Mapping Mexico’s dengue fever hotspots

Rutgers researcher co-creates tool to help identify outbreaks and prioritize virus control efforts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

As many as one in five dengue fever deaths in the Americas occur in Mexico, and the rate of the disease’s severity has been increasing for decades, according to the World Health Organization. Now, a Rutgers researcher has generated data that could help curb the mosquito-borne illness in the country.

Ubydul Haque, an assistant professor of global health at the Rutgers Global Health Institute, has analyzed data from Mexico’s Ministry of Health to identify dengue fever hotspots. Working with epidemiologists at the University of North Texas and Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, the team calculated environmental and socioeconomic risk factors and mapped areas where severe outbreaks occur.

The findings are published in the journal Ecological Informatics.

“These maps can aid health officials in targeting fogging activities or enhancing surveillance,” Haque said. “By knowing where severe dengue fever frequently occurs, we can significantly reduce the number of cases.”

Dengue fever has been reported in 28 of 32 states in Mexico, and researchers have long known that socioeconomic status and weather affect dengue fever case counts in those states. But the factors contributing to disease severity hasn’t been studied.

Past work also has failed to account for geographic distribution of variants, or serotypes. There are four dengue virus serotypes – DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3 and DENV-4 – and transmissibility and lethality differ by each.

To fill these research gaps, Haque analyzed laboratory-confirmed dengue fever infections from 71,059 individuals in 2,469 Mexican municipalities collected between 2012 and 2020. Samples included serotype classification.

This data was overlaid with localized weather and socioeconomic statistics, such as literacy, access to health services, electricity and sanitation.

As expected, each degree Celsius increase in temperature was associated with lower rates of occurrence of the virus – mosquito eggs don’t hatch well in high heat – while increasing humidity was associated with an increase in the rate of each virus serotype.

Moreover, the researchers determined that lower socioeconomic status increases risk of dengue fever, and indicators such as access to education, information and infrastructure are better predictive factors of dengue fever distribution.

From this data, the researchers produced heat maps highlighting dengue virus distribution and severity. Hotspots were generally observed in humid coastal regions at lower altitude. Throughout the country, the most prevalent serotype was DENV-2 and the least prevalent was DENV-4, Haque said.

While efforts are underway to develop DENV-specific vaccines, mosquito control programs such as fogging, and drone surveillance remain the most effective means of slowing the disease’s spread. Haque said data visualization can help health officials plan where to target their activities.

“From our data we know that DENV-2 is deadlier compared to other serotypes,” Haque said. “If regional health officials had limited resources for their control program, they could focus most of their resources in places where DENV-2 was prevalent.”

The WHO estimates dengue fever infects as many as 400 million people every year, killing thousands. With climate change predicted to increase dengue fever cases in Mexico over the coming decades, continuous surveillance of serotype patterns will be essential to preventing or slowing the rate of increase, Haque said.

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JOURNAL

Ecological Informatics

DOI

10.1016/j.ecoinf.2023.101986 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The ecological determinants of severe dengue: A Bayesian inferential model

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-severe-dengue
Dengue and severe dengue - World Health Organization (WHO)
Jan 10, 2022 ... Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that has rapidly spread to all regions of WHO in recent years. Dengue virus is transmitted by female ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever
Dengue fever - Wikipedia
Dengue fever virus (DENV) is an RNA virus ; The dengue virus genome ; Dengue virus is primarily transmitted by Aedes mosquitos, particularly A. aegypti. · These ...

Dengue fever, a man-made disease

Apr 30th 1998 | JAKARTA

THE ECONOMIST

EXCERPT

SUPERSTITIOUS South-East Asians might suspect a supernatural curse. Reeling from economic turmoil, and bracing themselves for a return of the smog that forest fires last year belched over much of the region, they are also now battling the Aedes aegypti mosquito, and the disease it carries: dengue fever. In most of the tropical world, dengue is ever-present, and spreading. Last year saw the highest-ever recorded number of infected people in the Americas, with Brazil and Cuba especially badly hit. This year dengue has reached pandemic proportions in Indonesia and Thailand, and Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam are all experiencing serious outbreaks. Most sufferers are children.

As with the smog, it is tempting, but unfair, to blame mother nature. The weather patterns brought by the El Niño effect have mucked about with the mosquito's life-cycle, just as they have delayed the rains to douse the burning trees. But dengue is a disease of urbanisation and human travel. In the words of Suchitra Nimmannitya, a Thai specialist on the disease, the infected Aedes aegypti is “a man-made mosquito”.

Is dengue fever today a man-made

disaster? An ethical dilemma

LETTERS
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2014.050

Date of Publication: July 22, 2014

I faced a serious ethical dilemma while attending a couple of cases of dengue fever at a ward in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area during September 2013. Two patients had tested positive for dengue IgM antibody by MAC ELISA. Adjacent to their house was a vacant plot of around 1500 sq feet and this was heaped with domestic waste from the neighbouring houses. The waste comprised plastic cups, thermocol plates, plastic bags and boxes of biscuits, cakes, chips and other foodstuff, coconut shells, bicycle tyres and earthen pots. These served as a permanent breeding ground for Aedes mosquitoes, the vector for the dengue virus. The owner of the land lived elsewhere and the local people had been dumping their domestic waste here indiscriminately, without the owner’s permission. They had converted the area into an unauthorised garbage dump, despite the fact that the conservancy workers of the KMC visited the place for house collection of wastes every day.

Later, I came to know that two more NS1-reactive dengue cases had been reported from the same locality the following week. I informed the KMC health department about the matter, as dengue is a notifiable disease here. Health workers from the KMC visited the area and discovered several plastic cups, earthen pots, coconut shells and the like, which contained stagnant water. Larval and pupal stages of the Aedes species were found on the rooftops of most houses in the locality. Van-fogging of the area with adulticides was performed, as well as source reduction, followed by chemical (Temephos 50% EC) spraying in the moist areas and other possible breeding sites that could not be destroyed. Last year, there had been a dengue outbreak in the area and three deaths due to dengue shock syndrome were reported. The KMC authorities have been sending surveillance workers with information, education and communication (IEC) materials, such as handbills, to this area on a weekly basis for the past six months. They have even hired an auto-rickshaw and fitted it with a microphone to conduct IEC activities in the area twice a week. Their field workers and surveillance workers have been carrying out anti-larval activities, such as source destruction and chemical spraying, and conducting active surveillance for new cases of fever throughout the year. Further, IEC activities are being carried out through television, FM radio, newspapers, electricity bills, handbills, and so on.

Despite the above measures, people continue to dispose of waste indiscriminately, resulting in the accumulation of stagnant water. Therefore, it was evident that mere IEC and chemical spraying would not suffice; the civic authorities would need to take decisive action to improve the environment.

Despite the outbreak of dengue in the area the previous year, the residents failed to reduce the sources conducive to the breeding of mosquitoes in their own premises. Even after the enormous efforts of the KMC health department, they failed to realise how they themselves had promoted the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes. Should people have the liberty not to keep their premises clean when this can make others ill and even result in their deaths? Should the authorities, in the interest of beneficence and justice for the larger community, have the right to forcibly take action to clean up people’s premises? Should people have the right to convert others’ premises into an unauthorised dumping ground, endangering the life of others in the community? Should the authorities, in the interest of non-maleficence and justice for the owner, as well as beneficence for the community, have the right to take legal action against such transgressions? The dilemma remains unanswered.

About the Authors
Subhasis Bhandari (subhasisbhandari@gmail.com)
General Physician and Health Research Scholar
Bhandari House, 151, Diamond Harbour Road, Behala, Kolkata 700034

Financial coaching for parents in clinic leads to higher attendance at well-child health care visits for their young children

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES

Implementing financial coaching for parents of infants in a pediatric primary care setting reduced missed well-child care visit rates by half and significantly improved receipt of vaccinations at a timely age, according to a new community-partnered pilot study led by UCLA researchers.

The study, published in Pediatrics, is the first to examine the effectiveness of delivering financial coaching and its impact on preventive care visits and vaccination in infants’ first six months of life, among families with low income who often face economic stress.

“Improving the continuity and quality of pediatric care has been a focus for pediatric care nationally, and the medical-financial partnership approach offers a novel strategy,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Adam Schickedanz, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Early childhood financial hardship has a significant impact on health. Infancy is full of new expenses and financial challenges that families grapple with. Having a new baby in the family can increase eligibility for a number of anti-poverty public benefits programs, and young children and their parents have relatively frequent visits to their physician, so the health care system has more contact with children and families in the preschool years than any other family-facing system. This makes health care a great setting for delivering financial guidance and supports to young families. What our study shows is that this in-clinic financial coaching leads to improvements in clinical care continuity and quality too.”

Poverty-related social needs and other measures of patient financial hardship are among the most consistent predictors of missed health care visits, yet interventions to increase patient visit attendance have tended not to focus on underlying financial needs of children and families. In this new study, conducted at the Harbor-UCLA pediatric primary care clinic, parents received financial coaching in exam rooms during their infants’ well-child visits while waiting for their pediatrician and other health care team members. The financial coaches, who have backgrounds in social work, were trained in the foundations of financial coaching by LIFT Inc., a national nonprofit that works to break intergenerational cycles of poverty. Through ongoing supervision and education from clinician supervisors, as well as LIFT’s financial coaching training, financial coaches were equipped to help parents identify their financial goals, plan action steps and ultimately achieve greater financial stability. The coaches also connected parents to public benefits and cost-saving services such as low-cost childcare, nutrition assistance programs, free tax preparation and other public resources. Coaches also followed up remotely with parents at least monthly to track progress toward goals.

The researchers enrolled 81 parents recruited from clinic waiting areas or exam rooms who were randomized to either receive clinic-based financial coaching plus usual care (the intervention group of 35) or usual care (the control group of 46). The parents were primarily mothers and over half were Latina.

Over the first months of their infants’ lives, parents and children in the intervention group had half the rate of missed primary care pediatric visits compared to those in the control group. They were also 26% more likely to be up-to-date with immunizations each visit and had fewer missed vaccinations overall by the end of the six-month visit period. Parents who received financial coaching also reported increased monthly household income relative to when they enrolled in the program.

“When we approached the parents in clinic to offer this service and support them with their financial goals, many already recognized that their finances and the health of their child were intertwined. It made sense, from their perspective, to receive financial coaching services in combination with their child’s health care,” Schickedanz said. “Once they began receiving the intervention service, many parents shared that they felt supported by their coach. This supportive relationship with that coach as a key new member of their health care team may have given parents more motivation to stick with the clinic for their pediatric visits over time.”

“We have found that the strong social connection between parent and coach is an integral part of the success of the service,” added co-author Michelle Rhone-Collins. “Coaching breaks down the goals of parents into concrete action steps alongside a partner to cheer them on, hold them accountable and offer them hope.”

The authors note the study has some limitations, including its small size at a single site and the inability to do a blinded study. A concurrent study of the influence of financial coaching on participating parents’ health outcomes remains ongoing.

Still, the results “suggest that addressing financial goals and needs can improve preventive visit care adherence and vaccinations,” the authors write. “This may partially offset costs to clinics of implementing medical-financial partnership programs, in addition to optimizing the host of health, developmental and psychosocial benefits of preventive pediatric care.”

Other study authors are Lorraine Perales and Dr. Peter G. Szilagyi of UCLA, Dr. Monique Holguin of UCLA and USC, Michelle Rhone-Collins and Helah Robinson of LIFT-Los Angeles, Dr. Niloufar Tehrani and Dr. Lynne Smith of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Paul J. Chung of UCLA and the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.

The study was funded by the UCLA National Research Service Award Primary Care and Health Services Fellowship, the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS, KL2TR001882), a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K23HD099308) and NCATS at the National Institutes of Health through the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program (UL1TR001881).

Study: Clinic-Based Financial Coaching and Missed Pediatric Preventive Care: A Randomized Trial; Pediatrics published online February 2, 2023; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2021-054970

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JOURNAL

PEDIATRICS

DOI

10.1542/peds.2021-054970 

ARTICLE TITLE

Clinic-Based Financial Coaching and Missed Pediatric Preventive Care: A Randomized Trial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Feb-2023

Flue2Chem: Science-based industries join forces for first time to address UK net zero targets

Business Announcement

SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

 

IMAGE: THE FLUE2CHEM PROJECT IS LED BY UNILEVER AND FACILITATED BY SCI, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BASF, TATA STEEL, CRODA, JOHNSON MATTHEY, UPM-KYMMENE, HOLMEN, THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD, THE UNIVERSITY OF SURREY, CARBON CLEAN, PROCTOR & GAMBLE, THE CENTRE FOR PROCESS INNOVATION, THE CONFEDERATION OF PAPER INDUSTRIES, AND RECKITT. WITH SUPPORT FROM INNOVATE UK FUNDING, THE CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION FLUE2CHEM WILL WORK TO CONVERT INDUSTRIAL WASTE GASES IN THE UK TO CREATE MORE SUSTAINABLE CHEMICALS FOR CONSUMER PRODUCTS, A MOVE WHICH IS ESSENTIAL IN HELPING THE UK REACH NET ZERO BY 2050. view more 

CREDIT: SCI (THE SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY)

• Industry giants from £73 billion UK sector, including Unilever, BASF and Tata Steel, embark on a first of its kind cross-sector collaboration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
   
• Currently, fossil feedstocks extracted from coal, oil and gas, are used to make a range of consumer goods from electronics to cleaning products
   
• With support from Innovate UK funding, the cross-sector collaboration ‘Flue2Chem’ will work to convert industrial waste gases in the UK to create more sustainable chemicals for consumer products, a move which is essential in helping the UK reach net zero by 2050

Key industrial players representing the UK’s £73 billion chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry sector have signed a collaboration agreement to launch ‘Flue2Chem’ – a collaborative programme to transform the sustainability of the UK’s consumer products industry and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a demonstration scale.

SCI (Society of Chemical Industry), Unilever and 13 other organisations have secured funding for a two-year programme to develop a new value chain to convert industrial waste gases into sustainable materials for consumer products. 

The £5.4 million project, which has been granted £2.68 million from Innovate UK via UKRI’s Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) Challenge, will aim to help the UK reach its net zero targets. 

One goal is to seek to demonstrate how the UK could cut 15–20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. 

The aim of the consortium is to enable the use of waste gases from foundation industries such as the production of metals, glass, paper and chemicals to generate an alternative source of carbon for UK consumer product production. 

This comes at a time when most of the carbon used to produce plastics, cosmetics, synthetic textiles, and many other products is extracted from coal, oil and gas. If the UK is to reach its net zero target by 2050, industries must find an alternative source for the carbon in these goods.

Aside from the technical aspects of the project, the business model development will frame the economic incentives that will likely be required to make the model work. The project will bring together partners from across the whole supply chain to achieve this. 

Currently the UK imports large amounts of carbon-containing feedstocks each year for use in the consumer goods industry. Securing an alternative domestic source of carbon for these goods is one way in which these sectors can contribute to net zero targets, while also building a new UK value chain. 

David Bott, SCI’s Head of Innovation said:

‘This is an excellent example of the power of collaborative working. It is an important step for the UK and SCI’s vision of furthering the application of chemistry and related sciences into industry for public benefit.

‘The new business model will aim to reduce the need for imported fossil fuel material. Instead, the consortium will build a new, more sustainable supply chain whilst also mitigating waste emissions. The group will develop methods for using carbon captured from waste streams of other industries and transform them into affordable raw materials for consumer products.’

Project lead Ian Howell, Unilever’s Home Care Science & Technology R&D Director and Chair of SCI’s Sustainable Materials for Consumer Products Group explained:

‘This is a game-changing opportunity to accelerate action and rewire the chemicals value chain to be less reliant on fossil fuels. It’s a bold ambition and one that, at Unilever, we have been publicly calling for action over the last two years. No single company can do this alone, so to have the power of 15 manufacturers and academics marks a significant step forward not only for the UK, but globally too.’

Bruce Adderley, Innovate UK Challenge Director for the Transforming Foundation Industries Challenge, added:

‘Underpinned by circular economy thinking, the Foundation Industries and their supply chain partners are bringing forward a range of new innovations as they move towards a sustainable competitive future. But these need to be demonstrated at scale if they are to be rapidly deployed in the UK and taken to international markets. That is why we are delighted to be able to support projects like Flue2Chem which have huge potential to address decarbonisation through multi-industry collaboration focused on resource and energy efficiency.’

In addition to SCI, Unilever, BASF and Tata Steel, the other consortium partners are: UPM-Kymmene, Holmen, Croda, Johnson Matthey, The University of Sheffield, The University of Surrey, Carbon Clean, Procter & Gamble, Centre for Process Innovation, Confederation of Paper Industries, and Reckitt. These organisations encompass the capture, transformation and use of the carbon emissions in industry

The Flue2Chem project is led by Unilever and facilitated by SCI, in partnership with BASF, Tata Steel, Croda, Johnson Matthey, UPM-Kymmene, Holmen, the University of Sheffield, the University of Surrey, Carbon Clean, Proctor & Gamble, the Centre for Process Innovation, the Confederation of Paper Industries, and Reckitt. With support from Innovate UK funding, the cross-sector collaboration Flue2Chem will work to convert industrial waste gases in the UK to create more sustainable chemicals for consumer products, a move which is essential in helping the UK reach net zero by 2050.

CREDIT

SCI (The Society of Chemical Industry)

Medication administration errors can induce fear, sadness ang guilt among healthcare professionals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND

Despite evidence showing that the causes of medication errors can be traced back to multiple factors in the healthcare setting, healthcare professionals still often feel the blame on them. In a new study, healthcare professionals described a variety of negative emotions when reporting medication administration errors, most commonly feelings of fear, disturbed mood, sadness, and guilt. However, immediate reassurance and guidance from seniors and colleagues helped them cope with the situation effectively.

“How the workplace responds to the error is clearly linked to the emotional impact it can have on the healthcare professional who made the error. Adequate support and guidance may not only help solve the problem at hand, but also prevent further medication errors and encourage an open reporting culture,” says the first author of the study, Doctoral Researcher Sanu Mahat from the University of Eastern Finland.

The study was conducted in collaboration between the University of Eastern Finland and King’s College London. The findings were published in BMC Health Services Research.

Data for the study was obtained from the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) for England and Wales and included medication administration errors reported in 2016 in a total of 72,390 incident reports. The researchers analysed those incident reports where healthcare professionals expressed negative emotions in relation to the error, in total 93 reports.

The key negative emotions expressed by healthcare professionals were categorised into feelings of fear, disturbed mood, sadness, and guilt. They also included extreme negative emotional expressions, such as being devastated and questioning one’s own professional competence.

“The use of such intense and traumatic language can be a reflection of how much the healthcare professionals concerned were impacted and even emotionally wrecked after making an error. Incident reporting by healthcare professionals in this study indicated that unintentional harm caused due to medication administration errors and even near misses can affect the healthcare professional involved in error emotionally, increasing their risk of becoming the second victim,” Mahat says.

Workplace factors such as high workload and poor nurse staffing are known to contribute to medication administration errors. However, emotional distress caused by errors can also further affect the quality and safety of patient care.

The authors point out that immediate negative feelings experienced by healthcare professionals after getting involved in medication administration incidents can have long-lasting and potentially traumatising impacts on their mental health. In the absence of support, self-blame seems to assume greater prominence.

“Hence, it should be paramount to tailor appropriate support from persons in-charge and colleagues and to promote an open culture where errors are treated fairly. In addition, system triggers surrounding medication administration errors need to be understood and prevented,” Mahat concludes.

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JOURNAL

BMC Health Services Research

DOI

10.1186/s12913-022-08818-1 

ARTICLE TITLE

Negative emotions experienced by healthcare staff following medication administration errors: a descriptive study using text-mining and content analysis of incident data.

Uncovering the secrets of electron-eating microorganisms

A new research project is aiming to improve our understanding of so-called electro-trophic microorganisms, which can convert green electricity and CO2 to high-value products

Grant and Award Announcement

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: ASSISTANT PROFESSOR JO PHILIPS view more 

CREDIT: AARHUS UNIVERSITY

A large number of microorganisms have the inherent ability to convert electricity and CO2 to high-value chemical products via electrosynthesis. These electro-trophic microorganisms absorb energy in the form of electrons, which they can use to convert CO2 into biofuels, for example.

We have known about the process for years, it is completely natural, and the microbes belong to a large number of microbial groups. The same microorganisms also have the ability to break down metal via microbial corrosion.

However, the precise electro-trophic mechanism is still unknown territory, and neither do we know why certain microorganisms are electro-trophic and others are not.

Assistant Professor Jo Philips from the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering at Aarhus University has received a grant from the Villum Foundation's Young Investigator programme to study these questions in the project Some-like-it-low. There could be great potential for both microbiological Power-to-X and new tools to avoid microbial corrosion.

"Using the electro-trophic properties of microorganisms shows great promise for a wide range of applications, but we need a full understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Today, we know very little about what determines whether or not a microbe is electro-trophic, and this lack of understanding prevents the development of microbial electrochemical technologies," says Jo Philips.

The Some-like-it-low project will focus on the hypothesis, that electro-trophic microbes are capable of consuming molecular hydrogen, H2, at low levels.

“Our research group here at Aarhus University, Microbial Electrosynthesis, is currently proving the hypothesis, that H2 is a key intermediate in this process. With Some-like-it-low, we’re able to extend this research to a much wider range of other highly relevant microbes and to use new techniques for investigating the electro-trophic mechanism,” Jo Philips says.

She continues:

“I have always been fascinated by microbes as they have so many intriguing properties which could be of use to solve some of the major issues of our time. I really hope, that this research will bring new insights into some of these remarkable microbes.”

Jo Philips is originally from Belgium and did her PhD in Bioscience Engineering at KU Leuven, where she worked on bioremediation of contaminated soils. From 2012 to 2014 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Microbiology at University of Massachusetts before going back to Belgium as a postdoc at Ghent University. In 2018 she got a position as tenure track assistant professor at Aarhus University.

Jo Philips is heading the Microbial Electrosynthesis research group at Aarhus University, which will carry out the Some-like-it-low project. The Villum Foundation has awarded DKK 6 million (EUR 0.8 million) to the project, which is set to start in summer 2023.

Physicists observe rare resonance in molecules for the first time

The findings could provide a new way to control chemical reactions.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

If she hits just the right pitch, a singer can shatter a wine glass. The reason is resonance. While the glass may vibrate slightly in response to most acoustic tones, a pitch that resonates with the material’s own natural frequency can send its vibrations into overdrive, causing the glass to shatter.

Resonance also occurs at the much smaller scale of atoms and molecules. When particles chemically react, it’s partly due to specific conditions that resonate with particles in a way that drives them to chemically link. But atoms and molecules are constantly in motion, inhabiting a blur of vibrating and rotating states. Picking out the exact resonating state that ultimately triggers molecules to react has been nearly impossible.

MIT physicists may have cracked part of this mystery with a new study appearing in the journal Nature. The team reports that they have for the first time observed a resonance in colliding ultracold molecules.

They found that a cloud of super-cooled sodium-lithium (NaLi) molecules disappeared 100 times faster than normal when exposed to a very specific magnetic field. The molecules’ rapid disappearance is a sign that the magnetic field tuned the particles into a resonance, driving them to react more quickly than they normally would.

The findings shed light on the mysterious forces that drive molecules to chemically react. They also suggest that scientists could one day harness particles’ natural resonances to steer and control certain chemical reactions.

“This is the very first time a resonance between two ultracold molecules has ever been seen,” says study author Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT. “There were suggestions that molecules are so complicated that they are like a dense forest, where you would not be able to recognize a single resonance. But we found one big tree standing out, by a factor of 100. We observed something completely unexpected.”

Ketterle’s co-authors include lead author and MIT graduate student Juliana Park, graduate student Yu-Kun Lu, former MIT postdoc Alan Jamison, who is currently at the University of Waterloo, and Timur Tscherbul at the University of Nevada.

A middle mystery

Within a cloud of molecules, collisions occur constantly. Particles may ping off each other like frenetic billiard balls or stick together in a brief yet crucial state known as an “intermediate complex” that then sets off a reaction to transform the particles into a new chemical structure.

“When two molecules collide, most of the time they don’t make it to that intermediate state,” says Jamison. “But when they’re in resonance, the rate of going to that state goes up dramatically.”

“The intermediate complex is the mystery behind all of chemistry,” Ketterle adds. “Usually, the reactants and the products of a chemical reaction are known, but not how one leads to the other. Knowing something about the resonance of molecules can give us a fingerprint of this mysterious middle state.”

Ketterle’s group has looked for signs of resonance in atoms and molecules that are super-cooled, to temperatures just above absolute zero. Such ultracold conditions inhibit the particles’ random, temperature-driven motion, giving scientists a better chance of recognizing any subtler signs of resonance. 

In 1998, Ketterle made the first ever observation of such resonances in ultracold atoms. He observed that, when a very specific magnetic field was applied to super-cooled sodium atoms, the field enhanced the way the atoms scattered off each other, in an effect known as a Feshbach resonance. Since then, he and others have looked for similar resonances in collisions involving both atoms and molecules.

“Molecules are much more complicated than atoms,” says Ketterle. “They have so many different vibrational and rotational states. Therefore, it was not clear if molecules would show resonances at all.”

Needle in a haystack

Several years ago, Jamison, who at the time was a postdoc in Ketterle’s lab, proposed a similar experiment to see whether signs of resonance could be observed in a mixture of atoms and molecules cooled down to a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. By varying an external magnetic field, they found they could indeed pick up several resonances amid sodium atoms and sodium-lithium molecules, which they reported last year.

Then, as the team reports in the current study, graduate student Park took a closer look at the data.

“She discovered that one of those resonances did not involve atoms,” Ketterle says. “She blew away the atoms with laser light, and one resonance was still there, very sharp, and only involved molecules.”

Park found that the molecules seemed to disappear — a sign that the particles underwent a chemical reaction — much more quickly than they normally would, when they were exposed to a very specific magnetic field.

In their original experiment, Jamison and colleagues applied a magnetic field that they varied over a wide, 1,000-Gaussian range. Park found that molecules of sodium-lithium suddenly disappeared, 100 times faster than normal, within a tiny sliver of this magnetic range, at about 25 milli-Gaussian. That’s equivalent to the width of a human hair compared to a meter-long stick.

“It takes careful measurements to find the needle in this haystack,” Park says. “But we used a systematic strategy to zoom in on this new resonance.”

In the end, the team observed a strong signal that this particular field resonated with the molecules. The effect enhanced the particles’ chance of binding in a brief, intermediate complex that then triggered a reaction that made the molecules disappear.

Overall, the discovery provides a deeper understanding of molecular dynamics and chemistry. While the team does not anticipate scientists being able to stimulate resonance, and steer reactions, at the level of organic chemistry, it could one day be possible to do so at the quantum scale.

“One of the main themes of quantum science is studying systems of increasing complexity, especially when quantum control is potentially in the offing,” says John Doyle, professor of physics at Harvard University, who was not involved in the group’s research. “These kind of resonances, first seen in simple atoms and then more complicated ones, led to amazing advances in atomic physics. Now that this is seen in molecules, we should first understand it in detail, and then let the imagination wander and think what it might be good for, perhaps constructing larger ultracold molecules, perhaps studying interesting states of matter.”

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

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JOURNAL

Nature

ARTICLE TITLE

“A Feshbach resonance in collisions between triplet ground state molecules”

The bubbling universe: A previously unknown phase transition in the early universe

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK

 

IMAGE: AI GENERATED ILLUSTRATION OF COLLIDING BUBBLES IN EARLY UNIVERSE view more 

CREDIT: BIRGITTE SVENNEVIG, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK

Think of bringing a pot of water to the boil: As the temperature reaches the boiling point, bubbles form in the water, burst and evaporate as the water boils. This continues until there is no more water changing phase from liquid to steam.

This is roughly the idea of what happened in the very early universe, right after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

The idea comes from particle physicists Martin S. Sloth from the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology at University of Southern Denmark and Florian Niedermann from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA) in Stockholm. Niedermann is a previous postdoc in Sloth’s research group. In this new scientific article, they present an even stronger basis for their idea.

Many bubbles crashing into each other
- One must imagine that bubbles arose in various places in the early universe. They got bigger and they started crashing into each other. In the end, there was a complicated state of colliding bubbles, which released energy and eventually evaporated, said Martin S. Sloth.

The background for their theory of phase changes in a bubbling universe is a highly interesting problem with calculating the so-called Hubble constant; a value for how fast the universe is expanding. Sloth and Niedermann believe that the bubbling universe plays a role here.

The Hubble constant can be calculated very reliably by, for example, analyzing cosmic background radiation or by measuring how fast a galaxy or an exploding star is moving away from us. According to Sloth and Niedermann, both methods are not only reliable, but also scientifically recognized. The problem is that the two methods do not lead to the same Hubble constant. Physicists call this problem “the Hubble tension”.

Is there something wrong with our picture of the early universe?
- In science, you have to be able to reach the same result by using different methods, so here we have a problem. Why don't we get the same result when we are so confident about both methods?, said Florian Niedermann.

Sloth and Niedermann believe they have found a way to get the same Hubble constant, regardless of which method is used. The path starts with a phase transition and a bubbling universe - and thus an early, bubbling universe is connected to "the Hubble tension".

- If we assume that these methods are reliable – and we think they are – then maybe the methods are not the problem. Maybe we need to look at the starting point, the basis, that we apply the methods to. Maybe this basis is wrong.

An unknown dark energy
The basis for the methods is the so-called Standard Model, which assumes that there was a lot of radiation and matter, both normal and dark, in the early universe, and that these were the dominant forms of energy. The radiation and the normal matter were compressed in a dark, hot and dense plasma; the state of the universe in the first 380.000 years after Big Bang.

When you base your calculations on the Standard Model, you arrive at different results for how fast the universe is expanding – and thus different Hubble constants.

But maybe a new form of dark energy was at play in the early universe? Sloth and Niedermann think so.

If you introduce the idea that a new form of dark energy in the early universe suddenly began to bubble and undergo a phase transition, the calculations agree. In their model, Sloth and Niedermann arrive at the same Hubble constant when using both measurement methods. They call this idea New Early Dark Energy – NEDE.

Change from one phase to another – like water to steam
Sloth and Niedermann believe that this new, dark energy underwent a phase transition when the universe expanded, shortly before it changed from the dense and hot plasma state to the universe we know today.

- This means that the dark energy in the early universe underwent a phase transition, just as water can change phase between frozen, liquid and steam. In the process, the energy bubbles eventually collided with other bubbles and along the way released energy, said Niedermann.

- It could have lasted anything from an insanely short time – perhaps just the time it takes two particles to collide – to 300,000 years. We don't know, but that is something we are working to find out, added Sloth.

Do we need new physics?
So, the phase transition model is based on the fact that the universe does not behave as the Standard Model tells us. It may sound a little scientifically crazy to suggest that something is wrong with our fundamental understanding of the universe; that you can just propose the existence of hitherto unknown forces or particles to solve the Hubble tension.

- But if we trust the observations and calculations, we must accept that our current model of the universe cannot explain the data, and then we must improve the model. Not by discarding it and its success so far, but by elaborating on it and making it more detailed so that it can explain the new and better data, said Martin S. Sloth, adding:

- It appears that a phase transition in the dark energy is the missing element in the current Standard Model to explain the differing measurements of the universe's expansion rate.

  

AI generated illustration of colliding bubbles in the universe

CREDIT

Birgitte Svennevig, University of Southern Denmark

SIDE BAR: How fast is the universe expanding?

The Hubble constant is a value for how fast the universe is expanding.

In Martin S. Sloth and Florian Niedermann's model, the Hubble constant is 72. Approximately. After all, large distances are being calculated, so we must allow for uncertainty of a few decimals.

What does 72 mean? It means 72 km per second per Megaparsec. Megaparsecs are a measure of the distance between, for example, two galaxies, and one megaparsec is 30,000,000,000,000,000,000 km. For every megaparsec between us and, for example, a galaxy, the galaxy moves away from us at 72 km per second.

When you measure the distance to galaxies by supernovas, you get a Hubble constant of approx. 73 (km/s)/megaparsec. But when measuring on the first light particles (the cosmic background radiation), the Hubble constant is 67.4 (km/s)/megaparsec.

When Sloth and Niedermann changed the basis of these calculations by introducing the existence of a new, early, dark energy that undergoes a phase transition – as described in the article – both types of calculations come to a Hubble constant of about 72.

---

JOURNAL

Physics Letters B

DOI

10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137555 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Hot new early dark energy: Towards a unified dark sector of neutrinos, dark energy and dark matter

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