It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
It is only under the microscope that the similarity of its namesake becomes apparent: the plump, round physique and the short legs are reminiscent of those of a bear. Credit: Ralph Schill
Tardigrades are excellent at adapting to harsh environmental conditions. Back in 2019, Ralph Schill, a professor at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomolecular Systems at the University of Stuttgart, proved that anhydrobiotic (dried) tardigrades can survive undamaged for many years without absorbing water. Whether they age faster or slower in a frozen state, or whether aging even comes to a halt, was previously unclear. But the mystery has now been solved: Frozen tardigrades do not age.
Tardigrades, also called water bears, belong to the family of nematodes. Their gait is reminiscent of that of a bear, but that is the only similarity. The tardigrades, which are barely one millimeter in size, have managed to adapt perfectly to rapidly changing environmental conditions over the course of evolution and can dry out in extreme heat and freeze in cold conditions. "They don't die, they fall into a deep sleep," explains Schill.
The Sleeping Beauty hypothesis
For a cell organism, freezing or drying out cause different kinds of stress. But tardigrades can survive both heat and cold equally unscathed. They no longer show any obvious signs of life. And this raises the question of what happens to the animals' internal clock and whether they age in this resting state.
For dried tardigrades, which wait many years in their habitat for the next rain, Ralph Schill and his team answered the question of aging several years ago. In a fairytale by the Grimm brothers, the princess falls into a deep sleep. When a prince kisses her 100 years later, she awakens and still looks as young and beautiful as before. It is the same with tardigrades in a dried state and therefore this is also called the "Sleeping Beauty" hypothesis ("Sleeping Beauty" model).
"During inactive periods, the internal clock stops and only resumes running once the organism is reactivated," explains Schill. "So, tardigrades, which usually only live for a few months without periods of rest, can live for many years or even decades."
Until now, it was still unclear whether this also applies to frozen animals. Do they age faster or slower than the dried animals, or does aging also come to a halt?
Live images taken under the microscope help Schill and his colleagues to investigate the (in)activity of the tardigrades. Credit: Ralph Schill
The aging process stops even when frozen
To explore this, Schill and his team conducted several experiments in which they froze a total of more than 500 tardigrades at -30 °C, thawed them out again, counted them, fed them and froze them again. This was repeated until all the animals died. At the same time, control groups were kept at constant room temperature. Excluding the time in frozen condition, the comparison with the control groups showed an almost identical lifetime. "So even in ice, tardigrades stop their internal clocks like Sleeping Beauty," concludes Schill.
Schill and his colleagues published their findings and approach in the Journal of Zoology.
More information: J. Sieger et al, Reduced ageing in the frozen state in the tardigrade Milnesium inceptum (Eutardigrada: Apochela), Journal of Zoology (2022). DOI: 10.1111/jzo.13018
NASA’s InSight Mars lander took this final selfie on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The lander’s solar panels have become covered with dust since the lander touched down on Mars in November 2018, which has led to a gradual decline in its power level. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's InSight mission, which is expected to end in the near future, saw a recent drop in power generated by its solar panels as a continent-size dust storm swirls over Mars' southern hemisphere. First observed on Sept. 21, 2022, by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the storm is roughly 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) from InSight and initially had little impact on the lander.
The mission carefully monitors the lander's power level, which has been steadily declining as dust accumulates on its solar arrays. By Monday, Oct. 3, the storm had grown large enough and was lofting so much dust that the thickness of the dusty haze in the Martian atmosphere had increased by nearly 40% around InSight. With less sunlight reaching the lander's panels, its energy fell from 425 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, to just 275 watt-hours per sol.
InSight's seismometer has been operating for about 24 hours every other Martian day. But the drop in solar power does not leave enough energy to completely charge the batteries every sol. At the current rate of discharge, the lander would be able to operate only for several weeks. So to conserve energy, the mission will turn off InSight's seismometer for the next two weeks.
"We were at about the bottom rung of our ladder when it comes to power. Now we're on the ground floor," said InSight's project manager, Chuck Scott of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "If we can ride this out, we can keep operating into winter—but I'd worry about the next storm that comes along."
The team had estimated that InSight's mission would end sometime between late October of this year and January 2023, based on predictions of how much the dust on its solar panels will reduce its power generation. The lander has long-since surpassed its primary mission and is now close to the end of its extended mission, conducting "bonus science" by measuring marsquakes, which reveal details about the deep interior of the Red Planet.
The beige clouds seen in this global map of Mars are a continent-size dust storm captured on Sept. 29, 2022, by the Mars Climate Imager camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA’s Perseverance, Curiosity, and InSight missions are labeled, showing the vast distances between them. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Studying Martian Storms
There are signs that this large, regional storm has peaked and entered its decay phase: MRO's Mars Climate Sounder instrument, which measures the heating caused by dust absorbing sunlight, sees the storm's growth slowing down. And the dust-raising clouds observed in pictures from the orbiter's Mars Color Imager camera, which creates daily global maps of the Red Planet and was the first instrument to spot the storm, are not expanding as rapidly as before.
This regional storm isn't a surprise: It's the third storm of its kind that's been seen this year. In fact, Mars dust storms occur at all times of the Martian year, although more of them—and bigger ones—occur during northern fall and winter, which is coming to an end.
Mars dust storms aren't as violent or dramatic as Hollywood portrays them. While winds can blow up to 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour), the Martian air is thin enough that it has just a fraction of the strength of storms on Earth. Mostly, the storms are messy: They toss billowing dust high into the atmosphere, which slowly drops back down, sometimes taking weeks.
On rare occasions, scientists have seen dust storms grow into planet-encircling dust events, which cover almost all of Mars. One of these planet-size dust storms brought NASA's solar-powered Opportunity rover to an end in 2018.
Because they're nuclear-powered, NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have nothing to worry about in terms a dust storm affecting their energy. But the solar-powered Ingenuity helicopter has noticed the overall increase in background haze.
Besides monitoring storms for the safety of NASA missions on the Martian surface, MRO has spent 17 years collecting invaluable data about how and why these storms form. "We're trying to capture the patterns of these storms so we can better predict when they're about to happen," Zurek said. "We learn more about Mars' atmosphere with each one we observe."
IMAGE: WEST HEALTH-GALLUP HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA REPORTview more
CREDIT: 2022 GALLUP
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Oct. 6, 2022 — Nearly half the country (44%), or about 114 million Americans, give poor (30%) or failing (14%) grades to the U.S. healthcare system, percentages that climb higher and grow even more negative when it comes to affordability and health equity, according to a new report from West Health and Gallup, the polling organization.
The 2022 West Health-Gallup Healthcare in America Report asked a nationally representative sample of more than 5,500 Americans to provide a letter grade (A-excellent, B-good, C-satisfactory, D-poor and F-fail) for the healthcare system overall and to give individual grades for affordability, equity, accessibility and quality of care.
High marks were in short supply across the board, with the healthcare system getting an average grade of C-minus. Women and Hispanic and Asian Americans were more negative, with about half of each group assigning it a grade of D or F compared to about 40% of males, and 43% of White and Black Americans.
Nothing, however, earned more failing grades than affordability, which for three-quarters of Americans — an estimated 190 million adults — deserved no higher than a D (41%) or F (33%), for an average grade of D-minus. A top grade of A was virtually nonexistent (1%), only 6% went as high as a B, and 19% gave it a middling grade of C. The negative feelings about healthcare affordability were strikingly similar across gender, age, race, household income and political persuasion.
“After years of higher prices, growing inequities, skipping treatments, getting sicker, or borrowing money to pay medical bills, it’s no wonder so many Americans view the health system so poorly,” said Timothy A. Lash, President, West Health. “This new report should send a strong message to policymakers that despite the healthcare provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, most of which will not take effect for some time, there is still immediate work to be done to lower healthcare prices.”
Report Card on Healthcare Equity, Access and Quality of Care
Two-thirds of Black Americans (66%) and a similar percentage of Asian Americans (64%) gave a D or F for equity, the ability of every person to get quality care when they need it regardless of personal characteristics. That’s more than the 55% of Hispanic Americans and 53% of White Americans who deemed health equity to be poor or failing. Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans and women were also more critical when it came to access to care. More than 40% of each of these groups gave access Ds and Fs, compared to about a third of White Americans and men.
Quality of care was the only aspect of the healthcare system that received more positive than negative marks, though it was still only able to earn an overall grade of C-plus. Less than half (47%) gave it an A or B grade, but a significant gender divide emerged, with women much less likely to give high grades for quality than men (38% vs. 57%). Black and Hispanic Americans were more negative on quality and less likely to give top marks than the general population (36% each vs. 47% overall).
Making the Grade — Why Do So Many Americans View Healthcare So Poorly?
Millions of Americans struggle every day in the face of a high-cost healthcare system, a struggle that not only results in a bad report card but in negative real-life consequences. Nearly one in five Americans say they or a family member had a health problem worsen after being unable to pay for needed care and an estimated 70 million people (27%) report that if they needed quality care today, they would not be able to afford it.
“What I’ve done instead is ration healthcare…medicine. Using less to make it last. Using less than was prescribed in order to make it last longer...Things weren’t as good as they could have been if I’d been using it...the way I should have been,” said 71-year-old Anne Courtney Davis from Ohio, one of the survey respondents.
Additional Key Findings
66% of Americans say their household pays too much relative to the quality of care that it receives, up six points compared to April of last year.
Half the country, about 129 million people, lack confidence they will be able to afford healthcare as they age.
Two in three Americans under 65 are worried Medicare will not exist when they turn 65, and 3 in 4 adults 62 or younger say the same about Social Security.
17% cut back on healthcare services to pay for other household goods with women more likely to do so than men (about 50% more likely); and Black (23%) and Hispanic (24%) Americans 53% and 60% more likely than White adults (15%).
Six in 10 Americans report that cost is an extremely important or important factor when considering a recommended medical procedure or medication.
People 50 to 64 are nearly twice as likely to say cost is extremely important as those over 65 (29% vs. 16%) — rates that run even higher for Black (39%) and Hispanic adults (41%).
“While America’s grading of the U.S. healthcare system is troubling, it provides a roadmap for healthcare systems and policymakers to invest and fix areas with the greatest impact to shift sentiment,” said Dan Witters, Research Director for the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. “What we must remember is that there are actual people behind these grades and that too many Americans are persistently struggling to access and afford quality healthcare.”
Note to Media If you wish to receive any additional information about the survey, including further demographic groups responses, please contact kristjan_archer@gallup.com.
Methodology
Results are based on surveys conducted June 21-30, 2022, with n=5,584 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia as a part of the Gallup Panel. For results based on these samples of national adults, the margin of sampling error at the 95% confidence level is +1.6 percentage points for response percentages around 50% and is +1.0 percentage points for response percentages around 10% or 90%, design effect included. For reported subgroups, the margin of error will be larger, typically ranging from ±3 to ±4 percentage points. All demographic group comparisons in the report are significant at p<.05 unless otherwise noted. Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.
About Gallup Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
Score a discount on Amazon? You might’ve unwittingly paid more
Online sellers display a discount claim when raising price. Shoppers think they have found a bargain
More than a quarter of vacuum cleaners sold on Amazon have at some point pretended to offer a discount when they had actually just increased the price, according to new research.
By pairing a price increase with the introduction of a previously unadvertised “list price” for a product, Amazon signals to shoppers that they are receiving a discount when they actually pay 23% more, on average, for their new vacuum than they would have just a day earlier. Days after the price hike, the price drops and both the list price and misleading discount claim disappear.
Sellers of digital cameras, blenders, drones and even books used the same misleading practice, although less frequently. The false discounts drove higher sales despite charging more money, causing the products to improve in Amazon’s sales rankings.
“When you see this list-price comparison, you naturally assume you are getting a discount. It’s not just that you didn’t get a discount. You actually paid a higher price than before the seller displayed the discount claim,” said Jinhong Xie, a professor in the Warrington College of Business at UF.
Currently, regulations prohibiting deceptive pricing require that sellers use truthful price comparisons. Consumers have won class-action lawsuits against retailers like JC Penny and Ann Taylor for making discount claims using illegitimate values in price comparisons.
In the pricing practice that Xie and her colleagues uncovered, the list price can be truthful yet still misleading. That’s because retailers advertise a price discount by displaying the list price when they actually raise prices and give the impression of a deal. But most of the time, the product is sold at a cheaper price without any comparison to a list price. It is the timing of the price comparison that misleads shoppers.
“Current regulations are all about the value of the list price, and they don’t say anything about misleading consumers by manipulating the timing of the list price’s introduction,” Xie said.
The researchers studied the pricing of household products on Amazon from 2016 to 2017. Xie and her colleagues followed more than 1,700 vacuums and gathered nearly half a million individual observations of prices. While most introductions of a new list price were associated with a price drop or no price change, 22% were instead accompanied by a price increase.
Because shoppers perceive they are getting a deal, these misleading discounts actually improved the products’ sales rankings on Amazon, a proxy for sales volume.
“We found that by increasing the price by 23% on average, the seller achieves an 11% advantage in their sales rank among all products in the home and kitchen category,” Xie said. “This allows firms to achieve the impossible: increasing margins and increasing sales simultaneously.”
Other products used this practice anywhere from 3% of the time for books to more than 13% of the time for blenders, digital cameras and drones.
Xie says consumers can protect themselves by questioning ubiquitous “discounts” advertised in online stores. Shoppers should not assume a discount claim means the price is lower than usual. Instead, shoppers should comparison-shop across multiple websites. They can also use online tools that provide price histories to learn if the advertised price they are seeing is really a deal or not.
“We think consumers need to be aware so they can protect themselves,” Xie said. “And we think that consumer organizations and regulators should evaluate this new marketing practice to determine whether and how to manage it.”
IMAGE: THE PROJECT USES DIGITAL GAMES – INCLUDING ENGAGING AND REALISTIC SOCIAL MEDIA SITUATIONS – TO MAKE LEARNING FUN.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Last year, more than 92,000 U.S. adults aged 60 and over reported being victims of online scams, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Their losses? Roughly $1.7 billion.
To fight this problem, a University at Buffalo-led research team was awarded a two-year, $5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator phase 2 cooperative agreement to create digital tools that help older adults better recognize and protect themselves from online deceptions and other forms of disinformation.
“Older adults did not grow up using the internet. For many of them, it can be difficult to spot online deceptions, and the results can be tragic,” says principal investigator Siwei Lyu, PhD, Empire Innovation Professor of computer science and engineering at UB.
He adds: “What we’re doing is pulling together a multidisciplinary team of experts to create a suite of digital literacy tools that older adults can use to help recognize, resist and spread awareness of online deceptions and disinformation.”
Co-principal investigators include Natalie Bazarova, PhD, professor in the Department of Communications at Cornell University, Dominic DiFranzo, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, Darren Linvill, PhD, associate professor in the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences at Clemson University; and Anita Nikolich, director of research and technology innovation and research scientist in the School of Information Sciences at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Other team members from UB include David Castillo, PhD, professor in UB’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; Rohini Srihari, PhD, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; and Cynthia Stewart, PhD, program manager for the UB Center for Information Integrity.
Team is working with older adults
The project, Deception Awareness and Resilience Training (DART), is led by the UB Center for Information Integrity (CII), which was launched in late 2021 with internal funding from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at UB. Lyu and Castillo serve as co-directors of CII.
DART builds upon a $750,000 National Science Foundation phase 1 grant the team received last year, when it began meeting with older adults in Western New York and South Carolina to better understand how they fall victim to online deceptions.
Both projects are funded by the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator, a program the agency launched in 2019 to support “basic research and discovery to accelerate solutions toward societal impact.”
The DART platform uses digital games – including engaging and realistic social media situations – to make learning fun. The aim is to make DART easy to use, so older adults can learn on their own, in communal settings such as adult homes or libraries, or with the aid of a caregiver.
There are many digital literacy tools available, but many are not tailored to older adults, which limits their effectiveness.
DART aims to address this limitation by including a wide range of online schemes older adults encounter. The team will update the learning materials as schemes evolve.
DART can be applied to teens, others vulnerable to online scams
NSF selected the DART team for the second phase of the accelerator’s 2021 cohort. It is one of six teams funded under the accelerator’s Track F: Trust and Authenticity in Communication Systems.
Additional DART investigators are affiliated with Cornell University, Lehigh University, and Northeastern University. The team also includes representatives from the Education Collaborative of Western New York.
Additional partner organizations include the Amherst Center for Senior Services in Amherst, New York; Clemson Downs, a retirement community in Clemson, South Carolina, and the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library system.
While focused on older adults, the DART platform is being designed so it can be adapted for use by teenagers and other groups that are vulnerable to online deceptions, Lyu says.
DEMILITARIZE POLICE
WVU researchers envision police as community partners, not adversaries
IMAGE: WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGISTS JAMES NOLAN AND HENRY BROWNSTEIN HOPE TO SHIFT THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF POLICING FROM LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITIES, SUCH AS MAKING ARRESTS AND SEIZING LARGE QUANTITIES OF GUNS AND DRUGS, TO HELPING RESIDENTS CREATE THE CONDITIONS IN THEIR COMMUNITIES WHERE CRIME AND VIOLENCE ARE LESS LIKELY TO THRIVE.view more
CREDIT: WVU PHOTO/GEOFF COYLE
Mistrust between the police and the communities they serve has exacerbated crime, according to two West Virginia University sociologists who hope to reimagine and reshape policing techniques in American communities.
James Nolan and Henry Brownstein, of the WVU Department of Sociology and Anthropology, in partnership with Morgan State University, have collectively received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to break down those walls and build a healthier rapport among police and citizens.
The research team will study the implications of a situational policing approach in real-life neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland, home to MSU.
People need to feel safe in their neighborhoods, and the key may be Nolan’s concept of situational policing, which shifts the primary focus of policing from law enforcement activities, such as making arrests and seizing large quantities of guns and drugs, to helping residents create the conditions in their communities where crime and violence are less likely to thrive.
While Nolan, sociology professor and department chair, had considered situational policing in the past, he said he recently began challenging the efficacy of the law enforcement approach itself. Rather than an adversarial, outside force, police might come into, or emerge from, a community as partners, seeking to solve problems and make places safer together. This is different from previous versions of community policing that emphasized friendly police-community relations while the “real police” continued its law enforcement mission. Situational policing shifts the primary police mission from law enforcement to building safe and strong communities.
“What keeps communities safe are these levels of connection,” he said. “The cohesion and trust within the community where people are supporting each other.” Situational policing considers how to forge such connections and, collaboratively, build the needed resources.
Nolan served as a police officer for 13 years, working in an undercover unit on wiretap investigations, surveillance and conspiracy cases. Rather than making the streets and neighborhoods safer, he found the increased law enforcement served only to further divide police from residents. When community members complained about the number of shootings in the neighborhood, police responded by increasing the frequency of arrests, weapons seizures and drug busts. Nolan believes this was misguided and counterproductive.
“The idea that drives the law enforcement approach to policing is that if you could get the small percentage of people that are bad, that are criminals, that it is going to make places safe,” he said. “That's just a completely wrong way of thinking about things. No matter how many people you take off the street, if conditions in the neighborhood create distrust, and there are no resources to help those struggling, no jobs and lots of poverty, the problems are going to continue.”
Nolan and Brownstein, distinguished research professor, said despite the recent killings of Black Americans like Tamir Rice, Philando Castille and George Floyd by police in the last decade, the problem isn’t a new one.
“People in underserved communities, people on the fringes and borders of society, are not being treated the same as other people,” said Brownstein, who studied such attitudes toward police discretion in the 1970s.
Success in police work has traditionally been quantitative, and advancement goals focus on arrests, drug busts and the seizure of weapons.
During a period of zero tolerance in the late 20th century, police “went after everybody,” Brownstein said of traditional policing methods. “Every little thing, every public nuisance, somebody getting drunk on the street. They arrested them all.”
The MSU component of the project is led by Natasha Pratt-Harris, a former student of Brownstein’s, who will conduct the hands-on research and provide essential connections in the area. She is accompanied by fellow faculty members Kevin Daniels and Paul Archibald. Faculty at WVU and MSU will be equal partners in designing and conducting the research.
“We don't know Baltimore,” Brownstein said. “Our colleagues at Morgan State know everybody who has any authority, interest or knowledge of the police in Baltimore. They're connected. We're not, but we have the data analytic capabilities, the theory. It's a great partnership.”
Besides analyzing data, “We’ll ask questions of the police and of the local people,” Brownstein said. For example, “What would it take for you to talk to each other? What would it take for you to trust each other? What would it take for you to respect each other?’ And let them tell each other those things while we're sitting there. The people we would be talking to will be part of our research team. They help us figure out the answers to the questions we have and what questions we have yet to ask.”
This type of data collection is known as participatory action research, a method in which community members work as partners with the research team to help gather and process data and use it to create the desired change.
Researchers will use the collected data to assess each neighborhood based on criteria like the amount of crime, types of crime, number of arrests, levels of trust in local government and the police, levels of cohesion among neighbors and the willingness of residents to get involved to help others and keep the community safe.
“That way, residents and police can change the local neighborhood conditions which often give rise to crime and violence,” Nolan said. “And once the conditions are changed in a way that fosters larger and stronger alliances with added resources, participants are better able to affectively reduce crime and keep it that way.”
Impact that killed the dinosaurs may have triggered a 'mega-earthquake' that lasted weeks to months
Artwork depicting one dinosaur's experience of the Chicxulub impact. Credit: Hermann Bermúdez
Some 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision. The amount of energy released in this "mega-earthquake" is estimated at 1023 joules, which is about 50,000 times more energy than was released in the magnitude 9.1 Sumatra earthquake in 2004.
Hermann Bermúdez will present evidence of this "mega-earthquake" at the upcoming GSA Connects meeting in Denver this Sunday, October 9. Earlier this year, Bermúdez visited outcrops of the infamous Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event boundary in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi to collect data, supplementing his previous work in Colombia and Mexico documenting evidence of the catastrophic impact.
In 2014, while doing fieldwork on Colombia's Gorgonilla Island, Bermúdez found spherule deposits—layers of sediment filled with small glass beads (as large as 1.1 mm) and shards known as "tektites" and "microtektites" that were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact. These glass beads formed when the heat and pressure of the impact melted and scattered the crust of the Earth, ejecting small, melted blobs up into the atmosphere, which then fell back to the surface as glass under the influence of gravity.
Spherule deposits on Gorgonilla Island. Credit: Hermann Bermúdez
The rocks exposed on the coast of Gorgonilla Island tell a story from the bottom of the ocean—roughly 2 km down. There, about 3,000 km southwest of the site of the impact, sand, mud, and small ocean creatures were accumulating on the ocean floor when the asteroid hit. Layers of mud and sandstone as far as 10–15 meters below the sea floor experienced soft-sediment deformation that is preserved in the outcrops today, which Bermúdez attributes to the shaking from the impact.
Faults and deformation due to shaking continue up through the spherule-rich layer that was deposited post-impact, indicating that the shaking must have continued for the weeks and months it took for these finer-grained deposits to reach the ocean floor. Just above those spherule deposits, preserved fern spores signal the first recovery of plant-life after the impact.
Bermúdez explains, "The section I discovered on Gorgonilla Island is a fantastic place to study the K-Pg boundary, because it is one of the best-preserved and it was located deep in the ocean, so it was not affected by tsunamis."
Deformed spherule-rich layer at Gorgonilla Island (Colombia) showing that seismic activity persisted for weeks or months after impact. Credit: Hermann Bermúdez
Evidence of deformation from the mega-earthquake is also preserved in Mexico and the United States. At the El Papalote exposure in Mexico, Bermúdez observed evidence of liquefaction—when strong shaking causes water-saturated sediments to flow like a liquid. In Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, Bermúdez documented faults and cracks likely associated with the mega-quake. He also documented tsunami deposits at several outcrops, left by an enormous wave that was part of the cascading catastrophes resulting from the asteroid collision.
Bermúdez will deliver a talk about evidence for the mega-earthquake at the GSA Connects meeting in Denver on Sunday, October 9. He will also present a poster about his observations of tsunami deposits and earthquake-related deformation on Monday, October 10, which will be available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Chinese. In discussing his research, he emphasized the important role collaboration has played in visiting and studying so many outcrops that tell the story of this extreme event in Earth's history.
Purdue researchers perform testing during a CIPP installation in 2016. Credit: Purdue University
The tiny bits of plastic that wear off bottles, plastic bags, automotive parts and even cosmetics get into the soil and the water supply. They disrupt chemical cycles, throw off ecosystem health and pollute environments both marine and terrestrial. They eventually also get into the air, where they can damage lungs much more effectively. But for that to happen, they have to be worn away by water or earth and then be launched into the sky by winds.
A new study published in Nature Nanotechnology has discovered that a process that happens all over the developed world every day accelerates the airborne dispersal of these micro- and nanoplastic particles, posing a risk to human and environmental health. The study was led by Alexander Laskin, professor of analytical chemistry in Purdue University's College of Science.
Laskin is an expert in environmental forensics: He takes complex samples and uses analytical chemistry methods to determine what, exactly, is in the air. In this case, what's in the air are previously unsuspected amounts of aerosolized nanoplastics.
The origin of the issue lurks under the ground in every modern city, in technology to repair sewer pipes. When a sewer pipe breaks, the options to fix it are to physically dig a hole around it and replace a section of it or to treat it like the weakened area of a human artery and install a stent.
"What they do," explains Laskin, "is they put a resin-soaked sock into the pipe. That's what it is, effectively a big sock, and then they cure it into place. It seals the pipe without any need for excavation. It is a very sophisticated and very practical technology. When they inflate the sock, they use pressurized steam, which then emerges as a discharged chemical plume. There's no control on the resulting emissions, and it turns out that they produce a significant amount of pollution, including nanoplastic particles."
The result is that around every modern urban or suburban area where this process takes place, there are uncounted and significant sources of these microplastics and nanoplastics, sources that have not before been considered or examined. Before, scientists thought the only route for plastics to get into the air is slow degradation followed by consistent wind.
Researchers have discovered that microplastics are among a complex mixture of vapors and chemical droplets contained in a white plume emitted during the process of cured-in-place pipe repair. Credit: Purdue University
"The amount of microplastic and nanoplastic in the atmosphere, floating around, has been explicitly assumed to only come from windborne sources. What we show here is that there is a process commonly used throughout the whole modern world that is dumping nanoplastic pollution into the air," Laskin said.
Laskin worked with Andrew Whelton, a Purdue professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering, to quantify the impact of this cured-in-place pipe repair method, which Whelton has been studying for almost a decade. Whelton's research has helped advise municipalities, utilities and public health agencies on how to lessen environmental pollution from this pipe repair method and protect the workers better.
This new study further unravels the mystery of what exactly is in the air when construction workers repair pipes using the cured-in-place method, something Whelton and other Purdue researchers have been studying for years.
"When we first investigated the plastic pipe air pollution practice, we discovered there had been no independent testing or oversight," Whelton said. "It was being used in neighborhoods and in environmentally sensitive areas, sometimes prompting immediate health impacts to workers, bystanders, emergency responders and the environment. We often see workers who implement this pipe repair standing inside or near the micro- and nanoplastics waste exhaust plumes without respiratory protection. This new study indicates these workers and ones before them have likely been inhaling microplastics and nanoplastics."
The effect of inhaled, aerosolized microplastics on human health has not been widely studied—not least because scientists have not been aware of it as a significant problem. This paper is important, because like the first studies that heralded the trouble with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosol sprays (like hairspray), it's the first one to point to a potential significant risk that scientists were previously unaware of.
They conducted the chemical imaging measurements of nanoplastics at the Advanced Light Source Synchrotron facility operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory operated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, with additional expertise provided by the Sonoma Technology staff. Ana Morales, a doctoral student in Laskin's lab, integrated the observations into the published study as its first author.
"It's not that no one cares about this problem," Laskin said. "But with knowledge comes the need for solutions. Now that we know there is a problem, once we have assessed the issue, now we can develop mitigations and strategies to keep everyone safe."
More information: Ana C. Morales et al, Atmospheric emission of nanoplastics from sewer pipe repairs, Nature Nanotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01219-9
