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  • Data Brief: One in Five Adults Unable to Isolate Sick Family Member During Disease Outbreak

    Data Brief: One in Five Adults Unable to Isolate Sick Family Member During Disease Outbreak

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    Newswise — LOS ANGELES, Dec. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — One-fifth of U.S. adults said that they would not be able to isolate a sick household member in a separate bedroom and bathroom in the case of an infectious disease outbreak, yet 75% believe that an infectious disease outbreak is moderately or highly likely to occur within the U.S. during the next year, according to a data brief issued by Heluna Health this week.

    The results come as part of a nationwide survey led by Jo Kay Ghosh, PhD, director of research and evaluation at Heluna Health.

    “While our overall results found moderate to high levels of outbreak preparedness among those surveyed, we identified areas of concern when it comes to people’s ability to isolate a sick family member, and their knowledge of how to use air filters in the home,” Ghosh said.

    One-fifth of those surveyed reported low knowledge of how to use or install high-efficiency air filters to reduce communicable disease spread.

    The survey also identified disparities in overall levels of household preparedness according to socioeconomic factors like age, race, ethnicity, education and income. Younger adults, those of Black or African American race, those of Hispanic ethnicity, those with less than a high school education and those with annual household incomes less than $35,000 reported being the least prepared for an outbreak.

    Blayne Cutler, MD, PhD, president and CEO of Heluna Health, said these results reinforce the importance of the organization’s mission.

    “Heluna Health is at the forefront of increasing equitable access to disease prevention, treatment, care and social resources,” Cutler said.

    The research was conducted by taking a survey of more than 4,000 adults in May 2023, immediately following the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration. The survey assessed public opinions regarding risk for future outbreaks, preferred sources of outbreak information and preparedness for future outbreaks.

    The survey also asked about where participants seek information on how to cope with disease outbreaks. The most highly sought sources were government agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or health departments; doctors or health systems; or television and news channels.

    For more information, visit www.helunahealth.org.

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    Heluna Health

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  • Nature Inspires a New Wave of Biotechnology

    Nature Inspires a New Wave of Biotechnology

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    The Science

    Newswise — Biological molecules called peptides play a key role in many biological activities, including the transport of oxygen and electrons. Peptides consist of short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. They are also the inspiration for new kinds of biotechnology. Researchers are developing a synthetic form of a peptide that self-assembles into nanoscale fibers that conduct electricity when combined with heme. Heme is a substance that helps proteins in nature move electrons from one place to another. The researchers determined how electrical conductivity of their peptide nanofibers was affected by the length of the sequence of amino acids in the peptide and their identity

    The Impact

    Structural parameters of  peptides in nature determine their function and their promise for biotechnology. These parameters include sequence length—the length of the peptide segments that make up complete peptide chains. They also include how some amino acids are arranged in a peptide. This study’s results help researchers design peptide assemblies that form nanoscale fibers and transport electrons over long distances, which could make these fibers useful in medical devices, biosensors for a wide range of applications, and robotics. They also have promise in the development of new enzymes, which companies use to make and improve things such as medical-grade and household cleaning products.

    Summary

    Fields in materials and biochemistry research explore protein and peptide nanostructures found in nature. These nanostructures show great promise as bioelectronic materials. The development of a synthetic analog capable of forming one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures would greatly improve scientists’ understanding of the natural system and provide a platform for developing new materials. Researchers in the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory investigated a series of peptides that self-assemble into 1D layered nanostructures. The peptides PA-(Kx)n are denoted simply as PA-Kxn, where PA is c16-AH with c16-A being modified alanine (A) and H is histidine, K is lysine, n is the sequence repeat length (1-4), and x is the amino acid leucine (L), isoleucine (I), or phenylalanine (F).

    The team determined how the length of the peptide sequence (n) and the identity of the hydrophobic amino acid affect key factors: the binding affinity of heme to pre-assembled peptides, the heme density, and the electronic properties. With a sequence length of 2, the peptide assembly yielded the greatest binding affinity. The resulting nanoscale assemblies produced ordered arrays of the electroactive molecule heme. All the peptides, with the exception of PA-KL1, had nanofibers with a long aspect ratio regardless of repeat unit length and sequence. Such structures have potential utility as supramolecular bioelectronic materials useful in biomedical sensing and the development of enzymatic materials.

    Funding

    Research at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility, was supported by DOE Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.


    Journal Link: Nanoscale, Jun-2022

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Bristol researchers set to join leading experts at COP28 as world ‘stands on edge of burning bridge’ to tackle climate change

    Bristol researchers set to join leading experts at COP28 as world ‘stands on edge of burning bridge’ to tackle climate change

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    Newswise — A team of University of Bristol experts are poised to join the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will hold the world to account in addressing humanity’s most urgent and ambitious challenge.

    The annual two-week summit, starting in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, 30 November, is set to deliver the first-ever global stocktake of progress in achieving key international climate targets to reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming.

    Dr Matt Palmer, Associate Professor of Climate Science, is among a group of academics from the University of Bristol’s renowned Cabot Institute for the Environment, who will be attending to share their expertise and insights.

    “The world community stands on the edge of a burning bridge: we must act faster to reduce emissions if we are to avoid devastating impacts of climate change on humans, the environment, and vital ecosystems,” Dr Palmer said.

    “2023 is set to be the warmest year on record and saw a catalogue of unprecedented and damaging extreme climate events across the globe. Current emissions reduction pledges by nations fall well short of the 1.5C Paris Agreement warming target. Immediate concerted action is imperative to lessen future climate risks and this meeting is a crucial opportunity for the global community to review progress, recognise shortcomings, and commit to stepping up mitigation actions.”

    Dr Palmer has been a lead author on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, covering sea-level rise and ocean warming, and he will be presenting an event focused on the latest observations on climate change.

    Wide-ranging experts in hot topics including climate change policy, emissions, climate modelling, adapting to a warming world, food systems, and ensuring the shift to a net zero economy is fair, are joining the gathering.

    The conference will help harness joint global efforts on climate action and identify changes needed to bridge gaps preventing being on track to meet agreed goals.

    Delivering climate resilient, net zero food systems is a major global challenge which will come under discussion.

    Dr Pete Falloon, Associate Professor in Climate Resilient Food Systems, is attending in this capacity, leading an event in the UK Pavilion spanning partners and youth farmers from the Global North and South amongst others.

    He said: “Droughts, flooding, high temperatures and rising sea levels are increasingly threatening the security and resilience of our food systems worldwide. Food systems are also a key part of the pathway to net zero, given they are responsible for around a third of global emissions. We critically need to transform our food systems so they are well adapted to climate change but also deliver on net zero goals.

    “My hope is that by bringing together scientists, young farmers and policy makers together, we will use climate science and services as a platform to accelerate food system change, innovation and practice to reduce hunger and ensure a more sustainable future.”

    Dr Katharina Richter, a specialist in decolonial environmental politics and equitable development, hopes negotiations will consolidate previous multilateral plans to help emerging economy countries have swift access to financing to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.

    “This year, extreme weather events in Africa, including drought and flooding, are thought to have been exacerbated by climate change and, tragically, have killed more than 15,000 people already. To prevent further loss of life, it’s absolutely critical developing countries can access climate finance quickly and unconditionally,” Dr Richter said.

    “I will therefore be watching closely to see how G77 and Alliance of Small Island States proposals are met by the international community, especially details on operationalising last year’s negotiation highlight: the Loss and Damage Fund.”

    Technology and the transition to a green economy are further important areas to be negotiated.

    “Rich and oil-producing countries must honour their emission-related responsibilities and commit to phasing out fossil fuels entirely. Clean energy technology will be key to replacing fossil fuels. Without commitments to demand-side reductions by rich nations, however, a business-as-usual energy transition will continue to create sacrifice zones in indigenous, biodiverse, and/or water scarce territories of the Global South,” Dr Richter added.

    “I will therefore also be looking out for how green technology supply chains are addressed in the negotiations, including outcomes for developing countries where critical raw materials are extracted.”

    Climate justice specialist Dr Alix Dietzel, who also attended last year, leads work to help ensure the journey towards net zero is fully inclusive and equitable.

    Dr Dietzel said: “I’ll be interested to see who is able to attend and who will have their voices heard at the negotiations and whether this represents fair and equal decision making. Substantial commitments to mitigation targets, adaptation planning, and loss and damage funding are vital requirements of the just transition to climate change.

    “I hope the global community rises to such pressing challenges and that pledges are fair to all those most affected by climate change, who may be under-represented.”

    Incorporating the voice of Indigenous groups will play a pivotal role in realising such aspirations.

    Dr Karen Tucker, an expert in the politics of Indigenous knowledge, added: “Indigenous peoples are some of the most knowledgeable actors in global climate politics. But this doesn’t mean their expertise or rights are always recognised in international negotiations.

    “I’ll therefore be paying attention to the ways in which Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledges are incorporated into negotiations, particularly relating to land use and nature.”

    Raising the ambition of climate policies by integrating cities in national climate policies could help deliver and step-up progress in meeting demanding targets.

    Energy and climate policy specialist Dr Colin Nolden is hosting an official event, which highlights the latest research development and cross-sectoral policy recommendations for ramping up climate action at urban level. It has a specific focus on using Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to generate investment, especially in the context of climate clubs and alliances.

    Dr Nolden said: “Article 6 of the Paris Agreement provides a mechanism not just for trading carbon credits but also for generating investment and lowering the cost of capital, ranging from district heating systems in the global north to clean cooking projects in the global south.”

    “Climate clubs and alliances, meanwhile, can increase emission mitigation ambition among participating countries if they include cross-border investment and trading arrangements for carbon emission reductions generated using Article 6.

    “If appropriate Article 6 market governance arrangements are agreed on at COP28, climate clubs and alliances, ideally spanning the Global North and South, have great potential to help implement effective and just net zero policies. I will be providing insights and pitching an idea on how to make this happen.”

    University of Bristol student Katie Riley, who is in the final year of her degree in politics and international relations, will be joining as an observer.

    The 21-year-old has been an environmental lobbyist for several years and recently published a book about experiences of youth in climate activism. At COP27 Katie was a UK communications delegate for the Future Leaders Network and this year she is on Generation Climate’s COP28 strategy delegation.

    “I mainly started because I saw a space for change and loved engaging within my community. But international politics is exciting, especially within COP, so I’m pleased to be developing my involvement more widely,” Katie said.

    “I also think it’s necessary for as many young people to have a platform within big conferences like this, as our generation will be most affected by the climate crises.”

    The University has been working closely with Mayor Marvin Rees and Bristol City Council to help the city achieve a just transition towards a more sustainable economy. This includes a shared commitment to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to deliver better health, education, economic growth, and equality while also tackling climate change.

    Notes to editors

    Here’s a full overview of experts from the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment who can help with media requests in the run up to and during COP28: https://environment.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2023/10/30/are-you-a-journalist-looking-for-climate-experts-for-cop28-weve-got-you-covered/

    For more information and to request an expert comment and/or media interview, please contact Victoria Tagg, University of Bristol Media & PR Manager (Research): [email protected]

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    University of Bristol

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  • Adolescent fitness may not provide as much future cardiovascular health benefit as believed.

    Adolescent fitness may not provide as much future cardiovascular health benefit as believed.

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    Newswise — There is a well-known relationship between good physical fitness at a young age and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. However, when researchers adjusted for familial factors by means of sibling analysis, they found a weaker association, although the link between high body mass index (BMI) and cardiovascular disease remained strong. The study, which was conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and other universities, is published in JAMA Network Open.

    “This does not mean that fitness is irrelevant,” says the study’s last author Viktor Ahlqvist, doctoral student at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet. “We could still see an association, although it was weaker after taking into account factors shared by full siblings. We also think that adolescence is an important time in life for establishing good habits such as exercising and having a healthy diet.”

    Challenging to prove causal associations

    Many observational studies have previously demonstrated links between various risk factors at a young age and cardiovascular disease in adulthood. However, whether the associations are causal is challenging to prove because of the potential influence of unaccounted genetic and environmental factors. A collaborative team including researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has therefore tried to examine if a large proportion of cardiovascular diseases in adulthood could indeed be prevented with a lower BMI, lower blood pressure, improved physical fitness or improved muscle strength in adolescence.

    Sourcing data from the Swedish Military Conscription Register and other Swedish registries, the researchers identified over a million 18-year-old males and followed them for 60 years. Almost half of them were full brothers.

    “The strength of our study, which makes it more reliable than many other conventional observational studies, is that we have used sibling analyses,” says the study’s first author Marcel Ballin, researcher at Uppsala University and analyst at Region Stockholm’s Centre for Epidemiology and Community Medicine. “By doing so we could examine how the relationship changes when controlling for all shared sibling factors. This includes environmental factors such as childhood environment and half of the genetics.”

    High BMI is a strong risk factor

    The results show that a high BMI in late adolescence was strongly associated with future cardiovascular disease, even after the researchers had controlled for shared familial factors. However, the association between physical fitness and cardiovascular disease was considerably weaker in the sibling analysis, suggesting that many previous observational studies might have overestimated the relevance of adolescent fitness to cardiovascular health later in life.

    “Our conclusion is that of the risk factors studied, high BMI is the strongest individual risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and that efforts to tackle the obesity epidemic should continue to be given high priority,” says co-author Daniel Berglind, docent at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet. “A good level of fitness and muscle strength in adolescence doesn’t seem as crucial, but physical activity still remains important for public health, as it can bring other health benefits.”

    Several limitations

    The study examined the association between risk factors at a young age and future cardiovascular disease; other disease outcomes were not investigated. The researchers had no data on whether the participants’ risk factors varied later in life, and they only studied men, which makes it difficult to extend their findings to women. The Military Conscription Register also lacks details on certain risk factors for future cardiovascular disease, such as diet, alcohol consumption, smoking, blood lipids and blood glucose.

    The researchers received no specific grant for this study. Co-author Martin Neovius is on the advisory panels for Ethicon, Johnson & Johnson and Itrim and has been a consultant for the Swedish armed forces outside the scope of this study. No other conflicts of interest have been reported.

    Publication: “Genetic and environmental factors and cardiovascular disease risk in adolescents”, Marcel Ballin, Martin Neovius, Francisco B. Ortega, Pontus Henriksson, Anna Nordström, Daniel Berglind, Peter Nordström, Viktor H. Ahlqvist, JAMA Network Open, online 17 November 2023, doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.43947.

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    Karolinska Institute

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  • Malnutrition linked to antibiotic resistance spike, study finds.

    Malnutrition linked to antibiotic resistance spike, study finds.

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    Newswise — University of B.C. researchers have uncovered startling connections between micronutrient deficiencies and the composition of gut microbiomes in early life that could help explain why resistance to antibiotics has been rising across the globe.

    The team investigated how deficiencies in crucial micronutrients such as vitamin A, B12, folate, iron, and zinc affected the community of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbes that live in the digestive system.

    They discovered that these deficiencies led to significant shifts in the gut microbiome of mice—most notably an alarming expansion of bacteria and fungi known to be opportunistic pathogens.

    Importantly, mice with micronutrient deficiencies also exhibited a higher enrichment of genes that have been linked to antibiotic resistance.

    “Micronutrient deficiency has been an overlooked factor in the conversation about global antibiotic resistance,” said Dr. Paula Littlejohn, a postdoctoral research fellow with UBC’s department of medical genetics and department of pediatrics, and the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. “This is a significant discovery, as it suggests that nutrient deficiencies can make the gut environment more conducive to the development of antibiotic resistance, which is a major global health concern.”

    Bacteria naturally possess these genes as a defence mechanism. Certain circumstances, such as antibiotic pressure or nutrient stress, cause an increase in these mechanisms. This poses a threat that could render many potent antibiotics ineffective and lead to a future where common infections could become deadly.

    Antibiotic resistance is often attributed to overuse and misuse of antibiotics, but the work of Dr. Littlejohn and her UBC colleagues suggests that the ‘hidden hunger’ of micronutrient deficiencies is another important factor.

    “Globally, around 340 million children under five suffer from multiple micronutrient deficiencies, which not only affect their growth but also significantly alter their gut microbiomes,” said Dr. Littlejohn. “Our findings are particularly concerning as these children are often prescribed antibiotics for malnutrition-related illnesses. Ironically, their gut microbiome may be primed for antibiotic resistance due to the underlying micronutrient deficiencies.”

    The study, published this week in Nature Microbiology, offers critical insights into the far-reaching consequences of micronutrient deficiencies in early life. It underscores the need for comprehensive strategies to address undernutrition and its ripple effects on health. Addressing micronutrient deficiencies is about more than overcoming malnutrition, it may also be a critical step in fighting the global scourge of antibiotic resistance.

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    University of British Columbia

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  • Topology, Algebra, and Geometry Give Math Respect in Data Science

    Topology, Algebra, and Geometry Give Math Respect in Data Science

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    By John Roach

    Newswise — In the computer vision field of object detection, deep learning models are trained to identify objects of interest within an image of a scene. For example, such models can be trained to detect viruses in microscopy images or pick out airplanes parked on tarmacs in overhead aerial imagery.

    “In many cases, like microscopy or overhead images, a user would want to ensure that the objects are found regardless of their orientation,” said Tegan Emerson, a senior data scientist and leader of the mathematics, statistics, and data science group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). “However, this property is not inherent in all deep learning models.”

    In some cases, the deep learning model can pick out the airplanes with noses pointed north but fail to detect the airplanes pointed south, for instance.

    Emerson and her colleagues explored solutions to address this problem by applying the algebraic concept of group action to a deep learning model for object detection. Group action describes how things are changed under a collection of operations such as rotation. With these algebra-based architecture changes applied to the model, objects are more reliably detected in imagery no matter their orientation.

    “If you constrain the model to have this type of mathematical invariance to it, you’re able to maintain your ability to detect and appropriately identify the objects within your scene, which makes this a much more trustworthy tool for people to use,” Emerson said. “That matters in operational environments where a lot of our algorithms are going to be deployed.”

    Giving math respect in data science

    In recent years, mathematicians were pushed to the sidelines in data science disciplines as computer power and datasets used to train machine learning (ML) models grew exponentially and led to a step-change in capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can generate fluid prose in natural language, noted Timothy Doster, a senior data scientist at PNNL.

    “The mathematics community felt a little behind the time as massive amounts of funding went into these computer science fields,” he said. “But now they’re seeing research around explainability or dependability of these algorithms and that’s where math can really come in and address these areas.”

    In 2022, Doster, Emerson, and PNNL data scientist colleague Henry Kvinge co-founded the Topology, Algebra, and Geometry in Data Science (TAG-DS) community to help spur interest in the application of math to address specific topics in data science and ML.

    The community hosts workshops and conferences as well as provides publishing opportunities to drive awareness of mathematically principled solutions to data science problems. Most recently, the team hosted the second annual TAG in ML workshop at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) on July 28, 2023, in Honolulu, Hawaii, and attracted more than 200 participants.

    Part of the interest in the TAG-DS community stems from the growing complexity of ML systems, which operate on high-dimensional, complex datasets using models that have thousands to billions of learnable parameters, noted Kvinge.

    “Such settings transcend human intuition which begins to quickly degrade beyond three dimensions,” he said. “Modern topology, algebra, and geometry were designed to allow mathematicians to understand exotic spaces, making them natural toolboxes to investigate when studying state-of-the-art machine learning.”

    Proof of math in data science

    In some cases, the application of math to data science can improve the rigor of AI models trained with massive datasets and computer power. For example, the mathematical study of symmetry, or representation theory, is used in some of the models capable of predicting how proteins fold and twist into their three-dimensional shapes, according to Kvinge.

    Protein folding models help scientists understand the structure of proteins, which are the building blocks of life—they are molecular machines that play a fundamental role in the structure, function, and regulation of nearly every biological process.

    “We know that how a protein folds should not depend on its location in space nor its orientation, and consequently a deep learning model should ignore these factors of variation when processing representations of proteins,” he explained. “Building model architectures can be done far more accurately when you understand how to capture the symmetries intrinsic to three-dimensional space.”

    In other cases, mathematics techniques can improve data used in more niche data science tasks such as using topological data analysis to extract shape-based features for ML models used to understand the structure and properties of materials such as the metal rods, tubes, and cubes that provide cars and trucks their shape, strength, and fuel economy.

    “Topology is the study of shape and there is a widely used quote from a leader in the field that states, ‘Data has shape, shape has meaning’ and what shape means for different formats of data can be nuanced,” noted Emerson.

    In one study, researchers applied topology to scanning electron microscopy images that were used to support research and development in advanced manufacturing. In this case, white precipitates, or solid materials, that formed during a metal manufacturing process were visible throughout the image. By looking at the topology of the precipitates at multiple threshold values, the team was able to capture physically meaningful features, summarize the information, and use it as input to the ML model.

    “Part of the difference in the paradigm for TAG-DS both at PNNL and in the scientific community is that you’re not just trying to train a model. What you’re trying to do is build a solution,” said Emerson. “You want something that actually addresses a need or a way to support a human who is involved in the processing pipeline.”

    Growing the TAG-DS community

    Engagement with the TAG-DS community has more than doubled in its first year of existence, according to Doster. For example, the TAG-ML workshop at ICML in 2022 had about 40 published submissions. This year’s workshop received more than 90 submissions and included four keynotes by world leaders in geometric and topological deep learning, two poster sessions, six spotlight talks, and other activities.

    Looking forward, the group is planning to host more workshops at computer science and mathematics conferences and is aiming to host a standalone TAG-DS conference in 2025.

    According to Emerson, the ability of TAG-DS to increase the rigor, trustworthiness, and explainability of AI systems will only grow in importance as technologies such as generative AI become widespread.

    “From a national laboratory’s perspective with our interest for the nation, but also for the average person in daily life, the mathematical rigor that the TAG-DS community can bring to understanding the ways these tools can support you, when they will work, how they will fail, and when they are not an appropriate technique to be using is critical,” she said.

    ###

    About PNNL

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in sustainable energy and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science. For more information on PNNL, visit PNNL’s News Center. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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  • Probing the Intricate Structures of 2D Materials at the Nanoscale

    Probing the Intricate Structures of 2D Materials at the Nanoscale

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    The Science

    Two-dimensional (2D) materials are just a single or a few layers of atoms thick. These materials often have exotic properties that may be useful for next-generation technologies. When layers of these materials are stacked, the electronic properties that emerge can be manipulated by, for example, twisting the layers with respect to one another. To fully understand these properties and correlate them with the twist angle, scientists need advanced microscopy techniques. Researchers developed a novel operating mode for the interferometric four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy (4D-STEM) technique. This special technique allows researchers to measure the atomic-scale structural distortions, twist angle, and interlayer spacings that influence the unique electronic properties of layered 2D materials.

    The Impact

    Layered 2D materials have special properties that can advance technology beyond existing capabilities. For example, they could lead to faster and more energy efficient computers or more reliable electricity storage. The individual layers that make up these materials may each be oriented differently. This creates challenges in fully understanding their 3D atomic structures with existing microscopy techniques. Interferometric 4D-STEM can reveal the relative positions of atoms within separate layers of stacked and twisted 2D materials. The technique opens avenues to the design and development of materials with useful properties.

    Summary

    Layered 2D materials have attracted considerable attention due to their interesting electronic properties, which can be modified by changing the twist angle of bilayer materials, the stacking sequence of trilayer materials, or other factors. To fully understand and control the properties of these materials, researchers need to study their atomic structures. However, visualizing the atomic structure of few-layered materials is often challenging using conventional microscopy techniques, such as when working with materials composed of light elements or when 3D information is needed. Researchers need new techniques to improve precision and locally measure distortions and interlayer spacings in twisted materials composed of two or three layers, especially when they contain light elements or high twist angles.

    Researchers developed a new interferometric 4D-STEM modality that can provide information about local structural deformations within layers, twist direction and magnitude between layers, and interlayer distances for few-layered 2D materials. This new operating mode of 4D-STEM is still based on Bragg interferometry but uses a defocused electron probe to directly provide information about the relative positions of atoms within separate layers, as demonstrated in this study in bilayer and trilayer graphene. The technique sheds new light on the interplay between electronic properties and the precise structural arrangements of few-layer 2D materials.

     

    Funding

    The research was supported by the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science user facility, and by the DOE Office of Science Early Career Award Program. Additional support was provided by the European Research Council and resources at the Vienna Scientific Cluster.


    Journal Link: Small, Jun-2021

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Scientists reveal structures of neurotransmitter transporter

    Scientists reveal structures of neurotransmitter transporter

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    Newswise — (Memphis, Tenn – November 1, 2023) Neurons talk to each other using chemical signals called neurotransmitters. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have drawn on structural biology expertise to determine structures of vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), a key component of neuronal communication. By visualizing VMAT2 in different states, scientists now better understand how it functions and how the different shapes the protein takes influence drug binding — critical information for drug development to treat hyperkinetic (excess movement) disorders such as Tourette syndrome. The work was published today in Nature.    

    How our neurons talk to each other 

    Chemical compounds called monoamines, which include dopamine, serotonin and adrenaline, play a central role in neuronal communication. These molecules affect how the brain works, controlling our emotions, sleep, movement, breathing, circulation and many other functions. Monoamines are neurotransmitters (signaling molecules) produced and released by neurons, but before they can be released, they must first be packaged into vesicles.  

    Vesicles are cellular compartments that store neurotransmitters before they are released at the synapses (the junction through which chemical signals pass from one neuron to another). Think of vesicles as the cargo ships of the neuronal cell — neurochemicals are packed inside them and taken to where they need to go. VMATs are proteins on the membrane of these vesicles that move monoamines into the space within, acting like loading cranes for the cargo ships.  

    “VMATs are transporters that are required for packing these monoamine neurotransmitters into synaptic vesicles,” explained co-corresponding author Chia-Hsueh Lee, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Structural Biology.   

    Once the VMAT has packed the vesicle with monoamines, the “cargo ship” moves towards the synaptic gap (the space between neurons), where it releases the chemical compounds.  

    The many faces of monoamine transporters 

    There are two types of VMAT: VMAT1 and VMAT2. VMAT1 is more specialized, found only in neuroendocrine cells, whereas VMAT2 is found throughout the neuronal system and has significant clinical relevance.   

    “We knew that VMAT2 is physiologically very important,” Lee said. “This transporter is a target for pharmacologically relevant drugs used in the treatment of hyperkinetic disorders such as chorea and Tourette Syndrome.” 

    Despite their importance, the structure of VMAT2, which would allow researchers to investigate how it works fully, had remained elusive. Lee and his team used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to obtain structures of VMAT2 bound to the monoamine serotonin and the drugs tetrabenazine and reserpine, which are used to treat chorea and hypertension, respectively. This was no easy feat.  

    “VMAT2 is a small membrane protein,” explained co-first author Yaxin Dai, PhD., St. Jude Department of Structural Biology. “This makes it a very challenging target for cryo-EM structure determination.”  

    Despite the difficulty and using some clever tricks, the team captured multiple structures of VMAT2 that allowed them to tease out how the protein functions and investigate how exactly those drugs work. “VMAT transporters adopt multiple conformations [shapes] while transporting their substrate. This is called alternating access transport, where the protein is either “outward” or “inward” facing,” explained co-first author Shabareesh Pidathala, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Structural Biology. “To completely gain mechanistic understanding at an atomic level, we needed to capture multiple conformations of this transporter.”  

    Answering a 40-year-old question 

    The researchers discovered this dynamic mechanism means multiple opportunities for drugs to bind. They confirmed that reserpine and tetrabenazine bind two different conformations of VMAT2. “30 or 40 years of pharmacological research had suggested that these two drugs bind to the transporter in different ways,” said Pidathala, “but nobody knew the atomic details of how this works. Our structures nicely demonstrate that these two drugs stabilize two different conformations of the transporter to block its activity.” 

    The structure of VMAT2 with serotonin bound allowed the researchers to pinpoint specific amino acids that interact with the neurotransmitter and drive transport. “We believe this is a common mechanism that this transporter uses to engage all the monoamines,” said Lee.  

    While this work offers a huge leap forward in understanding monoamine transport, Lee and his team are delving deeper into its mechanism. For example, the intake of monoamines into vesicles is fueled by protons moving in the other direction. “We identified amino acids that are important for this proton-dependent process,” Lee said, “but we still don’t know how exactly protons drive this transport. Determining this mechanism is our future direction, which will help us to fully appreciate how this transporter works.”  

    Authors and funding 

    The study’s other first author is Shuyun Liao of the School of Life Sciences, Peking University. The study’s co-corresponding author is Zhe Zhang of the School of Life Sciences, Peking University. Other authors include Xiao Li and Chi-Lun Chang of St. Jude, and Changkun Long of the School of Life Sciences, Peking University.  

    The study was supported by grants from National Institutes of Health (R01GM143282), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFA1302300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171201), the SLS-Qidong innovation fund, the Li Ge-Zhao Ning Life Science Youth Research Foundation, the State Key Laboratory of Membrane Biology of China, and ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization of St. Jude. 

     

    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital  

    St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer, sickle cell disease and other life-threatening disorders. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened more than 60 years ago. St. Jude shares the breakthroughs it makes to help doctors and researchers at local hospitals and cancer centers around the world improve the quality of treatment and care for even more children. To learn more, visit stjude.org, read St. Jude Progress blog, and follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.   

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  • Powassan Virus: What to Know about this Rare Tick-Borne Disease

    Powassan Virus: What to Know about this Rare Tick-Borne Disease

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    Newswise — On paper, Powassan virus sounds like your basic nightmare. A tick-borne infection with no vaccine and no cure, it kills 1 in 10 people who get it and causes long-term neurological problems in half of reported cases. For decades, Powassan virus disease had affected only about one person a year in the U.S.—most likely because it was typically transmitted to humans by a tick that rarely bites people. But cases are slowly rising, especially in New England and the Great Lakes region, and human Powassan virus infections have now been diagnosed in the U.S., Canada, and Russia. 

    In 1997, Sam Telford III, a professor in the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, found a genetically distinct strain of Powassan virus in deer ticks—the bloodsuckers notorious for spreading Lyme disease. He initially worried about its implications for Powassan virus in humans, as he found the virus in 1 out of every 100 deer ticks he sampled. But at the time, there were no reports of people with swelling in the brain—or encephalitis, a key symptom of Powassan—in places where deer ticks were common. He and his fellow researchers surmised that people just didn’t come down with Powassan virus disease from the strain carried by deer ticks.

    “It turned out we were wrong,” he said.

    In 2008, an elderly immunocompromised woman died from the deer-tick-carried subtype of Powassan virus. Since then, the number of cases has been slowly increasing each year. In 2022, 44 cases of Powassan virus were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and seven of those people died. So far this year, 29 cases have been reported. Massachusetts has been a particular hot spot. The state Department of Public Health has reported 16 cases in the last decade.

    Telford said he suspects that there has been some sort of natural selection for a variant of Powassan virus that’s more easily transmitted by deer ticks to people and causes severe disease. Such is likely the case regarding the recent emergence of babesiosis—a rare and sometimes fatal tick-borne disease that attacks human red blood cells—in the northeastern U.S. “Babesiosis used to be a coastal disease,” explained Telford, who is also part of the Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative. “Now it’s all over the place, from New Jersey to Maine.”

    Since 2017, Telford has conducted research under a grant from the National Institutes of Health to try to explain the epidemiological paradox of why they’ve found so much of the virus present in ticks but relatively few cases in humans. The objective is to determine whether some strains are less likely to cause disease. “This seems to be the case, but more work is needed,” he said.

    Symptoms and Transmission

    Whereas a deer tick needs to attach itself to a human host for 36–48 hours to spread Lyme disease, it may only need to be attached for 15 minutes or so to transmit Powassan virus.

    “Powassan is different from other diseases spread by ticks because it lives in the salivary glands of the tick,” said Telford. “That means it doesn’t take much time for the virus to exit the tick’s mouth and transmit to a person. Lyme and other tick-borne diseases are caused by viruses that live in ticks’ guts.”

    Powassan virus cannot be transmitted between people via coughing or close contact like the flu. Clinical symptoms begin with a high fever and vomiting and progress to neurologic signs such as headache, weakness, confusion, seizures, memory loss, and encephalitis. Half of those who survive have persisting neurological problems such as memory issues and even paralysis.

    “It’s scary what this virus can do to people,” said Telford. “If they survive, some patients will have severe neurological damage for the rest of their life.”

    If you’re experiencing any of the initial, flu-like symptoms and you may have recently been bitten by a tick, it’s a good idea to see a doctor. A blood test or spinal fluid test can diagnose Powassan virus. There are no medications that can prevent or treat Powassan, and since it’s a virus, antibiotics (which treat bacterial illnesses) won’t help.

    All that said, it is extraordinarily unlikely for a person to encounter a tick carrying Powassan virus. There are 3,000 to 5,000 cases of Lyme disease reported to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health each year, but the greatest number of Powassan cases ever reported to the agency was seven in 2015.

    Telford issued a word of caution for parents and dog owners, in particular. In 2021, he published this case report about two infants in Connecticut who contracted Powassan virus after being bitten by a deer tick that entered their home on the clothing of a parent who had been outside. In one case, the parent was hunting in the woods, and in the other case, the parent had been walking the family’s dog. Thankfully, both patients survived, but the cases demonstrate the importance of preventative measures.

    “One way to avoid bringing home ticks on your clothes is to spray your clothing, shoes, and gear with insecticides that contain 0.5% permethrin,” he said. “It’s not tick-ageddon. People should continue to enjoy the outdoors. Just protect yourself against tick bites.”

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  • ORNL scientists close the cycle on recycling mixed plastics

    ORNL scientists close the cycle on recycling mixed plastics

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    Newswise — Little of the mixed consumer plastics thrown away or placed in recycle bins actually ends up being recycled. Nearly 90% is buried in landfills or incinerated at commercial facilities that generate greenhouse gases and airborne toxins. Neither outcome is ideal for the environment.

    Why aren’t more mixed plastics recycled? It’s usually easier and less expensive to make new plastic products than reclaim, sort and recycle used ones. Conventional recycling of mixed plastics has previously meant manually or mechanically separating the plastics according to their constituent polymers.

    Addressing the issue, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used carefully planned chemical design, neutron scattering and high-performance computing to help develop a new catalytic recycling process. The catalyst selectively and sequentially deconstructs multiple polymers in mixed plastics into pristine monomers — molecules that react with other monomer molecules to form a polymer. The process offers a promising strategy for combating global plastic waste, such as bottles, packaging, foams and carpets.

    The researchers’ analysis, published in Materials Horizons, compared using the new multipurpose catalyst to using individual catalysts for each type of plastic. The new catalyst would generate up to 95% fewer greenhouse gases, require up to 94% less energy input, and result in up to a 96% reduction in fossil fuel consumption.

    “Our approach involves a tailored synthetic organocatalyst — a compound comprised of small organic molecules that facilitate organic chemical transformations. The organocatalyst can convert batches of mixed plastic waste into valuable monomers for reuse in producing commercial-grade plastics and other valuable materials,” said Tomonori Saito, an ORNL synthetic polymer chemist and corresponding author. “This exceptionally efficient chemical process can help close the loop for recycling mixed plastics by replacing first-use monomers with recycled monomers.

    “Today, nearly all plastics are made from fossil fuels using first-use monomers made by energy-intensive processes. Establishing this kind of closed-loop recycling, if used globally, could reduce annual energy consumption by about 3.5 billion barrels of oil,” Saito added.

    A recycling solution for over 30% of all plastics

    The new organocatalyst has proven to efficiently and quickly deconstruct multiple polymers — in around two hours. Such polymers include those used in materials such as safety goggles (polycarbonates), foams (polyurethanes), water bottles (polyethylene terephthalates) and ropes or fishing nets (polyamides), which together comprise more than 30% of global plastic production. Until now, no single catalyst has been shown to be effective on all four of these polymers.

    The process provides many environmental advantages by replacing harsh chemicals for deconstructing polymers, as well as offering good selectivity, thermal stability, nonvolatility and low flammability. Its effectiveness against multiple polymers also makes it useful for deconstructing the increasing amounts of multicomponent plastics, such as composites and multilayer packaging.

    Small-angle neutron scattering at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source was used to help confirm the formation of deconstructed monomers from the waste plastics. The method scatters neutrons at small angles to characterize the structure at different levels of detail, from nanometers to fractions of a micrometer.

    Converting mixed plastics polymers to true recycled plastics

    The organocatalyst deconstructs the plastics at different temperatures, which facilitates sequentially recovering the individual monomers separately, in reusable form. Polycarbonates deconstruct at 266 F (130 C), polyurethanes at 320 F (160 C), polyethylene terephthalates at 356 F (180 C) and polyamides at 410 F (210 C). Other plastics, additives and associated materials such as cotton and plastic bags are left intact because of the differences in their reactivity and can subsequently be recovered.

    “The deconstructed monomers and the organocatalyst are water soluble, so we can transfer them into water, where any impurities such as pigments can be removed by filtration,” said Md Arifuzzaman, the study’s lead author and former postdoctoral synthetic organic chemist at ORNL. He is now an Innovation Crossroads Fellow and CEO and Founder of the Re-Du Company. “The nearly pure monomers are then extracted, leaving the catalyst, which is almost entirely recovered by evaporating the water and can be directly reused for multiple deconstruction cycles.”

    The study included researchers from ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division and Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences within the Physical Sciences Directorate, the Neutron Sciences Directorate and the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

    CNMS and SNS are Department of Energy Office of Science user facilities.
    UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’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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  • Inovação em IA da Mayo Clinic traz expectativa para a detecção precoce de câncer de pâncreas

    Inovação em IA da Mayo Clinic traz expectativa para a detecção precoce de câncer de pâncreas

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    Newswise — ROCHESTER, Minnesota — Existe uma estimativa de que o câncer de pâncreas se tornará a segunda causa principal de morte provocada por câncer até 2030. Com um prognóstico desolador, aproximadamente 70 por cento dos pacientes morrem no primeiro ano de diagnóstico. Infelizmente, 40 por cento dos cânceres de pâncreas não são detectados nos exames de tomografia computadorizada (TC), então, eles avançam para um estágio incurável.

    Esse cenário cria uma barreira crítica, a “última fronteira” para os esforços de detecção precoce, e para maioria dos pacientes, inclusive aqueles com alto risco que passam pela triagem ativa, o exame de imagem detecta o câncer em um estágio onde a cura é improvável. Isso faz com que o exame de imagem se torne a última fronteira na busca da detecção precoce do câncer.

    Em um avanço recente, os pesquisadores do Centro de Câncer da Mayo Clinic usaram o conjunto de dados de exames de imagens mais extenso do mundo para construir um modelo de inteligência artificial (IA) versátil que demonstrou o potencial de detecção autônoma do câncer de pâncreas em tomografias computadorizadas onde a intervenção cirúrgica ainda pode gerar a cura.

    “Aqui é onde o estudo surge como um farol de otimismo”, explica Ajit H. Goenka, médico radiologista na Mayo Clinic, pesquisador principal e autor correspondente. “Ele soluciona o desafio da última fronteira ao detectar o câncer em um estágio no qual ele ainda está além do escopo de especialistas.”

    O grupo desenvolveu um modelo de IA altamente preciso, treinado no maior e mais diverso conjunto de dados de tomografia computadorizada, com mais de 3 mil pacientes, para a detecção de câncer completamente automatizada, inclusive os tumores pequenos e outros de difícil detecção. Publicado na Gastroenterology, a revista da Associação Americana de Gastroenterologia, o estudo não só se baseia no trabalho recente do grupo sobre modelos de detecção precoce baseados em radiômica, como também destaca a posição da Mayo Clinic como um farol de inovação para as soluções de cuidados em saúde com o uso de IA.

    O mais importante é que o modelo poderia detectar o câncer visualmente imperceptível a partir dos pâncreas com aparências normais em exames de imagens pré-diagnósticas de tomografia computadorizada, ou seja, as imagens obtidas em 3 a 36 meses antes do diagnóstico clínico, substancialmente precoces, em média 438 dias, antes do diagnóstico clínico.

    “Essas descobertas sugerem que a IA tem o potencial de detectar cânceres ocultos em pessoas assintomáticas, permitindo o tratamento cirúrgico em um estágio no qual a cura ainda é possível”, explica o Dr. Goenka. 

    Finalmente, o modelo permaneceu confiável e preciso entre os diversos grupos e variações de pacientes no equipamento de varredura e técnicas de exame de imagem. Essa resiliência é fundamental para a utilidade do modelo em um amplo conjunto de cenários médicos no mundo real.

    Ao lidar com um interesse principal no cenário de cuidados em saúde com o uso de IA, a equipe também desconstruiu um processo de tomada de decisão da IA para garantir transparência e reconhecer que a confiança e controle de qualidade são essenciais para a aceitação clínica mais ampla da IA.

    “Devemos esse progresso aos esforços engenhosos da Estrutura para Tecnologia de Software em IA, equipe liderada pelo Dr. Panagiotis Korfiatis e complementada pela nossa equipe de bolsistas de pesquisa e analistas de ciência de dados excepcionalmente brilhantes”, explica o Dr. Goenka. “Eles dedicaram meses de preparação meticulosa para o nosso envio inicial e investiram um esforço significativo para responder astutamente às consultas incisivas do painel de analistas internacionais.”

    “Estamos apenas no começo, mas estamos preparados para lidar com os desafios relativos à detecção precoce de câncer e potencializar as capacidades da IA e do exame de imagem molecular de próxima geração em consonância com os biomarcadores moleculares”, acrescenta o Dr. Goenka.

    A Mayo Clinic já iniciou as etapas para a validação clínica e os modelos estão sendo submetidos a processos regulatórios. Com o apoio do Centro de Câncer da Mayo Clinic, a equipe está pronta para realizar ensaios de triagem prospectivos financiados por benfeitores. As descobertas a partir desses ensaios refinarão e reforçarão a efetividade prática de suas abordagens inovadoras.

    Seus esforços interdisciplinares envolvem coautores especialistas em radiologia (Dra. Garima Suman, Dr. Nandakumar Patnam Gopal Chetty, bacharel em medicina e cirurgia, Dra. Kamaxi H. Trivedi, bacharel em medicina e cirurgia, Dra. Aashna M. Karbhari, bacharel em medicina e cirurgia, Dr. Sovanlal Mukherjee, Dr. Cole J. Cook, mestre em ciências, Dr. Jason R. Klug, Dr. Naveen Rajamohan, Dra. Hala A. Khasawneh, Dr. Joel G. Fletcher, Dra. Candice W. Bolan e Kumar Sandrasegaran, bacharel em medicina e cirurgia), cirurgia (Dr. Mark J. Truty, mestre em ciências) e gastroenterologia (Dr. Shounak Majumder e Dr. Suresh T. Chari).

    A pesquisa relatada neste comunicado de imprensa recebeu apoio do Instituto Nacional do Câncer dos Institutos Nacionais de Saúde com os números de subvenção R01CA272628 e R01CA256969, assim como da Fundação de Caridade Centene e Programa de Pesquisa para o Câncer de Pâncreas Campeões do Otimismo da Fundação Funk Zitiello. O conteúdo é de responsabilidade exclusiva dos autores e não representa necessariamente as opiniões oficiais dos Institutos Nacionais de Saúde.

    ###

    Sobre a Mayo Clinic
    A Mayo Clinic é uma organização sem fins lucrativos comprometida com a inovação na prática clínica, educação e pesquisa, fornecendo compaixão, conhecimento e respostas para todos que precisam de cura. Visite a Rede de Notícias da Mayo Clinic para obter outras notícias da Mayo Clinic.

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  • ORNL is poised to have a major role in the future of nuclear physics

    ORNL is poised to have a major role in the future of nuclear physics

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    Newswise — The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a bastion of nuclear physics research for the past 80 years, is poised to strengthen its programs and service to the United States over the next decade if national recommendations of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, or NSAC, are enacted.

    “The 2023 Long Range Plan lays out a compelling vision for nuclear science in the United States under multiple budget scenarios,” said Gail Dodge, physicist at Old Dominion University and chair of the NSAC. “Implementation of the Long Range Plan’s recommendations will maintain the nation’s leadership and workforce in nuclear science.”

    On Wednesday the NSAC, which advises DOE and the National Science Foundation on nuclear physics, approved a 10-year roadmap, or Long Range Plan. It includes four key priorities that would advance the nation’s nuclear science research program and set the direction of research for another generation of scientists.

    The recommendations would give ORNL a continuing critical role in helping maintain the nation’s leadership in nuclear physics for at least the next decade — solving mysteries of how the smallest particles in the universe behave and using that understanding to advance medicine, quantum science, energy, national security and other areas that improve the lives of people everywhere.

    Research in nuclear physics — the science of atomic nuclei and their constituents — helps us understand how virtually all ordinary matter in the universe originated and evolved. The cutting-edge research on particles is also used in isotope production, medical diagnosis, national security, energy, nuclear treaty verification, the environment and nuclear applications.

    The highest priority, according to the plan, is increasing the budget for nuclear physics in theoretical, experimental and computational research “to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities for scientific discovery made possible by the substantial and sustained investment of the United States.” This would expand “discovery potential, technological innovation, and workforce development to the benefit of society.” This recommendation, if adopted, would ensure user facilities throughout the country would continue to operate at the highest level and reap the most scientific benefit.

    “Each one of the four recommendations has a large impact for ORNL,” said David Radford, ORNL physicist and head of the lab’s Fundamental Nuclear and Particle Physics Section. For example, another recommendation is for funding of multiple large experiments to search for neutrinoless double beta decay; one of these experiments has leadership and significant participation from ORNL scientists. The advisory committee recommends that construction of ton-scale detectors addressing fundamental physics should be a top budgetary priority.

    That research, which aims to solve the problem of how matter came to dominate over antimatter, will provide insight into the origin and mass of the neutrino, and in so doing could rewrite the Standard Model of particle physics. The research includes experiments known as CUPID, LEGEND and nEXO proposed by international collaborations. ORNL scientists, including Radford, are leading DOE’s contribution to building LEGEND.

    “This could help explain the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe,” Radford said. “This plan reiterates that the experiment should go forward. That’s very important for this extremely compelling and exciting physics.”

    Radford and Cynthia Jenks, ORNL’s associate laboratory director for the Physical Sciences Directorate, said the ORNL impacts at a rollout of the plan on Friday after the plan was released to the public on Wednesday.

    Another committee recommendation calls for the “expeditious completion” of the Electron-Ion Collider, a massive particle accelerator that would be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Already, ORNL physicists are hard at work designing and building a detector for the system, which, like a precision microscope, will illuminate three-dimensional images of nuclear matter, uncovering how particles like quarks and gluons interact and behave. Experiments on the machine could help answer longstanding questions about the fundamental particles of matter.

    An additional recommendation is to advance discovery science for society by investing in scientific projects that offer new strategic opportunities. Such opportunities advance computing, nuclear data for medicine, clean energy, national security, nonproliferation, the environment and space — all areas that are in ORNL’s wheelhouse of research and that would bolster ORNL’s research programs, Radford said.

    “ORNL certainly does work in these areas, using emerging technologies to meet national needs,” Radford said, adding that programs in nuclear data, advanced computing, sensing, quantum information and nuclear data all make use of not only physicists but engineers, data scientists and other experts. An example is ORNL’s Advanced Radiation Detection, Imaging, Data Science and Applications group, which is invested in these research areas. Also, high-performance computing research impacts physics experiments around the world, including at CERN in Switzerland and elsewhere.

    DOE facilities, such as ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source, or SNS, an Office of Science user facility, are critical to fundamental nuclear physics research by ORNL researchers and other laboratory and university scientists around the world. An important experiment at SNS is the neutron electric dipole moment experiment, which aims to make the world’s best measurement of this property, an accomplishment that would be “paradigm shifting,” the committee says. Similarly, ORNL scientists use DOE’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, also a DOE Office of Science user facility, at Michigan State University, which is producing exciting results on decays of never-before-produced isotopes. ORNL helped lead construction of a day-one detector for that facility that has already produced high-impact results.

    Such scientific advances rely on a workforce trained in science, and the plan calls for resources to help build the next generation of STEM researchers. This includes ensuring graduate students are fairly compensated and “expanding policies and resources to ensure an environment that is safe and respectful to everyone,” said Shelly Lesher, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. One of the architects of the workforce development section of the plan, Lesher added that the plan calls for exposure of the field to broader populations to increase representation. Like all 17 of America’s DOE national laboratories, ORNL stands to benefit from policies that make it possible for people from all walks of life to join the field, Radford said.

    Said Radford, “The training of the future workforce at this lab will help the security and economic prosperity of the country. This is the voice of the community saying what its priorities are and that the nation would benefit tremendously by buying into that and funding nuclear physics at the appropriate level.”

    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.. — Lawrence Bernard

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  • Jim Sebek wins 2023 Lytle Award for decades of synchrotron problem solving and dedication

    Jim Sebek wins 2023 Lytle Award for decades of synchrotron problem solving and dedication

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    Newswise — Jim Sebek, an electrical engineer and physicist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will receive this year’s Farrel W. Lytle Award for countless contributions towards building, maintaining and operating the synchrotron for nearly four decades.

    The annual award recognizes staff members and SSRL users, and no one has done more to keep SSRL and its accelerator running over the years, SSRL senior scientist James Safranek said.

    “An attempt to describe the many times that Jim has led the effort to get SSRL accelerators back online would not take a book. It would require volumes,” Safranek said. “He takes an interest in solving any problem, whether it is with power supplies, beam diagnostics, computer controls or the HVAC system. If there is a problem, Jim is addressing it.”

    Over his 39 year career, Sebek has worked on almost all of the electrical systems at the Stanford Positron Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR), the particle accelerator at the heart of the synchrotron facility. His job description may be summarized as “fix whatever needs fixing,” Safranek said.

    Sebek credits his skills and knowledge to his mentors, who have been willing to spend time to teach their expertise, even during the busiest times at SSRL. Sebek actually started working at SLAC before he finished his undergraduate degree. He learned technical subjects related to the operation of an accelerator on his own, completing morning and evening classes at San Jose State University. He’d take classes that could help him solve immediate problems at SSRL and SPEAR – if a beam control system was acting oddly, for example, he’d take a course about feedback, he said.

    “I enjoy reading technical books and applying new ideas to SPEAR. In the past, I took math and science classes before or after work,” Sebek said. “This is what I like to do with my free time.”

    He went on to complete a PhD in accelerator physics at Stanford, after mentors at SSRL encouraged him to pursue his degree and publish papers based on his experience.

    Building a particle injector from scratch

    Sebek did not ease his way into working at SSRL: His initial job was to help build the dedicated electron injector for SPEAR that decoupled it from the SLAC linac. Until the 1980s, SPEAR was connected to SLAC’s linear accelerator and was used to study high-energy physics. In 1988, SPEAR transitioned into a stand-alone synchrotron radiation source that generates X-rays for SSRL. Sebek was hired as an electronics instrumentation engineer on the new injector project, which took about two years to finish. 

    The injector project offered opportunities to learn about all aspects of an accelerator.  During the project, Sebek learned another new subject: how to modify and repair large magnet power supply systems to help the synchrotron run reliably.

    “My career has been a progression along these lines: I find something that needs work, so I start working on it,” he said. “I migrate from one system to another and learn about them as I go.”

    He’s lost count of the total number of titles and roles he’s held. This broad experience is one of his favorite parts of his career.

    “In some positions at SLAC, you become highly specialized in one particular thing, but at SPEAR, things are different,” he said. “Our primary goal is to make sure the accelerator runs reliably, which means we have to know a lot about all of its parts. This helps us fix things outside of our immediate assignments.”

    His journey to SLAC started in 1979, when he left his hometown of Chicago for the San Francisco Bay Area. He did not know then that he would spend the better part of his life working as an engineer and physicist at SSRL. He liked to tinker with mechanical things and study math growing up, but he did not have a clear sense of what path he would travel on when he arrived in California.

    “SSRL and SLAC as a whole was a mystery to me before I started working here,” he said. “I’d heard about the lab and read a little about it, but until I started working here, I really did not know what went on inside.”

    The lab ended up being a “good working environment with good people who are a pleasure to work with,” he said. “I enjoyed it and stayed on.”

    His favorite project was researching, understanding, and ultimately curing beam instabilities that had caused operational issues in SPEAR2, the next generation of SPEAR.  He also enjoyed contributing to the design, construction, commissioning, and operation of SPEAR3.

    He remains fully engaged in keeping SSRL running. “But time goes on and nobody stays at SSRL forever,” Safranek said. “SSRL does have a succession issue – Jim is simply irreplaceable.”

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  • Scientists uncovered mystery of important material for semiconductors at the surface

    Scientists uncovered mystery of important material for semiconductors at the surface

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    Newswise — A team of scientists with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has investigated the behavior of hafnium oxide, or hafnia, because of its potential for use in novel semiconductor applications.

    Materials such as hafnia exhibit ferroelectricity, which means that they are capable of extended data storage even when power is disconnected and that they might be used in the development of new, so-called nonvolatile memory technologies. Innovative nonvolatile memory applications will pave the way for the creation of bigger and faster computer systems by alleviating the heat generated from the continual transfer of data to short-term memory.

    The scientists explored whether the atmosphere plays a role in hafnia’s ability to change its internal electric charge arrangement when an external electric field is applied. The goal was to explain the range of unusual phenomena that have been obtained in hafnia research. The team’s findings were recently published in Nature Materials.

    “We have conclusively proven that the ferroelectric behavior in these systems is coupled to the surface and is tunable by changing the surrounding atmosphere. Previously, the workings of these systems were speculation, a hypothesis based on a large number of observations both by our group and by multiple groups worldwide,” said ORNL’s Kyle Kelley, a researcher with the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences. CNMS is a DOE Office of Science user facility.

    Kelley performed the experiments and envisioned the project in collaboration with Sergei Kalinin of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

    Materials commonly used for memory applications have a surface, or dead, layer that interferes with the material’s ability to store information. As materials are scaled down to only several nanometers thick, the effect of the dead layer becomes extreme enough to completely stop the functional properties. By changing the atmosphere, the scientists were able to tune the surface layer’s behavior, which, in hafnia, transitioned the material from the antiferroelectric to the ferroelectric state. 

    “Ultimately, these findings provide a pathway for predictive modeling and device engineering of hafnia, which is urgently needed, given the importance of this material in the semiconductor industry,” Kelley said.

    Predictive modeling enables scientists to use previous research to estimate the properties and behavior of an unknown system. The study that Kelley and Kalinin led focused on hafnia alloyed, or blended, with zirconia, a ceramic material. But future research could apply the findings to anticipate how hafnia may behave when alloyed with other elements.

    The research relied on atomic force microscopy both inside a glovebox and in ambient conditions, as well as ultrahigh-vacuum atomic force microscopy, methods available at the CNMS.

    “Leveraging the unique CNMS capabilities enabled us to do this type of work,” Kelley said. “We basically changed the environment all the way from ambient atmosphere to ultrahigh vacuum. In other words, we removed all gases in the atmosphere to negligible levels and measured these responses, which is extremely hard to do.”

    Team members from the Materials Characterization Facility at Carnegie Mellon University played a key role in the research by providing electron microscopy characterization, and collaborators from the University of Virginia led the materials development and optimization.

    ORNL’s Yongtao Liu, a researcher with CNMS, performed ambient piezoresponse force microscopy measurements.

    The model theory that underpinned this research project was the result of a long research partnership between Kalinin and Anna Morozovska at the Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

    “I have worked with my colleagues in Kiev on physics and chemistry of ferroelectrics for almost 20 years now,” Kalinin said. “They did a lot for this paper while almost on the front line of the war in that country. These people keep doing science in conditions that most of us cannot imagine.”

    The team hopes that what they have discovered will stimulate new research specific to exploring the role of controlled surface and interface electrochemistries — the relationship between electricity and chemical reactions — in a computing device’s performance.

    “Future studies can extend this knowledge to other systems to help us understand how the interface affects the device properties, which, hopefully, will be in a good way,” Kelley said. “Typically, the interface kills your ferroelectric properties when scaled to these thicknesses. In this case, it showed us a transition from one material state to another.”  

    Kalinin added: “Traditionally, we explored surfaces at the atomic level to understand phenomena such as chemical reactivity and catalysis, or the modification of the rate of a chemical reaction. Simultaneously, in traditional semiconductor technology, our goal was only to keep surfaces clean from contaminants. Our studies show that, in fact, these two areas — the surface and the electrochemistry — are connected. We can use surfaces of these materials to tune their bulk functional properties.”

    The title of the paper is “Ferroelectricity in hafnia controlled via surface electrochemical state.”

    This research was supported as part of the Center for 3D Ferroelectric Microelectronics, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by DOE’s Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences program, and was partially performed as a user proposal at the CNMS.

    UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’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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  • Mapping COVID-19 spike protein could improve vaccine design

    Mapping COVID-19 spike protein could improve vaccine design

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    Newswise — Although the COVID-19 pandemic was the first time most of humanity learned of the now infamous disease, the family of coronaviruses was first identified in the mid-1960s. In a new study, molecular biologist Steven Van Doren, a scientist in the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, has uncovered unexpected actions of a key player in how the coronavirus infects its target — a discovery that could guide further vaccine development.

    Funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Van Doren and his team studied the fusion peptide, an important feature of the spike protein that serves to bind the virus with the human cell, an essential step in the course of infection. In this study, they found that the fusion peptide plays a more invasive role in fusing the virus to the cell than previously thought, which is significant in understanding how infection occurs.

    “The fusion peptide is the most preserved part of the whole viral spike,” said Van Doren, a professor of biochemistry. “Throughout the evolution of this virus, the fusion peptide endured despite all the mutations and variants that we kept on hearing about in the news. The fusion peptide never changed much and stayed a constant feature on the virus spike because it’s too critically important for infection for it to be modified.”

     

    The fusion peptide on the SARS-CoV-2 spike (pictured here) plays a key role in virus/cell attachment.

    This research is interesting to compare to a recent study that surveyed asymptomatic patients who were infected by the coronavirus because they had developed a defense mechanism known as broadly neutralizing antibodies. Van Doren’s research on the functionality of the fusion peptide’s ability to puncture a cell membrane could further inform why the fusion peptide may be an important target for vaccine development capable of fighting all types of coronavirus infections.

    Another potential application of this research could be to create a novel strategy to penetrate cells.

    “There may be many strategies for crossing membranes, but it’s conceivable that the fusion peptide work could help further development of more ways to cross cellular membranes, which could be useful to deliver therapeutics through cell membranes,” Van Doren said.

    Further, this research broadens understanding of protein insertion in membranes, which has broader relevance to the scientific community.

    “I love what protein molecules look like and what they can do,” Van Doren said. “I got fascinated by the science when I was still a teenager, and it’s intriguing to me the things they can do, so studying how proteins work has been something that has stuck with me for decades now — I’d say going on almost 40 years.”

    The study “SARS-CoV-2 Fusion Peptide Sculpting of a Membrane with Insertion of Charged and Polar Groups” was published in Structure. Co-investigators include Benjamin S. Scott and Rama K. Koppisetti.

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    University of Missouri, Columbia

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  • COVID-19 narratives through public health humanities

    COVID-19 narratives through public health humanities

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    Newswise — COLUMBIA, Mo. — A new health humanities essay from the University of Missouri highlights how the narrative of many news stories detailing the challenges of health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic often emphasized individual experiences. However, many of these news stories often left out broader public health, socioeconomic and environmental contexts that are critical to how consumers of news shape their thoughts about the pandemic and how to respond.

    By introducing a storytelling framework that emphasizes the core tenets of public health, the authors hope to help journalists, policymakers and public health humanities experts reframe not just how they view and tell stories about the COVID-19 pandemic, but also how scientific information gets disseminated, absorbed or rejected, and what emotions that data conjures up in consumers of news.

    Lise Saffran, an associate teaching professor in the MU College of Health Sciences and lead researcher on the essay, analyzed how health care workers were characterized during the COVID-19 pandemic in the narrative storytelling of American newspapers and television news stories. She then categorized the stories into three common themes related to clinicians as vulnerable front-line workers, clinician frustration with vaccine and masking resistance, and the clinician as a hero.

    Clinicians as vulnerable front-line workers

    While countless news stories highlighted the risk to individual health care workers assisting infected patients in the hospital, stories about the nearly 7 million essential low-wage workers, such as housekeepers and personal care aides, who are disproportionately women and people of color, were much rarer, even though they were being exposed to COVID-19 at a higher rate than the general public.  

    “It’s not that the stories being told are inaccurate, they are just often incomplete or fail to incorporate the broader contexts that give a more holistic view of the situation,” Saffran said. “For example, there were plenty of stories detailing bosses requesting their employees to return to in-person work instead of remote work, but a more wholistic story could be also mentioning at-risk populations, such as grocery store workers, who had no option to work remotely in the first place. Broadening the story not only can help increase feelings of empathy and compassion, but it could also spark discussions for how policymakers can potentially address the structural and systematic inequities at play.”

    Clinician frustration with vaccine and masking resistance

    Some news stories detailed clinicians who originally stated they had no sympathy toward people who chose not to get vaccinated and then suddenly gained compassion toward an unvaccinated patient once they realized the patient had been potentially misled or misinformed.

    “Instead of only telling the story about these specific individuals, how do we broaden the conversation to think about unvaccinated individuals who have not gotten sick yet. How do we think about vaccine hesitancy in general rather than only thinking about it when someone gets sick,” Saffran said. “Broadening the story helps us reframe the way we think about ideas of blame, responsibility, empathy and compassion. This is where a public health framework comes into play, by thinking about the upstream causes and broader contexts that impact overall populations, rather than just looking at the choices of an individual.”

    Clinicians as heroes

    News stories often highlighted the heroics of clinicians in hospitals without the proper personal protective equipment (PPE) or adequate staffing levels who put their own health at risk to help patients.

    “While these workers certainly are heroes, how do we frame the narrative around possible solutions to the structural and systematic failures, whether it be a lack of PPE or staffing shortages, that are forcing the clinicians to be heroes in the first place,” Saffran said. “We also tend to tell stories through the American lens, but in less developed, less industrialized countries, these gaps in health care, gaps in adequate PPE or gaps in staff are often larger. So how we frame these stories informs how we react. Do we ask clinicians to be heroes, or do we try to change the system to fill the gaps?”

    Implications going forward

    Saffran’s ultimate goal is to help storytellers broaden their narrative through a more holistic public health humanities framework, which has implications for both increasing feelings of empathy and compassion, as well as influencing policy decisions to address societal inequities and help improve the health outcomes of underserved populations.

    “Whether we realize it or not, when we consume news stories, this is how we develop our ideas of what policy should look like, we ask questions like ‘why is this happening?’ and ‘what should we do about it?’,” said Saffran, who teaches public health storytelling and earned a master’s degree in fine arts and creative writing from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. “Humans don’t approach science and data strictly through an analytical lens, we engage with material through our values, identity and fears, which incorporate the humanities as well.”

    “‘You just emotionally break’: understanding COVID-19 narratives through public health humanities,” was recently published in Medical Humanities. Ashti Doobay-Persaud was a coauthor on the study.

     

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    University of Missouri, Columbia

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  • Calculations Predict Surprising Quark Diffusion in Hot Nuclear Matter

    Calculations Predict Surprising Quark Diffusion in Hot Nuclear Matter

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    The Science

    Scientists can use powerful colliders to smash atomic nuclei together to create a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). This “soup” of quarks and gluons, some of the fundamental building blocks of matter, filled the early universe. Tracking how high energy jets of quarks travel through the QGP can reveal information about the QGP’s properties. Scientists’ simplest assumption is that local interactions with the quarks and gluons will deflect these energetic particles. But recent theoretical calculations that also include non-local quantum interactions—those interactions beyond a particle’s immediate surroundings—predict a super-diffusive process. This means that the complex  interactions in QGP deflect quarks faster and at wider angles than can be explained by local interactions alone.

    The Impact

    Testing these predictions at particle colliders will provide new insight into the interactions between quarks and gluons. These interactions are governed by the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces that govern the universe. The new theoretical explanation points to the importance of the non-local nature of these quantum interactions. The findings suggest that the description of the QGP as a collection of point-like particles may break down even at short distances. The discovery of the importance of longer-range quantum interactions might also offer a new perspective for understanding why the QGP flows like a nearly perfect fluid–a fluid with very low viscosity.

    Summary

    Scientists use particle colliders to recreate a form of early universe matter known as a QGP. Tracking how energetic jets of particles move through the QGP can reveal information about its properties. Early calculations based on the theory of strong interactions suggested that jets would undergo a diffusive process caused by random deflections as the energetic particles interacted with the quarks and gluons that make up the plasma—similar to the way pollen particles on the surface of a pond get “kicked” around by water molecules.

    Counter to these early calculations, nuclear theorists at Brookhaven National Laboratory recently discovered that including non-local quantum effects—which arise from long-lived gluon fluctuations—predicts significant deviations from the expected diffusion pattern in QGP. Including these non-local effects predicts that energetic jets will undergo a super-diffusive process, broadening the angle of the jet faster than local interactions alone can explain. The predictions can be tested by tracking energetic jets in the QGP created in high-energy heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (a Department of Energy user facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory) and the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.

     

    Funding

    This research was funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics and by the National Science Foundation.


    Journal Link: Journal of High Energy Physics, Sep-2022
    Journal Link: Physical Review D, Sep-2022

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Trump’s mug shot expression was a calculated move for his presidential campaign strategy, says experts

    Trump’s mug shot expression was a calculated move for his presidential campaign strategy, says experts

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    For the first time in United States history, a former president has their mug shot taken and released to the public in connection to criminal charges. Donald Trump surrendered at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia last night and was booked on felony charges alleging he participated in a criminal conspiracy to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

    Virginia Tech political science and public relations experts alike, believe there was a calculated effort by the former president and his team in regards to how he should look in the mug shot.

    “Trump’s mug shot expression tries to convey strength and defiance, likely a strategy used to rile up his base,” says Chad Hankinson, a political science expert at Virginia Tech. “The likely interpretation for them is that he is fearless, powerful, confident, and undeterred by efforts to undermine him.” 

    Trump’s campaign released the photo while requesting donations. Hankinson believes he’s trying to capitalize on this to raise more campaign funds. “Overall, he views this as a win that will net him more campaign contributions and supporters, and further the narrative that he is the target of politically motivated investigations that are meant to derail his chances of regaining the presidency.”

    “Former President Trump has long been said to claim that any publicity is “good” publicity,” says Virginia Tech political expert Karen Hult. “This is another historic “first” for U.S. presidents and arguably another step along the path of a collapsing constitutional republic.”

    Cayce Myers, a public relations professor in the School of Communication says mug shots have become a defining visual for news coverage of arrests. 

    “Often thought of as a degrading experience, mug shots frequently are thought to be unflattering and frequently present the subject as a guilty person who got caught,” says Myers. “In high profile cases there is a strategy for taking a mug shot where the person arrested attempts to send a message to the public with their picture.”

    “Trump’s expression in his Fulton County Jail mugshot expresses a certain disgust and contempt, which helps promote his narrative that this is an unjust, politically motivated arrest,” says Myers. “Trump’s mug shot may become a defining visual for the 2024 presidential campaign, perhaps not surprisingly on both sides.”

    While pundits predicted that such images would be used to undermine Trump’s credibility in 2024, Myers agrees with Hankinson that it is Trump who is likely to use the visual to promote his own campaign. “His indictments have become a rallying cry and platform for his 2024 presidential campaign, and polling in the Republican primary shows that his sizable lead has not diminished despite these legal problems.”

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    Virginia Tech

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  • In Preparation for DUNE, Scientists Examine Modern Nuclear Theory for Neutrino Oscillation Physics

    In Preparation for DUNE, Scientists Examine Modern Nuclear Theory for Neutrino Oscillation Physics

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    The Science

    Newswise — The U.S. particle physics community is preparing for a major research program with the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). DUNE will study neutrino oscillations. These quantum mechanical oscillations are only possible because neutrinos have mass, albeit it very small masses. Research at DUNE will address key questions about neutrinos, such as whether they and their antineutrino counterparts behave differently. Answering these questions could help explain why the universe is composed of matter and not antimatter. These studies require a detailed understanding of how neutrinos interact with atomic nuclei and the nucleons (protons and neutrons) that make up nuclei. By providing new data, DUNE will help scientists advance beyond the current understanding of neutrino-nucleon interactions, which relies upon data from experiments in the 1970s and ‘80s.

    The Impact

    Scientists use the nuclear theory method called Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD) to predict neutrino-nucleon interactions. The LQCD results predict a stronger neutrino-nucleon interaction than predictions determined from older, less precise, experimental data. This research demonstrated important implications of how scientists interpret neutrino oscillation signals from LQCD. It also identified the next results to tackle with LQCD. These findings, combined with modern many-body nuclear theory methods, will reduce the potential biases due to incorrect modeling. The findings will also improve scientists’ predictions of these interactions for DUNE and other neutrino experiments.

    Summary

    A recent project by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory demonstrated the importance of incorporating state-of-the-art theoretical predictions of the “nucleon axial form factor” into simulations of neutrino-nucleus reactions (a form factor is a measure of the “squishiness” of a particle — the smaller the value, the squishier). Scientists need these form factors to determine oscillation properties of the elusive neutrinos that will be explored by DUNE and other leading neutrino oscillation experiments. The most advanced LQCD predictions conflict with the older phenomenological models of the axial form-factor, leading to a 30% larger neutrino-nucleon cross-section. This has important implications for the interpretation of the oscillation experiments. These LQCD calculations are made possible by the Department of Energy’s Leadership Class Computing Facilities, which house the fastest supercomputers in the world.

    In the exascale computing era, scientists will further refine the LQCD results and tackle additional, more complicated processes. The results will be combined with modern many-body nuclear theory methods to provide more robust predictions of the neutrino-nucleus reactions. These predictions are essential ingredients for interpreting the next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments, such as DUNE, and inferring properties of neutrinos.

     

    Funding

    This work is supported in part by the Department of Energy Office of Science, High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics programs.


    Journal Link: Annual Reviews in Nuclear and Particle Science, Sep-2022

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Modeling Study Indicates Potential for US to Reduce Building Emissions by 91%, Resulting in $100 Billion Annual Savings in Energy Costs

    Modeling Study Indicates Potential for US to Reduce Building Emissions by 91%, Resulting in $100 Billion Annual Savings in Energy Costs

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    Newswise — The US has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. To accomplish this goal, large cuts in emissions are necessary, especially in high-emission sectors like the building industry. In an article publishing on August 18 in the journal One Earth, a team of researchers use a computational model to analyze several scenarios of future building energy use in the US. They find that by tackling emissions on multiple fronts and placing focus on “demand-side measures” that affect how power is drawn from the grid, such as technologies like electric heat pumps and smart thermostats, the US can achieve its climate goals, decrease building emissions by 91% from their 2005 peak, and save over $100 billion each year on energy costs.

    “Meeting the US 2050 net-zero emissions target requires a rapid and cost-effective low-carbon transition across the entire energy system,” writes the team of energy technology experts based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and energy consultants. “Commercial and residential buildings are a primary source of emissions and are key to this transition.”

    In the United States, the authors cite, buildings—including both public buildings, like offices, and private buildings, like homes—contribute 35% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. In 2005, the US contributed 2,327 megatons of carbon dioxide in the buildings sector, setting a record for all-time high emissions. Since then, emissions have declined by 25%, and are projected to keep declining by up to another 41% by 2050. But we will need to keep cutting emissions to reach our climate goals, assert the authors.

    For their analysis, the authorship team defines three main ways to cut building-related emissions. They argue that we should focus on making buildings use energy more efficiently, making the power grid more reliable by increasing the flexibility of how energy is managed by the grid, and utilizing low-carbon energy sources. “There are no ‘silver bullet’ solutions for building decarbonization,” write the authors. “Achieving deeper levels of emissions reductions will require a comprehensive mix of solutions addressing both the generation and end uses of energy—a true ‘all-of-the-above’ menu of solutions to decarbonize the built environment.”

    The team modeled “low,” “moderate,” and “aggressive” scenarios of this “all-of-the-above menu” to determine the degree to which we can cut emissions. They found that it’s possible to reduce building emissions by 91% compared to 2005 levels by 2050, and that demand-side measures that increase the flexibility of the power grid, like heat pumps and smart thermostats, could contribute up to 45% of these emissions cuts.

    “Flexibility will play an increasingly important role as variable renewable energy accounts for a larger share of power generation and distribution networks are challenged by growing demand for clean electricity,” write the researchers.

    However, achieving this level of emissions cuts would require the “aggressive” level of intervention from the researchers’ model, and the authors emphasize that an “unprecedented scale and speed of building technology development and deployment” would be necessary, as well as a largescale commitment to changing how we consume energy.

    “Realizing this level of change in the building sector will require a rapid and sustained increase in investment alongside policy and regulatory support,” write the authors. “We hope that this study can inform concrete policy approaches that accelerate energy system decarbonization across both demand- and supply-side technologies to fulfill ambitious targets for climate change mitigation in the US.”

     

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    Cell Press

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