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World's oldest-known starfish dating back 480 million years unearthed in Morocco
RABAT - The fossil of the world’s oldest-known starfish dating back 480 million years was unearthed in Morocco, according to a study published on January 20. The discovery gives an insight into the evolution of starfish and other echinoderms.
A group of researchers has unearthed a fossil starship in Morocco that dates back 480 million years. The fossil specimen is the world’s oldest-known starfish ever discovered, providing an insight into the evolution of starfish and other echinoderms.
Headed by Aaron W. Hunter from the department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, researchers discovered the starfish fossil in the Fezouata Shale in Zagora, located in central Anti-Atlas, Morocco.
In their study, published Wednesday, January 20, by the Royal Society, researchers indicate that the newly-identified species is from the so-called Ordovician period.
Named «Cantabrigiaster fezouataensis» by researchers, the starfish has a unique design that lacks 60 percent of the features of a modern starfish’s body plan.
Indeed, the world’s oldest-known starfish has five feathery arms, wider that those found on modern starfish. «The level of detail in the fossil is amazing — its structure is so complex that it took us a while to unravel its significance», Dr Hunter wrote.
An ancient starfish
The discovery is a missing link to the ancestors of the fascinating sea creatures. According to the same study, prior to this recent discovery, the oldest starfish specimen record was 50 million years younger.
The Morocco fossil will help understand how the starfish and related animals evolved, millions of years ago.
«If you went back in time and put your head under the sea in the Ordovician, then you wouldn't recognize any of the marine organisms — except the starfish, they are one of the first modern animals», Hunter said. «Finding this missing link to their ancestors is incredibly exciting», he added.
Along with other researchers, the evolutionary palaeoecologist hopes to answer other questions regarding the evolution of the starfish. «One thing we hope to answer in the future is why starfish developed their five arms», he said.
«It seems to be a stable shape for them to adopt — but we don't yet know why. We still need to keep searching for the fossil that gives us that particular connection — but by going right back to the early ancestors like Cantabrigiaster, we are getting closer to that answer», he concluded.
Will Angela Merkel’s Ambiguous Legacy Last?
BY JUDY DEMPSEY, Carnegie Europe, JANUARY 19, 2021
Germany’s governing Christian Democrats chose Armin Laschet as their new party leader to succeed the long-serving Angela Merkel. He promises to continue Merkel’s legacy and centrist policies.
Unless the coronavirus pandemic upends Germany’s federal elections in September 2021, Chancellor Angela Merkel will be political history.
This consummate politician—chancellor since 2005—will leave the center stage after winning four elections for her Christian Democratic Union party (CDU).
But before she does so, Merkel has to deal with some urgent matters. She must ensure that Germany and the EU can economically recover from the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping across Europe.
She has a few months to mend bilateral and transatlantic relations with the incoming U.S. administration of Joe Biden.
And she must give the EU the direction and strategy it needs to deal with China and Russia at a time when both countries are sowing divisions in Europe and exacerbating tensions in the transatlantic relationship.
MERKEL’S WOULD-BE SUCCESSOR
Whoever succeeds Merkel has big shoes to fill. Armin Laschet, the fifty-nine-year-old son of a coal miner, is likely to run for chancellor after having become CDU’s new leader during a virtual party conference on January 16. He beat his main contender, Friedrich Merz, a longtime critic of Merkel and a politician turned businessman. Ahead of the vote, Laschet told delegates, “The Germany I imagine is a European Germany.”
Despite his avuncular manner, Laschet is no pushover. He is currently the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. This conservative centrist, against all the odds, won that top job in 2017 in a region long considered the bastion of left-wing Social Democrats.
Since then, Laschet has pursued Merkel’s centrist policies. He supported her decision to allow over 1 million refugees fleeing the war in Syria to enter Germany in 2015. He has spoken out against the far-right, anti-immigration party, the Alternative for Germany. He advocates for integration and inclusive policies. He is an intensely pro-European politician, having served as a member of the European Parliament. And like Merkel, he’s a consensus builder.
Over the past year, the pandemic tested his political and leadership skills. He was slow and indecisive about imposing a lockdown, even as the virus raced through his state. Since then, he has signed onto Merkel’s tough lockdown policies.
On climate change, he supports the coal industry lobby that is still strong in the region but also wants much more renewable energy sources. Indeed, if he wants to be the next chancellor, he needs a greener profile, particularly since current opinion polls show that the Greens are now the second-biggest political party. That makes them possible coalition partners for the Christian Democrats. Were that to happen, Merkel’s legacy might be challenged.
MERKEL’S LEGACY
Under Merkel’s helm, Germany changed. She moved the conservative, male-dominated Catholic CDU party to the center, which is no easy feat for someone brought up in communist East Germany and whose father was a Lutheran pastor.
She abolished military conscription, eventually came around to accepting single-sex marriage, gave parents more flexibility when it came to taking leave for newborn children, and supported the introduction of a minimum wage.
But her two biggest domestic decisions—closing nuclear power stations and throwing open Germany’s doors to over 1 million refugees—shook her party and showed her real grit.
The former decision broke the back of the powerful energy lobbies that had close ties with the CDU. The latter spurred the rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party. Over the past few years, the far-right party has attracted CDU supporters disgruntled with Merkel’s policies.
Yet that trend changed with the arrival of COVID-19. Merkel’s steady handling of the pandemic reassured voters. Her approval ratings soared to over 70 percent. Her standing confirmed how crisis management has always been her forte, whether saving the euro during the global financial crisis of 2009, keeping Europe together during the refugee crisis, or now coping with the pandemic.
Her legacy, however, is inconsistent, especially with regard to Russia and China and some of the EU’s own member states.
Merkel took a very hard line against the Kremlin when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in early 2014. She persuaded other EU leaders to impose sanctions on Russia and has repeatedly criticized the way in which Russian President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on human rights and opposition figures.
When a Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned last summer by operatives sent by the Kremlin, it was Merkel who brought him to Berlin where he was treated and protected around the clock. As soon as he returned to Moscow on January 17, Navalny was arrested. Merkel’s support for him shows her commitment to human rights and individual freedoms.
Yet her critics, especially the Green party, say the chemical attack on Navalny was the ideal opportunity for Merkel to either impose further sanctions on the Kremlin or stop the construction of Nord Stream 2. This second pipeline being built across the Baltic Sea will bring more gas directly from Russia to Germany. It will make Germany more dependent on Russian energy. It provides Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy giant, with lots of cash. And the project has often soured relations with Poland and Ukraine; both countries earn lucrative transit fees for transmitting Russian gas to Europe.
Despite her warnings to Putin over the Navalny case, Merkel chose not to stop Nord Stream 2 or apply new sanctions. This is a puzzle for her domestic supporters and allies.
The other puzzle is Merkel’s China policy.
The Trump administration has repeatedly applied pressure on most European governments to avoid using Chinese technology for the 5G telecommunications networks. It wasn’t just because of Trump’s anti-Chinese policies. There are serious security considerations, which Merkel’s own party and the intelligence services have repeatedly warned her about. Several European governments have decided to ban the Chinese technology. Merkel, on the other hand, insists there will be safeguards.
On another Chinese-related issue, Merkel introduced a much tighter screening policy for Chinese investments in Germany, recognizing the security concerns for companies and the need to protect German strategic assets. Yet just before Germany ended on December 31 its six-month stint in heading the European Council, Merkel pushed through an ambitious EU-China investment deal.
The deal was forged against the backdrop of Beijing’s fierce crackdown in Hong Kong, its imprisonment of individuals critical of China’s handling of COVID-19, the detention and re-education camps for the Uighur minority, and China’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
Merkel’s support for human rights and the rule of law doesn’t square with her policy toward China. Compared to the sharp criticism by the United States and the UK on China’s record on human rights both on the mainland and in Hong Kong, the response by Germany and the EU has been timid. She could have made a difference.
Even inside the EU, Merkel has refrained from sanctioning Poland and Hungary. The Polish government continues to systematically undermine the independence of the judiciary and the courts. The Hungarian government has clamped down on nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and a free media. Merkel’s critics, particularly the Greens, accuse her of not standing up for the EU’s values and principles.
Merkel’s supporters say she is a pragmatist at heart, one who over the years has kept the EU together during crises and who doesn’t want to burn bridges. That pragmatism has won her party four successive elections. But if Laschet manages a fifth term for the CDU and if the Greens become the CDU’s coalition partners, continuing Merkel’s legacy will not be a given. The Greens will push for a more assertive policy toward China and Russia and a more active role on defense and security issues inside NATO, an organization in which Merkel had little interest. They also will push for more European political and economic integration and an EU that will do much more to defend values inside and outside the bloc. The center—pursued by Merkel and supported by Laschet—may be in for a reassessment.
New ‘iron lung’ to help NHS patients breathe could be ready this year
LONDON - A 21st century version of the old “iron lung” technology, which was used to help thousands of patients with polio to breathe, could be available on NHS wards as early as this year.
A team of doctors, scientists and engineers are about to make a bid to the UK’s medical devices regulator to get approval for the use of the exovent device, which they say could prevent some patients needing to be sedated and put on invasive ventilators with tubes down their windpipe.
The exovent uses the same principle as the old iron lungs by creating a negative pressure vacuum around the patient which gently forces air to be sucked into the lungs. It can be used to support patients to breathe or it can take over their breathing completely.
Because the device fits over the patient on a hospital bed, they don’t need to be sedated and can remain awake, eating and drinking and talking.
The team behind the project, who have set up a charity (called Exovent) to help develop their idea, began work on it last year in response to fears the UK and other countries could run out of ventilators because of the demand from patients sick with the coronavirus.
Ian Joesbury, chief executive of Exovent and a former aerospace mechanical engineer, told The Independent: “There are enormous benefits, not just to the NHS here in the UK, but globally. Every 40 seconds a child dies of pneumonia and we are developing a lower cost model of exovent which could be used to treat these patients because you don’t need an intensive care unit or an anaesthetist.
“The exovent could reduce the frequency of patients being ventilated where they are knocked out and a tube put down their throat and not knowing whether they are going to wake up or not. With exovent patients can stay awake throughout the process.
World could lose coral reefs by end of century, UN report
NEW YORK - Every one of the world’s coral reefs could bleach by the end of the century, unless there are drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned.
“In the face of inaction, coral reefs will soon disappear,” Leticia Carvalho, head of UNEP’s Marine and Freshwater Branch said on Monday.
“Humanity must act with evidence-based urgency, ambition and innovation to change the trajectory for this ecosystem, which is the canary in the coalmine for climate’s impact on oceans, before it’s too late.”
Coral reefs are incredibly important and sustain a wide variety of marine life. They also protect coastlines from erosions from waves and storms, sink carbon and nitrogen and help recycle nutrients.
Their loss would have devastating consequences not only for marine life, but also for over a billion people globally who benefit directly or indirectly from them.
Coral bleaching
When water temperatures rise, corals expel the vibrant microscopic algae living in their tissues. This phenomenon is called coral bleaching. Though bleached corals are still alive and can recover their algae, if conditions improve. However, the loss puts them under increased stressed, and if the bleaching persists, the corals die.
The last global bleaching event started in 2014 and extended well into 2017. It spread across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, and was the longest, most pervasive and destructive coral bleaching incident ever recorded.
In its report Projections of Future Coral Bleaching Conditions, UNEP outlines the links between coral bleaching and climate change. It postulates two possible scenarios: a “worst-case scenario” of the world economy heavily driven by fossil fuels; and a “middle-of-the-road” wherein countries exceed their current pledges to limit carbon emissions by 50 per cent.
Under the fossil-fuel-heavy scenario, the report estimates that every one of the world’s reefs will bleach by the end of the century, with annual severe bleaching occurring on average by 2034, nine years ahead of predictions published three years ago.
This would mark the point of no return for reefs, compromising their ability to supply a range of ecosystem services, including food, coastal protection, medicines and recreation opportunities, the report warns.
Should countries achieve the “middle-of-the-road” scenario, severe bleaching could be delayed by eleven years, to 2045, adds UNEP.
‘More dire than before’
Report’s lead author Ruben van Hooidonk, a coral researcher with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said “the sad part is that the projections are even more dire than before.”
“It means we really need to try to reduce our carbon emissions to save these reefs. This report shows that we need to do it even more urgently and take more action because it’s even worse than what we thought.”
According to UNEP, while it is not known exactly how corals acclimate to changing temperatures, the report examines the possibility of these adaptations assuming between 0.25 degree Celsius and 2 degrees Celsius of warming.
It found that every quarter degree of adaption leads to a possible seven-year delay in projected annual bleaching: that means corals could receive a 30-year reprieve from severe bleaching if they can adapt to 1 degree Celsius of warming.
However, if humanity keeps up with its current greenhouse-gas emissions, corals won’t survive even with 2 degrees Celsius of adaptation.
“What this shows is even with the adaptation, we need to reduce our emissions to buy time for those locations (where) we can do restoration efforts and keep corals alive,” said Mr. van Hooidonk.
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