Tech

Researchers at the University of Minnesota are part of a national team in the Center for Sustainable Polymers that has found a better way to recycle a versatile plastic material, called polyurethanes, that could prevent the material from becoming waste.

In the past, a few methods have attempted to recycle polyurethane waste, but these techniques result in a material of lower quality. Now, researchers have found a way to recycle used polyurethanes into equivalent or even higher quality material using an innovative method.

Their findings are reported in the journal ACS Central Science, published by the American Chemical Society.

"We are quite excited about this new research from the Center for Sustainable Polymers because of the tremendous potential for recycling of polyurethane materials that are typically considered as waste," said Marc Hillmyer, director of the Center for Sustainable Polymers based at the University of Minnesota and a chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota. "It also demonstrates how the powerful combination of polymer chemistry and polymer processing can be applied to help solve environmental problems."

Polyurethanes are all around us. Polyurethanes can be a found in mattresses, insulation, footwear, construction materials, automotive suspension systems, carpet underlay, and many other products. Wear and replacement of these products generates a lot of waste and creates demand for new polyurethanes, often made from toxic chemical building blocks.

Conventional polyurethanes can't be simply recycled by heating because the material consists of polymer networks held together by strong chemical bonds that don't flow when heated. Instead, polyurethanes can only be downcycled into less useful materials using either mechanical methods or chemical recycling. Other past methods have made innovative types of polyurethanes with cross-links that can be broken and reformed, allowing it to be recycled. But this approach requires the industry to commercialize new starting materials, and it wouldn't address the issue of conventional waste lingering in landfills. These methods also haven't been tested on foams, a very common form for polyurethane products.

In this new study, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University ground up polyurethane foam or film and then mixed the particles in a catalyst solution. After drying, the particles were compression molded to form new films. Compression molded films formed good-quality products, but compression molded foam produced cracked and inhomogeneous materials.

The researchers solved this problem by developing a twin-screw extrusion process that improved mixing and air removal in recycled foams, compared to the compression molding approach. They say this new method could be used for continuous recycling of the large amounts of polyurethanes waste currently in landfills and newly produced.

"The extrusion process removes air simultaneously as the catalyst enables the polyurethane to flow like a liquid," said Christopher Ellison, a University of Minnesota chemical engineering and materials science professor and one of the senior authors of the study. "This reactive process is similar to those already used in the plastics industry for other purposes meaning the technology could have impact quickly."

Virginia Tech scientists with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have manipulated genes to link an undiagnosed human disease with a rare mutation in the PHETA1 gene.

Using CRISPR genome editing and other research tools in zebrafish, the scientists found that zebrafish PHETA1-like proteins are necessary for renal function and craniofacial development in zebrafish -- consistent with kidney and craniofacial problems observed in the human patient. The study was published in the current issue of Disease Models and Mechanisms.

The research began after a study of a 6-year-old girl identified through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Undiagnosed Diseases Program, which focuses on the most puzzling medical cases referred to the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

"When a family takes a child to a family physician and a specialist, and no one can figure what is causing the health problem, it creates a real burden," said Albert Pan, an associate professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, who led an international team of investigators in the study. "We focused on this disease because it is hard to manage and difficult to treat because its underlying cause is unknown."

In collaboration with the NIH team -- along with an assembly of researchers from national and international institutions -- Pan investigated how patient-associated mutations may contribute to the clinical phenotypes; in other words, the physical properties and appearance.

The patient, who had developmental delays and facial and renal abnormalities, had a mutated version of the PHETA1 protein. Researchers generated similarly mutated or deficient versions of the PHETA1-like proteins in zebrafish to find that they were interacting in a harmful way with OCRL, the causative protein for Lowe syndrome.

Deficiency in the PHETA1-like proteins resulted in impaired renal physiology and craniofacial development in zebrafish, resembling the renal and craniofacial characteristics in the patient. The craniofacial deficits in zebrafish were likely caused by a dysregulation of cathepsin K, which degrades collagen and is known for a role in osteoporosis.

A broad range of research groups collaborated during the study on matters of genome analysis, protein modeling, craniofacial development, and undiagnosed diseases.

"It was a complex, cross-disciplinary project that came together at the end," said Pan, who is also the Commonwealth Center for Innovative Technology Eminent Research Scholar in Developmental Neuroscience and an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Virginia Tech. "We linked a phenotype in an individual with an underlying gene. We have provided medical scientists a starting point to define a common syndrome and develop of preventions and treatments."

AMHERST, Mass. - For years, geologists have debated how and when a network of canyons under the Greenland Ice Sheet formed, especially one that is so deep and long it's called 'Greenland's Grand Canyon.' Its shape suggests it was carved by running water followed by glaciation, but until now, "the genesis of this canyon, and similar features in northern Greenland, remain(ed) unknown," authors of a new paper say.

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Copenhagen's Centre for Ice and Climate now propose a new mechanism for how the megacanyon formed - from a series of catastrophic 'outburst' floods that suddenly and repeatedly drained lakes of melting ice sheet water over time. Based on ice-sheet model simulations of the early ice sheet's history, they show that climate and bedrock topography have "exerted strong controls" on the ice sheet since its beginning.

First author Benjamin Keisling, now a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, did the work as a graduate student with senior author and advisor Rob DeConto at UMass Amherst. He collaborated with colleagues in Denmark, where Keisling had a National Science Foundation GROW fellowship. Details appear now in the journal Geology.

Keisling, explains that before now, repeated outburst floods appeared to be the mechanism by which the Columbia River and other North America canyon networks formed, but they had not been considered as having played a role in forming the tortured landscape under the Greenland Ice Sheet.

He says, "If the floods we propose occurred, they could have influenced ocean circulation, causing abrupt climate changes with regional and perhaps global significance. The megacanyon beneath northern Greenland also influences how ice and water flow in the subglacial environment today, which affects present-day ice-sheet stability."

He recalls that in most Greenland studies, researchers use the modern ice sheet as a starting point for understanding how it has changed over time. But Keisling and his co-authors took a different approach, investigating what Greenland looked like before widespread glaciation. "We wanted to better understand the dynamics of "glacial inception - how, where, and why the ice sheet first grew on an ice-free island," he says.

The team also wanted to gain a better understanding of how the ice sheet grew back after melting. "We know from prior work this has happened multiple times in the past and could again in the future, given enough global warming," says Keisling.

They used coupled ice-sheet and climate models to simulate the Greenland Ice Sheet's evolution over many glacial-interglacial cycles in the last few million years. They found that following long periods with stable temperatures, an exceptionally warm period could cause the ice sheet to rapidly retreat. This led to large, ice-dammed lakes forming in areas where the bedrock was still depressed from the old ice sheet's weight.

Their simulations show the ice dams eventually giving way as large outburst floods. "Over time," says Keisling, "it appears that the filling and draining of these lakes as the ice repeatedly retreated and advanced carved Greenland's megacanyons." Similar floods have been documented at the edge of other retreating ice sheets, he says.

Comparing Greenland with modern outburst floods, the researchers estimate that as many as hundreds of floods carved its Grand Canyon. Results suggest testable hypotheses for future research that could settle the long-standing debate about whether the ice sheet's stability has changed over time, they point out.

"Knowing the history of Greenland's bedrock provides context for understanding the ice sheet's long-term behavior," Keisling says. "This helps paint a picture of what happened during past warm periods when the melting ice sheet caused global sea levels to rise - a phenomenon we are also seeing today."

FAIRFAX, VA - Bruise detection and diagnosis is currently conducted by sight, under regular light, and bruises are often difficult to see on victims of violence depending on their skin color and the age of their injury.

As a result, individuals with dark skin tones are at a significant disadvantage in having their injuries properly identified and documented. This can have a significant impact on both medical and legal outcomes for victims of violence. For example, strangulation, a violent act often perpetrated during intimate partner violence, is now charged by many states as a felony. Detecting bruises associated with these dangerous offenses can provide important evidence towards prosecution.

To address the challenges of detecting bruises, Scafide and colleagues conducted a randomized control trial with 157 participants to test the effectiveness of an alternate light source at detecting bruises compared to commonly used white light. They also assessed the impact of skin color, age, gender, localized fat, and mode of injury on bruise detection. They found that using alternate light was five times better at detecting bruises on victims across a variety of skin tones than white light. Results of the study were published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

"As domestic violence rates soar worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic, we need innovative ways of capturing its effects on victims," urges Dr. Katherine Scafide, a forensic nursing expert who led the randomized control trial at the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University. "Alternate light could be the tool towards addressing the disparity in detecting bruises across diverse populations."

"Alternate light improves our ability to see bruises," explains Scafide. "We need to implement this technology into the care of adult patients who have experience physical trauma, but only after evidence-based guidelines are developed and evaluated."

Scafide cautions that alternate light can detect bruises but should not yet be used to diagnose bruises because other skin lesions (e.g., scars, hyperpigmentation) may appear similar when viewed using this technology. Alternate light should only be interpreted in conjunction with a history of injury and other physical assessment findings.

Scafide will continue this work with a new grant from the National Institute of Justice that will allow her to develop and evaluate evidence-based guidelines for implementing alternate light in the clinical assessment of bruises.

TROY, N.Y. -- Hidden within countless materials are valuable properties that will enable the next generation of technologies, like quantum computing and improved solar cells.

At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, researchers working at the intersection of materials science, chemical engineering, and physics are uncovering new and innovative ways to unlock those promising and useful abilities using light, temperature, pressure, or magnetic fields.

The groundbreaking discovery of an optical version of quantum hall effect (QHE), published today in Physical Review X, demonstrates the leadership of Rensselaer in this vital research field.

QHE is a difference in mechanical voltage that is created when a two-dimensional semiconductor is placed in a large magnetic field. The magnetic field causes electrons to move in such a way that current no longer flows through the entire semiconductor, only on the edges.

The phenomenon has been a significant area of study, leading to several Nobel prizes and numerous technology innovations. What is less understood, said Sufei Shi, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer, is the quantization of excitons -- a promising particle found within transitional metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) that is formed when light hits a semiconductor and a positively charged particle bonds with a negatively charged particle. The strong bond that unites those two particles holds a significant amount of energy.

Shi has focused much of his research on this new frontier, understanding that the exciton has the potential to be harnessed for a multitude of applications, including quantum computing, memory storage, and even solar energy harvesting. Shi and his lab have worked on a process to fabricate extremely clean and high-quality two-dimensional semiconductors out of TMDs, so they can study their intrinsic properties. That groundwork has led to this most recent discovery.

In this research, Shi and his lab studied the exciton in the presence of a large magnetic field, inducing energy quantization known as Landau quantization -- an effect that has previously been difficult to see optically.

This work demonstrates the optical version of the QHE for excitons, and Shi believes it will open the door for further discovery and application.

"Fundamentally, this is something completely new and it will greatly enhance our understanding of excitons in the quantum regime, an area we don't really fully understand yet," Shi said. "We hope this will inspire a lot of people to work along this direction to see new
quantum physics, something we did not even expect before."

URBANA, Ill. ¬- Climate change creates extreme weather patterns that are especially challenging for people in developing countries and can severely impact agricultural yield and food security. International aid organizations have invested billions of dollars in promoting climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, but the effects of those programs are rarely documented.

A new University of Illinois study helps provide such documentation. Researchers Festus Amadu, Paul McNamara, and Daniel Miller, Departments of Agricultural and Consumer Economics and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at U of I, evaluated the effectiveness of a major United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program in southern Malawi. They found impressive results; farmers who implemented CSA practices saw a 53% increase in maize yields.

Those findings, published in the journal Food Policy, document the efficacy-as well as the long-term impact-of CSA programs that provide training and resources to farmers, says Amadu, post-doctoral research associate at U of I and lead author on the study.

"Our research showed that farmers were able to maintain these practices. Their perceived benefits outweighed constraints, to the extent that when we conducted the study two years after the USAID project had ended, retention rates were high," he states.

The USAID contributed $86 million to the Wellness and Agriculture for Life's Advancement (WALA) project in southern Malawi from 2009 to 2014. The project featured multiple components, including maternal and child health nutrition education; community development activities; and training farmers in CSA practices to improve watershed restoration.

Amadu's research focuses on the WALA project's CSA component, which aimed to improve food security by helping farmers increase their adoption of environmental conservation practices and realize higher yields of maize, the main crop in Malawi.

The researchers surveyed more than 800 smallholder farmer households in southern Malawi. They also visited fields to verify whether farmers maintained the CSA practices over time. The study included farmers in WALA watersheds as well as farmers in comparable watersheds without WALA CSA activities.

"Climate change leads to excessive weather shocks with extreme dryness or extreme rain," Amadu explains. "Farmers can use climate-smart practices to absorb excess rainwater and conserve it so it is available in times of drought."

CSA practices include technologies such as absorption trenches that capture rainwater during excess rainfall and gradually let it seep it into the soil or save it for irrigation during dry periods.

"A group of farmers could have large absorption trenches around their farms. The farms could also have continuous contour trenches and stone bounds, which would slow excessive rain water in mountainous or hilly areas and help conserve soil nutrients," Amadu explains.

Other CSA practices include using vetiver grass (a legume plant that helps soil conservation), or agroforestry fertilizer trees, where tree roots can reduce rain water run-off, and falling leaves can serve as fertilizer.

"These are not really rocket science technologies. They are just basic things that people have always done but they never really prioritized them," Amadu says. He points out such techniques require investment of land, labor, and finances that make adoption challenging in developing countries.

Amadu trained a team of 14 students from Malawi's main agricultural university to conduct the surveys, using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) technology. The students interviewed smallholder farmers and their spouses in the project area, as well as a control group that did not learn about CSA interventions.

The researchers identified several factors that increased CSA adoption rate, such as the ability to hire help, and access to extension services. They also found that plot size, soil fertility, and use of fertilizer had a positive effect on yield.

Amadu says the results indicate aid programs work because they help farmers acquire knowledge and gain access to resources, while reducing barriers to implementing the CSA techniques.

The researchers note the findings also have policy implications beyond the results of the WALA project.

"More generally, our findings on CSA adoption and maize yields suggest that aid-financed CSA can be effective in reducing food insecurity in contexts beyond Malawi, particularly those in resource-poor, rural dryland areas where rainfed agriculture predominates," they conclude in the paper.

Children who experience "dependent" or clingy relationships with their preschool teachers tend to also have difficulties in their relationships with their mothers finds researchers at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The research, published in peer-reviewed academic research journal Attachment and Human Behavior, went even further to find that later in elementary school, these children were prone to being anxious, withdrawn, and overly shy.

"Our research suggests that preschool teachers have the potential to play a pivotal role for children who are more dependent," said Robin Neuhaus, lead researcher and doctoral student in NYU Steinhardt's Department of Teacher and Learning. "By being warm and supportive, and by encouraging children to explore, preschool teachers may be able to reset the trajectories of children who may otherwise struggle with anxiety in elementary school."

Analyzing data from 769 children collected by the National Institute of Health's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Neuhaus and her colleagues looked at assessments of mother-child attachment patterns from families across the United States. The sample looked at attachment at 36 months, 54 months, first, third and fifth grades, and examined dependency, closeness, conflict and other behaviors between children and their mothers, as well as children and their teachers.

"Results from multilevel models showed that clingy behavior with preschool teachers was associated with higher levels of anxious behaviors when children were in fifth grade. Clingy behavior also partially mediated the link between a difficult type of mother-child attachment and anxiety in fifth grade," continued Neuhaus.

Using an ultra-thin and sharp needle tipped with a single carbon monoxide molecule frozen to minus 266 degrees centigrade, researchers from the University of Warwick and Cardiff identified and mapped the location of every molecular bond on the surface of a material

This Scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) technique is so precise that it can measure variations in the electrical resistance at an atomic level produced by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, to not only tell apart halogen and hydrogen bonds, but also accurately image and map their actual locations in a material

The same technique allows us to determine the location of atoms within molecules, thus providing a powerful quality control mechanism for identifying impurities in materials

This can help in the production of many new materials particularly pharmaceuticals, and ensure that they are purer than ever

A research project led by chemists at the University of Warwick first used ultrahigh resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy to see the exact location of atoms and bonds within a molecule, and then employed these incredibly precise images to determine the interactions that bond molecules to one another.

Using a carbon monoxide tipped super sharp needle frozen to 7 Kelvin (minus 266 degrees centigrade), the researchers could identify whether bonds are hydrogen or halogen, and were also able to pick up minute defects in these materials. These results could be of high relevance to help creating new pharmaceuticals that are purer than ever.

The researchers compared standard with ultrahigh resolution STM on a brominated polycyclic aromatic molecule laid on a gold surface. They were able to demonstrate that standard STM measurements could not conclusively establish the nature of the intermolecular interactions, but the new technique could clearly identify the location of carbon rings and halogen atoms, determining that halogen bonding governs the assemblies.

Their research is published today, 30th April 2020, in a paper entitled "Combining high-resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy and first-principles simulations to identify halogen bonding" in Nature Communications.

One of the paper's lead researchers, Professor Giovanni Costantini, from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick said:

"Renowned physicist Richard Feynman once said that the easiest way to analyse any complicated chemical substance would be "to look at it and see where the atoms are"; the technique we have been using is one way of doing just that.

"Scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) can normally only reveal the overall shape and position of molecules in a material but hasn't got the precision needed to determine their exact atomic structure.

"However, using ultrahigh resolution STM, we could precisely pinpoint the location of carbon rings and halogen atoms, which allowed us to establish that halogen rather than hydrogen bonding governed the molecular assembly of this material.

"By closely following Richard Feynman's adjuration to "just look at the thing", our clear visualisation of the actual positions of atoms within the molecules enabled us to infer the position and the nature of the bonding between the molecules.

"This was supported by theoretical calculations that revealed a number of electronic features the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) recognises as identifying traits of halogen bonding. We believe that a significant fraction of difficult or controversial molecular structures that have been discussed in the literature over the last decades could be quickly and clearly solved by using this approach and we predict its increasing use in molecular nanoscience at surfaces."

Another of the lead researchers on the paper, Assistant Professor Gabriele Sosso, from the University of Warwick's Department of Chemistry also points out that:

"The ability to discern and actually clearly identify the position of halogen bonds will be of particular value to researchers attempting to understand biomolecular recognition and design novel pharmaceuticals drugs.

"In fact, most of the medicinal chemistry up to now has been focussing on the role of hydrogen bonds, as they are ubiquitous in both biochemistry and materials science: understanding halogen bonding will thus provide and additional tool to engineer the next generation of molecular systems for drug design.

"To that end, it is essential that, as we did in this work, we bring together experiments and simulations - in order to deliver a comprehensive picture of this still largely unexplored molecular interaction."

Two microscopic bubbles are better than one at penetrating soft materials, concludes a new study by engineers at the University of California, Riverside.

Optical cavitation, which uses a laser to form bubbles in a liquid that expand rapidly then collapse, could be a safe way to quickly and efficiently deliver therapeutic agents, such as drugs or genes, directly into living cells. Current methods for introducing foreign materials into cells, known as transfection, rely on puncturing the outer membrane with a laser, which risks heat damage to the cell, or a pipette, which risks contamination.

Though not quite ready for prime time yet, scientists are improving optical cavitation techniques. The new paper shows two bubbles produce long, fine jets that penetrate far enough with only five pulses to make cavitation potentially suitable for transfection or needle-free injections.

"The study of cavitation bubbles has evolved relatively fast, from learning how to avoid the damage they cause on ship propellers to benefitting medicine delivery," said Vicente Robles, a doctoral student at the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, who led the study. "The biggest limitation on their applications is our creativity."

Cavitation bubbles are micron-sized and live for only a fraction of a second, but generate strong, local changes in physical properties of the surrounding medium, making them prime candidates for localized surface cleaning, cell targeting, and heating or cooling.

In double-bubble configurations, one bubble collapses faster and accelerates the neighboring bubble to invert and pierce itself, emitting a fast jet that could, if forceful enough, also pierce a cell membrane and possibly be used to transfect a cell. However, the jet's speed, force, and trajectory are highly influenced by the mechanical properties of the medium surrounding it and the spatial and temporal separations of the bubbles.

Robles started by using lasers to create bubbles that form jets of water directed at a medium. He then compared single- and double-bubble jets directed at both petroleum jelly and a transparent agar gel widely used to model human tissue.

The double-bubble process created elongated, fast, focused jets that increased in length and volume when directed at the agar gel. Just five pulses penetrated 1.5 millimeters -- enough to pierce human skin. This was achieved without the special micro-nozzles used in existing laser injection systems. In petroleum jelly, double-bubble jetting produced the same penetration length as single-bubble jetting, but with a 45% reduction in damage area, potentially resulting in less thermal and shockwave damage to the surrounding medium, and from three times farther away.

"The use of a laser-induced double-bubble arrangement is a significant advantage over previous studies, which rely on a converging nozzle or pressurized cavity to produce forceful jets," mechanical engineering professor and senior author Guillermo Aguilar said. "Here, we take advantage of the inherent physics of the asynchronous collapse of two bubbles to accelerate the jet that pierces the nearby surface."

The study concludes double-bubble cavitation could offer compact, device-free alternatives for needle-free applications after further study and improvement.

In the present context of concerning CO2 levels and sustainability issues, the search for efficient and clean alternatives for producing energy continues. Among the most attractive ecofriendly fuels known, hydrogen stands out and there is much potential for its use. But researchers are yet to come up with a cost-efficient and scalable method to produce large amounts of hydrogen, and a hydrogen economy is still not on the cards. For instance, hydrogen can be produced from fossil fuels, but the process generates CO2 and is, therefore, not sustainable. An environment-friendly approach to producing hydrogen is water splitting: breaking up water molecules (H2O) to obtain pure hydrogen (H2). The energy that this process requires can be harvested directly from solar radiation using photoelectrochemical cells. These cells are composed of two electrodes and a material called the electrolyte; the characteristics of all three are tailored to trigger and favor the necessary water splitting reactions.

One important characteristic that determines the efficiency of the water splitting reaction is the "band gap" of the photoelectrode material. The band gap is broadly a measure of the energy that the electrodes must receive so that charge can transfer through them and the reaction can occur. Photoelectrode materials with moderate band gaps are desirable because less energy would have to be captured from solar radiation to cause charge circulation. In light of this, silicon carbide (SiC) electrodes have been explored as a promising option. Now, scientists from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, have contributed to a better understanding of these materials. "SiC is one of the most promising photoelectrode materials owing to its durability. Among its various types, 3C-SiC can absorb part of visible light due to its moderate band gap and is also capable of hydrogen generation," explains Dr Kato the lead scientist of this study published in Applied Physics Express. Nonetheless, the observed performance of existing 3C-SiC photoelectrodes is still lower than that predicted through theoretical calculations.

To bridge this gap and improve performance, the scientists applied a previously reported approach: the efficiency of photoelectrodes can be improved by giving them a textured structure. A rugged surface allows the incident light to pass through the material multiple times, increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed.

In this study, to make the 3C-SiC photoelectrode surfaces textured, Dr Kato and his colleague employed a technique called "electrochemical etching." They then compared the optical and electrical properties and the performances of several photoelectrodes etched under various conditions. They also observed all surfaces through advanced microscopy techniques.

They saw that the etching had occurred preferentially on the existing faults and dislocations on the material's surface. Its surface roughness was greatly increased (as desired), without the formation of "point defects"--anomalies in the base structure of the electrode.

Its performance--measured through its photon-to-current conversion efficiency under an applied voltage (also known as "ABPE" or "applied bias photon-to-current conversion efficiency")--showed improvement. Under optimal conditions of etching and platinum cocatalyst deposition, the performance was found to be 2%. "This ABPE value is the highest among the reported efficiencies for SiC photoelectrodes so far. Thus, we believe our 3C-SiC photoelectrode with a surface texture formed through electrochemical etching is promising for solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion applications," concludes Dr Kato.

The scientists say that their ultimate goal is to someday produce SiC photocathodes with solar-to-hydrogen efficiencies comparable to those of other energy conversion technologies. Realizing this vision could be a key step towards a more environment-friendly hydrogen economy.

An examination of nearly 350 published psychological experiments found that nearly half failed to show that they were based on a valid foundation of empirical evidence, suggesting that a wide swath of psychological science is based on an “untested foundation.”

The study — conducted by David Chester, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Emily Lasko, a psychology doctoral student at VCU — focuses on the practice of experimental manipulations, in which psychologists induce specific mental states, such as giving research participants insulting or complimentary feedback to manipulate how angry they feel.

To conduct these experimental manipulations in a scientifically valid way, researchers must first establish whether their manipulations actually affect the intended psychological variable (for example: make people feel angry) and not other closely related variables (for example: make people feel sad). However, the extent to which psychologists actually examine the validity of their manipulations remains unknown.

Chester and Lasko investigated 348 psychological manipulations included in peer-reviewed studies. They found that roughly 42% of the experiments were paired with no validity evidence, and that the remaining psychological manipulations were validated in ways that were extremely limited.

“These findings call into question the accuracy of one of psychology's most common practices and suggest that the field needs to strongly improve its practices in this methodological domain,” said Chester, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. 

The forthcoming study, “Construct Validation of Experimental Manipulations in Social Psychology: Current Practices and Recommendations for the Future,” will be published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

The study is the first of its kind to systematically document the extent to which psychology's experiments are based on a valid foundation of empirical evidence.

Importantly, Chester said, the study’s findings do not suggest that the experimental psychologists’ findings were necessarily wrong or invalid.

“We do not find such experiments are invalid, instead we simply don't have the evidence to know one way or another how valid they are,” he said. “Almost all of the manipulations we examined failed to provide the necessary evidence that they were valid, which does not mean they are invalid — their validity is just unknown.”

As a result, he said, the study suggests that “the findings of experimental psychology likely rest on an untested foundation.”

“This framework might be weak, it might be strong, it is more likely both of these things depending on many factors,” he said. “We have outlined a prescribed series of recommendations for experimenters to ensure that this is not the case going forward — that the validity of each experimental manipulation is tested in a systematic and accurate way.”

Chester added that he and Lasko hope their findings encourage experimental psychologists to include validity evidence in future research.

“We hope our paper makes experimenters aware of this untested aspect of their research, motivates them to change their practices, and provides a road map of precisely what to do to make such changes,” he said.

About VCU and VCU Health

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 30,000 students in 233 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Twenty-two of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 11 schools and three colleges. The VCU Health brand represents the VCU health sciences academic programs, the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Health System, which comprises VCU Medical Center (the only academic medical center in the region), Community Memorial Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, MCV Physicians and Virginia Premier Health Plan. For more, please visit www.vcu.edu and vcuhealth.org.

Journal

Perspectives on Psychological Science

DOI

10.31234/osf.io/t7ev9

The generation of energy on offshore wind turbine farms is much higher because heavy-duty wind turbines are deployed and wind regimes are much more stable than on land. "There are two ways of conveying all this energy produced ashore: by building a huge piece of infrastructure to be able to bring the electrical power grid right up to it and convey the electricity generated via cable, or by producing hydrogen on the spot by means of hydrolysis using the energy produced there, and then conveying the hydrogen ashore to be used as fuel. We have gone for the second option and the aim of this research was to find a way of improving this process," explained Ekaitz Zulueta-Guerrero, researcher in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation of the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Engineering - Vitoria-Gasteiz.

When embarking on the research the researchers in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation and the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Fluid Mechanics of the Faculty of Engineering - Vitoria-Gasteiz sought to reduce the energy cost of the hydrogen-producing process. "To improve the aerodynamics of the wind turbines we wanted to test the effect of two components used to control turbine flow. One is a vortex generator, the other Gurney flaps which are fitted to the blade and which significantly improve the thrust force, and therefore the aerodynamics," explained Unai Fernandez-Gamiz, member of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Fluid Mechanics. What is more, "they are very cost-effective and can be easily fitted to the wind turbines".

Power to produce hydrogen by means of hydrolysis

In the second step they wanted to see whether "it is both technically and economically viable to use that energy produced on the offshore wind turbine farms themselves to generate hydrogen by means of hydrolysis and thus be able to convey it ashore so that it can be used as fuel," added Fernandez-Gamiz. "In fact, the hydrogen generated could be conveyed ashore by ship and, what is more, that energy accumulated would offer the electrical system great flexibility bearing in mind that right now electricity production has to be in line with demand."

The tests were conducted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States on a 5-MW turbine, the technical, geometrical characteristics and other parameters of which are public. "The annual energy production of the turbines was found to be about 2.5 % higher. It is not a very high increase, but bearing in mind the huge potential of wind turbines deployed offshore, a huge amount of additional energy is produced," explained Zulueta. The researchers also calculated the amount of hydrogen that could be produced using this additional generation of energy: over 130,000 Nm3. In other words, "the amount of fuel that a million hydrogen-powered cars would need to travel 100 kilometres", said the researchers in the article. "And that is thanks to the flow control components added, which entail hardly any additional costs."

Once it has been found to be technically possible and economically viable, the next step, according to the researchers, would be "for a wind turbine farm developer to get in touch with us to test, measure and adapt to the developer's systems what was achieved at the facility in the United States".

Additional information

This research was carried out in collaboration with researchers in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation and the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Fluid Mechanics at the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Engineering - Vitoria-Gasteiz. The former specialises in the design, control and modelling of wind turbines while the latter specialises in aerodynamics.

COVID-19 healthcare workers will be psychologically impacted by their work during the pandemic and will require psychological support from multiple levels in their organisations, according to an academic review by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, London's Air Ambulance and Barts Health NHS Trust, and a London-based A&E doctor.

Published in the European Heart Journal, the review paper looks at the psychological wellbeing of medical staff, and includes pragmatic recommendations for individuals, teams and organisational leaders in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper highlights the increased pressure staff are under, while having to deal with fears of catching the illness themselves or passing it on to their families, working with new and frequently changing protocols, and caring for very sick and quickly deteriorating patients - all of which can result in acute stress reactions, burnout, depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder and 'moral injury'.

The authors argue that during the COVID-19 pandemic there are many opportunities to support staff. The paper is structured as a guide and has easy to read sections and tables so that individuals can focus on the section most relevant to them. The paper will be useful for any individual involved in the front line healthcare response.

Special circumstances such as staff being quarantined and returning to work are covered, including guidance on how organisations can provide tangible support and address any pre-existing stressors. Advice on crisis leadership and how to support distressed colleagues is detailed, including self-care.

Dr Mike Christian, Research & Clinical Effectiveness Lead, HEMS Doctor, London's Air Ambulance, Barts Health NHS Trust, said: "Leadership during a crisis is always a challenge, however, leading during the COVID-19 situation is even more difficult given that leaders themselves are 'living' in the crisis and equally impacted by it as much as those who they are leading. Although there are many negative aspects of the current situation, teams can grow stronger, individuals can develop, relationships can grow deeper as a result of this crisis. The impact of this pandemic and how leaders respond during it will shape the future relationship of teams and culture of organizations for years to come."

Dr Matt Walton, London-based A&E doctor, added: "Psychological support for frontline staff is a critical part of the public health response, I hope our paper can be useful for all those who need guidance in providing that support."

In the paper, emerging concepts such as 'moral injury' (originally from work with military veterans) are applied to frontline staff. Moral injury describes the psychological impact of bearing witness to unacceptable things or making decisions that contravene the morals of the individual making them, resulting in severe guilt and shame. For example, following new protocols about which patients will not receive life support if there are resource scarcities.

Dr Esther Murray, Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology at Queen Mary University of London, said: "The hero and angel tropes which we see bandied about are also highly problematic because they make it look as if people signed up to die, like a hero does, but they didn't. It also makes it harder for NHS staff to talk about how they really feel because opinions get polarised - are you a hero or a coward? A lot of staff feel like cowards but they are not at all, they're just quite justifiably frightened and angry."

Microplastics constitute an environmental problem of growing concern, and various studies have identified the Bay of Biscay as an area where marine litter builds up. The research that has now been published establishes considerable variability in the spatial and temporal distribution of microplastics confirming their presence in over 50% of the water and sediment samples collected for analysis purposes.

These are plastic particles measuring less than 5 mm that are deposited in the seas and on the coasts as a result of the dumping of small-sized plastics used in certain products and applications (known as primary microplastics) or as a result of the breaking up of larger objects (secondary microplastics). Owing to the abundance of these particles in the marine environment, their origin, presence and influence on human health and species worldwide is being extensively investigated right now.

In terms of their nature, the polymers most found are polypropylene, polyethylene, polyester and polystyrene, which tally with the main plastics used worldwide. "The predominance of fragments and fibres in the results of the studies suggests that the microplastics in this region originate mainly from the breaking up of larger objects. However, the difficulty in comparing the various pieces of research owing to the different methodologies used in them is evident, so consensus needs to be reached on standardized methods for monitoring microplastics in the marine environment," said the research group responsible for the study.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a new way to treat chronic pain which has been tested in mice. With a compound designed and developed by the researchers themselves, they can achieve complete pain relief.

Between seven and ten percent of the world's population suffers from chronic pain originating from nerves that have been damaged. A disease that can be severely debilitating. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found a new way to treat the pain.

The treatment has been tested in mice, and the new results have been published in the scientific journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. For more than a decade, the researchers have been working to design, develop and test a drug that shall provide complete pain relief.

"We have developed a new way to treat chronic pain. It is a targeted treatment. That is, it does not affect the general neuronal signalling, but only affects the nerve changes that are caused by the disease," says co-author Kenneth Lindegaard Madsen, Associate Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Copenhagen.

"We have been working on this for more than ten years. We have taken the process all the way from understanding the biology, inventing and designing the compound to describing how it works in animals, affects their behaviour and removes the pain," says Kenneth Lindegaard Madsen.

Chronic pain can occur, among other things, after surgery, in people with diabetes, after a blood clot and after an amputation in the form of phantom pain.

Clinical trials as the next step

The compound developed by the researchers is a so-called peptide named Tat-P4-(C5)2. The peptide is targeted and only affects the nerve changes that pose a problem and cause the pain.

In a previous study, the researchers have shown in an animal model that use of the peptide can also reduce addiction. Therefore, the researchers hope that the compound may potentially help pain patients who have become addicted to, for example, opioid pain relievers in particular.

"The compound works very efficiently, and we do not see any side effects. We can administer this peptide and obtain complete pain relief in the mouse model we have used, without the lethargic effect that characterises existing pain-relieving drugs," says Kenneth Lindegaard Madsen, adding:

"Now, our next step is to work towards testing the treatment on people. The goal, for us, is to develop a drug, therefore the plan is to establish a biotech company as soon as possible so we can focus on this."

The researchers are now working towards clinical trials in collaboration with, among others, pain researcher Nanna Brix Finnerup, Professor at Aarhus University.