tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/the-conversation-france-24313/articlesThe Conversation France – The Conversation2024-03-27T16:39:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265572024-03-27T16:39:54Z2024-03-27T16:39:54ZHow can a baby learn two languages at the same time?<p>Language acquisition in children is one of the most fascinating features of the human species, as well as one of the most difficult problems in linguistics and cognitive science. What are the processes that enable a child to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-Child-Language-Acquisition/Rowland/p/book/9781444152654">completely master its native language</a> in just a few years, and to a degree of competence that adult learners of a second language can almost never match?</p>
<p>Far from being a matter of consensus, this subject has in fact greatly divided the research communities in these fields: the 20th century was marked by Noam Chomsky’s influential idea that native-language acquisition might stem from a <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/chomsky-philosophy/">universal and innate grammatical faculty in humans</a>, distinguishing them from other animal species.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">What do all languages have in common?</span></figcaption>
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<p>If it’s so impressive that a baby can learn even just one language, then how do we explain that it can go on to learn two, three or even more?</p>
<h2>Half the world’s population is bilingual</h2>
<p>This question presupposes that bilingualism or multilingualism is sporadic in human societies, the exception rather than the rule. However, not only do experts estimate that almost <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674066137">half the world’s population is bilingual</a>, but also that <a href="https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/multilingualism">multilingualism</a> is actually more common than monolingualism. Just look at some of the world’s most populous countries, such as India and China.</p>
<p>It’s thus hardly surprising that a child might have multiple native languages. This is something that should be encouraged, not prevented as if it were an obstacle to the child’s development or cultural and social integration. Numerous researchers have highlighted the many cognitive and social benefits of bilingualism throughout life. These include a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23175648/">better memory</a>, a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32036490/">later onset of neurodegenerative diseases</a>, or a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-43419-001">better adaptation to different social contexts</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The benefits of a bilingual brain.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674017641">keystone of bilingualism</a> in children seems to lie first in a set of general cognitive skills in human beings of all ages (such as analogy, abstraction and encyclopaedic memory), and secondly in a child’s astonishing cerebral plasticity, particularly between the ages of 0 and 3.</p>
<p>From birth, a child is able to retain and categorise linguistic stimuli that are extremely rich in information about their pronunciation, structure and meaning, as well as the family and social contexts in which they are used. On the basis of this information, a child can very quickly infer that one set of linguistic constructions differs from another in terms of conventions for two different languages (for example, French and English), particularly after the first year.</p>
<p>In this way, they acquire a skill known as “code-switching”, enabling them to switch easily from one language to another, for example depending on who they are speaking to, and sometimes within the same sentence (<em>code-mixing</em>).</p>
<h2>Leave time for the child</h2>
<p>Of course, just because bilingualism is easy for a child does not mean that their linguistic development is identical to that of a monolingual. Whether children are learning two languages simultaneously or a second language before the age of three, mastering two alternative grammars for specialised social contexts represents an additional cognitive load. It is not uncommon for a bilingual child to take slightly longer than a monolingual child to fully learn the language they have in common. This slight discrepancy – which sometimes manifests itself in the form of language “mixtures” – <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35399292/">quickly disappears as the child grows up</a>.</p>
<p>In order to guide children further and facilitate their bilingual acquisition, the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-second-language-acquisition/article/abs/raising-children-bilingually-through-the-one-parentone-language-approach-a-case-study-of-japanese-mothers-in-the-australian-context-takeuchi/F34BF798A2367F3833A5DA82F0FFD9EF">“one person, one language” parental approach</a> is often cited. For example, if one parent speaks more English to the child while the other uses more French, the baby will be able to distinguish between the two linguistic systems more quickly and to summon them up in interactions with specific people, in our example, Anglophones and Francophones.</p>
<p>Moreover, a balance in the frequency of use of the two languages at home will enable the child to successfully entrench them for regular use in later years. So if you’re a couple who speak two languages and you want to pass them on to your child, there are a few habits you can get into, but you don’t have to worry too much: just speak the two languages consistently to your child, and they’ll take care of the rest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cameron Morin ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>If you’re lucky enough to be able to teach your child several languages, don’t hesitate!Cameron Morin, Docteur en linguistique, ENS de LyonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265562024-03-26T16:34:29Z2024-03-26T16:34:29ZChinese acquisitions in the Bordeaux vineyards: have their new owners really been neglecting them?<p>Since 2012, more than 200 acquisitions have been made by Chinese investors in Bordeaux’s prestigious <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/french-wine-73590">vineyards</a>, mainly from the country’s economic, political and artistic elite. A leading example is Alibaba founder <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/jack-ma-10294">Jack Ma</a>, who bought several châteaux, including <a href="https://www.terredevins.com/actualites/le-chateau-de-sours-revoit-les-choses-en-grand">Château de Sours</a> in the Entre-Deux-Mers appellation. Actress <a href="https://www.vitisphere.com/actualite-94717-les-chateaux-de-zhao-wei-fonctionnent-normalement-malgre-sa-disgrace-en-chine.html">Zhao Wei</a> has set her sights on several châteaux in the Saint-Émilion appellation.</p>
<p>These transactions, involving members of China’s elite and prestigious assets in Europe, stand out in the world of mergers and acquisitions. Regarded indiscriminately as “ego deals”, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conspicuous-consumption.asp">“conspicuous consumption”</a> or “self-interest transactions”, such atypical acquisitions are <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/tie.21967">widely decried in the academic financial literature</a> because they can produce few or no synergies, and are therefore doomed to failure. There have been instances of Bordeaux châteaux acquired by Chinese investors, which have been <a href="https://www.rts.ch/info/monde/13265418-dans-le-vignoble-bordelais-des-rachats-chinois-au-gout-de-bouchon.html">left to rot</a> by their new owners. Reportedly, <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/nouvelle-aquitaine/gironde/bordeaux/vignoble-bordelais-sur-200-domaines-achetes-par-les-chinois-une-cinquantaine-est-a-vendre_5532906.html">around 50 of them</a> have been also put up for sale by their once-enthusiastic owners.</p>
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<p><em>RTS report, November 2023.</em></p>
<p>However, a closer look shows that Chinese acquisitions in the Bordeaux vineyards are far from uniformly ending up in failures and selloffs. This is reflected by our <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362930206_In_vino_vanitas_Social_dynamics_and_performance_of_Chinese_chateau_acquisitions_in_the_Bordeaux_vineyards">recent research paper</a> which analyses the post-acquisition performance of 123 Bordeaux châteaux acquired by Chinese investors between 2008 and 2015.</p>
<h2>What motives for such acquisitions?</h2>
<p>Applying a sociological approach to these acquisitions has allowed us to show that some of them did create value, not only economically but also symbolically. With the opportunity to gain social distinction, these properties were acquired for the prestige they confer to their owners.</p>
<p>The new owners perceive their prestigious possessions as an extension of themselves and so take particular care of them. They strongly commit to renovating the property, maintaining the cellars and, above all, enhancing the wine quality. We have many accounts of Chinese-owned châteaux investing in new winemaking techniques, hiring top oenologists such as Michel Rolland and Stéphane Derenoncourt, and replanting part of the vineyards. These acquisitions have often prevented these châteaux from getting bankrupt while improving their wine ranking in the major wine guides. For instance, the <a href="https://www.hachette-vins.com/">Hachette Wine Guide</a>, which covers all French AOC vineyards, shows significant progress for the wines produced by some of these Chinese-owned châteaux.</p>
<p>A case in point is the Andrew and Melody Kuk couple, who in 2013 acquired <a href="https://www.sudouest.fr/vin/investisseurs-chinois-a-pomerol-les-epoux-kuk-reaffirment-leur-attachement-au-terroir-17148857.php">La Commanderie in Pomerol</a>. Having made their fortune in finance and communication in Hong Kong, they renovated the vineyard’s winemaking facilities and refurbished the property’s building. After just a few years, the wine from this château, once described as a “sleeping beauty”, is regularly featured in the rankings of the best Bordeaux wines.</p>
<p>These acquisitions, integrated in a clear strategy aiming to climb up the social ladder, are distinct from the few Bordeaux château acquisitions conducted by Chinese billionaires, which attract most of the media covering. Standing already at the top of the social hierarchy, these distinctive acquirers have little commitment to their wineries and frequently change their conspicuous hobbies as their social position does not depend on the success of their acquired assets. For this specific category of elite acquirers, the post-acquisition outcome is often a deterioration in performance.</p>
<p>Statistically, we reported a significant correlation between upward social mobility strategies and improved wine quality in the rankings.</p>
<h2>In the wine industry and beyond</h2>
<p>More generally, our sociological approach provides keys to understanding the motives behind these “conspicuous acquisitions” that were conducted on an international scale by the economic, sporting and artistic elites. This concept, dating back to the end of the 19th century, has been coined by the American economist and sociologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thorstein-Veblen">Thorstein Veblen</a>, who analysed the lifestyle and purchasing behaviour of the elite class at that time. While some of the purchasing behaviour of this elite class does not seem rational from the point of view of economic science, Veblen provided an alternative rationale, mostly based on strategies of social affirmation.</p>
<p>Concentrated in industries such as sport, luxury hotels, resorts and real estate, these prestigious acquisitions are made by “high net-worth individuals”, whose number is estimated to 22 million worldwide, with combined wealth hovering around <a href="https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/world-wealth-report/">83 trillion dollars</a>. Their continuously growing number results from the macroeconomic implementation of neoliberal policies since the late 1970s, the collapse of the USSR and the rise of emerging economies.</p>
<p>Part of this fortune is spent on <a href="https://www.enograf.com/media/pdf/Profit%20ili%20zadovoljstvo%20-%20kompletan%20izvestaj.pdf">socially motivated acquisitions</a>. Two of the major European football clubs, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, are owned by sovereign wealth funds linked to the ruling Qatari and Emirati families, and until recently Chelsea FC was owned by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovitch. In the hotel industry, French palace hotels such as the Bristol, the George V and the Meurice are owned by wealthy foreigners (respectively, the German family group Oetker, Saudi Prince Al-Walid Ben Talal Al Saoud and the Sultan of Brunei).</p>
<p>These are all personalities whose wealth does not originate from the target industry and who made the acquisitions to gain access to, or reaffirm their affiliation with, the international elite.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pierre-Xavier Meschi is Chairman of Atlas-AFMI (Association Francophone de Management International).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandre Bohas ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Contrary to popular belief, only a minority of Bordeaux vineyards bought by Chinese investors have had a negative outcome.Alexandre Bohas, Professeur d'Affaires internationales, ESSCA School of ManagementPierre-Xavier Meschi, Professeur des Universités en sciences de gestion, Affillié à Skema Business School, IAE Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management – Aix-Marseille UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2262662024-03-25T16:35:08Z2024-03-25T16:35:08ZWhat makes voatsiperifery the world’s best pepper<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583170/original/file-20240222-22-jhwzut.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Highly sought after for its flavours, voatsiperifery is tricky to harvest. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jérome Queste/Cirad</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The triple Michelin-starred chef Anne-Sophie Pic <a href="https://www.facebook.com/100044563800645/posts/10158492682644935/">has long been raving about its</a> “complex, woody, tangy and spicy nose”. It goes particularly well with pigeon, she says, and also with rhubarb and grapefruit.</p>
<p>Endemic to <a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/topics/madagascar-24701">Madagascar</a>, the wild pepper of voatsiperifery became popular some 15 years ago. Nowadays it is considered to be one of the best peppers in the world, with a uniquely subtle taste, more flavour and scent, and less pungency than other peppers. Once dried, its peppercorns give off woody, earthy and fruity aromas. When fresh, its flavours and scents are even more balanced. Voatsiperifery is a perfect illustration of the <a href="https://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.354.aspx.pdf">“cultural ecosystem services”</a> provided by Madagascar’s natural forests and their biodiversity.</p>
<h2>From medicine to gastronomy</h2>
<p>While the pepper does not contribute to food security, <a href="https://doi.org/10.17660/th2017/72.6.1">it is a source of pleasure for gourmets worldwide and, therefore, of income</a> for people living on the fringes of forests. This is particularly the case during during the “hunger gap”, the period between two harvests, in which people have hardly anything to eat as the previous crop has been used up and the next is not yet available.</p>
<p>We look to voatsiperifery as an ambassador for Madagascar. It is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-022-00732-z">only spice exported from the country</a> that is endemic to the main island. This wild pepper has small round or oval peppercorns that grow in clusters on long lianas in the natural forests of eastern Madagascar, from the coast to the central highlands. <a href="https://doi.org/10.17660/th2017/72.6.1">It is dioecious</a>, meaning that male and female flowers grow on separate plants.</p>
<p>In Malagasy, <em>voatsiperifery</em> is a combination of <em>voa</em> (“fruit”), and <em>tsiperifery</em>, (“which makes wounds disappear”). This name stems from its medicinal use to <a href="https://www.fofifa.mg/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Th%C3%A8seVF_Rharizoly_EDGRND_compressed.pdf">heal wounds</a> and refers to the peppercorns themselves, while <em>tsiperifery</em> refers to the plant. Tsiperifery belongs to the pepper family Piperaceae, which includes black pepper (<em>Piper nigrum</em>) and was once likened to <em>Piper borbonense</em> from the French overseas island of Réunion. However, as of the date of writing, it still does not have a valid scientific name.</p>
<h2>A history that is gathering pace</h2>
<p>The first written references to the tsiperifery vine date back to colonial times. Archives from the 19th and early 20th centuries describe a round pepper used locally for medicinal purposes, to treat venereal diseases and colic and to blacken teeth as part of local rituals. There are still specimens collected by the first European explorers at the <a href="https://www.mnhn.fr/en">Muséum national d’histoire naturelle</a> in Paris.</p>
<p>People living around forests traditionally pick and use tsiperifery for its culinary and medicinal properties, but also in their spiritual practice. The leaves are used in rituals, to protect against lightning and prevent rain from falling. The stems and roots serve as infusions to protect one against evil. In the area of medicine, it is used to <a href="https://doi.org/10.17660/th2017/72.6.1">prevent scarring, and treat respiratory, venereal, skin diseases and sexual problems</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Adult tsiperifery climbing up a tree in the forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577914/original/file-20240226-18-e3jz30.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsiperifery is a vine that grows high on trees, making it difficult to harvest the berries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Harizoly Razafimandimby/FOFIFA</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Voatsiperifery was “discovered” between 2004 and 2010 by two “spice hunters”, Olivier Roellinger and Gérard Vives. Since 2010, demand has rocketed and triggered a rush toward this wild pepper. Its exploitation relies on existing commercial routes: pickers first go deep into the forest and then sell their harvest to middlemen, who go on to sell them on to other economic players who process, bag and export them. The latter capture the major share of the profits from the value chain.</p>
<p>But the wild pepper is tricky to pick. In natural forests, the vines produce fruit very high up in the canopy. Ripping down the fruiting vine or felling the tree it is growing on is the simplest solution. Voatsiperifery has only recently been discovered but is already under threat of extinction and is contributing to the destruction of its habitat.</p>
<p>In the past 14 years, our French-Malagasay research team has been the knowledge necessary to map out a sustainable tsiperifery export chain. Our multidisciplinary research covers the <a href="https://www.fofifa.mg/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Th%C3%A8seVF_Rharizoly_EDGRND_compressed.pdf">biology and ecology of the vine</a>, its <a href="https://www.forets-biodiv.org/content/download/4770/35531/version/1/file/RAHERINJATOVOARISON+2017+Aire+de+distribution.pdf">distribution area</a>, <a href="https://www.forets-biodiv.org/content/download/4771/35535/version/1/file/Rakotomalala+2017+Filiere+tsiperifery+et+encastrement.pdf">value chain economics</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/fruits/2014025">transformation processes</a>, among others. As a result, we have been to hand out <a href="https://www.forets-biodiv.org/productions/ouvrages/guides-de-bonnes-pratiques-tsiperifery">good practice handbooks for tsiperifery commercialisation</a>.</p>
<h2>Growing tsiperifery in natural forests</h2>
<p>Like other non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as mushrooms, honey or certain barks, the profits from tsiperifery should benefit the people living near forests, who are extremely vulnerable. Such a principle lies behind the Nagoya protocol, which commits its signatories to fair, equitable sharing of research results or financial returns on the exploitation of resources. In practice, however, academics often observe <a href="http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss2/art20/">trade-offs between locals ability to earn a living from this type of business and forest conservation</a>.</p>
<p>As we already outlined above, picking techniques for tsiperifery tend to be destructive. The fact that <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1724745">NTFPs are traditionally freely accessible</a> in Malagasy forests also makes them prone to over-exploitation, with prospects of any government regulation from the weak Malagasy State unrealistic. Indeed any initiative to regulate the value chain such as certification soon run up again the legal vacuum around wild forest products.</p>
<p>Our current research aims to find a way out of this paradigm by helping to turn <a href="https://doi.org/10.17660/th2021/76.3.3">tsiperifery from a wild into a domestic species faster</a> – what scientists call the <em>domestication process</em>, following the example set by other <em>Pipers</em>. There is growing evidence that cultivated vines are private property and are therefore better protected than wild foods. <a href="http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol5/iss2/art13/">This plausible promise</a> was the working principle for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/cagri/2017059">two research programmes</a> led by French and Malagasy agricultural research institutes, CIRAD and FOFIFA, in consultation with four villages of voatsiperifery growers, Ambodivoangy (south-east of Madagascar, Ambongamarina (central highlands), Rantolava (eastern coast), and Masiaposa (north).</p>
<p>In Rantolava and Masiaposa, competition with other, more lucrative crops – vanilla and passion fruit – led to the attempt at domestication being abandoned. In the other two other villages, the research has served to <a href="https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2023.1362.80">master the first stages of propagation from cuttings and by germination</a>.</p>
<p>The first surveys carried out three years after replanting vines in the forest showed a significant increase in tsiperifery vine density, including in zones beyond the plantations. People living around the forest have therefore stopped ripping off vines, are replanting and monitoring the forest plots that house vines. Tsiperifery has changed status. From a freely accessible wild vine, it has become an argument in favour of forest conservation.</p>
<p>However, the road toward the domestication of this wild pepper is still long. The next step is to look into agronomic aspects such as fertilisation, crop protection and <em>genotype selection</em>, agronomists’ hunt for clones that grow faster, produce more fruits and adapt better to a large spectrum of environments. On a value chain level, local people will not grow tsiperifery unless they are sure of being able to sell their products at an acceptable price. This will undoubtedly require a shift in relations between the upstream and downstream parts of the value chain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research has been performed within the Forests & Biodiversity (dP F&B) research platform with support from the European Union, the French Embassy in Madagascar and the SOLINA company. jerome Queste is the current coordinator of the platform.
Special thanks to Pr. Hirac Gurden (CNRS) who recently began groundbreaking research into how tsiperifery pickers use their sense of smell</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harizoly Razafimandimby's thesis on the first characterization of the plant (moprhology, genetics and ecology) was supported by FOFIFA, dP F&B and IFS</span></em></p>Endemic to Madagascar, voatsiperifery is one of the secrets of the world’s top chefs. But it has to be grown in a way that preserves its environment and guarantees producers a fair income.Jérôme Queste, Sociologue, CiradHarizoly Razafimandimby, Maître de Recherche Gestion des Ressources Naturelles et Développement, FOFIFALicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2260362024-03-20T15:56:09Z2024-03-20T15:56:09ZMumpreneurs: a growing entrepreneurial force in Chinese society<p>While much ink has been poured over China’s economic growth in recent decades, the contributions of Chinese women often receive less attention. With the pressure of the <a href="https://www.ined.fr/en/publications/editions/population-and-societies/china-s-new-three-child-policy-what-effects-can-we-expect/">“three-child policy”</a>, being a mother isn’t a mere personal choice, it’s a part of national demographic strategy. To navigate their lives, many Chinese mothers are now turning to what has been referred to as “mumpreneurship”. A January 2024 search for “妈妈创业” (the term in Chinese) showed 69.9 million results on Baidu, China’s primary search engine, compared to just 2.6 million English results on Google.</p>
<p>The term <em>mompreneur</em> was coined in 1996 by Patricia Cobe and Ellen Parlapiano, two entrepreneurs who caught global attention with a <a href="http://www.mompreneursonline.com/">website</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/624570.Patricia_Cobe">books</a> on the theme. Unlike <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718510001284">female entrepreneurs</a>, mumpreneurs are motivated to achieve work-life harmony by merging the identities of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0266242611435182">motherhood and business ownership</a>. It’s typical to observe the boundaries of two roles blurring.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.openedition.org/travailemploi/10041/">Prior research</a> indicates that the mumpreneurs movement has its roots in the United States in the 1990s, and that it saw further growth in France in the 2000s, as the Internet gained strength. The researchers defined it as a “feminised form of non-salaried work, in which independence is considered the ideal way to combine work and family.”</p>
<h2>Mumpreneurship in China</h2>
<p>Our ongoing research focuses on mumpreneurs in Chinese urban areas. We find that most are between the ages of 31 and 45, resourceful, educated and digitally savvy. Chinese women’s age at first birth is getting older, <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1285983.shtml">30.36 in Shanghai in 2022</a>. According to a <a href="https://www.199it.com/archives/1418770.html">2022 Chinese Female Entrepreneurs Research Report</a>, women start their businesses at a young age, 36% before 30, 50% between 31 to 40.</p>
<p>Covid-19 has played a key role in driving the growth of mumpreneurship. Many parents are stepping back from the corporate life due to the economic downturn in China. Mumpreneurs are most commonly found in urban regions such as Beijing, Shanghai and Great Bay area, notably Shenzhen, where robust support networks and resources exist. Preferred sectors are children’s education and social services, HR consulting, psychotherapy consulting, and beauty-related industries. Businesses typically have small teams of no more than 10. Many of their leaders actively engage and enjoy the popularity on social media like TikTok and Xiaohongshu. One of our interviewees, DanDan, has pioneered a <a href="http://xhslink.com/ARVTnC">“divorced companion mumpreneurial business model”</a> (离婚搭子创业 in Chinese) in education and social-media marketing services that has received significant attention. She and her business partner have recently been invited to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb7MlUvMNhs"><em>Super Diva</em></a>, a show spotlighting Chinese mothers from diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>Contrary to the promise of work-life balance, Chinese mumpreneurs are driven and <a href="https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20231205A054G400">relentlessly self-improving</a> and are often sleep-deprived. Support can come from a range of source, including their partner, parents, paid services such as nannies, cleaners and drivers, and sometimes company employees. Office and family space are frequently within walking distance or even overlapping.</p>
<p>As in other Asian countries, K–12 education in China is highly competitive. Chinese mothers are often perceived to face triple expectation from the society, family, and themselves, while Chinese fathers can have more leniency. Our study reveals that when it comes to education, some Chinese mumpreneurs disagree with both 鸡娃 (Ji Wa) <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1024804523/forget-tiger-moms-now-chinas-chicken-blood-parents-are-pushing-kids-to-succeed">Chicken Blood parenting</a> and traditional laissez-faire motherhood. Instead, they believe in a spiritual maternal role, working to strengthen the emotional and personal construction of their children. Annie, a mumpreneur who works in human resources, remarked:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I disagree with cramming, stressful, and result-oriented education. It’s essential for me to nurture my son’s capacity for happiness. It pains me to witness the prevalence of depression among Chinese children.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While mumpreneurs value motherhood, for them it doesn’t consistently rank as the top priority. Instead, there’s unanimous agreement on the importance of prioritising the “me” as an individual, encompassing financial, physical, and mental self-care. Additionally, there’s a recurring theme indicating that a woman’s awakening process is influenced by her education and the duration of her marriage. As for the role of “wife”, it’s often optional, and many mumpreneurs are single, divorced or cohabiting with partners to whom they are not married.</p>
<h2>A social movement</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www-annualreviews-org.em-lyon.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052615-025801">rise of a social movement</a> is primarily facilitated by three key factors: more chances to influence politics, support networks, and shaping public opinion through messages. In China, the government has been making a strategic push to compensate for the country’s <a href="https://chinapower.csis.org/china-demographics-challenges/">demographic challenges</a>, which will become increasingly acute in the coming years. The country’s “one-child policy” was established in 1980, and it took more than a quarter-century to transit to the “two-child policy”, enacted in 2016. Less than five years later, the “three-child policy” came into force in 2021.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RlUOUDUtF3U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“China pushes three-child policy” (NBC News).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The increasing female power in China is another catalyst for the mumpreneurship movement. Since 1949, there has been remarkable progress in the economic, educational, and health status of Chinese women. The changing social perceptions could be sensed in the language used to describe them, from 大婶 (Aunty) to 爷 (Ye) meaning lord or master, and 女王 (Nu Wang) meaning queen. Women are being progressively liberated from the expectation of a life centred on supporting her family, children, and husband. Women in China are embracing more diverse values and contributing to a more inclusive society.</p>
<p>The support ecosystem for mumpreneurs has matured. These include the <a href="http://mqcy.cwdf.org.cn/">“@SHE Entrepreneur Plan”</a>, which is operated by the China Women’s Development Foundation. It has grown increasingly influential over the last 28 years and now covers more than 20 provinces. At the grassroots level, <a href="https://www.huxiu.com/article/37107.html">mumpreneur communities</a> are spreading with the help of social media. Interesting examples include Lamabang.net.com, Babytree.com (a sort of Facebook for parents and kids), ci123.com and 研究生 Yan Jiu Sheng (which highlights research on pregnancy).</p>
<p>Given their presence, our study mainly focuses on the mumpreneurs in urban areas. Given that the country’s spatial disparity, future research could explore mumpreneurship in rural areas. This may reveal differences in entrepreneurial motivation, motherhood definition, social capital and social networking.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Special thanks to Chen Liu (DBA candidate from Durham University and EM Lyon Business School) and Hanrui Liu (MSc in international marketing and business development, EM Lyon Business School) for their contributions to the ongoing research project.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226036/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Xiong ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>With the pressure of China’s “three-child policy”, many women are motivated to achieve work-life harmony by merging the identities of motherhood and business ownership.Lisa Xiong, Associate Professor in Strategy & Organization, EM Lyon Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2258062024-03-14T18:54:10Z2024-03-14T18:54:10ZDebate: The amorality of ‘Oppenheimer’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581904/original/file-20240314-22-avegsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C1137%2C745&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cillian Murphy stars as the title character in the 2023 drama _Oppenheimer_. .</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>As part of the research for <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250070050/hiroshimanagasaki">“Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath”</a>, published in 2013 by Penguin Random House (UK) and Pan Macmillan (US), author Paul Ham interviewed 80 survivors of the 1945 atomic bomb attacks.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The ghost of a little Japanese girl attended the <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2024">Oscar celebrations last week</a>. Nobody noticed her. She sat in the wings, her face seared, her blood poisoned, her skin marked after countless grafts, her mind scarred by the memory of the events in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. They were the direct result of the work of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Academy Awards was celebrating the film version of his life – it took home seven Oscars – yet it dismally failed to address his decisive role in the decision to drop the bomb, and all the death and destruction it caused.</p>
<h2>Choosing the target</h2>
<p>In May 1945, a high-powered <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bomb-anniversary/400448/">“target committee”</a> agreed on a shortlist of five Japanese cities as suitable targets for a terrifying new weapon that drew its power from an atomic chain reaction. Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the <a href="https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/index.htm">Manhattan Project</a>, then building the weapon at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, co-chaired the committee. He ran through the agenda like an executive attending a board meeting: “height of detonation”, “gadget [bomb] jettisoning and landing”, “psychological factors in target selection”, “radiological effects”, and so on.</p>
<p>Kyoto and Hiroshima headed the target list because they were “large urban areas” capable of being “extensively damaged” or that they had great “sentimental value” to the Japanese (Tokyo had been rejected because it was “rubble”). Kyoto was the preferred target “from the psychological point of view” because the ancient city was an <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf">“intellectual center”</a> and that its then 1 million residents were “more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon,” the committee noted. However, Hiroshima’s “adjacent hills” were <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf">“likely to produce a focussing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage”</a> – that is, the hills would concentrate the blast waves on the people. Hiroshima was chosen as the target.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bK6ldnjE3Y0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer for <em>Oppenheimer</em> (2023), directe by Christopher Nolan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The desired “spectacular” impact</h2>
<p>The weapon created by Oppenheimer’s team exploded directly above Shima Hospital, in the centre of Hiroshima, at <a href="https://www.icanw.org/hiroshima_and_nagasaki_bombings">8:15 a.m. on 6 August 1945</a>, instantly killing all patients, doctors, nurses, and visitors in the building. Those who saw the flash did not live to experience their blindness. The heat wave charred every living thing within a 500-metre radius and scorched uncovered skin at 2 kilometres. The instantaneous ground temperature ranged between 3,000 and 4,000 degrees Celsius, hotter than the surface of the sun (iron melts at 1,535 degrees Celsius). About 70,000 civilians were killed instantly.</p>
<p>There was no mass panic. The people of Hiroshima had had no warning; they were not prepared to panic. Shock turned to stupefaction, then to a soft and insistent plea: “It hurts”, “Help me”, and “Water, water”. Hysteria was individual, the expression of acute, private grief. The sudden sight of the charred remains of their children induced madness in uncomprehending mothers, who wandered in circles, holding their dead offspring to the sky. Or they clung fast to the little bundle as if that might bring the child back to life.</p>
<p>Three days later, on 9 August 1945, an American plane dropped another atomic weapon, <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/bombing-nagasaki-august-9-1945">this time on Nagasaki</a>. The plutonium bomb created by Oppenheimer’s team missed its target – the city centre – and instead detonated above the main cathedral in the hospital and schools district. It was home to Nagasaki’s 12,500 Catholics, and 8,500 were killed instantly. In total, the two weapons killed about 100,000 civilians on impact (the same number who perished in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Bombing-of-Tokyo">Tokyo firebombing raids</a> on the night of 9-10 March 1945). A further 250,000 would die of bomb-related cancers.</p>
<p>The film purporting to be the life of the man who invented the atomic bomb mentioned none of this.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581898/original/file-20240314-30-w2joau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Florence Pugh and Cillian Murphy in a scene from Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning film <em>Oppenheimer</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Looking away</h2>
<p>Instead, <em>Oppenheimer</em> devotes most of its second half to an interminable assessment of whether his security clearance should or should not have been renewed after the war. As though his career was all that mattered. There are flashbacks to his utterly irrelevant affair with a communist, engaged in many years earlier, offering the viewer gratuitous sexual content, little more.</p>
<p>The film completely overlooks Oppenheimer’s intimate involvement in <em>how</em> the bombs were used, and where. He personally recommended a nuclear strike on the centres of two cities populated overwhelmingly by civilians, without warning. That <em>happened</em>. As for the rest of his life, it was filled with wistful dreams about arms controls that were neither heard nor enacted.</p>
<p>The film relegates the Japanese to a footnote, which is entirely in keeping with Oppenheimer’s view: he never once expressed regret for what his creation had done – indeed, he never visited Japan. When Oppenheimer told President Truman that he had “blood on his hands” he didn’t mean that of countless thousands of Japanese civilians who died, he meant the blood of future generations who would die in a coming nuclear holocaust for which he felt responsible.</p>
<p>The only victims of the bomb presented by this film were American students who are seen dying, their skin melting, as they listen to a lecture – but they exist only in Oppenheimer’s imagination. The historical victims of this atrocity, the Japanese people, were airbrushed out of the narrative.</p>
<p>Some critics have suggested that leaving the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki out of the film was a “sensitive” choice by the director, Christopher Nolan, because his film was only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/opinion/oppenheimer-secret-lives.html">“entertainment”</a> and “a fiction”, yet Nolan bills the film as having been based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin"><em>American Prometheus</em></a> by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Instead, his decision to leave the bombing of Japan out of the film seems more of a financially astute decision – the reality wouldn’t have pulled in the crowds, nor attracted awards.</p>
<p>Hollywood is good at portraying the horror of genocide and war crimes so long as the perpetrator isn’t the United States. Yet in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American actions were directly responsible for the instantaneous death of 100,000 civilians, including 8,500 schoolchildren.</p>
<p>The film purporting to be the life of the man who invented the atomic bomb mentioned none of this.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581907/original/file-20240314-26-pw66wc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On 9 August 1945, American forces dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. The plane missed the city centre and instead detonated above the main cathedral in the hospital and schools district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getarchive.net</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2009 I visited an aged care home in the suburbs of Hiroshima built exclusively for <a href="https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/244049/1/zinbun_49_81.pdf"><em>hibakusha</em></a> – the “bomb-affected people”. The patients were having lunch as the doctor and I entered. The upward gaze of the ward seemed to hold a measure of surprise at the sight of a Westerner, the first some might have seen since 1945 – “Why is he here, to study us?” their eyes seemed to say. Some had no outward physical signs of bomb exposure, yet were psychologically damaged, mute and expressionless. Others were deformed, their bodies twisted and faces scarred. One or two waved from their wheelchairs, smiling. The effort lent a strange sense of hope, that nobody here takes for granted the use of their hands or the movement of their lips. A source of happiness here was simply being able to smile.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ham ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Christopher Nolan’s historical drama took home seven Oscars, but the film conspicuously avoids Oppenheimer’s intimate involvement in how his diabolical weapon was used – and where.Paul Ham, Lecturer in narrative history, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2254812024-03-11T16:11:24Z2024-03-11T16:11:24ZMental workload: how can we prevent our brains from overheating?<p>Is it possible to read your e-mails while keeping weekend plans in mind and listening to someone on the phone? Multitasking is part and parcel of our daily lives, with teleworking and the rapid expansion – if not invasion – of digital technology. </p>
<p>We may feel like we’re doing two things at the same time, but in reality our brain unconsciously shifts its attention from one task to another very quickly. After more than 50 years of scientific research, the expression <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/mental-workload">“mental workload”</a> is starting to be heard in everyday life and a variety of professional contexts. But the concept still raises many questions, both about its precise definition and about how to study it or manage it on a day-to-day basis.</p>
<p>Also known as cognitive workload, mental workload corresponds to a <a href="http://arpege-recherche.org/user/pages/06.activites/03.colloques-epique/11.10e-colloque-epique/Actes_EPIQUE_2019.pdf">quantity of mental work to be done in a given time</a>, with potential consequences for the individual, such as rising fatigue or the number of errors in carrying out tasks. Examples include searching through a cluttered visual display, taking a difficult exam or driving on a busy motorway. These and other activities call on perceptual, cognitive and/or motor processes to produce <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.1.1">flexible and adaptive behaviour</a>. </p>
<p>The engagement, maintenance and control of these processes require different levels of mental effort depending on the circumstances (routine activities versus sudden events). Sometimes this massive mental effort leads to what scientists call “cognitive overload” or “mental overload”.</p>
<h2>Searching for a universal definition</h2>
<p>Researchers are still struggling to come up with a universal definition that cuts across the disciplines concerned with mental workload, including psychology, management and cognitive science. For some, it corresponds to the notion of an individual’s <a href="https://kahneman.scholar.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf3831/files/kahneman/files/attention_lo_quality.pdf">limited capacity</a> to process information – a “reservoir” of attentional resources. For others, it refers to the management of attentional resources and focuses on the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1518/001872008X288394">demands of the task in hand</a>. Among the many <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA474193.pdf">definitions proposed</a>, mental workload can be defined as the effort invested by the individual in carrying out a task as a function of the resources available and the characteristics of the task.</p>
<p>In neuroscience, cognitive psychology and ergonomics (the scientific discipline concerned with the relationship between human beings and their work), the study of mental workload relates in particular to so-called safety-critical applications.</p>
<p>When the cognitive cost exceeds the available resources, the result can be <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018720813510735">“inattentional deafness”</a>.</p>
<p>The overload produced accentuates the risk of accidents. In fields such as aviation, space flight, defence and medicine, the result can be catastrophic – for example, when a pilot is landing in poor weather conditions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Pilot landing an airplane" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580925/original/file-20240311-24-d7ujzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aviation is filled with</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/pilot-flying-airplane-5129525/">Roger Brown/Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While laboratory studies have advanced our knowledge of brain function during a given task, it is important to assess an individual’s performance and mental load in the complex work environments encountered in everyday life. The discipline of neuroergonomics, which was founded in the late 20th century, brings together the approaches and tools of neuroscience, ergonomics and engineering. It’s defined as the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721411409176">study of the human brain in relation to performance at work and in everyday life</a>. One example is the measurement of brain activity in surgeons, for whom <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844023064666">increased mental workload can lead to errors and adversely affect performance</a>.</p>
<h2>How can mental workload be studied?</h2>
<p>No single tool or method can give a complete picture of how an individual responds to a particular task. Approaches that combine <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-023-00692-y">data from several sensors or measurements</a> can be more accurate and reliable for estimating mental workload in real time. This is all the more true in changing environments (fluctuations in lighting, temperature, noise, etc.) or contexts requiring adaptation to the situation (discomfort, technical incidents, etc.).</p>
<p>Self-assessment questionnaires can be used to collect people’s perceptions of the task they are performing. For example, by incorporating a multidimensional evaluation procedure, the <a href="https://humansystems.arc.nasa.gov/groups/tlx/downloads/TLXScale.pdf">NASA-TLX questionnaire</a> provides an overall mental workload score during or after the task. It is based on a weighted average of the scores (from 0 to 100) of six subjective areas. These are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Mental demand: level of mental activity.</p></li>
<li><p>Physical demand: level of physical activity.</p></li>
<li><p>Temporal demand: feeling of pressure to complete the task within a given time.</p></li>
<li><p>Performance: level of achievement of the task objectives.</p></li>
<li><p>Effort: amount of effort involved.</p></li>
<li><p>Frustration: feeling of dissatisfaction while completing the task.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Analysing performance on a single task can also help to estimate mental workload. For example, more frequent errors or a reduction in the speed with which information is processed may indicate a higher mental load if the demands of the task increase. In the case of a dual cognitive-motor task (phoning while driving, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457516304389">finding your way while cycling or walking</a>…), the sharing of resources thus created can lead to a drop in performance compared with performing each of the two tasks separately.</p>
<p>Neuroergonomics also proposes the integration of objective measures to assess mental workload <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00375/full">using several techniques</a> in environments that vary over time – workplaces, classrooms, hospitals, motorways, and so on. For example, eye-tracking analysis can provide information on mental workload by measuring where an individual directs her or his attention. Physiological measures such as heart rate and its variability, electrodermal activity and even portable brain imaging can provide specific neurophysiological indicators of mental workload.</p>
<h2>The brain’s prefrontal cortex is a key indicator</h2>
<p>Mental workload manifests itself particularly in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that has undergone the greatest development in human beings over the last few million years. This part of our brain is heavily involved in <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1088545">cognitive control</a>, a mechanism for supervising and managing the decision-making process. It involves conflict resolution, error detection and inhibition, and aims to guarantee a sufficient level of performance in relation to the demands of the task and unforeseen events, while maintaining an acceptable cognitive cost.</p>
<p>Measuring the activation of the prefrontal cortex can provide information about the quantity of resources mobilised. Indeed, difficult tasks or those requiring sustained attention lead to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bht206">more pronounced activation of the prefrontal cortex and associated brain networks</a>.</p>
<p>This also occurs during demanding physical effort in complex environments, such as in traffic situations with a bicycle, where each cyclist acts individually, weighing up the costs and benefits of each choice. In this dual-task situation, both physical and cognitive, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457514003157">speed choice decision</a> is cognitively controlled.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man working being distracted by two people talking nearby" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580935/original/file-20240311-16-jsqj90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Something as simple as two coworkers talking nearby can complicate tasks that are normally managable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-stressed-employee-at-work-7640731/">Yan Krukau/Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Managing the load</h2>
<p>In demanding contexts, our mental load can shift under the influence of various external and internal factors. So how do we deal with the multitude of factors to which we have to pay attention? Here are four specific suggestions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Draw up an overview of all the tasks that need to be done and prioritise them. This allows building up a sequence of tasks to be completed in order, and to set aside the nonessential ones.</p></li>
<li><p>Each task should correspond to specific short-term objectives of 20 minutes or so.</p></li>
<li><p>Adapt work breaks to the task in hand. This allows you to manage mental workload effectively and reduce distracting interruptions.</p></li>
<li><p>Always allow yourself adequate recovery time (reading, sport, etc.).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Applying the principles of neuroergonomics can provide personalised and effective solutions for managing mental workload. Research remains extremely relevant, particularly when taking account individual ways people process information and interact with the environment. In this respect, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.609096/full">the use of artificial intelligence methods</a> to extract information from several measurements is an interesting way of continuously assessing the mental load of an individual engaged in a task.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stéphane Perrey ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Despite being a central concept in the digital age, mental workload remains difficult to define and study in real-life situations.Stéphane Perrey, Professeur des Universités en Physiologie de l'Exercice / Neurosciences Intégratives, Directeur Unité Recherche EuroMov Digital Health in Motion, Université de MontpellierLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2252052024-03-10T16:43:35Z2024-03-10T16:43:35ZSeeing green: some older-car owners show that there’s more than one way of being eco-friendly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580114/original/file-20230927-29-x8d4j0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C2048%2C1143&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Une Renault 16 garée à Nevers, 2017. La voiture écolo par définition ?
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/152930510@N02/38493865784/">crash71100/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ongoing climate emergency requires us to fundamentally rethink how we get around. Transportation accounts for approximately <a href="https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/transport-and-mobility?activeTab=fa515f0c-9ab0-493c-b4cd-58a32dfaae0a">25% of European greenhouse-gas emissions</a>. Of this, road transportation represents <a href="https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport">by far the largest percentage</a>. While the Covid-19 epidemic briefly interrupted the rise in emissions, they’ve since resumed their upward climb. </p>
<p>Public authorities have been working to persuade residents to abandon combustion-powered cars in favour of electric vehicles. As of 2023, <a href="https://www.acea.auto/fact/electric-cars-tax-benefits-purchase-incentives-2023/">20 EU member states offered incentives</a>, and most of the other members have put tax incentives or exemptions in place. </p>
<p>A number of cities have established <a href="https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/low-emission-zones-main">low-emission zones</a>, which restrict access to vehicles that exceed a certain pollution threshold – leading examples include London, Paris and Brussels. Inspired by these and others, New York City is scheduled to start a <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/12/04/new-york-city-congestion-pricing-plan-how-much-traffic-15-dollars/">“congestion pricing” plan in 2024</a>. Projections indicate that it could generate US$1 billion in annual revenues that will be used to improve the city’s subway and bus systems. </p>
<p>In France, the 2021 <a href="https://www.vie-publique.fr/loi/278460-loi-22-ao%C3%BBt-2021-climat-et-resilience-convention-citoyenne-climat">“Climate and Resilience” law</a> will require 33 urban areas with more than 150,000 inhabitants to start implementing low-emissions measures. Only cars that meet the latest ecological standards (mainly electric or hybrid) will be allowed in urban centres, and the restrictions are intended to be progressively tightened as technology improves. </p>
<p>While the production of electric vehicles produces greenhouse gasses, a <a href="https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Global-LCA-passenger-cars-FS-EN-jul2021.pdf">2021 study</a> from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) found that the life-cycle emissions of battery-electric vehicles registered today will be significantly lower – nearly 70% in Europe and the US – than those of similar gasoline-powered cars. So the logic seems inescapable: out with the old, in with the new. </p>
<h2>Making use of what already exists</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.theses.fr/2022UBFCH020">doctoral thesis in sociology</a>, carried out between 2017 and 2022, explored the ownership and use of cars more than 20 years old. It revealed that, far from being hostile to the imperatives of sustainability, some owners of older vehicles were strongly committed to a certain idea of ecology. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550641/original/file-20230927-27-94ktec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chantal’s Renault Clio, 52 years old.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">G. Mangin</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our research, we interviewed 40 or so vehicle owners and the vast majority expressed the importance of re-use as opposed to mass production and consumption. For them, it’s about promoting an ecology that prioritises the use of functional (or repairable) tools over buying new ones. This was perceived as being more financially accessible and also responsible.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s not easy to explain to our dear ecologists that keeping and running an ‘old’ car instead of building a new one saves hectolitres of water, kilos of steel, rubber and plastic. That’s the whole problem with looking only at the pollution from exhaust gases, rather than analysing the whole life cycle, from manufacture to use to recycling.” (Richard, writing in “Youngtimers” magazine).</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Redefining what is sustainable through an ethics of “care”</h2>
<p>Like any technical object, to function correctly and last, a car needs to be carefully maintained. Older cars often require constant attention, particularly safety-related components such as brakes.</p>
<p>Today, however, dealerships often no longer have the mechanics trained to work on older vehicles. Maintenance thus has largely become the responsibility of owners, who develop detailed knowledge that allows them to believe that their car will be with them for a long time to come. In so doing, they build an <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/lectures/58828">attachment to the car they look after</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I look after my car to keep it looking good and to keep driving it… I’d like to drive a Golf like this for 300,000 kilometres. My car can go on for another 30 years.” (Larry, 64, retired decorator, drives a 1993 Volkswagen Golf 3)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Suspicion that the ecological transition is “greenwashing”</h2>
<p>Resisting the switch to a less-polluting vehicle is also a sign of scepticism about manufacturers’ ecological intentions. For better or worse, electric vehicles are suspected of being <a href="https://theconversation.com/fin-de-la-voiture-thermique-pourquoi-le-tout-electrique-na-rien-dune-solution-miracle-192264">far more polluting than they appear</a>, in particular because their production requires the <a href="http://www.editionslesliensquiliberent.fr/livre-La_guerre_des_m%C3%A9taux_rares-531-1-1-0-1.html">extraction of precious metals such as lithium or cobalt</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550642/original/file-20230927-19-sv3xj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Peugeot 205 of Mickaël, a 22-year-old mechanic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">G. Mangin</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Electronic and digital equipment is also the <a href="http://www.editionslesliensquiliberent.fr/livre-Bon_pour_la_casse-359-1-1-0-1.html">subject of mistrust</a>. The logic of early replacement is criticised and with it a perceived strategy of rendering past models obsolete.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They’re not designed to last, no… the aim is to consume! The Saab 900 is a robust car. Why? Because we weren’t into that kind of consumption.” (Yannis, 40, company director, drives a 1985 Saab 900)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Driving “less but better”</h2>
<p>Compared with more recent cars, those that are more than 15 years old are less comfortable, have fewer safety features and required greater attention from the driver. They necessarily have to be more observant and anticipate problems that can crop up.</p>
<p>Because such cars are at odds with the modern imperatives of efficiency, for their owners they become the ideal tool for keeping at bay the <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/lectures/990">feeling of acceleration that characterises our era</a> – they become a means to immerse oneself in “gentle” mobility that conjures up an imaginary world of contemplative travel.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“My parents have the [electronic pass] to go through the tollbooth and then everything is deducted from their account… Me, I find it frightening.” (Lucas, 22, philosophy student turned carpenter, drives a 1982 Renault 4)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even more than goods and an economic system, those devoted to older cars use them to keep an entire system of mobility at arm’s length. At the same time, many support an ambitious overhaul that would prioritise alternative forms of mobility, in particular the bicycle. They all say they would do without a car on a daily basis if they could.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I’m not nostalgic. I think that the society of the past, the society of conquest, was wrong. It forgot the finiteness of things. Cycling is one example – with a bicycle, you can go to places where cars don’t go any more, you can get away from traffic jams, that’s all there is to it. You can plan ahead again.” (Fabrice, 47, teacher-researcher, owns Citroëns from the 1970s to 2000).</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The component of a restrained lifestyle</h2>
<p>For some, driving an old car is a way of being mobile in a more restrained way, favouring quality (of the journey, of the object…) over a form of abundance.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I think we’ve gone too far on certain things, that we’re going too far with regard to the planet too, pollution and all that. I don’t want to get into that, or at least I don’t want to any more. One of my dreams is to be energy independent. So there’s something ecological about my approach.” (Bruno, 56, special-needs educator, drives a 1986 Renault 4).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This ethic of sobriety is often at the root of a more frugal lifestyle, and presupposes a reflective attitude to our actions and their consequences. While having everyone use “older cars” would be directly in contradiction with the ecological transition we face, the relationship of their <em>owners</em> to their mobility nevertheless invites us to take the road more seriously, especially in a context where almost half of the vehicles put into circulation are no longer owned but rented through short-term contracts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gaëtan Mangin ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>While electric cars have significantly lower emissions over their entire lifecycle, research shows that owners of older cars can experience mobility in a more restrained way.Gaëtan Mangin, ATER en sociologie, Université d'Artois, docteur en sociologie, Université de Bourgogne – UBFCLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248842024-03-04T16:54:22Z2024-03-04T16:54:22ZDiscovering the world of dolphins and their three ‘super senses’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579179/original/file-20240129-15-onehyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C12%2C4265%2C2826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dolphins can communicate very effectively.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/fr/photos/photographie-en-accelere-de-deux-dauphins-nageant-dans-la-mer-ZYPQDN_xSqk">Arielle Allouche/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine that you’re in a comfortable room with your cat. You’re both sharing the same space, temperature and lighting. But while you’re enjoying the décor, and perhaps a book or the taste of hot chocolate, the cat seems intrigued by something else. Maybe she’s looking for a treat or making sure that no one infringes on “her” preferred spot, a comfortable armchair near the heater.</p>
<p>All this is to say that even if you and your pet are in the same place, you both perceive your environment differently. In 1934, the German scientist Jakob von Uexküll defined it as the “umwelt” (<em>environment</em> in German). The <em>umwelt</em> is each individual’s <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/1/1d/Uexkuell_Jakob_von_A_Stroll_Through_the_Worlds_of_Animals_and_Men_A_Picture_Book_of_Invisible_Worlds.pdf">perception of the world in which he or she lives</a>.</p>
<p>But how do other animals perceive the world around them? I’m particularly interested in those that live in habitats that are drastically different from those of humans, such as dolphins in the vastness of the ocean.</p>
<p>By understanding animals’ perceptions, we can better protect them. In the case of dolphins, knowing how they perceive their environment means knowing the impact of underwater noise on their communication and taking measures to control it in protected marine areas.</p>
<p>So let’s dive in and discover the three super-senses of dolphins: magnetic perception, electrical perception and echolocation.</p>
<h2>Magnetic perception</h2>
<p>Magnetic perception was first demonstrated in dolphins in 1981: American researchers found <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7256282">fragments of magnetite closely linked to neuronal connections</a> extracted from the brains of four stranded common dolphins. Surprised by the discovery, the scientists suggested that it could have a sensory function or play a role in navigation.</p>
<p>In 1985, another team of researchers discovered a <a href="https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/120/1/1/4953/Evidence-From-Strandings-for-Geomagnetic">relationship between cetacean stranding positions and the Earth’s geomagnetic field</a>: several species of whales and dolphins actually tend to strand in places where the magnetic intensity is low. If cetaceans use the Earth’s magnetic field to find their bearings, one hypothesis is that areas where the magnetic intensity is weaker would increase the likelihood of stranding due to a lack of bearings.</p>
<p>In 2014, with a team of scientists from the University of Rennes 1, I carried out a behavioural study that enabled us to show that <a href="https://hal.science/hal-01134557">bottlenose dolphins have a magnetic sense</a>. We tested the spontaneous response of six captive dolphins to the presentation of two objects with the same shape and density: the first contained a block of magnetically charged neodymium (a metal), while the second device was completely demagnetised.</p>
<p>The dolphins approached the device much more quickly when it contained a block of strongly magnetised neodymium. This allowed us to conclude that the dolphins are able to discriminate between the two stimuli on the basis of their magnetic properties.</p>
<p>These data support the hypothesis that cetaceans can determine their location using the Earth’s magnetic field and that, consequently, when this field is weaker, the tendency to strand is greater.</p>
<h2>Electrical perception</h2>
<p>When fish move their muscles and skeletons, they emit weak electric fields. Some marine predators, particularly in benthic areas (at the bottom of the ocean) – where visibility is reduced, are able to perceive their prey via these electric fields. A range of aquatic and semi-aquatic species share this ability.</p>
<p>In dolphins, electroreception was demonstrated for the first time in 2012. The structures known as hairless <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.1127">vibrissal crypts</a> on the rostrum of Guiana dolphins (one of the smallest species) serve as electroreceptors. In the study, the researchers noted that the vibrissal crypts have a well-innervated ampullary structure, reminiscent of the ampullary electro-receptors in other species such as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/elasmobranch">elasmobranchs</a> (sharks and rays), lampreys, paddlefish, catfish, certain amphibians and even in the platypus and echidna). These vibrissal crypts are thought to function as sensory receptors capable of picking up small electric fields emitted by prey in aquatic environments.</p>
<p>The same study also found behavioural evidence of electroperception. A male Guiana dolphin was trained to respond to electrical stimuli of the order of magnitude of those generated by small-to medium-sized fish. For example, a goldfish 5 to 6 centimetres long produces electric fields of 90 microvolts per centimetre, with a peak energy at 3 hertz. Bioelectric fields of 1,000 microvolts per centimetre have been reported in flounders – a magnitude equivalent to 1/100,000 of the electric current of a light bulb.</p>
<p>The dolphin was trained to place its head in a hoop and touch a target with the tip of its rostrum. It had to leave the hoop when a stimulus was presented, and when no stimulus was presented, it had to remain in the hoop for at least 12 seconds.</p>
<p>This experiment showed that dolphins perceive weak electric fields – a sensitivity comparable to that of platypus electroreceptors. The first clear demonstration of electroreception in platypuses was carried out in Canberra in 1985 by a German-Australian team, which showed that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/319401a0">they sought out and attacked submerged and otherwise invisible batteries</a>. In 2023, a team of researchers found similar <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38035544/">detection thresholds in bottlenose dolphins</a>, using the same behavioural test.</p>
<p>It is now thought that electroreception can facilitate the detection of prey at close range and the targeted killing of prey on the seabed.</p>
<p>In addition, the ability to detect weak electric fields could enable dolphins to perceive the Earth’s magnetic field by means of magnetoreception, which could enable them to orientate themselves on a large scale.</p>
<h2>Echolocation</h2>
<p>The most studied sense in dolphins remains <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2016.00049/full">echolocation</a>.</p>
<p>A more active sense than the detection of electric or magnetic fields, echolocation involves the dolphins producing sequences of clicks with their phonic lips (located in the blowhole, the nostril on the dolphin’s head). The clicks produced are highly directional, moving forward. When the sound wave touches a surface, it returns and is perceived through the dolphin’s lower jaw. In this way, they perceive sound waves extremely well, without having external ears and so retaining their smooth hydrodynamic shape.</p>
<p>Thanks to this information, the dolphin can not only know the location of a target, but also deduce its density: a dolphin can distinguish at a distance of 75 metres whether a one-inch diameter sphere (2.54 cm) is made of <a href="https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article-abstract/68/4/1077/625152/Long-range-target-detection-in-open-waters-by-an">solid steel or filled with water</a>.</p>
<h2>Dolphins communicate through channels that are inaccessible to us</h2>
<p>Dolphins’ impressive ability to “see with their ears” doesn’t stop there. Dolphins can listen to the echoes of clicks produced by their fellow dolphins, an ability known as “eavesdropping”](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03199007). In this way, they can “share” what they detect with the members of their group and coordinate their movements.</p>
<p>As part of my research, I was interested in <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA491087577">how dolphins use their clicks to synchronise their movements</a>. To do this, I exploited a <a href="https://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/article/vol-43-iss-2-lopez-marulanda/">recording method using four hydrophones and a 360° camera</a>, which make it possible to know which dolphin is making a sound – something that was previously impossible because dolphins do not open their mouths to vocalise.</p>
<p>I was able to show that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635721000449">when the dolphins jump synchronously in a dolphinarium, one produces the clicks while the others remain silent</a>. In our experiment, we determined that the animal that produced the clicks was always the oldest female.</p>
<p>Will the same thing happen in the wild when dolphins fish in coordination? To find out, we would need to use the same 360° audiovisual recording method in the ocean. This would involve establishing an observation base in a feeding area with good visibility – for example, when dolphins are feeding around fish farms. The regular proximity of the dolphins would make it possible to record their solitary fishing behaviour, and to better understand how they cooperate and coordinate, using all of their three “super senses”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224884/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Juliana López Marulanda is co-founder of the Macuaticos Colombia Foundation for the research and conservation of cetaceans in Colombia.</span></em></p>Let’s delve into the three super-senses of dolphins: magnetic perception, electrical perception and echolocation.Juliana López Marulanda, Enseignante chercheuse en éthologie, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243962024-02-26T15:44:21Z2024-02-26T15:44:21ZCould tardigrades have colonized the Moon?<p>Just over five years ago, on 22 February 2019, an unmanned space probe was placed in orbit around the Moon. Named <a href="https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=2019-009B"><em>Beresheet</em> and built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries</a>, it was intended to be the first private spacecraft to perform a soft landing. Among the probe’s payload were tardigrades, renowed for their ability to survive in even the harshest climates.</p>
<p>The mission <a href="https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/sciencepanorama/what-happened-beresheet">ran into trouble from the start</a>, with the failure of “star tracker” cameras intended to determine the spacecraft’s orientation and thus properly control its motors. Budgetary limitations had imposed a pared-down design, and while the command center was able to work around some problems, things got even trickier on 11 April, the day of the landing.</p>
<p>On the way to the Moon the spacecraft had been travelling at high speed, and it needed to be slowed way down to make a soft landing. Unfortunately during the braking manoeuvre a gyroscope failed, blocking the primary engine. <a href="https://spacenews.com/spaceil-says-chain-of-events-led-to-crash-of-lunar-lander/">At an altitude of 150 m, <em>Beresheet</em> was still moving at 3,000 km/h</a>, far too fast to be stopped in time. The impact was violent – the probe shattered and its remains were scattered over a distance of around a hundred metres. We know this because the site was photographed by NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) satellite on 22 April.</p>
<p><a title="NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Wikimedia" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File :Beresheet_Crash_Site_Spotted_LRO_02.gif"><img width="512" alt="Beresheet crash site spotted by LRO 02" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Beresheet_Crash_Site_Spotted_LRO_02.gif/512px-Beresheet_Crash_Site_Spotted_LRO_02.gif"></a></p>
<h2>Animals that can withstand (almost) anything</h2>
<p>So what happened to the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/57985-tardigrade-facts.html">tardigrades</a> that were travelling on the probe? Given their remarkable abilities to survive situations that would kill pretty much any other animal, could they have contaminated the Moon? Worse, might they be able to reproduce and colonize it?</p>
<p>Tardigrades are microscopic animals that measure less than a millimetre in length. All have neurons, a mouth opening at the end of a retractable proboscis, an intestine containing a microbiota and four pairs of non-articulated legs ending in claws, and most have two eyes. As small as they are, they share a common ancestor with arthropods such as insects and arachnids.</p>
<p>Most tardigrades live in aquatic environments, but they can be found in any environment, even urban ones. <a href="https://biophysique.mnhn.fr/fr/annuaire/emmanuelle-delagoutte-9017">Emmanuelle Delagoutte</a>, a researcher at the CNRS, collects them in the mosses and lichens of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. To be active, feed on microalgae such as chlorella, and move, grow and reproduce, tardigrades need to be surrounded by a film of water. They reproduce sexually or asexually via parthenogenesis (from an unfertilised egg) or even hermaphroditism, when an individual (which possesses both male and female gametes) self-fertilises. Once the egg has hatched, the active life of a tardigrade lasts from 3 to 30 months. A total of <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-95702-9">1,265 species have been described</a>, including two fossils.</p>
<h2>Otherworldly powers</h2>
<p>Tardigrades are famous for their resistance to conditions that exist neither on Earth nor on the Moon. They can shut down their metabolism by losing up to 95% of their body water. Some species synthesise a sugar, trehalose, that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-04015-2">acts as an antifreeze</a>, while others synthesise proteins that are thought to incorporate cellular constituents into an amorphous “glassy” network that offers resistance and protection to each cell.</p>
<p>During dehydration, the tardigrade’s body can shrink to half its normal size. The legs disappear, with only the claws still visible. This state, known as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/cryptobiosis">cryptobiosis</a>, persists until conditions for active life become favourable again.</p>
<p>Depending on the species of tardigrade, individuals need more or less time to dehydrate and not all specimens of the same species manage to return to active life. Dehydrated adults survive for a few minutes at temperatures as low as -272°C or as high as 150°C, and over the long term at high doses of gamma rays of 1,000 or 4,400 Gray (Gy). By way of comparison, a dose of 10 Gy is fatal for humans, and 40-50,000 Gy sterilises all types of material. However, whatever the dose, radiation kills tardigrade eggs. What’s more, the protection afforded by cryptobiosis is not always clear-cut, as in the case of <em>Milnesium tardigradum</em>, where radiation affects both active and dehydrated animals in the same way.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577940/original/file-20240226-18-qtnl5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The species <em>Milnesium tardigradum</em> in its active state.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrada#/media/Fichier:SEM_image_of_Milnesium_tardigradum_in_active_state_-_journal.pone.0045682.g001-2.png">E. Schokraie, U. Warnken, A. Hotz-Wagenblatt, M.A. Grohme, S. Hengherr, et al. (2012).</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lunar life?</h2>
<p>So what happened to the tardigrades after they crashed on the Moon? Are any of them still viable, buried under the moon’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunarsoil">regolith</a>, the dust that varies in depth from a few metres to several dozen metres?</p>
<p>First of all, they have to have survived the impact. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33978458/">Laboratory tests</a> have shown that frozen specimens of the <em>Hypsibius dujardini</em> species travelling at 3,000 km/h in a vacuum were fatally damaged when they smashed into sand. However, they survived impacts of 2,600 km/h or less – and their “hard landing” on the Moon, unwanted or not, was far slower.</p>
<p>The Moon’s surface is not protected from solar particles and cosmic rays, particularly gamma rays, but here too, the tardigrades would be able to resist. In fact, Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, professor at the University of Kiel in Germany, and his team have shown that the <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1334">doses of gamma rays hitting the lunar surface were permanent but low</a> compared with the doses mentioned above – 10 years’ exposure to Lunar gamma rays would correspond to a total dose of around 1 Gy.</p>
<p>But then there’s the question of “life” on the Moon. The tardigrades would have to withstand a lack of water as well as temperatures ranging from -170 to -190°C during the lunar night and 100 to 120°C during the day. A lunar day or night lasts a long time, just under 15 Earth days. The probe itself wasn’t designed to withstand such extremes and even if it hadn’t crashed, it would have ceased all activity after just a few Earth days.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the tardigrades, they can’t overcome the lack of liquid water, oxygen and microalgae – they would never be able to reactivate, much less reproduce. Their colonising the Moon is thus impossible. Still, inactive specimens are on lunar soil and their presence raises ethical questions, as <a href="https://www.prindleinstitute.org/2019/09/the-ethics-of-sending-life-to-the-moon-and-beyond/">Matthew Silk</a>, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh, points out. Moreover, at a time when space exploration is taking off in all directions, contaminating other planets could mean that we would lose the opportunity to detect extraterrestrial life.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The author thanks Emmanuelle Delagoutte and Cédric Hubas of the Muséum de Paris, and Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of the University of Kiel, for their critical reading of the text and their advice.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224396/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurent Palka ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Tardigrades are tiny animals known for their extraordinary survival skills, but are they tough enough to survive a space-probe crash and conditions on the Moon?Laurent Palka, Maître de conférences, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196782024-02-13T15:39:24Z2024-02-13T15:39:24ZFinancial sanctions: banks’ reactions depend on their location, research reveals<p>Individual states and intergovernmental organisations increasingly use financial sanctions to punish or influence the behaviour of targeted entities. However, our <a href="https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-abstract/36/11/4417/7160932">latest research</a> shows that even universally adopted sanctions can throw a spanner into the works of the global financial system for want of being enforced everywhere.</p>
<p>Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much ink has been spilled over the sanctions on Russia. Such economic sanctions – including arms embargoes and travel and trade restrictions – have been regularly used since World War II and have become indispensable foreign policy tools. And since the late 1980s, there has been a shift toward imposing financial sanctions, which involve freezing assets and investments.</p>
<p>The idea behind financial sanctions is to target key entities – such as decision-makers and major industries – to discourage the sanctioned country from breaking international law or acting aggressively, while at the same time limiting negative consequences for civilians. As a result, these so-called smart sanctions only ban some transactions with the target country, and financial institutions must thus scrutinise business opportunities to ensure they undertake only those that remain legal. Failing to comply can result in sizable penalties. In 2015, for example, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0NM41J/">BNP Paribas</a> was required to forfeit $8.83 billion and pay a $140 million fine after failing to comply with sanctions against Sudan, Cuba and Iran.</p>
<h2>How sanctions impact lending</h2>
<p>Sanctions will impose extra compliance costs on a bank, as it must fulfill reporting requirements and undertake due diligence checks to ensure its transactions are legal. The bank will also have to factor in the litigation costs and the reputational risk involved if its due diligence should fail. We wanted to understand how these costs and risks alter lending decisions. One possibility would be that the bank withdraws all business from the sanctioned country – but that would be an extreme position.</p>
<p>Instead, we assume that a bank’s decision to lend in sanctioned countries will depend on the trade-off between the expected profits and the costs of due diligence and possibly litigation. However, both the cost of compliance and the risks associated with non-compliance vary significantly across countries. In Germany, for example, labour costs are high, so hiring people to carry out due diligence is expensive. Strong data protection laws in Germany also increase the costs of carrying out checks. In some other countries, those costs may be lower, or the government may not have the resources to enforce compliance, making litigation less likely. Do those differences affect how banks respond to sanctions?</p>
<h2>Location, location, location</h2>
<p>Thanks to data provided by Germany’s central bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, we were able to study the behaviour of German banks worldwide. The data show how much each bank in Germany was lending in foreign countries from 2002 to 2015. Importantly, German banks are also required to record how much their foreign affiliates (branches and subsidiaries outside Germany) are lending in each country.</p>
<p>Looking at this data, we see clear differences in how German banks in different countries responded to sanctions. Banks in Germany strongly reduced their positions in countries targeted by sanctions. But their foreign affiliates, on average, increased lending relative to their parent banks at home and, in some cases, also in absolute terms.</p>
<h2>The importance of the Financial Action Task Force</h2>
<p>There are variations in behaviour between affiliates in different countries, so we needed a way to categorise countries according to the sanctions-related costs they impose, which are related to the quality of the countries’ institutions and anti-crime policies.</p>
<p>Founded in 1989, the <a href="https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/home.html">Financial Action Task Force</a> (FATF), also known by its French name, Groupe d’action financière (GAFI), is an intergovernmental organisation that sets international standards to allow national authorities to go after illicit funds linked to money laundering, terrorism and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. Our analysis showed that German bank affiliates located outside the FATF increased their positions in sanctioned countries by an average of 95% relative to German banks inside the FATF. That figure rises to 151% in countries blacklisted as noncompliant with FATF rules.</p>
<p>The fact that banks in Germany and within the FATF strongly <em>decreased</em> their lending in sanctioned countries, whereas banks outside the FATF <em>increased</em> their positions, suggests that lending decisions indeed depend on a trade-off between seizing profitable investment opportunities and the costs of due diligence and possibly litigation.</p>
<h2>Levelling the playing field</h2>
<p>One key takeaway from this is that, regardless of whether it is the litigation risks or compliance costs that ultimately drive the decision to lend in sanctioned countries (or not), you don’t have a level playing field. Banks in locations with weaker standards for the integrity of the financial system seem to find lending in sanctioned countries more attractive.</p>
<p>Regulators work together to harmonise rules and financial standards across countries, with a view to ironing out any regulatory irregularities for international banking competition. However, our analysis of financial sanctions and cross-border lending shows that this doesn’t go far enough. To guarantee a level playing field, it is also vital to make sure all countries effectively comply with these sanctions.</p>
<p>Such conclusions are probably valid beyond the realm of sanctions and may very well extend to other contexts of international regulation and globally integrated markets. Indeed policymakers typically won’t limit themselves to harmonising rules and standards in money laundering, sanctions, and terrorism financing (FATF) across countries, but also seek to harmonise the financial regulations of banks – such as in the area of leverage, for example.</p>
<p>This important finding applies as much to standards that regulate the litigation and compliance risk of banks (i.e., the FATF standards) as those that regulate financial risk-taking and <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/basel_accord.asp">leverage</a>. Our work ultimately suggests that policymakers must pay equal attention that all countries enforce such financial regulations to the same degree.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grant of EUR 5000 from the French National Research Agency (ANR), “Investissements d’Avenir” (LabEx
Ecodec/ANR-11-LABX-0047). Deutsche Bundesbank (German central bank) provided on-site access to the database External Position Report and free accommodation on the premises of the central bank during the author’s research visits.</span></em></p>German banks located outside of areas regulated by a key financial watchdog sharply increased business with sanctioned countries.Matthias Efing, Associate professor of finance, HEC Paris Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2200252024-02-08T16:54:26Z2024-02-08T16:54:26ZAI in the developing world: how ‘tiny machine learning’ can have a big impact<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574354/original/file-20240208-22-lty35i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2000%2C1353&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A team in Argentina is using sensors based on TinyML technology to study _Chelonoidis chilensis_ tortoises. Little is known about its biology and the species is in a vulnerable state. The small sensors, in black on the shell, are small enough to allow the animal to move freely. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) applications has traditionally been dominated by the use of resource-intensive servers centralised in industrialised nations. However, recent years have witnessed the emergence of small, energy-efficient devices for AI applications, a concept known as <a href="https://www.datacamp.com/blog/what-is-tinyml-tiny-machine-learning">tiny machine learning</a> (TinyML).</p>
<p>We’re most familiar with consumer-facing applications such as <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.07128">Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant</a>, but the limited cost and small size of such devices allow them to be deployed in the field. For example, the technology has been used to <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582515.3609514">detect mosquito wingbeats and so help prevent the spread of malaria</a>. It’s also been part of the <a href="https://www.smartparks.org/opencollar-io/">development of low-power animal collars to support conservation efforts</a>.</p>
<h2>Small size, big impact</h2>
<p>Distinguished by their small size and low cost, TinyML devices operate within constraints reminiscent of the dawn of the personal-computer era – memory is measured in kilobytes and hardware can be had for as little as US$1. This is possible because TinyML doesn’t require a laptop computer or even a mobile phone. Instead, it can instead run on simple microcontrollers that power standard electronic components worldwide. In fact, given that there are already <a href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/why-tinyml-is-a-giant-opportunity/">250 billion microcontrollers deployed globally</a>, devices that support TinyML are already available at scale.</p>
<p>A number of development packages for TinyML applications are available. Two popular options are <a href="https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/arduino-tiny-machine-learning-kit">Arduino</a> and <a href="https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-ESP32S3-Sense-p-5639.html">Seeed Studio</a>, both of which come with additional sensors for audio, vision, and motion-based applications.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C48%2C4031%2C2764&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C48%2C4031%2C2764&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573124/original/file-20240202-23-rgy9pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">TinyML workshop at Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia, 2023. Participants working on the ‘smile’ or ‘serious’ face-detection application.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marco Zennaro</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How does it work?</h2>
<p>Like classical machine learning, TinyML involves data collection – often from Internet of Things (IoT) devices – and cloud-based training. Let’s consider an outdoor object-detection application – for example, counting the number of cars on a street to see how heavy the traffic there is. In the classical ML process, images have to be gathered using a webcam and sent to a cloud server where the training takes place. Once the trained model provides an acceptable level of accuracy, the system is ready to detect cars from a new video feed. The ML model runs on the cloud, so an Internet connection is necessary.</p>
<p>In the TinyML system, however, the model is deployed on the device itself and is ready to detect objects with no need for connectivity. The first part of the process (gathering data and training the model on the cloud) follows the classical ML model but the inference phase (detecting objects) runs on the device itself. This is how TinyML diverges from traditional server-based architectures: it deploys pre-trained compact models optimised for limited resources onto embedded devices, enabling real-time, low-power data analysis and decision-making, all independent of cloud connectivity.</p>
<p>TinyML offers several advantages over traditional centralised server-based models:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Affordability: the technology’s low cost makes these devices accessible to a wide range of users including educational institutions and students in the developing world.</p></li>
<li><p>Sustainability: the modest energy consumption produces a <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3608473">low carbon footprint</a>, reducing impact on the environment.</p></li>
<li><p>Flexibility and scalability: it enables the development of applications that address the needs of local communities rather than global agendas.</p></li>
<li><p>Internet independent: Because everything is embedded, TinyML devices can operate without online connectivity. This is particularly beneficial for the third of the world that still does not have Internet access.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>TinyML applications already power <a href="https://cms.tinyml.org/wp-content/uploads/summit2021/tinyMLSummit2021d3_tinyTalks_Gandhi.pdf">personalised sensors for athletics and provide localisation where GPS isn’t available</a>. They’re also employed by startups such as <a href="https://usefulsensors.com/">Useful Sensors</a>, which offers privacy-conserving conversational agents, QR code scanners, and person-detection hardware. Only through the use of TinyML could these smart devices run on the low-cost, low-power microcontrollers.</p>
<h2>Developing in the Global South</h2>
<p>To help the use of TinyML grow in regions where a centralised machine-learning model would face significant challenges, we built <a href="https://tinymledu.org/4d">TinyML4D</a>, a network of academic institutions in developing countries. It already includes more than 40 countries spanning the Global South from Columbia to Ethiopia to Malaysia.</p>
<p>With support from UNESCO’s International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and from Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science, the network was launched in 2021. Its aim is to develop a community of educators, researchers and practitioners focused on both improving access to TinyML education, and developing innovative solutions to address the unique challenges faced by developing countries.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573122/original/file-20240202-19-rq3yjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of the TinyML Academic Network. More than 50 universities are part of the network as of February 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marcelo Rovai</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To make all this possible, we needed to develop ways to share educational resources globally. Initial efforts included distributing TinyML hardware kits to selected universities with budgetary challenges. We also organised global and regional (Africa, Latin America, and Asia) workshops and training sessions. Using a mixture of in-person, online and hybrid methods, we’ve reached more 1,000 participants in over than 50 countries. The combination of no-cost or low-cost hardware resources, combined with open-source course materials and workshops has enabled TinyML to be taught by many of our network members in their home countries.</p>
<p>Beyond our workshops and training activities, we have launched a series of regional collaborations, outreach activities and virtual “show and tell” events to share best practices and augment our network’s impact among practitioners. Throughout, there has been a strong focus on addressing the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573125/original/file-20240202-27-wcu4vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workshop at Kobe Institute of Computing, Japan, in 2023. Participants are working on ‘keyword spotting’ applications, developing their personal Alexa/Google Home on a $10 device. The system can be trained to recognise local dialects.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marco Zennaro</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These collaborations have led to multiple peer-reviewed papers on TinyML applications. In addition to the solution to <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524458.3547258">detect mosquito species</a>, which could lead to more efficient malaria-control campaigns, others include the <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3586991">responsible use of intelligent sensors</a> and low-cost solutions to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkZEFzBfiJI">monitoring atrial fibrillation and sinus rhythm</a>. They’re also used by Cornell University’s <a href="https://www.elephantlisteningproject.org/about-elp/">“Elephant Listening Project”</a> as well <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.11493.pdf">monitoring water quality in aquaculture to help make it more sustainable</a>, a project supported by EU’s <a href="https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-2020_en">Horizon 2020</a> programme.</p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>TinyML represents a transformative approach to artificial intelligence and is especially pertinent to developing countries. It offers a sustainable path toward democratising AI technology, fostering local innovation, and addressing regional challenges.</p>
<p>The growth of TinyML devices and applications is not without potential challenges and risks, however. The number of applications and devices is expected to rise from the millions shipped today to <a href="https://www.abiresearch.com/press/tinyml-device-shipments-grow-25-billion-2030-15-million-2020/">2.5 billion devices in 2030</a>, and that could lead to increased electronic waste due to the low-cost nature of devices. There’s also the risk of embedded biases in critical ML models – because they operate standalone, there’s no option for updates. Finally, there are privacy concerns due to the discrete integration of devices in the environment. As the field evolves, it will be crucial to navigate these issues responsibly, and so help ensure that TinyML remains a tool for positive change and sustainable development.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>UNESCO’s duty remains to reaffirm the humanist missions of education, science and culture. Mobilise education to transform lives; Reconcile with the living; Promote inclusion and mutual understanding; Foster science and technology at the service of humanity are UNESCO’s key strategic objectives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220025/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Traditionally dominated by the use of centralised, resource-intensive servers, machine learning is being democratised with the growth of “TinyML”, distinguished by its small size and low cost.Marco Zennaro, Coordinator, Science, Technology and Innovation Unit, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)Brian Plancher, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Barnard CollegeMatthew Stewart, Postdoctoral Researcher, Harvard UniversityVijay Janapa Reddi, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211572024-01-29T15:44:46Z2024-01-29T15:44:46ZFrom Twitter to X: one year on, are white supremacists back?<p>On 28 October 2022, just one day after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk published a message that summed up his vision for its future: “The bird is free”.</p>
<p>The social network’s emblematic blue colour quickly gave way to the black X – reminiscent of the dark web – when Musk’s X Corp, took control. Soon after, the billionaire announced the <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/why-some-tech-ceos-are-rooting-for">restoration of 62,000 previously suspended accounts</a>, including – and this was to make headlines – that of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The technology mogul clearly stated his intention: to transform Twitter into a platform where freedom of speech would approach the absolute. In so doing, he <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-outsourced-content-moderators/">gutted the site’s moderation mechanisms</a>, intended to reduce hate speech and counter the epidemic of misinformation on the platform. Put in place at the encouragement of the <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662">US Congress</a>, Musk felt that they had no place in the brave new world of X.</p>
<p>Predictably, this new direction generated polarised reactions in the United States. Some feared a rise in extremism, in particular supremacist movements, due to the spread and possible normalisation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/21/great-replacement-theory-antisemitism-racism-rightwing-mainstream">racist and anti-Semitic content</a>. At the same time, others saluted the new “freedom of expression”, and even called for the accounts of white nationalist leaders to be reinstated.</p>
<p>Just over a year later, Musk retweeted his original message on the anniversary of his takeover, embellishing it with the word <em>freedom</em>. So what is the actual state of white nationalist accounts on the social network, and what are the foreseeable implications for the evolution of extremism in public discourse?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1717917213301055508"}"></div></p>
<h2>The persistent suspension of white nationalist leaders</h2>
<p>X carried out an initial wave of restorations of suspended accounts <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/08/tech/twitter-unbanned-users-returning/index.html">from November 2022</a>, including white-nationalist leaders suspended from 2017 to 2021. The waves of <a href="https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/deplatform.php">“deplatforming”</a> started after the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/19/us/charlottesville-unite-the-right-civil-trial-how-we-got-here/index.html">Charlottesville “United the Right” rally that turned deadly</a> and continued through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-permanently-suspends-trump-after-u-s-capitol-siege-citing-risk-of-further-violence-152924">assault on the US Capitol</a>. </p>
<p>During that period, the accounts of well-known figures such as Ku Klux Klan icon <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/david-duke-twitter-ban/index.html">David Duke</a> were suspended. The measure also affected less high-profile but equally important individuals, such as <a href="https://www.cnet.com/culture/white-nationalist-jared-taylor-american-renaissance-sues-twitter-for-account-suspension/">Jared Taylor</a>, founder of the white supremacist website <a href="https://www.amren.com/">American Renaissance</a>, and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/25370/chapter-abstract/192454202">Greg Johnson</a>, publisher of the white nationalist magazine <em>Counter-Currents</em>.</p>
<p>Even with Musk’s arrival, however, these and other accounts have remained inaccessible. Because they all promote the idea of a racial state in the United States based on a homogeneous white identity, their content contradicts X’s new security rules, which prohibit <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/x-rules">associations with violent or hateful entities</a>. Other key accounts were deactivated by Elon Musk’s teams, such as that of the anti-Semitic and white nationalist psychologist <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/kevin-macdonald">Kevin MacDonald</a> in April 2023.</p>
<p>While the persistent absence of these leaders deprives a fragmented movement of points of ideological convergence, this does not mean that the platform is free of anti-democratic racialism. Many minor figures already on Twitter have managed to slip past X’s new rules and establish themselves as the new voices to follow.</p>
<p>The platform carried out a second wave of restorations in January 2023, and while it didn’t restore high-profile theorists of racialism, groups close to white nationalism, such as Nick Fuentes’s <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/groypers/">Groypers</a>, have attempted to reestablish themselves.</p>
<h2>The intellectual dark web or “authentic” right-wing X</h2>
<p>Musk’s Twitter tends to favour an essentialising line of the <a href="https://intellectualdarkweb.site/">intellectual dark web</a>, a motley collection of personalities who claim academic qualifications in order to define themselves as thinkers. Their shared ideology is often based on a biological conception of gender, crystallising traditionalist roles that confine men to a productive, masculine power, while assigning women a femininity centred on the home.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1604080906746355719"}"></div></p>
<p>The account of Stefan Molyneux, once part of the <a href="https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1613610719043256331">alt-right movement</a>, was reinstated back in January 2023. With a following of several hundred thousand, he is known for his libertarian views within the <a href="https://unherd.com/2021/12/why-the-right-is-obsessed-with-masculinity/">“manosphere”</a>, a particularly reactionary version of masculinism characterised by militant hostility to anything that its members consider to be “wokism.” This ideological trend has been reinforced by the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2022/11/18/jordan-peterson-returns-to-twitter-immediately-demands-the-site-censor-anonymous-trolls/">reactivation of the accounts of Jordan B. Peterson</a> and <a href="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/james-lindsay-exclusive-part-one">James Lindsay</a>, two figures in this movement.</p>
<p>The “manosphere” also tends to serve as a gateway to other groups adjacent to white nationalism. The synthesis of identity is embodied by the return to X of Bronze Age Pervert (known as “BAP” to his followers), the provocative pseudonym of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/bronze-age-pervert-costin-alamariu/674762/">Costin Alamariu</a>. His world view is based on a rigid sexual hierarchy dominated by alpha males who enjoy ephemeral seduction. It also adds the ambiguity of virile friendships marked by a warrior aesthetic.</p>
<p>Since given a green light by Elon Musk, BAP has found a growing audience, which now exceeds 130,000 followers, an increase of two thirds in one year. Its presence has restored structure to a movement that commonly refers to itself as the “authentic” right-wing Twitter. It has also encouraged a shift from simple anti-woke libertarianism to more overt neo-fascism.</p>
<p>Indeed, BAP is not so different from the white-nationalist accounts that are <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/16/bronze-age-pervert-masculinity-00105427">inaccessible on X</a>. He subscribes to a neo-Nietzschean philosophy, placing his elitist notion of fraternity against ethnic groups. Social relations are essentialised to the extreme: they are no longer euphemistic, but sublimated by the illusion of belonging to a community based on the celebration of a strength that is achieved solely through the domination of others.</p>
<h2>The NatCon movement</h2>
<p>At first glance, X’s rejection of explicitly racialist or anti-Semitic accounts while allowing the presence and growth of an adjacent neo-fascist network may seem paradoxical. There are several possible explanations.</p>
<p>From a semiotic point of view, this faction of the extreme right has developed its own codes of language that enable it to bypass the recommendation algorithms. Masculinist discourses, which take a stand against gender theories, seem to be favoured by Elon Musk. Indeed, he made his opposition to the “woke virus” explicit when he reinstated the satirical <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/the-babylon-bees-twitter-account-reinstated-elon-musk-suspension-transgender-joke-back">Babylon Bee</a> account. </p>
<p>The right-wing extreme influencers returning to the platform tend to gravitate towards the “NatCon” movement, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/national-conservatism-conference/594202/">nationalist conservatism</a> bringing together various illiberal political branches, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/national-conservatism-conference/594202/">under the leadership of Yoram Hazony</a>. From 2019, BAP received the support of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/174656/claremont-institute-think-tank-trump">the Claremont Institute</a>, a think tank closely associated with the NatCon network, for the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/are-the-kids-altright/">promotion of its book _Bronze Age Mindset</a>_.</p>
<p>This inclusion in a key organisation of national conservatism establishes a link to <a href="https://reason.com/2020/08/02/wait-wasnt-peter-thiel-a-libertarian">libertarian Peter Thiel</a>, founder of Palantir, co-founder of PayPal and former associate of Elon Musk. The relationship between a Silicon Valley tycoon and a masculinist philosopher may seem tenuous, yet Thiel is a major donor to the Republican Party and has never hidden his adherence to an anti-democratic ideology akin to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/marc-andreessen-manifesto-techno-optimism.html">neo-reactionary thinking of Curtis Yarvin</a>. BAPtism enjoys considerable support, and is at the extreme of the <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">continuum promoting a “New Right”</a>.</p>
<p>The question of white nationalism can therefore be posed in strategic terms. Despite their ideological proximity, the refusal of the NatCon conference organisers to accept the presence of the movement’s leaders is justified by the <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/national-conservatism-trump">concern not to see their image linked to such an openly extreme movement</a>. Association with what is labelled “white nationalism” is seen as detrimental to attracting a broad and diverse audience. On the contrary, staging its rejection helps to reassure and reinforce NatCon’s respectability.</p>
<p>In the conference rooms and on X, NatCon seems to have set about rebuilding a movement on the basis of new codes and new figures. It is these choices that will determine whether the anti-democratic project can be perceived as acceptable, and whether masculinist extremism can become the political norm in the Republican Party. As far back as 2022, Blake Masters, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senator of Arizona, gained the support of the hard right with a program that was both traditionalist and protectionist.</p>
<p>The Twitter bird may be free, but X is being selective. A year after Elon Musk took control, fears about the rise of white nationalism need to be contextualised and rationalised more than ever. A study of the influential accounts that are actually active shows that the terms of the debate are in danger of shifting from the alt-right to the New Right. As the 2024 elections approach, this framework will be of great importance in analysing the resurgence of all forms of white supremacism in the United States.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>When Elon Musk took control of Twitter, many were concerned about the reappearance of extremist accounts. In retrospect, X has shown itself to be selective.Sarah Rodriguez-Louette, Doctorante à l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, membre de la Chaire Unesco « Savoir Devenir à l'ère du développement numérique durable»., Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3 Divina Frau-Meigs, Professeur des sciences de l'information et de la communication, Auteurs historiques The Conversation FranceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1264022024-01-24T17:19:28Z2024-01-24T17:19:28ZTraining to reduce cognitive bias may improve decision making after all<p>Ever since Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky formalised the concept of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/cognitive-bias">cognitive bias in 1972</a>, most empirical evidence has given credence to the claim that our brain is incapable of improving our decision-making abilities. Cognitive bias has practical ramifications beyond private life, extending to professional domains including business, military operations, political policy, and medicine.</p>
<p>Some of the clearest examples of the effects of bias on consequential decisions have occurred in military operations. Confirmation bias, that is the tendency to conduct a biased search for and interpretation of evidence in support of our hypotheses and beliefs, has contributed to the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 and, more recently, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. It has also been identified as one of the most deleterious biases on social media, actively contributing to the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10796-021-10222-9">development of polarisation and echo chambers in exchanges</a>.</p>
<h2>Can one bend one’s intuition?</h2>
<p>Despite all the attention in recent years on reducing cognitive bias, most evidence suggests that there’s little we can do to improve our professional and personal decision making. But a recent experiment suggests that it may be possible for training to improve decision making in the field.</p>
<p>We are regularly reminded of the many ways that cognitive biases interfere with our decision making. However, beyond teaching a specific skill or rule – for example, how to calculate expected values – reading articles and books or even completing courses and business cases <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01142.x">has proven of little help</a> to people in the throes of making a decision. That conclusion was succinctly summarised by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate and a founder of the field and, who said in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/cognitive-bias/565775/">a 2018 interview</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You can’t improve intuition. Perhaps, with very long-term training, lots of talk, and exposure to behavioural economics, what you can do is cue reasoning… Unfortunately, the world doesn’t provide cues. And for most people, in the heat of argument, the rules go out the window.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That view is backed up by a trail of frustrating findings from the <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA099435">1980s</a> on, where even trained experts such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7070445">doctors</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/074959788790046X">realtors</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2012.01438.x">philosophers</a> did not show improved decision making when faced with novel contexts and problems in the field.</p>
<p>In an article published in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797619861429"><em>Psychological Science</em></a>, we report promising results that suggest this post-mortem may be premature. In an experiment involving graduate business students, we found that bias-reduction training can improve decision making in field settings even though reminders of bias are absent.</p>
<h2>Training sessions and computer games</h2>
<p>The experiment was designed to surreptitiously measure the influence of a single <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175">de-bias training intervention</a> – the tendency to search for evidence confirming hypotheses and ideas we already suspect or believe to be true, to overweight facts and ideas that support that belief, and to discount or ignore evidence that supports alternate hypotheses.</p>
<p>A little more than half of participants in the experiment (62%) were given the training and then asked to complete a business case designed to test confirmation bias, but they were unaware of the connection between the training and the case. The rest of participants first completed the case and then received training. Even though the time lag between training and the case averaged 18 days and the structure of problems used in the training differed from the case, comparison of the trained and untrained students revealed that training reduced choice of the inferior, hypothesis-confirming case solution by 29%.</p>
<p>To disguise the relationship between training and the case, all graduate business students in three programs were invited to play a serious computer game in a set of sessions that took place over a 20-day window. This particular training intervention has produced large and long-lasting reductions of confirmation bias, correspondence bias, and the bias blind spot, in laboratory contexts. Originally created for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it has been used to reduce bias in US government intelligence analysts.</p>
<h2>Imagining you’re leading an automotive racing team</h2>
<p>All graduate students in the three programs also completed, in one of their courses, an unannounced business case known as “Carter Racing”, a case modelled on the fatal decision to launch the <em>Challenger</em> space shuttle in 1986. Here, each student acted as the lead of an automotive racing team making a high-stakes, go/no-go decision: remain in a race or withdraw from it. We then used natural variance in the training schedule to test whether the effects of debias training would transfer to improved decision making in the case, when trainees were not aware that their decision making would be examined for bias.</p>
<p>At first sight, the case narrative and payoff structure favour the hypothesis-confirming choice: remaining in the race. A careful examination of the data provided in the case, however, reveals that withdrawing from the race is an objectively superior option, but it requires the compilation of two charts. The first chart tracks frequencies of engine failures in relation to temperature at the time of the race. The other chart tracks frequencies of races without engine failures by temperatures at the time of the race. Casual inspection of either chart would not reveal the clear relationship between failures and temperature, but when both charts are considered together, the relationship is strikingly clear. A catastrophic engine failure is nearly certain at the low temperature recorded just before the race is to begin.</p>
<p>Participants trained before completing the case were 29% less likely to choose the inferior hypothesis-confirming solution than participants trained after completing the case. To address possible selection biases, such as better students signing up for earlier training sessions, we tested and found that the effect held even if we only compared participants who completed the training one day before or after the case. Further, when controlling for factors including students’ work experience, age, grade point averages, GMAT scores, and propensity to engage in cognitive reflection, we found that the training intervention still significantly improved decision making.</p>
<p>Our analyses of participants’ written justifications for their decisions suggest that their improved decisions were driven by a reduction in confirmatory hypothesis testing. Trained participants spontaneously generated fewer arguments in support of going ahead with the race – the inferior case solution – than did untrained participants.</p>
<h2>Improvement is possible</h2>
<p>These results provide encouraging evidence that training can improve decision making in the field and consequential decisions in professional and personal life. It also addresses the concern that debiasing training may lead people to overcorrect or abandon <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-01984-002">heuristics</a>, the simple rules people rely on to reduce the complexity and effort when making decisions that sometimes <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661310001713">produce these biases</a>, in situations where they are useful. Trained participants were more likely to choose the optimal case solution, so training benefited rather than impaired decision making.</p>
<p>Of course, these findings are limited to a single field experiment. More research is needed to replicate the effect in other domains and to explain why this game-based training intervention transferred more effectively than have other forms of training tested by past research. Games may be more engaging training interventions than lectures or written summaries of research findings. The game also provided intensive practice and personalised feedback, which is another possibility. A third possibility is the way the intervention taught players about biases. Training may be more effective when it describes cognitive biases and how to mitigate them at an abstract level, and then gives trainees immediate practice testing out their new knowledge on different problems and contexts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne-Laure Sellier a reçu des financements de la Fondation HEC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carey K. Morewedge previously received funding for other debiasing research from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity of the United States Government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irene Scopelliti ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>It has long been thought one couldn’t bend one’s intuition. Recent research reveals it is in fact possible to reduce bias through training.Anne-Laure Sellier, Professeur de Sciences Comportementales à HEC Paris et membre du groupe de recherche CNRS-GREGHEC, HEC Paris Business SchoolCarey K. Morewedge, Professor of Marketing, Boston UniversityIrene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181612024-01-16T16:15:39Z2024-01-16T16:15:39ZDomestic violence: criminalising coercive control in France could bring more justice to victims<p>Over the last decade in many European countries, legislators, magistrates, government ministers, law enforcement agencies, lawyers and service providers have recognised that prevailing approaches to domestic violence were failing and have adopted the new model of “coercive control” to reframe domestic violence as a crime against rights and resources rather than as an assault.</p>
<h2>Criminalising coercive control</h2>
<p>In 2021, the <a href="https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22001-213869%22%5D%7D">European Court of Human Rights</a> instructed authorities to “promptly” revise the legal definition of domestic violence so that it covers “manifestations of controlling and coercive behaviour”.</p>
<p>Drawing on interviews with several hundred French professionals, victims, service providers and academics, the <a href="https://medias.vie-publique.fr/data_storage_s3/rapport/pdf/289498.pdf">Chandler-Vérien French parliamentary mission on domestic violence</a> tasked by Prime Minister Borne with improving the judicial treatment of domestic violence stressed the urgency of translating coercive control into law and called on coercive control to be at the core of future information campaigns and professional training.</p>
<p>The French Ministers for Equality between Women and Men <a href="https://twitter.com/BCouillard33/status/1705252762450079761">Bérangère Couillard</a> and <a href="https://www.librairie-des-femmes.fr/livre/9782234096677-la-fin-de-l-impunite-pour-une-revolution-judiciaire-et-juridique-en-matiere-de-violences-faites-aux-femmes-isabelle-rome/">Isabelle Rome</a>, an experienced magistrate, have stated their will to move forward with this approach to domestic violence. In a groundbreaking criminal hearing at the Poitiers Court of Appeal held in November 2023, First President <a href="https://www.librairiedalloz.fr/livre/9782369450900-elle-l-a-bien-cherche-la-justice-et-la-lutte-contre-les-violences-faites-aux-femmes-gwenola-joly-coz/">Gwenola Joly-Coz</a> and Attorney General <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ec-eric-corbaux-78a3a8a6_le-13-d%C3%A9cembre-jai-eu-le-plaisir-d%C3%AAtre-activity-7140963261486714882-apXl/?originalSubdomain=fr">Eric Corbaux</a> used the framework of coercive control in all the domestic violence cases. The court’s decisions are expected in January 2024.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ujk27hrL1JY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Isabelle Lonvis-Rome, former Minister Delegate for Equality between Women and Men, wants the concept of ‘coercive control’, which covers predatory behaviour deployed by a man to subjugate his spouse, to be better taken into account by the justice system (Public Sénat).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We believe that enacting a coercive control offence in France would be a significant advance in the equality agenda. Criminalising such behaviour would help protect <a href="https://arretonslesviolences.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2020-11/Lettre%20n%C2%B016%20-%20Les%20violences%20au%20sein%20du%20couple%20et%20les%20violences%20sexuelles%20en%202019.pdf">213,000 women</a>, <a href="https://www.ihemi.fr/sites/default/files/publications/files/2019-12/flash_21_violences_au_sein_du_couple_.pdf">82% of whom are mothers</a>, and their <a href="https://www.haut-conseil-egalite.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/hce_-_tableau_de_bord_d_indicateurs_-_politique_de_lutte_contre_les_violences_conjugales.pdf">398,310 children, who are also victims of domestic violence</a>, and so prevent the deaths of hundreds of partners, ex-partners and children every year.</p>
<h2>Coercive control: a “liberty crime”</h2>
<p>Coercive control has been referred to as a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/coercive-control-9780195384048">“liberty crime”</a> because of the experience of entrapment it produces, analogous to being held hostage. The rights infringed upon include autonomy, dignity and self-determination, even more so when victims have a disability. Unless the perpetrators’ range of actions are framed as a single malevolent course of conduct and stopped, this pattern of abuse and exploitation may continue for years, undetected.</p>
<p>The French and international situation described by one of us in the 2023 book <a href="https://www.dunod.com/sciences-humaines-et-sociales/controle-coercitif-au-coeur-violence-conjugale"><em>Coercive Control: At the Heart of Domestic Violence</em></a> (<em>Le Contrôle coercitif au cœur de la violence conjugale</em>) reflects three bodies of evidence : </p>
<ul>
<li><p>current domestic-violence laws have failed to hold perpetrators accountable and to protect victims, mainly women and children; </p></li>
<li><p>the lack of social control and legal sanctions encourages aggravation and recidivism, creating a revolving door in French courts and prisons; </p></li>
<li><p>victims confront situations that more closely resemble captivity than an assault.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>A system of impunity</h2>
<p>The French state’s High Council for Equality has found that the conviction rate for perpetrators of domestic violence amounted to a <a href="https://www.haut-conseil-egalite.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/hce_-_indicateurs_violences_conjugales_-_2019-2.pdf">“true system of impunity”</a>. The gap between the current criminalisation of domestic violence and its reality as <a href="https://www.ciivise.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Avis-meres-en-lutte.pdf">experienced by victims</a> can <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/181119/justice-la-perte-de-confiance">erode trust in the justice system</a>.</p>
<p>The conviction rate of perpetrators and the number of domestic homicides in France reflect the perpetrators’ lack of accountability. In 2022, <a href="https://mobile.interieur.gouv.fr/Publications/Securite-interieure/Etude-nationale-sur-les-morts-violentes-au-sein-du-couple-pour-l-annee-2022">118 women, 29 men and 12 children were killed</a>. In 2021, <a href="https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/actualites/actualites-du-ministere/etude-nationale-sur-morts-violentes-au-sein-du-couple-2021">121 feminicides</a> were officially recorded, a situation that is even more alarming if we add the <a href="https://arretonslesviolences.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2022-11/Lettre%20n%C2%B018%20-%20Les%20violences%20au%20sein%20du%20couple%20et%20les%20violences%20sexuelles%20en%202021.pdf">684 women who attempted suicide or committed suicide</a> as a result of “domestic harassment”. This failure, which takes place despite the <a href="https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/la-politique-degalite-entre-les-femmes-et-les-hommes-menee-par-letat">efforts made</a>, highlights the link between the ineffectiveness of the current understanding and criminalisation of domestic violence and its focus on acts that are poor markers of its most dangerous forms.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andreea-Gruev-Vintila/publication/360756577_Violences_au_sein_du_couple_pour_une_consecration_penale_du_controle_coercitif/links/6289e95c6e41e5002d3a6107/Violences-au-sein-du-couple-pour-une-consecration-penale-du-controle-coercitif.pdf">situation in France</a> is not unique. In 2016, when the Home Secretary discovered that England was spending more on policing domestic violence than on National Defense, but that neither domestic homicides nor reports of partner violence to police had declined, she called for an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-create-new-domestic-abuse-offence">entirely new approach</a> and adopted “coercive control” to replace all 14 definitions of domestic violence in use by health and social services in Britain. Similarly, in 2018 the Scottish parliament unanimously adopted <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2018/5/contents/enacted">Domestic Abuse Act</a>, a crime built around elements of coercive control that carried a maximum 14-year prison sentence, the same as murder.</p>
<h2>Surveillance, isolation, intimidation, control, personalised credible threats</h2>
<p>Since one of us published <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/coercive-control-9780195384048"><em>Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life</em></a> in 2007, in 2007, more than 1,000 monographs and countless survivor testimonials support the view that coercive control should be the primary focus of state intervention in abuse cases, not domestic violence, including the arrest and prosecution of perpetrators, protection, support and empowerment services for victims and protections for children.</p>
<p>The book presents evidence that 75% of the domestic violence incidents that currently lead to arrest are repeated assaults committed by a small proportion of offenders in the context of complimentary abusive behaviours, including sexual assaults, stalking, and other attempts to intimidate victims, and tactics to isolate and control them by taking their money, depriving them of resources and regulating their lives as well as those of their children.</p>
<p>In most cases, violence and/or sexual abuse is accompanied by intimidation, isolation, control tactics, and personalised credible threats. These begin in the house and can extend to every activity, including work, and involve children, other family members and unrelated others, including professionals, as spies, informants or co-victims.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569518/original/file-20240116-27-nw69v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The coercive control of women by men is the most important cause and context of violence against children and child homicide outside war zones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">iStock</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because perpetrators aim to monopolise all the resources and privileges available in a relationship or family space, their adult partner is usually their primary target. But any person who is seen as obstructing this monopoly is likely to be targeted as a secondary victim, including children, grandparents, siblings, friends, neighbours, coworkers, as well as law and social services professionals. <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2018/5/contents/enacted">Scotland’s inclusion of “child abuse”</a> as one element of the crime of coercive control highlights how easy it is for police, courts and child protection professionals to miss the frequency with children of all ages are “weaponised”, enlisted as confederates or made into “adjoined victims” by perpetrators who want to use them to hurt or control their mothers.</p>
<p>The effects of these tactics on the adult victims and their <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1162908823000373">children</a> range from paralysing fear, psychological dependence, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/coercive-control-in-childrens-and-mothers-lives-9780190922214">child and mother sabotage</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376515993_'Swim_swim_and_die_at_the_beach'_family_court_and_perpetrator_induced_trauma_CPIT_experiences_of_mothers_in_Brazil">court and perpetrator-induced trauma</a>, and impoverishment to “the death from a thousand cuts”, suicidality and fatality.</p>
<h2>What about the children?</h2>
<p>Coercive control of women by men is the most important cause of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-coercive-control-of-children-9780197587096">violence against children and child homicide outside war zones</a>. This often occurs after a separation, in the context of legal proceedings relating to the child’s custody and parental rights or during visiting rights. The aggressor can feel that the only way to punish his partner is to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/coercive-control-in-childrens-and-mothers-lives-9780190922214">sabotage her relationship with the children</a> or injure or kill them, as we tragically experienced in France this year with <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/hauts-de-seine-92/courbevoie-92400/infanticide-dans-les-hauts-de-seine-une-petite-fille-de-3-ans-succombe-a-ses-blessures-12-05-2023-UDIZS7ZYLBCS7JN2V5MVUN4JEE.php">the homicide of little Chloé, aged 5, by her father</a> whose mother had filed for divorce and against whom she had obtained a protection order.</p>
<p>The child is an <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09646639221089252">adjoined victim</a> in these cases, where the risk can only be deciphered in terms of the coercive control over the mother. The importance of extending protection to children in a law on coercive control was highlighted by a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366393524_Contribution_au_Rapport_UNSRVAW_violence_a_l%27egard_des_femmes_et_des_enfants_dans_les_affaires_concernant_la_residence_des_enfants_les_droits_de_visite_l%27autorite_parentale_-_France">French contribution</a> to a <a href="https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile">UN report</a> on violence against women and girls, judges’ request to <a href="https://www.dalloz-actualite.fr/node/comment-mieux-lutter-contre-feminicides-libres-propos-sur-controle-coercitif">include coercive control in French family law</a>, and recent <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fran%C3%A7oise-fericelli-13b273147_violences-intrafamiliales-et-protection-des-activity-7097855544564047872-RIo3/">family law jurisprudence</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The concept of “coercive control” reframes domestic violence as an attack on human rights and resources rather than an assault.Evan Stark, Professeur émérite, sociologue, Rutgers UniversityAndreea Gruev-Vintila, Maîtresse de conférences HDR en psychologie sociale, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2201502024-01-10T18:54:04Z2024-01-10T18:54:04Z‘Legal animism’: when a river or even nature itself goes to court<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566558/original/file-20231004-26-deen3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=130%2C32%2C5324%2C3582&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aerial view of a waterfall in the valley of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, where an historic lawsuit was won by a river in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/fr/image-photo/ecuador-waterfall-aerial-view-mountain-waterall-2150891681">Curioso.Photography/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 30 March 2011, a truly <a href="https://ejatlas.org/conflict/first-successful-case-of-rights-of-nature-ruling-vilcabamba-river-ecuador/">unprecedented event</a> took place at a provincial court in Loja, Equator, located some 270 miles from the capital of Quito. The Vilcabamba River, a plaintiff in a <a href="https://mariomelo.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/proteccion-derechosnatura-loja-11.pdf">trial there</a>, convinced the tribunal that its own rights were being undermined by a road development project. The project was then halted due because it would have jeopardised the river’s flow.</p>
<p>I was fortunate to be able to both attend this trial and examine what has been termed “legal animism” in two pioneering countries in the field, Ecuador and Bolivia.</p>
<p>Today, nations from <a href="https://notreaffaireatous.org/amendement-du-parlement-ougandais-du-national-environment-act-2019/">Uganda</a> to <a href="https://www.earthlaws.org.au/aelc/rights-of-nature/new-zealand/">New Zealand</a> are following suit by opening up their criminal justice systems to this type of jurisprudence that enables a natural entity, be it an ecosystem or indeed nature itself, to become a legal person and thus have rights. These innovations are raising hopes among some environmental activists, but they also remind us of the law’s malleability. From animals being called to stand trial in the <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-europes-insane-history-putting-animals-trial-executing/">Middle Ages</a> to the Indian lawyer who <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35489971">sued a god</a>, we have sculpted our laws in creative ways throughout the eras. Indeed, no one finds it odd nowadays that a business is considered a legal person.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505718/original/file-20230122-28471-kntkja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499989/original/file-20221209-29206-wsoxgj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of a sow and her piglets on trial for the murder of a child. The trial is believed to have taken place in 1457.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proc%C3%A8s_d%27animaux#/media/Fichier:Trial_of_a_sow_and_pigs_at_Lavegny.png">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When two worldviews collide</h2>
<p>By delving into the origin and development of the innovations in Ecuador and Bolivia, we can also observe how legal animism plays out in all its various guises, possibilities and limits. This is what I intend to do in this article.</p>
<p>South America may have blazed the trail, but the expression “legal animism” actually appeared for the first time in the writings of French legal researcher <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/insituarss/1338">Marie-Angèle Hermitte</a>. Right off the bat, this compound term connotes a meeting of two worlds and two philosophical traditions. In one corner, we have the animist worldview, which some Western schools of thought have portrayed as their antithesis; in the other, a system that forms the bedrock of European modernity.</p>
<p>In Ecuador and in Bolivia, we can find a common undercurrent of influences or frictions that pervades these two colliding worldviews. All at once, influences from North American environmental lawyers meld with the use of the divine Earth Mother figure present in Andean cosmogony.</p>
<h2>Constituent Assembly: the moment when the natural world became redefined</h2>
<p>Another commonality between these two nations is the rather specific context of the constituent assembly. In 2006 and 2007, respectively, Bolivia and Ecuador essentially wiped the slate clean by introducing assemblies tasked with drafting new constitutions. In doing so, they each witnessed a watershed moment of redefining their entire national identity.</p>
<p>Supported or even long awaited by Native communities in both countries, these changes led to a rising prominence of the figure of Pachamama, the embodiment of Mother Earth in Andean myth. Also evoking a meeting of two worlds, this name is a portmanteau of <em>pacha</em>, the Quechua and Aymara word for “world”, and <em>mama</em>, the Spanish word for “mother”. Out of these circumstances soon came a wave of aspirations to endow nature with a legal status.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mother Earth, or Pachamama, is a mythical figure found throughout Latin America. Shown here in Andean cosmology according to Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua (1613)." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552055/original/file-20231004-24-8ro2p2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mother Earth, or Pachamama, is a mythical figure present across Latin America. This depiction of her is taken from Andean cosmology, drawn by Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua (1613) based on an image from the Qorikancha (</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachamama#/media/Fichier:Santa_Cruz_Pachacuti_Yamqui_Pachamama.jpg">Domaine public</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Ecuador, legal animism was brought into the constituent assembly by intellectuals aligned with new theories of the law. They’re influenced by the concepts of US legal expert Christopher Stone, who proposed, as early as <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/should-trees-have-standing-9780199736072">1972</a>, that trees should have rights. To ground these ideas within the constitutional context, the advocates relied on reinterpretations of the country’s Indigenous knowledge. In fact, 80% of Ecuadorians are mixed-race European and Native, but <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/11/13/religion-in-latin-america/">virtually the entire population</a> identifies as Christian. It was out of these disparate influences that Article 71 of the Constitution was born. It stipulates:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Nature, or Pachamama where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. All persons, communities, peoples and nations can call upon public authorities to enforce the rights of nature.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Article 72 evokes the right for an ecosystem to be restored, while Article 73 cites the requirement to enforce the precautionary principle for activities that might lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems and the permanent alteration of natural cycles.</p>
<h2>The figure of Pachamama</h2>
<p>In Bolivia, constituents found themselves debating Pachamama’s specific attributes. On one side were residents from the highlands, who honour this deity each day; on the other were people from the lowlands and the south of the country, who had an altogether much more nebulous notion.</p>
<p>Pachamama’s scope of enforcement was also the subject of fierce discussion. If Mother Earth is omnipresent, must all living things be included in her definition? What are her limits? I had the chance to attend a debate that sought to ascertain whether, if Pachamama were considered a legal person, it would be possible – or indeed desirable – to sue a mosquito for biting a human.</p>
<p>These discussions culminated in a conceptualisation of Pachamama as an open-ended, collective entity; a Mother Earth across all planes of existence who should therefore be protected as such. This was to avoid the endless back-and-forth of determining what could or could not be included in her definition. Thus regarded as the mother of all things, her definition extends to every entity in the world. In the new constitution of 22 January 2010, no fewer than 10 articles mention Mother Earth based on these terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Mother Earth is a dynamic living system comprising an indivisible community of all living systems and living organisms, interrelated, interdependent and complementary, which share a common destiny. Mother Earth is considered sacred, from the worldviews of nations and indigenous peoples.” (Article 3)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Articles 5 and 6 set out the legal framework of Mother Earth as a “collective public interest”, affirming that all Bolivians can exercise the rights of Mother Earth, provided that they also respect individual and collective rights.</p>
<p>Article 7 then goes on to list the seven rights of Mother Earth, which are the right to life, to the diversity of life, to water, to clean air, to equilibrium, to restoration and to pollution-free living.</p>
<hr>
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<hr>
<h2>The permutations and limits of nature’s newfound rights</h2>
<p>With this new relationship to nature being enshrined in the two constitutions, what real-world consequences and applications have followed on from the legal tools that they have inspired? Again, Bolivia and Ecuador differ somewhat.</p>
<p>The Ecuadorian constituents’ desire to offer practical legal tools quickly gave way to legal actions, the first of which was the case of the Vilcabamba River. This trial was spurred by environmental activists who back in 2011 were already well versed in the law’s new potential, but we have since seen <a href="https://www.derechosdelanaturaleza.org.ec/casos-ecuador/">other proceedings led by a diverse cross-section of Ecuadorian society</a>.</p>
<p>The tools proposed by the new constitution soon outstripped the limits expected of them by ecological struggles across the world. In this respect, it was presumed that it would be tricky to isolate responsibility for cases concerning the environment. For instance, how could a project, organisation or person be held accountable for environmental damages if those damages were suffered beyond the borders of the offending country? The Ecuadorian justice system has managed to extricate itself from these issues by invoking the precautionary principle and <a href="https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/mlj/2014-v60-n1-mlj01619/1027721ar/">universal jurisdiction</a>.</p>
<p>In November 2010, citizens from Ecuador, as well as India, Colombia and Nigeria, pressed charges against British Petroleum before the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. After the company caused a colossal oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the plaintiffs demanded that it release information on the ecological disaster and its impact, and that it repair the damages caused. These citizens were not direct victims of the oil spill and were therefore not suing on behalf of their own rights, but of those of the ocean. Although the complaint was heard, the judges ultimately decided to dodge the issue, citing another constitutional framework that imposed a notion and scope of territoriality on legal cases.</p>
<p>By comparison, the Bolivian constituent assembly has done little in the way of offering simple recourse to the law for defending the rights of nature. Nevertheless, the drafting of the new constitution centred on the figure of Pachamama has not been a futile exercise.</p>
<p>In particular, there has been some disillusionment regarding the gap between the ambitious ideals built upon the rights of Mother Earth and the reality of ongoing projects to exploit natural resources. This has put the government in a difficult position. It declares Mother Earth as sacred on the one hand, but on the other, it has also been entrusted with managing business as usual – or even developing it further – across all economic sectors.</p>
<p>This disparity has a fuelled a certain anger, with the figure of Pachamama being used as a cornerstone of several struggles. Among them is the movement to stop the construction of a road leading to the region of TIPNIS, a natural reserve of the Bolivian Amazon. Against the “developmentalist” arguments of the Bolivian government, farmers’ organisations, Natives and civic committees alike have cited the rights of Mother Earth as guaranteed in the nation’s constitution.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Manifestants contre le projet de route de TIPNIS arrivant à La Paz, en octobre 2011" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552048/original/file-20231004-17-83ds1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators protesting against plans to build a road from TIPNIS to La Paz in October 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mywayaround/6262323419/">Szymon Kochański/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Backed by <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/opalc/node/712/index.html">citizen support</a>, particularly during two marches toward the capital, this movement saw an <a href="https://www.courrierinternational.com/breve/2011/09/27/evo-morales-recule-sur-le-projet-de-route-du-tipnis">initial victory</a> when a law was passed to establish the national park as an “intangible zone” and when plans to build the motorway were scrapped in October 2011. However, this was <a href="https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/bolivie-le-projet-controverse-dune-route-au-milieu-de-lamazonie-refait-surface">reversed in 2017</a>. President <a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/topics/evo-morales-78519">Evo Morales</a>, for his part, lost considerable support from Native populations throughout this case.</p>
<h2>Backtracking and side-tracking in all directions</h2>
<p>What can we learn? Such legal innovations may well have sparked a number of legal and political actions, but the law cannot do everything. It remains, above all, subject to the whims of political situations, as malleable for environmental struggles as it is for the demands of extractivism.</p>
<p>It can be common for backtracking to occur. In Australia in 2019, the Aṉangu Aboriginal population decided to ban <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/2002324/autochtones-lieux-touristiques-land-back">tours of Uluru</a> despite the substantial financial boon that these visits represented. This was because mass tourism to this sacred site was exacerbating erosion and groundwater pollution.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Panorama du Mont Uluru" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552057/original/file-20231004-15-6nov55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uluru, a mountain where tourist access has been prohibited.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/fr/photos/1GFUOji-yck">Photoholgic/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent years, Ecuador and Bolivia have stayed true to their reputation as breeding grounds of legal innovation. For instance, the Bolivian Mother Earth Authority, headed by Benecio Quispe, considered potentially expanding the law to include rights for objects.</p>
<p>Confronted with the global problem of waste management, the Mother Earth Authority opened up discussions with chiefs of Native communities and trade union leaders on the subject of <a href="https://arbre-bleu-editions.com/heritage-et-anthropocene.html">legal rights for manufactured objects and goods</a>. These included the right to a maximum lifespan, care, repair, non-abandonment and so forth. While this avenue ultimately led to nothing, it once more demonstrated the ability of legal tools to help redefine our relationship with ecosystems and the modern world.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is part of a project between The Conversation France and AFP Audio, supported financially by the European Journalism Centre, as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “Solutions Journalism Accelerator” initiative. AFP and The Conversation France have maintained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diego Landivar ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Some countries have managed to elevate nature and ecosystems to the status of legal entities. Do these innovations really help to protect the environment?Diego Landivar, Enseignant Chercheur en Economie, Directeur d'Origens Media Lab, ESC Clermont Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2167132023-12-24T08:30:30Z2023-12-24T08:30:30ZHow AI could dramatically improve cancer patients’ prognosis<p>With 1.2 million deaths in the 2020, or 23% of the total number of deaths, cancer is the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Cancer_statistics#Deaths_from_cancer">second biggest killer in the European Union</a>.
The figure is all the more tragic given 40% of these cancers could be prevented through <a href="https://www.macmillan.org.uk/cancer-information-and-support/worried-about-cancer/causes-and-risk-factors">early detection and lifestyle change</a> such as not smoking or regular exercise. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-future-of-medicine-50-year-forecast-offers-hope-for-hiv-and-cancer-patients-and-predicts-climate-change-to-increasingly-set-agenda-215510">Research on the future of medicine</a> offers hope, however, with significant progress forecast in the prevention and treatment of the disease in the decades to come. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), among others, is one of the significant causes for optimism. </p>
<h2>What exactly does AI in healthcare involve?</h2>
<p>Many <a href="https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-023-04698-z">recent research articles</a> show that AI has the potential to <a href="https://www.esmo.org/newsroom/press-releases/the-potential-of-ai-to-improve-cancer-care-is-only-going-to-grow">transform healthcare</a> by offering new ways to improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of cancer across many therapeutic areas - oncology, cardiology, and ophthalmology in particular- and across the value chain, from research, development, production down to marketing. Overall, patients stand to enjoy much better care.</p>
<p>Glancing over market figures, the growth of AI in healthcare is evident from the large number of players. Leaving aside the flourish of AI startups, 18 out of the 47 multinationals providing AI currently offer <a href="https://www.calameo.com/read/002049284916ecbd5d8db?view=book&page=">healthcare solutions</a>. Out of these, 80% offer innovative solutions related strictly to treatment, while 20% produce efficiency-based tools to optimise resources and hone healthcare technology. </p>
<p>AI is set to contribute to <a href="https://www.symplr.com/blog/digital-health-ai-transform-healthcare">six areas in particular</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Medical research</strong>: AI can accelerate the development of new treatments by analysing large bulks of data to identify promising chemical compounds and predict their efficacy. The technology is set to have a major impact on drug development, speeding up clinical research by identifying patients who are eligible for clinical trials and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/greglicholai/2023/07/13/ai-poised-to-revolutionize-drug-development/?sh=128fd37d7ca4">analysing data generated by these trials</a> </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Medical diagnosis</strong>: AI can help doctors make faster and more accurate diagnoses by analysing medical data (X-ray images, lab results, specific medical histories, for example). AI algorithms can detect early signs of disease and help identify the most appropriate treatment. Among many other examples, the Wisconsin Breast Cancer used a specific machine learning algorithm which was successfully applied to diagnose breast cancer and achieved <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885935/#:%7E:text=AI%2Dbased%20algorithms%20are%20an,diagnosis%20of%20patients%20%5B76%5D">98.53% classification accuracy</a>. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Surgery assistance</strong>: AI can help surgeons plan and perform complex surgical procedures, including preoperative planning, intra-operative approaches, and prediction of postoperative complications. AI-assisted surgical robots allow for greater precision and <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4095/4/1/10#:%7E:text=AI%20has%20the%20potential%20to%20significantly%20improve%20the%20safety%20and,precision%20of%20the%20surgical%20procedure.">quicker post-operative recovery for patients</a>.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Patient monitoring</strong>: AI can be used to monitor patients’ vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure or blood sugar level, and alert healthcare professionals in the event of abnormalities. This is predicted to be game-changing for patients with chronic diseases, enabling thorough monitoring and early intervention should they experience complications.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Personalised treatment</strong>: AI can take into consideration vast amounts of medical data to determine the most targeted treatment for patients, factoring in their genetic profile, medical history, lifestyle and a host of other specific traits. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Medical record management</strong>: AI can automate electronic medical record management, thereby making medical record management more efficient and accurate while ensuring the confidentiality and security of patient information.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Diagnostic announcement procedure</h2>
<p>Out of the areas outlined above, the market for AI-assisted medical diagnosis is faring particularly well. Worth $1.3 billion today, it is expected to see an annual growth rate of over <a href="https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/artificial-intelligence-medical-diagnostics-market-22519734.html">23% in the next five years to reach $3.7 billion in 2028</a>. There is already strong demand for cloud-based medical image analysis software in particular. Fields such as mammography, CT-scans or MRIs are set to be among the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00199-0">first to be benefit from the technology</a>.</p>
<p>In practice, however, many hospital centres are grappling with a lack of technological resources, making it difficult for them to tap into AI’s potential. Take the pathology slides on the basis of which biological anomalies are analysed: although all of them should be digitised to train AI models, the vast majority of European institutions currently lack the equipment to do so.</p>
<h2>Treatment management, support and post-treatment monitoring</h2>
<p>AI can be used at every stage of cancer care, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on high value-added tasks such as direct patient care and psychological support, critical technical decision-making, and clinical trials. This can lead to improved patient outcomes and a more efficient healthcare system.</p>
<p>Five areas stand in particular to <a href="https://www.calmedica.com/lintelligence-artificielle-dans-le-domaine-de-la-sante/">benefit from the technology</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>organisational management tools</strong>, which save your doctor much time in routine tasks. Some of these might help monitor patient flow, slash the administrative burden, and record notes thanks to automated transcription software to complete medical records.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>predictive analytic tools</strong>, which mine and analyse large quantities of patient data and determine which health categories a patient belongs to. This allows for a more personalised and efficient treatment.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>AI-powered surgical assistance tools</strong>, based on medical robotics. These technologies are still too often used for simple surgical procedures, such as stitching. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>Remote monitoring</strong> allows medical professionals to use digital medical devices to remotely interpret patients’ health data collected in their homes and make decisions about their care. Remote monitoring systems aim to improve patients’ health through regular monitoring.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Chatbots</strong> can also be included in a wide range of applications (Messenger, Slack). They can be utilised throughout the patient care pathway, but are especially helpful during the monitoring period, in which continued <a href="https://www.msdconnect.fr/innovation-sante/organisation-systeme-de-sante/chatbot-sante-assistant-medical-aujourdhui-medecin-demain/">support is crucial</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>The limits of AI in healthcare</h2>
<p>For all those exciting prospects, we will nevertheless need to overcome a set of challenges before we can enjoy the full range of benefits of AI-assisted healthcare.</p>
<p>For one, AI has yet to become more sophisticated from a technical viewpoint. For example, the current absence of a universal format for data health makes it tricky to clean it up and transfer it from one software or computer to the next. The vast majority of AI solutions also require to be trained by humans - and not any humans. In collaboration with healthcare professionals, engineers will need to carefully listen to the medical community’s needs and reflect them in emerging AI. </p>
<p>It’s no secret sociocultural and ethical questions will also need to be taken into consideration. Data protection remains a real issue for many citizens even though the European Union’s 2018 framework regulation for processing data, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has handed more power to individuals to dictate how companies handle their personal information. The <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/641530/EPRS_STU(2020)641530_EN.pdf">EU AI Act</a>, the world’s first comprehensive legislation to regulate AI machines posing risks to health, human rights and safety, should also go some way in alleviating those concerns. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was co-written with Prof Frédéric Jallat’s former student, Rym Aouchiche, who currently works as a Life Sciences & Strategy Associate Consultant at IQVIA.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frédéric Jallat ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>From helping surgeons to carry out complex procedures to monitoring the heartbeat of the chronically ill, the use of AI in cancer care is set to be game-changing.Frédéric Jallat, Professor of Marketing and Academic Director of MSc. in Biopharmaceutical Management, ESCP Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196342023-12-20T19:56:51Z2023-12-20T19:56:51ZMeasuring the invisible: the tough job of calculating the carbon stocks and fluxes of a forest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564820/original/file-20230904-21-onpqo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=55%2C20%2C4545%2C3387&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Carbon fluxes between the forest and atmosphere in Gabon.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Barbier </span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Green lungs” is the term often used to describe rainforests due to their ability to use photosynthesis to capture CO<sub>2</sub>, the planet’s primary greenhouse gas. That makes them a key component of global climate regulation, and their preservation represents a major issue for decision-makers and citizens alike. But calculating how much carbon such forests store and the flows they represent into the planet’s overall greenhouse gas balance is no easy feat. In fact, it is one of the segments where our knowledge remains most limited - even the carbon stocks and flows of the oceans are easier to quantify.</p>
<p>The stakes are colossal, however. To prevent future scandals around conserving ecosystems that are reputed to be carbon sinks, we need reliable, independent measuring and monitoring systems. Otherwise, each country and stakeholder can take all the credit for themselves, come up with definitions and measurements that best suit their interests, and pay no heed to reality or the evolution of forest ecosystems.</p>
<p>Forest carbon stocks are not a cryptocurrency; they are a tangible physical quantity, but one that proves tricky to measure. </p>
<p>So how has this been done until now, and how have people gone about measuring these carbon stocks and flows that spark such fervent - and at times opportunistic - interest?</p>
<h2>The forest inventory</h2>
<p>It all starts in the forest with the tried and tested methods of the woodcutter, as used by the forest industry to compute volumes of harvestable timber. Because carbon makes up half of the total dry mass of green plants, specifically trees, quantifying the total stock of this element means coming up with an estimate for the volume of each tree and identifying its species. The species is important because this is what helps determine wood density and, ultimately, the amount of carbon stocked per volume of wood.</p>
<p>Obviously, the number of species found in one rainforest can be so huge that not a single expert in the world could name every one of them. While temperate Europe contains only 124 tree species, there are at least 40,000 growing in the tropics, with some estimates <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1423147112">putting this number at more than 53,000</a>. As such, researchers must systematically compile plant collections to serve as benchmark test material, checking whether a tree belongs to a given species by looking at existing samples from museums and universities. </p>
<p>Next, to assess the evolving carbon stock – which is to say the carbon flowing in and out of the forest – measurements must be taken regularly to calculate tree growth, count dead specimens and include shrubs that are tall enough to be categorised as trees.</p>
<h2>Forest inventory</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three photos of men climbing trees to measure their size" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546168/original/file-20230904-17-jduqa5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For some measurements, researchers are required to climb trees, as Pierre Ploton can be seen doing in Cameroon, in the photograph to the left. Measuring the diameter of a misshapen tree can also be a somewhat acrobatic manoeuvre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vincent Droissart et Nicolas Barbier</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To make the challenge even more daunting, tropical forests are - still - vast, dense, difficult to access and located in countries with poor infrastructure. Even when all goes well, the site to be inventoried will require at least several days’ travel from the capital. Of course, it would be impossible to measure the whole forest; instead, a sample is taken, just like for an electoral survey. Typically, researchers select a number of fairly large tracts of land (ideally equivalent to the size of two football pitches, i.e., between 500 and 1,000 trees per tract).</p>
<p>The selection criteria constitute a whole science in themselves (whether the sample is totally random or chosen from among specific vegetation types), and modifying the criteria halfway through the process can render the entire task null and void. Researchers speak of “majestic forest” bias, for instance, when tracts are selected in unusually intact forests to estimate the average carbon content for all the forests in a given region.</p>
<p>Simple measurements are taken on site, including trunk diameter and, more rarely, tree height. Next, researchers draw up conversion tables known as allometric equations, which use these few measurements to estimate how much carbon a tree contains. The equations are created through felling and weighing a small number of trees. Given that the wet mass of just one of these giants can reach up to 160 tons and that it must be weighed directly in the forest, it can take a dozen workers a whole week to weigh a single tree.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Destructive weighing of a sample tree " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546173/original/file-20230904-27-zt2br3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Destructive weighing of a sample tree.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Barbier</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Consequently, it is common to use equations from other regions, which can lead to bias. There are alternatives being developed that do not harm the forest, such as laser scanners, which can now measure the precise volume of standing trees. These methods have helped us produce new allometric equations in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, both much more efficiently and without compromising on accuracy.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is brought to you in partnership with <a href="https://shows.acast.com/654a3366cce18a0012315d73">“Your Planet”</a>, an AFP audio podcast. A creation to explore initiatives in favour of ecological transition, all over the planet. <a href="https://shows.acast.com/654a3366cce18a0012315d73">Subscribe</a></em></p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/654a3366cce18a0012315d73/6581f25000974f0016f1e3f6" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
<hr>
<h2>How can this be applied on a large scale?</h2>
<p>Even with sampling, there are still considerable challenges involved in remeasuring sites to obtain reliable, up-to-date estimates of the carbon stocks and fluxes of an entire country or of all rainforests. Recent decades have seen the development of remote measuring techniques (known as remote sensing) for more efficient sampling that is less vulnerable to unpredictable conditions on the ground. Satellites scan the globe, taking daily measurements to measure surface status changes, rainfall and water currents, among other values.</p>
<p>Space missions have been set up specially to measure forest biomass, such as ESA’s <a href="https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Biomass">BIOMASS mission</a>, which is currently awaiting a reliable launcher for take-off, or the GEDI laser on the International Space Station. In the meantime, we will have to keep extrapolating data from existing satellites, which are not necessarily designed for inspecting dense forest canopies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546176/original/file-20230904-15-trhz0g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Infrared satellite image mosaic of the entire region of Central Africa (MODIS satellite, ten years of observation).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Barbier</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is because remote sensing does not measure carbon or biomass directly, but rather a quantity of light or radio waves reflected by the objects in question. Complex physical or statistical models must be established to convert the raw data into actionable information, which is why it is vital to gather field data. Due to the scarce data and limited satellite signals currently at our disposal, the average for a country <a href="https://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/Books/SOF-2021-01.pdf">can almost double from one map to the next</a>. Over the last decade, our team has spent many hours analysing the sources of these errors, which are sometimes hidden behind poor statistical approaches or poorly recorded instrumental effects.</p>
<p>For instance, images cannot be compared directly if they are taken in varying light conditions or atmospheres. Due to the permanent cloud cover near the Equator, we can even be constrained to using very poor-quality images or pixel composites amassed from a variety of images.</p>
<p>However, it is not enough to design supercomputers and launch space missions. Reinvesting in data acquisition on the ground is also vital in order to provide essential reference information. <a href="https://geo-trees.org/">International initiatives are being devised</a> to support national forest inventories (as seen above) or set up state-of-the-art calibration sites to serve as a reference for satellite missions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546177/original/file-20230904-17-5pa2ym.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stéphane Momo laser-scans a forest in Gabon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Barbier</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What about other segments?</h2>
<p>If assessing carbon stocks in the visible parts of standing trees is difficult enough, very little is known about these trees’ roots and the carbon contained in soil, or about the amount that is carried away by rivers or absorbed into the atmosphere. For example, the peat bogs of the Congo basin were recently found to contain <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21048">more carbon than all the forests in that same region</a>.</p>
<p>To measure the overall respiration and photosynthesis of the planet’s famed “green lungs”, we must erect flux towers. Looking out over the tree canopy at around 60 metres in height (and sometimes more than 300), these structures are fitted with devices with names like “sonic anemometer,” “infrared CO<sub>2</sub> analyser” and “hygrometer”, that measure gas exchanges between the atmosphere and the forest. It is a challenge in and of itself to power, maintain and secure such a facility over several decades. A team of fellow researchers attempted this feat in the Congo in the 1990s. When they returned, the tower’s aluminium cladding had been melted down and used to make pots.</p>
<p>Few realise that, in spite of the climate crisis, there is basically no measuring infrastructure left in good working order in Africa. There is even a shortage of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128159989000075">basic facilities, such as weather stations</a>. This dearth of material prompts some deeper questions: who should be tasked with gathering all the essential data – government bodies in the Global South, private industrial operators, research agencies in the Global North? <a href="https://www.ird.fr/transfert-de-connaissances-et-initiation-de-nouvelles-collaborations-avec-lecole-nationale-des-eaux">For our part</a>, we advocate collaboration between researchers and scientific institutions from both of these regions, as this would enable us to learn together by benefiting from the best technology available. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1316696342492839938"}"></div></p>
<h2>What is the end goal?</h2>
<p>Science is doing its best to make more pertinent measurements of rainforest carbon stocks and fluxes. In time, this should help avoid repeating errors, whether careless or deliberate, such as those from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/greenhouse-gas-emissions-pledges-data/">Malaysia</a>, which made global headlines in 2021, when the country’s annual greenhouse gas balance claimed an annual forest carbon sink of over 243 million tons – equal to the amount in neighbouring Indonesia, which has five times as much forest land.</p>
<p>But while some countries publish exaggerated figures, others do not even bother. With <a href="https://theconversation.com/pourquoi-les-temperatures-pourraient-battre-des-records-au-cours-des-prochains-mois-210935">some researchers</a> already worried that we will have exceeded the 1.5°C limit set by the Paris Agreement by the end of 2023, the lack of data around greenhouse gas fluxes, stocks and emissions remains particularly alarming. <a href="https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/tribunes/planete/comprendre-les-emissions-mondiales-de-gaz-a-effet-de-serre/">At the start of the year</a>, only 48 countries had published an inventory of their greenhouse gases. This is tiny when we consider the fact that, starting in <a href="https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/ETF_Handbook-first_edition_June_2020-FR.pdf">2024</a>, the 197 member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be obliged to submit an annual report on this topic.</p>
<p>Rigorous measurements of carbon fluxes and stocks are also crucial to assessing the impact of conservation projects in forest ecosystems. Such measurements are especially important in the case of monetisation using carbon credits, as is the case for projects to avoid deforestation or promote reforestation. Once again, we must avoid falling into the same traps of recent decades, which have seen many forest conservation projects fail to produce any real, positive impact.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is part of a project between The Conversation France and AFP Audio, supported financially by the European Journalism Centre, as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “Solutions Journalism Accelerator” <a href="https://ejc.net/news/the-second-group-selected-in-the-solutions-journalism-accelerator-programme">“Solutions Journalism Accelerator”</a> initiative. AFP and The Conversation France have maintained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pierre Ploton and Nicolas Barbier are members of UMR AMAP. Pierre Ploton, Nicolas Barbier and Bonaventure Sonké are members of the Laboratoire Mixte International (LMI) DYCOFAC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bonaventure Sonké, Le Bienfaiteur Sagang, Pierre Ploton et Stéphane Momo Takoudjou ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.</span></em></p>Depending on the methods used, the measurement of forest carbon can vary by as much as 100%.Nicolas Barbier, Chercheur en Écologie Tropicale à l'UMR AMAP, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)Bonaventure Sonké, Professeur de Botanique, Université de Yaounde 1Le Bienfaiteur Sagang, Écologiste et analyste en télédétection, University of California, Los AngelesPierre Ploton, Chercheur en Sciences des données et des modèles à l'UMR AMAP, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)Stéphane Momo Takoudjou, Chercheur en Écologie tropicale, Université de LiègeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2199452023-12-17T15:33:47Z2023-12-17T15:33:47ZJames Bond and Aston Martin’s DB5: behind the scenes of one of cinema’s most successful product placements<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566088/original/file-20231215-29-4apoeo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C1920%2C1256&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James Bond (Daniel Craig) behind the wheel of an Aston Martin in 'Death Can Wait'.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Ian Fleming’s most famed character, James Bond, first graced the screen in 1962, ushering in a cinematic obsession that has grossed more than 7 billion dollars since its creation.</p>
<p>Across 26 feature-length films, the James Bond saga has evolved through the ages and met the expectations of audiences. The saga’s latest films, which introduced Daniel Craig in the lead role in 2006, marked a break with the past. The protagonist appears both more robust and more fragile, more in line with the character as sketched out in the original novel, and the tone darkens. Action and espionage remain, while drama supersedes comedy. The films presented a different narrative archetype by following a common thread, each character beginning each film with the stigma (physical and psychological) of the previous one.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364710/original/file-20201021-21-17gh2jy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Craig-Bond marks a break in the saga.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there is another, less discussed success that has been delighting the particular crowd of ad agencies: that of product placement. As Aston Martin’s DB5 turns 60 this year and we get ready to enjoy a 007 flick or two during the festive period, I take a look at how the Aston Martin brand has become essential to the series.</p>
<h2>Bond-Craig earns his stripes</h2>
<p>For the first time in 1964’s <em>Goldfinger</em> (Hamilton), James Bond drives an Aston Martin – model DB5 – like his literary alter ego (<em>Goldfinger</em>, Ian Fleming, 1959). The DB5 appeared in eight Bond films – <em>Goldfinger</em>, <em>Thunderball</em> (Young, 1965), <em>Golden Eye</em> (Campbell, 1995), <em>Tomorrow Never Dies</em> (Spottiswoode, 1997), <em>Casino Royale</em>, <em>Skyfall</em>, <em>Spectre</em> and <em>No Time to Die</em> – and was driven by Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364696/original/file-20201021-17-woen08.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sean Connery, <em>Goldfinger</em>, 1964.</span>
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<p>In the prologue to <em>Casino Royale</em>, the British agent enters a room reserved for casino staff – the remote surveillance area. Bond scans the hotel’s cameras for the face of his enemy, who gets out of an Aston Martin DB5. This rookie, James Bond, catches a glimpse of the car via an interposed screen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364697/original/file-20201021-19-1bo9e18.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The appearance of the Aston Martin DB5 in <em>Casino Royale</em>.</span>
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<p>By placing the character in the same situation as the cinema-goer, the director distances Daniel Craig from the character of James Bond. It’s a clever <em>mise en abyme</em> to show that the actor is not yet “in the game”. Nevertheless, the agent identifies the vehicle, a “magnificent 1964 Aston Martin”, which belongs to Dimitrios, a terrorist linked to the Cipher. Later, Bond is playing poker with his enemy. Dimitrios has three kings in his hand. To keep up, he bets his Aston Martin DB5. James Bond calls and wins the game with three aces. On leaving the Casino, Bond climbs into his new car – Bond-Craig has taken possession of his Aston Martin.</p>
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<p>In this scene, the Aston Martin is not part of the kit provided by MI6. James Bond has to fight to win the right to be behind the wheel of his character’s mythical car. It’s a strategic battle: when Daniel Craig was unveiled as the next actor to wear the Bond suit, the media focused on his physique, which is far more athletic than his predecessors. We might have expected a muscular action scene, but Martin Campbell conceives instead a scene of psychological tension. It was a poker move for the production: imposing an actor very different from Bond standards and imagination, but also for the new hero who gradually becomes the character.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364698/original/file-20201021-23-1psm3a4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bond-Craig for the first time at the wheel of the Aston Martin DB5 in <em>Casino Royale</em>.</span>
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<p>The prologue scene reveals how the protagonist becomes a Double-0. In the viewer’s mind, he is not yet established as James Bond. And by getting behind the wheel of the Aston Martin DB5, Daniel Craig takes a symbolic step toward his character. This product placement <a href="https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=39871">can be described as narrative</a>, because it is in itself a major dramatic node and launches the plot. It can also be described as qualifying, as the Aston Martin inserted represents a primordial and fundamental attribute in the construction of James Bond’s identity and his coded universe.</p>
<h2>Aston Martin breaks records</h2>
<p>As proof, having won the confidence of “M”, later in the mission MI6 entrusted him with a new car: a latest-generation Aston Martin DBS. The new model is unveiled in the film. And if the new face of Bond has to convince by outdoing himself in his role (and in the economic revenues it should generate), his car seems to be in symbiosis, because it too breaks records: the Aston Martin DBS rolls over seven times at 120 km/h, the world record for the greatest number of rolls (according to the Guinness Book). The car was crushed, but managed to protect the agent, who emerged from this impressive stunt unscathed.</p>
<p>Like the armour of a modern-day knight, the car is inseparable from 007. The DBS also features in the opening sequence of <em>Quantum of Solace</em>. Bond-Craig begins his revenge at the wheel of this powerful model in a chase that showcases the car’s performance. The agent has bonded forever with Aston Martin and continues his association, not to say partnership, in subsequent opuses.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364699/original/file-20201021-17-17u7h8g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The four Aston Martin models in the film <em>Dying Can Wait</em> (scheduled for release in April 2021).</span>
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<p><em>No Time to Die</em> features four Aston Martin models: the DB5, the Aston Martin V8 (similar to the one in the 1987 film <em>The Living Daylights</em>), the DBS Supperleggera (driven by the new female agent 00 Nomi) and the mid-engined Valhalla.</p>
<h2>From rupture to return to tradition</h2>
<p>Although Bond-Craig drives an Aston Martin, the staging of the product breaks with that of the previous films: the car is just a car, and for once it is not accompanied by innovative gadgets. It wasn’t until <em>Skyfall</em> that the head of MI6’s “Q” section, who supplied 007 with his famous gadgets, returned. <em>Skyfall</em>, the 50th anniversary of the franchise, sounds like a tribute to the saga: the film echoes the past while wiping the slate clean.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it and the films that followed retained what had been achieved over the previous six years: a serious spirit and a dark tone, without denying the saga’s heritage. The film marks the return of some of the traditional elements – such as gimmicky product placements – that had disappeared from previous films starring Craig.</p>
<p>In the film, “Q” warns Bond – and the audience: “Perhaps you were expecting an explosive pen? They don’t make gadgets like that much these days…” However, the Aston Martin featured in <em>Skyfall</em> reveals its assets once more. Like the original in <em>Goldfinger</em>, it is equipped with two machine guns in the front bumper, tyre-piercing screws in the rear axles, an ejector seat for hostile passengers, a bullet-proof plate that rises up behind the rear window and a device that disperses slippery oil to lose a pursuing car. If the pen no longer explodes, the car (re)becomes a weapon like in the early days of James Bond.</p>
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<p>In the final part of the film, Silva’s men blow up the legendary car, provoking 007’s almost irrational anger. To destroy his Aston Martin is to touch him to the core.</p>
<p>In the next film, <em>Spectre</em>, the DB5 is just a carcass before being refurbished in the workshop of “Q”. At the end of the story, Bond chooses to leave MI6 rather than Madeleine. Before bidding farewell with his new love on his arm, he picks up his 1964 Aston Martin, the “last thing” he needs. And the story between Aston Martin and 007 isn’t over, as Bond-Craig and his famous steed will be back again in <em>No Time to Die</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=318&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364700/original/file-20201021-19-1ditknx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The explosion that destroys the mythical Aston Martin DB5 in <em>Skyfall</em>.</span>
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<h2>The performative effect of product placement</h2>
<p>The release of <em>No Time to Die</em> coincided with Aston Martin’s decision to resume production of the DB5 after more than 50 years. Twenty-five units were manufactured and each sold for 3 million euros. This is no ordinary DB5, but the DB5 <em>of James Bond</em>. Created in partnership with the films’ producers, EON Productions, the car is called the “DB5 Goldfinger Continuation” and features some of the gadgets used in the films: the smoke generator, rotating number plate holders, retractable bumpers and the telephone in the driver’s door.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364701/original/file-20201021-17-i2oln7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Aston Martin relaunches production of James Bond’s DB5.</span>
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<p>Aston Martin has built up a storytelling operation over several years by placing itself at the heart of the film saga. The brand blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, between the identity of the actor and that of the character (as in the <a href="http://www.culturepub.fr/videos/heineken-daniel-craig-vs-james-bond/">“Daniel Craig VS James Bond”</a> commercial, produced by Heineken (United States, 2020), and between the fictional car and the one sold in dealerships.</p>
<p>The “DB5 Goldfinger Continuation” gives consumers the illusion of being a super agent or, failing that, a consumer-actor. The 007 films need the brand to immortalise the character. The brand needs the films to perpetuate its prestige and the fascination it inspires. James Bond and Aston Martin, or how product placement shapes an unbreakable alliance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Delphine Le Nozach ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The release of “No Time to Die”, scheduled for next spring, is an opportunity to analyse the role of the Aston Martin brand and the way it contributes to the construction of the character.Delphine Le Nozach, Maître de conférences en Sciences de l'information et de la communication, Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2129402023-12-11T10:16:12Z2023-12-11T10:16:12ZHow 1930s American scientists came to think about the impact of climate on wine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553527/original/file-20231012-21-jbnzzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C29%2C4912%2C3228&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Depending on the region, rising temperatures can have negative or positive effects on wine quality. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Kohler/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Europe and beyond, the notion of <a href="https://www.brgm.fr/en/news/article/good-land-wine-how-geology-can-influence-quality-wine"><em>terroir</em></a> dominates ideas about the origins of the taste and quality of wine. While there’s intense debate over the term, generally it refers to the specific place where grapes are grown. The concept is largely focused on soil, but also includes the layout of the land and the elements to which it is regularly exposed – sun, rain, wind, seasons, and more. And although climate is seen as being part of the equation, the land upon which grapes are grown is its foundation. As such thinking took root over centuries, it was eventually codified into Europe’s <a href="https://www.inao.gouv.fr/Les-signes-officiels-de-la-qualite-et-de-l-origine-SIQO/Appellation-d-origine-protegee-controlee-AOP-AOC"><em>appellation d’origine contrôlée</em></a> (AOC) system, meaning “registered designation of origin”.</p>
<p>While European immigrants have long grown grapes and made wine around the world, the traditional regions were an ocean away, literally. So what could be done to improve wine quality in these new vineyards and wineries? The situation was particularly dire in the United States after the Prohibition forced many of its winemakers out of business.</p>
<h2>A world away</h2>
<p>After the Prohibition repealed in 1933, two scientists, Albert “Wink” Winkler and Maynard Amerine, launched an effort to revitalise California’s wine industry. Winkler was more of the viticulturalist and Amerine the oenologist, but both shared a passion for grapes, wine, and believed that the state could produce wines that rivalled the best of Europe. Their journey led them to collect vine samples from Fresno in the south to Ukiah in the north and westward to the coast. They planted many of these vines in test vineyards to see how they fared in different climatic regions, in order to advise growers on the best grapes for their plot of land. But vines were not the only bounty they sought.</p>
<p>Winkler and Amerine also collected grapes from willing viticulturalists turning them into a library of more than 500 site-specific wines over a decade. By 1943, they had observed enough seasonal variation in the hundreds of small batches of wines that Winkler and Amerine made and tasted every year to recommend specific grape varieties for specific regions. By expanding the vineyards where they collected grapes, they could both measure and taste the difference between vineyards in regions across California.</p>
<p>Winkler came to an epiphany from their sojourns in California’s vineyards and by analysing the wines these fields produce. The research let him to conclude that climate and regional differences were the most important factors in selecting varietals to produce high-quality wines. He came to this conclusion counter-intuitively.</p>
<p>By thinking about Europe and the idea of a “vintage” versus a “non-vintage” year, he realised the only thing that changed in the vineyard (not the vines, not soil type, not soil quality, not soil drainage) was the weather and, in particular, a vintage year was warmer in places like Bordeaux and Burgundy. He applied this same logic to California as he tasted the same grape in different regions and found some varieties like Zinfandel produced better wines in cooler climates in northern and coastal California while others like Alicante bouchés, which produced sweet wines, fared better in warmer, arguably hot, climates inland and in southern California. This observation had global impact.</p>
<h2>Knowing what to grow</h2>
<p>With Winkler’s development of a heat-based index, he and Amerine advised would-be California wine makers – from Gallo to Mondavi – not just on the varieties they should plant (or pull out) but also which ones would produce the best wines in their particular locations. The <a href="https://winedataresearcher.com/why-the-winkler-index-matters-to-the-wine-world/">Winker Index</a> rapidly transformed not just California vineyards but vineyards across the world as viticulturalists and oenologists paid more attention to the climate. In New World regions, it allowed them to choose varieties that produced wines best suited to the climate, thus improving the overall quality of wine.</p>
<p>But their research had an even deeper impact on varietal selection. Although the Winkler Index measured the temperature across the growing season, it was the taste and aroma of the wines in their wine library that was at the heart of their conclusions. In measuring the <a href="https://oeno-one.eu/article/view/7399">acid/sugar ratio</a> among other compounds in their wines, Amerine and Winkler judged how climate was reflected in the wines they swirled and sipped and how their wines changed over time, especially in years when the weather deviated from the norm.</p>
<p>These early observations on heat and its influence on wine quality allow historians, wine makers, and climate researchers to conclude that not only is the climate warming, but how a warming climate is changing the taste of wine based not just on acid/sugar ratios – though they are – but how hotter, sunnier growing season are increasing sugar in grapes, the alcohol in wine and reducing acidity, throwing wines out of balance. A vineyard that may have consistently produced high-quality wines from the 1930s through the 1990s now produced inconsistent wine.</p>
<p>The opposite can also be true: A region like Bordeaux, which was historically plagued by erratic weather, sometimes losing entire vintages to hail, frost or cold summers, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-french-wine-taste-better">now had more consistent yields</a>, smoothing the difference between a vintage and a non-vintage year. Even inexpensive wines in Bordeaux benefited from warmer growing seasons because more grapes fully ripened.</p>
<p>Of course, as the climate warms, that impact has other negative consequences. Hotter weather reduces the acidity of wines making them flat, flabby, or turgid. An example of mitigating low acidity is Bordeaux’s experiment allowing new varieties to be blended into their iconic – and legislated – varieties of reds and whites to increase acidity and rebalance overripe wines.</p>
<h2>Where there’s fire there’s smoke</h2>
<p>An even more difficult and frightening consequence of a warming climate are wildfires. While fires do not always destroy vineyards (grapes are just spheres of water, after all), the smoke can contaminate wine made near wildfires, resulting in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2113327118">smoke-tainted wine</a> – it tastes something like burnt rubber, cigarette ash or other unpleasant flavours. Once smoke has wafted into the vineyard and engulfed ripening grapes, it is impossible to remove. Worse, winemakers cannot tell if the wine will be smoke tainted by tasting the grapes themselves, as fermentation also affects how foul a wine will taste.</p>
<p>Though scientists around the world are trying to find a solution, they still do not understand exactly what makes a wine taste smoke tainted or how to mitigate it. It’s become a growing concern given the rising number of fires in wine-growing regions, including <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/11/us/california-wildfires-wineries/index.html">California</a> in 2020, <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210824-provence-wine-producers-weigh-up-losses-after-deadly-wildfires-in-france-ros%C3%A9-french-riviera">France</a> in 2021, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wildfire-leaves-sense-total-destruction-spanish-winemaker-says-2022-07-21/">Spain</a> in 2022. The same year two wildfires burned more than <a href="https://www.icare.univ-lille.fr/wildfires-in-southwest-france-july-2022/">20,000 hectares of forest</a> in France’s Bordeaux region. Tests indicated that that year’s harvest <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220831-bordeaux-wine-harvest-will-not-have-a-smoky-taste-after-summer-wildfires-winemakers-say">shouldn’t be affected</a>, but the coming years promise to be difficult for winemakers.</p>
<h2>Adapting to a changing world</h2>
<p>It is only because Winkler severed the link between wine and terroir that wine growers had the vision to plant and produce world-renowned wine made in places like <a href="https://visitcanberra.com.au/things-to-do/canberras-wine-region">Canberra</a>, Australia; <a href="https://www.winetourism.com/wine-region/mendoza/">Mendoza</a>, Argentina; <a href="https://www.wine-searcher.com/regions-sussex">Sussex</a>, England; and <a href="https://www.wineningxia.com/">Ningxia</a>, China.</p>
<p>Given that climate change is already changing the weather in Europe’s wine-growing regions – the ones whose methods and very identity are most closely linked to traditional notions of <em>terroir</em> – research is also seeking to help wine makers adapt to a changing world. It’s a process that’s already taking place, not only in the <a href="https://www.terraview.co/gdd-and-winkler-index-update/">Winkler Index itself</a>, but even in the <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/france-changes-aoc-rules-allow-153919195.html">venerable AOC system</a>. <em>Plus ça change</em>…</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is the result of The Conversation’s collaboration with <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine">Horizon</a>, the EU research and innovation magazine. In February, the authors published an <a href="https://projects.research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/en/horizon-magazine/wine-connoisseurs-face-testing-times-climate-change-alters-flavours">interview with the magazine</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriella Maria Petrick a reçu des financements de EU Horizon 2020 MSCA project number 896298. </span></em></p>While the notion of terroir has long been the foundation of European wine, research in the 1930s in the US began to reveal the link between climate and wine.Gabriella Maria Petrick, Research Fellow Ruhr University Bochum, University of StavangerLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191752023-12-06T17:25:05Z2023-12-06T17:25:05ZHow agriculture can make the most of one of the world’s biggest carbon stocks, soil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563380/original/file-20231031-23-xvib7j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=150%2C30%2C3875%2C2987&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soil contains three times more carbon than the atmosphere. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rémi Cardinael</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s right under our feet. We barely notice as we go about our lives, yet it is nothing less than the largest carbon repository among all of Earth’s ecosystems. This distinction is awarded neither to forests, nor to the atmosphere, but to our <a href="https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/">soils</a>. There are around 2,400 billion tons of carbon in the first two metres below ground, which is three times as much as in the atmosphere.</p>
<p>In our era of climate disruption, there is much to be learned from soil’s impressive capacity for carbon storage. While soils on their own cannot drastically reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, they can still play a substantial role by keeping sizeable stocks of carbon underground, as well as through the restoration of degraded lands. Today, a number of farming practices are helping trap more carbon below the ground. Here’s how.</p>
<h2>How carbon enters soils</h2>
<p>It all begins with <a href="https://theconversation.com/fr/topics/photosynthese-63763">photosynthesis</a>, when plants absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) into their chloroplasts, those small cell organelles that are packed with chlorophyll. CO<sub>2</sub> then binds to water molecules (H<sub>2</sub>O) with the help of solar energy, producing carbohydrates (i.e., carbon-rich molecules) and oxygen (O<sub>2</sub>). A portion of this carbon captured by the plant enters the soil directly via new and existing roots.</p>
<p>Carbon can also enter soils when a plant sheds its leaves or crop residues are left in fields. This blanket of carbon-rich dead leaves decomposes and eventually ends up as the soil’s organic matter. Animals such as termites can also accelerate the process.</p>
<p>Some regions and ecosystems hold remarkably high carbon stocks in their soils. This is the case for the northernmost regions of the planet, where huge stocks of carbon are preserved in the permafrost, but these are now <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14338">threatened by global heating</a>. Significant stocks have also been found in <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav0550">tropical ecosystems</a>, particularly rainforests.</p>
<p>The main challenge for carbon-rich ecosystems such as forests, wetlands and permanent pastures is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0738-8">maintaining these stocks</a>. To meet this challenge, we would have to put an end both to deforestation and to converting ecosystems into farmland. An average 25% of the carbon in the soil – and sometimes <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39338-z">much more</a> – is lost when forests or wetlands are turned into farmland. Still, certain agricultural practices can sequester additional carbon in the soil. Standardising these practices is one of the objectives of the initiative known as “4 per 1,000”, launched at COP21 in 2015.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ORncZnlKOZg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Presentation of the 4 per 1,000 initiative.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What are the agricultural practices that increase soil carbon stocks?</h2>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39338-z">whole host of practices</a> to help boost carbon stocks in agricultural soils – from agroforestry to intermediate cover to organic soil enrichment – but three solutions come up more frequently than others:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>No-till or limited-tillage farming</strong>, which involves sowing crops without ploughing or tilling the entire field beforehand. The technique reduces soil erosion, slows down organic matter decomposition due to minimal soil oxygenation and preserves the soil’s biodiversity (worms, in particular).</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Permanent soil cover</strong>: This is either mulch from crop residues left in the field or living plant cover between different crops. This cover protects the soil against erosion, especially water erosion, and traps carbon, all while benefiting soil wildlife (bacteria, fungi, earthworms, etc.).</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Crop diversification</strong>, either through crop rotation or through intercropping. A more diverse crop means less development of bioaggressors and plant diseases, as well as increased productivity for the cultivated plots, owing in particular to the effects of previous crops. For example, a rotation crop of legumes (such as peas, beans, groundnuts, broad beans or lucerne) locks in nitrogen from the air and releases it into the soil, thereby favouring the growth of the next crop. Boosted productivity among crops helps keep more carbon in the plot. As such, a greater amount of carbon then enters the soil, specifically through crop roots.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Crop rotation in Cambodia: cassava on the left, corn on the right. Crops alternate on each plot from year to year." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556830/original/file-20231031-27-1medqs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crop rotation in Cambodia, with cassava to the left and corn to the right. The crops are alternated yearly on each plot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vira Leng</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These practices form what is defined as “conservation agriculture”, and combined, they present real benefits in terms of increasing soil carbon stocks – but only when used together. For example, no-till farming works in some contexts, but not in others. The scientific community was slow to realise this because initial research focused mainly on the first few centimetres of no-till soil, which did in fact show a higher carbon content. But this sometimes coincided with less carbon in the soil’s deeper layers compared to tilled soils, which tend to have a relatively uniform level of carbon at 20 or 30 centimetres deep. As such, there are cases whereby no-till practices can effectively redistribute carbon across the soil profile, but not necessarily bring about the <a href="https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2136/sssaj2007.0342">net increase</a>.</p>
<p>Recent research done in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that only by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167198718301296">combining the three principles</a> of conservation agriculture can we hope for any significant increase in soil carbon stocks.</p>
<h2>Results in Zimbabwe and Cambodia</h2>
<p>To understand the benefits from combining these three practices, it is crucial for us to carry out experiments over the long term. It would take an average of five to ten years to detect any significant variation in soil carbon stock.</p>
<p>Fourteen years ago, in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371875138_Soil_organic_carbon_and_nitrogen_dynamics_under_long-term_conservation_agriculture_systems_in_Cambodia">Cambodia</a>, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture began tests on cassava-based systems. This crop accounts for nearly 700,000 hectares in the country, grown primarily for exportation to produce flour for animal feeds.</p>
<p>By using a combination of no-till and direct sowing, permanent soil cover with plant cover, and crop rotation with corn, we were able to observe a considerable increase in soil carbon. Rates stood at around 0.7 to 0.8 tons per hectare per year at depths of up to 40 cm. The region’s hot, humid climate facilitated permanent soil cover with highly productive plant cover, including legumes (sunn hemp and cowpea) and grasses (millet) between the cassava and corn crops on plots where corn had been sown.</p>
<p>As a result, carbon could be stored all year long due to photosynthesis, while a remarkably deep root system was developed, increasing carbon stocks well below the initial soil layers. This additional carbon storage in the soil will continue until the system reaches a new balance. The plan is to conduct this trial over several decades to ascertain its long-term viability. Once a balance has been reached, the challenge will then be to preserve these carbon stocks by maintaining best practices for soil management.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Corn being grown directly under plant cover in Cambodia. It’s sown directly without the soil being tilled or ploughed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556832/original/file-20231031-19-o1m52h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Corn being grown directly under plant cover in Cambodia. It’s sown directly without the soil being tilled or ploughed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vira Leng</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These combined practices were also tested in Zimbabwe, which has a seven-month dry season and five-month rainy season. To do so, we had access to a trial that our fellow researchers at the <a href="https://www.cimmyt.org/about/">International Corn and Wheat Improvement Centre</a> set up <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880922003565">ten years ago</a> in a low-input farming system whose primary crop was corn. Our experiments were carried out in tilled and no-till fields, with and without corn crop residue (mulch), and with and without rotation using a legume crop of cowpea.</p>
<p>Once again, the results showed little benefit from no-till practices used in isolation, which even revealed a <a href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-1233/">slight loss of soil carbon</a> compared to tillage. This happens because the soil becomes highly compacted when left untilled, restricting root development. In addition, the soil is less able to absorb rain, which ends up as run-off. Because of this, corn develops much less in these systems, resulting in less carbon being transferred into the soil through roots and, therefore, a loss of soil carbon.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is brought to you in partnership with <a href="https://shows.acast.com/654a3366cce18a0012315d73">“Your Planet”</a>, an AFP audio podcast. A creation to explore initiatives in favour of ecological transition, all over the planet. <a href="https://shows.acast.com/654a3366cce18a0012315d73">Subscribe</a></em></p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/$/654a3366cce18a0012315d73/carbon-capture-is-it-really-the-miracle-solution?feed=true" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
<hr>
<p>On the other hand, the no-till fields that used a mulch from the previous season, as well as crop rotation, saw a rise in their carbon stocks, but this effect was <a href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-1233/">limited to the surface horizon only</a>[E3]. A net increase in the carbon stock was observed, however, as the results indicated no reduction in carbon at lower depths.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556833/original/file-20231031-19-pl3bb0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soil core sampling in Zimbabwe as part of a long-term trial for conservation agriculture aimed at quantifying organic carbon stocks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rémi Cardinael</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What might hinder the development of these practices?</h2>
<p>Despite their promise, these practices are not always easy to implement. For instance, farming in Zimbabwe is based on a low-input, mixed crop-livestock system, which requires little mineral fertilisation and little or no machinery. At harvest time, only the ears of corn are picked by hand, leaving the stalks standing in the field. These stems are then used to feed livestock during the dry season, when cattle, having spent the wet season in forests and communal areas, are brought to fields to graze them.</p>
<p>Consequently, there is a dilemma around whether corn residues should be used to feed livestock or to cover soils. Some farmers erect fences to prevent livestock from eating them during the dry season, but this method has costs. Others harvest the residues, store them away from animals, then gather the mulch during the wet season. All this requires substantial organisation, time and energy, and an alternative source of livestock feed must also be found.</p>
<p>In these regions and elsewhere, the interest for farmers is not only soil carbon sequestration and its benefits for mitigating climate disruption. They also have a positive impact on soil fertility and the resulting crop productivity, which they achieve by reducing the risk of erosion and improving nutrient availability, and they can improve water conservation. Together, these are crucial benefits that are often priorities for farmers in the Global South, who are among those most affected by climate disruption.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is part of a project between The Conversation France and AFP Audio, supported financially by the European Journalism Centre, as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation “Solutions Journalism Accelerator” <a href="https://ejc.net/news/the-second-group-selected-in-the-solutions-journalism-accelerator-programme">“Solutions Journalism Accelerator”</a> initiative. AFP and The Conversation France have maintained their editorial independence at every stage of the project.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>For research work in Zimbabwe, Rémi Cardinael has received funding from the DSCATT project "Agricultural Intensification and Dynamics of Soil Carbon Sequestration in Tropical and Temperate Farming Systems" (<a href="https://dscatt.net/">https://dscatt.net/</a>) (N° AF 1802-001, N° FT C002181) financed by the Agropolis Foundation ("Programme d′Investissement d′Avenir" Labex Agro, ANR-10-LABX- 0001-01) and co-financed by the Total Foundation. In Cambodia, the work is funded by the ASSET project "Agroecology and Safe food System Transitions in Southeast Asia" (<a href="http://www.asset-project.org">www.asset-project.org</a>), financed by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the European Union (EU Contribution Agreement N° FOOD/2020/415-683), with the soil component financed by the Fonds Français pour l'Environnement Mondial (FFEM).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Armwell Shumba et Vira Leng ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.</span></em></p>Soil contains three times more carbon than the atmosphere. As climate change has become a global threat, agriculture’s ability to store more or less carbon is under close scrutiny.Rémi Cardinael, Chercheur en Science du sol et Agronomie, CiradArmwell Shumba, Chercheur en agronomie, University of ZimbabweVira Leng, Doctoral student, Université de MontpellierLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2136182023-11-07T17:24:43Z2023-11-07T17:24:43ZOvercoming the climate crisis with trade-based strategies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557599/original/file-20231105-27-uw7cz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2048%2C1358&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A container ships docked in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Corey Seeman/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Global warming is making <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_LongerReport.pdf">weather patterns more extreme</a> and <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2022/103/article-A001-en.xml">increasing inequalities</a> across regions. However, economic growth is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trade-regulations-may-be-opening-up-a-new-era-of-sustainable-growth-in-the-global-south-182070">still possible</a>, with economies showing a range of responses to the impacts of global heating.</p>
<p>Recently, Martina Bozzola, Fabio Santeramo and I joined together to understand whether the climate crisis is creating new trading patterns. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X23008221">Our research</a> concludes that international trade may serve as an adaptation strategy to climate change.</p>
<p>Production shifts induced by the changing climate may favour both the domestic and international markets depending on how interconnections across the globe facilitate the movement of goods. Taking into account conditions such as the geographical distance or the size of economies, the value of the exchange in goods between two trading partners is as large as their climatic conditions differ. Specifically, for an increase of 1 degree Celsius in the gap between the mean temperatures of two countries, the trade between them is expected to grow by 38% on average.</p>
<p>For example, between 1996 and 2015, the agricultural and food-related trade between India and Indonesia amounted to an average of 215 million dollars each year for the period. Indonesia is about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than India, and the effect of having a 1 degree Celsius larger difference in temperatures between the two countries would generate an average trade increase between them quantifiable in 82 million dollars per year.</p>
<h2>Changes in temperatures leading to new shipping routes</h2>
<p>The greater the temperature difference across countries, the tighter their commercial relationships get. In absolute terms, trade tends to increase more substantially for routes in the northern hemisphere, particularly when the European Union and the United States are involved: the intra-EU shipping routes are expected to increase annually by more than 1 billion dollars each. The monetary gain in the EU-US route is also relevant, rising from 611 to 893 million dollars more per year depending on the EU trading partner. While less marked, an increase in trade values is expected between countries in the southern hemisphere, including Latin America (for example, a rise of 552 million dollars between Argentina and Brazil) and Oceania (an increase of 573 million dollars between Australia and New Zealand).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Top 20 trade routes most affected by increase in the difference between countries' temperatures" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553250/original/file-20231011-23-p4k7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Top 20 trade routes most affected by increase in the difference between countries’ temperatures. Figures are in million dollars; the reference year is 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The difference in the magnitude of trade effects between Northern and Southern countries is likely due to the variation in both the countries’ climates and state of economic development. Most of northern countries are developed economies, whereas most of southern ones are developing or emerging. Northern (developed) countries tend to have a colder climate and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/twec.13256">higher trade values with respect to the southern</a> (developing) countries. Under the same increase in temperature differences, a higher level of economic development may explain the larger gains in monetary terms. </p>
<p>It should be kept in mind, however, that the strength of seasonality varies significantly across the globe, with seasons being more homogenous around the equator. Differences in temperatures tend to increase the value of agricultural and food products traded between lower-latitude countries, such as China, and higher-latitude countries, such as the EU. According to the data from Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/food-farming-fisheries/farming/documents/agrifood-china_en.pdf">China is both a top origin and a top destination for the EU</a>. On average, China is 6 degrees Celsius colder than the EU trading partners for the period between 1996 and 2015. Consistent with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X23008221">our results</a>, such a difference would increase trade between the EU and China. Similar to other central Asian countries that traditionally suffered from a temperature penalty, China would benefit of an improved agricultural productivity with warmer temperatures.</p>
<h2>Strategies to survive in a warmer environment</h2>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article-abstract/21/4/487/6384781">Climate change has a range of impacts across space</a>, with some countries experiencing losses or gains more than others. Overall, changes in climatic conditions and increasing differences in the temperatures of countries contributes to change the economic geography and shape sectoral specialisations. </p>
<p>Countries shifting their specialisation is a form of adaptation that depends, among other, on their ability to trade with partners in other regions of the world. Developing trading partners with different specialisations would result in a potentially beneficial adaptation strategy to climate change.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=158&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=158&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Created in 2007 to help accelerate and share scientific knowledge on key societal issues, the AXA Research Fund has supported nearly 700 projects around the world conducted by researchers in 38 countries. To learn more, visit the site of the AXA Research Fund or follow on Twitter @AXAResearchFund.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>As global warming accelerates, a new study indicates that new trading patterns could develop as an adaptation strategy.Emilia Lamonaca, AXA Research Fellow, Università di FoggiaFabio Gaetano Santeramo, Associate Professor, Università di FoggiaMartina Bozzola, Associate professor, School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147042023-10-19T07:25:32Z2023-10-19T07:25:32ZExtreme weather could burn investment portfolios by mid-century<p>Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today, with potentially severe implications for infrastructure assets. Infrastructure investments such as roads, bridges, ports, airports, and power plants have long lifetimes, typically spanning several decades, and are designed to operate under specific climatic conditions. However, climate change is causing more frequent and intense extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and storms, which can damage or disrupt infrastructure assets. These physical risks can lead to direct losses, increased maintenance costs, and lower asset values.</p>
<p>At the same time, climate change induces changes in policy, technology, and consumer preferences that can impact the value of infrastructure assets. This is known as transition risks. For example, new regulations and carbon-pricing schemes could make carbon-intensive infrastructure assets less attractive or even “stranded”, leading to significant financial losses . Additionally, changes in consumer behaviour, such as a shift toward electric vehicles or renewable energy sources, could render certain infrastructure assets obsolete.</p>
<h2>50% potential loss of value</h2>
<p>If the energy transition has a cost for private investors (transition risks), so does climate change (physical risks). Extreme weather events, which <a href="https://reseauactionclimat.org/rapport-giec-climat-2021/">experts predict will increase over the next few years</a>, thus greatly increase the risk of losing value in portfolios.</p>
<p>In an August 2023 study, <a href="https://edhec.infrastructure.institute/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/p1102.pdf">“It’s getting physical”</a>, EDHEC Infrastructure and Private Assets Research Institute shows that some investors could see the value of their portfolio fall by more than 50% before 2050. The average investor’s portfolio, which generally holds around 10 assets, could drop by a quarter.</p>
<p>The reason is that over the past two decades, institutional investors – such as insurance companies, mutual and pension funds – have been allocating more and more capital to private infrastructure companies, which operate motorway toll roads, airports, power stations, bridges, pipelines, wind and photovoltaic farms, and so on. This represents a total value of 4.1 trillion dollars in the 25 most active markets. These markets include sectors like renewable energy projects, sustainable infrastructure development, clean technology ventures, electric vehicle manufacturing, carbon offset trading, and green real estate investment, among others. These infrastructures are particularly exposed to climate risks.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, public spending on physical infrastructure has persistently failed to keep up with economic growth; the United States spends only <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/04/24/data-show-private-infrastructure-investment-continues-to-improve-following-pandemic-slump">2.3% of its GDP on infrastructure, compared to 5% for European countries and 8% for China</a>. Still, private-investor exposure appears to be considerable. </p>
<h2>27% loss of value on average</h2>
<p>To measure the likely losses of infrastructure investors, we randomly constructed thousands of portfolios. To do this, we included hundreds of assets belonging to infrastructure investments across eight industrial superclasses, including transport (air, rail and road), power generation (gas- and coal-fired, nuclear, etc.), renewable energy (wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc.), network utilities (electricity, gas or water distribution), water resources (oil, gas or water pipelines, gas or liquid storage), etc. For all these assets, it is possible to obtain information on the associated climate risks in EDHEC’s <a href="https://edhec.infrastructure.institute/get-started/">InfraMetrics database</a>.</p>
<p>Overall, we observed a high concentration of risk. Most infrastructure investors generally have few assets in their portfolios (between 5 and 20 on average). Their portfolios are poorly diversified, with a relatively limited number of assets held directly by each investor.</p>
<p>Furthermore, portfolios containing infrastructure assets are often concentrated in a single sector – for example, wind farms. In practical terms, an investor who started building a portfolio in 2018 and plans to hold the assets for another 30 years is exposed to losses solely due to physical risks ranging from -54% to -10%, depending on the number of assets held.</p>
<p>In addition, the loss in value of assets exposed to climate change is -27% on average [by 2050]. In a scenario where temperatures rise faster than expected, they could reach 54% for the most-concentrated portfolios. For instance, the <a href="https://www.ngfs.net/ngfs-scenarios-portal/">“Hot House World” scenario</a> predicts a rise in temperatures of about 3.2ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100.</p>
<p>Some sectors are also more exposed to climate risks than others. In the transport sector, for example, the loss in net asset value would be four times greater than in the renewable energies sector. Investors in developed countries – in particular the United States, Europe and Australia and others – are the most exposed to losses in value worldwide. Indeed, the more valuable assets are concentrated in a given location, the greater the risk of value destruction.</p>
<h2>More inaction, even greater risk</h2>
<p>This study shows the scale of the potential losses that investors will have to face. And that’s before the 2050 deadline, as long as climate change predictions remain unchanged. Without action from governments and other stakeholders, climate risks could have a major impact on the overall value of investments, and on the economy as a whole.</p>
<p>However, there is still a glimmer of hope: if the stakeholders manage to organise an effective transition to a low-carbon economy, the losses mentioned in the article could be halved for all investors. All that remains – and this is undoubtedly the most difficult part – is to take action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>According to a study by EDHEC, some investors could see the value of their portfolios plummet by 50% by 2050 as a result of the multiplication of extreme weather events.Noël Amenc, Professeur de finance, EDHEC Business SchoolAbhishek Gupta, Associate Director at the EDHEC Infrastructure Institute, EDHEC Business SchoolBertrand Jayles, Senior Sustainability Data Scientist, EDHEC Infrastructure & Private Assets Research Institute, EDHEC Business SchoolDarwin Marcelo, Project Director at the EDHEC Infrastructure & Private Assets Research Institute, EDHEC Business SchoolFrédéric Blanc-Brude, Directeur de l'EDHEC Infrastructure Institute, EDHEC Business SchoolLeonard Lum, Data analyst, EDHECinfra, EDHEC Business SchoolNishtha Manocha, EDHECinfra Senior Research Engineer, EDHEC Business SchoolQinyu Goh, MSc Urban Science, Sustainability Data Scientist at the EDHEC Infrastructure & Private Assets Research Institute, EDHEC Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2159402023-10-19T07:24:20Z2023-10-19T07:24:20ZThe EU and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: many voices, no shared vision<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554538/original/file-20231016-28-svbnzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C3817%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is the European Union missing in action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The day after the barbaric attacks by Hamas on Israel, the EU’s Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, Oliver Varhelyi of Hungary, announced the <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/10/commissioner-varhelyi-went-solo-with-suspension-of-eu-funds-for-palestinians-prompting-u-t">suspension of aid to the Palestinians</a>. He was soon rebuffed by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, and by several countries and members of the European Parliament. In the end, it was decided to <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/10/10/the-eu-backtracks-on-announcement-about-suspending-aid-to-palestine_6161227_4.html">“revise”</a> European aid to the Palestinians rather than suspend it. At the same time, the EU announced an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the establishment of an <a href="https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-launches-humanitarian-air-bridge-operation-bring-aid-gaza-2023-10-16_en">air bridge to deliver it via Egypt</a>.</p>
<p>This sequence of events illustrates the extent to which, on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the unity of the 27 Member States remains difficult to achieve. While the EU’s <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/10/15/statement-agreed-by-the-27-members-of-the-european-council-on-the-situation-in-the-middle-east/">unanimously condemned</a> of the attacks and affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself, shortly after Ursula von der Leyen was <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/10/18/ursula-von-der-leyen-defends-trip-to-israel-and-says-civilians-must-be-protected-from-fury">criticised</a> for having visited Israel to show support without expressing concern about the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza.</p>
<p>In the past the <a href="https://www.puf.com/content/La_Politique_%C3%A9trang%C3%A8re_europ%C3%A9enne">European Economic Community</a> – replaced by the EU in 1993 – was able to develop consensual positions on this issue, but it now seems infinitely more difficult. It is therefore hard to see how the EU could weigh in sufficiently to influence the outcome.</p>
<h2>A bipolar system</h2>
<p>The 1980 <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/docs/mepp/docs/venice_declaration_1980_en.pdf">Venice Declaration</a>, on Palestine enabled the nine Member States to express their support for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Two years later, French president François Mitterrand, spoke before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. He expressed his attachment to the state of Israel, but also the prospect of a Palestinian state. Mitterrand’s position was subsequently adopted by the EU itself.</p>
<p>Despite such firm declarations, Europeans had little influence on the Middle East peace process. During the Cold War, a bipolar system had spread to the Middle East: the United States sided with Israel while the Soviet Union supported the Arab and Palestinian cause. Nevertheless, the Security Council’s positions – in particular 1967’s <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/PDF/NR024094.pdf">resolution 242</a>, which called for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories – marked a consensus among the powers on the need to return to the partitioning of Palestine planned in 1948-1949. In 1980, the same Security Council, in <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/25618?ln=fr">resolution 478</a>, refused to recognise Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>It was under the aegis of the United States (principally) and the Soviet Union (moribund at the time) that the peace process was really launched at the 1991 <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/madrid-conference">Madrid Conference</a>. The Europeans found their place in this complex and hesitant process with the 1996 appointment of a special representative – Spain’s Miguel Moratinos was the first holder of the post – and the 2002 establishment of the <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/fr/un-system/un-system-partners/the-quartet">“quartet”</a> (the United States, Russia, the EU, and the UN) to play a mediating role.</p>
<h2>Europe in support</h2>
<p>The EU supported the peace agreements, funded the Palestinian Authority and launched a mission to <a href="https://www.eubam-rafah.eu/">assist the Rafah border crossing</a> between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, evacuated by Israel in 2005. However, faced with a conflict that continued to escalate – Benyamin Netanyahu’s rise to power in 1996, the second Intifada from 2000 to 2006, the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, and Israel’s increased colonisation of the occupied territories – the EU Member States struggled to speak with a common voice and make it heard.</p>
<p>The EU is not condemned to impotence, however. Member States have taken united and resolute action on the Iranian nuclear issue since 2003, combining sanctions and diplomacy. There are elements of consensus on civil aid to the Palestinians, support for the peace process and opposition to the policy of force, including the colonisation of the occupied territories. Europeans have not always remained passive regarding Israel. The 1995 <a href="https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-03/25032022-factograph_israel_fr.pdf">Association Agreement</a>, which organises with cooperation Israel, did not meet between 2012 and 2022, as the Israelis objected to the EU’s positions on settlements in the West Bank.</p>
<p>Still, the Member States haven’t agreed on any sanctions. All they did in 2019 was to agree to label (rather than ban) <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/eu-denies-preferences-to-products-from-israeli-settlements/">Israeli products from the occupied territories</a>, after Israel proclaimed itself to be the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/final-text-of-jewish-nation-state-bill-set-to-become-law/">“nation-state of the Jewish people”</a>, a discrimination against non-Jewish citizens, particularly the country’s Arab minority.</p>
<h2>Too many differences?</h2>
<p>Despite some points of agreement, the Member States (and the UK, a former member) have strikingly different visions of the Israeli-Palestinian question – a fact that limits their effectiveness.</p>
<p>Starting in 1917, it was the UK and France that encouraged the rebirth of a Jewish national home in the ancestral land of Israel. While London generally remained close to Israeli positions, Paris was more careful about the Arab world and defended Palestinian rights. Germany and Austria, for their part, bear the scars of the Nazis’ crimes and are more inclined to align themselves with Israel’s positions. This is also the case for the Netherlands and in a number of Central and Eastern European countries. Spain, for its part, has often taken a position close to that of France, a position that may have been relayed by Spanish figures in key positions in European diplomacy – Javier Solana and Miguel Moratinos in the past, Josep Borrell today.</p>
<p>In reality, no European country is powerful enough to stand alone as a major player; but together, they are too divided. Their voices verge on inaudible, especially when it comes to going against Washington’s positions.</p>
<p>While the EU has adopted a common position in UN General Assembly texts more than 90% of the time, the divisions reappear as soon as the issues become sensitive. This is how the votes of the Member States were divided on the UN’s reaction to the Israeli offensive in Gaza in 2008-2009, on the admission of Palestine to UNESCO in 2011, and then on granting it UN observer in 2012. In the last case, 14 countries (including France) voted in favour, the Czech Republic against and 12 countries abstained, including Germany and the UK.</p>
<p>As the right-wing “illiberal” axis has strengthened in both Israel and the west, the rhetoric of the “war against Islamist terrorism” and a “security above all” vision, political analysis of the conflict has suffered. In this light, it is not surprising to see figures such as Viktor Orban, Georgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen fully aligning themselves with the Netanyahu government’s security policy.</p>
<h2>Can the EU do more?</h2>
<p>The legitimacy of the European institutions to carry out strong diplomacy above the Member States is fragile. If the EU were to introduce majority voting in foreign policy – foreign policy currently requires unanimity – this would perhaps facilitate things, but it’s not sure that strong autonomous actions not aligned with the United States’ position could reach even a majority.</p>
<p>At this stage, coordinated action by France, Germany and the UK, as in the case of Iran, does not seem to be in sight either. Unfortunately, the Israeli-Palestinian issue shows the limits of European power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maxime Lefebvre ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The EU now appears too divided to play a significant role in any resolution of the conflict.Maxime Lefebvre, Affiliate professor, ESCP Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137312023-10-03T16:34:50Z2023-10-03T16:34:50ZMicroplastics in the mud: Finnish lake sediments help us get to the bottom of plastic pollution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551737/original/file-20231003-25-ks87tq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5472%2C3596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers on the frozen surface of Lake Kallavesi prepare to take a sample of the sediment down below. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Timo Saarinen</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The sun is shining, and air feels surprisingly warm when we walk on a 35cm ice that covers a frozen lake in central Finland. The heavy sledges move nicely, because there is not much snow on the ice today. The journey isn’t far either, as we’re by the city of Kuopio, which is surrounded by Finland’s 10th largest lake. Despite the temperature of -10˚, I need to take off my hat – the sun in early March is already warm, or it could be the fact that the heavy sledge is following me obediently.</p>
<p>We’re crossing the icy bay not for sport or holiday activities, nor is it part of a plan to hike to north Pole. Instead, our focus is in research. We are determinedly walking to the middle of the bay to collect a sediment core from its bottom. Mud – or sediments, as geologists call them – are deposited slowly at the bottom of lakes. How quickly mud accumulates varies greatly depending on the body of water, but at this bay in Lake Kallavesi, about 1 centimetre of sediment is deposited annually. Logically, the new sediment is deposited on top of earlier layers, and so sediments are like time machines – the deeper you dig into the older sediments, the further you reach into the past. You can think of sediments like libraries of a lake’s untold stories, and if you can read the words of the sediment core, they can tell amazing stories.</p>
<p>Lake Kallavesi has a specific and rare type of sediments called annually laminated or <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4020-4411-3_226">varved sediments</a>. They’re composed of a bright and dark couplets one after the other, just like tree rings, that can be counted backwards. It is possible to check how your birth year looked – or your grandmother’s birth year. Such sediment layers can reach back thousands of years.</p>
<h2>The history of plastic, buried in the mud</h2>
<p>Our historical destination this time is much more recent – we want to investigate the presence of plastic particles within the natural sediment. It’s a continuation of our ongoing research, most recently published in the <em>Journal of Soils and Sediments</em> in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11368-023-03465-3">February 2023</a>. </p>
<p>Widespread use of plastic started about 70 years ago, and since then, 9 billion metric tonnes has been produced. <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782">Only 12% is incinerated</a>, meaning that 7.5 billion metric tonnes are still with us somewhere – recycled and in use; in landfills or dump pits, or in nature, including our waters. The weight of all that plastic is more than that of all the people on the planet – there’s about 1,000 kg of plastic for each of us, mostly in form of waste. What would you do with your share? What would I do?</p>
<p>These are my thoughts when I am drilling a hole in the ice. It would be nice to work on lake on a sunny summer day, but the thick ice serves as a stable platform. It allows us to spread all our corers, saws, sledges, tubes, wires, and hot water pots around us. We use metal rods to push the core tubes down 11 metres to the lake floor and then into the sediment. A few minutes later, we lift the core tube out on the water. It was known that the bay is polluted, but we’re surprised by the strong smell of oil when the core emerges.</p>
<p>Because plastic is very durable material, it works well as a core tube. This benefit is also plastic’s worst aspect: released into the environment, it doesn’t decompose but breaks into ever smaller pieces. <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html">Particles smaller than 5 mm are called microplastics</a>, and they have only been studied since 2004, after Richard Thompson <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1094559">accidently noted their presence</a> in coastal sediments near Plymouth, England. While it’s a relatively new research field, we already know that microplastics are harmful pollutants that endanger animal life – including our own – and that they are found everywhere from the top of the Himalayas to the deepest oceans.</p>
<p>Like natural particles, microplastics are transported to the lakes by rivers, rainfall, and wind. They can float in the surface but finally sink to the bottom. There they will be slowly buried under new layers of sediments. But how much microplastics has increased in the nature since the last 70 years? Let’s go to see what the sediment library can tell us.</p>
<h2>The ABCs of reading sediment layers</h2>
<p>The 2-meter sediment core lies on the metallic table at our laboratory. As we saw open the core, my skin gets goosebumps. It might be the noise or maybe it is just excitement – after all, you never know beforehand what the sediment will look like.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551740/original/file-20231003-15-ga6eip.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The core of the lake sediment reveals brighter and darker bands that allow us to look back into time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
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<p>Sediments consist of natural materials as well as pollutants. Detrital materials such as clay, silt and sand are washed into the lake by spring floods that follow the melting of snow – this is the bright layer in Lake Kallavesi sediment. The thicker the bright layer is, the more intensive the spring flood and higher the snow was during the winter.</p>
<p>There is also a lot of organic matter in the sediments – not only plants transported by the rivers and pollen flown in from long distances, but also algae. On sunny summer days, they bloom on the lake’s surface and so serve as a buffet for the zooplankton that graze on the surface. When these microscopic organisms die, they too sink to bottom and become part of the mud.</p>
<p>Sediments also bear witness to human activities. Building a bridge or a road involves digging and can increase erosion, and our sediment shows bright layers that can be several centimetres thick. A significant number of pollutants are buried within the sediments – we found trace metals such as mercury, copper, lead and zinc as well as <a href="https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=423&toxid=75">petroleum hydrocarbon fractions</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/PAHs_FactSheet.html">PAH compounds</a> that are ecologically risky and potentially dangerous to health. Many are related to burning of fossil fuels. In addition to this chemical cocktail, the sediments were flavoured by a large amounts of microplastics.</p>
<p>Occasionally I get the feeling that I never went too far from my childhood. Playing with water and mud was the greatest thing I could imagine for the summer holidays, and nowadays I keep on doing very similar activities – collect mud, treat it in different ways, put it in all kinds of cups and machines. I often come home with my clothes splashed with mud. Today, however, I’m planning my playing in more detail, having spent weeks in the laboratory preparing these sediments for analysis.</p>
<h2>Two steps forward, one steps back</h2>
<p>The preliminary results show that the amount of heavy metals and oil fractions have decreased significantly from the peak in the 1970s toward the present day. This is good news, because it tells us that we’ve come to understand the harmfulness of these chemicals and our actions to preserve nature have paid off. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for microplastics – their presence in the sediments is increasing over time. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Close-up view of microplastic particles" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551742/original/file-20231003-21-d0cx0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A magnified view of lake sediments reveals an immense number of microplastic particles. Many are from single-use plastics that find their way into the environment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
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<p>The materials most frequently found are polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene, often employed for so-called single-use products such as packaging. In the annual layers we can immediately find the years 2011-2013, when there was significant construction work and dredging in the harbour. During this period, a huge number of microplastics are present with a large diversity of types.</p>
<p>With such detailed information, we start to understand how human activities on the land have a direct influence on the microplastics in the water. In the future, we want to understand how all kinds of pollutants that are already in the nature can be attached to microplastic particles, and what when such particles are eaten by plankton and animals that graze on the bottom of lakes. There is still much we do not understand from microplastics and the risks they pose, but our knowledge increases with every sediment core. It is not piece of cake, but a mud cake.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=158&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=158&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310261/original/file-20200115-134768-1tax26b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Created in 2007 to help accelerate and share scientific knowledge on key societal issues, the Axa Research Fund has supported nearly 700 projects around the world conducted by researchers in 38 countries. To learn more, visit the site of the Axa Research Fund or follow on Twitter @AXAResearchFund.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saija Saarni a reçu des financements de AXA Research Fund. </span></em></p>Since the 1950s, billions of tons of plastic have been produced and much of it ends up in the environment – even at the bottom of lakes in Finland.Saija Saarni, Senior research in geology, University of TurkuLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2126362023-09-24T15:30:31Z2023-09-24T15:30:31ZDebate: Why France needs the Fifth Republic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549370/original/file-20230920-17-pboaim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2048%2C1361&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French citizens celebrate Emmanuel Macron's victory in the country's 2017 presidential elections. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/34527195605">Lorie Shaull/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>France’s current constitution is its fifth, and it’s built for stability – literally. Established in 1958 after the government collapsed in the throes of the Algerian War, the new constitution featured a president with considerable powers. That made the country’s governments more stable – a welcome change from the Third and Fourth Republics – but it’s also left opposition parties consistently frustrated.</p>
<p>There have long been calls for greater proportionality in the National Assembly – then-President Francois Mitterrand <a href="https://www.liberation.fr/politique/proportionnelle-en-1986-cetait-un-coup-politique-de-mitterrand-20210220_XQE5EOMTNRALTHP64S72N7LPHM/">heeded them in 1986</a>, albeit in an attempt to prevent defeat in the legislative elections. In the last decade they’ve grown louder, however, with parties on the left and right insisting that the composition of the assembly should more closely mirror the results of presidential elections.</p>
<p>In 2022, both the far right (Rassemblement National) and the far left (La France Insoumise) successfully sent a staggering number of representatives to the assembly. However unprecedented, this result only confirmed that any political party needs local anchorage and time to climb the constitutional ladder. But for La France Insoumise, the Fifth Republic – regardless of the stability it has brought to the country – should be abolished and replaced by a new constitution that, to put it in a nutshell, <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2013/05/04/01002-20130504ARTFIG00271-la-vie-republique-en-six-principes.php">strangely resembles that of the Third Republic</a>.</p>
<h2>Taming executive power, ensuring political stablity</h2>
<p>In a lecture titled “France: Politics, Power, and Protest” given at University College Dublin, I strove to explain to undergraduate students that the successive régimes stemmed from both a willingness to tame the executive power and a quest to ensure political stability. The Third Republic (1870–1940) modernised the country and implemented state laws that schooled multiple generations into becoming citizens. It was not without flaws: between 1876 and 1940, <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.149663/page/n203/mode/2up?view=theater&q=103+cabinets">101 cabinets came and went</a>, essentially due to parliamentary instability and a total absence of authority within the executive power.</p>
<p>France’s defeat in 1940 finished off the Third Republic and eventually led to the Vichy Régime. The Fourth Republic only lasted from 1946 to 1958, yet paved the way for European integration. The war in Algeria convinced the authorities of the time, in particular Charles de Gaulle, that a new system of governance was needed, and the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-france-its-fifth-republic-180962983/">Fifth Republic was born</a>.</p>
<p>Out of self-respect perhaps, the French Revolution has always been taught to secondary and high-school pupils as an ethnocentric turning point, completely disconnected from foreign experiences. Before and in the aftermath of the revolution, however, an entire generation of would-be revolutionaries looked toward the United States. Concepts such as checks and balances, bicameral system, and the centralisation of the decision-making process in the hands of the legislative power intrigued minds in Europe. Prominent French intellectuals regularly met with the thinkers behind these concepts. Thomas Jefferson, who served as minister plenipotentiary for France (1785–1789), was befriended by Condorcet and Mirabeau. In this way, acquaintances and networks between American and French élites <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0035.012/--alien-origins-of-the-french-revolution-american-scottish?rgn=main;view=fulltext">fed the revolution</a>.</p>
<p>Later, Alexis de Tocqueville’s <em>Democracy in America</em>, published in 1835, confirmed in French political thought the image of the United States as an appropriate governmental system where the separation of powers – an idea heavily influenced by the thinking of political philosopher Montesquieu – to ensure personal liberties to American citizens.</p>
<h2>Looking to Germany and the UK</h2>
<p>Today, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/opinion/france-elections-melenchon-macron.html">finding fault with France’s institutions</a>, the systems of neighbouring countries such as Germany and Britain are often brought up. The comparison is not apt, however, for British and German parliamentary systems <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2022/07/12/une-recomposition-politique-sur-le-modele-allemand-ne-peut-se-realiser-sur-des-bases-factices_6134410_3232.html">do not meet France’s standards for process and governance</a>. And while such systems succeed in Britain and Germany, France’s history has shown that it is a nation that regards political compromise as a sign of institutional weakness.</p>
<p>Further, it would be inconceivable for French taxpayers to accept the existence of a shadow president and watch a prime minister elected by indirect universal suffrage touring the capitals of Europe and negotiating bills and policies. Nothing today, save for unpopular reforms presented to parliament and <a href="https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/pres-de-trois-francais-sur-quatre-sont-mecontents-d-emmanuel-macron-22-04-2023-2517400_20.php">Emmanuel Macron’s general unpopularity</a> can justify overthrowing France’s constitution. On that point, Macron’s <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2023/03/17/french-pension-reform-macron-s-isolation-revealed-by-recourse-to-article-49-3_6019685_5.html">repeated use of the article 49.3</a> to ram the government’s retirement reform has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/06/vive-la-revolution-but-is-france-ready-to-establish-a-sixth-republic">comforted advocates of a “Sixth Republic”</a>, who feel that the current constitution gives too much power to a single individual.</p>
<p>France’s current constitution consolidates the state, secures constitutional representations, and permits a coalition between the government and the president in times of crisis. It permits the executive power to react quickly, summon the National Assembly, and implement political responses when needed. Most importantly, it guarantees to the president the constitutional ability to act in the domestic sphere while leading the foreign policy of the country. All the mechanisms consolidate the three branches of power while permitting the president to participate both in domestic politics and represent France on the international scene.</p>
<p>But is this too much power? In 1964, then-<em>député</em> François Mitterrand published an essay declaring his opposition to the Fifth Republic, arguing that the institutions had been framed for a single leader, Charles de Gaulle. The title of Mitterrand’s book spoke for itself: <a href="https://www.mitterrand.org/le-coup-d-etat-permanent-465.html"><em>The Permanent Coup d’État</em></a>. When he was elected president in 1981, however, he accepted the role of presidential monarch after having so <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-60th-anniversary-of-frances-fifth-republic-out-of-breath-105747">vehemently criticised it</a>.</p>
<h2>The flip side of power</h2>
<p>Power is a precious gift, to be used with caution. While the Fifth Republic certainly confers great power to its presidents, and so draws <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230413-france-to-witness-12th-nationwide-day-of-protests-against-macron-s-pension-law">political hatred and violence against them</a> (rather than against the assembly), this system guarantees political stability. Calling for the establishment of new institutions at a time of social crisis and spreading populism is not productive. The optics also aren’t good: the image projected is that of modern revolutionaries, handsomely paid by the very institutions they wish to overthrow, cheering the idea that Emmanuel Macron could precipitate the fall of the Fifth Republic.</p>
<p>The strength of the Fifth Republic is that presidents can articulate a vision for the country. They can guide, define priorities, and pave the way for big projects. That was the case in 1975 when President Valérie Giscard d’Estaing and Minister for Health Simone Veil furthered women’s rights by legalising abortion. So too was Mitterrand’s <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210918-french-public-divided-over-death-penalty-40-years-after-its-abolishment">abolition of the death penalty in 1981</a> and Francois Holland’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22579093">legalisation of same-sex marriage</a> in 2013.</p>
<p>Any French president is entitled to follow their political conscience. It is then up to parliament to debate the vision and initiatives and to the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/05/02/what-can-the-french-president-do-with-or-without-a-parliamentary-majority_5982224_8.html">Constitutional Council to validate the final text</a>.</p>
<p>Citizens across France certainly <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-long-standing-mistrust-between-the-french-people-and-the-elites-165569">distrust Emmanuel Macron</a>, but this need not entail an automatic rejection of the nation’s institutions. What France needs now is political stability and time to address issues that other European countries also face. And the present constitution positions the nation’s leadership for precisely that. France has tried many régimes in the past, and the Fifth Republic is effective – it is appropriate for the times in which we live and for democracy, and allows broad political representation and legitimacy. While it certainly places significant power into the hands of a single person, the constitution ensures that it is still up to the people to decide who shall govern their lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emmanuel Destenay ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Opposition forces in France are using the president’s unpopularity to push for a new constitution. It’s a dangerous game.Emmanuel Destenay, Research Fellow, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.