The Value of Wind Energy

Video by Graham Bourque | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Two teams of researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have shown that wind energy offers logistical, economic, and environmental value to consumers and utilities from the coast of Oregon to remote villages in Alaska.

In the first study of the grid impacts of offshore wind energy in Oregon, a PNNL team paired offshore wind resource potential from the Oregon coastline with other variable renewable energy sources, including land-based wind and solar. The study helped the team understand how offshore wind could serve electricity demand within Oregon’s transmission network and across the Pacific Northwest.

In the second study, a PNNL team analyzed the value of distributed wind—wind turbines installed near where their energy is consumed, such as for homes, businesses, and communities—for the small, remote community of St. Mary’s, Alaska. The study’s results could help inform utilities of the economic feasibility for installing wind in similar isolated microgrid systems in other remote villages. Additionally, the study revealed potential economic and environmental benefits for the village’s electricity consumers.

Both studies, which were published in the journal Energies, illustrate PNNL’s growing expertise in assessing the value that renewable energy brings for bolstering the grid.

Research team sets new efficiency record for solar cell technology

Asst Prof Hou Yi (right), Dr Chen Wei (left) and their team have developed perovskite/organic tandem solar cells (held by Dr Chen) that achieved a power conversion efficiency of 23.6%.
Source: National University of Singapore.

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has set a new record in the power conversion efficiency of solar cells made using perovskite and organic materials. This technological breakthrough paves the way for flexible, light-weight, low cost and ultra-thin photovoltaic cells which are ideal for powering vehicles, boats, blinds and other applications.

“Technologies for clean and renewable energy are extremely important for carbon reduction. Solar cells that directly convert solar energy into electricity are among the most promising clean energy technologies. High power conversion efficiency of solar cells is critical for generating more electrical power using a limited area and this, in turn, reduces the total cost of generating solar energy,” explained lead researcher Presidential Young Professor Hou Yi, who is from the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and also leading a “Perovskite-based Multi-junction Solar Cells group” at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore at NUS.

“The main motivation of this study is to improve the power conversion efficiency of perovskite/organic tandem solar cells. In our latest work, we have demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 23.6% - this is the best performance for this type of solar cells to date,” added Dr Chen Wei, Research Fellow at the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the first author of this work.

Air pollution significantly reduces pollination by confusing butterflies and bees

Credit: James Ryalls

Common air pollutants from both urban and rural environments may be reducing the pollinating abilities of insects by preventing them from sniffing out the crops and wildflowers that depend on them, new research has shown.

Scientists from the University of Reading, the University of Birmingham and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology found that there were up to 70% fewer pollinators, up to 90% fewer flower visits and an overall pollination reduction of up to 31% in test plants when common ground-level air pollutants, including diesel exhaust pollutants and ozone, were present.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, is the first to observe a negative impact of common air pollutants on pollination in the natural environment. The theory is that the pollutants react with and change the scents of flowers, making them harder to find.

Dr Robbie Girling, Associate Professor in Agroecology at the University of Reading, who led the project, said: “We knew from our previous lab studies that diesel exhaust can have negative effects on insect pollinators, but the impacts we found in the field were much more dramatic than we had expected.”

Dr James Ryalls, a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow at the University of Reading, who conducted the study, said: “The findings are worrying because these pollutants are commonly found in the air many of us breathe every day. We know that these pollutants are bad for our health, and the significant reductions we saw in pollinator numbers and activity shows that there are also clear implications for the natural ecosystems we depend on.”

Dr Christian Pfrang, Reader in Atmospheric Science at the University of Birmingham and a co-author on the study, said: “This truly cross-disciplinary work demonstrated very clearly how atmospheric pollutants negatively impact on pollination with direct consequences for food production as well as the resilience of our natural environment.”

Scientists build ‘valves’ in DNA to shape biological information flows

DNA valve controlling molecular processes along DNA
Credit: Thomas Gorochowski

Scientists at the University of Bristol have developed new biological parts that are able to shape the flow of cellular processes along DNA.

The work, now published in the journal Nature Communications, offers a fresh perspective on how information is encoded in DNA and new tools for building sustainable biotechnologies.

Despite being invisible to the naked eye, microorganisms are integral for our survival. They operate using DNA, often referred to as the code of life. DNA encodes numerous tools that could be useful to us, but we currently lack a complete understanding of how to interpret DNA sequences.

Matthew Tarnowski, first author and a PhD student in Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “Understanding the microbial world is tricky. While reading a microbe’s DNA with a sequencer gives us a window into the underlying code, you still need to read a lot of different DNA sequences to understand how it actually works. It’s a bit like trying to learn a new language, but from only a few small fragments of text.”

To tackle this problem, the Bristol team focused on how the information encoded in DNA is read, and specifically, how the flow of cellular processes along DNA are controlled. These biological information flows orchestrate many of the core functions of a cell and an ability to shape them would offer a way to guide cellular behaviors.

Taking inspiration from nature, where it is known that flows on DNA are often complex and interwoven, the team focused on how these flows could be regulated by creating “valves” to tune the flow from one region of DNA to another.

Suicide Attempts on the Rise, But Help is Hard to Get

The rate of suicidal behavior among Americans increased from 2008 to 2019, but usage of mental health services didn’t budge, reports a team led by UConn Health. The results, reported in JAMA Psychiatry, show that people need help to overcome existing barriers to care.

Suicide overall is still rare, but the rate of people attempting it in the US increased from 2008 to 2019, despite an improving economy during that period. A team of researchers including UConn Health School of Medicine psychiatric epidemiologist Greg Rhee looked at data from a survey done by the National Institutes of Health and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of 484,732 people across the US.

The survey found rates of attempted suicide rose by 1.8 times from 2008 to 2019 in young people aged 18-25. It also rose among people struggling with substance abuse. Suicide attempts are the single most important risk factor for suicide; the rate of suicide is 100 times greater among people who’ve already made the attempt in the past year compared to the general population. Getting people mental health services soon after a suicide attempt is one of the most effective ways to help them.

The survey also asked respondents if there was a time in the last 12 months when they needed mental health services but did not receive them, and if so, why.

Arthritis-related gene also regenerates cartilage in joints and growth plates

Spine from a healthy mouse (left) and a mouse with
genetically disrupted cartilage progenitor cells 
Image by Dawei Geng and Tea Jashashvili

The IL-6 family of proteins has a bad reputation: it can promote inflammation, arthritis, autoimmune disease and even cancer. However, a new USC-led study published in Communications Biology reveals the importance of IL-6 and associated genes for maintaining and regenerating cartilage in both the joints and in the growth plates that enable skeletal growth in children.

“We show, for the first time, that the IL-6 family, previously almost exclusively associated in the musculoskeletal field with arthritis, bone and muscle loss, and other chronic inflammatory diseases, is required for the maintenance of skeletal stem and progenitor cells, and for the healthy growth and function of the joints and spine,” said the study’s corresponding author Denis Evseenko, who is the J. Harold and Edna LaBriola Chair in Genetic Orthopedic Research, and an associate professor of orthopaedic surgery, and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at USC. “Our study establishes a link between inflammation and regeneration, and may explain why stem and progenitors are exhausted in chronic inflammation.”

In the study, first author Nancy Q. Liu from USC and her colleagues took a close look at a key gene activated by IL-6: STAT3. In both lab-grown human cells and in mice, the scientists demonstrated that STAT3 is critical for the proliferation, survival, maturation and regeneration of cartilage-forming cells in the joints and growth plates. When the gene ceased to function, cartilage-forming cells became increasingly dysfunctional over time, resulting in smaller body size, prematurely fused growth plates, underdeveloped skeletons and mildly degenerated joint cartilage.

Mice experienced the same issues when they lacked a protein called glycoprotein 130 (gp130), which all IL-6 proteins use to activate Stat3. Deactivating another gene Lifr, which encodes a protein that works with gp130 to recognize one of the IL-6 proteins called Lif, produced similar but milder skeletal and cartilage changes.

Making the invisible visible: tracing the origins of plants in West African cuisine

Excavated Nok vessels are cleaned and photographed at the Janjala research station, shown in the picture: Dr Gabriele Franke, Goethe University
Credit: Peter Breunig

A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, in co-operation with colleagues from Goethe University, Frankfurt, has uncovered the first insights into the origins of West African plant-based cuisine, locked inside pottery fragments dating back some 3,500 years ago.

West African cuisine has long been known for its distinct ingredients and flavors, often enhanced by the addition of a large and diverse range of plant foods.

A traditional meal comprises a starchy staple cooked in a pot, served with a sauce prepared from vegetables, fish and/or meat, often accompanied by pulses.

These starchy staples include root crops such as yams, cassava, sorghum, pearl millet and maize. In the northern Sahel and savanna zones, pearl millet is mainly prepared as porridge, while in the southern forest zone, a pounded mash from tuber crops such as yam, called fufu, is the major starch-rich element.

Excavating Nok terracotta pottery vessel at Ifana 3 site
Credit: Peter Breunig

Indigenous vegetables, eaten at almost every West African meal, include eggplant, pumpkin and watermelon, okra (used as a thickener for soups and stews), as well as a staggering variety of both farmed and foraged green leafy vegetables, little known or used outside of the African continent.

These include leaves from the amaranth, roselle and baobab tree. However, investigating the origin of vegetables and leafy greens is difficult as they do not generally survive over archaeological timescales.

The Bristol team carried out chemical analysis of more than 450 prehistoric potsherds from the Central Nigerian Nok culture to investigate what foods they were cooking in their pots. The Nok people are known for their remarkable large-scale terracotta figurines and early iron production in West Africa, around the first millennium BC.

Powerful volcanic blast not the cause for 2018 Indonesian island collapse

The dramatic collapse of Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano in December 2018 resulted from long-term destabilizing processes, and was not triggered by any distinct changes in the magmatic system that could have been detected by current monitoring techniques, new research has found.

The volcano had been erupting for around six months prior to the collapse, which saw more than two-thirds of its height slide into the sea as the island halved in area. The event triggered a devastating tsunami, which inundated the coastlines of Java and Sumatra and led to the deaths of more than 400 people.

A team led by the University of Birmingham examined volcanic material from nearby islands for clues to determine whether the powerful, explosive eruption observed after the collapse had itself triggered the landslide and tsunami. Their results are published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Working with researchers at the Bandung Institute of Technology, the University of Oxford and the British Geological Survey, the team looked at the physical, chemical and microtextural characteristics of the erupted material. They concluded that the large explosive eruption associated with the collapse was probably caused by the underlying magmatic system becoming destabilized as the landslide got underway.

This means the disaster was less likely to have been caused by magma forcing its way to the surface and triggering the landslide. Current volcano monitoring methods record seismic activity and other signals caused by magma rising through the volcano, but since this event was not triggered from within, it would not have been detected using these techniques.

The Roman Space Telescope's Simulated Ultra-Deep Field Image

This video demonstrates how Roman could expand on Hubble’s iconic Ultra Deep Field image. While a similar Roman observation would be just as sharp as Hubble’s and see equally far back in time, it could reveal an area 300 times larger, offering a much broader view of cosmic ecosystems.

Also on our You Tube channel 

Source/Credit: 
Video: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center
Music: "Subterranean Secret" and "Expectant Aspect" from Universal Production Music.
Final Editing and Conversion Scientific Frontline

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Researchers discover how deep-sea worms help keep natural gases on ice

Sabellidae, or feather duster worms, are a family
of marine polychaete tube worms

It is well known that natural gas hydrates, crystalline lattices of hydrogen-bonded water molecules that encapsulate small hydrocarbon molecules, on the ocean floors constitute both a potential accelerator of climate change and one of the greatest energy sources on Earth. But whether the huge amounts of natural gas that are so confined remain safely locked in crystalline hydrate cages, or are liberated into the ocean potentially to become atmospheric greenhouse gases, may depend in part on an unusual sea-floor symbiosis between worms and their microbial neighbors.

Researchers at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering discovered that this natural ecosystem involving feather duster worms (Sabellidae, Annelida) and both heat-generating and heat-absorbing bacteria (Archaea) that consume methane enclathrated — or locked into a crystalline structure — by hydrates in deep marine environments play a key role in maintaining equilibrium that keeps hydrates frozen.

Seeking to examine the influence that subtle temperature fluctuations may have on the dynamic stability of the hydrate deposits, the investigators, led by Ryan Hartman, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NYU Tandon, found that feather duster worms, which thrive around crystalline hydrates, by selectively consuming heat-generating bacteria called methanotrophs that metabolize methane, put the brakes on the potential melting of these crystal structures (releasing trapped methane) due to the microbes’ exothermic metabolism.

In a newly published study, “Microbe-Worm Symbiosis Stabilizes Methane Hydrates in Deep Marine Environments,” in Energy & Fuels, researchers including lead author Tianyi Hua, Maisha Ahmad, and Tenzin Choezin, simulated the ecosystem by solving the associated energy balance and methane hydrate dissociation kinetics. They examined and analyzed the dissociation rate — the rate at which frozen hydrates disassembled into molecular components — and found that the symbiosis established among methanogens (methane-producing bacteria), methanotrophs, and feather duster worms indeed stabilizes methane hydrates at depths where the crystals are exposed to the ocean and its living organisms.