Identifying local solutions in the barotse floodplain for sustainable agricultural development

To develop locally relevant strategies that improve food security, nutrition, and conservation, researchers employed a gendered ecosystem services approach in Zambia.

INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR TROPICAL AGRICULTURE (CIAT)

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY SUGGESTS SEVERAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HOW MEN AND WOMEN ACCESS THEIR ECOSYSTEMS: FOR EXAMPLE, WOMEN GO TO SHALLOWER RIVER AREAS FOR SMALLER FISH. view more 

CREDIT: BIOVERSITY INTERNATIONAL/E.HERMANOWICZ

The Barotse Floodplain in Zambia is one of Africa's largest wetlands, representing varied ecotypes and high biodiversity conservation value. However, the Lozi People who live in the region face an intense "hungry season" from November to January when accessibility to food is very limited. This means that year-round nutrition and food security are consistently top priorities.

Conventional intensive agriculture is not well-suited for the Barotse landscape. Over-expansion of agriculture would have cascading negative effects on local people, wildlife, downstream ecosystems, and economic sectors such as hydropower.

To help improve livelihoods through sustainable agricultural development and environmental protection, researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT worked with Lozi communities to identify locally relevant strategies. They published some of their findings in a recent study in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.

Why identify ecosystem services?

Ecosystem services encompass a plethora of benefits to humans that come from natural and managed lands. However, researcher and co-author Natalia Estrada-Carmona says, only a small fraction of these tend to be considered, valued, and measured (e.g., CO2 or crop yields) in economic and agriculture development agendas.

The research team used a gender-sensitive ecosystem services approach to work with three local communities. Focus group participants (separated into men and women) used 1,992 coded cards in English and the local language Silozi to assess 17 ecosystem services, from fishing to erosion control.

Questions such as "Where do you go to get water for consumption?" and "What eco-types are important for controlling floods?" identified services according to provisioning, regulating, and cultural uses and benefits.

"The activities carried out with the local communities helped to visualize all the benefits from the different eco-types present in the floodplain. It was very interesting to see that many of the most important ecosystem services for both women and men come from native vegetation eco-types," explains Estrada-Carmona. "Additionally, this exercise facilitated discussing and visualizing the trade-offs associated with converting natural vegetation to cultivated eco-types. Those trade-offs are often invisible in agriculture development agendas and programs. This research confirms that assuming that agricultural expansion can occur everywhere without consequences is a pretty biased perception."

Much of the fertile land in the floodplain is being converted for agricultural use.

The study suggests several differences between how men and women access their ecosystems: for example, women go to shallower river areas for smaller fish and cultivate diverse crops, including neglected and underutilized species (NUS), that complement household nutrition security.

The dynamic nature of the floodplain also translates into seasonal changes in human migration, and labor shortages. Estrada-Carmona elaborates: "Communities in the uplands are settling more as access to schools, roads, and electricity increases. Women tend to stay caring for kids, elders, and land during the dry season while men migrate to the plains in the hunt for fish and cash. Therefore, agricultural practices or activities that ignore women's reality in the uplands during the dry season would either add a burden or exclude them from implementing those practices or activities."

Agroecological intensification - multifunctional agricultural land

Although the study revealed that forests in the uplands and grasslands in the plains provide the bulk of ecosystem services, these fertile lands are often converted to agricultural land. The authors point out that rather than monocultures focused on cash crops, such as hybrid maize and rice, local food security and livelihoods would benefit most from agroecological intensification. Approaches such as multiple cropping, conservation agriculture, and agroforestry could restore and maintain the identified ecosystem services in cultivated lands while reducing the pressure on natural lands.

Local people and the Zambian government already recognize the value of crop diversity in mitigating environmental, food security, and market risks, with researchers finding that at least 17 NUS are currently being planted. However, maize is the most common crop, and there is a lack of support for experimentation and innovation that can identify the cultivation system best suited to ensure year-round, long-term production and other benefits.

"Agricultural land is seen as a source of yields or calories only," says Estrada-Carmona. "In reality, it is the most malleable land that can contribute to maintaining soil fertility, erosion or flood control, water quality, wildlife connectivity/habitat, etc. Hence, identifying the cropping systems and crop diversification strategies at the farm and landscape level that generate those multiple benefits is vital for sustainable and holistic development."

The study concludes: "The intertwined drivers of change and the complex trade-offs between ecosystem services demand looking beyond 'agriculture' and 'conservation' as two separate challenges... All stakeholders' agendas could be better articulated by integrating the traditional place-based knowledge for jointly planning a sustainable future of the Barotse Floodplain for livelihoods, well-being, and conservation."

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SHHH DON'T TELL ELON MUSK

Research suggests viability of brain computer to improve function in paralyzed patient

SOCIETY OF NEUROINTERVENTIONAL SURGERY

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Researchers demonstrated the success of a fully implantable wireless medical device called a stentrode brain-computer interface designed to improve functional independence in patients with severe paralysis. The abstract was presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery's (SNIS) 17th Annual Meeting.

The study, Motor Neuroprosthesis Implanted using Cerebral Venography Improves Activities of Daily Living in Severe Paralysis, is the first-in-human examination of the stentrode, an implantable brain- computer interface, conducted at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. The first patient to receive the device was a 75-year-old man with severe paralysis due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who was totally dependent on his wife for care.

"The implantation procedure combined functional MRI coregistration with angiography to precisely place the stentrode over the motor cortex," said Professor Peter Mitchell, principal investigator and leader of the operative team.

Following implantation of the device, the patient increased independence and could perform essential activities, such as text messaging, online shopping and managing his finances.

"The results in this first human trial show promise that this device may restore voluntary motor function of personal computers and devices for patients with severe paralysis due to brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerve or muscle dysfunction," said Dr. Thomas Oxley, lead author of the study and Associate Professor in the Vascular Bionics Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. "We need to conduct additional research to confirm our preliminary results and prove the validity of this ground-breaking technology."

The stentrode brain-computer interface translates brain activity associated with attempted movements and digitally converts thoughts into command functions of external devices. The data shows successful control of devices that improve instrumental activities of daily living, which can include texting, emailing, online shopping and banking.

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To receive a copy of this abstract or to speak with the authors, please contact Maria Enie at menie@vancomm.com or 202-248-5454.

About the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery

The Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) is a scientific and educational association dedicated to advancing the specialty of neurointerventional surgery through research, standard-setting, and education and advocacy to provide the highest quality of patient care in diagnosing and treating diseases of the brain, spine, head, and neck. Visit http://www.snisonline.org and follow us on Twitter (@SNISinfo) and Facebook (@SNISOnline).

"Ample evidence" that Cape Hatteras beach closures benefit birds

Independent report assesses appropriateness of current NPS beach management plan

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS OFFICE

 

The barrier islands of North Carolina's Cape Hatteras National Seashore are among the most popular recreational destinations on the Atlantic coast. Park managers strive to integrate the needs of wildlife with recreational use of the area's beaches, but in some cases, they impose restrictions on the latter in order to preserve the former--sometimes even completely closing portions of beaches to pedestrian and off-road vehicle traffic to protect nesting birds. These closures are controversial, but a new independent report from the American Ornithological Society (AOS) finds evidence that despite complaints from the public, they provide significant benefits for vulnerable beach-nesting birds and sea turtles.

Two such beach-nesting birds--the American Oystercatcher and federally threatened Piping Plover--are of particular concern to Park managers. Populations of both species at Cape Hatteras declined in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The plover population recovered to pre-decline levels, whereas the oystercatcher population did not. In 2016, in response to the ongoing controversy over beach closures in the park, the National Park Service asked AOS to assemble an expert panel and produce an independent report assessing the appropriateness of the current NPS beach management plan.

Two factors that determine whether a population of shorebirds grows are carrying capacity (how many individuals the existing habitat can support) and productivity (how many young are produced). According to the report, carrying capacity for the two shorebird species has been reduced due to disruption of barrier island dynamics by human structures and activities, but the National Park Service has limited options for boosting carrying capacity. However, Park managers do have options for increasing productivity.

Productivity is influenced by factors including predation and human disturbance, both of which have contributed to past shorebird declines. The presence of humans can indirectly increase the risk to birds from predators such as raccoons, which are initially attracted to human trash and then stick around to raid nests. Wildlife managers might be able to boost productivity by removing more predators from the local ecosystem, but that doesn't mean that beach closures can be scrapped in favor of increased predator control. The report also found that the controversial beach closures, though not sufficient on their own to increase productivity enough for populations to grow, appear to be necessary for maintaining productivity at its current level.

"Overall, we found the Park's management of beach-nesting species, which include sea turtles and colonial terns and skimmers as well as the two shorebirds, to be appropriate, although some Park objectives should be reevaluated in light of recent research," says Jeff Walters, lead author of the report. "There is ample evidence of the benefits of restrictions on pedestrian and off-road vehicle activity to protect beach-nesting species, although this is just one of several factors important to the success of these species at Cape Hatteras National Seashore."

The full report by J.R. Walters, A.A. Dayer, S.J. Dinsmore, M.H. Godfrey, C.L. Gratto-Trevor, E. Nol, S.R. Riggs, which was prepared by The American Ornithological Society Committee on Science Arbitration, can be found here: https://americanornithology.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/CAHA-report_final-AOS.pdf

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Analysis of renewable energy points toward more affordable carbon-free electricity

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

As more states in the U.S. push for increased reliance on variable renewable energy in the form of wind or solar power, long-term energy storage may play an important role in assuring reliability and reducing electricity costs, according to a new paper published by Caltech researchers.

Graduate student Jackie Dowling, who works in the lab of Nathan Lewis (BS '77), the George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry, has collaborated with Ken Caldeira at the Carnegie Institution for Science and others to examine energy-storage options and multiple decades of data about wind and solar availability. Dowling and her collaborators determined that currently available battery technology is prohibitively expensive for long-term energy storage services for the power grid and that alternative technologies that can store a few weeks' to a month's worth of energy for entire seasons or even multiple years may be the key to building affordable, reliable renewable electricity systems.

Energy storage is needed with renewable energy because wind and solar energy are not as reliably available as fossil fuels. For example, wind power is often at its lowest during the summer in the United States, which is when the electrical grid is strained the most by the demand for air conditioning in homes and businesses.

"This research is motivated by the fact that laws in several states have mandated 100 percent carbon-free electricity systems by midcentury," says Dowling, lead author of a paper about the work. "Within these mandates, a lot of states include requirements for wind and solar power. Both wind and solar are variable from day to day, or even year to year, yet high reliability is mandatory for a viable electricity system. Energy storage can fill in for the gaps between supply and demand."

Dowling looked at short-duration storage systems, such as lithium-ion batteries, and long-duration storage methods, such as hydrogen storage, compressed-air storage, and pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

To see how to optimize the use of those storage technologies at the lowest energy cost, Dowling built a mathematical simulation of each and incorporated historical electricity-demand data and four decades of hourly resolved historical weather data across the contiguous U.S. The Macro Energy Model, as she calls it, reveals that adding long-duration storage to a wind-solar-battery system lowers energy costs. In contrast, using batteries alone for storage makes renewable energy more expensive.

Dowling says that the extra expense associated with batteries occurs because they cannot cost-effectively store enough energy for an entire season during which electricity is generated in lower amounts. That means an electrical grid would require many costlier solar panels or wind turbines to compensate and would result in wasteful idling of electricity-generation equipment for much of the year.

Currently available battery technology is not even close to being cost effective for seasonal storage, Dowling says.

"The huge dip in wind power in the summer in the U.S. is problematic, and batteries are not suitable for filling that gap. So, if you only have batteries, you have to overbuild wind or solar capacity," she says. "Long-duration storage helps avoid the need to overbuild power generation infrastructure and provides electricity when people need it rather than only when nature provides it. At current technology costs, storage in underground caverns of green hydrogen generated by water electrolysis would provide a cost-effective approach for long-duration grid storage."

Other researchers have built renewable energy models, but the team's data-driven approach is the first to incorporate four decades of historical wind and solar variability data, thus factoring in variability from year to year and periodic episodes of rare weather events that affect power generation, such as wind and solar droughts.

"The more years of data we use in our models, the more we find a compelling need for long-term storage to get the reliability that we expect from an electricity system," she says.

Dowling suggests her findings may be helpful to policy makers in states with 100 percent carbon-free electricity laws and high wind/solar mandates and to other U.S. states considering the adoption of similar laws. In the future, she plans to extend her research to take an in-depth look at the roles that specific types of energy storage, such as hydrogen or redox flow batteries, can play in renewable energy systems. For instance, some types of batteries might effectively serve as medium-duration energy storage, she says.

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The paper, titled "Role of long-duration energy storage in variable renewable electricity systems," appears in the September issue of Joule. Co-authors are Lewis and Katherine Rinaldi, chemistry graduate student, of Caltech; Tyler Ruggles, Mengyao Yuan, and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science; Steven Davis of UC Irvine; and Fan Tong of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Support for the research was provided by the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech, through which Dowling is a Zeller-Resnick Fellow; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; a fellowship from the Southern California Gas Company; and through a gift from Gates Ventures LLC to the Carnegie Institution for Science.

HEALING IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD

Placebos prove powerful even when people know they're taking one

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE NEW FINDINGS, PUBLISHED IN NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, TESTED HOW EFFECTIVE NONDECEPTIVE PLACEBOS -- OR, WHEN A PERSON KNOWS THEY ARE RECEIVING A PLACEBO -- ARE FOR REDUCING EMOTIONAL BRAIN ACTIVITY. view more 

CREDIT: PEXELS: PIXABAY CC0

EAST LANSING, Mich. - How much of a treatment is mind over matter? It is well documented that people often feel better after taking a treatment without active ingredients simply because they believe it's real -- known as the placebo effect.

A team of researchers from Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Dartmouth College is the first to demonstrate that placebos reduce brain markers of emotional distress even when people know they are taking one.

Now, evidence shows that even if people are aware that their treatment is not "real" -- known as nondeceptive placebos -- believing that it can heal can lead to changes in how the brain reacts to emotional information.

"Just think: What if someone took a side-effect free sugar pill twice a day after going through a short convincing video on the power of placebos and experienced reduced stress as a result?", said Darwin Guevarra, MSU postdoctoral fellow and the study's lead author. "These results raise that possibility."

The new findings, published in the most recent edition of the journal Nature Communications, tested how effective nondeceptive placebos -- or, when a person knows they are receiving a placebo -- are for reducing emotional brain activity.

"Placebos are all about 'mind over matter," said Jason Moser, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at MSU. "Nondeceptive placebos were born so that you could possibly use them in routine practice. So rather than prescribing a host of medications to help a patient, you could give them a placebo, tell them it can help them and chances are -- if they believe it can, then it will."

To test nondeceptive placebos, the researchers showed two separate groups of people a series of emotional images across two experiments. The nondeceptive placebo group members read about placebo effects and were asked to inhale a saline solution nasal spray. They were told that the nasal spray was a placebo that contained no active ingredients but would help reduce their negative feelings if they believed it would. The comparison control group members also inhaled the same saline solution spray, but were told that the spray improved the clarity of the physiological readings the researchers were recording.

The first experiment found that the nondeceptive placebos reduced participants' self-reported emotional distress. Importantly, the second study showed that nondeceptive placebos reduced electrical brain activity reflecting how much distress someone feels to emotional events, and the reduction in emotional brain activity occurred within just a couple of seconds.

"These findings provide initial support that nondeceptive placebos are not merely a product of response bias - telling the experimenter what they want to hear -- but represent genuine psychobiological effects," said Ethan Kross, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan.

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Credible assumptions replace missing data in COVID analysis

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - How contagious is COVID-19, and how severe is the virus for those who've caught it?

Everyone wants firm numbers as schools make decisions about in-person versus remote learning, as local and state governments grapple with reopening, and as families care for sick loved ones.

But firm data is missing, said Francesca Molinari, the H.T. Warshow and Robert Irving Warshow Professor in the Department of Economics, in the College of Arts and Sciences. The best way to find out the share of the population that has been exposed to the virus is to either test everyone or to test a random sample of people. But currently not everyone gets tested, and testing is not random; moreover, tests are not perfect. These data challenges have led to wildly divergent predictions in recent months about how many people get infected and how many infected people die.

In research published in the Journal of Econometrics, Molinari and Charles F. Manski, the Board of Trustees Professor at Northwestern University, wrote that actual cumulative rates of COVID-19 infection are higher than reported rates of infection, and therefore actual infection fatality rates are lower than reported rates. The researchers reached these conclusions using a technique called "partial identification," which Molinari uses often in her econometrics research.

"You are interested in some quantity, but you cannot learn it exactly," she said. "In this particular instance, we are interested in the infection rate, and we recognize that because we don't have a random sample, we can't learn the exact infection rate from the data."

She and Manski made weak but logical assumptions about COVID-19 data from Illinois, New York and Italy from March 16 to April 24, thereby putting some limits around the incomplete data.

They assumed that the infection rate among those who are tested is higher than the rate among those who are not - a logical assumption because people showing symptoms are most likely to be tested. The researchers also allowed for the possibility that many negative test results were false - i.e., that the person tested was actually positive but not counted.

These two assumptions drive the actual cumulative infection rates up and push the actual fatality rates down, Molinari said. Cumulative infection rates in New York state as of April 24, according to the researchers, were between 1.7% and 61% of the state's 19.45 million residents (or between 330,650 and 12,020,100 people), with an upper infection fatality rate of 4.9%. That is substantially lower than the death rate among confirmed infected individuals, which on April 24 was 5.9%.

Infection rates for the same date in Illinois were between 0.04% and 52%; in Italy, they were between 0.06% and 47%.

"The bounds you get are wide," Molinari said, "but they are substantially tighter compared to the bounds you obtain if you assume nothing about the missing data."

Making key assumptions and narrowing the bounds helps policymakers and leaders better understand fatality rates as they try to limit spread of the virus and plan reactivations. Molinari hopes this research will contribute to serious analysis of policies.

Molinari and Manski are working on a follow-up analysis of a longer time period that adds data from California, Florida and Texas to the study.

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New science behind algae-based flip-flops

Biodegradable shoes meet commercial standards for products needed to help eradicate tons of plastic waste

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

IMAGE: COMMERICAL-QUALITY BIODEGRADABLE FLIP-FLOPS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHEN MAYFIELD, UC SAN DIEGO.

As the world's most popular shoe, flip-flops account for a troubling percentage of plastic waste that ends up in landfills, on seashores and in our oceans. Scientists at the University of California San Diego have spent years working to resolve this problem, and now they have taken a step farther toward accomplishing this mission.

Sticking with their chemistry, the team of researchers formulated polyurethane foams, made from algae oil, to meet commercial specifications for midsole shoes and the foot-bed of flip-flops. The results of their study are published in Bioresource Technology Reports and describe the team's successful development of these sustainable, consumer-ready and biodegradable materials.

The research was a collaboration between UC San Diego and startup company Algenesis Materials--a materials science and technology company. The project was co-led by graduate student Natasha Gunawan from the labs of professors Michael Burkart (Division of Physical Sciences) and Stephen Mayfield (Division of Biological Sciences), and by Marissa Tessman from Algenesis. It is the latest in a series of recent research publications that collectively, according to Burkart, offer a complete solution to the plastics problem--at least for polyurethanes.

"The paper shows that we have commercial-quality foams that biodegrade in the natural environment," said Mayfield. "After hundreds of formulations, we finally achieved one that met commercial specifications. These foams are 52 percent biocontent--eventually we'll get to 100 percent."

In addition to devising the right formulation for the commercial-quality foams, the researchers worked with Algenesis to not only make the shoes, but to degrade them as well. Mayfield noted that scientists have shown that commercial products like polyesters, bioplastics (PLA) and fossil-fuel plastics (PET) can biodegrade, but only in the context of lab tests or industrial composting.

"We redeveloped polyurethanes with bio-based monomers from scratch to meet the high material specifications for shoes, while keeping the chemistry suitable, in theory, so the shoes would be able to biodegrade," Mayfield explained.

Putting their customized foams to the test by immersing them in traditional compost and soil, the team discovered the materials degraded after just 16 weeks. During the decomposition period, to account for any toxicity, the scientists, led by UC San Diego's Skip Pomeroy, measured every molecule shed from the biodegradable materials. They also identified the organisms that degraded the foams.

"We took the enzymes from the organisms degrading the foams and showed that we could use them to depolymerize these polyurethane products, and then identified the intermediate steps that take place in the process," said Mayfield, adding, "We then showed that we could isolate the depolymerized products and use those to synthesize new polyurethane monomers, completing a 'bioloop.'"

This full recyclability of commercial products is the next step in the scientist's ongoing mission to address the current production and waste management problems we face with plastics --which if not addressed, will result in 96 billion tons of plastic in landfills or the natural environment by 2050. According to Pomeroy, this environmentally unfriendly practice began about 60 years ago with the development of plastics.

Biodegrading Material (IMAGE)

Biodegradation of PU cubes over 12 weeks. Degradation was analyzed through A) Change in appearance, B) Cube mass and C) Maximum force at 50% compression force deflection (CFD). Error bars indicate sample standard deviations of the triplicate measurements. For compost and soil mass loss, p<0 .01="" 2="" able="" and="" cfd="" compost="" for="" in="" p="" paper="" published="" soil="">

"If you could turn back the clock and re-envision how you could make the petroleum polymer industry, would you do it the same today that we did it years ago? There's a bunch of plastic floating in every ocean on this planet that suggests we shouldn't have done it that way," noted Pomeroy.

While commercially on track for production, doing so economically is a matter of scale that the scientists are working out with their manufacturing partners.

"People are coming around on plastic ocean pollution and starting to demand products that can address what has become an environmental disaster," said Tom Cooke, president of Algenesis. "We happen to be at the right place at the right time."

The team's efforts are also manifested in the establishment of the Center for Renewable Materials at UC San Diego. Begun by Burkart, Mayfield, Pomeroy and their co-founders Brian Palenik (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and Larissa Podust (Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences), the center focuses on three major goals: the development of renewable and sustainable monomers made from algae and other biological sources; their formulation into polymers for diverse applications, the creation of synthetic biology platforms for the production of monomers and crosslinking components; and the development and understanding of biodegradation of renewable polymers.

"The life of material should be proportional to the life of the product," said Mayfield. "We don't need material that sits around for 500 years on a product that you will only use for a year or two."

Foot-bed of flip-flops being pulled from a mold.

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In addition to Gunawan, Burkart, Pomeroy and Mayfield, coauthors of the Bioresource Technology Reports paper include Tessman, Ariel Schreiman (Division of Biological Sciences), Ryan Simkovsky (Division of Biological Sciences), Anton Samoylov (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry), Nitin Neelakantan (Algenesis Materials Inc.) and Troy Bemis (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry).

The research was supported by grants from the Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (DE-SC0019986) and the National Science Foundation (1926937) to Algenesis Materials.

Burkart, Mayfield and Pomeroy are all co-founders of Algenesis and have equity. In addition, Burkart and Pomeroy are scientific advisors and Mayfield is acting CEO and on the Board of Directors.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for

Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: ONE 50-MINUTE, 212 F COOKING CYCLE IN A DRY ELECTRIC MULTICOOKER DECONTAMINATES AN N95 RESPIRATOR WITHOUT CHEMICALS AND WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE FILTRATION OR FIT. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY CHAMTEUT OH

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Owners of electric multicookers may be able to add another use to its list of functions, a new study suggests: sanitization of N95 respirator masks.

The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign study found that 50 minutes of dry heat in an electric cooker, such as a rice cooker or Instant Pot, decontaminated N95 respirators inside and out while maintaining their filtration and fit. This could enable wearers to safely reuse limited supplies of the respirators, originally intended to be one-time-use items.

Led by civil and environmental engineering professors Thanh "Helen" Nguyen and Vishal Verma, the researchers published their findings in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.

N95 respirator masks are the gold standard of personal protective equipment that protect the wearer against airborne droplets and particles, such as the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

"A cloth mask or surgical mask protects others from droplets the wearer might expel, but a respirator mask protects the wearer by filtering out smaller particles that might carry the virus," Nguyen said.

High demand during the COVID-19 pandemic has created severe shortages for health care providers and other essential workers, prompting a search for creative approaches to sanitization.

"There are many different ways to sterilize something, but most of them will destroy the filtration or the fit of an N95 respirator," Verma said. "Any sanitation method would need to decontaminate all surfaces of the respirator, but equally important is maintaining the filtration efficacy and the fit of the respirator to the face of the wearer. Otherwise, it will not offer the right protection."

The researchers hypothesized that dry heat might be a method to meet all three criteria - decontamination, filtration and fit - without requiring special preparation or leaving any chemical residue. They also wanted to find a method that would be widely accessible for people at home. They decided to test an electric cooker, a type of device many people have in their pantries.

They verified that one cooking cycle, which maintains the contents of the cooker at around 100 degrees Celsius or 212 Fahrenheit for 50 minutes, decontaminated the masks, inside and out, from four different classes of virus, including a coronavirus - and did so more effectively than ultraviolet light. Then, they tested the filtration and fit.

"We built a chamber in my aerosol-testing lab specifically to look at the filtration of the N95 respirators, and measured particles going through it," Verma said. "The respirators maintained their filtration capacity of more than 95% and kept their fit, still properly seated on the wearer's face, even after 20 cycles of decontamination in the electric cooker."

The researchers created a video demonstrating the method. They note that the heat must be dry heat - no water added to the cooker, the temperature should be maintained at 100 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes and a small towel should cover the bottom of the cooker to keep any part of the respirator from coming into direct contact with the heating element. However, multiple masks can be stacked to fit inside the cooker at the same time, Nguyen said.

The researchers see potential for the electric-cooker method to be useful for health care workers and first responders, especially those in smaller clinics or hospitals that do not have access to large-scale heat sanitization equipment. In addition, it may be useful for others who may have an N95 respirator at home - for example, from a pre-pandemic home-improvement project - and wish to reuse it, Nguyen said.

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The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture supported this work.

Editor's notes: To reach Helen Nguyen, email thn@illinois.edu. To reach Vishal Verma, email vverma@illinois.edu.

The paper "Dry heat as a decontamination method for N95 respirator reuse" is available online. DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00534

Are we medically intervening in maternity care when we don't need to?

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

 

Are we medically intervening in maternity care when we don't need to?

Researchers from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin have provided an international perspective on differences in key birth interventions as part of a European research network on understanding and contextualising physiological labour and birth (EU COST Action IS1405), which provides insights into maternity care practices and costs in Ireland.

The School's two studies are published in a special maternity care themed edition of the online journal PLOS ONE (Thursday, 6th August 2020).

The first study - Economic implications of reducing caesarean section rates - analysis of two health systems - looks at the cost implications of reducing caesarean sections rates (CS rates) among first-time mothers, along with improving rates of vaginal births after c-sections.

Caesarean section (CS) rates throughout Europe have risen significantly over the last two decades. As well as being an important clinical issue, these changes in mode of birth may have substantial resource implications. Policy initiatives to curb this rise have had to contend with the multiplier effect of women who had a CS for their first birth having a greater likelihood of requiring one during subsequent births, thus making it difficult to decrease CS rates in the short term.

The study examined the long-term resource implications of reducing CS rates among first-time mothers, as well as improving rates of vaginal birth after caesarean section (VBAC), among an annual cohort of women over the course of their most active childbearing years (18 to 44 years) in two public health systems in Europe; Ireland and England/Wales.

Researchers found that the economic benefit of improvements in these two outcomes is considerable, with the net present value of the savings associated with a five-percentage-point change in nulliparous (a woman who has yet to give birth to a child) CS rates and VBAC rates being €1.1million and £9.8million per annual cohort of 18-year-olds in Ireland and England/Wales, respectively.

Reductions in CS rates among first-time mothers are associated with a greater payoff than comparable increases in VBAC rates. The net present value of achieving CS rates comparable to those currently observed in the best performing Scandinavian countries was €3.5M and £23.0M per annual cohort in Ireland and England/Wales, respectively.

Dr Patrick Moran, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the School of Nursing and Midwifery said:

"Our results show that in addition to the reported clinical benefits, there is a significant economic benefit of reducing caesarean section rates among those for whom it is safe to do so in Ireland. This can free up vital maternity care resources to strengthen maternity services in Ireland and improve outcome for women, children and families."

READ: You can read the paper Economic implications of reducing caesarean section rates - analysis of two health systems here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228309

The second study from the School of Nursing and Midwifery - How much synthetic oxytocin is infused during labour? A review and analysis of regimens used in 12 countries - highlights the national and institution regimens on the use of oxytoxin, the most common drug used to induce labour, across 11 European countries and South Africa.

This study examined the use of oxytocin to induce labour. Oxytocin is widely used, but even 70 years after it was first introduced in clinical practice, there is still no agreement on the optimal infusion regimen to use during induction (starting) or augmentation (speeding up) in labour.

The study found that across the 16 regimens, there were considerable variations which were noted, with an 11-fold difference between minimum and maximum amounts. As oxytocin is a potentially harmful medication, with serious consequences for mum and baby, it is vital that the appropriate minimum infusion rate is administered.

Ireland is one of only five countries in the study with a national oxytocin infusion regimen; with one Irish hospital using a different regimen. All other countries use differing amounts of oxytocin.

The study found that the total amount of IU (international unit) oxytocin infused, estimated over eight hours, ranged from 2.38 IU to 27.00 IU, a variation of 24.62 IU and an 11-fold difference over the 16 regimens. In Ireland, the total amount infused in one regimen was 4.08 IU, just slightly above the lowest of the 16 regimens, and 13.05 IU in the other hospital regimen, which was the second highest amount but very close to several other regimens.

Dr Deirdre Daly, Assistant Professor in Midwifery at the School of Nursing and Midwifery said:

"In the era of evidence-based health care, the fact that such widespread variation exists in the use of infused oxytocin, and in the total amount infused, reflects potential overuse in many settings. All maternity care professionals are driven by the need to reduce avoidable maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality, but it is crucial that intrapartum interventions designed to reduce risk for some who have complications are not used routinely for others who are healthy.''

READ: You can read the paper How much synthetic oxytocin is infused during labour? A review and analysis of regimens used in 12 countries, here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227941

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Arecibo Observatory returns from tropical storm Isaias lockdown to track asteroid for NASA

The National Science Foundation facility, managed by the University of Central Florida, determines that a newly discovered asteroid won't threaten Earth

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

 

IMAGE: RADAR RANGE-DOPPLER IMAGE OF 2020 NK1 REVEALS AN ELONGATED ASTEROID APPROXIMATELY 1 KM (0.6 MI) ALONG THE LONGEST AXIS. THE IMAGE RESOLUTION IN THE VERTICAL DIMENSION IS 100 FT (30... view more 

CREDIT: ARECIBO OBSERVATORY

The Earth has one less asteroid to worry about thanks to the research of an international team of scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Asteroid 2020 NK1 was spotted in early July by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey team at the University of Hawaii. Little was known about the asteroid, making it difficult to predict exactly where the asteroid would travel in the future. It was estimated to be 1,600 feet in diameter, about the length of five football fields. Before the Arecibo observations, 2020 NK1 was calculated to be one of the biggest threats out of all known asteroids on NASA's list of potential impactors, with about one chance in 70,000 of impacting the Earth between 2086 and 2101.

Arecibo's Planetary Radar Group made it a priority to observe 2020 NK1 when it came within range - within 5 million miles - of the facility's powerful instruments. In this case, the time period was brief, July 30-31, just about the same time Tropical Storm Isaias was expected to slam into the island.

The observatory shut down to prepare for the storm, and as soon as it passed the team jumped into action to detect and study the asteroid. Even as parts of the island lost power and damage was assessed, the Arecibo team was able to determine the asteroid's shape, orbit and motion.

"Fortunately, the storm passed quickly without damage to the telescope or the radar system, and the maintenance and electronics teams were able to activate the telescope from hurricane lockdown in time for the observations," says Sean Marshall, an observatory scientist who led the team during the radar observations.

The team of scientists and telescope operators was able to observe the asteroid for two and half hours, collecting precise measurements of the asteroid's speed and distance from Earth as well as high-resolution images of the asteroid. "These measurements greatly improve our knowledge of 2020 NK1's orbit and allow for predictions of its future whereabouts for decades to come," says Patrick Taylor, a Texas scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, part of Universities Space Research Association, who participated in the observation remotely.

The observations showed the asteroid is not expected to get close enough to Earth to pose a danger in the future, with its closest approach coming in 2043 when it will pass about 2.25 million miles from Earth - or more than 9 times farther away than the Moon, the team concluded

The obtained radar images reveal an elongated shape and a diameter along its longest axis of approximately .6 mile.

"This event was a great example of the important role that the Arecibo radar system plays in planetary science and planetary defense. It shows that we have very quick response times and high-precision range, motion, and-size measurement capabilities, in spite of storms, the COVID-19 pandemic and earthquakes with which Puerto Rico has dealt with this year," says Anne Virkki, the head of the Planetary Radar group at the Arecibo Observatory.

2020 NK1 is one of many Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHO) that NASA tracks. Asteroids are considered PHOs if they are bigger than 500 feet in diameter and come within 5 million miles of the Earth's orbit. No known PHOs pose an immediate danger to the Earth, but observations like those conducted at the Arecibo Observatory are used to determine their future trajectories and risk.

Arecibo runs a program supported by a NASA grant to observe and characterize near-Earth objects that pose a potential hazard to Earth or that could be candidates for future space missions.

The observatory is home to the most powerful and most sensitive planetary radar system in the world, which means it is also a unique tool available to analyze NEOs, such as asteroids and comets. The knowledge gained from radar observations helps NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office determine which objects pose significant risks, and when and what to do to mitigate them. NASA officials can also use the information to determine which objects are the most viable for science missions - landing on an asteroid is not equally easy for all of them.

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Other team members participating in the radar observation of 2020 NK1 were Flaviane Venditti, Israel Cabrera and Juan Marrero at Arecibo. Virkki and Dylan Hickson, also from Arecibo, participated in the data analysis.

UCF manages the NSF facility under a cooperative agreement with Universidad Ana G. Méndez and Yang Enterprises Inc. The Arecibo Planetary Radar Project is fully supported by NASA's Near Earth Object Observations Program in NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office through a grant awarded to UCF. Arecibo has played a role in analyzing NEOs for decades, observing up to 130 objects per year.