Strategies beyond recycling to bolster circular economy for solar and battery technologies

Date: June 28, 2022

Source: DOE/National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Summary:

In a new comprehensive literature review, researchers have discovered that alternatives to recycling may have untapped potential to build an effective circular economy for solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery technologies. These alternative strategies, such as reducing the use of virgin materials in manufacturing, reusing for new applications, and extending product life spans, may provide new paths to building sustainable product life cycles.

FULL STORY

In a new comprehensive literature review, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) discovered that alternatives to recycling may have untapped potential to build an effective circular economy for solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery technologies. These alternative strategies, such as reducing the use of virgin materials in manufacturing, reusing for new applications, and extending product life spans, may provide new paths to building sustainable product life cycles.

These insights come after an analysis of more than 3,000 scientific publications exploring the life cycle of the most common PV and lithium-ion battery technologies, including starting materials, environmental impacts, and end-of-life options. The NREL researchers examined 10 possible pathways toward a circular economy. The findings highlight key insights, gaps, and opportunities for research and implementation of a circular economy for PV and battery technologies, including strategies that are currently being underutilized.

Demand for PV panels and lithium-ion batteries is expected to increase as the United States shifts away from fossil fuels and deploys more clean energy. Creating a robust circular economy for these technologies could mitigate demand for starting materials and reduce waste and environmental impacts. Circular economy strategies also have the potential to create clean energy jobs and address environmental justice concerns.

The researchers noted the emphasis on recycling may overlook the challenges and opportunities that research into other strategies could reveal. "If you can keep them as a working product for longer, that's better than deconstructing it all the way down to the elements that occurs during recycling," said Garvin Heath, senior environmental scientist and energy analyst and Distinguished Member of Research Staff at NREL. "And when a product does reach the end of its life, recycling is not the only option."

The deconstruction process takes more energy and generates more associated greenhouse gas emissions to then build into another product than keeping the first product in use longer, he said. Heath, along with his NREL colleague Dwarakanath Ravikumar, are lead authors of the 52nd annual Critical Review of the Air & Waste Management Association, titled "A Critical Review of Circular Economy for Lithium-Ion Batteries and Photovoltaic Modules -- Status, Challenges, and Opportunities," which appears in the June edition of the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

Their co-authors, also from NREL, are Brianna Hansen and Elaine Kupets.

"People often summarize the product life cycle as 'take, make, waste.'" Heath said. "Recycling has received a lot of attention because it addresses the waste part, but there are ways to support a circular economy in the take part and the make part, too."

Recycling to recover the materials used in the technologies is preferable to discarding them in a landfill, he said, "but if we can think about designing a product to use less materials to begin with, or less hazardous materials, that should be the first strategy."

The authors also noted that challenges remain in developing PV and battery recycling methods. There are currently no integrated recycling processes that can recover all the materials for either technology, and existing research has focused more on lab-scale methods.

NREL is already leading efforts to improve PV reliability, extend PV life spans, reduce the use of hazardous materials, and decrease demand for starting materials. This includes leading the Durable Module Materials Consortium (DuraMAT), which is researching ways to extend the useful life of PV modules, and the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment (BOTTLE) Consortium, which is developing ways to improve the recycling of plastics.

NREL is also a partner in the Argonne National Laboratory-led consortium ReCell, which works with industry, academia, and national laboratories to advance recycling technologies along the entire battery life cycle for current and future battery chemistries.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office and Solar Energy Technologies Office funded the research.

Journal Reference:Garvin A. Heath, Dwarakanath Ravikumar, Brianna Hansen, Elaine Kupets. A critical review of the circular economy for lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic modules – status, challenges, and opportunities. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2022; 72 (6): 478 DOI: 10.1080/10962247.2022.2068878

CRISPR CRITTERS

Genetics breakthrough in sea urchins aids biomedical research

Use of gene editing tool CRISPR allows development of genetically engineered marine animals


View image credit & caption
Research News

June 28, 2022

Marine biologists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have created a line of sea urchins whose genetic makeup is fully mapped and can be edited to study human disease genes. The creation of these new research model organisms will accelerate the pace of marine biomedical research.

Sea urchins, like fruit flies or lab rats, have been organisms used in research for more than a century. Sea urchins led to the discovery of a protein family known as the cyclins, which guides cell division. That knowledge went on to become the basis of current cancer treatments.

Now Scripps marine biologist Amro Hamdoun and colleagues have taken the research to a new level by developing lines of sea urchins that can be used as genetic models using the gene editing technology CRISPR. The modified sea urchins are derived from the fast-growing species Lytechinus pictus, also known as the painted sea urchin.

The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded team describes its results in the journal Development.

Hamdoun said the sea urchins could serve as new workhorse organisms in marine biomedical research, capable of being cultivated to adulthood in four to six months at room temperature.

Species of sea urchins are used around the world to study the developmental origins of diseases and the effects of pollutants on human and marine health. But few can be grown in the lab and genetically modified like other lab animals. Having this new "genetically enabled" urchin could dramatically enhance the efficiency, reproducibility and utility of those studies.

"Sea urchins have long been a model organism for marine biologists, but they have been bottlenecked by not having stable genetics," Hamdoun said. "This work breaks that final barrier."

How the pandemic and social distancing have changed our perception of time

Brazilian researchers surveyed 900 volunteers via an online platform for five months. Most reported feeling that time passed more slowly during home confinement in the early months of the pandemic, associating this perception with feelings of loneliness

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people perceive the passage of time, according to an article published in the journal Science Advances.

At the end of the first month of social distancing, in May 2020, most participants in the study (65%) reported feeling time was passing more slowly. The researchers classified this perception as “time expansion” and found it to be associated with feelings of loneliness and a lack of positive experiences in the period.

An even larger proportion (75%) reported feeling less “time pressure”, when the clock appears to go faster, allowing less time for day-to-day tasks and leisure. The vast majority of interviewees (90%) said they were sheltering at home during the period.

“We followed the volunteers for five months to see if this ‘snapshot’ of the start of the pandemic would change over time. We found that the feeling of time expansion diminished as the weeks went by, but we didn’t detect significant differences with regard to time pressure,” André Cravo, first author of the article, told Agência FAPESP. Cravo is a professor at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo state, Brazil.

The study began on May 6, when 3,855 volunteers recruited via social media answered a ten-item online questionnaire and completed a simple task designed to gauge their ability to estimate short intervals (pressing start and stop buttons in 1, 3 and 12 seconds). They were then asked about their routine in the previous week (whether they had completed all the requisite tasks and how much time they had devoted to leisure), and how they were feeling now (happy, sad, lonely etc).

“They were invited to return every week for further sessions, but not everyone did,” Cravo said. “In the final analysis, we considered data for 900 participants who answered the questionnaire for at least four weeks, albeit not all consecutively.”

Using time awareness scales from 0 to 100 that are standard for this type of survey, the researchers analyzed the answers and calculated the two parameters – time expansion and time pressure – to see whether they increased or decreased week by week.

“Besides a rise or fall on the scales, we also analyzed the factors that accompanied the changes. During the five-month period, we observed a similar pattern: in weeks when participants reported feeling lonely and experiencing less positive affect, they also felt time pass more slowly. In highly stressful situations, they felt time pass more quickly,” Cravo said.

When the first set of answers to the question on the passage of time was compared with the second, provided at the end of the first month of confinement, perceptions of time expansion had risen 20 points while time pressure had fallen 30 points, according to Raymundo Machado, a researcher at the Brain Institute of the Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital (HIAE) in São Paulo, and last author of the article. “These results are evidently affected by memory bias, however, because no measurements were made before the pandemic,” he said.

Time slowed most for younger participants early in the pandemic, when compliance with social distancing rules was strictest. Except for age, demographic factors such as household size, occupation and gender, had no influence on the results.

For the authors, this may be an effect of the sample profile. Most of the volunteers (80.5%) lived in the Southeast region. A large majority were women (74.32%). Most had completed secondary school, and a great many even had a university degree (71.78%). In terms of income, roughly a third were upper middle class (33.08%). Sizable minorities worked in education (19.43%) and healthcare (15.36%).

“This is typical of online surveys, where a majority are women living in the Southeast with high levels of formal education. The influence of demographics might have been more evident if the sample had represented the Brazilian population better,” Machado said.

Internal clock

Although the pandemic changed participants’ perceptions of the passage of time, it apparently did not affect their ability to sense duration, measured by the button-pressing task. “All of us are able to estimate short intervals. When the results of this time estimation test [including overestimation and underestimation of the intervals] were compared with the time awareness scores, there was no correlation,” Machado said.

According to Cravo, evidence from the scientific literature suggests the feeling that time is passing more slowly or more quickly is influenced mainly by two factors: the relevance of time in a particular context, and unpredictability. “For example, if you’re late for work [so that time is relevant in the context] and have to wait for a bus [unpredictable timing], you have an extreme perception that the minutes aren’t passing. When you’re on vacation and having fun, time isn’t relevant and appears to fly,” he said.

The perception often changes when we recall past situations. “When you remember what you did during a vacation, time seems to have lasted longer. On the contrary, when you’re standing in line, time goes all too slowly but when you recall the situation some time later, it feels as if it was over quickly,” Cravo said.

In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, how people will remember the passage of time during the period of social distancing is unknown. “Several temporal milestones, such as Carnival, the June festivals and birthdays, had to be skipped in the last two years, so the question remains open,” he concluded.

The study was supported by FAPESP via five projects (17/25161-8, 19/25572-3, 17/24575-3, 19/06423-7, and 16/24951-2).

 

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About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abj7205 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Time experience during social distancing: A longitudinal study during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Christopher Labos: Myths about vitamins are hard to dislodge

Amazingly, negative vitamin studies don’t seem to dent sales, which amount to billions of dollars globally.

Author of the article: Christopher Labos • Special to Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: Jun 28, 2022 • 

"While it is understandable to want to take your health in hand, there are better, cheaper things you can do" than taking vitamins, Dr. Christopher Labos writes. 

Many people see vitamins as an inexpensive and risk-free way to prevent disease. But just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, vitamins are neither inexpensive nor risk free, and they do not actually prevent disease. In fact, they may make things worse.

Last week, the United States Preventive Services Task Force published its recommendations about whether vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements should be taken to prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer. Much as it did in 2014 when it last reviewed the evidence, it explicitly recommends against taking beta-carotene or vitamin E, and says there is insufficient evidence to support the use of any other vitamins.

In short, vitamins don’t work. In fact, beta-carotene increases the risk of cancer and vitamin E the risk of hemorrhagic strokes.

So why do people keep taking them?

Amazingly, negative vitamin studies don’t seem to dent sales, which amount to billions of dollars globally. When asked, most people say they take vitamins to improve their health, but, paradoxically, when you look at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey the people who take vitamins are more likely to be in good health to begin with. They smoke less, exercise more and have lower rates of obesity. Also, when you survey people about their vitamin use, you unveil surprisingly contradictory beliefs. Almost 90 per cent of people surveyed agree or strongly agree that vitamins can help people meet their nutritional requirements. But 80 per cent of them also agree or strongly agree that vitamins shouldn’t be used as a substitute for an unhealthy diet, and 75 per cent agree or strongly agree that vitamins are not meant to cure disease.

When you drill down in people’s perceptions, they at once acknowledge that vitamins do not cure disease and yet simultaneously see them as boosting health.

Some people do have valid medical reasons to take vitamins; vitamin deficiencies do happen. But vitamin deficiencies are extremely rare.

That leaves many people taking vitamins for reasons that are not medically justifiable. A survey of Italian students found that those taking supplements were not taking them because they were worried about not getting enough vitamin D, iron or omega-3. The most common reason given was to boost athletic performance, even though there is little evidence to support this idea.

This belief system is incredibly difficult to dislodge. The editorial accompanying the USPSTF recommendations discusses why this may be the case. Rather successful marketing continues to convince the public that vitamin supplementation has value, when it largely does not. Vitamins are seen as natural and people who abhor “Big Pharma” and taking medication happily take a vitamin supplement while being blissfully unaware that prescription drugs and vitamins are often made by the same company. Also, people often prefer to do “something” even when that something is contrary to their self interest. Statistically, a soccer goalie’s best strategy is to stay in the centre of the net during a penalty kick. And yet goalies feel compelled to dive one way or the other because in that setting inaction is unacceptable. The term has a name: action bias. It is what compels some of us to honk our car horns in traffic when we know it will have little effect.

Humorous examples aside, the problem with our vitamin fascination is that only one-quarter of people who take vitamins would stop taking them if advised to do so by public health. While it is understandable to want to take your health in hand, there are better, cheaper things you can do. Quit smoking, exercise regularly, eat plenty of fruits of vegetables, avoid junk food, and you will drastically reduce your risk of both cancer and heart disease. Simply take vitamins, and you will not.

Christopher Labos is a Montreal physician and cohost of the Body of Evidence podcast.

Seat assignments drive friendships among elementary school children

by Florida Atlantic University

A new study is the first to show that classroom seat assignments have important

 implications for children's friendships and the enormous influence that teachers wield over

 the interpersonal lives of children. Credit: Florida Atlantic University

Most teachers focus on academic considerations when assigning seats. A new study by Florida Atlantic University psychology researchers is the first to show that these classroom seat assignments also have important implications for children's friendships.

Results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, revealed that friendships reflect classroom seat assignments. Students sitting next to or nearby one another were more likely to be friends with one another than students seated elsewhere in the classroom. Moreover, longitudinal analyses showed that classroom seating proximity was associated with the formation of new friendships. After seat assignments changed, students were more likely to become friends with newly near-seated classmates than with those who remained or became seated farther away.

"The students in our study spent most of every day with the same 15 or so classmates. By the middle of the school year, there were no unfamiliar peers," said Brett Laursen, Ph.D., senior author and a professor of psychology in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. "Yet when seat assignments changed, new seatmates were apt to become new friends, consistent with claims that exposure alone is not a sufficient condition for friendship. Apparently, proximity transcends familiarity by providing new opportunities for the kind of exchanges that form the basis of a friendship."

Participants in the study included 235 students (129 boys, 106 girls) in grades 3—5 (ages 8–11) who nominated friends at two time points (13 -14 weeks apart). Children attended a public primary school in South Florida that reflected public school students in the state in terms of ethnicity and family income.

For the study, teacher seating charts were used to calculate three forms of proximity for each pair of students in a classroom. Neighbor proximity described classmates seated directly beside one another in a row or at a table, and those seated directly across from one another at a table. Group proximity included classmates identified as neighbors as well as those who were near neighbors; the latter were either one seat away in the same row or diagonal to one another at the same table. Findings for group proximity were the most robust, suggesting that children are willing (and able) to overlook their nearest neighbors in favor of those seated close enough for sustained communication.

"Of course, students were not glued to their seats; interactions with far-seated peers undoubtedly occurred during lunch, recess and (in some classes) free time activities," said Laursen. "The fact that new friends tended to emerge among the newly near-seated—despite opportunities for engagement with other classmates—underscores the power of proximity in friendship formation."

Classroom proximity assumes outsized importance during the elementary school years because children this age have few other sustained opportunities to meet (and engage with) friends and because companionship is central to the definition of friendship. It has long been known that most children report that most of their friends are in the same classroom. We now know that they are probably seated nearby.

Elementary school children spend most of their days in assigned seats, in the company of classmates. In most elementary school classrooms, teachers decide who sits next to whom and, by extension, who interacts with whom.

"Taken together, our findings highlight the enormous influence that teachers wield over the interpersonal lives of children. With great power comes great responsibility," said Laursen. "We urge teachers to exercise their power judiciously. Unintended social consequences have been known to arise when adults meddle in the social lives of children."Assigned classroom seats can promote friendships between dissimilar students

More information: Sharon Faur et al, Classroom Seat Proximity Predicts Friendship Formation, Frontiers in Psychology (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.796002

Journal information: Frontiers in Psychology 

Provided by Florida Atlantic University 

Smarter, but more depressing: researchers began to study children conceived in a test tube

Yesterday

Science

Photo: Laurel Fertility Care

Finnish scientists compared the school success and mental health of children born naturally, and their peers, who were born through reproductive technologies.

The method of in vitro fertilization is relatively new: the first person born thanks to IVF, Englishwoman Louise Joy Brown, is only 43 years old. So the field of scientific research of test-tube babies is just beginning to develop. At the same time, assisted reproductive technologies are being used more and more, so it is vital for both scientists and potential parents to know how IVF can affect future children.


One of the first studies of this kind belongs to scientists from the University of Helsinki, according to the Daily Mail. They followed 280,000 teenagers born in Finland from 1995 to 2000. When they were 16 or 18 years old, the researchers checked their school performance and looked at their medical records. The results appeared in the European Journal of Population.

It turned out that, compared with children born vaginally, children conceived through IVF had a higher average score (8 vs. 7.7), were less likely to drop out of school (2.4% vs. at home (11% versus 17%).

The researchers note that these differences between the two groups almost vanished when their family circumstances were taken into account: parental wealth, relationship status, and education. This is because, due to the cost of IVF, test-tube babies are more likely to be born into rich families, and their parents invest more time, money, and emotions in the child, which cannot but affect the educational level.

At the same time, children conceived as a result of IVF were more likely to suffer from mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. If by the end of adolescence, 9% of children conceived naturally had a mental diagnosis, then among their peers conceived with the help of technology, there were 10% of such children. In percentage terms, the difference may seem insignificant, but, according to scientists, in reality the difference is significant. The increased risk of mental health problems persisted even when children born through IVF were compared to naturally conceived siblings.

The authors of the study are not yet able to explain this. A possible explanation is that parents of children conceived through IVF may experience anxiety due to problems with conception, and this is reflected in their offspring. On the other hand, such parents may be more concerned about their child's health and see their child more often, which increases the likelihood of diagnosed disorders.

https://archive.org/details/BraveNewWorld-and-BraveNewWorldRevisited/Brave-New-World-Revisited_-_Aldous-Huxley/

Placebo response reveals unconscious bias among white patients toward female, Black physicians

By Katherine Gilyard

June 28, 2022


The doctor-patient relationship is an important part of helping and healing. But it can be hijacked by racial or other biases that either party holds.

A novel study published Monday using the placebo response as a measure of bias shows how patients’ unconscious reactions to their doctor’s gender or race may have lingering physiological effects and even steer health outcomes.

In the study, 187 white women and men had an allergy skin prick test, after which a physician applied an inert skin cream but told the participants it was an antihistamine cream that would ease any allergic reaction. Each interaction was the same — same treatment room, physician medical credentials, and verbal instructions given to the patient — except for physician gender and race. The 13 male and female physicians were either Asian, Black, or white.

White patients who were treated by Black and female health care providers had more significant reactions to the skin test than those treated by white and male doctors, suggesting a bias-based blunting of the placebo response to the skin cream. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Related:

Negative descriptors are more likely to appear in health records of Black patients, study finds

“Bias is complex,” said Lauren Howe, an associate professor of management at the University of Zurich and lead author of the study.

Although the patients in the study rated women physicians as “warmer” and more competent than men, and Black and Asian providers were rated as warmer and equally competent as white providers, and most patients were highly motivated to control biased responding, “they still showed this reaction underneath the skin, which I think shows the fact that bias really is multifaceted and that the effects of bias can potentially linger.”

Howe said the study focused on white, Asian, and Black physicians because white providers have been historically overrepresented in medicine, and Black and Asian physicians face different stereotypical associations — Asian people often seen as a highly competent “model minority” and Black people facing long-held negative stereotypes. The study was conducted in the San Francisco Bay area, where Asian doctors are nearly as prevalent as white doctors (approximately 30% each of the physician population), while only 2.5% identified as Black.

One reason the researchers undertook the study was to explore the impact of shifting demographics among health care providers that are being spurred by diversity and inclusion initiatives across the health industry. In 2017, for example, women made up 50.7% of U.S. medical school enrollees, surpassing male enrollees for the first time in history. In 2021, women made up 55.5% of medical school enrollees.

Related:

‘It’s not going to work’: Keeping race out of machine learning isn’t enough to avoid bias

A substantial body of research shows that biases held by providers can influence patient care. “Our approach in this study was to look at the opposite,” said Howe: Might biases held by patients affect their responses to treatment?

Bias can be a two-way street, influencing doctors and patients, said Charlotte Blease, a philosopher, interdisciplinary health researcher, and co-founder of the Society of Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies. “We’re not really the best at accessing the subconscious part of ourselves that carries or holds implicit bias. It speaks to the need for representation and true diversity.”

Although this study showed that bias could potentially inhibit a patient’s response to therapy, it could also give some people a boost in their care through nothing the provider is doing aside from the color of their skin or their sex, Blease pointed out, adding that this study is part of a necessary conversation “about social justice and the delivery of care that is the makeup of the people who deliver the care.”


Katherine Gilyard (she/her) is a multimedia intern at STAT.
kaitlyn.gilyard@statnews.com

Help NASA Scientists Find Clouds on Mars
June 28, 2022

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured these clouds just after sunset on March 19, 2021, the 3,063rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. The image is made up of 21 individual images stitched together and color corrected so that the scene appears as it would to the human eye. The clouds are drifting over “Mont Mercou,” a cliff face that Curiosity studied. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Full Image Details

By identifying clouds in data collected by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the public can increase scientists’ understanding of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

NASA scientists hope to solve a fundamental mystery about Mars’ atmosphere, and you can help. They’ve organized a project called Cloudspotting on Mars that invites the public to identify Martian clouds using the citizen science platform Zooniverse. The information may help researchers figure out why the planet’s atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s even though ample evidence suggests the planet used to have a much thicker atmosphere.

The air pressure is so low that liquid water simply vaporizes from the planet’s surface into the atmosphere. But billions of years ago, lakes and rivers covered Mars, suggesting the atmosphere must have been thicker then.

How did Mars lose its atmosphere over time? One theory suggests different mechanisms could be lofting water high into the atmosphere, where solar radiation breaks those water molecules down into hydrogen and oxygen (water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom). Hydrogen is light enough that it could then drift off into space.


Cloudspotting on Mars asks members of the public to look for arches such as this one in data collected by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Like Earth, Mars has clouds made of water ice. But unlike Earth, it also has clouds made of carbon dioxide (think: dry ice), which form when it gets cold enough for the Martian atmosphere to freeze locally. By understanding where and how these clouds appear, scientists hope to better understand the structure of Mars’ middle atmosphere, which is about 30 to 50 miles (50 to 80 kilometers) in altitude.

“We want to learn what triggers the formation of clouds – especially water ice clouds, which could teach us how high water vapor gets in the atmosphere – and during which seasons,” said Marek Slipski, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

That’s where Cloudspotting on Mars comes in. The project revolves around a 16-year record of data from the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been studying the Red Planet since 2006. The spacecraft’s Mars Climate Sounder instrument studies the atmosphere in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. In measurements taken by the instrument as MRO orbits Mars, clouds appear as arches. The team needs help sifting through that data on Zooniverse, marking the arches so that the scientists can more efficiently study where in the atmosphere they occur.

“We now have over 16 years of data for us to search through, which is very valuable – it lets us see how temperatures and clouds change over different seasons and from year to year,” said Armin Kleinboehl, Mars Climate Sounder’s deputy principal investigator at JPL. “But it’s a lot of data for a small team to look through.”

While scientists have experimented with algorithms to identify the arches in Mars Climate Sounder data, it’s much easier for humans to spot them by eye. But Kleinboehl said the Cloudspotting project may also help train better algorithms that could do this work in the future. In addition, the project includes occasional webinars in which participants can hear from scientists about how the data will be used.

Cloudspotting on Mars is the first planetary science project to be funded by NASA’s Citizen Science Seed Funding program. The project is conducted in collaboration with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences. For more NASA citizen science opportunities, go to science.nasa.gov/citizenscience.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission – as well as the Mars Climate Sounder instrument – for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington

Human urine-derived stem cells have robust regenerative potential

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WAKE FOREST BAPTIST MEDICAL CENTER

WINSTON-SALEM, NC – June 28, 2022 – The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) researchers who were the first to identify that stem cells in human urine have potential for tissue regenerative effects, continue their investigation into the power of these cells. In their latest published study, they focus on how telomerase activity affects the regenerative potential of these and other types of stem cells.

Telomerase is an enzyme that is essential for the self-renewal and potential of different types of stem cells. Telomerase activity is also closely related to longevity. The research team investigated the regenerative significance of telomerase activity, particularly in terms of characteristic cell surface marker expression, multipotent differentiation capability, chromosomal stability, and safety of in vivo formation of tumors.

Their findings provide a novel perspective to evaluate the capacity of telomerase-positive human urine-derived stem cells to become a wide variety of other cell types, and to be used as an optimal cell source for stem cell therapy or cell-based tissue regeneration.

WFIRM’s Yuanyuan Zhang, Ph.D, lead author of the paper published by Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, said that human urine-derived stem cells can be easily isolated from urine samples which offers clear advantages over stem cells from other sources, like bone marrow or fat tissue which often require a surgical procedure for collection.

“Being able to use a patient's own stem cells for therapy is considered advantageous because they do not induce immune responses or rejection,” said WFIRM Director Anthony Atala, MD, who is a co-author of the paper. “Additionally, the non-invasive collection method is suitable for rapid clinical translation.”

The study demonstrates that human primary urinary stem cells with positive telomerase activity act as a distinct subpopulation with potential regeneration capacity in both cell growth and its capacity to become other cells, Zhang said. Better understanding of alterations in this cell subpopulation throughout the human lifespan, and how they translate into, aging, kidney damage, or cancer, among others will be beneficial overall.

“As a safe cell source, telomerase-positive human urine-derived stem cells have a robust regenerative potential, which might induce better tissue repair,” said Zhang.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. This work is partially supported by Research Grants from the National Institutes of Health NIDDK (R21DK071791), (R56DK100669), NIAID (R21AI152832), and (R03AI165170).

Additional co-authors include: Yingai Shi, Guihua Liu, Rongpei Wu, David L. Mack, Xiuzhi S. Sun, and Xuan Guan.

About the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine: The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is recognized as an international leader in translating scientific discovery into clinical therapies, with many world firsts, including the development and implantation of the first engineered organ in a patient. Over 400 people at the institute, the largest in the world, work on more than 40 different tissues and organs. A number of the basic principles of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine were first developed at the institute. WFIRM researchers have successfully engineered replacement tissues and organs in all four categories – flat structures, tubular tissues, hollow organs and solid organs – and 15 different applications of cell/tissue therapy technologies, such as skin, urethras, cartilage, bladders, muscle, kidney, and vaginal organs, have been successfully used in human patients. The institute, which is part of Wake Forest School of Medicine, is located in the Innovation Quarter in downtown Winston-Salem, NC, and is driven by the urgent needs of patients. The institute is making a global difference in regenerative medicine through collaborations with over 400 entities and institutions worldwide, through its government, academic and industry partnerships, its start-up entities, and through major initiatives in breakthrough technologies, such as tissue engineering, cell therapies, diagnostics, drug discovery, biomanufacturing, nanotechnology, gene editing and 3D printing. 

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology

DOI

10.3389/fcell.2022.890574 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Differentiation Capacity of Human Urine-Derived Stem Cells to Retain Telomerase Activity

How to MRI your dragon: Researchers develop first bearded dragon brain atlas

by Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
Interdisciplinary researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign performed MRI scans on bearded dragons, like the one shown here, to generate a first-of-its-kind brain atlas: a high-resolution map of regions in the creatures' brains. 

Credit: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

They're not too cuddly, but bearded dragons are working their way into the hearts and homes of American families. And now, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are ensuring that these scaly companion animals receive the same medical care as Fluffy, Stripes, and Snowball.

Interdisciplinary researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the College of Veterinary Medicine performed MRI scans on bearded dragons to generate a first-of-its-kind brain atlas: a high-resolution map of regions in the creatures' brains.

Currently, there no standardized protocol for performing MRIs on America's No. 1 companion reptile.

"It is challenging to get spatial resolution sufficient to see disease in the brain of a bearded dragon using a clinical MRI machine designed for humans," said Brad Sutton, a professor of bioengineering and the technical director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at the Beckman Institute. "It is important to understand what a healthy bearded dragon's brain looks like, and to understand the variation across different animals."
Bearded dragons are America's No. 1 companion lizard.

 Dr. Krista Keller and "B" the bearded dragon discuss why they are creating an MRI brain atlas for these amazing reptiles. Keller is an assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "B" is a bearded dragon with swag. 

Credit: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

Anesthesia is routinely used for animals during MRI scans. Because the scanner contains a strong magnet, specialized metal-free anesthetic monitoring equipment is also required.

"There are several instances when a bearded dragon would benefit from an MRI exam. However, a strong consideration prior to ordering this diagnostic would be the risks associated with anesthesia," said Krista Keller, an assistant professor of veterinary and clinical medicine and the service head of zoological medicine at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

Interdisciplinary researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign performed MRI scans on bearded dragons, like the one shown above, to generate a first-of-its-kind brain atlas: a high-resolution map of regions in the creatures' brains.This image depicts a bearded dragon mid-sagittal slice and was generated using a 3 Tesla MRI scanner located in the Biomedical Imaging Center at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. The bearded dragon is facing left, with the top of its head corresponding to the top of the image. 

Credit: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

The researchers' work appeared in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. It identified a predictable and safe anesthetic protocol that can be used in future clinical cases. Data from this study also expands the clinical information available to researchers performing high-resolution MRI scans of bearded dragons in the future.

To compile their data, the team used a 3 Tesla MRI scanner located in Beckman's Biomedical Imaging Center to image seven bearded dragons safely and non-invasively. The bearded dragons came from a research and study colony and represent the most common lizard species encountered in veterinary medical practice.


The researchers used an image averaging strategy to compile the scans into a single idealized model of a bearded dragon brain; the resulting atlas will be used as a standard reference material in the event that a bearded dragon may be diagnosed with or treated for a neurological disease. Anatomical atlases of reptiles including the tawny dragon, the tokay gecko, and the garter snake were also used for reference.

While bearded dragons could certainly benefit from MRI exams, the risks associated with anesthesia are significant, according to assistant professor of veterinary clinical medicine Krista Keller (pictured with a bearded dragon at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Veterinary Medicine). 

Photo courtesy of L. Brian Stauffer. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer.

"Our goal for this study was to not only provide clinicians with an anatomic reference of the bearded dragon brain, but to also establish a safe and efficient MRI and sedation protocol that can be utilized in practices with access to either a 1.5 or 3 Tesla MRI," said Kari Foss, an assistant professor of veterinary and clinical medicine.

The researchers identified nine anatomic structures in the bearded dragon brain including the thalamus, optic nerve, optic tectum, lateral ventricles, medulla, telencephalon, tectal ventricle, cerebellum, and the olfactory lobe and stalk.

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More information: Kari D. Foss et al, Establishing an MRI-Based Protocol and Atlas of the Bearded Dragon (Pogona vitticeps) Brain, Frontiers in Veterinary Science (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2022.886333

Provided by Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology