Ocean acidity crosses vital threshold, study finds

The deep oceans have crossed a crucial boundary that threatens their ability to provide the surface with food and oxygen, a new study finds.
Nearly two-thirds of the ocean below 200 meters, or 656 feet, as well as nearly half of that above, have breached 'safe' levels of acidity, according to findings published on Monday in Global Change Biology.
The fall in ocean pH is 'a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies,' Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the United Kingdom's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said in a statement.
The study was funded in part by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), a federal agency that has been targeted for steep cuts by the Trump White House, in large part because of its role in investigating climate change.
Some of the biggest changes in deep water are happening off the coast of western North America, home to extensive crab and salmon fisheries, the study found.
The core problem is one scientists have warned about for a long time: the continued global burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide — an acid when dissolved in water — is making the seas and oceans more acidic.
Or, technically, it's making them less basic, which is to say: Less hospitable to species such as corals and clams that form the foundation of the ocean's ecosystem.
'Most ocean life doesn't just live at the surface — the waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals,' lead author Helen Findlay of PML. 'Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought.'
As of five years ago, Findlay's study noted, the oceans may have crossed a critical threshold in which oceanic levels of calcium carbonate — the main ingredient in limestones, and also the shells of those animals — fell to more than 20 percent below pre-industrial levels.
If true, that shift would mean the Earth has passed seven out of nine of the critical 'planetary boundaries' needed to maintain its ecosystem, as the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found last year.
That shift, Widdicombe of the Marine Lab said, means 'we're witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on.'
'From the coral reefs that support tourism to the shellfish industries that sustain coastal communities,' he added, 'we're gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed.'
The further implications are even more serious. The reasons for the ocean's rise in acid, or fall in base, is that its waters have absorbed about one-third of all the carbon dioxide released by surface burning of coal, oil and gas.
But the more carbon dioxide it absorbs, the lower its ability to absorb more — meaning faster warming on the surface.
Making that dynamic even more dramatic, seas and oceans have also absorbed 90 percent of the global heating that the Earth's surface would have otherwise experienced, according to NASA.
In addition to absorbing heat and carbon dioxide, the ocean also provides 50 percent of the Earth's oxygen — which comes from the very marine ecosystems that warming and acidification are threatening.
Ecosystem loss and fossil fuel burning mean that levels of oxygen below the surface are decreasing, as, more slowly, is oxygen above the surface.

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Harvard researcher's work gives ‘hope' for Parkinson's. But the feds cut his funding

When Bence Ölveczky came to the U.S. from Hungary at the age of 28, it was the first place he didn't feel like a foreigner. 'This is a unique country because it's a country of immigrants. And that's why I felt at home; because nobody cared,' he told MassLive, during a recent interview in his office. The U.S. drew him because of its 'unparalleled scientific infrastructure' and collaboration between the government and its universities. However, it feels like the climate is changing. 'It's made America great,' Ölveczky, who holds a Ph.D. , said. 'And now we are sort of willingly giving up on that. That's the tragic part of this.' As a professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, he is feeling the ways the Trump administration is attacking not only the institution where he works but also his research. " The research that we are doing — it is not Harvard research," he said. ' We are doing government research.' The Trump administration has frozen or cut nearly $3 billion in federal funding to Harvard, citing antisemitism at the university. The administration has claimed the university failed to protect Jewish students, particularly in the wake of the war in Gaza. Read more: Federal judge delays decision over Trump admin barring Harvard foreign students At the same time, the federal government has revoked most of the institutions' research grants. This has a significant impact on Ölveczky's lab, which uses rats to better understand how the brain learns new motor skills and generates more complex behaviors. It also has the potential to affect an entire generation of researchers who may decide not to come to the U.S. or to Harvard because of the federal government's actions, he said. Two of his federal grants were terminated by the National Institutes of Health in May. His lab focuses on addressing the function of the basal ganglia, which goes awry in people with Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease, according to a court filing in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration. With more time, his work could help inform rehabilitation therapeutics for people with those diseases or even those who have had strokes, he said. 'It's an inspiration to me that we could help in the treatment of these,' he said. Taking an elevator to the basement in a Harvard building, passing through white door after white door, there are several rooms filled with rats. Some are kept in clear cages behind closed cabinets. Opening one of the cabinets, two black and white rats in separate cages appear. One with wires attached to its head immediately walks to the front of its clear cage to put its nose and minuscule teeth through a hole at the front. Other rats are stacked high, while not undergoing testing or recuperating from surgery, sometimes even doubled up in a cage for socialization, snuggled up next to each other. Each rat is taught a task. One task is pressing down on a joystick at a certain angle for a reward. 'Some of these animals have been in their training for a year or more,' Ölveczky said. The rats do these tasks so the researchers can better understand how complex behaviors are generated by the brain. However, the lab is also researching how autism affects brain function and behavior. They had planned to apply for federal funding for this work, which has been privately funded that is ending this year. Read more: As federal funding cuts hit Harvard, a private investment firm and other donors step up In collaboration with the University of Washington, Stanford University and the Salk Institute, the lab has also created a virtual rodent controlled through an artificial neural network, according to Ölveczky's court affidavit. It is able to be trained to mimic the behavior of real animals and has the potential to transform how researchers study the brain by comparing hypothesis testing through the virtual rodent and juxtaposing it to experiments in real animals, he said. By studying rats at the Ölveczky Lab, it is also ultimately about giving families who are struggling with Parkinson's or stroke hope for recovery, he said. 'To some degree, knowing that there are people out there working on the mechanisms that underlie the disease, particularly for neurodevelopmental disorders like autism or childhood disorders ... I think give folks hope,' he said There is so much more that could be learned in the lab, Ölveczky said. Nobody knew that studying the saliva of a lizard would lead to the 'most revolutionary obesity drug,' he said, referring to Ozempic. 'The bargain this country made was to invest in basic research and understand that the rewards are going to accumulate over time. And this is also why normal tax-paying Americans won't necessarily feel the immediate effects of any of these funding cuts,' he said. 'What you would have to do is compare the alternative reality — the reality when there was no research — versus the reality where there is research, and those two are very different. But that would become apparent in some years from now," he said. Ölveczky has been looking for non-federal funding. However, that is even more difficult as other institutions are experiencing a scaling back of funding as well. The lab may not be able to finish its experiments, analyze its data or write publications without federal funding, according to Ölveczky's affidavit. Slashing research funding isn't about saving money for the U.S., Ölveczky said. In fact, it has the opposite effect, he said. 'This is the most wasteful thing that's happened to biomedical research. You build up a research enterprise, and it takes an incredible amount of money to gain the trust of the world, frankly. Everybody's coming here,' he said. 'The fact that this is done in the name of sort of eliminating waste is just absurd,' he said. Using 'rainy day' funds given to him from his promotion a decade ago, he has been able to keep staff on — but these funds will dry up within the year, he said. He runs a lab with 10 to 12 people. His grants largely funded the salaries of postdoctoral students and technicians, reagents, animal care costs, instruments and publication costs. Being forced to let them go would be devastating, as they have institutional knowledge about the lab and how it works. Even if he were to later find funding, those people would be difficult to replace, and ultimately it would take time and more money to get them up to speed, he said in an affidavit. Read more: 'Far reaching consequences' — UMass Amherst sounds the alarm amid federal uncertainty In addition to potential layoffs, around 100 rats would also have to be killed because the lab won't have the funding to keep going. He said he refuses 'to believe that people in Congress don't see' the impact the funding cuts will have on research. 'I hope we can reverse course, but the worry I have is when will some of these things become irreversible?' he said. Even if the cuts at Harvard don't happen, the proposed cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation through President Donald Trump's budget are going to be 'devastating,' Ölveczky said. 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Read more: As Trump cuts funding, these Harvard scholars consider leaving US — and academia That is especially true for international students at Harvard, as the Trump administration has attempted to block Harvard international students from entering the country or enrolling at the institution. 'I have an incoming graduate student from Taiwan, who's phenomenal by all accounts, and I can't encourage him about this situation because the degree of uncertainty and anxiety associated with this whole situation is not something that I would necessarily want for myself if I had other options,' Ölveczky said. He is settled in the U.S. now as an American citizen. However, only a few short years ago, that wasn't the case. If he were 28 years old again and making the move again out of Hungary for his doctoral degree, he said there would be 'no chance' of him coming to the U.S. These US colleges are among the top 100 best global universities, US News says 'Far reaching consequences' — UMass Amherst sounds the alarm amid federal uncertainty MIT joins group of universities suing the DOD over funding cuts As federal funding cuts hit Harvard, a private investment firm and other donors step up 20 NIH grants restored to UMass system after judge rules against Trump admin Read the original article on MassLive.

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‘Devastating': 10 Harvard researchers detail ‘essential' work set to be cut by Trump

From a fruit fly database, to developing 'organ chip' technology, to the study of deer mice — all of it could have serious implications for understanding, finding cures for or helping alleviate human diseases, Harvard University researchers say. And yet, those explorations are among thousands of federal research grants and billions of dollars the Trump administration has cut in recent months. In court filings, Harvard — global research mecca — claims it is being targeted by a 'government vendetta,' as President Donald Trump strips much of its federal money and contracts in the name of addressing antisemitism. But what research is actually being done at Harvard? And does it matter if it gets cut? MassLive is profiling 10 researchers, using interviews and court affidavits, whose work will be entirely stopped or severely affected by federal government cuts. A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore 367 National Institutes of Health grants as part of two lawsuits, but the order doesn't apply to a broad swath of grants, including the huge numbers at Harvard. There have been 2,282 NIH grants terminated nationally, amounting to nearly $3.8 billion of lost funding as of June 4, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The funding cuts at Harvard have led to layoffs at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, as every one of its direct federal grants has been terminated. The school has even taken to social media to ask for donations. Read more: As federal funding cuts hit Harvard, a private investment firm and other donors step up Harvard announced it has committed $250 million of 'central funding' to support research affected by suspended and canceled federal grants. However, even with the boost of funding from the university, research is threatened and could be significantly affected without federal money, according to Harvard researchers. Overwhelmingly, researchers told MassLive that while Harvard may be the facilitator for the work they're doing, it's not 'Harvard research' — rather, it's research for the world. They also argued that the cuts are wasteful and costly because they stop research prematurely, making all funding that came before it nearly useless. Position: Genome database coordinator, a staff scientist position in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University Victoria Jenkins extracts, interprets and archives data to keep FlyBase, the world's central repository for fruit fly research, running. The website is a free treasure trove of 32 years' worth of data for scientists across the world to access. Fruit flies are genetically similar to humans — nearly 70% — making them cheap and accessible test subjects to work with. The site contains information about every fruit fly gene and genome. 'We're the Wikipedia of fruit fly research,' Jenkins said in an interview. 'There really isn't a second version of what we do. We are the one resource for this information.' In May, FlyBase's grant funding from the National Institutes of Health was terminated. Now, researchers are searching for other forms of funding to, at the very least, preserve the website as is. Jenkins said Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, addiction, traumatic brain injuries and birth defects have all been modeled in flies as researchers work to make scientific breakthroughs. Six Nobel Prize projects have been awarded to fruit fly-related research. And the results are all found on FlyBase, which is a multi-university partnership between Harvard, Indiana University, University of New Mexico and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. 'Every fly researcher around the world relies on us for historical data and everything new that gets produced,' Jenkins said. Position: Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University When Bence Ölveczky came to the U.S. at the age of 28 from Hungary, it was the first place where he didn't feel like a foreigner. 'This is a unique country because it's a country of immigrants. And that's why I felt at home because nobody cared,' he told MassLive. Now it feels like the climate is changing. He isn't able to encourage students to come to the university. At the same time, he is piecing together funding for his research after the funding terminations. He is working to understand how rats learn, which will inform rehabilitation, helping people who have had strokes or have Parkinson's. 'It's an inspiration to me that we could help in the treatment of these,' he said. Using 'rainy day' funds he received a decade ago from when he was promoted, he hasn't had to lay off staff yet — but these funds will dry up within the year, he said. In addition to potential layoffs, around 100 rats would also have to be euthanized because the lab won't have the funding to keep going. Position: Professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the chair of the Department of Biostatistics. For over three decades, John Quakenbush has been working in biomedical research, investigating the mechanisms that cause healthy people — and ultimately their cells — to become diseased. Despite his decades of experience, he said he is looking at leaving the United States. 'I stand behind Harvard in its decision to fight for its First Amendment rights,' Quakenbush said in an interview. 'But I'm looking, at this point in my career, at potentially two years with almost no external research funding — maybe longer. And, as you get to that point, and you're not doing research anymore, picking back up and starting up again becomes more difficult. Even securing federal research grants becomes difficult.' Part of Quakenbush's research is attempting to uncover a 'fundamentally important but understudied problem in health.' He is both unpacking how sex and age interact to influence disease risk and how diseases differ between biological males and females. Without the funding, he doesn't know what'll happen next, but said sex is important to understand how nearly every disease has different ways it manifests or responds to therapy. " The political agenda that we don't want to acknowledge different genders or we don't even want to go beyond individual sexes is sort of ridiculous because disease strikes us all right? Independent of who we voted for, who we love, what church we go to or don't go to," Quakenbush said. Position: Associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health When describing the affects of federal research cuts in a recent court filing, Shoba Ramanadhan used the word 'devastating' multiple times. Four of her federal grants have been terminated or ended early. They included research related to the impact of climate change-caused heat stress and cancer-focused outreach to immigrants, refugees and minority communities. 'I work closely with communities that have been subject to discrimination in the United States, such as racial and ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ groups,' Ramanadhan wrote in her court affidavit. 'Given historical and current abuses of power, these communities are understandably skeptical of scientists and academic researchers. It can take us anywhere from 5 to 15 years to build the requisite trust and relationships with a community and partner on research.' Ramanadhan warned that if her projects can't be completed, 'people in the communities we serve will not be supported to engage in cancer prevention activities, such as breast cancer screening or vaccination against HPV.' She also expressed concerns that an entire cohort of faculty working toward tenure, herself included, could lose the opportunity to achieve it because of federal research cuts. Kelsey Tyssowski Position: Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Departments of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology and Molecular & Cellular Biology at Harvard University. Without funding for Kelsey Tyssowski's work, she may have to leave academic science entirely. Her pathway to getting a tenure-track job has been halted by federal funding cuts. Her research only has funding until the end of the month — then it is up to tenure faculty to determine if she will have any left. A canceled grant from the National Institutes of Health was supposed to cover her salary through March 2026 and the first three years of research in her own lab. 'I have to get a job this year. And this year it's going to be very hard to get a tenure track faculty job because there's hiring freezes everywhere,' Tyssowski said. 'If I can't stay in this job here, I almost certainly have to leave academia.' Tyssowski's research involves skilled movement, complex learned movements that can be reproduced accurately and efficiently and take entire body coordination to do, like climbing. She is pioneering a new way to study skilled movement through deer mice — whose skilled movement might have evolved in a way that humans and primates have. This could provide significant understanding on how human brains engage in skilled movement, and ultimately, in treating diseases such as ALS, where skilled movement is the first thing to go. If she leaves academia, the work that she has been doing is at risk of completely vanishing. 'No one will do this research. I won't do this research. It will just go away,' she said. Position: Social epidemiologist and director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Rita Hamad has spent nearly 20 years studying the effects of social policies on health, poverty and education. Specifically, how policies can have the power to lift up marginalized communities and improve their health, or make it worse. It is an 'unbelievably devastating time for science in general, but particularly for us that study health equity,' she said in an interview. Hamad has seen three of her NIH grants canceled. One was used to study how neighborhood socioeconomic factors affect risk for Alzheimer's and dementia. 'We need to know what about communities we can intervene in to improve these risk factors,' she said. 'If you don't have that information, you're not preventing any cases of dementia.' A second grant was used to examine the effects of school segregation on the cardiovascular health of youth and young adults. Research so far has shown that children who experience school segregation have a higher risk of worse health in childhood and years later, she said. 'All of that research is grinding to a halt, doing a disservice to people of all backgrounds,' Hamad said. 'Clinging to whatever I can,' Hamad said she's trying to remain hopeful that her grant funding will be restored and the damage 'reversible.' 'We're not just here to get a paycheck,' she said. 'We're here to make the world a better and healthier place.' Position: Founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University With Donald Ingber's ongoing work, the U.S. had a better chance at exploring Mars. But the federal government has instructed him to cease his projects. Ingber and his team have been working to develop human 'organ chip' technology — 'tiny, complex, three-dimensional models with hollow channels lined by different types of cells and tissues that recapitulate the structure and function of human organs,' he wrote in a court affidavit. One of Ingber's projects was using the organ chip to study the effects of microgravity and radiation on astronauts during spaceflight. Ingber was developing specialized bone marrow chips incorporating cells from individual astronauts. The specialized chips were scheduled to fly aboard the Artemis II mission to the moon, scheduled for early 2026, alongside the astronauts who donated the cells, Ignber said. 'This work is critical to our ultimate ability to explore Mars, because protecting astronauts from radiation toxicity remains a major barrier to the long-distance space travel necessary to explore the solar system,' he continued. The second project using the organ chip technology was studying how the human lung, intestine, bone marrow and lymph node respond to radiation, with the goal of identifying drugs 'that can mitigate the effects of that radiation.' Ingber said the work was important to improve public safety, 'as the country ramps up nuclear power production to support the energy-intensive artificial intelligence industry.' 'These countermeasures also would be available in the case of a nuclear attack and to alleviate toxic side effects in cancer patients who receive radiation therapy,' he said. Position: Professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Kept frozen by liquid nitrogen inside laboratories at Harvard University are more than 1.5 million biospecimens that have mere 'weeks' left until they spoil. Soon, there won't be enough money left to keep the freezers running. The nearly 50 years of collected human feces, urine, blood, tumors and even toenail clippings could have consequential implications for the future health of Americans, and yet, they're at risk of being lost if funding slashed by the Trump administration isn't restored. Read more: Trump cuts threaten 'irreplaceable' Harvard stockpile of human feces, urine The mother lode collection housed at Harvard has supported generations-long chronic disease risk studies that have fundamentally shaped significant scientific and medical advancements. The studies have led to major breakthroughs, including links between cigarettes and cardiovascular disease and alcohol consumption and breast cancer. The research also uncovered the dangers of trans fats, which the U.S. has now largely restricted. The biological samples collected during the studies are 'irreplaceable,' according to Walter Willett, one of the most sought-after nutritionists internationally. And some of the study participants could even die before the next check-in period, he said. 'No other institution in the world has this data,' Willett wrote in a May 30 court affidavit detailing the effects of federal funding cuts on his research. Position: Senior lecturer in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Personally, Paige Williams, a Harvard faculty member of 34 years, stands to lose 90% of her salary due to revocations of NIH grants. Professionally, she fears the downstream effects on clinical research in the future, particularly when it comes to community trust. She cited some of her study participants — women living with HIV — who have already expressed feeling 'betrayed' when study activities abruptly stopped in May. 'As HIV researchers, we rely on the willingness of our study participants to share openly some of the most vulnerable and challenging aspects of their lives,' Williams wrote in a court filing. 'Our work thus depends on a foundation of trust between us and the participants we work with…' Williams primarily studies health outcomes in pregnant women and their children, and much of her work is HIV-centered. One of her terminated grants was a 20-year study evaluating the effects of anti-retroviral treatment for mothers with HIV and their children — currently in its final year. Because of the grant stoppage, her research team was essentially unable to procedurally finish two decades of work. In addition, they're slated to lose data they've collected, Williams wrote. 'Losing the data arising from such studies would be devastating for the entire scientific community and for the many Americans whose lives would be forever improved by scientific breakthroughs,' she said. Position: Professor of Health Economics and Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health & interim department chair. Meredith Rosenthal's research focuses on a tool to lower medication alternatives to help reduce out-of-pocket costs for patients and increase medication adherence. She is aiming to understand how things may change based on people's socioeconomic statuses and geographic locations. Around 60% of Rosenthal's salary comes from research grants. One of her grants provides almost $2.5 million over three and a half years, and she has one year left. Her grant was canceled on May 15, according to court documents. 'I firmly believe that equity is an essential value in health policy. I have dedicated my career to improving health and affordability for everyone, both through my research and by overseeing the school's Office of Diversity and Inclusion (from 2013-2018) to improve diversity, equity and inclusion of those who work in the industry and on our campus,' she said. 'I worry that the Trump administration will label my focus on equitable access to healthcare as an 'ideologically capture' DEI program and demand that the school 'shutter' the program, particularly because of my former diversity-related administrative role, but because of the vagueness of the Demand Letters, I cannot be sure,' she said. Federal judge halts Trump's plans to keep Harvard from enrolling foreign students Harvard researcher's work gives 'hope' for Parkinson's. But the feds cut his funding These US colleges are among the top 100 best global universities, US News says 'Far reaching consequences' — UMass Amherst sounds the alarm amid federal uncertainty MIT joins group of universities suing the DOD over funding cuts Read the original article on MassLive.

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10 hours ago

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Trump THREATENS US Food Security By Slashing Science Funding, Experts Warn

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