Researchers see need for warnings about long-range wildfire smoke

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: THE CAMERON PEAK AND EAST TROUBLESOME WILDFIRES LEAVE A HEAVY SMOKE PLUME OVER FORT COLLINS IN OCT. 2020. view more 

CREDIT: COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY

Smoke from local wildfires can affect the health of Colorado residents, in addition to smoke from fires in forests as far away as California and the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers at Colorado State University, curious about the health effects from smoke from large wildfires across the Western United States, analyzed six years of hospitalization data and death records for the cities along the Front Range, which reaches deep into central Colorado from southern Wyoming.

They found that wildfire smoke was associated with increased hospitalizations for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and some cardiovascular health outcomes. They also discovered that wildfire smoke was associated with deaths from asthma and cardiovascular disease, but that there was a difference in the effects of smoke from local fires and that from distant ones.

Long-range smoke was associated with expected increases in hospitalizations and increased risk of death from cardiovascular outcomes.

But when the research team separated out health effects of smoke from local wildfires in early summer 2012 from long-range smoke from late summer 2012 and summer 2015, they found that local wildfires were associated with meaningful decreases in hospitalizations, especially for asthma.

The study, "Differential Cardiopulmonary Health Impacts of Local and Long?Range Transport of Wildfire Smoke," was recently published in GeoHealth, a journal from the American Geophysical Union.

Residents protect themselves from local fires

Sheryl Magzamen, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at CSU, said the team believes that evacuation efforts and related media coverage of local wildfires may have helped protect residents from adverse health effects of smoke exposure as well as direct impacts of the fires.

"There's a lack of communication about smoke from distant wildfires," said Magzamen. "Generally when there are local fires, there are advisories in the news that are associated with evacuations and local fire conditions. Due to the presence of the fire, people take measures to protect themselves. This could be why we see this lower risk of health effects from smoke associated with local fires."

Researchers described the long-range wildfire smoke as resembling fog, which is what Magzamen said she noticed in Fort Collins in August 2015. At the time, she was collaborating on a project with Jeff Pierce, associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science.

"I thought it was weird to see fog on that day," she explained. "Jeff said, 'That's actually smoke.' We all took a step back."

Smoke changes with age

Pierce, a co-author on this study, said researchers don't really know how harmful smoke is as it gets older, or becomes long-range smoke.

"In Fort Collins, about half the time we had smoke in late August or September 2020, this was smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire," he explained. "This smoke was only a couple hours old when it got here. At other times, we were getting smoke from California, and the smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire was either going over our heads or further south."

The Cameron Peak Fire was reported on Aug. 13, 2020, and burned into October, consuming 208,913 acres on the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in Larimer and Jackson Counties and Rocky Mountain National Park. It was the first wildfire in Colorado history to burn more than 200,000 acres.

The average person would not notice a difference in wildfire smoke, Pierce said.

"If the smoke is even two days old, things happen chemically, which changes the smoke a lot," he explained. "If it didn't smell like wood burning, it was long-range smoke from California."

Magzamen said that the team is working to better understand these chemical changes.

"As the small particles found in wildfire smoke age, they can cause more oxidative stress and more respiratory health effects," she said. "But wildfire smoke itself is a mixture of particles and gases. Teasing apart the effects of all the components of smoke and what happens to the mixture across space and time - and how those changes impact health - is an enormous scientific challenge."

Better air quality monitoring

Magzamen said the gap in understanding the source of wildfire smoke is because it historically has been measured by land-based sensors, which are primarily located in large urban areas and sparsely located in other regions, even along the Front Range.

"Even over the last five years, our air quality monitoring networks have been enhanced with new technologies and better measurements of real-time smoke effects," she said.

CSU researchers are now collaborating with local government officials on messaging related to the different types of wildfire smoke, with a specific aim to reach the most vulnerable populations. This includes caretakers of young children, people experiencing homelessness and others who can't shelter safely in place during wildfire season.

"We want people to be smoke-aware," she said. "On the Front Range, we have wildfire smoke every summer. We may not get Cameron Peak-size type of fires every year, but we are downwind for pretty much the entire Western United States," she said. "It's critical that we keep people healthy and safe."

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Additional co-authors on this study include Ryan Gan and Jingyang Liu (CSU Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences); Katelyn O'Dell, Research Scientist Bonne Ford and Associate Professor Emily Fischer (CSU Department of Atmospheric Science); Kevin Berg and Kurt Bol (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment) and Assistant Professor Ander Wilson (CSU Department of Statistics).

Floral probiotics reduce apple disease

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS APPLYING PROBIOTIC SPRAYS TO BLOOMING APPLE TREES AT THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. view more 

CREDIT: ZHOUQI CUI, REGAN B. HUNTLEY, NEIL P. SCHULTES, BLAIRE STEVEN, AND QUAN ZENG

While many celebrate apple blossoms as classic signs of spring, they are also welcoming entry gates for pathogens. Full of nutrients to lure pollinators and promote pollen germination, flowers also attract bacteria like Erwinia amylavora, a pathogen that causes a damaging disease called fire blight. However, recent work by scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station suggests that these flowery infection sites might also be perfect targets for applying microbial fire blight biocontrol measures.

In a paper recently published in Phytobiomes Journal, researchers Zhouqi Cui, Regan Huntley, Neil Schultes, Blaire Steven, and Quan Zeng found that treating apple flowers with a probiotic spray reduced incidence of fire blight. They sprayed blooming trees with different strains of bacteria isolated from apple flowers and then exposed the same blooms to the fire blight pathogen. After this inoculation, they sampled the floral microbiomes and observed the development of fire blight symptoms.

They found flowers treated with Pantoea spp. bacteria developed distinct microbiomes and exhibited fire blight symptoms 35 to 45 percent less frequently than flowers treated with just water. These results suggest that Pantoea spp. structure floral microbiomes in a way that reduces infection and could be an effective probiotic biocontrol for fire blight. Flowers may be a particularly promising system in which growers can actively influence microbiomes--compared to roots and leaves, flowers are short-lived, which could make reshaping their microbiomes both more technically feasible and biologically impactful.

This research underscores the importance of studying apple flower ecology in the field. While many researchers simply screen bacterial isolates in the laboratory, Cui and colleagues studied how these natural strains altered flower microbiomes and disease rates in the field. This step was crucial as the bacterial strain that suppressed the fire blight pathogen most strongly in the lab failed to substantially reduce infections in the field while Pantoea spp., the strain with the promising fire blight reduction in the field, did not directly suppress pathogen growth in the lab.

The authors suggest that the ineffectiveness of biocontrol agents in field settings may be due to the products' incompatibility with natural plant microbiomes. "Typical studies...often fail to even test if the applied strain effectively colonizes the flower" the authors note. As evidenced in their study, laboratory results can sometimes show false promise, but in some incidences--as with the case of Pantoea, may allow promising biocontrol agents to be overlooked.

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To learn more about this research, read the original article published in Phytobiomes Journal: "Inoculation of Stigma-Colonizing Microbes to Apple Stigmas Alters Microbiome Structure and Reduces the Occurrence of Fire Blight Disease."

The lead researcher on this project, Dr. Zhouqi Cui (@CuiZhouqi), is interested in the dynamic interactions between the plant microbiome and plant pathogens on agricultural crops. She is currently a postdoctoral scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (@CT_CAES) and is looking for a permanent research position in the near future. Dr. Blaire Steven, a co-PI on this project is a microbial ecologist with broad interests in how microbial communities are acquired and assembled. His work includes the microbial ecology of permafrost, desert and agricultural soils, the mosquito microbiome, as well as the work on the apple flower phytobiome. Dr. Quan Zeng (@oldkayak), the corresponding author, is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and graduate faculty at the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut. His research interests include plant-associated microbiomes and their impact on plant diseases, and bacterial plant pathogens and diseases.

Author Bio: Dr. Mia Howard (@mia_how) is an assistant feature editor for Phytobiomes Journal and a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Jen Lau's lab at Indiana University. She is fascinated by how plants--often with help from microbes--protect themselves from herbivores with toxic chemicals.

 

Microscopic wormholes possible in theory

German physicists explore the possibility of tunnels in spacetime

UNIVERSITY OF OLDENBURG

Research News

 

Wormholes play a key role in many science fiction films - often as a shortcut between two distant points in space. In physics, however, these tunnels in spacetime have remained purely hypothetical. An international team led by Dr. Jose Luis Blázquez-Salcedo of the University of Oldenburg has now presented a new theoretical model in the science journal Physical Review Letters that makes microscopic wormholes seem less far-fetched than in previous theories.

Wormholes, like black holes, appear in the equations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published in 1916. An important postulate of Einstein's theory is that the universe has four dimensions - three spatial dimensions and time as the fourth dimension. Together they form what is known as spacetime, and spacetime can be stretched and curved by massive objects such as stars, much as a rubber sheet would be curved by a metal ball sinking into it. The curvature of spacetime determines the way objects like spaceships and planets, but also light, move within it. "In theory, spacetime could also be bent and curved without massive objects," says Blázquez-Salcedo, who has since transferred to the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain. In this scenario, a wormhole would be an extremely curved region in spacetime that resembles two interconnected funnels and connects two distant points in space, like a tunnel. "From a mathematical perspective such a shortcut would be possible, but no one has ever observed a real wormhole," the physicist explains.

Moreover, such a wormhole would be unstable. If for example a spaceship were to fly into one, it would instantly collapse into a black hole - an object in which matter disappears, never to be seen again. The connection it provided to other places in the universe would be cut off. Previous models suggest that the only way to keep the wormhole open is with an exotic form of matter that has a negative mass, or in other words weighs less than nothing, and which only exists in theory. However, Blázquez-Salcedo and his colleagues Dr. Christian Knoll from the University of Oldenburg and Eugen Radu from the Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal demonstrate in their model that wormholes could also be traversable without such matter. The researchers chose a comparatively simple "semiclassical" approach. They combined elements of relativity theory with elements of quantum theory and classic electrodynamics theory. In their model they consider certain elementary particles such as electrons and their electric charge as the matter that is to pass through the wormhole. As a mathematical description, they chose the Dirac equation, a formula that describes the probability density function of a particle according to quantum theory and relativity as a so-called Dirac field.

As the physicists report in their study, it is the inclusion of the Dirac field into their model that permits the existence of a wormhole traversable by matter, provided that the ratio between the electric charge and the mass of the wormhole exceeds a certain limit. In addition to matter, signals - for example electromagnetic waves - could also traverse the tiny tunnels in spacetime. The microscopic wormholes postulated by the team would probably not be suitable for interstellar travel. Moreover, the model would have to be further refined to find out whether such unusual structures could actually exist. "We think that wormholes can also exist in a complete model," says Blázquez-Salcedo.

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The scientists conducted the research for their paper within the Research Training Group "Models of Gravity" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It is headed by Oldenburg physicist Prof. Dr. Jutta Kunz together with Prof. Dr. Claus Lämmerzahl from the Centre of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen. In addition to the University of Oldenburg, several other universities and research institutions are also involved in the programme.

Perspectives of US youth during the initial month of the COVID-19 pandemic

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

According to two national surveys by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School, US teens and young adults are engaged in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with most being knowledgeable about the disease, concerned about its impacts on others, and practicing social distancing. On March 6, 2020, 70 percent reported knowledge of the pandemic, with 46 percent noting they got information from news sources. By March 20, 2020, nearly all respondents, 95 percent, reported impact. Worry about the pandemic increased from 25 to 51 percent. For some young people who weren't worried early on about the pandemic, staying at home and engaging in other preventive public health guidelines made them feel safer. Between the two surveys, pandemic preparation seemed to shift. Initially, respondents primarily reported doing nothing (36 percent), but by March 20th, 50 percent reported practicing social distancing. The authors recommend that, as public health planning evolves, it will be important to acknowledge young people's concern for others as a driver of their behavior and to create programs that are informed by their beliefs and perspectives.

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Perspectives of US Youth During Initial Month of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Eric Waselewski, MD, et al
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan
https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/2/141

Bonus: https://umich.app.box.com/s/yi9wfqt49gm4sav2eruv6sdm5n9dp4od

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible

Perspectives of US youth during the initial month of the COVID-19 pandemic

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

According to two national surveys by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School, US teens and young adults are engaged in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with most being knowledgeable about the disease, concerned about its impacts on others, and practicing social distancing. On March 6, 2020, 70 percent reported knowledge of the pandemic, with 46 percent noting they got information from news sources. By March 20, 2020, nearly all respondents, 95 percent, reported impact. Worry about the pandemic increased from 25 to 51 percent. For some young people who weren't worried early on about the pandemic, staying at home and engaging in other preventive public health guidelines made them feel safer. Between the two surveys, pandemic preparation seemed to shift. Initially, respondents primarily reported doing nothing (36 percent), but by March 20th, 50 percent reported practicing social distancing. The authors recommend that, as public health planning evolves, it will be important to acknowledge young people's concern for others as a driver of their behavior and to create programs that are informed by their beliefs and perspectives.

###

Perspectives of US Youth During Initial Month of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Eric Waselewski, MD, et al
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan
https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/2/141

Bonus: https://umich.app.box.com/s/yi9wfqt49gm4sav2eruv6sdm5n9dp4od

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible

How the South African COVID-19 variant was found

UC Riverside biomedical scientists were part of an international team that identified the coronavirus strain

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

Research News

 

IMAGE: ADAM GODZIK IS A PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES AT UC RIVERSIDE. view more 

CREDIT: STAN LIM, UC RIVERSIDE.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Variants of the coronavirus are appearing in different parts of the world, many of them spreading with alarming speed. One contagious variant is the South African, or SA, variant, identified by an international team of researchers, including biomedical scientists from the University of California, Riverside.

"The new COVID-19 variants are the next new frontier," said Adam Godzik, a professor of biomedical sciences in the UC Riverside School of Medicine and a member of the research team that made the discovery. "Of these, the SA and Brazil strains are most worrying. They have mutations that make them resistant to antibodies we generate with existing vaccines. It is commonly believed we are in a tight race: Unless we vaccinate people quickly and squash the pandemic, new variants would dominate to the point that all our COVID-19 vaccines would be ineffective."

Godzik and Arghavan Alisoltani-Dehkordi, a postdoctoral researcher who joined his lab two years ago, helped characterize the new SA variant by providing its spike protein structure using computer simulations.

Study results appear today in Nature.

Alisoltani-Dehkordi, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town in South Africa before she joined UCR, mentioned that research teams at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and the University of Cape Town discovered the new lineage -- or variant -- of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, from samples collected between Oct. 15 and Nov. 25, 2020, in three South African provinces. By early November, this variant rapidly became the dominant variant in samples from two provinces.

"Each SARS-CoV-2 variant has specific mutations defining it," Alisoltani-Dehkordi said. "Professor Godzik and I used computer modeling to suggest possible structural and functional consequences of spike protein mutations in the SA lineage. Our analysis, confirmed also by several other research groups, shows that some of the mutations potentially result in a higher transmissibility of the virus and a weaker immune response."

The SA variant has been detected in at least 40 countries, including the United States.

"This variant is probably spreading in areas where it has not been sequenced and is, therefore, not identifiable," Godzik said. "In the U.S., sequencing is still a slow process. In many parts of the country, including Riverside, we have no information whatsoever about variants."

Initial research on the SA variant suggested it could be resistant to antibodies, which could reduce the efficacy of vaccines.

"That's when it received a high level of interest," Godzik said. "Subsequent research confirmed it is resistant to vaccines and is spreading. South Africa is doing a good job, however, at controlling the variant through quarantining and other measures."

All the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, and California show common mutational signatures. But each of these variants also has a unique set of mutations. For example, the SA and Brazil variants have two unique mutations on spike proteins K417N and E484K, respectively.

"Our preliminary findings indicate that some of the spike mutations may be associated with increased transmissibility of the SA variant," Alisoltani-Dehkordi said. "The full significance of spike and other genome mutations in this new lineage, however, is yet to be determined. It needs to be stressed that we do not have enough evidence confirming the higher disease progression, severity, or mortality rate associated with the SA lineage compared to other lineages. But the high transmissibility and unusual divergence of the SA lineage and other recently emerged lineages compared to the wild type creates a high demand for the systematic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 strains and early detection of variants before they turn into outbreaks."

Godzik explained there is no single COVID-19 virus. Instead, a population of viruses exists that constantly evolve. Variants, which also evolve, acquire mutations and could undergo viral escape at any time.

"It is hard to say there is only one SA variant," he said. "One way to understand this is to imagine that this variant is the major branch of a tree, which has many smaller branches. Some of these smaller ones may grow faster than others and assume more importance. This dynamic process is hard to predict."

Godzik predicts COVID-19 will be a constant presence in our lives, much like the flu.

"It takes six months to develop a flu vaccine," he said. "Models predict the evolution of the flu virus and vaccines are produced before the variants show up. If the predictions are good, the vaccines work. If they miss, a heavy flu season follows. This is how COVID-19 will likely behave. A lot of effort will be invested in predicting what will happen the following year, vaccines would then be updated, and people will need to get a booster shot."

CAPTION

Positions of the mutations identified in the new SA variant shown in red on the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (PDB: 7a94). N-terminal domain and receptor binding domain of the spike are shown in shades of blue and green respectively. The remaining part of the spike protein and human ACE2 receptor are in grey and black, respectively.

CREDIT

Godzik lab, UC Riverside.

The research paper is titled "Emergence of a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern with mutations in spike glycoprotein."

The University of California, Riverside (http://www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 25,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of almost $2 billion. To learn more, email news@ucr.edu.

Big shift seen in high-risk older adults' attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination

Poll shows double-digit jumps since autumn in percentage of Black, Hispanic and chronically ill older adults who say they'll get vaccinated -- or already have

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Research News

 

IMAGE: CHANGES IN COVID VACCINATION ATTITUDES AMONG ADULTS AGE 50-80 BETWEEN OCTOBER 2020 AND LATE JANUARY 2021. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Last fall, nearly half of older adults were on the fence about COVID-19 vaccination - or at least taking a wait-and-see attitude, according to a University of Michigan poll taken at the time.

But a new follow-up poll shows that 71% of people in their 50s, 60s and 70s are now ready to get vaccinated against COVID-19 when a dose becomes available to them, or had already gotten vaccinated by the time they were polled in late January. That's up from 58% in October.

Three groups of older adults with especially high risk of severe COVID-19 -- Blacks, Hispanics and people in fair or poor health - had even bigger jumps in vaccine receptiveness between October and late January.

The poll shows a 20-point jump in just four months in the percentage of Black respondents who said they would likely get vaccinated, and an 18-point jump for Hispanic older adults. The jump for white respondents in that time was 9 points.

People who said their health was fair or poor - likely including many with chronic conditions that can increase their risk of serious illness if they catch the coronavirus - had an 11-point jump in likelihood of getting vaccinated. However, they were still less likely to want to get vaccinated than those in better health.

By late January, 60% of Black respondents, 69% of Hispanic respondents, and 62% of those in fair or poor health said they were very likely or somewhat likely to get vaccinated, or had already gotten at least one dose. Among all white respondents regardless of health status, it was 72%.

The data come from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, based at U-M's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center. In November 2020, the poll published a full report based on data from a poll conducted in October. The new data come from a question asked in late January and are being issued as an update to the previous poll.

"This is incredibly encouraging, given the amount of hesitancy we saw in our poll from late fall," says Preeti Malani, M.D., the poll's director and a professor of infectious diseases at U-M. "But these new data still reveal gaps in attitudes about COVID-19 vaccination between racial and ethnic groups. We hope this new knowledge will help the various groups doing education and outreach tailor their approach so they can address questions, concerns and reasons for vaccine hesitancy."

In both outings, the poll asked older adults the question, "Assuming no cost to you, when a COVID vaccine is available, how likely are you to get it?" Respondents in January had the additional option to answer that they had already been vaccinated.

The percentage of all respondents who were most enthusiastic about vaccination - those who said they were 'very likely' to get the vaccine - jumped 20 percentage points, from 33% in October to 53% in January.

As states like Michigan open up vaccination eligibility to people over 50, the poll reveals that this group may need a bit more persuading than those 65 and up. The younger half of the poll group had an 11-point rise in likelihood of vaccination, compared with 14-point rise in the older group.

As in October, the new poll shows that individuals who have higher household incomes or more education were also more likely to report they would get a COVID vaccine.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging results are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a wide range of questions online; the October poll included 1,553 respondents, and the January one included 2,022 respondents. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have them.

A full report of the findings and methodology of the October report is available at http://www.healthyagingpoll.org, along with past National Poll on Healthy Aging reports.

Electrochemistry opens ways for the sustainable production of sulfonamides

Researchers at Mainz University developed a new procedure for the quick, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly production of essential substances required by the pharmaceutical industry

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ

Research News

 

A research team at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany has developed a completely new, environmentally-friendly electrochemical procedure for producing sulfonamides rapidly and inexpensively. Sulfonamides are used in many drugs including antibiotics and Viagra as well as in agrochemicals and dyes, which makes them an important class of molecules for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. While to date it has been necessary to use corrosive chemicals, high temperatures, and expensive metal catalysts to produce sulfonamides, the new method requires only cheaper starting materials, electrical current, and largely safe solvents. The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal "Angewandte Chemie International Edition". "The conventional procedure requires three reaction stages, with each stage driving up manufacturing costs by a factor of two to five. With the new method, just one reaction stage is needed. That makes it readily scalable and it can thus be applied on a technical scale," said Professor Siegfried Waldvogel, head of the research team and spokesperson for JGU's cutting-edge SusInnoScience - Sustainable Chemistry as the Key to Innovation in Resource-efficient Science in the Anthropocene research initiative.

The starting materials for the new reaction are molecules in the substance classes amines and aromatics as well as the pollutant sulfur dioxide, which is a waste product of many industrial processes. In effect, the new method makes it possible to convert this unwanted material into valuable products: The amines react with the sulfur dioxide in solution, producing amidosulfinate as an intermediate product. This makes oxygen and sulfur available to react with the aromatic molecules that have already been oxidized using an electrical current. However, it is necessary to prevent the bond formation of the oxygen during this process. "We do this by using a suitable solvent - and that is the really clever bit," Waldvogel pointed out. The solvent forms strong hydrogen bonds with the oxygen atoms, thereby rendering them inactive - and clearing the way for the formation of the desired sulfur-carbon bonds. After the reaction, the solvent can be redistilled and used again. "Our technique of electrochemical production of sulfonamides represents a completely new approach in chemistry that can now be applied to a number of other reactions. In a sense, we opened a door and found a variety of new possibilities," concluded Waldvogel, who is one of the world's leading scientists working in the field of electrosynthesis.

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Related links:

https://susinnoscience.uni-mainz.de/ - SusInnoScience (Sustainable Chemistry as the Key to Innovation in Resource-efficient Science in the Anthropocene) research center at JGU

Read more:

https://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/13042_ENG_HTML.php - press release "Synthesizing valuable chemicals from contaminated soil" (29 Jan. 2021) ;

https://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/12467_ENG_HTML.php - press release "Lignin instead of vanadium: Scientists at Mainz University work on sustainable alternatives to metal materials in large power storage systems" (9 Nov. 2020) ;

https://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/12056_ENG_HTML.php - press release "Paving the way for environmentally friendly electrochemistry" (9 Sept. 2020) ;

https://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/11412_ENG_HTML.php - press release "Researchers at Mainz University develop a sustainable method for extracting vanillin from wood processing waste" (3 June 2020) ;

https://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/8934_ENG_HTML.php - press release "Research on the sustainable conversion of lignin into valuable chemical compounds is attracting further funding" (3 July 2019) ;

https://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/6739_ENG_HTML.php - press release "EU funding to promote the utilization of lignin" (24 Oct. 2018)

Warming climate slows tropical birds' population growth rates

30-year study in Tanzania shows temperature-linked population declines in species important to forests

UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

Research News

IMAGE: WHITE-CHESTED ALETHE IN TANZANIA. view more 

CREDIT: MONTE NEATE-CLEGG

The mountain forests of Tanzania are more than 9,300 miles away from Salt Lake City, Utah. But, as in eastern Africa, the wild places of Utah depend on a diversity of birds to spread seeds, eat pests and clean up carrion. Birds keep ecosystems healthy. So if birds in Tanzania are in trouble in a warming climate, as found in a recent study by University of Utah researchers, people in Utah as well as in the African tropics should pay attention.

In a new study published in Global Change Biology, doctoral student Monte Neate-Clegg and colleagues tracked the demographics of 21 bird species over 30 years of observations from a mountain forest in Tanzania. For at least six of the species, their population declined over 30 years could be most attributable to rising temperatures--an effect of a warming world. Smaller birds, as well as those that live at the lower part of their elevation range, were at higher risk for slowed population growth.

"If climate change continues to cause population declines in tropical birds, these species could go extinct," Neate-Clegg says. "And what is happening to birds is almost certainly happening to other organisms."

Three decades in Tanzania

This story starts with William Newmark, a conservation biologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah. In 1987, he began collecting data on birds in the East and West Usambara Mountains in northeastern Tanzania. To track the birds, he and his colleagues set up mist nets, nearly invisible nets that safely and temporarily trap birds so that researchers can gently place an identification band (or record a band number if a bird already has one) and release it again.

"Understory tropical birds are also a particularly good group of organisms to assess the impact of climate change on biodiversity because they can be individually banded and thus carefully monitored over time," says Newmark. "Furthermore many tropical understory birds are poor dispersers, and thus they do not have the option to move elsewhere when their environment changes and consequently are excellent indicators of environmental change."

In 2017, Neate-Clegg joined the project, and in 2019 traveled to Tanzania for 10 weeks of fieldwork. "It rained a lot which made things pretty miserable, and the length of isolation was a mental challenge, but good practice for a pandemic!" he says. But the local field team, led by Victor Mkongewa, was fantastic, he says. "They ran a tight ship and made me feel very welcome. Being in the jungle is always a magical experience and I enjoyed exploring the forests and mountains. Having hornbills as an alarm clock never got old!"

Thirty years of bird observations generate a vast and powerful dataset, one that is rare in the tropics. Bird banding is a powerful tool in itself because demographic information for bird species can be derived from the rate at which previously banded birds are re-encountered.

"This dataset was a great opportunity to test for long-term climate signals," Neate-Clegg says. And the location featured high biodiversity and high levels of species that were found in that area and nowhere else. "Historically the forests have been fragmented, and now climate change threatens these species as well," he says. "So it's a really important ecosystem to study, especially given how little research takes place in Africa compared to other tropical locales."

Bird demographics

The researchers examined the resulting data in a few different ways. First, they looked at how the demographics, or population characteristics, of 21 bird species changed over the study period. Specifically, they looked at population growth, including through reproduction, and survival rates.

To explore possible factors behind the trends, the researchers compared demographic trends with precipitation and temperature trends, finding that for more than half of the species studied, the rising temperature was correlated with decreasing population growth rates. After more statistical analysis, they found that temperature explained demographic trends better than just the passage of time for six of the 21 species, or a little more than a quarter.

Neate-Clegg was surprised that precipitation wasn't more of a factor relative to temperature. "Rainfall has been linked to demographic rates in tropical birds in Panama," he says. "More rain means healthier plants, and more insects such as caterpillars, so we expect rain to help bird demographic rates.  "On the other hand," says Newmark, "the dry season in the Usambara Mountains is shorter and less pronounced than in Panama and thus there is a less seasonal change in food supply for birds in the Usambara Mountains than in Panama."

Other characteristics emerged as important factors. Birds with smaller bodies exhibited lower population growth, as did birds who lived below the midpoint of their optimal elevation range.

What it means for the rest of the world

The declines in population growth, Neate-Clegg says, are more likely to be due to less reproduction than to bird mortality. "To survive and reproduce birds need to find food and avoid predators and parasites," he says. "If changes in temperature affect any of these processes it could affect the birds." Climate effects on insect abundance, predator activity or fruit timing, he says, could negatively affect birds.

Climate change is a complex global phenomenon, with the potential for winners and losers in various corners of the animal kingdom, Neate-Clegg says.

"Birds trapped in montane forest blocks such as in the Usambara mountains will likely be losers because they live in isolated habitats and so don't really have the option of escaping the temperature increases," he says. "I think montane birds throughout the tropics, and even in temperate places such as the Rockies, will be feeling the pressure of increasing temperatures."

And that matters because birds are not just birds. They're integral components of their ecosystems. In forests particularly, birds participate in seed dispersal and pollination, and their loss threatens the health of forests with all the benefits to soil, air, water and wildlife that they carry. In places like Tanzania, Neate-Clegg adds, biodiversity spurs eco-tourism which supports local economies. "The world," he says, "would be poorer without this diversity."

"This study highlights," Newmark says, "the importance of rapidly developing conservation strategies for tropical birds that incorporate the impact of climate change."

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Find the full study here.

CAPTION

Usambara double-collared sunbird in Tanzania.

CREDIT

Monte Neate-Clegg