Environmentally hazardous coal waste diminished by citric acid

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Guangping Xu adds coal ash into a citric acid mixture. This solution will be fed into a reactor — operating at about 70 times atmospheric pressure — where supercritical carbon dioxide aids citric acid in extracting rare-earth metals.
(Photo by Rebecca Lynne Gustaf)

In one of nature’s unexpected bounties, a harmless food-grade solvent has been used to extract highly sought rare-earth metals from coal ash, reducing the amount of ash without damaging the environment and at the same time increasing an important national resource.

Coal ash is the unwanted but widely present residue of coal-fired power. Rare-earth metals are used for a variety of high-tech equipment from smartphones to submarines.

The separation method, which uses carbon dioxide, water and food-grade citric acid, is the subject of a Sandia National Laboratories patent application.

“This technique not only recovers rare-earth metals in an environmentally harmless manner but would actually improve environments by reducing the toxicity of coal waste dotting America,” said Guangping Xu, lead Sandia researcher on the project.

“Harmless extraction of rare-earth metals from coal ash not only provides a national source of materials essential for computer chips, smart phones and other high-tech products — including fighter jets and submarines — but also makes the coal ash cleaner and less toxic, enabling its direct reuse as concrete filler or agricultural topsoil,” he said.

The method, if widely adopted, could make coal ash, currently an environmental pariah, into a commercially viable product, Xu said.

COVID-19 risks explained with new tool

A calculator to help people understand their risk factors for COVID-19 infection and vaccination has been launched by the Immunization Coalition in collaboration with Australian researchers.

The tool’s three co-lead researchers are University of Queensland virologist Dr Kirsty Short, CoRiCal instigator from Flinders University Associate Professor John Litt and GP Dr Andrew Baird.

Dr Kirsty Short said the Immunization Coalition COVID-19 Risk Calculator (CoRiCal) was an online tool to support GPs and community members in their discussions about the benefits and risks of COVID-19 vaccines.

"This tool is really designed to help people make an informed decision around vaccination based on their current circumstances and also see their risk for getting COVID-19 under different transmission scenarios," Dr Short said.

"Users can access the tool and input their age, sex, community transmission and vaccination status to find out their personalized risk calculation.

"For example, you can find out your chance of being infected with COVID-19 versus your chance of dying from the disease.

"You can also find out your chance of developing an atypical blood clot from the AstraZeneca vaccine and see this data in the context of other relatable risks – like getting struck by lightning or winning OzLotto."

AstraZeneca’s vaccine dosing ‘mistake’ led to new dosage finding in mice

 

A dosing error made during an AstraZeneca-University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trial has led to a new dosage finding in mice, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

During the AstraZeneca-Oxford trial, some human participants erroneously received a half dose of their first shot, followed by a full dose for their second shot. Paradoxically, the trial showed that volunteers who got a lower dose of the first shot were better protected against COVID-19 than those who received two full doses.

However, it was not clear if the improvement of the low-dose vaccine was due to the dose itself or the fact that people who received the lower dose had also had a longer time between the first and the second shot, known as an extended prime-boost interval.

Scientists from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine tested the effect of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine prime dose in mice and found that a lower-dose first shot, followed by a full-dose booster shot, significantly improved the potency of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The booster shot produced more antibodies and T-cells in the mice, allowing them to develop much more robust immune responses against SARS-CoV-2, the study found.

The findings were recently published in the journal Science Immunology.

Researchers find a way to stabilize a promising material for solar panels

This image shows the difference between an ordinary perovskite solar cell, top, and a perovskits solar cell with a water-repellent molecular-thin layer, below.

One of the solar energy market’s most promising solar cell materials—perovskite—is also the most frustrating. A research team in Sweden reports a possible solution to the environmental instability of perovskite—an alternative to silicon that’s cheap and highly efficient, yet degrades dramatically when exposed to moisture.

The team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology developed a new synthetic alloy that increases perovskite cells’ durability while preserving energy conversion performance. The researchers published their findings in Nature’s Communications Materials.

“Perovskite usually dissolves immediately on contact with water,” says co-author James Gardner, associate professor at KTH. “We have proven that our alloyed perovskite can survive for several minutes completely immersed in water, which is over a 100 times more stable than the perovskite alone. What’s more, the solar cells that we have built from the material retain their efficiency for more than 100 days after they are manufactured.”

1 day. 3 rockets. 23 experiments

Sandia National Laboratories conducted three sounding rocket launches for the Department of Defense on Oct. 20. The launches supported research for hypersonic weapons programs.
(Photos by Mike Bejarano and Rana Weaver)

One year to design, build and test three rockets. Six weeks to unpack, assemble and test them at the flight range. One day to launch them.

Sandia National Laboratories launched three sounding rockets in succession for the Department of Defense on Wednesday. The triple launch was conducted at NASA’s launch range at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to hasten development of 23 technologies for the nation’s hypersonic modernization priority, including the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike and the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon programs.

This was the first mission for the High Operational Tempo for Hypersonics rocket program, funded by the Department of Defense. Experiments were supplied by Sandia, entities within the Defense Department and partner institutions. Other collaborators included Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University and several defense contractors.

Machine learning predicts antibiotic resistance spread

Genes aren’t only inherited through birth. Bacteria have the ability to pass genes to each other, or pick them up from their environment, through a process called horizonal gene transfer, which is a major culprit in the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Cornell researchers used machine learning to sort organisms by their functions and use this information to predict with near-perfect accuracy how genes are transferred between them, an approach that could potentially be used to stop the spread of antibiotic resistance.

The team’s paper, “Functions Predict Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Emergence of Antibiotic Resistance,” published Oct. 22 in Science Advances. The lead author is doctoral student Hao Zhou.

“Organisms basically can acquire resistance genes from other organisms. And so it would help if we knew which organisms bacteria were exchanging with, and not only that, but we could figure out what are the driving factors that implicate organisms in this transfer,” said Ilana Brito, assistant professor and the Mong Family Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering, and the paper’s senior author. “If we can figure out who is exchanging genes with who, then maybe it would give insight into how this actually happens and possibly even control these processes.”

Many novel traits are shared through gene transfer. But scientists haven’t been able to determine why some bacteria engage in gene transfer while others do not.

A new vision for farming would help the world tackle climate change and restore biodiversity

A coalition of agroecological and regenerative farming organizations are calling on leaders to be bold on sustainable agriculture in tackling the climate and nature emergency at COP26 in Glasgow.

The coalition is pleased to see the Government publish its Net Zero Strategy this week. There are certainly many elements that are welcome, particularly around agroforestry and tree planting, as well as a focus on the need to curtail excess nitrogen from slurry and synthetic fertilizers.

However, the Strategy failed to recognize the power of agroecology to help reduce emissions and the value of species-rich grasslands as a nature-based solution. Whilst a step in the right direction, the strategy lacks ambition and vague statements on emerging technology take priority over concrete commitments.

The Government’s Net Zero Strategy echoed the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations for land use outlined in their 6th Carbon Budget. Both documents demonstrate siloed thinking that could be detrimental to nature’s recovery and the transition to sustainable farming. Both demonstrate siloed thinking that could be detrimental to nature’s recovery and the transition to sustainable farming.

The coalitions briefing outlines how farming and land use can deliver for climate, nature and public health, while still providing food security through the wider adoption of agroecology and regenerative farming.

Pioneering new process creates versatile moldable wood

Structures and vehicles built with sustainable materials are in high demand to meet today’s needs and for future generations.

Natural wood already boasts an inherently lower life cycle cost than other materials and is a naturally strong, lightweight, and durable composite material that could offer an attractive alternative to commonly used polymers, metals and alloys, if its properties and functionality could be improved.

Previous approaches, such as delignification and densification, have been tried and so far failed to provide the same formability offered by metals and plastics.

That’s why the development of an innovative new technique, using a rapid ‘water-shock’ process, able to create strong and moldable wood is so exciting and made the cover story of Science.

After extracting the lignin – a polymer which binds the cell walls inside wood that give it strength – which softens it, and then closing the fibers via evaporation, the research team, involving the University of Bristol, re-swelled the wood by "shocking" it with water.

"The rapid water-shock process forms a distinct partially open, wrinkled cell wall structure that provides space for compression as well as the ability to support high strain, allowing the material to be easily folded and molded," said lead author Professor Liangbig Hu, Director of the Center of Materials Innovation, University of Maryland.

Infant planet discovered

Discovery image of planet, which lies about 100 times the Earth-Sun distance from its parent star.

One of the youngest planets ever found around a distant infant star has been discovered by an international team of scientists led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty, students, and alumni.

Thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars, but what sets this one apart is that it is newly-formed and can be directly observed. The planet, named 2M0437b, joins a handful of objects advancing our understanding of how planets form and change with time, helping shed new light on the origin of the Solar System and Earth. The in-depth research was recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“This serendipitous discovery adds to an elite list of planets that we can directly observe with our telescopes,” explained lead author Eric Gaidos, a professor in the UH Mānoa Department of Earth Sciences. “By analyzing the light from this planet we can say something about its composition, and perhaps where and how it formed in a long-vanished disk of gas and dust around its host star.”

A third of leukemia patients do not generate any antibody response to two doses of COVID-19 vaccination

A University of Birmingham-led study has shown that a third of patients with the most common type of leukemia fail to generate any measurable antibody response following two doses of COVID-19 vaccination.

Furthermore, the research showed that in the two thirds of patients who do develop antibodies, levels are much lower than compared to healthy people and also have a profoundly reduced ability to ‘neutralize’ the globally dominant Delta variant.

The largest study of its kind, the research identified a number of important new findings which researchers say will be crucial to shaping future management and public health policy for patients with this type of blood cancer, who are immunosuppressed and at an increased clinical risk from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Key new findings are:

• Only 67% of the leukemia patients generated any measurable antibody response to double COVID-19 vaccination, compared to 100% of the age-matched healthy population.
• In those patients with leukemia who did have an antibody response, antibody levels were 3.7 times lower than that seen in the healthy control group.
• Antibody levels declined by 33% at four months after leukemia patients’ second vaccine.
• No difference in antibody responses were observed between those participants receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and those receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
• Antibody responses showed weak ability to neutralize the spike protein from the now globally dominant SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant compared to healthy controls.

500 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia - the most common leukemia in adults - were recruited to the study. 41% had received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, whilst 59% had received two doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The average age of participants was 67 and 53% of the cohort was male. Their antibody response to double COVID-19 vaccination was compared to that of 94 age-matched healthy ‘controls’. Blood samples were obtained from all study participants between two to three weeks following their second vaccination, and again up to 30 weeks later.