Can clay capture carbon dioxide?

Sandia National Laboratories bioengineer Susan Rempe, left, and chemical engineer Tuan Ho peer through an artistic representation of the chemical structure of a kind of clay. Their team is studying how clay could be used to capture carbon dioxide.
Photo Credit: Craig Fritz

The atmospheric level of carbon dioxide — a gas that is great at trapping heat, contributing to climate change — is almost double what it was prior to the Industrial Revolution, yet it only constitutes 0.0415% of the air we breathe.

This presents a challenge to researchers attempting to design artificial trees or other methods of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air. That challenge is one a Sandia National Laboratories-led team of scientists is attempting to solve.

Led by Sandia chemical engineer Tuan Ho, the team has been using powerful computer models combined with laboratory experiments to study how a kind of clay can soak up carbon dioxide and store it.

The scientists shared their initial findings in a paper published earlier this week in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

“These fundamental findings have potential for direct-air capture; that is what we’re working toward,” said Ho, lead author on the paper. “Clay is really inexpensive and abundant in nature. That should allow us to reduce the cost of direct-air carbon capture significantly, if this high-risk, high-reward project ultimately leads to a technology.”

Scientists boost quantum signals while reducing noise

This superconducting parametric amplifier can achieve quantum squeezing over much broader bandwidths than other designs, which could lead to faster and more accurate quantum measurements.
 Image Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

A certain amount of noise is inherent in any quantum system. For instance, when researchers want to read information from a quantum computer, which harnesses quantum mechanical phenomena to solve certain problems too complex for classical computers, the same quantum mechanics also imparts a minimum level of unavoidable error that limits the accuracy of the measurements.

Scientists can effectively get around this limitation by using “parametric” amplification to “squeeze” the noise –– a quantum phenomenon that decreases the noise affecting one variable while increasing the noise that affects its conjugate partner. While the total amount of noise remains the same, it is effectively redistributed. Researchers can then make more accurate measurements by looking only at the lower-noise variable.

A team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere has now developed a new superconducting parametric amplifier that operates with the gain of previous narrowband squeezers while achieving quantum squeezing over much larger bandwidths. Their work is the first to demonstrate squeezing over a broad frequency bandwidth of up to 1.75 gigahertz while maintaining a high degree of squeezing (selective noise reduction). In comparison, previous microwave parametric amplifiers generally achieved bandwidths of only 100 megahertz or less.

Doubling protected lands for biodiversity could require tradeoffs with other land uses

Scientists show how 30% protected land targets may not safeguard biodiversity hotspots and may negatively affect other sectors – and how data and analysis can support effective conservation and land use planning
Photo Credit: Federico Respini

Although more than half the world’s countries have committed to protecting at least 30% of land and oceans by 2030 in support of biodiversity, various questions emerge: Where and what type of land should be protected? How will new land protections impact carbon emissions and climate change, or the land needed for energy and food production? As a result, many decision makers are left questioning how to take action around protecting new land as they set their sights on achieving ambitious targets to preserve biodiversity in regions around the globe. New science tools can shed light on some of those questions.

A recent study led by climate scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) aims to inform the discussion around how protecting additional land to meet conservation goals may impact land use (such as agricultural) and land cover (such as grass, water, or vegetation). The research is among the first to explore how potential pathways to achieve these bold targets affect agricultural expansion, and its findings suggest that meeting the 30% protection targets could lead to substantial regional shifts in land use and in some cases still fail to protect the world’s most biodiverse hotspots.

“It is important that we protect land if we want to stem additional ecosystem degradation,” said the paper’s lead author Alan Di Vittorio, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area. “But protecting land entails tradeoffs with other land uses and could have negative impacts on the agricultural sector, such as less land for bioenergy crops or less forest land for timber.”

Tracking ocean microplastics from space

Video Credit: University of Michigan

Microplastic pollution can be spotted from space because its traveling companion alters the roughness of the ocean’s surface

New information about an emerging technique that could track microplastics from space has been uncovered by researchers at the University of Michigan. It turns out that satellites are best at spotting soapy or oily residue, and microplastics appear to tag along with that residue.

Microplastics—tiny flecks that can ride ocean currents hundreds or thousands of miles from their point of entry—can harm sea life and marine ecosystems, and they’re extremely difficult to track and clean up. However, a 2021 discovery raised the hope that satellites could offer day-by-day timelines of where microplastics enter the water, how they move and where they tend to collect, for prevention and clean-up efforts.

The team noticed that data recorded by the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), showed less surface roughness—that is, fewer and smaller waves—in areas of the ocean that contain microplastics, compared to clean areas.

Marine reserves unlikely to restore marine ecosystems

The study used visual censuses and the analysis of stable isotopes to determine the abundance and trophic niche of carnivorous fish in marine reserves and areas open to fishing.
Photo Credit: Lluís Cardona

Protected marine areas are one of the essential tools for the conservation of natural resources affected by human impact —mainly fishing—, but are they enough to recover the functioning of these systems? A study published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, led by researchers from the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with researchers from the Group of Ecosystem Oceanography (GRECO) of the Oceanographic Center of the Balearic Islands, highlights the limitations of marine reserves in restoring food webs to their pristine state prior to the impact of intensive fishing.

Protected marine areas are one of the essential tools for the conservation of natural resources affected by human impact —mainly fishing—, but are they enough to recover the functioning of these systems? A study published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, led by researchers from the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with researchers from the Group of Ecosystem Oceanography (GRECO) of the Oceanographic Center of the Balearic Islands, highlights the limitations of marine reserves in restoring food webs to their pristine state prior to the impact of intensive fishing.

Spokes move along Saturn's rings

Spokes move along Saturn's rings
Seven Hubble Space Telescope images, each taken about four minutes apart, are stitched together to show "spoke" features rotating around Saturn. The puzzling, transient features have defied easy characterization. Their rotation rate does not quite match up with the rotation of the rings or of the planet's magnetic field. The spokes are known to appear during the period leading up to and following the planet's equinox. With the northern hemisphere autumnal equinox approaching on May 6, 2025, scientists are hoping new observations by Hubble will help them to put the clues together and solve the spoke mystery—what are they, and why do they form? Hubble observations will be compared with those made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in the period surrounding Saturn's last equinox, in 2009. With the Cassini mission completed, Hubble's annual observations of Saturn as part of its Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program will be crucial to studying and better understanding this dynamic world.
Credits: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC) ANIMATION: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

New images of Saturn from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope herald the start of the planet's "spoke season" surrounding its equinox, when enigmatic features appear across its rings. The cause of the spokes, as well as their seasonal variability, has yet to be fully explained by planetary scientists.

Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn's much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun. The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn's northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable.

Less is more

The ability to genetically change bacteria is the key to researching the microbial world.
Image Credit: Braňo

Scientists from Würzburg and Braunschweig have developed a new approach that enables more efficient processing of bacterial genomes.

The ability to genetically change bacteria is the key to researching the microbial world. Genome editing - i.e. processing the genome such as DNA - is essential in order to develop new antibiotics and to use bacteria as miniature factories for the sustainable production of chemicals, materials and therapeutics. Tools based on the CRISPR gene scissors have proven helpful here because they make it possible to change different bacteria quickly, easily and reliably.

The underlying technology requires CRISPR ribonucleic acid (crRNA), which serves as a "lead RNA". It helps to control certain regions of a genome for targeted DNA cleavage. Proteins involved in homologous recombination - a natural process of exchanging genetic material between chromosomes - then insert the designed "repair template" to create a processed sequence of the DNA strand.

How Giants Became Dwarfs

A nest of empty snail shells with the giant territorial nest owner (right), a female just entering a shell (middle) and a parasitic dwarf male (left). The striped fish in the foreground are egg predators.
Photo Credit: © Sabine Wirtz-Ocana

In certain Lake Tanganyika cichlids breeding in empty snail shells, there are two extreme sizes of males: giants and dwarfs. Researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Graz have analyzed the genomes of these fish and found out how the peculiar sizes of males and females evolved in conjunction with the genetic sex determination mechanism.

Difference in body size (or sexual dimorphism) between males and females is common across the animal kingdom. One of the most extreme examples of sexual dimorphism is found in the cichlid fish species Lamprologous callipterus from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, where males are 12 times bigger (heavier) than females. The ecological reason for this remarkable size difference is the fact that this species uses empty snail shells found at the bottom of the lake to build nests. Hence males must be large enough to carry shells with their mouths, whereas females need to be small enough to fit inside the snail shells to lay eggs, where they are well protected from predators. Sex-specific differences in body size are important for the biology of this species, as small males would not be able to carry empty snail shells and large females would not be able to enter the shells for breeding.

New approach puts brain scans on the witness stand in trademark disputes

Research shows how neuroscience could reduce bias, revolutionize intellectual property law
Image Credit: creative commons

Imagine you’re browsing the toothpaste aisle and see next to Colgate a new brand called Colddate, packaged in a box with similar colors and designs. “You might think this is clearly a copycat brand,” said Ming Hsu, William Halford Jr. Family Chair in Marketing at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.

Yet in a real-life trademark infringement case involving these two brands, Colgate-Palmolive lost the suit, with the judge saying they were “similar” but not “substantially indistinguishable.”

There are often different opinions between judges and juries in trademark cases about how similar the brands in question actually are, leading to large inconsistencies in the application of the law. In a paper published February 8 in the journal Science Advances, Hsu and colleagues propose a more scientific measure through the use of brain scans—employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) along with a specialized technique called repetition suppression (RS).

“Asking the brain, not a person, could reduce—if not eliminate—these inconsistencies,” said lead author Zhihao Zhang, a former Berkeley Haas postdoctoral researcher now on the faculty of the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. The study’s other authors include Dr. Andrew Kayser of UC San Francisco, Femke van Horen of Vrije University Amsterdam, and Mark Bartholomew of University at Buffalo Law School.

"Snapshots" of Translation Could Help Us Investigate Cellular Proteins

Nascent polypeptide chains or polypeptidyl-tRNAs (pep-tRNAs) occur transiently during protein synthesis. The potential to study these intermediates and better understand their role in processes like gene regulation has been greatly enhanced by the development of a process termed PETEOS—short for peptidyl-tRNA enrichment using organic extraction and silica adsorption. This method, developed by scientists at Tokyo Tech, allows for the large-scale harvesting, processing, and identification of pep-tRNA polypeptide moieties.

Advances in molecular biology have revealed that pep-tRNAs—nascent polypeptides inside the ribosome that are covalently attached to transfer RNA—are involved in a myriad of cell functions, including gene expression. All proteins exist as pep-tRNAs at some point and studying these translation intermediates is vital as they possess properties of both RNA and protein and can help researchers better understand the specifics of translation. Depending on stimuli and/or stresses, translational regulation is very rapid and spans initiation, elongation, and elongation pausing. Garnering deeper insights into the process of translation therefore requires a suitable method to process pep-tRNAs in large quantities. These nuances have fueled the development of molecular tools to investigate cellular translation.