Green robotics start-up signs deal with energy giant

University of Bristol alumni and founders of Perceptual Robotics: Chief Operating Officer Dimitris Nikolaidis, Chief Technical Officer Kevin Driscoll-Lind and Chief Executive Officer Kostas Karachalios
Credit: University of Bristol

A start-up with University of Bristol roots has signed a deal with energy giant Enel to help keep its estimated 9,000 turbines spinning.

Perceptual Robotics use autonomous drones and artificial intelligence to detect damage in wind turbines early.

Now the company, founded by three Bristol alumni, has landed a deal to inspect turbines owned by Enel Green Power, a subsidiary of Enel, which is one of the biggest energy companies in the world.

Enel Green Power will use the data to carry out preventative maintenance - reducing costs and turbine stoppages while increasing safety.

Meanwhile, research published today shows that Perceptual Robotics’ technology is 14% better at detecting damage than expert humans carrying out the same inspections.

Perceptual Robotics says it can reduce the cost of wind turbine blade maintenance by 30%.

Kostas Karachalios, CEO of Perceptual Robotics, who studied for a Master of Engineering (MEng) at Bristol, said: “The task of inspecting and maintaining these structures is becoming ever more challenging, as the industry is increasingly recognized.

Using Bacteria to Accelerate CO2 Capture in Oceans

Berkeley Lab researcher Peter Agbo was awarded a grant for a carbon capture project under the Lab’s Carbon Negative Initiative.
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab

You may be familiar with direct air capture, or DAC, in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere in an effort to slow the effects of climate change. Now a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has proposed a scheme for direct ocean capture. Removing CO2 from the oceans will enable them to continue to do their job of absorbing excess CO2 from the atmosphere.

Experts mostly agree that combating climate change will take more than halting emissions of climate-warming gases. We must also remove the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that have already been emitted, to the tune of gigatons of CO2 removed each year by 2050 in order to achieve net zero emissions. The oceans contain significantly more CO2 than the atmosphere and have been acting as an important carbon sink for our planet.

Deaths from Alcohol Use Disorder Surged During Pandemic

Deaths related to alcohol use disorder dramatically increased over projections during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cedars-Sinai investigators found

Deaths involving alcohol use disorder increased dramatically during the pandemic, according to a new study by Cedars-Sinai investigators. The study also found that young adults 25 to 44 years old experienced the steepest upward trend in alcohol use disorder mortality.

In the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, investigators used predictive modeling to compare expected—also called projected—alcohol use disorder mortality rates to actual rates. They found that alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates increased among all ages and sexes during the pandemic.

“During the first few months of the pandemic, my colleagues and I saw increased numbers of patients being treated for acute

alcohol use-related conditions in the intensive care unit and throughout the medical center,” said Yee Hui Yeo, MD, MSc, lead author of the study. “We also became aware of reports from single centers of elevated alcohol use-related complications. That prompted us to think, maybe this is a significant public health crisis.”

Ancient grains

Laura Motta, University of Michigan paleoethnobotanist, shows peas excavated from the Karanis site in Egypt.
Image credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography

For a long time, researchers believed the diets of ancient people were nutritionally poor.

Everyday ancient Mediterranean civilizations relied on a diet of grains and pulses (chickpeas, lentils and other members of the bean family). Researchers thought this food lacked micronutrients such as zinc and iron, while also containing components that inhibit the uptake of what nutrients the food did have.

But a University of Michigan pilot study on crops grown in Egypt during Roman times suggests that ancient grains were more nutrient dense than grains grown in the same region today. Now, building on that study, U-M is part of a five-university consortium to receive a €3.7 million grant (about $3.85 million), called the AGROS project, awarded by the Belgian program Excellence of Science.

The researchers will use cutting-edge technologies to examine the nutritional profile of the food and how its nutrients changed based on the historical methods of food preparation.

Transgender mental health in crisis

Trans and LGBTIQA+ organizations across Australia are facing huge demand from the trans community for inclusive and affirming mental health services.
Image: The Gender Spectrum Collection

Australia’s transgender (trans) community is experiencing depression and thoughts of self-harm at levels never before seen, but many are not getting the help they need because they’re afraid to access mainstream services, a new study has shown.

Authored by the University of Melbourne’s Trans Health Research Group, the Trans in the Pandemic: Stories of Struggle and Resilience in the Australia Trans Community report has found 61 per cent of the 1019 people surveyed in 2020 experienced clinical depression – that’s twice the national rate and much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team also found 49 per cent of trans people experienced thoughts of self-harm or suicide compared to 14.9 per cent for the general Australian population who reported thoughts of self-harm or suicide in the initial months of the pandemic.

The survey was carried out in May and June 2020, when there was concern the trans community may be disproportionately affected by social distancing restrictions, and healthcare and employment disruptions.

Report lead author Sav Zwickl said it was already well-established prior to the pandemic that the trans community faced numerous health disparities and was one of the most medically and socially marginalized groups in society.

Experimental COVID-19 vaccine provides mutation-resistant T cell protection in mice

Marulasiddappa Suresh
Credit: UWM

A second line of defense — the immune system’s T cells — may offer protection from COVID-19 even when vaccine-induced antibodies no longer can, according to new research out of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine.

The researchers discovered that a new, protein-based vaccine against the original version of the COVID-19 virus was able to teach mouse T cells how to recognize and kill cells infected with new, mutated versions of the virus. This T cell protection worked even when antibodies lost their ability to recognize and neutralize mutated SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“Antibodies prevent COVID-19 infection, but if new variants escape these antibodies, T cells are there to provide a second line of protection,” explains lead scientist Marulasiddappa Suresh, a professor of immunology and associate dean for research at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigates the role of T cells, a specialized type of white blood cell, in defending against COVID-19 when antibodies fail.

When you receive a COVID-19 vaccine, your body learns to produce antibodies, proteins in the immune system that bind to and neutralize SARS-CoV-2. These antibodies circulate in the blood stream and protect you from illness by patrolling the nostrils, airways and lungs and wiping out the virus before it can cause infection or disease.

The genetic origins of the world's first farmers clarified

Ancient DNA extraction in Mainz’s lab. Work done in sterile conditions to avoid contamination from modern DNA.
Credit: Joachim Burger / JGU

The genetic origins of the first agriculturalists in the Neolithic period long seemed to lie in the Near East. A new study published in the journal Cell shows that the first farmers actually represented a mixture of Ice Age hunter-gatherer groups, spread from the Near East all the way to south-eastern Europe. Researchers from the University of Bern and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics as well as from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the University of Fribourg were involved in the study. The method they developed could help reveal other human evolution patterns with unmatched resolution. 

The first signs of agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle are found in the so-called 'Fertile Crescent', a region in the Near East where people began to settle down and domesticate animals and plants about 11,000 years ago. The question of the origin of agriculture and sedentism has occupied researchers for over 100 years: did farming spread from the Near East through cultural diffusion or through migration? Genetic analyses of prehistoric skeletons so far supported the idea that Europe's first farmers were descended from hunter-gatherer populations in Anatolia. While that may well be the case, this new study shows that the Neolithic genetic origins cannot clearly be attributed to a single region. Unexpected and complex population dynamics occurred at the end of the Ice Age, and led to the ancestral genetic makeup of the populations who invented agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle i.e. the first Neolithic farmers. 

The first farmers emerged from a mixing process starting 14,000 years ago 

Previous analyses had suggested that the first Neolithic people were genetically different from other human groups from that time. Little was known about their origins. Nina Marchi, one of the study's first authors from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern and SIB says: "We now find that the first farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a population admixed between hunter-gatherers from Europe and the Near East." According to the authors, the mixing process started around 14,000 years ago, which was followed by a period of extreme genetic differentiation lasting several thousand years. 

A novel approach to model population history from prehistoric skeletons 

The Klein7 individual from the Kleinhadersdorf site in the Lower Austrian Weinviertel, whose genome was analyzed in the paper.
Credit: BDA / Christine Neugebauer-Maresch

This research was made possible by combining two techniques: the production of high-quality ancient genomes from prehistoric skeletons, coupled with demographic modeling on the resulting data. The research team coined the term "demo genomic modeling" for this purpose. "It is necessary to have genome data of the best possible quality so that the latest statistical genomic methods can reconstruct the subtle demographic processes of the last 30 thousand years at high resolution", says Laurent Excoffier, one of the senior authors of the study. Laurent Excoffier is a professor at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern and group leader at SIB. He initiated the project together with Joachim Burger of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and Daniel Wegmann of the University of Fribourg. Nina Marchi adds: "Simply comparing the similarity of different ancient genomes is not enough to understand how they evolved. We had to reconstruct the actual histories of the populations studied as accurately as possible. This is only possible with complex population genetic statistics." 

Interdisciplinary key to solve such ancient puzzles 

Joachim Burger of the University of Mainz and second senior author emphasizes the necessity of interdisciplinarity: "It took close to ten years to gather and analyze the skeletons suitable for such a study. This was only possible by collaborating with numerous archaeologists and anthropologists, who helped us to anchor our models historically". The historical contextualization was coordinated by Maxime Brami, who works with Burger at Johannes Gutenberg University. The young prehistorian was surprised by some of the study's findings: "Europe's first farmers seem to be descended from hunter-gatherer populations that lived all the way from the Near East to the Balkans. This was not foreseeable archaeologically". 

Towards a general model of human population evolution 

Genetic data from fossils (skeletons) are badly damaged and must be processed accordingly using bioinformatics, as Daniel Wegmann from the University of Fribourg and group leader at SIB explains: "The high-resolution reconstruction of the prehistory of the Europeans was only possible thanks to methods that we specifically developed to analyze
ancient fossil genomes." Joachim Burger adds: "With these approaches, we have not only elucidated the origins of the world's first Neolithic populations, but we have established a general model of the evolution of human populations in Southwest Asia and Europe." 

"Of course, spatial and temporal gaps remain, and this does not imply the end of studies on the evolution of humans in this area", concludes Laurent Excoffier. Thus, the team's research plan is already set; they want to supplement their demographic model with genomes from the later phases of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages to provide an increasingly detailed picture of human evolution. 

Source/Credit: University of Bern

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International project aims to understand and protect endangered sea turtles

A hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata)
Credit: Kate Charles, Ocean Spirits Inc

A partnership of organizations and universities in the UK and Grenada has launched a new project looking into the challenges and threats facing two endangered marine species.

Marine conservationists in the two countries will be working to understand more about hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) and green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas).

This will include using a variety of field techniques to fully appreciate their behaviors and habitats, and ultimately, the partners hope to develop a series of measures that can be used to support the sustainable conservation of the species now and in the future.

The research is being funded by the Oscar Montgomery Environmental Foundation (OMEF), a charity launched in 2020 as a legacy to a young man who was passionate about the marine environment.

He died, aged just 17, and the charity set up in his memory aims to support, advocate and raise awareness of environmental issues, largely marine, and support projects and research which work to conserve and enhance the global environment.

Powering the moon

An artistic rendering of a resilient microgrid for a lunar base camp
might look like. Sandia National Laboratories engineers are working with
NASA to design the system controller for the microgrid.
Illustration by Eric Lundin

Sandia National Laboratories is well-known for designing reliable and resilient microgrids for military bases and vital city services. Now, Sandia researchers are working with NASA to design one for the moon.

This is not the first time Sandia has partnered with NASA to power equipment on the moon. In fact, Sandia provided the technical direction for the radioisotope thermoelectric generators that powered the lunar experiments placed by many of the Apollo missions.

NASA’s plan for its concept Artemis lunar base is that it will serve as a technology proving ground for the eventual human exploration of Mars, said Jack Flicker, a Sandia electrical engineer. The base camp concept consists of a habitation unit — complete with room for up to four astronauts — as well as the potential for separate mining and fuel processing, called in-situ resource utilization, facilities. Early Artemis missions will include short stays at the base camp with the goal to build up to stays of two months at a time.

The mining and processing facilities could produce rocket fuel, water, oxygen and other materials needed for extended exploration of the lunar surface while decreasing supply needs from Earth. This facility will be located far away from the base camp — so other science and technology activities conducted there won’t be disrupted — but the electrical grid for the two units will be connected during emergencies for resiliency and robustness, Flicker added.

Precision oncology helps prostate cancer patients

Brain metastasis of prostate cancer with selected intratumoral areas (pink and white circles) for undergoing molecular analyses.
Credit: Antonio Rodriguez, Dept. of Pathology and DBMR

Researchers at the University of Bern and University Hospital Bern have achieved a breakthrough in a particularly aggressive form of prostate cancer. In tissue samples from advanced brain metastases, they were able to establish the genetic profile of the cancer cells. These findings show for the first time that affected patients could benefit from target treatment, from which they have so far not been eligible.

Around 6,600 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Switzerland every year. It is the second most common cause of cancer-related death in men after lung cancer. Dangerous are advanced stages in which cancer cells have spread to other organs and form so-called metastases. However, unlike other cancers such as breast or lung cancer, the extremely dangerous metastases in the brain are very rare in prostate cancer. Only 1.5 percent of advanced cases have been diagnosed as brain metastatic prostate cancer (PCBM), according to a 2020 review study. As a result, PCBM cases have been poorly studied.