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As early as the Neolithic period (circa 3900 BC), the domestication of animals likely led to the development of diseases including measles and smallpox. Since then, zoonotic disease has led to other major transnational outbreaks including HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS, and H1N1 swine flu, among others. Currently, more than half of all existing human pathogens, and almost three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases, are zoonotic in nature.
COVID-19 is the latest and most impactful zoonotic event of the modern era, but it will certainly not be the last.

Given the breadth of these impacts and the fact that other zoonotic pandemics are highly likely - a matter of when and not if - the key public health ethics question that emerges is about whether it is ethically appropriate for governments to intervene to prevent future pandemics. And given that SARS, Swine Flu, and the Spanish Flu of 1918 (among other outbreaks of zoonotic diseases) all came from animal agriculture facilities, a concern with preventing future pandemics suggests re-examining the current global food system - in the name of protecting public health.

In an article published in the journal Food Ethics, Florida Atlantic University's Justin Bernstein, Ph.D., senior author, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy within the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and a member of the FAU Center for the Future Mind, which is sponsored by the FAU Brain Institute, and co-author Jan Dutkiewicz, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow at Concordia University, offer three plausible solutions to mitigate zoonotic risk associated with intensive animal agriculture. They explore incentivizing plant-based and cell-based animal source food alternatives through government subsidies, disincentivizing intensive animal source food production through the adoption of a "zoonotic tax," and eliminating intensive animal source food production through a total ban.

"Modern medicine has not only failed to catch up to the zoonotic threat, but in some ways is losing ground, due in part to growing global antibiotic resistance. So, from a public health ethics perspective, we should assess measures aimed at mitigating zoonotic risks," said Bernstein, whose expertise focuses on questions in moral and political philosophy and bioethics and the intersection of the two. "This is especially the case with systemic, predictable sources of zoonotic risk such as agriculture and food production. We argue that if the government may protect public health generally, then this permission extends to radically altering current animal agricultural practices."

The first, and arguably least intrusive public health intervention the authors offer, involves incentivizing alternative choices. Second, they suggest that public health disincentivizes the relevant behavior that poses a public health risk by attaching costs to it. Given that animal source food production can lead to the outbreak of zoonotic disease that can harm both consumers and non-consumers, the authors argue that the goal of disincentivizing both production and consumption could be achieved by a Pigouvian tax - a "zoonotic tax" - on meat.

The third and most intrusive kind of intervention involves the government restricting or eliminating choices. In the context of mitigating the risk of zoonotic pandemics, the authors say that governments might consider making intensive animal agriculture illegal. Of course, given the disruption to food supply chains and both local and national economies, such a ban would have to be carefully and gradually enacted.

"While there are urgent short-term public health measures that can mitigate the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not lose sight of how to prevent the devastation of a future pandemic. In response to the current pandemic, a natural thought is to focus on what public health agencies and local governments should focus on contact tracing, more tests, social distancing and adequate personal protection equipment," said Bernstein. "Yet, while all of these approaches are invaluable, they are not truly preventative in that they do not address a root cause of future zoonotic risk: intensive animal agriculture."

The authors note that the threat of another pandemic may be the right kind of consideration to motivate people to seriously re-examine current dietary practices, especially when they have witnessed firsthand just how devastating a pandemic can be.

"The risk of infectious disease associated with animal agriculture is often overlooked. The COVID-19 pandemic forces us to pay attention to food production and evaluate how to reduce similar outbreaks in the future in the interest of global, collective public health," said Bernstein. "While the exact causes of this particular pandemic still require further investigation, we have highlighted the causal role of intensive animal agriculture in other pandemics and its contribution to increased risk of future zoonotic disease outbreaks."

Researchers from Telethon Kids Institute and Curtin University in Perth and Tulane University in New Orleans have developed sophisticated data modelling that could help eradicate malaria in Haiti.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean - beset by natural disasters - and is one of the few countries in the region that have not mostly wiped out the mosquito-borne disease.

Telethon Kids Institute researcher Associate Professor Ewan Cameron led the team, using a range of different health data to create a complete picture of where malaria infections are taking place in Haiti. This information has been used to directly inform Haiti's national response to malaria.

The team's findings have been published in the journal eLife.

Director of the Malaria Risk Stratification at Telethon Kids Institute and an Associate Professor at Curtin University, Dr Cameron said the team used mathematical modelling to work out where people diagnosed with malaria were most likely to reside.

"Monthly counts of malaria cases arriving at local health facilities are routinely gathered by the Haitian health system, but these data don't record at a granular level where those patients live, or where they were most likely to be infected," he said.

"Most people will be bitten in or around their homes, so the interventions we have to fight malaria aim to interrupt transmission there, whether that's spraying for mosquitos or delivering bed nets and anti-malarial medications.

"By using a wide range of data - from satellite images of the terrain to hand-written medical logs - we've been able to develop a fine-scale malaria risk map to help public health experts find these at-risk populations."

Almost 9,000 cases of malaria were reported in Haiti in 2019 and determining which areas are most at risk is a crucial line of defence against infection.

Dr Cameron said this fine-scale data could be the final piece of the puzzle that helps stamp out malaria in Haiti.

"Haiti is seen as a place where malaria eradication can be achieved," he said.

"Neighbouring countries like the Dominican Republic are much wealthier and have been able to reduce malaria to really negligible amounts but, working with fewer resources, Haiti has not yet been able to achieve the same results.

"We hope that this work can help the country to better target its interventions and work towards that goal."

Researcher Alyssa Young from Tulane University in New Orleans, working in Haiti, said accessing some of the more remote parts of the island to gather data was a significant challenge.

"During the rainy season, some of the health facilities we visited were out in really remote locations," she said.

"They'd often be a small building on a remote beach - that was the community health facility. But the people who work at those facilities were incredible, and very committed to the goal of eliminating malaria in Haiti."

Telethon Kids Institute epidemiologist and the Kerry Stokes Chair of Child Health at Curtin University, Professor Pete Gething, said the team hopes to be able to contribute to the goal of eliminating malaria in Haiti.

"Haiti is really the last bastion of malaria in the whole of Mesoamerica, just a stones-throw from the US, so it's a really interesting place," he said.

"We're making maps that are being used by Haiti's malaria control program to fundamentally change where they're targeting their interventions."

The research in Haiti is part of a collaboration that has been operating since 2017, funded by the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Every tumour is different, every patient is different. So how do we know which treatment will work best for the patient and eradicate the cancer? In order to offer a personalised treatment that best suits the case being treated, a team of scientists led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, had already developed a spheroidal reproduction of tumours that integrates the tumour cells, but also their microenvironment. However, the immune system had not yet been taken into account, even though it can either be strengthened or destroyed by the treatment given to the patient. Today, the Geneva team has succeeded in integrating two types of immune cells that come directly from the patient into the spheroidal structure, making it possible to test the various possible treatments and select the most effective. These results can be read in the journal Cancers.

In order to test cancer treatments, scientists use 2D cultures of cancer cells. However, these are only an artificial system, as they do not represent the 3D tumour in all its complexity. This is why the team of Patrycja Nowak-Sliwinska, professor at the Section of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Faculty of Science of the UNIGE, has developed a spheroidal structure that reproduces the microenvironment of the tumour. "The idea is to create a 3D structure from the cells of the tumour, while also integrating the fibroblasts - cells that make up the mass of the tumour - and the endothelial cells, which allow the tumour to feed and be vascularised." This method, which has since been used by the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), allows us to get closer to the tumour as it is present in the patient's body. "However, an important factor was still missing: the cells of the immune system", explains the Geneva researcher.

The critical role of the immune system in the fight against cancer

The immune system is the primary fighter against tumours and it reacts differently depending on the treatment prescribed to the patient: its effectiveness can either be increased or decreased. Today, the Geneva team, in collaboration with the universities of Lausanne and Amsterdam, has succeeded in integrating two types of immune cells into its spheroidal structure: macrophages and T lymphocytes. "This technological advance makes it possible to test the effects of a treatment not only on the tumour, but also on the immune system!", enthuses Magdalena Rausch, researcher at the UNIGE's Section of Pharmaceutical Sciences and first author of the study. To do this, the scientists first take cells from the patient's tumour to recreate it in vitro in the form of a spheroidal structure, and then they isolate the immune cells and inject them into the 3D structure. "Once this step has been completed, which takes 24 hours, we can test the various possible treatments for this cancer on our reproduction of the tumour and study which one will be most suitable for the patient, taking into account the effects on the tumour cells, but also on the immune system", explains Patrycja Nowak-Sliwinska.

This technique, which is relatively inexpensive and fast, would make it possible to propose a personalised treatment for each patient, while offering an effective alternative to several animal experimentations. "This platform opens up many possibilities for testing drug combinations, taking into account the different types of cancer, their mutations and the immune reactions specific to each person treated", concludes Patrycja Nowak-Sliwinska.

The white-tailed sea eagle is known for reacting sensitively to human disturbances. Forestry and agricultural activities are therefore restricted in the immediate vicinity of the nests. However, these seasonal protection periods are too short in the German federal States of Brandenburg (until August 31) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (until July 31), as a new scientific analysis by a team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) suggests. Using detailed movement data of 24 juvenile white-tailed sea eagles with GPS transmitters, they were able to track when they fledge and when they leave the parental territory: on average, a good 10 and 23 weeks after hatching, respectively. When forestry work is allowed again, most of the young birds are still near the nest. In a publication in the journal IBIS - International Journal of Avian Science, the scientists therefore recommend an extension of the currently existing nest protection periods by one month.

Between 2004 and 2016, bird of prey specialist Dr Oliver Krone and his team from the Leibniz-IZW fitted a total of 24 juvenile white-tailed eagles with GPS transmitters during ringing, which usually takes place between four and six weeks after hatching. The aim was to precisely record and analyse the movements of the younglings in the important life span between the first flight and leaving the parents' territory. "On average, the juvenile white-tailed sea eagles leave the nest for the first time at the age of 72 days for their maiden flight and, on average, leave their parental territory another 93 days later," Krone summarises. During this period, the juvenile birds are very active and undertake frequent excursions from the nest, which vary greatly in length and distance. However, the activity in this phase varies greatly from bird to bird and influences the time of departure from the parental territory. "The more frequently a young eagle makes such reconnaissance flights, the later it leaves the territory for good," explains biologist Marc Engler. The same applies to the quality of this territory: if it offers at least one body of water that is suitable for foraging, the young birds stay with their parents almost four weeks longer.

Both correlations strongly suggest that juvenile white-tailed sea eagles stay as long as possible in the parental territories, provided the conditions are favourable. "If there is more disturbance at a nest, the possibilities of reconnaissance flights for the young eagles are limited and they seem to be forced to disperse earlier," Krone and Engler conclude. On average, they fledge between the end of May and the beginning of July, so the period until dispersal often extends into September or October. "An extension of the nest protection periods of at least one month is therefore advisable in order to avoid disturbances of juvenile eagles in the nest area and thus prevent early dispersal with possible negative effects on their survival. This applies in particular to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where forestry work and hunting around the white-tailed sea eagle nests can be resumed starting with the beginning of August - when almost two thirds of the younglings still have their centre of life in the parental nest."

Intensive protection efforts over the last 100 years have saved the sea eagle from extinction in Germany. They were placed under protection in the 1920s, after hunting in particular had reduced the population to a critical level. Meanwhile the population of white-tailed sea eagles has grown back to a stable level. Currently there are about 950 breeding pairs of the white-tailed sea eagle in Germany, projections assume a potential of 1200 breeding pairs for Germany. However, the use of leaded ammunition in hunting still has a negative effect on the birds, which in winter feed on the carcasses of animals left behind by hunters. In addition, a team led by Oliver Krone showed that not only forestry work is a burden for the white-tailed sea eagles, but also the proximity to roads especially paths with pedestrians and cyclists. The team measured concentrations of the hormone corticosterone and its metabolic products in white-tailed sea eagles in northern Germany and correlated these values with potential causes of "stress". They found that the levels of corticosterone in the birds' urine are higher the closer a breeding pair's nest is to trails, paths or roads. This paper was published in October 2019 in the scientific journal ""General and Comparative Endocrinology".

Materials have a variety of properties that can be used to solve computational problems, according to studies in substrate-based computing. BZ computers, slime mould computers, plant computers, and collision-based liquid marbles computers are just a few examples of prototypes produced for future and emergent computing devices. Modelling the computational processes that exist in such systems, however, is a difficult task in general, and determining which part of the embodied system is doing the computation is still somewhat ill-defined.

Claiming that fungi are the most intelligent living organisms in the world sounds like an exaggeration. However, a recent study by Mohammad Mahdi Dehshibi, a UOC researcher who is contributing to a growing body of knowledge on the use of fungal materials, concurs with this idea. Its implications are numerous and practical in both the medium and the long term. They include the possibility of using fungal tissues as actual computing devices. How could we use a fungus as if it were a computer?

Converting the fungal electrical signals into messages

Fungal mycelium like Pleurotus djamor, also known as the pink oyster mushroom, can resolve an incredible range of computational geometry problems, explained Mohammad Mahdi Dehshibi in a previously published article on fungal materials. "By changing the environmental conditions, we can reprogramme a geometry and a theoretical structure of the graphics of mycelium networks and then use the electrical activity of the fungi to create computing circuits", confirmed the researcher.

In a recent study, Electrical activity of fungi: Spikes detection and complexity analysis, published by Mohammad Mahdi Dehshibi of the Scene Understanding and Artificial Intelligence Lab (SUNAI) group at the UOC Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications, in collaboration with Andrew Adamatzky of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory at the UWE Bristol, the researchers demonstrate that the pink oyster mushroom generates a series of spikes in electrical potential that are propagated by a growing mycelium.

The electrical activity property of the fungus corresponds to the extremely complex internal communication it uses, and this can be analysed and utilized to operate and develop computing measures. In the research project, the authors propose a variety of measures to be able to "translate" these electrical signals into messages according to the classification of the spikes in potential that can be detected.

The electrical signals in the fungal tissue are so faint and complex that it is impossible to analyse them using the standard techniques of neuroscience, the discipline that traditionally measures them. The researchers' proposal consists of a method for detecting spike arrival time through an exhaustive algorithm that enables fairly efficient characterization of the electrical activity.

The key to the complex language of fungi

Fungi are among the largest, most widely distributed and oldest groups of living organisms in the world. The many advantages for which they are considered an interesting material include their tremendous availability at no cost, their resilience, their capacity for self-maintenance and their rapid growth. To all of this, as demonstrated in the study, we must add the communicative complexity shown by the electrical signals of the fungus.

To obtain a better idea, the researchers have proven that the complexity of this "language" is greater than that of many human languages in terms of communication. That reality opens up the possibility of using the signals as an efficient and practical means of information transmission and computing, giving fungi a very interesting potential as computers.

"At the moment, there are two major challenges to be confronted [in being able to use fungi as computers]", explained Dehshibi. "The first is to implement a computing purpose that makes sense. The second is to characterize the properties of the fungal substrates to discover their true computational potential". These two steps are essential for building functional computing units.

Designing environmental sensors

Will we really see, then, a laptop computer with a microprocessor made with fungi? For the author, the objective of fungal computers is not to replace silicon chips, as the actions in this type of computer are too slow for that. But the properties of fungi could be used as an "environmental sensor on a large scale". Fungal networks could monitor large quantities of data flows as part of their day-to-day activity. If we were able to connect to their networks and interpret the signals, they use to process information, we could learn more about what is happening in an ecosystem and act accordingly.

Good acoustics in the workspace improve work efficiency and productivity, which is one of the reasons why acoustic materials matter. The acoustic insulation market is already expected to hit 15 billion USD by 2022 as construction firms and industry pay more attention to sound environments. Researchers at Aalto University, in collaboration with Finnish acoustics company Lumir, have now studied how these common elements around us could become more eco-friendly, with the help of cellulose fibres.

'Models for acoustic absorption are based on tests done with synthetic fibres, and natural fibres don't adhere to these models. With natural fibres like cellulose, we can use thinner structures to achieve the same sound absorption as synthetic fibres,' says Jose Cucharero, a doctoral student at Aalto University.

Cucharero's research explores the effect of natural fibres' properties on sound absorption and how these fibres can be used in room acoustics. Synthetic fibres, such as fibreglass and rockwool, are uniform in quality. Cellulose fibres have a complex structure with natural irregularities, which can be an asset for absorbing sound indoors. The origin of fibres also seems to matter: his research has found that hardwood fibres absorb sound better than softwood fibres. Based on the research, this can be attributed to the smaller dimensions of the hardwood fibres.

In addition to their excellent acoustic properties, cellulose fibres also have positive environmental impacts compared to traditional acoustic materials. The production of cellulose fibres is considerably more energy-efficient, and the fibres also absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Using the fibre in construction materials is an effective way to store carbon: buildings last for decades, unlike single-use packaging and paper where cellulose is typically used.

'Acoustics solutions based on cellulose fibres can be applied to a wide range of facilities. For example, acoustic sprays -- which can be used on any surface to create a porous, sound-absorbing layer -- can significantly improve the comfort of buildings under renovation without changing their visual appearance,' Cucharero says.

Research results are already used in product development

Alongside his doctoral dissertation, Jose Cucharero works at Lumir Oy, which produces acoustic solutions in line with the principles of the circular economy. The results of the dissertation are used in the development of new cellulose-based acoustics solutions, and the study has been rapidly applied in product development.

The commercial perspective is also complemented by tests that ensure the products' scalable manufacturing and fire resistance. Based on the results, an industrially scalable process has been developed for the production of acoustic panels based on cellulose fibres.

'Governments around the world have set out to become carbon neutral. We can't achieve this by simply reducing emissions; we need to also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in products.' , says Lumir's R&D Director Tuomas Hänninen, Doctor of Technology and Jose Cucharero's thesis advisor.

Popcorn. What would movies and sporting events without this salty, buttery snack? America's love for this snack goes beyond these events. We consume 15 billion quarts of popped popcorn each year.

When it comes to popcorn, consumers want a seed-to-snack treat that leaves more snacks than seeds when popped. This means when they pop the corn, there shouldn't be many unpopped kernels left in the bowl.

Maria Fernanda Maioli set out to determine the properties affecting popping expansion in popcorn. The team's research was recently published in Agronomy Journal, a publication of the American Society of Agronomy.

"The way kernels expand is a basic, yet very important characteristic of popcorn," says Fernanda Maioli. This is referred to as "expansion ratio."

"Very hard grains burst when heated. This expansion multiplies the initial volume of the grains by more than 40 times. In the case of popcorn, it produces a unique and tasty food."

The major factors that influence popcorn quality are kernel moisture, expansion ratios, and popping ratios. Higher quality popcorn is associated with kernels that expand more. This popped corn has a better texture and softness.

There have been several past studies on the ways popcorn kernel expand. These studies report that popping expansion has a strong association with higher starch content in kernels.

Previous research also shows that popcorn varieties with a thicker protective outer seed coating - have a greater expansion ratio.

Popping ability is also affected by how well the starchy substance inside kernels transfer heat during the popping process. Fernanda Maioli and her team's study measured this performance, which makes this research unique.

"We observed how this heat transfer inside the popcorn kernel relates to the expansion ratio," she adds. "It allowed us to understand how other characteristics may also relate to expansion."

"The purpose of our study was to identify popcorn characteristics related to expansion," says Fernanda Maioli. "This will help us efficiently identify popcorn varieties with good agronomic characteristics as well as good popping quality."

The team evaluated 49 types of popcorn for different traits. The traits included grain yield, kernel length, popping expansion, kernel and protective layer thickness, heat transfer ability, and the amount of protein in kernels.

Then the researchers studied the influence of those characteristics on the popping expansion.

"Our results showed that the thickness of the kernel's outer layer is a key trait for selecting popcorn with greater popping expansion," says Fernanda Maioli.

Understanding which popcorn traits are related to the expansion capacity will help future researchers identify and breed high quality popcorn. Researchers will not need to spend time and money to look at other unrelated characteristics.

The team hopes they can identify relationships between other key traits. Future research will continue to improve the tasty, buttery snack.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...June 2, 2021 - As drones become more ubiquitous in public spaces, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have conducted the first studies examining how people respond to various emotional facial expressions depicted on a drone, with the goal of fostering greater social acceptance of these flying robots.

The research, which was presented recently at the virtual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, reveals how people react to common facial expressions superimposed on drones.

"There is a lack of research on how drones are perceived and understood by humans, which is vastly different than ground robots." says Prof. Jessica Cauchard together with Viviane Herdel of BGU's Magic Lab, in the BGU Department of Industrial Engineering & Management. "For the first time, we showed that people can recognize different emotions and discriminate between different emotion intensities."

BGU researchers conducted two studies using a set of rendered robotic facial expressions on drones that convey basic emotions. The faces use four core facial features: eyes, eyebrows, pupils, and mouth. The results showed that five different emotions (joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise) can be recognized with high accuracy in static stimuli, and four emotions (joy, surprise, sadness, anger) in dynamic videos. Disgust was the only emotion that was poorly recognized. Click here to watch the "Drone in Love" video.

"Participants were further affected by the drone and presented different responses, including empathy, depending on the drone's emotion," Prof. Cauchard says. "Surprisingly, participants created narratives around the drone's emotional states and included themselves in these scenarios."

BGU researchers propose a number of recommendations that will enhance the acceptability of drones for use in emotional support and other social situations. These include adding anthropomorphic features, using the five basic emotions, and using empathetic responses to drive compliance in health and behavior change applications.

"BGU is spearheading some of the most remarkable robotic research in the world," says Doug Seserman, chief executive officer, Americans for Ben-Gurion University. "We foresee continued innovation leveraging human-drone interaction technologies, leading to greater adoption and more beneficial applications."

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have developed a wirelessly powered relay network for 5G systems. The proposed battery-free communication addresses the challenges of flexible deployment of relay networks. This design is both economical and energy-efficient. Such advances in 5G communications will create tremendous opportunities for a wide range of sectors.

The ever-increasing demand for wireless data bandwidth shows no sign of slowing down in the near future. Millimeter wave, a short wavelength spectrum, has shown great potential in 5G communications and beyond. To leverage high-capacity millimeter-wave frequencies, phased-array antennas (antenna elements that work together to boost signal strength in a specific direction) are being adapted. However, the current use case is confined to line-of-sight propagation.

As a result, relay nodes are considered for non-line-of-sight communications (Figure 1). While relaying can provide improved bandwidth, coverage, and reliability, the flexible deployment of a relay network poses some challenges. The most significant challenge in relay networks is power supply. A typical relay node has its own power supply unit or is connected to an external power source.

Fortunately, a team of scientists from Tokyo Tech, led by Prof. Kenichi Okada, have proposed a wirelessly-powered 28-GHz phased-array relay transceiver for the 5G network. Their work is scheduled for presentation in the 2021 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, an international conference where emerging trends and novel concepts on semiconductor technology and circuits are explored.

A vector-summing backscattering technique is used to realize the proposed design. The transmitter works as a backscatter with 24GHz local oscillator (LO) and 4GHz intermediate frequency (IF) signals (Figure 2). Okada elaborates, "Backscatter communication makes it possible to harvest energy from incident signals and reflects back parts of the same signals while modulating the data. In this design, backscatter up-converts the 5G New Radio (5G NR) spectrum at 4GHz and transmits at 28GHz." The transmitter also acts as a phase shifter, allowing it to alter the phase of an incoming signal. The backscattering and phase-shifting capabilities of the transmitter facilitate beamforming, wherein an array of antennas can be controlled to transmit signals in a specific direction. As a result, information is transferred more efficiently with less interference.

The receiver and rectifier operation is another critical feature of the transceiver. Passive phase shifters and power combiners (which combine power fed at multiple ports) are used to boost the received signal power for wireless power transfer (WPT). The proposed rectifier acts as a self-heterodyne mixer. In other words, the rectifier splits and recombines an incoming beam with a modulated version of itself. It also works as a full-wave rectifier with the 24 GHz WPT signal.

The entire phased-array relay transceiver is configured in an area as small as 1.8 mm2 (Figure 3). In the receive mode, the wirelessly powered 4x8 array module produces 3.1 mW of power. In the transmit mode, it produces -2.2 dBm of saturated Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP), which is the output power radiated from an antenna in a single direction. The vector-summing backscatter covers a 360° phase range with 7-bit phase resolution while consuming just 0.03 mW in both transmit and receive mode.

Okada excitedly concludes, "The proposed battery-free transceiver enhances 5G connectivity by serving as a repeater between indoor and outdoor environments. This, in turn, will improve user experiences and create new opportunities for operational efficiency in internet-of-things, industrial automation, and new communication services."

Talk about efficiency personified!

VANCOUVER, Wash. - A new study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles shows per-area greenhouse gas emissions from the world's water reservoirs are around 29% higher than suggested by previous studies, but that practical measures could be taken to help reduce that impact.

Much of the increase in emissions comes from previously unaccounted for methane degassing, a process where methane passes through a dam and bubbles up downstream, according to the analysis by Washington State University and University of Quebec at Montreal scientists.

Overall, the researchers found the world's water reservoirs are annually producing methane, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouses gases in an amount roughly equivalent to 1.07 gigatons of carbon dioxide.

While that amount is small in comparison to the more than 36 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions produced by fossil fuels and other industrial sources each year, it's still more greenhouse gas than the entire country of Germany, the globe's sixth largest emitter, produces annually. It is also roughly equal in weight to 10,000 fully-loaded U.S. aircraft carriers.

Led by John Harrison, a professor in the WSU Vancouver School of the Environment, and co-authored by colleagues at the University of Quebec at Montreal, the study is the first to include methane degassing in its estimate of global greenhouse gas emissions from manmade reservoirs.

The research team also factored in numerous other unaccounted for variables into their analysis such as water temperature, water depth and the amount of sediment entering into thousands of different reservoirs located around the world. Previous studies that calculated overall greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs relied solely on average emission rates per reservoir surface area.

"While a number of papers have pointed out the importance of aquatic systems as sources of methane to the atmosphere, this is the first paper that I know of to look explicitly at which kinds of reservoirs are big sources and why," Harrison said. "It gives us the ability to start working toward understanding what we could do about methane emissions from these types of systems."

Decomposing plant matter near the bottom of reservoirs fuels the production of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide over the course of a century and comparable to rice paddies or biomass burning in terms of overall emissions.

Harrison and colleagues found methane degassing accounts for roughly 40% of emissions from water reservoirs. This large increase in previously unaccounted for emissions was partly offset by a projected lower amount of methane diffusing off the surface of reservoirs, according to the analysis. Carbon dioxide emissions were similar to those reported in past work.

The researchers' findings reveal the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs occur in the tropics and subtropics. An estimated 83% of methane emissions occurred within tropical climate zones.

These areas are also where the majority of ongoing and planned new reservoir construction projects are anticipated to occur in coming decades.

The findings are particularly important because it may be possible to reduce methane emissions downstream from reservoirs by selectively withdrawing water from near the reservoirs' surface, which tend to be methane-poor rather than from greater depths, where methane often accumulates.

For example, in a related study, a simulated decrease in water withdrawal depth by as little as 3 meters (about 10 feet) yielded a 92% reduction in methane degassing emissions from a Malaysian reservoir.

"We aren't saying that reservoirs are necessarily bad. Many provide important services like electrical power, flood control, navigation and water," Harrison said. "Rather, we want to bring attention to a source of greenhouse gas emissions that we think can be reduced in the years ahead as we work towards carbon neutral emissions."

Harrison's and colleagues work recently helped lead the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international authority on the subject of global warming, to recognize reservoirs and flooded lands as an integral part of each country's overall emissions.

"We're interested in using this work to improve these models and global estimates," Harrison said. "One end goal of this work is to improve our ability to estimate the amount of greenhouse gases coming from reservoirs on a per country basis so that countries can address this source and include it in the way that they are managing their greenhouse gas liabilities."

Bone-regenerating treatments are in high demand due to the ageing population. Increasingly, the orthopaedic biomaterials used to support these treatments are designed to be "immunomodulatory", i.e., guide the body's inflammatory response. They do this by encouraging macrophages - a type of white blood cell that surrounds and kills microorganisms - to adopt new roles based on signals and stimuli in their microenvironment. This approach has proved effective for developing new bone and for encouraging existing bone to accept artificial implants.

Magnesium is a mineral that not only helps to maintain normal nerve and muscle function, importantly, it also supports a healthy immune system and helps bones to retain their strength. Typically, it is given to orthopaedic patients as an oral supplement.

In a recent study published in the KeAi journal Bioactive Materials, a group of researchers from Hong Kong and mainland China, trialed a new immunomodulatory approach which replaces that magnesium supplement with an injection - directly into the compromised bone - of custom-made, polymer microspheres that control the release of magnesium ions.

According to one of the study's authors, Kelvin Yeung, Professor in Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the University of Hong Kong, the team tested the hypothesis by using two different animal models. "In one, we injected the microspheres containing the magnesium (Mg) ions. In the other, we injected microspheres without the Mg loading. In the two weeks following the injections, faster bone regeneration rates were observed in the first group."

Professor Young believes that one of the benefits of magnesium is that it encourages the immune system and skeletal system to work in tandem to support in situ healing.

He explains: "The biomaterial development for bone repair usually involves the direct activation of osteoprogenitor cells - stem cells located in the bone that play a key role in bone repair and growth. However, the "conversation" that takes place between the skeletal and immune systems during the bone healing process has often been overlooked."

Professor Yeung points to the fact that the healthy functioning of immune cells significantly impacts bone regeneration and remodelling. "In this study, we have drawn on the properties of biomaterials that can tailor the plasticity of macrophages. For instance, our custom-made, magnesium-loaded microspheres created a favourable, anti-inflammatory, osteoimmune environment."

He adds: "Bioactive metal ions working as minerals has huge potential in bone or other musculoskeletal tissue regenerations. We hope our results can convince scientists to explore the potentials of these ions beyond bone healing."

BEND, Ore. - Bat researchers say a project in Central Oregon shows citizen science's strong potential for helping ecologists learn more about one of the least understood groups of mammals.

Volunteers listened for the rare spotted bat, Euderma maculatum, within study grids in a 24,000-square-kilometer area in and around the Deschutes and Ochoco national forests. They completed a total of 61 surveys and heard the bat 25 times.

Bat encounters help fill in holes in basic information regarding species abundance and distribution - gaps that impede conservation - and the proof-of-concept study's design suggests it could be scaled up to larger areas in Oregon and around the globe.

"We're really happy with the approach and think it has legs," said Tom Rodhouse, a courtesy faculty member of Oregon State University's College of Agricultural Sciences who led the project along with Sara Rose, Trent Hawkins and Rogelio Rodriguez.

Rose, Hawkins and Rodriguez work with Rodhouse in the Northwestern Bat Hub, part of OSU-Cascades' Human and Ecosystem Resiliency and Sustainability Laboratory, or HERS Lab.

Outdoor recreationists in Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Idaho are invited to help further the scientists' work by listening for spotted bats and recording encounter information through the iNaturalist app. To make sure you know what you're listening for, check out this example.

Bats navigate by echolocation, emitting pulses of sound that bounce off their surroundings and picking up the echoes with their extraordinary ears; those sonar signals are how they know where they are and what's in front of them, including prey.

Most bat sounds are above the frequency range detectible by the human ear - from 20 hertz, or cycles per second, to 20,000 hertz. However, like other bat species that eat larger insects, E. maculatum puts out sounds that people can hear: at a frequency around 10,000 hertz, and above 60 decibels, the loudness of a busy street or an alarm clock.

"Spotted bats are high-flying, hard-charging lions of the sky, trying to catch the big moths," said Rodhouse, also a National Park Service ecologist. "They're going after the big critters, calling from 20 or 40 meters away, getting a bounce and chasing it down. People with undamaged hearing can hear a spotted bat more than 60 meters away, while the range of a commercially available bat acoustic recording unit is less than 40 meters."

The scientists recruited 12 volunteers, coached them in what a spotted bat sounds like, sent them out to 100-square-kilometer grid cells and told them to stay for an hour; the volunteers visited a total of 20 cells.

Rodhouse said the study design allowed for about a 70% "detection probability" - how likely you are to detect what you're trying to detect given the methods you're using, under the assumption that it's present.

"That means on average, if the bat was there, they'd have a roughly 70% chance of hearing it," he said. "It's been a big advancement just to be able to quantify the detection probability for bats, especially the rarer ones. Non-citizen science approaches have at times been way down in the 10 to 20% range, so we're excited about increasing by three or four times the ability to find this elusive bat. We told people to go out, have a picnic, enjoy the night sounds, the coyotes, the frogs. It's a great opportunity to connect with nature."

The 25 spotted bat encounters were reported from a total of 11 cells.

"Several observers reported multiple simultaneous detections, suggesting multiple individual bats," Rodhouse said. "The audible bats tend to be the rare desert bats. They're understudied and undersurveyed, and the spotted bat is a classic example. We've been missing them for generations of research, and this is a cool nexus of the desert ecology of rare bats and a new opportunity to engage members of the public in science. And the people loved it."

Findings were published in Conservation Science and Practice.

Global oceans absorb about 25% of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned. Electricity-eating bacteria known as photoferrotrophs could provide a boost to this essential process, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Scientists led by Arpita Bose, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, found that bacteria found in brackish sediments can "eat" electricity and, in the process, absorb and lock away climate-warming carbon dioxide. This unusual skill was previously thought to be almost exclusive to freshwater bacteria, but may be common in marine bacteria. The study was published May 30 in The ISME Journal, an official journal of the International Society of Microbial Ecology.

"These microbes are fixing and sequestering carbon dioxide and they can both 'eat' electricity and perform photoferrotrophy," Bose said. "Photoferrotrophs use soluble iron as an electron source for photosynthesis while fixing carbon dioxide. Marine environments are great places for them because they are rich in many things they need.

"We are interested in these microbes because of their role in carbon sequestration," she said. "Perhaps these microbes can be important for combating climate change."

The first photoferrotrophs that scientists isolated in the 1990s came from freshwater ecosystems. Only two marine photoferrotrophs have previously been discovered, but those bacteria are difficult to keep alive in a lab setting.

"This really hampered investigations on marine photoferrotrophs," Bose said.

For the new work, Bose returned to one of her favorite places to hunt for bacteria, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the Trunk River estuary. There, she and members of her team isolated 15 new strains of the common marine anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria Rhodovulum sulfidophilum.

"We found that all the Rhodovulum strains were capable of photoferrotrophy, and we used AB26 as a representative strain to show that it can also consume electricity," Bose said.

In the laboratory, the bacteria were able to harvest electrons directly from an electricity source; in the wild, they likely harvest electrons through rust and other iron minerals that are naturally abundant in marine sediments.

The scientists then conducted some additional tests with one of the strains to further illuminate the pathway that the bacteria use to directly consume electrons. A previously unknown electron-transfer protein appears to be key to the process, although additional research is needed to specifically describe the molecular mechanism.

"Anoxygenic phototrophs, like Rhodovulum sulfidophilum, are broadly distributed in marine ecosystems," said Dinesh Gupta, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-first author of the new study, who conducted this research as a graduate student in the Bose laboratory. "This study is the first to explore whether they can use insoluble/solid-phase substances as electron donors and if this electron-uptake process could be linked to carbon sequestration or carbon dioxide fixation in the ocean."

Because these bacteria are common and thriving in marine sediments already, they may already hold a key for future engineered approaches to climate change, Bose said.

"We need to understand the extent of carbon sequestration they can do in nature, as it might be a cryptic metabolism," Bose said. "We could also potentiate it further -- both for biotechnology and for the environment. This study is a big step, setting the stage for many future studies."

Our lives today are governed by electronics in all shapes and forms. Electronics, in turn, are governed by their batteries. However, the traditional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), that are widely used in electronic devices, are falling out of favor because researchers are beginning to view lithium metal batteries (LMBs) as a superior alternative due to their remarkably high energy density that exceeds LIBs by an order of magnitude! The key difference lies in the choice of anode material: LIBs use graphite, whereas LMBs use lithium metal.

Such a choice, however, comes with its own challenges. Among the most prominent ones is the formation of needle-like structures on the lithium anode surface during cycling called "dendrites" that tend to pierce the barrier between the anode and cathode, causing short-circuit and, consequently, safety issues. "Li dendrite formation is strongly dependent on the surface nature of lithium anodes. A crucial strategy for LMBs, therefore, is to build an efficient solid-electrolyte interface (SEI) at the lithium surface," explains Prof. Yong Min Lee from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Korea, who specializes in battery design.

Accordingly, researchers have explored a variety of strategies, from 2D interfacial engineering to 3D lithium anode architecture. In each case, solving one problem has merely given way to another. However, a new approach based on lithium metal powder (LMP) composite electrodes promises to stand out. The appeal of LMP lies in their spherical shape, which results in higher surface area, and ease of thickness tunability, allowing for wider and thinner electrodes. However, problems with LMP use still exist, such as the morphological failure caused by the inherent nature of their uneven surface.

Now, in a new study published in Advanced Energy Materials, Dr. Lee, along with researchers from Korea, adopted a novel approach in which they pre-planted LiNO3 to the LMP itself during the electrode fabrication process, allowing them to fabricate ~150-mm-wide and 20-μm-thick electrodes, which showed a coulombic efficiency of 96%.

The addition of LiNO3 to LMP accomplished two things: it induced a uniform N-rich SEI on the LMP surface and led to its sustained stabilization over prolonged cycling as LiNO3 was steadily released into the electrolyte. In fact, LMBs with LiNO3 pre-planted LMP (LN-LMP) demonstrated an outstanding cycling performance, with 87% capacity retention over 450 cycles, outperforming even cells with LiNO3-added electrolytes.

Prof. Lee is thrilled by these findings and speaks of their practical ramifications. "We expect that pre-planting Li stabilized additives into the LMP electrode would be a stepping-stone towards the commercialization of large-scale Li-metal, Li-S, and Li-air batteries with high specific energy and long cycle life," he says.

With respect to batteries, it looks like lithium is not going out of fashion anytime soon!

Tokyo - Machine learning is the process by which computers adapt their responses without human intervention. This form of artificial intelligence (AI) is now common in everyday tools such as virtual assistants and is being developed for use in areas from medicine to agriculture. A challenge posed by the rapid expansion of machine learning is the high energy demand of the complex computing processes. Researchers from The University of Tokyo have reported the first integration of a mobility-enhanced field-effect transistor (FET) and a ferroelectric capacitor (FE-CAP) to bring the memory system into the proximity of a microprocessor and improve the efficiency of the data-intensive computing system. Their findings were presented at the 2021 Symposium on VLSI Technology.

Memory cells require both a memory component and an access transistor. In currently available examples, the access transistors are generally silicon-metal-oxide semiconductor FETs. While the memory elements can be formed in the 'back end of line' (BEOL) layers, the access transistors need to be formed in what are known as the 'front end of line' layers of the integrated circuit, which isn't a good use of this space.

In contrast, oxide semiconductors such as indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) can be included in BEOL layers because they can be processed at low temperatures. By incorporating both the access transistor and the memory into a single monolith in the BEOL, high-density, energy-efficient embedded memory can be achieved directly on a microprocessor.

The researchers used IGZO doped with tin (IGZTO) for both the oxide semiconductor FET and ferroelectric capacitor (FE-cap) to create 3D embedded memory.

"In light of the high mobility and excellent reliability of our previously reported IGZO FET, we developed a tin-doped IGZTO FET," explains study first author Jixuan Wu. "We then integrated the IGZTO FET with an FE-cap to introduce its scalable properties."

Both the drive current and the effective mobility of the IGZTO FET were twice those of the IGZO FET without tin. Because the mobility of the oxide semiconductor must be high enough to drive the FE-cap, introducing the tin ensures successful integration.

"The proximity achieved with our design will significantly reduce the distance that signals must travel, which will speed up learning and inference processes in AI computing, making them more energy efficient," study author Masaharu Kobayashi explains. "We believe our findings provide another step towards hardware systems that can support future AI applications of higher complexity."