Stanford scientists combine AI and atomic-scale images in pursuit of better batteries

From left, Will Chueh, associate professor; Tanya Jomaa, high school summer intern; and Haitao “Dean” Deng, PhD ’21. Jomaa, now an undergraduate at Yale University, worked with Deng researching lithium titanate batteries.
Image credit: Norman Jin

Using artificial intelligence to analyze vast amounts of data in atomic-scale images, Stanford researchers answered long-standing questions about an emerging type of rechargeable battery posing competition to lithium-ion chemistry.

Today’s rechargeable batteries are a wonder, but far from perfect. Eventually, they all wear out, begetting expensive replacements and recycling.

“But what if batteries were indestructible?” asks William Chueh, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and senior author of a new paper detailing a first-of-its-kind analytical approach to building better batteries that could help speed that day. The study appears in the journal Nature Materials.

Butterfly eyespots reuse gene regulatory network that patterns antennae, legs and wings

A silky owl (Taenaris catopsv) butterfly with distinctive eyespots on its wings.
Photo credit: Kristof Zyskowski and Yulia Bereshpolova

Findings highlight those novel complex traits, such as eyespots, evolve from gene networks that already pattern pre-existent complex traits in the body

Eyespots, the circular markings of contrasting colors found on the wings of many butterfly species, are used by these fluttering creatures to intimidate or distract predators. A team of scientists led by Professor Antónia Monteiro from the National University of Singapore (NUS) conducted a research study to better understand the evolutionary origins of these eyespots, and they discovered that eyespots appear to have derived from the recruitment of a complex network of genes that was already operating in the body of the butterflies to build antennae, legs, and even wings.

“This new study addresses how novel complex traits might originate. These complex traits require the input of many interacting genes for their development, and are often illustrated by the vertebrate eye, or the bacteria flagellum. In our study, we looked at how butterfly eyespots – an example of a complex trait - came about and concluded that a network recruitment approach is adopted by butterflies for the creation of eyespots. We have also identified the specific network of genes that was likely recruited,” said Prof Monteiro, who is from the NUS Department of Biological Sciences.

The findings were first published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Can a planet have a mind of its own?

In a self-described "thought experiment," University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank and colleagues David Grinspoon at the Planetary Science Institute and Sara Walker at Arizona State University use scientific theory and broader questions about how life alters a planet, to posit four stages to describe Earth's past and possible future.
University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw

Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank discusses why cognitive activity operating on a planetary scale is necessary to tackle global issues such as climate change.

The collective activity of life—all of the microbes, plants, and animals—have changed planet Earth.

Take, for example, plants: plants ‘invented’ a way of undergoing photosynthesis to enhance their own survival, but in so doing, released oxygen that changed the entire function of our planet. This is just one example of individual lifeforms performing their own tasks, but collectively having an impact on a planetary scale.

If the collective activity of life—known as the biosphere—can change the world, could the collective activity of cognition, and action based on this cognition, also change a planet? Once the biosphere evolved, Earth took on a life of its own. If a planet with life has a life of its own, can it also have a mind of its own?

Sunlight can help dissolve oil into seawater

A slick of sunlight-altered oil floating on the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. A team of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers found that nearly 10 percent of the oil floating on the Gulf after the spill dissolved into the water by sunlight – a process called photo-dissolution.
Photo by Cabell Davis III © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the largest marine oil spill in United States history. The disaster was caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, taking 11 lives and releasing nearly 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Twelve years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, scientists are still working to understand where all this oil ended up, a concept known as environmental fate.

The most commonly discussed fates of oil spilled at sea are biodegradation (microorganisms consuming and breaking down the oil), evaporation (liquid oil becoming a gas), and oil stranding on shorelines.

A team of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers discovered that nearly 10 percent of the oil floating on the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon disaster was dissolved into seawater by sunlight - a process called “photo-dissolution”. The findings were published today in the paper “Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea” in Science Advances.

Engineer develops tool to predict oxygen in water, finds streams along southeastern U.S. in poorer quality

The muddy water in the Monongahela River in Morgantown. WVU engineer Omar Abdul-Aziz has developed a model that can be utilized on any body of water to predict levels of dissolved oxygen, which contributes to water quality.
Photo Provided/Omar Abdul-Aziz

Plants and animals on land aren’t the only organisms that need oxygen to survive. Underwater aquatic life requires dissolved oxygen to live and prosper.

But a variety of factors, such as pollution, water temperature and bacteria, can deplete the amount of dissolved oxygen within a water ecosystem, setting off a chain reaction that kills off aquatic life and potentially spreads disease to humans.

In a new study, one West Virginia University engineer developed a simpler, more effective model that predicts dissolved oxygen in streams across the U.S. Atlantic Coast. Omar Abdul-Aziz, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, said the model can be applied to water bodies anywhere in the world.

Abdul-Aziz’s research also found that streams in the southern U.S. (Florida and Georgia, for instance) have a higher metabolism, meaning that they contain less dissolved oxygen due to warmer temperatures and the heavy presence of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Study finds older Americans are largely unaware of new Alzheimer‘s drug

There’s a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease, but those who might benefit from it know almost nothing about it, a new study shows.

In spring 2021, for the first time in decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Enthusiasm for the drug, aducanumab, was swiftly eclipsed by concerns about efficacy, prohibitive cost and serious side effects.

Now, USC researchers have found older Americans most at risk for Alzheimer’s know little about aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm™), despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of survey respondents said they were worried about Alzheimer’s disease. The study appears this week in JAMA Network Open.

“The contrast between older Americans who were very concerned about developing Alzheimer’s disease and those that actually knew anything about the drug was surprising,” said Julie Zissimopoulos, the lead study author, associate professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy and a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics.

Study looks at older Americans’ knowledge about new Alzheimer’s drug

Shortly after the FDA’s decision, the study authors sought to understand older Americans’ knowledge of and opinions about aducanumab and its potential outcomes.

The researchers analyzed more than 1,000 responses to an online survey of people 55 and older who are part of the USC Center for Economic and Social Research large online survey panel, Understanding America Study. The responses, collected just a few weeks after the June 2021 approval, revealed that although more than 8 in 10 respondents were concerned about Alzheimer’s disease, only about 1 in 4 had some knowledge of the drug.

Where Wild Honeybees Survive

Bee colonies also use hollow electricity poles as nest sites (here a photo from Belgium).
Credit: Dimi Dumortier

In northern Spain, wild honeybees use hollow electricity poles as nesting cavities. Natural areas in the surroundings promote the colonies’ chances to survive the winter.

Until recently, experts considered it unlikely that the honeybee had survived as a wild animal in Europe. In a current study, biologists Benjamin Rutschmann and Patrick Kohl from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, show that wild honeybees still exist in the region of Galicia in the northwest of Spain.

The researchers describe where to find the bees’ nests and under which conditions they can survive in Biological Conservation, a journal for conservation biology.

136 square kilometers searched for power poles

Rutschmann and Kohl are doctoral students at the JMU Chair of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology in the group of Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter.

New method provides more detailed information about leukemia

Genetic analysis is standard for investigating the cause of leukemia and for deriving the optimal treatment strategy for diseases also known as blood cancer. A research team from Bochum and Essen has examined a new methodology that offers more accuracy. The so-called optical genome mapping produced more precise information on the genetic basis of the disease in two thirds of all cases examined. The team led by Prof. Dr. Huu Phuc Nguyen, chair of human genetics at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), and Prof. Dr. Roland Schroers, head of the hematology, oncology, stem cell / immunotherapy department at the Knappschaftskrankenhaus University Hospital, reports in the International Journal of Cancer.

Laser lights up molecules

For optical genome mapping, very long molecules of the human genome are obtained, for example, from routinely taken blood samples or bone marrow material from patients. These long DNA molecules are marked with luminous dye molecules at over half a million different positions of the entire human genome and passed through very thin nanocannels on a special chip. As the DNA molecules move through the nanocannels, they are made to glow with a laser and photographed using a microscope. The images of the entire genome are then analyzed bioinformatically. "The aim is to find and evaluate changes in regions that are important for the development of cancer," explains Dr. Wanda Gerding from Bochum's human genetics.

Even in Southern California, wildfire frequency is likely to increase by end of century

A wildfire in Lake Elsinore, California, in 2018. Under one possible scenario, the study projects, the number of days with a high risk of fire would nearly double to about 58 days per year by 2100.
Credit: slworking2/Flickr

California’s massive fire seasons in the past two years are part of a trend that scientists have traced back for more than four decades. The area consumed each year by fires has increased significantly over that period — particularly in the Sierra Nevada and northern parts of the state. Although Southern California has had its share of wildfires in that span, too, the region hasn’t experienced the same increase.

But that disparity between north and south is not likely to continue. The number of days per year with increased risk for more and larger wildfires in Southern California is projected to increase significantly through the end of the century, according to new UCLA-led research.

The study, which is published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, analyzes data dating to 1975. Researchers found no substantial increase in the amount of area burned per year over the past 45 years.

Sustainable bioeconomy: development of environmentally friendly bio-shampoos and plant protection agent technologies

With the early assessment of sustainable, newly developed chemicals and products it is possible to assess a potential risk of toxic substances being released at a later point in product cascades. This has been revealed in a proof-of-concept study jointly coordinated by Goethe University Frankfurt and RWTH Aachen University. In the course of the study the toxicity of sustainable biosurfactants, potentially applied in, e.g., bio-shampoos, and of a new technology for the economical deployment of plant protection agents were analyzed using a combination of computer modelling and laboratory experiments. The study is the first step towards a safe bioeconomy from an eco-toxicological stance, and which uses sustainable resources and processes to reduce environmental burdens significantly.

The natural resources of the planet are running short, yet at the same time they are the basis for our prosperity and development. A dilemma which the EU intends to overcome with the aid of its revised bioeconomy strategy. Rather than relying on fossil-based materials, the economy is to be based on renewable materials. These include plants, wood, microorganisms and algae. At some point in time everything is to be found in closed loops, yet the implementation of a circular bioeconomy requires a shift in the manufacture of chemicals. These also have to be produced from bio-materials rather than crude oil. Based on these requirements the American chemists Paul Anastas and John C. Warner formulated their twelve principles of green chemistry in 1998. One of their principles has very much been neglected to date, however: the reduction of the environmental toxicity of newly developed substances.