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Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed an elongated Tropical Storm Rene being battered by wind shear in the Central Atlantic Ocean. Tropical cyclones that appear less than round are likely being affected by wind shear or outside winds transitioning into an extra-tropical cyclone or taking on the elongated appearance of a weather front. Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed an elongated Tropical Storm Rene being battered by wind shear in the Central Atlantic Ocean. Tropical cyclones that appear less than round are likely being affected by wind shear or outside winds transitioning into an extra-tropical cyclone or taking on the elongated appearance of a weather front. Outside winds have given Rene's strongest storms an appearance like that of a triangle.

Wind Shear Affecting Rene

The shape of a tropical cyclone provides forecasters with an idea of its organization and strength. When outside winds batter a storm, it can change the storm's shape. Winds can push most of the associated clouds and rain to one side of a storm.

In general, wind shear is a measure of how the speed and direction of winds change with altitude. Tropical cyclones are like rotating cylinders of winds. Each level needs to be stacked on top each other vertically in order for the storm to maintain strength or intensify. Wind shear occurs when winds at different levels of the atmosphere push against the rotating cylinder of winds, weakening the rotation by pushing it apart at different levels.

Infrared Data Reveals Effects of Wind Shear 

NASA's Aqua satellite uses infrared light to analyze the strength of storms by providing temperature information about the system's clouds. The strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.

On Sept. 11 at 12:35 a.m. EDT (0435 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite revealed a small area of Rene's most powerful thunderstorms around its center where cloud top temperatures were as cold as minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). A larger area of strong storms with cloud top temperatures as cold as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6. degrees Celsius) surrounded the center in what looks like a triangular shape. NASA research has found that storms with cloud tops as cold as at least minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit can generate heavy rain.

At 5 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11, U.S. Navy Hurricane Specialist, Dave Roberts of NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla. noted in the Rene discussion, "A microwave pass revealed that Rene's surface center is farther separated from the shrinking deep convection. Model soundings indicate that east-southeasterly 30 to 25 knot [vertical wind] shear near 300 millibars is temporarily undercutting the diffluent southerly flow aloft." An air pressure of 300 millibars is about 30,000 feet (9,100 meters) high in the atmosphere, but it can vary between 27,000 to 32,000 feet (8,200 to 9,600 meters).

The wind shear Rene is currently experiencing is expected to relax during the next 36 to 48 hours (from 5 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11) which should allow for gradual intensification. "By mid-period, Rene is forecast to move into an area of increasing west-northwesterly shear, which should induce a weakening trend," Roberts noted.

Rene's Status on Sept. 11

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Rene was located near latitude 19.7 degrees north and longitude 38.5 degrees west. Rene is 985 miles (1,585 km) west-northwest of the Cabo Verde Islands. Rene is moving toward the west-northwest near 10 mph (17 kph).  This general motion is expected to continue through Friday night, followed by a turn toward the northwest on Saturday. Maximum sustained winds are near 45 mph (75 kph) with higher gusts. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1002 millibars.

Rene's Weekend Forecast

NHC forecasters expect a north-northwestward and northward motion with a decrease in forward speed on Sunday and Sunday night [Sept. 13]. Gradual strengthening is forecast during the couple of days.  Afterward, weakening is expected to begin by Sunday night.

NASA Researches Earth from Space

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration.

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Ling Li has a lesson in one of his mechanical engineering courses on how brittle materials like calcium carbonate behave under stress. In it, he takes a piece of chalk composed of the compound and snaps it in half to show his students the edge of one of the broken pieces. The break is blunt and straight.

Then, he twists a second piece, which results in sharper shards broken at a 45-degree angle, indicating the more dangerous direction of tensile stress on the chalk. The broken chalk helps Li demonstrate what brittle calcium carbonate will do under normal forces: it tends to fracture.

"If you bend it, it will break," Li said.

In Li's Laboratory for Biological and Bio-Inspired Materials, many of the ocean animals he studies for their biological structural materials have parts made of calcium carbonate. Some mollusks use it in photonic crystals that create a vivid color display, "like a butterfly's wings," Li said. Others have mineral eyes built with it, into their shells. The more Li studies these animals, the more he's amazed by the uses their bodies find for intrinsically brittle and fragile material. Especially when the use defies that fragility.

In a study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Li's research team focused on the cuttlefish, another one of those inventive, chalk-built animals and a traveler of the ocean's depths. The researchers investigated the internal microstructure of cuttlebone, the mollusk's highly porous internal shell, and found that the microstructure's unique, chambered "wall-septa" design optimizes cuttlebone to be extremely lightweight, stiff, and damage-tolerant. Their study goes into the underlying material design strategies that give cuttlebone these high-performance mechanical properties, despite the shell's composition mostly of brittle aragonite, a crystal form of calcium carbonate.

In the ocean, the cuttlefish uses cuttlebone as a hard buoyancy tank to control its movement up and down the water column, to depths as low as 600 meters. The animal adjusts the ratio of gas to water in that tank to float up or sink down. To serve this purpose, the shell has to be lightweight and porous for active fluid exchange, yet stiff enough to protect the cuttlefish's body from strong water pressure as it dives deeper. When cuttlebone does get crushed by pressure or by a predator's bite, it has to be able to absorb a lot of energy. That way, the damage stays in a localized area of the shell, rather than shattering the entire cuttlebone.

The need to balance all of these functions is what makes cuttlebone so unique, Li's team discovered, as they examined the shell's internal microstructure.

Ph.D. student and study co-author Ting Yang used synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography to characterize cuttlebone microstructure in 3D, penetrating the shell with a powerful X-ray beam from Argonne National Laboratory to produce high-resolution images. She and the team observed what happened to the shell's microstructure when it was compressed by applying the in-situ tomography method during mechanical tests. Combining these steps with digital image correlation, which allows for frame-by-frame image comparison, they studied cuttlebone's full deformation and fracture processes under loading.

Their experiments revealed more about cuttlebone's chambered "wall-septa" microstructure and its design for optimized weight, stiffness, and damage tolerance.

The design separates cuttlebone into individual chambers with floors and ceilings, or "septa," supported by vertical "walls." Other animals, like birds, have a similar structure, known as a "sandwich" structure. With a layer of dense bone atop another and vertical struts in between for support, the structure is made lightweight and stiff. Unlike the sandwich structure, however, cuttlebone's microstructure has multiple layers -- those chambers -- and they're supported by wavy walls instead of straight struts. The waviness increases along each wall from floor to ceiling in a "waviness gradient."

"The exact morphology we haven't seen, at least in other models," said Li of the design.
This wall-septa design gives cuttlebone control of where and how damage occurs in the shell. It allows for graceful, rather than catastrophic, failure: when compressed, chambers fail one by one, progressively rather than instantaneously.

The researchers found that cuttlebone's wavy walls induce or control fractures to form at the middle of walls, rather than at floors or ceilings, which would cause the entire structure to collapse. As one chamber undergoes wall fracture and subsequent densification -- in which the fractured walls gradually compact in the damaged chamber -- the adjacent chamber remains intact until fractured pieces penetrate its floors and ceilings. During this process, a significant amount of mechanical energy can be absorbed, Li explained, limiting external impact.

Li's team further explored the high-performance potential of cuttlebone's microstructure with computational modeling. Using measurements of the microstructure made with the earlier 3D tomography, postdoctoral researcher Zian Jia built a parametric model, ran virtual tests that altered the waviness of the structure's walls, and observed how the shell performed as a result.

"We know that cuttlebone has these wavy walls with a gradient," Li said. "Zian changed the gradient so we could learn how cuttlebone behaved if we went beyond this morphology. Is it better, or not? We show that cuttlebone sits in an optimal spot. If the waviness becomes too big, the structure is less stiff. If the waves become smaller, the structure becomes more brittle. Cuttlebone seems to have found a sweet spot, to balance the stiffness and energy absorption."

Li sees applications for cuttlebone's microstructural design in ceramic foams. Among foams used for crush resistance or energy absorption in packaging, transportation, and infrastructure, polymer and metal materials are the more popular choices. Ceramic foams are rarely used because they're brittle, Li said. But ceramics have their own unique advantages -- they're more chemically stable and have a high melting temperature.

If cuttlebone's properties could be applied to ceramic foams, their ability to withstand high heat paired with newfound damage tolerance could make ceramic foams ideal for use as thermal protection units in space shuttles or as general thermal protection, Li believes. His team has been evaluating that application in a separate study.

Though the team has already begun to look up from the sea to the sky at the possibilities that cuttlebone inspires, their study of the shell's fundamental design strategies is just as important to Li.

"Nature makes a lot of structural materials," Li said. "These materials are made at room temperature and regular atmospheric pressure, unlike metals, which can be detrimental to the environment to produce -- you need to use high temperatures and refraction processes for metals.

"We're intrigued by such differences between biological structural materials and engineered structural materials. Can we bridge these two and provide insights in making new structural materials?"

CHICAGO --- The locus of male sexual desire has been uncovered in specific regions of brain tissue where a key gene named aromatase is present, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study in mice.

The gene regulates sexual behavior in men, and thus can be targeted by drugs to either increase its function for low sexual desire or decrease its function for compulsive sexual desire, scientists said. Aromatase converts testosterone to estrogen in the brain, which drives male sexual activity.

The study was published Sept. 10 in the journal Endocrinology.

Aromatase's full function in the adult brain had not previously been known.

"This is the first key finding to explain how testosterone stimulates sexual desire," said senior author Dr. Serdar Bulun, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Medicine. "For the first time, we demonstrated conclusively that the conversion of testosterone to estrogen in the brain is critical to maintain full sexual activity or desire in males. Aromatase drives that."

When Northwestern scientists knocked out aromatase selectively in the brain, sexual activity in male mice decreased by 50%, despite their having higher levels of blood testosterone levels (compared with control male mice).

"Male mice partially lost interest in sex," said corresponding study author Dr. Hong Zhao, research associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology at Feinberg. "Aromatase is the key enzyme for estrogen production. Estrogen has functions in males and females. Testosterone has to be converted to estrogen to drive sexual desire in males."

If a normal male mouse is put with a female one, Bulun said, "it would chase after her and try to have sex with her. If you knock out the aromatase gene in the brain, their sexual activity is significantly reduced. There is less frequency of mating. The male mice are not that interested."

The finding can contribute to new treatments for disorders of sexual desire, the scientists said.

Low sexual desire, clinically known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder, is a common condition and can be a side effect of widely used medications such as a category of antidepressants known as SSRIs. A treatment to boost aromatase in this disorder could heighten sexual desire, Bulun said.

On the flip side, compulsive sexual desire is another condition that can be treated by an existing systemic aromatase inhibitor, but that treatment has side effects such as osteoporosis. Now, new selective drugs that suppress only the brain promoter region of the aromatase gene can be developed, Bulun said. These new selective medications would not cause the side effects of the currently existing aromatase inhibitors.

A soil scientist from RUDN University found out that the resources of organic phosphorus in the soils of the Tibetan Plateau could be depleted because of global warming. To do so, he compared phosphorus content in the soils from the Tibetan Plateau that has a cold climate and from the warmer Loess Plateau. The results of the study were published in the Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment journal.

Phosphorus is the second most vital element for plants after nitrogen. In the soil, it is bound into organic or inorganic compounds. The soil cycle of phosphorus has several stages: first, organic substances mineralize; then, phosphorus is transferred to inorganic mineral compounds; after that, it is consumed by plants, and then it returns to the soil with organic plant waste. A soil scientist from RUDN University was the first to find out that global warming can deplete soil phosphorus reserves. To do so, he studied soil samples from the Tibetan Plateau, a place where temperature grows three times faster than on average across the planet.

"The Tibetan Plateau is the largest pasture in Eurasia, and considerable temperature growth in the region combined with excessive cattle grazing and other factors has already led to a visible decrease of soil nutrients. It is vital to understand changes in soil phosphorus dynamics caused by global warming in order to predict the reaction to climate change in the Tibetan Plateau on the ecosystemic level," said Yakov Kuzyakov, a PhD in Biology, and the Head of the Center for Mathematical Modeling and Design of Sustainable Ecosystems at RUDN University.

The scientist took soil samples from 10 areas across the Tibetan Plateau (3,500 meters above sea level) and the Loess Plateau (about 1,300 meters above sea level). The average annual temperature at the highest sampling point was 0.3?, and at the lowest 9?. All plant roots were removed from the samples, and the soil was dried at 105?. After that, a team of soil scientists separated organic and inorganic phosphorus and measured the activity of phosphatase, a soil enzyme that is produced by plant roots and enables plants to consume phosphate minerals.

It turned out that in the cold soils of the Tibetan Plateau phosphorus is stocked up in the organic form that cannot be consumed by plants, while in the warm soils of the Loess Plateau it is presented in the inorganic form and is available to plants. Phosphatase, in its turn, was more active on higher altitudes. The team saw it as a kind of a protective mechanism: in cold climates, it is better to store phosphorus in organic waste, not in minerals that can be washed out from the soil by rains.

The team also believes that global warming can have a harmful impact on the cycle of phosphorus on the Tibetan Plateau. With the growth of temperatures phosphorus would transition from the organic to the inorganic form, just like it already does in the warm soils of the Loess Plateau. On the face of it, it appears to be a positive development, as it would increase the fertility of Tibetan soils. However, the organic phosphorus stored on the Tibetan Plateau is a product of long years of evolution in a cold climate. When it gets warmer, phosphorus resources would deplete because it would take longer for organic phosphorus to build up than for plants to consume its inorganic form.

Phosphorus is essential for agriculture, yet this important plant nutrient is increasingly being lost from soils around the world. The primary cause is soil erosion, reports an international research team led by the University of Basel. The study in the journal Nature Communications shows which continents and regions are most strongly affected.

The world's food production depends directly on phosphorus. However, this plant nutrient is not unlimited, but comes from finite geological reserves. How soon these reserves might be exhausted is the subject of scholarly debate. Just as controversial is the question which states own the remaining reserves and the political dependencies this creates.

Quantification using high-resolution data

An international research team led by Professor Christine Alewell has investigated which continents and regions worldwide are suffering the greatest loss of phosphorus. The researchers combined high-resolution spatially discrete global data on the phosphorus content of soils with local erosion rates. Based on this, they calculated how much phosphorus is lost through erosion in different countries.

An important conclusion of the study is that more than 50% of global phosphorus loss in agriculture is attributable to soil erosion. "That erosion plays a role was already known. The extent of that role has never before been quantified with this level of spatial resolution," Alewell explains. Previously, experts reported losses primarily due to lack of recycling, food and feed waste, and general mismanagement of phosphorus resources.

Too little in the field, too much in the water

Erosion flushes mineral bound phosphorus out of agricultural soils into wetlands and water bodies, where the excess of nutrients (called eutrophication) harms the aquatic plant and animal communities. The researchers were able to validate their calculations using globally published measurement data on phosphorus content in rivers: the elevated phosphorus content in waters mirrors the calculated loss of phosphorus in the soil in the respective region.

Mineral fertilizers can replace the lost phosphorus in the fields, but not all countries are equally able to use them. Although countries such as Switzerland can develop solutions thanks to organic fertilizers and potentially relatively closed phosphorus cycles (see box) in agriculture, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America register the greatest phosphorus losses - with limited options for solving the problem. "It's paradoxical, especially as Africa possesses the largest geological phosphorus deposits," says Alewell. "But the mined phosphorus is exported and costs many times more for most farmers in African countries than, for example, European farmers." In Eastern Europe economic constraints are also the most crucial factor of phosphorous deficiency.

South America could potentially mitigate the problem with efficient use of organic fertilizer and/or better recycling of plant residues. On the other hand, farmers in Africa do not have this option: Africa has too little green fodder and too little animal husbandry to replace mineral fertilizers with manure and slurry, says Alewell.

Who will control reserves in the future?

It is still unclear when exactly phosphorus for global agriculture will run out. New large deposits were discovered a few years ago in Western Sahara and Morocco, although how accessible they are is questionable. In addition, China, Russia, and the US are increasingly expanding their influence in these regions, which suggest that they might also control this important resource for global future food production. Europe has practically no phosphorus deposits of its own.

"95% of our food is directly or indirectly produced as a result of plants growing in the soil. The creeping loss of the plant nutrient phosphorus should be of concern to all people and societies," says Alewell. If countries want to secure their independence from those states that possess the remaining large deposits, they must seek to minimize phosphorus losses in soils.

A drastic reduction in soil erosion is a major and important step in the right direction. Land managers can reduce erosion by ensuring ground cover for as long as possible; for example, through mulching, green manure and intercropping, and through topography-adapted cultivation - tilling fields transversely to the slope or terracing.

A team from Osaka City University, in collaboration with other international partners, has demonstrated a reliable and precise microscope-based thermometer that works in live, microscopic animals based on quantum technology, specifically, detecting temperature-dependent properties of quantum spins in fluorescent nanodiamonds.

The research is published in Science Advances.

The optical microscope is one of the most basic tools for analysis in biology that uses visible light to allow the naked eye to see microscopic structures. In the modern laboratory, fluorescence microscope, an enhanced version of the optical microscope with various fluorescent biomarkers, is more frequently used. Recent advancements in such fluorescence microscopy have allowed for live imaging of the details of a structure, and through this, obtaining various physiological parameters in these structures, such as pH, reactive oxygen species, and temperature.

Quantum sensing is a technology that exploits the ultimate sensitivity of fragile quantum systems to the surrounding environment. High-contrast MRIs are examples of quantum spins in fluorescent diamonds and are some of the most advanced quantum systems working at the forefront of real-world applications. Applications of this technique to thermal biology were introduced seven years ago to quantify temperatures inside cultured cells. However, they had yet to be applied to dynamic biological systems where heat and temperature are more actively involved in biological processes.

The research team decorated the surface of the nanodiamonds with polymer structures and injected them to C. elegans nematode worms, one of the most popular model animals in biology. They needed to know the base "healthy" temperature of the worms. Once inside, the nanodiamonds moved quickly but the team's novel quantum thermometry algorithm successfully tracked them and steadily measured the temperature. A fever was induced within the worms by stimulating their mitochondria with a pharmacological treatment. The team's quantum thermometer successfully observed a temperature increase in the worms.

"It was fascinating to see quantum technology work so well in live animals and I never imagined the temperature of tiny worms less than 1 mm in size could deviate from the norm and develop into a fever," said Masazumi Fujiwara, a lecturer at the Department of Science at Osaka City University. "Our results are an important milestone that will guide the future direction of quantum sensing as it shows how it contributes to biology,"

WASHINGTON (Sept. 11, 2020)--A team of Israeli and American researchers funded by grants from the National Geographic Society and the Israel Science Foundation has uncovered new evidence that an earthquake may have caused the destruction and abandonment of a flourishing Canaanite palatial site about 3,700 years ago.

The group made the discovery at the 75-acre site of Tel Kabri in Israel, which contains the ruins of a Canaanite palace and city that dates back to approximately 1900-1700 B.C. The excavations, located on land belonging to Kibbutz Kabri in the western Galilee region, are co-directed by Assaf Yasur-Landau, a professor of Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Haifa, and Eric Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology at the George Washington University.

"We wondered for several years what had caused the sudden destruction and abandonment of the palace and the site, after centuries of flourishing occupation," Yasur-Landau said. "A few seasons ago, we began to uncover a trench which runs through part of the palace, but initial indications suggested that it was modern, perhaps dug within the past few decades or a century or two at most. But then, in 2019, we opened up a new area and found that the trench continued for at least 30 meters, with an entire section of a wall that had fallen into it in antiquity, and with other walls and floors tipping into it on either side."

According to Michael Lazar, the lead author of the study, recognizing past earthquakes can be extremely challenging in the archaeological record, especially at sites where there isn't much stone masonry and where degradable construction materials like sun-dried mud bricks and wattle-and-daub were used instead. At Tel Kabri, however, the team found both stone foundations for the bottom part of the walls and mud-brick superstructures above.

"Our studies show the importance of combining macro- and micro-archaeological methods for the identification of ancient earthquakes," he said. "We also needed to evaluate alternative scenarios, including climatic, environmental and economic collapse, as well as warfare, before we were confident in proposing a seismic event scenario."

The researchers could see areas where the plaster floors appeared warped, walls had tilted or been displaced, and mud bricks from the walls and ceilings had collapsed into the rooms, in some cases rapidly burying dozens of large jars.

"It really looks like the earth simply opened up and everything on either side of it fell in," Cline said. "It's unlikely that the destruction was caused by violent human activity because there are no visible signs of fire, no weapons such as arrows that would indicate a battle, nor any unburied bodies related to combat. We could also see some unexpected things in other rooms of the palace, including in and around the wine cellar that we excavated a few years ago."

In 2013, the team discovered 40 jars within a single storage room of the palace during an expedition also supported by a National Geographic Society grant. An organic residue analysis conducted on the jars indicated that they held wine; it was described at the time as the oldest and largest wine cellar yet discovered in the Near East. Since then, the team has found four more such storage rooms and at least 70 more jars, all buried by the collapse of the building.

"The floor deposits imply a rapid collapse rather than a slow accumulation of degraded mud bricks from standing walls or ceilings of an abandoned structure," Ruth Shahack-Gross, a professor of geoarchaeology at the University of Haifa and a co-author on the study, said. "The rapid collapse, and the quick burial, combined with the geological setting of Tel Kabri, raises the possibility that one or more earthquakes could have destroyed the walls and the roof of the palace without setting it on fire."

The investigators are hopeful that their methodological approach can be applied at other archaeological sites, where it can serve to test or strengthen cases of possible earthquake damage and destruction.

The health of democracy in the United States has reached its lowest point since an academic watchdog group of political scientists began tracking its performance in 2017.

Results of the August 2020 survey from Bright Line Watch—a political science research project of faculty at the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, and Dartmouth College—show a small but perceptible drop in the experts’ rating of the overall quality of US democracy.

During the first two years of Bright Line Watch expert surveys, from February 2017 to March 2019, average scores were generally in the high 60s on a 0–100 scale, with a decline in the period before the 2018 midterm elections and then an uptick afterward in March 2019. Since then, however, three consecutive expert surveys have shown successive declines, driving ratings of US democracy to a new low of 61 on the Bright Line Watch scale in their latest survey.

While there are a few bright spots in the latest report, the overall picture is cause for consternation, notes Gretchen Helmke, professor of political science at the University of Rochester.

Since February 2017, the nonpartisan group of political scientists, which includes Helmke and Mitchell Sanders ’97 (PhD) of Meliora Research, has been surveying the American public, as well as colleagues in academia, in an effort to gauge the relative well-being of the nation’s democracy.

“It is concerning that there has been so much erosion across the board on so many principles,” says Helmke. “We have been seeing growing gaps for a while between how important a principle is and how it is performing, particularly in areas related to institutional limits on the government and accountability. But the latest survey showed us just how much ground has been lost since March.”

In one way or another, COVID-19 has touched billions of lives around the globe and cast a pall over US politics. To date, more than 185,000 people have died in the US alone. Campaigns for the presidency, Congress, and other public offices are taking place in a largely virtual medium. At the same time, since Memorial Day, when George Floyd died while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers, protests over Floyd’s death and the government’s response to the protests have highlighted challenges to democratic governance. The survey was completed before the police shooting of Jacob Blake on August 23 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

In its 11th survey of experts, the academic watchdog group asked political scientists across the country how US democracy fared during the pandemic.

The 776 responding experts, polled between July 27 and August 17, see the overall quality of US democracy continuing on its downward trend, reaching the lowest point since Bright Line Watch began its surveys in early 2017.

Key findings of Bright Line Watch’s August 2020 survey

Performance declines since March 2020 are greatest for protections of free speech, toleration of peaceful protest, and protection from political violence.
Experts see considerable declines since 2017 in the performance of democratic principles concerning limits on government power and accountability for its misuse.
Experts are concerned about the state of American elections. Although relatively few express significant concerns about fraud, the majority does not believe that elections are free from foreign influence. Two-thirds of the experts do not think that citizens have an equal opportunity to vote, or that all votes have equal impact.
The gap between expert assessments of the importance of numerous principles and performance on those principles has widened. In the past, importance and performance ratings were highly correlated; experts perceived stronger performance for more important principles. That relationship has weakened.

Performance on democratic principles

Bright Line Watch asked experts to gauge how well the US “fully meets,” “mostly meets,” “partly meets,” or “does not meet” standards for 28 democratic principles.

Overall, experts rate the US as performing well on questions related to rights and freedoms—such as political parties, opinions, and speech. They rate the US as performing poorly on dimensions associated with civility and behavior—such as patriotism, compromise, and facts, and electoral dysfunction—such as biased districts, campaign contributions, and inequality of votes. Experts express more mixed judgments on items involving accountability of officeholders and institutions.

“The most alarming findings, though not particularly surprising, are the steep declines in government protection for peaceful protest and the prevention of political violence,” says Helmke. “This is really a new and quite worrisome trend, and, of course, our polling for this survey took place even before the events in Kenosha.”

Specifically, since March, experts perceive substantial declines in government protection for peaceful protests (-31 percentage points), prevention of political violence (-16.7 percentage points), and protections for free speech (-12.4 percentage points). According to Bright Line Watch, those decreases can be attributed to the administration’s responses to protests and demonstrations, including the use of nonlethal weapons against protestors and the deployment of federal agents in Portland and Washington, DC.

Expert ratings also declined for the principles that government statistics and data not be influenced by political considerations
(-14.3 percentage points), that investigations of public officials remain free of political interference (-10.9 percentage points), and that voter participation in elections is generally high (-9 percentage points).

The only significant improvement in performance is on the principle that the judiciary can effectively limit the executive, which rose from 44 percent to 58 percent of experts saying that the US “mostly” or “fully” meets this standard. This increase might reflect recent Supreme Court decisions that prevented President Trump from blocking the release of his financial records and overturned his decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to the Bright Line Watch team.

The long view

When placed in a longer-term context, the experts’ ratings of US democratic performance have fallen the furthest since Bright Line Watch’s inception in 2017 for the following five items:

Government protects individuals’ right to engage in peaceful protest
Executive authority cannot be expanded beyond constitutional limits
The legislature is able to effectively limit executive power
The judiciary is able to effectively limit executive power
Government agencies are not used to monitor, attack, or punish political opponents

Australian wine scientists are shedding scientific light on the processes underlying traditional practices of Australian Aboriginal people to produce fermented beverages.

The scientists from the University of Adelaide and the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) have discovered the complex microbial communities associated with the natural fermentation of sap from the iconic Tasmanian cider gum, Eucalyptus gunnii. The work has been published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

The much-loved, but locally endangered, cider gum is native to the remote Central Plateau of Tasmania and also commonly planted as an ornamental tree across the British Isles and some parts of Western Europe.

"Cider gums produce a sweet sap that was collected by Aboriginal people to produce a mildly alcoholic beverage," says lead author Dr Cristian Varela, Principal Research Scientist with the AWRI.

"The drink known as way-a-linah was made by the Tasmanian Palawa people in a traditional practice where the sap was given time to spontaneously ferment.

"To the best of our knowledge, the microorganisms responsible for this traditional Australian fermentation have never been investigated or identified."

The wine scientists, in collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy, collected sap, bark and soil samples from around the cider gums in three locations in the Tasmanian Central Plateau.

They used DNA sequencing to identify the bacterial and fungal communities they found. Some could not be matched to existing databases, suggesting they represent completely new classifications of bacteria and fungi, not previously described.

Research leader Professor Vladimir Jiranek, Professor of Oenology with the University's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, says: "The wider community is not typically aware of these historic traditions. This work shines a light on these practices and the cultural significance of these unique fermentations.

"It also allows us to identify new strains, or species, of yeast and bacteria from the fermentations that are unique to Australia. Further work will characterise single microorganisms that have been isolated and grown from the cider gum.

"We are particularly interested in their fermentative abilities, their potential flavour impacts, how they've adapted to the cider gum environment and the possible symbiotic relationship they have with the trees.

"We look forward to continuing our work with relevant Aboriginal communities in order to understand these and other processes, and help revive lost practices or perhaps develop new ones from these."

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Eating less meat and dairy products in favor of plant-based proteins like those found in grains, legumes and nuts could make a huge difference in how much carbon dioxide reaches the atmosphere, research by Oregon State University shows.

Published Monday in Nature Sustainability, the findings by OSU's William Ripple and collaborators at New York University, Colorado State University and Harvard University detail how agricultural land devoted to producing animal-sourced food puts the squeeze on forests and other native vegetation well suited to absorbing CO2.

"Plant protein foods provide important nutrients while requiring a small percentage of the farm and ranch land needed to generate animal products like beef, pork and milk," said Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology in the Oregon State College of Forestry.

Via photosynthesis, trees and other vegetation generate energy from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, in the process storing some of the carbon in the form of wood and foliage and releasing oxygen.

The land required to meet current global demand for meat and dairy-based products constitutes more than 80% of the Earth's agricultural acreage, according to the research collaboration led by Matthew Hayek of New York University.

If production is shifted to more land-friendly foods, the door opens to the regrowth of native vegetation capable of scrubbing away years of climate-changing fossil fuel emissions.

The scientists mapped and analyzed areas where extensive production of animal-sourced foods is likely suppressing forests and other native vegetation. They identified areas totaling more than 7 million square kilometers - roughly the size of Russia - with conditions such that forests would regrow and thrive on their own if agricultural pressure were removed.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased 40% since the dawn of the industrial age, contributing heavily to a warming planet. According to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the global average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in 2018 was 407.4 parts per million, higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.

Fossil fuels like coal and oil contain carbon that plants pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis over millions of years. That same carbon is now being returned to the atmosphere in a matter of hundreds of years because fossil fuels are being burned for energy,

The annual rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past six decades is roughly 100 times faster than increases resulting from natural causes, such as those that happened following the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago, according to NOAA.

Unlike oxygen or nitrogen, which account for most of the atmosphere, greenhouse gases absorb heat and release it gradually over time. Absent those greenhouse gases, the planet's average annual temperature would be below freezing rather than around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but too-high levels of greenhouse gases cause the Earth's energy budget to become unbalanced.

The largest potential for climate-benefiting forest regrowth is in comparatively wealthy nations. In those countries, cutbacks in meat and dairy production would bring relatively mild impacts on food security, the researchers say, while substantially assisting in capping climate change at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial age levels as called for in the 2016 Paris Agreement.

A majority of climate scientists agree that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would maintain substantial proportions of ecosystems while also benefiting human health and economies.

"We can think of shifting our eating habits toward land-friendly diets as a supplement to developing green energy, rather than a substitute," Hayek said. "Restoring native forests could buy some much-needed time for countries to transition their energy grids to renewable, fossil-free infrastructure."

Hayek, Ripple and their collaborators - Helen Harwatt of Harvard and Nathaniel Mueller of Colorado State - emphasize that their findings are meant to help local officials seeking to come up with plans to mitigate climate change. The scientists acknowledge that animal-based agriculture is economically and culturally important in many areas around the globe.

"While the potential for restoring ecosystems is substantial, extensive animal agriculture is culturally and economically important in many regions around the world," Mueller said. "Ultimately, our findings can help target places where restoring ecosystems and halting ongoing deforestation would have the largest carbon benefits."

Reducing meat production would also aid water quality and quantity, wildlife habitat and biodiversity, Ripple says, including fostering the ecosystem health that helps thwart pandemic diseases originating from animals as COVID-19 is believed to have done.

"Intact, functioning ecosystems and preserved wildlife habitat help make the risk of pandemics smaller," Ripple said. "Our research shows that with diet change, we have an opportunity to give large areas back to nature and wildlife with relatively minimal impacts on food security. Ecosystem restoration and reduced livestock populations could reduce zoonotic disease transmission from wildlife to chickens or pigs and ultimately to people."

HOUSTON -- Results from a Phase II trial led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center suggest that a combination of ipilimumab (anti-CTLA-4) plus nivolumab (anti-PD-1) can generate durable responses in a subset of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), an "immune-cold" cancer that does not typically respond well to immunotherapy.

In a cohort of patients without previous chemotherapy treatment, the overall response rate (ORR) was 25% and median overall survival (OS) was 19 months. In a post-chemotherapy cohort, the ORR was 10% and media OS was 15.2 months. Four patients (two in each cohort) achieved a complete response.

The results of the CheckMate 650 trial, published today in Cancer Cell, are the first report of combination immune checkpoint inhibitors in mCRPC. Early results from this study were presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. Based on the findings, alternate dosing regimens are now being evaluated in an expanded clinical trial to reduce treatment-related toxicities.

"Historically, prostate cancer has been very resistant to checkpoint inhibitors because it is immunologically cold with few tumor-infiltrating T cells," said principal investigator Padmanee Sharma, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology. "These results suggest that a combination approach to increase T cell infiltration and then block inhibitory pathways may be a useful strategy for treating these patients. Going forward, we plan to optimize the schedule and dosing to improve the safety profile."

Designing a combination strategy

In previous research published in Nature Medicine, Sharma and colleagues discovered that prostate cancers deploy multiple mechanisms to dampen the anti-tumor immune response. Although anti-CTLA-4 therapy could recruit T cells, the tumor-infiltrating T cells elicited compensatory inhibitory pathways, including immune-suppressing proteins PD-L1 and VISTA.

This would explain why previous clinical trials evaluating single-agent checkpoint inhibitors have not been effective in treating patients with mCRPC, said Sharma, who co-directs MD Anderson's immunotherapy platform, part of the institution's Moon Shots Program®.

The researchers hypothesized that combining anti-CTLA-4 (ipilimumab) with anti-PD-1 (nivolumab) may be effective in bringing T cells into the tumor and overcoming the resulting immunosuppressive response.

The multi-institution, open-label study enrolled 90 men with mCRPC, who received the combination therapy every three weeks. Patients were enrolled in two cohorts: one with and one without prior chemotherapy. Participants were 77.8% Caucasian, 10% Black/African-American and 12.2% other.

In addition to response rates, the combination therapy achieved disease control in 46.9% and 13.3% of patients, with a median progression-free survival of 5.5 and 3.8 months in the pre- and post-chemotherapy cohorts, respectively.

Despite the positive responses, grade 3 and 4 treatment-related adverse events occurred in 42.2% of pre-chemotherapy patients and 53.3% of post-chemotherapy patients. The most common of these events was diarrhea, pneumonitis, colitis and increased lipase. Treatment-related adverse events led to discontinuation of therapy in a total of 31 patients. There were four treatment-related deaths, two in each cohort.

"There were patients who had clear benefit as a result of treatment, but there also were patients who had serious adverse events, which led us to amend the protocol to evaluate alternate schedules and doses and improve the safety of this approach," said Sharma.

Based on these data, the trial has been expanded to include more than 400 patients, with different dosing and schedules to identify strategies that can improve efficacy and minimize toxicities.

Exploring biomarkers associated with response

The researcher team also conducted analyses to identify potential biomarkers associated with clinical outcomes in these patients.

While this study represents a small number of patients, their findings suggest that the combination may be more effective in patients with a relatively high tumor mutational burden (TMB). This is in agreement with previous work that suggests certain patients with mCRPC may respond to checkpoint blockade despite having low TMB relative to other cancers, such as melanoma and lung cancer.

"The current study represents the first step in trying to identify mCRPC patients who would benefit from combination therapy with ipilimumab plus nivolumab based on chemotherapy exposure as well as preliminary biomarker analyses," said co-author Sumit Subudhi, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology. "The data generated to date are encouraging, but we clearly have more work to do in the expansion cohort as we try to administer effective combination strategies with fewer toxicities."

Laser Raman spectroscopy parameters of pure organic matter (e.g., vitrinite, solid bitumen) in sedimentary rocks have been widely applied for maturity determination, but there is a lack of relevant studies on mineral-organic aggregation (MOA) directly based on shale whole rock samples. A recent paper has revealed a good correlation between Laser Raman spectroscopy parameters of MOA and maturities for high-overmature marine shales, providing a new way to address maturity evaluation.

The paper entitled "Thermal maturation as revealed by micro-Raman spectroscopy of mineral-organic aggregation (MOA) in marine shales with high and over maturities ", authored by Xianming XIAO, Qin ZHOU, Peng CHENG, Jian SUN, Dehan LIU & Hui TIAN, was published in Science China Earth Sciences. The researchers investigated the laser Raman spectra and parameters of MOA in marine shale samples with different organic matter contents and different maturities from southern China, and they believed that the laser Raman parameters of MOA can indicate the maturity levels, as do the pure organic matter in shales.

There are two Raman first-order bands for organic matter in shales: D band (representing disordered structure) and G band (representing ordered structure). With increasing maturity, the position, shape and intensity of the two bands change regularly, and the resulted parameters show a clear correlation with maturity. A large number of studies have shown that the laser Raman parameter is another rapid and damage-free technique for the maturity determination of organic matter in shales following the method of vitrinite reflectance measurement. At present, pure organic matter, such as vitrinite or solid bitumen, is mainly selected to determine the maturity of shales by laser Raman technique. Nevertheless, in the early Paleozoic and older marine shales, there is no vitrinite, and the solid bitumen is generally rare. The shale organic matter mainly occurs with a very small size (In the suggested paper, the laser Raman spectra of MOA were systematically tested and the relevant parameters were calculated by using laser Raman technique. The results show the Raman spectral D and G bands derived from organic matter can be detected in MOA in shales with a minor amount of organic matter ( as low as 0.1 %). Perfect Raman spectra and effective parameters of MOA can be obtained where the shale TOC ? 0.60 %. The Raman spectral parameters of MOA are comparable to those of its associated sold bitumen, having an equivalent value as thermal maturity indicators with solid bitumen (Fig. 1).

The Raman spectral parameters of MOA provide an alternative way to estimate the maturity for shales in high and over maturity stages, especially for lower Paleozoic and Precambrian shales where microscopically identifiable organic matter are rare.

Recent years have witnessed explosive development in electrochemical CO2 reduction into valuable chemicals or fuels. The CO2 electroreduction is considered as a promising route to utilize renewable electricity from intermittent energy, such as solar, winder, geothermal power, etc. Designing high-performance electrocatalysts is pivotal to tune CO2 activation, thus achieving the highly selective CO2 conversion into target products.

However, the rational design of electrocatalysts faces severe challenge, because that most of the catalysts would go through dynamic structural evolution under applied electric field. The ambiguous evolution rules also hinder the uncovering of working mechanism. The established structure-performance relationship based on ex-situ static characterizations does not match realistic catalytic phenomenon. It is highly important yet challenging to operando probe the structural evolution and identify the true catalytically active components under realistic working conditions.

In response to this challenge, in-situ/operando characterization techniques are solid methods to track structural change, identify real active phases and uncover underlying mechanism, thus guiding the structure design of highly active and robust catalysts. In a new research article published in National Science Review, the Li group at East China University of Science and Technology presents a latest advance in comprehensive insights into how the catalyst structure evolves, and how real catalytically active components catalyze CO2 electroreduction by virtue of operando structural identifications at multiscale levels.

"The distinct difference between the operando and ex-situ structural information is displayed, revealing that the real catalytically active phase for CO2 electroreduction is inconsistent with the as-prepared or post-catalyzed catalyst structure. High-performance CO2 electroreduction into formate is actually exhibited onto the operando regenerative structure. More importantly, the operando structural information with atomic level precision is the key to uncover catalytic mechanism," They state.

This work provides insights into structural evolution and activity origin of catalysts under realistic working conditions, and highlights the importance of mechanism study and catalyst design based operando feedback information. The proposed strategy could be widely extended to unravel the structural evolution and working mechanism of catalysts in most of heterogeneous catalytic processes.

Is an oozing apple with fuzzy white mold better than one that is fresh and green a month after you bought it?

Yes, according to a new sociological study of Danes' perceptions about food 'purity' and 'impurity'.

"We associate purity with what's natural. That means that much of what was once considered impure, such as soil, mold, bacteria and dust, is now seen as pure, when contrasted with a pesticide sprayed and preservative coated apple that never perishes," explains Associate Professor Kia Ditlevsen of UCPH's Department of Food and Resource Economics.

Along with department colleague Sidse Schoubye Andersen, Ditlevsen analysed two qualitative studies that included interviews with 69 Danes, in which the discussion focused on ecology, local foods and dietary supplements.

The conclusion is clear: respondents preferred the natural and were suspicious of foods treated to guarantee lengthy shelf lives.

In the past, sterility was equated with good

According to the researchers, there has been a shift in attitudes about what characterizes 'clean' foods over the past 40-50 years.

In the past, food safety concerns were more widespread. Consequently, there was a perception that the greater the sterility, the better the quality.

The presence of soil was completely unthinkable in the understanding of 'clean' foods, as many people feared bacteria and microorganisms at the time.

"Today, our concepts of food purity have changed. What is objectively referred to as dirty, i.e. mold, etc., is less frightening to us than apples which never rot. Similarly, having dirt under one's nails has become a sign of health," she says.

To illustrate the trend, Kia Ditlevsen refers to a Burger King advertisement from February 2020:

"For many people, Burger King is associated with products that may not be quite all-natural -- but do last a long time. To shift this perception, the fast food chain released large advertising banners with a picture of a moldy Whopper, their signature burger."

Thus, the use of ingredients without unnecessary preservatives has become a branding strategy.

In other words, we are wild about the naturalness and visibility of what a product contains.

"However, this should not be confused with not caring about whether or not our food has mold on it. Food safety remains extremely important, but we nearly take it granted here in Denmark, despite the problems that regularly arise. The focus on naturalness that we found is that some consumers are concerned about modern food production methods. For example, they are uncertain about the impact of pesticides and chemistry upon us," says Ditlevsen.

Will the coronavirus pandemic reverse the trend?

Several of the study's respondents described that they find the artificial sweeteners and dyes used in, for example, Coca-Cola Light, both disgusting and unnatural:

"We seek to cleanse our bodies of harmful chemistry. A growing number of people believe that this can be achieved by opting for foods that are perceived as pure and natural. Among other choices, this might include the purchasing of organics," explains Ditlevsen.

She elaborates that conceptions of 'pure' and natural products are likely to evolve over time, along with the events and on goings which surround us as a society.

"Many people are concerned about climate, nature, environment and food production in this regard. That's why naturalness has become important for so many. On the other hand, the coronavirus pandemic has intensified our focus on hygiene and sterility, in terms of disinfecting, distancing, etc. Perhaps sterility and control will once again become the focus of consumers with regards to food. But it may also be that the current trend continues - only time will tell," concludes Ditlevsen.

With grid-scale renewable energy on the rise, many scholars have shifted their attention from energy generation to energy storage. Whether it is solar cells converting sunlight into power, or windmills transforming air currents into electrical currents, the sources of renewable energy generation are inherently variable.

Exceptionally cloudy or still days can cause noticeable fluctuations in the power output of renewable sources. A major hurdle for grid-scale renewable energy is how to efficiently store these often intermittent energy sources for later, more evenly distributed uses.

A research team led by Prof. CUI Guanglei and ZHAO Jingwen from Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is one step closer to solving this storage problem.

The team has focused on Zinc anode and Graphite cathode based Dual-ion batteries (DIBs) due to their low cost and high-voltage capabilities, making them a great candidate for large, grid-scale storage devices. Their findings were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition on August 18.

In these batteries, Zn deposition occurs on a Zn anode during charging process while negatively charged anions weave themselves into the Graphite cathode allowing energy storage for later use, a process known as intercalation. Zinc/Graphite batteries, however, do have a catch.

"Unfortunately, anions often used for graphite intercalation reactions could complex with carbonate in the electrolyte. This decreases the oxidation stability of carbonate and prevents the development of DIBs with high efficiency, low self-discharge and long shelf/cycling life," says CUI.

Essentially, the electrolytes used to transfer charge through the battery would undergo oxidative decomposition at high voltage regions, lowering the efficiency and the lifetime of the battery. This is an essential problem to solve before applying this type of battery to large scale power storage.

The group's approach enhanced the oxidation stability of carbonate-based electrolytes through tuning the anion solvation structure. By introducing a strongly-electron donating trimethyl phosphate (TMP) solvent, the team was able to trap the anions in the TMP solvation regime and decouple the anions from carbonate solvent.

Consequently, the operating voltage of the Zinc/Graphite batteries was raised by 0.45 V while also enabling a long-life cycle (92% capacity retention after 1000 cycles). This could not only extend the cycle life of Zinc/Graphite batteries, but also increase the capacity of anion intercalation into graphite. The authors emphasized that "a deep understanding and regulation of the anion solvation structure is essential."

"Here, we regain the anti-oxidative nature of carbonate-based electrolytes to support high-voltage Zinc/Graphite cells, by reorganizing the intermolecular, i.e., ion-solvent and ion-ion, interactions," CUI said.

Their future work will be focused on increasing the energy density, suppressing the self-discharge behavior as well as lowering the cost of the electrolyte for Zinc/Graphite batteries. The ultimate goal is to commercialize the Zinc/Graphite battery in grid-scale energy storage.