Fertility and intelligence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence 

The relationship between fertility and intelligence has been investigated in many demographic studies. There is evidence that, on a population level, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility rate and positively correlated with survival rate of offspring. Proponents of dysgenics postulate that, if the inverse correlation of IQ with fertility rate is stronger than the correlation of IQ with survival rate, and if the correlation between IQ and fertility can be linked to genetic factors, then the hereditary component of IQ will decrease with every new generation, eventually giving rise to a 'reversed Flynn effect', as has been observed in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries, where a slow decline in average IQ scores has been noted since the 1990s. However, detractors point out that genetic studies have shown no evidence for dysgenic effects in human populations and the theory's strong association with scientific racism and eugenics. They also note that the Flynn effect demonstrates an increase in phenotypic IQ scores over time in most other countries. Additionally, complicating any assessment of decreases in intelligence over time is the reliance on IQ as a unbiased measure of intelligence, which has been criticised by some scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould. Other correlates of IQ include income and educational attainment, which are also fertility factors that are inversely correlated with fertility rate, and are to some degree heritable.

Although fertility measures offspring per woman, if one needs to predict population-level changes, the average age of motherhood also needs to be considered, with lower age of motherhood potentially having a greater effect than fertility rate. For example, a subpopulation with fertility rate of 4 with average age of reproduction at 40 years old, generally speaking, will have relatively less genotypical growth than a subpopulation with fertility rate of three but average age of reproduction at 20 years old.

Early views and research

The negative correlation between fertility and intelligence (as measured by IQ) has been argued to have existed in many parts of the world. Early studies, however, were "superficial and illusory" and not clearly supported by the limited data they collected.

Some of the first studies into the subject were carried out on individuals living before the advent of IQ testing, in the late 19th century, by looking at the fertility of men listed in Who's Who, these individuals being presumably of high intelligence. These men, taken as a whole, had few children, implying a correlation.

More rigorous studies carried out on Americans alive after the Second World War returned different results suggesting a slight positive correlation with respect to intelligence. The findings from these investigations were consistent enough for Osborn and Bajema, writing as late as 1972, to conclude that fertility patterns were eugenic, and that "the reproductive trend toward an increase in the frequency of genes associated with higher IQ... will probably continue in the foreseeable future in the United States and will be found also in other industrial welfare-state democracies."

Several reviewers considered the findings premature, arguing that the samples were nationally unrepresentative, generally being confined to white people born between 1910 and 1940 in the Great Lakes States. Other researchers began to report a negative correlation in the 1960s after two decades of neutral or positive fertility.

In 1982, Daniel R. Vining, Jr. sought to address these issues in a large study on the fertility of over 10,000 individuals throughout the United States, who were then aged 25 to 34. The average fertility in his study was correlated at −0.86 with IQ for white women and −0.96 for black women. Vining argued that this indicated a drop in the genotypic average IQ of 1.6 points per generation for the white population, and 2.4 points per generation for the black population. In considering these results along with those from earlier researchers, Vining wrote that "in periods of rising birth rates, persons with higher intelligence tend to have fertility equal to, if not exceeding, that of the population as a whole," but, "The recent decline in fertility thus seems to have restored the dysgenic trend observed for a comparable period of falling fertility between 1850 and 1940." To address the concern that the fertility of this sample could not be considered complete, Vining carried out a follow-up study for the same sample 18 years later, reporting the same, though slightly decreased, negative correlation between IQ and fertility. Critics note Vining's involvement with the eugenicist journal Mankind Quarterly and his acceptance of grants from the Pioneer Fund.

Later research

In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by .81 points per generation. Taking .71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks and Fulker, they calculated a dysgenic decline of .57 IQ points per generation.

Another way of checking the negative relationship between IQ and fertility is to consider the relationship which educational attainment has to fertility, since education is known to be a reasonable proxy for IQ, correlating with IQ at .55; in a 1999 study examining the relationship between IQ and education in a large national sample, David Rowe and others found not only that achieved education had a high heritability (.68) and that half of the variance in education was explained by an underlying genetic component shared by IQ, education, and SES. One study investigating fertility and education carried out in 1991 found that high school dropouts in the United States had the most children (2.5 on average), with high school graduates having fewer children, and college graduates having the fewest children (1.56 on average).

The Bell Curve (1994) argued that the average genotypic IQ of the United States was declining due to both dysgenetic fertility and large scale immigration of groups with low average IQ.

In a 1999 study Richard Lynn examined the relationship between the intelligence of adults aged 40 and above and their numbers of children and their siblings. Data was collected from a 1994 National Opinion Research Center survey among a representative sample of 2992 English-speaking individuals aged 18 years. He found negative correlations between the intelligence of American adults and the number of children and siblings that they had, but only for females. He also reported that there was virtually no correlation between women's intelligence and the number of children they considered ideal.

In 2004 Lynn and Marian Van Court attempted a straightforward replication of Vining's work. Their study returned similar results, with the genotypic decline measuring at 0.9 IQ points per generation for the total sample and 0.75 IQ points for whites only.

Boutwell et al. (2013) reported a strong negative association between county-level IQ and county-level fertility rates in the United States.

A 2014 study by Satoshi Kanazawa using data from the National Child Development Study found that more intelligent women and men were more likely to want to be childless, but that only more intelligent women – not men – were more likely to actually be childless.

International research

Map of countries by fertility rate (2020), according to the Population Reference Bureau

Although much of the research into intelligence and fertility has been restricted to individuals within a single nation (usually the United States), Steven Shatz (2008) extended the research internationally; he finds that "There is a strong tendency for countries with lower national IQ scores to have higher fertility rates and for countries with higher national IQ scores to have lower fertility rates."

Lynn and Harvey (2008) found a correlation of −0.73 between national IQ and fertility. They estimated that the effect had been "a decline in the world's genotypic IQ of 0.86 IQ points for the years 1950–2000. A further decline of 1.28 IQ points in the world's genotypic IQ is projected for the years 2000–2050." In the first period this effect had been compensated for by the Flynn effect causing a rise in phenotypic IQ but recent studies in four developed nations had found it has now ceased or gone into reverse. They thought it probable that both genotypic and phenotypic IQ will gradually start to decline for the whole world.

Possible causes

Income

Further information: Income and fertility

A theory to explain the fertility-intelligence relationship is that while income and IQ are positively correlated, income is also in itself a fertility factor that correlates inversely with fertility, that is, the higher the incomes, the lower the fertility rates and vice versa. There is thus an inverse correlation between income and fertility within and between nations. The higher the level of education and GDP per capita of a human population, sub-population or social stratum, the fewer children are born. In a 1974 UN population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, encapsulated this relationship by stating "Development is the best contraceptive".

Education

In most countries, education is inversely correlated to childbearing. People often delay childbearing in order to spend more time getting education, and thus have fewer children. Conversely, early childbearing can interfere with education, so people with early or frequent childbearing are likely to be less educated. While education and childbearing place competing demands on a person's resources, education is positively correlated with IQ.

While there is less research into men's fertility and education, in developed countries evidence suggests that highly-educated men display higher levels of childbearing compared to less-educated men.

As a country becomes more developed, education rates increase and fertility rates decrease for both men and women. Fertility has fallen faster for both less-educated men and women than it has for highly-educated men and women. In the Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, fertility for less-educated women has now fallen enough that childlessness is now highest among the least educated women just as it is for men.

Birth control and intelligence

Among a sample of women using birth control methods of comparable theoretical effectiveness, success rates were related to IQ, with the percentages of high, medium and low IQ women having unwanted births during a three-year interval being 3%, 8% and 11%, respectively. Since the effectiveness of many methods of birth control is directly correlated with proper usage, an alternative interpretation of the data would indicate lower IQ women were less likely to use birth control consistently and correctly. Another study found that after an unwanted pregnancy has occurred, higher IQ couples are more likely to obtain abortions; and unmarried teenage girls who become pregnant are found to be more likely to carry their babies to term if they are doing poorly in school.

Conversely, while desired family size in the United States is apparently the same for women of all IQ levels, highly educated women are found to be more likely to say that they desire more children than they have, indicating a "deficit fertility" in the highly intelligent. In her review of reproductive trends in the United States, Van Court argues that "each factor – from initially employing some form of contraception, to successful implementation of the method, to termination of an accidental pregnancy when it occurs – involves selection against intelligence."

Criticisms

While it may seem obvious that such differences in fertility would result in a progressive change of IQ, Preston and Campbell (1993) argued that this is a mathematical fallacy that applies only when looking at closed subpopulations. In their mathematical model, with constant differences in fertility, since children's IQ can be more or less than that of their parents, a steady-state equilibrium is argued to be established between different subpopulations with different IQ. The mean IQ will not change in the absence of a change of the fertility differences. The steady-state IQ distribution will be lower for negative differential fertility than for positive, but these differences are small. For the extreme and unrealistic assumption of endogamous mating in IQ subgroups, a differential fertility change of 2.5/1.5 to 1.5/2.5 (high IQ/low IQ) causes a maximum shift of four IQ points. For random mating, the shift is less than one IQ point. James S. Coleman, however, argues that Preston and Campbell's model depends on assumptions which are unlikely to be true.

The general increase in IQ test scores, the Flynn effect, has been argued to be evidence against dysgenic arguments. Geneticist Steve Connor wrote that Lynn, writing in Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, "misunderstood modern ideas of genetics." "A flaw in his argument of genetic deterioration in intelligence was the widely accepted fact that intelligence as measured by IQ tests has actually increased over the past 50 years." If the genes causing IQ have been adversely affected, IQ scores should reasonably be expected to change in the same direction, yet the reverse has occurred. However, it has been argued that genotypic IQ may decrease even while phenotypic IQ rises throughout the population due to environmental effects such as better nutrition and education. The Flynn effect may now have ended or reversed in some developed nations.

Some of the studies looking at relation between IQ and fertility cover the fertility of individuals who have attained a particular age, thereby ignoring positive correlation between IQ and survival. To make conclusions about effects on IQ of future populations, such effects would have to be taken into account.

Recent research has shown that education and socioeconomic status are better indicators of fertility and suggests that the relationship between intelligence and number of children may be spurious. When controlling for education and socioeconomic status, the relationship between intelligence and number of children, intelligence and number of siblings, and intelligence and ideal number of children reduces to statistical insignificance. Among women, a post-hoc analysis revealed that the lowest and highest intelligence scores did not differ significantly by number of children. However, socioeconomic status and (obviously) education are themselves not independent of intelligence.

Most research involves studying female fertility, while male fertility is ignored. When male fertility rates are compared to education attainment men with more education father more children.

Other research suggest that siblings born further apart achieve higher educational outcomes. Therefore, sibling density, not number of siblings, may explain the negative association between IQ and number of siblings.

Other traits

A study by the Institute of Psychiatry determined that men with higher IQ's tend to have better quality sperm than lower IQ males, even when considering age and lifestyle, stating that the genes underlying intelligence may be multi-factored.

Extremophile

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile 

 

See also: Earliest known life forms

 

The bright colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, are produced by thermophiles, a type of extremophile.

An extremophile (from Latin extremus meaning "extreme" and Greek philiā (φιλία) meaning "love") is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environments that make survival challenging such as due to extreme temperature, radiation, salinity, or pH level.

These organisms are ecologically dominant in the evolutionary history of the planet. Dating back to more than 40 million years ago, extremophiles have continued to thrive in the most extreme conditions, making them one of the most abundant lifeforms.

Characteristics

Diversity of extreme environments on Earth 

In the 1980s and 1990s, biologists found that microbial life has great flexibility for surviving in extreme environments—niches that are acidic, extraordinarily hot or within irregular air pressure for example—that would be completely inhospitable to complex organisms. Some scientists even concluded that life may have begun on Earth in hydrothermal vents far under the ocean's surface.

According to astrophysicist Steinn Sigurdsson, "There are viable bacterial spores that have been found that are 40 million years old on Earth—and we know they're very hardened to radiation." Some bacteria were found living in the cold and dark in a lake buried a half-mile deep under the ice in Antarctica, and in the Marianas Trench, the deepest place in Earth's oceans. Expeditions of the International Ocean Discovery Program found microorganisms in 120 °C sediment that is 1.2 km below seafloor in the Nankai Trough subduction zone. Some microorganisms have been found thriving inside rocks up to 1,900 feet (580 m) below the sea floor under 8,500 feet (2,600 m) of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States. According to one of the researchers, "You can find microbes everywhere—they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are." A key to extremophile adaptation is their amino acid composition, affecting their protein folding ability under particular conditions. Studying extreme environments on Earth can help researchers understand the limits of habitability on other worlds.

Tom Gheysens from Ghent University in Belgium and some of his colleagues have presented research findings that show spores from a species of Bacillus bacteria survived and were still viable after being heated to temperatures of 420 °C (788 °F).

Limits of known life on Earth
Factor	Environment / source	Limits	Examples
High temperature	Submarine hydrothermal vents, oceanic crust	110 °C (230 °F) to 121 °C (250 °F)	Pyrolobus fumarii, Pyrococcus furiosus
Low temperature	Ice	−20 °C (−4 °F) to −25 °C (−13 °F)	Rhodotorula glutinis
Alkaline systems	Soda lakes	pH > 11	Psychrobacter, Vibrio, Arthrobacter, Natronobacterium
Acidic systems	Volcanic springs, acid mine drainage	pH -0.06 to 1.0	Picrophilus
Ionizing radiation	Cosmic rays, X-rays, radioactive decay	1,500 to 6,000 Gy	Deinococcus radiodurans, Rubrobacter, Thermococcus gammatolerans
UV radiation	Sunlight	5,000 J/m2
High pressure	Mariana Trench	1,100 bar	Pyrococcus sp.
Salinity	High salt concentration	aw ~ 0.6	Halobacteriaceae, Dunaliella salina
Desiccation	Atacama Desert (Chile), McMurdo Dry Valleys (Antarctica)	~60% relative humidity	Chroococcidiopsis
Deep crust	Accessed in some gold mines		Halicephalobus mephisto, Mylonchulus brachyurus, unidentified arthropods

Classifications

There are many classes of extremophiles that range all around the globe; each corresponding to the way its environmental niche differs from mesophilic conditions. These classifications are not exclusive. Many extremophiles fall under multiple categories and are classified as polyextremophiles. For example, organisms living inside hot rocks deep under Earth's surface are thermophilic and piezophilic such as Thermococcus barophilus. A polyextremophile living at the summit of a mountain in the Atacama Desert might be a radioresistant xerophile, a psychrophile, and an oligotroph. Polyextremophiles are well known for their ability to tolerate both high and low pH levels. The terms extremonobes and mesonobes, similar to extremophiles and mesophiles, but having sizes as nanobes, have also been suggested.

Terms

Microscopic image from the hypersaline Lake Tyrrell (salinity> 20% w/v), in which the eukaryotic chlorophyte, Dunaliella salina, can be tentatively identified. Dunaliella salina is grown commercially for the carotenoid, β-carotene, which is widely used as a natural food colorant as well as a precursor to vitamin A. Alongside is the haloarchaeon, Haloquadratum walsbyi, which has flat square-shaped cells with gas vesicles that allow flotation to the surface, most likely to acquire oxygen.

Acidophile

An organism with optimal growth at pH levels of 3.0 or below.

Alkaliphile

An organism with optimal growth at pH levels of 9.0 or above.

Anaerobe

An organism with optimal growth in the absence of molecular oxygen. Two sub-types exist: facultative anaerobe and obligate anaerobe. A facultative anaerobe can tolerate anoxic and oxic conditions whilst an obligate anaerobe will die in the presence of even low levels of molecular oxygen.:

Capnophile

An organism with optimal growth conditions in high concentrations of carbon dioxide. An example would be Mannheimia succiniciproducens, a bacterium that inhabits a ruminant animal's digestive system.

Cryptoendolith

An organism that lives in microscopic spaces within rocks, such as pores between aggregate grains. These may also be called endolith, a term that also includes organisms populating fissures, aquifers, and faults filled with groundwater in the deep subsurface.

Halophile

An organism with optimal growth at a concentration of dissolved salts of 50 g/L (= 5% m/v) or above.

Hyperpiezophile

An organism with optimal growth at hydrostatic pressures above 50 MPa (= 493 atm = 7,252 psi).

Hyperthermophile

An organism with optimal growth at temperatures above 80 °C (176 °F).

Hypolith

An organism that lives underneath rocks in cold deserts.

Metallotolerant

Capable of tolerating high levels of dissolved heavy metals in solution, such as copper, cadmium, arsenic, and zinc. Examples include Ferroplasma sp., Cupriavidus metallidurans and GFAJ-1.

Oligotroph

An organism with optimal growth in nutritionally limited environments.

Osmophile

An organism with optimal growth in environments with a high sugar concentration.

Piezophile

An organism with optimal growth in hydrostatic pressures above 10 MPa (= 99 atm = 1,450 psi). Also referred to as barophile.

Polyextremophile

A polyextremophile (faux Ancient Latin/Greek for 'affection for many extremes') is an organism that qualifies as an extremophile under more than one category.

Psychrophile/Cryophile

An organism with optimal growth at temperatures of 15 °C (59 °F) or lower.

Radioresistant

Organisms resistant to high levels of ionizing radiation, most commonly ultraviolet radiation. This category also includes organisms capable of resisting nuclear radiation.

Sulphophile

An organism with optimal growth conditions in high concentrations of sulfur. An example would be Sulfurovum Epsilonproteobacteria, a sulfur-oxidizing bacteria that inhabits deep-water sulfur vents.

Thermophile

An organism with optimal growth at temperatures above 45 °C (113 °F).

Xerophile

An organism with optimal growth at water activity below 0.8.

In astrobiology

Astrobiology is the multidisciplinary field that investigates the deterministic conditions and contingent events with which life arises, distributes, and evolves in the universe. Astrobiology makes use of physics, chemistry, astronomy, solar physics, biology, molecular biology, ecology, planetary science, geography, and geology to investigate the possibility of life on other worlds and help recognize biospheres that might be different from that on Earth. Astrobiologists are particularly interested in studying extremophiles, as it allows them to map what is known about the limits of life on Earth to potential extraterrestrial environments For example, analogous deserts of Antarctica are exposed to harmful UV radiation, low temperature, high salt concentration and low mineral concentration. These conditions are similar to those on Mars. Therefore, finding viable microbes in the subsurface of Antarctica suggests that there may be microbes surviving in endolithic communities and living under the Martian surface. Research indicates it is unlikely that Martian microbes exist on the surface or at shallow depths, but may be found at subsurface depths of around 100 meters.

Recent research carried out on extremophiles in Japan involved a variety of bacteria including Escherichia coli and Paracoccus denitrificans being subject to conditions of extreme gravity. The bacteria were cultivated while being rotated in an ultracentrifuge at high speeds corresponding to 403,627 g (i.e. 403,627 times the gravity experienced on Earth). Paracoccus denitrificans was one of the bacteria which displayed not only survival but also robust cellular growth under these conditions of hyperacceleration which are usually found only in cosmic environments, such as on very massive stars or in the shock waves of supernovas. Analysis showed that the small size of prokaryotic cells is essential for successful growth under hypergravity. The research has implications on the feasibility of panspermia.

On 26 April 2012, scientists reported that lichen survived and showed remarkable results on the adaptation capacity of photosynthetic activity within the simulation time of 34 days under Martian conditions in the Mars Simulation Laboratory (MSL) maintained by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

On 29 April 2013, scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, funded by NASA, reported that, during spaceflight on the International Space Station, microbes seem to adapt to the space environment in ways "not observed on Earth" and in ways that "can lead to increases in growth and virulence".

On 19 May 2014, scientists announced that numerous microbes, like Tersicoccus phoenicis, may be resistant to methods usually used in spacecraft assembly clean rooms. It's not currently known if such resistant microbes could have withstood space travel and are present on the Curiosity rover now on the planet Mars.

On 20 August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living half a mile below the ice of Antarctica.

In September 2015, scientists from CNR-National Research Council of Italy reported that S.soflataricus was able to survive under Martian radiation at a wavelength that was considered extremely lethal to most bacteria. This discovery is significant because it indicates that not only bacterial spores, but also growing cells can be remarkably resistant to strong UV radiation.

In June 2016, scientists from Brigham Young University conclusively reported that endospores of Bacillus subtilis were able to survive high speed impacts up to 299±28 m/s, extreme shock, and extreme deceleration. They pointed out that this feature might allow endospores to survive and to be transferred between planets by traveling within meteorites or by experiencing atmosphere disruption. Moreover, they suggested that the landing of spacecraft may also result in interplanetary spore transfer, given that spores can survive high-velocity impact while ejected from the spacecraft onto the planet surface. This is the first study which reported that bacteria can survive in such high-velocity impact. However, the lethal impact speed is unknown, and further experiments should be done by introducing higher-velocity impact to bacterial endospores.

In August 2020 scientists reported that bacteria that feed on air discovered 2017 in Antarctica are likely not limited to Antarctica after discovering the two genes previously linked to their "atmospheric chemosynthesis" in soil of two other similar cold desert sites, which provides further information on this carbon sink and further strengthens the extremophile evidence that supports the potential existence of microbial life on alien planets.

The same month, scientists reported that bacteria from Earth, particularly Deinococcus radiodurans, were found to survive for three years in outer space, based on studies on the International Space Station. These findings support the notion of panspermia.

However, it has also been shown that evolution put some restrictions on extremophiles as analogues to life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond. Thus, the so-called extremophile paradox states, that while extremophiles live in extreme environments, they cannot originate in such environments.

Bioremediation

Extremophiles can also be useful players in the bioremediation of contaminated sites as some species are capable of biodegradation under conditions too extreme for classic bioremediation candidate species. Anthropogenic activity causes the release of pollutants that may potentially settle in extreme environments as is the case with tailings and sediment released from deep-sea mining activity. While most bacteria would be crushed by the pressure in these environments, piezophiles can tolerate these depths and can metabolize pollutants of concern if they possess bioremediation potential.

Hydrocarbons

There are multiple potential destinations for hydrocarbons after an oil spill has settled and currents routinely deposit them in extreme environments. Methane bubbles resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were found 1.1 kilometers below water surface level and at concentrations as high as 183 μmol per kilogram. The combination of low temperatures and high pressures in this environment result in low microbial activity. However, bacteria that are present including species of Pseudomonas, Aeromonas and Vibrio were found to be capable of bioremediation, albeit at a tenth of the speed they would perform at sea level pressure. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons increase in solubility and bioavailability with increasing temperature. Thermophilic Thermus and Bacillus species have demonstrated higher gene expression for the alkane mono-oxygenase alkB at temperatures exceeding 60 °C. The expression of this gene is a crucial precursor to the bioremediation process. Fungi that have been genetically modified with cold-adapted enzymes to tolerate differing pH levels and temperatures have been shown to be effective at remediating hydrocarbon contamination in freezing conditions in the Antarctic.

Metals

Acidithiubacillus ferroxidans has been shown to be effective in remediating mercury in acidic soil due to its merA gene making it mercury resistant. Industrial effluent contain high levels of metals that can be detrimental to both human and ecosystem health. In extreme heat environments the extremophile Geobacillus thermodenitrificans has been shown to effectively manage the concentration of these metals within twelve hours of introduction. Some acidophilic microorganisms are effective at metal remediation in acidic environments due to proteins found in their periplasm, not present in any mesophilic organisms, allowing them to protect themselves from high proton concentrations. Rice paddies are highly oxidative environments that can produce high levels of lead or cadmium. Deinococcus radiodurans are resistant to the harsh conditions of the environment and are therefore candidate species for limiting the extent of contamination of these metals.

Some bacteria are known to also use rare earth elements on their biological processes for example Methylacidiphilum fumariolicum, Methylorubrum extorquens and Methylobacterium radiotolerans are known to be able to use lanthanides as cofactors to increase their methanol dehydrogenase activity.

Acid mine drainage

Acid mine drainage is a major environmental concern associated with many metal mines. One of the most productive methods of its remediation is through the introduction of the extremophile organism Thiobacillus ferrooxidans.

Radioactive materials

See also: Uranium § Biotic and abiotic

Any bacteria capable of inhabiting radioactive mediums can be classified as an extremophile. Radioresistant organisms are therefore critical in the bioremediation of radionuclides. Uranium is particularly challenging to contain when released into an environment and very harmful to both human and ecosystem health. The NANOBINDERS project is equipping bacteria that can survive in uranium rich environments with gene sequences that enable proteins to bind to uranium in mining effluent, making it more convenient to collect and dispose of. Some examples are Shewanella putrefaciens, Geobacter metallireducens and some strains of Burkholderia fungorum.

Radioresistance has also been observed in certain species of macroscopic lifeforms. The lethal dose required to kill up to 50% of a tortoise population is 40,000 roentgens, compared to only 800 roentgens needed to kill 50% of a human population. In experiments exposing lepidopteran insects to gamma radiation, significant DNA damage was detected only at 20 Gy and higher doses, in contrast with human cells that showed similar damage at only 2 Gy.

Examples and recent findings

New sub-types of -philes are identified frequently and the sub-category list for extremophiles is always growing. For example, microbial life lives in the liquid asphalt lake, Pitch Lake. Research indicates that extremophiles inhabit the asphalt lake in populations ranging between 10⁶ to 10⁷ cells/gram. Likewise, until recently boron tolerance was unknown but a strong borophile was discovered in bacteria. With the recent isolation of Bacillus boroniphilus, borophiles came into discussion. Studying these borophiles may help illuminate the mechanisms of both boron toxicity and boron deficiency.

In July 2019, a scientific study of Kidd Mine in Canada discovered sulfur-breathing organisms which live 7900 feet below the surface, and which breathe sulfur in order to survive. These organisms are also remarkable due to eating rocks such as pyrite as their regular food source.

Biotechnology

Main article: Extremophiles in biotechnology

The thermoalkaliphilic catalase, which initiates the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water, was isolated from an organism, Thermus brockianus, found in Yellowstone National Park by Idaho National Laboratory researchers. The catalase operates over a temperature range from 30 °C to over 94 °C and a pH range from 6–10. This catalase is extremely stable compared to other catalases at high temperatures and pH. In a comparative study, the T. brockianus catalase exhibited a half life of 15 days at 80 °C and pH 10 while a catalase derived from Aspergillus niger had a half life of 15 seconds under the same conditions. The catalase will have applications for removal of hydrogen peroxide in industrial processes such as pulp and paper bleaching, textile bleaching, food pasteurization, and surface decontamination of food packaging.

DNA modifying enzymes such as Taq DNA polymerase and some Bacillus enzymes used in clinical diagnostics and starch liquefaction are produced commercially by several biotechnology companies.

DNA transfer

Over 65 prokaryotic species are known to be naturally competent for genetic transformation, the ability to transfer DNA from one cell to another cell followed by integration of the donor DNA into the recipient cell's chromosome. Several extremophiles are able to carry out species-specific DNA transfer, as described below. However, it is not yet clear how common such a capability is among extremophiles.

The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans is one of the most radioresistant organisms known. This bacterium can also survive cold, dehydration, vacuum and acid and is thus known as a polyextremophile. D. radiodurans is competent to perform genetic transformation. Recipient cells are able to repair DNA damage in donor transforming DNA that had been UV irradiated as efficiently as they repair cellular DNA when the cells themselves are irradiated. The extreme thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus and other related Thermus species are also capable of genetic transformation.

Halobacterium volcanii, an extreme halophilic (saline tolerant) archaeon, is capable of natural genetic transformation. Cytoplasmic bridges are formed between cells that appear to be used for DNA transfer from one cell to another in either direction.

Sulfolobus solfataricus and Sulfolobus acidocaldarius are hyperthermophilic archaea. Exposure of these organisms to the DNA damaging agents UV irradiation, bleomycin or mitomycin C induces species-specific cellular aggregation. UV-induced cellular aggregation of S. acidocaldarius mediates chromosomal marker exchange with high frequency. Recombination rates exceed those of uninduced cultures by up to three orders of magnitude. Frols et al. and Ajon et al. hypothesized that cellular aggregation enhances species-specific DNA transfer between Sulfolobus cells in order to repair damaged DNA by means of homologous recombination. Van Wolferen et al. noted that this DNA exchange process may be crucial under DNA damaging conditions such as high temperatures. It has also been suggested that DNA transfer in Sulfolobus may be an early form of sexual interaction similar to the more well-studied bacterial transformation systems that involve species-specific DNA transfer leading to homologous recombinational repair of DNA damage (and see Transformation (genetics)).

Extracellular membrane vesicles (MVs) might be involved in DNA transfer between different hyperthermophilic archaeal species. It has been shown that both plasmids and viral genomes can be transferred via MVs. Notably, a horizontal plasmid transfer has been documented between hyperthermophilic Thermococcus and Methanocaldococcus species, respectively belonging to the orders Thermococcales and Methanococcales.

Electoral reform in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States 

Electoral reform in the United States refers to efforts to change American elections and the electoral system used in the United States.

Most elections in the U.S. select one person; elections with multiple candidates selected by proportional representation are relatively rare. Typical examples include the House of Representatives, whose members are elected by a plurality of votes in single-member districts. The number of representatives from each state is set in proportion to each state's population in the most recent decennial census. District boundaries are usually redrawn after each such census. This process often produces "gerrymandered" district boundaries designed to increase and secure the majority of the party in power, often by offering secure seats to members of the opposition party. This is one of a number of institutional features that increase the advantage of incumbents seeking reelection. The Senate and the president are also elected by plurality. However, these elections are not affected by gerrymandering (with the possible exception of presidential races in Maine and Nebraska, whose electoral votes are partially allocated by Congressional district).

Proposals for electoral reform have included overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, public and citizen funding of elections, limits and transparency in funding, ranked-choice voting (RCV), abolishing the Electoral College or nullifying its impact through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and improving ballot access for third parties, among others. The U.S. Constitution gives states wide latitude to determine how elections are conducted, although some details, such as the ban on poll taxes, are mandated at the federal level.

Cost of the current system

The cost of getting elected, especially to any national office in the US, has been growing. The Federal Elections Commission estimated that "candidates, parties, PACs, super-PACs, and politically active nonprofits" spent a total of $7 billion in 2012. The magazine Mother Jones said that this money was used "to influence races up and down the ballot", noting further that the cost of elections has continued to escalate. The 2010 congressional elections cost roughly $4 billion.

Spending averages just under $3 billion per year for the 4-year presidential election cycle.

This is small relative to what the major campaign contributors, crony capitalists (whether allegedly "liberal" or "conservative"), receive for their money. The Cato Institute found corporate welfare totaling $100 billion in the 2012 U.S. federal budget. This includes only direct subsidies specifically identified in the Cato Institute research. It does not include indirect subsidies like tax breaks, trade barriers, distorting copyright law beyond the "limited time" and other restrictions mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, and other distortions of U.S. foreign and defense policies to benefit major corporations and people with substantial financial interests outside the U.S.

Other studies have estimated between $6 and $220 return for each $1 invested by major corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals in lobbying and political campaigns.

This rate of return helps escalate the cost of elections. To obtain the money needed for their next election campaign, incumbent politicians spend a substantial portion of their time soliciting money from large donors, who often donate to competing candidates, thereby buying access with the one that wins.

This $3 billion per year is about $10 for each of the 316 million people in the US, $23 for each of the 130 million people who voted in 2012.

Electoral reform proposals

Josh Silver's "Cure for political corruption" divides electoral reforms between campaign finance, lobbying and election administration.

Most of the proposed reforms can be achieved at least in part by legislation, though some require amending the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC and related decisions would require a constitutional amendment to permanently change, and several have been proposed. Similarly, some proposed systems for campaign finance or restrictions on campaign contributions have been declared unconstitutional; implementation of those changes could require a constitutional amendment.

However, many other reforms can seemingly be achieved without a constitutional amendment. These include various forms of public financing of political campaigns, disclosure requirements and instant-runoff voting. The American Anti-Corruption Act (AACA) is one collection of reforms that appear to be consistent with existing US Supreme Court rulings, developed by Republican Trevor Potter, who had previously served as head of the US Federal Elections Commission under Democratic President Bill Clinton. Local versions of the AACA are being promoted by RepresentUs.

Campaign finance reform

See also: Campaign finance reform in the United States

Lawrence Lessig said, "On January 20, 2010, the day before Citizens United was decided, our democracy was already broken. Citizens United may have shot the body, but the body was already cold. And any response to Citizens United must also respond to that more fundamental corruption. We must find a way to restore a government 'dependent upon the People alone,' so that we give 'the People' a reason again to have confidence in their government."

Lessig favors systems that share as broadly as possible the decisions about which candidates or initiatives get the funding needed to get their message to the voters. Following Bruce Ackerman, Lessig recommends giving each eligible voter a "democracy voucher" worth, e.g., $100 each election year that can only be spent on political candidates or issues. The amount would be fixed at roughly double the amount of private money spent in the previous election cycle. Unlike the current Presidential election campaign fund checkoff, the decisions regarding who gets that money would be made by individual citizens.

Lessig also supports systems to provide tax rebates for such contributions or to match small dollar contributions such as the system in New York City that provides a 5-to-1 match for contributions up to $250.^[13] To be eligible for money from vouchers, rebates or matching funds, candidates must accept certain limits on the amounts of money raised from individual contributors.

Vouchers, tax rebates, and small dollar matching are called "citizen funding" as opposed to more traditional "public funding", which tasks a public agency with deciding how much money each candidate receives from the government. While the Supreme Court of the United States has already struck down many forms of public funding of political campaigns, there are forms of public and especially citizen financing that seem consistent with the constitution as so far interpreted by the courts and could therefore be secured by standard legislative processes not requiring amending the constitution.

One bill that proposes such a system for U.S. congressional elections is "The Grassroots Democracy Act". It was introduced September 14, 2012, by U.S. Representative John Sarbanes as H.R. 6426 and reintroduced on January 15, 2013 as H. R. 268.

Overturning Citizens United

The Citizens United v. FEC decision, January 21, 2010, of the U.S. Supreme Court has received substantial notoriety, pushing many people to work for a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Key provisions of that decision assert in essence that money is speech and subject to first amendment protections. Move to Amend began organizing to oppose that decision in September 2009. By June 2013, they had at least 164 local affiliates in 36 states plus the District of Columbia. They had obtained roughly 300,000 individual signatures for their Motion to Amend and had secured the passage of 367 local resolutions and ordinances. United for the People is consortium of some 144 organizations supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. The web site of United for the People lists 17 constitutional amendments introduced in the 112th United States Congress and 12 introduced by March 13, 2013, in the 113th proposing to overturn Citizens United in different ways.

The libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute is concerned that most proposed responses to Citizens United will give "Congress unchecked new power over spending on political speech, power that will be certainly abused."

Clean elections, clean money, and disclosure

Terms like "clean elections" and "clean money" are sometimes used inconsistently. Clean elections typically refers to systems where candidates receive a fixed sum of money from the government to run their campaigns after qualifying by collecting small dollar contributions (e.g., $5) from a large enough group of citizens. Systems of this nature have been tried in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere; some of these have been disqualified at least in part by the courts.

"Clean money" is sometimes used as a synonym for clean elections; at other times, it refers to a DISCLOSE Act, requiring disclosure of the sources of campaign funds. The DISCLOSE Act bill in the U.S. Congress seeks "to prohibit foreign influence in Federal elections, to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and to establish additional disclosure requirements with respect to spending in such elections, and for other purposes."

The California Clean Money Campaign is pushing the California DISCLOSE act, which differs substantially from the federal DISCLOSE Act. The California bill would strengthen disclosure requirements for political advertisements. Among other provisions, it requires the top three contributors for any political ad to be identified by name on the ad.

Ackerman and Ayres propose a "secret donation booth", the exact opposite of full disclosure. This system would require that all campaign contributions be anonymously given through a government agency. Their system would give donors a few days to change their minds and withdraw or change the recipient of a donation; it would also add a random time delay to ensure that the recipients of donations could never know for sure the source of the funds they receive.

Proposed improvements or replacements to the current voting system

Approval voting

Approval voting is a non-rank-order but graded system in which voters may select all candidates that meet with the voter's approval. The candidate with the highest approval score (i.e. approved by the most voters) wins the election. In elections with three or more candidates, voters may indicate approval of more than one candidate. Approval voting is the voting method which received the highest approval in a 2021 poll of electoral systems experts.

Approval voting is promoted by the Center for Election Science.

In 2017, the Colorado legislature considered approval voting. If the bill had passed, Colorado would have been the first state to approve approval voting legislation, but the bill was postponed indefinitely.

In 2018, Fargo, North Dakota, passed a local ballot initiative adopting approval voting for the city's local elections, and it was used to elect officials in June 2020, becoming the first United States city and jurisdiction to adopt approval voting.

In November 2020, St. Louis passed Proposition D to authorize a variant of approval voting (as unified primary) for municipal offices.

Ranked Choice Voting

Main article: Ranked-choice voting in the United States

Ranked voting, also called ranked choice voting in the United States, is a ballot design where voters can rank their choices. Popular methods used in some jurisdictions around the world include a system called instant-runoff voting (IRV) to elect one candidate, or a system called the single transferable vote (STV) to elect multiple candidates. Each voter ranks all (or at least some) of the available options. If one option is ranked first by a majority of voters, it wins. Otherwise, the option(s) obtaining the fewest votes is (are) eliminated, and the options ranked second by those voters get those votes.

IRV is being promoted in the U.S. by numerous individuals and organizations. One of these is FairVote, which provides a long list of endorsers of IRV, including President Obama, Senators John McCain and Bernie Sanders, five U.S. Representatives, policy analyst Michael E. Arth, the Green, Libertarian, and Socialist parties, a dozen state chapters of the League of Women Voters, four state chapters of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party of Alaska, and many others. It is currently being used in some jurisdictions in the U.S., including the state of Maine and, since November 2020, the state of Alaska.

The Institute for Political Innovation, along with organizations such as Unite America and Nevada Voters, supports "final five voting" which consists of a combination of general primaries to elect the top five candidates, with instant-runoff voting to decide the winner. A similar system was approved in Alaska via a 2020 ballot measure.

Fair Representation Act proposes to introduce STV, along with the multi-member districts, for elections to the House of Representatives.

Abolishing the Electoral College

Main articles: Efforts to reform the United States Electoral College and Electoral College abolition amendment

There have long been concerns about problems with the Electoral College method of selecting the president and vice president. Under this system, the party that wins a plurality in a given state gets all that state's electoral votes. (In Maine and Nebraska, the plurality rule applies to each congressional district.)

Modern polling has allowed presidential campaigns to determine which states are "swing states" (also called "battleground states") and which will provide near-certain victories for either the Republican or Democratic candidates. The campaigns then increase their chances of winning by focusing primarily on the swing states. This effectively disenfranchises voters in other states to the extent that their concerns differ from those of voters in swing states.

Officially abolishing the Electoral College would require amending the U.S. Constitution. However, the same effect could be achieved if the Electoral College representatives from states with a majority of the electoral votes were all committed to vote for the presidential slate that achieves a national plurality (or the majority after instant-runoff voting): Presidential candidates would then have to compete for votes in all 50 states, not just the typically less than a dozen swing states.

This is the idea behind the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. As of March 2022, sixteen states with electoral votes totaling 196 had approved the compact. To take effect it must be approved by states with electoral votes totaling 270, just over half of the 538 current total electoral votes.

Redistricting

In the United States House of Representatives and many other legislative bodies such as city councils, members are elected from districts, whose boundaries are changed periodically through a process known as redistricting. When this process is manipulated to benefit a particular political party or incumbent, the result is known as gerrymandering. The Open Our Democracy Act & the For the People Act are bills designed to end gerrymandering. The For the People Act passed the United States House of Representatives on March 3, 2020. As of June 2021, it has not been passed by the United States Senate. Due to the Uniform Congressional District Act, it is illegal for a state with more than one representative to elect its representatives proportionally in several multi-member districts or in an at-large election.

Organizations promoting changes in redistricting include FairVote, RepresentUs and EndGerrymandering.com.

Compulsory voting

Voting is not required of citizens in any state, so elections are decided by those who show up. Politicians target their message at getting their own supporters out to the polls, rather than winning over undecided voters or apathetic citizens. One solution to this problem is compulsory voting.

Compulsory voting has been criticized as "vaguely un-American" but potentially beneficial to democracy.

Organizations supporting reforms

Organizations that support some variant of at least one of the reforms mentioned above include ReformElectionsNow, Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, National Association of Non-Partisan Reformers, Leadership Now Project, The Fulcrum, RepresentUs, Democracy Found, League of Women Voters, BiPartisan Policy Center, Open Primaries, Public Citizen, Move to Amend, People for the American Way, National Popular Vote Inc., Rootstrikers, FairVote, RepresentWomen and Equal Citizens.