The Dark Side of Online Shopping

In 2023, UK-based Reddit user “pacacinnoscafe” wrote that they endured chemical burns after reordering their usual sunscreen from Amazon. Chemical burns cause symptoms that are similar to those of a first-degree burn: red, swollen, and painful skin that may develop blisters. Although the product appeared legitimate, it turned out to be a fake. Pacacinnoscafe was wondering what recourse they had, if any, given their excruciating pain. Fake products have become a feature of digital environments. In 2017, twenty Toronto police officers gathered $2.5 million worth of fake goods: makeup that caused rashes, fake Thomas the Tank Engine toys, a Bluetooth headset that overheated, and a Magic Bullet blender that smoked when turned on. When shopping online, sometimes you just get ripped off, but other times, your skin might get seared. The gap between what we believe we’re purchasing and the reality of what finally lands on our doorsteps has become a celebrated expectation-versus-reality meme. Hilarious examples of misshapen Halloween costumes, flimsy fashion, or furniture better suited for a dollhouse are shared online for a laugh. These are often framed as “online shopping fails.” But this mismatch shouldn’t be normalized or blamed on shoppers duped by fake reviews and convincing images. Too often, a counterfeit knock-off is masquerading as the real thing, and these imitations can have grave consequences. Take the examples of fake tourniquets on Amazon, fake oven gloves that can’t withstand heat, or an airplane safety harness for kids that claimed to be approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration. Amazon has shipped expired baby formula and other past-their-due-date foods. The liabilities involved go beyond copyright and trademark infringement, making real harm not just a possibility but a guarantee. People increasingly can’t, and shouldn’t, trust what they see when shopping online. Consumer scams and rip-offs have soared with the rise of e-commerce juggernauts like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. The now-popular structure of digital platform marketplaces has been called a boon to counterfeiters. An estimated $2 trillion worth of counterfeit products are sold each year in the United States, and counterfeits are now the top illicit trade in the world. A recent CBC Marketplace investigation purchased products from AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Wish (a personalized shopping platform) and found that more than half of them were suspected fakes. In its efforts to curtail counterfeits, Amazon says it found, seized, and discarded more than 7 million fraudulent products globally in 2023, according to its most recent Brand Protection Report. Consumer protection issues are relevant to competition policy, because the Competition Bureau enforces against deceptive marketing practices. Under the Competition Act, it is against the law to advertise in a way that is false or misleading. False claims influence purchasing decisions; lying to a prospective customer to win their business is clearly anti competitive. While monitoring for these tactics occurs independently of the size of a firm, it is the largest e-commerce gatekeepers that are ground zero for this problem. Digital market companies, from Amazon to Uber, promised to be a neutral gateway between buyers and sellers, often fighting regulation by claiming that they were simply platforms. But, instead, they became private regulators, organizing online markets in their favour when it bolstered their interests, while behaving as absent cops on the beat when it was more convenient to ignore gnawing problems. Counterfeit products and fake reviews have proliferated online because major platforms are not incentivized to deal comprehensively with the problem. A major contributor to revenue for e-commerce platforms is advertising, and they’re often willing to offer ad space to any seller who’s buying, regardless of whether they’re a scam. Counterfeit products often win top placement on the sites, because they are cheaper than authentic products. In the absence of stronger regulatory oversight, it’s all too easy to dump the navigational burden on the consumer, who is forced to gamble every time they purchase a product. And while companies like Amazon have implemented some measures to combat this problem, the aggressive expansion of their e-commerce platforms is prioritized over safety and public interest. The platforms have proven unwilling or unable to police these problems—similar to how they have fared in their struggles with content moderation. In the case of counterfeits, the millions of packages arriving into the United States each day now overburden law enforcement and customs and border protection agencies. Legitimate third-party sellers are hesitant to give even more competitive information and data to Amazon, often their biggest competitor, to substantiate that they are real businesses. Again, it wasn’t always this way. The market globalization that coincided with the e-commerce boom initially seemed promising for shoppers. Suddenly, we weren’t constrained by factors like geography and available transit, or reliant on the curation of major catalogues to have access to a wide variety of products. From the comfort of our homes or while on the go, thanks to broadband connectivity and the ubiquity of mobile devices, we could scroll and shop, skim customer reviews, and compare prices with just a few glances. There was a sense of empowerment as the internet started to change how, where, and when we made purchasing decisions. But that renewed autonomy created a false sense of control that has since deteriorated. What initially made e-commerce so great—primarily, the ability to quickly search for product comparators across a range of stores and geographies, compare price, and be informed by reviews—has become unnecessarily difficult and disorienting. It’s not just counterfeit products. It’s getting harder to make the best possible choice when you shop, because firms of all sizes do sneaky things like give preference to their own products, make inflated claims through undisclosed influencer marketing, secretly change the shape and size of their products, degrade product quality, or rush you to buy things online through deceptive hurry-up design. Our trust is being manipulated and exploited, and the tactics used by firms to take advantage of consumers are making markets less knowable and more confusing. One answer to unreliable marketplaces and sluggish productivity has been the battle cry of more competition, with an emphasis on the raw number of firms competing in a particular place or the number of products in a category. But just adding a couple of competitors won’t do enough to address a deeper underlying issue: a growing mistrust of marketplaces that frequently deceive shoppers. This unreliability isn’t worth a cheaper sticker price. Companies are increasingly shameless in employing deceitful tactics to pad their profits. For instance, our grocery purchases have recently been declining in weight or volume while the price stays the same or even grows. Selling less of a product for the same price is referred to as “shrinkflation.” A chip bag that is two-thirds air but costs more than it used to is a common example. “Price pack architecture” is a euphemism that corporate leaders have used to refer to the practice of shrinkflation. This refers to a company’s strategy of offering products in various packaging sizes and price points. While this activity can provide more choice to consumers, it also makes price comparisons more challenging and potentially leads to higher costs per unit for smaller packages. Similarly, corporate advice to use more of a product per serving so that it gets replaced or repurchased faster is called “usage-flation.” This has been documented with Gatorade and such foods as yogurt, Nutella spread, pasta, soup, cheese, coffee, and instant oatmeal. “Skimpflation” occurs when cheaper ingredients have been substituted but the price stays the same. This trend has been noted most often with palm oil as a substitute in milk chocolate. These tactics are particularly alarming in an inflationary period, when people are already feeling squeezed. Many consumers have reallocated household spending toward discount retailers with a greater focus on deals. But even the best deals can be a mirage. Walmart’s checkout machines have allegedly been inflating the weight of groceries. The corporate giant settled, for $45 million, a class-action lawsuit which accused it of falsely inflating the weight of certain grocery items, mislabelling the weight of bagged produce, and overcharging for sold-by-weight clearance products, forcing customers to pay more for them than their lowest advertised price. Talk about a raw deal. Many other profit-maximizing schemes are similarly difficult, if not impossible, to detect, like self-preferencing, which occurs when a firm favours its own products in search. Coupled with the reality of the largest firms owning hundreds of private-label brands, it can be a powerful way to nudge customers toward purchasing the platform’s own products at the expense of competitors. Independent sellers on Amazon, for example, can end up spending large amounts of revenue on advertising to improve their search rankings. They must shell out big money to Amazon to even have the opportunity to compete. Firms don’t have to be dominant to engage in these kinds of tricks. Many companies are making these adjustments without any notice. However, given that the largest retailers and e-commerce platforms now command a majority of consumer spend, dominance and consumer manipulation often go hand in hand. Companies also manipulate the price of goods in ways that consumers may not realize. Today, the prices of most goods are not set by humans but by automatic processes—algorithms. The use of these systems and their terms are not disclosed to shoppers, although the aim is often to extract the highest possible price from them. Using intrusive personal data, sometimes acquired directly through interactions with consumers and more often bought by third-party data brokers, companies now know our intimate spending habits and can calculate our maximum willingness to pay. For example, research from Mozilla and Consumers International found that Tinder users could be charged up to thirty-one different prices for the same subscription service, and that older users were typically charged more. Stores from Staples to Target to grocers all employ this technique today. As our digital footprints continue to grow, uniform prices may be a thing of the past. Steve Burd, former CEO of Safeway, has said, “There’s going to come a point where our shelf pricing is pretty irrelevant because we can be so personalized in what we offer people.” Economists will say that this is simply an exercise in pricing optimization. When companies offer different prices based on consumer willingness to pay, it can enhance market efficiency. It is true that not all price discrimination is inherently anti competitive; it depends on context and impact. Discounted prices for seniors, students, and children, for example, are common and accepted. The key is discerning when pricing strategies cross the line between a savvy business practice and anti-competitive behaviour, a challenge that requires vigilant oversight and nuanced regulation. But online personalized pricing is a different beast. It requires the use of highly invasive data collection and personal identification techniques. This kind of sophisticated price calibration is happening more often, without any sort of consumer consent, disclosure, or labelling. Market power is a necessary precondition for personalized pricing. If consumers had multiple options for products and could find the same item more cheaply elsewhere without incurring high switching costs, personalized pricing would be less effective. In consolidated sectors, companies don’t need to court or maintain our trust anymore, because they aren’t actually competing for it. This disappointing reality was dubbed the “Golden Age of User Hostility” by technology journalist Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic. He referred to this new reality combining add-on fees and personalized pricing as a “game you can’t win” and characterized it as “pricing hell.” Junk fees are another now-ubiquitous price-related tactic. Unnecessary, hidden, and often illegal fees are added onto a bill. Junk fees mask themselves with a myriad seemingly believable aliases, including service fees, convenience fees, administrative fees, and other official-sounding terminology that lends credibility to ultimately bogus charges. At their core, unjustified junk fees are a form of “exploitative innovation,” a kind of lazy man’s innovation. When firms don’t have to compete, they are incentivized to develop new bogus fees and pricing tricks instead of improving their products. A report from the consultancy North Economics found that Canadians are overpaying bank fees by billions of dollars annually compared to consumers in the United Kingdom and Australia. The firm calculated that the big five Canadian banks earn $7.73 billion in “excess” annual profits from retail banking fees alone, equivalent to around $250 per Canadian. Fees for basic chequing accounts, non-sufficient funds, overdrafts, and using other banks’ ATMs were found to be dramatically higher than in peer countries. These kinds of unnecessary fees impact lower-income households in outsized ways and exacerbate affordability challenges. They’ve become normalized because our banks, long-time oligopolists, can mimic each other’s bogus fee structures without having to compete for customers’ business. These shifts and tricks by companies have forced us to become more vigilant and even defensive when shopping. Considered together, misleading marketing, counterfeit products, deceptive pricing architecture, and other tactics speak to the significant information asymmetry between consumers and companies. This power imbalance is made significantly worse by the absence of real competition. It takes traditional consumer vulnerability to a whole other level. When such tactics are noticed, businesses have occasionally been shamed by consumer protection groups, viral Reddit threads, or vigilant individuals with a platform. But these problems go well beyond the ability of a consumer to read every label in detail or verify the weight of a product at checkout. Consumers can’t be expected to police every market every day. Too much of the new economy relies on individuals to provide near-constant mini checks on corporate power. The ongoing erosion of trust between firms and purchasers is less about a false choice between free or regulated markets—it’s a question of how to turn manipulated markets into trustworthy ones. It shouldn’t be too much to expect markets to operate in fair, transparent, and reliable ways. We can turn that expectation into reality. ---- Excerpted from The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians. Copyright © 2024 Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar. Reprinted by permission of Sutherland House Books. Vass Bednar Vass Bednar is the executive director of McMaster University’s master of public policy in digital society and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Denise Hearn Denise Hearn is a resident senior fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.

The Beauty of Minimalism

1/ Minimalism is not just a visual aesthetic—it’s a specific lifestyle choice that’s also an emotional appeal. Minimalists feel more at peace and in charge of their surroundings. No additional pressure. Life is messy, hectic, and often out of our control, so there’s no point giving ourselves additional pressure to behave in a certain way. 2/ Minimalism can help you save money. Buying and furnishing choices hinge on a question: Does this matter and does this make me free? Do I really need it or want it? 3/ Minimalism can help you save time and energy. Cutting out the unnecessary things in life to focus on what really matters, which ultimately can mean less work for you. It’s gratifying to be able to control and manage all the things you have at home —their care, their placement, maintenance and repair, etc. Liberating yourself by clearing out things you no longer want or need. Getting rid of clutter at home. Saying no to commitments that drain your time and energy. 4/ Learning to appreciate and to feel grateful for what you have in life. When you live with just the things you really need and love, you don’t take anything for granted. Source: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-s-it-really-like-to-live-with-only-the-essentials-4-minimalists-sound-off?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us What’s It Really Like to Live With Only the Essentials? by Rebecca Deczynski

Shadows and Echoes

Cư sĩ Bàng Long Uẩn: “Xin hãy xem mọi hiện hữu là không, và cũng đừng coi không là thật. Tất cả chỉ là bóng ảo và âm vang”. “I beg you just to regard as empty all that is existent and to beware of taking as real all that is non-existent. Fare you well in the world. All is like shadows and echoes.” Source: thuvienhoasen.org

Drought Areas Have Trebled in Size Since 1980

Drought areas have trebled in size since 1980s, study finds Oct 29, 2024 Stephanie Hegarty and Talha Burki The area of land surface affected by drought has trebled since the 1980s, a new report into the effects of climate change has revealed. Forty-eight per cent of the Earth’s land surface had at least one month of extreme drought last year, according to analysis by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change - up from an average of 15% during the 1980s. Almost a third of the world - 30% - experienced extreme drought for three months or longer in 2023. In the 1980s, the average was 5%. The new study offers some of the most up-to-date global data on drought, marking just how fast it is accelerating. The threshold for extreme drought is reached after six months of very low rainfall or very high levels of evaporation from plants and soil - or both. It poses an immediate risk to water and sanitation, food security and public health, and can affect energy supplies, transportation networks and the economy. The causes of individual droughts are complicated, because there are lots of different factors that affect the availability of water, from natural weather events to the way humans use land. But climate change is shifting global rainfall patterns, making some regions more prone to drought. The increase in drought has been particularly severe in South America, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. In South America's Amazon, drought is threatening to change weather patterns. It kills trees that have a role to play in stimulating rainclouds to form, which disrupts delicately balanced rainfall cycles - creating a feedback loop leading to further drought. Yet, at the same time as large sections of the land mass have been drying out, extreme rainfall has also increased. In the past 10 years, 61% of the world saw an increase in extreme rainfall, when compared with a baseline average from 1961-1990. The link between droughts, floods and global warming is complex. Hot weather increases the evaporation of water from soil which makes periods when there is no rain even drier. But climate change is also changing rainfall patterns. As the oceans warm, more water evaporates into the air. The air is warming too, which means it can hold more moisture. When that moisture moves over land or converges into a storm, it leads to more intense rain. The Lancet Countdown report found the health impacts of climate change were reaching record-breaking levels. Drought exposed 151 million more people to food insecurity last year, compared with the 1990s, which has contributed to malnutrition. Heat-related deaths for over 65s also increased by 167% compared to the 1990s. Meanwhile, rising temperatures and more rain are causing an increase in mosquito-related viruses. Cases of dengue fever are at an all-time high and dengue, malaria and West Nile virus have spread to places they were never found before. An increase in dust storms has left millions more people exposed to dangerous air pollution..... Since 2020, an extreme and exceptional agricultural drought has gripped northeast Syria and parts of Iraq. …Unless we can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and stop the global temperature from rising further, we can expect more drought and more intense rain. 2023 was the hottest year on record.

Alzheimer's

https://saigonnhonews.com/doi-song/suc-khoe/khi-nguoi-than-mac-benh-alzheimer/ Khi người thân mắc bệnh Alzheimer Mai Lâm – 11 tháng 9, 2024 Một ngày, khi biết cha, mẹ, hay chồng, vợ của mình được chẩn đoán mắc bệnh Alzheimer, bạn sẽ cảm thấy thế nào? Chúng ta thường nghe nói, nhưng không quan tâm nhiều đến căn bệnh này trước đây, có thể vì chuyện đó xảy ra cho những người ở thế hệ trước ta, như ông bà cố, ông bà nội, ngoại. Nhưng đến tuổi trung niên hoặc khi bản thân mình cũng là một người già, cha hoặc mẹ bạn hoàn toàn có thể là bệnh nhân của chứng mất trí nhớ, lúc đó bạn mới giật mình vì những thông tin về chứng bệnh đáng sợ này. Hơn thế nữa, ngày nay bệnh Alzheimer ngày càng trẻ hóa. Đã có những bệnh nhân được chẩn đoán bệnh mất trí nhớ khi mới ở tuổi đôi mươi. Hàng loạt những triệu chứng như thường xuyên nhầm lẫn, để sai vị trí của đồ dùng cá nhân, không thể tự chăm sóc bản thân, quên tên mọi người quen và cả người thân yêu trong gia đình như chồng/ vợ, con cái. Đây là căn bệnh với những biểu hiện kinh khủng, khi ba mẹ không nhớ bạn là con của họ, khi mẹ bạn hỏi bạn là ai, khi mẹ khăng khăng nói bạn ăn cắp tiền của bà, khi một buổi sáng đang ở sở thì nhận tin mẹ đã bỏ ra khỏi nhà mà không biết đi đâu. Bệnh Alzheimer liên quan đến những hoạt động sau: -Hoạt động ý thức, tư duy -Hoạt động tâm thần -Sinh hoạt hàng ngày Một vài vấn đề có thể làm phát triển bệnh Alzheimer: Căng thẳng, trầm cảm; Mất ngủ; Mỡ máu cao; Áp huyết cao; Áp huyết tâm trương thấp dưới 70. Khi bệnh đã phát triển, hiện chưa có thuốc hay phương pháp điều trị hiệu quả. Vào Tháng Bảy năm 2023, FDA phê duyệt một loại thuốc để chữa bệnh Alzheimer. Nhưng theo các nhà chuyên môn đánh giá, thuốc sẽ không thể điều trị dứt điểm, mà chỉ làm chậm sự phát triển của bệnh. Chính vì vậy, hãy quan tâm chăm sóc đến sức khỏe khi chưa bị phát bệnh. Mặc dù bệnh Alzheimer thường bắt đầu bằng việc mất dần khả năng ghi nhớ thông tin mới, bệnh này và hầu hết các bệnh gây ra chứng mất trí đều tiến triển thành tình trạng không có khả năng tự chăm sóc bản thân, khó nói và khó nhìn chính xác. Ở giai đoạn cuối của bệnh Alzheimer, nhiều người mất khả năng đi bộ và duy trì khả năng kiểm soát bàng quang và ruột. Nhiều người sẽ trải qua những thay đổi tâm trạng dữ dội ảnh hưởng đến hành vi và một số người phát triển những ý tưởng sai lầm, ảo giác gây phiền nhiễu cho họ và những người chăm sóc họ. Không gì cô đơn cho bằng việc chăm sóc người thân bị bệnh Alzheimer, vì họ luôn xem bạn như người lạ. Những người từng chăm sóc người thân bị bệnh thấy chứng mất trí nhớ không diễn ra như một con dốc thoai thoải, nó là một loạt các bước đi giật cục. Những thay đổi lớn đến đột ngột và không báo trước. Một nghiên cứu ở Hong Kong cho thấy 35.7 % người chăm sóc bệnh nhân mất trí nhớ phải dành hơn 20 giờ chăm sóc mỗi tuần, tương đương với công việc bán thời gian, ngoài công việc chính thức của họ. Những người chăm sóc bệnh nhân mất trí nhớ có tỷ lệ căng thẳng cao hơn những người chăm sóc những người mắc các bệnh khác. Ngoài việc bảo đảm cho người bệnh sạch sẽ, thoải mái, được ăn uống đầy đủ, an toàn, hãy để mắt đến họ khi tắm, mua tã để giảm thiểu các tai nạn tiểu không tự chủ, vì điều này khiến họ rất đau khổ. Những người chăm sóc biết họ cần phải chăm sóc ngày một nhiều hơn, nhưng họ không chắc điều đó sẽ diễn ra như thế nào – hoặc chứng mất trí nhớ của người thân sẽ tệ đến mức nào, hoặc nhanh đến mức nào. Sau đây là một số điều có thể làm cho việc chăm sóc người thân bị Alzheimer tốt hơn. Tìm hiểu càng nhiều thông tin càng tốt về căn bệnh mà người thân của bạn đang mắc phải. Tập trung vào nhu cầu và khả năng còn lại của người bệnh. Hãy luôn có một bác sĩ chăm sóc chính hiểu biết về chứng mất trí nhớ và nhu cầu y tế của người đó. Xem xét nhu cầu về mặt tình cảm, thể chất và tinh thần của chính bạn. Đáp ứng những nhu cầu này sẽ có lợi cho cả bạn và bệnh nhân mất trí nhớ. Mất trí nhớ là một căn bệnh tiến triển. Hãy yêu cầu trợ giúp khi cần, lập kế hoạch cho những thay đổi có thể xảy ra và biết rằng cuối cùng, một người có thể không thể cung cấp tất cả các dịch vụ chăm sóc cần thiết cho người bệnh. Cố gắng sắp xếp thời gian, để bản thân bạn được nghỉ ngơi xứng đáng. Mỉm cười. Điều đó khiến bạn cảm thấy tốt hơn và giúp người bạn chăm sóc tin tưởng bạn. Thỉnh thoảng, hãy ghi âm lại cuộc trò chuyện của bạn với người được bạn chăm sóc. Lưu ý giọng điệu và ngôn ngữ của bạn. Hãy kiềm chế nếu cần thiết. Viết nhật ký: việc viết nhật ký giúp chúng ta giải tỏa, vượt qua những ngày khó khăn nhất và còn là kỷ vật cho những ngày tốt đẹp. Ngay từ bây giờ, hãy lưu tâm giúp cha mẹ và chính bản thân hầu có thể tránh được bệnh Alzheimer nguy hiểm bằng những việc làm này: Đọc sách; Học điều gì mới; Lưu tâm đến chất lượng giấc ngủ; Không để bị căng thẳng lâu ngày; Lưu ý không để bị trầm cảm; Sinh hoạt lành mạnh, duy trì giao lưu dù ở tuổi nào; Duy trì huyết áp ổn định. Khi thường xuyên gặp các vấn đề gợi ý đến bệnh Alzheimer, hãy gặp bác sỹ để được hỗ trợ sớm. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/we-ve-been-studying-the-same-people-for-76-years-this-is-what-we-ve-found-out-about-alzheimer-s?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7C2tf7cq98 The history of NSHD About the NSHD 1946 cohort: a message from Nick Fox …What have we found so far? We cannot attempt to cover all our numerous research findings to date, as there have been so many. But our investigations have highlighted some key themes. 1. Amyloid accumulation starts before symptoms We found that around 18% of “cognitively normal” people from the cohort had amyloid PET scans like those seen in people with Alzheimer’s disease – a finding that tallies with other studies in people around the world who don’t have symptoms. These individuals also had slightly lower performance on sensitive tests of cognition and slightly increased rates of brain shrinkage. While the significance of the finding for amyloid frequency is unclear – and hence our protocols and consent processes mean that unlike some MRI findings we do not give the results to participants – we think that these individuals are at higher risk of developing cognitive impairment in the future, something we plan to look out for closely in the years to come. 2. Child cognitive tests indicate brain function later in life We found that cognition assessed in childhood predicted cognition around 60 years later. This is consistent with earlier findings for the whole cohort, suggesting that some aspects of cognitive performance are stable over a lifetime. This matters because cognitive function is not just about the mind – it helps to shape everyday skills, supports quality of life and ultimately predicts how long we live. However, the level of cognitive performance can be potentially improved. In the same report, education and occupation in midlife predicted later cognition after taking account of childhood cognitive scores. We had seen this in the whole cohort too, which counters an old argument, still sometimes made, that education is nothing more than a marker of IQ. In other words, level of education and type of occupation can positively affect cognitive performance in later life regardless of cognitive skills in early childhood. It also emphasises that education does not just increase opportunities but has a significant effect on brain health. 3. Importance of early heart health checks Some of the first publications from Insight 46 showed that high and rising blood pressure in those aged in their 40s and – in some cases their 30s – predicted smaller brain volume. There are several possible mechanisms for this, including microstructural damage from high blood pressure and a higher burden of small blood vessel damage in the brain. The latter is thought to be a marker of brain frailty, raising the risk of stroke, dementia, depression, impaired mobility and death. Similar outcomes were seen in relation to heart health in general, using an index that includes blood pressure, use of anti-hypertension medication, diabetes, smoking and high body weight. Conversely, falling blood pressure in later life may in some cases be a marker of poor brain health. Similar findings may also apply to body weight. A follow-up analysis found that declining body weight in the two years before the scan predicted amyloid. These findings have significant implications for public health, suggesting that routine checking of heart health, and blood pressure, in particular, may need to start much younger than is typically recommended – probably at or before the age of 40. 4. A blood test for Alzheimer’s disease Most experts will agree that when we have new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, they are likely to have maximum benefits if taken early in the disease, and preventing the onset of cognitive decline would clearly be preferable to trying to slow or halt memory decline that has already started. It is unlikely that the expensive PET scans we are conducting in Insight 46 will be able to screen whole populations, so there is much interest in developing blood tests instead. Using state-of-the-art methods sensitive enough to detect 1g of salt dissolved in one million trillion litres of water, we were able to show that a blood marker is capable of detecting amyloid in the brain with about 85% accuracy. We are currently looking at a range of new blood tests that seem to be even better at detecting amyloid, and at even lower cost. The prospect of new drugs that can clear amyloid from the brain provide even more reason to intensify efforts to identify amyloid pathology early, cheaply and at scale. Studies using the whole NSHD cohort have also shown complex relationships between cognitive function and several bodily functions, including those of the lungs, bones and kidneys. This probably reflects biology shared between the brain and these organs. We are currently looking to see how these findings relate to the brain health measures we have made in Insight 46. A similar “common cause” story applies to depression and cognitive function, and we are currently looking into how depression relates to the brain. On the other hand, health-related behaviour such as smoking, physical exercise and healthy diet genuinely seem to predict cognitive function (negatively for smoking, positively for exercise and diet). We have been emphasising prediction of health problems, but it’s equally important to understand resilience. Why can some people navigate through or escape these problems altogether even though they are apparently at risk, from genes or certain disadvantages in life? Does it come down to pure luck? But luck is, of course, just another way of saying we don’t know something. Uncovering what predicts Alzheimer’s That brings us to retirement. Retirement is one of the most vivid life transitions we can experience. Yet we know surprisingly little about its effects on ageing, including mental ageing. Work provides many of the everyday things that sustain our brain health: physical activity, mental stimulation, the security of an income, a role in society and a structure to our daily lives. We risk losing these when we retire unless we can find ways to maintain or replace them. With its life course design, NSHD provides an ideal opportunity for us to investigate the effects of retirement across a range of health outcomes, including brain health, and we hope to be able to report on this in the near future. But perhaps the most profound contribution that Insight 46 can make is to uncover what predicts Alzheimer’s disease – one of the biggest causes of disability and dependency in older people. At the age of 76, the cohort study is still relatively young when it comes to examining this aspect. However, as participants continue to age, Alzheimer’s will inevitably become more common. Indeed, some studies suggest that we have over a 30% chance of developing this condition if we live beyond our mid-80s. To reduce these odds, we need to be able to look back over the whole life course to see where we can best intervene. We mentioned education and leisure activities, heart health, and maintaining quality of life after retirement. But the richness of information provided by NSHD will open possibilities not yet even thought of. So, to achieve these goals we need to keep NSHD and Insight 46 going. We have already started another wave of assessments that will increase the number of study members with dedicated brain investigations to 1,000. We want these to become the world’s first continuously followed cradle-to-grave studies of general health and brain health. Our aim is to keep building a whole-of-life model that others can complete after we ourselves have retired. These findings have significant implications for public health, suggesting that routine checking of heart health, and blood pressure, in particular, may need to start much younger than is typically recommended – probably at or before the age of 40. 4. A blood test for Alzheimer’s disease Most experts will agree that when we have new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, they are likely to have maximum benefits if taken early in the disease, and preventing the onset of cognitive decline would clearly be preferable to trying to slow or halt memory decline that has already started. It is unlikely that the expensive PET scans we are conducting in Insight 46 will be able to screen whole populations, so there is much interest in developing blood tests instead. Using state-of-the-art methods sensitive enough to detect 1g of salt dissolved in one million trillion litres of water, we were able to show that a blood marker is capable of detecting amyloid in the brain with about 85% accuracy. We are currently looking at a range of new blood tests that seem to be even better at detecting amyloid, and at even lower cost. The prospect of new drugs that can clear amyloid from the brain provide even more reason to intensify efforts to identify amyloid pathology early, cheaply and at scale. Studies using the whole NSHD cohort have also shown complex relationships between cognitive function and several bodily functions, including those of the lungs, bones and kidneys. This probably reflects biology shared between the brain and these organs. We are currently looking to see how these findings relate to the brain health measures we have made in Insight 46. A similar “common cause” story applies to depression and cognitive function, and we are currently looking into how depression relates to the brain. On the other hand, health-related behaviour such as smoking, physical exercise and healthy diet genuinely seem to predict cognitive function (negatively for smoking, positively for exercise and diet). We have been emphasising prediction of health problems, but it’s equally important to understand resilience. Why can some people navigate through or escape these problems altogether even though they are apparently at risk, from genes or certain disadvantages in life? Does it come down to pure luck? But luck is, of course, just another way of saying we don’t know something. Uncovering what predicts Alzheimer’s That brings us to retirement. Retirement is one of the most vivid life transitions we can experience. Yet we know surprisingly little about its effects on ageing, including mental ageing. Work provides many of the everyday things that sustain our brain health: physical activity, mental stimulation, the security of an income, a role in society and a structure to our daily lives. We risk losing these when we retire unless we can find ways to maintain or replace them. With its life course design, NSHD provides an ideal opportunity for us to investigate the effects of retirement across a range of health outcomes, including brain health, and we hope to be able to report on this in the near future. But perhaps the most profound contribution that Insight 46 can make is to uncover what predicts Alzheimer’s disease – one of the biggest causes of disability and dependency in older people. At the age of 76, the cohort study is still relatively young when it comes to examining this aspect. However, as participants continue to age, Alzheimer’s will inevitably become more common. Indeed, some studies suggest that we have over a 30% chance of developing this condition if we live beyond our mid-80s. To reduce these odds, we need to be able to look back over the whole life course to see where we can best intervene. We mentioned education and leisure activities, heart health, and maintaining quality of life after retirement. But the richness of information provided by NSHD will open possibilities not yet even thought of. So, to achieve these goals we need to keep NSHD and Insight 46 going. We have already started another wave of assessments that will increase the number of study members with dedicated brain investigations to 1,000. We want these to become the world’s first continuously followed cradle-to-grave studies of general health and brain health. Our aim is to keep building a whole-of-life model that others can complete after we ourselves have retired. This will be a road map to guide hypotheses for future research but also enable travel in exciting new and unknown directions. But ultimately the only way of knowing what is going on in the brain is to examine it after death – and we are humbled that already over a third of Insight 46 have signed up for postmortem brain donation. The life course of NSHD will eventually be complete, as it will for all of us. However, that certainly won’t be the end, thanks to a rich body of data and evidence which will continue to flow from the UK’s different birth cohorts. While we continue to plan future assessments, at the same time we look back over the incredible information that the 1946 participants have already provided. In doing so we can only imagine what James Douglas would be thinking if he could see where his study of the cost of childbirth is now – 76 years later and counting. This post originally appeared on The Conversation and was published November 13, 2022. This article is republished here with permission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzLZh7875ZA Tests for Dementia: SLUMS Assessment DISCLAIMER This channel and its content, such as text, graphics, images and other material shown is for your informational purposes only. The content is not intended to substitute for professional or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The use of the information in these videos is solely at your own discretion. 🙋 Answer to Cryptogram: It's time to explore how well your brain scores 00:00 Intro 00:12 Cognitive Test Information 01:42 SLUMS Assessment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqMy3MXy-Fk Diagnosing dementia: an artificial intelligence-based visual test Neural Central https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlZJRfguDj0 When Is It Time to Move Someone To Memory Care? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymp2SgFhNtw 4 COMMON DEMENTIA CAREGIVER MISTAKES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX5Kw2OotL0 10 Warning Signs of Early Alzheimer's Disease – HOP ML Podcast Better Health While Aging Jun 29, 2022 All Episodes: Dr Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH – Better Health While Aging Wondering how to know whether someone might have Alzheimer’s disease? In this episode, geriatrician Leslie Kernisan, MD, goes beyond the usual 10 warning signs and covers 10 signs and symptoms that are red flags for her, when it comes to spotting early Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia #memoryloss #aging #alzheimer Learn about signs like accusations, denying difficulties, anosognosia (also known as lack of insight), delusions, and more. Read more: https://betterhealthwhileaging.net/8-... Get ongoing guidance from Dr. K by joining the Helping Older Parents Membership: https://betterhealthwhileaging.mykaja... Register for our free webinar, How to Help Your Aging Parent with Memory Loss Be Safer (Even If They're Resisting Your Help): https://betterhealthwhileaging.mykaja... Useful resource from the Alzheimer’s Association: https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dement... These warning signs can be early Alzheimer’s, or another form of dementia. But they can also be caused by other problems affecting brain function in older adults. Learn what warning signs to look for, if you’re concerned about possible Alzheimer’s, and what to do if they are present. Subscribe to the Channel: / @betterhealthwhileaging Video Chapters: 00:00 Early Signs of Alzheimer's Disease 00:39 Most common warning signs of early Alzheimer’s disease 01:59 Poor short-term memory 02:43 Repeating the same stories (or questions) 04:04 Why repeating happens in early Alzheimer’s 04:48 Difficulty with Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) 05:58 Unaware of or denying difficulties or mistakes 07:26 Accusing others 08:50 Developing delusions (false beliefs) 09:49 Developing hallucinations 10:28 Getting lost while driving or walking 10:49 Trouble with speech and language 11:38 Aphasia – trouble producing or understanding language 12:21 Uncharacteristic behaviors and/or changes in personality 13:29 Common early warning signs of Alzheimer’s & Dementia 13:56 What if you’ve noticed your older parent have memory problems LEARN – ONLINE COURSES: Memory Loss & Safety: How to Have Better Talks & Fewer Fights With Your Aging Parent Free Training: https://betterhealthwhileaging.mykaja... Get Dr. K’s expert guidance on how & when to step in, to help a parent with memory loss: https://betterhealthwhileaging.net/ed... Choose any playlist to watch: / betterhealthwhileaging . Especially take a look at: Helping Older Parents with Memory Loss: • Helping Older Parents with Memory Los... Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH, is a practicing geriatrician and the founder of the popular aging health website and podcast BetterHealthWhileAging.net, which she created to help families and older adults learn better ways to manage aging health challenges. Additionally, Leslie Kernisan works as a Clinical Instructor in the Division of Geriatrics at UCSF. Dr. K is particularly interested in the practical issues that families face when assisting aging parents, such as how to help them age in place. She has been running “Helping Older Parents” online courses and group coaching programs since 2018, and is the author of the book “When Your Aging Parent Needs Help: A geriatrician's step-by-step guide to memory loss, resistance, safety worries, and more.” https://betterhealthwhileaging.net/ed... WATCH NEXT: Episode #1 – Is Memory Loss Normal in Aging? HOP ML Podcast: • Is Memory Loss Normal in Aging? Helpi... Episode #2 – 10 Causes of Memory Loss in Old Age • 10 Causes of Memory Loss in Old Age –... Episode #3 – MCI, Alzheimer's and Dementia. What's the Difference? • MCI, Alzheimer's and Dementia. What's... Episode #4 – What are ADLs and IADLs: • What are ADLs and IADLs – HOP ML Podcast Episode #5 – How ADLs and IADLs change in early Alzheimer's: • How ADLs and IADLs change in early Al... _____ Dr. Kernisan's website, podcast, and YouTube channel all provide easy-to-follow instructions on how to deal with common health issues that affect the elderly. If you detect Alzheimer’s disease symptoms, go ahead and assist your parent in obtaining an appropriate medical assessment. In this scenario, your parent and family can determine the source of the memory loss or other symptoms discussed in this episode. Please share it: 10 Warning Signs of Early Alzheimer's.... Disclaimer: The material on the Better Health While Aging Youtube channel, including any exchanges in the comments section, is for informational and educational purposes only. Please see the full disclaimer for more information: https://betterhealthwhileaging.net/di...

Iceberg A-68: The story of how a mega-berg transformed the ocean

Iceberg A-68: The story of how a mega-berg transformed the ocean 14 hours ago Oct 26, 2024 Michael Marshall https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0k04nr2.jpg.webp The world's largest icebergs – which can be larger than entire countries in some cases – break off the Antarctic ice sheet. As they drift and melt in the Southern Ocean, they create a unique environment around them. It began with a crack. A very, very large one. In late 2016, scientists spotted a rapidly growing fissure extending across the enormous Larsen C Ice Shelf that spills into the Weddle Sea from the West Antarctica Peninsula. Within a few months, the crack led to one of the biggest icebergs ever observed breaking off into the ocean. The gargantuan slab of ice was more than twice the size of Luxembourg, covering an area of more than 2,200 sq miles (5,700sq km) and was around 770ft (235m) thick. For a year, this monster barely moved, trapped in the seasonal embrace of the Antarctic sea ice. But then it began to accelerate north, carried by ocean currents and winds. Iceberg A-68, as it was designated, had embarked on what would be an epic four-year odyssey that took it from the Antarctic sea ice to a remote island in the Southern Ocean. A-68 would also go on to become one of the world's most famous icebergs when, during the Christmas of 2020, its journey caught hold on social media and the world fell in love with it. Perhaps everyone was a bit stir-crazy from the Covid-19 lockdowns, but for whatever reason, the fate of iceberg A-68 as it made its way across the Southern Ocean was a sensation. There was even the possibility of a truly dramatic ending. Ecologists worried that the vast berg might collide with the island of South Georgia, devastating local ecosystems. The remote island is a breeding ground for many threatened species including albatrosses. Instead, the iceberg gradually broke apart and melted before the worst could happen. Over the years, it fractured into smaller pieces and released billions of tonnes of chilled, freshwater into the ocean before finally meeting its end in a slushy whimper during April 2021. In doing so, it also transformed the marine habitat around it, creating unique conditions that support an entire ecosystem of life. Scientists following A-68's birth and demise were able to track just what such giant icebergs do to the surrounding ocean. For its short, transient life as an iceberg, A-68 became a frozen lifeboat for a wide range of species. Now the huge volumes of data gathered about A-68 have been analysed by scientists, it's possible to tell the full story of the iceberg and the impact it had on the ocean. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0k05ckd.jpg.webp Iceberg A-68, above, was one of the largest on record when it initially broke off from the Larsen C ice sheet and began drifting across the ocean (Credit: Getty Images) Calving from Antarctica On the side of Antarctica closest to South America, a long strip of land extends out into the Southern Ocean. The West Antarctic Peninsula is the most habitable part of the continent, with many penguin colonies, plants and other thriving life. Along its east coast, the peninsula is bordered by the Larsen ice shelves. These vast plains of floating glacier ice span tens of thousands of square kilometres. The seas under them are virtually unknown because the thick ice acts as a near-impassable barrier to vessels. It can be hundreds of metres thick, with all but a fraction of it being below the sea surface. This thick, frozen blanket also means the marine habitat and life below often hasn't seen sunlight for thousands of years. But the ice sheets are not static. Gradually and inexorably, ice flows downhill from the continent and out over the sea where it meets the much thinner sea ice, which extends and retreats with the seasons. This means the shelf of continental ice sheet that protrudes over the ocean is forever being pushed out towards the open sea. Occasionally, a big chunk breaks away or "calves". "Calving is a natural event," says Geraint Tarling, a polar ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. That's exactly what happened in July 2017. The huge crack in the Larsen C ice sheet had been there for more than a decade, but in late 2016 it began to rapidly propagate causing the ice shelf to snap a few months later. A block of ice, representing about 10% of the Larsen C shelf, broke away. At the time it was the largest iceberg adrift in the ocean and the sixth largest in 30 years of records. The US National Ice Center, which is responsible for tracking major icebergs, named the berg "A-68". The letter specifies the region from which it calved, and A-68 was the 68th iceberg of sufficient size to be tracked. However, within days a chunk broke away, so the main iceberg became known as "A-68a": the breakaway fragments were A-68b, A-68c and so on. Bringing huge amounts of fresh water into an environment could really change the ecosystem from the bottom up – Geraint Tarling The journey begins The birth of A-68 exposed a stretch of seabed that had been hidden under the ice for thousands of years. Polar scientists were eager to explore it before the ecosystems were inevitably transformed by the new situation. "There was a big move to get expeditions in there to see, once it calved and moved off, what was left," says Tarling. "Unfortunately, when it calved there was a huge amount of ice around... The opportunity was lost." Consequently, most people forgot about A-68a for a couple of years. The huge iceberg remained trapped in position by the surrounding sea ice. In July 2018, BBC News' Jonathan Amos described it as "shuffling on the spot". However, soon afterwards it became caught up in a circling current called the Weddell Gyre. By the following summer, it had travelled 155 miles (250km) north along the Peninsula coast. Then it accelerated. By February 2020, as Covid-19 – and the first lockdowns – spread around the world, iceberg A-68a had reached the edge of Antarctica's year-round sea ice. It entered a region dubbed "Iceberg Alley", where powerful currents thrust icebergs northwards into the Southern Ocean. This meant A-68a was drifting through waters warmer than anything it had so far encountered. Researchers thought it would quickly break up – and when a 67 sq mile (175 sq km) chunk fell off in April 2020, some thought a collapse was imminent. But the iceberg sailed on. A-68a had become a near-unprecedented iceberg, says Tarling. "It was the sixth-largest ever detected," he says, and "it stayed together for an incredibly long period". At this time, palaeoclimatologist Roseanne Smith was doing a Master's in polar and alpine change at the University of Sheffield – or rather, "I was doing it from home". Her supervisor Grant Bigg suggested she study A-68a and she began using satellite data to monitor it. "It was a case of waking up every morning and then checking where the iceberg had moved to." Now at the British Antarctic Survey, Smith published her findings in 2023. The satellites had detected vast but thin layers of freshwater spreading across the ocean for more than 620 miles (1,000km) from the iceberg. "Satellites are only able to tell you anything about the conditions in the top few centimetres of the surface ocean," says Smith. But even in that very top layer of water they are revealing. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0k05czy.jpg.webp Sqd Ldr David Emeny-Smith Ocean currents created stresses in iceberg A-68 that caused sections to break off to form smaller icebergs (Credit: Sqd Ldr David Emeny-Smith) It's normal to find a layer of fresh water surrounding an iceberg, says Claudia Cenedese, a flow dynamicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and co-author of a 2023 review of melting icebergs. "The iceberg doesn't move very fast compared to the ambient water," she says. The water melting from the surfaces of the iceberg is fresh, because it ultimately formed from snow, so it's less dense than the surrounding saltwater. "It goes to the top and it forms this meltwater pool." Collision course By the summer of 2020, Tarling and many others had realised that A-68a, if it remained intact, posed a serious danger. That's because the currents would carry it towards South Georgia, off the north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island is at the heart of a Marine Protected Area that spans 500,000 sq miles (1.24 million sq km). "South Georgia is an incredibly rich, dynamic marine ecosystem," says Tarling. "The reason for that is that the glaciers and the land run-off fertilises the ocean around it." This allows photosynthetic plankton to thrive in the waters around South Georgia, supporting Antarctic krill and a rich web of larger animals. "There are some valuable fisheries around there for toothfish and icefish, which have to be carefully managed." Furthermore, the land is home to breeding colonies of several threatened species including elephant seals, king penguins and wandering albatrosses. A huge iceberg was the last thing the South Georgia ecosystem needed. "We were particularly concerned with this iceberg coming into this area," says Tarling. For one thing, A-68a was deep enough to scour the shallow seabed around the island, gouging away the diverse ecosystems living there. It could even ground itself just offshore, blocking breeding animals like seals from heading out to sea just when they needed to do so to obtain food for their young. "That probably would mean that there would be low levels of survival at those colonies for that particular year." This had happened in 2004 when an iceberg called A-38b grounded itself off South Georgia for months. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0k05d3w.jpg.webp During its 3.5 year long journey, iceberg A-68 released billions of tonnes of freshwater into the ocean as its melting accelerated (Credit: Nasa) If that weren't enough, the iceberg would also change the chemical makeup of the seawater, simply because it was mostly fresh water. "Bringing huge amounts of fresh water into an environment could really change the ecosystem from the bottom up," says Tarling. So in the summer of 2020 Tarling started trying to arrange an expedition to the iceberg. Doing so on short notice is "not easy", he says. "But we did take advantage of the fact that there was an expedition going in and around that area anyway, for completely different purposes." Tarling arranged for the RRS James Cook to be diverted to A-68a in February 2021, though he had to stay at home because of the pandemic. He and his colleagues devised a plan for the ship to transect the freshwater layer around the iceberg, measuring water conditions and marine life as it went. Collapse Then in December 2020, "the iceberg started to collapse," he says. Satellite imagery at the start of the month revealed that A-68a was "fraying at the edges", "riven with cracks" and shedding chunks of ice. Over the next two weeks, it crept towards South Georgia. "It got very, very close," says Tarling. One corner of the iceberg became wedged on the continental shelf, in the shallow waters near the island. "That bit got stuck. The rest of the iceberg snapped off." The lodged ice gouged out an area of the seabed. "We still haven't been back to investigate how bad that was," says Tarling. Still, he calls it "a lucky escape". A few days later, A68a shattered into several fragments – albeit still large enough to affect their surroundings. A study published the following year found that this second break-up was caused by powerful ocean currents. One part of the iceberg was exposed to a fast-moving current while a neighbouring section was sat in a slower current. This created a powerful shearing effect that broke off a "finger" of ice from the iceberg's southern side. No iceberg has been seen breaking up for this reason before. The breakup meant Tarling's team had to throw out their measurement plans and draw up new ones on the fly. But the hassle was worth it, because the situation was now even more interesting. "There have been measurements around icebergs before," he says, but "there hasn't been any measurements around a collapsing iceberg before." At the peak of its breakup, around 1.5 billion tonnes of fresh water was gushing into the ocean every day Another large fragment broke away in late January 2021, not long before the RRS James Cook arrived. The researchers deployed robot gliders, which could move in amongst the huge chunks of ice. The main ship had to maintain a safe distance, sampling the seawater. "Getting measurements near icebergs is dangerous," says Cenedese. The iceberg had also started to melt dramatically. As it spent time in the relatively warmer waters of the north Scotia Sea around South Georgia, A-68a was thinning by around 23ft (7m) a month. The rest of A-68a was carried back out to sea in the powerful currents circling South Georgia. "Then it got taken off into the sea a little bit more, and that's where it collapsed," says Tarling. By mid-April 2021, only fragments were left. "The largest piece became so small that it was no longer officially tracked as a giant iceberg," says Smith. Over its three-and-a-half-year journey since it broke away from the Antarctic ice shelf, A-68 lost 802 billion tonnes of ice as it thinned from an average thickness of 770ft (235m) to 551ft (168m). Over a three-month period at the end of 2020 and start of 2021, it dumped an estimated 152 billion tonnes of fresh water into the ocean – that is equivalent to almost 61 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. At the peak of its breakup, around 1.5 billion tonnes of fresh water was gushing into the ocean every day. The effect this would have on the ocean ecosystem was profound. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0k05dc3.jpg.webp Sqd Ldr David Emeny-Smith Layers of fresh and brackish water forming around iceberg A-68 and its "bergy" offspring created a habitat for algae and plankton to thrive (Credit: Sqd Ldr David Emeny-Smith) A unique ecosystem Icebergs create unique and unusual temporary ecosystems around themselves – A-68 did so on a huge scale. In the surface water around the iceberg, Tarling and his colleagues found elevated levels of nutrients, including nitrate and phosphate. The concentrations were more typical of what is found in deeper waters. What seems to have happened is that the less dense fresh water melting off the underside of the iceberg, which extended up to 463ft (141m) beneath the surface, picked up these nutrients from the deeper seawater and carried them upwards with it. These nutrient-rich melt waters were dominated by ice-associated algae: species that prefer to live in or near ice. "They can deal with high differences in salinity," says Tarling, allowing them to survive moving between fresh iceberg water and salty seawater. "You have this sort of halo effect," says Tarling. The ice-associated algae bloomed around A-68a and its iceberg "children". This attracted tiny animals called zooplankton to feed on them. If the research ship had stayed longer, Tarling says, they would probably have seen larger animals arrive to feed on the zooplankton. This would likely have included baleen whales, the largest animals on Earth. "Whales definitely would be in there and thriving on that productivity given a few more weeks," says Tarling. "They are amazing at locating patches of productivity. That's why they thrive." He speculates they may even be aware that icebergs tend to leave blooms in their wake. "They're really clever animals." The giant iceberg also affected the overall structure of the waters around it – but not in the way most icebergs do. Normally, the dumping of fresh water creates stratification, in which layers of water stacked on top of each other mix less than usual. "If you have freshwater on the surface, you basically increase the stratification," says Cenedese. "You make it more stable so it's harder to mix it." But not around A-68a. "Everything was happening so fast it just completely changed the whole dynamic of that," says Tarling. "What was happening is that huge dumps of water were coming in." The weight of the fresh water pushed down the layers beneath, so conditions that would normally be found 164ft (50m) down were instead found 328ft (100m) down. Any particles of food drifting in the water were also driven down. "This deepening of the water masses is creating an effect that we've never seen before, taking all this particulate material down with it," says Tarling. This may actually have increased the amount of carbon that was buried at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. Normally, organic material drifts down slowly through the water and some of it gets eaten, so only a fraction reaches the seabed and gets trapped there. But the crushing weight of the freshwater from A-68a as it melted may have helped force the carbon-based material down more quickly, to depths where it was less likely to be eaten. "No one's ever reported this," says Tarling. The implication is that massive icebergs like A-68 may help drive carbon into the depths of the sea, slightly lowering greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0k05dgg.jpg.webp Icebergs provide an important source of minerals to the ocean that can attract a wide range of life who come to feed around them (Credit: Getty Images) Icebergs of the future In many ways, A-68 was a microcosm of what to expect as Antarctica and other large ice sheets melt due to climate change. For one thing, huge dumps of freshwater into the ocean can disrupt currents. "An individual iceberg is not going to make a difference," says Cenedese, but there is a vast amount of water locked up in Antarctica's ice. "All that water's going to get into the ocean." This is already happening around Antarctica's coast, but it is complicated by other processes. "It's easier to see what happens near an iceberg because it's small." In response, Tarling is drawing up plans for larger-scale studies of icebergs, with the aim of understanding how they affect the ocean. There have been other giant icebergs since A-68. Tarling says his team has already obtained data from two, "by pure luck": "We just happened to be in the area." Iceberg A-74 calved from Antarctica in March 2021, just before A-68 collapsed, exposing a huge area of seabed that proved to be teeming with animals. A-76 emerged in May 2021. At the time it was the world's largest iceberg. Then in late 2023 came A-23a. It calved in 1986 but swiftly grounded in the Weddell Sea and stayed there for decades. The RRS Sir David Attenborough visited it in December 2023, and the following month another expedition obtained dramatic pictures of caves and arches sculpted into its side walls by waves. It is still largely intact. These calving events can have drastic consequences for Antarctic wildlife. For instance, in May 2024 iceberg A-83 broke away from the Brunt Ice Shelf and drifted to a new position – which blocked access to the sea for an emperor penguin colony at Halley Bay. These penguins were already struggling: in 2019 it emerged they had failed to raise many chicks for three years in a row. The iceberg posed an additional threat. It moved as the long Antarctic winter began, so the scientists had a long anxious wait before they could see what had became of the emperor penguins. In late September, Peter Fretwell at the British Antarctic Survey told BBC News that satellite photos had revealed "a brown smudge on the white ice sheet", indicating the colony had survived. We need to understand such icebergs, says Tarling, because climate change is thawing Antarctica. "The probability of icebergs like this coming into Iceberg Alley," he says, "is greater and will be becoming greater." We can expect many more huge bergs like A-68. Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241025-how-mega-icebergs-change-the-ocean

The UK coal-fired power station that became a giant battery

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240927-how-coal-fired-power-stations-are-being-turned-into-batteries https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0jt52jd.jpg.webp One of the UK's defunct coal plants in Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire, is being turned into a battery energy storage system (Credit: Getty Images) https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0jt52rw.jpg.webp With the closure of the last coal-fired power station in the UK, it raises questions about how old fossil fuel infrastructure can be repurposed. One option is to use them to store energy from renewables. It's an unassuming place for a major era of British history to come to an end. Surrounded by farmland drenched by recent rains and trees with leaves starting to turn ahead of the autumn – all within earshot of the thundering traffic from the M1 motorway – the UK's last coal-fired power station is shutting down for good. As of 30 September 2024 the turbines at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant in Nottinghamshire will fall silent while smoke and steam will cease to belch from the chimney and cooling towers that dominate this part of the landscape. The power station, which has been operating since 1967, is to undergo a two-year decommissioning and demolition process. It's a symbolic moment, a marker along the UK's journey to decarbonisation and net-zero. For centuries, coal was the main source of energy in the UK. It was the life-blood of the industrial revolution – providing the fuel for steam engines and then generating much of the country's electricity. By the 1960s, nearly 90% of the UK's electricity relied upon coal. Now, for the first time, the UK will not use any coal to generate electricity. It's not clear what the Ratcliffe-on-Soar site will become. There have been suggestions it could house a prototype fusion reactor or some other green industry. Regardless, as fossil fuel power plants are shuttered in many parts of the world, the question of what to do with them will keep coming up. One promising option is to turn old fossil power plants into battery storage sites. The intermittency problem Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are the mainstay of the net-zero transition. They don't emit greenhouse gases, so the more they replace fossil fuels like coal and gas the closer we come to net-zero emissions. The share of energy coming from renewables is rising steadily. According to a report by the International Energy Agency published in January 2024, renewables will generate 33.5% of global electricity this year and could account for 41.6% by 2028. However, using renewables comes with challenges for power grids. Coal and gas plants can be turned on and off at will, so they can supply more energy when it is needed: they are "dispatchable", in the jargon of the field. By contrast, renewable sources are intermittent and less controllable: the Sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow (and sometimes can blow too much). "With renewables, we have less dispatchable power," says Grazia Todeschini, an electrical engineer at King's College London in the UK. To some extent, the intermittency problem can be managed by having a diverse selection of renewable sources: that way, if one doesn't generate enough, another can pick up the slack. Nuclear power, which is zero-carbon, also offers a steady supply. Alongside this, though, countries are investing heavily in energy storage. When lots of electricity is generated but isn't needed, it can be stored – then when there is a shortage it can be released. "The main point is to be able to match generation and demand," says Todeschini. One of the UK's defunct coal plants in Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire, is being turned into a battery energy storage system (Credit: Getty Images) For many decades, the most important form of energy storage was pumped hydropower. Excess electricity was used to pump water uphill, so that it could be released to drive turbines and generate electricity when needed. However, this won't be enough for the renewable era, and hydropower has its own emission problems too. "That capacity pretty much is saturated everywhere, in Europe at least," says Todeschini. "There is no space to build any more." That's why many countries are turning instead to battery energy storage systems (BESS). A BESS site is simply an array of batteries: big ones, about the size of shipping containers. Excess electricity from renewable sources can be dumped into the batteries, ready to be discharged when demand is high. "In the last 20 years, this technology has improved a lot," says Todeschini. "The control is more precise, and also the cost has decreased." All of which explains why one of the UK's defunct coal plants is being turned into a BESS site. Ferrybridge Near Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire sit the remains of a trio of coal-fired power plants. Between them they operated for almost a century, the first one turning on in 1927 and the last being decommissioned in 2016. The third station, Ferrybridge C, passed into the ownership of energy company SSE in 2004, which ran it until the site's closure and demolition. Now SSE is building a BESS on the site of Ferrybridge C. It will have a capacity of 150 megawatts, which SSE estimates will be enough to power 250,000 homes. Construction began in August 2023, and in June 2024 the first batteries arrived. The following month, the last of the 136 battery units were installed. "We're now at the point all the kit's on site," says Heather Donald of SSE Renewables, where she is director of onshore wind, solar and battery for Great Britain and Ireland. "We're just about to go into the commissioning phase and we're hoping to switch on early next year." Building an array of batteries on the site of an old coal-fired power station has multiple advantages, says Donald. "First and foremost, there's a grid connection there," she says. That means linking the BESS to the grid is as straightforward as it can be. "Access to grid connections and grid capacity's at such a premium now." WATCH: The final cooling towers at Ferrybridge power station are demolished The site also proved to have a lot of useful materials and infrastructure. "We've been able to use some of the existing concrete foundations, we've been able to repurpose some of the concrete on site," says Donald. This meant the company did not need to import many materials, apart from the batteries themselves. "It's a great reuse of a site like this," says Donald. More of this sort of thing If the UK is to achieve its decarbonisation targets, it will need a lot more BESS projects like Ferrybridge. Some indication of quite how many more can be gleaned from the latest Future Energy Scenarios report, released in July 2024 by National Grid. The report finds the UK had 4.7 gigawatts (GWs) of battery storage capacity in 2023. That's a lot, but the UK government has set a legally binding target of net-zero emissions by 2050. Depending on quite how this is achieved, the country will need storage of between 29 gigawatts and 36 gigawatts by 2050. Even the lower figure is only possible if the UK stores a lot of its energy in the form of hydrogen. Currently, most hydrogen comes from fossil fuel sources, so a switch to greener alternatives is needed. If green hydrogen does not take off, the country will need more BESS to compensate. In short, the UK's BESS capacity needs to increase by a factor of at least six, and possibly closer to eight, in the next quarter-century. Many more BESS sites are in the pipeline for the UK. In June 2024, plans were approved for a BESS facility in a field near the hamlet of Wineham in West Sussex. Another near Sunderland was recommended by city planners in August. Weeks later, a similar facility was approved for agricultural land in Cumbria. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0jt52rw.jpg.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1024xn/p0jt52zn.jpg.webp The BESS at Ferrybridge C will have a capacity of 150 megawatts - enough to power 250,000 homes (Credit: Getty Images) Given the massive increase in battery capacity needed, disused power stations like Ferrybridge C are a tempting option. "To be able to use former energy sites for new carbon-free energy is definitely something we're looking to do more of," says Donald. Indeed, SSE is already building a second BESS on another coal-fired power station site. Fiddler's Ferry in Warrington, Cheshire, was shut down in 2020, and in December 2023 the company announced it would turn it into a 150-megawatt BESS. Construction began in the spring of 2024. "I agree it makes sense to use a site where there is already some of this infrastructure," says Todeschini. That said, not all ex-fossil-fuel power stations will be suitable for BESS. "It really depends a lot on the location," says Todeschini. For instance, a site that's a long way from residential neighbourhoods might not be suitable. Instead, such sites could be repurposed as wind farms or other forms of generation. Todeschini also suggests charging sites for fleets of electric vehicles. "I'm an advocate for this kind of mixed approach, in general, for the energy transition," says Todeschini. "My approach is to really consider all options." Nevertheless, many former fossil fuel power plants around the world are being repurposed for batteries. In the Lusatia region of Germany, there is an intricate system of coal mines and thermal power plants operated by the energy company LEAG. In 2023, the company – which specialises in the dirtiest form of coal, lignite – announced a plan to transform the entire complex into a "green energy hub". This will include wind and solar, hydrogen and batteries, and is intended to be completed by 2040. An early step will be to convert the Boxberg coal plant into a BESS facility, to be operational by 2027. In June 2024, LEAG secured €58 million of European Union funding to support the project. On the other side of the world, the former Liddell Power Station in New South Wales, Australia, is becoming the Liddell Battery. The site's owner AGL Energy announced the project in December 2023 and construction began in June 2024. The 500-megawatt batteries should come online in December 2025. Finally, Nevada is home to a project that is already storing and supplying electricity. The coal-fired Reid Gardner Power Station, 50 miles (80km) north-east of Las Vegas, was demolished in 2020. A company called Energy Vault has since replaced it with the Reid Gardner Battery Energy Storage System, which has a capacity of 220 megawatts. The site came online in late April 2024. The more projects like these come online, the better they will become, argues Donald. "It's obviously an emerging technology," she says. Donald expects BESS to become more efficient and to be able to discharge electricity for longer periods – helping ensure a secure electricity supply after all the fossil fuel plants have been turned off for good. --