Volcano helped clean up after it erupted

A violent volcanic eruption in the South Pacific has revealed a surprising natural mechanism that could potentially help slow global warming.

The finding provides entirely new insights into atmospheric chemistry and may inspire new methods to remove methane emissions from the air.

When the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai in the South Pacific erupted in January 2022, it was not only one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in modern times. The volcano also did something completely unexpected: it helped clean up some of the methane pollution it released. This phenomenon could potentially be key to how humans can slow global warming.

Using advanced satellite measurements, researchers observed unusually high concentrations of formaldehyde in the massive volcanic plume following the eruption. This was crucial evidence: when methane is destroyed in the atmosphere, formaldehyde forms as a short-lived intermediate.

“When we analyzed the satellite images, we were surprised to see a cloud with a record-high concentration of formaldehyde. We were able to track the cloud for 10 days, all the way to South America. Because formaldehyde only exists for a few hours, this showed that the cloud must have been destroying methane continuously for more than a week,” explains Maarten van Herpen from Acacia Impact Innovation BV, first author of the study.

“It is known that volcanoes emit methane during eruptions, but until now it was not known that volcanic ash is also capable of partially cleaning up this pollution,” he adds.

According to the researchers, everything points to a very special process taking place—one they first discovered in 2023, but in a completely different part of the world.

They found that when dust from the Sahara is blown over the Atlantic Ocean, it mixes with sea salt from sea spray, forming small particles known as iron salt aerosols. When sunlight hits these aerosols, chlorine atoms are produced. These chlorine atoms react with methane and help break it down in the atmosphere. This discovery changed scientific understanding of tropospheric chemistry.

“What is new—and completely surprising—is that the same mechanism appears to occur in a volcanic plume high up in the stratosphere, where the physical conditions are entirely different,” says Professor Matthew Johnson from the chemistry department at the University of Copenhagen, one of the researchers behind both discoveries.

The 2022 eruption hurled enormous amounts of salty seawater into the stratosphere along with volcanic ash. The theory is that when sunlight hit this mixture, highly reactive chlorine was formed, helping to break down the methane released during the eruption. The visible evidence of this methane breakdown was the large amounts of formaldehyde detected in satellite images.

Methane is currently responsible for one third of global warming. Over a 20-year period, methane is about 80 times as potent as CO2. However, methane breaks down relatively quickly in the atmosphere—typically within about 10 years.

This means that if we reduce methane emissions now it could have a noticeable impact on the climate within a decade. For this reason, researchers sometimes refer to methane reduction as an “emergency brake” on climate change—one that may help prevent climate tipping points in the coming decades. However, reducing CO₂ emissions remains essential to stabilize temperatures in the long term.

The researchers behind the new study believe their findings could inform a growing field working on solutions to reduce methane emissions by artificially accelerating its breakdown in the atmosphere—similar to how the volcano effectively cleaned up after itself. Various methods are currently under investigation, but a key challenge is measuring and verifying how much methane is actually removed.

“How do you prove that methane has been removed from the atmosphere? How do you know your method works? It’s very difficult. But here we address that problem by showing that methane breakdown can in fact be observed using satellites,” says Jos de Laat from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, senior author of the study.

The research was conducted with the advanced TROPOMI instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite, which monitors air pollution and greenhouse gases worldwide on a daily basis.

“Retrieving formaldehyde from TROPOMI in a stratospheric volcanic plume is far outside the instrument’s standard operating conditions—we had to carefully correct the satellite’s sensitivity for the unusual altitude of the signal and account for interference from the exceptionally high sulfur dioxide concentrations. Getting these corrections right was essential to confirm that what we were seeing was real,” says Isabelle De Smedt of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy.

The researchers believe the new findings will inspire engineers in industry:

“It’s an obvious idea for industry to try to replicate this natural phenomenon—but only if it can be proven to be safe and effective. Our satellite method could offer a way to help figure out how humans might slow global warming,” concludes Johnson.

The article appears in Nature Communications.

Additional researchers behind the study are from CSIC, Spain and Utrecht University, Netherlands.

The research was supported by Spark Climate Solutions.

Source: University of Copenhagen

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What your dog training choices say about your ethics

A new study explores how the training methods dog owners use reflect their ethical views on animals.

The findings may give dog owners new insight into why they choose certain training approaches over others.

Whether a dog owner rewards their dog with a treat or corrects it by pulling on the leash is not simply a matter of what they believe to be the most effective training method.

According to the study, owners’ choice of training methods is linked to their ethical stance on how animals should be treated and used.

The results come from a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Edinburgh.

Dog owners with an animal welfare-oriented ethical stance are less likely to use punishment-based training methods than those who believe that animals are there for humans to use.

“If you use punishment as part of dog training, you are more likely to view dogs as existing primarily for human purposes. If you use less punishment and rely more on positive training methods, you are more likely to orient yourself towards the idea that animals should have rights, or at least good welfare,” says Peter Sandøe, a professor at the veterinary and animal sciences department at the University of Copenhagen and senior author of the study.

The study is based on responses from 500 dog owners in the United States, who were surveyed about their training practices.

Positive training methods—such as treats, toys, and verbal praise—were widely used among respondents, while punishment-based methods, including verbal reprimands or physical correction, were used less frequently.

The participants were also asked about their views on animals and were categorized based on their responses. Overall, respondents reflected three main types of ethical orientation towards animals: an anthropocentric orientation, an animal welfare-oriented ethics stance, and an animal rights orientation.

The results show that dog owners with an anthropocentric animal‑ethical stance are more likely to use punishment‑based methods than owners who believe that animals are entitled to good welfare or rights. In addition, owners who believe that animals are entitled to good welfare were more likely to use positive methods than owners with an anthropocentric stance.

According to Sandøe, the study indicates that choice of dog training methods does not solely reflect technical knowledge or understanding of learning theory.

“Training is not a neutral activity. It is an activity in which the owner’s view of the animal becomes apparent. The methods people choose also reflect their beliefs about what our moral obligations towards animals are.”

From this perspective, influencing choice of training methods is not merely a technical or professional issue.

“It is not only about learning theory—it is also an ethical discussion. You cannot isolate it as something purely technical or sciency, as some tend to do,” says Sandøe.

Although the study was conducted in the United States, similar patterns may be expected in other countries, explains Sandøe. While the distribution of ethical views may vary across countries, the relationship between ethical orientation and the choice of training methods is likely to be comparable.

At the same time, the findings may encourage reflection among dog owners.

“The study creates room for reflection. Ethics appears to play an important role in why people do what they do when training their dogs,” says Peter Sandøe.

Overall, the study highlights considerable variation in how people relate to animals.

“People have very different views on animals, and dog training is an area that really divides opinions,” concludes Peter Sandøe.

The study is not representative, and the results cannot therefore be used to estimate how widespread different training methods or ethical orientations are in the general population. The study focuses solely on the relationship between training choices and ethical orientation.

The study used a measure of animal ethical orientation developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. This measure has also been applied in previous studies examining the relationship between animal ethics views and consumer choices, such as the purchase of pork with or without animal welfare labels.

Additional contributors to the study are from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Copenhagen.

The study appears in the journal Anthrozoös.

Source: University of Copenhagen

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‘Love hormone’ plays a role in group competition

The “love hormone” oxytocin plays a role not only in moments of intimacy but also in competitive situations.

Researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) have shown that oxytocin levels increase when rivalry or clearly defined groups are involved—particularly in men.

“Previous work showed that receiving oxytocin via a nasal spray can make people more ‘groupish’,” says Charlotte Debras from UZH’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, who conducted the study as part of her doctoral research.

“But it wasn’t known whether OT naturally increased during group competition.”

To systematically study competition, the researchers organized soccer tournaments together with the Indigenous Tsimane’ people in the Bolivian Amazon.

“The Tsimane’ lifestyle has an effect on their hormone levels,” says Adrian Jaeggi, also from UZH’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, who has been conducting research on site since 2011.

For example, levels of reproductive hormones like testosterone or progesterone are lower when calories are harder to come by. Meanwhile, the kinds of social factors linked to OT are likely especially important in these highly interdependent societies. To test their hypothesis, the researchers measured oxytocin levels in the urine of soccer players before and after the matches.

Oxytocin levels increased most strongly after matches against familiar rivals but less so among teams from different communities. When Tsimane’ played against non-Tsimane’ people, however, the increase was again higher.

“This suggests that oxytocin is sensitive to the salience of the opposition—showing heightened reactivity both toward familiar competitors and toward a clearly defined out-group,” says Jaeggi.

One particularly striking finding of the study was that women’s OT levels did not differ before or after games, unlike men’s. Debras mentions several possible explanations for this.

“Firstly, women start from higher baseline levels, as many of them were breastfeeding, which could make it harder to detect a change.”

It is also possible that soccer may not hold the same significance for women, as they play less often than men. Another explanation is provided by the “male warrior hypothesis,” which proposes that men have evolved to be generally more invested in group competition.

“The most important forms of rivalry for Tsimane’ women may involve relational dynamics, such as managing reputations or jostling for social support, rather than physical competition,” says Debras.

The study does not make it possible to determine whether the increase in OT primarily promotes cohesion within the team or competition with the opposing group. In team sports, both aspects are closely intertwined.

“Cooperation can be a successful way to compete in the game of life, and OT seems to be a key ingredient for this,” says Jaeggi. “OT has been linked to group conflict in many different species, from fish to chimpanzees. Our findings suggest that similar mechanisms are at play in humans.”

The research appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Source: University of Zurich

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COVID didn’t really lead to lasting effects on fatherhood

The changes in fathering that came with COVID lockdowns have not outlasted the pandemic itself, according to new research.

In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, much has been said about how the lockdowns created conditions for dual-parent families to spend more time at home with their children.

In an ideal vision of family life, this would have led to parents sharing in quality time and caregiving responsibilities, and bonding with their children in a way they hadn’t been able to do before.

In the United States, ample attention was given to the novelty of how dads, in particular, were getting much more time to participate in the daily, often mundane and yet intimate tasks of child-rearing. Many people hoped that the change would persist, allowing dads more time and flexibility in the long term—ultimately reshaping how we view fatherhood in general.

“COVID didn’t really lead to a large-scale uptick in this new vision for fathering on the part of dads across the board,” says Lee Gettler, a professor of anthropology and chair of the anthropology department at the University of Notre Dame, as well as an affiliated faculty at the Eck Institute for Global Health and the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families.

“I think what’s been missing from many of those initial reports was a wider perspective on what the realities are for families and fathers in the United States and around the world following the pandemic,” he says, “especially as we think about common jobs for men, precarity in the workplace and economic inequality.”

To address those gaps in understanding, Gettler and his team, which included coauthor and postdoctoral research associate Sarah Hoegler Dennis, relied on 15 years of longitudinal data to compare fathers’ pre-COVID to post-COVID behaviors. The researchers looked at this data from a non-Euro-American perspective in a major metropolitan area in the Philippines.

What they found was that fathering behaviors, for the most part, did not change much before COVID began versus shortly after the pandemic ended.

“There was this idea out there that a meaningful percentage of dads were spending more time with their kids during the lockdown periods, even if they were still working, and that the dynamics of COVID would lead to this long-term effect on what and how much dads were doing within their families,” Gettler says. “And we just didn’t see that prevailing change.”

The research team drew on a large sample of men who were around 25 years old at the start of the study and followed them for the next 15 years as part of a larger set of research in Cebu, Philippines. Gettler and his team have been studying fathering and the “biology of fatherhood” as part of this project for close to 20 years, and have found that fathers in Cebu have become much more involved in the past few decades, mirroring father involvement in the United States.

During the pandemic, the Philippines also had one of the longest lockdown periods in the world, according to Gettler, with some of the most strict, government-mandated quarantine guidelines in place, making this an appropriate site to test for the effects of the stay-at-home orders on fathering.

“There are questions remaining about how we can continue to encourage dads in dual-parent families to pull their weight, be a supportive partner or to balance the responsibilities of what it takes to run a household and take care of young children. COVID exposed or habituated more dads to what that can look like, but now we need to enable them to continue that behavior.”

The researchers used waves of socio-demographic and fathers’ caregiving data collected prior to the pandemic (2009 and 2014) and after the pandemic (2022-23). The main analyses focused on caregiving changes over time for fathers who had young children at home both pre- and post-pandemic, looking at how involved they were with routine, hands-on care for babies and young children, recreational play and activities, and educational caregiving tasks.

“What we found is that COVID—and the time dads spent at home with their children during that period—did not change fathering in any lasting way,” Gettler says. “As soon as life gets back to normal, we see that dads are continuing to do the same thing they were doing before COVID.”

With one exception, Gettler notes.

For the group of fathers who found themselves going from employed to either unemployed or underemployed because of the pandemic, their involvement with their children’s educational care shot up noticeably, and the change persisted.

“We see this link with employment status and fathers’ ability to spend more time helping kids with school work and homework,” Gettler says. “But that’s the only hint that the conditions surrounding COVID may have contributed to some sort of change in what dads are doing at home.”

At the end of the day, dad’s employment status is the primary predictor for how much care he is providing, Gettler says. He believes that policy changes within the workplace—such as paid paternity leave and widespread flexibility on working from home or setting working hours—might lead to a more lasting change in fatherhood behavior. These structural changes could support permanent shifts in expectations and norms for men as caregivers, and open up more opportunities for dads to get—and stay—involved.

Gettler argues that society needs to recognize how it can better support dads and give them the chance to be more available at home, without the caveat of having to become unemployed or underemployed in order to enjoy such chances to be with their families.

“There are questions remaining about how we can continue to encourage dads in dual-parent families to pull their weight, be a supportive partner or to balance the responsibilities of what it takes to run a household and take care of young children,” Gettler says.

“COVID exposed or habituated more dads to what that can look like, but now we need to enable them to continue that behavior.”

Source: University of Notre Dame

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How worried should you be about hantavirus?

News of a hantavirus outbreak aboard an expedition cruise ship has put a spotlight on the rare but potentially deadly disease.

As of May 6, three passengers have died from acute respiratory illness and several additional cases are suspected among the other passengers and crew.

Health officials are investigating whether the virus, which is typically spread from rodents to humans, may in this case have spread between people on board the ship—a rare but concerning possibility.

Marieke Rosenbaum, assistant professor in the infectious disease and global health department at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, has been investigating whether rats in Boston carry hantavirus.

Here’s what she says the public needs to know about hantaviruses, the ship outbreak, and how to protect against the rodent-borne disease:

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Trees don’t benefit health for everyone

The biological benefits of nature are not the same for all populations, according to a new study.

Being around trees is proven to enhance health, from lowering stress to increasing longevity.

“The prevailing thought among urban planners and health professionals has been that if we plant trees, everyone’s health will get better,” says Amber Pearson, professor in the public health department in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

“Our study found that the benefits of trees aren’t equally experienced.”

Published in the Lancet Regional Health–Americas, the study examined the relationship between residential tree canopy and allostatic load—the cumulative “wear and tear” on the body caused by chronic stress.

Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data related to 40,307 adults matched with satellite maps of tree cover, Pearson’s team analyzed data for every census block in the country. And they found that while higher tree canopy is generally associated with lower allostatic load, that was not the case for the most vulnerable groups.

“Surprisingly, there is an association between trees and better health for those who have a higher income and education and are employed, but there is no association for less-advantaged people,” Pearson says.

“The findings were consistent for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic subpopulations, but not for non-Hispanic Black participants.”

The study notes that 24% of non-Hispanic Black participants lived in high-canopy neighborhoods, yet they did not show the same reduction in allostatic load seen in white and Hispanic groups. Pearson suggests for some minority groups, other environmental or social stressors—like discrimination—may override the calming effects of nature.

“There are other things that may be more stressful in disadvantaged groups like unfair treatment, lack of good job opportunities, or poor neighborhood conditions that tree canopy is not going to overcome,” Pearson explains.

The findings suggest that while urban greening is a vital public health tool, it must be paired with efforts to address the root causes of social and economic inequality for the most vulnerable groups to reap its benefits.

Source: Michigan State University

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Being overweight may lead to faster cognitive decline

Being overweight may lead to accelerated cognitive decline, according to new research.

Cognitive decline is a normal process. As people age, it often becomes harder to remember things and think as clearly as when they were younger. In otherwise healthy adults, these changes are gradual and subtle.

The new study found higher body mass index over time led to more rapid declines in cognitive functions, memory, and executive functioning than what is typically seen in aging adults. That includes things such as managing emotions, organizing and planning tasks, concentrating, and more.

The researchers relied on data from a nationally representative study that followed more than 8,200 people over the age of 50 for 24 years.

The present study found that every unit increase in BMI led to a more rapid decline in brain health.

But it’s not all bad news.

“We found that if people managed their weight, they could significantly lower their rate of cognitive decline in just two years,” says Suhang Song, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in University of Georgia’s College of Public Health.

“That makes BMI one of the most easily modifiable risk factors when it comes to aging well.”

The researchers found the strongest correlation between BMI and cognitive decline at year eight of the study. The effect was most pronounced in adults over 65.

Defined as having a BMI of 30 or higher, obesity negatively affects brain health. But it’s not clear exactly how, according to the researchers.

It’s likely that extra weight results in inflammation, reduced blood flow and insulin resistance. That may lead to cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias.

Two out of every five Americans are considered obese based on their BMI alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some researchers are pushing for an expanded definition of obesity that also accounts for additional factors including waist size and weight-related health conditions. Under that definition, the percentage of Americans with obesity jumps to 75%.

Meanwhile, more than 7 million people are living with dementia in the US. And that number is predicted to double by 2050, the researchers say.

“There are no cures for dementia,” Song says, “which is why it is critical to identify and address any modifiable risk factors we can find to prevent it.”

The study appears in the Journal of Neurology.

Source: University of Georgia

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