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ITHACA, N.Y. - Solar-power developers need to explore using lower-quality agricultural land for solar energy, incentivize dual-use (combined agriculture and solar) options, avoid concentrated solar development and engage communities early to achieve New York's green energy goals, according to forthcoming Cornell University research.

"As farmland is generally flat and cleared, agricultural land will be the prime target for future solar energy development," said Max Zhang, professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. "Good farmland, however, is not ideal."

Zhang is senior author of "Strategic Land Use Analysis for Solar Energy Development in New York State," which will publish in August 2021 in Renewable Energy.

Under New York state's 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the state must reach 70% renewable energy generation by 2030 - and 100% by 2040. Assuming no further offshore wind energy development beyond the current 9-gigawatt goal, the state will need 21.6 gigawatts of utility-scale solar energy capacity to reach that target.

That goal can't be attained without using lower-grade agricultural land and dual-use (agrivoltaics) options, according to the research.

So far, 40% of current solar energy capacity has been developed on agricultural land, the researchers found, while 84% of land identified as suitable for future solar development - about 140 gigawatts - is agricultural.

"Solar farms are already taking up agricultural land and it will likely take even more to achieve New York's energy goals," Zhang said. "For the solar-energy community, this is not a surprise. But for the agricultural community, this is a surprise."

Keeping solar farms from becoming too concentrated in regions will likely help mitigate negative economic activity. This kind of concentration leads to agricultural land conversion and then initiates a negative, economic chain reaction for businesses that depend on farming, according to the paper.

In their research on solar development, the engineers found growing public opposition in rural communities to the utility-level development projects. Alleviating public concerns though community engagement is essential for sustainable growth of solar in New York, Zhang said.

Devising a decision-making approach that actively involves the community early can ease public opposition to solar development. During a preliminary analysis, the group found that more than 80% of land containing large installations is private land where developers typically sign a lease with private landowners, before the parties approach the broader community. Zhang said that this decide-announce-defend approach arouses protective actions from the wider community.

"It makes economic sense that if your business is to generate solar energy flows, you will look at longer term," said Zhang, who is a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. "If energy companies build a better relationship with the community, the more likely the community will help to develop more energy on nearby land. It's easier to engage and educate the community, rather than defend actions."

MIAMI--A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science tracked large sharks in Miami and The Bahamas to understand how these migratory animals respond to major storms, like hurricanes.

The researchers analyzed acoustic tag data from tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas), nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum), and great hammerheads (Sphyrna mokarran) before, during, and after Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017. They found that they behaved differently by species and location.

For example, in response to Hurricane Irma passing by Miami, bull sharks, great hammerhead, and most nurse sharks appeared to mostly evacuate the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay, similar to previous studies that found that small sharks evacuate inshore shallow waters in the wake of a storm. However, large tiger sharks in the Bahamas remained in shallow inshore waters, even as the site received a direct hit from the eye of the category-5 Hurricane Matthew, and immediately following the storm, the number of tiger sharks doubled.

"I was amazed to see that big tiger sharks didn't evacuate even as the eye of the hurricane was bearing down on them, it was as if they didn't even flinch." said Neil Hammerschlag, a research associate professor at the UM Rosenstiel School and the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. "their numbers even increased after the storm passed. We suspect tiger sharks were probably taking advantage of all the new scavenging opportunities from dead animals that were churned up in the storm."

"Major storms, like hurricanes, are predicted to increase in frequency and strength with climate change," said Hammerschlag, who is also the director of the University's Shark and Research Conservation Program. "How these storms impact the environment, including large sharks, is of interest and conservation concern to many."

The identity of the skeletal remains of a member of the 1845 Franklin expedition has been confirmed using DNA and genealogical analyses by a team of researchers from the University of Waterloo, Lakehead University, and Trent University. This is the first member of the ill-fated expedition to be positively identified through DNA.

DNA extracted from tooth and bone samples recovered in 2013 were confirmed to be the remains of Warrant Officer John Gregory, engineer aboard HMS Erebus. The results matched a DNA sample obtained from a direct descendant of Gregory.

The remains of the officer were found on King William Island, Nunavut. "We now know that John Gregory was one of three expedition personnel who died at this particular site, located at Erebus Bay on the southwest shore of King William Island," says Douglas Stenton, adjunct professor of anthropology at Waterloo and co-author of a new paper about the discovery.

"Having John Gregory's remains being the first to be identified via genetic analysis is an incredible day for our family, as well as all those interested in the ill-fated Franklin expedition," said Gregory's great-great-great grandson Jonathan Gregory of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. "The whole Gregory family is extremely grateful to the entire research team for their dedication and hard work, which is so critical in unlocking pieces of history that have been frozen in time for so long."

Sir John Franklin's 1845 northwest passage expedition, with 129 sailors on two ships, Erebus and Terror, entered the Arctic in 1845. In April 1848, 105 survivors abandoned their ice-trapped ships in a desperate escape attempt. None would survive. Since the mid-19th century, skeletal remains of dozens of crew members have been found on King William Island, but none had been positively identified.

To date, the DNA of 26 other members of the Franklin expedition have been extracted from remains found in nine archaeological sites situated along the line of the 1848 retreat. "Analysis of these remains has also yielded other important information on these individuals, including their estimated age at death, stature, and health," says Anne Keenleyside, Trent anthropology professor and co-author of the paper.

"We are extremely grateful to the Gregory family for sharing their family history with us and for providing DNA samples in support of our research. We'd like to encourage other descendants of members of the Franklin expedition to contact our team to see if their DNA can be used to identify the other 26 individuals," says Stenton.

Genealogical records indicated a direct, five-generation paternal relationship between the living descendant and John Gregory. "It was fortunate that the samples collected contained well-preserved genetic material, says Stephen Fratpietro of Lakehead's Paleo-DNA lab, who is a co-author.

Prior to this DNA match, the last information about his voyage known to Gregory's family was in a letter he wrote to his wife Hannah from Greenland on 9 July 1845 before the ships entered the Canadian Arctic.

This latest discovery helps to complete the story of the Franklin victims, says Robert Park, Waterloo anthropology professor and co-author. "The identification proves that Gregory survived three years locked in the ice on board HMS Erebus. But he perished 75 kilometers south at Erebus Bay."

The remains of Gregory and two others were first discovered in 1859 and buried in 1879. The grave was rediscovered in 1993, and in 1997 several bones that had been exposed through disturbance of the grave were placed in a cairn with a commemorative plaque. The grave was then excavated in 2013 and after being analyzed, all the remains were returned to the site in 2014 and placed in a new larger memorial cairn.

A team of engineers recommends expanding fast-charging stations for electric vehicles as campuses and businesses start planning for a post-pandemic world.

The recommendation is based on a study of charging patterns for electric vehicles on the University of California San Diego campus from early January to late May of 2020, after the university moved most of its operations online. Researchers say the findings can be applied to a broader range of settings.

"Workplace charging is a critical enabler of carbon-free transportation as the electrons consumed primarily come from solar power plants, as opposed to at-home charging, which occurs at night and relies more on fossil fuel power plants," said Jan Kleissl, the paper's senior author and a professor of environmental engineering at UC San Diego.

It's the first time that a research team gathered information on workplace charging patterns for electric vehicles during the COVID-19 pandemic. As expected, charging declined dramatically once most campus operations became remote. Also as expected, charging at the campus' medical center was less impacted as medical facilities continued most in-person operations and healthcare workers and patients kept using those charging stations.

This reflects nationwide trends. Vehicle travel in the United States declined by about 40 percent from mid-March to mid-April 2020, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

But DC fast chargers that provide a full charge in about half an hour were less affected than what is known as Level 2 chargers, which provide a full charge over eight hours. Energy dispatched at Level 2 chargers on the main UC San Diego campus decreased by 84 percent. DC fast charging initially dropped by 67 percent. These stations quickly returned to near-normal usage in a short period of time, unlike Level 2 charging stations.

"This finding reinforces ongoing efforts to deploy at least an additional 20 DCFCs primarily on the perimeter of campus in order to serve both UC San Diego commuters as well as the general public in need of recharging," said Byron Washom, the UC San Diego director of strategic energy initiatives and one of the paper's coauthors.

The team details their findings in the March 23 issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

Only four out of 100 stations in the study were fast-charging. More broadly, in the United States, only a tiny fraction of charging stations are fast-charging, and most of those only serve Tesla vehicles. For example, California has about 31,800 EV charging stations. Of those, almost 3000 are Tesla supercharging stations, only available to Tesla vehicles. An additional 470 are DCFC stations managed by California-based Chargepoint.

The study looked at 100 charging stations in 28 parking structures. Specifically, researchers found that from March 11 to May 20, 2020:

Charging on the main campus dropped by 84 percent from pre-pandemic levels

Charging dropped by 50 percent at the parking structures at the UC San Diego medical center locations

Charging at DC fast charging stations initally dropped by 67 percent before going back up to near pre-pandemic levels

Charging will likely not resume back to normal even after the pandemic ends, researchers say.

"Commuting patterns based on five days a week in the office are unlikely to resume, however, as employers may allow more telecommuting even after the end of the pandemic," Kleissl said. .

That may be good news as the anticipated dramatic increase in EV adoption over the coming years would otherwise strain the existing charging infrastructure, he added.

The European Alps is certainly one of the most scrutinized mountain range in the world, as it forms a true open-air laboratory showing how climate change affects biodiversity. Although many studies have independently demonstrated the impact of climate change in the Alps on either the seasonal activity (i.e. phenology) or the migration of plants and animals, no systematic analysis has been carried out on both consequences simultaneously. A European team of ecologists1, including Jonathan Lenoir, CNRS Researcher in the research unit Écologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés (CNRS/University of Picardie Jules Verne), has just published a review that quantifies seasonal changes and elevational movements of more than 2,000 species of plants, animals and fungi that live in the Alps. This review shows that species have shifted their life cycles (e.g. bud burst for plants or nesting for birds) earlier during the season2 and their distribution higher along the elevational gradient, but that the average velocity of range shift3, which varies from species to species, is often lagging behind the velocity of climate change. These results, partly based on citizen science data, were published online on 27 April 2021 in Biological Reviews.

Notes:

1 The laboratories: WSL Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Department of Environmental Sciences (University of Basel, Switzerland), Institute of Geography (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland), Centre de Recherches sur les Ecosystèmes d'Altitude (Chamonix Mont-Blanc, France), le Laboratoire d'écologie alpine ( CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes/Université Savoie Mont Blanc), WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, Schweizerische Vogelwarte, Institut für Evolutionsbiologie und Umweltwissenschaften (Universität Zürich, Switzerland), Swiss National Park (Zernez, Switzerland), Department of Arctic and Marine Biology (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway).

2 While terrestrial insects, reptiles, migratory birds, and plants have reacted strongly to global warming by advancing their spring activity by an average of 2 to 8 days per decade, other groups of organisms such as nesting birds, amphibians, and aquatic insects have shifted their spring activity less or not at all.

3 Significant changes in mean elevation distribution were found for butterflies, reptiles, trees and shrubs (more than +30 m/decade), while certain groups such as semi-aquatic insects having an aquatic larval stage or birds, ferns and alpine plants only migrated a little in elevation (less than+ 15 m/decade).

AMHERST, Mass. - A team of researchers at the Center for Bioactive Delivery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Institute for Applied Life Sciences has engineered a nanoparticle that has the potential to revolutionize disease treatment, including for cancer. This new research, which appears today in Angewandte Chemie, combines two different approaches to more precisely and effectively deliver treatment to the specific cells affected by cancer.

Two of the most promising new treatments involve delivery of cancer-fighting drugs via biologics or antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). Each has its own advantages and limitations. Biologics, such as protein-based drugs, can directly substitute for a malfunctioning protein in cells. As a result, they have less serious side effects than those associated with traditional chemotherapy. But, because of their large size, they are unable to get into specific cells. ADCs, on the other hand, are able to target specific malignant cells with microdoses of therapeutic drugs, but the antibodies can only carry a limited drug cargo. Since the drugs are more toxic than biologics, increasing the dose of ADCs increases the risk of harmful side effects.

"What our team has done," explains Khushboo Singh, a graduate student in the chemistry department and one of the study's lead authors, "is to combine the advantages of biologics and ADCs and address their weaknesses. It is a new platform for cancer therapy."

The team's approach depends on a nanoparticle the team engineered called a "protein-antibody conjugate," or PAC. "Imagine that the antibodies in PACs are the address on an envelope," adds Sankaran "Thai" Thayumanavan, distinguished professor in chemistry and interim head of biomedical engineering at UMass, "and that the cancer-fighting protein is the contents of that envelope. The PAC allows us to deliver the envelope with its protected treatment to the correct address. So, safer drugs are delivered to the right cell--the result would be a treatment with fewer side effects"

At the heart of the PAC is a "polymer brush," a nanoparticle that the team engineered. This brush does two things. First, it is studded with antibodies that are capable of locating individual cancerous cells. Next, the brush has to both hold a sizable cargo of biologics but also keep that dose intact. The team found that their nanoparticle could carry four times the therapeutic dose of a typical ADC, and, through a variety of techniques, could be increased many times over.

While the UMass team's research represents a major milestone in cancer research, their findings are also widely applicable, and "open many new opportunities in biomedicine, extending far beyond cancer to all sorts of genetic diseases, or really any abnormality that occurs inside a human cell," says Bin Liu, one of the papers lead authors and a graduate student in the UMass chemistry department at the time of the research.

"Among the implications," says Thayumanavan, "perhaps the most exciting part is that this opens the door to develop cures for certain cancers that have been long considered undruggable or incurable" The team's research is currently being tested in models beyond a petri-dish.

Quantum computers or quantum sensors consist of materials that are completely different to their classic predecessors. These materials are faced with the challenge of combining contradicting properties that quantum technologies entail, as for example good accessibility of quantum bits with maximum shielding from environmental influences. In this regard, so-called two-dimensional materials, which only consist of a single layer of atoms, are particularly promising.

Researchers at the new Center for Applied Quantum Technologies and the 3rd Institute of Physics at the University of Stuttgart have now succeeded in identifying promising quantum bits in these materials. They were able to show that the quantum bits can be generated, read out and coherently controlled in a very robust manner. "There certainly is still a long way to go before these quantum bits can be used in quantum technology," says the head of the study and director of the 3rd Institute of Physics at the University of Stuttgart, Prof. Jörg Wrachtrup. "However, the properties found by the scientists are so convincing that they can trigger a new boost in quantum technologies."

For millennia, humans in the high latitudes have been enthralled by auroras--the northern and southern lights. Yet even after all that time, it appears the ethereal, dancing ribbons of light above Earth still hold some secrets.

In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report a new feature to Earth's atmospheric light show. Examining video taken nearly two decades ago, the researchers describe multiple instances where a section of the diffuse aurora--the faint, background-like glow accompanying the more vivid light commonly associated with auroras--goes dark, as if scrubbed by a giant blotter. Then, after a short period of time, the blacked-out section suddenly reappears.

The researchers say the behavior, which they call "diffuse auroral erasers," has never been mentioned in the scientific literature. The findings appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research Space Physics.

Auroras occur when charged particles flowing from the sun--called the solar wind--interact with Earth's protective magnetic bubble. Some of those particles escape and fall toward our planet, and the energy released during their collisions with gases in Earth's atmosphere generate the light associated with auroras.

"The biggest thing about these erasers that we didn't know before but know now is that they exist," says Allison Jaynes, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa and study co-author. "It raises the question: Are these a common phenomenon that has been overlooked, or are they rare?

"Knowing they exist means there is a process that is creating them," Jaynes continues, "and it may be a process that we haven't started to look at yet because we never knew they were happening until now."

It was on March 15, 2002, that David Knudsen, a physicist at the University of Calgary, set up a video camera in Churchill, a town along Hudson Bay in Canada, to film auroras. Knudsen's group was a little disheartened; the forecast called for clear, dark skies--normally perfect conditions for viewing auroras--but no dazzling illumination was happening. Still, the team was using a camera specially designed to capture low-level light, much like night-vision goggles.

Though the scientists saw only mostly darkness as they gazed upward with their own eyes, the camera was picking up all sorts of auroral activity, including an unusual sequence where areas of the diffuse aurora disappeared, then came back.

Knudsen, looking at the video as it was being recorded, scribbled in his notebook, "pulsating 'black out' diffuse glow, which then fills in over several seconds."

"What surprised me, and what made me write it in the notebook, is when a patch brightened and turned off, the background diffuse aurora was erased. It went away," says Knudsen, a Fort Dodge, Iowa, native who has studied aurora for more than 35 years and is a co-author on the study. "There was a hole in the diffuse aurora. And then that hole would fill back in after a half-minute or so. I had never seen something like that before."

The note lay dormant, and the video unstudied, until Iowa's Jaynes handed it to graduate student Riley Troyer to investigate. Jaynes learned about Knudsen's recording at a scientific meeting in 2010 and referenced the eraser note in her doctoral thesis on diffuse aurora a few years later. Now on the faculty at Iowa, she wanted to learn more about the phenomenon.

"I knew there was something there. I knew it was different and unique," says Jaynes, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "l had some ideas how it could be analyzed, but I hadn't done that yet. I handed it to Riley, and he went much further with it by figuring out his own way to analyze the data and produce some significant conclusions."

Troyer, from Fairbanks, Alaska, took up the assignment with gusto.

"I've seen hundreds of auroras growing up," says Troyer, who is in his third year of doctoral studies at Iowa. "They're part of my heritage, something I can study while keeping ties to where I'm from."

Troyer created a software program to key in on frames in the video when the faint erasers were visible. In all, he cataloged 22 eraser events in the two-hour recording.

"The most valuable thing we found is showing the time that it takes for the aurora to go from an eraser event (when the diffuse aurora is blotted out) to be filled or colored again," says Troyer, who is the paper's corresponding author, "and how long it takes to go from that erased state back to being diffuse aurora. Having a value on that will help with future modeling of magnetic fields."

Jaynes says learning about diffuse auroral erasers is akin to studying DNA to understand the entire human body.

"Particles that fall into our atmosphere from space can affect our atmospheric layers and our climate," Jaynes says. "While particles with diffuse aurora may not be the main cause, they are smaller building blocks that can help us understand the aurora system as a whole, and may broaden our understanding how auroras happen on other planets in our solar system."

The ability of antibodies to recognize specific cancer cells is used in oncology to specifically target those cells with small active agents. Research published in the journal Angewandte Chemie shows that scientists have now built a transport system that delivers even large protein-based drugs into cancer cells. This study demonstrates how proteins can arrive at their target intact, protected from destructive proteases by polymer brushes.

Developing anticancer treatments involves two recurring problems for researchers. An active agent needs to be able to kill the body's cells at the root of the cancer, and it should be active in target cancer cells rather than in healthy cells. Many medical researchers are therefore working on the concept of a cargo package. The active agent stays protected and packaged until it reaches the target location, while antibodies that only attach to cancer cells help with "finding the right address".

These antibodies recognize specific receptor structures on the outer membrane of cancer cells. They attach to these structures and the cell absorbs the active agent. However, this strategy is unsuccessful when the active agents are large proteins. Proteins of this type are usually water soluble and they cannot pass through the cell membrane. A further issue is caused by the body's own protease enzymes, which break down the transported proteins before they can reach their target location.

Sankaran Thayumanavan and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA, have now developed a particular protected nanosized cargo package, which meets both requirements of targeted delivery and keeping the cargo intact. They use miniscule beads made of silicon dioxide with a diameter of just 200 nanometers. The surface of these beads is covered with brush-like polymer strands made of polyethylene glycol (PEG) that can be doubly functionalized, giving tiny "brush beads".

The researchers attached the desired active-agent protein and antibodies to the polymer bristles using simple click chemistry. The finished bead-shaped packages have antibodies on the very outside, with the proteins tucked away safely within the forest of polymer strands.

As well as being able to transport water-soluble proteins, this type of protein-antibody conjugate (PAC) also afforded the researchers another potential advantage: the possibility of attaining a high protein-antibody ratio in this format. They say that, at least in theory, more than 10 000 proteins could be transported per (expensive) antibody using the researchers' PACs, unlike the maximum of four active agents per antibody in previous antibody-drug combinations.

The team tested their system on various cell cultures with different antibodies and test proteins. As planned, the proteins reached their targets in the cell and fulfilled their deadly role.

The team's next steps involve working out whether the cargo packages can be protected from the body's macrophages. However, they are optimistic because the PEG functionalities and the surface antibodies are designed for a quick delivery while minimizing clearance by macrophages.

MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers added to the understanding of the protective immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a study published in April in iScience. The team found that approximately 3% of the population is asymptomatic, which means that their bodies can get rid of the virus without developing signs of illness.

The researchers screened more than 60,000 blood samples from symptomless individuals in the Southeastern U.S., including Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, for the IgG antibody to the viral spike protein.

What began as a highly collaborative statewide effort to detect SARS-CoV-2 accurately, when tests were lacking, has led to discoveries. Last year, Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D., professor, and scientific director of the FACT-accredited Clean Cell Therapy Unit at MUSC, led the task of developing a method to detect COVID-19 infections rapidly in patients.

The research team developed an orthogonal ELISA-based serological assay, which allows for large-scale antibody testing. While commercial antibody tests are now more readily available, the work has excellent strength in findings because of the exceptionally large sample size, said Mehrotra. Studies such as this shed light on the current unknowns, such as the longevity of the antibodies, their ability to protect from repeat infections and the protective concentration (titer) of neutralizing antibodies.

"As cancer researchers who focus on understanding the role of the immune system in cancer, we are well-positioned to tackle the difficult immunity questions raised by COVID-19. This work was a concerted effort with the highly skilled scientists in the Clean Cell Facility who processed this large sample population," said Mehrotra.

Disease-specific antibody research is necessary to understand protective immunity and understand more fully the prevalence of infection and immune responses to both the virus and vaccines. The team found that high levels of anti-S IgG, the antibody that detects the spike protein, and anti-RBD IgG, the antibody that detects the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein, strongly correlated with neutralizing activity, meaning they defend the person from the virus. Antibodies from 94 hospitalized COVID-19 patients were also assessed: the data showed that compared to asymptomatic individuals with high anti-S IgG, sick patients had decreased antibody responses and reduced neutralizing activity.

The data showed that younger (30 years old and younger) versus older individuals had the highest antibody responses. Also, the findings matched other reports indicating that COVID-19 is disproportionately high in African Americans in Southeastern states.

In the future, this tool can be used to monitor antibody levels upon vaccination or as a screening tool for therapeutic convalescent plasma. Since analyzing neutralizing antibodies in all patients and asymptomatic individuals is challenging, the results indicate that IgG anti-S or RBD can act as a surrogate in determining neutralizing activity in individuals tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccine response.

More studies are needed to understand the differences between neutralizing antibodies in asymptomatic and hospitalized individuals. Follow-up studies can be done with this extensive data set; for example, the biomarkers between asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals can be compared.

The increase in cross-disciplinary research reveals how novel strategies can accelerate research across medical subdisciplines. The development of mRNA-based COVID vaccines is anticipated to boost cancer research developments. For two decades, scientists have been trying to use RNA as a therapeutic but with little success, since RNA naturally degrades quickly. Now, with the COVID vaccines, it is apparent that stabilizing techniques are feasible and can be translated to other applications, such as cancer vaccines targeting markers on cancer cells or epitopes.

Identifying disease prevalence as a whole helps public health leaders to target interventions and prioritize resources. "Research across the biomedical research spectrum over the last year has demonstrated how public health can be accelerated by collaboration from all sectors, including academic, pharmaceutical and regulatory agencies," said Mehrotra.

The introduction of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries has revolutionized technology as a whole, leading to major advances in consumer goods across nearly all sectors. Battery-powered devices have become ubiquitous across the world. While the availability of technology is generally a good thing, the rapid growth has led directly to several key ethical and environmental issues surrounding the use of Li-ion batteries.

Current Li-ion batteries utilize significant amounts of cobalt, which in several well-documented international cases is mined using child labor in dangerous working environments. Additionally, only a very small percentage of Li-ion batteries are recycled, increasing the demand for cobalt and other strategic elements.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Texas A&M University has made a breakthrough that could lead to battery production moving away from cobalt. In an article published in the May issue of Nature, Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, Axalta Coating Systems Chair and professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, and Dr. Karen Wooley, distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry and holder of the W.T. Doherty-Welch Chair in Chemistry in the College of Science, outline their research into a new battery technology platform that is completely metal free. This new battery technology platform utilizes a polypeptide organic radical construction.

"By moving away from lithium and working with these polypeptides, which are components of proteins, it really takes us into this realm of not only avoiding the need for mining precious metals, but opening opportunities to power wearable or implantable electronic devices and also to easily recycle the new batteries," said Wooley, recently honored as the 2021 SEC Professor of the Year. "They [polypeptide batteries] are degradable, they are recyclable, they are non-toxic and they are safer across the board."

The all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules also solves the problem of recyclability. The components of the new battery platform can be degraded on demand in acidic conditions to generate amino acids, other building blocks and degradation products -- one of the major breakthroughs in this research, according to Lutkenhaus.

"The big problem with lithium-ion batteries right now is that they're not recycled to the degree that we are going to need for the future electrified transportation economy," Lutkenhaus added. "The rate of recycling lithium-ion batteries right now is in the single digits. There is valuable material in the lithium-ion battery, but it's very difficult and energy intensive to recover."

The development of a metal-free, all-polypeptide organic radical battery composed of redox-active amino-acid macromolecules that degrade on demand marks significant progress toward sustainable, recyclable batteries that minimize dependence on strategic metals. As a next step, Wooley and Lutkenhaus have begun working in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Tabor, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, through a 2020 Texas A&M Triads for Transformation (T3) grant that aims to utilize machine learning to optimize the materials and structure of the battery platform.

The idea of creating quantum computers has long captured the minds of researchers and experts of IT corporations. They are the most powerful computers operating according to the laws of the quantum world and capable of solving many problems more efficiently than the most productive classical supercomputers. Similar developments are underway, for example, at Google and IBM. However, many such projects require the use of cryostats. These are vessels with liquid nitrogen or compressed helium, inside which quantum processors are cooled to temperatures below -270°C. Such a low temperature is required to maintain the superconductivity effect, which is necessary for the operation of quantum computers.

The developments of Alexey Kavokin and his colleagues are related to the creation of a polariton platform for quantum computing. One of its key advantages is the ability to perform quantum computing at room temperature. The polariton laser has been discovered by Alexey Kavokin and his colleagues. It operates on the principle of Bose-Einstein condensation of exciton polaritons at room temperature, and makes possible the creation of qubits - the basic elements of quantum computers. Qubits occur using the method of laser irradiation of artificial semiconductor structures - microcavities.

In the new study, the researchers managed to observe experimentally for the first time how a Bose-Einstein condensate is formed in the world's thinnest semiconductor - the atomically thin crystal of molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2). Bosonic condensate contains tens of thousands of quanta of 'liquid light', the exact name of which is exciton polaritons. These particles have the properties of both light and ordinary material particles, and they can be used as information carriers. This means that, instead of electrons, an electrically neutral liquid light can run through the microcircuits of any electronic device. Polariton devices will make it possible to process immense data streams at speeds close to the speed of light.

The study engaged physicists from: the University of Würzburg (Germany); the University of California Merced (USA); the Westlake University in China; Arizona State University (USA); National Institute for Materials Science (Japan); and St Petersburg University (Russia).

'The Bose-Einstein condensate was obtained in a semiconductor microcavity containing a layer of a new crystalline material - an atomically thin crystal of MoSe2. The localisation of light in such a thin layer was achieved for the first time,' said Professor Alexey Kavokin about the discovery. 'This research can lead to the invention of new types of lasers based on two-dimensional crystals, allowing the creation of qubits - quantum transistors that are at the heart of a quantum computer operating on a liquid light.'

It is important to understand, as Alexey Kavokin has repeatedly noted, that quantum computers are now referred to as the atomic bomb of the 21st century. This is because they open up tremendous opportunities not only in the field of, for example, the creation of new drugs, but also in the field of cyberattacks. Having such a powerful computer, it is possible to crack almost any code. Consequently, scientists today are also facing an important challenge of protecting quantum devices - quantum cryptography. This is where the discoveries of Alexey Kavokin and his colleagues are also of great importance.

LA JOLLA--(May 6, 2021) Plants are unparalleled in their ability to capture CO2 from the air, but this benefit is temporary, as leftover crops release carbon back into the atmosphere, mostly through decomposition. Researchers have proposed a more permanent, and even useful, fate for this captured carbon by turning plants into a valuable industrial material called silicon carbide (SiC)--offering a strategy to turn an atmospheric greenhouse gas into an economically and industrially valuable material.

In a new study, published in the journal RSC Advances on April 27, 2021, scientists at the Salk Institute transformed tobacco and corn husks into SiC and quantified the process with more detail than ever before. These findings are crucial to helping researchers, such as members of Salk's Harnessing Plants Initiative, evaluate and quantify carbon-sequestration strategies to potentially mitigate climate change as CO2 levels continue to rise to unprecedented levels.

"The study offers a very careful accounting for how you make this valuable substance and how many atoms of carbon you've pulled out of the atmosphere. And with that number, you can start to extrapolate what role plants could play in mitigating greenhouse gases while also converting an industrial byproduct, CO2, into valuable materials by using natural systems like photosynthesis," says co-corresponding author and Salk Professor Joseph Noel.

SiC, also known as carborundum, is an ultrahard material used in ceramics, sandpaper, semiconductors and LEDs. The Salk team used a previously reported method to transform plant material into SiC in three stages by counting carbons at each step: First, the researchers grew tobacco, chosen for its short growing season, from seed. They then froze and ground the harvested plants into a powder and treated it with several chemicals including a silicon-containing compound. In the third and final stage, the powdered plants were petrified (turned into a stony substance) to make SiC, a process that involves heating the material up to 1600 ?C.

"The rewarding part was that we were able to demonstrate how much carbon can be sequestered from agricultural waste products like corn husks while producing a valuable, green material typically produced from fossil fuels," says first author Suzanne Thomas, a Salk staff researcher.

Through elemental analysis of the plant powders, the authors measured a 50,000-fold increase in sequestered carbon from seed to lab-grown plant, demonstrating plants' efficiency at pulling down atmospheric carbon. Upon heating to high temperatures for petrification, the plant material loses some carbon as a variety of decomposition products but ultimately retains about 14 percent of the plant-captured carbon.

The researchers calculated that the process to make 1.8 g of SiC required about 177 kW/h of energy, with the majority of that energy (70 percent) being used for the furnace in the petrification step. The authors note that current manufacturing processes for SiC carry comparable energy costs. So while the production energy required means that the plant-to-SiC process isn't carbon neutral, the team suggests that new technologies created by renewable energy companies could bring down energy costs.

"This is a step towards making SiC in an environmentally responsible approach," says co-corresponding author and Salk visiting scientist James La Clair.

Next, the team hopes to explore this process with a wider variety of plants, in particular plants like horsetail or bamboo, that naturally contain large amounts of silicon.

ITHACA, N.Y. - By swiping surfaces in commercial food processing plants with specially designed rapid-testing adenosine triphospate (ATP) swabs - which produce a light similar to the glow of fireflies in the presence of microorganisms - spoilage and foodborne illness could diminish, according to a new study from Cornell University food scientists.

During food production, routine cleaning and surface sanitation are keys to help prevent microbial contamination in the end food products. Without such a sanitation regime, food from processing plants can become more vulnerable to spoilage, and people who eat that food may face greater risk with illness or death from foodborne pathogens.

"Food scientists know that for processing plants, visual inspection is not a reliable indicator of cleaning-protocol success," said Randy Worobo, professor of food science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. "All food factory 'ecosystems' are prone to niches where microorganisms can hang out or where food residues can persist. We need to find them."

Worobo is senior author of the study, "Implementation of ATP and Microbial Indicator Testing for Hygiene Monitoring in a Tofu Production Facility Improves Product Quality and Hygienic Conditions of Food Contact Surfaces: A Case Study," which published on Feb. 12 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Each year more than 48 million Americans get sick from foodborne pathogens; more than 120,000 are hospitalized and about 3,000 die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Examining the efficacy of an environmental monitoring program using the 3M Clean-Trace Hygiene Monitoring and Management system for ATP monitoring, in combination with 3M Petrifilm Plates, for microbiological enumeration - Worobo and lead author Jonathan H. Sogin, a doctoral student in food science, in partnership with 3M Food Safety microbiologists, spent nine months testing samples collected from the processing environment in a commercial tofu manufacturing facility.

Worobo, Sogin and the 3M Food Safety team assembled a custom-designed plan to use an ATP swab test to check dozens of critical points in the plant after it had been cleaned. Following use, the ATP swab is placed in a luminometer instrument, where the bioluminescence of contaminants is detected.

The amount of light is transformed in the luminometer to relative light units, where this value is displayed on the instrument. If it exceeds a defined threshold value, the surface would be considered dirty and may indicate that cleaning operations were not performed properly.

Results show that targeted cleaning - demonstrated by ATP monitoring, and verified by further microbiological tests - can improve the environmental hygiene of food-processing facilities.

"If a plant supervisor is responsible for the cleaning crew and the supervisor says, 'That's not clean enough,' there might be an employee who thinks that the supervisor is picking on them," Worobo said. "Instead, if you have luminometer, like the 3M Clean-Trace system, that device removes the bias so that the cleaning crew itself can see the numbers. These methods become a quantitative way to ensure that they're doing a good job."

ATP monitoring and microbiological enumeration can verify and improve the efficacy of cleaning and sanitation practices, which can have a positive impact not only for the facility, but for product quality, Sogin said.

"This test can not only verify that the plant's equipment and food-contact surfaces are cleaned and sanitized before starting food preparations, it can identify problematic situations. It helps you become a sleuth," Worobo said. "But as a standard, the industry should be using this method to verify cleaning and sanitation programs. It's key."

Ikoma, Japan - Many natural compounds have various anti-inflammatory and other beneficial properties that humans have been utilizing for medicinal purposes for hundreds of years. However, the specific molecular mechanisms behind these health-promoting effects are not always clear. One such compound is 1'-acetoxychavicol acetate, or ACA, which comes from the tropical ginger Alpinia plant. Now, researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) have identified how ACA can help in the treatment of inflammatory diseases.

In a report published in International Immunology, they found that ACA attenuates mitochondrial damage through decreasing mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS), blocking activation of a crucial protein complex known as the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome. Many inflammatory diseases, like inflammatory bowel disease, display improper and chronic activation of this complex.

Previous work has suggested that the NLRP3 inflammasome plays a significant role in promoting inflammation by secreting a molecule called IL-1ß. This acts as a messenger that recruits various immune cells to the site of injury or infection. Additional studies described how production of ROS can help trigger activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome. Because other groups showed that ACA can reduce ROS production in certain immune cells, the NAIST researchers became curious how this compound would impact the NLRP3 inflammasome and its functions.

"Many disease pathogeneses involve dysregulation of the inflammasome," says Daisuke Ori, co-lead author on the study. "Blood cells from people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune disorders frequently have increased levels of inflammasome-derived IL-1ß. Therefore, targeting the NLRP3 inflammasome with a compound like ACA may be a promising therapeutic strategy."

The researchers grew immune cells in culture that were obtained from mouse bone marrow, and also used a mouse model of colitis. ACA was added to the growing cells and the live mice were given the compound in their food. The researchers then examined the effects on ROS production, secretion of IL-1ß, and other markers of inflammation.

"Cells treated with ACA had significantly reduced IL-1ß production, as well as lower levels of ROS," explains Taro Kawai, senior author. "ACA could also inhibit NLRP3 inflammasome activation in the colitis mouse model." These in vivo results are promising, as they suggest ACA has the potential to treat or prevent the development of inflammatory diseases. "Interestingly, we did not observe high levels of immune cell death when using ACA, which means that it may be relatively safe," continues Ori.

This work provides novel evidence for a specific molecular mechanism governing the previously observed anti-inflammatory properties of ACA. Furthermore, it highlights the potential of ACA for therapeutic use in diseases mediated by IL-1ß molecules, or associated with cytokine storm occurrence, as seen in patients suffering from severe COVID-19.