#vrije universiteit

[booksplease]

The Classroom as a Battleground for Meaning and Difference

Education, at its best, is an act of rebellion. It dares to disrupt the comfort of certainty, to dismantle the walls we build around ourselves, and to replace them with windows. Yet, in a world that fears change, education often finds itself tamed—reduced to sterile instruction manuals, neatly packaged outcomes, and metrics that measure everything except meaning. But the truth is, education is…

[crispy0nion]

HEY YOU. ARE YOU LOOKING TO APPLY TO CS AT VU AMSTERDAM?

because i am too! and i just found a google doc full of extremely useful links and tips, so I thought i'd put this on here too, since I think the op only put it on reddit. it has everything from housing websites to city guides to a drive full of textbooks. originally made and posted by MvKal on reddit (og post)

[ourwitching]

By Anastasia Nefeli Vidaki, law scholar and researcher at the Cyber and Data Security Lab, Vrije Un...

[storiesfromthevub]

VUB wants to evaluate professors in a new way in the fight against 'toxic leadership'

A translation of the part of the article addressing toxicity: "[...]

Second remarkable statement in the summer interview: the VUB is thinking aloud about a new personnel policy in the fight against transgressive behaviour. Last year, the university opened at least five files involving intolerable behavior. The most famous case is that of Elke Van Hoof, the 'burn-out prof' whose entire team resigned because of dissatisfaction with her 'toxic leadership'.

Danckaert does not comment on Van Hoof in the conversation with BRUZZ, but nevertheless points out that some “underestimate their impact on how they come across to younger employees”. That is why he also thinks “that not all transgressive behavior is by definition intentional. Sometimes it also happens from the ambition to strive for scientific excellence.”

To relieve that pressure and stress - a common complaint among academics - Danckaert wants to tinker with the financing method. “In the current model, someone receives funding based on the number of publications and projects. In the future, the VUB wants to assess these quantitative parameters more at group level, less at individual level. That way it becomes a collegial responsibility and a collegial process, where everyone thinks about their contribution to the whole.”

By being assessed as a group, with each member focusing on their strengths and potential weaknesses being absorbed by colleagues, the rector hopes to introduce a new leadership culture. To be clear: this is a thinking exercise at the VUB, no concrete decision yet. If Danckaert wants to succeed in his aim, he will mainly have to seek external support, from the government, from scientific funds and from companies and financing sectors."

End of translation.

Comments: From our experiences at the university, the goal of these pressured and stressed individuals is not scientific excellence but furthering their own career ahead of others', whether that undermines the scientific excellence of the project or not. They are, as the statement implies, hugely pressured by their superiors and in great competition with their peers; they are not blinded in the pursuit of scientific excellence. If this action does ever happen we are hopeful it will change the culture at the university in the long term. So far still only empty placation from the university, though, with such heavy caveats on whether these changes are possible in the first place.

Also, as always we would like to see something done about the seemingly overt and accepted culture of sexual harassment and sexualization of students at the VUB. This seems to get lumped into transgressive behaviour, which (purposefully?) erases/de-emphasizes the sexual nature of most of the harassment that happens at the university.

Unlike most universities, the VUB does not have a policy against professors dating their current students. Adding this to their regulations would be a simple step that would protect students' academic experience and achievements. As it is now, students have no protection from sexual predation from professors; there is literally no recourse because it is not against any regulations. Complainants against Dries Tys were repeatedly told that he did not break university policy and the students had probably misinterpreted or overreacted to the situation. They were put into in-person one-on-one mediation with Tys and asked if they were sure they hadn't misunderstood. This in regards to a man who had dated students in the past, married one of his students, and continued to date students afterwards. Obviously the complainants just misunderstood his excitement for scientific excellence, though, right?

The problem continues: the VUB has purposefully tied its hands behind its back when it comes to the safety of its students.

[internationaldayoflight]

Discover the fascinating world of gravitational waves.

Each year, the B-PHOT Student Chapter celebrates the International Day of Light with their Light Night event. In this year’s edition, you will get the chance to be inspired by Professor Anja Boisen, from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), who will discuss different biosensing techniques and how light is involved in drug delivery and monitoring.

On top of that, this event will let you discover the fascinating world of gravitational waves via the lecture of Professor Michael Vervaeke and Professor Alexandre Sevrin, both affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Additionally, the B-PHOT Student Chapter will announce the winner of the Photo Contest 2023 at the end of the event, followed by a reception with drinks and food. Light Night 2023 will take place on the 18th of April from 18h to 22h at Pilar Box (VUB campus). 

[whencyclopedia]

Interview: Medieval Christian Art in the Levant

Medievalists retain misconceptions and myths about Oriental Christians. Indeed, the fact that the Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity is an afterthought for many. During the Middle Ages, Christians from different creeds and confessions lived in present-day Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine. Here, they constructed churches, monasteries, nunneries, and seminaries, which retain timeless artistic treasures and cultural riches.

James Blake Wiener speaks to Dr Mat Immerzee to clarify and contextualize the artistic and cultural heritage of medieval Christians who resided in what is now the Levant.

Dr Immerzee is a retired Assistant Professor at Universiteit Leiden and Director of the Paul van Moorsel Centre for Christian Art and Culture in the Middle East at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Saint Bacchus Fresco

James Gordon (CC BY)

JBW: ​​The largest Christian community in what is present-day Lebanon is that of the Maronite Christians – they trace their origins to the 4th-century Syrian hermit, St. Maron (d. 410). The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic Syriac Church, using the Antiochian Rite, which has been in communion with Rome since 1182. Nonetheless, Maronites have kept their own unique traditions and practices.

What do you think differentiates medieval Maronite art and architecture from other Christian sects in the Levant? Due to a large degree of contact with traders and crusaders from Western Europe, I would suspect that we see “Western” influence reflected in Maronite edifices, mosaics, frescoes, and so forth.

MI: Especially in the 13th century, the oriental Christian communities enjoyed an impressive cultural flourishing which came to expression in the embellishment of churches with wall paintings, icons, sculpture, and woodwork and the production of illustrated manuscripts, but what remains today differs from on one community or region to another. In Lebanon, several dozens of decorated Maronite and Greek Orthodox churches are encountered in mountain villages and small towns in the vicinity of Jbeil (Byblos), Tripoli, the Qadisha Valley, and by exception in Beirut, but only a few still preserve substantial parts of their medieval decoration programs. Most churches fell into decay after the Christian cultural downfall in the early 14th century when the pressure to convert became stronger. While many church buildings were left in the state they were, others were renovated in the Ottoman period or more recently.

Christian Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, c. 1000

Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)

Remarkably Oriental Christian art displays broad uniformity with some regional and denominational differences. Cut off from the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire after the Arab conquest, it also escaped from the Byzantine iconoclastic movement (726-843 CE), which allowed the Middle Eastern Christians to develop their artistic legacy in their own way. An appealing subject is the introduction of warrior saints on horseback such as George and Theodore from about the 8th century. The West and the Byzantine Empire had to wait until the Crusader era to pick up this oriental motif and make it a worldwide success. But the borrowing was mutual. Mounted saints painted in Maronite, Melkite (Greek Orthodox), and Syriac Orthodox churches would increasingly be equipped with a chain coat and rendered with their feet in a forward thrust position, a battle technique developed within Norman military circles. Moreover, the Syrian equestrian saints Sergius and Bacchus were rendered holding a crossed ‘crusader’ banner, an attribute usually associated with Saint George, as if they were Crusader knights. Apart from these examples, there is little evidence of Oriental susceptibility to typically Latin subjects. We find Saint Lawrence of Rome represented in the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Our Lady near Kaftun, but this is exceptional.

Normally, one cannot tell from wall paintings in Lebanon to which community the church in question belonged. They all represented the same subjects and saints whose names are written in Greek and/or Syriac and may have recruited painters from the same artistic circles. Regarding architecture, the last word has not been said on this matter, because the documentation of medieval Lebanese church architecture is still in progress. Nevertheless, the build of some churches undeniably displays Western architectural influences; for example, the Maronite Church of Saint Sabas in Eddé al-Batrun is even plainly Romanesque in style.

JBW: Following my last question, is it then correct to assume that the Crusader lands – Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli, and Jerusalem – were quite receptive to Eastern Christian styles?

MI: That is difficult to tell because there is next to nothing left in the former County of Edessa and the Principality of Antioch. We do have some decorated churches in the former Kingdom of Jerusalem (Abu Gosh, Bethlehem), and here we see a strong focus on Byzantine craftsmanship and Latin usage. Apart from the preserved church embellishment in the Lebanese mountains, there are some fascinating, stylistically and thematically comparable instances across the border with Syria.

Saint Peter in Sinai

Wikipedia (Public Domain)

Although situated within Muslim territory, the Qalamun District between Damascus and Homs stands out for its well-established Greek Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox populations; and from the 18th century onwards, also Greek Catholics and Syrian Catholics. Interestingly, stylistic characteristics confirm that indigenous Syrian painters were also involved in the decoration inside Crusader fortresses such as Crac des Chevaliers and Margat Castle in Syria. It was obviously easier to contract local manpower than to find specialists in Europe.

JBW: The Byzantine Empire exuded tremendous political, cultural, and religious sway across the Levant throughout the Middle Ages; a sizable chunk of the Christian population in both Syria and Lebanon still adheres to the rituals of the Greek Orthodox Church even today.

MI: Leaving aside the cultural foundations laid before the Arab conquest, the contemporary Byzantine influences can hardly be overlooked. In the 12th and 13th centuries, itinerating Byzantine-trained painters worked on behalf of any well-paying client within Frankish and Muslim territory, from Cairo to Tabriz, irrespective of their denominational background. This partly explains the introduction of some ‘fashionable’ Byzantine subjects and the Byzantine brushwork of several mural paintings and icons. Made in the 1160s, the Byzantine-style mosaics in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem are believed to be the result of Latin-Byzantine cooperation at the highest levels; they exhale the propagandistic message of Christian unity. In 1204, however, the Crusaders would conquer Constantinople and substantial parts of the Byzantine Empire. The Venetians brought the bounty to Venice, and, surprisingly, also to Alexandria with the consent of the sultan in Cairo, intending to sell the objects in the Middle East. So much for Christian unity…

The Eastern Greek Orthodox Church has its roots in the Chalcedonian dispute about the human and divine nature of Christ in 451, which resulted in the dogmatic breakdown of the Byzantine Church into pro- and anti-Chalcedonian factions. Like the Maronites, the Melkites (‘royalists’) remained faithful to the former, official Byzantine standpoint, except for their oriental patriarchs in Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem were officially allowed autonomy without direct interference from Constantinople. On the other hand, the Syriac Orthodox became dogmatically affiliated with the identically ‘Miaphysite’ Coptic, Ethiopian, and Armenian Churches. To complicate matters even more, part of the Greek Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox communities joined the Church of Rome in the 18th century. This resulted in the establishment of the Greek Catholic and Syriac Catholic Churches.

The Church of Nativity, Bethlehem

Konrad von Grünenberg (Public Domain)

JBW: Could you tell us a little bit more with regard to the Syriac Orthodox Church? If I’m not mistaken, there was a flourishing of the building of churches and monasteries by Syriac Orthodox communities once they fell under Muslim rule around 640.

MI: As a Miaphysite community, the Syriac Orthodox enjoyed the same protected status as other non-Muslim communities under Muslim rule. This allowed them to establish an independent Church hierarchy headed by their patriarch who nominally resided in Antioch, which covered large areas in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Some of their oldest churches, with architectural sculpture and occasionally a mosaic, are situated in the Tur Abdin region in Southeast Turkey. Remarkably, around the year 800, a group of monks from the city of Takrit (present-day Tikrit in Iraq) migrated to Egypt to establish a Syriac ‘colony’ within the Coptic monastic community. Their ‘Monastery of the Syrians’ (Deir al-Surian) still exists and is one of Middle Eastern Christianity’s key monuments for its architecture, wall paintings, icons, wood- and plasterwork ranging in date from the 7th to the 13th centuries. The monastery also houses an extensive manuscript collection. Another decorated monastery is the Monastery of St Moses (Deir Mar Musa; presently Syriac Catholic) near Nebk to the north of Damascus, where paintings from the 11th and 13th-centuries can still be seen. The Monastery of St Behnam (Deir Mar Behnam; presently Syriac Catholic) near Mosul is reputed for its 13th-century architectural sculpture and unique stucco relief, but unfortunately, a lot has been destroyed by ISIS warriors.

The Syriac Orthodox presence in Lebanon remained limited to a church dedicated to Saint Behnam in Tripoli, and the temporary use of a Maronite church dedicated to St Theodore at the village of Bahdeidat by refugees from the East who were on the run from the Mongols during the 1250s. This church still displays its complete decoration program from this period. It is impossible to tell which community arranged the refurbishment, but the addition of a donor figure in Western dress testifies to support from a (probably) local Frankish lord. Finally, the Syriac Orthodox also excelled in manuscript illumination, examples of which can be found in Western collections and the patriarchal library near Damascus.

JBW: As the Lebanese and Syrian Greek Orthodox Churches had fewer dealings with Western Europeans than the Maronite Church, does medieval Christian Orthodox art in Lebanon and Syria reflect and maintain the designs and styles of medieval Byzantium? If so, in what ways, and where do we see deviation or innovation?

MI: As I said before, Byzantine-trained artists have been surprisingly active in the Frankish states and beyond, especially during the 13th century. I prefer to label them as “Byzantine-trained” instead of “Byzantine,” because it is not always clear where they came from. To mention an example, painters from Cyprus still worked in the Byzantine artistic tradition but no longer fell under the authority of the emperor after the Crusader conquest of the island in 1291. Culturally they were still fully Byzantine, but, speaking in modern terms, they would have had the Frankish-Cypriot nationality. The little we can say from the preserved paintings is that some Cypriot artists traveled to the Levant in the aftermath of the power change in search of new clientele. It is unknown if they stayed or returned after the accomplishment of their tasks, but around the mid-13th century we see the birth of a ‘Syrian-Cypriot’ style which combines Byzantine painting techniques with typically Syrian formal features and designs; for example, in the afore-mentioned Monastery at Kaftun in Lebanon. Typically, instances of this blended art are not only encountered in Lebanon and Syria but also in Cyprus.

The Virgin and Child Mosaic, Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia Research Team (CC BY-NC-SA)

Focusing on the shared elements in Oriental Christian and Byzantine art, the example of apse decorations illustrates the resemblances and often also subtle differences. From the Early Christian period, the common composition in the apse behind the altar consisted of the mystical appearance of Christ (Christ in Glory) between the Four Living Creatures in the conch and the Virgin between saints, such as the apostles and Church fathers, in the lower zone. However, an early variant encountered in Egypt renders the biblical Vision of Ezekiel: here, Christ in Glory is placed on the fiery chariot the prophet saw. Recent research has brought to light that this variant was also applied in Syriac Orthodox churches in Turkey and Iraq as late as the 13th century. Medieval oriental conch paintings often combine Christ in Glory with the Deesis, that is, the Virgin and St John the Baptist pleading in favour of mankind. Whereas the Byzantines kept these subjects separated, the ‘Deesis-Vision’ is encountered from Egypt to Armenia and Georgia in churches of all denominations

JBW: One cannot discuss medieval Christian art in the Near East without making some mention of Armenians and Georgians. The first recorded Armenian pilgrimage occurred in the early 4th century, and Armenian Cilicia (1080-1375) flourished at the time of the Crusades. During the reign of Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213), Georgia assumed the traditional role of the Byzantine crown as a protector of the Christians of the Middle East. Armenians and Georgians intermarried not only with one another but also with Byzantines and Crusaders.

Where is the medieval Armenian and Georgian presence the strongest in the Levant? Is it discernible?

Tomb of Saint Hripsime in Armenia

James Blake Wiener (CC BY-NC-SA)

MI: Medieval Armenian and Georgian art can be found in their homelands, but there are also surviving works testifying to their presence in the Levant and Egypt. Starting with the Armenians, they have always lived in groups dispersed throughout the Middle East, whereas in Jerusalem they have their own quarter. A 13th-century wooden door with typically Armenian ornamentation and inscriptions in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem testify to the interest Armenians took in the Holy Land. Further to the south, a 12th-century mural painting with Armenian inscriptions in the White Monastery near Sohag reminds us of the strong Armenian presence in Egypt under Fatimid rule during the 11th to 12th centuries. They had arrived in the wake of the rise of power of the Muslim Armenian warlord and later Vizir Badr al-Jamali, who seized all power in the Fatimid realm during the 1070s. He not only brought his own army consisting of Christian and Muslim Armenians but also made Egypt a safe home for Armenians from more troubled areas.

The Christian Armenians had their own monastery and used a number of churches in Egypt. However, these were appropriated by the Copts at the downfall of Fatimid power and the subsequent expulsion of all Armenians during the 1160s. The Armenian catholicos or head of Egypt is known to have left for Jerusalem taking with him all the church treasures.

At the White Monastery, a mural was made by an artist named Theodore originating from a village in Southeastern Turkey on behalf of Armenian miners who were apparently allowed to use the monastery’s church. It is hard to believe that Theodore came all the way to accomplish just one task in this remote place. There can be no doubt that he decorated more Armenian churches during his stay in Egypt, but the Copts thoroughly wiped out all remaining traces of their previous owners.

The Georgian presence was limited to Jerusalem, where they owned the Monastery of the Holy Cross until it was taken over by the Greek Orthodox in the 17th century. In the monastery’s church, a series of 14th-century paintings with Georgian inscriptions are a reminder of this period. In addition, an icon representing St George and scenes of his life painted during the early 13th century, and kept in the Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai, was a gift from a Georgian monk, who is himself depicted prostrating at the saint’s feet.

St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai

Marc!D (CC BY-NC-ND)

JBW: Because we touched upon the incorporation of outside artistic influences coming from Western Europe and Byzantium to the Levant, I wondered if you might offer a final comment or two on those architectural or artistic influences coming from the Arab World or even the wider Islamic world.

To what extent did Levantine Christians – who often lived near their Muslim neighbors – adopt or assimilate Islamic styles of art and architecture?

MI: The earliest examples of Islamic art from the Umayyad era display strong influences of Late Antiquity, which in turn had also been the source of inspiration to early Christian art. Over the course of time, these artistic relatives would gradually grow apart to meet again on specific occasions. The earliest example of Islamic-inspired Christian art is the purely ornamental stucco reliefs in the Monastery of the Syrians in Egypt. Constructed during the early 10th century by the Abbot Moses of Nisibis. Its plastered altar room exudes the same atmosphere as houses in the 9th-century Abbasid capital of Samarra and the similarly decorated Mosque of Ibn Tulun (an Abbasid prince who came to Egypt as its governor) in Cairo.

The Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Cairo Egypt

Berthold Werner (CC BY)

The decoration of Fatimid-era sanctuary screens in Coptic churches and woodwork from Egyptian Islamic, Jewish, and secular contexts are fully interchangeable; likewise, 13th-century architectural sculpture, manuscript illustrations, and metalwork from the Mosul area display the same shared stylistic and iconographic artistic language. Broadly speaking, we are obviously dealing with craftsmen working on behalf of different parties at the local level regardless of their religious backgrounds. Occasionally, one comes across ‘Islamic’ ornaments in wall paintings, but the overall impression is that Christian painting was subject to blatant conservatism when compared to more fashionable, ‘neutral’ items of interior decoration. The only Arabic inscriptions found in mural paintings concern texts commemorating building or refurbishment activities, or graffiti left by visitors. There obviously was a difference in status between the vernacular spoken language and the Church’s Greek and Syriac.

JBW: Dr. Mat Immerzeel, thanks so much for your time and consideration.

MI: You are welcome; it is my pleasure to contribute to your magazine.

Mat Immerzeel has been active in the Middle East since 1989, first in Egypt, then in Syria and Lebanon, and recently in Cyprus. His main field of study is the material culture of Oriental Christian communities from the 3rd century to the present. In particular, he studies wall paintings, icons, stone and plaster sculpture, woodwork, and manuscript illustrations. He has participated in research projects focusing on the formation of religious communal identity, the training of local collection curators, and restoration and documentation campaigns. He is the Director of the Paul van Moorsel Centre for Christian Art and Culture in the Middle East and editor-in-chief of the journal Eastern Christian Art (ECA) published by Peeters Publishers in Leuven, the Netherlands.

Continue reading...

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

Fascinating long Covid research study from the Netherlands published in early January. Image is from Guardian article: "Long Covid causes changes in body that make exercise debilitating – study. Experts say severe muscle damage, mitochondrial problems and microclots may explain impact of working out"

Full research paper can be read here: "Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID"

"This study highlights novel pathways that help to understand the pathophysiology of post-exertional malaise in patients suffering from long COVID and other post-infectious diseases."

Press release:

Discussion thread on the Science for ME forum

Twitter thread by corresponding author:

Includes: "We are now seeing if something similar happens in patients with ME, and hope to include muscle biopsies from patients with severe ME as well in the near future"

"This collaboration between @amsterdamumc, @VUamsterdam , @VU_FGB, and @AMSmovement would not have been possible without the help of so many students, colleagues, and private funders. We also acknowledge the contribution of @PlzSolveCFS , Patient-Led Research Collaborative , and @ZonMw for future work! 2/m"

"Professor Steve Griffin, of Leeds University, said the study suggests “the approach to treating conditions such as long Covid, ME and CFS [myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome] using graded exercise regimens is entirely flawed. Moreover, it appears that over-exercising under these circumstances is actually directly damaging”."

[willowreader]

Fatigue is one of the most debilitating symptoms of long covid. I hope some progress can be made towards a cure.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Uncovering the role of oxygen concentration in the formation of early earth magma ocean

It is widely accepted that the early Earth largely consisted of molten magma, forming a global ocean of magma. This extreme state of Earth was likely caused by the intense heat generated from accretionary impacts, meaning the collision of smaller celestial bodies with Earth. Understanding the formation of this magma ocean is crucial for comprehending Earth’s formation. A major problem with current magma ocean formation models is the lack of consensus on the melting temperatures of deep mantle rocks. Models explaining Earth’s core formation use a specific set of experimental data to estimate mantle melting temperatures, but recent experiments have shown that these temperatures may differ by 200–250 °C from the previously accepted data.

Some studies indicate that oxygen fugacity, or the amount of oxygen available in the mantle, may strongly affect the melting temperatures of deep mantle rocks, which in turn may have influenced the formation of the magma ocean. The mantle’s oxygen fugacity is thought to have increased during accretion, core formation and subsequent mantle evolution; however, the effect of this increase on the melting temperatures of deep mantle materials remains unclear.

Addressing this gap, a team of researchers led by Associate Professor Takayuki Ishii from the Institute for Planetary Materials at Okayama University, Japan and Dr. Yanhao Lin from the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, China, investigated the effects of oxygen fugacity on magma ocean formation during early Earth evolution. “The evolution of early Earth has been greatly influenced by oxygen fugacity, which may necessitate the reconsideration of current models. To this end, we assessed the effect of oxygen fugacity on the melting temperatures of deep mantle materials to constrain the conditions at the floor of a deep terrestrial magma ocean,” explains Prof. Ishii.

The study also involved Professor Wim van Westrenen from the Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Professor Tomoo Katsura from Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth, Germany, and Dr. Ho-Kwang Mao from the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, China. It was published online in the journal Nature Geoscience on July 16, 2024.

The researchers conducted melting experiments at pressures of 16–26 Gigapascals, similar to mantle depths between 470 km and 720 km, at high oxygen fugacities, on mantle pyrolite, a material composition representing Earth’s mantle. Results revealed that over this pressure range, the melting temperatures decreased with increasing oxygen fugacity and were at least 230–450 °C lower than those from experiments conducted at low oxygen fugacities. Assuming a constant temperature for the magma ocean, this implies that the magma ocean floor deepens by about 60 km for each logarithmic unit increase in mantle oxygen fugacity. This strong influence of oxygen fugacity on mantle melting suggests that current models for early Earth thermal evolution and core formation need re-evaluation.

Furthermore, these results can also explain the apparent discrepancy between the low oxygen fugacities predicted for the Earth’s deep mantle post-core formation and the high oxygen fugacities observed in magmatic rocks over 3 billion years old, formed by melting of the deep mantle.

“Beyond Earth’s formation, our findings on the dependence of melting temperatures on oxygen fugacity can also be applied to understand the formation of other rocky planets that can support human life,” remarks Dr. Lin, highlighting the potential impact of the study. He adds, “For example, these results can improve our understanding of Mars, which is a recent hot topic regarding human habitability.”

This groundbreaking study promises to improve Earth formation models, deepening our understanding of the formation of Earth and other such planets.

IMAGE: The melting temperatures of deep mantle rocks decrease with an increase in mantle oxygen concentration, suggesting the need for re-evaluation of current Earth core formation and thermal evolution models. Credit Takayuki Ishii from Okayama University

[mariacallous]

Humans have long sullied the Arctic with industrial development—mining operations, oil and gas exploration, military bases. That’s contaminated the landscape with a bevy of toxicants, including radiological material, heavy metals, insecticides, and fuels. That nastiness was often intentionally buried in frozen ground known as permafrost. In theory, as long as that ground remained frozen, the pollutants would stay locked away.

No longer. An alarming new paper in the journal Nature Communications estimates that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are splayed across Arctic permafrost regions, with 3,500 to 5,200 in areas that’ll be affected by thawing soils before the end of the century. The region is already warming rapidly, more than four times faster than the rest of the planet. And that estimated number of sites is likely low, the scientists warn, because thaw might dramatically accelerate in some places. 

As permafrost degrades, it collapses, releasing buried contaminants that flow out in the melted ice. The ground sinks—often spectacularly and rapidly—dragging down aboveground infrastructure like fuel tanks and pipelines. Indeed, that was the suspected cause of a 2020 environmental disaster in Norilsk, Russia, in which 17,000 tons of oil leaked from a collapsed tank.

“The assumption is that permafrost is a hydrological barrier, and it will remain there forever,” says permafrost researcher Moritz Langer, of the Alfred Wegener Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, lead author of the new paper. “That was the assumption for all of these very old sites—especially from the ‘70s, ‘80s, up until the ‘90s—when climate warming and the problem of permafrost thaw was not really on the radar of most people.”

Langer and his colleagues found that 70 percent of these sites are in Russia, with others across Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Some facilities are abandoned and difficult to access and clean up. Others are still operational, and producing yet more toxicants to leak into the environment. (The new paper doesn’t distinguish, though, exactly which sites are which.) As the Arctic warms, expect industrial and military development to creep farther north, adding more contaminants while putting more people in contact with them. And the mushier the soil gets, the harder it will be to use heavy equipment to clean up the messes.

“This idea that somehow we have, functionally, a number of potential Superfund sites that were completely unknown until this paper, but could be mobilizing into the Arctic and potentially international environment, is pretty terrifying,” says Kimberley R. Miner, a climate scientist who studies permafrost contamination at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “To see them take that idea and apply it to actual maps and get actual sites, with permafrost disturbance underneath, was so mind-blowing to me.”

Existing sites are already plagued by a slew of environmental troubles. Oil leaks come from both wells and from pipelines. Radioactive material is buried around military bases. Pesticides like DDT are packed in barrels, then buried. Mining operations are notorious for emitting heavy metals like mercury; other sites are full of arsenic, lead, and other highly toxic elements and compounds. Trucks and heavy machinery carry liquid fuels like diesel, which are prone to spill. 

Once the ground is no longer frozen enough to form a barrier, those contaminants will seep into rivers and ponds, corrupting highly sensitive ecosystems. “This, we think, could also be a dangerous situation for people living up in the high north,” says Langer, as the contaminants mix with drinking water.

That water will eventually empty into the ocean and ride elsewhere on currents. Toxicants can also get airborne: Indeed, the Arctic is already dusted with lead from burning leaded gasoline. Mercury, too, could escape mining operations by taking to water and air. “Mercury that came from the burning of coal and fossil fuels from a century or two centuries ago is still cycling through our biosphere,” says Kevin Schaefer, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies permafrost contaminants but wasn’t involved in the new paper.

Human activity in the Arctic only exacerbates the thaw. Dark-colored roads absorb the sun’s energy, heating the soil. Digging up dirt and tossing it on top of snow darkens the whiteness that would normally bounce light off the landscape. Vehicle tires chew up the soil. “You already have rapidly changing environmental conditions,” says George Washington University climate scientist Dmitry Streletskiy, who studies permafrost but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “But then, of course, on top of those rapid changes, you have concentrated human presence—you have industry and infrastructure. So those are really focal points, where you in many ways amplify those changes associated with climate."

Oh, and the giant new Willow drilling project in Alaska that the Biden administration just approved? That’ll be on permafrost too. “Think about what it takes to establish a pipeline,” says Miner. “You're going to need a road. You're going to have people walking in and out, trampling the permafrost. All of that is going to lead to increased thaw and increased potential for contamination and disturbances to the very fragile tundra landscape. So it's just impacts upon impacts upon impacts.”

This new paper only considered gradual permafrost thaw. But permafrost can collapse much more rapidly, digging holes known as thermokarst. As ice becomes liquid water, it loses volume, forming a crater in which microbes produce the highly potent greenhouse gas methane. This further warms the atmosphere and accelerates permafrost thaw—a gnarly climatic feedback loop.

Adding yet more peril is that as the Arctic warms, wildfires are proliferating. If one sweeps through a contaminated site, it’ll send up plumes of toxicant-laden smoke. That will in turn exacerbate the thaw: Scientists have previously calculated that in north Alaska, thermokarst formation has accelerated by 60 percent since 1950, thanks to wildfires.

In other words, Langer says, their paper’s projection is “pretty conservative.” Some of the sites might thaw even earlier.

Permafrost is already deforming communities in the far north. Airport runways are sinking, roads are wrinkling, and buildings are crumbling. “It's no longer some ambiguous thing that might happen in the future—it's happening today, even as we speak,” says Schaefer. “If this infrastructure becomes damaged because of thawing permafrost, it's extremely expensive and extremely difficult to resolve. These areas are very remote. You can only do things in certain times of the year, mainly the summer.” 

If thermokarst opens a hole in your runway, for instance, it might cut off surrounding communities that rely on supplies brought in by plane. And if you can’t fly, you can’t get out of many places around the Arctic. “It's not like the Lower 48—if I don't make it to Denver, I'll fly to Colorado Springs,” says Schaefer. “These are all really key infrastructure, and it's really difficult to build and maintain.”

But this new paper is at least a step toward localizing the problem, directing governments to where cleanup might be required. Early scientific sleuthing like this is a start, but a fix will take putting a lot of boots on increasingly soggy ground. “In order to manage something, you have to measure it,” says Miner. The next step would take a massive push—one like the US Environmental Protection Agency began in the 1980s to clean up Superfund sites. But with such a patchwork of nations and corporations responsible for the mess, it’s not clear when—or if—that work would start.

[merovingian-marvels]

Payment in Silver

Coins were truly a Roman matter. They existed during the Germanic age, but were not used as actual currency. Coins were a status object, with coins sometimes even being worn as jewerly, to emphasize said status. Although trading goods was one of the most important methods of payment, the late Merovingians and during the entire Viking age, silver was used as currency.

Not in the shape of coins, but rather long thin strips of silver which was literally worth its weight. Payment consisted of breaking of bits and weighing them.

The only coin currency used may have been with and by traders from the Arabian Peninsula, as many Dirham coins have been found in Viking Age Scandinavia. The silver itself was imported by Arabs, due to the lack of minable metal in Europe. Tacitus mentions it in his writings, stating "he doesnt know what the Germans did to anger the gods that there are no precious metals to be mined in Germania"

Depot unknown

Found in Tiel Passewaaij, Gelderland - The Netherlands

Image copyright:

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam - Stijn Heeren en J. Roymans

Stephan Weiss-König, CC-BY-NC-SA

[bpod-bpod]

Diabetes-beating Betas

Interim results of a clinical trial of pancreatic precursor cells encapsulated in a device as treatment for Type I diabetes: analysis of resulting β cell function and control of glucose levels

Read the published research paper here

Image from work by Bart Keymeulen and colleagues

Diabetes Research Center, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Biotechnology, November 2023

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

[dertaglichedan]

COVID vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths since pandemic: study

COVID vaccines could be partly to blame for a rise in “unprecedented” excess deaths in the US and other Western countries in the three years since the pandemic took hold, a new study suggests.

Analyzing mortality data from 47 Western countries, scientists from the Netherlands’ Vrije Universiteit found that excess mortality has “remained high” since 2020 — despite the widespread rollout of COVID vaccines and various containment measures.

The researchers said the trend “raised serious concerns” as they urged government leaders and policymakers to “thoroughly investigate the underlying causes of persistent excess mortality,” according to the study published in BMJ Public Health.

Vrije Universiteit ranks 150th out of more than 20,000 universities globally, according to the Center for World University Rankings.

...

“Both medical professionals and citizens have reported serious injuries and deaths following vaccination to various official databases in the Western World.”

“During the pandemic, it was emphasized by politicians and the media on a daily basis that every Covid-19 death mattered and every life deserved protection through containment measures and Covid-19 vaccines. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the same moral should apply,” they added.

The study found there had been more than 3 million excess deaths across the US, Europe and Australia since 2020.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Using lignin and a catalyst to create an alternative to bisphenol A (BPA)

A team of microbiologists and chemists at the Center for Sustainable Catalysis and Engineering, working with colleagues from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research and Rheology and Technology (SMaRT), KU Leuven, all in Belgium, has developed a replacement for bisphenol A, a compound used to make plastics. In their paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the group describes their lignin-based process and its performance. Bert Weckhuysen, with Utrecht University, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team on this new effort. Also, the editors at Nature have published a Research Highlight report in the same journal issue summarizing the work. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic, organic compound that is used to make a wide variety of polymers and epoxy resins, which means that it is used to produce different kinds of plastics. When used in such a fashion, it remains in the finished product. Prior research has shown that in some products, BPA can be released during use, such as when drinking from a plastic bottle, and it is also released when the material is heated.

Read more.

[storiesfromthevub]

Overly emotional students or VUB’s culture?

“I have never seen so many professors make their students cry. And everyone acts like it’s normal. For me it is not normal.” -anonymous masters student at the VUB

[beardedmrbean]

Taiwan is seeking to open a representative office in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, drawing the ire of China, whose ambassador has threatened to withdraw from the Baltic country if the plan goes through.

Guo Xiaomei, the Chinese envoy, delivered the warning during a meeting with the chairman of the Estonia-China parliamentary group, Toomas Kivimagi.

China says the office would be a breach of its "one China" policy, which requires countries it has relations with to acknowledge that the People's Republic of China, and not Taiwan, is the legal representative of "China." Beijing also claims sovereignty over Taiwan, although the Chinese Communist Party government has never ruled there.

"We firmly oppose any form of official interaction between the Taiwan region and countries having diplomatic ties with China and oppose any action supporting Taiwan independence separatist forces," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at Wednesday's regular press conference.

However, leaders in the country of 1.3 million people say the office, with functions limited to economic and cultural services—not diplomatic ones—does not violate its commitments to China. It would also reportedly be opened in the name of "Taipei" rather than "Taiwan"—which is considered less controversial.

"Estonia does not recognize Taiwan as a state. As part of the 'One China Policy,' we are not developing political relations with Taiwan," Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in a statement shared with Newsweek.

"At the same time, we consider it important to boost relations in domains such as the economy, education, culture, relations between NGOs, and other similar fields. We also support Taiwan's participation in international life in areas of global importance, such as the fight against pandemics and Taiwan's attendance at the World Health Assembly," he added.

Due to Chinese pressure, Taiwan has not in recent years been allowed to join meetings of the World Health Organization's decision-making body, even as an observer.

Although the country values "a constructive relationship with Beijing," Tsahkna said it's also important to safeguard national values like democracy and human rights.

Estonia and Taiwan have "affirmed establishing an office is of great significance to strengthening bilateral exchanges, but we have not yet reached a consensus," Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jeff Liu told Newsweek on Thursday.

Liu said he had no comment on the China's relationship with Estonia.

Estonia isn't the first Baltic country to draw China's ire over a Taiwan office. After Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open one in 2021, Beijing hit the country with tariffs, including secondary sanctions on companies from third countries, like Germany, that sourced Lithuanian parts for their products.

The move didn't have the desired effect. Lithuania had limited exposure to the Chinese economy due to a relatively low amount of bilateral trade.

In addition, the European Union rallied around its member. The 27-country bloc accused China of "coercion" and asked the World Trade Organization to intervene.

"Lithuania's decision to turn to Taiwan, away from China, set a precedent for its Baltic neighbors facing similar threats from China—and Russia. But the EU's response to Beijing's coercion against Lithuania also set a precedent for joint EU-level response to coercion, sending a message to Beijing that the bloc is ready to protect the interests of its member states against external pressure," Zsuzsa Ferenczy, a former political adviser to the European Parliament and an associate researcher for Belgian university Vrije Universiteit Brussel, told Newsweek.

Ferenczy said this resolve has only been strengthened in light of the support China has shown for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that it's not in Beijing's interests to once again take serious action against an EU member on this issue.

"While Beijing will protest against any embrace of Taiwan, it has also been trying to rebuild the damage its coercion against Lithuania has done to EU-China ties. Beijing's response will tell whether it has learned from the lesson," she said.

When China issued its warning to Estonia, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu was in the country as part of a six-day tour of the Baltic states.

"We may be small, but a strong bond of democracies can make us mightier than we could ever imagine," Wu proclaimed in a speech in Tallinn on Wednesday.