Earth

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 23, 2020) - A majority of Americans (63%) continue to say they see the effects of climate change in their own communities, and 65% believe that the federal government is doing too little to reduce the impacts of climate change, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

At a time when partisanship colors most views of policy, broad majorities of the public - including more than half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats - say they would favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change, including large-scale tree planting efforts (90%), tax credits for businesses that capture carbon emissions (84%) and tougher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles (71%.)

The new national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted April 29 to May 5, 2020 among 10,957 U.S. adults using the Center's online American Trends Panel, finds that partisans remain far apart on several overarching questions about climate change. Much larger shares of Democrats than Republicans say human activity is contributing a great deal to climate change (72% vs. 22%), that it is impacting their own local community (83% to 37%) and that the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change (89% to 35%).

However, there is bipartisan support for several policy options to reduce the effects of climate change. Large shares of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (92%) and Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (88%) favor planting about a trillion trees around the world to absorb carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans also support providing a business tax credit for carbon capture technology that can store carbon emissions before they enter the atmosphere (90% and 78%, respectively). Partisan divides are wider on policies related to tougher restrictions on power plant emissions, taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles and trucks. Still, about half or more Republicans say they would favor each of these policies, including 64% who back tougher emission standards for power plants.

While partisanship remains the predominant dividing line in many views of climate and the environment, there are meaningful differences within party coalitions. In particular, Republicans and Republican leaners who describe their political views as moderate or liberal (roughly a third of all Republicans and leaners) are much more likely than conservative Republicans to see local impacts of climate change, support policies to address it and say the federal government is doing too little in areas of environmental protection. Further, younger generations and women in the GOP tend to be more critical of government action on the environment than their older and male counterparts. Republican women also are more supportive of polices aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change than GOP men.

Other key findings include:

Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans prioritize alternative over fossil fuel energy sources. A broad majority of Americans (79%) say the more important priority for the country is to develop alternative sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas, including 91% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans.

There is broad support for developing more solar and wind energy. Large shares say they would favor developing more solar panel farms (90%) and more wind turbine farms (83%). There is far less support for expanding fossil fuel energy sources. Majorities oppose expanding coal mining (65%), hydraulic fracturing (60%) and offshore oil and gas drilling (58%).

Those living near the coast are most likely to say climate change is affecting their local community. Seven-in-ten Americans who live less than 25 miles from the coastline say climate change is affecting their local community a great deal or some. By comparison, 57% of those who live 300 miles or more from the coastline say climate change is affecting their local community at least some.

With or without physical separation due to COVID-19, youth are using social media to connect and support each other, according to a report released today. Three leading researchers have just published Youth Connections for Wellbeing, an integrative review paper that illuminates how teens support each other through digital media during times of stress and isolation.

Leveraging their expertise across the fields of cultural anthropology, developmental psychology, and clinical psychology, scholars Mimi Ito, Candice Odgers, and Stephen Schueller discuss the potential of digital media to support youth wellbeing.

The work underlying the paper was completed prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The physical isolation that has resulted from shelter-in-place orders has yielded a seismic shift, making it even more critical to understand and leverage technology in a way that benefits youth.

The position paper summarizes current knowledge and redirects the conversation about adolescent social media use and wellbeing in three ways that are particularly relevant today:

Refocusing the debate over the relationship between youth social media use and wellbeing to reflect existing evidence, varied youth perspectives and backgrounds.

Identifying teen vulnerabilities and assets that may influence problematic and healthy social media engagement.

Suggesting opportunities where youth social engagement might mitigate vulnerabilities and leverage assets.

In the position paper Ito, Odgers, and Schueller highlight the need to move beyond the simple question of whether more time spent using social media causes mental health problems in adolescents. Instead, people should consider the specific forms of social media engagement that amplify or mitigate mental health risks for different adolescents. The team integrates findings from existing large-scale reviews, the voices of youth who have grown up on social media, and a systematic review of digital mental health apps available for youth.

The team finds that adolescents' online risks often mirror offline vulnerabilities. They note that it is particularly important for messages, interventions, and strategies to be targeted and tailored to the most vulnerable youth and those underserved by traditional mental health services.

A number of relevant findings, opportunities, and benefits are outlined in the paper, including:

Evaluating claims about whether social media use is leading to greater vulnerability for mental health problems for youth, including harassment and bullying, sleep disruption, and exposure to idealized images that may lead to envy.

Identifying factors such as poverty, discrimination, instability, social marginalization, and other forms of stress as more significant influences on mental health than technology.

Revealing that Black and trans youth have reported that online sources of empowerment are sources of support and strategies for coping with and discussing racism and prejudice.

Offering evidence that extending parental support to online spaces can be more effective in supporting youth wellbeing than restricting technology access, which can create more tension between youth and parents.

Recognizing that youth experience positive social support in many online settings, which may reduce their feelings of social isolation and social anxiety, increase their social skills, and augments their offline friendships.

Sharing details on how online communication and affinity networks including fandoms, gaming communities, and creative communities can help marginalized young people benefit from unique friendships and forms of social support.

Highlighting evidence that young people are actively seeking support for mental health information online and using online tools to elicit socio-emotional support. Most teens and tweens say social media helps support social-emotional wellbeing, boosting confidence, and alleviating anxiety, loneliness, and depression.

Describing ways to provide online mental health support to youth, especially those who are difficult to reach through more traditional clinical supports.

For example, one student interviewed shared how they experienced a supportive community online, saying: "I think a lot of my mutuals on Instagram, they're very open to being emotionally vulnerable on Instagram, so they'll actually say, 'I'm not doing fine.' I like it because it's a very nice community, just spreading love whether it be through comments or someone will actually say through messages like, 'Are you okay?'"

A freshman adjusting to life away from family shared how online connections made her feel close to them: "My mother just started using Messenger. I taught her how to use it. And so she texts me here and there. She's like, 'Good morning,' or, 'How are you doing?,' and then we FaceTime. Then my siblings, we use Instagram because that's where we're mostly at. We send each other videos and memes, and then we kind of comment just to make our day."

Given the rising rates of mental health concerns among young people in the U.S., Ito, Odgers, and Schueller encourage a sense of urgency in focusing research, investment, and public attention on how digital spaces and tools can be better designed and used to support youth's mental health.

What The Studies Did: These studies looked at changes in the rate of traffic fatalities in states that have legalized the use of recreational cannabis.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

Authors: Julian Santaella-Tenorio, Dr.P.H., of the New York University School of Medicine, is the corresponding author of the original investigation.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1757)

Authors: Russell S. Kamer, M.D., of New York Medical College in White Plains, New York, is the corresponding author of the research letter.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1769)

Editor's Note: Please see the articles for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Media advisory: The full studies and commentary are linked to this news release.

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A new study has highlighted the crucial role that sea ice across the Southern Ocean played in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during times of past climate change, and could provide a critical resource for developing future climate change models.

For the study an international team of researchers, led by Keele University and including experts from the University of Exeter, demonstrated that seasonal growth and destruction of sea ice in a warming world enhances the amount of marine life present in the sea around Antarctica, which draws down carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in the deep ocean.

Having captured half of all human-related carbon that has entered the ocean to date, the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is crucial for regulating carbon dioxide levels resulting from human activity, so understanding the processes that determine its effectiveness as a carbon sink through time are crucial to reducing uncertainty in future climate change models.

To understand this process further, the researchers studied data relating to one period where atmospheric CO2 levels changed rapidly.

This occurred after the Last Ice Age, around 18,000 years ago, when the world transitioned naturally into the warm interglacial world we live in today.

During this period, CO2 rose rapidly from around 190 parts per million (ppm) to 280 ppm over around 7,000 years, but one period in particular stands out; a 1,900 year period where CO2 levels plateaued at a nearly constant level of 240 ppm.

The cause of this plateau, which occurred around 14,600 years ago, is unknown, but understanding what happened during this period could be crucial for improving climate change projections.

Professor John Love, from Exeter's Biosciences department and co-author of the study said: "My research group and I are very excited about being part of this important investigation. We developed new techniques in cell biology to find, collect and analyse the rare and very tiny particles and cells that had been frozen in the ice for millennia.

"Like flies in amber, these minute fragments give us a unique window into past events, enabling our colleagues in the Earth, Atmosphere and Ocean sciences to develop a better understanding of climate change then, and now."

Lead author Professor Chris Fogwill, Director of Keele University's Institute for Sustainable Futures said: "The cause of this long plateau in global atmospheric CO2 levels may be fundamental to understanding the potential of the Southern Ocean to moderate atmospheric CO2."

To resolve this question, researchers travelled to the Patriot Hills Blue Ice Area of Antarctica to develop new records of evidence of marine life that are captured in ice cores, with support from Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions (ALE).

Blue ice areas are the perfect laboratory for Antarctic scientists due to their unique topography. Created by fierce, high-density katabatic winds, the top layer of snow is effectively eroded, exposing the ice below. As a result, ice flows up to the surface, providing access to ancient ice below.

Professor Chris Turney, a visiting Fellow at Keele's Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences from UNSW Sydney said: "Instead of drilling kilometres into the ice, we can simply walk across a blue ice area and travel back through time.

"This provides the opportunity to sample large amounts of ice for studying past environmental changes in detail. Organic biomarkers and DNA from the Southern Ocean are blown onto Antarctica and preserved in the ice, providing a unique record in a region where we have few scientific observations."

Using this approach the team discovered that there was a marked increase in the number and diversity of marine organisms present across the 1,900 year period when the CO2 plateaued, an observation which had never been recorded before.

This provides the first recorded evidence of increased biological productivity and suggests that processes in the high latitude Southern Ocean may have caused the CO2 plateau. However, the driver of this marked change remained unknown, and the researchers used climate modelling to better understand the changes in the Southern Ocean to understand the potential cause.

This modelling revealed that the plateau period coincided with the greatest seasonal changes in sea ice during a pronounced cold phase across the Southern Ocean known as the Antarctic Cold Reversal. During this period, sea ice grew extensively across the Southern Ocean, but as the world was warming rapidly, each year the sea ice would be rapidly destroyed during the summer.

The researchers will now use these findings to underpin the development of future climate change models. The inclusion of sea ice processes that control climate-carbon feedbacks in a new generation of models will be crucial for reducing uncertainties surrounding climate projections and will help society adapt to future warming.

The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system.

This "hot start" scenario, presented in a paper published June 22 in Nature Geoscience, contrasts with the traditional view of Pluto's origins as a ball of frozen ice and rock in which radioactive decay could have eventually generated enough heat to melt the ice and form a subsurface ocean.

"For a long time people have thought about the thermal evolution of Pluto and the ability of an ocean to survive to the present day," said coauthor Francis Nimmo, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. "Now that we have images of Pluto's surface from NASA's New Horizons mission, we can compare what we see with the predictions of different thermal evolution models."

Because water expands when it freezes and contracts when it melts, the hot-start and cold-start scenarios have different implications for the tectonics and resulting surface features of Pluto, explained first author and UCSC graduate student Carver Bierson.

"If it started cold and the ice melted internally, Pluto would have contracted and we should see compression features on its surface, whereas if it started hot it should have expanded as the ocean froze and we should see extension features on the surface," Bierson said. "We see lots of evidence of expansion, but we don't see any evidence of compression, so the observations are more consistent with Pluto starting with a liquid ocean."

The thermal and tectonic evolution of a cold-start Pluto is actually a bit complicated, because after an initial period of gradual melting the subsurface ocean would begin to refreeze. So compression of the surface would occur early on, followed by more recent extension. With a hot start, extension would occur throughout Pluto's history.

"The oldest surface features on Pluto are harder to figure out, but it looks like there was both ancient and modern extension of the surface," Nimmo said.

The next question was whether enough energy was available to give Pluto a hot start. The two main energy sources would be heat released by the decay of radioactive elements in the rock and gravitational energy released as new material bombarded the surface of the growing protoplanet.

Bierson's calculations showed that if all of the gravitational energy was retained as heat, it would inevitably create an initial liquid ocean. In practice, however, much of that energy would radiate away from the surface, especially if the accretion of new material occurred slowly.

"How Pluto was put together in the first place matters a lot for its thermal evolution," Nimmo said. "If it builds up too slowly, the hot material at the surface radiates energy into space, but if it builds up fast enough the heat gets trapped inside."

The researchers calculated that if Pluto formed over a period of less that 30,000 years, then it would have started out hot. If, instead, accretion took place over a few million years, a hot start would only be possible if large impactors buried their energy deep beneath the surface.

The new findings imply that other large Kuiper belt objects probably also started out hot and could have had early oceans. These oceans could persist to the present day in the largest objects, such as the dwarf planets Eris and Makemake.

"Even in this cold environment so far from the sun, all these worlds might have formed fast and hot, with liquid oceans," Bierson said.

In addition to Bierson and Nimmo, the paper was coauthored by Alan Stern at the Southwest Research Institute, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.

Giving people "digital literacy" tips can help them identify dubious information online, a new study shows.

The avalanche of online content available to people around the world challenges humans' ability to separate fact from what can be highly toxic and even dangerous fiction.

Researchers studying Facebook's efforts to educate users on how to spot misinformation have found people in the United States and India were less likely to say a false headline was true after they were exposed to tips on how to spot misinformation

The Princeton University-led study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows people's ability to spot erroneous information weakened over time, so digital literacy needs to be taught with regularity.

"Most people struggle to reliably evaluate the quality of information they encounter online, even under the most ideal conditions," said Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University.

"This is because they lack the skills and knowledge required to distinguish between high and low-quality news content. We find that effort to promote digital literacy can improve people's ability to evaluate the accuracy of online content."

This study is among the first to systematically explore the role of digital media literacy shortfalls.

"Digital literacy and media literacy are often proposed as solutions to online misinformation, but these approaches are not evaluated as often as they are proposed. If we want to develop tools that help people distinguish truth from falsity, it is essential to test the effectiveness of these tools," added Professor Jason Reifler from the University of Exeter.

The team originally set out to explore why people fall victim to misinformation, selecting the United States and India as both countries have struggled with misinformation campaigns, especially during national elections.

The team looked at the effects of Facebook's "Tips to Spot False News," which appeared at the top of users' news feeds in 14 countries in April 2017. The list was also printed as a full-page ad in many U.S. newspapers, and a version appeared in India as well.

These tips have likely been the most widely distributed digital-media literacy intervention. They also are not overly complex, allowing for quick decision-making. For example, one tip cautions readers to be skeptical of headlines, warning that if claims sound unbelievable, they probably are.

The researchers then employed a "two-wave panel design," studying the same group of people immediately after exposure to the tips, and then again several weeks later, allowing them to see whether the digital media literacy efforts took root over time.

Participants were exposed to the tips and then presented with the same series of mock headlines, which they rated for accuracy. The headlines were balanced in terms of partisan slant, well-known and lesser-known media outlets, as well as low-quality and mainstream content. While the tips were offered to respondents, they couldn't be forced to read them, so the researchers took this into account in their modeling.

This two-wave design was conducted online in both the U.S. and India, though in-person interviews were also conducted in areas of rural India where there is greater religious polarization and potentially higher risk of misinformation spread.

The team found that the intervention improved people's ability to discern between mainstream and false news headlines by 26.5 per cent in the U.S. and 17.5 per cent in India. In the U.S., this lessened but remained measurable several weeks later. One-third of participants also were more likely to point out a less accurate headline. Their ratings of false headlines as "very accurate" or "somewhat accurate" went from 32 per cent to 24 per cent.

While the online results between the two countries were similar, India's face-to-face interviews yielded different results. There was no evidence that exposure to the tips increased the perceived accuracy of mainstream news articles. However this group had much less experience with evaluating news headlines online.

The researchers listed a few caveats with their work. First, the effects were modest, and the intervention did not completely eliminate belief in false news headlines. The effects also decayed over time, suggesting the need for regular reinforcement of these lessons. Lastly, it's not clear whether everyone actually read the tips.

The study provides opportunities for future research. Rather than using an intervention done by a tech company, academics could take this into their own hands by sampling people in other countries and electoral contexts. Likewise, more intensive training models could be used to see if the effects are more durable.

"We see no reason why this wouldn't work for any type of misinformation. Currently there are sources spreading misleading or even dangerous information about Covid-19 regarding protective measures, vaccines, miracle cures. We think this intervention could work in the public health domain, as well," Guess said.

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is posing an extraordinary challenge that requires swift worldwide action for the massive deployment of affordable and ready-to-apply measures to drastically reduce its transmission probabilities in indoor spaces, and eventually return to conventional activities such as working at the office, going to school, or even attending entertainment events.

Studies show that the virus transmission follows two main paths. Firstly, the virus can transmit through air in droplets exhaled by infected individuals and inhaled by healthy individuals. Secondly, it can be deposited on surfaces from either exhalations or hand contact. Now, several measures are being adopted to help prevent the transmission of this disease. The common ones refer to facial masks and other physical barriers that if properly used have proven to be highly effective but that however depend on compliance of the population.

A long series of studies suggest that virus transmission in indoor spaces has a much higher transmission rate than outdoors. Filters and chemicals have been presented as possible solutions to minimize this problem, but even though these are efficient solutions to reduce the concentration of contaminated particles and droplets through ventilation systems, their installation may be costly and time-consuming. In addition, chemicals such as ozone are very effective for virus disinfection, but if misused they are harmful for humans.

In this context, in a study recently published in ACS Nano, ICREA Prof. at ICFO Javier García de Abajo, in collaboration with ICREA Profs. Andreas Meyerhans (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Joan Rosell-Llompart (University Rovira i Virgili), together with Profs. Rufino Javier Hernández (University of the Basque Country), Ido Kaminer (Technion), and Tilman Sanchez-Elsner (University of Southampton), experts in the fields of virology, immunology, aerosols, architecture, and physics, have surveyed the possible methods to prevent SARS-CoV-2 propagation in indoor spaces. Following this survey, they advocate for one measure that they believe to be particularly efficient, easily deployable, and economically affordable: virus inactivation by ultraviolet light.

The study gives information on the currently available UV-C sources, such as fluorescent lamps, microcavity plasmas, and LEDs, emphasizing that, by irradiating this type of light inside the ventilation systems of buildings and in shared indoor spaces while not in use, it is possible to quickly and efficiently deactivate airborne and surface-deposited SARS-CoV-2 viruses.

They also explore costs and investments in deploying such technology and argue that a global capital investment of a few billion dollars in UV-C sources could protect of the order of ~10^9 indoor workers worldwide.

The tsetse fly occurs in large regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The flies feed on human and animal blood, transmitting trypanosoma in the process - small, single-cell organisms that use the flies as intermediate host and cause a dangerous inflammation of the lymph and nervous system in both animals and humans. There is no vaccination for this sleeping sickness; untreated, it usually ends in death. In agriculture, particularly cattle breeding, sleeping sickness - or trypanosomiasis - causes enormous damages in the form of sick and dead animals.

In addition to the use of insecticides, the insects are also caught in traps. The attractants used include substances that also occur in cattle urine and which attract tsetse flies. These substances (3-ethylphenol and 3-propylphenol, or 3-EP and 3-PP for short) are synthesized out of oil derivatives or also extracts from cashew nut shells through chemical processes. However, both processes are complex and neither practical nor affordable for rural communities in Africa.

In the LOEWE collaborative research project MegaSyn, molecular biologists at Goethe University have now succeeded in producing 3-EP and 3-PP in genetically modified brewer's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). They used a yeast strain into which they had previously introduced a new metabolic pathway, and changed its sugar metabolism. This enabled the yeasts to produce similarly high concentrations of 3-EP and 3-PP as those which occur in cow urine.

Doctoral student Julia Hitschler from the Institute for Molecular Biosciences at Goethe University explains: "Our yeasts could ideally grow in Africa in nutrient solutions on the basis of plant waste products, food rests or fodder rests. This would make production of the attractant almost cost-free. We are currently looking for partners to help us test our yeasts locally and provide them to the local population."

The potential for the new yeasts go beyond the tsetse attractants, add Professor Eckhard Boles, who heads the project. In the future, other substances that have been previously won through oil or coal could be produced through the new yeasts: "Our yeasts could be developed to produce other alkylphenols besides 3-EP and 3-PP. These alkylphenols could be used for the production of lubricant additives or surface-active substances in cleaning agents."

MINNEAPOLIS, MN- June 22, 2020 - While pregnancy and birth rates continue to decline to historic lows for 15 to 19-year-olds, Minnesota youth are contracting sexually transmitted infections (STI) at alarmingly high rates. The 2020 Minnesota Adolescent Sexual Health Report from the University of Minnesota Medical School's Healthy Youth Development - Prevention Research Center (HYD-PRC) attributes the rise in STI rates to a combination of factors, including barriers to prevention, screening and treatment services, education, transportation, cost, concerns about confidentiality and peer and media influences.

"Teen pregnancy and birth rates are at historic lows, and Minnesota youth should be commended for making safe and healthy choices about pregnancy prevention," said Jill Farris, director of Adolescent Sexual Health Training and Education for the HYD-PRC. "However, we must continue to highlight the importance of condoms and other barrier methods, utilize new and innovative public health educational campaigns to reach youth and expand access to STI services and treatment."

The HYD-PRC's report notes that Minnesota youth are disproportionately impacted by sexually transmitted infections. While adolescents aged 15 to 19 are only 7% of the Minnesota population, they accounted for 24% of all chlamydia cases and 15% of gonorrhea cases in Minnesota in 2019. "It's encouraging that young people are using highly effective contraceptive methods and increasing their use of condoms (up 3% since 2016), but discussions around the importance of barrier methods for STI prevention must continue. Confidential screening and treatment services must be easily accessible for youth, and families need to be supported to have open and nonjudgmental conversation with their children," Farris said.

Disparities in sexual health outcomes - by geography, race and ethnicity - continue to persist, as well. Rural areas in Minnesota continue to experience the highest teen birth rates in the state. Youth from communities of color have disproportionately high STI and birth rates. Birth rates for American Indian, Black and Hispanic youth are higher than for white and Asian/Pacific Islander youth. Adolescents from communities of color experience disproportionately higher rates of STIs, with the highest chlamydia and gonorrhea rates among Black and Hispanic youth.

Minnesota youth are also increasingly identifying their sexual orientation and gender identities on a broad spectrum. In 2019, 14% of male and 26% of female high school students identified their sexual orientation as something other than heterosexual (straight). "This is a dramatic increase from the 2016 figures," Farris said. Youth were also asked about their gender identity; 1.4% of Minnesota high schoolers identified as transgender, genderqueer or genderfluid.

"Students are increasingly fluid in their gender identities and sexual orientations. Health care providers, teachers, youth workers and parents need to respond by providing accurate, non-judgmental information and support to all youth," Farris said. Importantly, diverse sexual orientations and gender identities were reported throughout Minnesota. Young people from rural, suburban and urban areas are represented in these numbers.

This annual report helps Minnesotans understand the current landscape of our young people's sexual and reproductive health and how it is tied more broadly to healthy youth development.

"While focusing on changing individual behaviors that lead to decreases in STIs and teen pregnancy is needed, our youth deserve a holistic approach. We must fully support young people's health by addressing their physical, social, emotional and cognitive development and provide them with skills and support to make healthy decisions," Farris said. "Reducing systematic barriers to resources, power and opportunity will empower Minnesota youth to make healthy choices. Improving adolescent sexual health outcomes starts where we live, learn, work and play."

SUMMARY

Researchers discovered a new way to engineer optoelectronic devices by stretching a two-dimensional material on top of a silicon photonic platform. Using this method, coined strainoptronics by a team led by George Washington University professor Volker Sorger, the researchers demonstrated for the first time that a 2D material wrapped around a nanoscale silicon photonic waveguide creates a novel photodetector that can operate with high efficiency at the technology-critical wavelength of 1550 nanometers.

Such new photodetection can advance future communications and computer systems, especially in emerging areas such as machine learning and artificial neural networks.

THE SITUATION

The ever-increasing data demand of modern societies requires a more efficient conversion of data signals in the optical domain, from fiber optic internet to electronic devices, like a smartphone or laptop. This conversion process from optical to electrical signals is performed by a photodetector, a critical building block in optical networks.

2D materials have scientific and technologically relevant properties for photodetectors. Because of their strong optical absorption, designing a 2D material-based photodetector would enable an improved photo-conversion, and hence more efficient data transmission and telecommunications. However, 2D semiconducting materials, such as those from the family of transition metal dichalcogenides, have, so far, been unable to operate efficiently at telecommunication wavelengths because of their large optical bandgap and low absorption.

THE SOLUTION

Strainoptronics provides a solution to this shortcoming and adds an engineering tool for researchers to modify the electrical and optical properties of 2D materials, and thus the pioneered 2D material-based photodetectors.

Realizing the potential of strainoptronics, the researchers stretched an ultrathin layer of molybdenum telluride, a 2D material semiconductor, on top of a silicon photonic waveguide to assemble a novel photodetector. They then used their newly created strainoptronics "control knob" to alter its physical properties to shrink the electronic bandgap, allowing the device to operate at near infrared wavelengths, namely at the telecommunication (C-band) relevant wavelength around 1550 nm.

The researchers noted one interesting aspect of their discovery: the amount of strain these semiconductor 2D materials can bear is significantly higher when compared to bulk materials for a given amount of strain. They also note these novel 2D material-based photodetectors are 1,000 times more sensitive compared to other photodetectors using graphene. Photodetectors capable of such extreme sensitivity are useful not only for data communication applications but also for medical sensing and possibly even quantum information systems.

FROM THE RESEARCHERS

"We not only found a new way to engineer a photodetector, but also discovered a novel design methodology for optoelectronic devices, which we termed 'strainoptronics.' These devices bear unique properties for optical data communication and for emerging photonic artificial neural networks used in machine learning and AI."

- Volker Sorger, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at GW

"Interestingly, unlike bulk materials, two-dimensional materials are particularly promising candidates for strain engineering because they can withstand larger amounts of strain before rupture. In the near future, we want to apply strain dynamically to many other two-dimensional materials in the hopes of finding endless possibilities to optimize photonic devices."

- Rishi Maiti, postdoctoral fellow in the electrical and computer engineering department at GW

AMHERST, Mass. - As concern grows among environmentalists and consumers about micro- and nanoplastics in the oceans and in seafood, they are increasingly studied in marine environments, say Baoshan Xing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues in China. But "little is known about the behavior of nanoplastics in terrestrial environments, especially agricultural soils," they add.

Xing, an environmental scientist at UMass Amherst's Stockbridge School of Agriculture, and collaborators at Shandong University, China, point out that until now, there had been no direct evidence that nanoplastics are internalized by terrestrial plants.

They state, "Our findings provide direct evidence that nanoplastics can accumulate in plants, depending on their surface charge. Plant accumulation of nanoplastics can have both direct ecological effects and implications for agricultural sustainability and food safety." Both positively and negatively charged nanoplastics accumulate in the commonly used laboratory model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana.

Xing adds that widespread global use and persistence in the environment result in an "enormous" amount of plastic waste. He says, "Our experiments have given us evidence of nanoplastics uptake and accumulation in plants in the laboratory at the tissue and molecular level using microscopic, molecular and genetic approaches. We have demonstrated this from root to shoot." Details are in Nature Nanotechnology this week.

Xing points out that nanoplastic particles can be as small as a protein or a virus. Weathering and degradation change plastic's physical and chemical properties and imparts surface charges, so environmental particles are different from the pristine polystyrene nanoplastics often used in the lab. "This is why we synthesized polystyrene nanoplastics with either positive or negative surface charges for use in our experiments."

He helped to design the study, interpret the results, evaluate and revise the manuscript while a large team at Shandong University led by Xian-Zheng Yuan and Shu-Guang Wang conducted the experiments.

They grew Arabidopsis plants in soil mixed with differently charged, fluorescently labeled nanoplastics to assess plant weights, height, chlorophyll content and root growth. After seven weeks, they observed that plant biomass and height were lower in plants exposed to nanoplastics than in controls, for example.

"Nanoplastics reduced the total biomass of model plants," Xing adds. "They were smaller and the roots were much shorter. If you reduce the biomass, it's not good for the plant, yield is down and the nutritional value of crops may be compromised."

He adds, "We found that the positively charged particles were not taken up so much, but they are more harmful to the plant. We don't know exactly why, but it's likely that the positively charged nanoplastics interact more with water, nutrients and roots, and triggered different sets of gene expressions. That needs to be explored further in crop plants in the environment. Until then, we don't know how it may affect crop yield and food crop safety."

The team also analyzed seedlings to investigate sensitivity of the roots to charged nanoplastics. Exposed for 10 days, seedling growth was inhibited compared with that of control seedlings. To identify molecular mechanisms responsible, the researchers used RNA-Seq transcriptomic analyses of roots and shoots, then verified results with a quantitative PCR assay on three root genes and four shoot genes.

"Regardless of the surface charge, Arabidopsis can take up and transport nanoplastics with sizes of less than 200 nm," they write. Further, "In this study, we mainly demonstrate that the pathway of uptake and transport of nanoplastics in root tissues differed between differentially charged nanoplastics."

COLUMBUS, Ohio - For smokers who are better at math, the decision to quit just adds up, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that smokers who scored higher on a test of math ability were more likely than others to say they intended to quit smoking.

The reason: They had a better memory for numbers related to smoking risk, which led to perceiving a greater risk from smoking and then a greater intention to quit.

"People who had better math skills remembered more of the scary numbers about smoking risks that we gave them, and that made a difference," said Brittany Shoots-Reinhard, lead author of the study and research assistant professor in psychology at The Ohio State University.

This study is one of the few to link the ability to work with math - called numeracy - with smoking, Shoots-Reinhard said.

"These results may help explain why many studies find that smokers who are more educated are more likely to successfully quit," she said.

The study was published online recently in the journal Health Psychology.

The research involved 696 adult smokers in the United States who participated online. At the beginning of the session, participants were given a short, standardized test measuring numeracy.

Participants were then shown eight different cigarette warning labels, four times each. The warning labels had various images, such as a cartoon gravestone or a photo of a damaged lung.

Each label also included a congressionally mandated text warning (such as "Smoking can kill you") paired with risk probability information for smokers and non-smokers. For example, "75.4 percent of smokers will die before the age of 85, compared to 53.7 percent of non-smokers."

At various points, participants were asked to rate their emotional reactions to each label, the credibility of each label and the personal relevance of each label.

Either immediately after the experiment or six weeks later, the participants answered a variety of questions designed to see how much they remembered of the risk information they were given. They were also asked questions gauging their perception of how high their risk was related to smoking and to rate how likely they thought they were to quit smoking in the next 30 days or the next year.

Although it wasn't the focus of this study, the findings confirmed earlier research suggesting that memory for high-emotion warning labels (those that had graphic images like a diseased lung) was lower immediately after the experiment than memory for the low-emotion warning labels (those with graphics like the cartoon gravestone).

However, memory for the graphic labels declined less for those tested six weeks later than for those shown the less graphic images.

But over and above the effects of the images, participants who scored higher in numeracy tended to have better memory for the risks involved in smoking, including the statistics. And this was linked to higher risk perceptions and intentions to quit.

The results suggest that health officials and policymakers should evaluate how they present risk information to smokers, Shoots-Reinhard said.

"Smokers who are less numerate tend to have a very superficial knowledge about the health risks of their habit," she said.

"What we saw here is that people who better understood numbers had a better understanding of the risks. We need to find a way to communicate that to people who aren't as numerate."

Shoots-Reinhard recommended the use of simple infographics and similar devices to help less numerate smokers better understand the risks.

"We want people to understand the risk information in order to make more informed decisions. Our results suggest that may help them make the decision to quit," she said.

Jan Korbel and Oliver Stegle, both group leaders at EMBL Heidelberg, have performed a survey of fellow life scientists in Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy, France, Canada, Turkey, and the USA to learn how the current crisis, with partial or complete institutional shutdowns, is affecting their work.

The two researchers received 881 responses in total. Of the respondents, 77% stated that their institute had been fully shut down, with only essential service staff present on site. A partial shutdown, with less than half of the institute being operational, was reported by 19%. These numbers show the severe impact on the ability of researchers to work in their usual offices or labs.

The closure of the institutes also meant that more than half of the researchers lost part of their work on ongoing experiments, requiring between a single month and half a year to repeat. Personnel working in wet labs were more affected by this problem than computational researchers in dry labs.

Korbel and Stegle also analysed the stress level of participants and identified two potential risk groups. One was young trainees - especially trainees working outside their home country in institutes located on a different continent. "A third of these scientists live alone and are likely to feel more isolated in the time of a shutdown than their more settled or local colleagues," explains Jan Korbel. The second group are female scientists. A higher proportion of female respondents were working in wet labs - which have been more affected by the shutdown than dry labs - and they were also more often bound by childcare duties than male respondents.

On the positive side, the survey showed that many researchers used the additional time on data analysis and writing - including manuscripts, theses, and grant applications - which has already led to an increase in manuscript submissions to scientific journals.

Overall, it seems, life scientists have adapted very well to the new circumstances. "The ability to work efficiently from home, and to collaborate productively with life scientists and clinicians nationally and internationally by videoconferencing, without extensive travel, might ultimately even result in benefits for scientific communities and society as a whole," concludes Oliver Stegle.

Do different painting materials affect the creation of children's paintings? How might we increase children's focus and motivation to learn, while also improving their creativity? Researchers focusing on these very questions at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have recently published the results of a wide-spanning study involving more than 650 children, revealing insight into improving fine art education for children.

Through various genres, styles, and even periods of art, media used to create paintings varies greatly. Delicate materials, such as crepe paper or fine brushes, tend to be the materials of choice when artists wish to produce a painting with fine details. Rough materials, on the other hand, tend to result in rougher, more abstract lines. Complex and subtle interplay of the combinations of these materials allows for more varied and nuanced expressions, as well.

Researchers Lan Yu and Yukari Nagai confirm that children tend to use relatively few materials when painting, most of which are best-suited to representing fine detail, such as watercolor pens and colored pencils. These finely detailed implements may be the ones chosen for the primary school classroom due to reasons of convenience, cost, and cleanup. Nevertheless, these types of materials are most commonly used in realistic, detailed styles of art - and indeed, children who use these materials do tend to work in such styles of artwork.

Children don't mix media often, and the results of this study indicate that children feel that it is difficult to do so. When they do mix media, it tends to result in uneven line thicknesses and color, leading to a final product worse than they had hoped.

However, despite the complacency that children and indeed teachers may feel with their comfortable and convenient painting materials, limiting the media used for creating artwork seems to result in disinterest, and robs children of the opportunity for growth. This study raises concerns that using the same tools that painting students have always used, or avoiding combining tools with which they are familiar, may not produce the best results. Luckily, the young learners in this study displayed positive attitudes toward trying new materials, indicating that teaching techniques involving new materials would likely be accepted. In fact, introducing new materials into children's fine art education may produce clear beneficial results.

The researchers make clear recommendations to educators involved in fine art for children. According to the study, introduction of new materials would expand children's repertoires, and could allow them not only to improve the visual effects of their paintings, but even to expand their creative consciousness. The process of mixing different painting materials expands children's creativity, and can also improve their motivation, resulting in increased ability to maintain attention on learning, a skill crucial both inside and outside the primary school classroom. Finally, children should be instructed not only in the application and use of new media, but also how to manage object proportion using adaptive training exercises with multiple materials.

In 2018 it was discovered that two layers of graphene twisted one with respect to the other by a "magic" angle show a variety of interesting quantum phases, including superconductivity, magnetism and insulating behaviours. Now a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science led by Prof. Shahal Ilani of the Condensed Matter Physics Department, in collaboration with Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero's group at MIT, have discovered that these quantum phases descend from a previously unknown high-energy "parent state," with an unusual breaking of symmetry.

Graphene is a flat crystal of carbon, just one atom thick. When two sheets of this material are placed on top of each other, misaligned at small angle, a periodic "moiré" pattern appears. This pattern provides an artificial lattice for the electrons in the material. In this twisted bilayer system the electrons come in four "flavours": spins "up" or "down," combined with two "valleys" that originate in the graphene's hexagonal lattice. As a result, each moiré site can hold up to four electrons, one of each flavour.

While researchers already knew that the system behaves as a simple insulator when all the moiré sites are completely full (four electrons per site), Jarillo-Herrero and his colleagues discovered to their surprise, in 2018, that at a specific "magic" angle, the twisted system also becomes insulating at other integer fillings (two or three electrons per moiré site). This behaviour, exhibited by magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG), cannot be explained by single particle physics, and is often described as a "correlated Mott insulator." Even more surprising was the discovery of exotic superconductivity close to these fillings. These findings led to a flurry of research activity aiming to answer the big question: what is the nature of the new exotic states discovered in MATBG and similar twisted systems?

Imaging magic-angle graphene electrons with a carbon nanotube detector

The Weizmann team set out to understand how interacting electrons behave in MATBG using a unique type of microscope that utilizes a carbon nanotube single-electron transistor, positioned at the edge of a scanning probe cantilever. This instrument can image, in real space, the electric potential produced by electrons in a material with extreme sensitivity.

"Using this tool, we could image for the first time the 'compressibility' of the electrons in this system - that is, how hard it is to squeeze additional electrons into a given point in space," explains Ilani. "Roughly speaking, the compressibility of electrons reflects the phase they are in: In an insulator, electrons are incompressible, whereas in a metal they are highly compressible."

Compressibility also reveals the "effective mass" of electrons. For example, in regular graphene the electrons are extremely "light," and thus behave like independent particles that practically ignore the presence of their fellow electrons. In magic-angle graphene, on the other hand, electrons are believed to be extremely "heavy" and their behaviour is thus dominated by interactions with other electrons ? a fact that many researchers attribute to the exotic phases found in this material. The Weizmann team therefore expected the compressibility to show a very simple pattern as a function of electron filling: interchanging between a highly-compressible metal with heavy electrons and incompressible Mott insulators that appear at each integer moiré lattice filling.

To their surprise, they observed a vastly different pattern. Instead of a symmetric transition from metal to insulator and back to metal, they observed a sharp, asymmetric jump in the electronic compressibility near the integer fillings.

"This means that the nature of the carriers before and after this transition is markedly different," says study lead author Uri Zondiner. "Before the transition the carriers are extremely heavy, and after it they seem to be extremely light, reminiscent of the 'Dirac electrons' that are present in graphene."

The same behaviour was seen to repeat near every integer filling, where heavy carriers abruptly gave way and light Dirac-like electrons re-emerged.

But how can such an abrupt change in the nature of the carriers be understood? To address this question, the team worked together with Weizmann theorists Profs. Erez Berg, Yuval Oreg and Ady Stern, and Dr. Raquel Quiroez; as well as Prof. Felix von-Oppen of Freie Universität Berlin. They constructed a simple model, revealing that electrons fill the energy bands in MATBG in a highly unusual "Sisyphean" manner: when electrons start filling from the "Dirac point" (the point at which the valence and conduction bands just touch each other), they behave normally, being distributed equally among the four possible flavours. "However, when the filling nears that of an integer number of electrons per moiré superlattice site, a dramatic phase transition occurs," explains study lead author Asaf Rozen. "In this transition, one flavour 'grabs' all the carriers from its peers, 'resetting' them back to the charge-neutral Dirac point."

"Left with no electrons, the three remaining flavours need to start refilling again from scratch. They do so until another phase transition occurs, where this time one of the remaining three flavours grabs all the carriers from its peers, pushing them back to square one. Electrons thus need to climb a mountain like Sisyphus, being constantly pushed back to the starting point in which they revert to the behavior of light Dirac electrons," says Rozen. While this system is in a highly symmetric state at low carrier fillings, in which all the electronic flavours are equally populated, with further filling it experiences a cascade of symmetry-breaking phase transitions that repeatedly reduce its symmetry.

A "parent state"

"What is most surprising is that the phase transitions and Dirac revivals that we discovered appear at temperatures well above the onset of the superconducting and correlated insulating states observed so far," says Ilani. "This indicates that the broken symmetry state we have seen is, in fact, the 'parent state' out of which the more fragile superconducting and correlated insulating ground states emerge."

The peculiar way in which the symmetry is broken has important implications for the nature of the insulating and superconducting states in this twisted system.

"For example, it is well known that stronger superconductivity arises when electrons are heavier. Our experiment, however, demonstrates the exact opposite: superconductivity appears in this magic-angle graphene system after a phase transition has revived the light Dirac electrons. How this happens, and what it tells us about the nature of superconductivity in this system compared to other more conventional forms of superconductivity remain interesting open questions," says Zondiner.

A similar cascade of phase transitions was reported in another paper published in the same Nature issue by Prof. Ali Yazdani and colleagues at Princeton University. "The Princeton team studied MATBG using a completely different experimental technique, based on a highly-sensitive scanning tunneling microscope, so it is very reassuring to see that complementary techniques lead to analogous observations," says Ilani.

The Weizmann and MIT researchers say they will now use their scanning nanotube single-electron-transistor platform to answer these and other basic questions about electrons in various twisted-layer systems: What is the relationship between the compressibility of electrons and their apparent transport properties? What is the nature of the correlated states that form in these systems at low temperatures? And what are the fundamental quasiparticles that make up these states?