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This week’s quote is from environmentalist, author, and primate researcher Jane Goodall: “Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”

This poster was originally published on September 6, 2019.

Recently, large-scale molecular phylogenetic analyses have begun to elucidate these phylogenetic aspects. However, the understanding of evolution will be extremely superficial in absence of biological information on development and reproduction.

Therefore, researchers examined the developmental and reproductive biology of almost all Dermaptera families (8 out of 11) and compared them from various perspectives. The results corroborated the systematic membership of Dermaptera to Polyneoptera and strongly supported the phylogeny within the order, which was inferred from the latest molecular phylogenetic analyses but was significantly different from the conventional understanding. These findings indicated that the “caudal forceps,” which is a major characteristic of Dermaptera, and the “elaborate maternal care for eggs and young larvae,” which are an important behavioral trait in this order, have emerged in parallel.

Future studies will examine more basal families as well as families whose monophyly is dubious, including more genera into the analysis, to advance the phylogenetic understanding of Dermaptera and, ultimately of Polyneoptera and Insecta.

This study was supported by the JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) KAKENHI: Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (24-1550) to SS; Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research C: 21570089, 25440201, 19K06821, and Scientific Research B:16H04825 to RM.

The researchers examined individuals’ responses to climate change messaging when delivered through traditional video and desktop virtual reality — VR programs like Google Earth that can run on a mobile phone or computer. They found that loss-framed messages, or those that transitioned from a positive to negative climate scenario to emphasize what humanity has to lose, were more effective at convincing people to support environmental policies when delivered via VR. Gain-framed messages, which depict a more hope-inspiring change from a negative to a positive environmental outcome, had a greater impact when delivered through traditional video format.

“The findings of this study suggest that in terms of seeking support for climate change policy, it’s the combination of the medium and the message that can determine the most effective solution for promoting a particular advocacy message,” said S. Shyam Sundar, senior author and the James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects at Penn State. “For consumers, the media literacy message here is that you’re much more emotionally vulnerable or more likely to be swayed by a VR presentation of an advocacy message, especially if the presentation focuses on loss.”

The research team created two desktop virtual reality experiences, one gain-framed and one loss-framed, using the Unity3D game engine. In addition to the loss and gain framed messages, the VR programs also depicted healthy and unhealthy coral reef ecosystems, accompanied by lighter or darker ambient lighting and hopeful or sad audio, and allowed users to explore the aquatic environments. The researchers used the programs to record loss- and gain-framed videos based on the VR experiences.

They chose to depict coral reef ecosystems because corals are one of the species most endangered by the effects of climate change and far removed from many peoples’ lived experiences.

“It’s difficult to communicate environmental issues to non-scientists because the consequences are usually long-term and not easily foreseeable,” said Mengqi Liao, first author and doctoral candidate in mass communication at Penn State. “Not to mention that it’s usually very hard to bring people to an environment that has been damaged by climate change, such as coral reefs, which, based on decades of data collected in part from NASA’s airborne and satellite missions, have declined rapidly over the past 30 years. This is where VR comes in handy. You can bring the environment to people and show them what would happen if we fail to act.”

The researchers recruited 130 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk and asked them to complete a pre-questionnaire to measure variables like attitudes toward climate change and political ideology. Then they randomly assigned participants to a video or desktop VR experience. Within each of these groups, half saw the gain-framed messaging while the other half saw the loss-framed messaging.

Participants in the loss-framed experiences saw healthy then unhealthy coral ecosystems, with a message explaining the negative consequences of failing to adopt climate change mitigation behaviors. Those in the gain-framed versions saw unhealthy then healthy coral ecosystems, with messages explaining the positive impacts of adopting climate policies. After completing the experiences, participants answered a questionnaire to measure how likely they would be to support environmental policies.

The researchers found that loss-framed messages were most effective at motivating people to support climate change mitigation policies when delivered through desktop VR. Gain-framed messages were most effective when delivered in video format.

Virtual reality is inherently interesting and attention-grabbing, and it has a low cognitive barrier to entry — even small children with limited reading ability can use it, according to Sundar.

“The nickname for VR is empathy machine. It can generate better empathy because you’re one with the environment,” he said. “Loss-framed messaging tends to be more effective, more about emotions like fear rather than hope. Sometimes fear can be better represented in visually resplendent media like VR.”

Gain-framed messaging, on the other hand, tends to involve more thinking about the consequences of action or inaction for the environment and what humans have to gain, Sundar explained. The movement and interactivity that come with VR may distract too much from the kind of thinking needed to process the potential gains highlighted in that type of messaging, which is better suited for traditional video or text.

“With politicized topics like climate change, people are guided by their motivated reasoning, whereby an individual readily accepts information consistent with their worldview and ignores or rejects information that is inconsistent with that view,” Liao said. “Our study suggests that showing stark portrayals of environmental loss can be persuasive in spurring people into action, to support climate change issues regardless of their pre-existing worldviews.”

Pejman Sajjadi, who completed the work as a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State and is now with Meta, also contributed to the research.

Earth Hour 2024, the “Biggest Hour for Earth” of the year, takes place on March 23rd. Since the World Wildlife Fund launched the event in 2007, Earth Hour has symbolized a commitment to the planet by simply turning off lights for one hour. However, despite its noble intentions, awareness of the movement was limited, with only 52% of the global population aware of the event. Our guests today, Phil Wilce and Antonia Simon, are Creative Director for Europe and Senior Experience Consultant, respectively, for EPAM Continuum, a research and strategy firm that worked with the World Wildlife Fund to reinvigorate the campaign and its outreach efforts as the climate crisis becomes more pronounced. The project represents an opportunity to explore how to tell stories about the environment and humanity’s impact on nature, something everyone listening to Sustainability In Your Ear thinks about in work and life.

The project’s cornerstone was identifying a new target audience, “the inactive middle,” a group of people of all ages and backgrounds characterized by a lack of action driven by eco-anxiety and eco-fatigue. The strategy focused on transforming Earth Hour from a singular event into a gateway for nature-positive action, and a significant part of the design was introducing the “Biggest Hour for Earth” as a critical message. Some enjoyable new activities around Earth Hour in 2024 include an in-world Fortnite experience built to bring young people to the program.

You can learn more about Earth Hour at https://www.earthhour.org/ and about EPAM at https://www.epam.com/

The preclinical study, published in Science Immunology on Mar. 15, showed that bacteria abundant in the guts of newborns produce serotonin, which promotes the development of immune cells called T-regulatory cells or Tregs. These cells suppress inappropriate immune responses to help prevent autoimmune diseases and dangerous allergic reactions to harmless food items or beneficial gut microbes.

“The gut is now known as the second human brain as it makes over 90 percent of the neurotransmitters in the human body. While neurotransmitters such as serotonin are best known for their roles in brain health, receptors for neurotransmitters are located throughout the human body,” explained the study’s senior author, Dr. Melody Zeng, an assistant professor of immunology in the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Research and the Department of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Gut Bacteria in Babies Provide a Helping Hand

The researchers observed that the neonatal mouse gut had much higher levels of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, than the adult gut. “So far, almost all studies of gut neurotransmitters were conducted in adult animals or human subjects, where a specific gut cell type called enterochromaffin cells produce neurotransmitters,” said Dr. Zeng. “However, we discovered that this isn’t the case in the newborn gut where most of the serotonin is made by bacteria that are more abundant in the neonatal gut.”

This was also confirmed in babies through a human infant stool biobank that the Zeng lab has established in collaboration with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the NewYork-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns. These samples were obtained with parental consent and deidentified.

The study results suggest that before the neonatal gut is mature enough to make its own neurotransmitters, unique gut bacteria may supply neurotransmitters that are needed for critical biological functions during early development.

“We found that gut bacteria in young mice not only directly produce serotonin but also decrease an enzyme called monoamine oxidase that normally breaks down serotonin, thus keeping gut serotonin levels high,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Katherine Sanidad, postdoctoral associate in pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The high serotonin levels shift the balance of immune cells by increasing the number of Tregs, which helps prevent the immune system from overreacting and attacking gut bacteria or food antigens. “The neonatal gut needs these serotonin-producing bacteria to keep the immune system in check,” Dr. Sanidad added.

Healthy Immune System Helps Later in Life

Dr. Zeng noted that this work underscores the importance of having the right types of beneficial bacteria soon after birth. Babies in developed countries have better access to antibiotics, less exposure to diverse microbes in their clean environments and potentially unhealthy diets that may significantly impact the abundance of serotonin-producing bacteria in their intestines.

As a result, these babies may have fewer Tregs and develop immune reactions to their own gut bacteria, or allergies to food. This may be one reason food allergies have become increasingly common in children, particularly in developed countries. “If educated properly, the immune system in babies would recognize that things like peanuts and eggs are okay, and it doesn’t have to attack them,” she said. This may also have an impact on developing autoimmune diseases — when the immune system attacks the body’s own healthy cells — later in life.

The team next plans to look at bacteria in human infant stool samples to measure their production of serotonin, other neurotransmitters and molecules that may help train the immune system to prevent future immune-related diseases, such as allergies, infections and cancer.

“It’s essential to understand how the immune system is trained during early life, but this is understudied in newborns and children. Further studies of these developmental periods may hopefully lead us to mitigation approaches to reduce the risk of inflammatory diseases like food allergies and inflammatory bowel disease later in life,” Dr. Sanidad said.

Dr. Melody Zeng’s lab is supported in part by the National Institutes of Health grants R01HD110118, R01HL169989, R21CA270998, and K01DK114376; The Starr Cancer Consortium; the Hartwell Foundation; and the Jill Roberts Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, the Children’s Health Council, and the Drukier Institute for Children’s Health at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Tune in for an important conversation about the future of krill, the billions of tiny crustaceans that are a keystone in the food chain of the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica. Overfishing of krill to make Omega-3 oil products also threatens a vital carbon sink that pulls planet-warming CO2 from the environment. This special video event features environmental journalist Ashlan Cousteau of EarthEcho International, Doug Heske, Dan Wheeler, and Matt Zimmer of Newday Impact Investing, Millicent Pitts CEO of Ocean Exchange, Monger.fish Founding Principal Aaron Niederhelman, Philipp Stratton, President and CEO of Ocean Power Technologies, environmental activist Melissa Walton, and Elizabeth Kim, director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs. 

Krill and many other species could be protected by introducing marine protected areas, or MPAs, regions of the Southern Ocean that will be set aside from commercial exploitation by a treaty currently under negotiation. But there are financial and political challenges on the path to protection. Get the story and learn what you can do to help.

Earth911 and Intentional Futures’ Mitch Ratcliffe hosted the event but could not participate in the conversation because of connectivity issues.

Oil and gas producers worldwide use venting and flaring to release or burn away excess natural gas in crude oil production. The practice contributes to air pollution in surrounding and downwind communities resulting in increased risk of hospitalizations, emergency room visits, worsening asthma and even premature death.

“Being able to combine information from what states are reporting with satellite retrievals helped us quantify the emissions from this sector better than just relying on one source,” said Sarav Arunachalam, deputy director of the UNC Institute for the Environment and senior author of the study. “Using a comprehensive multipollutant modeling framework as shown in our study is needed to assess the overall air quality impacts of this sector, instead of just focusing on one pollutant. “

According to the study, published in GeoHealth, flaring and venting activities contribute an estimated $7.4 billion in health risks and 710 premature deaths annually in the U.S. Of those deaths, 360 are attributable to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Fine particulate matter is widely known to cause adverse health effects, but researchers say impacts from O3 and NO2 should not be overlooked.

“Our research shows that oil and gas flaring can have substantial health impacts, and that a large portion of these impacts come from NO2 and O3, two air pollutants which are commonly not considered in health impact assessments,” said co-author Jonathan Buonocore, an assistant professor of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health.

Quantifying emissions for flaring and venting in the oil and gas industry has been difficult historically due to the intermittent nature of the practice and how those emissions are reported. The research team used satellite images from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite to observe flaring and venting activities in combination with state and local reported data and found emissions that were up to 15 times higher for fine particulate matter, two times higher for sulfur dioxides and 22% higher for nitrogen oxides than what was reported in the U.S. EPA’s National Emission Inventories (NEI). These emissions contribute to health-harming air pollution in oil and gas basins and surrounding areas and exceedances in ozone ambient air quality standards.

Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado had the highest health burdens in this analysis, accounting for 45% of the total number of flaring and venting air pollution excess deaths.

Researchers also found the air quality health burdens of flaring and venting fall disproportionately on low-income, Hispanic and Native American communities. Of the total early deaths caused by flaring and venting, one in three occurred in low-income census tracts, 30% occurred in Hispanic/Latino census tracts, and 10% occurred in Native American census tracts. Of the 73,000 childhood asthma cases, 40% occurred in Hispanic/Latino census tracts.

Researchers are hopeful these new insights will have significant benefits on air quality and human health by reducing emissions from flaring and venting activities.

“This research provides more evidence of the problem of excessive venting and flaring in the oilfield,” said Hillary Hull a co-author of the study and director of research and analytics at the Environmental Defense Fund. “This practice wreaks havoc on our climate, worsens quality of life and creates more health risks for people who live near this activity. State and national policies designed to put an end to this dangerous practice are sorely needed to protect the health and well-being of these communities.”

“The recent MethaneSat mission launched to monitor oil and gas projects and specifically identify, in near real-time, large sources of methane that some satellite missions may miss will further assist to quantify emissions from this sector in an unprecedented manner, and to develop mitigation measures for addressing climate change in addition to solving air quality problems,” added Arunachalam.