The Arctic This Week Take Five: Week of July 9, 2018

• Study suggests polar waters breed more new species than tropics

Although the tropics are often considered ‘hot-spots’ of global biodiversity, a new study published in Nature suggests that Arctic and Antarctic waters are the prime location for the birth of new species. University of Michigan scientists found a strong pattern of regions with the lowest diversity, the frigid Arctic and Antarctic oceans, having the fastest rates of species formation.

Take 1: The study’s authors believe that the harsh conditions in these cold, dark environments are the key to understanding the high rates of speciation, or the formation of new species. Polar waters are dynamic environments, which means they are easily changed by geological events and most species don’t survive for very long. This leaves the opportunity for new species to come in and fill the roles that the extinct ones leave behind (CBC).

• Inupiaq added to Facebook’s Translate app

Inupiaq, an Alaskan Inuit dialect, can now be used and translated on Facebook thanks to linguistics PhD student Myles Creed from the University of Victoria. Creed reached out to Facebook to add Inupiaq to its translation app, but he had to provide the language data for the app. Creed started off by crowdsourcing translation from local speakers, but finding volunteers was a slow process and eventually he was able to hire professional translators using a grant from the Alaskan Humanities Forum to finish the job (EOTA).

Take 2: The internet can be a threat for speakers of lesser known languages because it is so dominated by English. Conversely, it can be a resource, providing niche areas where speakers can use their language with others from around the globe in a whole new way. Facebook is building on the effort and is currently asking for Inuktuk speakers to provide translations so that an Inuktuk version of Facebook will be usable in 2019 (Global News).

• Combatting health inequalities and racial bias

Experts are calling unconscious racism one of the main causes of health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. To tackle this issue, Canadian researchers are figuring out how to adopt a strategy developed in the United States, where racism is treated ‘like a bad habit’ to be broken, in a Canadian healthcare context to improve outcomes for patients.

Take 3: Racism and cultural bias can affect health outcomes in a variety of ways. Explicit racism can lead to differing standards of acute care for patients, but the larger problem may be how implicit racism affects public health messaging and attitudes towards Indigenous healthcare needs (CBC).

• Nordics taking steps towards unified defence

The Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO) states are increasing cooperation for a common goal of defence against outside threats. These states include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, which are currently working to create a framework of cooperation and an “easy access agreement” to facilitate cooperation in emergency situations (Breaking Defense).

Take 4: The Nordic countries have been increasingly emphasizing military readiness in the face of intimidation from nearby Russia and this new agreement is another step towards that goal. Russia has been employing aggressive tactics against Northern Europe in a bid to expand its influence in the region and the Nordic countries are coming together to face this threat (SLDinfo).

• Welsh students create ice machine for the Arctic

Students from Wales’ Bangor University think they have devised a way to ‘rebuild’ sea ice using an a currently unnamed invention. The students recently demonstrated how the invention could work, by using wind power to pull seawater under floating ice and causing it to freeze, at a local beach. Although there was no sea ice present during the demonstration, they showed how the technology could slow down the melting process by pushing water under cold, reflective ice and allowing it to freeze naturally (BBC).

Take 5: The students see technology like this as a way to fight climate change directly, rather than just trying to prevent it and accepting the global changes that have already occured. Many other theoretical methods for ‘reversing’ climate change have been proposed by engineers and scientists like these students, but few if any of them have ever become more than just a thought experiment for reasons discussed in Take 4 here.