Cli­mate change threat­ens ice caves in Aus­tria

Charlotte Honiat and Tanguy Racine from the Department of Geology pack ice samples in the Tyrolean Guffert Eisschacht for further analysis in the laboratory.
Credit: Christoph Spötl

Eight ice caves in four Austrian federal states: A team of geologists from the University of Innsbruck has comprehensively documented the loss and gain of ice in Alpine ice caves over the last 2000 years for the first time. The geologist Tanguy Racine warns: The ice of smaller caves especially is in danger of disappearing in the near future and with it a valuable climate archive. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

There are several thousand documented ice caves worldwide, and Austria is one of the countries with the highest density of ice caves - but only a few have been studied in detail. Over the past few years, a team of researchers from the Universities of Innsbruck and Belfast has now analyzed in detail eight ice caves with a descending morphology in Tyrol, Styria, Upper Austria and Carinthia, choosing a comparative research approach. "There are already some good studies on single ice caves. However, this was the first time a comparative analysis was carried out and we focused on the ice development in several caves that are also in comparable settings: similar altitude and a steep to vertically sloping geometry," explains Tanguy Racine from the Quaternary Research Group around Christoph Spötl at the Department of Geology. His dissertation dealt with the topic in detail. Ice bodies in these caves are formed from solid precipitation: snow falls and slides into the cave in winter and then subsequently turns to ice at low temperatures.

More than 1.1 million sea turtles poached over last three decades

A new ASU study shows during a 30-year period, 95% of poached sea turtles came from two species — green and hawksbill turtles — both of which are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Also, Southeast Asia and Madagascar emerged as major hot spots for illegal sea turtle take and trade, particularly for critically endangered hawksbills, which are prized in the illicit wildlife trade for their beautiful shells. The East Pacific hawksbill turtle is among the most endangered sea turtle populations.
 Photo Credit: Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock

One of the most serious threats to wildlife biodiversity, in addition to the climate crisis, is the illegal killing and trafficking of animals and plants. Despite many laws against the black-market wildlife trade, it is considered to be one of the most lucrative illicit industries in the world.

Animals, especially endangered and threatened species, are often exploited and sold for their pelts or used as medicine, aphrodisiacs, curios, food and spiritual artifacts.

In a new study published in “Global Change Biology,” Arizona State University researchers estimate that more than 1.1 million sea turtles have been illegally killed and, in some cases, trafficked between 1990 and 2020. Even with existing laws prohibiting their capture and use, as many as 44,000 sea turtles were exploited each year over the past decade in 65 countries or territories and in 44 of the world’s 58 major sea turtle populations.

Despite the seemingly large number of poached turtles, the study shows that the reported illegal exploitation of sea turtles declined by approximately 28% over the last decade — something that surprised the researchers. They initially expected to see an overall increase in reported poaching.

Upgraded Laser Facility Paves the Way for Next-Generation Particle Accelerators

Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division scientists Marlene Turner and Anthony Gonsalves perform work on the laser table where the petawatt laser is split into the two beamlines. Well-positioned mirrors enable femtosecond overlap of the two lasers on target.
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have completed a major expansion of one of the world’s most powerful laser systems, creating new opportunities in accelerator research for the future of high-energy physics and other fields. The expansion created a second beamline for the petawatt laser at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center, enabling the development of next-generation particle accelerators for applications in science, medicine, security, and industry. The second beamline came online this summer and is the culmination of several years of planning, design, and engineering by the BELLA and engineering teams.

“We are happy to see construction completed and are very eager to begin the wide variety of exciting experiments that are enabled by the second beamline,” said Eric Esarey, Director of the BELLA Center.

Using light to move particles

Traditional accelerators use radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to gradually speed particles up over distances of tens of kilometers and tend to be huge and very expensive as a result. For example, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the famous international particle accelerator, accelerates particles along a circular path over 16 miles long, a monumental achievement costing billions of dollars to build and operate.

Elevated Cholesterol Found in GenX Exposure Study Participants

Photo credit: Luis Tosta on Unsplash

In a new paper detailing findings from North Carolina State University’s GenX Exposure Study, researchers found that elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were associated with higher total cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol in participants’ blood. They also found that the legacy PFAS chemicals PFOS and PFNA were most strongly associated with elevated cholesterol compared to the other chemicals, and that the effects were more pronounced in older people.

“Previous studies had established links between PFAS and elevated cholesterol,” says Jane Hoppin, professor of biological sciences, director of NC State’s Center for Human Health and the Environment (CHHE), member of NC State’s Center for Environmental and Health Effects of PFAS, and corresponding author of the paper describing the work. “However, most of the previous work had focused on PFOA and PFOS, though we know that people are exposed to many other chemicals in the PFAS family. So, we wanted to look not just at legacy PFAS, but also at certain fluoroethers, a family of chemicals that include GenX and that have similar chemical structure to PFAS.”

The blood samples came from 344 Wilmington residents (289 adults and 55 children) across two sampling efforts in November 2017 and May 2018.

More than 10 million children were affected by COVID-19-associated parental and caregiver deaths

According to a new modeling study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, the number of children estimated to have experienced the death of a parent or caregiver as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has climbed to more than 10.5 million globally as of May 1, 2022.

The new study, involving the University of Oxford, Imperial College, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO), builds on the best available and most conservative data recently published by WHO on excess COVID-19 deaths (14.9 million as of Dec 31, 2021), to establish estimates of orphaned children in every country. This is the first-time availability of these comprehensive data on excess deaths for every country, and it enabled the data modelers to update global minimum estimates of pandemic orphanhood and caregiver death among children based on these excess deaths.

Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods. Estimates of excess deaths can provide information about the burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributed to COVID-19.

In this study, authors analyzed country-level deaths, fertility rates, and national excess mortality data provided by the WHO, the Economist, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and used mathematical modelling to develop global estimates based on the WHO estimates, which were the most conservative.

Researchers use combined imaging techniques to monitor stem cell therapies

Samuel Grant, professor and postdoctoral fellow director in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, works with graduate student Dayna Richter on a 900-megahertz magnet at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida.
Credit: Mark Wallheiser/FAMU-FSU College of Engineering

When patients are treated for strokes and other neurological disorders, understanding what is happening inside the nervous system is a crucial part of treatment. Doctors rely on imaging tools such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to peer inside the body and see if interventions are helping.

A Florida State University research team has found that a combination of two MRI techniques can provide early answers on the effectiveness of stem cell therapies for treating strokes, which could help physicians quickly know if a treatment is working or if they should change their strategy. Their work was published in the journal Translational Stroke Research.

“With strokes, the sooner that you can salvage tissue that might be at risk, because it’s been starved from oxygen and glucose, the sooner you can avoid some of that inflammatory response and help the tissue recover,” said Sam Grant, a professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and faculty researcher at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

The researchers examined rat brains that had suffered a stroke and been injected with stem cells, specifically adult mesenchymal stem cells, which come from a variety of sources in the human body and are the focus of treatments for neurological diseases.

New measurements point to silicon as a major contributor to performance limitations in superconducting quantum processors

A superconducting-based quantum processor, composed of several thin film materials deposited on top of a silicon substrate.
Photo credit: Rigetti Computing

Silicon is a material widely used in computing: It is used in computer chips, circuits, displays and other modern computing devices. Silicon is also used as the substrate, or the foundation of quantum computing chips.

Researchers at the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, demonstrated that silicon substrates could be detrimental to the performance of quantum processors. SQMS Center scientists have measured silicon’s effect on the lifespan of qubits with parts-per-billion precision. These findings have been published in Physical Review Applied.

New approaches to computing

Calculations once performed on pen and paper have since been handed to computers. Classical computers rely on bits, 1 or 0, which have limitations. Quantum computers offer a new approach to computing that relies on quantum mechanics. These novel devices could perform calculations that would take years or be practically impossible for a classical computer to perform.

Using the power of quantum mechanics, qubits—the basic unit of quantum information held within a quantum computing chip—can be both a 1 and a 0 at the same time. Processing and storing information in qubits is challenging and requires a well-controlled environment. Small environmental disturbances or flaws in the qubit’s materials can destroy the information.

Qubits require near-perfect conditions to maintain the integrity of their quantum state, and certain material properties can decrease the qubit lifespan. This phenomenon, called quantum decoherence, is a critical obstacle to overcome to operate quantum processors.

As threats to the U.S. power grid surge

WVU Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering students Partha Sarker, Paroma Chatterjee and Jannatul Adan, discuss a power grid simulation project led by Anurag Srivastava, professor and department chair, in the GOLab.
Photo credit: Brian Persinger | WVU

The electrical grid faces a mounting barrage of threats that could trigger a butterfly effect – floods, superstorms, heat waves, cyberattacks, not to mention its own ballooning complexity and size – that the nation is unprepared to handle, according to one West Virginia University scientist.

But Anurag Srivastava, professor and chair of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, has plans to prevent and respond to potential power grid failures, thanks to a pair of National Science Foundation-funded research projects.

“In the grid, we have the butterfly effect,” Srivastava said. “This means that if a butterfly flutters its wings in Florida, that will cause a windstorm in Connecticut because things are synchronously connected, like dominos. In the power grid, states like Florida, Connecticut, Illinois and West Virginia are all part of the eastern interconnection and linked together.

“If a big event happens in the Deep South, it is going to cause a problem up north. To stop that, we need to detect the problem area as soon as possible and gracefully separate that part out so the disturbance does not propagate through the whole.”

How Fat Signals Us to Eat More of It

Charles S. Zuker
Columbia University Neuroscience Physiology
Source: HHMI

Scientists discover how fat triggers a gut-to-brain mechanism that drives us to keep consuming more of it. Their findings could one day lead to interventions to help treat obesity and associated disorders.

Short ribs glazed in a sweet sticky sauce and slow-cooked to perfection, potato chips hand-fried and tossed with a generous coating of sour cream, chicken wings battered and double-fried so that they stay crispy for hours. What is it about these, and other, mouth-watering — but incredibly fatty — foods that makes us reach out, and keep coming back for more?

How they taste on the tongue is one part of the story, but to really understand what drives “our insatiable appetite for fat,” we have to examine what happens after fat is consumed, says Columbia University’s Charles Zuker, a neuroscientist and molecular geneticist who has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator since 1989.

Two years ago, Zuker and his team reported how sugar, upon reaching the gut, triggers signals that are sent to the brain, thus fueling cravings for sweet treats. Now, in an article published in Nature on September 7, 2022, they describe a similar gut-to-brain circuit that underlies a preference for fat.

“The gut is the source of our great desire for fat and sugar,” says Zuker.

The topic in question is an incredibly timely one, given the current global obesity epidemic. An estimated 13 percent of adults worldwide are obese — thrice that in 1975. In the US, that figure is even higher — at a staggering 42 percent. “It’s a very significant and important health problem,” says Zuker.

Having a high body-mass index is a risk factor for stroke, diabetes, and several other diseases. “It’s clear that if we want to help make a difference here, we need to understand the biological basis for our strong appetite for fat and sugar,” he says. Doing so will help us design interventions in the future to “suppress this strong drive to consume” and combat obesity.

Using science to solve ancient Chinese art mystery

UC assistant professor Pietro Strobbia consulted with the Cincinnati Art Museum to solve a mystery about one of its ancient Chinese masterpieces.
Photo credit: Andrew Higley/University of Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Art Museum turned to a scientist at the University of Cincinnati for help solving a mystery 1,300 years in the making.

The museum’s Chinese dancing horse sculpture is so realistic that the fiery steed seems ready to gallop off its pedestal. But East Asian art curator Hou-mei Sung questioned the authenticity of a decorative tassel on the terracotta horse’s forehead that resembles the horn of a mythological unicorn.

The museum reached out to UC College of Arts and Sciences assistant professor of chemistry Pietro Strobbia for help to determine if the tassel was original to the work.

“Many museums have a conservator but not necessarily scientific facilities needed to do this kind of examination,” Strobbia said. “The forehead tassel looks original, but the museum asked us to determine what materials it was made from.”

Strobbia and his collaborators wrote about the project for a paper published in the journal Heritage Science.