Between 2014 and 2016, the Gulf of Alaska experienced a prolonged and intense heatwave. The hot temperatures disrupted species interactions and stressed the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem past its tipping point. New research led by Dr Robert Suryan at the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center suggests that this event may have left a long-standing mark on the Gulf of Alaska. Dr Suryan and his colleagues quantified the effects of the heatwave on all aspects of marine ecosystems. Their work highlights the importance of long-term ecosystem monitoring in tracking, predicting, and preparing for a changing climate.
Author: Amaury Abreu
HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ was inspired by a real medieval dynastic struggle over a female ruler
In three decades of teaching medieval European history, I’ve noticed my students are especially curious about the intersection of the stories told in class and the depictions of the Middle Ages they see in movies and television.
Judged by their historical accuracy, cinematic portrayals are a mixed bag.
However, popular fantasy, unencumbered by the competing priority of “getting it right,” can, in broad strokes, reflect the values of the medieval society that inspires it.
“House of the Dragon” is one of those TV shows. A king, lacking a male heir to his throne, elevates his teenage daughter to be his named successor, and a complex dynastic drama ensues.
This storyline reflects the real obstacles facing women who aspired to exercise royal authority in medieval society.
The queen as a conduit to power
George R. R. Martin, whose novels were the foundation for the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” has made no secret of his inspiration for “House of the Dragon”: the Anarchy, a two-decade period, from 1135 to 1154, when a man and a woman vied with each other for the English throne.
The story went like this: Henry I sired two dozen or more children out of wedlock. But with his queen, Matilda, he had only a daughter, the future “Empress” Matilda, and a son, William. With William’s birth, the foremost responsibility of medieval queenship was fulfilled: There would be a male heir.
Then tragedy struck. In 1120, a drunken 17-year-old William attempted a nighttime channel crossing. When his also-inebriated helmsmen hit a rock, the prince drowned.
The queen had died two years earlier, so Henry I remarried – Adeliza of Louvain – but they had no children together. The cradle sat empty and the sands in Henry I’s hourglass ran low, so he resolved that his lone legitimate child, Matilda, would have the throne as a ruling queen.
The move was unprecedented in medieval England. A queen could exert influence in her husband’s physical absence or when, after a king’s death, their son was a minor. Her role, moreover, as an intimate confidant and counselor could be consequential.
But a queen was not expected to swing a sword or lead troops into battle and forge the personal loyalties on which kingship rested, to say nothing of the misogyny inherent to medieval English society. The queen was the conduit through which power was transferred by marriage and childbirth, not its exclusive wielder.
Viserys and Henry I share the same plight
A similar scenario drives the plot of “House of the Dragon.” The absolute preference in the fictional kingdom Westeros for a male ruler is expressed in the series’ opening scene.
The old king, having outlived his sons, empowers a council of nobles to choose his successor between two of his grandchildren, the cousins Rhaenys and Viserys. Rhaenys, a female, is the older of the two.
Yet the male Viserys becomes king and Rhaenys, “the queen who never was,” later ruefully concedes that this represented “the order of things.”
Once installed, however, Westeros’ new king would have understood the plight of England’s Henry I.
Aemma, Viserys’ queen, suffers stillbirths and miscarriages and produces only a daughter, Rhaenyra. A fading hope for a son is dashed when a breached birth and a brutal Caesarian section, intended to save the child, ends up killing Aemma. The boy – the desperately desired heir – doesn’t live out the day.
Sonless, Visery’s named heir is his younger brother, the debauched, sinister Daemon. When Daemon’s conduct becomes intolerable, Viserys disinherits and banishes him. Left with his young daughter Rhaenyra, he decides to make her a ruling queen, a role the girl relishes as she seeks to change “the order of things.”
Building support for a ruling queen
The challenge for a medieval king, whether Henry I or the fictional Viserys, was to persuade the nobles to overcome their prejudices and not just accept but actively support a woman’s ascension to power.
Henry I pursued measures to make his daughter palatable to them. Matilda, who had married the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V in 1114, returned to England a widow in 1125. Henry I, determined to forge a sacramental bond between his daughter and England’s magnates, compelled his barons in 1127 to swear their support for her as his successor. Henry I then turned to arranging a marriage for Matilda so she could give birth to a grandson and buttress her position.
After Matilda’s nuptials with Geoffrey, count of Anjou, the barons were summoned to renew their oath to her in 1131. A son, Henry, was born two years later, and a third pledge followed. Henry I died two years later of food poisoning after eating eels, a favorite dish of his.
The durability of his arrangements for Matilda’s rise to authority was immediately tested.
Viserys in “House of the Dragon” works from a similar playbook. The worthies of Westeros vow their loyalty to Rhaenyra as royal successor. Once Rhaenyra becomes marriageable, Viserys fields a plethora of suitors for her hand. A reluctant bride, Rhaenyra finally accedes to a union in which she would “dutifully” produce a male heir but then let her heart have what it wanted.
The unfortunate result is her inability to conceive with her husband while having three sons by a lover. Her situation is further complicated by Viserys’ remarriage to the lady Alicent, who gives him sons. Dangers stalk Rhaenyra’s path to power. In Westeros, as in England, a princess is expected to guard her chastity closely until marriage and, once wed, to be monogamous and not to “sully” herself in order to ensure the legitimacy of her children – a blatant double standard when noblemen frequently had children out of wedlock.
Yet even rumors of female infidelity could threaten succession. Lineage matters. Blood binds, as evident in the streams of it running from family crest to family crest in the series’ opening credits.
War ensues
Did these strategies work?
Not for Matilda. Stephen of Blois, a son from the marriage of Henry I’s sister Adela to a French count, aggressively registered a claim to the crown after Henry I’s death. Many English magnates conveniently forgot their oaths to Matilda, and Stephen became king.
Matilda was not without supporters – her half-brother Robert, earl of Gloucester; her husband, the count of Anjou; nobles disaffected by Stephen’s rule; and opportunists seeking personal gain from the conflict. Matilda resisted and the Anarchy ensued.
Forces supporting Matilda invaded England in 1139 but, save for a moment in 1141, she never ruled. She then focused instead on elevating her son to the crown.
Prosecution of the war ultimately passed to the young Henry. His mounting military successes jogged the barons’ memory of their past commitments, and the contending parties reached a settlement. Henry would succeed Stephen. With Stephen’s death, Henry became Henry II. England wouldn’t have another ruling queen until the ascension of Queen Mary I in 1553, nearly four centuries later.
But what of Rhaenyra?
Westeros is not 12th century England. For Martin, the author, the Anarchy does not serve to establish historical fact but is a wellspring for his creative vision. The fire-breathing dragon – that denizen of the medieval imagination – exists in Westeros. Rhaenyra’s pursuit of the throne may be fraught with difficulties, but she is a dragon-rider, and dragons were the most fearsome military asset in the kingdom.
This makes her dangerous in a way Matilda of England could hardly have conceived. Nonetheless, “House of the Dragon,” through the lens of fantasy, reflects a slice of the English medieval experience.
David Routt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Colonoscopy is still the most recommended screening for colorectal cancer, despite conflicting headlines and flawed interpretations of a new study
Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
A recently published study in a high-profile medical journal appeared to call into question the efficacy of colonoscopy, a proven and widely utilized strategy for the screening and prevention of colorectal cancer.
News headlines were striking: “Disappointing results on colonoscopy benefits”; “New study suggests benefits of colonoscopies may be overestimated”; “In gold-standard trial, invitation to colonoscopy reduced cancer incidence but not death.”
Such news coverage has ignited controversy and created some confusion about the study and its implications, leading people to question whether the results suggest that reevaluation of the utility and need for a colonoscopy is warranted.
As a cancer research scientist with over 20 years of experience studying colorectal cancer screening and prevention, I am confident that colonoscopy remains one of the most critical and effective tools to screen for, detect and prevent this prevalent and lethal form of cancer.
Colorectal cancer is the fourth-most prevalent and second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 151,000 new cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed in 2022 and nearly 53,000 deaths. Screening has contributed markedly to a decline in colorectal cancer cases and deaths over the past several decades.
Current U.S. Preventive Services Taskforce guidelines recommend that people with average risk begin screening for colorectal cancer at the age of 45. This recommendation was lowered from age 50 in 2021 due to the recent increase in colorectal cancer disease prevalence among young adults.
Unpacking the new study
Several investigations have shown that colonoscopy screening is highly effective in the detection and removal of precancerous polyps before they progress to cancer.
That is why media coverage of the new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine prompted confusion and concern among health care experts and the public. Many of these news reports mistakenly interpreted the study as showing that colonoscopies have a small effect on the incidence of colorectal cancer and are ineffective at reducing deaths. Such misinterpretations could have grave consequences with regard to efforts aimed at screening and preventing a form of cancer that affects the health and well-being of so many.
In the study, a team of European researchers performed a randomized clinical trial that examined the risk of colorectal cancer and death in healthy men and women between the ages of 55 and 64. Study participants, who were recruited from population registries in Norway, Sweden, Poland and the Netherlands, were either invited to undergo a colonoscopy or were not invited and received usual care.
After approximately 10 years, the research team gathered information on colorectal cancer incidence and deaths among 28,220 in the invited group and 56,365 in the uninvited group. They found that those in the invited group had a mere 18% decrease in the number of cases of colorectal cancer relative to those in the uninvited group. They also found that there was no significant reduction in deaths in the invited group. This seemingly disappointing result drove many of the more misleading headlines in the media.
But there is a critical caveat in all this that bears explaining. Only 42% of the participants who were invited to receive a colonoscopy did so. This percentage ranged from 33% among those from Poland, from where most of the participants were recruited, to 60.7% among those from Norway.
When the researchers determined the benefit among those who actually underwent a colonoscopy, they found that the incidence of colorectal cancer decreased by 31% and deaths decreased by 50% – results that are much closer to those expected from other studies.
Another shortcoming of the study is the time between recruitment and screening of the participants. Colorectal cancer is typically slow to develop, taking 10 or more years to progress from precancerous polyps to cancer. Thus, the 10-year window used in the study may be too short to measure the full impact of colonoscopy screening. The authors recognize this and indicate that they will be doing an analysis at 15 years.
These and other issues have been clearly outlined in responses to the study by several medical and advocacy groups comprised of experts with long-standing experience in colorectal cancer and its screening. These include the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable, the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, the American Cancer Society and the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, among others.
All of the responses emphasize that, despite the tone of much of the media coverage, nothing in the study changes the recognized reliability or efficacy of colonoscopy screening. At best, the findings confirm that for many, a simple invitation to screening does not necessarily promote participation in screening.
Colonoscopy remains the ‘gold standard’
During a colonoscopy, a long flexible tube is inserted into the rectum and moved through the colon to allow the direct viewing, identification, imaging and removal of abnormal tissues such as precancerous polyps that could progress into colorectal cancer. As such, for quite some time, colonoscopies have been considered the “gold standard” for colorectal cancer screening and prevention, and still are.
However, there are several features of the procedure that can deter people from choosing it. It is invasive, and there is risk – though small – of complications. In addition, for the procedure to be effective, the colon must be cleared of any stool, requiring a protocol that many find distasteful and uncomfortable. Finally, it can be expensive, creating barriers for those who lack adequate insurance coverage.
Though not as sensitive as a colonoscopy, there are a number of noninvasive alternatives for colorectal cancer screening that are currently available and recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for people with normal risk levels. Such alternatives include stool tests such as high-sensitivity guaiac fecal occult blood tests, fecal immunochemical tests and multitarget stool DNA tests.
These methods vary in effectiveness, and each has advantages and disadvantages. The option of choice is based upon patient preference, determined with input from the medical provider. But those at higher risk, such as having a family history of colorectal cancer, certain symptoms such as blood in the stool or a history of polyps are advised to get screened by a colonoscopy.
Importantly, noninvasive screening tests do not on their own prevent the disease. Rather, they raise the possibility that a benign polyp or tumor may exist, and must therefore be followed up with a colonoscopy to confirm the presence of, and remove, any abnormal lesions.
New directions for cancer screening
Most recently, researchers have made significant progress in the development of liquid biopsies, which involve the profiling of informative biomarkers in fluids such as blood. This type of profiling identifies signals for detecting and monitoring numerous cancers, including colorectal cancer.
There is particular enthusiasm in the scientific and medical communities around liquid biopsies that can aid in multi-cancer early detection. This approach offers great potential in the early detection of colorectal cancer as well as numerous other cancers for which there are currently no effective screening methods. Multi-cancer early detection tests are under development by many companies and are not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Several are currently available by prescription as laboratory-developed tests.
As with all noninvasive tests, liquid biopsies must be appropriately followed up to verify, remove and/or treat any identified lesions. Extensive research on liquid biopsies is ongoing, and results suggest that a new generation of highly sensitive, readily available and patient-friendly modes of cancer screening will emerge in the next few years.
Over the past several decades, screening has contributed significantly to a marked reduction in the incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer. Given the aging of the population, as well as the recent rise in colorectal cancer among young adults, detecting the disease sensitively and in its earliest stages is more important than ever.
Franklin G. Berger receives funding from Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Sarah Bassing, CC BY-ND
In the arid American West, wildfires now define summer. Recent years have seen some of the worst wildfires in recorded history. Climate change, the loss of Indigenous burning practices and a century of fire suppression are increasing the risk of larger, hotter and more frequent wildfires.
I’m a wildlife ecologist studying how the presence of wolves and other predators is affecting deer and elk in Washington state. I’m particularly interested in understanding how these species interact in changing landscapes.
Habitat degradation and other factors have caused populations of mule deer, a common species in many parts of the West, to decline across much of their native range. My collaborators and I recently published a study examining how mule deer use forests that have burned, and how wildfires affect deer interactions with cougars and wolves.
We found that mule deer use these burns in summer but avoid them in winter. Deer also adjusted their movement to reduce predation risk in these burned landscapes, which varies depending on whether cougars or wolves are the threat.
Understanding how mule deer respond to burns and interact with predators in burned areas may be essential for conserving and restoring wildlife communities. Our findings could help land managers and policy makers balance the needs of wildlife with those of humans as they evaluate wildfire impacts and create policies to address future wildfires.
Long-term effects of wildfires
Many forests in western North America have trees that have evolved to withstand fire. Some even depend on burning to dispense seeds. Herbivores can thrive on the lush vegetation that grows after a blaze – so much so that burned areas have a “magnet effect” on deer, attracting them from surrounding areas.
But as fires trigger forest regeneration, they also restructure landscapes. And this process is influencing interactions between predators and prey.
Wildfires have had major impacts in recent decades in the Methow Valley of Okanogan County in northern Washington, where my collaborators on the Washington Predator-Prey Project and I focus our research. Wolves recolonized this area over the past 15 years, and researchers, land managers and the public want to know how the presence of wolves is affecting the ecosystem.
Fires have burned nearly 40% of this region since 1985, with more than half of those burns in the past decade. As in much of the West, low-severity fires historically were frequent here, burning every one to 25 years, with mixed-severity fires burning every 25 to 100 years. But now the area is seeing larger and more frequent fires.
Fire reshapes forests and wildlife behavior
In northern Washington and much of the American West, fires clear the forest understory and burn away the shrubs and small trees that grow there. In more severe fires, flames reach treetops and burn away the upper branches of the forest. More light reaches the forest floor post-fire, and fire-adapted plants regenerate.
After a fire, burned forests can be lush with shrubs and other vegetation that deer favor as summer forage. In our study, deer generally preferred burned areas for about 20 years post-fire, which is the time it takes for the forest to move beyond the initial regrowth stage.
Fires also affect deer behavior in winter. In unburned evergreen forests, trees’ upper branches intercept much of the falling snow before it builds up on the forest floor. Where fires have removed these upper branches, snow is often deeper than in unburned forests.
The snow prevents deer from feeding. It also makes deer more vulnerable to carnivores, since their hooves sink into the snow, while predators like wolves and cougars have wide paws that help them walk over the snow. For these reasons, the mule deer we tracked avoided burns in the winter.
Cougars and wolves prey on mule deer in different ways. Cougars, like nearly all cats, hunt by stalking and ambushing their prey. Often they rely on shrubs and complex terrain to approach deer undetected.
In contrast, wolves hunt by chasing their prey over longer distances. This strategy works best in open terrain.
After fires, vegetation growth and the accumulation of fallen trees and branches can create stalking cover for cougars and also provide refuge for deer to hide from wolves. In Washington, we found that deer were generally less likely to use burned forests in areas of high cougar activity, although their response also depended on the severity of the fire and the time that had elapsed since the fire.
Deer had to balance the availability of improved summer forage in burns with increased predation risk from cougars. In areas heavily used by wolves, however, burns created a win-win for deer: more food and less risk of being detected by a predator.
Mapping fires, deer and predators
To assess how wildfires altered forests in our study area, we used satellite data to map 35 years of impacts from fires that occurred between 1985 and 2019. This data set represents one of the widest ranges of fire histories yet examined by wildlife researchers.
To investigate how deer navigated burns and avoided predators, we captured 150 mule deer and fit them with GPS collars programmed to record a location every four hours. We also caught and GPS-collared five wolves and 24 cougars to map the areas those species used most heavily.
Putting all of this information together, we examined burn history, wolf activity and cougar activity at the locations that mule deer used and compared the results with locations the deer could have reached but did not use. This approach measured how strongly mule deer selected for or avoid burned areas with varying levels of cougar and wolf activity.
Wildlife is part of healthy forests
Our study and others show that deer and other wildlife use burned areas after wildfires, even when these zones have been intensely burned. But these fires bring both costs and benefits to wildlife.
Mule deer may benefit from the opportunity to feed on better summer forage. But avoiding burns in the winter, when the ground is covered with snow, could reduce the deer’s range at a time when the animals already gather at lower elevations to avoid the deepest snow.
Our research suggests that in fire-affected areas, scientists and land managers who want to predict how burns could affect wildlife need to account for interactions between species, as well as how fires affect food supplies for herbivores such as deer. As policymakers debate suppressing wildfires, treating forests to reduce fuels and logging after fires, I believe they should consider how these strategies will affect wildlife – a key part of biodiverse, resilient landscapes.
Taylor Ganz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When it comes to education in prison, policy and research often focus on how it benefits society or improves the life circumstances of those who are serving time.
But as I point out in my new edited volume, “Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison,” education in prison is doing more than changing the lives of those who have been locked up as punishment for crimes – it is also changing the lives of those doing the teaching.
As director of a college program in prisons and as a researcher and professor who teaches in both colleges and prisons, I know that the experience of teaching in a correctional facility makes educators question and reexamine much of what we do.
My book collects experiences of college professors who teach in prison. A common thread is that we all went into education behind the wall thinking about ourselves to some extent as experts but have since critically reflected on what we know through interactions with incarcerated students and the institutions that hold them.
Rewriting the book
One semester in 2020, I volunteered to tutor for a class on something that occurs frequently behind prison walls: conflict and negotiation. The class featured two books that are considered essential to the field. The first is “Interpersonal Conflict,” a 2014 text that invites readers to reflect on how conflict has played out in their personal lives. The second is “Getting to Yes,” a 2011 text described by its publisher as a “universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry – or getting taken.”
“You know, I know these are very important books and all, but this isn’t really what would work in here,” one incarcerated student said after a few class meetings, gesturing to the prison walls. “Here, you can’t talk openly about your feelings like the authors want us to, and the rules of relating to people are different.”
I responded that his observation was astute, and that knowing both sets of rules – and how to switch between them – could be profoundly useful. For example, I theorized, I imagine he behaves differently during yard time than on a phone call with a family member on the outside. If the textbooks about conflict on the outside didn’t adequately address how to handle conflict in prison, I suggested he write an equivalent book for conflict negotiation in prison.
“Maybe I should,” he chuckled, and looked around to his classmates. “Maybe we should.”
The experience showed me how even though there are textbooks that are considered “universal,” that universality may not always extend itself to correctional institutions.
A new understanding of status
As a full professor and chair of the sociology department at Clark University, a small, private university in Worcester, Massachusetts, Shelly Tenenbaum is used to being accorded a certain degree of respect for her professional accomplishments and credentials. But none of those things mattered once she passed through the gates of medium-security prisons for men located in Massachusetts.
“Status that I might have as a scholar, full professor, department chair … is rendered invisible as we enter prison,” Tenenbaum writes. When passing through security, “I have been abruptly instructed to obey commands and my questions are ignored.”
Encounters with correctional officers are frequently unnerving for educators, particularly at the entrance gates.
“I find myself in the position of needing to second-guess what I may (or may not) have done wrong and defer to people who are considerably younger than I am,” Tenenbaum continues. “There were times that I followed rules only to be scolded when the rules appeared to be differently interpreted from one day to the next. To be in the subordinate role of a power dynamic is a humbling experience. … It takes having expectations defied to realize that they even existed.”
Whether the rules are about clothing faculty members are allowed to wear or the number of pieces of paper we can carry in, the decisions are frequently about power. In her chapter, Tenenbaum writes that having had her status questioned has led to a new sense of humility and altered the power dynamics in her professional world. She does not take it for granted that her expertise is currency for respect.
Modeling apology
When an incarcerated student told Bill Littlefield, a retired English professor, that the novel “Frankenstein” had no relevance to his experience or life, Littlefield’s first reaction was to push back.
“‘Good writing is always relevant,’ I said, ever the professor,” writes Littlefield. Littlefield tutors and teaches at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Concord and Northeastern Correctional Center. He is also author of the newly released book “Mercy,” as well as popular host of WBUR’s sports radio show “Only A Game.”
“He said he would read it, certainly … even though he knew that the story of the lonely, ultimately vengeful monster created by the gentleman scientist’s preposterous, insane overreach would have nothing to say to him,” Littlefield writes. “I argued that he was wrong.”
But in the week that followed, Littlefield said he came to see his own reaction as a mistake and an act of arrogance.
“When we met again, I made a point of apologizing to the student, in front of his classmates,” Littlefield writes. “I told him that I’d realized it was no business of mine to tell him what was relevant to his life. If he did the reading, he’d decide for himself.” The student thanked him.
More college in prison
As college programs in prison become more prevalent, I fully expect that in the coming years there will be more and more college professors being transformed by the powerful experience of teaching behind bars. This is especially so given that Congress has lifted a long-standing ban on federal financial aid, namely, Pell Grants, for people who are incarcerated.
In 2022, there are 374 prison education programs run by 420 institutions of higher education operating in 520 facilities, according to the National Directory maintained by the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison.
Collectively, college programs in prison have been shown to lower the odds that a person who participates in them will return to prison after being released. But as I show in my book, the programs are also dramatically changing the perspective of the college professors who teach them.
Mneesha Gellman is affiliated with the Emerson Prison Initiative.
U-turns, economic turmoil and an occasionally absent prime minister: The (latest) UK political crisis explained
Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images
The U.K. government – and its leader, Prime Minister Liz Truss – appears to be in a spot of trouble, to use a typically British understatement. An economic mess largely of its own making has resulted in U-turns, a high-profile firing, curious absences and plummeting support.
Indeed, just months into the job, Truss appears in danger of becoming the shortest-lived U.K. prime minister in history.
So what exactly has gone wrong, and what happens next? The Conversation asked Garret Martin, an expert on U.K. politics at American University School of International Service, to explain all.
Who is Liz Truss and how did she become prime minister?
Liz Truss is both the leader of the Conservative Party and the nation’s political leader – albeit not one put in place by the electorate. In early July 2022, then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having lost the support of his party after a series of scandals, resigned as leader of the Conservatives. Instead of stepping down immediately as prime minister, Johnson announced that he would stay on until his party had selected a successor.
The leadership election proceeded in two distinct steps over the course of the summer. Through a series of votes, Conservative members of Parliament whittled down the list of candidates to two finalists: Truss, who served as foreign secretary, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. It was then up to the wider members of the Conservative Party to pick between the top two. On Sept. 5, Truss was formally announced as the winner, with 57.4% of the votes, paving her way to become the new prime minister.
Why is she in trouble?
Truss came to office amid extremely difficult circumstances. Queen Elizabeth II died within a few days of her taking over from Johnson. That removed the promise of any new leadership “bounce,” as the nation was plunged into an official period of mourning.
Overseeing the transition to a new monarch only added to the plethora of thorny challenges affecting the government, including the war in Ukraine and the threat of Scottish secession, as well as the severe energy and inflation crises.
But if any observers expected caution from Truss, they were rapidly corrected. On Sept. 23, then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng outlined a bold “mini-budget” to Parliament. This new plan promised growth for a struggling U.K. economy, relying on a massive package of tax cuts. It would have represented the biggest tax cut in half a century, with benefits predominantly for richer segments of the population.
This was not a complete surprise, since Truss had campaigned on such a platform during the leadership election. Yet the scale and speed of the announcement were stunning, an example of what BBC journalist Nicholas Watt referred to as “shock and awe” tactics.
It was an audacious gamble by Truss – and one that completely failed to convince the markets. Within days of Kwarteng’s announcements, the pound had plummeted in value, leading British borrowing costs to shoot up. Meanwhile, soaring interest rates piled on misery to millions in the U.K. in the shape of higher mortgage payments.
The International Monetary Fund piled on as well, urging the U.K. government to “reevaluate” the planned tax cuts because of how they might “stoke soaring inflation.” And the Bank of England was forced to take drastic measures, including buying an unlimited quantity of government bonds, to protect the U.K. economy from crashing even further.
How has she responded?
With pressure mounting and growing disquiet among the wider public and members of her own party, Truss resorted yet again to drastic measures. She sacked Kwarteng unceremoniously on Oct. 14, meaning he had lasted only 38 days on the job.
Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign secretary, stepped in to replace Kwarteng – the fourth chancellor in less than four months. He immediately proceeded to roll back nearly all the measures promised in Kwarteng’s mini-budget. Hunt emphasized that this was necessary to restore confidence in the U.K. economy, but it was also an unmistakable and stunning rebuke of the prime minister. Her absence from Parliament during an “urgent question” on the dismissal of Kwarteng and subsequent ducking out of a planned media event have done little to instill confidence in her handling of a political crisis. And that crisis only worsened on Oct. 19 with the announcement that the U.K.‘s home secretary had resigned over an apparent security breach.
Truss, for her part, is now trying to salvage what is left of her authority. In a recent BBC interview she confessed to mistakes but remained adamant that she would lead her party in the next elections. However, that decision will be in the hands of the party.
Can she cling on to her job?
Truss’ future will depend on how the Conservative Party navigates a difficult dilemma. It could try to stick with Truss, in the hope that there is enough time for her to recover. After all, the next election could be as far away as January 2025.
Yet the prime minister is deeply wounded and will face a major challenge to recover her credibility. As it stands, only 10% of voters approve of her leadership, with 80% having an unfavorable view, a significantly worse score than even Boris Johnson when he resigned. Within her own party, a whopping 55% want Truss to leave.
The Conservative Party could try to ditch Truss, but the various paths to achieve that have drawbacks as well. The prime minister could resign of her own accord, seeing the writing on the wall. But she has not shown any inclination to do so as of now and told Parliament on Oct. 19, 2022, that she is a “fighter, not a quitter.”
The Conservatives could try to revise their current internal rules, which protect any new leader from facing a confidence vote within their first year in office. That is a feasible step if enough members of the party support that; but it would trigger yet another long and divisive leadership contest mere months after the last one.
The Conservatives could also try to pass a motion of no confidence in the government, triggering a new general election. Yet that would be an extremely risky strategy, considering the latest polls show the opposition Labour Party with a dramatic 29 percentage-point lead.
What are the options to replace her?
Were Truss to leave office, there would be several possible candidates to replace her.
These include figures like Rishi Sunak; Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt; or Jeremy Hunt – all of whom ran against Truss in July. Boris Johnson might even try a daring comeback, although that remains a stretch, considering the circumstances in which he left office.
But whoever is in office, whether Truss or someone else, will face a steep climb to regain the confidence and support of voters.
Garret Martin receives funding from the European Union for the research center – The Transatlantic Policy Center – that he co-directs at American University.
A new type of material called a mechanical neural network can learn and change its physical properties to create adaptable, strong structures
Jonathan Hopkins, CC BY-ND
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
A new type of material can learn and improve its ability to deal with unexpected forces thanks to a unique lattice structure with connections of variable stiffness, as described in a new paper by my colleagues and me.
Ryan Lee, CC BY-ND
The new material is a type of architected material, which gets its properties mainly from the geometry and specific traits of its design rather than what it is made out of. Take hook-and-loop fabric closures like Velcro, for example. It doesn’t matter whether it is made from cotton, plastic or any other substance. As long as one side is a fabric with stiff hooks and the other side has fluffy loops, the material will have the sticky properties of Velcro.
My colleagues and I based our new material’s architecture on that of an artificial neural network – layers of interconnected nodes that can learn to do tasks by changing how much importance, or weight, they place on each connection. We hypothesized that a mechanical lattice with physical nodes could be trained to take on certain mechanical properties by adjusting each connection’s rigidity.
To find out if a mechanical lattice would be able to adopt and maintain new properties – like taking on a new shape or changing directional strength – we started off by building a computer model. We then selected a desired shape for the material as well as input forces and had a computer algorithm tune the tensions of the connections so that the input forces would produce the desired shape. We did this training on 200 different lattice structures and found that a triangular lattice was best at achieving all of the shapes we tested.
Once the many connections are tuned to achieve a set of tasks, the material will continue to react in the desired way. The training is – in a sense – remembered in the structure of the material itself.
We then built a physical prototype lattice with adjustable electromechanical springs arranged in a triangular lattice. The prototype is made of 6-inch connections and is about 2 feet long by 1½ feet wide. And it worked. When the lattice and algorithm worked together, the material was able to learn and change shape in particular ways when subjected to different forces. We call this new material a mechanical neural network.
Jonathan Hopkins, CC BY-ND
Why it matters
Besides some living tissues, very few materials can learn to be better at dealing with unanticipated loads. Imagine a plane wing that suddenly catches a gust of wind and is forced in an unanticipated direction. The wing can’t change its design to be stronger in that direction.
The prototype lattice material we designed can adapt to changing or unknown conditions. In a wing, for example, these changes could be the accumulation of internal damage, changes in how the wing is attached to a craft or fluctuating external loads. Every time a wing made out of a mechanical neural network experienced one of these scenarios, it could strengthen and soften its connections to maintain desired attributes like directional strength. Over time, through successive adjustments made by the algorithm, the wing adopts and maintains new properties, adding each behavior to the rest as a sort of muscle memory.
This type of material could have far reaching applications for the longevity and efficiency of built structures. Not only could a wing made of a mechanical neural network material be stronger, it could also be trained to morph into shapes that maximize fuel efficiency in response to changing conditions around it.
What’s still not known
So far, our team has worked only with 2D lattices. But using computer modeling, we predict that 3D lattices would have a much larger capacity for learning and adaptation. This increase is due to the fact that a 3D structure could have tens of times more connections, or springs, that don’t intersect with one another. However, the mechanisms we used in our first model are far too complex to support in a large 3D structure.
What’s next
The material my colleagues and I created is a proof of concept and shows the potential of mechanical neural networks. But to bring this idea into the real world will require figuring out how to make the individual pieces smaller and with precise properties of flex and tension.
We hope new research in the manufacturing of materials at the micron scale, as well as work on new materials with adjustable stiffness, will lead to advances that make powerful smart mechanical neural networks with micron-scale elements and dense 3D connections a ubiquitous reality in the near future.
Ryan Lee has received funding from the Air Force Office of Science Research .
Dr Robert Suryan | Exploring the Impacts of an Intense Heatwave on Alaskan Marine Ecosystems
Dr Robert Suryan | Exploring the Impacts of an Intense Heatwave on Alaskan Marine Ecosystems
Between 2014 and 2016, the Gulf of Alaska experienced a prolonged and intense heatwave. The hot temperatures disrupted species interactions and stressed the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem past its tipping point. New research led by Dr Robert Suryan at the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center suggests that this event may have left a long-standing mark on the Gulf of Alaska. Dr Suryan and his colleagues quantified the effects of the heatwave on all aspects of marine ecosystems. Their work highlights the importance of long-term ecosystem monitoring in tracking, predicting, and preparing for a changing climate.
The Northeast Pacific Marine Heatwave
The Northeast Pacific marine heatwave was the only marine heatwave recorded globally in recent decades that lasted through all four seasons and over consecutive years. A brief hiatus in 2016 was short-lived, with warming re-intensifying between late 2018 and 2019. The heatwave wasn’t just record-breaking in its duration and magnitude, but also in the diversity of habitats it affected, ranging from shoreline ecosystems to the deep ocean.
Some biological responses to the heatwave were apparent; tens of thousands of dead seabirds washed up on beaches, toxic algal blooms intensified and spread along the West Coast, and fewer humpback whales arrived in their breeding grounds in Hawaii.
Such marine heatwaves will only intensify as climate change continues. In 2016, 70% of the world’s oceans experienced intense or severe heatwaves, up from 30% in 2012. While the immediate effects of heatwaves can sometimes be apparent, few studies have evaluated the lingering impacts of heatwaves on whole ecosystems.
In 1989, another environmental disaster received international attention. The oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Alaska. In response to this disaster, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council and scientists established an extensive monitoring program to assess long-term recovery. Dr Robert Suryan, a marine biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) took advantage of this data to determine how the Gulf of Alaska has responded to and recovered from the Northeast Pacific marine heatwave.
Tracking Long-term Impacts
Dr Suryan and his collaborators showed that this Pacific heatwave left its mark on diverse ecosystems – from the shoreline to the open oceans. ‘As of 2022, the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem had yet to fully recover from the effects of this major heatwave,’ explains Dr Suryan. ‘The community composition, or proportion of species that make up the ecosystem, are distinct from what we observed prior to the heatwave.’
His team also showed how these ecosystem changes still affect Alaskan communities that depend on fisheries and nature-based tourism. Their research points to the importance of extensive monitoring to better understand and prepare for the long-term effects of climate change on sensitive ecosystems.
Dr Suryan and his team assessed nine ecosystem components that spanned the food web in the Gulf of Alaska. Specifically, they analysed 187 datasets that contained measurements of the abundance of primary producers, such as phytoplankton and zooplankton, shallow-water species including mussels and sea stars, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.
With this wealth of long-term monitoring data across Gulf of Alaska species and ecosystems, Dr Suryan studied how specific species responded, which groups showed long-term effects or recovery responses for up to five years after the heatwave, and how the ecological community responded as a whole.
Varied Species Responses
To measure species response, Dr Suryan and other scientists looked at critical indicators including species abundance, size, growth rates, and signs of reproductive success. Many species showed prolonged negative responses to the heatwave, whereas others showed neutral or positive responses. ‘Some species did return to pre-heatwave levels soon after the heatwave; however, other species did not,’ says Dr Suryan.
For instance, the abundance of phytoplankton, a key primary producer, greatly decreased. Sea-stars, a prominent predator in shallow waters near the shore, also declined in abundance.
Populations of many fish species that form the diets of larger predatory species, such as cod and herring, dropped abruptly. There were fewer sea lion pups during the heatwave, and nesting seabird numbers also declined. Fewer humpback whales arrived in breeding grounds – a sustained decline that lasted beyond 2018.
On the other hand, the decline of some species helped others thrive. Mussel populations actually grew, giving a few coastal birds more to eat. Impacts on fisheries were also mixed. Declines in cod, herring and certain species of salmon left many fisheries struggling with closures and reduced quotas. In contrast, sablefish, pollock and other salmon species actually thrived during the heatwave.
Because some areas remained warmer than normal for almost five years after the beginning of the heatwave, many species were affected by warmer conditions for five years in a row. Consequently, some species of algae and whales struggled to return to their pre-heatwave levels of abundance.
Community-level Responses
Species responses to the heatwave led to new ecological community patterns within two years of the onset of the heatwave. Generally, the Gulf of Alaskan ecosystems differed from any community structures that had prevailed for at least fourteen years before the heatwave.
To measure community responses, Dr Suryan and his colleagues explored metrics that indicated changes in the abundance of biological populations, and species’ demographics, such as size, growth, and condition. Overall, the scientists noted that many different effects combined to drastically change relationships between species within the marine food web.
For example, large-scale declines in fish prey, including sand lance and capelin, meant far less food for their predators, leading to large-scale declines in the abundance of salmon, groundfish, birds, and mammals. Overall, over half of the 187 datasets showed a long-lasting response to the heatwave.
These community-level impacts coalesced to change the abundance and breeding success of various species at all levels of the marine food web, leading to different community structures. These results highlight the magnitude of the heatwave’s impacts, and demonstrate that the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem was not resilient enough to prevent large-scale community-level shifts.
The Human Dimension
Local communities in the Gulf of Alaska rely on fisheries and tourism to remain afloat. Unsurprisingly, fish species abundance and ecosystem changes significantly affected commercial fisheries and local communities.
We can think of commercial fisheries as another predator of fish. Like other marine predators, these fisheries need to adapt to fluctuations in prey abundance. In the case of reduced fish abundance, commercial fishery revenue suffers. Although fisheries can adjust the price and timing of product delivery, these changes can only temporarily buffer the impacts on local communities. Unfortunately, the fish species that were most negatively affected by the heatwave are also the most valuable, representing a substantial portion of total earnings for fishers in the region.
Similar to commercial fisheries, reductions in whale abundance led whale-watching tour operators to travel longer distances and concentrate on fewer whales, affecting tourist-dependent regions and placing additional stress on local communities and resources.
An Uncertain Recovery
In 2018, the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem still appeared distinct from its pre-heatwave years. A re-intensification of warming through fall 2018 and summer 2019 has meant that most species did not have enough time to rebound to pre-heatwave levels. This data also means we should be cautious when assessing observations that may point to recovery, such as increased whale sightings.
Additionally, increases in water temperature due to climate change, along with more frequent and intense heatwaves, mean that the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem will potentially continue changing from its pre-heatwave structure. Ecosystems have tipping points, beyond which they can no longer buffer disturbances. Climate change has the potential to push ecological communities past their upper limits.
Still, ecosystems have proven to be surprisingly resilient. The results of Dr Suryan’s study provide a foundation upon which he and other scientists can develop hypotheses to better understand why and how ecosystems will respond.
Underlying Mechanisms
The Gulf of Alaska has been severely affected by the marine heatwave, but Dr Suryan’s research shows that not every community and species responded similarly. While some groups were devastated, others thrived.
‘Whereas our analyses did not identify mechanisms of biological change, our results do provide a foundation on which to develop hypotheses and test mechanistic links to physical drivers of change,’ his team wrote in one of their recent papers.
The next step will be to explore these mechanisms, so that we can better predict how the changing climate will shape Alaskan ecosystems, in order to plan for and mitigate the most damaging effects.
‘This analysis is a good basis for future studies,’ says Dr Suryan. ‘What we need to do next is identify the mechanisms that cause species abundance fluctuations. For instance, understanding what forage fish and zooplankton species do well or poorly as water temperatures warm is critical for understanding how the marine mammals, seabirds and commercial fish stocks that feed on them will fare in this same environment.’
Of course, climate change is just one of many threats that Alaska must contend with. Predicting what ecosystems will look like in the future, and how the resources we depend on will be affected, requires an integrated approach that hinges on the continued collection of long-term monitoring data.
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REFERENCE
https://doi.org/10.33548/SCIENTIA844
MEET THE RESEARCHER
Dr Robert M. Suryan
NOAA, Alaska Fisheries Science Center
Juneau, AK
USA
A well-known marine biologist on an international scale, Dr Robert Suryan has been involved in ground-breaking studies since pursuing his PhD in Wildlife Science at Oregon State University. Before graduating with his PhD in 2006, Dr Suryan worked as a biologist for various private and federal agencies, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service and several marine laboratories. After transitioning to academia, Dr Suryan spent 17 years at Oregon State University, where he mentored undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers. In 2018, he returned to government work, becoming a research ecologist and program manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Juneau, Alaska. Dr Suryan’s contributions to marine science cannot be understated; with 70 peer-reviewed papers and dozens of reports, Dr Suryan is a prolific advocate of using long-term data to better manage marine ecosystems in the face of climate change.
CONTACT
E: rob.suryan@noaa.gov
W: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/contact/robert-suryan
KEY COLLABORATORS
U.S. Geological Survey
National Park Service
Alaska Department of Fish and Game
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Prince William Sound Science Center
FUNDING
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council
FURTHER READING
RM Suryan, ML Arimitsu, HA Coletti, et al., Ecosystem response persists after a prolonged marine heatwave, Scientific Reports, 2021, 11, 6235. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83818-5
SL Danielson, TD Hennon, DH Monson, RM Suryan, RW Campbell, SJ Baird, K. Holderied, and TJ Weingartner. 2022. Temperature variations in the northern Gulf of Alaska across synoptic to century-long time scales. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography. doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr2.2022.105155
B Weitzman, B Konar, K Iken, H Coletti, D Monson, R Suryan, T Dean, D Hondolero, M Lindeberg, Changes in rocky intertidal community structure during a marine heatwave in the northern Gulf of Alaska, Frontiers in Marine Science, 2021. doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.556820
ML Arimitsu, JH Piatt, S Hatch, RM Suryan, et al., Heatwave-induced synchrony within forage fish portfolio disrupts energy flow to top pelagic predators, Global Change Biology, 2021, 9, 1859. doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15556
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