̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - ETH Zurich

Companies’ zero-deforestation commitments have potential to halve cattle-driven deforestation in Brazilian Amazon

jg533 — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 23:01:02 +0000

Cattle-rearing is the biggest cause of tropical deforestation in the Amazon - and the world.

A study has found that some of the world’s largest slaughterhouses reduced cattle-driven deforestation in the Amazon by 15% - equivalent to sparing 7,000km2 of forest from clearance (4.5 times the size of London) - through their commitment to zero-deforestation policies between 2010 and 2018.

If these policies were fully implemented and adopted across all cattle companies operating in the Amazon, 24,000km2 of forest (an area larger than Wales) could have been spared over this time, effectively halving cattle-driven deforestation in Brazil.

Deforestation is the second largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions after fossil fuel use, and the Brazilian Amazon is the world’s deforestation hotspot.

Zero-deforestation commitments are supply chain policies aiming to ensure production of goods does not involve deforestation, by identifying and dropping suppliers who produce on areas recently cleared of natural vegetation. ̽��ֱ��commitments have been signed by many leading UK beef retailers, including the supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose.

Although the UK imported 60 million tonnes of Brazilian beef in 2017, according to the National Beef Association the UK is 75% self-sufficient for beef. Many British companies are increasingly turning away from Brazilian beef due to the perceived risk of deforestation. But the researchers argue that this is not the best approach.

“We can benefit the climate by eating less meat in general. But when it comes to deforestation, the solution is not to avoid beef from specific countries – because then we lose our power to make a difference in those places,” said Professor Rachael Garrett, Moran Professor of Conservation and Development at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, senior author of the report.

She added: “If we do eat imported beef, we should buy it from retailers that are trying to improve cattle production systems in Brazil and elsewhere. If enough countries join the UK and EU in purchasing only deforestation-free beef it’s likely to have a positive impact on the planet by reducing deforestation.”

̽��ֱ��results are published today in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Due to the complexity of Brazilian supply chains and incomplete availability of public records, it has been challenging until now to determine how much of the cattle in any given region was being purchased by companies with zero-deforestation commitments. This impeded efforts to analyse the effectiveness of zero-deforestation policies linked to beef and leather goods - such as shoes and handbags.

̽��ֱ��researchers traced the links between farming regions, slaughterhouses and companies with zero-deforestation commitments in the Brazilian Amazon cattle sector, to see how these links influenced deforestation.

An agreement called G4 is the most widespread and strongly implemented zero-deforestation commitment for cattle in the Brazilian Amazon – accounting for over 99% of cattle exports. ̽��ֱ��study focused on companies that have adopted the G4 Agreement, and found they were associated with substantial reductions in deforestation.

“We’ve shown that zero-deforestation policies are having an important - and measurable – impact in protecting forests, and that with widespread adoption and rigorous implementation they could achieve a lot more,” said Garrett.

She added: “Even reducing deforestation by 15% is a huge amount. But this result shows that supply chain policies have significant limitations, and we need to couple them with more visionary approaches to help countries like Brazil improve their agricultural systems.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say a mix of interventions by the private and public sector is needed to improve cattle-rearing practices and help eliminate deforestation in countries like Brazil.

Public sector interventions could include support for alternative economic activities, and financial incentives or greater pressure to avoid deforestation from the Brazilian government.

“With this evidence, supermarkets can use their influence to help improve Brazilian cattle production. But more needs to be done to improve the rigour of corporate policies and the market coverage of policy adopters, even in relatively well-covered regions such as the Brazilian Amazon,” said Dr Sam Levy at ETH Zurich and New York ̽��ֱ��, lead author of the report.

Cattle production for beef and leather is the cause of over 70% of all deforestation in the Amazon – much of which is illegal. Zero-deforestation commitments cover 82% of beef exported from the Brazilian Amazon for trade internationally – but a large amount of beef production destined for Brazil’s domestic markets is not covered.

Deforestation causes the loss of diverse animal and plant life, threatens the livelihoods of indigenous groups, and increases inequality and conflict.

In 2021, the COP26 Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use committed to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. It was signed by over 100 countries, representing 85% of global forests.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the European Research Council.

Reference

Levy, S A et al: ‘Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon could be halved by scaling up implementation of zero-deforestation cattle commitments.’ Global Environmental Change, April 2023. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102671

Study shows better adoption and implementation of company supply chain policies for Brazilian beef and leather could significantly reduce carbon emissions

If we do eat imported beef, we should buy it from retailers that are trying to improve cattle production systems in Brazil and elsewhere.

Rachael Garrett

Bruno Kelly / Greenpeace

Cattle in the Amazon

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Humanity’s quest to discover the origins of life in the universe

sc604 — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 17:10:32 +0000

For thousands of years, humanity and science have contemplated the origins of life in the Universe. While today’s scientists are well-equipped with innovative technologies, humanity has a long way to go before we fully understand the fundamental aspects of what life is and how it forms.

“We are living in an extraordinary moment in history,” said Professor Didier Queloz, who directs the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe at Cambridge and ETH Zurich’s Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life. While still a doctoral student, Queloz was the first to discover an exoplanet – a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. ̽��ֱ��discovery led to him being awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In the three decades since Queloz’s discovery, scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets. Trillions more are predicted to exist within our Milky Way galaxy alone. Each exoplanet discovery raises more questions about how and why life emerged on Earth and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe.

Technological advancements, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and interplanetary missions to Mars, give scientists access to huge volumes of new observations and data. Sifting through all this information to understand the emergence of life in the universe will take a big, multidisciplinary network.

In collaboration with chemist and fellow Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak and astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, Queloz announced the formation of such a network at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington, DC. ̽��ֱ��Origins Federation brings together researchers studying the origins of life at Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Harvard ̽��ֱ��, and ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago.

Together, Federation scientists will explore the chemical and physical processes of living organisms and environmental conditions hospitable to supporting life on other planets. “ ̽��ֱ��Origins Federation builds upon a long-standing collegial relationship strengthened through a shared collaboration in a recently completed project with the Simons Foundation,” said Queloz.

These collaborations support the work of researchers like Dr Emily Mitchell from Cambridge's Department of Zoology. Mitchell is co-director of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and an ecological time traveller. She uses field-based laser-scanning and statistical mathematical ecology on 580-million-year-old fossils of deep-sea organisms to determine the driving factors that influence the macro-evolutionary patterns of life on Earth.

Speaking at AAAS, Mitchell took participants back to four billion years ago when Earth’s early atmosphere - devoid of oxygen and steeped in methane – showed its first signs of microbial life. She spoke about how life survives in extreme environments and then evolves offering potential astrobiological insights into the origins of life elsewhere in the universe.

“As we begin to investigate other planets through the Mars missions, biosignatures could reveal whether or not the origin of life itself and its evolution on Earth is just a happy accident or part of the fundamental nature of the universe, with all its biological and ecological complexities,” said Mitchell.

̽��ֱ��founding centres of the Origins Federation are ̽��ֱ��Origins of Life Initiative (Harvard ̽��ֱ��), Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life (ETH Zurich), the Center for the Origins of Life ( ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago), and the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

̽��ֱ��Origins Federation will pursue scientific research topics of interest to its founding centres with a long-term perspective and common milestones. It will strive to establish a stable funding platform to create opportunities for creative and innovative ideas, and to enable young scientists to make a career in this new field. ̽��ֱ��Origins Federation is open to new members, both centres and individuals, and is committed to developing the mechanisms and structure to achieve that aim.

“ ̽��ֱ��pioneering work of Professor Queloz has allowed astronomers and physicists to make advances that were unthinkable only a few years ago, both in the discovery of planets which could host life and the development of techniques to study them,” said Professor Andy Parker, head of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. “But now we need to bring the full range of our scientific understanding to bear in order to understand what life really is and whether it exists on these newly discovered planets. ̽��ֱ��Cavendish Laboratory is proud to host the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and to partner with the Origins Federation to lead this quest.”

Scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Harvard ̽��ֱ��, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago have founded the Origins Federation, which will advance our understanding of the emergence and early evolution of life, and its place in the cosmos.

ETH Zurich/NASA

L-R: Emily Mitchell, Didier Queloz, Kate Adamal, Carl Zimmer

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Companies’ ‘deforestation-free’ supply chain pledges have barely impacted forest clearance in the Amazon

jg533 — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 08:13:38 +0000

Corporate pledges not to buy soybeans produced on land deforested after 2006 have reduced tree clearance in the Brazilian Amazon by just 1.6% between 2006 and 2015.

This equates to a protected area of 2,300 km2 in the Amazon rainforest: barely the size of Oxfordshire.

̽��ֱ��findings, made by tracing traders’ soy supplies back to their source, are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. ̽��ֱ��work involved a team from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Boston ̽��ֱ��, ETH Zurich and New York ̽��ֱ��.

̽��ֱ��researchers also discovered that in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savannah, zero-deforestation commitments have not been adopted effectively - leaving over 50% of soy-suitable forests and their biodiversity without protection.

Brazil has the largest remaining tropical forests on the planet, but these are being rapidly cleared to rear cattle and grow crops including soybean. Demand for soy is surging around the world, and an estimated 4,800 km2 of rainforest is cleared each year to grow soybeans.

̽��ֱ��majority of soy is consumed indirectly by humans: soybean is widely used as feed for factory-farmed chickens, pigs, fish and cattle. It also accounts for around 27% of global vegetable oil production, and as a complete protein source it often forms a key part of vegetarian and vegan diets.

By 2021, at least 94 companies had adopted zero-deforestation commitments – pledging to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. But the study revealed that many of these commitments are not put into practice.

And the researchers say that adoption of zero-deforestation commitments is lagging among small and medium sized food companies.

“Zero-deforestation pledges are a great first step, but they need to be implemented to have an effect on forests – and right now it’s mainly the bigger companies that have the resources to do this,” said Professor Rachael Garrett, Moran Professor of Conservation and Development at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, a joint senior author of the report.

She added: “If soybean traders actually implemented their global commitments for zero-deforestation production, current levels of forest clearance in Brazil could be reduced by around 40 percent.”

Deforestation is the second largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions after fossil fuel use. It also causes the loss of diverse animal and plant life, threatens the livelihoods of indigenous groups, and increases inequality and conflict.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the supply chains of other food products including cattle, oil palm and cocoa supply chains are more complex than soy, making them even more difficult to monitor.

“If supply chain policies intend to contribute to the task of tackling deforestation in Brazil, it’s crucial to expand zero-deforestation supply chain policies beyond soy,” said Garrett, who is also Professor of Environmental Policy at ETH Zurich.

A ‘soy moratorium’ was the first voluntary zero-deforestation commitment in the tropics – by signing it, companies agreed not to buy soybeans produced on land deforested after 2006. But while the commitment was implemented in the Brazilian Amazon, most Brazilian soy is produced in the Cerrado – which is rich in biodiversity.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their findings suggest private sector efforts are not enough to halt deforestation: supportive political leadership is also vital to conservation efforts.

“Supply chain governance should not be a substitute for state-led forest policies, which are critical to enable zero deforestation monitoring and enforcement, have better potential to cover different crops, land users, and regions,” said Garrett.

In 2021, the COP26 Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use committed to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. It was signed by over 100 countries, representing 85% of global forests.

This research was funded by the US National Science Foundation, NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program, and US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Reference

Gollnow, F, Cammelli F, Carlson, KM, and Garrett, RD. ‘Gaps in Adoption and Implementation Limit the Current and Potential Effectiveness of Zero-Deforestation Supply Chain Policies for Soy.’ October 2022, Environmental Research Letters. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac97f6

READ MORE in Garrett's piece for ̽��ֱ��Conversation: Zero deforestation in the Amazon is now possible - here's what needs to happen

More companies must make and implement zero-deforestation supply chain commitments in order to significantly reduce deforestation and protect diverse ecosystems, say researchers.

Zero-deforestation pledges are a great first step, but they need to be implemented to have an effect on forests.

Rachael Garrett

An area of the Amazon rainforest cleared for soya production

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Cambridge launches new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 15:11:51 +0000

̽��ֱ��Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe will bring together an international team of scientists and philosophers, led by 2019 Nobel Laureate Professor Didier Queloz.

Thanks to simultaneous revolutions in exoplanet discoveries, prebiotic chemistry and solar system exploration, scientists can now investigate whether the Earth and the processes that made life possible are unique in the Universe.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has recently launched the Initiative for Planetary Science and Life in the Universe (IPLU) to enable cross-disciplinary research on planetology and life in the Universe.

Building on IPLU’s activities, the new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe will support fundamental cross-disciplinary research over the next 10 years to tackle one of the great interdisciplinary challenges of our time: to understand how life emerged on Earth, whether the Universe is full of life, and ask what the nature of life is.

̽��ֱ��Centre will include researchers from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Earth Sciences, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Institute of Astronomy, Department of Zoology, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Divinity, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

“ ̽��ֱ��Centre will act as a catalyst for the development of our vision to understanding life in the Universe through a long-term research programme that will be the driving force for international coordination of research and education,” said Queloz, Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Cavendish Laboratory and Director of the Centre.

Research within the Centre will focus on four themes: identifying the chemical pathways to the origins of life; characterising the environments on Earth and other planets that could act as the cradle of prebiotic chemistry and life; discovering and characterising habitable exoplanets and signatures of geological and biological evolution; and refining our understanding of life through philosophical and mathematical concepts.

̽��ֱ��Centre will collaborate with researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado Boulder (USA), ̽��ֱ�� College London, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Harvard ̽��ֱ�� (USA) and the Centre of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey (USA).

“Understanding the reactions that predisposed the first cells to form on Earth is the greatest unsolved mystery in science,” said programme collaborator Matthew Powner from ̽��ֱ�� College London. “Critical challenges of increasing complexity must be addressed in this field, but these challenges represent one of the most exciting frontiers in science.”

Carol Cleland, Director of the Center for the Study of Origins and Professor of Philosophy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado Boulder, also collaborator on the programme said: “ ̽��ֱ��new Centre is unique in the breadth of its interdisciplinarity, bringing together scientists and philosophers to address central questions about the nature and extent of life in the universe.

“Characteristics that scientists currently take as fundamental to life reflect our experience with a single example of life, familiar Earth life. These characteristics may represent little more than chemical and physical contingencies unique to the conditions under which life arose on Earth. If this is the case, our concepts for theorising about life will be misleading. Philosophers of science are especially well trained to help scientists 'think outside the box' by identifying and exploring the conceptual foundations of contemporary scientific theorising about life with an emphasis on developing strategies for searching for truly novel forms of life on other worlds.”

Didier Queloz is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

With a £10 million grant awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is to establish a new research centre dedicated to exploring the nature and extent of life in the Universe.

̽��ֱ��Centre will act as a catalyst for the development of our vision to understanding life in the Universe through a long-term research programme that will be the driving force for international coordination of research and education

Didier Queloz

ESO/M Kornmesser

Artists’s impression of the rocky super-Earth HD 85512 b

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Watching magnetic nano ‘tornadoes’ in 3D

sc604 — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 15:01:20 +0000

̽��ֱ��team, from the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow in the UK and ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, used their technique to observe how the magnetisation behaves, the first time this has been done in three dimensions. ̽��ֱ��technique, called time-resolved magnetic laminography, could be used to understand and control the behaviour of new types of magnets for next-generation data storage and processing. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Magnets are widely used in applications from data storage to energy production and sensors. In order to understand why magnets behave the way they do, it is important to understand the structure of their magnetisation, and how that structure reacts to changing currents or magnetic fields.

“Until now, it hasn’t been possible to actually measure how magnets respond to changing magnetic fields in three dimensions,” said Dr Claire Donnelly from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, and the study’s first author. “We’ve only really been able to observe these behaviours in thin films, which are essentially two dimensional, and which therefore don’t give us a complete picture.”

Moving from two dimensions to three is highly complex, however. Modelling and visualising magnetic behaviour is relatively straightforward in two dimensions, but in three dimensions, the magnetisation can point in any direction and form patterns, which is what makes magnets so powerful.

“Not only is it important to know what patterns and structures this magnetisation forms, but it’s essential to understand how it reacts to external stimuli,” said Donnelly. “These responses are interesting from a fundamental point of view, but they are crucial when it comes to magnetic devices used in technology and applications.”

One of the main challenges in investigating these responses is tied to the very reason magnetic materials are so relevant for so many applications: changes in the magnetisation typically are extremely small, and happen extremely fast. Magnetic configurations – so-called domain structures – exhibit features on the order of tens to hundreds of nanometres, thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, and typically react to magnetic fields and currents in billionths of a second.

Now, Donnelly and her collaborators from the Paul Scherrer Institute, the ̽��ֱ�� of Glasgow and ETH Zurich have developed a technique to look inside a magnet, visualise its nanostructure, and how it responds to a changing magnetic field in three dimensions, and at the size and timescales required.

̽��ֱ��technique they developed, time-resolved magnetic laminography, uses ultra-bright X-rays from a synchrotron source to probe the magnetic state from different directions at the nanoscale, and how it changes in response to a quickly alternating magnetic field. ̽��ֱ��resulting seven-dimensional dataset (three dimensions for the position, three for the direction and one for the time) is then obtained using a specially developed reconstruction algorithm, providing a map of the magnetisation dynamics with 70 picosecond temporal resolution, and 50 nanometre spatial resolution.

What the researchers saw with their technique was like a nanoscale storm: patterns of waves and tornadoes moving side to side as the magnetic field changed. ̽��ֱ��movement of these tornadoes, or vortices, had previously only been observed in two dimensions.

̽��ֱ��researchers tested their technique using conventional magnets, but they say it could also be useful in the development of new types of magnets which exhibit new types of magnetism. These new magnets, such as 3D-printed nanomagnets, could be useful for new types of high-density, high-efficiency data storage and processing.

“We can now investigate the dynamics of new types of systems that could open up new applications we haven’t even thought of,” said Donnelly. “This new tool will help us to understand, and control, their behaviour.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded in part by the Leverhulme Trust, the Isaac Newton Trust and the European Union.

Reference:
Claire Donnelly et al. ‘Time-resolved imaging of three-dimensional nanoscale magnetization dynamics.’ Nature Nanotechnology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-0649-x

Scientists have developed a three-dimensional imaging technique to observe complex behaviours in magnets, including fast-moving waves and ‘tornadoes’ thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

We can now investigate the dynamics of new types of systems that could open up new applications we haven’t even thought of

Claire Donnelly

Reconstruction of 3D magnetic structure

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Massive projected increase in use of antimicrobials in animals could lead to widespread antimicrobial resistance in humans

sc604 — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 18:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from ETH Zürich, Princeton, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, conducted the first global assessment of different intervention policies that could help limit the projected increase of antimicrobial use in food production. Their results, reported in the journal Science, represent an alarming revision from already pessimistic estimates made in 2010, pushed up mostly by recent reports of high antimicrobial use in animals in China.

In modern animal farming, large quantities of antimicrobials are used for disease prevention and for growth promotion. “Worldwide, animals receive almost triple the amount of antibiotics that people do, although much of this use is not medically necessary, and many new strains of antibiotic-resistant infections are now common in people after originating in our livestock,” said co-author Emma Glennon, a Gates Scholar and PhD student at Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “As global demand for meat grows and agriculture continues to transition from extensive farming and smallholdings to more intensive practices, the use of antimicrobials in food production will increasingly threaten the efficacy of these life-saving drugs.”

Global policies based on a user fee and stricter regulation could help mitigate those ominous projections. “Under a user fee policy, the billions of dollars raised in revenues could be invested in the development of new antimicrobial compounds, or put towards improving farm hygiene around the world to reduce the need for antibiotics, in particular in low- and middle-income countries,” said Dr Thomas Van Boeckel from ETH Zurich, the study’s first author.

Compared to a business as usual scenario, a global regulation putting a cap of 50 mg of antimicrobials per kilogram of animal per year in OECD countries could reduce global consumption by 60% without affecting livestock-related economic development in low-income countries.

However, such a policy may be challenging to enforce in resource-limited settings. An alternative solution could be to impose a user fee of 50% of the current price on veterinary antimicrobials: this could reduce global consumption by 31% and generate yearly revenues of between US$ 1.7 and 4.6 billion.

An important limiting factor in performing this global assessment was accessing sufficient data on veterinary antimicrobial sales volumes and prices. ̽��ֱ��present study is based on publicly available data, limited to 37 countries. Representatives from the animal health industry were approach for this study but all declined to share information on antimicrobial sales or prices.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the program for Adaptation to a Changing Environment, the ETH postdoctoral fellowship program and the European Research Council.

Reference:
Thomas P. Van Boeckel et al. ‘Reducing global antimicrobial use in food animals.’ Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao1495

Adapted from at ETH Zurich press release.

̽��ֱ��amount of antimicrobials given to animals destined for human consumption is expected to rise by a staggering 52% and reach 200,000 tonnes by 2030 unless policies are implemented to limit their use, according to new research.

Worldwide, animals receive almost triple the amount of antibiotics that people do.

Emma Glennon

Marcelo Braga

Expresso Porco

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Positive teacher-student relationships boost good behaviour in teenagers for up to four years

fpjl2 — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 09:15:32 +0000

A new study has found that having a positive relationship with a teacher around the age of 10-11 years old can markedly influence the development of ‘prosocial’ behaviours such as cooperation and altruism, as well as significantly reduce problem classroom behaviours such as aggression and oppositional behaviour.

̽��ֱ��research also found that beneficial behaviours resulting from a positive teacher-student relationship when a child is on the cusp of adolescence lingered for up to four years – well into the difficult teenage years.

Researchers found that students with a more positive relationship with their teacher displayed towards peers, on average, 18% more prosocial behaviour (and 10% more up to two years later), and up to 38% less aggressive behaviour (and 9% less up to four years later), over students who felt ambivalent or negative toward their teacher.

Positivity toward their teacher also resulted in students displaying an average of 56% less ‘oppositional defiant’ behaviour: such as argumentativeness and vindictiveness toward authority figures. This was still reduced by 22% up to three years later.

In fact, the researchers found the beneficial effect on behaviour was as strong, if not stronger, than that of established school-based ‘intervention programmes’ such as counselling and other anti-bullying therapies.

̽��ֱ��importance of good teacher relationships on infant behaviour was already known, and programmes have been designed to help preschool teachers improve relationships with pupils, which in turn improves pupil behaviour.

Researchers say the latest results suggest that developing similar programmes for those who teach students in early adolescence has the potential to promote better classroom behaviour in schools that may otherwise rely more on exclusionary practises – such as detentions, or being sent out of class – to manage student behaviour.

“Teachers play an important role in the development of children. Students who feel supported tend to be less aggressive and more prosocial, and we now have evidence that this is the case from preschool right through to adolescence,” said the study’s lead author Dr Ingrid Obsuth.

“Educational and school policies should take this into consideration when supporting teachers in fostering their relationships with students,” she said.

̽��ֱ��research was conducted by members of the Violence Research Centre at Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, along with colleagues from ETH Zurich and the ̽��ֱ�� of Toronto. ̽��ֱ��findings are published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed data from eight ‘waves’ of a major longitudinal study of culturally-diverse Swiss youth being schooled across Zurich. ̽��ֱ��latest study involved 1,067 students randomly sampled across 56 of the city’s schools.

Only students who experienced a change of teacher between ages 9 and 10 were used for the study, with data gathered from teachers, students and their parents on an annual and later biannual basis.

Using the multitude of data from interviews and surveys across the years*, the research team used an innovative statistical technique that enabled them to ‘score’ the children on over 100 different characteristics or experiences that could potentially account for good or bad behaviour – from background to past behaviour, parenting to student and teacher genders.

They then matched students in pairs with highly similar scores in all respects except one: how they felt about their teacher, and how the teacher felt about them. This allowed researchers to emulate a ‘randomised-controlled trial’ – the most rigorous way of establishing causal links. ̽��ֱ��only difference between the students in each pair was that one had the ‘treatment’ of a positive relationship with their teacher, and the other, the ‘control’, did not.

While the researchers approached data collection from both sides of the teacher-student relationship, they say that it is how the student perceives the relationship that is most important for behaviour. Students who saw themselves as having a more positive relationship with their teacher engaged in fewer aggressive behaviours right up to age 15.

Cambridge’s Prof Manuel Eisner, senior author on the study, said: “Most adults remember some teachers that they admired and that fit their learning needs, and others that they felt hard done-by. This is not necessarily only because they have more or less supportive teachers. Each child will respond differently to a teacher's style and personality. Our study shows that once a child develops an impression of a teacher, one way or the other, it can have significant long-term effects on their behaviour.”

“While this is the first study to look at the effect of teacher-student relationships on adolescents, our findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that bonds with prosocial others – whether peers, teachers or institutions – are a protective factor against children engaging in problem behaviours,” he said.

Added Obsuth: “Ideally, building healthy and supportive teacher-student relationships would become part of the curriculum in teacher training and intervention programmes as a way of improving adolescent well-being.”

̽��ֱ��first study to look at the impact of the relationship with teachers on adolescent behaviour finds that a positive teacher-student relationship can be as effective as anti-bullying programmes at improving wellbeing in young people.

Ideally, building healthy and supportive teacher-student relationships would become part of the curriculum in teacher training and intervention programmes as a way of improving adolescent well-being

Ingrid Obsuth

Sir James

Teenagers in Oslo, Norway

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Increase in volcanic eruptions at the end of the ice age caused by melting ice caps and glacial erosion

sc604 — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 06:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��combination of erosion and melting ice caps led to a massive increase in volcanic activity at the end of the last ice age, according to new research. As the climate warmed, the ice caps melted, decreasing the pressure on the Earth’s mantle, leading to an increase in both magma production and volcanic eruptions. ̽��ֱ��researchers, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have found that erosion also played a major role in the process, and may have contributed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

“It’s been established that melting ice caps and volcanic activity are linked – but what we’ve found is that erosion also plays a key role in the cycle,” said Dr Pietro Sternai of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, the paper’s lead author, who is also a member of Caltech’s Division of Geological and Planetary Science. “Previous attempts to model the huge increase in atmospheric CO₂ at the end of the last ice age failed to account for the role of erosion, meaning that CO₂ levels may have been seriously underestimated.”

Using numerical simulations, which modelled various different features such as ice caps and glacial erosion rates, Sternai and his colleagues from the ̽��ֱ�� of Geneva and ETH Zurich found that erosion is just as important as melting ice in driving the increase in magma production and subsequent volcanic activity. ̽��ֱ��results are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Although the researchers caution not to draw too strong a link between anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change and increased volcanic activity as the timescales are very different, since we now live in a period where the ice caps are being melted by climate change, they say that the same mechanism will likely work at shorter timescales as well.

Over the past million years, the Earth has gone back and forth between ice ages, or glacial periods, and interglacial periods, with each period lasting for roughly 100,000 years. During the interglacial periods, such as the one we live in today, volcanic activity is much higher, as the lack of pressure provided by the ice caps means that volcanoes are freer to erupt. But in the transition from an ice age to an interglacial period, the rates of erosion also increase, especially in mountain ranges where volcanoes tend to cluster.

Glaciers are considered to be the most erosive force on Earth, and as they melt, the ground beneath is eroded by as much as ten centimetres per year, further decreasing the pressure on the volcano and increasing the likelihood of an eruption. A decrease in pressure enhances the production of magma at depth, since rocks held at lower pressure tend to melt at lower temperatures.

When volcanoes erupt, they release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a cycle that speeds up the warming process. Previous models that attempted to explain the increase in atmospheric CO₂ during the end of the last ice age accounted for the role of deglaciation in increasing volcanic activity, but did not account for erosion, meaning that CO₂ levels may have been significantly underestimated.

A typical ice age lasting 100,000 years can be characterised into periods of advancing and retreating ice – the ice grows for 80,000 years, but it only takes 20,000 years for that ice to melt.

“There are several factors that contribute to climate warming and cooling trends, and many of them are related to the Earth’s orbital parameters,” said Sternai. “But we know that much faster warming that cooling can’t be caused solely by changes in the Earth’s orbit – it must be, at least to some extent, related to something within the Earth system itself. Erosion, by contributing to unload the Earth’s surface and enhance volcanic CO₂ emissions, may be the missing factor required to explain such persistent climate asymmetry.”

Reference:
Pietro Sternai et al. ‘Deglaciation and glacial erosion: a joint control on magma productivity by continental unloading.’ Geophysical Research Letters (2016). DOI: 10.1002/2015GL067285

Inset image: 3D model simulation of a glaciation on the Villarrica Volcano (Chile). Credit: Pietro Sternai

Researchers have found that glacial erosion and melting ice caps both played a key role in driving the observed global increase in volcanic activity at the end of the last ice age.

It’s been established that melting ice caps and volcanic activity are linked – but what we’ve found is that erosion also plays a key role in the cycle.

Pietro Sternai

Matthew.landry at English Wikipedia

Arenal Volcano in November 2006

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