IPCC report: Climate solutions exist, but humanity has to break from the status quo and embrace innovation

French lawmakers voted to require solar panel covers in most large parking lots. Teamjackson via iStock/Getty Images Plus

Robert Lempert, Pardee RAND Graduate School and Elisabeth Gilmore, Carleton University

It’s easy to feel pessimistic when scientists around the world are warning that climate change has advanced so far, it’s now inevitable that societies will either transform themselves or be transformed. But as two of the authors of a recent international climate report, we also see reason for optimism.

The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the synthesis report released March 20, 2023, discuss changes ahead, but they also describe how existing solutions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help people adjust to impacts of climate change that can’t be avoided.

The problem is that these solutions aren’t being deployed fast enough. In addition to pushback from industries, people’s fear of change has helped maintain the status quo.

To slow climate change and adapt to the damage already underway, the world will have to shift how it generates and uses energy, transports people and goods, designs buildings and grows food. That starts with embracing innovation and change.

Fear of change can lead to worsening change

From the industrial revolution to the rise of social media, societies have undergone fundamental changes in how people live and understand their place in the world.

Some transformations are widely regarded as bad, including many of those connected to climate change. For example, about half the world’s coral reef ecosystems have died because of increasing heat and acidity in the oceans. Island nations like Kiribati and coastal communities, including in Louisiana and Alaska, are losing land into rising seas.

Residents of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati describe the changes they’re experiencing as sea level rises.

Other transformations have had both good and bad effects. The industrial revolution vastly raised standards of living for many people, but it spawned inequality, social disruption and environmental destruction.

People often resist transformation because their fear of losing what they have is more powerful than knowing they might gain something better. Wanting to retain things as they are – known as status quo bias – explains all sorts of individual decisions, from sticking with incumbent politicians to not enrolling in retirement or health plans even when the alternatives may be rationally better.

This effect may be even more pronounced for larger changes. In the past, delaying inevitable change has led to transformations that are unnecessarily harsh, such as the collapse of some 13th-century civilizations in what is now the U.S. Southwest. As more people experience the harms of climate change firsthand, they may begin to realize that transformation is inevitable and embrace new solutions.

A mix of good and bad

The IPCC reports make clear that the future inevitably involves more and larger climate-related transformations. The question is what the mix of good and bad will be in those transformations.

If countries allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue at a high rate and communities adapt only incrementally to the resulting climate change, the transformations will be mostly forced and mostly bad.

For example, a riverside town might raise its levees as spring flooding worsens. At some point, as the scale of flooding increases, such adaptation hits its limits. The levees necessary to hold back the water may become too expensive or so intrusive that they undermine any benefit of living near the river. The community may wither away.

Riverside communities often scramble to raise levees during floods, like this one in Louisiana. Scott Olson/Getty Images

The riverside community could also take a more deliberate and anticipatory approach to transformation. It might shift to higher ground, turn its riverfront into parkland while developing affordable housing for people who are displaced by the project, and collaborate with upstream communities to expand landscapes that capture floodwaters. Simultaneously, the community can shift to renewable energy and electrified transportation to help slow global warming.

Optimism resides in deliberate action

The IPCC reports include numerous examples that can help steer such positive transformation.

For example, renewable energy is now generally less expensive than fossil fuels, so a shift to clean energy can often save money. Communities can also be redesigned to better survive natural hazards through steps such as maintaining natural wildfire breaks and building homes to be less susceptible to burning.

Costs are falling for key forms of renewable energy and electric vehicle batteries. IPCC sixth assessment report

Land use and the design of infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, can be based on forward-looking climate information. Insurance pricing and corporate climate risk disclosures can help the public recognize hazards in the products they buy and companies they support as investors.

No one group can enact these changes alone. Everyone must be involved, including governments that can mandate and incentivize changes, businesses that often control decisions about greenhouse gas emissions, and citizens who can turn up the pressure on both.

Transformation is inevitable

Efforts to both adapt to and mitigate climate change have advanced substantially in the last five years, but not fast enough to prevent the transformations already underway.

Doing more to disrupt the status quo with proven solutions can help smooth these transformations and create a better future in the process.

Editor’s note: This is an update to an article originally published April 18, 2022.

Robert Lempert, Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School and Elisabeth Gilmore, Associate Professor of Climate Change, Technology and Policy, Carleton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

5 Tips to Ace College Entry Exams

(eLivingtoday.com) Because most colleges and universities require applicants to submit ACT or SAT results as part of admissions consideration, prepping for the test itself can be a critical component of that process.

While it can oftentimes be hard to deal with the anxiety that comes with a rigorous test meant to show your mastery of certain subjects and concepts, such as reading and mathematics, consider these test prep tips to help boost your score while simultaneously lowering stress.

Register Early
To allow yourself as much flexibility as possible, taking college entrance exams during your junior year of high school is encouraged. If you don’t get an ideal score, you can refine your approach and retake the exam with a better idea of what to expect.

Take a Practice Test
Any test prep plan should start with a practice SAT or ACT exam. Taking practice tests under realistic conditions can help you gain a better understanding of the content of the test, improve your time management and help combat test anxiety. You can use your practice test as a baseline to set goals and focus the rest of your prep on areas you would like to improve before the real thing.

Sign Up for a Prep Course
If you find studying on your own difficult or not as successful as you’d hoped, a prep course can put you through the paces and hold you accountable. Complete with homework and in-class practice, prep classes can range from small groups to larger classes taught by test experts. Some school districts even offer after-school programs dedicated to ACT or SAT prep.

Gather Supplies
To help reduce test day stress, gather everything you’ll need the night before. Check the list of banned items – cellphones aren’t permitted – to make sure you don’t accidentally bring something you’re not allowed to have. Ensure your bag is packed with your admission ticket, valid photo identification, several sharpened pencils with erasers, an approved calculator (with fresh batteries) and a watch, if allowed.

Get a Good Night’s Sleep and Eat Breakfast
While it can be tempting to stay up late the night before the test to cram, you’re likely to perform better with a full night’s sleep. Sleep is important for retention, and eating a balanced breakfast before heading out the door can aid in your ability to focus. To make your morning easier, prep breakfast before bed to keep an early morning from starting even earlier.

Remember, the college admissions process involves more than just test scores. Visit eLivingtoday.com for more education tips and information.

 

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

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SVB’s newfangled failure fits a century-old pattern of bank runs, with a social media twist

Thousands of banks failed in the Great Depression. Bettmann via Getty Images

Rodney Ramcharan, University of Southern California

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, 2023, came as a shock to most Americans. Even people like myself, a scholar of the U.S. banking system who has worked at the Federal Reserve, didn’t expect SVB’s collapse.

Usually banks, like all companies, fail after a prolonged period of lackluster performance. But SVB, the nation’s 16th-largest bank, had been stable and highly profitable just a few months before, having earned about US$1.5 billion in profits in the last quarter of 2022.

However, financial history is filled with examples of seemingly stable and profitable banks that unexpectedly failed.

The demise of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, two prominent investment banks, and Countrywide Financial Corp., a subprime mortgage lender, during the 2008-2009 financial crisis; the Savings and Loan banking crisis in the 1980s; and the complete collapse of the U.S. banking system during the Great Depression didn’t unfold in exactly the same way. But they had something in common: An unexpected change in economic conditions created an initial bank failure or two, followed by general panic and then large-scale economic distress.

The main difference this time, in my view, is that modern innovations may have hastened SVB’s demise.

Great Depression

The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1941, epitomized the public harm that bank runs and financial panic can cause.

Following a rapid expansion of the “Roaring Twenties,” the U.S. economy began to slow in early 1929. The stock market crashed on Oct. 24, 1929 – a date known as “Black Tuesday.”

The massive losses investors suffered weakened the economy and led to distress at some banks. Fearing that they would lose all their money, customers began to withdraw their funds from the weaker banks. Those banks, in turn, began to rapidly sell their loans and other assets to pay their depositors. These rapid sales pushed prices down further.

As this financial crisis spread, depositors with accounts at nearby banks also began queuing up to withdraw all their money, in a quintessential bank run, culminating in the failure of thousands of banks by early 1933. Soon after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inauguration, the federal government resorted to shutting all banks in the country for a whole week.

These failures meant that banks could no longer lend money, which led to more and more problems. The unemployment rate spiked to around 25%, and the economy shrank until the outbreak of World War II.

Determined to avoid a repeat of this debacle, the government tightened banking regulations with the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. It prohibited commercial banks, which serve consumers and small and medium-size businesses, from engaging in investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured deposits up to a certain threshold. That limit has risen sharply over the past 90 years, from $2,500 in 1933 to $250,000 in 2010 – the same limit in place today.

The government created the FDIC to protect depositors from bank failures.

S&L crisis

The nation’s new and improved banking regulations ushered in a period of relative stability in the banking system that lasted about 50 years.

But in the 1980s, hundreds of the small banks known as savings and loan associations failed. Savings and loans, also called “thrifts,” were generally small local banks that mainly made mortgage loans to households and collected deposits from their local communities.

Beginning in 1979, the Federal Reserve began to hike interest rates very aggressively to fight the high inflation rates that had become entrenched.

By the early 1980s, Congress began allowing banks to pay market interest rates on depositers’ accounts. As a result, the interest rate S&Ls had to pay their customers was much higher than the interest income they were earning on the loans they had made in prior years. That imbalance caused many of them to lose money.

Even though about 1 in 3 S&Ls failed from around 1986 through 1992 – somewhere around 750 banks – most depositors at small S&Ls were protected by the FDIC’s then-$100,000 insurance limit. Ultimately, resolving that crisis cost taxpayers the equivalent of about $250 billion in today’s dollars.

Because the savings and loans industry was not directly connected to the big banks of that era, their collapse did not cause runs at the bigger institutions. Nevertheless, the S&L collapse and the government’s regulatory response did reduce the supply of credit to the economy.

As a result, the U.S. economy underwent a mild recession in the latter half of 1990 and first quarter of 1991. But the banking system escaped further distress for nearly two decades.

High inflation spurred failures of many small savings-and-loan banks in the 1980s. Bettmann via Getty Images

Great Recession

Against this backdrop of relative stability, Congress repealed most of Glass-Steagall in 1999 – eliminating Depression-era regulations that restricted the scope of businesses that banks could engage in.

Those changes contributed to what happened when, at the start of a recession that began in December 2007, the entire financial sector suffered a panic.

At that time, large banks, freed from the Depression-era restrictions on securities trading, as well as investment banks, hedge funds and other institutions outside the traditional banking system, had heavily invested in mortgage-backed securities, a kind of bond backed by pooled mortgage payments from lots of homeowners. These bonds were highly profitable amid the housing boom of that era, and they helped many financial institutions reap record profits.

But the Federal Reserve had been increasing interest rates since 2004 to slow the economy. By 2007, many households with adjustable-rate mortgages could no longer afford to make their larger-than-expected home loan payments. That led investors to fear a rash of mortgage defaults, and the values of securities backed by mortgages plunged.

It wasn’t possible to know which investment banks owned a lot of these vulnerable securities. Rather than wait to find out and risk not getting paid, most of the depositors rushed to get their money out by late 2007. This stampede led to cascading failures in 2008 and 2009, and the federal government responded with a series of big bailouts.

The government even bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, two of the country’s three largest automakers, in December 2008 to keep the industry from going bankrupt. That happened because the major car companies relied on the financial system to provide potential car buyers with credit to purchase or lease new cars. But when the financial system collapsed, buyers could no longer obtain credit to finance or lease new vehicles.

The Great Recession lasted until June 2009. Stock prices plummeted by more than 50%, and unemployment peaked at around 10% – the highest rate since the early 1980s.

As with the Great Depression, the government responded to this financial crisis with significant new regulations, including a new law known as the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. It imposed stringent new requirements on banks with assets above $50 billion.

Traders in Chicago watch stock index futures plunge on March 17, 2008. Scott Olson/Getty Image

Close-knit customers

Congress rolled back some of Dodd-Frank’s most significant changes only eight years after lawmakers approved the measure.

Notably, the most stringent requirements were now reserved for banks with more than $250 billion in assets, up from $50 billion. That change, which Congress passed in 2018, paved the way for regional banks like SVB to rapidly expand with much less regulatory oversight.

But still, how could SVB collapse so suddenly and without any warning?

Banks take deposits to make loans. But a loan is a long-term contract. Mortgages, for example, can last for 30 years. And deposits can be withdrawn at any time. To reduce their risks, banks can invest in bonds and other securities that they can quickly sell in case they need funds for their customers.

In the case of SVB, the bank invested heavily in U.S. Treasury bonds. Those bonds do not have any default risk, as they are debt issued by the federal government. But their value declines when interest rates rise, as newer bonds pay higher rates compared with the older bonds.

SVB bought a lot of Treasury bonds it had on hand when interest rates were close to zero, but the Fed has been steadily raising interest rates since March 2022, and the yields available for new Treasurys sharply increased over the next 12 months. Some depositors became concerned that SVB might not be able to sell these bonds at a high enough price to repay all its customers.

Unfortunately for SVB, these depositors were very close-knit, with most in the tech sector or startups. They turned to social media, group text messages and other modern forms of rapid communication to share their fears – which quickly went viral.

Many large depositors all rushed at the same time to get their funds out. Unlike what happened nearly a century earlier during the Great Depression, they generally tried to withdraw their money online – without forming chaotic lines at bank branches.

Most of the SVB bank failure drama occurred online rather than in person. John Brecher for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Will more shoes drop?

The government allowed SVB, which is being sold to First Citizens Bank, and Signature Bank, a smaller financial institution, to fail. But it agreed to repay all depositors – including those with deposits above the $250,000 limit.

While the authorities have not explicitly guaranteed all deposits in the banking system, I see the bailout of all SVB depositors as a clear signal that the government is prepared to take extraordinary steps to protect deposits in the banking system and prevent an overall panic.

I believe that it is too soon to say whether these measures will work, especially as the Fed is still fighting inflation and raising interest rates. But at this point, major U.S. banks appear safe, though there are growing risks among the smaller regional banks.

Rodney Ramcharan, Professor of Finance and Business Economics, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the global musical phenomenon turns 50, a hip-hop professor explains what the word ‘dope’ means to him

Hip-hop culture brought graffiti art, breakdancing, emceeing and DJing to prominence. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

A.D. Carson, University of Virginia

After I finished my Ph.D. in 2017, several newspaper reporters wrote about the job I’d accepted at the University of Virginia as an assistant professor of hip-hop.

“A.D. Carson just scored, arguably, the dopest job ever,” one journalist wrote.

The writer may not have meant it the way I read it, but the terminology was significant to me. Hip-hop’s early luminaries transformed the word’s original meanings, using it as a synonym for cool. In the 50 years since, it endures as an expression of respect and praise – and illegal substances.

In that context, dope has everything to do with my work.

In the year I graduated from college, one of my best friends was sent to federal prison for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. He served nearly a decade and has been back in prison several times since.

But before he went to prison, he helped me finish school by paying off my tuition.

‘80’s’ is a song from the author’s dissertation album that describes his conception of ‘dopeness.’

In a very real way, dope has as much to do with me finishing my studies and becoming a professor as it does with him serving time in a federal prison.

Academic dope

For my Ph.D. dissertation in Rhetorics, Communications, and Information Design, I wrote a rap album titled “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.” A peer-reviewed, mastered version of the album is due out this summer from University of Michigan Press.

‘The Defense’ describes the composition of the author’s dissertation album and his dissertation defense.

Part of my reasoning for writing it that way involved my ideas about dope. I want to question who gets to determine who and what are dope and whether any university can produce expertise on the people who created hip-hop.

While I was initially met with considerable resistance for my work at Clemson, the university eventually became supportive and touted “a dissertation with a beat.”

Clemson is not the only school to recognize hip-hop as dope.

In the 50 years since its start at a back-to-school party in the South Bronx, hip-hop, the culture and its art forms have come a long way to a place of relative prominence in educational institutions.

Since 2013, Harvard University has housed the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute and the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship that funds scholars and artists who demonstrate “exceptional scholarship and creativity in the arts in connection with Hiphop.”

UCLA announced an ambitious Hip Hop Initiative to kick off the golden anniversary. The initiative includes artist residencies, community engagement programs, a book series and a digital archive project.

Perhaps my receiving tenure and promotion at the University of Virginia is part of the school’s attempt to help codify the existence of hip-hop scholarship.

When I write about “dope,” I’m thinking of Black people like drugs to which the U.S. is addicted.

Dope is a frame to help clarify the attempts, throughout American history, at outlawing and legalizing the presence of Black people and Black culture. As dope, Black people are America’s constant ailment and cure.

To me, dope is an aspiration and a methodology to acknowledge and resist America’s steady surveillance, scrutiny and criminalization of Blackness.

By this definition, dope is not only what we are, it’s also who we want to be and how we demonstrate our being.

Dope is about what we can make with what we are given.

Dope is a product of conditions created by America. It is also a product that helped create America.

Whenever Blackness has been seen as lucrative, businesses like record companies and institutions like colleges and universities have sought to capitalize. To remove the negative stigmas associated with dope, these institutions cast themselves in roles similar to a pharmacy.

Even though I don’t believe academia has the power or authority to bestow hip-hop credibility, a question remains – does having a Ph.D and producing rap music as peer-reviewed publications change my dopeness in some way?

Legalizing dope

Though I earned a Ph.D by rapping, my own relationship to hip-hop in academic institutions remains fraught.

Part of the problem was noted in 2014 by Michelle Alexander, a legal scholar and author of “The New Jim Crow,” when she talked about her concerns about the legalization of marijuana in different U.S. states.

“In many ways the imagery doesn’t sit right,” she said. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses … after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”

I feel the same way about dopeness in academia. Since hip-hop has emerged as a global phenomenon largely embraced by many of the “academically trained” music scholars who initially rejected it, how will those scholars and their schools now make way for the people they have historically excluded?

In ‘crack, usa’ the author explores America’s relationship to drugs.

This is why that quote about me “scoring, arguably, the dopest job ever” has stuck with me.

I wonder if it’s fair to call what I do a form of legalized dope.

America’s dope-dealing history

In the late 1990s, I saw how fast hip-hop had become inescapable across the U.S., even in the small Midwestern town of Decatur, Illinois, where I grew up with my friend who is now serving federal prison time.

He and I have remained in contact. Among the things we discuss is how unlikely it is that I would be able to do what I do without his doing what he did.

‘nword gem’ describes the author’s relationships with friends and family.

Given the economic realities faced by people after leaving prison, we both know there are limitations to his opportunities if we choose to see our successes as shared accomplishments.

Depending on how dope is interpreted, prisons and universities serve as probable destinations for people who make their living with it. It has kept him in prison roughly the same amount of time as it has kept me in graduate school and in my profession.

This present reality has historical significance for how I think of dope, and what it means for people to have their existence authorized or legalized, and America’s relationship to Black people.

Many of the buildings at Clemson were built in the late 1880s using “laborers convicted of mostly petty crimes” that the state of South Carolina leased to the university.

Similarly, the University of Virginia was built by renting enslaved laborers. The University also is required by state law to purchase office furniture from a state-owned company that depends on imprisoned people for labor. The people who make the furniture are paid very little to do so.

The people in the federal prison where my friend who helped me pay for college is now housed work for paltry wages making towels and shirts for the U.S. Army.

Even with all of the time and distance between our pasts and present, our paths are still inextricably intertwined – along with all those others on or near the seemingly transient line that divides “legal” and “illegal” dope.

A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a surprisingly bright, complex and element-filled early universe – podcast

The James Webb Space Telescope is providing astronomers with images and data that reveal secrets from the earliest era of the universe. NASA/STScI

Daniel Merino, The Conversation and Nehal El-Hadi, The Conversation

If you want to know what happened in the earliest years of the universe, you are going to need a very big, very specialized telescope. Much to the joy of astronomers and space fans everywhere, the world has one – the James Webb Space Telescope.

In this episode of “The Conversation Weekly,” we talk to three experts about what astronomers have learned about the first galaxies in the universe and how just six months of data from James Webb is already changing astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched into space on Dec. 25, 2021. After about six months of travel, setup and calibration, the telescope began collecting data and NASA published the first stunning images.

One of Webb’s nicknames is the “first light telescope.” This is because Webb was specifically designed to be able to see as far back as possible into the earliest days of the universe and detect some of the first visible light.

You can see these galaxies in the images NASA has released. Jonathan Trump, an astronomer at the University of Connecticut, is on one of the teams working on some of the early James Webb data. He was watching the release of the first images live and noticed some things many nonastronomers might have missed. “In the background, behind these beautiful arcs and spirals and massive elliptical galaxies are these tiny, itty-bitty red smudges. That’s what I was most interested in, because those are some of the first galaxies in the universe.”

This compound image shows some of the earliest galaxies ever seen, highlighted by the small boxes in the images on the left and right, and shown up close in the images in the center. NASA, ESA, CSA, Tommaso Treu (UCLA), CC BY-SA

To see any of these galaxies from the earliest days of the universe would be exciting, but right off the bat, Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astronomer at the Rochester Institute of Technology, found something exciting when she started digging into the data.

“One of the things we’ve learned is that there are more of these galaxies than we expected to see.” In addition to working on identifying these early galaxies, Kartaltepe has been using Webb’s incredible resolution to study their structure and shape. “We expect there to be discs because discs form pretty naturally in the universe whenever you have something that’s rotating. But we’ve been seeing a lot of them, which has been a bit of a surprise.”

In addition to noting the shape of the galaxies in the early universe, astronomers like Trump are starting to be able to assess the chemical composition of these galaxies. He does this by looking at the spectrum of light James Webb is collecting. “We look at these distant galaxies and we look for particular patterns of emission lines. We often call them a chemical fingerprint because it really is like a particular fingerprint of particular elements in the gas in a galaxy.”

The universe started with just hydrogen and helium, but as stars formed and fused elements together, bigger, heavier elements started to emerge and fill in the periodic table as it is today. And just like Kartaltepe, Trump is finding evidence that things were happening faster in the early universe than astronomers expected. “I would’ve guessed that the universe would have struggled to make the periodic table and build up things. But that’s not what we found. Instead, the universe seems to have proceeded pretty rapidly.”

This photo shows Webb’s first deep-field image, a long exposure of a small part of the sky revealing thousands of galaxies, many of which are too faint for even Hubble to detect. NASA/STScI

The discoveries coming out of James Webb are already changing how astronomers think of the early universe and challenging much of the existing theory. But the truly exciting part is that we are just beginning to see what this telescope is capable of, as Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University, explains.

“I’ve been on science papers that have used literally just a couple of minutes of data,” Brown says. “The image quality is just so good that a couple of minutes can do amazing things.” But soon Webb will begin to do follow-up surveys, take deep-field images and stare at parts of the sky for days and even weeks. Over the coming months, years and decades, Webb is going to keep giving astronomers plenty to work on, and astronomers like Brown are excited. “There is just all this complexity there, and we are barely scratching the surface. This will be the stuff that people who are students now are going to devote their careers to. And it’s going to be marvelous.”

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This episode was produced by Katie Flood and Daniel Merino, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. It was written by Katie Flood and Daniel Merino. Mend Mariwany is the show’s executive producer. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s free daily email here. A transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Listen to “The Conversation Weekly” via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed, or find out how else to listen here.

Daniel Merino, Associate Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation and Nehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Brains also have supply chain issues – blood flows where it can, and neurons must make do with what they get

Blood carries oxygen and vital nutrients to the brain. Mr. Suphachai Praserdumrongchai/iStock via Getty Images

Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Vanderbilt University

Neuroscientists have long assumed that neurons are greedy, hungry units that demand more energy when they become more active, and the circulatory system complies by providing as much blood as they require to fuel their activity. Indeed, as neuronal activity increases in response to a task, blood flow to that part of the brain increases even more than its rate of energy use, leading to a surplus. This increase is the basis of common functional imaging technology that generates colored maps of brain activity.

Scientists used to interpret this apparent mismatch in blood flow and energy demand as evidence that there is no shortage of blood supply to the brain. The idea of a nonlimited supply was based on the observation that only about 40% of the oxygen delivered to each part of the brain is used – and this percentage actually drops as parts of the brain become more active. It seemed to make evolutionary sense: The brain would have evolved this faster-than-needed increase in blood flow as a safety feature that guarantees sufficient oxygen delivery at all times.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging is one of several ways to measure the brain.

But does blood distribution in the brain actually support a demand-based system? As a neuroscientist myself, I had previously examined a number of other assumptions about the most basic facts about brains and found that they didn’t pan out. To name a few: Human brains don’t have 100 billion neurons, though they do have the most cortical neurons of any species; the degree of folding of the cerebral cortex does not indicate how many neurons are present; and it’s not larger animals that live longer, but those with more neurons in their cortex.

I believe that figuring out what determines blood supply to the brain is essential to understanding how brains work in health and disease. It’s like how cities need to figure out whether the current electrical grid will be enough to support a future population increase. Brains, like cities, only work if they have enough energy supplied.

Resources as highways or rivers

But how could I test whether blood flow to the brain is truly demand-based? My freezers were stocked with preserved, dead brains. How do you study energy use in a brain that is not using energy anymore?

Luckily, the brain leaves behind evidence of its energy use through the pattern of the vessels that distribute blood throughout it. I figured I could look at the density of capillaries – the thin, one-cell-wide vessels that transfer gases, glucose and metabolites between brain and blood. These capillary networks would be preserved in the brains in my freezers.

A demand-based brain should be comparable to a road system. If arteries and veins are the major highways that carry goods to the town of specific parts of the brain, capillaries are akin to the neighborhood streets that actually deliver goods to their final users: individual neurons and the cells that work with them. Streets and highways are built on demand, and a road map shows what a demand-based system looks like: Roads are often concentrated in parts of the country where there are more people – the energy-guzzling units of society.

In contrast, a supply-limited brain should look like the river beds of a country, which couldn’t care less about where people are located. Water will flow where it can, and cities just have to adjust and make do with what they can get. Chances are, cities will form in the vicinity of the main arteries – but absent major, purposeful remodeling, their growth and activities are limited by how much water is available.

This image shows astrocytes, a type of brain cell, contacting a ravinelike capillary. Ed Reschke/Stone via Getty Images

Would I find that capillaries are concentrated in parts of the brain with more neurons and supposedly require more energy, like streets and highways built in a demand-based manner? Or would I find that they are more like creeks and streams that permeate the land where they can, oblivious to where the most people are, in a supply-driven manner?

What I found was clear evidence for the latter. For both mice and rats, capillary density makes up a meager 2% to 4% of brain volume, regardless of how many neurons or synapses are present. Blood flows in the brain like water down rivers: where it can, not where it is needed.

If blood flows regardless of need, this implies that the brain actually uses blood as it is supplied. We found that the tiny variations in capillary density across different parts of dead rat brains matched perfectly with the rates of blood flow and energy use in the same parts of other living rat brains that researchers measured 15 years prior.

Resolving blood flow and energy demand

Could the specific density of capillaries in each part of the brain be so limiting that it dictates how much energy that part uses? And would that apply to the brain as a whole?

I partnered with my colleague Doug Rothman to answer these questions. Together, we discovered that not only do both human and rat brains do what they can with what blood they get and typically work at about 85% capacity, but overall brain activity is indeed dictated by capillary density, all else being equal.

The reason why only 40% of the oxygen supplied to the brain actually gets used is because this is the maximum amount that can be exchanged as blood flows by – like workers trying to pick up items on an assembly line going too fast. Local arteries can deliver more blood to neurons if they start using slightly more oxygen, but this comes at the cost of diverting blood away from other parts of the brain. Since gas exchange was already near full capacity to begin with, the fraction of oxygen extraction seems to even drop with a slight increase in delivery.

From afar, energy use in the brain may look demand-based – but it really is supply-limited.

Blood supply influences brain activity

So why does any of this matter?

Our findings offer a possible explanation for why the brain can’t truly multitask – only quickly alternate between focuses. Because blood flow to the entire brain is tightly regulated and remains essentially constant throughout the day as you alternate between activities, our research suggests that any part of the brain that experiences an increase in activity – because you start doing math or playing a song, for example – can only get slightly more blood flow at the expense of diverting blood flow from other parts of the brain. Thus, the inability to do two things at the same time might have its origins in blood flow to the brain being supply-limited, not demand-based.

A better understanding of how the brain works could offer insights into human behavior and disease. Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Our findings also offer insight into aging. If neurons must make do with what energy they can get from a mostly constant blood supply, then the parts of the brain with the highest densities of neurons will be the first to be affected when there is a shortage – just like the largest cities feel the pain of a drought before smaller ones.

In the cortex, the parts with the highest neuron densities are the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. These areas are involved in short-term memory and the first to suffer in aging. More research is needed to test whether the parts of the brain most vulnerable to aging and disease are the ones with the greatest number of neurons packed together and competing for a limited blood supply.

If it’s true that capillaries, like neurons, last a lifetime in humans as they do in lab mice, then they may play a bigger role in brain health than expected. To make sure your brain neurons remain healthy in old age, taking care of the capillaries that keep them supplied with blood may be a good bet. The good news is that there are two proven ways to do this: a healthy diet and exercise, which are never too late to begin.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Associate Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why the growing number of foreign agent laws around the world is bad for democracy

Georgians protest a foreign agent bill that mirrored a Russian law used to crack down on dissent. Vano Shlamov/AFP via Getty Images

Maxim Krupskiy, Tufts University

After several days of mass protests and clashes between protesters and police in early March, the ruling party of Georgia, a former Soviet state located in the Caucasus, succumbed to pressure and abandoned its proposed laws on foreign agents.

But the uproar and media focus surrounding the Georgian initiative and its demise should not mask a greater trend when it comes to such laws, which target foreign-funded media and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Over the past decade they have sprung up in countries across the world. China, India, Cambodia, Australia and Uganda are among the dozens of countries that have “foreign agent” laws on their books.

And a few days after the withdrawal of the Georgian draft laws, Politico reported that the European Union was going to develop its own register of foreign agents.

Overly broad, prone to abuse

The impetus for the adoption of these laws in recent years has come from growing international tensions and concerns of national authorities about foreign influence on domestic affairs and public opinion.

The interpretation and application of “foreign agent” laws varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But they all tend to require the registration and singling out of organizations with foreign funding or “influence.” In many cases, their activities are also curtailed unreasonably.

From my experience representing NGOs classified as foreign agents, such laws have the potential to be used as a tool against groups providing human rights and social assistance or monitoring the transparency of government agencies. Any organization involved in any way in international activities and deemed by a state to be influencing domestic policy or public opinion runs the risk of being recognized as a foreign agent.

The legislation in Georgia would have required nongovernmental organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to be included in a special register of “agents of foreign influence.” They would also need to file an annual financial declaration or face a US$9,500 fine.

The authors of the Georgia bill compared it to the American Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which applies to any “agent of a foreign principal.”

But critics argued that it was a copy of Russia’s more repressive foreign agents law. Human rights groups say the Russian law allows the Kremlin to obstruct the work of NGOs and independent media, as well as to harass dissenting citizens.

Ever since Russia enacted its foreign agents law in 2012, I have seen how authorities use vague legal concepts like “political activity,” “foreign funding” and “foreign influence” to determine whether an NGO is a foreign agent. These vague legal concepts allow executive authorities and courts to interpret the law as broadly as they like and arbitrarily decide who is or isn’t a foreign agent.

And this broad and arbitrary classification of foreign agents is not unique to Russia. It also applies to foreign agent legislation in more democratic countries. However, the more authoritarian a regime is, the more negative consequences these laws have on civil society.

How foreign agent laws began

The first foreign agent law, FARA, was enacted in the U.S. in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda. This law is still in force today but has undergone significant changes. The concept of propaganda has disappeared from it, and its stated purpose is to identify foreign influence in the U.S. and address threats to national security.

While FARA does not create repressive restrictions on civil society, it can be interpreted extremely broadly if desired. The large number of advisory opinions that the FARA unit has issued on individual requests indicates how difficult it can be to determine who should register as a foreign agent.

In drafting their own foreign agent legislation, Russia and Georgia both referred to FARA. However, there is a key difference between their legislation and FARA: In the Russian and now-abandoned Georgian versions, “foreign agents” do not need to carry out activities on behalf of a foreign government, political party, business or individual.

As such, the use of the terms “foreign agent” and “agent of foreign influence” is incorrect from a legal point of view – agency activity does not even need to be proved.

Nonetheless, the legal consequences are very real for those who are labeled “foreign agents.” In Russia, these organizations cannot engage in educational activities in state schools, organize public events or produce or distribute materials for children. And their programs and activities can be canceled by state authorities even if they do not violate the law.

Protesters in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, face police in riot gear as they rally against the government’s planned foreign agent legislation. Zurab Tsertsvadze/AFP via Getty Images)

Civil rights violations

Similar legislation in other countries also violates civil rights and freedoms. Chinese law requires NGOs to obtain government permission to conduct their activities and to register with the security authorities, along with a number of other serious restrictions that essentially make it impossible for them to operate. As The Guardian newspaper has pointed out, “foreign NGOs must refrain from engaging in political or religious activities or acting in a way that damages ‘China’s national interests’ or ‘ethnic unity.’”

In Uganda, NGOs cannot operate in any part of the country unless they receive permission from the District NGO Monitoring Committee and the local government. They must also sign a memorandum of understanding with government representatives.

In 2022, international human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called on the Indian government to stop applying the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to civil society. They argued that the law was being used to persecute the Centre for Promotion of Social Concerns, a prominent local NGO that monitors human rights abuses. Indian authorities accused the group of “portraying India’s human rights record in negative light … to the detriment of India’s image,” and searched its office and seized documents.

Beyond these legal consequences for NGOs, state rhetoric against foreign agents can lead citizens to distrust important NGOs and other organizations that protect human rights and provide public services. And unfairly applying the foreign agents law to individuals leads to a return to the Soviet rhetoric of “enemies of the nation.” Vladimir Putin’s railing against unspecified “scum and national traitors” and the “fifth column” wishing to destroy Russia in the interests of the West is an extreme manifestation of this rhetoric.

International courts have recognized how foreign agents laws have violated citizens’ rights and freedoms. In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had violated the right to freedom of assembly and association with regard to NGOs deemed foreign agents. Two years earlier, the European Court of Justice determined that the Hungarian law on foreign agents unduly violates individual rights and freedoms and contradicts the European Union Charter of Human Rights. However, neither decision brought practical results, as the legislation in Russia and Hungary remains intact.

Growing movement

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and foreign interference in elections in the U.S. and Canada, measures to protect state sovereignty have grown more popular.

Countries need to ensure transparency in financial transactions in order to curb corruption, money laundering, terrorism funding and other crimes. However, creating unnecessarily broad foreign agents laws that stigmatize and restrict law-abiding NGOs, independent media and individuals is a threat to democratic values.

Maxim Krupskiy, Visiting scholar, Russia and Eurasia Program, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

FDA approval of over-the-counter Narcan is an important step in the effort to combat the US opioid crisis

The use of naloxone administered by nasal spray can be a lifesaving drug with minimal side effects. TG23/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Lucas Berenbrok, University of Pittsburgh; Janice L. Pringle, University of Pittsburgh, and Joni Carroll, University of Pittsburgh

On March 29, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Narcan for over-the-counter sale. Narcan is the 4-milligram nasal spray version of naloxone, a medication that can quickly counteract an opioid overdose.

The FDA’s greenlighting of over-the-counter naloxone means that it will be available for purchase without a prescription at more than 60,000 pharmacies nationwide. That means that, for 90% of Americans, naloxone nasal spray will be accessible at a pharmacy within 5 miles from home. It will also likely be available at gas stations, supermarkets and convenience stores. The transition from prescription to over-the-counter status is expected to take a few months.

We are pharmacists and public health experts who seek to increase public acceptance of and access to naloxone.

We think that making naloxone available over the counter is an essential step in reducing deaths due to overdose and destigmatizing opioid use disorder. Over-the-counter access to naloxone will permit more people to carry and administer it to help others who are overdosing. Moreover, increasing naloxone’s over-the-counter availability will convey the message that risks associated with substance use disorder warrant a pervasive intervention much as with other illnesses.

Deaths from opioid overdoses across the U.S. have increased nearly threefold since 2015. Between October 2021 and October 2022, approximately 77,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the U.S. Since 2016, the synthetic opioid fentanyl has been responsible for most of the drug-involved overdose deaths in America.

Naloxone can be a lifesaving intervention from opioids and other drugs that are laced with the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

What is naloxone?

Naloxone reverses overdose from prescription opioids like fentanyl, oxycodone and hydrocodone and recreational opioids like heroin. Naloxone works by competitively binding to the same receptors in the central nervous system that opioids bind to for euphoric effects. When naloxone is administered and reaches these receptors, it can block the euphoric effects of opioids and reverse respiratory depression when opioid overdose occurs.

There are two common ways to administer naloxone. One is through the prepackaged nasal sprays, such as Narcan and Kloxxado or generic versions of the drug. The other method is via auto-injectors, like ZIMHI, which deliver naloxone through injection, similar to the way epinephrine is delivered by an EpiPen as an emergency treatment for life-threatening allergic reactions.

The FDA will review a second over-the-counter application for naloxone auto-injectors at a later date. Although no interaction with a health care provider will be needed to purchase over-the-counter naloxone, when naloxone is purchased at a pharmacy, a knowledgeable pharmacist will be able to help people choose a product and explain instructions for use.

Research shows that when people who are likely to witness or respond to opioid overdoses have naloxone, they can save patients’ lives. This also includes bystanders as well as first responders like police officers and paramedics.

But until now, people in those situations could intervene only if they were carrying prescription naloxone or knew where to retrieve it quickly. Friends and family of people who use opioids are often given prescriptions for naloxone for emergency use. Over-the-counter naloxone will help make the drug more accessible to members of the general public.

Naloxone works on a variety of opioids, including fentanyl.

Reducing stigma and saving lives

Naloxone is a safe medication with minimal side effects. It works only for those with opioids in their system, and it’s unlikely to cause harm if given by mistake to someone who’s not actively overdosing on opioids.

Since approximately 40% of overdoses occur in the presence of someone else, we believe public access to naloxone is extremely important. People may wish to have naloxone on hand if someone they know is at an increased risk for opioid overdose, including people who have opioid use disorder or people who take high amounts of prescribed opioid medications.

Community centers and recreational facilities may also keep naloxone on hand, similar to the placement of automated external defibrillators in public spaces for emergency use when someone has a heart attack.

There’s a long-held public stigma that suggests addiction is a moral failing rather than a chronic yet treatable health condition. Those who request naloxone or who have an opioid use disorder experience stigma and often aren’t comfortable disclosing their drug use to others, or seeking medical treatment. Removing naloxone’s prescription requirements by making it over the counter could decrease the stigma experienced by individuals since they no longer must request it from a health care provider or behind the pharmacy counter.

In addition, we encourage health care providers and members of the general public to use less stigmatizing language when discussing addiction.

Questionable accessibility

Often, medications switched from prescription to over the counter are not covered by insurance. It remains unclear if this will be the case with Narcan. If so, the costs will shift to the patient, highlighting the reason continued support of programs that offer naloxone free of charge remains important.

What’s more, over-the-counter access could paradoxically cause a decrease in the drug’s availability. A rise in purchases could make it harder to buy naloxone if manufacturer supply does not keep up with increased consumer demand. The U.S. experienced such shortages of over-the-counter drugs in late 2022 during the nationwide surges in flu, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19.

Federal and state governments could lessen these potential barriers by subsidizing the cost of over-the-counter naloxone and working with drug manufacturers to provide production incentives to meet public demand.

The effects of nationwide access to over-the-counter naloxone on opioid-related deaths remain to be seen, but making this medication more widely available is an important next step in our nation’s response to the opioid crisis.

Lucas Berenbrok, Associate Professor of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh; Janice L. Pringle, Professor of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh, and Joni Carroll, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.