A sinister truth had emerged: tamper with the unseen balancing beam of predators and prey at your peril or else nature will create a level playing field at your expense.

Resources

Learn more about the representation of history, culture  and politics as represented by propaganda posters at Chinese Posters, run by the International Institute of Social History. They have an outstanding collection of posters, including a nice selection of more “Four Pest” campaign posters.

From the U.S National Library of Medicine, check out their short web exhibition, “Health for the People: Continuity and Change in Asian Medicine.”

This list of campaigns of the Communist Party of China is a fascinating trip down history.

References

1. DM Lampton (1972) Public health and politics in China’s past two decades. Health Serv Rep.  87(10): 895–904

2. JW Salaff (1973) Mortality Decline in the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Population Studies. 27(3): 551-576

3.  B Ashton et al. (1984) Famine in China, 1958-61. Population and Development Review. 10(4): 613-645

CATEGORIZED UNDER: Arthropods, Bacteria, Culture, Genes & Health, Geography, History, Infectious Diseases, Military, Occupations & Work, Parasitic Helminths, Select, Top posts, Vaccines & drugs, Viruses, Zoonotic Diseases

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Genetics May Explain Why Autism Is More Common in Boys

When it comes to developmental disorders of the brain, men and women are not created equal.

Decades of research have shown that males are at far greater risk for neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than females. Boys, on average, are five times more likely to have autism than girls . What causes this disparity has largely remained unknown.

Now scientists have uncovered compelling genetic evidence to explain why the biological scales aren’t balanced.

According to a team of geneticists in the U.S. and Switzerland, it all boils down to what’s called the “female protective model.” This suggests that girls have a higher tolerance for harmful genetic mutations and therefore require a larger number of them than boys to reach the diagnostic threshold of a developmental disorder. With identical genetic mutations, then, a boy could show symptoms of ASD while a girl could show none.

But because the female mutation threshold is higher, when girls are diagnosed with ASD, they tend to fall on the more severe end of the spectrum.

Researchers believe the same dynamic could explain why more boys are diagnosed with ADHD, intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia. The findings were published Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Geneticists analyzed DNA samples from 16,000 boys and girls with neurodevelopmental disorders. They found that, on average, females diagnosed with ASD had 1.3 to 3 times more harmful genetic alterations than males diagnosed with the disorder.

The findings suggest that as the male brain develops, smaller and more subtle genetic changes can trigger autism spectrum disorders. Female brains require a greater number or severity of mutations before showing symptoms, so their symptoms tend to be worse.

“There’s no application in terms of treatment,” said study author Sébastien Jacquemont of University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland, but “it does help understand the inheritance dynamics in families.”

Jacquemont also studied some 800 families in which a family member was affected by ASD. He found that children were more likely to inherit gene mutations linked to autism from their mothers. Jacquemont says this may be because a male with a severe form of autism may have more trouble forming relationships and be less likely to have children. In contrast, the same genetic glitches in a female could go unnoticed, Jacquemont says, so that woman may be more likely to start a family and unknowingly pass the genes to her offspring.

The study doesn’t answer the most profound question surrounding the genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders: “What causes these disorders?” It’s still unclear which particular genetic glitches are responsible for different manifestations of developmental disorders. Or if genetic alterations are even passed down from parents, rather than simply appearing in children as they develop. Jacquemont is hoping to form larger cohorts to study which mutations put children at risk for ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Still, some researchers aren’t convinced that genetics are even the way to answer questions about neurodevelopmental disease. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epidemiologist at the University of California-Davis, told USA Today,

“Boys are swimming in measurably more testosterone than girls are. Some evidence suggests that social behaviors are in part determined by such early life exposures to sex steroids.”

Still, advances in the genetics of neruodevelopmental disorders could help families gain insight into whether their children are likely to inherit genetic markers associated with disorders like autism.

Image credit:  Zurijeta/Shutterstock

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How Does Crop Biotechnology Help Food Security?

In the U.S. food is taken for granted. There are well-stocked supermarkets and no shortage of cookbooks and eateries to indulge appetites. This bountiful supply allows Americans to focus more on the aesthetics of food and, to an increasing degree, where and how it is produced.

For the millions around the globe who do not live in an affluent society, the main concern about food is more basic: Getting enough of it on a consistent basis. For many in Africa and Asia, this entails growing cash crops and staple foods.

As the Gates Foundation points out, agricultural enhancement in the developing world is also the key to a better life:

When farmers grow more food and earn more income, they are better able feed to their families, send their children to school, provide for their family’s health, and invest in their farms.

One way to do this is through biotechnology. Note that I said ONE WAY, not the only way. Nor is this just my opinion. Global sustainability guru Jeffrey Sachs has said this.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the GMO debate is how it is framed. Forget the cranks who dominate the discourse–I’m talking about smart, influential thought leaders who simplistically portray GMOs as a well-meaning technology that hasn’t delivered on its grand promises.

A prime example is Jon Foley’s recent essay, titled, “GMO’s, Silver Bullets and the Trap of Reductionist Thinking.” He starts off:

To begin, GMOs have done little to enhance the world’s food security. Mainly, that’s because GMO crops primarily in use today are feed corn (mostly for animal feed and ethanol), soybeans (mostly for animal feed), cotton and canola. But these aren’t crops that feed the world’s poor, or provide better nutrition to all. GMO efforts may have started off with good intentions to improve food security, but they ended up in crops that were better at improving profits. While the technology itself might “work,” it has so far been applied to the wrong parts of the food system to truly make a dent in global food security.

This is a narrow (dare I say reductionistic) way of looking at food security. Feeding the world’s poor, as Foley knows, also requires improving their livelihoods. It’s about lifting their incomes, helping them break the vicious cycle of poverty. There’s much that goes into that economic development equation but in Africa and other areas of the developing world, the role of commodity crops as an income generator for small farmers is crucial.

To cite one example, look at what happened after Bt cotton was introduced in India. (I’m not talking about a certain popular urban myth.) Recent studies show that Indian farmers who turned to genetically modified cotton have increased their yields, lowered their input costs and as a result, boosted their household incomes. Does that not contribute to food security?

Nor is this the whole story. As University of California plant geneticist Pamela Ronald notes:

To understand why farmers have embraced GE crops and how they benefit the environment, consider genetically engineered cotton. These varieties contain a bacterial protein called Bt that kills pests such as the cotton bollworm without harming beneficial insects and spiders. Bt is benign to humans, which is why organic farmers have used Bt as their primary method of pest control for 50 years. Today 70–90 percent of American, Indian, and Chinese farmers grow Bt cotton.

Recently, a team of Chinese and French scientists reported in the journal Nature that widespread planting of Bt cotton in China drastically reduced the spraying of synthetic chemicals, increased the abundance of beneficial organisms on farms, and decreased populations of crop-damaging insects. Planting of Bt cotton also reduced pesticide poisonings of farmers and their families. In Arizona farmers who plant Bt cotton spray half as much insecticide as do neighbors growing conventional cotton. The Bt farms also have greater biodiversity.

It’s puzzling to me that such benefits are ignored by GMO skeptics who profess a deep interest in human welfare and more enlightened environmental stewardship.

In his piece, Foley goes on to make additional arguments against GMOs that some agricultural biotech proponents have already responded to.

It’s important to bear in mind that this is a young technology. Sometimes the value of a scientific enterprise is not appreciated until years down the road. Have GMOs lived up to the hype of their most exuberant advocates? No. Does any new technology?

Perhaps the naysayers should check back in five or ten years. Maybe food security for those who need it most will be more strengthened with new advances that will be harder to ignore by the GMO-averse champions of sustainability.

UPDATE: Due to time constraints, my critique of Foley’s piece was narrowly focused. In the comments, David Ropeik makes a good point, which was also raised in a series of tweets (starting here) by University of Wyoming’s Andrew Kniss.

UPDATE 2: Science writer and futurist Ramez Naam has weighed in with his response to Foley’s essay.

UPDATE 3: University of Wyoming’s Andrew Kniss has also put up a post addressing one of Foley’s claims.

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