The Speaker » Day Blakely Donaldson

Least developed countries, despite strong growth and rising export prices, fail to develop due to “LDC Paradox” – UNCTAD

The Speaker — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 00:31:47 +0000

Although the world’s poorest countries are thriving in terms of market values–over the past decade they have grown vigorously due to rising developmental aid and export prices–the people of those countries are trapped in a system in which poverty cannot be reversed–a phenomenon newly identified by UNCTAD and termed the “LDC paradox.” “The world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs) are the battleground on which the post-2015 development agenda will be won or lost,” stated the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in a newly released report. “Its success will depend on action by the international community and the LDCs to structurally transform their economies and break the vicious circle of human and economic development that has trapped these countries in poverty.” The poorest 48 countries are failing to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) while growing economically. Growth in the least developed countries exceeded the seven percent target set by the international community. The LDC world even outstripped the rest of the developing world after the 2008 financial crisis, a time when LDCs grew an average of just under six percent per year, despite the uncertainty of export prices and a slowing of aid funding from donor countries facing austerity measures. Of the MDG target countries, only one is on track to meet all of the MDG goals–the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. This failure to meet MDG targets despite strong growth has been dubbed the “LDC paradox” by UNCTAD. “The economic performance of developing countries is based on two separate but interrelated processes: increasing labour productivity and productive structural transformation,” the report found. ” Structural transformation has different dimensions, especially changes in the composition of output, employment, exports and aggregate demand.” “Under favourable economic and institutional conditions, a rise in labour productivity leads to a rise in output, and thus to higher incomes,” the report continued. “However, higher labour productivity also gives rise to trade-offs. For LDCs, the crucial trade-off relates to aggregate employment. Employment growth is limited if faster productivity growth is not accompanied by faster expansion of aggregate demand. Indeed, without strong demand for output, a rise in labour productivity could even reduce employment.” Although the LDCs are experiencing unprecedented growth, this growth is not accompanied by the creation of decent jobs in higher-productivity activities. The problem, as UNCTAD identifies it, is that policy makers don’t recognize the need for a framework of upward-tending development that would lead to real transformative growth. The goal of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda is total eradication of poverty by 2030–zero poverty everywhere within 15 years. According to the report, meeting this goal will depend mostly on LDCs, in which lies the biggest developmental challenges The report identified three key approaches to meeting MDG targets: mobilizing resources for investment, directing these resources towards transforming economies and establishing macroeconomic policies that promote investment and demand growth. Diversifying rural economies was also identified as critical to eradicating poverty, and crucial to this was the inclusion of women, who are particularly important contributors to social and economic development in rural areas, according to the report. The core of the agenda, UNCTAD concluded, should be a virtuous circle between economic and human development, in order to reverse the vicious cycle of the LDC paradox. “For LDCs, greater progress in economic development will require not only economic growth, but also a dynamic transformation of their economies,” found UNCTAD. By Justin Blakely Munce Photos: Rod Waddington, Jeff Attaway

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China expels 26 nuns using new law

The Speaker — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 02:55:54 +0000

Chinese authorities have expelled 26 nuns from a nunnery in Pekar Township, Driru County, Tibet Autonomous Region. The nuns were expelled for refusing to defame their highest spiritual leader. Chinese authorities used a new law regulating religious institutions to expel the nuns legally. The nuns were expelled from Jhada Gon Palden Khachoe Nunnery by a large number of Chinese “work team” members tasked with removing the nuns from their the religious community. The work team was following up on the results of a police raid on the monastery, during which many nuns refused to criticize their religious leader, the Dalai Lama, who is considered a splittest and terrorist orchestrator and is a wanted criminal in China. After the refusals, officials examined the registration records of the nunnery to check its population. The nuns were expelled legally under new Chinese legislation that restricts the number of registered pupils that are permitted in religious institutes in Tibet. In this case the number was set at 140, and the 26 extra nuns were expelled. This is the first instance of enforcement of a new measures detailing causes for expulsions of monks and nuns from religious institutions. The new Chinese “rectification” drive also warns of the destruction of “illegal” monasteries and mani walls. By Justin Blakely Munce

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The language of sperm whales: Interview with Dr Shane Gero part 1

The Speaker — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 23:50:58 +0000

The Speaker recently interviewed Dr Shane Gero, a marine biologist who has been studying sperm whales in the Caribbean for the past 10 years. We talked to Gero about his research in Dominica as well as his current project, which represents many firsts in the science of sperm whale communication. Gero’s findings offer a greater understanding of what happens when sperm whales talk to each other. The whales, Gero has found, are using language for many communicative purposes–including, it seems, greeting other whales using first and last names. Also, sperm whales from different parts of the world and from different social groups speak the differently. Not only do they speak their language differently, they also exhibit varying cultures depending on where they live and which social group they belong to. “The focus of my study has been at the level of the individual whale.” Gero told us. “We’ve been able to follow these animals year after year–the same about two dozen families–some of them we’ve spent hundreds of hours wit.” “We’ve collected a huge data set on who has spent time with who–but also, from a communications standpoint, who says what to whom. And that’s really a first: being able to look at individuals chatting with each other at a conversational level. “This new study that’s happening in the next couple of years is, for the first time, going to be able to place those conversations into a context in the open ocean.” The new project takes Gero’s previous decade of experience with sperm whales one step further, and will serve as a lead-up to a fuller understanding of what sperm whale language is. “Previously we would record animals, and be able to figure out who was saying what, but we didn’t know where they were relative to each other, or the ‘when’ context… in terms of when they were actually talking to each other… “We’ve done well in the last 10 years to answer the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ of these conversations. The ‘where’ and the ‘when’ are the subject of the current research. Hopefully this will lead us to one day answer the really interesting ‘why’ questions. ‘What are they saying to each other? What does it all mean?'” Gero gave us some details about sperm whale society. These whales live in a hierarchical society, and spend their day to day life in what the researchers call “social units.” In Dominica, there are some 400 sperm whales, and all of them belong to one matriline–grandmothers, mothers and daughters–which spend their full lives together. The Dominica group spends most of their lives within 20 miles of the shore. “These animals in the Caribbean are really island-associated animals,” said Gero of the group. “It’s really easy to call them families, because that’s what they are.” “On the average day, there’s only one family off the coast of the island. But every now and again, two families will join up and spend anywhere from a few hours to a few days together socializing. When talking about language, Gero told us that we must keep in mind that sperm whale language is very different from human language–and is also different from the language of other whales–including the language of the more familiar humpback whale. “Language is a big question. Language comes with syntax and it comes with meaning and orders, and we haven’t figured all that out yet. But what we do know is that sperm whales use a system of clicks to communicate with each other. “It’s kind of like Morse code. So, some calls sound like this: ‘tap-tap-taptaptap,’ where others sound like this: ‘taptaptaptaptaptaptap.’ And different rhythms are used at different times. Animals exchange these back and forth, kind of like you would using Morse code.” Sperm whales throughout the world exhibit common features of communication, but also exhibit variation, Gero explained. The variation seemingly depends on the geographic origin of a particular whale, among other factors, and serves the whales as a social marker. “So, what’s interesting about variation in the world is that animals in the Caribbean sound different from animals in the Mediterranean, and they sound different from animals in the Gulf of Mexico and so on. “At least in the Atlantic, it seems like it’s geographic. So all the animals in the Caribbean sound very similar, but they sound different from the animals in the Med–that sound very similar. “But in the Pacific it’s different. In the Pacific you actually have different sperm whale dialects living in the same area. So some of the animals off the Galapagos sound one way, and some of the animals sound differently. But what’s really neat about that is that they seem to use these dialects to segregate their society. “So as a whale that means making a certain type of coda,” said Gero. Codas are patterns of clicks used by whales to communicate. Gero offered an example of the individuals that live in these segregated sperm whale groups. “I only spend time with animals that make that same sound. It would be similar to living in a multi-cultural country like Canada or the United States, but then only socializing with anyone who speaks the same language as you.” “In the Caribbean we hear a lot of a one-plus-one-plus-three coda. So it sound like this: ‘tap-tap-taptaptap.’ And that’s the only place that it’s been recorded–in the Caribbean. And all the animals make it very similarly. So, we think that it acts as a marker of ‘I’m from the Caribbean.’ Whereas in the eastern tropical Pacific, the Galapagos, the coast of Chile and Ecuador–there are several different coda repertoires.” Gero contrasted this five-part coda with the five-part codas used by other whales around the world. “One of the groups makes very regularly timed codas. So, they’ll make a five-regular, which is five clicks that are very evenly spaced, so it sounds something like this: ‘tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.’ And they also make a six-regular and a seven-regular, and so on. “But then there’s another dialect that’s all plus-one. So, rather than making a five-regular,

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Thebault to shoot for new sail speed record with Hydroptere Rocket

The Speaker — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:48:31 +0000

Engineer Alain Thebault is aiming at a new record. The sailboat designer, who began his career as a teenager wanting to build a boat that would fly, has previously set the sailing speed record with his Hydrofoil, which achieved 50 knots average speed (95km/h) in 2009. Thebault is aiming for a much higher sail speed, and he aims to do it by sailing at four times the speed of wind–something that has never been done before. Thebault’s new project is the Hydroptere Rocket. Thebault teamed with an Aeronautics engineer-led group under Philippe Perrier of Dassault Aviation and Maurice Prat of Airbus to launch the iDroptere, a glider boat which aims to push the absolute sailing speed record to 80 knots (150 km/h). Assembly of the iDroptere Rocket has begun in the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. “This is great news!” said Thebault. “We look forward to attending the launch of Hydroptere Rocket in the Mediterranean. Our first objective will be sailing between Lausanne and Geneva for Syz and Co Sailing Speed Records, and between Hyères and La Ciotat to climb the wall of 80 knots under sail!” “My interest in this is to do some things that nobody has done before,” said Perrier. “Basically, hydrodynamics and aerodynamics are quite the same. The main difference is density of water, which is 800 time the one of air. But, when you go to high speed, some differences may appear.” “In the air, you have the speed of sound, which is the sound barrier, and this creates different phenomena as the plane is pushing its noise and its perturbation in front of it. This changes completely the way it behaves.” “The speed of sound in water is very high, so nobody will ever get it.” “But there is another phenomenon, which is called ‘cavitation.’ At the upper side of the foil in the water you get such low pressure that the water starts to uprise, and when this starts to occur–it starts around 40-45 knots, it takes place more around 50 knots, and when you up to 55 knots, you can consider that all the upper side of the foil doesn’t work anymore in the water, but it works in the vapor of water.” “And this changes completely the behavior in a way that is comparable to sonic and supersonic differences in aerodynamics.” “We consider that in order to go at more than 65 knots, we must try to do it with a lower speed of wind. That means that our goal is to get 80 knots with only 20 knots of wind.” “That means that the speed of the boat is four times the speed of the wind. This has never been done before.” A foil that is capable of working efficiently at over 80 knots is one of the challenges the team faces, Perrault said, and referred to technical engineering partnerships the group has made, which has given them confidence that the goal is achievable. By Justin Blakely Munce Photo: Hydroptere Hydroptere

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A first-hand account of South Sudan’s IDP camps: “What is our fate? We are suffering all kinds of sickness, insecurity, and all kinds of violence”

The Speaker — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 02:59:31 +0000

In this captivating first hand account of the situation in South Sudan’s IDP camps, South Sudanese Assistant Director for Information and Media at the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, Afayoa Richard Metaloro, details the actuality of life in the camps, their problems, and some of the measures currently being taken and proposed as solutions for the gender based violence and other issues that plague the lives of residents there. The camps were set up by the United Nations and other international aid groups to shelter and provide basic human requirements to South Sudanese and others who were displaced by the civil conflict that has raged in the country since Dec. 2013. Some 30,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are being protected by the United Nations in the nations capital, Juba, and 100,000 live in Protection of Civilians (PoC) camps nationwide. The humanitarian situation across the entire nation of South Sudan remains “dire,” according to the UN. To date, almost 2 million people have been displaced in a nation of 11.3 million. Of those, 1.35 have been displaced internally, while approximately 500,000 have relocated to neighboring countries. We want to go home whether there is peace or not in South Sudan. The government and rebels must know that they are also citizens of South Sudan, thus deserve equal rights. South Sudanese IDPs are in despair! In my visit to the IDP camps in Juba–Protection of Civilians (PoC) camps–the IDPs there expressed the bitterness of their situations living in the PoCs, saying that whether there is peace or not, they are eager to move out of the Pocs! To where? Is it safe out there? And who to depend on remained a big and challenging question to all the humanitarian actors working in South Sudan. The living conditions of the IDP’s living in the camps has remained a very big challenge, as the situation has pushed them deep into the misery from where recovery is difficult if not impossible. They are cut off from carrying out livelihood activities, despite the efforts of the humanitarian community in the emergency response to attempt to save lives. This however, came after several clashes that occurred between the IDP communities within the PoCs, shortages of funding from the donors to the NGOs that led to the cut off of some services, denial by agencies to register new arrivals, incidents of sexual harassment of women and girls by members of various groups such as the UN and and other NGOs, armed groups and the IDP communities within the camps, lack of effective representation for the voice of the voiceless, etc. The government, since the fighting broke out in South Sudan on Dec.15, 2013, payed little attention to the needs of the IDPs living in camps, yet it is a constitutional mandate that a sovereign state ensures the protection and service provision of the affected population in times of civil conflict. Surprisingly, little was done by the government, which pretends to implementing the international humanitarian law despite the huge challenges encountered by humanitarian agencies in delivering humanitarian assistance to needy people. These barriers to assistance include impediments to access the target people, road blocks that charge huge amounts of cash, rape cases, ill treatment and detentions, and kidnapping and looting of humanitarian items. It is not as if these problems make up the only observations in the humanitarian intervention; the worst case scenarios have been practiced by the rebel side, where there has been a very large number of children abducted for child-soldier recruitment, as well as massacres of innocent lives, arbitrary arrests, detentions, etc. Read more: South Sudan: Child Soldiers Enter Fight on Government Army Side, Condemned by Human Rights Watch The needed response Many of the threats to women and girls highlighted by assessment participants can and should be mitigated by the humanitarian response. It is the obligation of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and other humanitarian actors to ensure that relief services are not only not harmful, but are also proactive in their interventions to alleviate risks and make the camps a safer environment for women, girls, boys and men. As the cooks, cleaners, and caretakers of the family, women and girls ensure lifesaving relief services are used at the household level. The humanitarian community is doing a disservice to families, if relief interventions do not fully incorporate in their lifesaving activities the safety issues that women and girls face as they carry out their essential contribution to their family’s well-being and health. To overcome barriers in the community that prevent survivors from seeking services and to ensure that survivors feel welcome to seek assistance from the available services, outreach and awareness is important. Awareness, however, is not enough to encourage survivors to report. GBV and health service providers need to build trust, and therefore must demonstrate that they support the interests of survivors. It is essential that they make concerted efforts to respect survivors by talking with them and listening to their needs and wishes. Confidentiality must be respected. All efforts should be made to ascertain the safest options for survivors before and during interventions to meet their needs for protection and efforts to access justice. Simultaneously, it is necessary to work with the community to change attitudes and practices that stigmatize survivors and create barriers for them to seek help and justice through extended social mobilization and awareness campaigns. Read more: South Sudanese Propose “Reconciling Many Truths” to End Crisis, Form One Acceptable Narrative Change has started but vigilance needs to be sustained According to the camp managers, an assessment was conducted, and the humanitarian response began to mitigate some risks in ways that will have a positive impact on the safety of women and girls. A new extension has been opened and two-thirds of the population has moved to new residential areas that have been designed to be less congested and to ensure that access to essential infrastructures is more evenly balanced. Congestion and overcrowding has been the underlying factor in many of the risks of gender based violence (GBV) in the original PoC (tight alleys, hidden dark spaces, difficult access to latrines and water, crowded markets,

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Hailstones Are Formed by Biological Material – Conclusive Evidence by MSU Environmental Scientists

The Speaker — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 07:08:29 +0000

Montana State University environmental scientists have found conclusive evidence that hailstones originate in biological material. MSU researcher Alex Michaud turned travesty into understanding by peeling back the onionlike layers of the crystalline compositions he collected from the Bozeman and two other Rocky Mountain hailstorms, and the results promise to increase our understanding of the role of aerosol particles in atmospheric condensation and, as a part of the bigger picture, improve our model inputs to the Earth’s energy balance. “A hailstone is a very complex weather phenomenon, Alex Michaud, MSU doctoral student and first author of the paper, told The Speaker. “It can tell us a lot about the properties of the clouds in which it was formed.” Michaud, who normally studies Antarctic microorganisms, took up the subject of hailstones after storms pummeled Bozeman and other parts of southwest Montana in 2010. “While they cause lots of damage there are many things to be learned from hailstones. They’re more than just a clump of ice falling from the sky,” Michaud told us. “This is the first paper to really show that biological material makes hailstones,” commented John Priscu, a polar scientist and professor at MSU’s Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, with whom Michaud regularly works and who coauthored the report. “Despite the millions in dollars of damage the storm caused in Bozeman, the damaging hailstones provided us with a better understanding of hailstone formation, which will help us understand the role of aerosol particles in the formation of precipitation.” After the Montana storm, Michaud collected and stored hailstones–averaging 1.5 inches in diameter. He also collected hailstones from two other local storms that year and the next. Michaud peeled back the crystalline layers of the hailstones and found that they had formed around a biological embryo. “We can assume–quite safely, except maybe in the dead of winter–that biological material is constantly being taken up into the air,” said Michaud. “Many surfaces give off biological material such as leaf surfaces, lakes, oceans, animals, my dandruff, etc. They are emitting bacteria, fungal spores, detritus, and so forth.” Michaud elaborated to explain that biological material in the air was not the only thing required to create hailstones. “Certainly the atmospheric and meteorological conditions need to fit a certain set of conditions in order for a hailstorm to occur and produce hailstones. These particular conditions are best answered by a meteorologist, but suffice it to say that you need a very strong thunderstorm conditions to generate a hailstorm. So not all biological material turns into hail because meteorological conditions need to be appropriate to support hailstone formation.” In his research, Michaud was also able to gauge the temperatures at which the hailstone embryos formed by analyzing stable isotopes in water. The temperatures at which hail froze were warm, Michaud found. “Warm freezing temperatures–warm, sub-zero temperatures–is indicative of ice nuclei that are efficient at catalyzing ice nucleation. Water needs a template or a nucleus in order to form an ice crystal, only once water reaches ~-40C does it spontaneously freeze. So for something to freeze at warm subzero temperatures means that it provides a good template of an ice crystal, which is found in biological material much more often than abiotic–dust, minerals, etc–material.” The study builds on previous findings that warm temperature ice nucleation indicated that biological material was likely the nuclei of hailstones. Among past researchers in hailstones was Tina Santl Temkiv, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, with whom Michaud consulted. “It was very coincidental that she published two hailstone microbiology papers two years before me and we ended up at the same university for a few month,” said Michaud. “Plus, we are the only ones to work on hailstone microbiology since a 1973 paper in Nature.” Michaud also said that hailstones were a nice model for studying atmospheric ice nucleation and cloud processes because of the way hailstones grow. “Hail is a good model system for understanding precipitation formation and nucleation,” said Michaud. “We can trace the life history of a hailstone all the back to the part of the hailstone that was present when it was first started, the embryo. This ability to trace a hailstones life back to its beginnings, and those life history stages are layers of ice that can be peeled away–sort of like an onion–we can be more definitive in saying what was present when the embryo of the hailstone formed.” Michaud explained to us how the new evidence could contribute to our understanding of the role of aerosol particles in the formation of precipitation. “Aerosols are a broad term for any particle that is aloft in the atmosphere. These aerosol particles play a large role in reflecting solar energy and in cloud formation–which also reflects solar energy. So understanding how aerosols form precipitation and/or clouds will help with meteorological models and the earth’s energy balance. “Certainly the last one is a bit of a stretch for my work, but knowing that biological ice nuclei are active in forming clouds and precipitation–rain, snow, and, now, hail–will improve the model inputs to earth’s energy balance. It’s a piece to a much bigger puzzle.” Michaud was uncertain if the results would have any immediate practical implications. “On improving our use of aerosol particles, I’m not too sure. In California they are trying to perform cloud seeding to increase snowpack in the Sierras to decrease drought conditions, which is through the use of particular aerosols. I don’t think I am qualified to speak to how we–the royal we, humans–can improve our use of aerosol particles.” The report, “Biological ice nucleation initiates hailstone formation,” was authored by Alexander B. Michaud, John E. Dore, Deborah Leslie, W. Berry Lyons, David C. Sands andJohn C. Priscu, and was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. By Justin Blakely Munce Photo: Alex Michaud, Andrew Slaughter and Kelly Gorham, MSU

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Tibetan Self Immolator Gives Testimony

The Speaker — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 22:50:11 +0000

A Tibetan protester who attempted to self immolate to draw attention to the plight of Tibet and Tibetans under Chinese rule has provided a statement about the situation in Tibet. In his statement, the unidentified man explains the experience of Tibetans under Chinese rule. The testimony was translated by Tibet Watch and reported on by Free Tibet. The voice of the Tibetan demonstrator was disguised for safety reasons. “Since I am an ordinary human being, my way of thinking is that in this century, people and governments of most countries’ minds are joining together. They are enjoying the freedom and human rights of their countries–both the people and their nations are enjoying the new progress of their nations. “But being a Tibetan, I don’t have a nation or freedom–I have experienced a lot of unhappiness. When I went to Lhasa on pilgrimage, the Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple were surrounded by Chinese armies. “We were unable to do a pilgrimage unless we applied for permission and waited a week for that permission. I noticed most soldiers put on monks robes over their military uniform. “After I saw and experienced all of this with my own eyes, I started to think it was better to die rather than live in such an environment. I prayed for a rebirth under the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in my all lifetimes. “Compared to other countries, we don’t have freedom of religious belief, freedom of speech, and our spiritual leader cannot return home. The restrictions are ongoing. I was unable to bear the suffering of living under Chinese aggression, so I thought about a self-immolation protest; I failed to die in my self-immolation protest, because of the dousing of the fire on my burning body. “Nowadays I am unable to go anywhere and am dependent on others for everything.” The reporter who spoke to the Tibetan demonstrator also asked about his hopes and wishes, and was told that the emancipation of the 11th Panchen Lama, and the meeting of the two Lamas (the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama) were his hopes. Also, he expressed hope for the release of all Tibetan political prisoners. For safety reasons, it cannot be disclosed which of the over 130 Tibetan self immolators this man was. By Day Blakely Donaldson

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Life From Death: Ecologists Demonstrate Species Manipulation With “Less is More” Approach

The Speaker — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 20:33:37 +0000

New understanding has been gained into how densities within populations can affect outcomes for the species as a whole. Answers to how species populations can be manipulated to increase and properly manage fish yields, better eliminate unwanted pests, and other species-wide effects have been demonstrated by Princeton University researcher Anieke van Leeuwen and two European colleagues who asked, “Can less really be more?” “When we think about dynamics in ecological systems, either in one population or through interactions between populations (for example predator-prey dynamics or competition) or in entire ecosystems (food webs), we have to consider the fact that individual organisms differ within a population (or stock or species),” Dr Anieke van Leeuwen, postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the three authors of the report, told The Speaker. There was a significant benefit to understanding how differences among individuals within a species population affect outcomes for the whole, van Leeuwen told us. “There are differences in sizes, and individuals need to grow and develop, which costs energy. In other words, we cannot think in terms of numbers of individuals (and therewith average all biological characteristics, such as size, over all individuals). We will have to count the biomass per individual organism and account for the energy that it takes to grow to that size and maintain that biomass.” Van Leeuwen explained how this could be done. “Consider a herring population that has grown to the maximum ‘capacity’ of its resource environment. In such a setting we would predict that all individuals in the population experience harsh competition for resources, resulting in slow growth and a population size-distribution that is hump-shaped. Or in other words, the population is stunted. “When we are interested in harvesting in particular the large individuals, the presence of such large, mature individuals could be boosted by some source of mortality on this herring population. Through increased mortality the intra-specific (i.e. intra-population) competition can be released, which would allow individuals in the population to attain higher growth rates and reach larger individual sizes. In the scenario accounting for some source of mortality (which may be imposed by fisheries or caused by predatory marine species, such as cod) the population size-distribution would become bimodal (at least to a much stronger extent than in the previous scenario) and large individuals are present (at all, or in higher densities than before).” Van Leeuwen pointed to an earlier research paper, “How cod shapes its world,” which provided illustrations of the overcompensation phenomenon as well as the collapsing pattern that can result from overfishing in a more complex species system. In this research, the scientists reviewed existing studies that showed positive population level impacts of mortality, and explained how this has been looked at in theoretical models: classically (i.e. mostly non-size-structured populations) vs when accounting for population size structure, and compared the essential assumptions and processes of such models with what is reported in empirical studies. Logically extending their understanding, the researchers concluded that species could be decimated if imposed mortality surpassed a certain point. “If fishing pressure in such a setting steadily increases, observations show and models predict that there is a maximum, above which the herring population collapses,” van Leeuwen explained. She offered an illustration from the world of art: Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Big Fish Eat Little Fish” (1557). “It shows the importance of size-structure and differentiation so beautifully, while at the same time pointing out that humans are overexploiting natural systems,” commented van Leeuwen. In seeking to understand species dynamics, many ecological models have ignored differences in body size in development while predicting that modest gains in total species numbers could be achieved by imposing mortality. Considering these theories, in addition to research that has shown that mortality of individuals from certain life stages or size classes can have a positive effect, the researchers concluded that the overlap of these data showed that it was a division along lines of developmental stages that was key to understanding mortality benefits. “Only theory predicting the life stage specific positive mortality effects accounts for fundamental aspects of individuals,” the researchers found. “Mortality-induced density increases that are specific to life-history stage are common in nature.” We asked van Leeuwen about whether their findings could be applied to human populations to understand the world’s various demographics. The comparison of humans to other animal species was complicated, she said, because human existence involves much more complicated social relationships than the animal settings in the study systems the researchers looked at allow for (for example, laboratory settings or the simplifying assumptions made in mathematical models). “This question is extremely hard to answer from our context,” said van Leeuwen. “I think it is reasonable to say that in general human populations are limited in a different fashion or by different kinds of resources than the simplified ‘one-resource’ by which consumers are limited in the studies we refer to. “Moreover, the structure in human populations is very much determined by certain social constructs and social configurations. These would influence populations to a large extent, while the research we review discounts any such social structure.” Van Leeuwen offered an alternative starting point. “I think with respect to potential applications for human interest, we should rather think about how the concept of culling has been known and used for ages in forestry and agriculture; and also in recreative or sports fisheries this is a familiar phenomenon.” The report, “When less is more: positive population-level effects of mortality,” was completed by first author Arne Schröder, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin and first author, and Tom Cameron, a lecturer in aquatic community ecology at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, in addition to van Leeuwen, and was supported by the Journal of Experimental Biology, the Swedish Research Council and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, the University of Leeds, the National Environment Research Council and the European Commission Intra-European Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. By Day

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