Tech

It's hard to find a place in the U.S. that isn't impacted by wildfires and smoke.

Dry landscapes, warmer temperatures and more development near forested areas all contribute to massive wildfires across North America each year. Smoke and haze from these fires can travel hundreds of miles from their source, affecting the health and wellbeing of communities across the U.S.

Given these impacts, scientists rely on models that try to predict the severity of wildfires and smoke. The amount of living and dead vegetation on a landscape, known as fuels, is a key part of the equation when modeling wildfire and smoke behavior. But in many areas, fuel estimates are imprecise, leading to unreliable smoke and fire forecasts -- potentially endangering communities.

Researchers from the University of Washington and Michigan Technological University have created the first comprehensive database of all the wildfire fuels that have been measured across North America. Called the North American Wildland Fuel Database, the tool incorporates the best available measurements of vegetation in specific locations, and allows fire managers to see where information about fuels is missing altogether.

Ultimately, it can help scientists make more informed decisions about fire and smoke situations.

"Where there are fuels and fire, there's smoke," said lead author Susan Prichard, a research scientist at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. "This database is informing more realistic predictions of smoke that allow for the fact that we might not have dialed in the fuels perfectly."

The new database is described in a paper published Dec. 4 in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences.

There are many types of vegetation that burn during wildfires, including live and dead trees, freshly fallen leaves and needles, shrubs, grasses, moss -- and even decomposing logs and soil. The database, which includes a map view, shows a breakdown of each type of wildfire fuel and its amount in various locations across the U.S. It provides, for example, a quick way to see that dead trees are more densely packed along the West Coast, while decomposing materials, called "duff," are more prevalent along the East Coast and upper Midwest.

The amount of vegetation in a particular area can vary drastically by season and natural events like windstorms that blow down trees, or wildfires that burn up fuels on the ground. As a result, the researchers found that it takes a wide range of observations to encompass the natural variability that is common within vegetation on a landscape.

Their dataset incorporates all of the existing information about fuels across the country -- drawn from other datasets and published studies -- and also factors in the potential range of variability for each vegetation type in different locations.

"Setting a static map of fuels is not going to be an accurate depiction of what the vegetation will be like in that location forever," said co-author Maureen Kennedy, an assistant professor at UW Tacoma. "It was important to us to find ways to communicate that fuels on the landscape are variable and have uncertainty."

The researchers hope that smoke modelers and fire managers use this data to analyze the range of wildfire fuels in their location, and use it to make better predictions about smoke emissions and fire severity. All of the data is accessible and downloadable from their website.

Managers also could use this data when deciding where and when to do a prescribed burn, which is important for reducing fire hazard in dense forests. More accurate fuels information will help determine if smoke and other pollutants will be too high or within a safe range for surrounding communities during a burn.

The team also hopes to add more data as other researchers continue to take measurements of the fuels in their areas. Data on live and dead trees is robust because of satellite imagery, Prichard explained, but data on fuels that must be measured by hand, such as leaves, needles and small branches, are largely missing. Fuels all burn differently -- some smolder while others ignite quickly -- which can also impact the accuracy of smoke and fire predictions.

"One of the things we didn't anticipate is that the database would also let us know what still needs to be done," Prichard said. "The big surprise for all of us is how little data we have on non-forest vegetation such as grasslands and shrublands. That data gap is big and worth closing over time."

Entropy, a measure of the molecular disorder or randomness of a system, is critical to understanding a system's physical composition. In complex physical systems, the interaction of internal elements is unavoidable, rendering entropy calculation a computationally demanding, and often impractical, task. The tendency of a properly folded protein to unravel, for example, can be predicted using entropy calculations.

Now, a new Tel Aviv University study proposes a radically simple and efficient way of calculating entropy -- and it probably exists on your own computer.

"We discovered a way to calculate entropy using a standard compression algorithm like the zip software we all have on our computers," explains Prof. Roy Beck of TAU's School of Physics and Astronomy. "Supercomputers are used today to simulate the folding or misfolding of proteins in diseased states. Our study demonstrated that by using a standard compression algorithm, we can provide new insights into the physical properties of these proteins by calculating their entropy values using a compression algorithm.

"Having the ability to calculate entropy meets an urgent need to harness the incredible power of computer simulations to address urgent, timely problems in science and medicine," Prof. Beck adds.

The research was led by Prof. Beck and conducted by TAU PhD students Ram Avinery and Micha Kornreich. It was published in Physical Review Letters on October 22.

According to Prof. Beck, the research has endless applications. From biomedical simulations to basic research conducted in physics, chemistry or material science, the new algorithm would be simple to use on any computer.

"A high school student used our concept to calculate the entropy of a complex physical system -- the XY model," says Prof. Beck. "Although this is considered a challenging problem with regard to entropy, the student accomplished it with very little guidance. This demonstrates how easily this method can be used by almost anybody to solve very interesting problems."

The idea for the computational method first came about when Prof. Beck's students, Avinery and Kornreich, discussed entropy from the point of view of information theory. They wondered how well this idea might work in practice rather than in theory.

"They simulated a few standard physical systems with entropy values they can compare to," says Prof. Beck. "Soon they found that the simulation data file size after compression rises and falls just as the expected entropy should. Shortly after that, they realized they could convert the compressed file size into a usable value -- the physical entropy. Surprisingly, the simple conversion they used was valid for all the systems studied."

The researchers are currently expanding the application of their methodology to a wide and varied selection of systems.

"Since we started working and talking about our work, we have been approached by many researchers from very different fields, asking us to help them calculate entropy from their data," concludes Prof. Beck. "For now, we are concentrating on simulation of protein folding, a timely and urgent topic that can benefit tremendously from our discovery."

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over the South China Sea and provided forecasters with a visible image of Tropical Storm Kammuri on Dec. 4.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided two visible images of Kammuri on Dec. 4 that were combined at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. to show the entire storm. NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) provided the image. The combined VIIRS image showed that Kammuri's center of circulation was almost in the center of the South China Sea, while a tail of clouds streamed over Luzon, the northern Philippines and north to Taiwan.

Visible imagery from NASA satellites helps forecasters understand if a storm is organizing or weakening by the storm's shape. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed that the storm appears to be elongating, indicating it is weakening.

On Dec. 4 at 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), Kammuri's maximum sustained winds were near 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph) and weakening. Tropical Storm Kammuri (Philippines designation Tisoy) was centered near latitude 14.4 degrees north and longitude 115.7 degrees east. That is about 285 nautical miles west of Manila, Philippines. Kammuri has moved far enough away from the Philippines that all warnings have been dropped.

Kammuri is weakening as it moves west through the South China Sea. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts Kammuri to turn south-southwest and dissipate by December 6.

Tropical cyclones and hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is just days away from selecting the site where the spacecraft will snag a sample from asteroid Bennu. After a lengthy and challenging process, the team is finally ready to down-select from the four candidate sites to a primary and backup site.

OSIRIS-REx is NASA's first asteroid sample return mission, so this decision of a sample collection site is key for asteroid operations and mission success.

After selecting the four candidate sample sites - Sandpiper, Osprey, Kingfisher, and Nightingale - in July, the mission completed its Reconnaissance A phase. During Recon A, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performed a month-long series of four flyovers - one over each potential sample collection site. This mission phase provided the team with high-resolution imagery in order to thoroughly examine the sampleability (fine-grained material), topography, albedo, and color of each site. The data collected from these high-altitude flyovers is central for determining which site is best-suited for sample collection.

While the mission is one step closer to collecting a sample, Recon A observations have revealed that even the best candidate sites on Bennu pose significant challenges to sample collection, and the choice before the site selection board is not an easy one.

"Sample site selection really is a comprehensive activity. It requires that we look at many different types of data in many different ways to ensure the selected site is the best choice in terms of spacecraft safety, presence of sampleable material, and science value," said Heather Enos, OSIRIS-REx deputy principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and chair of the sample site selection board. "Our team is incredibly innovative and integrated, which is what makes the selection process work."

The most recent images show that while there is fine-grained material (smaller than 2.5 cm in diameter), much of it may not be easily accessible. The mission was originally designed for a beach-like surface, with "ponds" of sandy material, not for Bennu's rugged terrain. In reality the potential sample sites are not large, clear areas, but rather small spaces surrounded by large boulders, so navigating the spacecraft in and out of the sites will require a bit more fine-tuning than originally planned.

Starting in Bennu's southern hemisphere, site Sandpiper was the first flyover of the Recon A mission phase. Sandpiper is one of the "safer" sites because it is located in a relatively flat area, making it easier for the spacecraft to navigate in and out. The most recent images show that fine-grained material is present, but the sandy regolith is trapped between larger rocks, which makes it difficult for the sampling mechanism to operate.

Site Osprey was the second site observed during Recon A. This site was originally chosen based on its strong spectral signature of carbon-rich material and because of a dark patch in the center of the crater, which was thought to possibly be fine-grained material. However, the latest high-resolution imagery of Osprey suggests that the site is scattered with material that may be too large to ingest for the sampling mechanism.

Site Kingfisher was selected because it is located in a small crater - meaning that it may be a relatively young feature compared to Bennu's larger craters (such as the one in which Sandpiper is located). Younger craters generally hold fresher, minimally-altered material. High-resolution imagery captured during the Recon A flyover revealed that while the original crater may be too rocky, a neighboring crater appears to contain fine-grained material.

Recon A concluded with a flyover of site Nightingale. Images show that the crater holds a good amount of unobstructed fine-grained material. However, while the sampleability of the site ranks high, Nightingale is located far to the north where the lighting conditions create additional challenges for spacecraft navigation. There is also a building-size boulder situated on the crater's eastern rim, which could be a hazard to the spacecraft when backing away after contacting the site.

Bennu has also made it a challenge for the mission to identify a site that won't trigger the spacecraft's safety mechanisms. During Recon A, the team began cataloguing Bennu's surface features to create maps for the Natural Feature Tracking (NFT) autonomous navigation system. During the sample collection event, the spacecraft will use NFT to navigate to the asteroid's surface by comparing the onboard image catalog to the navigation images it will take during descent. In response to Bennu's extremely rocky surface, the NFT system has been augmented with a new safety feature, which instructs it to wave-off the sampling attempt and back away if it determines the point of contact is near a potentially hazardous surface feature. With Bennu's building-sized boulders and small target sites, the team realizes that there is a possibility that the spacecraft will wave-off the first time it descends to collect a sample.

"Bennu's challenges are an inherent part of this mission, and the OSIRIS-REx team has responded by developing robust measures to overcome them," said Mike Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy project manager at Goddard. "If the spacecraft executes a wave-off while attempting to collect a sample, that simply means that both the team and the spacecraft have done their jobs to ensure the spacecraft can fly another day. The success of the mission is our first priority."

Whichever site wins the race, the OSIRIS-REx mission team is ready for whatever new challenges Bennu may bring. Next spring, the team will undertake further reconnaissance flights over the primary and backup sample sites, and will then start spacecraft rehearsals for touchdown. Sample collection is scheduled for summer 2020, and the sample will return to Earth in September 2023.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

NASA's Aqua satellite found some powerful storms in Tropical Storm 06A as it moved through the Arabian Sea toward Somalia.

NASA's Aqua satellite used infrared light to analyze the strength of storms in 06A and found it was maintaining strength. Infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.

On Dec. 4 at 4:55 a.m. EST (0955 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered temperature information about Tropical Storm 06A's cloud tops. MODIS found several small areas of powerful thunderstorms where temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 degrees Celsius), embedded in a much larger area of slightly warmer cloud tops of minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 Celsius). Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms with the potential to generate heavy rainfall.

On Dec. 4 at 10 a.m., EST (1500 UTC), Tropical Storm 06A was located near latitude 8.4 degrees north and longitude 57.0 degrees east in the Arabian Sea, Northern Indian Ocean. That is about 864 nautical miles east-southeast of Djibouti. Djibouti is a sovereign state in the Horn of Africa with a coastline on the Gulf of Aden. It is bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the west, and Etriea to the north. 06A was moving to the northwest and had maximum sustained winds near 35 knots (40 mph/65 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC noted, "The storm's good outflow (air that flows outwards from a storm system) and warm sea surface temperatures are being offset by strong (20-25 knots/23-29 mph/37-46 kph) vertical wind shear to make the environment marginally supportive. Tropical Storm 06A appeared to accelerate west-northwestward over the past six hours, suggesting a subtropical ridge (an elongated area of high pressure) to the north has become the primary steering mechanism." Over the next 24 hours, the subtropical ridge will cause 06A to turn onto a west southwestward track and remain there until making landfall and dissipating.

Tropical Storm 06A is expected to make landfall in east central Somalia late on Dec. 6.

Tropical cyclones and hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

WASHINGTON -- Early returns from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's camera on NASA's latest mission to study the Sun's corona revealed on Dec. 4 a star more complex than ever imagined.

NRL's Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR, the only imaging instrument aboard the NASA Parker Solar Probe mission, is now 84 percent of the way to the Sun.

WISPR produced multiple scientifically relevant photos, capturing the beginning of a dust-free zone around the Sun, detailed plasma eruptions, magnetic flux ropes, and the first image of a magnetic island around the Sun, a small region of space with a circulating magnetic field.

"The images help in the modeling of the behavior and the transport of the solar wind to Earth," said Russ Howard, an NRL astrophysicist and principal WISPR investigator. "They allow us to develop more accurate models by putting proper physics in the models."

Understanding how the solar wind behaves is important to the Navy and Marine Corps because when the winds reach Earth, they can impact GPS, spacecraft operations, and ground-based power grids.

WISPR, designed, developed and led by NRL, records visible-light images of the solar corona and solar outflow in two overlapping cameras, which together cover more than 100-degrees angular width from the Sun.

The findings just released stem from Parker Solar Probe's most recent approach to the Sun during a quiet part of the solar cycle, and set the stage for discoveries when the Sun is more active.

"Parker is going to swoop past the sun three or four times a year for the next few years, getting successively closer each time," said Karl Battams, a computational scientist at NRL. "Every encounter is going to give us a view that humankind has never seen, and along with that a lot of new questions - and hopefully quite a few answers - about what we are seeing."

Parker Solar Probe recently completed its third perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun. By the end of its 7-year-long mission, the spacecraft will have circled the Sun a total of 24 times. In 2024, the Parker Solar Probe is expected to have traveled 96 percent of the distance to the Sun.

"We're explorers and we're getting in closer and closer until we're finally at the Sun," Howard said. "It's mindboggling because you're going to see things that we can't even imagine."

The Parker Solar Probe is a robotic spacecraft NASA launched in August 2018, whose mission is repeatedly probing and making observations of the outer corona of the Sun. WISPR is one of four instruments on Parker Solar Probe.

If one wants to calculate the environmental impact of purchasing a product or services, they must consider the role of the capital assets that went into their production -- machinery, factories, IT, vehicles, and roads -- and the energy and materials required to create those assets. For instance, any assessment of the environmental "footprint" of renting a home should include the materials and processes that went into its construction. 
 

However, many of the models used to assess the impacts of purchases -- known as "environmentally extended input-output" (EEIO) analyses -- don't incorporate data that would account for the contributions of these capital assets. As a result, most analyses underestimate the carbon, energy, and material footprints. 
 

In order to get a more accurate estimate, Yale researchers have developed a new model using the most recent detailed economic data available, from the years 2007 and 2012. The model incorporates those capital assets into the production supply chains, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the environmental impacts associated with a range of sectors, from mining to government to media.

According to their analysis, use of capital assets for production in 2012 accounted for 13 percent, 19 percent, and 40 percent of the economy-wide carbon, energy, and material footprints, respectively. 

"For some products -- such as recorded music, medical instruments, or communication devices -- the impacts of capital assets used actually outweigh those related to direct material and energy inputs to production," said Peter Berrill, a Ph.D. candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and one of the developers of the model. "So if you're not incorporating that data you're missing the full extent of the environmental impact."
 

The findings are published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.
 

By combining supply-chain data on a range of products and services with industry-level emissions data, EEIO models reveal important insights into the life cycle environmental impacts of a particular product -- or any group of products. But since EEIO models use data from trade between companies in services and consumable inputs, long-lived capital assets are usually omitted. 
For the new model, the researchers developed a highly detailed capital flow matrix approach to incorporate the role of capital assets. In addition to including such assets as machinery, vehicles, and buildings, the model incorporates "knowledge capital" such as technologies and patents that emerge from research and development.  
 

According to their findings, the products most affected by capital, in terms of overall economy-wide carbon footprint, are housing, government services, gasoline production, and healthcare. Construction assets, as expected, are key contributors to the housing sector. Metals, vehicles, and machinery are critical components for such sectors as federal defense. 

Meanwhile, research is a major contributor in the case of federal government and pharmaceutical sectors. "For pharmaceuticals, you need to have done research in the past to develop and produce drugs," said Berrill. "And that research may have been very environmentally intensive."
 

As part of this effort, the authors also developed a spreadsheet-based tool that allows users to quickly estimate carbon, energy, and material footprints associated with purchase of more than 400 products and services that drive the U.S. economy.
 

This tool will be useful to researchers and students as well as organizations looking to reduce their environmental impacts.
 

"It allows those involved in a purchasing or producing a particular good to get a better sense of, say, how much a thousand dollars spent on that good compares on average environmentally with a thousand dollars spent on another," said Reed Miller, a Ph.D. candidate in the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science and co-developer of the model. "It also enables one to identify the potential 'hotspots' they might want to focus on if they want to reduce their footprints."
 

"If you're targeting efforts to reduce the impact of something and you're not considering the capital aspects, then you might miss opportunities for improvements."

India can sustainably enhance its food supply if its farmers plant less rice and more nutritious and environmentally-friendly crops, including finger millet, pearl millet, and sorghum, according to a new study from the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that diversifying crop production in India, in this case replacing some rice--India's main crop--with millets and sorghum, would make the nation's food supply more nutritious while reducing irrigation demand, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. Such diversification of crops would also enhance India's climate resilience without reducing calorie production or requiring more land.

"To make agriculture more sustainable, it's important that we think beyond just increasing food supply and also find solutions that can benefit nutrition, farmers, and the environment. This study shows that there are real opportunities to do just that," says Kyle Davis, an environmental data scientist at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University and lead author of the study.

With nearly 200 million undernourished people in India as well as widespread groundwater depletion and the need to adapt to climate change, increasing the supply of nutri-cereals may be an important part of solving India's food shortage, Davis says.

Historical practices, especially the Green Revolution, have promoted the use of high-yielding seed varieties, irrigation, fertilizers, and machinery and emphasized maximizing food calorie production often at the expense of nutritional and environmental considerations. But Davis assessed India's crops according to multiple indices. He and fellow researchers evaluated alternative production decisions across multiple objectives using India's rice-dominated monsoon grain production as a case study.

The team performed a series of optimizations to either maximize the production of important dietary nutrients (i.e., protein and iron), minimize greenhouse gas emissions and resource use (i.e., water and energy), or maximize resilience to climate extremes. They found that planting more coarse cereals such as millets and sorghum could improve India's national food supply in myriad ways. On average, it would increase protein by 1 to 5 percent; increase iron supply by 5 to 49 percent; increase climate resilience (1 to 13 percent fewer calories lost during a drought), and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2 to 13 percent. The diversification of crops would also decrease the demand for irrigation water by 3 to 21 percent and reduce energy use by 2 to 12 percent while maintaining calorie production and using the same amount of cropland.

These findings show the many potential benefits of increasing millet and sorghum production in India, particularly in regions where rice yields are currently low, Davis says. "This work provides strong evidence that agriculture can be a powerful tool in helping to solve many of our planet's most important challenges, including malnutrition, climate change, and water scarcity."

The Indian Government is also promoting the increased production and consumption of nutri-cereals, which will be important for farmers' livelihoods and the increased cultural acceptability of these grains.

It has long been suggested that a cell protease could take part in enterovirus infection. However, the identity of such proteases have remained unknown. The work performed in the University of Jyväskylä shows, for the first time, that host cell calpain proteases can process enterovirus polyprotein in vitro. The research was published in Viruses scientific journal in November 2019.

Enteroviruses are the most common viruses infecting humans. Although most of the diseases that enteroviruses cause are symptomless or mild, enteroviruses can also cause more severe diseases.

Calpains are common host cell proteases, ubiquitous in the cell cytoplasm. The group of Docent Varpu Marjomäki has shown earlier that inhibition of calpain proteases very efficiently stops enterovirus infection. The work done now sheds light to the mechanism of the inhibitory effect. The work suggests that enteroviruses have learnt through evolution to take advantage of the cellular resources for their own benefit.

"We showed that calpain proteases can cut out viral capsid proteins from the larger polyprotein, and thus have the potential to contribute to the assembly of new viruses", says Docent Varpu Marjomäki.

The work done is very interesting as suggested by the eminent virologist Dr. Marco Vignuzzi from Pasteur-Institute, Paris.

"I consider this an outstanding observation and very significant first demonstration that will lead to significant advances in the field. It may very likely be that this mechanism of cleavage is also used by viruses in other viral families", Vignuzzi says.

According to Vignuzzi the work is to be considered to be one of the most interesting things that will be published this year in picornavirus research. This work was part of Mira Laajala´s dissertation at 22.11.2019 in Marjomäki´s group. Laajala showed further that calpain proteases have cross-reactivity against viral proteases as well. Inhibition of calpain proteases thus offers a future possibility to develop anti-viral therapies based on calpains.

Understanding how microwave absorption changes the transport properties of diffusive Josephson junctions is at the forefront of interest in the quantum transport community. It is especially relevant for the current efforts to address the current-phase relation in topological Josephson junctions and more generally the microwave transport in quantum devices. Researchers from the University of Paris-Saclay, the University of Regensburg (Germany) and the University of Jyvaskyla; (Finland) have delivered a combined experimental and theoretical work which reveal the profound nature of quantum transport in strongly driven diffusive Josephson junctions. Results are published in Physical Review Research in October.

At sufficiently low temperatures, superconductors cannot absorb microwave radiation of energy smaller than the superconducting energy gap D. In Josephson weak links instead, where two superconductors (S) are weakly coupled through a long diffusive metallic wire (N), radiation can be absorbed in N because the induced gap in the density of states or minigap is considerably smaller than D.

In a recent article the researchers' team have studied the out-of-equilibrium dynamical state induced by the absorption of high frequency microwave photons in diffusive Superconductor-Normal metal-Superconductor (SNS) junction. To characterize this state, the researchers pioneered a harmonic-resolved ac-Josephson spectroscopy technique which allows to access the harmonic content of the current-phase relation under microwave radiation.

With this approach, which does not require a specialized on-chip circuitry, they could see that a strong anharmonicity of the current-phase relation arises under illumination, especially at high frequency when inelastic transitions across the induced minigap are favored. This novel regime goes well beyond the standard Eliashberg theory and is understood because of the modifications of the supercurrent-carrying Andreev spectrum induced by non-adiabatic transitions.

These findings shed light on the complex mechanisms involved in irradiated mesoscopic superconductors and has important implications in Andreev-based quantum computing prospects.

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) and the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB) of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) have identified the protease MT1-MMP as a possible future target for drugs to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The study was led by Dr Alicia G Arroyo and is published today in EMBO Molecular Medicine. The study shows that inhibition of this protease could improve the treatment of IBD.

IBD refers to a group of chronic inflammatory disorders that fall into 2 categories: Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis. Complications associated with these diseases affect the gut (intestinal obstruction, nutrient deficiency, etc.) and other organs (disorders of the skin, joints, eyes, liver and gallbladder, etc.). The appearance of symptoms is unpredictable, and the disease is characterized by periods of remission and relapse. In many patients, symptoms are severe enough to require hospitalization and surgical intervention. Unfortunately, there is currently no universally effective cure for IBD.

During colitis, the intestinal blood vessels duplicate through mechanisms that are poorly understood. In the new study, Dr Arroyo's team used microscopy techniques and 3D image analysis to characterize these duplication events in a mouse model of colitis. These tools enabled the scientists to demonstrate that MT1-MMP expressed on endothelial cells lining the blood vessels impedes their duplication in the inflamed gut, reducing the severity of colitis.

The researchers also investigated the mechanisms underlying vascular duplication during IBD. The first stage in vessel duplication is dilation. One of the most potent vasodilator molecules is nitric oxide, and the authors found that the catalytic activity of MT1-MMP is necessary for nitric oxide production.

To investigate the effect of MT1-MMP on vessel duplication in vivo, the scientists examined the blood vessels supplying the cremaster muscle (covering the testicles and spermatic cord). These vessels are accessible to analysis by intravital microscopy. Using this technique, CNIC researcher Cristina Rius found that the cremaster vessels of mice lacking MT1-MMP did not fully dilate in response to treatment with vasodilators. Similar results were found in blood vessels supplying the intestine.

The authors also found that MT1-MMP 'cuts' the protein thrombospondin-1 (TSP1), generating a TSP1 fragment that binds to the cell adhesion receptor integrin αvβ3. The resulting integrin activation triggers the production of nitric oxide, leading to vasodilation and vessel duplication.

This finding has potential clinical implications. "The study shows that patients with mild IBD have higher than normal circulating levels of TSP1, which could be a useful biomarker of the disease," commented Arroyo.

In addition, first author Sergio Esteban described how the team had managed to "reduce vessel duplication in mice with colitis by administering either an antibody that inhibits MT1-MMP protease action or a TSP1 peptide that blocks TSP1-αvβ3 binding. This result establishes the MT1-MMP-TSP1-αvβ3 integrin pathway as a new therapeutic target, particularly for less severe forms of IBD."

Finally, the team worked with Fernando Martínez of the CNIC Bioinformatics Unit on a computer model to predict MT1-MMP cleavage sites in TSP1. This model will be used to screen for molecules able to block TSP1 cleavage.

Arroyo concluded that "the study presents a new opportunity to develop personalized treatments not only for patients with IBD, but also for patients with other diseases that progress through vessel duplication, like cancer."

What if we could use antibodies as functional tools for nanotechnology applications? A group of researchers at the University of Rome Tor Vergata started from this simple question and the results of their research are now published in Nature Communications.

Nanotechnology enables the design and fabrication of molecular structures of nanoscale dimensions that hold a great potential for several applications in the near future, including biomedicine. A convenient way to make such nanostructures is to employ synthetic DNA as the building material. These days it is possible to design and synthetize DNA strands that, by simple and predictable interactions, bind to each other just like Lego bricks, and form beautiful 2D and 3D geometries in a very controllable and precise fashion. To date, many nanoscale shapes have been created using DNA bricks, ranging from nanoboxes to more complex geometries, such as a nanoscale Monalisa. To allow potential applications of these nanostructures, however, it would be extremely important to design them so that their assembly and disassembly could be guided by molecular cues of clinical relevance.

Now a research group at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata has shown that it is possible to recruit antibodies as molecular builders to build or dismantle DNA nanostructures.

The function of antibodies in our body is to recognize and bind to a specific target (i.e. the antigen), which is often a foreign molecule or protein. For this reason, antibodies are ideal biomarkers because they are produced by our body to target foreign molecules in our blood. Each antibody has its own target and therefore does its job in a highly specific and precise way.

"This project started a couple of years ago when we realized that this amazing functionality of antibodies (recognize and bind to a specific molecule) could be repurposed for nanotech applications", says Francesco Ricci, professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and senior author of the manuscript. "We had the idea of utilizing antibodies as molecular workers to build nanoscale structures".

"To do this, we employed DNA bricks that bind to each other and form nanostructures of tubular shape", says Simona Ranallo, a post-doc researcher in the group of Prof. Ricci and first author of the manuscript, "we then re-engineered such bricks with recognition tags (antigens) so that their assembly is initiated by a specific antibody. The nanotube structure can thus only built up when the antibody is present in the sample!"

"Antibodies are highly specialized workers" adds Ricci, "there are thousands of distinct antibodies in our body each recognizing its own antigen. We took advantage of this amazing feature and designed different bricks that can assemble with different specific antibodies".

"We took a step further" continues Ricci, "we engineered our DNA bricks so that not only they assemble into the desired nanostructure in the presence of a specific antibody, but they can also be completely dismantled by a second antibody worker".

This strategy demonstrates the possibility to design intelligent nanostructures that can be built and destroyed in the presence of a specific biomarker. This could have potential applications in the biomedical field, either in diagnostics or therapeutics.

Obesity and gum (periodontal) disease are among the most common non-communicable diseases in the United States--and studies show these chronic conditions may be related. This new study explores the effect of obesity on non-surgical periodontal care and evaluates potential pathways that may illustrate the connection between the two conditions.

The connection between obesity and gum disease isn't as simple as cause-and-effect, said Andres Pinto, professor of oral and maxillofacial medicine and diagnostic sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and co-author of the study published in the British Dental Journal.

Instead, the relationship centers on what both diseases have in common: inflammation.

Examining a plethora of existing studies, researchers found that data showing increased body mass index, waist circumference and percentage of body fat to be associated with an increased risk to develop gum disease, also known as periodontitis. Most studies analyzed data from population subsets at one point in time, as opposed to studying the same population over a longer period.

They concluded that changes in body chemistry affect metabolism, which, in turn causes inflammation--something present in both maladies.

"Periodontal disease occurs in patients more susceptible to inflammation--who are also more susceptible to obesity," Pinto said.

This information can inform how health-care professionals plan treatments for patients suffering from obesity and/or gum disease, Pinto said.

"Oral health-care professionals need to be aware of the complexity of obesity to counsel their patients about the importance of an appropriate body weight and maintaining good oral hygiene," he said.

Pinto said further research on the relationship between gum disease and obesity is needed, noting there is, at this point, limited evidence to recommend changes in treatment planning.

"There is a thought, from the clinical perspective, that if you treat one of the issues, it may impact the other," he said. "This is the big question. For example, if we treat obesity successfully, will this impact periodontal disease to the point of being of clinical relevance compared to control population. The jury is still out given the paucity of controlled, well designed, clinical trials on this issue."

p>Slightly bending semiconductors made of organic materials can roughly double the speed of electricity flowing through them and could benefit next-generation electronics such as sensors and solar cells, according to Rutgers-led research.

The study is published in the journal Advanced Science.

“If implemented in electrical circuits, such an enhancement – achieved by very slight bending – would mean a major leap toward realizing next-generation, high-performance organic electronics,” said senior author Vitaly Podzorov, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

Semiconductors include materials that conduct electricity and their conductivity can be tuned by different external stimuli, making them essential for all electronics. Organic semiconductors are made of organic molecules (mainly consisting of carbon and hydrogen atoms) that form light, flexible crystals called van der Waals molecular crystals. These novel materials are quite promising for applications in optoelectronics, which harness light and include flexible and printed electronics, sensors and solar cells. Traditional semiconductors made of silicon or germanium have limitations, including cost and rigidity.

One of the most important characteristics of organic and inorganic semiconductors is how fast electricity can flow through electronic devices. Thanks to progress over the last decade, organic semiconductors can perform roughly 10 times better than traditional amorphous silicon transistors. Tuning semiconductors by bending them is called “strain engineering,” which would open a new avenue of development in the semiconductor industry if implemented successfully. But until now, there were no conclusive experimental results on how bending organic semiconductors, including those in transistors, may affect the speed of electricity flowing in them.

The Rutgers-led study reports the first such measurement, and a 1 percent bend in an organic transistor can roughly double the speed of electrons flowing through it.

The lead author is Hyun Ho Choi, a former post-doctoral researcher in the Podzorov Group who is now at Gyeongsang National University in Korea. Hee Taek Yi, another former post-doctoral researcher, is a coauthor. Scientists at the University of Tokyo; University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea contributed to the study.

Journal

Advanced Science

DOI

10.1002/advs.201901824

As the planet warms due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a solution for drawing down that carbon - or at least a major part of it - lies silently below us.

Soil organic matter - made of decomposing plant, animal and microbial tissue - is what distinguishes healthy, vibrant soil from just plain dirt. Making up about 3% of productive agricultural soils, soil organic matter is an effective "carbon sink" that can store, in the ground, the carbon dioxide plants pull from the atmosphere. Along with reducing fossil fuel emissions, employing soils as vast carbon sinks is considered a key strategy in combating climate change.

Accruing soil organic matter effectively and sustainably requires a deeper understanding of its formation, persistence and function. And according to Colorado State University scientists, not all soil organic matter is created equal.

A set of studies led by CSU soil scientist Francesca Cotrufo offers a newly nuanced understanding of different soil organic matter components that can be increased through varied management strategies. Publishing in Global Change Biology, Cotrufo and co-authors Jocelyn Lavallee and Jennifer Soong establish a framework for classifying soil organic matter into two broad categories that are fundamentally different in origin and makeup. In a related study in Nature Geoscience, Cotrufo led an experimental and statistical survey of these soil organic matter components across European forests and grasslands.

Only by recognizing the diversity of soil organic matter can science, government and agriculture move forward with carbon sequestration to help reverse the tide of climate change while increasing the health of our soils, the scientists say.

"Because of thousands of years of historical land use and conventional agriculture, we have contributed to consuming soil organic matter and emitting carbon from the soil into the atmosphere," says Cotrufo, a professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and senior scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. "Now, we have the opportunity to put it back."

That opportunity, Cotrufo and colleagues say, comes with thinking of soil organic matter as having two major components.

The first is called "particulate organic matter," made up of lightweight, partly decomposed plants and fungi residues that are short-lived and not well protected.

The second is "mineral-associated organic matter," largely made of byproducts of the decomposition of microbes that chemically bind to minerals in the soil. This type of matter is more resilient and able to persist in the ground for centuries.

Insights around the formation of these different classes of soil sprouted from previous work Cotrufo published in 2013, establishing a "microbial-efficiency mineral-stabilization framework" that transformed the way scientists understand how organic matter persists in soils. Cotrufo and colleagues proposed that microbial decomposition of plant matter can act as a stabilizer for soil organic matter; it was previously thought that preserving carbon in soil would require halting decomposition.

Cotrufo calls particulate organic matter the "checking account" of soils. It turns over continuously and supports nutrient cycling but requires regular deposits to stay vital. Mineral-associated organic matter, then, is the "savings account": it gets a smaller fraction of deposits but is inherently more stable.

Conventional agriculture, Cotrufo says, has caused us to exhaust our checking account and start living off our savings. This happens because of farms selecting few crops with minimal root production, harvesting much of the above-ground biomass, and maintaining few and chemically homogenous plant inputs into the soils.

By taking cues from nature and understanding how natural prairies and forests manage their soil checking and savings accounts, more forward-thinking strategies are possible for upending farming and land use to be more sustainable, Cotrufo says. To regenerate healthy soil that can capture excess carbon, both types of soil pools must be augmented, she adds.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers showed that European grasslands and forests with symbiotic partnerships between fungi and plants store more soil carbon in nitrogen-demanding mineral-associated organic matter. But forests that depend on symbiosis with other fungal species store more carbon in particulate organic matter, which is more vulnerable to disturbance, but has a lower nitrogen demand and can accumulate carbon indefinitely.

Cotrufo will continue researching how particulate and mineral-associated soil organic matter are distributed, with plans to incorporate U.S. land surveys into her datasets. Cotrufo was also recently named the Nutrien Distinguished Scholar of Agricultural Sciences at CSU, a one-year award of $12,000 reserved for distinguished faculty who are making significant impacts in their fields.

Cotrufo recently gave a talk on soil as "humanity's capital" at The Land Institute, where she provided insight into her early stake in soil science, and how the field has evolved over her career.