New research published in Business Strategy and the Environment based on information from G7 countries demonstrates that green finance—loans, investments, and incentives that support environmentally-friendly projects and activities—can reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Also, data indicate that investments in green projects are profitable.
The study found that G7 countries’ environmental conditions have been negatively impacted by economic development; however, there are advantages of green finance solutions for economic growth.
The study’s investigators note that companies across various industries can contribute to environmental sustainability by proactively investing in green finance initiatives and renewable energy.
“Companies must also ensure that their growth strategies incorporate environmental considerations to avoid exacerbating carbon dioxide emissions and climate change,” said corresponding author Kaliyan Mathiyazhagan, Ph.D., of the Thiagarajar School of Management, in India.
More information:
Rim El Khoury et al, The nexus of Green finance and renewable energy on CO2 emissions, Business Strategy and the Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1002/bse.3914
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Can green finance effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions while promoting economic growth? (2024, September 11)
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Graphical abstract of the study. Credit: Yinda et al., CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Four plants consumed by wild gorillas in Gabon and used by local communities in traditional medicine show antibacterial and antioxidant properties, find Leresche Even Doneilly Oyaba Yinda from the Interdisciplinary Medical Research Center of Franceville in Gabon and colleagues in a new study publishing September 11 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Wild great apes often consume medicinal plants that can treat their ailments. The same plants are often used by local people in traditional medicine.
To investigate, researchers observed the behavior of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in Moukalaba-Doudou National Park in Gabon and recorded the plants they ate. Next, they interviewed 27 people living in the nearby village of Doussala, including traditional healers and herbalists, about the plants that were used in local traditional medicine.
The team identified four native plant species that are both consumed by gorillas and used in traditional medicine: the fromager tree (Ceiba pentandra), giant yellow mulberry (Myrianthus arboreus), African teak (Milicia excelsa) and fig trees (Ficus). They tested bark samples of each plant for antibacterial and antioxidant properties and investigated their chemical composition.
The researchers found that the bark of all four plants had antibacterial activity against at least one multidrug-resistant strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli. The fromager tree showed “remarkable activity” against all tested E.coli strains. All four plants contained compounds that have medicinal effects, including phenols, alkaloids, flavonoids, and proanthocyanidins. However, it’s not clear if gorillas consume these plants for medicinal or other reasons.
Biodiverse regions, such as central Africa, are home to a huge reservoir of unexplored and potentially medicinal plants. This research provides preliminary insights about plants with antibacterial and antimicrobial properties, and the four plants investigated in this study might be promising targets for further drug discovery research—particularly with the aim of treating multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.
The authors add, “Alternative medicines and therapies offer definite hope for the resolution of many present and future public health problems. Zoopharmacognosy is one of these new approaches, aimed at discovering new drugs.”
More information:
Antibacterial and antioxidant activities of plants consumed by western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in Gabon, PLoS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306957
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Four plants eaten by gorillas, also used in traditional medicine, provide clues for new drug discovery (2024, September 11)
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The quasiperiodic landscape in which the new Bose glass forms, similar to a Penrose tiling. Credit: Many-body Quantum Dynamics Lab / Cavendish Laboratory
Physicists from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge have created the first two-dimensional version of the Bose glass, a novel phase of matter that challenges statistical mechanics. The details of the study have been published in Nature.
As the name suggests, the Bose glass has some glassy properties and within it all particles are localized. This means that each particle in the system sticks to itself, not mixing with its neighbors. If coffee was localized, then when stirring milk into the coffee, the intricate pattern of black and white stripes would remain forever, instead of washing out to an average.
To create this new phase of matter, the group overlapped several laser beams to create a quasiperiodic pattern, a pattern that is long-range ordered like a conventional crystal, but not periodic, meaning that, like a Penrose tiling, it never repeats. When filling the resulting structure with ultracold atoms, cooled to nanokelvin temperatures—close to absolute zero, the atoms formed the Bose glass.
“Localization is not only one of the toughest nuts to crack in statistical mechanics, it can also help to advance quantum computing,” said Professor Ulrich Schneider, Professor of Many-Body Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, who led the study. Since a localized system would not mix with its surroundings, quantum information stored in a localized system would be preserved for far longer.
“A big limitation of large quantum systems is that we can’t model them on a computer,” said Schneider. “To accurately describe the system, we have to consider all its particles and all their possible configurations, a number that grows very quickly. However, we now have a real-life 2D example which we can directly study and observe its dynamics and statistics.”
Schneider and his team focus on research into quantum simulation and quantum many-body dynamics. They use ultracold atoms to study many-body effects that, in the absence of a large full quantum computer, cannot be simulated numerically.
Example of a Penrose tiling. Credit: Many-body Quantum Dynamics Lab / Cavendish Laboratory
Very often, this problem simplifies significantly because the system will always relax into a thermal state in which only the temperature of the system is important and most other details vanish. This is referred to as being ergodic and forms the basis of statistical mechanics, one of the pillars of how we understand matter.
“For instance, simply knowing the amount of milk poured in is enough to predict the final color of our coffee after a long stirring,” explained Schneider. “If we want to predict the full structure of white and dark swirls during the stirring, however, it’s important to know where the milk was poured in and how the stirring is done precisely.”
Interestingly, the Bose glass appears to be non-ergodic. This means that it doesn’t “forget its details,” therefore modeling it will require all the details. This makes it a prime candidate for many-body localization.
“It’s a long-term aspiration to find a system or material that has many-body localization,” said Dr. Jr-Chiun Yu, the first author of the study.
“Such a material would offer many new possibilities, not only for fundamental studies, but also for building quantum computers, as quantum information stored in such a system should remain more local and not leak out into its environment—a process called ‘decoherence’ that plagues many current quantum computing platforms.”
In the experiment, the researchers observed a surprisingly sharp phase transition from a Bose glass to a superfluid, akin to how ice melts when the temperature increases.
“A superfluid is a fluid that flows without any resistance,” said Dr. Bo Song, a former Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cambridge and now an Assistant Professor at Peking University, who contributed to the research.
“Imagine particles swimming through a superfluid; there would be no friction, and the fluid would not slow them down. This property, called superfluidity, is closely related to superconductivity. Along with another quantum phase, the Mott insulator, the newly observed Bose glass and the superfluid make up the ground states of the Bose-Hubbard model that describes the physics of bosons in interacting and disordered system.”
Bose glasses and superfluids are distinct phases of matter like ice and liquid water. However, like ice cubes in a cup of water, the atoms in their system can form both phases within the same experiment. The experimental results, confirming recent theoretical predictions, reveal how the Bose glass forms and evolves, so now the scientists can start thinking of applications for it.
However, though there are exciting opportunities for the future, Schneider believes we should exercise caution.
“There are many things we still don’t understand about the Bose glass and its potential connection to many-body localization, both regarding their thermodynamics as well as dynamical properties. We should first focus on answering more of these questions before we try to find uses for it,” concluded Schneider.
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Discovery of a new phase of matter in 2D defies normal statistical mechanics (2024, September 11)
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On Oct. 1, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island will all see new minimum wage rates come into effect, while the Northwest Territories raised its minimum wage on Sept. 1. Relatively substantial increases were also announced by most of these governments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saskatchewan’s decision to index its minimum wage to inflation in 2014 was a step in the right direction for workers. The Saskatchewan government announced it would raise its minimum wage to $15 as of Oct. 1, although several exemptions apply and it will still possess one of the lowest rates in Canada.
After decades of inflation and wage stagnation have eroded wages for workers, the upcoming wage hikes represent progress. But workers certainly deserve more than that.
The fight for minimum wage
Coverage of the minimum wage debate often misses some crucial points. These wage increases didn’t simply arise from the halls of well-meaning policymakers; they were the result of years of struggle and active campaigning by labor and civil society organizations.
In Ontario, the Fight for $15 and Fairness was at the forefront of this movement. It took years of mobilization before the Liberal government at the time introduced Bill 148—the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017—that boosted minimum hourly rates to $15 by Jan. 1, 2019.
Community organizations, like the Workers’ Action Center, a worker-based organization in Toronto that improves the working conditions of people in low-wage and unstable employment, are instrumental to the movement. Their efforts are part of a broader, international movement for fair wages.
In the United States, similar campaigns unfolded, such as the Fight for $15 that advocates for raising the national minimum wage to $15 from US$7.25 an hour. Changes at municipal and state levels in the U.S. happened because of grassroots activism, even as the federal rate remained unchanged.
Pushback from business lobby groups
Incremental advances for workers are routinely opposed by business lobby organizations like the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses which pushes back against measures that improve conditions for the lowest-paid workers in Canada.
This resistance is particularly evident in retail and food services, where employers routinely complain about labor shortages and appeal to governments to help them recruit foreign workers to fuel their low-wage business models. Or, worse yet, seek to lower the working age to 13 or younger, as the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce did in a recent statement.
A key part of the rhetoric business lobby groups use is “small business ideology.” This ideology frames small mom-and-pop shops as being under constant siege by red tape, taxes and fair wages. Their solutions often include reducing taxes and increasing subsidies for businesses—anything but paying higher wages.
The minimum wage debate isn’t just about wages, but the overall working conditions and benefits for all segments of the labor market, especially the ones that were deemed “essential” during the pandemic.
Living wage policies aim to create minimum rates of pay based on the cost of living in a particular region. These can come from either companies adopting living wage policies for their workers out of goodwill—something known as moral suasion—or through policy interventions by cities and local governments.
It could be argued we are seeing a similar situation now, considering corporate profits skyrocketed during the pandemic at a time when workers struggled to make ends meet.
Basic income deserves consideration
Academic research and policy experiments have demonstrated the value of basic income models as a means of redistributing wealth to workers left out of the gains experienced by their employer.
Such measures deserve serious consideration, but they face challenges. One major issue is that workers are often excluded from these decision-making processes, and the policies rely on elected officials to sustain such programs. In July 2018, for example, Doug Ford’s newly elected Conservative government cancelled Ontario’s basic income pilot program, leaving about 4,000 people without financial support.
Another missing piece is the role of unions and collective bargaining. Starbucks workers in the U.S. and Canada have been at the forefront of food service certification campaigns for good reason.
Data in Canada shows that even lower wage workers benefit from unionization by measure of a wage advantage, and the securing of supplementary benefits like health care and paid leave. Workers deserve more than just an hourly bump in pay.
And most importantly, unions put workers at the forefront of the movement at a time when the cost of living is stripping away wage gains. That’s important. Federal programs like dental care and accessible child care can help alleviate the cost of living crisis, too.
So while we should celebrate minimum wage increases, it’s important to realize workers deserve more in this economy, and that these legislated increases are not silver bullets when it comes to fighting poverty and inequality. As wage hikes roll out across Canada, we should be prepared for the predictable outrage from business lobby groups that usually accompany basic pay increases. This shouldn’t stop workers from demanding what they deserve.
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Minimum wage increases are important, but workers deserve more (2024, September 11)
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by Sylvia Kreyssel-Minar, Leibniz-Institut für Alternsforschung – Fritz-Lipmann-Institut e.V. (FLI)
Characteristics of the Greenland shark genome assembly. a) Intensity signal heat map of HiC contacts. Credit: Genomics (2024). DOI: 10.1101/2024.09.09.611499
The Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus), an elusive dweller of the depths of the northern Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, is the world’s longest-living vertebrate, with an estimated lifespan of about 400 years.
An international team of scientists at the Leibniz Institute on Aging—Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena, Ruhr University Bochum, SNS, University of Copenhagen, and CNR-IBF Pisa, in collaboration with other institutions, have now sequenced this iconic species’ genome. They published their first results on the bioRxiv preprint server and made the genome sequence accessible. The data suggest that this animal’s toolbox for repairing its own DNA may explain its extreme longevity—and that of other animals.
Additionally, the team’s work to decode the animal’s genetic makeup will shed new light on general mechanisms enabling longevity.
“The Greenland Shark’s genome is a quintessential step for understanding the molecular mechanisms of aging in this exceptionally long-lived species,” says Steve Hoffmann, computational biologist and research group leader at the Leibniz Institute on Aging—Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena, Germany. The researchers expect the Greenland Shark study to be essential for many other organisms.
“Exploring the genetic underpinnings of the huge lifespan diversity across the tree of life offers an entirely new perspective for investigating the mechanisms enabling exceptional longevity,” explains Alessandro Cellerino, neurobiologist and associated group leader at FLI and a professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) in Pisa.
Only a few complex animals can outlive humans. Astounding examples are giant tortoises, like Jonathan, a 191-year-old specimen currently residing in St. Helena. Yet, this record pales compared to the Greenland Shark.
The shark’s genome size posed one of the project’s early challenges. With 6.5 billion base pairs, the Greenland Shark’s genetic code is twice as long as that of a human, and it is the largest among shark genome sequences to date.
“There are only a few animals sequenced thus far that have an even larger genome,” says Arne Sahm, the study’s first author, referring to the axolotl and recently published lungfish genome studies.
As for the axolotl and the lungfish, the massive Greenland Shark genome size is primarily due to the presence of repetitive and frequently self-replicating elements. Such transposable elements, sometimes called jumping or selfish genes and often considered genomic parasites, account for over 70% of the Greenland Shark’s genome.
Interestingly, a high repeat content is often regarded as detrimental since jumping genes can destroy the integrity of other genes and reduce the genome’s overall stability. In the case of the Greenland Shark, however, the high repeat content does not appear to have limited its lifespan.
On the contrary, Sahm and his colleagues suspect that the expansion of transposable elements may have even contributed to the Greenland Shark’s extreme longevity. Sometimes, other more functionally relevant genes can hijack the molecular machinery encoded by transposable elements to multiply. The team suggests that several regular genes seized this opportunity during the Greenland Shark’s evolution. Surprisingly, many duplicated genes are involved in repairing DNA damage.
“In each of our cells, the DNA sustains damage thousands of times every day, and specialized molecular mechanisms constantly repair it. A remarkable finding of comparative genomic studies is that long-lived mammalian species are exceptionally efficient in repairing their DNA,” explains Cellerino. Thus, the team’s results indicate that DNA repair may represent a general mechanism underlying the evolution of exceptional longevity.
“We are tempted to speculate that the evolution of the Greenland Shark has found a way to counterbalance the negative effects of transposable elements on DNA stability—by hijacking the very machinery of transposable elements,” adds Sahm.
The researchers are also eager to learn more about the mechanisms that control the spreading of transposable elements.
“We can now start answering whether the silencing of transposable elements in Greenland Sharks is any different from that in other species,” says Helene Kretzmer from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics.
The team also found a specific alteration in the protein p53—also known as the “guardian of the genome.” Strikingly, p53 acts as a control hub that responds to DNA damage in humans and in many other species.
“This protein is mutated in about half of all human cancers and is the most important tumor suppressor we know. Therefore, it is an essential gene for longevity,” says Steve Hoffmann. However, further studies are needed to show to which extent the observed changes in critical genes (such as p53 and molecular pathways, e.g., duplications of DNA repair genes or changes in tumor suppressors) contribute to the animals’ exceptional longevity.
“Our genome project now provides a basis for many independent studies that will help us to better understand the evolution of this remarkable species,” says Paolo Domenici from CNR—IBF Pisa.
“This is one of the reasons we decided to make the genome immediately available to the scientific community,” adds Alessandro Cellerino. The genome sequence and the corresponding web resources provided by the team enable researchers worldwide to analyze the Greenland Shark version of their genes of interest.
“This work is a cornerstone for a better understanding of the basis of the Greenland Shark’s extreme physiology. Furthermore, it helps us assess their genomic diversity and thus the population size of this vulnerable species for the first time,” says John Fleng Steffensen from the University of Copenhagen, who has been studying these giant animals in the field for the last 15 years.
More information:
Arne Sahm et al, The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) genome provides insights into extreme longevity, bioRxiv (2024). DOI: 10.1101/2024.09.09.611499
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Leibniz-Institut für Alternsforschung – Fritz-Lipmann-Institut e.V. (FLI)
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International team decodes the genome of the Greenland shark (2024, September 11)
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