New study reveals the global impact of debris on marine life

Dr Sarah Gall
Credit: University of Plymouth

Nearly 700 species of marine animal have been recorded as having encountered man-made debris such as plastic and glass, according to the most comprehensive impact study in more than a decade.

Researchers at Plymouth University found evidence of 44,000 animals and organisms becoming entangled in, or swallowing debris, from reports recorded from across the globe.

Plastic accounted for nearly 92 per cent of cases, and 17 per cent of all species involved were found to be threatened or near threatened on the IUCN Red List, including the Hawaiian monk seal, the loggerhead turtle and sooty shearwater.

In a paper, 'The impact of debris on marine life', published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, authors Sarah Gall and Professor Richard Thompson present evidence collated from a wide variety of sources on instances of entanglement, ingestion, physical damage to ecosystems, and rafting, where species are transported by debris.

The missing piece to faster, cheaper and more accurate 3D mapping

The authors: Davide A. Cucci, Aurélien Brun and Jan Skaloud.
Credit: Alain Herzog/EPFL

Engineers at EPFL and the University of Geneva believe they hold the key to automated drone mapping. By combining artificial intelligence with a new algorithm, their method promises to considerably reduce the time and resources needed to accurately scan complex landscapes. It is described in a paper published in ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

Three-dimensional (3D) mapping is a very useful tool for monitoring construction sites, tracking the effects of climate change on ecosystems and verifying the safety of roads and bridges. However, the technology currently used to automate the mapping process is limited, making it a long and costly endeavor.

“Switzerland is currently mapping its entire landscape using airborne laser scanners – the first time since 2000. But the process will take four to five years since the scanners have to fly at an altitude below one kilometer if they are to collect data with sufficient detail and accuracy,” says Jan Skaloud, a senior scientist at the Geodetic Engineering Laboratory (Topo) within EPFL's School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).

Artificial intelligence predicts patients’ race from their medical images

Researchers demonstrated that medical AI systems can easily learn to recognize racial identity in medical images, and that this capability is extremely difficult to isolate or mitigate.
 Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The miseducation of algorithms is a critical problem; when artificial intelligence mirrors unconscious thoughts, racism, and biases of the humans who generated these algorithms, it can lead to serious harm. Computer programs, for example, have wrongly flagged Black defendants as twice as likely to reoffend as someone who’s white. When an AI used cost as a proxy for health needs, it falsely named Black patients as healthier than equally sick white ones, as less money was spent on them. Even AI used to write a play relied on using harmful stereotypes for casting.

Removing sensitive features from the data seems like a viable tweak. But what happens when it’s not enough?

New breathable gas sensors may improve monitoring of health, environment

Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, newly developed flexible, porous and highly sensitive nitrogen dioxide sensors that can be applied to skin and clothing.
Credit: Penn State/Kate Myers

Newly developed flexible, porous and highly sensitive nitrogen dioxide sensors that can be applied to skin and clothing have potential applications in health care, environmental health monitoring and military use, according to researchers.

Led by Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, the researchers published their sensor designs, which build on previous models, and results in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

The sensors monitor nitrogen dioxide, either from breath if attached under the nose, or from perspiration, if attached elsewhere on the body. Unlike taking blood samples, the direct skin attachment allows for continuous, long-term monitoring of the gas.

Cheng explained that while similar sensors exist, a key differentiator of the new design is breathability.

“The commonly used substrate materials for gas sensors are flexible, but not porous,” he said. “The accumulation of water moisture from the skin surface can potentially lead to irritation or damage to the skin surface. We need to make sure the device can be porous so that moisture can go through the sensor without accumulation on the surface.”

Bird Flu: How It’s Spreading and What to Know About This Outbreak

A feeding frenzy of western sandpipers during the mass migration via Cordova, Alaska, a key study site in the paper.
Credit: Wendy Puryear

When it comes to avian influenza, more commonly known as bird flu, all birds are not created equal.

“The scientific community has become accustomed to speaking about influenza viruses in birds as a group, but birds are an incredibly diverse taxa of animals with different natural history, physiology, and anatomy,” says Jonathan Runstadler, professor and chair of the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

Runstadler is one of the authors of a new study, published today in the journal PLOS Pathogens, which takes a data-driven look at influenza viruses circulating among different groups of birds and characterizes which types of birds are involved in spreading the virus. The timing of this paper is impeccable, as a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has been spreading across North America.

This lineage of bird flu originated around 1996 and was first found in a domestic goose in China. The virus mutated and persisted, and the first big wild bird outbreak happened around 2005 in a major wetland in central Asia. Subsequent changes in the virus led to a 2014 introduction to the U.S. via the Pacific Northwest, severely affecting the U.S. poultry industry and forcing the culling of about 40 million turkeys and chickens as a control measure.

PFAS chemicals do not last forever

Once dubbed “forever chemicals,” per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, might be in the market for a new nickname.

That’s because adding iodide to a water treatment reactor that uses ultraviolet (UV) light and sulfite destroys up to 90% of carbon-fluorine atoms in PFAS forever chemicals in just a few hours, reports a new study led by environmental engineering researchers at UC Riverside. The addition of iodide accelerates the speed of the reaction up to four times, saving energy and chemicals.

“Iodide is really doing some substantial work,” said corresponding author Jinyong Liu, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering. “Not only does it speed up the reaction but it also allows the treatment of a ten times higher concentrations of PFAS, even some very recalcitrant structures.”

Liu’s lab has been working on ways to destroy PFAS through photochemical reactions since 2017. The new method has already attracted interest from industry and Liu’s group is partnering with companies to conduct pilot tests.

Synthetic chemicals known as PFAS contain multiple very strong carbon-fluorine bonds. Widespread use of these nonbiodegradable compounds in countless products since the 1940s has contaminated water supplies across America, with various negative health effects on humans and animals. Because the carbon-fluorine bond is very hard to break, PFAS pass through most water treatment systems unchanged.

Research Confirms Eastern Wyoming Paleoindian Site as Americas’ Oldest Mine

UW Ph.D. student Chase Mahan inspects an artifact from excavation at the Powars II archaeological site in 2020. Mahan is one of the co-authors of a new paper that confirms the site at Sunrise in Platte County is the oldest documented red ocher mine -- and likely the oldest known mine of any sort -- in all of North and South America.
Credit: Spencer Pelton

Archaeological excavations led by Wyoming’s state archaeologist and involving University of Wyoming researchers have confirmed that an ancient mine in eastern Wyoming was used by humans to produce red ocher starting nearly 13,000 years ago.

That makes the Powars II site at Sunrise in Platte County the oldest documented red ocher mine -- and likely the oldest known mine of any sort -- in all of North and South America. The excavations, completed shortly before the 2020 death of famed UW archaeologist George Frison, confirmed theories he advanced stemming from research he began at the site in 1986.

The findings appear in “In situ evidence for Paleoindian hematite quarrying at the Powars II site (48PL330), Wyoming,” a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), one of the world’s most prestigious multidisciplinary scientific journals covering the biological, physical and social sciences.

Low-cost battery-like device absorbs CO2 emissions while it charges

Co-authors Israel Temprano and Grace Mapstone 
Credit: Gabriella Bocchetti

The supercapacitor device, which is similar to a rechargeable battery, is the size of a two-pence coin, and is made in part from sustainable materials including coconut shells and seawater.

Designed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, the supercapacitor could help power carbon capture and storage technologies at much lower cost. Around 35 billion tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere per year and solutions are urgently needed to eliminate these emissions and address the climate crisis. The most advanced carbon capture technologies currently require large amounts of energy and are expensive.

The supercapacitor consists of two electrodes of positive and negative charge. In work led by Trevor Binford while completing his Master’s degree at Cambridge, the team tried alternating from a negative to a positive voltage to extend the charging time from previous experiments. This improved the supercapacitor’s ability to capture carbon.

“We found that that by slowly alternating the current between the plates we can capture double the amount of CO2 than before,” said Dr Alexander Forse from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research.

Using Light and Sound to Reveal Rapid Brain Activity in Unprecedented Detail

The image shows the vasculature of the brain, and the colors illuminate how capillaries experience varying levels of oxygenation as the brain undergoes hypoxia.
Credit: Duke University

Duke researchers use a combination of hardware innovations and machine learning algorithms to create the fastest photoacoustic imaging tool available

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a method to scan and image the blood flow and oxygen levels inside a mouse brain in real-time with enough resolution to view the activity of both individual vessels and the entire brain at once.

This new imaging approach breaks long-standing speed and resolution barriers in brain imaging technologies and could uncover new insights into neurovascular diseases like stroke, dementia and even acute brain injury.

The research appeared in the Nature journal Light: Science & Applications.

Imaging the brain is a balancing act. Tools need to be fast enough to capture rapid events, like a neuron firing or blood flowing through a capillary, and they need to show activity at different scales, whether it’s across the entire brain or at the level of a single artery.

New brain-painting method developed at USF is being tested for ADHD treatment

The brain painting method developed at USF is being tested for ADHD treatment.
Credit: University of South Florida

Imagine focusing on one thing so well that you can control its movement. Now, imagine mentally selecting colors and shapes to create an abstract image – a brain painting. USF computer scientist Marvin Andujar is harnessing the power of concentration and art to develop a new brain-computer interface (BCI) prototype and help study participants use their brain like never before. The goal is to introduce a novel treatment option for individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by tapping directly into their brain activity.

“This type of brain-computer interaction is more of a brain exercise to improve your attention,” Andujar said. “We’re trying to see how we can narrow that focus over time.”

Similar to Andujar’s previous work with brain-controlled drones, participants’ complete attention is required. To fly forward, a user must focus on a specific movement, such as walking. Individuals from the ADHD community approached Andujar after learning how the brain-controlled drone project harnessed attention span and asked for a device they could use at home.