Federal Reserve policymakers need current information about economic conditions to make well-informed monetary policy decisions. But hard data, such as GDP and the unemployment rate, is released with a significant lag, making it difficult to get a precise, real-time read on the economy, especially during times of rapid change.
Hard data is based on precise quantitative measurements, such as sales figures or the specific prices firms are charging. By contrast, soft data is qualitative, focusing on trends, expectations, and sentiment around economic activity. And while hard data looks backward, soft data from the regional surveys can look forward—providing important information about expectations for the future and emerging trends.
The surveys are sent to over 300 business executives and managers at firms across industries during the first week of every month. While about two-thirds of participating firms have 100 or fewer employees, some have hundreds or thousands of workers.
Leaders at the firms fill out a short questionnaire asking if business activity has increased, decreased, or stayed the same compared to the prior month. The surveys ask about indicators such as prices–yielding insights into inflationary pressures–as well as employment, orders, and capital spending. Respondents answer questions about how they expect these indicators to change over the next six months, offering a forward-looking perspective on the economy’s trajectory.
From the responses, New York Fed researchers construct diffusion indexes by calculating the difference between the percentage of firms reporting increased activity and those reporting decreased activity. Positive values indicate that more firms say activity increased than decreased, suggesting activity expanded over the month. Higher positive values indicate stronger growth, while lower negative values indicate stronger declines.
The surveys include local businesses, like restaurants and car dealerships, as well as firms with national and global reach, such as software manufacturers and shipping enterprises. As a result, the economic indicators derived from the surveys are often early predictors of national economic patterns, frequently aligning with hard data released later.
In addition to providing data to track economic conditions, the regional surveys also provide a channel to hear directly from local business leaders. Every month, survey respondents are asked for their comments, offering the opportunity for businesses to share their thoughts, concerns, and experiences with the New York Fed. This helps researchers and policymakers understand how businesses are being affected by economic conditions.
The surveys act as one of the bridges between the New York Fed and the business community, ensuring the voices of regional businesses are considered in economic assessments and policy discussions as well as enhancing the ability of policymakers to make informed decisions to respond effectively to economic challenges.
Executives, owners, or managers of businesses in New York, northern New Jersey, or Fairfield County, Conn., interested in participating in the New York Fed’s monthly business surveys can find more information here. The next survey results will be released on Oct. 15 and 16.
Following the inflationary surge from 2021 to 2023, which was touched off by supply chain constraints and shipping bottlenecks, we evaluate a new panel of own-firm price and unit cost growth expectations in the Atlanta Fed’s Survey of Business Uncertainty for signs that the anticipated impact from tariffs is broadening beyond directly affected firms. We find evidence for the potential of tariffs to touch off another bout of high inflation. First, firms that are directly exposed to tariffs have increased their year-ahead price growth expectations sharply (by 0.7 percentage points). Second, firms that are not directly exposed to tariffs but are operating in industries that are highly exposed to tariffs anticipate a moderately higher trajectory for year-ahead price growth (0.3 percentage points). Third, this broadening of overall price pressures—a key feature of the pandemic-era inflationary impulse—is only partially offset by lower price increases from tariff-exposed firms that are operating largely in industries not exposed to tariffs.
Key Findings
Firms, en masse, have increased their year-ahead price growth expectations since the end of 2024. This is especially true for firms directly exposed to tariffs.
We find evidence of a broadening out of the influence of tariffs beyond those directly exposed. Unexposed firms in exposed industries anticipate a moderately higher trajectory of year-ahead price growth.
The broadening of anticipated price growth is only partially offset by lower price growth expectations among tariff-exposed firms that are operating in largely unexposed industries.
Drewry Maritime Financial Research (DMFR), is the marketing name of Drewry Financial Research Services Ltd. DMFR, is an independent equity research service focused on the maritime industry. DMFR’s parent organisation, Drewry Shipping Consultants Holdings Limited was established more than 50 years ago and is now widely regarded as one of the leading independent sources of global industry analysis and insight. This in-depth industry knowledge is fully applied in our analysis of quoted maritime companies.
The railway is the most revolutionary instrumentality known to history, for economic life in general and not merely for commerce, but the railway was dependent on the age of iron; and it also like so many other things, was the plaything of princely and courtier interests.
Zooming out you may intuit that these narrow gauge explanations are inadequate but much better than nothing. We are faced with the problem of connecting railroads and the Iron Age to larger transformations from which these railroads were born.
Despite the brilliance of Watt’s engine, however, without the financial backing of Matthew Boulton, it might have been a failure.
If you read Watt and Boulton’s correspondence, Watt is always thinking locally, whereas Boulton is already talking about selling the invention globally. This is the ecosystem in which Weber’s economic observations reside.
Land transport also remained as before. The post produced no change; it merely forwarded letters and small packages, but did not concern itself with large scale production, which was decisive for economic life.
Only the roads underwent an extraordinary improvement, through the construction of turnpikes. In this the French government under Sully took the lead, while England leased the roads to private enterprisers who collected tolls for their use. The building of the turnpikes wrought a revolution in commercial life comparable to no other before the appearance of the railways. There is no comparison between the present density of road traffic and that of this period. In 1793, 70,000 horses went through the little town of Lüneburg while as late as 1846 only 40,000 were used in freight transport in all Germany. The costs of land carriage amounted to ten or twenty times the freight on the railways at a later time, and were three to four times as high as the charges for inland shipping at the same period. A half billion ton-kilometers was the highest figure for transportation for the movement on land in Germany, while in 1913, 67 billions were carried on the railroads.
Everything is connected to everything else, and without realizing this truth and sensing the underlying transformations, you cannot get a clear signal from history.
Ever since new tariffs were enacted in early 2025, a key policy question has been what is the extent to which businesses will pass tariff costs through to prices, and when? The effects of a tariff are rarely straightforward, given, among other things, competitive dynamics and the challenges of implementation, but the historically large and changing nature of these tariffs have created additional levels of uncertainty over the effects.
In uncertain times, anecdotal evidence from businesses can be especially insightful. We are learning how businesses are reacting to tariffs through the Richmond Fed’s business surveys as well as through hundreds of one-on-one conversations with Fifth District businesses since the start of 2025.
These conversations showcase that navigating tariffs is a complex and sometimes protracted process for firms, particularly when there is uncertainty. Firms describe several reasons they may not have experienced the full impact of proposed tariffs yet (even when goods and countries they deal with are subject to them), as well as reasons that even when they have incurred tariff-related cost increases, there can be a delayed impact on pricing decisions.
Reasons Firms May Not Have Incurred Tariffs Yet
Business contacts describe several strategies or circumstances that can delay or reduce the tariffs on inputs or other imported items. These include the following:
Delayed ordering. In response to announced tariffs, many firms ran down existing inventories or ran inventories lean in hopes that tariffs would become lower. For example, a national retailer said everyone was “delaying all we can delay in hopes we get more clarity on trade deals” and reported meeting with procurement teams multiple times per week to discuss ports and ship capacity, evolving tariffs, and inventories to keep goods flowing and prices as low as possible. One port said they have a crane waiting to be shipped but can’t do so now due to the tariffcost.
Cost-sharing.Vendor relationships are often long term, and many firms report partnering with suppliers and customers to share costs. When tariffs first rolled out, multiple firms (a beverage distributer, supply chainlogistics company) anticipated a “rule of thirds” where the cost was split evenly among the supplier, the importer, and the customer. A national retailer reported being large enough to force suppliers to bear much of the cost, though it varied by relationship and item. Interestingly, firms also reported that cost-sharing is not necessarily a permanent solution: A steeldistributer said that with the second round of tariffs announced in June, “The ‘kumbaya’ of cost-sharing was likely to come to an end.” Similarly, a fabricmanufacturer said that upon an announced trade deal with Vietnam that took tariffs from 10 percent to 20 percent, suppliers took a new stand on cost sharing: “Most vendors said you’re on your own” for the second 10 percent, and one even clawed back cost-sharing from the first round.
Transit time. It takes up to six weeks for container ships to arrive to the East Coast from China, so even if firms are ordering goods, there is a natural delay when the tariff is incurred. Shipping time in a world of rapidly changing tariff proposals add to uncertainty around tariffcosts.
Tariff implementation delays.Richmond FedeconomistMarina Azzimonti has found that a variety of tariff implementation delays help explain why actual tariffs as of May 2025 were much lower than expected. These factors include legacy exemptions and delays in customs system updates. Azzimonti also finds that a small percentage is explained by countries substituting away from high-tariff countries. For example, one national retailer we spoke with was in the process of dropping 10 percent of products sourced from China. Whether a company can change sourcing varies dramatically by type of firm and product.
As our monthly business surveys have found, many firms report deploying more than one strategy to delay tariffs. Notably, many of these delays are only temporary.
Reasons Tariffs May Have a Delayed Impact on Prices
Even when firms have incurred tariffs, they give several reasons why tariffs may not be immediately reflected in the prices they charge for their products. These include the following:
Waiting for tariff policy to clarify. Higher prices could reduce demand for goods and services and/or lead firms to lose market share, so many firms said they are hesitant to increase prices until they’re sure tariffs will remain in place. For example, a large national retailer said if tariffs are finalized at a sufficiently low level, they’ll absorb what they’ve incurred to date, but if high tariffs stick, they’ll have to raise prices. A steel fabricator for industrial equipment described being reluctant to raise prices on the 10 percent cost increases they’d seen thus far but would have to raise prices should the increases reach 12 to 13 percent. A grocery store chain was reluctant to raise prices and instead might reduce margins, which had recovered in recent years, to maintain their customer base. Some firms explicitly noted a strategy to both raise prices over time and pursue efficiency gains to cut costs and completely restore margins within a year or two.
Elasticity testing. Firms reported testing across goods whether consumers will accept price increases. A furnituremanufacturer said he’s seen competitors pass along just 5 percentage points of the tariffs at a time so it isn’t such a huge shock to customers, though in that sector, “We all end in the same place which is the customer bearing most of it.” A national retailer said most firms are doing a version of stair-stepping tariffs through, e.g., raising prices a small amount once or twice to see if consumer demand holds, and if so, trying again two months later. This retailer said prices were going up very marginally in early summer, would increase more in July and August, and would be up by 3 to 5 percent by the end of Q4 and into 2026. Another national retailer said they would start testing the extent to which demand falls with price increases, e.g., when the first items that were subject to tariffs—in this case back to school items—hit shelves in late July.
Blind margin. Some firms reported attempting to pass through cost in less noticeable ways. While any price increase to consumers will be captured in measures of aggregate inflation, the fact that price increases may occur on non-tariffedgoods might make it difficult to directly relate price increases to tariffs. An outdoor goodsretailer said, “Unless it’s a branded item where everyone knows the price, if something goes for $18, it can also go for $19.” A national retailer plans to print new shelf labels with updated pricing, which will be less noticeable for consumers compared to multiple new price stickers layered on top. This takes time (akin to a textbook “menu cost” in economics), so it will not be reflected in prices until July and August. A grocery store said their goal was to increase average prices across the store but focus on less visible prices.
Selling out of preexisting inventory: Many firms noted they still have productioninventory from before tariffs were announced, so they do not need to raise prices as long as they still sell these lower cost goods. A national retailer noted they have at least 25 weeks of inventory on hand for most importedproducts. A firm that produces grocery items said they will decide how much to raise prices as they get closer to selling tariff-affected products. Similarly, retailers order seasonal items quarters in advance. Many were receiving items for fall and winter when the new tariffs were going into effect in the spring. They paid the tariff then, but we won’t see the price increase until those items hit the shelves in the fall or winter. One retailer speculated that seasonal décor items will look the most like a one-time increase.
Pre-established prices. Many firms face infrequent pricing due to factors like annual contracts or pre-sales. For example, a dealer of farm equipment gets half its sales through incentivized pre-sales to lock in demand and smooth around crop cycles. They noted that while it would be difficult to retroactively ask those customers to pay for part of the tariff, they will pass tariffs directly through on spare parts. A steel fabricator for industrial equipment has a contract for steel through Q3, so they haven’t been impacted yet by price increases. However, they will face new costs once that contract expires.
In general, compared to small firms, large firms have more ability to negotiate with vendors, temporarily absorb costs, burn cash, wait for strategic opportunity, and test things out. This matters because large firms often lead pricing behavior among firms, so these strategic choices may influence the response of inflation to tariffs more generally. Even within firm size, one often hears that negotiations on price vary considerably by relationship and item.
Conclusion
A key question surrounding tariffs is whether any effects on inflation will resemble a short-lived price increase—as in the simplest textbook model of tariffs—or a more sustained increase to inflation that may warrant tighter Fedmonetary policy. When asked in May what will determine the answer, Fed ChairJerome Powellcited three factors [archived PDF]: 1) the size of the tariff effects; 2) how long it takes to work their way through to prices; and 3) whether inflation expectations remain anchored. The insights shared above suggest the process from proposed tariffs to the prices set by firms is far from instantaneous or clear-cut, particularly when tariff policy is changing.
Sensing from businesses suggests that the impact of tariffs on their price-setting [archived PDF] has been lagged, but it is starting to play out. Nonetheless, it remains highly uncertain how tariffs will impact consumerinflation. The discussion above makes clear that firms are nimble and innovative in the face of challenge, and they are concerned about losing customers in the current environment, particularly consumer-facing firms. We will continue to learn from our business contacts and share their insights.
Container shipping companies’ 3Q23 financial results showcased a sharp dip in profits or even losses. On a group level, eleven liners (which report quarterly results) among our portfolio of 13 companies reported an average slump of 54.6% YoY in their 3Q23 topline. Operating costs declined 18.1% YoY amid falling chartering costs and lowering bunker prices. However, the cost reduction was insufficient to offset the plunge in topline; thus, EBIT contracted 94.1% YoY on average.
The Drewry Container Equity Index tumbled 28.1% YTD 2023 (ending 22 November), driven by lowering freight rates (WCI: -30.7% in YTD 2023), which squeezed earnings over the quarters. On the contrary, the S&P 500 posted an 18.4% growth. The Drewry Container Equity Index declined 3.4% in the month ending 22 November 2023. Talking about equity prices individually, APMM’s stock price fell 9.0% amid EBIT loss for its Ocean segment in 3Q23, staff cuts and reduced capex guidance, highlighting APMM’s efforts toward reducing costs faced with the bleak industry outlook. Hapag-Lloyd’s stock price slumped 22.2% as its EBIT margin (3Q23: 5.1%) slid below its pre-pandemic level (3Q19: 7.8%). ZIM became the first carrier to report impairment of assets worth USD 2.0bn in 3Q23, and its stock price fell 18.1%. Meanwhile, China-exposed container companies benefitted from the positive sentiment arising from the proposed fiscal stimulus by the Chinese government, possibly boosting the out-of-China and intra-Asia trades. Asianstocks in the broader index rose 2.0% to 19.4% in the month ending 22 November 2023.
Mainly driven by weak earnings prospects, the Drewry Container Equity Index trades at a P/B of 0.5x, a 47.5% discount to its pre-pandemic average (2013-19). We expect freight rates to fall sharply in 2024 and increasingly incur losses. Thus, we expect the multiple to remain suppressed.
As the fleet of container shipping companies expands, the charter market softens. For instance, 1-year TC rates declined 14.2% and 52.5% YoY in October for vessels sized 1,110 teu and 8,500 teu. Rates declined more for larger vessels as these constitute the majority of the order book and new deliveries. The YoY decline has continued since October 2022, but rates improved slightly during April-May 2023. However, this was not due to the fundamentally strong market but MSC and CMA CGM’s aggressive chartering of vessels to expand their fleets. Now that the two companies have stopped chartering in vessels, the charter market continues to decline.
Driven by the softening charter market, second-hand asset prices are also weakening. In October, on a YoY basis, prices for five-year-old vessels (2,700 teu and 7,200 teu) contracted 30.6% and 31.5%, and for 10-year-old ships, prices tumbled between 36.7% and 53.2%. Contrary to the sale and purchase market, newbuild prices (1,500 teu and 14,000 teu) continue to increase and rose by an average of 2.2% YoY, led by a shortage of capacity in shipyards.
Oman shipyard Asyad Dry Dock is expanding its capacity by 20% with a new floating dock as its current facilities are fully utilized.
by Marcus Hand
The shipyard, formerly Oman Drydock Company, is now part of the Asyad Group, the logistics arm of the Oman government. Management of the yard has been combined with shipowner Oman Shipping Company, and overseen by Dr. Irbahim Al Nadhairi, Chief Executive Officer, Shipping & Drydock.
“We have integrated the shipping and drydocking as the shipping service. The companies are still two legal separate entities but then we share the same executive team to be more efficient,” Dr. Ibrahim told Seatrade Maritime News in an interview at Posidonia 2022.
On the shipping side of the business the group owns a fleet of 65 ships with plans to increase the fleet to over 100 vessels over the next five years. He explains that with such a size of fleet the shipowner needed a quality shipyard so it made sense to work together.
Asyad maintains most, if not all its fleet at the shipyard in Oman, accounting for around 15% of its business. While part of the same group Dr. Ibrahim says it does not send its ships to the yard “by default,” and they have to make sure it is competitive as it needs to be for their third-party customers.
Business has been growing for the shipyard and it experienced a spike in the first half of this year as Chinese capacity has been taken out of the market by COVID restrictions pushing work to yards in other parts of the world. “So, we could see there was a big hike in the number of ships, not only for Asyad Dry Dock, but the entire region as well,” Dr. Ibrahim said.
“The next 12 months I believe the ship repair industry will still continue to flourish on our side.”
The shipyard’s two 600,000 DWTdrydocks are already operating at full capacity and this year sees it adding a floating dock with the capacity to handle vessels up to Panamax size.
“We’ve recently acquired a floating dock which is of Panamax size and we reckon that about 40% of the business in ship repair is within that Panamax size. The floating dock gives us around 20% extra capacity,” he said. It will increase the number of ships the yard can repair from 200 to around 240.
The floating dock is expected to arrive in Oman in the next six weeks, and following some dredging works be operational by the start of Q4 this year.
Greek owners are major clients of the shipyard and account for around 40% of business, and Dr. Ibrahim said they added two more Greek clients last week. “It seems we have a good reputation in the Greek market and between now and end of Q3 we have 27 ships in orderbook from the Greek market.”
Being able to deliver services efficiently and on time is of critical importance in the financially booming container sector.
“Today when you talk about bringing a container ship into a shipyard time really is money,” Dr. Ibrahim said. If a container ship owner says a ship will be in the yard for 15 days the owner will expect work to be completed in 12 days.
‘Further Action Is Needed’ As MEPC 78 Gets Underway
IMO Secretary General Kitack Lim hailed the 78th session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee as an opportunity to be brave and lead by example on decarbonization.
by Gary Howard
MEPC 78 has a packed agenda with the opportunity to consider and progress IMO’s work on cutting greenhouse gas emissions from ships.
At the last MEPC meeting, a revision process was agreed to strengthen the IMO’s initial GHG strategy which was adopted in 2018. A strengthened version of that initial strategy is due in mid-2023 at MEPC 80.
“Whilst progress has been made on many of the measures set out in the Initial Strategy, I am sure that we can all agree that further action is needed. Your discussions this week will chart the way forward for the decarbonization of international shipping,” said Lim.
“It is therefore of utmost importance that IMO continues to deliver concrete progress in transitioning international shipping from fossil fuels to low and zero-carbon alternatives.”
Member states at MEPC 78 will also consider adoption of guidelines to support short-term measures on GHG emissions, including correction factors for carbon intensity, EEXI calculation methodology and revised SEEMP.
Calculations on the GHG impact of fuels will be discussed, as ISWG-GHG 11 reports progress on developing lifecycle GHG assessment guidelines. Well-to-wake and tank-to-wake calculations are in scope, with the aim of giving fuel users a full picture of the impact of the production and use of the fuels they choose.
“Your constructive discussions on these topics will enhance the Committee’s evidence-based decision making when further considering proposals for mid-term GHG reduction measures,” Lim told Member States.
“I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest appreciation to all Member States, and observer delegations, and especially the Chair of the Working Group on reduction of GHG emissions from ships, Mr. Oftedal of Norway, for the extraordinary effort and dedication in ensuring the successful outcome of both intersessional meetings.”
Houston Begins $1.1Bn Ship Channel Widening
The Port of Houston kicked off its the long-awaited billion dollar dredging scheme, the Houston Ship Channel Widening and Improvement Project 11 last week.
by Michele Labrut
The $1.1bn expansion of the Houston Ship Channel, which has been in planning for more than a decade is finally underway.
After more than a decade of planning, Project 11 will allow the ship channel to accommodate an additional 1,400 vessels per year and could generate up to $134bn more annually in economic impact once completed. The channel currently accommodates about 8,200 vessels and 215,000 barges each year, hauling more than 247m tons of cargo.
“This project will enable Port of Houston to continue to grow and respond effectively to whatever the future demand in the supply chain has to offer,” Port of Houston Executive Director Roger Guenther said in a statement.
Port of Houston is a 40-2 km-long complex of nearly 200 private and public industrial terminals along the 583.6 km-long manmade Houston Ship Channel, which connects the port to the Gulf of Mexico.
Port of Houston and the Army Corps of Engineers signed an agreement in August giving the port permits to start dredging the federal waterway. Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. was awarded a $95m contract in October, which also includes oyster mitigation and construction of a bird island. The channel widening and deepening project is scheduled to be completed in 2025.
EU Transport Commissioner Focuses on ‘Solidarity Lanes’ and Sanctions
As the global food crisis deepens and millions of tons of Ukraine’s grain remain blocked in the Black Sea, EU Transport Commissioner Adina-Ioana Vălean has declared that all transport modes will be considered in setting up new Solidarity Lanes that bypass the Black Sea.
by Paul Bartlett
Her comments come as disrupted grain movements risk a global food crisis.
Speaking to journalists immediately prior to yesterday’s opening ceremony at Posidonia, she said that trucks, tracks, trains, transshipment and storage facilities will all contribute to new supply chains to ensure that exports from one of the world’s largest grain exporters can resume, at least in part, as soon as possible.
She said that the setting up of Solidarity Lanes would have important commercial implications for shipping and could even lead to changes in the sector’s business models.
Vălean also rejected criticism from prominent Greek shipowners who had claimed earlier in the day that sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its invasion on Ukraine won’t work. At a Maritime Leaders Summit staged by Capital Link on Monday, George Prokopiou and Evangelos Marinakis had both said that sanctions against Iran and Venezuela had been shown not to work and similar moves against Russia would not be effective either.
However, other sources pointed to the scale of the sanctions package that has severely impacted the Russian economy by disrupting key revenue generating sectors. Energy exports are the most obvious example and although Russian oil is still easily sold in India and China, for example, it is at deep discounts to global prices.
Meanwhile, LNG exports have also been hit and development of Arctic LNGsupply chains have also been severely affected. Within the next few months, Vălean said that Russian oil exports would be further disrupted by the withdrawal of insurance cover on shipping and transport arrangements.
The supply chain challenges we hear about today likely bear little resemblance to those we envisioned at the beginning of 2020. Ongoing disruption to the global supply chain has accelerated and heightened the need to focus on risk mitigation — or face even more critical concerns.
The tempo and rhythm of world events and world history are not captured in the linear and bland books one reads in schools and colleges where the sense of the stormy forward turbulence of the world is not communicated. Here’s an example that does communicate this “crazy dynamics”:
“The world supply of gold was diminishing, as the effects of the gold rushes in California and Australia in the 1850s and 1860s passed. This coincided with the decision in the 1870s of many of the leading countries to follow Britain’s example to use gold rather than silver as the basis of their currency — Germany in 1871, France in 1876 for example — so that the demand for gold rose just as the supply was temporarily declining. This in turn led to some doubt about the use of a gold standard and to much discussion about ‘bi-metallism’ and about the possibility of restoring silver to its place as the metal on which the world’s currency should be based, though this movement had more success in the United States than in Europe, where gold has now established itself firmly. By the 1890s however the discovery of new gold deposits in South Africa, Western Australia and Canada put an end to these discussions and uncertainties, as far as currency was concerned, for some fifty years.”
In other words, the de facto emergence of Britain/London as the world commercial and policy center and the relation of this emergence to empire and international tensions and rivalries, means it is very problematical for any country to steer a course other than staying in tandem with British moods and ideologies, such as free trade. Any country by itself would find it difficult to have a more independent policy. (Friedrich List of Germany, who died in 1846, wrestles with these difficulties somewhat.) The attempts to find “autonomy and autarky” in the interwar years (Germany, Japan, Italy) led to worse nightmares. The world seems like a “no exit” arena of ideologies and rivalries.
The “crazy dynamics” and the semi-anarchy of the system, which continues to this day and is even worse, means that policy-making is always seen through a “dark windshield.”
The Brain Bank has released findings from its first three years of operation, analyzing the brains of professional and non-professional athletes who donate them after death.
The researchers say 12 of the athletes’ brains showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition associated with a range of psychiatric problems, ranging from mood and behavior disorders to cognitive impairment and dementia.
“CTE was identified in the brains of older former professionals with long playing careers, but also in younger, non-professional sportsmen and in recent professionals who had played under modern concussion guidelines,” the authors found.
“Screening for CTE in all deaths by suicide is probably impractical, but our finding suggests it should be undertaken if a history of repetitive head injury is known or suspected,” the authors say.
The authors note that brains donated to the bank are more likely to show signs of trauma because donation is often done when an athlete’s family have concerns about the role head trauma may have played in a person’s death or condition.
Nonetheless, they say: “Our findings should encourage clinicians and policymakers to develop measures that further mitigate the risk of sport-related repetitive head injury.”
One Step Closer to Hydrogen-Fueled Planes
Airbus to Test Zero-Emissions Aircraft, but How Does It Work?
Hydrogen fuel, touted by some as the fuel of the future, is seen as a potential solution for the deeply polluting aviation and shipping industries in a net-zero world: hydrogen burns cleanly, producing just energy and water vapor.
But while engineers have promoted hydrogen as a possible transport fuel since at least the 1920s, real-world technologies are still in their infancy, thanks to the destructive dominance of fossil fuels over the last century.
Airbus’ announcement, then, marks an important early step in a move towards making the sector compatible with net-zero.
“This is the most significant step undertaken at Airbus to usher in a new era of hydrogen-powered flight since the unveiling of our ZEROe concepts back in September 2020,” said Sabine Klauke, Airbus Chief Technical Officer, in a statement.
“By leveraging the expertise of American and Europeanengine manufacturers to make progress on hydrogen combustion technology, this international partnership sends a clear message that our industry is committed to making zero-emission flight a reality.”
“Our ambition is to take this aircraft and add a stub in between the two rear doors at the upper level,” said Glenn Llewellyn, Airbus’ Vice President of Zero Emissions Aircraft, in a promotional video on YouTube. “That stub will have on the end of it a hydrogen powered gas turbine.”
There will be instruments and sensors around the hydrogen storage unit and engine, to monitor how the system functions both in ground tests and in-flight. Up in the cockpit, instruments will need to be modified with a new throttle to change the amount of power the engine operates at, and a display for pilots to monitor the system.
Why Hydrogen Fuel?
Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the Universe, burns cleanly, and can be produced using renewable energy through the electrolysis of water (though it can be produced using fossil fuels, too).
Given that it’s so abundant, can be made from water, and combusts to produce water vapor, it can be a closed-loop energy system; the definition of renewable.
It’s also highly reactive: hydrogen gas, made up of two hydrogen atoms, can combust at extremely low concentrations. It can combust in response to a simple spark, and it’s even been known to combust when exposed to sunlight or minor increases in temperature. That’s why it’s a suitable replacement fuel for kerosene, but it’s also why the system needs to be tested for safety.
“Aviation is one of these things that everyone agrees needs hydrogen for decarbonization, because it’s not going to be possible to electrify long distance air travel in the next few decades,” explains Fiona Beck, a senior lecturer at ANU and convener of the Hydrogen Fuels Project in the University’s Zero-carbon energy for the Asia Pacific grand challenge. “We just don’t have the battery technologies.
“One kilogram of hydrogen has 130 times the energy of one kilogram of batteries, so in something like air travel, where weight is really important, there’s just no way you’re going to get batteries light enough to directly electrify air travel.”
That’s a very high-profile incident in which hydrogen proved deadly, but a proverbial boatload of hydrogen gas encased within a fabric covering is nothing like the fuel cells proponents of hydrogen fuel are creating in the modern era.
Nonetheless, the incident demonstrates why it’s important to ensure the safety and impregnability of fuel storage; a single spark can prove fatal (though that’s the case with existing fuels, too).
“The key will be to have really good storage containers for the hydrogen, and you’re going to have to re-engineer all the fuel delivery lines,” says Beck, “because you can’t assume that the systems that deliver kerosene safely to an engine are going to be suitable for delivering hydrogen.”
Ultimately, Beck says pre-existing, sophisticated hydrogen technologies, even if they aren’t derived from aviation, mean engineers aren’t going into this blind.
“We already use quite a lot of hydrogen in industry, which is very different than flying a plane full of hydrogen, but still, we know how to handle it relatively safely.
“So, it’s just about designers and engineers making sure that they consider all the safety aspects of it. It’s different, but not necessarily more challenging.”
Two Paths to a Hydrogen Fueled Future of Flight?
Beck notes that Airbus aren’t the only commercial entity exploring hydrogen as a fuel type. In fact, Boeing are incorporating hydrogen into their vision of a cleaner future, but in a different way.
“There’s a difference between just getting hydrogen and burning it in a modified jet engine and what Boeing are doing, which is using sustainable air fuels,” she says.
But what are sustainable air fuels (SAFs)? Beck says they’re made by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide to make a sustainably-produced kerosene.
“The difference is that instead of getting fossil fuels and refining them, you start with hydrogen, which you would hope comes from green sources, and then you take some carbon dioxide captured from another industrial process, and you’re cycling the carbon dioxide one more time before it gets released.”
So, CO2 is still released into the atmosphere, but the individual flight is not adding its own new load of greenhouse gases to the amount. Instead, it essentially piggy-backs off a pre-existing quantity of emissions that were already produced somewhere else.
The type of fuel that wins out remains to be seen.
“It’ll be really interesting to see which approach we go for in the longer term,” Beck muses. “With synthetic air fuels, your plane engine doesn’t need to change at all, nothing about the demand side needs to change–it’s just kerosene.
“But then there’s issues, because you’re still using carbon dioxide.”
Some commentators see Boeing’s bet on SAFs as a more pragmatic approach that may help us usher in a less polluting age, quicker. On the other hand, if successful, the Airbus system can be fully carbon-neutral from fuel production through to combustion.
“Climate Adaptation by Itself Is Not Enough”: The Latest IPCC Report Installment
The Second of Three Reports Shows Our Vulnerabilities and How We Can Protect Them.
In the next part of its Sixth Assessment Report, released today, the IPCC has examined the world population’s vulnerability to climate change, and what must be done to adapt to current and future changes.
It’s the second of three sections of this report (Working group II)–Working Group I’s section, released last August, demonstrates that anthropogenic climate change is continuing, while Working Group III’s component, on mitigation, will be released in April. An overall report is coming in September.
The IPCC reports represent a phenomenal amount of work from hundreds of researchers and government officials. It synthesizes information from over 10,000 studies, with over 62,000 comments from expert peer reviewers.
Literally every sentence of the summary for policymakers has been agreed upon by consensus from a group of experts and government delegations–the line-by-line approval process alone takes a fortnight. The report in its entirety is a product of several years.
Given the time and expertise involved in making the report, its conclusions aren’t revelatory: the world is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, poorest people are often the most at risk, and adaptation to these effects will force changes in our lifestyle, infrastructure, economy and agriculture.
While adaptation is necessary, it’s also insufficient. “It’s increasingly clear that the pace of adaptation across the globe is not enough to keep up with climate change,” says Professor Mark Howden, Working Group II’s vice-chair and director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University.
Under the IPCC’s projected emissions scenarios, the climate could warm much more or slightly more, based on the volume of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere.
“Depending on which of those trajectories we go on, our adaptation options differ,” says Howden.
On our current, business-as-usual trajectory, we can’t avoid the crisis, no matter how much we change our human systems to prepare for or recover from the ravages of climate change.
“Climate adaptation, risk management, by itself is not enough,” says Howden.
The report comes at a pertinent time for Australia, as southern Queensland and northern New South Wales experience dramatic flooding from high, La Niña-related rainfall.
“One of the clear projections is an increase in the intensity of heavy rainfall events,” says Professor Brendan Mackey, director of National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University, and a lead author on the Australasian chapter of the report.
Mackey also notes that he has extended family members in Lismore, NSW, who today needed to be rescued from their rooftops as the town floods.
Howden says that while it’s hard to link individual disasters to climate change as they occur, he agrees that there are more floods projected for northern Australia.
“I think we can say that climate change is already embedded in this event,” adds Howden.
“These events are driven by, particularly, ocean temperatures, and we know very well that those have gone up due to climate change due to human influence.”
He points out that flooding is a common side effect of a La Niña event, of which more are expected as the climate warms.
Flooding is not the only extreme weather event that can be linked to climate change.
“We’ve observed further warming and sea level rise, we’ve observed more flood days and heat waves, we’ve observed less snow,” says Mackey.
“Interestingly, [we’ve observed] more rainfall in the north, less winter rainfall in the southwest and southeast, and more extreme fire weather days in the south and east.”
All of these trends are expected to continue, especially under high-emissions scenarios.
For Australians, the predictions the IPCC has made with very high or high confidence include: both a decline in agricultural production and increase in extreme fire weather across the south of the continent; a nation-wide increase in heat-related mortality; increased stress on cities, infrastructure and supply chains from natural disasters; and inundation of low-lying coastal communities from sea level rise.
The final high-confidence prediction is that Australian institutions and governments aren’t currently able to manage these risks.
“Climate change impacts are becoming more complex and difficult to manage,” says Professor Lauren Rickards, director of the Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT, also a lead author on the Australasian chapter.
“Not only are climatic hazards becoming more severe–including, sometimes, nonlinear effects such as, for example, tipping over flood levees that have historically been sufficient–but also those climatic hazards are intersecting in very, very complex ways. And in turn, the flow-on effects on the ground are interacting, causing what’s called cascading and compounding impacts.”
She adds that many local and state governments and the private sector have both recognized the importance of changing their practices to prepare for or react to climate extremes.
“We have these systems, these infrastructural systems–energy, transport, water, communications, for example–and it’s the need to adapt those at the base of a lot of the adaptation that’s needed,” says Rickards.
Australia is missing a large investment in research on how different places and systems can adapt to the changing climate.
“We’ve seen a really significant reduction in the research into what actions different individuals, communities, sectors, can take,” says Howden.
“And what that means is we don’t have the portfolio of options available for people in a way that is easily communicable, and easily understood, and easily adopted.”
Without this research, as well as work from local and Indigenous experts, some adaptations can even risk worsening the impacts of climate change.
“The evidence that we’ve looked at shows really clearly that adaptation strategies, when they build on Indigenous and local knowledge and integrate science, that’s when they are most successful,” says Dr. Johanna Nalau, leader of the Adaptation Science Research Theme at Cities Research Institute, Griffith University.
While the risks Australia faces are dramatic, things are much worse for other parts of the world. Nalau, who was a lead author on the report’s chapter on small islands, says that “most of the communities and countries are constrained in what they can do in terms of adaptation”.
In April, we will have access to the IPCC’s dossier on mitigating climate change and emissions reduction. But in the meantime, Working Group II’s battalion of researchers advocate for better planning for climate disaster, more research into ways human systems can adapt, sustainable and just development worldwide, and rapid emissions reduction.
“Adaptation can’t be divorced from mitigation, conceptually or in practice,” says Rickards.
“We need adaptation to enable effective mitigation. We need effective mitigation to enable adaptation to give it a chance of succeeding. At present, we’re not on track and we need to pivot quickly.”
Piecing Together Pandemic Origins
New Research Asserts Market, Not Laboratory, Is the “Unambiguous” Birthplace of SARS-CoV-2
by Jamie Priest
Now in our third year of woe, most of us are naturally focused on the end of the pandemic. The global death toll is approaching 6 million, and the world is desperately searching for signs the ordeal’s over.
But amid the future watching, a team of researchers have turned their attention back to the beginning, tackling the question that was once on everyone’s lips: where did SARS-CoV-2 originate?
Outlining their evidence in two preprints, researchers assert an “unambiguous” origin in the Huanan market in Wuhan, spilling over not once, but twice into the human population and kicking off a global health crisis.
The paired papers, which have yet to undergo peer review and publication in a scientific journal, critically undermine the competing, and controversial, alternative origin story that involves a leak–intentional or otherwise–from a nearby Wuhan virology lab where scientists study coronaviruses.
The Huanan market was an immediate suspect when COVID first emerged in late 2019. Workers at the market were amongst the first individuals to present with the pneumonia that was quickly linked to a novel coronavirus, and Chinese officials, fearing a repeat of the 2002 SARS epidemic that killed 774 people, were quick to close the market down.
But by the time Chinese researchers descended on the Huanan market in 2020 to collect genetic samples, they found no wildlife present at all. Although they were able to detect traces of the virus in samples taken from surfaces and sewers in the market, the lack of direct evidence of infection in market animals sparked a debate over whether this truly was the epicenter of the outbreak. Alternative theories centered around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In the face of this absence of evidence, researchers working on the new reports turned to alternative information sources.
Using data pulled from the Chinesesocial media app Weibo, they were able to map the location of 737 COVID-positive Wuhan residents who turned to the app to seek health advice during the first three months of the outbreak.
Plotting the geographic concentrations of cases through time, the researchers clearly identified the market as the centre of origin, with the virus spreading radially through surrounding suburbs and across the city as time progressed. Through statistical analysis, the researchers demonstrated that the chances of such a pattern arising through mere chance was exceedingly unlikely.
However, the pattern alone was open to interpretation, with questions remaining about pathways of introduction to the market–was the virus carried in inside a caged animal, on the coat of an unwitting scientist, or via some as-yet unidentified vector?
To dig further into the mystery, the researchers looked at the genetic samples obtained from market surfaces in January 2020 by Chinese scientists, tracing the locations of individual positive samples to their exact location within the market complex.
This second map revealed a strong concentration of positive samples in one corner of the market, a sector that had been previously documented to house a range of wild mammals that are considered potential coronavirus hosts.
Finally, the researchers created an evolutionary family tree of the earliest coronavirus lineages that emerged in the first few panicked weeks of the pandemic.
Even in its very earliest stages SARS-CoV-2 was a variable beast, with evidence of two distinct lineages, dubbed A and B. Looking closely at the mutations that separate the two, the researchers found something surprising–rather than one descending from the other, it appears that they had separate origins and entries into the human population, with lineage B making the leap in late November and lineage A following suit shortly afterwards.
Initial studies of the Huanan market genetic samples found only lineage B, but this latest investigation detected the presence of lineage A in people who lived in close proximity to the market–a finding corroborated by a recent Chinese study that identified lineage A on a single glove collected from the market during the initial shutdown.
Questions remain about the identity of the intermediary animal host species. But by narrowing research focus to the most likely centre of origin, this research will significantly aid efforts to understand the process that saw COVID-19 enter the world, and hopefully help avert future pandemics.
Fake Viral Footage Is Spreading alongside the Real Horror in Ukraine—Here Are 5 Ways to Spot It
Manipulated or Falsified Videos and Images Can Spread Quickly—but There Are Strategies You Can Take to Evaluate Them.
By TJ Thompson, Daniel Angus and Paul Dootson
Amid the alarming images of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past few days, millions of people have also seen misleading, manipulated or false information about the conflict on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram.
One example is this video of military jets posted to TikTok, which is historical footage but captioned as live video of the situation in Ukraine.
Visuals, because of their persuasive potential and attention-grabbing nature, are an especially potent choice for those seeking to mislead. Where creating, editing or sharing inauthentic visual content isn’t satire or art, it is usually politically or economically motivated.
Disinformation campaigns aim to distract, confuse, manipulate and sow division, discord, and uncertainty in the community. This is a common strategy for highly polarized nations where socioeconomic inequalities, disenfranchisement and propaganda are prevalent.
How is this fake content created and spread, what’s being done to debunk it, and how can you ensure you don’t fall for it yourself?
What Are the Most Common Fakery Techniques?
Using an existing photo or video and claiming it came from a different time or place is one of the most common forms of misinformation in this context. This requires no special software or technical skills—just a willingness to upload an old video of a missile attack or other arresting image, and describe it as new footage.
Another low-tech option is to stage or pose actions or events and present them as reality. This was the case with destroyed vehicles that Russia claimed were bombed by Ukraine.
Using a particular lens or vantage point can also change how the scene looks and can be used to deceive. A tight shot of people, for example, can make it hard to gauge how many were in a crowd, compared with an aerial shot.
Taking things further still, Photoshop or equivalent software can be used to add or remove people or objects from a scene, or to crop elements out from a photograph. An example of object addition is the below photograph, which purports to show construction machinery outside a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine. The satirical text accompanying the image jokes about the “calibre of the construction machinery”—the author suggesting that reports of damage to buildings from military ordinance are exaggerated or untrue.
Close inspection reveals this image was digitally altered to include the machinery. This tweet could be seen as an attempt to downplay the extent of damage resulting from a Russian-backed missile attack, and in a wider context to create confusion and doubt as to veracity of other images emerging from the conflict zone.
Journalists and fact-checkers are also working to verify content and raise awareness of known fakes. Large, well-resourced news outlets such as the BBC are also calling out misinformation.
Social media platforms have added new labels to identify state-run media organisations or provide more background information about sources or people in your networks who have also shared a particular story.
They have also tweaked their algorithms to change what content is amplified and have hired staff to spot and flag misleading content. Platforms are also doing some work behind the scenes to detect and publicly share information on state-linked information operations.
What Can I Do about It?
You can attempt to fact-check images for yourself rather than taking them at face value. An article we wrote late last year for the Australian Associated Press explains the fact-checking process at each stage: image creation, editing and distribution.
Here are five simple steps you can take:
Examine the metadata
This Telegram post claims Polish-speaking saboteurs attacked a sewage facility in an attempt to place a tank of chlorine for a “false flag” attack.
But the video’s metadata—the details about how and when the video was created—show it was filmed days before the alleged date of the incident.
To check metadata for yourself, you can download the file and use software such as Adobe Photoshop or Bridge to examine it. Online metadata viewers also exist that allow you to check by using the image’s web link.
One hurdle to this approach is that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter often strip the metadata from photos and videos when they are uploaded to their sites. In these cases, you can try requesting the original file or consulting fact-checking websites to see whether they have already verified or debunked the footage in question.
If old content has been recycled and repurposed, you may be able to find the same footage used elsewhere. You can use Google Images or TinEye to “reverse image search” a picture and see where else it appears online.
But be aware that simple edits such as reversing the left-right orientation of an image can fool search engines and make them think the flipped image is new.
Look for inconsistencies
Does the purported time of day match the direction of light you would expect at that time, for example? Do watches or clocks visible in the image correspond to the alleged timeline claimed?
You can also compare other data points, such as politicians’ schedules or verified sightings, Google Earth vision or Google Maps imagery, to try and triangulate claims and see whether the details are consistent.
Ask yourself some simple questions
Do you know where, when and why the photo or video was made? Do you know who made it, and whether what you’re looking at is the original version?
Using online tools such as InVID or Forensically can potentially help answer some of these questions. Or you might like to refer to this list of 20 questions you can use to “interrogate” social media footage with the right level of healthy skepticism.
Ultimately, if you’re in doubt, don’t share or repeat claims that haven’t been published by a reputable source such as an international news organization. And consider using some of these principles when deciding which sources to trust.
By doing this, you can help limit the influence of misinformation, and help clarify the true situation in Ukraine.
