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Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Growing number of demonstrations on college campuses over war in Gaza
How wildlife crossings protect both animals and people
Interstate 90 is the longest interstate highway in the United States. Spanning more than 3,000 miles, it connects Seattle in the west to Boston in the east. But it also serves as a massive concrete divide. For the animals who live to the north and south of the interstate, this road has absolutely wrecked their commute.
The U.S. Forest Service and the Washington State Department of Transportation have teamed up to develop a network of “critter crossings” in Washington – overpasses and underpasses designed to provide safe passage for wildlife.
The crossing project, with structures at areas identified where animals are likely to cross, spans 15 miles of I-90 near the Snoqualmie Pass in Washington, flanked by large chunks of what’s primarily national forest land – habitat for all sorts of creatures great and small.
But if animals are protected on both sides of I-90, why does it matter if they’re not connected? “Because you lose genetic variability,” said Patty Garvey-Darda, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service, “and gradually you start getting localized extinction, and populations get further and further apart, and smaller.”
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Around the country, most animals see a busy highway and turn around. A brave few might try to cross, but they’re at risk of getting run over. A wildlife crossing is supposed to make that process far less treacherous. But there’s no guarantee that if you build it, they will come. So, miles of fencing along the road serves to funnel animals towards crossing points. High concrete walls block headlights and dull the traffic noise.
“We wanna mimic the habitat on either side, native plants and everything, so that animals sort of don’t even see the transition,” said Garvey-Darda.
It worked. In 2022, cameras captured animals – including mule deer, elk and coyotes – using these crossings more than 5,000 times.
According to Brian White of the Washington DOT, the wildlife crossings in Banff, Alberta, Canada, were a success story to mimic. Banff’s 38 undercrossings and six overcrossings along a section of the Trans-Canada Highway that cuts through Banff National Park have reduced wildlife collisions by 80 percent, and been used as a model for crossings worldwide.
Back in the U.S., there are now around 1,500 wildlife crossing structures in 43 states. In Wyoming, pronghorn run across Highway 191. In Florida, panthers and alligators creep under I-75. They can be subtle; motorists may have no idea they’re driving over moose in Montana or tunnels full of tortoises in Utah.
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But it will be hard to miss the crossing currently being built not far from Los Angeles; once it’s completed, in late 2025 or early 2026, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will stretch for more than 200 feet across 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway, which can see up to 400,000 vehicles a day. It will be the largest wildlife corridor in the country.
Beth Pratt, who serves as regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation in California, said, “I think that’s a real miracle, that over one of the busiest freeways in the world you’re gonna be driving under it, and mountain lion, fox, might be walking over. Or a fence lizard, or a ground squirrel may have a family on top. That’s a really hopeful project. And we do owe it to P-22.”
P-22 was the celebrated mountain lion who roamed around L.A.’s Griffith Park. When he was younger, he somehow made it across two freeways, only to end up a lonely Hollywood bachelor until his death in 2022.
But even for the mountain lions who can find mates, the dates are a little too close to home, and biologists worry the small population here could soon go extinct. The crossing, which is estimated to cost $90 million, will expand the dating pool. That’s important for all sorts of critters, even ones that aren’t as obviously charismatic.
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Back underneath I-90, Professor Jason Irwin and his team of Central Washington University students are focused on everything from toads to salamanders making use of an underpass. “It’s really been fantastic to work in a project where they appreciate the little guy,” he said.
There are also human lives at stake. There are approximately one million collisions involving large wildlife on America’s roads each year, resulting in some 200 human deaths.
Last year, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a federal grant program awarding a total of $350 million to states looking to build crossings and improve safety.
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White has already seen a reduction in collisions where the crossings have been built. “If you think about it that way, and you think about how many accidents didn’t happen, these crossing structures pay for themselves pretty fast,” he said.
And fewer road closures mean faster commutes for everyone.
Even though the crossing construction in Los Angeles has meant occasional slowdowns and lane closures, Pratt said the public has been able to stay focused on the benefits down the road.
“Wildlife crossings are something, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, or what political affiliation – people really support them,” she said. “I think there’s very few people who don’t get upset when they see a dead animal on the side of the road. So, I think that this is something that in a time where we agree on very little, we pretty much agree on wildlife crossings.”
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Story produced by Michelle Kessel. Editor: Joseph Frandino.
Secret army of women who broke Nazi codes get belated recognition for WWII work
During World War II, dozens of women students at Cambridge University worked around the clock in complete secrecy to crack Nazi codes, but only now are the unsung heroes getting recognition.
At least 77 students from the women-only Newnham College were drafted to Bletchley Parkthe code-breaking center north of London, during the conflict.
It was there that mathematician Alan Turing decoded messages encrypted by the Nazis’ Enigma machine, in particular those sent by German U-boats submarines in the North Atlantic. Enigma cyphers were used by the Germans during World War II to scramble military communications and intelligence, to such an extent that they trusted their code was unbreakable.
Historians widely acknowledge that Bletchley played a key role in bringing down Adolf Hitler. The team that worked in the secret installation outside of London is credited not only with cracking Enigma, but also the Lorenz, another device that the Nazi high command used to send coded messages.
But the story of the Cambridge women has only recently been revealed, thanks to research started by Sally Waugh five years ago. She worked with historian Gillian Sutherland and archivist Frieda Midgley to uncover the names of the Bletchley Park recruits from Newnham College, the BBC reported.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
Waugh, a 69-year-old former Newnham student and teacher, said she wanted to highlight the role of women during World War II, often ignored in history books.
“Nobody was ever able to say thank you,” she told AFP. “I had no idea that people from Newnham went to work at Bletchley Park”.
Then, one day, she came across an article mentioning the name of an old friend, Jane Monroe, who died in 2005.
When Monroe, a mathematician from Newnham, was asked what she had done during the war, she replied unfazed: “Oh, I made tea,” said Waugh.
“She was in reality a code breaker. She was a friend but she didn’t tell me,” Waugh explained.
Monroe was unable to talk about her role as she had signed the Official Secrets Act, which restricts the publication of government information deemed sensitive.
The article mentioned three other women, whom Waugh tracked down in the university’s archives.
“I thought, if there are four of them, I wonder if there are any more?” she recalled.
The Sherborne School
In fact, Waugh found around 20 names and then cross-referenced her information with Bletchley Park.
Together they were able to identify almost 80 women.
“Everything was quite mad, really”
The only one whose name has so far gone down in history is mathematician Joan Clarke, who was recruited in 1940 and worked with the celebrated Enigma decoder and computer scientist Turing, to whom she was briefly engaged.
She became deputy head of her unit and after the war continued to work in intelligence. Keira Knightley won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Clarke in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game.”
Also on the list is Violet Cane, another mathematician with a gift for statistics. She worked at Bletchley’s naval section between 1942 and 1945. Another code breaker, Mavis Batey, spoke to CBS News in 2008, when she was 87, about working at Bletchley Park.
“Everything was quite mad, really,” said Batey, who was responsible for decoding a message that revealed the date of a planned Italian naval attack and, in turn, allowed the British to prepare.
German speaker Elizabeth Langstaff was given the tasks of reconstructing German messages from raw decryptions, interpreting abbreviations and analyzing the results over months.
Three women — Alda Milner-Barry, Pernel Strachey and Ray Strachey — helped recruit women to Bletchley Park from Newnham College, the BBC reported. Milner-Barry by then had been a fellow and vice principal at the school, and her brother belonged to one of the government code and cypher school groups at the Bletchley code breaking station. Pernel Strachey was the Newnham principal, and her brother was an expert in deciphering coded messages, according to the BBC.
At the end of 2023, a letter was uncovered dated Jan. 28, 1939, in which the principal of the university confirmed to Bletchley Park that “in the event of emergency we should be able to find for you about six students proficient in Modern Languages, in order for work to be carried out at the Foreign Office.”
Newnham, which was founded in 1871, eventually sent Bletchley mathematicians, linguists, historians and even archaeologists to analyze aerial photographs.
“Newnham women were represented in most key areas of Bletchley Park’s work,” Jonathan Byrne, Oral History Officer at Bletchley Park Trust, told AFP.
That included decrypting German signals encrypted by Enigma, producing intelligence reports, understanding the activities of the Nazis by analysing signal networks and studying diplomatic signals.
Around 50 of women were believed to have been on duty on June 6, 1944 — “D-Day”, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Nazi-occupied northern France.
“Although the work they were involved in contributed to Allied planning for the liberation, most would have not known when the invasion was happening,” explained Byrne, though some may have suspected.
“German signal traffic in France increased in response to the invasion, making early June 1944 a busy time at Bletchley Park,” he explained.
Bebe Neuwirth returns to Broadway in “Cabaret” revival
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Bond auctions are a bigger deal than usual this week. The first went the way of the bulls
Every weekday, the Investing Club releases the Homestretch; an actionable afternoon update just in time for the last hour of trading.
Weapons chest and chain mail armor found in ancient shipwreck off Sweden
Researchers exploring an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Sweden discovered centuries-old relics, including a weapons chest and pieces of armor.
The maritime archaeologists from Stockholm University and Södertörn University studied the wreck of the Griffin, which sank after a fire aboard in 1495, according to a news release from Stockholm University. The ship was the flagship of the Danish-Norwegian King John, also known as Hans, who ruled from 1481 to 1513. The report published this month details their research.
The wreck is “partly disintegrated,” the news release said, but some of the pieces that remain on the seabed are “very well preserved.” Archaeologists found floor timbers that provided insights into the ship’s structure and military capability, as well as parts from elevated combat platforms that were built on the ship. The discoveries have “provided new data for the ongoing work of reconstructing and analysing the ship’s superstructure,” the news release said, and will allow reserachers to reconstruct the ship in the future.
Amid the wreck, the researchers found a “unique” ammunition-making tool chest that contained lead plates and cans that may have held powder. Researchers had been aware of the chest since 2019 but had not been able to closely study it until last year, when they used 3-D imaging to view the contents.
Photo by Florian Huber, outlines and notes by Rolf Warming
“The contents of the weapon chest are undeniably one of the most important finds,” said Rolf Warming, one of the lead maritime archaelogists, in the news release. “It contains, among other things, several different molds and lead plates for the manufacture of lead bullets for early handguns.”
The chest likely came from German mercenaries on board the ship when it sank, Warming said. Researchers also found two cannon carriages amid the wreck.
The armor fragments that archaeologists may be from a mail shirt that might have had up to 150,000 rings, according to the news release.
Rolf Warming
The weapons and armor found have given researchers a glimpse into what combat at sea looked like during this time period, the news release said.
“The ship is an important piece of the puzzle in the ‘military revolution at sea’ in the Early Modern Period, in which the primary tactics shifted from hand-to-hand combat to heavy naval artillery fire,” Warming said, adding that the ship is comparable to other preserved wrecks including the Mars and the Vasawhich has been on display in Stockholm, Sweden since the 1960s after being salvaged from the ocean floor.
FTC poised to ban noncompete agreements, making it easier for workers to quit. Here's what to know.
Federal regulators are set to ban most noncompete agreements, which keep millions of Americans — from minimum wage earners to CEOs — from moving jobs within their industries.
The Federal Trade Commission is expected to vote to approve the new rule on Tuesday afternoon. The potential impact is huge for tens of millions of workers, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“For nonunion workers, the only leverage they have is their ability to quit their job,” Shierholz told CBS MoneyWatch. “Noncompetes don’t just stop you from taking a job — they stop you from starting your own business.”
Since proposing a new rule that would bar employers from imposing noncompete arrangements on workers, the FTC has received more than 26,000 public comments on the regulations. The final rule being considered “would generally prevent most employers from using noncompete clauses,” the FTC said in a statement last week. It remains to be seen under what circumstances restrictions would remain legal.
The agency’s action comes more than two years after President Biden directed the agency to “curtail the unfair use” of noncompetes, under which employees effectively sign away future work opportunities in their industry as a condition of keeping their current job. The president’s executive order urged the FTC to target such labor restrictions and others that improperly constrain employees from seeking work.
Still, assuming the FTC approves the proposed rule, it is virtually certain to be challenged in court, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the past calling it “blatantly unlawful. The trade group, which advocates for U.S. corporations and businesses, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement making the case for axing noncompetes early last year. “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand.”
A threat to trade secrets?
An estimated 30 million people — or one in five U.S. workers — are bound by noncompete restrictions, according to the FTC. The new rule could boost worker wages by a total of nearly $300 billion a year, according to the agency.
Employers who use noncompetes argue that they are needed to protect trade secrets or other confidential information employees might learn in the course of their jobs.
The idea of using noncompetes to keep business information out of the hands of rivals has proliferated, noted Shierholz, citing a notorious case involving Jimmy John’s eateries.
Low-paid workers are now the hardest hit by restrictive work agreements, which can forbid employees including janitors, security guards and phlebotomists from leaving their job for better pay even though these entry-level workers are least likely to have access to trade secrets.
What is biodiversity and why is it important? Here's what to know.
Earth is home to millions of discovered species of plants and animals with many more yet to be known. They all play vital roles in each other, their ecosystems, and the planet’s overall health and they make up what is known as biological diversity.
But what exactly is biodiversity? It’s a shortened version of two scientific terms — biological diversity. Essentially, all it means is having a variety of living things. There are three main levels of biodiversity scientists typically refer to, according to the Smithsonian, including species, genetic and ecosystem diversity. Under these categories, researchers are looking to identify how many and what kind of species are around, what the genetic makeup of those individual species are and passing down to generations and what species populations are in various environments, such as waterways and forests.
“These levels cannot be separated,” the Smithsonian says. “Each is important, interacting with and influencing others. Changes at one changes at other levels.”
Why is biodiversity important?
A species’ ability to thrive isn’t only essential for its survival, but in many cases, for the survival of others as well. One of the clearest examples of this is bumblebees. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculturethere are 49 species of bumblebees across the U.S., and they all will go flower-to-flower, picking up nectar and pollen as they go. Not only does that help feed individual bees, but the transporting of the nectar and pollen also helps plant species thrive.
However, studies have found that climate change is threatening their survival, with researchers finding the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving has declined by an average of 30% within a single generation of humans.
Honeybees also serve a vital role in biodiversity. The USDA says they pollinate $15 billion worth of crops every year, helping support life for more than 130 agricultural products. The honey they produce, which humans have grown to love and enjoy, is also worth millions.
What is biodiversity loss?
As important as biodiversity is, it’s come under significant threat. In 2019, a United Nations report found that roughly 1 million plant and animal species could be threatened with extinction, while a newer report found an even more dire state – up to 6 million species extinct over the next 50 years.
“Major direct threats to biodiversity include habitat loss and fragmentation, unsustainable resource use, invasive species, pollution, and global climate change,” the American Museum of Natural History says. “The underlying causes of biodiversity loss, such as a growing human population and overconsumption are often complex and stem from many interrelated factors.”
How many species are there?
Scientists estimate that there are roughly 8.7 million species of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms on Earth, including roughly 2.2 million species that live in the world’s oceans. But even that number is low for the true amount of life on the planet.
“In spite of 250 years of taxonomic classification and over 1.2 million species already catalogued in a central database, our results suggest that some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description,” researchers said in a 2011 study. “Renewed interest in further exploration and taxonomy is required if this significant gap in our knowledge of life on Earth is to be closed.”
But new species are constantly being discovered. In 2023, scientists at London’s Natural History Museum say they’ve uncovered 815 new speciesfrom geckos to algae to swamp eels. And that’s just one group of scientists.
Thousands of other species have been discovered since Earth Day 2023, including more than 5,500 species in a single area, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico. Researchers have also found new species of hedgehogsa deepwater catsharkan “electrical” blue tarantulaand a deep-sea octopus.
“The bad news, however, is that biodiversity is declining,” says the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUNC) Red Listthe world’s most comprehensive list of species conservation status.
The Red List holds more than 157,100 species, including 44,000 the group says are threatened with extinction – more than a quarter of all the species the IUCN has assessed.
How to help and protect biodiversity
Even though species decline continues to be a serious ongoing issue, there are things that everyone can do to help what’s happening in their own backyard.
If you have a garden, for example, opting for native plants and wildflowers can be a huge boost for the local ecosystem. Native plants, which are those that grow naturally in a region, are vital to an area’s biological web, help reduce the amount of needed fertilizers and pesticides and provide ample pollinating opportunities. According to the National Audobon Societythey also require less water to maintain and can help store greenhouse gases, which are a key driver of climate change when they are in the atmosphere.
If you enjoy hiking or spending time outdoors, it’s also key to respect nature. Sticking to walking paths and trails isn’t just for your safety but for that of the species around you. Constantly disrupting habitats or walking on plant life can tarnish an ecosystem.
Reducing and reusing materials is also key, as landfills and pollution can be detrimental to life on Earth, especially marine life. Consider buying items second-hand and instead of throwing away old clothes or things around the house, find a way to repurpose them, sell them or donate them.
Essentially, it’s all about taking care of the home outside of your home.
“It is within our power to change our actions to help ensure the survival of species and the health and integrity of ecological systems,” the American Museum of Natural History says. “…While we might not be able to prevent all negative human impacts on biodiversitywith knowledge we can work to change the direction and shape of our effects on the rest of life on Earth.”
