Light, oxygen turn waste plastics into useful benzoic acid

Credit: Pexel 

Styrofoam egg cartons, hard plastic compact disc cases, red drinking cups and many other common products are composed of polystyrene, a type of plastic that makes up a third of landfill waste worldwide.

“In terms of plastic production and end-of-life waste streams, we are on the road to an unsustainable future,” said Erin Stache, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

But there’s good news: Stache has discovered a new path for polystyrene waste that includes being upcycled into benzoic acid, a chemical with wide commercial demand, through a mild process that uses light, an oxygen-rich environment and an abundant iron-based catalyst. The reaction can even take place in a sunny window.

The paper, “Chemical Upcycling of Commercial Polystyrene via Catalyst-Controlled Photooxidation” published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Doctoral candidate Sewon Oh is the lead author.

In line with her lab’s mission to tackle environmental concerns through interesting chemistry, the new process is mild, climate-friendly and scalable to commercial waste streams, Stache said. It efficiently produces benzoic acid, a product stocked in undergraduate and high school chemistry labs and also used in fragrances, food preservatives, and other ubiquitous products.

Meat industry not threatened by plant-based alternatives, study suggests

Vegan patties like these made with pea protein may mimic the sensory experience of eating a real burger, but aren’t putting much of a dent in fresh meat sales.
Credit: Unsplash

At least for now, there is no reason for the traditional meat industry to have much of a beef with producers of plant-based burgers and other meat alternatives, new research suggests.

The study showed that while sales and market share of new-generation plant-based meat alternatives have grown in recent years, those gains haven’t translated into reduced consumer spending on animal meat products.

Overall, the analysis of national meat purchases suggested that plant-based meats sold in patty, link and ground form are mostly an add-on to beef and pork and tend to serve as a substitute for chicken, turkey and fish.

Wuyang Hu Source: OSU

“We thought plant-based meat alternatives would be a potential replacement for red meat, but they’re not. It’s more of a complement,” said study co-author Wuyang Hu, professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at The Ohio State University. “People buy pork and beef, and at the same time they also buy plant-based meats.”

Researchers noted the study is not intended to take any industry’s side or give consideration to the comparative healthfulness of products.

“This new generation of plant-based meat, by mimicking the taste and sensory experience of eating real meat, appeals to consumers who are not only vegetarian but also people who are curious about plant-based meat and even meat eaters,” said lead author Shuoli Zhao, assistant professor of agricultural economics at the University of Kentucky.

“We wanted to look at the most up-to-date market response to a new product and see how the demand for such a product is interacting with the rest of the meat categories, especially within the fresh meat sector.”

World-leading simulation model to improve future pandemic quarantine response

A world-leading epidemiological simulation model to help improve future border quarantine practices for Australia and overseas has been developed by researchers at the University of Melbourne, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and collaborating institutions.  

The team of researchers – who advised the Federal Government on its National Plan to Transition Australia's National COVID Response last August – have published their model findings in the journal Sciences Advances.

The simulation model combines a detailed representation of person-to-person contact and virus transmission among both travelers and the quarantine workforce, with an accurate simulation of how infectiousness and virus testing accuracy varies over the course of a person’s period of infection.

Researchers were able to include these factors into the simulation model by drawing on growing data from the operation of Australian hotel quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their inclusion can aid the design of quarantine systems to reduce the risk of virus transmission from infected arrivals in quarantine to the wider community.

Lead researchers Associate Professor Nic Geard and Dr Cameron Zachreson, from the University’s School of Computing and Information Systems (CIS), said the simulation model was developed to be adaptable and better calculate risks associated with various quarantine pathways including hotel quarantine, home quarantine and dedicated quarantine facilities such as the Victorian Quarantine Hub at Mickleham.

Lockheed Martin Stalker VXE UAS Completes a World Record 39-Hour Flight

Stalker VXE
Credit: Lockheed Martin Corporation

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) Skunk Works® demonstrated the expanded endurance capabilities of a specially configured Lockheed Martin Stalker VXE unmanned aerial system (UAS) through a world record endurance flight on Feb. 18, 2022, at the Santa Margarita Ranch in California.

The flight establishes a new record in the Group 2 (5 to <25-kilogram) category with a flight time of 39 hours, 17 minutes and 7 seconds. The flight has been submitted to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world sanctioning body for aviation records, through its U.S. affiliate, the National Aeronautic Association, for certification.

A production Stalker VXE was modified for this record-setting flight with an external, wing-mounted fuel tank. The flight provided valuable insight for improvements to Stalker VXE aimed at scaling its mission capabilities for the future.

Stalker VXE’s class-leading endurance, broad operating envelope, modular payload compliance, vertical take-off and landing capability, and open system architecture allow it to execute diverse and demanding missions while maintaining a small operational footprint and crew.

Aprotinin is effective in COVID-19 patients

A clinical study from Spain recently confirmed laboratory experiments made by researchers of Goethe University Frankfurt and University of Kent who showed that the protease inhibitor aprotinin prevented cells to be infected by SARS-CoV2. The authors of the clinical study report that patients receiving an aprotinin aerosol could be discharged from hospital significantly earlier.

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, needs its spike proteins to dock onto proteins (ACE receptors) on the surface of the host cells. Before this docking is possible, parts of the spike protein have to be cleaved by host cell's enzymes called proteases. In 2020, a scientific team led by Professor Jindrich Cinatl (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany), Professor Martin Michaelis and Professor Mark Wass (both University of Kent, UK), conducted cell culture experiments and found that aprotinin, a protease inhibitor, could inhibit virus replications by preventing SARS-CoV-2 entry into host cells.

In a more recent study, the research consortium further showed that aprotinin is also effective against the Delta and Omicron variants.

Blood cancer cells and the immune system are best frenemies

Single-cell technologies allow for the analysis of individual cells and the comparison of normal cells to tumour cells (purple).
Credit: Claudiu Cotta

Researchers at the University of Helsinki and Aalto University have demonstrated that the body’s immune system attacks itself in a rare type of blood cancer. The finding could lead to improved treatment and a more intricate understanding of the immune system’s role in other cancers.

Current treatment methods for large granular lymphocyte (LGL) leukaemia, a rare type of blood cancer, are based on an understanding that the cancer cells attack the body’s own tissues. Prior research has focused on studying these rogue cells, making inroads to a better understanding of the disease.

‘Our research group demonstrated ten years ago that LGL cancer cells typically have a mutation in the STAT3 gene, a finding that is now used to diagnose this disease worldwide,’ says professor of translational hematology Satu Mustjoki from the University of Helsinki.

Although rarely fatal, blood cancer causes several chronic symptoms, including an increased infection risk, anemia and joint pain. The challenge so far has been that patients show a mixed response to treatment.

ESO telescope captures surprising changes in Neptune's temperatures

This composite shows thermal images of Neptune taken between 2006 and 2020. The first three images (2006, 2009, 2018) were taken with the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope while the 2020 image was captured by the COMICS instrument on the Subaru Telescope (VISIR wasn’t in operation in mid-late 2020 because of the pandemic). After the planet’s gradual cooling, the south pole appears to have become dramatically warmer in the past few years, as shown by a bright spot at the bottom of Neptune in the images from 2018 and 2020. 
Credit: ESO/M. Roman, NAOJ/Subaru/COMICS

An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track Neptune’s atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period. They found a surprising drop in Neptune’s global temperatures followed by dramatic warming at its south pole.

“This change was unexpected,” says Michael Roman, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Leicester, UK, and lead author of the study published today in The Planetary Science Journal. “Since we have been observing Neptune during its early southern summer, we expected temperatures to be slowly growing warmer, not colder.”

Like Earth, Neptune experiences seasons as it orbits the Sun. However, a Neptune season lasts around 40 years, with one Neptune year lasting 165 Earth years. It has been summertime in Neptune’s southern hemisphere since 2005, and the astronomers were eager to see how temperatures were changing following the southern summer solstice.

Astronomers looked at nearly 100 thermal-infrared images of Neptune, captured over a 17-year period, to piece together overall trends in the planet’s temperature in greater detail than ever before.

Wireless neuro-stimulator to revolutionize patient care

Many neurological disorders like Parkinson’s, chronic depression and other psychiatric conditions could be managed at home, thanks to a collaborative project involving researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ).

Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) Professor Peter Silburn AM said his team, together with Neurosciences Queensland and Abbott Neuromodulation have developed a remote care platform which allows patients to access treatment from anywhere in the world.

“By creating the world’s first integrated and completely wireless remote care platform, we have removed the need for patients to see their doctor in person to have their device adjusted,” Professor Silburn said.

Electrodes are surgically inserted into the brain and electrical stimulation is delivered by a pacemaker which alters brain function - providing therapeutic relief and improving quality of life.

This digital platform allows clinicians to monitor patients remotely, as well as adjust the device to treat and alleviate symptoms in real time.

“We have shown that it is possible to minimize disruption to patients’ and caregivers’ lifestyles by increasing accessibility to the service, saving time and money,” Professor Silburn said.

“There are no cures for many of these conditions which often require life-long treatment and care, so for those people the device would be a game-changer.”

He said the system also fostered increasingly personalized treatment and data-driven clinical decisions, which could improve patient care.

‘Frustrated’ nanomagnets order themselves through disorder

Source/Credit: Yale University

Extremely small arrays of magnets with strange and unusual properties can order themselves by increasing entropy, or the tendency of physical systems to disorder, a behavior that appears to contradict standard thermodynamics—but doesn’t.

“Paradoxically, the system orders because it wants to be more disordered,” said Cristiano Nisoli, a physicist at Los Alamos and coauthor of a paper about the research published in Nature Physics. “Our research demonstrates entropy-driven order in a structured system of magnets at equilibrium.”

The system examined in this work, known as tetris spin ice, was studied as part of a long-standing collaboration between Nisoli and Peter Schiffer at Yale University, with theoretical analysis and simulations led at Los Alamos and experimental work led at Yale. The research team includes scientists from a number of universities and academic institutions.

Nanomagnet arrays, like tetris spin ice, show promise as circuits of logic gates in neuromorphic computing, a leading-edge computing architecture that closely mimics how the brain works. They also have possible applications in a number of high-frequency devices using “magnonics” that exploit the dynamics of magnetism on the nanoscale.

Newborn cells in the epileptic brain provide a potential target for treatment

Altered cells create an electrical “fire” in patients with epilepsy.
Credit: BioRender illustration by Aswathy Ammothumkandy/Bonaguidi Lab/USC Stem Cell

Over the years, everyone loses a few brain cells. A study led by scientists from USC Stem Cell and the USC Neurorestoration Center presents evidence that adults can replenish at least some of what they’ve lost by generating new brain cells, and that this process is dramatically altered in patients with long-term epilepsy. The findings are published in Nature Neuroscience.

“Our study is the first to detail the presence of newborn neurons and an immature version of a related cell type, known as astroglia, in patients with epilepsy,” said Michael Bonaguidi, an assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, gerontology, and biomedical engineering at USC. “Our findings furnish surprising new insights into how immature astroglia might contribute to epilepsy—opening an unexplored avenue toward the development of new anti-seizure medications for millions of people.”

First author Aswathy Ammothumkandy, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the Bonaguidi Lab, and her colleagues collaborated with USC neurosurgeons Charles Liu and Jonathan Russin, who often treat patients with seizures that can’t be controlled with medication. Drug resistance is particularly common with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, or MTLE, and affects one-third of all patients with this form of the disease. As a result, some patients need to undergo surgery to remove the section of the brain, the hippocampus, that causes their seizures.

Melting ice caps may not shut down ocean current

Feng He
Credit: Courtesy of 
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Most simulations of our climate’s future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Climate scientists count the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) among the biggest tipping points on the way to a planetary climate disaster. The Atlantic Ocean current acts like a conveyor belt carrying warm tropical surface water north and cooler, heavier deeper water south.

“We’ve been taught to picture it like a conveyor belt — even in middle school and high school now, it’s taught this way — that shuts down when freshwater comes in from ice melt,” says Feng He, an associate scientist at UW–Madison’s Center for Climatic Research.

However, building upon previous work, He says researchers are revising their understanding of the relationship between AMOC and freshwater from melting polar ice.

In the past, a stalled AMOC has accompanied abrupt climate events like the Bølling-Allerød warming, a 14,500-year-old, sharp global temperature hike. He successfully reproduced that event using a climate model he conducted in 2009 while a UW–Madison graduate student.

“That was a success, reproducing the abrupt warming about 14,700 years ago that is seen in the paleoclimate record,” says He, now. “But our accuracy didn’t continue past that abrupt change period.”

Gel delivery enhances cancer treatment

As shown in this demonstration, the hydrogel can be easily injected through a needle and then rapidly self-heals after injection to form a solid-like gel. The needle in this image is a 21-gauge needle, a relevant size for human injection.
Image credit: Abigail K. Grosskopf

One cutting-edge cancer treatment exciting researchers today involves collecting and reprogramming a patient’s T cells – a special set of immune cells – then putting them back into the body ready to detect and destroy cancerous cells. Although effective for widespread blood cancers like leukemia, this method rarely succeeds at treating solid tumors.

Now, Stanford University engineers have developed a delivery method that enhances the “attack power” of the modified immune cells, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. Researchers add CAR-T cells and specialized signaling proteins to a hydrogel – a water-filled gel that has characteristics in common with biological tissues – and inject the substance next to a tumor. This gel provides a temporary environment inside the body where the immune cells multiply and activate in preparation to fight cancerous cells, according to a new study published April 8 in Science Advances. The gel acts like a leaky holding pen that pumps out activated CAR-T cells to continuously attack the tumor over time.

“A lot of the CAR-T cell field is focusing on how to make better cells themselves, but there is much less focus on how to make the cells more effective once in the body,” said Eric Appel, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and senior author of the paper. “So, what we’re doing is totally complementary to all of the efforts to engineer better cells.”

Human activity ‘helped fuel’ red tide events, new study reveals

The study is just the beginning of discovering the effects of human activity on red tide blooms.
Credit: File photo/UF

In a new study that is the first to explain what some have long suspected, researchers found that human activity helps sustain and intensify naturally occurring red tide blooms in Southwest Florida.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Florida, Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, the study found that while a combination of factors contributes to red tide blooms, human activity has played a consistent role in intensifying them during the past decade.

The researchers linked blooms in Charlotte Harbor and surrounding coastal areas to nitrogen inputs from the Caloosahatchee River, Lake Okeechobee and areas upstream of the lake. The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

“While red tide blooms develop naturally, we took a long view and found evidence that human activity has helped fuel coastal blooms in this estuary to varying extents between 2012 and 2021,” said Miles Medina, lead author of the study and a research scientist at UF’s Center for Coastal Solutions.

Determining what contributes to red tide intensification has been a priority for coastal states, as the harmful toxins these blooms create affect humans and sea and land creatures alike.

In the race to build quantum computing hardware, silicon begins to shine

Silicon-based device in development for use in quantum computers. Gate electrodes shown in blue, red, and green are used to define the quantum dot potentials while the micromagnet on top provides a magnetic field gradient. The image was taken using scanning electron microscopy and the colors were applied for clarity. 
Image credit: Adam Mills, Princeton University

Research conducted by Princeton University physicists is paving the way for the use of silicon-based technologies in quantum computing, especially as quantum bits – the basic units of quantum computers. This research promises to accelerate the use of silicon technology as a viable alternative to other quantum computing technologies, such as superconductors or trapped ions.

In research published in the journal Science Advances, Princeton physicists used a two-qubit silicon quantum device to achieve an unprecedented level of fidelity. At above 99 percent, this is the highest fidelity thus far achieved for a two-qubit gate in a semiconductor and is on par with the best results achieved by competing technologies. Fidelity, which is a measure of a qubit’s ability to perform error-free operations, is a key feature in the quest to develop practical and efficient quantum computing.

Researchers around the world are trying to figure out which technologies — such as superconducting qubits, trapped ions or silicon spin qubits, for example — can best be employed as the basic units of quantum computing. And, equally significant researchers are exploring which technologies will have the ability to scale up most efficiently for commercial use.

“Silicon spin qubits are gaining momentum [in the field],” said Adam Mills, a graduate student in the Department of Physics at Princeton University and the lead author of the recently published study. “It’s looking like a big year for silicon overall.”

A ‘cautionary tale’ about location tracking

New research out of the University of Rochester shows that data collected from your acquaintances and even strangers can predict your location.

Data about our habits and movements are constantly collected via mobile phone apps, fitness trackers, credit card logs, websites visited, and other means.

But if we turn off data tracking on our devices, aren’t we untraceable?

No, according to a new study.

“Switching off your location data is not going to entirely help,” says Gourab Ghoshal, an associate professor of physics, mathematics, and computer science and the Stephen Biggar ’92 and Elizabeth Asaro ’92 Fellow in Data Science at the University of Rochester.

Ghoshal, joined by colleagues at the University of Exeter, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Northeastern University, and the University of Vermont, applied techniques from information theory and network science to find out just how far-reaching a person’s data might be. The researchers discovered that even if individual users turned off data tracking and didn’t share their own information, their mobility patterns could still be predicted with surprising accuracy based on data collected from their acquaintances.

“Worse,” says Ghoshal, “almost as much latent information can be extracted from perfect strangers that the individual tends to co-locate with.”

The researchers published their findings in Nature Communications.