Human and weever fish sting records on beaches in Southwest England from April to November 2018, indicating A) daily mean number of water users across all beaches and observation windows, B) daily mean number of stings across all beaches and observation windows, and C) the number of available observation windows on each day, across all beaches. Credit: Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecss.2024.108957
Weever fish are perhaps most commonly known for the painful stings they deliver to beach goers around the UK coastline.
However, a new study has used records of those stings to provide one of the most detailed investigations of how fish populations vary in time and space, in relation to environmental conditions.
The study, by marine scientists at the University of Plymouth, focused on 77 beaches covered by RNLI lifeguards, stretching from Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, around the north and south coasts of Devon and Cornwall to Exmouth.
The paper is published in the journal Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science.
During daylight hours over the space of almost eight months, lifeguards compiled two-hourly estimates of the number of people engaged in different activities (e.g. bathers, surfers) on beaches. They also recorded the number of people requiring assistance after being stung by weever fish, and analyzing that—along with environmental data—provided scientists with a unique window into how environmental conditions affect fish populations.
What were the results?
The team found that between April and November 2018, when the records were compiled, lifeguards observed a total of more than 5.5 million people across the 77 beaches.
The study also showed that 89% of all stings occurred during the peak summer months of June, July and August, with smaller increases coinciding with the Easter and spring half term holidays. Stings tended to occur most often around times of low tide.
Overall, the scientists say, weevers seem to be more active in the shallows of beaches under the same conditions that humans prefer—sunny, calm summer afternoons at low tide.
With similar weever stings levels reported over a wide range of beaches, they also say there is evidence that weevers are suited to a wide range of beach environments and may be resilient to climate-related shifts in beach states.
The research was led by former masters student Ryan Hepburn and Lecturer in Marine Biology Dr. Benjamin Ciotti from the University’s School of Biological and Marine Sciences.
More information:
Ryan Hepburn et al, Drivers of variability in surf zone habitat use by sandy beach fish: Unwitting citizen scientists reveal detailed spatiotemporal patterns, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecss.2024.108957
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Weever stings provide scientists with a unique way of assessing impacts of environment on coastal fish populations (2024, October 10)
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A new report from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley finds that child care workers in every state struggle with poverty-level wages, even as they nurture and educate our children in the most important years of development.
Early childhood educators are paid a median wage of $13.07/hour, from $10.60 in Louisiana to $18.23 in the District of Columbia;
Those hourly rates are not a living wage for a single adult in any state;
Nearly half (43%) of childcare workers’ families survive on public assistance like food stamps and Medicaid.
The financial struggles of child care providers and their teachers have gotten worse as federal COVID-era subsidies have expired. “We’re at a crossroads,” said report lead author Caitlin McLean, CSCCE Director of Multistate and International Programs.
“Federal relief funding for child care is gone, and November elections will bring new leadership in 2025 and beyond. This is a critical time to step up, not back for these skilled educators whose support is so crucial for children, families, and the economy.”
“Imagine the impact of public investment that fairly compensates early educators for the important work they do,” said Lea Austin, CSCCE Executive Director and co-author of the report. “We’d see a more stable workforce, and families could find quality, affordable care.”
The report offers guidance to advocates, states, and the federal government on the policies requiring attention. Interactive maps enable you to view and compare workforce demographics and state policies on compensation. Easily see which states are leaders in supporting early educators—and which ones are falling behind.
Economic insecurity remains rampant
The report affirms that early educators have one of the worst-paid jobs in the nation. They earn less than 97% of all other occupations. As difficult as it is for anyone to be an early educator in America, conditions are even more severe for Black and Latina women who, on average, are paid up to $8,000 less than their peers each year, even when they hold equivalent educational degrees.
Pandemic relief and a return of cuts
The essential role early childhood educators play in supporting families and the economy was recognized through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). ARPA and other COVID-19 relief funding provided a lifeline when the pandemic forced many programs to close and at least 100,000 child care jobs were lost.
“Federal emergency funding made my family’s finances the most stable they have ever been,” said Corrine Hendrickson, a home-based child care provider in Wisconsin.
The Index details ARPA-funded initiatives across the states. In Utah, for example, programs paying at least half their staff a minimum of $15 per hour were offered additional public funding.
Now, these cuts are forcing many programs to close or increase costs to parents. “Because our state refuses to invest in child care, I’ve been forced to raise rates $70 a week over the last year,” said Hendrickson, who operates a five-star accredited program. “Yet I’m earning $12 an hour.”
Policies created this mess and policies can fix it
The Index also highlights promising state initiatives. “The Early Childhood Workforce Index shows that early educators’ poor working conditions are not inevitable, but a product of policy choices,” said McLean. “States as varied as Illinois, Kentucky, and Vermont are showing that state and local leaders have the power and authority to advance policies to support the early childhood workforce, with or without federal funding.”
Invest in direct public funding to provide early educators with a living wage, health care, and safe, supportive work environments. For an estimate of a values-based budget for each state, see Financing Early Educator Quality.
Prioritize compensation standards and a wage floor across all settings so no one working in early care and education earns less than a regionally assessed living wage. Create a wage/salary scale that sets minimum standards for pay, accounting for job role, experience, and education levels.
Adopt system-level workplace standards such as guidance on appropriate levels of paid time off for vacation and sick leave, paid planning and professional development time, and mental health and teaching supports.
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Poverty-level wages pose urgent problem for US childcare, study finds (2024, October 10)
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Per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, known commonly as PFAS, could take over 40 years to flush out of contaminated groundwater in North Carolina’s Cumberland and Bladen counties, according to a new study from North Carolina State University. The study used a novel combination of data on PFAS, groundwater age-dating tracers, and groundwater flux to forecast PFAS concentrations in groundwater discharging to tributaries of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.
The research is published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The researchers sampled groundwater in two different watersheds adjacent to the Fayetteville Works fluorochemical plant in Bladen County.
“There’s a huge area of PFAS contaminated groundwater—including residential and agricultural land—which impacts the population in two ways,” says David Genereux, professor of marine, Earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State and leader of the study.
“First, there are over 7,000 private wells whose users are directly affected by the contamination. Second, groundwater carrying PFAS discharges into tributaries of the Cape Fear River, which affects downstream users of river water in and near Wilmington.”
The researchers tested the samples they took to determine PFAS types and levels, then used groundwater age-dating tracers, coupled with atmospheric contamination data from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the rate of groundwater flow, to create a model that estimated both past and future PFAS concentrations in the groundwater discharging to tributary streams.
They detected PFAS in groundwater up to 43 years old, and concentrations of the two most commonly found PFAS—hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid (HFPO−DA) and perfluoro-2-methoxypropanoic acid (PMPA)—averaged 229 and 498 nanograms per liter (ng/L), respectively. For comparison, the maximum contaminant level (MCL) issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for HFPO-DA in public drinking water is 10 ng/L. MCLs are enforceable drinking water standards.
“These results suggest it could take decades for natural groundwater flow to flush out groundwater PFAS still present from the ‘high emission years,’ roughly the period between 1980 and 2019,” Genereux says. “And this could be an underestimate; the time scale could be longer if PFAS is diffusing into and out of low-permeability zones (clay layers and lenses) below the water table.”
The researchers point out that although air emissions of PFAS are substantially lower now than they were prior to 2019, they are not zero, so some atmospheric deposition of PFAS seems likely to continue to feed into the groundwater.
“Even a best-case scenario—without further atmospheric deposition—would mean that PFAS emitted in past decades will slowly flush from groundwater to surface water for about 40 more years,” Genereux says.
“We expect groundwater PFAS contamination to be a multi-decade problem, and our work puts some specific numbers behind that. We plan to build on this work by modeling future PFAS at individual drinking water wells and working with toxicologists to relate past PFAS levels at wells to observable health outcomes.”
More information:
Craig R. Jensen et al, Forecasting and Hindcasting PFAS Concentrations in Groundwater Discharging to Streams near a PFAS Production Facility, Environmental Science & Technology (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c06697
Citation:
Study finds it could take over 40 years to flush PFAS out of groundwater (2024, October 10)
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A mating pair of red milkweed beetles pictured in the spring of 2024 on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. Credit: U of A System Division of Agriculture / Rich Adams
Studying the secrets of how the common red milkweed beetle can safely feed on a toxic plant helps illuminate the ecological, evolutionary and economic impact of insect-plant interactions from a genomic perspective.
Although the relationship between the red milkweed beetle and milkweed plants has been studied for nearly 150 years, an Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station scientist recently joined colleagues at the University of Memphis and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh to do what no one else has done—curate the beetle’s genome and its arsenal of genes related to plant-feeding and other biological traits.
The researchers sequenced and assembled the entire genome of the host-specialist milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus). They then compared aspects of genome biology to a relative, the host-generalist Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis), which is an invasive exotic species that feeds on a variety of trees important to forestry.
Their study, “Functional and evolutionary insights into chemosensation and specialized herbivory from the genome of the red milkweed beetle,” is published in the Journal of Heredity.
“From a biological standpoint, there is a lot of correspondence that suggests that longstanding interactions between milkweed beetles and their toxic milkweed hosts should influence the biology of both interacting partners,” said Rich Adams, a lead author of the study. “But, to date, no one had assembled a milkweed beetle genome, which opens the door for targeting a lot of interesting questions at the interface between insect and plant.”
Adams is an assistant professor of agricultural statistics in the department of entomology and plant pathology for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. He is also a member of the Center for Agricultural Data Analytics, a new initiative of the experiment station, and he teaches statistics courses in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
Scientific development
Milkweeds and milkweed beetles (genus Tetraopes) have been studied as valuable models for over a century of research into ecology, evolution, developmental biology, biochemistry of toxins and more, Adams said. They also provide an interesting and compelling case of co-divergence patterns between insects and plants—meaning plants and insects share similarities in the timing of co-evolution across their histories of interaction, Adams explained.
The research team showed that the red milkweed beetle has an apparent expansion of genes from the ABC transport family, which may help them feed on milkweeds and sequester its toxins inside beetle tissues. Milkweeds are renowned for their toxic latex cocktails, which affect the balance of sodium, calcium and potassium that keeps heart cells pumping. Adams said this genome provides insights into the genes the beetle has evolved to safely interact with its toxic milkweed hosts.
“Milkweeds produce a particularly nasty type of toxin called cardiac glycosides alongside other types of toxins that come with it,” Adams said. “For many insects that eat it, the toxin will block their sodium-potassium pumps. But this beetle developed a way to not only resist the toxin, but also sequester it, hold on to it, to keep the beetles themselves safe from would-be predators.”
The study also pinpointed differences in genes responsible for smell, taste and metabolic enzymes that degrade the plant cell well. Adams said it provides a new vantage point for exploring the ecology and evolution of specialized plant-feeding in longhorned beetles, and other plant-eating beetles.
Applications in agriculture, human health
These findings may help us understand and identify the genetic factors that shape agricultural and forestry pests and allow them to successfully feed on plants, as well as evade control efforts. Most animals that can digest woody plant material depend on microbes in their gut to break down plant cell walls; however, many plant-eating beetles do not.
Adams said many plant-feeding beetles, including longhorn beetles, acquired the ability to break down plant cell walls through horizontal gene transfers from microbes. By looking at the diversity of proteins encoded within beetle genomes, he said scientists can learn about the genomic basis of beetle biology, evolution and diversity, as well as their propensity for interactions with plants.
“Nature has made an incredible diversity of genes and genomes already out there that we have not yet deciphered,” Adams said. “Understanding this diversity holds great promise for informing agriculture, forestry and human health. Herbivorous beetles would have a difficult time feeding on plants without their metabolic enzymes, because they can’t eat effectively without them.”
In addition to studying the genomic DNA of the milkweed beetle, the team collected RNA from male and female red milkweed beetle antennae to learn more about how they seek out mates and food through chemosensation.
“Learning more about chemosensory biology—how an organism senses its environment, like sensing a host plant or reproductive partner—has broad relevance for understanding insect-plant interactions, which is intensively relevant to agriculture and forestry,” Adams said.
The RNA profile provided the first transcriptomic resource for Tetraopes. A transcriptome contains a range of genes that are transcribed into RNA molecules an organism expresses in a tissue or set of cells.
The DNA provides a gene sequence, and the RNA offers “a better resolution of the gene and its expression, including how often the gene is getting made,” Adams explained.
More information:
Richard Adams et al, Functional and evolutionary insights into chemosensation and specialized herbivory from the genome of the red milkweed beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus (Cerambycidae: Lamiinae), Journal of Heredity (2024). DOI: 10.1093/jhered/esae049
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Red milkweed beetle genome offers evolutionary insights into plant-insect interactions (2024, October 10)
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Rsearchers at Linköping University and RISE, have investigated the costs hidden behind the seemingly free apps. Credit: Anna Nilsen
Procrastination, sleep deprivation and reduced focus are part of the price we pay for free mobile apps. This is according to researchers at Linköping University and RISE, who have investigated the costs hidden behind the free apps. Based on their results, they also have some advice for decision-makers.
The study is published in the journal Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance.
Most of us are becoming aware that our digital attention is hard currency for companies like Google and Facebook. By analyzing our digital behavior patterns, they can target tailored advertising directly to our feeds. Our attention becomes the product that is sold to advertisers. For example, YouTube’s three billion monthly users generated about €30 billion in revenue—mainly from services perceived as free.
Often, this data is collected through mobile applications that do not cost money to download and install. But according to researchers from LiU and RISE, there are more costs, in addition to personal data, associated with the free apps.
“Putting things off, procrastination, was the biggest hidden cost. But sleep deprivation, reduced focus and the apps taking time from physical contact with friends, hobbies and training, were also costs that arose. It can be difficult for users to put their finger on it at the time,” says Martin Mileros, Ph.D. student at Linköping University and researcher at the research institute RISE.
The phenomenon the researchers are investigating is called the zero-price economy, which means that a service provider offers its services in exchange for the user’s data and attention without money changing hands. In traditional economics, the cost to the private individual corresponds to value for the company. But in the zero-price economy, cost and value are decoupled.
Martin Mileros, Ph.D. student and Robert Forchheimer, professor emeritus at Linköping University. Credit: Anna Nilsen
The researchers interviewed 196 people in Linköping around the university campus and the science park. Therefore, the selection cannot be said to be representative of the entire population.
The researchers still think, however, that they can get a good indication of how users view hidden costs and their personal data. According to the researchers, this is the first time users and their attitude to the zero-price economy has been examined in this way.
“We can see that many users value privacy and transparency highly. Furthermore, the study shows that users prefer to make one-time purchases of their favorite apps to protect their privacy over using services that are free, but which collect personal data,” says Mileros.
In addition to more transparency from the companies, the researchers also want policy makers to place tougher demands on companies to disclose potential hidden costs.
“Many apps are designed to make us more or less dependent on them. Children and young people are particularly vulnerable. There should be stricter restrictions for many apps but also some sort of information about hidden costs. You might compare it to the graphic warning messages on cigarette packets. And for users, it’s important to understand these potential hidden costs and make more informed choices,” says Mileros.
Although the findings of the study suggest that there are hidden costs, Mileros still thinks that many users can get a lot of benefit and enjoyment from the free apps.
“You can find information, chat and so on. Also, you can change apps without much trouble if you don’t like something. So, it could be seen as a win-win situation where both companies and individuals benefit. But it’s easy to forget the other aspects of app use.”
More information:
Martin D. Mileros et al, Free for you and me? Exploring the value users gain from their seemingly free apps, Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance (2024). DOI: 10.1108/DPRG-01-2024-0009
Citation:
Exploring the hidden costs of free apps (2024, October 10)
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