Poorly circulated room air raises potential exposure to contaminants by up to 6 times

Berkeley Lab experiments quantify the effects of overhead heating on room air mixing with implications for COVID-safe meetings and classrooms

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: IN ONE OF THE ROOM CONFIGURATIONS, BERKELEY LAB RESEARCHERS PUT EIGHT PARTICIPANTS FACING INWARD LIKE IN A MEETING. ONE MANIKIN, DESIGNATED AS THE “SPEAKER,” WAS OUTFITTED WITH A DEVICE TO EXPEL AEROSOLS TO SIMULATE A PERSON TALKING. THE OTHER MANIKINS HAD A CO2 SENSOR AND OPTICAL PARTICLE COUNTER PLACED IN THEIR BREATHING ZONE. THERE WERE ALSO SENSORS THROUGHOUT THE ROOM TO MEASURE TEMPERATURE, AIR VELOCITY, AND CO2. view more 

CREDIT: BERKELEY LAB

Having good room ventilation to dilute and disperse indoor air pollutants has long been recognized, and with the COVID-19 pandemic its importance has become all the more heightened. But new experiments by indoor air researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) show that certain circumstances will result in poor mixing of room air, meaning airborne contaminants may not be effectively dispersed and removed by building level ventilation.

Using CO2 as a tracer to track small respiratory aerosols that travel with air currents in a room, the Berkeley Lab team found that when overhead vents (or diffusers) are supplying heated air, it created thermally stratified conditions that block the flow of clean air down to the “breathing zone” in the middle height of the room. As a result, even when people are sitting more than 6 feet from each other, some occupants may be exposed to respiratory aerosols from others at a rate 5 to 6 times higher than if the same room were well mixed. Their study, “Measured influence of overhead HVAC on exposure to airborne contaminants from simulated speaking in a meeting and a classroom,” was published recently in the journal Indoor Air.

“When everything's well mixed, everybody's exposed to the same conditions,” said Berkeley Lab indoor air researcher Woody Delp. “When it’s not well mixed, you can have, from a COVID perspective, potential hot spots. So, if there’s one infected individual in the room, instead of having their expelled breath fully dispersed and then then properly diluted and removed by the HVAC system, another person sitting next to them or even across the room could get a high concentration of that infected person’s emitted viral aerosol.”

Delp notes that this situation would occur only in the case of heated air being supplied from the overhead diffusers. When cold or neutral air is being supplied, the researchers did not see the thermal stratification occur; instead, the room was found to be well mixed in those circumstances.

While the basic risk from overhead heating has been known for years, it had not previously been quantified under controlled but realistic conditions of a meeting or classroom. The results are important for understanding how large the risk can be when occupants are intentionally spaced for safety. “Ventilation is essential to maintaining good air quality,” said Brett Singer, the lead author of the study and head of Berkeley Lab’s Indoor Environment Group. “But if you’re heating overhead without intentionally mixing the air in the room, you will not get the full benefit of ventilation.”

Fortunately, there is a simple solution, the study found: using portable air cleaners that pull air in from below and push it out through the top. “They take care of the mixing and then they also filter the air, so they have a double benefit,” Singer said.

 

CAPTION

Berkeley Lab researcher Chelsea Preble helped conduct experiments on the movement of indoor air contaminants. Here she is controlling the aerosol emissions device in a room configured like classroom.

CREDIT

Berkeley Lab

9 dummies in a room

The researchers positioned eight thermal manikins (which are like retail display mannequins but used for scientific research instead) and had a researcher present to operate an aerosol emissions device in a 20-by-30-foot room set up first like a conference room, with participants seated in a circular pattern, then reconfigured like a classroom, with one standing at the front of the room and eight participants facing forward. Singer noted that most previous studies of the effects of imperfect mixing on contaminant dispersal used only one or two simulated occupants.

In this study, the manikins released plumes of heat, much like a person would. CO2 was released at mouth level to simulate small respiratory aerosols. The temperature of the CO2 as well as the velocity of its release were adjusted to simulate a person talking.

The experiments took place in the FLEXLAB(R), Berkeley Lab’s building simulator and test bed. “With the FLEXLAB, we were able to control every aspect of the HVAC system, which is how we were able to iterate on so many different conditions for the two types of occupancy configurations,” said Chelsea Preble, a research scientist at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley and a co-author on the study. “We were also able to have temperature and air velocity measurements throughout the room in addition to our measurements of CO2. Those helped us verify and quantify the mixing problem.”

Study limited to small aerosols only

Previous studies have established that CO2 can act as a proxy for the dispersion behavior of small respiratory aerosols, or particles less than 5 microns in size. A micron is one millionth of a meter. While respiratory aerosols are made up of particles in a vast range of sizes, from sub-micron to millimeters, this paper focuses on the smaller particles, which move mostly with the air currents. Larger particles, which behave differently, will be the subject of a future analysis.

“We released the particles and the CO2 at different manikins and tried to see how these tracers and particles spread around the room,” said Haoran Zhao, a Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow and co-author on the study. “We had CO2 sensors in each corner of the room at different heights and also at the breathing zone of each manikin.”

The authors are careful to note that their study addresses only the relative risk of poorly versus well-mixed conditions; it cannot be used directly to predict infection risk.

“We know the chain of events that it takes to get a person exposed, and it’s complicated and extraordinarily variable. An infected person talking and breathing expels droplets and aerosols of various sizes. But even when some of those are inhaled by someone else, they may or may not get infected,” Delp said. “From others’ studies, we know that the quantity of viruses emitted by an individual infected person can vary very widely. One person may expel millions more viruses than another infected person – and that varies over the course of an infection and also appears to be different for delta compared to the earlier variants. And to top it off, the number of viruses that it takes to initiate an infection also likely varies between people and with the sizes of the aerosols that are inhaled. As indoor air quality scientists and engineers, our focus is on what can be done with ventilation, filtration, and air distribution to reduce risks even when all the details of the biology are not known.”

The study was funded by the Department of Energy through the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory, a consortium of DOE national laboratories focused on response to COVID-19. Other co-authors of the study were Jovan Pantelic, Michael Sohn, and Thomas Kirchstetter.

CAPTION

A release nozzle, placed at mouth level, released CO2, a tracer for tracking small respiratory aerosols that travel with air currents in a room.

CREDIT

Berkeley Lab

Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 14 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and 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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JOURNAL

Indoor Air

DOI

10.1111/ina.12917 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Measured influence of overhead HVAC on exposure to airborne contaminants from simulated speaking in a meeting and a classroom

 GOOD NEWS

Pregnant women who receive COVID-19 vaccination pass protection from the virus to their newborns

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NYU LANGONE HEALTH / NYU GROSSMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Women who receive the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy pass high levels of antibodies to their babies, a new study finds.

The effectiveness of the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers say, lies in their ability to trigger the production of the right antibodies, blood proteins capable of protecting individuals from infection. Whether this protection could pass from mothers to their infants before birth had remained a question.

Published online September 22 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology—Maternal–Fetal Medicine, the new study of 36 newborns whose mothers received either the Pfizer–BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy found that 100 percent of the infants had protective antibodies at birth.

Antibodies can either be produced as part of the natural response to infection or triggered by vaccines. With that in mind, the research team was able to tell apart antibodies in the neonatal blood that were created in response to natural infection from those made in response to the vaccines. The result is relevant because natural antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are not sufficiently protective for many people. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that just 23 percent of pregnant women have been vaccinated, despite growing evidence of prenatal vaccine safety.

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study authors observed the highest levels of antibodies in cord blood of mothers who were fully vaccinated during the second half of their pregnancies. This insight provides evidence of transferred immunity to neonates, which correlates to protection against infection for infants during the first months of life.

“Studies continue to reinforce the importance of vaccines during pregnancy and their power to protect two lives at once by preventing severe illness in both mothers and babies,” says Ashley S. Roman, MD, director of the Division of Maternal–Fetal Medicine and the Silverman Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at NYU Langone Health, and one of the study’s principal investigators. “If babies could be born with antibodies, it could protect them in the first several months of their lives, when they are most vulnerable.”

As the COVID-19 vaccines received authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the CDC consistently asserted that they should not be withheld from people who are pregnant and want the vaccine. Dr. Roman and colleagues confirm the strong evidence that the mRNA vaccines are safe during pregnancy in a study published August 16 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology—Maternal–Fetal Medicine, titled “COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy: Early Experience from a Single Institution.” The study found no increased risks during pregnancy, birth complications, or identifiable risks to the fetus among those who received the vaccine.

In the current study, though the sample size is small, “it is encouraging that neonatal antibody levels are high if women are vaccinated,” says Jennifer L. Lighter, MD, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, hospital epidemiologist at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, and the study’s senior author.

Existing studies analyze antibodies to the spike protein (anti-S IgG) alone, which may be present after natural infection or vaccination, and do not include antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein (anti-N IgG), which is only present following natural infection. Among the 36 samples collected, all had high levels of anti-S IgG. Of those samples, 31 were tested for anti-N IgG and were negative.

”High levels of transplacental antibody transfer are not surprising. It is consistent with what we see with other immunizations. Our findings add to a growing list of important reasons why women should be advised to receive the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy for the added benefit of their newborn receiving crucial protection,” adds Dr. Lighter.

Additional research is needed to determine how effective the infant antibodies are, how long protection will last, and if vaccination in the second half of pregnancy may confer higher levels of antibody transfer than vaccination earlier in pregnancy. Future studies should also focus on antibody transmission to newborns in a larger population and durability of antibody detection during infancy.

Media Inquiries

Katie Ullman
Phone: 212-404-3511
kathryn.ullman@nyulangone.org

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology MFM

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajogmf.2021.100481 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

High antibody levels in cord blood from pregnant women vaccinated against COVID-19

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Sep-2021

#DECRIMINALIZEDRUGS    #MEDICATEJUNKIES

Methamphetamine-involved overdose deaths nearly tripled between 2015 to 2019, NIH study finds

Patterns of methamphetamine use have become riskier, diversified across U.S. population

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NIH/NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE

Overdose deaths involving methamphetamine nearly tripled from 2015 to 2019 among people ages 18-64 in the United States, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The number of people who reported using methamphetamine during this time did not increase as steeply, but the analysis found that populations with methamphetamine use disorder have become more diverse. Published today in JAMA Psychiatry, the study suggests that increases in higher-risk patterns of methamphetamine use, such as increases in methamphetamine use disorder, frequent use, and use of other drugs at the same time, may be contributing to the rise in overdose deaths.

“We are in the midst of an overdose crisis in the United States, and this tragic trajectory goes far beyond an opioid epidemic. In addition to heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine are becoming more dangerous due to contamination with highly potent fentanyl, and increases in higher risk use patterns such as multiple substance use and regular use,” said NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, M.D., one of the authors of the study. “Public health approaches must be tailored to address methamphetamine use across the diverse communities at risk, and particularly for American Indian and Alaska Native communities, who have the highest risk for methamphetamine misuse and are too often underserved.”

In 2020, more than 93,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, marking the largest one-year increase in overdose deaths ever recorded, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This increase has largely been driven by rising overdoses involving synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl. Overdose deaths involving psychostimulants, and particularly methamphetamine, have also risen steeply in recent years, and many of these deaths involved use of an opioid at the same time. However, questions remain on how trends in methamphetamine use contribute to greater risk for overdose deaths.

To address this gap, the study authors analyzed data on overdose deaths involving psychostimulants other than cocaine from cause of death files in the National Vital Statistics System from 2015 to 2019. They also assessed the methamphetamine use patterns of U.S. adults ages 18 to 64 – the age group at highest risk of substance use and overdose deaths – from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), which provides annual information on tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use, mental health, and other health-related issues in the United States.

The researchers found that from 2015 to 2019, the number of overdose deaths involving psychostimulant drugs other than cocaine, (largely methamphetamine), rose from 5,526 to 15,489, a 180% increase. However, the number of people who reported using methamphetamine only increased by 43% over the same period. 

In addition, the data show that people reporting frequent methamphetamine use (100 days or more per year) rose by 66% between 2015 and 2019, and people reporting the use of methamphetamine and cocaine together increased by 60% during this period. The researchers also found that since 2017, more people who reported using methamphetamine in the past year also reported higher-risk use patterns (i.e., had methamphetamine use disorder and/or injected methamphetamine) than reported lower-risk use patterns (i.e., did not meet criteria for methamphetamine use disorder and/or inject methamphetamine). These findings indicate that riskier use patterns may have contributed to the increased numbers of methamphetamine-involved overdose deaths during this time period.

The researchers also noted shifts in the populations using methamphetamine between 2015 and 2019. Whereas, historically, methamphetamine has been most commonly used by middle-aged white persons, this analysis found that American Indians/Alaska Natives had the highest prevalence of methamphetamine use, as well as methamphetamine use disorder and methamphetamine injection. Previous studies have found that American Indians/Alaska Natives also had the greatest increases in methamphetamine overdose deaths in recent years.

This analysis also found that prevalence of methamphetamine use disorder among those who did not inject the drug increased 10-fold among Black people from 2015 to 2019, a much steeper increase than among white or Hispanic people. Like frequency of use, methamphetamine use disorder is a measure used to capture escalating methamphetamine use. Methamphetamine use disorder without injection quadrupled in young adults ages 18 to 23, a substantially greater increase than in older age groups. This is of particular concern, as young adulthood is a critical period of continued brain, social, and academic maturation, and having methamphetamine use disorder during this vulnerable period could have long-lasting consequences.

Methamphetamine use has also been linked to HIV transmission, as infectious diseases can spread by sharing injection equipment and through heightened unprotected sexual activity that is often associated with methamphetamine use. Previous studies have reported high rates of methamphetamine use among men who have sex with men, who also face higher rates of HIV transmission. This study found that the prevalence of methamphetamine injection was the highest among homosexual men. Moreover, methamphetamine use disorder without injection more than doubled among homosexual or bisexual men. It also more than tripled among heterosexual women and lesbian or bisexual women, and more than doubled among heterosexual men, further emphasizing the expansion of use across different groups.

“What makes these data even more devastating is that currently, there are no approved medications to treat methamphetamine use disorder,” said Emily Einstein, Ph.D., chief of NIDA’s Science Policy Branch and a co-author of the study. “NIDA is working to develop new treatment approaches, including safe and effective medications urgently needed to slow the increase in methamphetamine use, overdoses, and related deaths.”

Reference: B Han, et. al. Trends in methamphetamine use, use disorder, and related overdose deaths among adults in the United States. JAMA Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2588 (2021).

###

About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

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JOURNAL

JAMA Psychiatry

DOI

10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2588 

ARTICLE TITLE

Trends in methamphetamine use, use disorder, and related overdose deaths among adults in the United States

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Sep-2021

WAIT, WHAT?

Researchers look for possible connections between oxytocin and Instagram

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

A small study in college students found that individuals with a specific variant in the oxytocin receptor gene OXTR follow more people on Instagram, researchers report September 22 in the journal Heliyon. However, the investigation did not find evidence that gene-environment interactions influence online sociability.

“The present results should be interpreted with a great degree of caution in the panorama of genetic association studies,” says senior study author Gianluca Esposito a psychologist at the University of Trento in Italy and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “This is a small initial investigation of the phenomenon and should be followed up in different countries as well as in larger samples.”

Oxytocin, which has been dubbed the love hormone, is a neuropeptide that plays a crucial role in social skills in mammals. Genetic variants called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within OXTR have been shown to predict parenting behavior and attachment. Previous research has also shown that people with the G allele of the OXTR SNP rs53576 seek more social support in hostile environments compared with individuals with the A allele. In addition, individuals with the GG genotype report having greater empathy and marital satisfaction than A-allele carriers. But there has been relatively little research on gene-environment interactions in the context of online social behavior.

To address this knowledge gap, Esposito and his collaborators investigated whether OXTR interacts with an environmental factor—adult attachment—to influence Instagram behavior. A total of 57 students enrolled at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore participated in the study. All were between the ages of 18 and 25 years, 16 were male, and none had children or a history of psychiatric, neurological, or genetic disorders. They provided DNA samples and completed an online questionnaire that assessed their anxiety and avoidance behavior in close relationships with partners.

The researchers used the DNA samples to genotype the OXTR SNPs rs53576 and rs2254298. They also examined the participants’ Instagram profiles, including the number of posts, followers, and people followed. Contrary to their expectations, there were no significant gene-environment interactions. For rs53576, individuals with the AA genotype followed more people than G-allele carriers, regardless of the quality of their intimate relationships. According to the researchers, the AA genotype could make individuals more inclined to be sociable online.

“Overall, the role played by the A and G alleles of the OXTR SNPs toward general social behavior is debated,” Esposito says. “The current findings could inspire future research exploring online sociability with a gene-environment perspective.”

###

This research was supported by grants from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and the Singapore Ministry of Education. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Heliyon, Carollo et al.: “The relation between oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms, adult attachment, and Instagram sociability: An exploratory analysis.” https://www.cell.com/heliyon/fulltext/S2405-8440(21)01997-6

Heliyon (@HeliyonJournal), published by Cell Press, is an open access journal publishing scientifically accurate and valuable research across life, physical, social, and medical sciences. Visit https://www.cell.com/heliyon. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

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DOI

10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07894 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The relation between oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms, adult attachment, and Instagram sociability: An exploratory analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Sep-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

New research 'sniffs out' how associative memories are formed

by University of California, Irvine

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Has the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies ever taken you back to afternoons at your grandmother's house? Has an old song ever brought back memories of a first date? The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odor and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory.

Psychologists began studying associative memory in the 1800s, with William James describing the phenomenon in his 1890 classic The Principles of Psychology. Scientists today agree that the structures responsible for the formation of associative memory are found in the medial temporal lobe, or the famous "memory center" of the brain, but the particular cells involved, and how those cells are controlled, have remained a mystery until now.

Neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine have discovered specific types of neurons within the memory center of the brain that are responsible for acquiring new associative memories. Additionally, they have discovered how these associative memory neurons are controlled. We rely on associative memories in our everyday lives and this research is an important step in understanding the detailed mechanism of how these types of memories are formed in the brain.

"Although associative memory is one of the most basic forms of memory in our everyday life, mechanisms underlying associative memory remain unclear" said lead researcher Kei Igarashi, faculty fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and assistant professor of anatomy & neurobiology at the UCI School of Medicine.

The study published today in the journal Nature, reports for the first time, that specific cells in the lateral entorhinal cortex of the medial temporal lobe, called fan cells, are required for the acquisition of new associative memories and that these cells are controlled by dopamine, a brain chemical known to be involved in our experience of pleasure or reward.

In the study, researchers used electrophysiological recordings and optogenetics to record and control activity from fan cells in mice as they learn to associate specific odors with rewards. This approach led researchers to discover that fan cells compute and represent the association of the two new unrelated items (odor and reward). These fan cells are required for successful acquisition of new associative memories. Without these cells, pre-learned associations can be retrieved, but the new associations cannot be acquired. Additionally acquiring new associations also requires dopamine.

"We never expected that dopamine is involved in the memory circuit. However, when the evidence accumulated, it gradually became clear that dopamine is involved," said Igarashi. "These experiments were like a detective story for us, and we are excited about the results."

This discovery is an important piece in the puzzle of understanding how memories are formed in the brain and lays a foundation on which other researchers can continue to build. Associative memory abilities are known to decline in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease. Understanding the neurobiological mechanism of how these memories are formed is the first step to developing therapeutics to slow the loss of associative memory abilities in Alzheimer's Disease.Researchers use optogenetics to cause recoding of mouse associative memory

More information: Lee, J.Y. et al. Dopamine facilitates associative memory encoding in the entorhinal cortex. Nature (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03948-

Journal information: Nature 

Provided by University of California, Irvine 

 

Gigantic cavity in space sheds new light on how stars form

by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Astronomers have discovered a giant, spherical cavity within the Milky Way galaxy; its

 location is depicted on the right. A zoomed in view of the cavity (left) shows the

 Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds in blue and red, respectively. Though they 

appear to sit within the cavity and touch, new 3D images of the clouds show they 

border the cavity and are quite a distance apart. This image was produced in glue

 using the WorldWide Telescope. Credit: Alyssa Goodman/Center for Astrophysics,

 Harvard & Smithsonian.

Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of the shapes and sizes of nearby molecular clouds have discovered a gigantic cavity in space.

The sphere-shaped void, described today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, spans about 150 parsecs—nearly 500 light years—and is located on the sky among the constellations Perseus and Taurus. The research team, which is based at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, believes the cavity was formed by ancient supernovae that went off some 10 million years ago.

The mysterious cavity is surrounded by the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds—regions in space where stars form.

"Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble," says Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) who led the study. "We have two theories—either one supernova went off at the core of this bubble and pushed gas outward forming what we now call the 'Perseus-Taurus Supershell,' or a series of supernovae occurring over millions of years created it over time."

The finding suggests that the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds are not independent structures in space. But rather, they formed together from the very same supernova shockwave. "This demonstrates that when a star dies, its supernova generates a chain of events that may ultimately lead to the birth of new stars," Bialy explains.

Mapping Stellar Nurseries

The 3D map of the bubble and surrounding clouds were created using new data from Gaia, a space-based observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Descriptions of exactly how 3D maps of the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds and other nearby clouds were analyzed appear in a separate study published today in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ). Both studies make use of a dust reconstruction created by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

The maps represent the first-time molecular clouds have been charted in 3D. Previous images of the clouds were constrained to two dimensions.

Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of interstellar dust have discovered a huge, spherical-shaped cavity in space. The discovery shows that supernovae led to the creation of the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds. Credit: Jasen Chambers/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

"We've been able to see these clouds for decades, but we never knew their true shape, depth or thickness. We also were unsure how far away the clouds were," says Catherine Zucker, a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA who led the ApJ study. "Now we know where they lie with only 1 percent uncertainty, allowing us to discern this void between them.

But why map clouds in the first place?

"There are many different theories for how gas rearranges itself to form stars," Zucker explains. "Astronomers have tested these theoretical ideas using simulations in the past, but this is the first time we can use real—not simulated—3D views to compare theory to observation, and evaluate which theories work best."

The Universe at Your Fingertips

The new research marks the first time journals of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) publish astronomy visualizations in augmented reality. Scientists and the public may interact with the visualization of the cavity and its surrounding molecular clouds by simply scanning a QR code in the paper with their smartphone.

"You can literally make the universe float over your kitchen table," says Harvard professor and CfA astronomer Alyssa Goodman, a co-author on both studies and founder of glue, the data visualization software that was used to create the maps of molecular clouds.

Goodman calls the new publications examples of the "paper of the future" and considers them important steps toward the interactivity and reproducibility of science, which AAS committed to in 2015 as part of their effort to modernize publications.

"We need richer records of scientific discovery," Goodman says. "And current scholarly papers could be doing much better. All of the data in these papers are available online—on Harvard's Dataverse—so that anyone can build on our results."

Goodman envisions future scientific articles where audio, video and enhanced visuals are regularly included, allowing all readers to more easily understand the research presented.

She says, "It's 3D visualizations like these that can help both scientists and the public understand what's happening in space and the powerful effects of supernovae."

Herschel and Planck views of star formation

More information: Astrophysical Journal Letters (2021). iopscience.iop.org/article/10. … 847/2041-8213/ac1f95

Astrophysical Journal (2021). iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-435

Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Letters  , Astrophysical Journal 

Provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 

900 AD

Russia forest fire damage worst since records began, says Greenpeace

Andrew Roth in Moscow 24 mins ago

Russia has endured its worst forest fire season in the country’s modern history, according to recent data from the Russian Forestry Agency analysed by Greenpeace.

Fires have destroyed more than 18.16m hectares of Russian forest in 2021, setting an absolute record since the country began monitoring forest fires using satellites in 2001. The previous record was set in 2012, when fires covered 18.11 hectares of forest.

The record was surpassed late last week after a long fire season that has also produced unprecedented levels of global wildfire emissions and upturned daily life for hundreds of thousands of people living in Siberia and elsewhere in central Russia.

“For the past several years, when the area of the fires has surpassed 15m hectares, it has become, in all likelihood, the new normal in the conditions of the new climate reality,” Greenpeace Russia wrote.

Related: ‘Airpocalypse’ hits Siberian city as heatwave sparks forest fires

Those fires have primarily affected communities in Siberia, where dry, hot summers have turned the vast taiga forests into a tinderbox. In Yakutia, a northern Siberian region that has been particularly hard-hit, smog covered the capital city Yakutsk for weeks, and villagers have had to ban together in last-ditch efforts to save their homes.

© Photograph: Emercom Of Russia Handout/EPA

 A firefighter trying to extinguish wildfire in the republic of Yakutia, Russia, in August 2021.

“Emergency workers have come and villagers are also fighting the fires but they can’t put them out, they can’t stop them,” Varvara, a 63-year-old from the remote village of Teryut, said by telephone in July. “Everything is on fire.”

The statistics do not record other types of fires taking place outside Russia’s forests. “If we counted all the fires – grass, reed, tundra, where there is no forest fund – then we would see an even higher number,” wrote Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace Russia’s firefighting project. The total area could be as high as 30m hectares, he said, an area the size of Italy or Poland.

Burning forests in Russia helped produced some of the worst global emissions in recent months. The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the EU found that burning forests released 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide last month, the highest since the organisation began measurements in 2003.

The taiga forests of Siberia pumped 970 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere between June and August – more than all the forests in the rest of the world put together. The fires in Yakutia played an important role in that, as the fire season lengthens and pushes farther north, amid unusually high temperatures and lower than normal soil moisture.

According to Greenpeace Russia, the fires in Yakutia are continuing, including north of the Arctic Circle. “That is not characteristic for this time of year,” Kuksin wrote.

Grassfires are also ongoing mainly in Russia’s southern regions of Rostov, Volgograd, Astrakhan and Orenburg, Greenpeace said. Climate change will also make it more difficult for emergency workers to manage Russia’s regular peat fires, which have enveloped Moscow and other cities in noxious smog in past years.

Recording Roman resource exploitation and urban collapse

by University of Chicago

Co-Director of the study Hans Barnard leads survey and excavations of the Neo-Punic ritual precinct at Zita. Credit: Brett Kaufman

For hundreds of years, Carthage—the Phoenician city-state in North Africa—flourished, establishing itself as a robust trade empire with widespread colonies. As the Carthaginian and Roman empires expanded their reach across Mediterranean Europe and North Africa, escalating tensions over political dominance and trade culminated in the Three Punic Wars.

The conflict's conclusion marked the beginning of the Neo-Punic period and Rome's occupation of Carthage. After the dissolution of the Carthaginian state, administrative regions were obligated to provide the Roman state with goods and natural resources. While Neo-Punic citizens were expected to embrace Roman customs and rule, the Romans allowed them to retain certain aspects of their own culture. By employing this strategic tolerance, the Romans were able to take advantage of the knowledge and skillsets of Punic craftspeople as well as the region's environment.

This political transition ushered in a period of environmental exploitation and industrial overproduction, and Kaufman et. al argue that archaeological evidence indicates Roman colonial dynamics of overproduction played a role in the degradation and eventual desertion of the city of Zita in the administrative region of Tripolitania.

Kaufman et. al, in "Quantifying Surplus and Sustainability in the Archaeological Record at the Carthaginian-Roman Urban Mound of Zita, Tripolitania," published in Current Anthropology, utilize cultural ecological theory to analyze a dataset collected from excavations at two zones at the urban mound. Structures characteristic of both empires—such as kilns, metallurgical workshops, a tophet, and a Roman forum—are present at the mound, making the site conducive to studying the transition from Carthaginian to Roman control.

Lead author of the study Brett Kaufman prepping excavations of an ancient industrial facility at Zita, a Roman city abandoned ~AD 200. Credit: Hans Barnard

Ceramic evidence collected from excavations and survey suggests that before residents began abandoning Zita in AD 200, the region underwent a period of significant industrialization and prosperity, followed by economic collapse. As indicated by stratigraphic analysis of an ecological core from one of the zones, Zita's economy was initially reliant on agricultural goods, like olive oil. During the Roman occupation, however, evidence indicates a shift toward producing and refining metals, like iron.

Map of the ancient remains at Zita, with areas of research indicated. Credit: Brett Kaufman

Focusing on correlations between the raw materials needed to facilitate industrial processes, the authors use archaeological modeling to discern whether production expanded beyond sustainable levels. To gauge Zita's ecological metabolism, the authors compare levels of olive timber to the amount of metallurgical byproduct, or slag, found at the site. Higher layers of the core contained the orange and black waste products, which were indicative of and could be used as a measure of metal production.

Since olive wood served as fuel for metallurgical work, Kaufman et. al designate olive pits as a proxy for measuring the degree of olive tree consumption required to support production. The authors detail an inverse correlation between olive pits and metal production. Data indicate a reduction in olive pits over time, which suggests olive wood was increasingly allotted for metallurgical purposes. Charcoal analysis points to the unsustainability of this economic shift. While olive wood was used predominantly, the authors assert that scarcity may have led to the utilization of alternative fuels in later years preceding urban collapse.Analysis finds defeat of Hannibal 'written in the coins of the Roman Empire'

More information: Brett Kaufman et al, Quantifying Surplus and Sustainability in the Archaeological Record at the Carthaginian-Roman Urban Mound of Zita, Tripolitania, Current Anthropology (2021). DOI: 10.1086/715275

Journal information: Current Anthropology 

Provided by University of Chicago 

Wind energy can help Earth blow back climate calamity 

by Blaine Friedlander, Cornell University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The answer to climate change—or at least part of it—is blowing in the wind, according to research published Aug. 28 in the journal Climate.

"Early action will reap dividends," said Rebecca Barthelmie, professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, in the College of Engineering. "In terms of averting the worst of climate change, our work confirms that accelerating wind-energy technology deployment is a logical and a cost-effective part of the required strategy. Waiting longer will mean more drastic action will be needed."

Barthelmie and Sara C. Pryor, professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, calculated that implementing advance wind energy scenarios could achieve a reduction in global warming atmospheric average temperatures of 0.3 to 0.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

To avert environmental disaster, other greenhouse gas reduction strategies will also need to be implemented, they said.

In early August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report said that climate change is rapid and intensifying, and that Earth's atmosphere could add 1.5 degrees C of average warming by 2040. To avoid further warming, the IPCC report said there must be transformational change.

"Our work shows that it is feasible for the United States to accelerate its deployment of wind energy," Barthelmie said, "to substantially reduce carbon dioxide emissions and that will make a real difference to the kind of warming that the world endures."

Global wind resources exceed current electricity demand, Pryor said, and the cost of energy from wind turbines has declined sharply. "It makes perfect sense to rapidly deploy wind energy as a key part of decarbonizing the electricity supply," she said.

The global wind energy industry has been growing. Since 2005, the total installed capacity of global wind energy shows a 14% annualized growth rate for Asia, Europe and North America. Global wind energy electricity production expanded from 104 terawatt-hours (one trillion watts for one hour) in 2005 to 1,273 terawatt-hours in 2018, the paper said.

In 2019, wind energy generated approximately 6.5% of 26,600 terawatt-hours of global electricity demand. Six countries are generating more than 20% of their demand, while the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain are close to achieving 20% of electricity demand with wind energy. China has reported about 5% of its electricity supply from wind energy.

The United States generates 8.4% of its electricity from wind, as of 2020, with six states (Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, California, Kansas and Illinois) containing more than half of wind energy capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Wind turbines are now deployed in 90 countries, Barthelmie said, generating about 7% of global electricity, and the expansion of installed capacity of wind energy continues.

"While the scale of anthropogenic climate change is daunting, our research illustrates that wind energy can substantially reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses at the national and global scale," Barthelmie said, "and measurably reduce the amount of temperature increase."

Sectors like solar and wind have become less expensive than fossil fuels. "So there really aren't any arguments anymore for not making this kind of change," Barthelmie said. "Both technically and economically, advanced deployment scenarios are feasible. It needs more political will.New global 'wind atlas' propels sustainable energy

More information: Rebecca J. Barthelmie et al, Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Wind Energy, Climate (2021). DOI: 10.3390/cli9090136

Provided by Cornell University