Drought, Heat Waves Worsen West Coast Air Pollution Inequality

Shasta Lake, Calif. on August 25th, 2014 at Bridge Bay Resort and Marina. Lake Shasta is part of the Central Valley Project, operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
Photo Credit: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation

A new study led by North Carolina State University researchers found drought and heat waves could make air pollution worse for communities that already have a high pollution burden in California, and deepen pollution inequalities along racial and ethnic lines.

Published in Nature Communications, the study also found financial penalties for power plants can significantly reduce people’s pollution exposure, except during severe heat waves.

“We have known that air pollution disproportionally impacts communities of color, the poor and communities that are already more likely to be impacted by other sources of environmental pollution,” said the study’s lead author Jordan Kern, assistant professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “What we know now is that drought and heat waves make things worse.”

For the study, researchers estimated emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter from power plants in California across 500 different scenarios for what the weather could look like in future years, which they called “synthetic weather years.” These years simulated conditions that could occur based on historical wind, air, temperature and solar radiation values on the West Coast between 1953 and 2008. Then by using information about the location of power plants in California and how much electricity they would be generating under different weather conditions, they estimated air pollution within individual counties.

Tool developed to identify girls at risk of nutritional deficiency

Alexandra Pounds, Research Fellow at the University of Stirling's Institute of Aquaculture, in Bangladesh
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Stirling

A University of Stirling scientist has led a project which developed a new tool to identify girls in developing countries who are at risk of nutritional deficiency.

Professor Dave Little of the University’s world-renowned Institute of Aquaculture used the resource to discover that adolescent girls in Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable.

Aquaculture is a fast-growing food production sector in many low-income and food-deficit countries and whilst these ecosystems produce highly valuable and nutritious aquatic foods, local communities can still have a poor diet as a result of changes to the supply and accessibility of fish.

Professor Little said: “Adolescent girls represent a particularly vulnerable group in Bangladesh, with higher nutritional needs relative to energy requirements than other adult household members, and at the same time likely to have restricted access to food. 

“For this group, an optimal diet is critical for their own health and – in the case of early marriage and motherhood – for their infants.”

Wastewater could be the key to tracking more viruses than just COVID-19

Boehm lab graduate student Winnie Zambrana showing how wastewater samples are processed to test for evidence of viruses.
Photo Credit: Harry Gregory

Researchers have developed methods for using wastewater to track the levels of various respiratory viruses in a population. This can provide real-time information about virus circulation in a community.

Public health experts commonly track spikes in flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and rhinovirus circulating in a population through weekly reports from sentinel laboratories. These laboratories process samples from only severely ill patients, and it can take weeks for the results to get into the database. Now, for the first time, researchers at Stanford University, in collaboration with Emory University and Verily Life Sciences, have collected fast and accurate readings of a whole suite of respiratory viruses in their local Santa Clara sewer system.

Wastewater is currently the only source for accurate information about COVID-19 rates in communities. PCR testing is no longer widely available, and most people swab themselves at home where their results never reach public health agencies.

Prior to COVID-19, respiratory viruses had not been tracked through wastewater. Most of the viruses the scientists tested for in this study had never been measured in wastewater before. The findings are published in the March 22 issue of The Lancet Microbe.

Attack from the intestine

After an operation, bacteria can enter the organism from the intestine. Combat special cells of the immune system that are located in the liver.
Illustration Credit: Mercedes Gomez de Agüero

Darmbacteria are more common triggers of complications after surgery. This is shown by a new study by research teams from Würzburg and Bern. A solution to this problem could come from the liver.

German hospitals carried out almost 16 million operations in 2021. In Switzerland there are around 1.1 million. Even if the actual procedure is going well, it is not uncommon for a wound infection to occur afterwards, which can have dramatic consequences for those affected. In extreme cases, such infections are fatal.

A new study now shows that the causes of these infections are in a large part of the cases bacteria from the patient's intestine itself. To do this, the intestine does not even have to be injured during the operation. In this way, too, these pathogens overcome the intestinal barrier postoperatively and spread throughout the body through the blood and lymphatic pathways. They can be stopped by special immune cells that patrol all organs, including the liver.

Chemists Synthesize Material with Unusual Properties

Micrographs of ceramics based on barium stannate doped with yttrium. The percentage indicates the amount of yttrium in the tin sublattice. It can be used for electrolytes, electrodes and converters with varying amounts of additives
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the authors of the article

Researchers of the Institute of Hydrogen Energy of the Ural Federal University and the Institute of High Temperature Electrochemistry of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have created a promising material for hydrogen energy devices. The new material has high proton conductivity and unusual properties (depending on the degree of doping). It can be used as an electrolyte (at high doping levels) and as an electrode (at low doping levels) in solid oxide fuel cells and electrolyzers. A description of the new material and the results of the study are presented in the Journal of Power Sources.

"We synthesized an electrolyte material with a perovskite structure based on barium stannate. By modifying barium stannate with different amounts of yttrium, we obtained materials with curious properties. At high degrees of substitution of tin for yttrium, the materials are ionic (protonic) conductors, which makes them promising electrolytes. At the same time, the introduction of a small amount of yttrium in the composition leads to a pronounced electron transport. This allows these materials to be used as electrodes for the same electrochemical devices, both solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and electrolyzers. This opens up wide possibilities for applications in electrochemical converters, in particular for oxygen-, hydrogen- and water-permeable membranes," explains Georgy Starostin, co-author and Research Engineer at the Hydrogen Energy Laboratory of UrFU.

At least 80% of the world’s most important sites for biodiversity on land currently contain human developments

Photo Credit: Siggy Nowak

A study has found that infrastructure worldwide is widespread in sites that have been identified as internationally important for biodiversity, and its prevalence is likely to increase.

This is the first ever assessment of the presence of infrastructure in Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs): a global network of thousands of sites recognized internationally as being the world’s most critical areas for wildlife.

Infrastructure is one of the greatest drivers of threats to biodiversity according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It can cause natural habitat destruction and fragmentation, pollution, increased disturbance or hunting by humans, the spread of invasive species, direct mortality, and can have wider impacts beyond the development site.

Now, researchers from BirdLife International, WWF and the RSPB, in association with the University of Cambridge, have conducted an assessment of infrastructure in KBAs, finding that it is widespread and likely to increase. The results are published today in Biological Conservation.

“It’s concerning that human developments exist in the vast majority of sites that have been identified as being critical for nature,” said Ash Simkins, a Zoology PhD student at the University of Cambridge who led the study.

Pressure-Based Control Enables Tunable Singlet Fission Materials for Efficient Photoconversion

Applying hydrostatic pressure as an external stimulus, Tokyo Tech and Keio University researchers demonstrate a new way to regulate singlet fission (SF), a process in which two electrons are generated from a single photon, in chromophores, opening doors to the design of SF-based materials with enhanced (photo)energy conversion. Their method overrides the strict requirements that limit the molecular design of such materials by realizing an alternative control strategy.

Singlet fission (SF) is a process in which an organic chromophore (a molecule that absorbs light) in an excited singlet state transfers energy to a neighboring chromophore, resulting in two correlated triplet exciton pairs (pairs of bound electron-hole states, a "hole" signifying the absence of an electron) that decay to low energy triplet excitons. These excitons have long lifetimes and show efficient light emission, making SF promising for efficient light energy conversion.

However, the molecular design of SF-based materials is limited by the requirement that the energy of the excited singlet state must be at least equal to the energy of the two triplet states. One way to overcome this limit is by applying external stimuli, such as temperature or pressure, to manipulate the SF process.

Breakthrough on the way to the biological solar cell

Marc Nowaczyk which everted from the Ruhr University to the University of Rostock. The current works were partly made in Bochum.
Photo Credit: ITMZ University of Rostock

Researchers question the way photosynthesis works.

A research team from the University of Cambridge, the University of Rostock and the Ruhr University Bochum succeeded for the first time in obtaining electrons directly from the early stages of photosynthesis. This breakthrough questions the previous model for the basic functioning of photosynthesis and has the potential to revolutionize the development of solar cells based on biological catalysts. The research work was published in the renowned journal Nature from 22. Published March 2023.

Manufacture hydrogen with sunlight

Biological catalysts, so-called enzymes, have long since determined our everyday life. For example, they are used as additives in detergents, they refine food or are used in large-scale processes to produce medicines or raw materials for the chemical industry. Compared to chemical catalysts, they have the advantage that they only react with very specific raw materials and therefore produce very specific products. In addition, biological catalysts are never based on precious metals or other rare raw materials. "In nature, solutions have always been established that are not limited by the availability of raw materials," says Prof. Dr. Marc Nowaczyk, head of the chair for biochemistry at the University of Rostock and co-author of the study, who did part of the work at the Ruhr University Bochum as part of the graduate school Microbial Substrate Conversion, MiCon for short.

Use of melatonin linked to decreased self-harm in young people

There is currently a youth mental health crisis, and the risk of self-harm and suicide  is high.
Photo Credit: Vladislav Muslakov

Medical sleep treatment may reduce self-harm in young people with anxiety and depression, an observational study from Karolinska Institutet suggests. The risk of self-harm increased in the months preceding melatonin prescription and decreased thereafter, especially in girls. The study is published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Melatonin is a hormone that controls the sleep-wake cycle and is the most commonly prescribed drug for sleep disturbances in children and adolescents in Sweden. Melatonin use has dramatically increased in recent years, and it is available over the counter in Sweden since 2020.

“Given the established link between sleep problems, depression, and self-harm, we wanted to explore whether medical sleep treatment is associated with a lower rate of intentional self-harm in young people,” says Dr Sarah Bergen, docent at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, who led the study.

Clues to the cause of chronic gut pain

Professor Stuart Brierley
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Flinders University

New insights into chronic gut pain offer hope for improved treatments for irritable bowel syndrome and anxiety treatment.

A research team led by Flinders University Professor Stuart Brierley, based at the SA Health and Medical Research Institute, with Nobel Laureate Professor David Julius, Professor Holly Ingraham and Dr James Bayrer at the University of California San Francisco, has shown evidence of a specific pathway of cells and nerves linking the gut to the brain that may be responsible for the chronic gut pain.

Chronic gut pain is commonly experienced by 11% of the global population currently living with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and associated psychological conditions, including anxiety and depression.

Described in a new article in Nature, the team used genetic and pharmacologic tools in pre-clinical models to manipulate signals between gut epithelial cells and associated nerve fibers to determine how this pathway stimulates chronic gut pain and anxiety.