PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Time for a mass extinction metrics makeover

2021-04-29
(Press-News.org) New Haven, Conn. -- Researchers at Yale and Princeton say the scientific community sorely needs a new way to compare the cascading effects of ecosystem loss due to human-induced environmental change to major crises of the past.

For too long, scientists have relied upon metrics that compare current rates of species loss with those characterizing mass extinctions in the distant past, according to Pincelli Hull, an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Yale, and Christopher Spalding, an astrophysicist at Princeton.

The result has been projections of extinction rates in the next few decades that are on the order of a hundred times higher than anything observed in the last few million years of the fossil record.

"The problem with using extinction rates this way is that their assessment is riddled with uncertainty," said Hull, who has conducted extensive research on mass extinctions of marine life in the ancient world. "We need a better thermometer for biodiversity crises."

Furthermore, the researchers said, mass extinction predictions do not fully convey the severity of damage done to an ecosystem when species are depleted but not entirely wiped out.

In a new study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Spalding and Hull point out deep flaws in the way mass extinctions are being projected and propose a new model for assessing biodiversity loss.

Part of the problem, they said, has to do with comparing extinctions found in the fossil record over millions of years with human-influenced extinctions from only the past century. Mass extinctions in the ancient world were typically characterized by "pulses" of extinctions, preceded and followed by quieter periods; the longer time frame reduces the historic average because it includes the surrounding quiet periods.

What's more, there are large gaps in the ancient fossil record. For example, it is well documented that frog species today are at high risk of extinction -- yet frogs are only rarely found in the fossil record. In addition, certain habitats with many extinctions today -- such as islands -- are also not represented in the ancient fossil record. Rather, the fossil record tends to be dominated by larger species and geographically larger habitats.

"It's difficult to confidently deduce whether today's rates are objectively higher than those of the fossil record," Spalding said. "Meanwhile, we know that ecosystems may be totally decimated, yet suffer very few extinctions. In that sense, extinction rates may even underestimate our influence upon the biosphere."

Spalding and Hull took pains to describe the perilous state of the natural world today, beyond the numbers of species extinctions. According to an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report in 2019, nearly 75% of all freshwater resources on Earth are used by crop and livestock production; human activities have significantly altered 75% of all ice-free terrestrial environments and 66% of marine environments.

Spalding and Hull's proposal is to change the metric from species loss to changes in the rocks beneath their feet.

"Humans change the rock record as soon as they enter an area, whether it is agrarian societies, beaver trapping, or the damming of rivers," Hull said. "We completely change the way the Earth forms itself and this can be seen in the rocks left behind."

The researchers said a variety of measurable metrics -- such as the chemical composition of sediments and grains of rocks -- are more readably comparable to ancient timescales.

"Historical comparisons offer the hope that we might begin to understand the relative scope and the eventual ramifications of our modification of the biosphere," Spalding said. "If we think these comparisons are important, we need to get them right."

INFORMATION:



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Quality improvement project boosts depression screening among cancer patients

Quality improvement project boosts depression screening among cancer patients
2021-04-29
DALLAS - April 28, 2021 - Depression screening among cancer patients improved by 40 percent to cover more than 90 percent of patients under a quality improvement program launched by a multidisciplinary team at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Southwestern Health Resources. Cancer patients with depression are at an increased risk of mortality and suicide compared with those without depression. Although rates vary based on cancer type and stage, depression is estimated to affect 10 to 30 percent of patients with cancer compared with 7 to 8 percent of adults without a diagnosis or history of cancer, and impact both men and women equally. Due to the higher risk, medical ...

Was North America populated by 'stepping stone' migration across Bering Sea?

2021-04-29
LAWRENCE -- For thousands of years during the last ice age, generations of maritime migrants paddled skin boats eastward across shallow ocean waters from Asia to present-day Alaska. They voyaged from island to island and ultimately to shore, surviving on bountiful seaweeds, fish, shellfish, birds and game harvested from coastal and nearshore biomes. Their island-rich route was possible due to a shifting archipelago that stretched almost 900 miles from one continent to the other. A new study from the University of Kansas in partnership with universities in Bologna and Urbino, Italy, documents the newly named Bering Transitory Archipelago and then points to how, when and where the first Americans ...

New cell atlas of COVID lungs reveals why SARS-CoV-2 is deadly and different

2021-04-29
NEW YORK, NY (April 29, 2021)--A new study is drawing the most detailed picture yet of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lung, revealing mechanisms that result in lethal COVID-19, and may explain long-term complications and show how COVID-19 differs from other infectious diseases. Led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the study found that in patients who died of the infection, COVID-19 unleashed a detrimental trifecta of runaway inflammation, direct destruction and impaired regeneration of lung cells involved in gas exchange, and accelerated lung scarring. Though the study looked at lungs from patients who had died of the disease, ...

Doctors overestimate risk leading to over-diagnosis, overtreatment, study finds

2021-04-29
Primary care practitioners often over-estimate the likelihood of a patient having a medical condition based on reported symptoms and laboratory test results. Such overestimations can lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) published in JAMA Internal Medicine. "A large gap exists between practitioner estimates and scientific estimates of the probability of disease," said study leader Daniel Morgan, MD, a Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health at UMSOM. "Practitioners who overestimate ...

Groundbreaking kumara research marries scientific evidence with matauraka Māori

Groundbreaking kumara research marries scientific evidence with matauraka Māori
2021-04-29
The discovery of ancient kumara pits just north of Dunedin dating back to the 15th century have shone a light on how scientific evidence can complement mātauranga Maori around how and where the taonga were stored hundreds of years ago. A new study published in the science journal PLOS ONE reports that early Polynesians once stored kumara - American sweet potato - in pits dug into sand dunes at Purākaunui, eastern Otago, less than 30km north of Dunedin. The pits were first discovered in 2001 and are found over 200km south of the currently accepted South Island limit of cooler-climate Māori kumara storage. These Purākaunui features have the novel form of semi-subterranean, rectangular pits used for the cool seasonal storage ...

Diseases affect brain's networks selectively, BrainMap analysis affirms

2021-04-29
The brain possesses a complex architecture of functional networks as its information-processing machinery. Is the brain's network architecture itself a target of disease? If so, which networks are associated with which diseases? What can this tell us about the underlying causes of brain disorders? Building on the extraordinary progress in neuroscience made over the past 30 years, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) published a study of 43 brain disorders - both psychiatric and neurologic - and strongly affirmed ...

Study finds US Twitter users have strongly supported face coverings amid the pandemic

2021-04-29
EUGENE, Ore. -- April 29, 2021 -- An analysis of Twitter activity between March 1 and Aug. 1, 2020, found strong support by U.S. users for wearing face coverings and that a media focus on anti-mask opinions fueled the rhetoric of those opposed, report University of Oregon researchers. The study, published April 28 in the journal PLOS ONE, initially focused on linguistics, zeroing in on the language associated with hashtags during the study period, which began a month before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended mask-wearing to protect against COVID-19 infection. However, to better understand that semantics, which were found to be polarized, angry and emotionally ...

Mantis shrimp larvae punch just like Ma and Pa

Mantis shrimp larvae punch just like Ma and Pa
2021-04-29
Adult mantis shrimp pack an explosive punch that can split water, but no crustacean emerges fully formed. Minute larvae can undergo six or seven transformations before emerging as fully developed adults and limbs and manoeuvres develop over time. So, when do mantis shrimp larvae acquire the ability to pulverise their dinner and how powerful are the punches that these mini crustaceans pack? 'We knew that larval mantis shrimp have these beautiful appendages; Megan Porter and Eve Robinson at the University of Hawaii had captured normal videos of a couple of strikes a few years ago', says Jacob Harrison from Duke University, USA. So, he packed up ...

When does the green monster of jealousy wake up in people?

2021-04-29
Adult heterosexual women and men are often jealous about completely different threats to their relationship. These differences seem to establish themselves far sooner than people need them. The finding surprised researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who studied the topic. "You don't really need this jealousy until you need to protect yourself from being deceived," says Professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair at NTNU's Department of Psychology. Romantic jealousy can be experienced as horrible at its worst. But jealousy associated with a partner's infidelity has clearly been ...

More than 25% of infants not getting common childhood vaccinations, study finds

More than 25% of infants not getting common childhood vaccinations, study finds
2021-04-29
More than a quarter of American infants in 2018 had not received common childhood vaccines that protect them from illnesses such as polio, tetanus, measles, mumps and chicken pox, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals. Only 72.8% of infants aged 19-35 months had received the full series of the seven recommended vaccines, falling far short of the federal government's goal of 90%. Those less likely to complete the vaccine series include African-American infants, infants born to mothers with less than a high-school education and infants in families with incomes below the federal poverty line. The researchers warn that failure to complete the vaccine series leaves children at increased risk of infection, illness and death. It also reduces the herd ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Exercise as an anti-ageing intervention to avoid detrimental impact of mental fatigue

UMass Amherst Nursing Professor Emerita honored as ‘Living Legend’

New guidelines aim to improve cystic fibrosis screening

Picky eaters by day, buffet by night: Butterfly, moth diets sync to plant aromas

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman honored with the E. V. McCollum Award from the American Society for Nutrition

CCNY physicists uncover electronic interactions mediated via spin waves

Researchers’ 3D-printing formula may transform future of foam

Nurture more important than nature for robotic hand

Drug-delivering aptamers target leukemia stem cells for one-two knockout punch

New study finds that over 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter were not disclosed

New sea grant report helps great lakes fish farmers navigate aquaculture regulations

Strain “trick” improves perovskite solar cells’ efficiency

How GPS helps older drivers stay on the roads

Estrogen and progesterone stimulate the body to make opioids

Dancing with the cells – how acoustically levitating a diamond led to a breakthrough in biotech automation

Machine learning helps construct an evolutionary timeline of bacteria

Cellular regulator of mRNA vaccine revealed... offering new therapeutic options

Animal behavioral diversity at risk in the face of declining biodiversity

Finding their way: GPS ignites independence in older adult drivers

Antibiotic resistance among key bacterial species plateaus over time

‘Some insects are declining but what’s happening to the other 99%?’

Powerful new software platform could reshape biomedical research by making data analysis more accessible

Revealing capillaries and cells in living organs with ultrasound

American College of Physicians awards $260,000 in grants to address equity challenges in obesity care

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, FAACR, honored with the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Solar cells made of moon dust could power future space exploration

Deporting immigrants may further shrink the health care workforce

Border region emergency medical services in migrant emergency care

Resident physician intentions regarding unionization

[Press-News.org] Time for a mass extinction metrics makeover