At the beginning of the 20th century the development of quantum mechanics and relativity changed the face of physics forever. While much has been written about this revolution, less is known about the development of the CPT theorem  —  vital to quantum field theory and modern physics.

A new paper published in EPJ H and authored by Alexander S. Blum and Andres Martınez de Velasco from Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, looks at the roots of CPT theorem and its influence over modern physics.

“CPT theorem is the statement that nothing would change  —  nobody would notice and the predictions of physics would not be altered  —  if we simultaneously replace particles by antiparticles and vice versa,” Blum says. “Replace everything by its mirror image or more exactly: exchange left and right, up and down, and front and back, and reverse the flow of time. We call this simultaneous transformation CPT, where C stands for Charge Conjugation (exchanging particles and antiparticles), P stands for parity (mirroring), and T stands for time reversal.”

Blum adds that in the story told over the course of the paper is that CPT theorem only became really important a couple of years after its discovery.

“Originally, physicists had (tacitly) believed that nothing would change even if we do one of the three transformations mentioned above individually,” the researcher says. “In 1957, it was found that we can actually distinguish the world from its mirror image. In particular certain radioactive decays actually distinguish left from right. In time, it was found that, indeed, all three of the transformations individually actually produce noticeable differences.”

Blum concludes by explaining that the time is right for a review of CPT theorem because young researchers are becoming proficient both in historical and philosophical analysis and in the mathematical intricacies of post-WWII physics.

Blum’s research group, hosted both by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, is now establishing itself as a centre for this kind of training emphasising the importance of the CPT theorem for a new generation of physicists.

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Twitter shareholders have filed a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of engaged in “unlawful conduct” aimed at sowing doubt about his bid to buy the social media company.

The lawsuit filed late Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claims the billionaire Tesla CEO has sought to drive down Twitter’s stock price because he wants to walk away from the deal or negotiate a substantially lower purchase price.

San Francisco-based Twitter is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which seeks class action status as well as compensation for damages.

A representative for Musk did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Thursday. Twitter declined to comment.

Musk last month offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but later said the deal can’t go forward until the company provides information about how many accounts on the platform are spam or bots.

The lawsuit notes, however, that Musk waived due diligence for his “take it or leave it” offer to buy Twitter. That means he waived his right to look at the company’s non-public finances.

In addition, the problem of bots and fake accounts on Twitter is nothing new. The company paid $809.5 million last year to settle claims it was overstating its growth rate and monthly user figures. Twitter has also disclosed its bot estimates to the Securities and Exchange Commission for years, while also cautioning that its estimate might be too low.

To fund some of the acquisition, Musk has been selling Tesla stock and shares in the electric carmaker have lost nearly a third of their value since the deal was announced on April 25.

In response to the plunging value of Tesla’s shares, the Twitter shareholders’ lawsuit claims Musk has been denigrating Twitter, violating both the non-disparagement and non-disclosure clauses of his contract with the company.

“In doing so, Musk hoped to drive down Twitter’s stock price and then use that as a pretext to attempt to re-negotiate the buyout,” according to the lawsuit.

Twitter’s shares closed Thursday at $39.54, 27% below Musk’s $54.20 offer price.

Before announcing his bid to buy Twitter, Musk disclosed in early April that he had bought a 9% stake in the company. But the lawsuit says Musk did not disclose the stake within the timeframe required by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And the lawsuit says his eventual disclosure of the stake to the SEC was “false and misleading” because he used a form meant for “passive investors” — which Musk at the time was not, because he had been offered a position on Twitter’s board and was interested in buying the company.

Musk benefited by more than $156 million from his failure to disclose his increased stake on time, since Twitter’s stock price could have been higher had investors known Musk was increasing his holdings, the lawsuit claims.

“By delaying his disclosure of his stake in Twitter, Musk engaged in market manipulation and bought Twitter stock at an artificially low price,” the lawsuit says.

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A grim prediction made half a decade ago by University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health epidemiologists and modelers has come true: More than 100,000 people are now dying from drug overdoses annually in the U.S. The milestone comes as the International Journal of Drug Policy publishes a special section of the June issue reflecting on the exponential growth in drug-related deaths the Pitt team uncovered in 2017.

The special section — based around the Pitt team’s landmark research article in Science that analyzed nearly four decades of U.S. drug overdose data — contains commentary by four teams of epidemiologists, addiction specialists, modelers and drug policy experts, as well as an update from the original authors and an editorial by one of the journal’s senior editors.

“Since 1979, drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have inexorably climbed along a near-perfect exponential curve, despite changes in the popularity of different drugs, new drug control policies, changing demographics, economic upswings and downturns, wars — and now a global pandemic,” said Donald S. Burke, M.D., Distinguished University Professor of Health Science and Policy in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology and senior author of the Science publication. “The fact that we’re still seeing this exponential growth in another five years of data — 413,000 more young Americans dead — shows that we really don’t understand the deep drivers of the epidemic.”

Following their Science publication, Burke and his colleagues published several more articles involving U.S. drug overdose death data. Notably, the team reported in Nature Medicine that the generation a person was born into — Silent Generation, Baby Boomer, Generation X or Millennial — strongly predicts how likely they are to die from a drug overdose, and at what age.

And, when drug overdose deaths diverged from their predictions, taking a celebrated downturn in 2018, the team showed in the journal Addiction that it was a result of a decrease in supply of the potent synthetic opioid carfentanil, and not a sign of the drug overdose epidemic abating. Sure enough, overdose deaths snapped right back onto the exponential curve in the following year.

“There are theories, but nobody has an explanation for why drug overdose deaths so consistently stick to this exponential growth pattern, marching ever upward at an annual pace of 7.4%,” said Hawre Jalal, M.D., Ph.D., who was lead author of the Science paper while at Pitt and is now at the University of Ottawa. “Five years ago, leaders in the drug addiction and policy fields called our findings a coincidence. We need to stop denying that this exponential growth will continue if we don’t get at the root causes and fix them.”

In his editorial introducing the International Journal of Drug Policy special edition, Peter Reuter, Ph.D., distinguished professor in the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, noted that although the Science manuscript had been cited by scientists hundreds of times since its original publication to support that drug overdose rates are rising, no one had investigated the underlying cause of the relentless increase.

“It’s hard to imagine that this growth rate can continue much longer,” Reuter writes. “The notion that we might see 200,000 fatal overdoses annually in 2030 is simply too frightening, though we would have made the same statement in 2010 when the figure was a mere 38,000.”

In their article for the special section, Burke and Jalal suggest that a “systems” analysis including, but not limited to, surveillance data from electronic health records, urine screening, wastewater testing, law enforcement drug seizures, surveys to measure societal well-being and despair, and the economics of the drug trade will be necessary to understand the exponential growth. Computational models and simulations will then need to be designed to guide and test interventions, they said.

“Improved understanding of the deep causal drivers of the epidemic may be necessary to bend the curve,” they conclude. “Unless something different is done, the death toll will probably continue to increase exponentially.”

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Lighthouse Technology Partners of Greenwich, Connecticut, offers managed IT, cybersecurity, business transformation, and cloud services.The MSP’s clientele spans finance, life sciences and healthcare, and professional services sectors. The Lighthouse leadership team will join Coretelligent’s team in “expanded leadership roles,” though specific executive moves were not disclosed.

Coretelligent, founded in 2006, has 194 employees listed on LinkedIn. The company is based in Westwood, Massachusetts, with additional= offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Stamford, Scarborough, and the San Francisco Bay area, and expanded support locations in Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Tampa, Washington, DC, and West Palm Beach.

Mid-Market MSP M&A Deal: Executive Perspectives

Kevin J. Routhier, CEO, Coretelligent

In a prepared statement about the deal, Coretelligent CEO Kevin J. Routhier said:

“Coretelligent is incredibly excited to welcome the exceptional caliber of professionals on the Lighthouse team along with their world-class clientele. Lighthouse and Coretelligent are in complete alignment with regard to prioritizing both the client and employee experience. Bringing the firms together further enhances Coretelligent’s industry-leading domain expertise in the practice areas of digital and business transformation, security, compliance, and next-generation managed services.”

Added David Gerstenmaier, VP of Lighthouse Technology Partners:

“Joining the Coretelligent family is an incredible opportunity for the Lighthouse ecosystem. With their overall business focuses closely aligned with our own, we’re confident that joining Coretelligent will be beneficial and productive for our clients and employees. Hands down, this acquisition ensures we are better positioned for future success. For both our clients and employees, it was clear that this amazing combination creates the rare opportunity of 1 +1 = 5.”

Coretelligent: Early MSP Acquisitions

This is Coretelligent’s second acquisition of 2022. Additional acquisitions span:

Private equity firm Norwest Equity Partners (NEP) has owned Coretelligent since October 2021.

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Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have developed several new varieties of wheat that tolerate soils with higher salt concentrations. After having mutated a wheat variety from Bangladesh, they now have a wheat with seeds that weigh three times more and that germinate almost twice as often as the original variety.

The wheat, which grows in fields near the coast in Bangladesh, has a certain tolerance to salt in soils, which is important when more and more farmland around the world is being exposed to saltwater.

By mutating the wheat seeds from these coastal fields, researchers at the University of Gothenburg were able to develop approximately 2,000 lines of wheat. The 35 lines that germinated the best at different field and lab experiments were planted in an automated greenhouse in Australia, where different saline concentrations were applied to the plants that were then weighed. They were photographed each day until the wheat had formed its ears.

The findings were striking.

Genes for salt tolerance identified

“We developed wheat lines where the average weight of the seeds was three times higher and that germinated more often than the original wheat from Bangladesh,” says Johanna Lethin, a doctoral student at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg.

Using DNA analyses and studies of other research, the team was also able to identify what genes control salt tolerance in the wheat plant.

“This is a milestone in our research. Now we have a couple of genes we know are involved in salt tolerance. The next step is to test if these genes are also in our best wheat varieties that we have mutated into existence.”

The Earth’s population is growing and in 2050, there will be 10 billion people on the planet who all need to be fed. At the same time, climate changes are causing the Earth’s arable land to dry up and other areas to be flooded by rising seas. All this increases interest in a crop that can tolerate salt in soil.

2,000 hectares lost every day

“It is incredibly important to try to develop a salt-tolerant variety with good yields. Currently, we are losing approximately 2,000 hectares a day to rising seas and improper irrigation methods that increase soil salinisation.”

Some experiments remain to do, but the potential in this discovery is global. Today, about 8 per cent of the world’s arable land is no longer usable for crops because of salt contamination and more than half of the world’s countries are affected. In Egypt, Kenya and Argentina, wheat cannot be grown on large areas and even low-lying areas of Europe, like the Netherlands, have these problems. Even in those parts of Asia where rice is currently the dominant crop, salt-tolerant wheat will become an important part of the future food supply since wheat farming requires much less water than rice.

“The next stage is to plant the salt-tolerant varieties in fields in Bangladesh. I would estimate that it will take about five years before we can have commercial production of salt-tolerant wheat, depending on how the field tests go.”

Facts: GMO and mutations

This research does not use the sometimes highly criticised method of gene modification (GMO). In GMO, a gene from one plant (such as a plant that can resist fungus) is placed in another plant, such as wheat, so that farmers can avoid using excess insecticides. Instead, the researchers have made targeted mutations in the seeds using a chemical. In this way, nothing is placed in the plant and all mutations could potentially have happened naturally.

Thesis: Mutagenesis in wheat: An approach to make saline green!

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Two interesting images from NASA’s Hubble Telescope show two very interesting phenomena taking place in the cosmos. The first one shows a special duo of galaxies where one is superimposed on the other and the latter shows a “stream of star formation.”

A Seyfert galaxy with a partner

Hubble captured images of IC 4271 (also known as Arp 40), a peculiar pair of spiral galaxies which are about 800 million light-years away. In this system, the smaller galaxy is superimposed on the larger one, which is a special kind of galaxy called a “Seyfert galaxy.”

Seyfert galaxies are named for astronomer Carl K Seyfert who published a paper about spiral galaxies with bright emission lines in 1943. Today, scientists know that about 10 per cent of all galaxies may be such galaxies. Seyfert galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres and therefore accrete metal, releasing large amounts of radiation.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Charlton (Pennsylvania State University); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)

A Seyfert Galaxy’s brightest radiations typically occur in light outside the visible spectrum. The Seyfert Galaxy in the pair is a Type II Seyfert galaxy, which means that it is a very bright source of infrared and visible light.

The image uses data collected during Hubble observations which were done to study the role of dust in shaping the energy distributions of low mass galaxies. The Hubble telescope was making observations of six pairs of galaxies where one was in front of the other. The Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 is sensitive to a broad range of light. This allowed researchers to map the foreground galaxy’s dust disk in high detail across UV (ultraviolet), visible and infrared spectrums.

Since the bigger galaxy is a Type II Seyfert galaxy, the image is dominated by visible and infrared wavelengths of light. The majority of the colours in the image are primary visible light, while the colour violet represents ultraviolet light and red represents red and infrared light.

Hubble-observed ‘river of star formation’

A newly revised Hubble image of the Hickson Compact Group 31 (HCG 31) group of galaxies shows a stream of star formation as four dwarf galaxies interact. The bright, distorted clump of blue-white (right of centre, top half) stars is NGC 1741: a pair of colliding dwarf galaxies. A cigar-shaped dwarf galaxy to the pair’s right joins them with a thin blue stream of young blue stars.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Charlton (Pennsylvania State University); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)

The bright object in the centre of the image is a star situated between the Earth and HCG 13. The fourth member of HCG 31 (left of centre, bottom) is a galaxy that is connected to the other three with a stream of stars.

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Washington [US], May 21 (ANI): According to a new Cornell research, Cnidocytes, also known as stinging cells are characteristics of Corals and Jellyfish. It makes us cautious of our feet while wading in the sea, are also a magnificent model for a better understanding of the emergence of new cell types.

In new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 2, Leslie Babonis, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, showed that these stinging cells evolved by repurposing a neuron inherited from a pre-cnidarian ancestor.

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“These surprising results demonstrate how new genes acquire new functions to drive the evolution of biodiversity,” Babonis said. “They suggest that co-option of ancestral cell types was an important source for new cell functions during the early evolution of animals.”

Understanding how specialized cell types, such as stinging cells, come to be is one of the key challenges in evolutionary biology, Babonis said. For nearly a century, it’s been known that cnidocytes developed from a pool of stem cells that also give rise to neurons (brain cells), but up to now, no one knew how those stem cells decide to make either a neuron or a cnidocyte. Understanding this process in living cnidarians can reveal clues about how cnidocytes evolved in the first place, Babonis said.

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Cnidocytes (“Cnidos is Greek for “stinging nettle”), common to species in the diverse phylum Cnidaria, can launch a toxic barb or blob or enable cnidarians to stun prey or deter invaders. Cnidarians are the only animals that have cnidocytes, but lots of animals have neurons, Babonis said. So she and her colleagues at the University of Florida’s Whitney Lab for Marine Bioscience studied cnidarians — specifically sea anemones — to understand how a neuron could be reprogrammed to make a new cell.

“One of the unique features of cnidocytes is that they all have an explosive organelle (a little pocket inside the cell) that contains the harpoon that shoots out to sting you,” Babonis said. “These harpoons are made of a protein that is also found only in cnidarians, so cnidocytes seem to be one of the clearest examples of how the origin of a new gene (that encodes a unique protein) could drive the evolution of a new cell type.”

Using functional genomics in the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, the researchers showed that cnidocytes develop by turning off the expression of a neuropeptide, RFamide, in a subset of developing neurons and repurposing those cells as cnidocytes. Moreover, the researchers showed that a single cnidarian-specific regulatory gene is responsible both for turning off the neural function of those cells and turning on the cnidocyte-specific traits.

Neurons and cnidocytes are similar in form, Babonis said; both are secretory cells capable of ejecting something out of the cell. Neurons secrete neuropeptides — proteins that rapidly communicate information to other cells. Cnidocytes secrete poison-laced harpoons.

“There is a single gene that acts like a light switch — when it’s on, you get a cnidocyte, when it’s off you get a neuron,” Babonis said. “It’s a pretty simple logic for controlling cell identity.”

This is the first study to show that this logic is in place in a cnidarian, Babonis said, so this feature was likely to regulate how cells became different from each other in the earliest multicellular animals.

Babonis and her lab plan future studies to investigate how widespread this genetic off/on a switch are in creating new cell types in animals. One project, for example, will investigate whether a similar mechanism drives the origin of the novel skeleton-secreting cells in corals.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)

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Every spring, crowds flock to admire Japan’s cherry blossom — a dazzling pink and white bloom that has been revered in the country for more than a thousand years.

But the world-famous sakura plants are flowering much earlier than normal due to human-induced climate change, a new study has found.

Researchers from the Met Office in the United Kingdom and Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan say the climate crisis and urban warming have pushed forward the “peak bloom” flowering period by 11 days.

In 2021, cherry blossoms in the historic central city of Kyoto peaked on March 26 — the earliest full flowering date in 1,200 years. This year, the cherry blossoms burst into color on April 1.

The scientists, who published their findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters on May 20, said that extreme early flowering of the cherry blossoms is now more common.

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The trend of earlier peak blooms coincides with rising temperatures. Average March temperatures in Kyoto city center have increased by several degrees since pre-industrial times, under the influence of both climate change and urban warming, the scientists observed.

Part of the reason is increased urbanization. Cities tend to be warmer than surrounding rural areas because buildings and roads absorb the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes — a phenomena known as the heat island effect.

But scientists say a bigger reason is the climate crisis, in which the burning of fossil fuels has caused rising temperatures across the region and the world.

If planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions continue as they are, by the end of the century Kyoto’s cherry blossoms could start arriving even earlier — by almost another week, the study found.

“Our research shows that not only have human-induced climate change and urban warming already impacted the flowering dates of cherry blossom in Kyoto, but that extremely early flowering dates, as in 2021, are now estimated to be 15 times more likely, and are expected to occur at least once a century,” said lead author and Met Office climate scientist, Dr. Nikos Christidis.

“Such events are projected to occur every few years by 2100 when they would no longer be considered extreme.”

Earlier cherry blossoms have wider ramifications for Japan’s economy and ecology, and are a symptom of the larger climate crisis threatening ecosystems everywhere.

“Spring cherry blossom flowering is a culturally significant event in Japan,” said contributing author Yasuyuki Aono, from Osaka Metropolitan University. Spring festivals that accompany the blooms are an important contributor to the local economy, so being able to predict the bloom’s timing can be critical.

The peak bloom period lasts just a few days. During this period, hanami — Japanese for “flower viewing” — is a popular activity.

It is common for locals and tourists alike to have picnics under the cherry trees, and businesses will sometimes offer special set meals or products during the week.

Human-induced climate crisis is making Japan’s cherry blossoms bloom earlier.

Michihiro Kawamura/The Yomiuri Shimbun/AP

Why early cherry blossoms matter

But it’s not just a matter of tourists scrambling to catch peak bloom before the petals all fall — it could have a lasting impact on entire ecosystems, and threaten the survival of many species.

The impact of rising temperatures on nature’s calendar has trickle-down effects on farming and land management practices in the country, the study said.

It also impacts plants, insects and animals, which rely heavily on each other for their development and life cycles. A change to this cycle can initiate a chain reaction, causing damage to ecosystems.

For instance, plants sense the temperature around them and if it’s warm enough for a consistent period, they start to flower and their leaves start to emerge. Similarly, higher heat can cause faster growth in insects and other animals.

Different plants and insects may respond to the rise in heat at different paces, throwing their life cycles out of sync. Whereas they once timed their growth simultaneously each spring, now flowers may bloom before insects are ready, and vice versa — meaning there may not be enough food for the insects or plants.

The change in flowering dates isn’t limited to Japan or to cherry blossoms. This year, spring came early in parts of the United Kingdom and climate change is making plants across the British Isles flower, on average, a month earlier than they used to, according to a recent study.

The same phenomenon is already happening to many crops and economically valuable plants — posing big problems for food security and farmers’ livelihoods.

Photos: Japan celebrates cherry blossoms despite pandemic

A Japanese white-eye, also known as Mejiro, drinks the nectar of a cherry blossom in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

Shuji Kajiyama

People view blooming cherry blossoms from an open tour bus Thursday, March 31, 2022, in Tokyo. Cherry blossoms, or “sakura,” are Japan’s favorite flower and usually reach their peak in late March to early April, just as the country celebrates the start of a new school and business year. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Eugene Hoshiko

Visitors view seasonal cherry blossoms from a pedestrian bridge in the Roppongi district, Thursday, March 31, 2022, in Tokyo. People across Japan are celebrating the peak cherry blossom viewing season this week without COVID-19 restrictions in place for the first time in two years, but many people strolled under the trees to enjoy flowers and falling petals rather than drinking and eating at sit-down parties. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Eugene Hoshiko

People on boat view cherry blossoms in full bloom at the Chidorigafuchi palace moat in Tokyo Monday, March 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Koji Sasahara

A Japanese white-eye, also known as Mejiro, drinks the nectar of a cherry blossom in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. People across Japan are celebrating the peak cherry blossom viewing season this week without COVID-19 restrictions in place for the first time in two years, but many people strolled under the trees to enjoy flowers and falling petals rather than drinking and eating at sit-down parties. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

Shuji Kajiyama

A man wearing a protective mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus view the seasonal cherry blossoms at the Ueno Park Thursday, March 24, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Eugene Hoshiko

A visitor takes a picture under a shower of cherry blossoms in full bloom at a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, Thursday, March 31, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

Shuji Kajiyama

Women wearing traditional Kimono outfits take a rickshaw ride under a canopy of the cherry blossoms in full bloom Thursday, March 31, 2022, in Tokyo. People across Japan are celebrating the peak cherry blossom viewing season this week without COVID-19 restrictions in place for the first time in two years, but many people strolled under the trees to enjoy flowers and falling petals rather than drinking and eating at sit-down parties. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Kiichiro Sato

People stop to take pictures as they walk under a canopy of cherry blossoms in full bloom at a park Thursday, March 31, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Kiichiro Sato

Visitors stroll under a shower of cherry blossoms in full bloom at a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, Thursday, March 31, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

Shuji Kajiyama

People wearing face masks stroll under cherry blossoms in full bloom at the Zojoji Buddhist temple in Tokyo Tuesday, March 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Koji Sasahara

People gather under cherry blossoms in full bloom at a park for a traditional flower viewing called “Hanami” to celebrate the spring season Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Kiichiro Sato

People gather to take pictures under a canopy of cherry blossoms in full bloom at a park Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in Tokyo. People across Japan are celebrating the peak cherry blossom viewing season this week without COVID-19 restrictions in place for the first time in two years, but many people strolled under the trees to enjoy flowers and falling petals rather than drinking and eating at sit-down parties. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Kiichiro Sato

People wearing face masks view seasonal cherry blossoms at the Sumida Park on Monday, March 28, 2022, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Eugene Hoshiko

In this long exposure photo, streaks of lights indicate vehicles moving under a canopy of cherry blossoms flowers lit by street lights, in Tokyo, Monday, March 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Kiichiro Sato

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Once humans discovered how to tame fire, they began using it for heat, cooking, to scare away animals and to alter their environs, especially burning areas to plant and to restore grazing land. In Madagascar, scientists and conservationists have long believed that fire is a leading cause of high landscape degradation, but an international team of researchers have found that medium to large fires on the island are similar to other tropical locations.

“On Madagascar, it is assumed that fire is driving degradation,” said Leanne Phelps, postdoctoral fellow in anthropology at Penn State, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh and Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. “We are taking a new comparative approach and asking: Is fire different on Madagascar? And is it responsible for high rates of landscape degradations?”

The researchers report today (May 18) in Global Change Biology that Madagascar’s fire regimes are similar to 88% of tropical burned areas with shared climate and vegetation characteristics. They also found that Madagascar’s relatively high tree losses where not centered around boundaries between forest and savannah, but occurred internally in forests without landscape-scale fires, suggesting medium to large fires did not cause high rates of tree loss.

Landscape size fires are anything over about 50 acres. In Madagascar they are used on grass lands to improve grazing for cattle. However, the researchers found that “fire is declining across tropical grassy ecosystems with major implications for ecosystems livelihoods and the future of fire risk.”

“We found that rather than Madagascar being an exception, it is a microcosm of global patterns,” said Kristina Douglass, Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies, Penn State. “Despite what people think, fire is declining in grassy areas in general and it is declining faster on Madagascar.  It is not the primary driver of tree loss. Fire is not a uniform proxy for degradation.”

The assumption is usually if people are there and large areas are burning, that is causing high landscape degradation.

“We need to use more evidence-based approaches to understand why landscapes change,” said Phelps. “Mitigating climate change and managing biodiversity become difficult when we aren’t looking closely enough at the causes of problems.”

The researchers believe that more research is necessary to determine where fire poses the highest risks and where it is actually needed to ensure that savannahs and forests thrive, and that invasive species do not invade.

Dylan S. Davis, doctoral candidate in anthropology at Penn State, also worked on the project. Others on the project were Caroline E.R. Lehmann, tropical diversity, Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh, U.K.; Niels Adela, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, U.K.; Mathieu Gravey, Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, and Christian A. Kull, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc. Mobility Grant funded this research.

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Materials provided by Penn State. Original written by A’ndrea Elyse Messer. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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GroupSync’s enhanced electronic RFP capability empowers event planners to more efficiently search, source and book groups at over 200,000 properties worldwide. The single web-based solution provides greater access to hotel group inventory and rates for faster, smoother booking, and includes a proprietary RFP-free group booking option called Instant Booking.5.17.2022

Groups360 was created with a singular goal — to empower meeting planners by bringing innovation, transparency and simplicity to the decades-old problem of booking groups. The company’s integrated technology solution, GroupSync™, enables suppliers to distribute inventory, engage with planners, and optimize group revenue. GroupSync also equips planners to search and shop hotels worldwide and to book rooms and space directly, online or through a simplified RFP process. GroupSync is the first distribution channel to offer online booking for both group hotel rooms and meeting space.

Now, launching a new phase of rapid growth at the company’s corporate headquarters, Joseph Preciado is joining Groups360 as senior vice president of technology. Preciado brings more than 20 years of technology leadership experience to Groups360, where he will continue to scale operations based on increased demand for the GroupSync suite of products.

Before joining Groups360, Preciado led information technology operations at Asurion. Preciado’s deep expertise in leading teams to successfully scale and deliver value across global enterprises will help to scale the GroupSync solution and continue to elevate success for the company’s domestic and international customers.

Joseph Preciado

“It’s an exciting time to be a part of the innovation and progress that Groups360 is bringing to the group travel industry,” Preciado said. “I’m looking forward to working with GroupSync’s technology teams to enhance the platform and continue to scale rapidly.”

GroupSync’s enhanced electronic RFP capability empowers event planners to more efficiently search, source and book groups at over 200,000 properties worldwide. The single web-based solution provides greater access to hotel group inventory and rates for faster, smoother booking, and includes a proprietary RFP-free group booking option called Instant Booking.

“We’re excited to add Joseph’s leadership skills to our team,” said Jim Siegienski, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Groups360. “As we continue to scale our operations across the globe and refine our technology, his experience in building and scaling successful engineering will be essential as we continue to grow our global operations and enhance our platform.”

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