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Tag: Environmental Science

  • Termite mounds inspire energy-efficient buildings

    Termite mounds inspire energy-efficient buildings

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    Newswise — Among the approximately 2,000 known species of termites, some are ecosystem engineers. The mounds built by some genera, for example Amitermes, Macrotermes, Nasutitermes, and Odontotermes, reach up to eight meters high, making them some of the world’s largest biological structures. Natural selection has been at work improving the ‘design’ of their mounds over tens of millions of years. What might human architects and engineers learn if they go to the termites and consider their ways?

    In a new study in Frontiers in Materials, researchers showed how termite mounds can teach us to create comfortable interior climates for our buildings that don’t have the carbon footprint of air conditioning.

    “Here we show that the ‘egress complex’, an intricate network of interconnected tunnels found in termite mounds, can be used to promote flows of air, heat, and moisture in novel ways in human architecture,” said Dr David Andréen, a senior lecturer at the bioDigital Matter research group of Lund University, and the study’s first author.

    Termites from Namibia

    Andréen and co-author Dr Rupert Soar, an associate professor at the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University, studied mounds of Macrotermes michaelseni termites from Namibia. Colonies of this species can consist of more than a million individuals. At the heart of the mounds lie the symbiotic fungus gardens, farmed by the termites for food.

    The researchers focused on the egress complex: a dense, lattice-like network of tunnels, between 3mm and 5mm wide, which connects wider conduits inside with the exterior. During the rainy season (November through April) when the mound is growing, this extends over its north-facing surface, directly exposed to the midday sun. Outside this season, termite workers keep the egress tunnels blocked. The complex is thought to allow evaporation of excess moisture, while maintaining adequate ventilation. But how does it work?

    Andréen and Soar explored how the layout of the egress complex enables oscillating or pulse-like flows. They based their experiments on the scanned and 3D-printed copy of an egress complex fragment collected in February 2005 from the wild. This fragment was 4cm thick with a volume of 1.4 liters, 16% of which were tunnels.

    They simulated wind with a speaker that drove oscillations of a CO2-air mixture through the fragment, while tracking the mass transfer with a sensor. They found that air flow was greatest at oscillation frequencies between 30Hz and 40 Hz; moderate at frequencies between 10Hz and 20 Hz; and least at frequencies between 50Hz and 120 Hz.

    Turbulence helps ventilation

    The researchers concluded that tunnels in the complex interact with wind blowing on the mound in ways that enhance mass transfer of air for ventilation. Wind oscillations at certain frequencies generate turbulence inside, whose effect is to carry respiratory gases and excess moisture away from the mound’s heart.

    “When ventilating a building, you want to preserve the delicate balance of temperature and humidity created inside, without impeding the movement of stale air outwards and fresh air inwards. Most HVAC systems struggle with this. Here we have a structured interface that allows the exchange of respiratory gasses, simply driven by differences in concentration between one side and the other. Conditions inside are thus maintained,” explained Soar.

    The authors then simulated the egress complex with a series of 2D models, which increased in complexity from straight tunnels to a lattice. They used an electromotor to drive an oscillating body of water (made visible with a dye) through the tunnels, and filmed the mass flow. They found, to their surprise, that the motor needed to move air back and forth only a few millimeters (corresponding to weak wind oscillations) for the ebb and flow to penetrate the entire complex. Importantly, the necessary turbulence only arose if the layout was sufficiently lattice-like.

    Living and breathing buildings

    The authors conclude that the egress complex can enable wind-powered ventilation of termite mounds at weak winds.

    “We imagine that building walls in the future, made with emerging technologies like powder bed printers, will contain networks similar to the egress complex. These will make it possible to move air around, through embedded sensors and actuators that require only tiny amounts of energy,” said Andréen.

    Soar concluded: “Construction-scale 3D printing will only be possible when we can design structures as complex as in nature. The egress complex is an example of a complicated structure that could solve multiple problems simultaneously: keeping comfort inside our homes, while regulating the flow of respiratory gasses and moisture through the building envelope.”

    “We are on the brink of the transition towards nature-like construction: for the first time, it may be possible to design a true living, breathing building.”

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    Frontiers

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  • Most effective ways of foraging can attract predators, scientists find

    Most effective ways of foraging can attract predators, scientists find

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    BYLINE: Laura Thomas

    Newswise — Animals using the most of efficient methods of searching for resources may well pay with their lives, scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered.

    The findings, published today in Behavioral Ecology, reveal why animals may not always use a searching strategy that maximises results.

    How animals move through their habitat, particularly in search for food, is a major question in biology, and has application in how animals will respond to environmental change.

    Numerous studies have demonstrated that a special kind of movement, known as Lévy motion, increases the ability to find resources because it includes long-distance moves between areas being searched, as well as periods of concentrated searching in one area. It has also been shown that a range of animals use this kind of movement.

    This study is the first to demonstrate a potential cost of Lévy motion in an experiment, showing prey using Lévy motion are targeted twice as often as prey using Brownian motion – the movement observed in molecules in a gas, and thus a baseline expectation.

    Professor Christos Ioannou from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences explained: “We show that this is because the predators prefer to target prey that are moving with straighter paths of motion, possibly because this makes the future position of the prey more predictable.”

    Professor Ioannou and his team used a virtual prey approach. They developed a computer simulation of the prey which are identical in size, colour, speed etc but differ in how they turn.

    The video was then played to stickleback fish in a tank by projecting the video onto a translucent screen. This allowed the fish to see the prey, and for researchers to capture and record their choices.

    “By using an experimental design that presents virtual prey on a screen to real predators, we can control everything about the prey and isolate the variable we’re interested in – here, movement – while also using real animals,” continued Professor Ioannou.

    This study demonstrates that prey animals might not always use a searching strategy that maximises finding a resource because there might be costs that were, previous to the study, unknown. This might explain why some studies have found animals use different kinds of searches other than Lévy motion.

    He added: “Our study shows, for the first time, that animals using a common and very effective way of searching for resources may actually pay a cost of being more susceptible to predators.

    “Going forward, we want to look at whether the prey of sticklebacks show Levy or Brownian motion.

    “More broadly, our study predicts that prey animals should be less likely to demonstrate Lévy motion than apex predators.”

     

    Paper:

    ‘Virtual prey with Lévy motion are preferentially attacked by predatory fish’ by Christos Ioannou et al in Behavioral Ecology.

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    University of Bristol

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  • Fungus puppeteers hijack zombie flies

    Fungus puppeteers hijack zombie flies

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    Newswise — In a new study published in eLife, lead author Carolyn Elya, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, reveals the molecular and cellular underpinnings behind the parasitic fungus, Entomophthora muscae’s (E. muscae), ability to manipulate the behavior of fruit flies.

    Elya first described the manipulated behavior, called summiting, in a study published in eLife in 2018. Elya, who was studying microbes carried by fruit flies while a graduate student at University of California (UC) Berkeley, set out rotting fruit to capture wild fruit flies. When she later checked to see is she had captured any, she found instead zombie flies, with a banding pattern on their abdomen, that had died striking an interesting pose. Through extraction and sequencing of DNA Elya confirmed the suspected cause, E. muscae.

    Summiting occurs at sunset when the infected flies climb to an elevated location and extend their proboscises to the surface. A sticky droplet that emerges from the proboscis adheres the fly to the surface right before the wings raise up and away from the body and the flies die.

    “The climbing is very important as it positions the fly in an advantageous location for the fungus to spread to the most possible hosts,” says Elya. “The fungus jumps to the new host by forming very specialized and temporary structures that burst through the fly’s skin and shoots spores into the environment that are only good for a handful of hours. It’s a fleeting process, so an advantageous position is everything to survival.”

    While at UC Berkeley, Elya developed a laboratory model she refers to as the Entomophthora muscae-Drosophila melanogaster ‘zombie fly’ system using the wild fungal isolate she found in her backyard. With this system, Elya could continuously infect fruit flies – a laboratory staple, as well as culture the fungus independently of the fly host in media thought to mimic the internal environment of the fly.

    Summiting has appeared several times in scientific literature, but studies had only been observations of dead house flies. No one had ever observed how flies behave in their last hours of life. Elya set out to fill this knowledge gap of what happens when flies summit by developing a high-throughput behavioral assay to automatically track hundreds of infected flies. While using this platform to monitor the behavior of flies becoming zombies, she encountered a surprise. “We found that summiting is not about climbing,” said Elya, “it’s actually this burst of locomotor activity that starts about two and a half hours before the flies die.”

    With this discovery, Elya and co-authors paired her system to create on-demand zombie flies with the lab’s powerful fruit fly genetic toolkit. With these and the author’s new behavior assay they could identify genes and neurons required for flies to summit.

    “Overall, we found the flies hormonal axes was mediating summiting behavior. When we silenced these neurons the flies were really bad at summiting,” Elya says. These neurons send projections to a neurohemal organ that produces juvenile hormone, a hormone conserved in insects. “We think the fungus is actually driving the activity of these neurons in order to drive the release of this hormone, which is causing the flies to have this burst of locomotor activity.”

    Elya and co-authors were then able to collect a behavioral dataset consisting of hundreds of infected flies, which they then used to train a computer to identify flies as they are summiting. This classifier tool enabled the team to discover that fungal cells invade the fly’s brains in an organized way, occupying specific regions of the brain during summiting.

    Interestingly, the team also discovered that the flies blood brain barrier is compromised when exposed to the fungus. Normally the neurons are protected from the blood that’s circulating through the fly’s body. The breakdown of the blood brain barrier has important consequences for what the neurons are being exposed to, potentially allowing  things that are circulating in the blood to interact with neurons in the brain, thus providing a route for modulating neural activity.

    “We think this could be important for the way that the fungus is driving behavioral changes,” Elya said, “and we actually found that you can pull blood from flies that are doing the summiting behavior, put it into naive flies and drive some of this increased locomotion. So we’ve shown that there’s at least the partial ability to recapitulate this summiting behavior just by transferring fly blood.” Elya says that these experiments show some blood-borne factors can drive summiting behavior, though it’s not yet clear what the identity of these factors are or who produces them (the fungus or the fly).

    Elya hopes to next develop transgenics to help modulate things from the fungus side in addition to perturbations that can already be made in the flies. “There are still a lot of open questions here,” she says, “what the fungus is doing is still a mystery.”

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    Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

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  • North-West Europe’s scorching days heat up 2x faster

    North-West Europe’s scorching days heat up 2x faster

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    Newswise — New research led by the University of Oxford has found that climate change is causing the hottest days in North-West Europe to warm at double the rate of average summer days. The difference in trends is most pronounced for England, Wales, and Northern France. Worryingly, while current climate models accurately predict the rate of warming for average days, they underestimate the rate at which the hottest days are warming compared to observations.

    According to lead researcher Dr Matthew Patterson, from the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics, the results indicate that extreme heat events – such as the UK’s record-breaking heatwave last summer – are likely to become more regular. Dr Patterson said: ‘These findings underline the fact that the UK and neighbouring countries are already experiencing the effects of climate change, and that last year’s heatwave was not a fluke. Policy makers urgently need to adapt their infrastructure and health systems to cope with the impacts of higher temperatures.’

    For the study, published today in Geographical Research Letters, Dr Patterson analysed data from the past 60 years (1960-2021) recording the maximum daily temperature, provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

    Although the maximum recorded temperature varied between years, the overall trend clearly showed that the hottest days for North-West Europe had warmed at twice the rate of average summer days. For England and Wales, the average summer day increased by approximately 0.26°C per decade, whilst the hottest day increased by around 0.58°C per decade. However, this faster warming of the hottest days was not observed to this extent elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

    The reason causing this faster warming of the hottest days relative to average summer days is not yet understood. According to Dr Patterson, this may be due to the hottest summer days in North-West Europe often being linked to hot air transported north from over Spain. Because Spain is warming faster than North-West Europe, this means that air carried in from this region is ever more extreme relative to the ambient air in North-West Europe. The hottest days of 2022, for instance, were driven by a plume of hot air carried north from Spain and the Sahara. However, further research is needed to verify this.

    Dr Patterson added: ‘Understanding the warming rate of the hottest days will be important if we are to improve climate model simulation of extreme events and make accurate predictions about the future intensity of such events. If our models underestimate the rise in extreme temperatures over the coming decades, we will underestimate the impacts this will have.’

    Extreme heat has significant negative impacts on many different aspects of society, including energy and transport infrastructure, and agriculture. It also exacerbates conditions including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, putting a strain on health services.

    The current UK Government has been criticised by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) for failing to act quickly enough to adapt for the impacts of global heating. These new findings add even more urgency for policy makers to adapt infrastructure and systems vulnerable to extreme heat.

    Notes to editors:

    For media requests and interviews, contact Dr Matthew Patterson, Department of Physics, University of Oxford: [email protected]

    The study ‘North-West Europe hottest days are warming twice as fast as mean summer days’ will be published in Geographical Research Letters, DOI 10.1029/2023GL102757. This link will go live when the embargo lifts. To view a pre-embargo copy of the study, contact Dr Matthew Patterson, Department of Physics, University of Oxford: [email protected]

    About the University of Oxford

    Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the seventh year running, and ​number 2 in the QS World Rankings 2022. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.

    Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

    Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 200 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past three years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing £15.7 billion to the UK economy in 2018/19, and supports more than 28,000 full time jobs.

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    University of Oxford

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  • MSU, Audubon fight to conserve a disappearing bird species

    MSU, Audubon fight to conserve a disappearing bird species

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    BYLINE: Matt Davenport

    May 12, 2023 

    Images 

    • Research from Michigan State University and the National Audubon Society is providing valuable new insights to help conserve the black tern, a migratory bird species whose population has plummeted over the past several decades in Michigan and nationwide. 
    • The research is published in the journal Biological Conservation. 
    • Current conservation strategies focus on black tern breeding sites. The team showed that coupling those with new land management and monitoring practices at important sites where terns migrate and overwinter can potentially improve their outlook. 
    • The team collected data on black terns from a variety of sources, including a newer technology known as nanotags. By bringing together sparse and disparate data under a single modeling framework, the team then projected the impacts of new conservation strategies. 
    • This framework can be extended to species beyond black terns whose conservation efforts are hindered by a lack of data.  

    Newswise — EAST LANSING, Mich. – Current conservation practices likely won’t do enough to save the black tern, a migratory bird species that nests in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, from disappearing.  

    That’s according to new research from Michigan State University and the National Audubon Society published in the journal Biological Conservation.  

    But the team’s report also reveals new opportunities to enhance the outlook for these birds by strategically expanding conservation and land management practices. Furthermore, the team’s approach can help inform conservation practices for other species. 

    Currently, black tern conservation efforts are focused on maintaining and restoring the bird’s breeding habitat to ensure there’s a place for the next generation to take flight. It’s a sensible approach, but it also relies on adults surviving their migratory and overwintering periods.  

    As the team showed, that survival can’t be taken for granted. 

    “What’s going on outside the breeding season and away from the breeding grounds is really important for this bird and, likely, other migratory species,” said Kayla Davis, first author of the new report and a doctoral student in the College of Natural Science at MSU. “There are things we can do to protect stopover and overwintering areas to increase adult survival.” 

    “Fortunately, Audubon’s network of members and centers allows us to have an expansive conservation reach,” said Sarah Saunders, co-author of the study and senior manager of quantitative science at National Audubon Society. “Thanks to this work, now we know where to target efforts to help recover this species more effectively.” 

    Prior to this collaboration between MSU and Audubon, it’s been challenging for researchers to develop reliable projections for how the black tern population would respond to different conservation strategies.  

    Those challenges were largely rooted in how hard it is to observe the birds, Davis said. As a result, data on black terns are sparse, limiting the precision of computational models used to inform conservation practices.  

    But Davis works in the lab of Elise Zipkin, an associate professor of integrative biology and the director of the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior program, or EEB, at MSU. One of the Zipkin lab’s specialties is developing and implementing models for species lacking data.  

    “Because of data limitations, assessing wildlife trends is often only possible for common or easily identifiable species,” said Zipkin. “But our lab is interested in developing approaches that make use of every piece of available information so that we can tackle those tough questions on rare and elusive species.” 

    Still, the black tern was an extreme case. Thankfully, the MSU researchers had partnered with one of the world’s foremost conservation societies. 

    Staff and volunteers with Detroit Audubon and Audubon Great Lakes — regional offices of the National Audubon Society — were able to gather valuable data about black terns through a variety of methods. 

    “One of the newest methods for tracking birds is the use of nanotags as part of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System. We were able to deploy tags on pre-fledged black tern chicks, which allowed us to understand how many birds were fledging each year and where they traveled during migration,” Saunders said. “This gave us new insights we wouldn’t have known otherwise, such as their use of national wildlife refuges along the Atlantic coast for refueling during fall migration.” 

    Usually, each different data set that the team collected would be analyzed with its own separate model. For this project, using what’s known as an integrated population model, the team was able to bring typically disparate data together under a single analytical framework. 

    Though the data were still scant, the researchers were able to examine the information in a more cohesive way, revealing more about the population dynamics of Michigan black terns. 

    “This way, we can make our estimates more accurate and precise than we could with any other model individually,” Davis said. 

    For this project, the researchers worked at a black tern breeding colony at the St. Clair Flats State Wildlife Area, near where the base of Michigan’s thumb region connects to Canada. This site is actively managed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, another key partner in this project. 

    Based on its analysis, the team estimated that the average number of adult tern breeding pairs at St. Clair Flats dropped from more than 300 in 2013 to roughly 50 in 2022. The results show that promoting adult survival at other important areas along their migration — such as where birds rest and spend their winters — may be necessary in addition to current efforts that protect breeding sites. 

    “Of course, continuing to manage black tern breeding sites is important, too,” said Stephanie Beilke, Audubon Great Lakes senior manager of conservation science and a co-author of the report. “We need a collaborative approach to saving this species and that means connecting with partners abroad and at home.” 

    Another key takeaway from this project is simply that the team’s approach worked. That’s good news for species beyond the black tern. 

    “To be able to say something about conservation and land management implications with so little data is really encouraging because there are so many species out there that are data deficient,” Davis said. “This modeling framework is really powerful.” 

      

    Read on MSUToday.  

    ### 

    Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 165 years. One of the world’s leading research universities, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery to make a better, safer, healthier world for all while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 400 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges. 

    For MSU news on the Web, go to MSUToday. Follow MSU News on Twitter at twitter.com/MSUnews. 

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    Michigan State University

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  • Professor and students seek to uncover Nature’s chilling secret

    Professor and students seek to uncover Nature’s chilling secret

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    Newswise — Eric Bredahl, PhD, and his team of undergraduate research assistants are trusting that Nature, if asked nicely, or at least insistently, will yield another of her secrets.

    What happens, they want to know, when hibernating animals settle in for their long winter nap? They know hibernators experience a surge of a chemical known as adenosine, that heartbeats subsequently slow dramatically — in the case of a squirrel declining from 300 beats a minute to a few beats per minute, and that the burning of sugars is replaced by the metabolism of lipids.

    But how does this extreme state of relaxation last so long without reducing muscle mass or causing heart damage through reduced blood flow, or through the damage that sometimes occurs when normal blood flow resumes?

    The answers to these questions carry important implications for the preservation and successful transplantation of a human heart on its speedy journey from donor to recipient. That journey typically takes four to five hours, during which time the heart’s temperature is lowered and metabolism slowed through the use of a chilled organ preservation solution.

    Imagine, though, that a hibernation-like process could be used to improve organ storage and double the transport window, thus allowing for a larger donor and recipient pool. The dramatic slowing of function could potentially double its transportation window to 10 or 12 hours, thus allowing residents of difficult-to-reach rural areas better accessibility to donor hearts.

    “How and why can the heart of a hibernator function at such a low temperature for such an extended period without any ill effects?” — Eric Bredahl, PhD

    “How do you keep a hibernating animal alive for four months in the absence of food without a reduction in function having any negative effects?” asks Bredahl. “Nature has evolved all these unique mechanisms, unique pathways, and the more we understand about them the more we might be able to take those same mechanisms and apply them to a clinical condition.

    “In our case, what we are really interested in is how and why the heart of a hibernator can function at such a low temperature for such an extended period without any ill effects. We have an idea of how that happens. Now we are taking those same processes and applying them to a clinical application like transporting hearts for cardiac transplant.”

    Can it be done? Bredahl is hopeful.

    “Preliminary data says it may be possible,” he says. “But we are still doing basic research. Every couple of days we add more data and more data. It’s very exciting stuff.”

    Bredahl, an associate professor in exercise science, is aided in this quest by a $112,000 grant from the Great Plains IDeA Clinical Translational Research Program. The study is formally titled “Expanding the Cardiac Transplant Window: Treatments Derived from Hibernators,” and uses rat hearts to study the response of hearts to hibernation-like influences. It is a joint project of Bredahl and Matt Andrews, PhD, professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

    And, of course, a group of undergraduates availing themselves of Creighton’s many opportunities for adventures in research.

    “This project would not have been possible without our undergrads,” Bredahl says. “Liz Kettler (BS’23) and Nik Johnson (BS’22), for example, put almost a year’s worth of work into this project. It is phenomenal what they did.” 

    Furthermore, this project received significant help from Frazer Heinis, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

    The incoming cohort of undergraduate students will have similar opportunities, Bredahl said.

    “I have about seven of them, and they are going to do a whole variety of things,” he says. “Some of them will work with me on cardiac tissue doing functional assessments. Some of them will do molecular assessment where we try to quantify how much damage is happening from storage, and others will do protein analysis to see if there is any change in regulatory protein expression.

    “It will basically be groups of three, and they will have their own research project and every one of them will have something that they can present, hopefully something that they can publish and give them experience that will be second to none.”

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    Creighton University

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  • ‘Making things that matter…but making them smarter and greener;”

    ‘Making things that matter…but making them smarter and greener;”

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    Case Western Reserve University-led group wins federal grant to accelerate sustainable manufacturing in the region and beyond

    Newswise — CLEVELAND–A regional collaboration led by Case Western Reserve University has won a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to plan economic, environmental and manufacturing growth across the 18-county Northeast Ohio region.

    The award will support efforts to develop a robust and dynamic ecosystem for sustainable manufacturing and permit the team to compete for as much as $160 million from the NSF to be awarded in 2025—if the group can prove it has the ideas, relationships, track record and commitment to advance innovation and equitably benefit the regional economy.

    The group is one among 44 teams in the country–and the only one in Ohio– to receive a two-year grant to develop an “engine” in response to NSF’s new and innovative program.

    “This is an unprecedented opportunity for regional industries, small businesses, community groups, state and local governments and universities to come together and transform, lift up and lead sustainable manufacturing in America,” said Michael Oakes, the project director and senior vice president for research and technology management at Case Western Reserve.

    ‘Making things that matter…smarter and greener’

    The 11 initial planning partners are: Case Western Reserve, the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP), the City of Cleveland, TeamNEO, Cuyahoga County, MAGNET, JumpStart, Cleveland State University, the Cleveland Water Alliance, The Urban League of Greater Cleveland and the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development (NEOHCED).

    Their efforts will focus on four areas: technology innovation, technology adoption, workforce and talent development, and leadership and governance.

    To become a more sustainable region, group members say, more industries from Cleveland to Youngstown will have to embrace emerging technologies with unprecedented enthusiasm.

    Among the priority areas are energy science; electrochemistry; “green” steel and microchip production; carbon capture, storage and sequestration; and production of alternatives to petroleum-based plastics and biodegradable byproducts. Talent pipelines and inclusive growth are fundamental to success.

    Individual companies and entire industrial sectors will have to optimize or reduce energy use, water consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions. The Cleveland Water Alliance will guide the environmental innovation and impact efforts for the planning effort.

    GCP President and CEO Baiju R. Shah said the motivation for those big environment-related changes is rooted in a shared economic strategy.

    “Greater Cleveland is well known as a region where we make things that matter—this is about making things that matter, but making them smarter and greener,” Shah said. “Our leading companies are committed to sustainability for business growth as they see a strategic opportunity and they’re doing it together, not going it alone. Together, we can meet market needs and lead the world in sustainability.”

    The Urban League and NEOHCED will lead efforts to attain excellence in inclusion and environmental equity. They will seek to develop inclusive pathways in sustainable manufacturing—including careers in factories and universities—and build entrepreneurial capacity in underrepresented communities across the region.

    Ongoing efforts toward sustainability

    The broader pitch to become an NSF Center coincides with related efforts at Case Western Reserve and among the partners:

    • In March 2022, CWRU and partners launched a newS. Department of Energy-funded center focused on helping small- and medium-sized manufacturers adopt “smart manufacturing” technologies.
    • In June 2022, the university announced it would also lead an effort to integrate artificial intelligence and sensing to improve materials and processing in manufacturing—part of a long-term, federally funded strategy to strengthen U.S. innovation and industrial productivity.
    • In January 2023, CWRU’s Oakes committed $1 million to foster sustainable manufacturing as a primary focus and accelerate faculty research.
    • Also in January 2023, the GCP hosted its inaugural “Sustainability Summit” for more than 300 business leaders and stakeholders at the Huntington Convention Center. Conference participants discussed the importance of being “All In” on sustainability for business growth and regional impact—and steps and resources to get there.

    “Ultimately, this is about demonstrating that we have a working regional innovation

    ecosystem here for sustainable manufacturing,” said Nick Barendt, executive director of the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems at Case Western Reserve and co-leader of the Engines planning project. “We’re excited to be working with our partners to make this happen.”

    Federal Engines Program

    The Engines program was authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. Awardees span a broad range of states and regions, reaching geographic areas that have not fully benefited from the technology boom of the past decades.

    “These NSF Engines Development Awards lay the foundation for emerging hubs of innovation and potential future NSF Engines,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “These awardees are part of the fabric of NSF’s vision to create opportunities everywhere and enable innovation anywhere.”

    More information can be found on the NSF Engines program website.

    View a map of the NSF Engines Development Awards.

     

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    Case Western Reserve University is one of the country’s leading private research institutions. Located in Cleveland, we offer a unique combination of forward-thinking educational opportunities in an inspiring cultural setting. Our leading-edge faculty engage in teaching and research in a collaborative, hands-on environment. Our nationally recognized programs include arts and sciences, dental medicine, engineering, law, management, medicine, nursing and social work. About 5,800 undergraduate and 6,300 graduate students comprise our student body. Visit case.edu to see how Case Western Reserve thinks beyond the possible.

     

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  • Accurate measurements of black carbon in the atmosphere

    Accurate measurements of black carbon in the atmosphere

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    Newswise — Our industrialized society releases many and various pollutants into the world. Combustion in particular produces aerosol mass including black carbon. Although this only accounts for a few percent of aerosol particles, black carbon is especially problematic due to its ability to absorb heat and impede the heat reflection capabilities of surfaces such as snow. So, it’s essential to know how black carbon interacts with sunlight. Researchers have quantified the refractive index of black carbon to the most accurate degree yet which might impact climate models.

    There are many factors driving climate change; some are very familiar, such as carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, sulfur dioxide from cement manufacture or methane emissions from animal agriculture. Black carbon aerosol particles, also from combustion, are less covered in the news but are particularly important. Essentially soot, black carbon is very good at absorbing heat from sunlight and storing it, adding to atmospheric heat. At the same time, given dark colors are less effective at reflecting light and therefore heat, as black carbon covers lighter surfaces including snow, it reduces the potential of those surfaces to reflect heat back into space.

    “Understanding the interaction between black carbon and sunlight is of fundamental importance in climate research,” said Assistant Professor Nobuhiro Moteki from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of Tokyo. “The most critical property of black carbon in this regard is its refractive index, basically how it redirects and disperses incoming light rays. However, existing measurements of black carbon’s refractive index were inaccurate. My team and I undertook detailed experiments to improve this. With our improved measurements, we now estimate that current climate models may be underestimating the absorption of solar radiation due to black carbon by a significant 16%.”

    Previous measurements of the optical properties of black carbon were often confounded by factors such as lack of pure samples, or difficulties in measuring light interactions with particles of differing complex shapes. Moteki and his team improved this situation by capturing the black carbon particles in water, then isolating them with sulfates or other water-soluble chemicals. By isolating the particles, the team was better able to shine light on them and analyze the way they scatter, which gave researchers the data to calculate the value of refractive index.

    “We measured the amplitude, or strength, and phase, or step, of the light scattered from black carbon samples isolated in water,” said Moteki. “This allowed us to calculate what is known as the complex refractive index of black carbon. Complex because rather than being a single number, it’s a value that contains two parts, one of which is ‘imaginary’ (concerned with absorption), though its impact is very, very real. Such complex numbers with imaginary components are actually very common in the field of optical science and beyond.”

    As the new optical measurements of black carbon imply that current climate models are underestimating its contribution to atmospheric warming, the team hopes that other climate researchers and policymakers can make use of their findings. The method developed by the team to ascertain the complex refractive index of particles can be applied to materials other than black carbon. This allows for the optical identification of unknown particles in the atmosphere, ocean or ice cores, and the evaluation of optical properties of powdered materials, not just those related to the ongoing problem of climate change.

    ###

    Journal article: Nobuhiro Moteki, Sho Ohata, Atsushi Yoshida & Kouji Adachi. “Constraining the complex refractive index of black carbon particles using the complex forward-scattering amplitude”, Aerosol Science and Technology. DOI: 10.1080/02786826.2023.2202243

    Funding:
    Funds were provided by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20202003) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI program (JP19H04236, JP19KK0289, Accepted Manuscript JP19H04259, JP19H05699, 22H03722, and 22H01294), and the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability ArCS II project (JPMXD1420318865) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.

    Useful links:
    Graduate School of Science – https://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/
    Department of Earth and Planetary Science – https://www.eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/

    About The University of Tokyo
    The University of Tokyo is Japan’s leading university and one of the world’s top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world’s top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.

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  • Exploring the underground connections between trees

    Exploring the underground connections between trees

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    Fungal networks interconnecting trees in a forest is a key factor that determines the nature of forests and their response to climate change. These networks have also been viewed as a means for trees to help their offspring and other tree-friends, according to the increasingly popular “mother-tree hypothesis”. An international group of researchers re-examined the evidence for and against this hypothesis in a new study.

    Trees in a forest are interconnected through thread-like structures of symbiotic fungi, called hyphae, which together form an underground network called a mycorrhizal network. While it is well known that the mycorrhizal fungi deliver nutrients to trees in exchange for carbon supplied by the trees, the so-called mother-tree hypothesis implies a whole new purpose of these networks. Through the network, the biggest and oldest trees, also known as mother trees, share carbon and nutrients with the saplings growing in particularly shady areas where there is not enough sunlight for adequate photosynthesis. The network structure should also enable mother trees to detect the ill health of their neighbors through distress signals, alerting them to send these trees the nutrients they need to heal. In this way, mother trees are believed to act as central hubs, communicating with both young seedlings and other large trees around them to increase their chances of survival.

    This is a very appealing concept attracting the attention of not only scientists, but also the media, where this hypothesis is often presented as fact. According to the authors of the study just published in New Phytologist, the hypothesis is however hard to reconcile with theory, prompting the researchers to re-examine data and conclusions from publications for and against the mother tree hypothesis.

    The study, led by Nils Henriksson at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, found that the empirical evidence for the mother tree hypothesis is actually very limited and theoretical explanations for the mechanisms are largely lacking. While big trees and their interconnections with their neighbors are still essential for the forest ecosystem, the fungal network does not work as a simple pipeline for resource sharing among trees. This means that apparent resource sharing among trees is more likely to be a result of trading between fungi and trees rather than directed transfer from one tree to another. Very often, this even results in aggravated competition between trees rather than support of seedlings. 

    “We found that mycorrhizal networks are indeed essential for the stability of many forest ecosystems, but rarely through sharing and caring among trees. Rather, it works like a trading ground for individual trees and fungi, each trying to make the best deal to survive,” explains Oskar Franklin, a study author and a researcher in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group of the IIASA Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program. “The forest is not a super organism or a family of trees helping each other. It is a complex ecosystem with trees, fungi, and other organisms, which are all interdependent but not guided by a common purpose.” 

    “Although the narrative of the mother tree hypothesis is scarcely supported by scientific evidence and is controversial in the scientific community, it has inspired both research and public interest in the complexity of forests. It is vital that the future management and study of forests take the real complexity of these important ecosystems into account,” Franklin concludes.

    Reference

    Henriksson, N., Marshall, J., Högberg, M.N., Högberg, P., Polle, A., Franklin, O., Näsholm, T. (2023). Re-examining the evidence for the mother tree hypothesis – resource sharing among trees via ectomycorrhizal networks. New Phytologist DOI: 10.1111/nph.18935

     

    New Phytologist is a leading international journal focusing on high quality, original research across the broad spectrum of plant sciences, from intracellular processes through to global environmental change. The journal is owned by the New Phytologist Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion of plant science. https://www.newphytologist.org/

     

     

    About IIASA:
    The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an international scientific institute that conducts research into the critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change that we face in the twenty-first century. Our findings provide valuable options to policymakers to shape the future of our changing world. IIASA is independent and funded by prestigious research funding agencies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. www.iiasa.ac.at

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  • Archaea Diversity Drops in Warming Climate

    Archaea Diversity Drops in Warming Climate

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    Newswise — Led by Jizhong Zhou, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics at the University of Oklahoma, an international research team conducted a long term experiment that found that climate warming reduced the diversity of and significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

    At the microbiological level, life can be described as belonging to one of three kingdoms – how species are described in relation to one another. Eukarya contains complex organisms like animals and plants and microorganisms such as fungi. The other two categories, bacteria and archaea, are comprised only of microorganisms. Archaea are prevalent in a range of environments, from some of the most hostile like volcanoes and permafrost. However, archaea are also common in the human microbiome and as an important part of soil ecology.

    “As temperature is a major driver of biological processes, climate warming will impact various ecological communities,” Zhou said. “Based on long-term time-series data, our previous studies revealed that experimental warming leads to the divergent succession of soil bacterial and fungal communities, accelerates microbial temporal scaling, reduces the biodiversity of soil bacteria, fungi and protists, but increases bacterial network complexity and stability. However, how climate warming affects the temporal succession of the archaeal community remains elusive. Archaea are ubiquitously present in soil and are vital to soil functions, e.g., nitrification and methanogenesis.”

    Using a long-term multifactor experimental field site at OU’s Kessler Atmospheric and Ecological Field Station, the researchers showed that experimental warming of a tallgrass prairie ecosystem significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea and reduced their taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity. In contrast to the researchers’ previous observations in bacteria and fungi, their finds show that climate warming leads to convergent succession of the soil archaeal community, suggesting archaeal community structures would become more predictable in a warmer world.

    ###

    About the Project

    The article, “Experimental Warming Leads to Convergent Succession of Grassland Archaeal Community” published May 3, 2023 in Nature Climate Change. DOI no. 10.1038/s41558-023-01664-x. Zhou, who is also a George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Microbiology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, is the corresponding author. The first author is Ya Zhang, Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology at OU. 

    About the University of Oklahoma Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships 

    The University of Oklahoma is a leading research university classified by the Carnegie Foundation in the highest tier of research universities in the nation. Faculty, staff and students at OU are tackling global challenges and accelerating the delivery of practical solutions that impact society in direct and tangible ways through research and creative activities. OU researchers expand foundational knowledge while moving beyond traditional academic boundaries, collaborating across disciplines and globally with other research institutions as well as decision makers and practitioners from industry, government and civil society to create and apply solutions for a better world. Find out more at ou.edu/research.

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  • Single Approach to Wild Horse Management Urged

    Single Approach to Wild Horse Management Urged

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    Newswise — The U.S. federal government’s management of wild horses is doomed to fail without fundamental changes in policy and the law, according to a new paper led by researchers at the University of Wyoming and Oklahoma State University.

    Because contrasting societal views have created an approach that simultaneously manages horses on the range as wildlife, livestock and pets, current government programs are incapable of succeeding, the researchers argue in the article that appears in the journal BioScience.

    “For the federal government to sustain healthy populations, ecosystem health and fiscal responsibility, lawmakers must properly define how feral equids should be labeled,” the scientists wrote. “Each label (wild, livestock, pet) has validity, and management plans can be implemented to optimize equid populations with other land uses. Furthermore, providing a clear definition of feral equids will determine the legal tools that can be applied for their management.”

    The lead author of the paper is Jacob Hennig, a former UW Ph.D. student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Oklahoma State. Hennig’s advisers at UW — Professor Jeff Beck and Associate Professor Derek Scasta, both in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management — are co-authors of the paper. So are Oklahoma State Professor Sam Fuhlendorf and Assistant Professor Courtney Duchardt, who is a former UW Ph.D. student; Colorado State University research scientist Saeideh Esmaeili, also a former UW Ph.D. student; and Tolani Francisco, of Native Healing LLC in New Mexico.

    The researchers note that, while the fossil record shows there were horses in North America previously, they went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

    “The equids currently inhabiting North America did not coevolve there; they are descendants of livestock that underwent millennia of domestication and artificial selection,” the paper says. “Most large predators that would help limit their population growth went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene (epoch), and the Anthropocene (current epoch) has led to further predator reductions.”

    Because wild horses have no natural predators, cannot be legally hunted under federal law and are no longer slaughtered as livestock in the United States, their numbers on the range have more than doubled in the last decade, the researchers say. They also note that horses removed from the range by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and held in government facilities and private lands have grown in number by 33 percent during that time, with the BLM spending over $550 million since 2013 supporting the captive animals.

    “The BLM has increased the number of individuals removed from the wild in each of the past four years, leading to decreases in the on-range population,” the paper acknowledges. “However, the total on-range population is still approximately 50,000 individuals above the maximum (appropriate management level), and the recent moderate decrease in on-range individuals is directly correlated with an increase in the off-range population and subsequent expenditures.”

    Removing wild horses from Western rangelands and placing them in long-term holding is not a solution, the researchers say. Doing so “simply exports the issue elsewhere — including the imperiled tallgrass prairie ecosystem — with unknown ecological effects,” they wrote, noting that there are now about 23,500 wild horses on private lands in Oklahoma, five times more than the number on open range in Wyoming.

    Additionally, the paper contends that wild horses have a comparatively large impact on the range, as they consume more forage and water than ruminants such as cattle, per capita.

    The scientists credit the BLM for basing recent management on science, including better population estimates of wild horses and deploying measures to keep them from reproducing. But there are too many animals on the range for this approach to work.

    “Although the BLM has admirably increased fertility control research and application, if they are unable to also remove tens of thousands of equids, this process is doomed to be a Sisyphean task,” the researchers wrote.

    The federal Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 essentially calls for wild horses to freely roam like wild animals, but they are treated differently from wild animals because the act prohibits hunting. At the same time, the BLM’s practice of gathering and removing wild horses from the range “more closely resemble livestock operations than wildlife management, whereas adoption programs, sales restrictions and the abolition of slaughter have resulted in feral equids effectively serving as society’s pets,” the paper says.

    Choosing one of the labels — wild, livestock or pets — offers the best hope for the federal government to succeed in wild horse management, the scientists wrote.

    “As a wild species that lacks sufficient predation to keep most populations in check, a hunting or culling program, like those for other wild ungulates, could slow their population growth,” the paper says. “As livestock, gathers and removals that lead to sale or slaughter would limit growth and give the animals the monetary value they currently lack. As pets, simultaneously conducting large-scale removals and administering fertility control, including permanent sterilization (and potentially euthanasia), could reduce population sizes and slow growth.”

    The researchers’ conclusion?

    “The current state of feral horse and burro management in the United States is unsustainable and will continue to be a painful resource sink without fundamental changes to the law. We recommend that the U.S. federal government should officially declare the status of feral equids as either wild, livestock or pets and should provide the BLM and (U.S. Forest Service) the legal latitude and funding to develop and implement respective management options.”

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    University of Wyoming

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  • Fossil Discovery Revises Cycad Plant History

    Fossil Discovery Revises Cycad Plant History

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    Newswise — LAWRENCE — Cycads, a group of gymnosperms which can resemble miniature palm trees (like the popular sago palm houseplant) were long thought to be “living fossils,” a group that had evolved minimally since the time of the dinosaurs. Now, a well-preserved 80-million-year-old pollen cone discovered in California has rewritten scientific understanding of the plants.

    The findings are detailed in a paper by two University of Kansas paleobotanists just published in the journal New Phytologist.

    “Cycads aren’t well-known but make up a significant part of plant diversity, accounting for around 25% of all gymnosperms,” said lead author Andres Elgorriaga, postdoctoral researcher with the KU Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. “Cycads are plants that have thick stems and short stature, with thick, palm-like leaves on top. They produce cones like pine cones and are related to other seed-bearing plants that also don’t produce flowers, like Ginkgo and the monkey puzzle tree. But they’re also highly endangered, with the highest level of endangerment among all plant groups. Trafficking of cycads also is a significant issue.”

    Despite their importance, a lack of fossil evidence and confusion over the years about how to classify some fossil specimens has led to a murky scientific grasp of the plants’ evolutionary history. One prominent idea was that cycads today are nearly identical to their prehistoric ancestors.  

    “The prevailing school of thought is that cycads did not change much in deep time,” said co-author Brian Atkinson, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and curator of paleobotany at the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. “But the fossil record of cycads is poorly understood, and many things that have been called cycads have turned out not to be cycads at all. Here, we have a three-dimensionally preserved cone clearly assignable to cycads because it has internal anatomy and pollen grains typical of this group. However, the external morphology of this pollen cone is different from living cycads today. This finding suggests cycads aren’t really ‘living fossils’ and they probably have a more dynamic evolutionary history than previously thought.”

    According to the KU researchers, their analysis of an 80-million-year-old permineralized pollen cone found in the Campanian Holz Shale formation located in Silverado Canyon, California, tells a more accurate cycad natural history — one where the plants diversified during the Cretaceous.

    “With this type of discovery, we realize during this time there were cycads that were really different than the ones today in their size, in their number of pollen sacs, in a lot of things,” Elgorriaga said. “Maybe we haven’t found that many cycad fossils as well — or maybe we’re finding them but we’re just not recognizing them because they were so different from how they are today. They aren’t ‘living fossils.’ They were different in the past.”

    To perform their analysis, Elgorriaga and Atkinson studied the specimen’s cone’s architecture, anatomical details and vasculature organization using serial sectioning, scanning electron microscopy and 3D reconstruction. They also performed a series of evolutionary analyses to place the fossil within the cycad family tree.

    Relying partly on the shapes of the cone’s scales, pollen and pollen sacs, they assigned the ancient plant to Skyttegaardia, a recently described genus based on isolated cone scales found in Denmark and dated to the Early Cretaceous (about 125 million years ago). Further, they erase some initial doubt about the new genus’ placement in the cycad group.

    “The 3D reconstruction was striking because it only had two pollen sacs per cone scale, and the form of this cone scale reminded us of a fossil described from Scandinavia called Skyttegaardia,” Atkinson said. “There were many similarities, but the original in Scandinavia was only described in 2021 based on isolated cone scales. They cautiously explored the idea that the fossil belonged to cycad but were uncomfortable with firmly concluding this primarily because it only had two pollen sacs per cone scale — while cycads today have 20 to 700. Most cycad pollen cones are quite large, while this fossil was only half a centimeter in length.”

    With the additional information from the new fossil plant, the KU researchers were “quite confident” in their phylogenetic analysis showing Skyttegaardia’s positive relationship with cycads.

    The investigators said their description of the primordial plant shows how paleobotany can tell us more about how nature works through deep time.

    “This shows us that the information we collect from the fossil record greatly impacts our understanding of evolutionary patterns,” Atkinson said. “Time, just like fossils, can reveal insights that aren’t apparent from studying only living plants or organisms. This case study is an excellent example of how fossils can contribute to our understanding of evolution over extended periods.”

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  • “Golden” Fossils Show Exceptional Preservation Origins

    “Golden” Fossils Show Exceptional Preservation Origins

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    Newswise — All that glitters is not gold, or even fool’s gold in the case of fossils.

    A recent study by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and collaborators found that many of the fossils from Germany’s Posidonia shale do not get their gleam from pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold, which was long thought to be the source of the shine. Instead, the golden hue is from a mix of minerals that hints at the conditions in which the fossils formed.

    The discovery is important for understanding how the fossils — which are among the world’s best-preserved specimens of sea life from the Early Jurassic — came to form in the first place, and the role that oxygen in the environment had in their formation.

    “When you go to the quarries, golden ammonites peek out from black shale slabs,” said study co-author Rowan Martindale, an associate professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. “But surprisingly, we struggled to find pyrite in the fossils. Even the fossils that looked golden, are preserved as phosphate minerals with yellow calcite. This dramatically changes our view of this famous fossil deposit.”

    The research was published in Earth Science Reviews. Drew Muscente, a former assistant professor at Cornell College and former Jackson School postdoctoral researcher, led the study.

    The fossils of the Posidonia Shale date back to 183 million years ago, and include rare soft-bodied specimens such as ichthyosaur embryos, squids with ink-sacs, and lobsters. To learn more about the fossilization conditions that led to such exquisite preservation, the researchers put dozens of samples under scanning electron microscopes to study their chemical composition.

    “I couldn’t wait to get them in my microscope and help tell their preservational story,” said co-author Jim Schiffbauer, an associate professor at the University of Missouri Department of Geological Sciences, who handled some of the larger samples.

    The researchers found that in every instance, the fossils were primarily made up of phosphate minerals even though the surrounding black shale rock was dotted with microscopic clusters of pyrite crystals, called framboids.

    “I spent days looking for the framboids on the fossil,” said co-author Sinjini Sinha, a doctoral student at the Jackson School. “For some of the specimens, I counted 800 framboids on the matrix while there was maybe three or four on the fossils.”

    The fact that pyrite and phosphate are found in different places on the specimens is important because it reveals key details about the fossilization environment. Pyrite forms in anoxic (without oxygen) environments, but phosphate minerals need oxygen. The research suggests that although an anoxic seafloor sets the stage for fossilization — keeping decay and predators at bay — it took a pulse of oxygen to drive the chemical reactions needed for fossilization.

    These findings complement earlier research carried out by the team on the geochemical conditions of sites known for their caches of exceptionally preserved fossils, called konservat-lagerstätten. However, the results of these studies contradict long-standing theories about the conditions needed for exceptional fossil preservation in the Posidonia.

    “It’s been thought for a long time that the anoxia causes the exceptional preservation, but it doesn’t directly help,” said Sinha. “It helps with making the environment conducive to faster fossilization, which leads to the preservation, but it’s oxygenation that’s enhancing preservation.”

    It turns out, the oxygenation — and the phosphate and accompanying minerals — also enhanced the fossil’s shine.

    The research was funded by Cornell College and the National Science Foundation. The Posidonia fossil specimens used in this study are now part of the collections at the Jackson School’s Non-Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory.

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    University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

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  • Mushrooms communicate with electricity after rain

    Mushrooms communicate with electricity after rain

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    Newswise — Certain fungi play a critical role in the ecological sustenance of forest trees. Ectomycorrhizal fungi are one such example. Commonly found on pine, oak, and birch trees, ectomycorrhizal fungi form a sheath around the outside of tree roots, and their mycelial body develops into vast underground networks that absorb vital nutrients from the soil and transfer it to the trees.

    Scientists have been studying the possibility of electrical signal transfer between mushrooms and across trees via the mycelial networks. It is thought that fungi generate electrical signals in response to external stimuli and use these signals to communicate with each other, coordinating growth and other behavior. It has even been hypothesized that these signals can be used to help transfer nutrients to plants and trees.

    Still, current scientific evidence remains sparse. Moreover, many studies have been limited to the laboratory, failing to recreate what happens in the wild.

    Now, a group of researchers has recently headed to the forest floor to examine small, tan-colored ectomycorrhizal mushrooms known as Laccaria bicolor. Attaching electrodes to six mushrooms in a cluster, the researchers discovered that the electrical signals increased after rainfall.

    “In the beginning, the mushrooms exhibited less electrical potential, and we boiled this down to the lack of precipitation,” says Yu Fukasawa from Tohoku University, who lead the project along with Takayuki Takehi and Daisuke Akai from the National Institute of Technology, Nagaoka College, and Masayuki Ushio from the Hakubi Center, Kyoto University (presently at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology). “However, the electrical potential began to fluctuate after raining, sometimes going over 100 mV.”

    The researcher correlated this fluctuation with precipitation and temperature, and causality analysis revealed that the post-rain electric potential showed signal transport among mushrooms. This transport was particularly strong between spatially close mushrooms and demonstrated directionality.

    “Our results confirm the need for further studies on fungal electrical potentials under a true ecological context,” adds Fukasawa.

    Details of their research were reported in the journal Fungal Ecology on March 14, 2023.

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  • No clear link between social behavior and animal innovation

    No clear link between social behavior and animal innovation

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    Newswise — Innovating, i.e. the ability to find solutions to new problems or innovative solutions to known problems, it provides crucial benefits for the adaptation and the survival of human beings as well as for animals. What are the characteristics that make specific species or animals to be innovative? A study by the University of Barcelona has analysed this cognitive skill in ungulates, a group of mammals such as dromedaries, horses and goats, characterized by walking on the tip of their toes or hooves. The results show that those individuals that are less integrated in the group and those that are more afraid of new objects were the best at solving a challenge posed by the researchers: opening a food container.  

    “These findings are in line with recent scientific literature about wild and captive primates, and they show that less socially integrated individuals are less likely to obtain resources such as food, but they are more likely to overcome neophobia —aversion to new things—, to improve their situation. Also, this confirms that ungulates are a promising taxon to test evolutionary theories with a comparative approach”, says Álvaro López Caicoya, predoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and the Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) of the UB and first author of the article.

    Regarding this issue, the researcher states that most comparative studies on the evolution of cognitive abilities have been conducted on birds and primates, but that evolutionary pressures to which these are subjected may be different from those of other species. Therefore, including other taxa —such as ungulates— in future studies is “essential for understanding the limits and the generalization of specific evolutionary hypotheses”.

    The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, includes the participation of Montserrat Colell, lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology and researcher at UBneuro, together with other experts from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Leipzig (Germany).

    An experiment with a hundred animals in captivity

    The experiment was carried out on 111 animals from 13 different species, among which there were goats, dromedaries, Przewalki horses, giraffes, llamas, sheep and deer, among other ungulates, which lived in captivity in the zoos of Barcelona, Barbent (France), Nuremberg and Leipzig (Germany). Each of these groups of animals had to deal with a test, consisting opening a type of container they did not know and which contained their favourite food.   

    All the animals had previously been classified according to several aspects that could have an impact on their ability to solve problems, such as the fear of new objects, the diet and the social integration in the group. The aim was to identify the individual and socio-ecological characteristics of the animals that were most successful when working on the challenge the researchers had prepared.

    Dromedaries and goats, the most skilled

    The participation in the experiment varied between species: while 100% of the dromedaries approached the container, only 33% of the sheep did. But the species that showed the most interaction were the domesticated ones and those with a greater fission-fusion dynamic (those belonging to complex groups that go together or separate depending on the environment and the time). However, these characteristics were not indicators of a higher ability to solve the challenge they encountered. “The domestication process could have specifically selected specifically the traits and features that facilitate interactions with humans (and human artefacts), but not the cognitive skills that allow for a more efficient problem solving”, note the researchers. 

    Finally, out of the hundred animals that participated in the experiment, only 36% could open the container and access the food at least once. “Species with a higher percentage of individuals that escaped were dromedaries and goats, with 86% and 69%, respectively”, highlights Álvaro López Caicoya.

     In successful cases, the researchers assessed the diversity of resources used to solve the challenge. “Most of them opened the containers using their nose, muzzle or lips; only nine out of these forty animals used more than one strategy to solve the challenge, such as lifting the cover gently with their lips or throwing the cup to the floor”.

    A pioneering study

    This paper is a pioneering study in the research on the ungulates’ cognition, since “there are barely a handful of similar studies” with these species. “Traditionally, they have been considered cattle and their behaviour or their understating have not been of interest. Thanks to this and other studies, we are starting to see these are animals with complex behaviours which that are worth studying”, stresses Álvaro López Caicoya. 

    In this sense, the UB researcher highlights the need for more studies that include more species and individuals, both in captivity and wild ones, and more complex challenges, to generalize the findings. “The ungulates are an exceptional model for the comparative research and this study is only a first approach to the cognition of these species”, he concludes. 

     

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  • Fish Growth Unaffected by Spawning

    Fish Growth Unaffected by Spawning

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    Newswise — Contrary to what is stated in biology textbooks, the growth of fish doesn’t slow down when and because they start spawning. In fact, their growth accelerates after they reproduce, according to a new article published in Science. 

     “Fish don’t have to choose between growth or reproduction because, in the real world, they don’t occur simultaneously but rather sequentially,” says University of British Columbia (UBC) fisheries researcher Dr. Daniel Pauly, co-author of the Science technical comment with Dr. Rainer Froese, senior scientist at Germany’s Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research.

    “Fish use only 10% to 20% of their energy for each of these two activities, the rest being mainly devoted to other activities, such as darting about when predators approach,” adds Dr. Pauly, who leads the Sea Around Us research initiative at UBC. “This means that reducing the movement rate, given the same food and oxygen consumption, can easily produce the savings required for growth or reproduction. This is the reason, incidentally, why fish farmers raise fish which have been selected to be calmer than their wild congeners.”

    The comment is a response to a previous study which erroneously claims growth ceases when fish reproduce because they dedicate all of their energy to such activity.

    Based on a growth equation widely used in fisheries science, the authors of the initial paper claimed that the growth of the Atlantic horse mackerel from the North Sea stock slows down with the onset of reproduction. Yet, they did not report on the size at which this fish actually matures and spawn.

    Dr. Pauly and Dr. Froese revisited the study and included maturation and spawning trends. Their work demonstrated that the very evidence advanced to support the traditional, textbook claim shows the contrary: horse mackerel actually grow faster after spawning for the first time.

    “This case is not unique,” Dr. Pauly says. “If we ran the numbers using the growth parameters and size at first maturity available for hundreds of fish in FishBase, the online encyclopedia of fish, we would get the same s results.”

    According to the comment, there’s a lack of support for the notion that reproduction impacts growth, even in mammals. “Pets that are neutered or spayed exhibit the same growth trajectories as their parents,” says Dr. Froese. “Also, the dominant males in harem-building species, such as sea lions, don’t cease growing and they become bigger than bachelors, even though they are dedicating a lot of their resources to reproduction.”

    In fish, the oxygen needed for growth is supplied by gills surfaces through which water must flow – a bit like the wind through blinds. Gill surface area grows in two dimensions, that is, in length and width, but they cannot keep up with fish’s bodies, which grow in three dimensions, length, width and depth. Thus, as fish get bigger, they have less gill surface area and their gills provide less oxygen per unit volume or weight.

    “There is a point when the growth of individual fish leads to a decline in its relative gill surface area, which generates a critical level of oxygen supply. This ‘tells’ the fish that it has reached a stage in which it should mature and spawn,” says Dr. Pauly. “When a fish spawns, it loses gonadal tissue that previously had to be supplied with oxygen and thus its relative gill area increases, which facilitates renewed growth until the next spawning season.”

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    University of British Columbia

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  • Land O’Lakes president, CEO to deliver Heuermann Lecture

    Land O’Lakes president, CEO to deliver Heuermann Lecture

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    BYLINE: Frances Hayes | Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute

    Newswise — Beth Ford, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc., is the featured speaker at the May 8 Heuermann Lecture, part of the 2023 Water for Food Global Conference.

    The free lecture, sponsored by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, will be 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Nebraska Innovation Campus Conference Center, 2021 Transformation Drive in Lincoln, and streamed live here.

    Land O’Lakes, Inc., is a Fortune 200 food production and agribusiness company that is also a century-old farmer-owned cooperative. The company includes Land O’Lakes Dairy Foods, Purina Animal Nutrition, WinField United and Truterra and has operations in more than 60 countries.

    Ford joined Land O’Lakes in 2011 and has held a variety of roles across all businesses. She is a passionate advocate of farmers and rural America, with the goal of connecting people, particularly in urban areas, to the farmers and rural communities who grow their food. In addition, she helped launch the American Connection Project to help bridge the digital divide.

    Ford’s 35-year career spans six industries at seven companies. She is on the board of directors of Starbucks and previously served on the board of directors of Blackrock, Inc. She also serves on the board of directors for the Business Roundtable and the board of advises for Columbia Business School’s Deming Center.

    Ford was recently inducted into the Supply Chain Hall of Fame by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Iowa State University in 2022.

    The Heuermann Lecture is held in conjunction with the Water for Food Global Conference, May 8-11, which will convene leading international experts and organizations to discuss “Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for a Changing World.” The focus will be on the next generation of research, smart technology, policy development and best practices that are achieving breakthroughs in water and food security. The conference is organized by the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska and features three days of sessions, as well as site visits to a local Nebraska farm, feedlot and university research center. Registration and more information are available here.

    Heuermann Lectures are funded by a gift from B. Keith and Norma Heuermann of Phillips. The Heuermanns are longtime university supporters with a strong commitment to Nebraska’s production agriculture, natural resources, rural areas and people.

    Lectures are streamed lived on the Heuermann Lecture Series website and air live on campus channel 4. Lectures are archived after the event and are later broadcast on NET2.

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    University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Robert Wagner receives 2023 SAE Medal of Honor

    Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Robert Wagner receives 2023 SAE Medal of Honor

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    Newswise — SAE International has awarded Oak Ridge National Laboratory Buildings and Transportation Science Division Director Robert Wagner with the SAE Medal of Honor for his dedication and support of the organization’s mission of advancing mobility solutions.

    Wagner was presented with the award at a ceremony in Detroit. This is the most prestigious award that the automotive engineering society annually bestows upon one of its more than 128,000 members for individual achievement.

    Wagner has been a champion of SAE since the late 1990s and has founded, organized or chaired more than 20 SAE International symposiums, panels and conferences. In 2011, during a time of significant and rapid breakthroughs in engine technologies, he co-founded the High Efficiency Internal Combustion Engine Symposium and helped develop it into a premier global transportation event. Building on that success, in 2016 he co-founded a symposium that focused on range extenders and brought together leaders from the U.S. government and across the profession to share insights into the challenges and opportunities of integrating high-efficiency engines into electrified drivetrains. This was one of the first SAE events focused on electric vehicles and hybridization, helping the organization remain at the forefront of new technology innovations on the global stage.

    More recently, as transportation research focus has shifted to net-zero-carbon fuels, Wagner recognized the need to create an opportunity for a diverse group of global stakeholders to have a neutral forum setting in which to convene and exchange ideas. This led to a series of symposiums dedicated to net-zero initiatives and the interface with engines and fuel.

    Wagner has focused on passing down the legacy of planning and organizing to other researchers, inspiring and mentoring a new generation of engineers to understand the importance that symposiums can have on securing SAE International’s reputation as a world authority on automotive engineering.

    “I am pleased to see that SAE has recognized Robert for his contributions to advancing transportation research, both nationally and internationally,” said Xin Sun, associate laboratory directory for ORNL’s Energy Science and Technology Directorate. “His leadership at ORNL has been instrumental to maintaining the laboratory’s reputation as a leader in transportation and mobility research and development.”

    At ORNL, Wagner has led transportation research and initiatives for more than 20 years and is well regarded as a scientific leader, strategic planner, mentor and collaborator, working with the Department of Energy, other national laboratories, academia and industry partners. Within this role, he stewards two DOE user facilities — the National Transportation Research Center and the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center. He originally came to ORNL as an undergraduate student in 1992 and then joined ORNL as a postdoctoral research fellow in 1999, advancing to a distinguished research staff role followed by leadership roles in which he directed a diverse portfolio of transportation research. For 10 years, Wagner served as DOE’s laboratory relationship manager for advanced combustion, emissions and fuels and was a founding member of the DOE initiative on the Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines.

    He is an SAE Fellow, two-time winner of the SAE International Forest R. McFarland Award, and a recipient of the SAE International Leadership Citation. In 2019, Wagner was named in the Inaugural SAE Top Contributor Class based on his volunteer and engagement contributions. He has co-authored 40 SAE publications, presented 14 invited talks at SAE International events and served on multiple committees and the editorial board of the SAE International Journal of Engines. Wagner is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has won numerous awards from other organizations for research, leadership and service.

    A native of Missouri and first-generation college graduate, he earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the Missouri University of Science & Technology, where he delivered the commencement address to Ph.D. graduates in December 2022.

    UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

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    Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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  • Can technology save mangrove forests with deep learning?

    Can technology save mangrove forests with deep learning?

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    Newswise — Mangrove forests are an essential component of the coastal zones in tropical and subtropical areas, providing a wide range of goods and ecosystem services that play a vital role in ecology. They are also threatened, disappearing, and degraded across the globe.

    One way to stimulate effective mangrove conservation and encourage policies for their protection is to carefully assess mangrove habitats and how they change, and identify fragmented areas. But obtaining this kind of information is not always an easy task.

    “Since mangrove forests are located in tidal zones and marshy areas, they are hardly accessible,” says Dr. Neda Bihamta Toosi, postdoc at Isfahan University of Technology in Iran working on landscape pattern changes using remote sensing. In a recent study in the journal Nature Conservation, together with a team of authors, she explored ways to classify these fragile ecosystems using machine learning.

    Comparing the performance of different combinations of satellite images and classification techniques, the researchers looked at how good each method was at mapping mangrove ecosystems.

    “We developed a novel method with a focus on landscape ecology for mapping the spatial disturbance of mangrove ecosystems,” she explains. “The provided disturbance maps facilitate future management and planning activities for mangrove ecosystems in an efficient way, thus supporting the sustainable conservation of these coastal areas.”

    The results of the study showed that object-oriented classification of fused Sentinel images can significantly improve the accuracy of mangrove land use/land cover classification.

    “Assessing and monitoring the condition of such ecosystems using model-based landscape metrics and principal component analysis techniques is a time- and cost-effective approach. The use of multispectral remote sensing data to generate a detailed land cover map was essential, and freely available Sentinel-2 data will guarantee its continuity in future,” explains Dr. Bihamta Toosi.

    The research team hopes this approach can be used to provide information on the trend of changes in land cover that affect the development and management of mangrove ecosystems, supporting better planning and decision-making.

    “Our results on the mapping of mangrove ecosystems can contribute to the improvement of management and conservation strategies for these ecosystems impacted by human activities,“ they write in their study.

    Research article:

    Soffianian AR, Toosi NB, Asgarian A, Regnauld H, Fakheran S, Waser LT (2023) Evaluating resampled and fused Sentinel-2 data and machine-learning algorithms for mangrove mapping in the northern coast of Qeshm island, Iran. Nature Conservation 52: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.52.89639

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    Pensoft Publishers

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  • Genetic code of hornets sequenced to understand their successful invasion

    Genetic code of hornets sequenced to understand their successful invasion

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    Newswise — The genomes of two hornet species, the European hornet and the Asian hornet (or yellow-legged hornet) have been sequenced for the first time by a team led by UCL (University College London) scientists.

    By comparing these decoded genomes with that of the giant northern hornet, which has recently been sequenced by another team, the researchers have revealed clues suggesting why hornets have been so successful as invasive species across the globe.

    Hornets are the largest of the social wasps; they play important ecological roles as top predators of other insects. In their native regions, they are natural pest controllers, helping regulate the populations of insects such as flies, beetles, caterpillars and other types of wasps. These services are critical for healthy, functional ecosystems, as well as for agriculture.

    But hornets also tend to be very successful as invasive species. They can become established in areas they are not native to and cause potentially huge ecological and economic damage by hunting important pollinators, such as honeybees, wild bees and hoverflies.

    To better understand how these species have so successfully expanded their ranges, the international team of scientists investigated the genomes of three types of hornets.

    A genome sequence is the set of instructions – a genetic code – that makes a species. Comparing the genomes of different species can give insights into their biology – their behaviour, evolution, and how they interact with the environment.

    The researchers have newly sequenced the genomes of the native European hornet, Vespa crabro – an important top predator, which is protected in parts of Europe – and the invasive yellow-legged Asian hornet Vespa velutina, which has become established through much of Europe over the last 20 years threatening native ecosystems, and has occasionally been sighted in the UK. They compared these with the genome of the giant northern hornet, Vespa mandarinia – a species known for its role as pest controller, pollinator and food provider in its native Asian range, but is a recent arrival in North America, where it may threaten native fauna.

    By analysing differences between the three related species, the researchers were able to identify genes that have been rapidly evolving since the species differentiated themselves from other wasps and from one another, and found some noteworthy genes that are rapidly evolving, particularly relating to communication and olfaction (smell).

    The study’s first author, Dr Emeline Favreau (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment), said: “We were excited to find evidence of rapid genome evolution in these hornet genomes, compared to other social insects. Lots of genes have been duplicated or mutated; these included genes that are likely to be involved in communication and in sensing the environment.”

    Genome evolution allows organisms to adapt to their environment and make the most of their surroundings by developing new behaviours and physiology.

    Co-author Dr Alessandro Cini, who began the work at UCL before moving to the University of Pisa, said: “These findings are exciting, as they may help explain why hornets have been so successful in establishing new populations in non-native regions.

    “Hornets are carried to different parts of the world accidentally by humans. All that is needed is a small number of mated queens to be transported, hidden in cargo perhaps. The genomes suggest that hornets have lots of genes involved in detecting and responding to chemical cues – these may make them especially good at adapting to hunt different types of prey in non-native regions.”

    Senior author Professor Seirian Sumner (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment) said: “These hornet genomes are just the beginning. The genomes of more than 3,000 insect species have now been sequenced by efforts around the world, but wasps are under-represented among these.

    “Genomes tell us about aspects of the ecology and evolution that other methods cannot. Evolution has equipped these insects with an incredible genetic toolbox with which to exploit their environment and hunt their prey.”

    Armed with these new genomes, the scientists hope to help improve the management of hornet populations, both for their ecosystem services as pest controllers in native zones, and as ecological threats in regions where they are invasive.

    The study involved researchers in the UK, Italy, Spain, Israel, France, New Zealand, and Austria, and was primarily funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.

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    University College London

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