It's Worse Than We Thought: Food Miles Account For a Sickening Amount of Emissions

(Massimo Ravera/Getty Images)

JACINTA BOWLER
21 JUNE 2022

In many places around the world, grocery store produce aisles are a delightful array of colors, even in the depths of winter, when it feels like not much could grow outside.

But this year-round variety has a real cost on the planet, with a new study finding that 'food miles' account for 19 percent of all food emissions – three times more than previously thought.

Even worse, with only 12.5 percent of the world's population, high income countries generate 46 percent of the world's food-mile emissions.

"Our study estimates global food systems, due to transport, production, and land use change, contribute about 30 percent of total human-produced greenhouse gas emissions. So, food transport – at around six percent – is a sizable proportion of overall emissions," says the study's lead author, University of Sydney environmental modeling researcher Mengyu Li.

"Food transport emissions add up to nearly half of direct emissions from road vehicles."

You can imagine that modeling the entire food chain around the world is a difficult process, and most papers in the past have either looked at specific countries, or specific products (for example tomato ketchup or beef), but this isn't able to scale out to give a very good overall picture of what's happening.

"Although carbon emissions associated with food production are well documented," the team write in their new paper, "the carbon footprint of the global trade of food, accounting for the entire food supply chain, has not been comprehensively quantified."

Instead, the researchers used a framework called FoodLab to take in 74 countries, 37 economic sectors – like livestock, coal, and fruit and veg – and four transportation modes to create a model that incorporates the entire global supply-chain network.

The results are not exactly comforting. Food transport alone contributes 3 gigatonnes of emissions annually – equivalent to 19 percent of all food-related emissions, including land use.

The researchers also looked at what would happen if everyone just ate locally. The team worked out that it would reduce food miles emissions by 0.27 gigatonnes (0.24 gigatonnes for high-income countries alone!), and food production emissions by 0.11 gigatonnes.

Unfortunately, eating entirely locally is unrealistic, as some places aren't able to grow their own food, but it gives a good suggestion of where we can go from here.

"We tend to interpret information around us in simplistic terms, like 'meat is bad and vegetables are good' but we wanted a much more comprehensive picture," University of Sydney nutritional ecologist David Raubenheime told The Guardian.

"Our study shows that in addition to shifting towards a plant-based diet, eating locally is ideal, especially in affluent countries," he added.

The researchers suggest that in this case, consumers have the most chance of causing widespread change. So, for those of us in high income countries, individually choosing the local or seasonal option is one of the best ways forward.

This is particularly important with fruit and vegetables, as they need to be refrigerated to be sent around the world, creating even more emissions.

Sometimes grocery stores will include a country-of-origin label to assist in more local selections. It's even better if you know that the crop was grown in your state or area of the country.

The other issue is that many of us are now used to being able to buy avocados, asparagus, berries, and citrus at any time of year.

"One example is the habit of consumers in affluent countries demanding unseasonal foods year-round, which need to be transported from elsewhere," says Raubenheime.

"Eating local seasonal alternatives, as we have throughout most of the history of our species, will help provide a healthy planet for future generations."

You might be a little fuzzy with what fruits and vegetables are available in which seasons, so check out this link if you're in the US and want a refresher. There's other tips as well, like choosing frozen or canned vegetables when not in season, as these are able to be stored when they are most plentiful.

The research has been published in Nature Food.

Olive trees were first domesticated 7,000 years ago, study finds

Researchers: 'Earliest evidence for cultivation of a fruit tree'

Date: June 16, 2022

Source: Tel-Aviv University

Summary:

A new study has unraveled the earliest evidence for domestication of a fruit tree, researchers report. The researchers analyzed remnants of charcoal from the Chalcolithic site of Tel Zaf in the Jordan Valley and determined that they came from olive trees. Since the olive did not grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, this means that the inhabitants planted the tree intentionally about 7,000 years ago.

FULL STORY

A joint study by researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University unraveled the earliest evidence for domestication of a fruit tree. The researchers analyzed remnants of charcoal from the Chalcolithic site of Tel Zaf in the Jordan Valley and determined that they came from olive trees. Since the olive did not grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, this means that the inhabitants planted the tree intentionally about 7,000 years ago.

The groundbreaking study was led by Dr. Dafna Langgut of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology & Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University. The charcoal remnants were found in the archaeological excavation directed by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University. The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports from the publishers of Nature.

Dr. Langgut: "I am the head of the Laboratory of Archaeobotany & Ancient Environments, which specializes in microscopic identification of plant remains. Trees, even when burned down to charcoal, can be identified by their anatomic structure. Wood was the 'plastic'of the ancient world. It was used for construction, for making tools and furniture, and as a source of energy. That's why identifying tree remnants found at archaeological sites, such as charcoal from hearths, is a key to understanding what kinds of trees grew in the natural environment at the time, and when humans began to cultivate fruit trees."

In her lab, Dr. Langgut identified the charcoal from Tel Zaf as belonging to olive and fig trees. "Olive trees grow in the wild in the land of Israel, but they do not grow in the Jordan Valley," she says. "This means that someone brought them there intentionally -- took the knowledge and the plant itself to a place that is outside its natural habitat. In archaeobotany, this is considered indisputable proof of domestication, which means that we have here the earliest evidence of the olive's domestication anywhere in the world. I also identified many remnants of young fig branches. The fig tree did grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, but its branches had little value as either firewood or raw materials for tools or furniture, so people had no reason to gather large quantities and bring them to the village. Apparently, these fig branches resulted from pruning, a method still used today to increase the yield of fruit trees."

The tree remnants examined by Dr. Langgut were collected by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University, who headed the dig at Tel Zaf. Prof. Garfinkel: "Tel Zaf was a large prehistoric village in the middle Jordan Valley south of Beit She'an, inhabited between 7,200 and 6,700 years ago. Large houses with courtyards were discovered at the site, each with several granaries for storing crops. Storage capacities were up to 20 times greater than any single family's calorie consumption, so clearly these were caches for storing great wealth. The wealth of the village was manifested in the production of elaborate pottery, painted with remarkable skill. In addition, we found articles brought from afar: pottery of the Ubaid culture from Mesopotamia, obsidian from Anatolia, a copper awl from the Caucasus, and more."

Dr. Langgut and Prof. Garfinkel were not surprised to discover that the inhabitants of Tel Zaf were the first in the world to intentionally grow olive and fig groves, since growing fruit trees is evidence of luxury, and this site is known to have been exceptionally wealthy.

Dr. Langgut: "The domestication of fruit trees is a process that takes many years, and therefore befits a society of plenty, rather than one that struggles to survive. Trees give fruit only 3-4 years after being planted. Since groves of fruit trees require a substantial initial investment, and then live on for a long time, they have great economic and social significance in terms of owning land and bequeathing it to future generations -- procedures suggesting the beginnings of a complex society. Moreover, it's quite possible that the residents of Tel Zaf traded in products derived from the fruit trees, such as olives, olive oil, and dried figs, which have a long shelf life. Such products may have enabled long-distance trade that led to the accumulation of material wealth, and possibly even taxation -- initial steps in turning the locals into a society with a socio-economic hierarchy supported by an administrative system."

Dr. Langgut concludes: "At the Tel Zaf archaeological site we found the first evidence in the world for the domestication of fruit trees, alongside some of the earliest stamps -- suggesting the beginnings of administrative procedures. As a whole, the findings indicate wealth, and early steps toward the formation of a complex multilevel society, with the class of farmers supplemented by classes of clerks and merchants."

Journal Reference:Dafna Langgut, Yosef Garfinkel. 7000-year-old evidence of fruit tree cultivation in the Jordan Valley, Israel. Scientific Reports, 2022; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-10743-6

Researchers reconstruct the genome of centuries-old E. coli using fragments extracted from an Italian mummy

Date:June 16, 2022

Source:McMaster University

Summary: 

Researchers have identified and reconstructed the first ancient genome of E. coli, using fragments extracted from the gallstone of a 16th century mummy.

FULL STORY

An international team led by researchers at McMaster University, working in collaboration with the University of Paris Cité, has identified and reconstructed the first ancient genome of E. coli, using fragments extracted from the gallstone of a 16th century mummy.

The discovery is published online today in the journal Communications Biology.

E. coli is a major public health concern, causing significant death and morbidity, yet is not a source of pandemics. It is known as a commensal, a bacteria that resides within us and can act asan opportunistic pathogen infecting its host during periods of stress, underlying disease or immunodeficiency.

Its full evolutionary history remains a mystery, including when it acquired novel genes and antibiotic resistance, say researchers.

Unlike well-documented pandemics such as the Black Death, which lingered for centuries and killed as many as 200 million people worldwide, there are no historical records of deaths caused by commensals such as E. coli, though the impact on human health and mortality was likely tremendous.

"A strict focus on pandemic-causing pathogens as the sole narrative of mass mortality in our past misses the large burden that stems from opportunistic commmensals driven by the stress of lives lived," says evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, who is director of McMaster's Ancient DNA Centre and a principal investigator at the university's Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.

Modern E. coli iscommonly found in the intestines of healthy people and animals. While most forms are harmless, some strains are responsible for serious, sometimes fatal food poisoning outbreaks and bloodstream infections. The hardy and adaptable bacterium is recognized as especially resistant to treatment.

Having the genome of a 400-year-old ancestor to the modern bacterium provides researchers a point of comparison for studying how it has evolved and adapted since that time.

The mummified remains used for the new study come from a group of Italian nobles whose well-preserved bodies were recovered from the Abbey of Saint Domenico Maggiore in Naples in 1983.

For the study, the researchers conducted a detailed analysis of one of the individuals, Giovani d'Avalos. A Neapolitan noble from the Renaissance period, he was 48 when he died in 1586, and thought to have suffered from chronic inflammation of the gallbladder due to gallstones.

"When we were examining these remains, there was no evidence to say this man had E. coli. Unlike an infection like smallpox, there are no physiological indicators. No one knew what it was," explains lead author of the study, George Long, a graduate student of bioinformatics at McMaster who conducted the analysis with co-lead author Jennifer Klunk, a former graduate student in the university's Department of Anthropology.

The technological feat is particularly remarkable because E. coli is both complex and ubiquitous, living not only in the soil but also in our own microbiomes. Researchers had to meticulously isolate fragments of the target bacterium, which had been degraded by environmental contamination from many sources. They used the recovered material to reconstruct the genome.

"It was so stirring to be able to type this ancient E. coli and find that while unique it fell within a phylogenetic lineage characteristic of human commensals that is today still causing gallstones," says Erick Denamur, the leader of the French team that was involved in the strain characterisation.

"We were able to identify what was an opportunistic pathogen, dig down to the functions of the genome, and to provide guidelines to aid researchers who may be exploring other, hidden pathogens," says Long.

The work was done in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pisa and the Université Paris Cité /French Institute of Medical Research (INSERM) and is funded by the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research.

Journal Reference:George S. Long, Jennifer Klunk, Ana T. Duggan, Madeline Tapson, Valentina Giuffra, Lavinia Gazzè, Antonio Fornaciari, Sebastian Duchene, Gino Fornaciari, Olivier Clermont, Erick Denamur, G. Brian Golding, Hendrik Poinar. A 16th century Escherichia coli draft genome associated with an opportunistic bile infection. Communications Biology, 2022; 5 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03527-1

Once seen as fleeting, a new solar tech proves its lasting power

30-year perovskite solar cells and the new approach to testing them for the long  haul

Date:June 16, 2022Source:Princeton University, Engineering School

Summary:

Researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. The team projects their device can perform above industry standards for around 30 years, far more than the 20 years used as a threshold for viability for solar cells.

FULL STORY

Princeton Engineering researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. The team projects their device can perform above industry standards for around 30 years, far more than the 20 years used as a threshold for viability for solar cells.

The device is not only highly durable, it also meets common efficiency standards. It is the first of its kind to rival the performance of silicon-based cells, which have dominated the market since their introduction in 1954.

Perovskites are semiconductors with a special crystal structure that makes them well suited for solar cell technology. They can be manufactured at room temperature, using much less energy than silicon, making them cheaper and more sustainable to produce. And whereas silicon is stiff and opaque, perovskites can be made flexible and transparent, extending solar power well beyond the iconic panels that populate hillsides and rooftops across America.

But unlike silicon, perovskites are notoriously fragile. Early perovskite solar cells (PSC), created between 2009 and 2012, lasted only minutes. The projected lifetime of the new device represents a five-fold increase over the previous record, set by a lower efficiency PSC in 2017. (That device operated under continuous illumination at room temperature for one year. The new device would operate for five years under similar lab conditions.)

The Princeton team, led by Lynn Loo, the Theodora D. '78 and William H. Walton III '74 Professor in Engineering, revealed their new device and their new method for testing such devices in a paper published June 16 in Science.

Loo said the record-setting design has highlighted the durable potential of PSCs, especially as a way to push solar cell technology beyond the limits of silicon. But she also pointed past the headline result to her team's new accelerated aging technique as the work's deeper significance.

"We might have the record today," she said, "but someone else is going to come along with a better record tomorrow. The really exciting thing is that we now have a way to test these devices and know how they will perform in the long term."

Due to perovskites' well-known frailty, long-term testing hasn't been much of a concern until now. But as the devices get better and last longer, testing one design against another will become crucial in rolling out durable, consumer-friendly technologies.

"This paper is likely going to be a prototype for anyone looking to analyze performance at the intersection of efficiency and stability," said Joseph Berry, a senior fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who specializes in the physics of solar cells and who was not involved in this study. "By producing a prototype to study stability, and showing what can be extrapolated [through accelerated testing], it's doing the work everyone wants to see before we start field testing at scale. It allows you to project in a way that's really impressive."

While efficiency has accelerated at a remarkable pace over the past decade, Berry said, the stability of these devices has improved more slowly. For them to become widespread and rolled out by industry, testing will need to become more sophisticated. That's where Loo's accelerated aging process comes in.

"These kinds of tests are going to be increasingly important," Loo said. "You can make the most efficient solar cells, but it won't matter if they aren't stable."

How they got here

Early in 2020, Loo's team was working on various device architectures that would maintain relatively strong efficiency -- converting enough sunlight to electric power to make them valuable -- and survive the onslaught of heat, light and humidity that bombard a solar cell during its lifetime.

Xiaoming Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Loo's lab, had been working on a number of designs with colleagues. The efforts layered different materials in order to optimize light absorption while protecting the most fragile areas from exposure. They developed an ultra-thin capping layer between two crucial components: the absorbing perovskite layer and a charge-carrying layer made from cupric salt and other substances. The goal was to keep the perovskite semiconductor from burning out in a matter of weeks or months, the norm at that time.

It's hard to comprehend how thin this capping layer is. Scientists use the term 2D to describe it, meaning two dimensions, as in something that has no thickness at all. In reality, it's merely a few atoms thick -- more than a million times smaller than the smallest thing a human eye can see. While the idea of a 2D capping layer isn't new, it is still considered a promising, emerging technique. Scientists at NREL have shown that 2D layers can greatly improve long-haul performance, but no one had developed a device that pushed perovskites anywhere close to the commercial threshold of a 20-year lifetime.

Zhao and his colleagues went through scores of permutations of these designs, shifting minute details in the geometry, varying the number of layers, and trying out dozens of material combinations. Each design went into the light box, where they could irradiate the sensitive devices in relentless bright light and measure their drop in performance over time.

In the fall of that year, as the first wave of the pandemic subsided and researchers to returned to their labs to tend to their experiments in carefully coordinated shifts, Zhao noticed something odd in the data. One set of the devices still seemed to be operating near its peak efficiency.

"There was basically zero drop after nearly half a year," he said.

That's when he realized he needed a way to stress test his device faster than his real-time experiment allowed.

"The lifetime we want is about 30 years, but you can't take 30 years to test your device," Zhao said. "So we need some way to predict this lifetime within a reasonable timeframe. That's why this accelerated aging is very important."

The new testing method speeds up the aging process by illuminating the device while blasting it with heat. This process speeds up what would happen naturally over years of regular exposure. The researchers chose four aging temperatures and measured results across these four different data streams, from the baseline temperature of a typical summer day to an extreme of 230 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than the boiling point of water.

They then extrapolated from the combined data and forecast the device's performance at room temperature over tens of thousands of hours of continuous illumination. The results showed a device that would perform above 80 percent of its peak efficiency under continuous illumination for at least five years at an average temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Using standard conversion metrics, Loo said that's the lab equivalent of 30 years of outdoor operation in an area like Princeton, NJ.

Berry of NREL concurred. "It's very credible," he said. "Some people are still going to want to see it play out. But this is much more credible science than a lot of other attempts at forecasting."

The Michael Jordan of solar cells

Perovskite solar cells were pioneered in 2006, with the first published devices following in 2009. Some of the earliest devices lasted only seconds. Others minutes. In the 2010s the device lifetimes grew to days and weeks and finally months. Then in 2017, a group from Switzerland published a groundbreaking paper on a PSC that lasted for one full year of continuous illumination.

Meanwhile, the efficiency of these devices has skyrocketed over the same period. While the first PSC showed a power-conversion efficiency of less than 4 percent, researchers boosted that metric nearly tenfold in as many years. It was the fastest improvement scientists had seen in any class of renewable-energy technology to date.

So why the push for perovskites? Berry said a combination of recent advances make them uniquely desirable: newly high efficiencies, an extraordinary "tunability" that allows scientists to make highly specific applications, the ability to manufacture them locally with low energy inputs, and now a credible forecast of extended life coupled with a sophisticated aging process to test a wide array of designs.

Loo said it's not that PSCs will replace silicon devices so much that the new technology will complement the old, making solar panels even cheaper, more efficient and more durable than they are now, and expanding solar energy into untold new areas of modern life. For example, her group recently demonstrated a completely transparent perovskite film (having different chemistry) that can turn windows into energy producing devices without changing their appearance. Other groups have found ways to print photovoltaic inks using perovskites, allowing formfactors scientists are only now dreaming up.

But the main advantage in the long run, according to both Berry and Loo: Perovskites can be manufactured at room temperature, whereas silicon is forged at around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. That energy has to come from somewhere, and at the moment that means burning a lot of fossil fuels.

Berry added this: Because scientists can tune perovskite properties easily and broadly, they allow disparate platforms to work smoothly together. That could be key in wedding silicon with emerging platforms such as thin-film and organic photovoltaics, which have also made great progress in recent years.

"It's sort of like Michael Jordan on the basketball court," he said. "Great on its own, but it also makes all the other players better."


Journal Reference:Xiaoming Zhao, Tianran Liu, Quinn C. Burlingame, Tianjun Liu, Rudolph Holley, Guangming Cheng, Nan Yao, Feng Gao, Yueh-Lin Loo. Accelerated aging of all-inorganic, interface-stabilized perovskite solar cells. Science, 2022; DOI: 10.1126/science.abn5679

Engineers create single-step, all-in-one 3D printing method to make robotic materials

Advance shows promise for 'meta-bots' designed to deliver drugs or aid rescue missions

Date:June 16, 2022

Source:University of California - Los Angeles

Summary:

Engineers have developed a new design strategy and 3D printing technique to build robots in one single step. The breakthrough enabled the entire mechanical and electronic systems needed to operate a robot to be manufactured all at once by a new type of 3D printing process for engineered active materials with multiple functions (also known as metamaterials). Once 3D printed, a 'meta-bot' will be capable of propulsion, movement, sensing and decision-making.

A team of UCLA engineers and their colleagues have developed a new design strategy and 3D printing technique to build robots in one single step.

A study that outlined the advance, along with the construction and demonstration of an assortment of tiny robots that walk, maneuver and jump, was published in Science.

The breakthrough enabled the entire mechanical and electronic systems needed to operate a robot to be manufactured all at once by a new type of 3D printing process for engineered active materials with multiple functions (also known as metamaterials). Once 3D printed, a "meta-bot" will be capable of propulsion, movement, sensing and decision-making.

The printed metamaterials consist of an internal network of sensory, moving and structural elements and can move by themselves following programmed commands. With the internal network of moving and sensing already in place, the only external component needed is a small battery to power the robot.

"We envision that this design and printing methodology of smart robotic materials will help realize a class of autonomous materials that could replace the current complex assembly process for making a robot," said the study's principal investigator Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. "With complex motions, multiple modes of sensing and programmable decision-making abilities all tightly integrated, it's similar to a biological system with the nerves, bones and tendons working in tandem to execute controlled motions."

The team demonstrated the integration with an on-board battery and controller for the fully autonomous operation of the 3D printed robots -- each at the size of a finger nail. According to Zheng, who is also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, the methodology could lead to new designs for biomedical robots, such as self-steering endoscopes or tiny swimming robots, which can emit ultrasounds and navigate themselves near blood vessels to deliver drug doses at specific target sites inside the body.

These "meta-bots" can also explore hazardous environments. In a collapsed building, for example, a swarm of such tiny robots armed with integrated sensing parts could quickly access confined spaces, assess threat levels and help rescue efforts by finding people trapped in the rubble.

Most robots, no matter their size, are typically built in a series of complex manufacturing steps that integrate the limbs, electronic and active components. The process results in heavier weights, bulkier volumes and reduced force output compared to robots that could be built using this new method.

The key in the UCLA-led, all-in-one method is the design and printing of piezoelectric metamaterials -- a class of intricate lattice materials that can change shape and move in response to an electric field or create electrical charge as a result of physical forces.

The use of active materials that can translate electricity to motions is not new. However, these materials generally have limits in their range of motion and distance of travel. They also need to be connected to gearbox-like transmission systems in order to achieve desired motions.

By contrast, the UCLA-developed robotic materials -- each the size of a penny -- are composed of intricate piezoelectric and structural elements that are designed to bend, flex, twist, rotate, expand or contract at high speeds.

The team also presented a methodology to design these robotic materials so users could make their own models and print the materials into a robot directly.

"This allows actuating elements to be arranged precisely throughout the robot for fast, complex and extended movements on various types of terrain," said the study's lead author Huachen Cui, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in Zheng's Additive Manufacturing and Metamaterials Laboratory. "With the two-way piezoelectric effect, the robotic materials can also self-sense their contortions, detect obstacles via echoes and ultrasound emissions, as well as respond to external stimuli through a feedback control loop that determines how the robots move, how fast they move and toward which target they move."

Using the technique, the team built and demonstrated three "meta-bots" with different capabilities. One robot can navigate around S-shaped corners and randomly placed obstacles, another can escape in response to a contact impact, while the third robot could walk over rough terrain and even make small jumps.

Other UCLA authors of the study are graduate students Desheng Yao, Ryan Hensleigh, Zhenpeng Xu and Haotian Lu; postdoctoral scholar Ariel Calderon; development engineering associate Zhen Wang. Additional authors are Sheyda Davaria, a research associate at Virginia Tech; Patrick Mercier, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego; and Pablo Tarazaga, a professor of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University.

The research was supported by a Young Faculty Award and a Director's Fellowship Award from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with additional funding from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

The advance incorporates 3D printing techniques previously developed by Zheng and Hensleigh while both were researchers at Virginia Tech, which holds the patent. The researchers plan to file an additional patent through the UCLA Technology Development Group for the new methodology developed at UCLA.


Related Multimedia:3D-printed "meta-bot"

Journal Reference:Huachen Cui, Desheng Yao, Ryan Hensleigh, Haotian Lu, Ariel Calderon, Zhenpeng Xu, Sheyda Davaria, Zhen Wang, Patrick Mercier, Pablo Tarazaga, Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng. Design and printing of proprioceptive three-dimensional architected robotic metamaterials. Science, 2022; 376 (6599): 1287 DOI: 10.1126/science.abn0090

Missing for Decades: Researchers Identify Over 500 Species As “Lost”

By SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY JUNE 19, 2022

Researchers have reviewed the data of over 32,000 species and identified 562 of those species as “lost.” 75 of these 562 lost species are categorized as “possibly extinct.”

A new study has identified 562 lost species

An international study provides the first worldwide assessment of all terrestrial vertebrate species that have not been declared extinct and finds more than 500 ‘lost’ species—those that have not been observed by anybody in more than 50 years.

Researchers examined data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List) of 32,802 species and identified 562 lost species. On May 16th, 2022, their results were published in the journal Animal Conservation.

Black-browed babbler, a songbird species endemic to Borneo that went unrecorded for 172 years before being rediscovered in 2020. Credit: Panji Akbar

Extinct is defined by the IUCN Red List as “when there is no reasonable doubt the last individual of a species has died,” which can be hard to prove. According to Arne Mooers, a biodiversity professor at Simon Fraser University and research co-author, the Red List classifies 75 of the 562 lost species as ‘probably extinct.’ The presence of numerous species with unknown conservation status may become more problematic if the extinction crisis worsens and more species disappear, according to the researchers.

Since 1500, 311 terrestrial vertebrate species have been declared extinct, indicating that 80% more species are deemed lost than are pronounced extinct

Reptiles led the way with 257 species considered lost, followed by 137 species of amphibians, 130 species of mammals, and 38 species of birds. Most of these lost animals were last seen in megadiverse countries such as Indonesia (69 species), Mexico (33 species), and Brazil (29 species).

Miles’ robber frog (Craugastor milesi), is endemic to Honduras and thought to be extinct but was rediscovered in 2008. Credit: Tom Brown

While not surprising, this concentration is important, according to researchers. “The fact most of these lost species are found in megadiverse tropical countries is worrying, given such countries are expected to experience the highest numbers of extinctions in the coming decades,” says study lead author Tom Martin from the UK’s Paignton Zoo.

Mooers, who anchored the study, says: “While theoretical estimates of ongoing ‘extinction rates’ are fine and good, looking hard for actual species seems better.”

Gareth Bennett, an SFU undergraduate student who did much of the data combing, adds: “We hope this simple study will help make these lost species a focus in future searches.”

The authors suggest that future survey efforts concentrate on the identified ‘hotspots’ where the existence of many particular species remains in question. More funding would be needed to support such hotspot-targeted fieldwork to either rediscover lost species or to remove the reasonable doubt that a particular lost species does, in fact, still exist.

Reference: “‘Lost’ taxa and their conservation implications” by T. E. Martin, G. C. Bennett, A. Fairbairn and A. O. Mooers, 16 May 2022, Animal Conservation.
DOI: 10.1111/acv.12788

SwRI scientists identify a possible source for Charon’s red cap

Research combined spacecraft data with new lab experiments, models of Pluto’s largest moon

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE SCIENTISTS COMBINED DATA FROM NASA’S NEW HORIZONS MISSION WITH NOVEL LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS AND EXOSPHERIC MODELING TO REVEAL THE LIKELY COMPOSITION OF THE RED CAP ON PLUTO’S MOON CHARON AND HOW IT MAY HAVE FORMED. NEW FINDINGS SUGGEST DRASTIC SEASONAL SURGES IN CHARON’S THIN ATMOSPHERE COMBINED WITH LIGHT BREAKING DOWN THE CONDENSING METHANE FROST MAY BE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF CHARON’S RED POLAR ZONES. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA / JOHNS HOPKINS APL / SWRI

SAN ANTONIO — June 21, 2022 — Southwest Research Institute scientists combined data from NASA’s New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modeling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto’s moon Charon and how it may have formed. This first-ever description of Charon’s dynamic methane atmosphere using new experimental data provides a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this moon’s red spot as described in two recent papers.

“Prior to New Horizons, the best Hubble images of Pluto revealed only a fuzzy blob of reflected light,” said SwRI’s Randy Gladstone, a member of the New Horizons science team. “In addition to all the fascinating features discovered on Pluto’s surface, the flyby revealed an unusual feature on Charon, a surprising red cap centered on its north pole.”

Soon after the 2015 encounter, New Horizons scientists proposed that a reddish “tholin-like” material at Charon’s pole could be synthesized by ultraviolet light breaking down methane molecules. These are captured after escaping from Pluto and then frozen onto the moon’s polar regions during their long winter nights. Tholins are sticky organic residues formed by chemical reactions powered by light, in this case the Lyman-alpha ultraviolet glow scattered by interplanetary hydrogen molecules.

“Our findings indicate that drastic seasonal surges in Charon’s thin atmosphere as well as light breaking down the condensing methane frost are key to understanding the origins of Charon’s red polar zone,” said SwRI’s Dr. Ujjwal Raut, lead author of a paper titled “Charon’s Refractory Factory” in the journal Science Advances. “This is one of the most illustrative and stark examples of surface-atmospheric interactions so far observed at a planetary body.”

The team realistically replicated Charon surface conditions at SwRI’s new Center for Laboratory Astrophysics and Space Science Experiments (CLASSE) to measure the composition and color of hydrocarbons produced on Charon’s winter hemisphere as methane freezes beneath the Lyman-alpha glow. The team fed the measurements into a new atmospheric model of Charon to show methane breaking down into residue on Charon’s north polar spot.

“Our team’s novel ‘dynamic photolysis’ experiments provided new limits on the contribution of interplanetary Lyman-alpha to the synthesis of Charon’s red material,” Raut said. “Our experiment condensed methane in an ultra-high vacuum chamber under exposure to Lyman-alpha photons to replicate with high fidelity the conditions at Charon’s poles.”

SwRI scientists also developed a new computer simulation to model Charon’s thin methane atmosphere.

“The model points to ‘explosive’ seasonal pulsations in Charon’s atmosphere due to extreme shifts in conditions over Pluto’s long journey around the Sun,” said Dr. Ben Teolis, lead author of a related paper titled “Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot” in Geophysical Research Letters.

The team input the results from SwRI’s ultra-realistic experiments into the atmospheric model to estimate the distribution of complex hydrocarbons emerging from methane decomposition under the influence of ultraviolet light. The model has polar zones primarily generating ethane, a colorless material that does not contribute to a reddish color.

“We think ionizing radiation from the solar wind decomposes the Lyman-alpha-cooked polar frost to synthesize increasingly complex, redder materials responsible for the unique albedo on this enigmatic moon,” Raut said. “Ethane is less volatile than methane and stays frozen to Charon’s surface long after spring sunrise. Exposure to the solar wind may convert ethane into persistent reddish surface deposits contributing to Charon’s red cap.”

“The team is set to investigate the role of solar wind in the formation of the red pole,” said SwRI’s Dr. Josh Kammer, who secured continued support from NASA’s New Frontier Data Analysis Program.

“Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot” in Geophysical Research Letters can be found at https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097580.

“Charon’s refractory factory” article in ScienceAdvances can be found at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq5701.

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Southwest Research Institute directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern, and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.

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JOURNAL

Geophysical Research Letters

DOI

10.1029/2021GL097580 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

“Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot”

75% of teens aren’t getting recommended daily exercise

New study suggests supportive school environment is linked to higher physical activity levels

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Three out of every four teens aren’t getting enough exercise, and this lack is even more pronounced among female students.

But new research from the University of Georgia suggests improving a school’s climate can increase physical activity among adolescents.

School environments play a critical role in helping children develop healthy behaviors, like creating healthy eating habits, said lead study author Janani R. Thapa. And the same goes for physical activity.

“The length of recess, physical facilities and social environments at schools have been found to affect physical activity among students,” said Thapa, an associate professor of health policy and management at UGA’s College of Public Health.

The state of Georgia has implemented policies and programs to boost physical activity in K-12 schools. Thapa has been one of the lead evaluators of these programs.

“Over time, the state has observed declining levels of physical activity among all adolescents, but the rate is higher among female middle and high school students,” she said.

Thapa suspected that school climate could play an important role in determining how comfortable students feel participating in school sports or other physical activity. School climate includes factors such as social support, safety and bullying.

“We do not know much about the role of school climate on physical activity,” said Thapa. “There must have been barriers that were faced by certain groups of students. Hence, we wanted to investigate the difference by gender.”

Using data from a statewide survey of over 360,000 Georgia high school students that included questions about physical activity levels and school climate, Thapa and her co-authors were able to test that relationship.

The data included eight characteristics of climate: school connectedness, peer social support, adult social support, cultural acceptance, physical environment, school safety, peer victimization (bullying) and school support environment.

Overall, female students reported less physical activity than their male counterparts, only 35% were active compared to 57% of males. And physical activity declined steadily from ninth grade to 12th grade for both genders.

However, students of both genders were more physically active when school climate was perceived to be positive across most measures.

One thing that stood out was the influence of bullying. Female students who reported being bullied were more likely to be physically active, while male students who reported being bullied were less likely to be physically active.

Bullying was the only measure of school climate that differed for male and female students. This disparity could be explained, said the authors, by the different norms about exercise and masculine versus feminine ideals.

“For example, female students who are active in sports and physically active may not fit the gender norm and hence may face bullying,” said Thapa.

These findings suggest that K-12 schools that want to promote participation in physical activity should consider how to improve students’ sense of safety at school and bolster peer and adult support of exercise.

Co-authors include Justin Ingels, Kiran Thapa and Kathryn Chiang with UGA’s College of Public Health and Isha Metzger with UGA’s Department of Psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

The study, “School climate-related determinants of physical activity among high school girls and boys,” published in the Journal of Adolescence.

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DOI

10.1002/jad.12052 

ARTICLE TITLE

School climate-related determinants of physical activity among high school girls and boys

Vitamins, supplements are a ‘waste of money’ for most Americans

There’s no ‘magic set of pills to keep you healthy.’ Diet and exercise are key

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

• New guidelines say ‘insufficient’ evidence to support use of multivitamins or dietary supplements to prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer in healthy, non-pregnant adults
• Pregnant people, those becoming pregnant still need essential vitamins (iron, folic acid)
• More than half of U.S. adults take dietary supplements, a multi-billion-dollar industry

CHICAGO --- Drawn to the allure of multivitamins and dietary supplements filling nutritional gaps in their diet, people in the U.S. in 2021 spent close to $50 billion on vitamins and dietary supplements. 

But Northwestern Medicine scientists say for non-pregnant, otherwise healthy Americans, vitamins are a waste of money because there isn’t enough evidence they help prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer.

“Patients ask all the time, ‘What supplements should I be taking?’ They’re wasting money and focus thinking there has to be a magic set of pills that will keep them healthy when we should all be following the evidence-based practices of eating healthy and exercising,” said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine in the department of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Linder and fellow Northwestern Medicine scientists wrote an editorial that will be published June 21 in JAMA that supports new recommendations from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent panel of national experts that frequently makes evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services. 

Based on a systematic review of 84 studies, the USPSTF’s new guidelines state there was “insufficient evidence” that taking multivitamins, paired supplements or single supplements can help prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer in otherwise healthy, non-pregnant adults. 

“The task force is not saying ‘don’t take multivitamins,’ but there’s this idea that if these were really good for you, we’d know by now,” Linder said. 

The task force is specifically recommending against taking beta-carotene supplements because of a possible increased risk of lung cancer, and is recommending against taking vitamin E supplements because it has no net benefit in reducing mortality, cardiovascular disease or cancer.

“The harm is that talking with patients about supplements during the very limited time we get to see them, we’re missing out on counseling about how to really reduce cardiovascular risks, like through exercise or smoking cessation,” Linder said.

More than half of Americans take vitamins. Why?

More than half of U.S. adults take dietary supplements, and use of supplements is projected to increase, Linder and his colleagues wrote in the JAMA editorial. 

Eating fruits and vegetables is associated with decreased cardiovascular disease and cancer risk, they said, so it is reasonable to think key vitamins and minerals could be extracted from fruits and vegetables, packaged into a pill, and save people the trouble and expense of maintaining a balanced diet. But, they explain, whole fruits and vegetables contain a mixture of vitamins, phytochemicals, fiber and other nutrients that probably act synergistically to deliver health benefits. Micronutrients in isolation may act differently in the body than when naturally packaged with a host of other dietary components.

Linder noted individuals who have a vitamin deficiency can still benefit from taking dietary supplements, such as calcium and vitamin D, which have been shown to prevent fractures and maybe falls in older adults. 

New guidelines do not apply to pregnant people

The new USPSTF guidelines do not apply to people who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, said JAMA editorial co-author Dr. Natalie Cameron, an instructor of general internal medicine at Feinberg. 

“Pregnant individuals should keep in mind that these guidelines don’t apply to them,” said Cameron, who also is a Northwestern Medicine physician. “Certain vitamins, such as folic acid, are essential for pregnant women to support healthy fetal development. The most common way to meet these needs is to take a prenatal vitamin. More data is needed to understand how specific vitamin supplementation may modify risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and cardiovascular complications during pregnancy.” 

Additionally, recent research from Northwestern has found most women in the U.S. have poor heart health prior to becoming pregnant. Cameron said that, in addition to discussing vitamin supplementation, working with patients to optimize cardiovascular health prior to pregnancy is an important component of prenatal care. 

Eating healthy, exercising is ‘easier said than done’ 

Dr. Jenny Jia, a co-author of the JAMA editorial who studies the prevention of chronic diseases in low-income families through lifestyle interventions, said healthy eating can be a challenge when the U.S. industrialized food system does not prioritize health. 

“To adopt a healthy diet and exercise more, that’s easier said than done, especially among lower-income Americans,” said Jia, an instructor of general internal medicine at Feinberg and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “Healthy food is expensive, and people don’t always have the means to find environments to exercise—maybe it’s unsafe outdoors or they can’t afford a facility. So, what can we do to try to make it easier and help support healthier decisions?”

Over the past few years, Jia has been working with charitable food pantries and banks that supply free groceries to people who are in need to try to help clients pick healthier choices from the food pantries as well as educate those who donate to provide healthier options or money. 

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JOURNAL

JAMA

ARTICLE TITLE

Multivitamins and Supplements—Benign Preventionor Potentially Harmful Distraction?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Jun-2022

1,700-year-old Korean genomes show genetic heterogeneity in Three Kingdoms period Gaya

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

 

IMAGE: BURIAL OF AKG_3420 FROM YU-HARI, IT CORRESPONDS TO A CHILD FROM THE KOREAN TK PERIOD. (© JOHN BAHK) view more 

CREDIT: © JOHN BAHK

An international team led by The University of Vienna and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in collaboration with the National Museum of Korea has successfully sequenced and studied the whole genome of eight 1,700-year-old individuals dated to the Three Kingdoms period of Korea (approx. 57 BC-668 AD). The first published genomes from this period in Korea and bring key information for the understanding of Korean population history. The Team has been led by Pere Gelabert and Prof. Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna together with Prof. Jong Bhak and Asta Blazyte from the UNIST and Prof. Kidong Bae from the National Museum of Korea.

The study, published in Current Biology, showed that ancient Koreans from Gaya confederacy were more diverse than the present-day Korean population. The eight ancient skeletal remains used for DNA extraction and bioinformatic analyses came from the Daesung-dong tumuli, the iconic funerary complex of the Gaya confederacy, and from Yuha-ri shell mound; both archeological sites located in Gimhae, South Korea. Some of the eight studied individuals were identified as tomb owners, others as human sacrifices, and one, a child, was buried in a shell mound, a typical funerary monument of Southeast Asia that is not related to privileged individuals.  All burial sites are typical for the Gaya region funerary practices in AD 300-500. “The individual genetic differences are not correlated to the grave typology, indicating that the social status in the Three Kingdoms Korea would not be related to genetic ancestry. We have observed that there is no clear genetic difference between the grave owners and the human sacrifices” explains Anthropologist Pere Gelabert.

CAPTION

General perspective of Daeseong Dong Tumulti in Gimhae. This funerary complex dates to the Three Kingdoms period of Korea and more than 200 graves have been documented. (© John Bahk)

CREDIT

© John Bah

Six out of eight ancient individuals were genetically closer to modern Koreans, modern Japanese, Kofun Japanese (Kofun genomes are contemporaneous with individuals from our study), and Neolithic Koreans. The genomes of the remaining two were slightly closer to modern Japanese and ancient Japanese Jomons. “This means that in the past, the Korean peninsula showed more genetic diversity than in our times” says Gelabert.

Modern Koreans, on the other hand, appear to have lost this Jomon-related genetic component owing to a relative genetic isolation that followed the Three Kingdoms period. These results support a well-documented post- Three Kingdoms period Korean history, suggesting that Koreans of that time were intermixing within the peninsula, and their genetic differences were diminishing until the Korean population became homogeneous as we know it today.

CAPTION

Facial reconstruction of four Ancient Korean individuals based on Ancient DNA data. (© Current Biology)

CREDIT

© Current Biology

A detailed DNA-based facial feature prediction for the eight genomes showed that the Three Kingdoms period Koreans resembled modern Koreans. This is the first instance of publishing an ancient individuals’ face prediction using DNA-only in a scientific journal. This approach may create a precedent for other ancient genome studies to predict facial features when the skulls are extremely degraded. 

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.004 

ARTICLE TITLE

Northern Asian and Jomon-related genetic structure in Three Kingdoms period Gimhae, Korea

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Jun-2022