Sunday, December 11, 2022

Lehigh University shares in $47 million DOE push to accelerate fusion energy research

Professor Eugenio Schuster awarded nearly $1.75 million over three years for projects that could help pave the way for the development of a fusion pilot plant in the US

Grant and Award Announcement

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

The world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor is currently being built in the south of France. Called ITER— Latin for “the path”—the machine is the product of an international effort to essentially harness the energy-generating power of the sun.

“The goal of ITER is to produce 10 times more energy than is required to operate it,” says Eugenio Schuster, a professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. “Everyone in the fusion community is directly or indirectly working toward ITER.”

Schuster leads the Lehigh team that recently received nearly $1.75 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to continue their work in support of ITER and to help the United States establish its own nuclear fusion reactor within the next decade.

The award is part of a $47 million effort by the DOE announced in October to fund research around the world by U.S. scientists, and ultimately close the gap in science and technology when it comes to nuclear fusion. The awards support the Biden administration’s vision of creating commercial fusion energy.

ITER was formalized in 2006, construction began in 2013, and the facility is expected to be operational by the end of the decade. The long timeline is no surprise. For fusion to occur, two isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium must be heated to upwards of 100 million degrees Celsius. At that temperature, gas turns to plasma, the fourth state of matter. And stably containing that superheated plasma has been a tough problem to solve.

“We can’t just put it in a vessel because it will melt anything it touches,” says Schuster. “However, plasma is made of ionized atoms, meaning that nuclei and electrons are completely separated, which creates a mix of positive and negative charges. Those charged particles, ions and electrons, react to the presence of a magnetic field. So one of the approaches to containing the plasma has been to use magnetic fields to create what’s essentially an invisible bottle to hold it, and prevent those charged particles from escaping.”

While there are several approaches to magnetic confinement, Schuster says the most promising has been the tokamak, a doughnut-shaped structure that uses large coils to create the magnetic fields that confine and shape the plasma.

ITER is a tokamak, and for the past 20 years, Schuster has been part of an international team of scientists and engineers working at tokamaks in China, South Korea, and the U.S that were designed not to produce energy, but to help researchers study the physics of the plasma, and ultimately, to ensure the reality of sustained fusion—and ITER’s success.

Current tokamaks work in what’s called a pulsed regime, but they’re not all created equal, says Schuster. Unlike the newer machines in South Korea and China (called KSTAR and EAST, respectively) those in the U.S lack the superconducting coils necessary for extended operation.

“So, for example,” he says, “with the DIII-D tokamak in San Diego, which is the largest one we have here in the U.S., the pulse is around six seconds long. So we run an experiment for six seconds, and then we have to wait for the machine to cool down before we can run another one.”

KSTAR and EAST are known as long-pulse machines, and can run on the order of hundreds of seconds, which makes them ideal for experimentation that could eventually be applied to ITER, which is also designed for long-pulse and eventual steady-state operation. Ultimately, says Schuster, for nuclear fusion to be economically feasible, future nuclear-fusion reactors will have to operate in very long pulses (in comparison to the time between pulses) or in steady state.

Part of Lehigh’s DOE award will support research at KSTAR in South Korea, where Schuster’s Plasma Control Group—together with teams from General Atomics, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)—will address critical research questions related to the development of ITER’s long-pulse scenarios and their active control.

“We’ll be exploiting the fact that KSTAR is a long-pulse device that is similar to ITER in terms of both its inner-wall materials and its magnetic configuration,” he says. “And the work that we’ll be doing will help prepare ITER for operation.”

The total requested funding for this particular project is $4,347,000.

The remainder of Lehigh’s portion of the DOE award will support research that Schuster’s group will do in China at EAST. One of the goals of the project, which includes teams from General Atomics, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PPPL, and University of California, Los Angeles, is to utilize the readiness and uniqueness of EAST to guide the design of a fusion pilot plant (FPP) here in the U.S.

The total requested funding for the EAST project is $6,453,000.

The largest poloidal-field coils needed for ITER are manufactured by European partners in this 250-meter-long on-site production facility. These superconducting coils, ranging in diameter from 17 to 24 meters and weighing 200 to 400 tonnes, are simply too big to be manufactured off site and shipped to ITER. The poloidal-field coils are used in tokamaks mainly to stabilize and shape the plasma inside the vacuum vessel.
CREDIT
Courtesy of Eugenio Schuster

“A few years ago, the DOE asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to determine what was needed here in the U.S. to really advance nuclear fusion, and in particular, to bring fusion energy to the grid,” says Schuster. “And one of those recommendations was the construction of a fusion pilot plant. And that’s why the DOE is funding American researchers to do this work abroad. It will help us learn from these superconducting tokamak machines so that eventually, we can build a long-pulse reactor-degree device in this country.”

He says this push to design an FPP by the DOE is not only in line with the current administration’s goals to diversify its clean energy portfolio, but also with intense interest from private equity firms in making nuclear fusion a reality. Schuster says the goal is to design, develop, and begin producing energy within 10 years.

“It’s a very aggressive timeline,” he says. Indeed, especially considering that ITER—with its 16-year head start—is still not operational. But Schuster says the difference comes down to investment and technology.

“If you want to make things faster, you need to invest more heavily,” he says. “In the past, investors in nuclear fusion were exclusively governments around the world, which are often constrained by budgets aligned with shorter-term priorities. But now, you have startup companies funded by billionaires, and they aren’t constrained in the same way. The U.S. DOE is presently developing partnerships with private investors to accelerate the development of fusion energy.”

The technological constraints have also changed dramatically. Developments in computational power and advancements in superconducting coils capable of generating ever stronger magnetic fields to contain the plasma have pushed the field forward, faster.

“We now have the capability to better predict the evolution of the plasma, thanks to more powerful computational resources, to understand the physics of the plasma more precisely after decades of studies, and to process the huge amount of data that comes from plasma experiments so that we can better learn from these experimental results,” he says. “So we do believe that we’re in a position to design and build this FPP much faster than we did with ITER.”

It’s an exciting time, he says. The promise of nuclear fusion is a big one: If achieved, it could provide a limitless supply of clean, safe, and reliable energy. And now, with the force of American entrepreneurship behind it, the efforts of Schuster and so many researchers like him, may finally be realized.

“At the end of the day, this fusion pilot plant is what we’ve all been working on, and waiting our whole lives for,” he says. “It’s the opportunity to develop a type of energy that comes with so many benefits in terms of pollution, climate change, and fuel security—right here at home.”

Adults’ interactions at mealtimes influence children’s future relationships with food

University of Houston research shows engaged feeding yields healthier food habits that are likely to last

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

HOUSTON, December 7 — Two University of Houston researchers are developing strategies to help parents artfully sidestep showdowns at the family table. The goal is to reign in mealtime angst early in children’s lives so they can nurture positive relationships with food that can carry them into healthy adulthood.

In an article in the journal Appetite, the research team reveals that guiding children in recognizing their innate sense of fullness and helping them understand the importance of responding to its cues are two key elements in what is referred to as responsive feeding practices. The term is used by psychologists and other experts to describe parental attentiveness and engagement during feeding that affect children’s overall attitudes and behavior around food.

By way of clarifying the concept of responsive feeding practices, you might bring to mind its opposites – the nonresponsive feeding practices: Enforcing the ‘clean plate club,’ for example, whether a young eater is hungry or not. Or offering yummy dessert as a bribe for trudging through yucky vegetables or tedious chores.

Such unfortunate directions can encourage lifelong overeating, explained Leslie A. Frankel, associate professor in the Human Development and Family Sciences Program at the College of Education, and Ritu Sampige, a biomedical sciences senior in the UH Honors College, and the article’s first author.

“We consider those types of nonresponsive feeding practices to be less optimal because they override children’s ability to internally regulate how much food they should consume,” Sampige said.

In addition to paying attention to hunger and fullness cues, adults guide the mealtime atmosphere with attitudes they bring to the family table, even when they do not realize it. Staying positively involved with their children throughout family meals can make lasting differences.

“It’s not a black-and-white issue. Parents tend to use a lot of tactics to get their children to eat and behave and do all the things we need them to do. The key difference is the level to which parents are engaged at mealtime and how successful they are in avoiding nonresponsive eating behaviors and food rewards,” Frankel said.

Frankel and Sampige, with fellow research colleague and co-author Caroline Bena Kuno, of the Department of Psychology at the Virginia State University, are uncovering an unrecognized tie-in with parents’ mental health status.

Previous research has noted that children of parents who suffer from anxiety or depression are, themselves, more likely to experience general mental health issues. But until now, few studies have linked the issue specifically with children’s resiliency around the temptations of food.

“Parents who are more able to be responsive in the moment tend to be more successful in guiding their children on good paths to healthy eating. Helping parents get the support they need is crucial for many reasons. And now we know one more, that success at the family table involves the parents’ ability to be engaged with children and provide in-the-moment responses to each child’s fullness cues,” Frankel explained.

But take it all in balance, she stressed. “Food is often at the center of celebration, and that’s a beautiful thing. So are family trips out for ice cream and the joyful times children have with their families and friends. The important factor is not to adhere too strictly to rules – or expect every mealtime to go smoothly – but to help parents steer toward feeding practices that appreciate children’s innate sense of when to stop eating and regular mealtime rituals that honor everyone around the table,” she said.

Click here for the full article in Appetite.

JOURNAL

Appetite

DOI

10.1016/j.appet.2022.106317

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Adults’ interactions at mealtimes influence children’s future relationships with food

Socialness is in the eye of the beholder

New study investigates how social interaction is perceived

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

Although people are generally predisposed to perceive interactions to be social even in unlikely contexts, they don’t always agree on exactly which information is social, according to a new Dartmouth study.

The findings show that much of the brain responds more strongly to information that is interpreted as social versus non-social.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the results contribute to research illustrating how humans are drawn to social connections.

It has long been known that humans tend to perceive social information, including in inanimate stimuli, such as seeing a face in a rocky outcropping, or interpreting the motion of two shapes as a social interaction. Previous studies on social perception using such geometric-shaped animations have often relied on labels assigned over 20 years ago by researchers that designated which animations should be classified as social versus random (non-social) motion. However, Dartmouth’s study employs a more subjective approach and is based on participants’ own reports of whether they perceive a given animation as social or not.

“Through this research, we set out to understand how and why people can perceive the same dynamic social information differently,” says lead author Rekha Varrier, a postdoctoral fellow in the Functional Imaging and Naturalistic Neuroscience (FINN) Lab in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth. “By taking into account people’s own perceptions, we can understand the underlying neural processes better.”

To examine the behavioral and neural correlates of “conscious” social perception, the Dartmouth team used data from the social cognition task in the Human Connectome Project. With over 1,000 healthy adult participants, the project provides researchers with a large, public dataset to work from.

For the task, participants were asked to watch 10 animations of two or more shapes in motion that were 20 seconds in length while their brain activity was recorded in an fMRI scanner. The task was designed to be balanced, as five of the animations were meant to be social and the other five were not. After watching each animation, participants were asked to indicate how they perceived the content by selecting one of the following labels: social, non-social, or unsure.

The results demonstrated that participants were biased towards perceiving information as social in that they were more likely to declare an animation intended to be random as “social” than to declare one intended to be social as “random.” Furthermore, participants tended to express higher uncertainty on how to categorize animations when the stimuli were meant to be perceived as non-social, perhaps indicating a reluctance to declare content as non-social altogether.

“Humans depend on social structures to survive,” says senior author Emily Finn, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, and principal investigator of the FINN Lab at Dartmouth. “Our brains and minds might be primed to see things as social because it confers an evolutionary advantage.”

Finn also notes, “We’re likely tuned to see social information in our surroundings because the cost of missing a social interaction would likely be higher than that of falsely perceiving something as social.”

“Our fMRI results indicate that much of the brain cares about social information,” says Varrier. “We found that the neural response to social content occurs early both in time and in the cortical hierarchy.”

The findings show that the processing of social information occurs in early brain regions that are typically involved in processing visual information, including regions in the lateral occipital and temporal regions.

Through future work, the researchers plan to develop their own set of animations that are deliberately ambiguous, which will enable them to ask more precise questions about why there are different perceptions of social interactions across individuals. The results could potentially be used to better understand autism spectrum disorder and to gain a more nuanced understanding of social perception.

JOURNAL

JNeurosci

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Seeing Social: A Neural Signature for Conscious Perception of Social Interactions

The Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern, and we finally know why

UChicago research offers first concrete explanation for difference, and show it is getting even stormier over time

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CHIC

Topographical map of the world — IMAGE: TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF THE WORLD, WITH HIGHER MOUNTAIN RANGES IN DARK BROWN AND LOWER AREAS IN GREEN. THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE HAS MORE LAND MASS AND HIGHER MOUNTAINS THAN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, WHICH CONTRIBUTES IN PART TO FEWER STORMS, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY. view more
CREDIT: NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

For centuries, sailors who had been all over the world knew where the most fearsome storms of all lay in wait: the Southern Hemisphere. “The waves ran mountain-high and threatened to overwhelm [the ship] at every roll,” wrote one passenger on an 1849 voyage rounding the tip of South America.

Many years later, scientists poring over satellite data could finally put numbers behind sailors’ intuition: The Southern Hemisphere is indeed stormier than the Northern, by about 24%, in fact. But no one knew why.

A new study led by University of Chicago climate scientist Tiffany Shaw lays out the first concrete explanation for this phenomenon. Shaw and her colleagues found two major culprits: ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.

The study also found that this storminess asymmetry has increased since the beginning of the satellite era in the 1980s. The increase was shown to be qualitatively consistent with climate change forecasts from physics-based models.

‘A tale of two hemispheres’
For a long time, we didn’t know very much about the weather in the Southern Hemisphere: most of the ways we observe weather are land-based, and the Southern Hemisphere has much more ocean than the Northern Hemisphere does.

But with the advent of satellite-based global observing in the 1980s, we could quantify just how extreme the difference was. The Southern Hemisphere has a stronger jet stream and more intense weather events.

Ideas had been circulated, but no one had established a definitive explanation for this asymmetry. Shaw—along with Osamu Miyawaki (PhD’22, now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research) and the University of Washington’s Aaron Donohoe—had hypotheses from their own and other previous studies, but they wanted to take the next step. This meant bringing together multiple lines of evidence, from observations, theory, and physics-based simulations of Earth’s climate.

“You can’t put the Earth in a jar,” Shaw explained, “so instead we use climate models built on the laws of physics and run experiments to test our hypotheses.”

They used a numerical model of Earth’s climate built on the laws of physics that reproduced the observations. Then they removed different variables one at a time, and quantified each one’s impact on storminess.

The first variable they tested was topography. Large mountain ranges disrupt air flow in a way that reduces storms, and there are more mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.

Indeed, when the scientists flattened every mountain on Earth, about half the difference in storminess between the two hemispheres disappeared.

The other half had to do with ocean circulation. Water moves around the globe like a very slow but powerful conveyor belt: it sinks in the Arctic, travels along the bottom of the ocean, rises near Antarctica and then flows up near the surface, carrying energy with it. This creates an energy difference between the two hemispheres. When the scientists tried eliminating this conveyor belt, they saw the other half of the difference in storminess disappear.

Getting even stormier
Having answered the fundamental question regarding why the southern hemisphere is stormier, the researchers moved on to examine how storminess has changed since we’ve been able to track it.

Looking over past decades of observations, they found that the storminess asymmetry has increased over the satellite era beginning in the 1980s. That is, the Southern Hemisphere is getting even stormier, whereas the change on average in the Northern Hemisphere has been negligible.

The Southern Hemisphere storminess changes were connected to changes in the ocean. They found a similar ocean influence is occurring in the Northern Hemisphere, but its effect is canceled out by the absorption of sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere due to the loss of sea ice and snow.

The scientists checked and found that models used to forecast climate change as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report were showing the same signals—increasing storminess in the Southern Hemisphere and negligible changes in the Northern—which serves as an important independent check on the accuracy of these models.

It may be surprising that such a deceptively simple question—why one hemisphere is stormier than another—went unanswered for so long, but Shaw explained that the field of weather and climate physics is relatively young compared to many other fields.

It was only after World War II that scientists began to build models of the physics driving large-scale weather and climate (of which key contributions were made at the University of Chicago by Prof. Carl-Gustaf Rossby).

But having a deep understanding of the physical mechanisms behind the climate and its response to human-caused changes, such as those laid out in this study, are crucial for predicting and understanding what will happen as climate change accelerates.

“By laying this foundation of understanding, we increase confidence in climate change projections and thereby help society better prepare for the impacts of climate change,” Shaw said. “One of the major threads in my research is to understand if models are giving us good information now so that we can trust what they say about the future. The stakes are high and it’s important to get the right answer for the right reason.”

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2123512119

ARTICLE TITLE

Stormier Southern Hemisphere induced by topography and ocean circulation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Dec-2022

Aging societies: How can we design societies that benefit older and younger people?

The National Academy of Medicine’s Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity says we have an unprecedented opportunity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

The success of longevity interventions is putting countries on paths to becoming aging societies, in which the number of individuals aged 65 and older is equal to the number of people aged 15 and younger. This outcome may lead to resistance to investments in healthy longevity, according to aging experts, if concerns are raised that the needs of older individuals will overwhelm societies, exacerbate ageism, and divide populations.

The National Academy of Medicine in the United States addressed this possibility as its first-ever Grand Challenge, and in June 2022 published the Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity, developed by an independent and interdisciplinary global commission co-chaired by Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and John Eu-Li Wong, Isabel Chan Professor in Medical Sciences and senior vice president of health innovation and translation at the National University of Singapore. A commentary in the Dec. 2, 2022 Nature Aging, by Dr. Fried, Dr. Wong, and Victor J. Dzau, MD, president of the National Academy of Medicine, reviews the findings and recommendations of the Global Roadmap.

“We are at a critical inflection point, perhaps even a precipice, between the realization of our negative assumptions or pursuing an optimistic future of healthy longevity, avoidable disability, and social challenges,’” says Dr. Fried, who is also Director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center. “With most countries expected to be aging societies by 2050, the lead time to be fully prepared is short.”

“The health of a population is a priceless asset. A healthy society is far better prepared to face crises, be it extreme weather events or pandemics. Having populations able to continue contributing well into their older age will allow all to reap the investments in human capital made throughout life, which in turn will unlock the social and economic capital of older people to a degree which has yet to be realized,” says Dr. Wong, who is also senior advisor at the National University Health System.

“Across the globe, investing in health, well-being, and sense of purpose of older adults has the potential to yield great rewards that benefit individuals of all ages and society at large,” observes National Academy of Medicine President Victor J. Dzau. “Enabling healthy longevity allows people to be productive, contribute to their communities, generates social and economic capital, and fulfills an individual’s sense of purpose. All of society - governments and leaders across sectors - must work in tandem to cultivate healthy longevity to build societies that support longer, healthier, meaningful lives.”

Global Roadmap’s findings and recommendations include:

If health is realized in longer lives, older adults can bring unpercented assets at a potential scale that could create a longevity dividend good for all ages
The costs of inaction to create health longevity have critical implications, including the high risk of young people aging with more ill health.
The principles and vision (Vision 2050) for healthy longevity will allow for people to live long lives with health; for older populations to be valued; and for engagement in meaningful and productive activities, leading to intergenerational wellbeing and cohesion.
Implementing Vision 2050 demands an all-of-society effort, an aligned transformation of multiple sectors of society, and governmental leadership.
To initiate the transformation to healthy longevity requires social cohesion and the design of environments that are user-centered.
The returns on investment would be high, measured in enhanced human, social, and financial capital and multigenerational wellbeing.

“Governments should work to build the dividend of healthy longevity in collaboration with the business sector and civil society. This includes developing policies and systems that encourage older adults who want to remain working to do so, improving broadband accessibility to reduce the digital divide, and supporting lifelong learning,” notes Fried. “We are at the forefront of an unprecedented opportunity to realize healthy longevity that we must not miss if we want a generation of substantial social and economic benefits for all ages. By contrast, the costs to society are extraordinary if we continue to increase our years of ill health and widening disparities.”

The authors declare no competing interest.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the fourth largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu.

JOURNAL

Nature Aging

DOI

10.1038/s43587-022-00332-7

ARTICLE TITLE

A global roadmap to seize the opportunities of healthy longevity

Salton Sea dust triggers lung inflammation

UC Riverside study has health implications for people living around California’s largest lake

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

Graphical abstract — IMAGE: ILLUSTRATION SHOWS A GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT OF THE RESEARCH. view more
CREDIT: LO LAB, UC RIVERSIDE.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- The Salton Sea, the body of water in Southern California’s Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley, is shrinking over time as the planet warms and exposing more lakebed and new sources of dust in the process. High levels of dust already plague the region, a situation likely to worsen as the sea continues to shrink due to climate change.

Not surprisingly, the communities surrounding the Salton Sea have high rates of childhood asthma (20–22.4%) — much higher than the California average of 14.5%.

A University of California, Riverside, mouse study, led by Dr. David Lo, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine, has found that dust collected at sites near the Salton Sea triggered lung neutrophil inflammation in mice. Neutrophils are a type of white blood cells that help fight infection.

“We now have an important direct demonstration that chronic exposures to Salton Sea dust may have a role in the asthma in residents closest to the Salton Sea,” said Lo, who directs the Bridging Regional Ecology, Aerosolized Toxins, & Health Effects, or BREATHE, Center. Housed in the UC Riverside medical school, the center addresses critical issues in air quality and health.

“What residents near the sea are breathing is dissolved material from the sea, with microbial components that can promote inflammation,” Lo said. “As the sea continues to dry up and expose more dust-producing lakebed, it could increase concern for the residents, especially as climate change drives chronic drought in the region.”

Lo explained that dust can cause several pulmonary diseases. In the Salton Sea, contaminants such as pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, and microbial toxins may be enriched in the dust. To examine the potentially harmful effects of this dust, the study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, used an environmental exposure chamber at UC Riverside.

The research team collected dust at four sites, three of which were 0.6, 2, and 4 miles from the Salton Sea lakebed. Dust from a fourth site, located 20 miles from the northwest border of the Salton Sea shoreline, served as the control; the dust here produced no significant lung inflammation.

From the dust they collected, Lo and his colleagues made aqueous extracts and filtered out inert and larger particulate material such as fibers and sand. They then injected suspensions of fine aerosols into the environmental exposure chamber. The mice were exposed to the aerosols for two days (to study acute innate response) or seven days (to study allergic-type response).

“Interestingly, material from dust at the Salton Sea induced strong pulmonary inflammation in the mice, but not the allergic profile more commonly associated with clinical asthma,” Lo said.

“The lung inflammation looks like it is triggered by bacterial components rather than classic allergens like mold, dust mites, or pollen,” he said. “What we are seeing is decidedly different from a classic allergic response. Our next step is to see if this pattern is also true among residents of the region.”

The study has implications for other terminal lakes — those with no outlet — such as the Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan, the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and Mono Lake in Northern California.

“The environmental crisis at the Salton Sea may be occurring at these terminal lakes also or where rivers and lakes are shrinking and causing an ecosystem change,” Lo said. “This may be a warning sign that global warming and drying lakes and chronic drought — think of Lake Powell in Arizona and Utah or Lake Mead in Nevada — are also what we need to pay closer attention to because evaporating waters here are changing the ecology and local environment. These terminal lake regions are unique as they have increasing levels of dust, which can trigger high levels of pulmonary inflammation.”

Lo stressed that understanding dust-triggered inflammation, the mechanisms behind it, and its interaction with allergens and allergic development is crucial and needs more funding to advance.

“Only additional research on this topic will allow us to address in depth the negative health impacts of the dust and develop viable strategies to address them,” he said.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, through a grant to the UCR Center for Health Disparities, which Lo directs. The content of this article does not necessarily represent the NIH’s official views.

Lo was joined in the research by Trevor A. Biddle, Keziyah Yisrael, Ryan Drover, Qi Li, Mia R. Maltz, Talyssa M. Topacio, Jasmine Yu, Diana Del Castillo, Daniel Gonzales, Hannah L. Freund, Mark P. Swenson, Malia L. Shapiro, Jon K. Botthoff, Emma Aronson, and David R. Cocker III.

The research paper is titled “Aerosolized aqueous dust extracts collected near a drying lake trigger acute neutrophilic pulmonary inflammation reminiscent of microbial innate immune ligands.”

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

UC Riverside research at the Salton Sea is multidisciplinary, bringing together faculty and graduate students from the School of Medicine, the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, and the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.
CREDIT
Stan Lim, UC Riverside

JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159882

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Aerosolized aqueous dust extracts collected near a drying lake trigger acute neutrophilic pulmonary inflammation reminiscent of microbial innate immune ligands

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