News at a glance: Biggest lightning storm, regulating AI, and restoring Europe’s ecosystems

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

Volcano triggered world’s most intense lightning storm

The January 2022 eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga produced the most extreme lightning storm ever recorded. The giant, electrically charged ash plume of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (above) spawned nearly 200,000 lightning flashes, researchers report this week in Geophysical Research Letters. At its peak, lightning struck about 2600 times per minute—more than twice the peak rate recorded in previous storms. The lightning included record-setting bolts up to 30 kilometers tall, and some of them appeared to “surf” the ejected material, spreading outward in 250-kilometer-wide rings. The analysis was based on satellite imagery and data from radio antenna networks, and it yielded new insights into how the eruption unfolded. The research team identified four distinct phases lasting 11 hours, far longer than was known.

More than 200,000 lightning strikes (represented as blue dots) were recorded following the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai on 15 January 2022.AGU/Van Eaton et al., Geophysical Research Letters (2023)

ENVIRONMENT

EU nature law survives key vote

The European Parliament’s environment committee last week narrowly rejected an attempt to kill a proposed law aimed at restoring degraded ecosystems. The Nature Restoration Law could restore at least 20% of the European Union’s land and sea areas by 2030 and all degraded ecosystems by 2050. To do so, it would set multiple binding targets, such as reversing the decline in bees and other pollinators by 2030. The proposal’s opponents say the restrictions would threaten food security, jobs, farming, and fishing. But days before the vote, more than 3300 researchers sent members of Parliament references to scientific findings they said countered these claims. The committee must still vote on many proposed amendments before the full Parliament considers the measure next month.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Africa increases HIV research

Early in the AIDS epidemic, relatively few published studies about the disease came from African countries, where HIV has taken a heavy toll. But by 2020, nearly one-third of the HIV/AIDS papers in the PubMed database had a lead author at an institution in Africa, up from only 5.1% in 1986, the year HIV was officially named, reports a study this week in PLOS Global Health. South Africa alone accounted for one-third of the 83,527 HIV articles that came from African countries during that 35-year period; another 20% came from Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. Factors that correlated with the share of HIV publications included the size of the country’s economy and population, and how many residents were infected with HIV. Despite the surge in publications from Africa, its share in 2020 was still “relatively low” given that 67% of the people living with HIV in the world reside there, the researchers note.

Archaeology

Goddess images found at terrorist-damaged Iraq site

A fragment from Iraq depicts the goddess Ishtar Sharrat-niphi in a starburst with rosettes. PENN MUSEUM

Researchers have discovered valuable fragments of a monument to a Mesopotamian goddess among 3000-year-old ruins in northern Iraq. The site was severely damaged in 2015 by the Islamic State extremist group, which was largely ousted from the country by 2017. Using bombs and bulldozers, the group destroyed aboveground structures in Nimrud, once the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire and one of the most important Mesopotamian heritage sites. The destroyed buildings included a modern reconstruction of the Temple of Ishtar that encased original historic remains. Researchers from Iraq and the University of Pennsylvania uncovered the newly discovered relics inside the temple’s ruins, the institution’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology announced last week. The finds include fragments of a large stone monument that depict Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war. One fragment (above) contains the first known representation of Ishtar Sharrat-niphi, an aspect of the goddess associated with the planet Venus.

PLANETARY SCIENCE

Groundwater use moves Earth axis

The immense weight of groundwater pumped from aquifers has helped shift Earth’s rotational axis, scientists report. The effect has exceeded that from the release of meltwater from ice in Antarctica, they found. Despite the fixed position of the North and South poles as shown on maps, the orientation of the spin axis constantly drifts because of shifts in ocean currents, the sloshing of molten iron in Earth’s core, and changes in the amount of water stored in ice sheets. But when researchers tried to model this polar wandering, it didn’t match the path observed between 1993 and 2010—until they accounted for 2150 gigatons of water extracted from underground, according to a report last week in Geophysical Research Letters. Most of the pumped water ended up in the ocean, a redistribution of the planet’s mass that caused the axis to move 78 centimeters in the direction of Iceland during that period. The finding could help scientists confirm how much groundwater pumping has contributed to sea level rise.

RESEARCH METRICS

U.K. shakes up evaluation rubric

Evaluators will grade U.K. universities more heavily on work environment and diversity—and less on research output—to determine their share of higher education block grants, four national funding bodies announced last week. The shifts are part of a plan to change the way the Research Excellence Framework (REF) defines “excellence” and address criticisms that the REF encourages universities to prioritize quantity over quality in their research outputs. The changes aim to tackle inequity and incentivize a broader range of “contributions to knowledge,” such as data sets and software. They will be implemented during the next round of evaluation, set to conclude in 2028. Consultations over the next 18 months will refine the assessment criteria. The push comes amid international efforts to reshape research assessment.

It’s very sad. All we were trying to do is get a cake for Father’s Day.

Vaccine researcher Peter Hotez
in The Washington Post, about protesters who pressed him at his home to debate presidential candidate and vaccine opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about vaccine misinformation.

POLICY

EU’s draft AI law exempts research

Amid worries about rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), the European Parliament last week approved a legal framework governing its use. The AI Act—which must now go through negotiations with EU member states before becoming law—will regulate AI systems based on their potential to cause harm. To avoid stifling innovation, lawmakers exempted R&D before an AI system is released for public use. The law would ban some applications outright, including intrusive and discriminatory uses of AI in biometric surveillance and predictive policing. High-risk AI systems would be assessed before and after being put on the market. Members of Parliament say they hope the final version will set the tone for global AI standards.

PUBLISHING

Open-access funders cut journals

Two-thirds of the more than 2300 scholarly journals in a program designed to flip them to open access (OA)—making their articles immediately free to read when published—failed to meet prescribed targets for progress in 2022. As a result, the Coalition S group of research funders, which sponsors the program, will remove them from it at year’s end. The funders, most of whom are based in Europe, will no longer pay the fees that these journals charge authors for OA publication. The funders’ grantees may still publish manuscripts OA in these titles if they pay using other funds. “For some publishers, the transition to full and immediate open access is unlikely to happen in a reasonable time frame,” a Coalition S official said. The titles to be dropped at the end of this year include 77% of those enrolled in the coalition’s Transformational Journal program by publishing giant Springer Nature. Almost all members of its elite Nature family of journals met their goals and can remain in the program throughout 2024, when it is scheduled to end.

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