Reinecke, who joined the JGU Institute of Geography in May 2023, has made a major contribution to the new WMO report — in collaboration with Dr. Hannes Müller Schmied of Goethe University Frankfurt and the Senckenberg Leibniz Biodiversity and Climate Research Center Frankfurt (SBiK-F) as well as the Global Runoff Database Center (GRDC) in Koblenz. Together they supplied simulation data based on hydrological modeling, participated in the development of the corresponding methodology, and provided scientific validation of the report’s key statements. With the WMO acting as coordinating body, the report results from the expertise provided by 11 international modeling groups. The State of Global Water Resources 2022 report was published on October 12, 2023.

Scientifically validated findings on the global water situation

The first State of Global Water Resources Report for 2021 was presented in late November 2022 at the WMO headquarters in Geneva. The report is to appear annually and provide an overview of the status of the Earth’s water resources. The effects of climatic fluctuations and changes can often also be seen by what happens to our water: Heatwaves coupled with droughts can make wildfires more likely and these can then spread more rapidly due to the lack of soil moisture, to give only one example. “The WMO report is thus also designed to provide politicians and the industry with knowledge so as to identify regions that are at risk of experiencing water emergencies or are already in crisis,” added Reinecke.

Among the data shown in the 2022 report is information on the discharge rate of rivers, the levels of groundwater, soil moisture, and evaporation. However, generation of the data basis itself is problematic in that there are currently insufficient global statistics available. “Thus, we need to undertake simulation modeling,” explained Reinecke, a specialist in modeling techniques. There is a particular lack of data on the situation regarding groundwater. Even Germany cannot provide complete figures as to the related circumstances. However, there is no doubt that the dry conditions in 2022 had considerable impact in Germany, too. Just as in the case of the River Po in Italy, the water levels of the Rhine fell dramatically over longer periods, with the associated consequences for river traffic. France suffered from insufficient precipitation, resulting in difficulties when it came to providing the cooling required by nuclear power plants. South America experienced severe drought conditions while, despite increasing precipitation, groundwater levels in the important Murray-Darling Basin in Australia continued to drop below normal.

New Earth System Modeling group at Mainz University

Robert Reinecke was appointed to a junior professorship at JGU’s Institute of Geography in May 2023. Here he will establish an Earth System Modeling group. After studying computer science at TU Darmstadt, being awarded a doctorate by Goethe University Frankfurt, and undertaking research in California, he was employed at the International Center for Water Resources and Global Change (ICWRGC). He subsequently undertook research as a postdoc at the Institute of Environmental Science and Geography of the University of Potsdam. His research focuses on global groundwater in the context of global hydrological modeling. He also investigates surface water/groundwater interaction, the human impact on groundwater resources, and the impact of climate change on the hydrological cycle.

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have become an eminent cancer treatment because of their ability to precisely target tumors with potent efficacy. HER2-ADC therapies have been effective in treating breast, lung, bladder, and stomach cancers. Although they are usually well-tolerated, multiple doses of the drugs can result in severe side effects, including low blood counts, liver damage, and lung damage. Strategies that reduce toxic side effects caused by ADCs and predictive biomarkers of ADC toxicity are currently an unmet clinical need.

“In this study, we sought to determine whether a single dose of HER2-ADCs could be administered in combination with lovastatin (which temporarily elevates cell-surface HER2) to achieve therapeutic efficacy similar to that of a multiple dose regime,” said Patricia Pereira, PhD, assistant professor at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. “We also used HER2-targeted immuno-PET to monitor changes in HER2 expression after ADC therapy.”

Researchers injected mice with cultured gastric cancer cells and patient-derived gastric cancer cells. When tumors grew sufficiently, the mice were divided into groups and received various treatment schedules (no treatment, multiple doses of ADC, multiple doses of ADC with lovastatin, single dose of ADC, or single dose of ADC with lovastatin). Immuno-PET was used to investigate the dosing regimen and the efficacy of the treatment schedules.

A single dose of ADC therapy combined with lovastatin was found to reduce tumor volume at rates similar to those resulting from multiple doses of ADC in a preclinical setting. The study results showed that immuno-PET can noninvasively monitor HER2 tumor levels after treatment with HER2-targeted ADC therapies.

“This preclinical work is significant because it has the potential to improve therapy for patients with HER2-positive cancers,” noted Pereira. “It not only simplifies treatment by exploring single-dose schedules of antibody-drug conjugates but can also reduce side effects by minimizing the number of doses required. Additionally, it personalizes therapy using molecular imaging, enhancing treatment efficacy.”

She continued, “The findings suggest a future where molecular imaging techniques play a critical role in guiding drug development and cancer treatment decisions, particularly as various ADCs are being tested and approved for cancer treatment. Currently, there is no perfect way to select tumors or monitor their response to ADCs. This research indicates that molecular imaging can bridge this gap by providing real-time insights into therapy response.”

This study was made available online in June 2023.

Phytoplankton in the ocean are central to the global carbon cycle as they perform photosynthesis, capturing and transporting carbon (C) to the deep ocean. The growth of phytoplankton relies not only on carbon but also on nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), which are crucial for their cellular functioning. Phytoplankton stoichiometry defines the relative proportions of different elements such as C, N, and P in these organisms. Key connections exist between phytoplankton stoichiometry and climate through interdependencies between the oceanic carbon pump, nutrient cycling, food web dynamics, and responses to climate-related factors like atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration and temperature.

In the 1930s, the American oceanographer Alfred C. Redfield made an important discovery: he found that the concentrations of the elements C, N, and P in the marine phytoplankton roughly follow a fixed ratio of approximately 106:16:1 — the ratio now named after him, the Redfield ratio. Surprisingly, Redfield’s research also revealed that in the seawater samples he collected, the concentration of nitrate, a primary nitrogen nutrient source, was, on average, 16 times higher than the concentration of phosphate, a primary phosphorus nutrient source. The nitrogen-to-phosphorus (N:P) ratios in both phytoplankton and seawater are remarkably similar, indicating a strong connection between the particulate (phytoplankton) and dissolved (seawater) nutrient pools.

The question of whether the N:P ratio of the dissolved pool controls the ratio in particulate material, or vice versa, has long puzzled the marine science community. “It’s a chicken-and-egg question,” says Dr Chia-Te Chien, a researcher in the Biogeochemical Modelling Research Unit at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, who is investigating the role of variable stoichiometry of phytoplankton in the marine biogeochemistry. Together with his colleagues, he has now carried out a modelling study that examines the relationship between the ratios of nitrogen and phosphorus in dissolved inorganic and particulate organic matter in seawater. The study, now published in the journal Science Advances, emphasizes the importance of variable C:N:P ratios of phytoplankton for regulating dissolved oceanic nutrient ratios on a global scale and highlights marine oxygen levels as a critical regulator in the Earth system.

To investigate these relationships, the authors used a computer model of algal physiology coupled to an Earth system model, wherein phytoplankton dynamically optimize their C:N:P ratios in response to varying environmental conditions. In the computer model, they could alter the characteristics of phytoplankton and observe how this changed the nitrogen and phosphorus ratios in the water.

They carried out an ensemble of 400 simulations, which differ in the minimal nitrogen and phosphorus contents required by algae to stay alive. The model results reveal intricate feedback mechanisms involving changes in the nitrogen and phosphorus content of phytoplankton, oceanic oxygen levels, N₂ fixation by nitrogen-fixing phytoplankton, and denitrification. These model results challenge the commonly hypothesized strong link between phytoplankton and seawater nutrient ratios. Rather than attempting to uncover the reasons behind the resemblance in the currently observed ratios between phytoplankton and seawater, the results highlight that these ratios are not inherently similar. In other words, the similarity, as it is observed these days, is a specific state, and this state may be subject to change, at least on a time scale that is not covered by the many decades of ocean in situ observations.

Additionally, the analysis highlights the potentially substantial influence of phytoplankton subsistence nitrogen and phosphorus quotas on atmospheric CO₂ levels on geological time scales. Traditionally, stoichiometric variations of the phytoplankton and within the marine ecosystem were considered to have a relatively minor impact on marine biogeochemistry and, consequently, atmospheric CO₂ levels. This view could now be questioned, because this study points to the potential importance of a physiological detail for climate conditions on our planet.

The authors explain the significance of the findings: “Our results demonstrate that the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ as well as the ocean and air temperature are remarkably sensitive to variations in elemental stoichiometry induced by changes in phytoplankton physiology.” Understanding these connections could help scientists make more accurate predictions about how our planet’s ecosystems and climate will evolve in the future.

Lots of Americans — about one-third of us — are in the same situation and habitually get only five to six hours of sleep instead of the recommended seven to eight hours.

But even a mild chronic sleep deficit may heighten the risk of developing heart disease later in life: Surveys of thousands of people have found that people who report mild but chronic sleep deficits have more heart disease later in life than people who get adequate sleep.

A new Columbia study of women now shows what’s happening in the body during chronic mild sleep deprivation.

After just six weeks of shortened sleep, the study found, the cells that line our blood vessels are flooded by damaging oxidants. And unlike well-rested cells, sleep-restricted cells fail to activate antioxidant responses to clear the destructive molecules.

The result: cells that are inflamed and dysfunctional, an early step in the development of cardiovascular disease.

“This is some of the first direct evidence to show that mild chronic sleep deficits cause heart disease,” says study leader Sanja Jelic, MD, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Columbia and professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“Until now we’ve only seen associations between sleep and heart health in epidemiological studies, but these studies could be tainted by many confounders that cannot be identified and adjusted for. Only randomized controlled studies can determine if this connection is real and what changes in the body caused by short sleep could increase heart disease.”

Previous studies did not examine chronic sleep deficits

Studies of human sleep have examined the physiological effects of a few nights of profound sleep deprivation.

“But that’s not how people behave night after night. Most people get up around the same time each day but tend to push back their bedtime one to two hours,” Jelic says. “We wanted to mimic that behavior, which is the most common sleep pattern we see in adults.”

The researchers screened nearly 1,000 women in Washington Heights for the study, enrolling 35 healthy women who normally sleep seven to eight hours each night who could complete the 12-week study.

For six weeks the women slept according to their usual routine; for the other six weeks they went to bed 1.5 hours later than usual. Each participant’s sleep was verified with wrist-worn sleep trackers.

Bottom line: Just go to sleep

“Many problems could be solved if people sleep at least seven to eight hours per night,” Jelic says.

“People who are young and healthy need to know that if they keep getting less sleep than that, they’re aggravating their cardiovascular risk.”

Next steps

Recent epidemiological studies suggest that inconsistent bedtimes may raise the risk of heart disease. Jelic’s team is designing a study to see if bedtime variability impacts vascular cells in the same way as chronic, but regular, short sleep.

They conducted the study with colleagues at the Maryland Department of Health and presented their findings at this week’s Infectious Disease Society of America annual meeting in Boston.

“We found patients in long-term care facilities, like skilled nursing homes, were more likely to be colonized with these pathogens than those getting treated in hospitals,” said study leader Anthony Harris, MD, MPH, Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health at UMSOM and infectious disease specialist at University of Maryland Medical Center. “We were the first in the nation to get a statewide survey of all ventilated patients, and I think it points to the stringency of the infection control programs in place in the state of Maryland and the excellent collaboration between the University of Maryland and the State Health Department.”

Both A. baumannii and C. auris have been highlighted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as emerging pathogens that present a global health threat. C. auris is a fungus that spreads within and among local healthcare facilities — usually in those hospitalized and on breathing machines (ventilators). Older people with weakened immune systems are particularly susceptible to this infection, which resists treatment with common anti-fungal medications. A. baumannii, a bacteria, also poses a threat to these same types of patients and has become very resistant through the years to treatment with most antibiotics.

To conduct the study, Dr. Harris and his colleagues obtained culture swabs from all 482 patients receiving mechanical ventilation in Maryland healthcare facilities between March and June of this year. All eligible healthcare facilities, 51 in total, participated in the survey. They identified A. baumannii from at least one patient in one-third of the acute care hospitals and from 94 percent of the long-term care facilities. They identified C. auris in nearly 5 percent of hospitalized patients and in 9 percent of patients in long-term care facilities.

“Testing positive, however, does not mean that patients have symptoms or active infections that are potentially life-threatening,” said study co-author J. Kristie Johnson, PhD, Professor of Pathology at UMSOM whose lab did the A. baumannii testing for the study. “But knowing which patients are colonized with these pathogens can help contain their spread to other patients.”

Over the course of 2022, state and local health departments around the country reported 2,377 clinical cases, according to the CDC, nearly five times the number infections in 2019, which was less than 500 cases. Maryland alone had 46 cases in 2022. While these infections don’t normally pose much of health risk to hospital workers, they pose a significant risk of death in patients with weakened immune systems. Often the infections can be spread from patient to patient by health care workers carrying the germs on their hands, equipment or clothing.

“There is a need for more health care facilities nationwide to be aware of the extent of the problem through surveillance testing,” Dr. Harris said.Certain measures can be implemented to help reduce spread of these pathogens includingmore stringent use of disposable gloves and gowns between patients and the use of chlorhexidine bathing of the critically ill to disinfect their skin.

“Emerging pathogens that are resistant to available therapeutics present a growing challenge in our country, especially with a projected increased growth in our aging population entering long term care facilities,” said UMSOM Dean Mark Gladwin, MD, who is also Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor at UMSOM. “Nearly half of patients who contract C. auris infections die within 90 days, according to the CDC, and this pathogen is now found in nearly 50 states. This is why it is critical for these surveillance studies to be conducted nationwide, not just in Maryland.”

UMSOM faculty members Lisa Pineles, MA, Lyndsay O’Hara, PhD, Leigh Smith, MD, and Indira French, MS, were co-authors on this study. The study was funded by a grant from the CDC (1U54CK000450-01).

Scientists at UC San Francisco are getting close to an answer. In a breakthrough that could transform how doctors treat conditions from eczema to allergies, they have discovered a feedback loop centered on a single immune protein called IL-31 that both causes the urge to itch and dials back nearby inflammation.

The findings, published on October 13th in Science Immunology, lay the groundwork for a new generation of drugs that interact more intelligently with the body’s innate ability to self-regulate.

Previous approaches suggested that IL-31 signals itch and promotes skin inflammation. But the UCSF team discovered that nerve cells, or neurons, that respond to IL-31, triggering a scratch, also prevent immune cells from overreacting and causing more widespread irritation.

“We tend to think that immune proteins like IL-31 help immune cells talk to one another, but here, when IL-31 talks to neurons, the neurons talk right back,” said Marlys Fassett, M.D., Ph.D., UCSF professor of dermatology and lead author of the study. “It’s the first time we’ve seen the nervous system directly tamp down an allergic response.”

The discovery could eventually change how asthma, Crohn’s and other inflammatory diseases are treated, due to IL-31’s presence throughout the body.

“IL-31 causes itch in the skin, but it’s also in the lung and in the gut,” said Mark Ansel, Ph.D., UCSF professor of immunology and senior author of the study. “We now have a new lead for fighting the many diseases involving both the immune and nervous systems.”

More than an itch

IL-31 is one of several “itch cytokines” because of its ability to instigate itch in animals and people. Fassett, a dermatologist and a researcher, has wanted to know why since she arrived at UCSF in 2012, a few years after its discovery. She reached out to Ansel, a former colleague and asthma expert who welcomed her into his lab.

First, Fassett removed the IL-31 gene from mice and exposed them to the house dust mite, a common, itchy allergen.

“We wanted to mimic what was actually happening in people who are chronically exposed to environmental allergens,” Fassett said. “As we expected, the dust mite didn’t cause itching in the absence of IL-31, but we were surprised to see that inflammation went up.”

Why was there inflammation but no itching? Fassett and Ansel found that a cadre of immune cells had been called into action in the absence of the itch cytokine. Without IL-31, the body was blindly waging an immunological war.

A balance of forces

Ansel and Fassett then homed in on the nerve cells in the skin that received the IL-31 signal. They saw that the same nerve cells that spurred a scratch also dampened any subsequent immune response. These nerve cells were integral to keeping inflammation in check, but without IL-31, they let the immune system run wild.

The findings squared well with what dermatologists were increasingly seeing with a new drug, nemolizumab, which blocked IL-31 and was developed to treat eczema. While clinical trial patients found that the dry, patchy skin of their eczema receded on the drug, other skin irritation, and even inflammation in the lungs, would sometimes flare up.

“When you give a drug that blocks the IL-31 receptor throughout the whole body, now you’re changing that feedback system, releasing the brakes on allergic reactions everywhere,” Ansel said.

Fassett and Ansel also found that these neurons released their own signal, called CGRP, in response to the itch signal, which could be responsible for dampening the immune response.

“The idea that our nerves contribute to allergy in different tissues is game changing,” Fassett said. “If we can develop drugs that work around these systems, we can really help those patients that get worse flares after treatment for itch.”

Fassett recently founded her own lab at UCSF to tease apart these paradoxes in biology that complicate good outcomes in the clinic. And Ansel is now interested in what this itch cytokine is doing beyond the skin.

“You don’t itch in your lungs, so the question is, what is IL-31 doing there, or in the gut?” Ansel asked. “But it does seem to have an effect on allergic inflammation in the lung. There’s a lot of science ahead for us, with immense potential to improve therapies.”

Recurrent C. difficile infections occur after suppressive antibiotic treatments that knock out almost all of the normal gut flora. Patients suffer watery diarrhea, painful abdominal cramps, a feeling of sickness, fevers and weight loss.

In 2021, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, gave precise quantification of 150 bacterial strains belonging to 42 bacterial species that showed frequent engraftment after fecal microbial transplants. Importantly, they also tested for engraftment soon after transplant — 36 hours to four weeks — as well as later after transplantation, eight weeks to five years.

Now microbiome experts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have taken that 2021 study, and a similar study for children who had C. difficile infections, a step further. UAB researchers Hyunmin Koo, Ph.D., and Casey D. Morrow, Ph.D., focused on the commensal microbe Bacteroides vulgatus, one of the most common species found in healthy guts. Using DNA sequences from the two studies and powerful bioinformatics analysis, Koo and Morrow searched for genes, out of a total of 4,911 protein-encoding genes in the B. vulgatus strains, that were unique to the three B. vulgatus donors in the two studies that showed early colonization, as opposed to seven other B. vulgatus strains in the studies that did not show early colonization.

“Analysis of the common genes between the three donors revealed that only 19 were in common out of 4,911 genes encoding known and hypothetical proteins,” Morrow and Koo write in the Scientific Reports study. “The result from our analysis supports the screening of donor B. vulgatus for this gene consortium to enhance colonization following a fecal microbe transplant.”

Morrow and Koo identified two of the 19 genes.

One is a putative chitobiase that the UAB researchers found was located next to genes encoding SusD, SusC, putative anti-sigma factor and RNA polymerase ECF-type sigma factor. Others previously have identified these genes as components of a commensal colonization factor complex in Bacteroides fragilis and B. vulgatus. This complex promotes a specific interaction with the host that facilitates stable, resilient colonization in mice.

“Our results, then, provide support that the commensal colonization factor complex might also function in humans to enhance the colonization of B. vulgatus,” Morrow said.

The other identified gene encodes a unique fimbrillin family protein. Fimbrillins are protein polymers, previously identified in Bacteroides, that can form the hair-like structures that protrude from the surfaces of microbes and serve as anchors for microbial adhesion with host cells.

“Based on their known functions, the identification of both the chitobiase — and subsequently a complete commensal colonization factor complex — and fimbrillin proteins supports the involvement of these proteins in B. vulgatus colonization,” Morrow said.

The other 17 genes are hypothetical proteins with no identified function as yet. Interestingly, genes that mapped near the hypothetical proteins involved activities in DNA mobilization and transposition, meaning the ability to move genes into, around or out of the bacterial genome.

Morrow and Koo acknowledge a weakness in their study.

When they analyzed the 42-paired fecal microbe samples from the Human Microbiome Project data set, they found that none had the complete set of the 19 genes that were found in the three early engraftment B. vulgatus strains. Twenty-six of the samples had both the putative chitobiase and the fimbrillin genes, and another 11 had only the fimbrillin gene. There was a varied presence of the other 17 hypothetical genes in the 42 samples.

“Since none of the Human Microbiome Project pairs had the full 19 genes, we do not know whether any of the pairs would have an early colonizing phenotype in fecal microbe transplants,” Morrow said. “Based on our analysis, we would assume that the commensal colonization factor complex and fimbrillin genes would suffice; but to resolve this issue, additional fecal microbe transplants for recurrent C. difficile in humans using early analysis times post-transplant would need to be done.”

The UAB researchers say a further application of their study could be screening following chemotherapy or transplants, which are known to involve medications that can disrupt normal microbial gut flora. “The capacity to rapidly restore the B. vulgatus community in these patients would be important to reduce the risk of infection by pathogens or antibiotic-resistant microbe pathogens that could impact overall health,” Morrow said.

Support for the Scientific Reports study, “Identification of donor Bacteroides vulgatus genes encoding proteins that correlate with early colonization following fecal transplant of patients with recurrent Clostridium difficile,” came from the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine at UAB. Morrow is a professor emeritus in the UAB Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, and Koo is a bioinformatician in the UAB Department of Genetics.

“Establishing clear ethical guidelines and governance structures for the deployment of AI around the world is the first step to promoting trust and confidence, mitigating its risks, and ensuring that its benefits are fairly distributed,” says social scientist and co-author James William Santos of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul.

“Previous work predominantly centered around North American and European documents, which prompted us to actively seek and include perspectives from regions such as Asia, Latin America, Africa, and beyond,” says lead author Nicholas Kluge Corrêa of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul and the University of Bonn.

To determine whether a global consensus exists regarding the ethical development and use of AI, and to help guide such a consensus, the researchers conducted a systematic review of policy and ethical guidelines published between 2014 and 2022. From this, they identified 200 documents related to AI ethics and governance from 37 countries and six continents and written or translated into five different languages (English, Portuguese, French, German, and Spanish). These documents included recommendations, practical guides, policy frameworks, legal landmarks, and codes of conduct.

Then, the team conducted a meta-analysis of these documents to identify the most common ethical principles, examine their global distribution, and assess biases in terms of the type of organizations or people producing these documents.

The researchers found that the most common principles were transparency, security, justice, privacy, and accountability, which appeared in 82.5%, 78%, 75.5%, 68.5%, and 67% of the documents, respectively. The least common principles were labor rights, truthfulness, intellectual property, and children/adolescent rights, which appeared in 19.5%, 8.5%, 7%, and 6% of the documents, and the authors emphasize that these principles deserve more attention. For example, truthfulness — the idea that AI should provide truthful information — is becoming increasingly relevant with the release of generative AI technologies like ChatGPT. And since AI has the potential to displace workers and change the way we work, practical measures are to avoid mass unemployment or monopolies.

Most (96%) of the guidelines were “normative” — describing ethical values that should be considered during AI development and use — while only 2% recommended practical methods of implementing AI ethics, and only 4.5% proposed legally binding forms of AI regulation.

“It’s mostly voluntary commitments that say, ‘these are some principles that we hold important,’ but they lack practical implementations and legal requirements,” says Santos. “If you’re trying to build AI systems or if you’re using AI systems in your enterprise, you have to respect things like privacy and user rights, but how you do that is the gray area that does not appear in these guidelines.”

The researchers also identified several biases in terms of where these guidelines were produced and who produced them. The researchers noted a gender disparity in terms of authorship. Though 66% of samples had no authorship information, the authors of the remaining documents more often had male names (549 = 66% male, 281 = 34% female).

Geographically, most of the guidelines came from countries in Western Europe (31.5%), North America (34.5%), and Asia (11.5%), while less than 4.5% of the documents originated in South America, Africa, and Oceania combined. Some of these imbalances in distribution may be due to language and public access limitations, but the team says that these results suggest that many parts of the Global South are underrepresented in the global discourse on AI ethics. In some cases, this includes countries that are heavily involved in AI research and development, such as China, whose output of AI-related research increased by over 120% between 2016 and 2019.

“Our research demonstrates and reinforces our call for the Global South to wake up and a plea for the Global North to be ready to listen and welcome us,” says co-author Camila Galvão of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. “We must not forget that we live in a plural, unequal, and diverse world. We must remember the voices that, until now, haven’t had the opportunity to claim their preferences, explain their contexts, and perhaps tell us something that we still don’t know.”

As well as incorporating more voices, the researchers say that future efforts should focus on how to practically implement principles of AI ethics. “The next step is to build a bridge between abstract principles of ethics and the practical development of AI systems and applications,” says Santos.