China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) issued notice on Thursday, saying that investigating authorities will use a sampling method in anti-dumping probe into EU pork, while providing further details on the sampling plan and the preliminary sampling results for anti-dumping case involving pork and pig by-products from Europe.
Given the large number of EU exporters and Chinese domestic producers involved, a full investigation would overburden investigating authorities and prevent the timely completion of the investigation, according to a ministry notice. Therefore, in accordance with the relevant provisions of corresponding domestic rules and regulations, the investigative authority decided on the sampling approach.
Companies are selected for sampling based on their export quantities to China during the dumping investigation period, with the top three exporters in terms of export quantity selected, the notice read.
Based on initial sampling, the investigation identified the top three EU exporters by export volume during the investigation period. These exporters are Danish Crown A/S, VION Boxtel B.V., and LITERA MEAT S.L.U., have been instructed to complete a questionnaire within a specified timeframe.
The announcement came as the European Commission (EC), the executive body of the EU, announced to impose additional tariffs of up to 38.1 percent on electric vehicles (EVs) imported from China starting in July, which prompted harsh criticism from Chinese officials as well as industry and business groups. Chinese officials have repeatedly vowed to take all necessary measures to defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.
In a notice issued on June 17, MOFCOM said that the China Animal Agriculture Association on June 6, on behalf of the Chinese pork and pig by-products industry, submitted an application for an anti-dumping investigation into certain pork and pig by-products originating from the EU. After a review of the application, MOFCOM determined that it meets the requirements for launching an investigation in accordance with the relevant laws.
The probe will examine certain pork and pig by-products originating from the EU from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.
It will also investigate any damage done to domestic Chinese industry from between January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2023.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the investigation agency selected the top 20 enterprises in terms of pig slaughter volume in the country in 2023 as sampling enterprises.
The total slaughter volume of the 24 sampled enterprises in 2023 was approximately 44.78 million pigs, accounting for 6.16 percent of the national pig slaughter volume last year.
The probe is expected to end before June 17, 2025, but may be extended for half a year under special circumstances.
"Starting from 2023, the EU's exports of certain pork and pig by-products to China have increased significantly, making it necessary to investigate pricing factors in accordance with WTO rules," Cui Hongjian, a professor from the Academy of Regional and Global Governance under Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times in a previous interview.
Chinese analysts said that the MOFCOM probe was launched at the request of the domestic industry in line with WTO rules, in stark contrast to the actions of the European Commission’s investigation, which was launched without an application from relevant domestic industry groups in the EU, while the investigation process was unfair, non-objective and in potential violation of WTO rules.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released on Tuesday an update to its World Economic Outlook, predicting that China's economic growth rate will be 5 percent in 2024, an upward revision of 0.4 percentage points from the forecast in April.
The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) started its third plenary session in Beijing on Monday morning.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, delivered a work report on behalf of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and expounded on a draft decision of the CPC Central Committee on further comprehensively deepening reform and advancing Chinese modernization.
Despite the fallacies of the illegal South China Sea Arbitration Award released on July 12, 2016 being exposed, the Philippines continues to ignore the truth and instead celebrated the so-called "8th anniversary"of the illegal arbitration award with Western allies on Friday. Analysts called it a "political show" that is simply a way to perpetuate the "China threat" rhetoric and manipulate international perception in order to constrain China on the South China Sea issue.
Local media reported that the Philippines hosted an alleged "biggest-ever West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) conference" in Manila on July 12, which was attended by key military leaders, ambassadors and experts from the US, Australia, Canada, France, and Japan.
The US and the EU have issued statements to express support for the illegal arbitral award, which violates China's sovereignty.
In response to the statements, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Friday that the US selfishly refuses to accede to UNCLOS, and yet often lectures other countries on their implementation of UNCLOS. This is hypocrisy, double standard and selective application of international law.
The US has gone back on its public commitments of not taking a position on sovereignty issues in the South China Sea. It encouraged the Philippines to launch the arbitration on the South China Sea, and blatantly released a statement to endorse the award. This is political manipulation aimed at using allies to destabilize the South China Sea and the region and advance the nefarious agenda of going after China, Lin said.
With the concerted efforts of China and ASEAN members, the South China Sea has been generally stable. China will work with ASEAN members to keep the South China Sea peaceful and stable, and contribute to regional prosperity and development, the spokesperson said.
Lin urged countries outside the region led by the US to earnestly respect these efforts, refrain from statements and actions that disrupt regional peace and stability, and stop being a troublemaker in the South China Sea.
Experts are urging the Philippines to abandon the illusion of being a "winner" in the ruling and to stop relying on it to handle disputes.
Scholars also stressed the importance of remaining vigilant against the Philippines potentially inviting additional external forces to meddle with the South China Sea issue, as this could heighten the risk of military conflicts.
Arbitration is a manipulated trap
Chinese institutes released a report on Thursday thoroughly outlining the fallacies of the South China Sea Arbitration Award and the damage it does to the international rule of law. It explains why the Philippines' claims are illegal, and why the arbitration award cannot be accepted.
The report pointed out that Nanhai Zhudao (South China Sea islands) are China's inherent territory, and that the Philippines' territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of both history and international law.
Neither the international treaties that established the territorial boundaries of the Philippines nor the Philippine Constitution prior to 1997 included the Nansha Islands or Huangyan Island in the Philippine territory. For many years after the end of World War II, the US, an ally of the Philippines, recognized China's sovereignty over the Nansha Islands in diplomatic correspondence, applications for surveys, and notification of navigational overflight plans. Maps and books published by the US during the same period all recognized China's sovereignty over these islands in the South China Sea.
"With a well-recorded history and hard evidence, the Arbitration Award cannot give legitimacy to the Philippines' illegal claims in the South China Sea. Rather, it exposes the rogue logic of the Philippines as a thief shouting 'stop the thief'," Ding Duo, a deputy director of the Institute of Maritime Law and Policy at the China Institute for South China Sea Studies, told the Global Times.
Backed by the Arbitration Award and a small number of non-regional countries, the Philippines calls white black and confuses right and wrong. The US has incited the Philippines and even showed it how to escalate tensions step by step with China. This is the main reason behind the growing tensions in the South China Sea, said the scholar.
The Philippines and the US held a high-profile "commemoration" of the Arbitration Award, precisely demonstrating that the South China Sea arbitration case is a trap manipulated by the US, initiated by the Philippines, and carried out in collusion with the arbitral tribunal in the Hague, he argued.
Ding said that fallacies in the arbitration ruling regarding the interpretation of treaties, determination of facts, and acceptance of evidence have been widely questioned and criticized, and its political manipulation is truly obvious.
Introducing external risks and chaos
As more extraterritorial countries have increased their military activities in the South China Sea and intensified unilateral actions to consolidate their vested interests, concerns are rising that the Philippines is introducing more external risks into the region.
Japan and the Philippines signed a defense agreement on Monday that allows the deployment of Japanese forces for joint drills in the Philippines, according to media reports. Furthermore, it is evident from the first ever US-Japan-Philippines trilateral summit held in Washington in April that a new military confrontation bloc is forming.
The alliance and military cooperation between the three countries are strengthening, bringing risks into the entire South China Sea region in the Western Pacific, Wu Shicun, the chairman of the Huayang Research Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, told the Global Times.
Meanwhile, the US has continued to strengthen its military activities on China's doorstep in the South China Sea and surrounding areas. A think tank report released in March revealed that the US heightened deployment of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and bombers, holding intensified close-in reconnaissance operations, and holding joint exercises in 2023, which posed growing risks to China-US relations.
Following the US, Japan will become a new challenge and risk factor in the South China Sea. This will lower the threshold for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to enter the South China Sea and Philippine military bases, providing great convenience for Japan to provide weapons, equipment, and training support to the Philippines. There is now a higher possibility of a new arms race and small-scale conflicts in the region, Wu warned.
In less than two years, the current Philippine government has nearly dismantled the good practices established over recent years for managing maritime differences and properly handling the South China Sea issue between China and the Philippines. The bilateral relationship, which had gradually emerged from the shadow of the illegal South China Sea arbitration ruling, now appears to have reset and is even regressing, Wu said.
In a previous exclusive interview with the Global Times, former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte expressed regret over the current Philippine government's approach and policies on the South China Sea issue. He said he felt "very sad" about the loss of the peace during his administration, and called for both countries to resolve disputes through peaceful dialogue.
China has a growing capability, with rock solid resolve, to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea, Ding stressed. "The countermeasures against the Philippines and the costs it has borne fully demonstrate that expecting China to accept a unilateral ruling under comprehensive pressure on the South China Sea issue is a fantasy. The Philippines will end up with swallowing the bitter consequences," said Ding.
China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) released on Friday a case involving a foreign spy intelligence agency using campus loans to pressure and threaten a student borrower through high-interest loans, violent debt collection, and intimidation in order to steal national secrets from China.
According to a microfilm released by MSS, An Yong, a photography student at a prestigious university, fell into financial distress after spending a large amount of money on high-end equipment.
An then applied for a 20,000 yuan ($2,753) campus loan with a high interest rate, which he failed to repay. As graduation approached, the lender, Li Ming, demanded An to work part-time to repay the debt, but An didn't realize that Li and his accomplices are agents of a foreign spy intelligence agency.
An's father is a staff member of a key scientific research unit in China, and has access to documents and subjects involving state secrets. The agents' goal was to use the campus loan to coerce An to go to his father's unit and take photos of sensitive documents, and by threatening their future and reputation, blackmailed An and his father into cooperating with them to steal state secrets.
However, the documents that An photographed did not involve confidential substance. An's father eventually chose to call the national security hotline to report the incident.
An's father took the initiative to report the situation and cooperated with An to assist the national security authorities in thwarting the illegal plot of foreign spies to steal state secrets, avoiding irreparable and significant losses. The national security authorities seriously criticized and educated An and his father, and did not pursue criminal liability against them.
According to MSS, a person who commits the crime of espionage and surrenders or shows meritorious conduct may be mitigated, alleviated or exempted from punishment, and shall be rewarded if he or she shows significant meritorious conduct.
The State Grid Corporation of China recently completed the grid connection of GCL-Xin, Banqiao, and Datang energy storage power stations in Nanjing, located in East China's Jiangsu Province. These three new energy storage power stations on the side of the power grid can increase the short-term emergency peak capacity by 200,000 kilowatts for the Nanjing power grid, meeting the daily electricity demand of 50,000 households. This will also improve the new energy consumption capacity, save 64,000 tons of standard coal consumption, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 200,000 tons per year, learned the Global Times.
"The energy storage station will charge during the low load period, discharge to the grid during the peak period, and participate in grid interaction through grid frequency modulation and providing emergency backup power supply. This will not only promote peak load shifting and valley filling of the power grid, relieving power tension in local areas during peak periods of winter and summer electricity consumption, but also ensure the safe, stable, and green operation of the power system," said Deng Xing, the development department director of State Grid Nanjing Power Supply Company.
Banqiao Energy Storage Power Station is crucial for ensuring peak summer power supply for the Nanjing West Ring Network in 2024. It can store 200,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in a single charge, meeting the daily electricity demand of 25,000 households in the West Ring network during peak periods.
GCL Energy Storage Power Station, Banqiao Energy Storage Power Station, and Datang Energy Storage Power Station are the first power grid side energy storage power stations in Jiangning district, Yuhuatai district, and Lishui district of Nanjing, respectively. They utilize a lithium iron phosphate battery system, with one 110-kilovolt booster station and two 220-kilovolt booster stations built.
The State Grid Nanjing Power Supply Company has provided "one to one" guidance and "housekeeper" service for enterprises, conducting numerous field surveys to understand the construction progress. Additionally, they have collaborated with the Power Dispatch and Control Center of the State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Co., Ltd. to study and optimize energy storage charging and discharging strategies to maximize the role of energy storage in peak load shifting and valley filling.
In the future, the State Grid Nanjing Power Supply Company plans to continue optimizing the service process of energy storage projects, improving efficiency in all aspects, creating more new demonstration projects for energy storage, and aiding in the promotion of green and low-carbon transformation and the construction of a new power system, the company said.
Life on a volcanic isle appears to give barn owls a blush of red-brown plumage.
The high-sulfur environment on such islands influences the birds’ coloration, researchers report March 13 in the Journal of Biogeography. Darker feathers might also play a role in detoxifying harmful sulfur-based chemicals or help the owls blend in better with the islands’ humid, shadowy forest backdrop. The findings are among the first evidence that environmental sources of sulfur — such as the soil — can influence the color of integument like fur or feathers. Barn owls (Tyto alba) are found across most continents and on many islands. The owls’ plumage varies considerably across the globe, with bellies ranging from almost completely white to a much darker copper color.
In 2021, evolutionary ecologist Andrea Romano and his colleagues discovered that barn owls on some islands are paler than mainland populations. “However, such a difference disappears on small and remote islands and archipelagos, where in some cases, owls are darker than the continental ones,” says Romano, of the University of Milan.
The researchers wondered if there was something special about these smaller, more isolated islands that was causing a color pattern reversal in the owls: sulfur. Many of the remote islands are volcanic in origin, with volcanoes loading the air and soil with sulfur dioxide. Sulfur also has a crucial role in the development of some melanin pigments. For instance, pheomelanin — which is biochemically built using sulfur compounds — imparts a reddish hue in vertebrate soft tissues, while eumelanin, which creates blacks and dark browns, doesn’t rely on sulfur.
Some studies have linked sulfur-rich diets or artificial sulfur sources like pollution to plumage and fur color, Romano says. So the team hypothesized that a volcanic environment full of sulfur might encourage the owls to produce more pheomelanin, making their plumage darker.
The researchers examined the preserved, feather-covered skins of more than 2,000 barn owl museum specimens from dozens of island groups. They scored the relative redness of the owls’ belly plumage, finding an average color for each geographic location. On islands with sulfur-rich volcanic soils or recently active volcanoes — such as Sulawesi in Indonesia or the Canary Islands — the owls had darker, redder plumage than those on nonvolcanic islands such as Tasmania, the team found.
The influence of volcanic sulfur on barn owl colors explains less than 10 percent of the color variation, the researchers estimate. Other inputs like genetics play a major role. For instance, one gene called MC1R is responsible for as much as 70 percent of the color variation, says Thomas Kvalnes, an ecoevolutionary biologist at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research in Trondheim who was not involved with this study.
“Still there is variation left to explain, both within and between populations,” Kvalnes says. “This is where different environmental factors need to be taken into account.” It’s possible that sulfur-driven colors provide benefits to the owls, Romano says. Volcanic islands are often thick with vegetation supported by dark, fertile soil. Darker feathers might help the predatory owls disappear into their forest surroundings. The owls might also avoid the toxic effect of high sulfur exposure by shuttling a glut of sulfur into making more pheomelanin. Melanin has been previously tied to detoxifying pollutants in sea snakes, for instance (SN: 8/14/17).
Among birds, the connection between plumage color and volcanic sulfur might not be limited to just barn owls. Multiple bird species in Iceland, for example, are getting a pheomelanin boost from environmental sulfur, another group reported February 25 in the Journal of Ornithology. But some of these are migratory birds, Kvalnes points out, which dilutes the link between the local setting and the level of pigmentation.
It’s also possible the volcanic sulfur–pheomelanin relationship is even more widespread in vertebrates. “Studies on different species are highly needed to confirm whether this pattern is general,” Romano says. “Theoretically, however, the same process should apply to at least other birds and mammals.”
Romano is also interested in investigating how the sulfur is moving from the environment into the plumage pigmentation. Is it through the diet? The water? Maybe the air? “We know nothing about how sulfur reaches the soft tissues of this top predator,” he says.
A neutron star pileup may have emitted two different kinds of cosmic signals: ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves and a brief blip of energy called a fast radio burst.
One of the three detectors that make up the gravitational wave observatory LIGO picked up a signal from a cosmic collision on April 25, 2019. About 2.5 hours later, a fast radio burst detector picked up a signal from the same region of sky, researchers report March 27 in Nature Astronomy. If strengthened by further observations, the finding could bolster the theory that mysterious fast radio bursts have multiple origins — and neutron star mergers are one of them.
“We’re 99.5 percent sure” the two signals came from the same event, says astrophysicist Alexandra Moroianu, who spotted the merger and its aftermath while at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “We want to be 99.999 percent sure.”
Unfortunately, LIGO’s two other detectors didn’t catch the signal, so it’s impossible to precisely triangulate its location. “Even though it’s not a concrete, bang-on observation for something that’s been theorized for a decade, it’s the first evidence we’ve got,” Moroianu says. “If this is true … it’s going to be a big boom in fast radio burst science.”
Mysterious radio bursts Astronomers have spotted more than 600 fast radio bursts, or FRBs, since 2007. Despite their frequency, the causes remain a mystery. One leading candidate is a highly magnetized neutron star called a magnetar, which could be left behind after a massive star explodes (SN: 6/4/20). But some FRBs appear to repeat, while others are apparent one-off events, suggesting that there’s more than one way to produce them (SN: 2/7/20).
Theorists have wondered if a collision between two neutron stars could spark a singular FRB, before the wreckage from the collision produces a black hole. Such a smashup should emit gravitational waves, too (SN: 10/16/17).
Moroianu and colleagues searched archived data from LIGO and the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, a fast radio burst detector in British Columbia, to see if any of their signals lined up. The team found one candidate pairing: GW190425 and FRB20190425A. Even though the gravitational wave was picked up only by the LIGO detector in Livingston, La., the team spotted other suggestive signs that the signals were related. The FRB and the gravitational waves came from the same distance, about 370 million light-years from Earth. The gravitational waves were from the only neutron star merger LIGO spotted in that observing run, and the FRB was particularly bright. There may even have been a burst of gamma rays at the same time, according to satellite data — another aftereffect of a neutron star merger.
“Everything points at this being a very interesting combination of signals,” Moroianu says. She says it’s like watching a crime drama on TV: “You have so much evidence that anyone watching the TV show would be like, ‘Oh, I think he did it.’ But it’s not enough to convince the court.”
Neutron star secrets Despite the uncertainty, the finding has exciting implications, says astrophysicist Alessandra Corsi of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. One is the possibility that two neutron stars could merge into a single, extra-massive neutron star without immediately collapsing into a black hole. “There’s this fuzzy dividing line between what’s a neutron star and what’s a black hole,” says Corsi, who was not involved in the new work.
In 2013, astrophysicist Bing Zhang of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas suggested that a neutron star smashup could create an extra-massive neutron star that wobbles on the edge of stability for a few hours before collapsing into a black hole. In that case, the resulting FRB would be delayed — just like in the 2019 case.
The most massive neutron star yet observed is about 2.35 times the mass of the sun, but theorists think they could grow to be around three times the mass of the sun without collapsing (SN: 7/22/22). The neutron star that could have resulted from the collision in 2019 would have been 3.4 solar masses, Moroianu and colleagues calculate.
“Something like this, especially if it’s confirmed with more observations, it would definitely tell us something about how neutron matter behaves,” Corsi says. “The nice thing about this is we have hopes of testing this in the future.”
The next LIGO run is expected to start in May. Corsi is optimistic that more coincidences between gravitational waves and FRBs will show up, now that researchers know to look for them. “There should be a bright future ahead of us,” she says.
Most U.S. government attempts to quantify the costs and benefits of protecting the country’s bodies of water are likely undervaluing healthy lakes and rivers, researchers argue in a new study. That’s because some clean water benefits get left out of the analyses, sometimes because these benefits are difficult to pin numbers on. As a result, the apparent value of many environmental regulations is probably discounted.
The study, published online October 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surveyed 20 government reports analyzing the economic impacts of U.S. water pollution laws. Most of these laws have been enacted since 2000, when cost-benefit analyses became a requirement. Analysis of a measure for restricting river pollution, for example, might find that it increases costs for factories using that river for wastewater disposal, but boosts tourism revenues by drawing more kayakers and swimmers. Only two studies out of 20 showed the economic benefits of these laws exceeding the costs. That’s uncommon among analyses of environmental regulations, says study coauthor David Keiser, an environmental economist at Iowa State University in Ames. Usually, the benefits exceed the costs.
So why does water pollution regulation seem, on paper at least, like such a losing proposition?
Keiser has an explanation: Summing up the monetary benefits of environmental policies is really hard. Many of these benefits are intangible and don’t have clear market values. So deciding which benefits to count, and how to count them, can make a big difference in the results. Many analyses assume water will be filtered for drinking, Keiser says, so they don’t count the human health benefits of clean lakes and rivers (SN: 8/18/18, p. 14). That’s different from air pollution cost-benefit studies, which generally do include the health benefits of cleaner air by factoring in data tracking things like doctor’s visits or drug prescriptions. That could explain why Clean Air Act rules tend to get more favorable reviews, Keiser says — human health accounts for about 95 percent of the measured benefits of air quality regulations.
“You can avoid a lake with heavy, thick, toxic algal blooms,” Keiser says. “If you walk outside and have very polluted air, it’s harder to avoid.”
But even if people can avoid an algae-choked lake, they still pay a price for that pollution, says environmental scientist Thomas Bridgeman, director of the Lake Erie Center at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Communities that pull drinking water from a lake filled with toxic blooms of algae or cyanobacteria spend more to make the water safe to drink. Bridgeman’s seen it firsthand: In 2014, Lake Erie’s cyanobacteria blooms from phosphorus runoff shut down Toledo’s water supply for two days and forced the city to spend $500 million on water treatment upgrades.
Most of the studies surveyed by Keiser and his team were missing other kinds of benefits, too. The reports usually left out the value of eliminating certain toxic and nonconventional pollutants — molecules such as bisphenol A, or BPA, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA (SN: 10/3/15, p. 12). In high quantities, these compounds, which are used to make some plastics and nonstick coatings, can cause harm to humans and wildlife. Many studies also didn’t include discussion of how the quality of surface waters can affect groundwater, which is a major source of drinking water for many people.
A lack of data on water quality may also limit studies, Keiser’s team suggests. While there’s a national database tracking daily local air pollution levels, the data from various water quality monitoring programs aren’t centralized. That makes gathering and evaluating trends in water quality harder.
Plus, there are the intangibles — the value of aquatic species that are essential to the food chain, for example. “Some things are just inherently difficult to put a dollar [value] on,” says Robin Craig, an environmental law professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “What is it worth to have a healthy native ecosystem?… That’s where it can get very subjective very fast.”
That subjectivity can allow agencies to analyze policies in ways that suit their own political agendas, says Matthew Kotchen, an environmental economist at Yale University. An example: the wildly different assessments by the Obama and Trump administrations of the value gained from the 2015 Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States rule.
The rule, passed under President Barack Obama, clarified the definition of waters protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act to include tributaries and wetlands connected to larger bodies of water. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2015 that the rule would result in yearly economic benefits ranging from $300 million to $600 million, edging out the predicted annual costs of $200 million to $500 million. But in 2017, Trump’s EPA reanalyzed the rule and proposed rolling it back, saying that the agency had now calculated just $30 million to $70 million in annual benefits.
The difference in the conclusions came down to the consideration of wetlands: The 2015 analysis found that protecting wetlands, such as marshes and bogs that purify water, tallied up to $500 million in annual benefits. The Trump administration’s EPA, however, left wetlands out of the calculation entirely, says Kotchen, who analyzed the policy swing in Science in 2017.
Currently, the rule has gone into effect in 26 states, but is still tied up in legal challenges.
It’s an example of how methodology — and what counts as a benefit — can have a huge impact on the apparent value of environmental policies and laws.
The squishiness in analyzing environmental benefits underlies many of the Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks of Obama-era environmental legislation, not just ones about water pollution, Kotchen says. There are guidelines for how such cost-benefit analyses should be carried out, he says, but there’s still room for researchers or government agencies to choose what to include or exclude.
In June, the EPA, then under the leadership of Scott Pruitt, proposed revising the way the agency does cost-benefit analyses to no longer include so-called indirect benefits. For example, in evaluating policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the agency would ignore the fact that those measures also reduce other harmful air pollutants. The move would, overall, make environmental policies look less beneficial.
These sharp contrasts in how presidential administrations approach environmental impact studies are not unprecedented, says Craig, the environmental law professor. “Pretty much every time we change presidents, the priorities for how to weigh those different elements change.”
Flying forward is hard enough, but flying nowhere, just hovering, is so much harder. Most bats and birds can manage the feat for only a few frantic seconds.
Hovering means losing a useful aerodynamic shortcut, says aerospace engineer and biologist David Lentink of Stanford University. As a bat or bird flies forward, its body movement sends air flowing around the wings and providing some cheap lift. For animals on the scale of bats and birds, that’s a big help. Without that boost, “you’re going to have to move all the air over your wings by moving it with your wings,” he says. The energy per second you’re consuming to stay in place by flapping your wings back and forth like a hummingbird “is gigantic.” So how do vertebrates in search of nectar, for whom a lot of energy-sucking hovering is part of life, manage the job? For the first direct measurements of the wingbeat forces that make hovering possible, Lentink’s Ph.D. student Rivers Ingersoll spent three years creating a flight chamber with exquisitely responsive sensors in the floor and ceiling. As a bird or bat hovers inside, the sensors can measure — every 200th of a second — tremors even smaller than a nanometer caused by air from fluttering wings. Once the delicate techno-marvel of an instrument was perfected, the researchers packed it into 11 shipping cases and sent it more than 6,000 kilometers to the wilds of Costa Rica. “Very difficult,” Ingersoll acknowledges. The Las Cruces Research Station is great for field biology, but it’s nothing like a Stanford engineering lab. Every car turning into the station’s driveway set off the wingbeat sensors. And even the special thick-walled room that became the machine’s second home warmed up enough every day to give the instrument a fever. Babying the instrument as best he could, Ingersoll made direct measurements for 17 hovering species of hummingbirds and three bats, including Pallas’s long-tongued bats (Glossophaga soricina). “Their up-pointy noses made me think of rhino faces,” he says. Pallas’s bats specialize in nectar sipping much as hummingbirds do. Comparing wingbeats, bat vs. bird, revealed differences, though. Hummers coupled powerful downstrokes and recovery upstrokes that twist part of the wings almost backward. The twist supplied about a quarter of the energy it takes to keep a bird aloft, the researchers report in the September 26 Science Advances. The two kinds of nectar bats got a little more lift from the upstroke than did a bat that eats fruit instead of strenuously hovering for nectar. Yet even the specialist nectar bats relied mostly on downstrokes: powerful, deeply angled downstrokes of really big wings.
Those bat wings span proportionally more area than hummer wings. So the bats get about the same hovering power per gram of body weight that hummingbirds do. Supersizing can have its own kind of high-tech design elegance.
