WOMEN'S HEALTH

Reliable research and evidence-based recommendations scarce for women who exercise according to menstrual cycle

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

 

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A REVIEW CO-AUTHORED BY MCMASTER RESEARCHERS MAI WAGEH, ALYSHA D’SOUZA, AND STU PHILLIPS FOUND A LACK OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT EXERCISE RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON MENSTRUAL CYCLE PHASES

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CREDIT: GEORGIA KIRKOS/MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

Hamilton, ON, December 5, 2023 – There is no shortage of advice for women on what to eat, how to train, or what supplements to take during their menstrual cycles, but a new review by an international team of scientists has found little evidence to support such recommendations.

In fact, they found sparse research on women and exercise at all, and even less on the effect of their periods on sports performance, physiology, or physical fitness.

The authors of the paper, from McMaster University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, are calling for much more high quality, standardized research on women.

A key finding from the review was that hormonal levels vary substantially between women during their menstrual periods and between the cycles of individual women. Virtually no woman has a standard version of a menstrual cycle, which is typically 28 days long, with ovulation consistently occurring on day 14.

"The data suggests that from woman to woman, there are significant variations in estrogen and progesterone, the primary hormones that characterize the phases of the menstrual cycle," says co-lead author Alysha D'Souza, a graduate student in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University.

The findings are published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology.  

"Hormone levels can vary substantially. Not just between two women, but within one woman from one cycle to the next," says Mai Wageh, a PhD candidate in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster and co-lead author of the article.

The findings prompted D'Souza and Wageh to dig deeper into physiological differences across the menstrual cycle, broadly categorized into follicular, ovulatory, and luteal phases. They found few or no differences when they looked at exercise results across the cycle phases and examined women’s use of fat versus carbohydrates, the potential for muscle growth, or blood-vessel function. 

The review relied on various methods, including a systematic review and meta-analysis, narrative interpretation and a previous umbrella review.

"Many women are following advice and planning exercises and practices based on some ostensible benefit of menstrual cycle phase-based exercise. We saw no evidence that such practice is science-based," said Stuart Phillips, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster and senior author of the review.

"Women can feel better or worse, and some are even incapacitated during various phases of their cycle," said Wageh. "You need an individualized approach to training.  Track your cycle and your symptoms in each phase and adjust your exercise plan accordingly. There is no one-size-fits-all approach."

The next steps for this work will be to determine whether symptoms often associated with menstruation are cycle-related or due to other stressors, including lack of sleep, poor nutrition, or work and relationship-related issues.

High resolution photos and video related to this study can be found at:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qrr27ua7qj4UBoc56

 

  

Alysha D’Souza and Mai Wageh, co-lead authors of the review and graduate students in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University.

Stu Phillips, senior author of the study and a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University

CREDIT

Georgia Kirkos/McMaster University

JOURNAL

Journal of Applied Physiology

DOI

10.1152/japplphysiol.00346.2023 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Menstrual cycle hormones and oral contraceptives: a multimethod systems physiology-based review of their impact on key aspects of female physiology

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Nov-2023

COI STATEMENT

S.M.P. reports personal fees from Nestle Health Sciences and nonfinancial support from Enhanced Recovery outside the submitted work. S.M.P. has patents licensed to Exerkine but reports no financial gains from patents or related work. M.A.T. is President and CEO of Exerkine Corporation who develops post-exercise recovery drinks for athletes but none that are sex-specific. None of the other authors has any conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, to disclose

Decades after blood pressure-related pregnancy complications, Hispanic/Latina women can have changes in heart structure and function

Findings highlight importance of early monitoring and management of hypertension during and after pregnancy

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NIH/NATIONAL HEART, LUNG AND BLOOD INSTITUTE

Decades after blood pressure-related pregnancy complications, Hispanic/Latina women can have changes in heart structure and function

Findings highlight importance of early monitoring and management of hypertension during and after pregnancy

Hispanic/Latina women with a history of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) – conditions marked by high blood pressure during pregnancy – are more likely to have abnormalities in their heart structure and function decades later when compared with women without a history of HDP, according to a National Institutes of Health-supported study. The findings, published in the journal Hypertension, also suggest that while having high blood pressure later in life can contribute to these abnormalities, HDP play the greater role, significantly raising a woman’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

“The changes in cardiac structure and function that this study uncovers are known predictors of cardiovascular events such as heart failure and even death,” said Jasmina Varagic, Ph.D., program officer in the Vascular Biology and Hypertension branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH. “These findings emphasize the importance of recognizing HDP as an important risk factor for these future problems, especially in this understudied population of women.”

The rates of HDP, which include preeclampsia, eclampsia, and gestational hypertension, more than doubled between 2007-2019 in the U.S., with Hispanic/Latina women having the highest rate of over 60 cases per 1000 live births. Previous studies have shown that among women who have HDP, up to 20% will continue to have high blood pressure six months after giving birth and will also have up to a 10-fold lifetime risk of chronic hypertension. But researchers were unclear just how HDP was driving the high risk of cardiovascular disease many of these women later developed. 

“Prior to our study the question was: Do abnormalities in the structure and function of the heart develop because of the HDP itself, or because many of the women who have HDP then go on to develop chronic high blood pressure?” asked Odayme Quesada, M.D., medical director for The Christ Hospital Women's Heart Center, and lead author on the study. “Our study helps to answer this question.”

For the study, the researchers used participants in the NHLBI-funded Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), a multi-center community-based cohort of Hispanic/Latino adults. The cohort included 5,168 women who had at least one prior pregnancy and whose average age was 58.7 years – well past childbearing age – at the time of the study.

The participants underwent ultrasound scans to look for alterations in the structure and function of the heart, focusing on the left ventricle, considered the workhorse of the heart that pumps blood into the body. Researchers looked for alterations in the thickness and shape of the ventricle, and how well the heart squeezes and relaxes. The researchers found that prior HDP was associated with alterations in how the heart contracts and relaxes, increased thickness of the heart wall, and higher rates of abnormal geometry in the left ventricle. These abnormalities, particularly in the geometry of the left ventricle, are known to predict future cardiovascular events, including heart failure, ischemic heart disease, and sudden cardiac death.

The researchers also discovered that having hypertension later in life only accounted for part of the changes seen in heart structure and function. For example, they found that hypertension experienced by the women at the time of the study explained only 14% of the risk of having abnormal geometry of the left ventricle, while the rest was explained by having HDP at the time of their pregnancies.

“This underscores the importance of early surveillance for heart abnormalities in women whose pregnancy is complicated by HDP, and also the importance of managing high blood pressure to prevent later life cardiovascular disease,” said Varagic. She added that factors beyond blood pressure that link HDP to later life heart abnormalities need further investigation.

 

Study: Quesada, O. Cardiac Abnormalities in Hispanic/Latina Women with Prior De Novo Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy. Hypertension. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.123.21248

Funding: This study is supported by NHLBI contracts N01-HC65233, N01-HC65234, N01-HC65235, N01-HC65236, and N01-HC65237, and grants K23-HL136853 and K23-HL151867, with additional support for HCHS/SOL from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Office of Dietary Supplements.

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About the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI): NHLBI is the global leader in conducting and supporting research in heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders that advances scientific knowledge, improves public health, and saves lives. For more information, visit www.nhlbi.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov

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JOURNAL

Hypertension

ARTICLE TITLE

Cardiac Abnormalities in Hispanic/Latina Women with Prior De Novo Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy.

 

WVU research helps power plants recycle water using wastewater from oil and gas mining

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

 

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A WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY CHEMICAL ENGINEERING STUDENT ANALYZES WATER SAMPLES AS PART OF RESEARCH THAT USES TWO DIFFERENT FORMS OF INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TO PURIFY EACH OTHER. ALTHOUGH THE SAMPLE SIZES ARE SMALL, A NEW PROCESS SYSTEMS ANALYSIS SHOWS STAKEHOLDERS, LIKE POWER PLANT OPERATORS, WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN COTREATMENT HAPPENS AT A MUCH LARGER SCALE.

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CREDIT: WVU PHOTO/PAIGE NESBIT

Simulations from West Virginia University researchers demonstrate their use of two kinds of industrial wastewater to decontaminate each other has the potential to slash a power plant’s total water use.

The researchers from the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources modeled various scenarios for using “cooling tower blowdown” and “produced water” to treat each other. Cooling tower blowdown is wastewater produced by thermoelectric power plants, while produced water is created by hydraulic fracturing mining for oil and gas. The cotreatment process yields valuable byproducts as well as water that’s clean enough to be reused in power plant cooling operations. The study’s findings were published in the journal Desalination.

According to lead author Hunter Barber, a doctoral student in chemical engineering from Fairchance, Pennsylvania, no other industry in the U.S. uses as much water as thermoelectric power generation.

“Our cotreatment process reduces demand for chemicals to soften wastewater,” Barber said. “The treated water also has very high potential for reuse — treated water can be directly reused after cotreatment to make up 99% to 100% of the original volume of blowdown water, and that’s without optimizing or exploring different designs.”

Presently, power plants draw fresh water from a surface water or groundwater source, run it through the cycle to generate steam and electricity, then minimally treat it and discharge it back to surface or ground water. 

“Our approach is looking to close that cycle,” Barber said. “Instead of discharging the water, we treat it, and instead of drawing from fresh water, we recycle treated water back through.”

They’re reducing the amount of purifying chemicals needed to treat the power plant’s cooling blowdown with produced water, the oil and gas industry’s largest wastewater byproduct by volume. One current method for dealing with produced water from fracking is to inject it right back into the earth.

“In the Southwest especially, but also in the Marcellus Shale and Appalachian regions, you have oil and gas wells drilled deep into the ground,” Barber said. “Once you pull all oil and gas from a well, it’s just an open cavity in the earth. You have polluted produced water that will take a high effort to treat or you can inject it back in that reservoir. However, injecting it involves seismic activity risk and contamination risk from heavy metals leaching into the ground.”

Co-author Lian-Shin Lin, professor and chair of the Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has led the development of the cotreatment process. He pointed out that produced water is saltier than ocean water. “Treating or disposing of that water is difficult and expensive. And an energy producer’s business is focused on producing shale gas and oil — they don’t want to care about water. It’s a liability for them,” Lin said.

“This cotreatment scheme offers a way to manage produced water and recover resources from it. For the energy industry that means, essentially, their produced water problem can disappear.”

Lin’s lab works with produced water from a shale gas well near Morgantown and cooling tower blowdown from Longview Power Plant. Because the experimental samples Lin uses are small relative to the volume of water a power plant requires, Fernando Lima, associate professor of chemical engineering, said they saw a need for a techno-economic, environmental and process systems analysis that would “scale the cotreatment concept up as much as possible, so it can be integrated into power plants or other wastewater treatment solutions and optimized with regard to operating costs, capital costs and energy utilities.”

Through process modeling, the researchers have been able to consider changes to power plant design and topology and evaluate different types of wastewater treatment processes before trying them in the lab. Simulations for different treatment processes allow them to optimize both the economics and the technical aspects of cotreatment.

“Collaborative research joining process modeling and experimentation is critical for the future of wastewater treatment because not a lot of detailed work has been done in modeling and optimizing these cotreatment processes, which involve very specific water chemistries that aren’t simple to capture,” Lima said.

Barber said he believes their model demonstrates plenty of upsides for power plants looking to implement wastewater cotreatment.

“A power plant likely already has dedicated personnel and equipment for treating its cooling blowdown. By becoming self-contained, they no longer have to draw from a water source. When they close the cycle, they no longer have to deal with potential negative economic consequences from discharging water that wasn’t clean enough according to EPA regulations,” Barber said.

“Instead, they can utilize the waste to make something beneficial and cost-effective. In terms of progressing the sustainability of many of our water demands, I think blowdown reuse is on the horizon for a lot of these facilities.”

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JOURNAL

Desalination

DOI

10.1016/j.desal.2023.117003 

ARTICLE TITLE

Synergistic cotreatment of cooling tower blowdown and produced waters: Modeling strategies for a comprehensive wastewater treatment simulation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Jan-2024

 

Forecasting forest health using models to predict tree canopy height

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOURNAL OF REMOTE SENSING

Tree height is an important indicator of a forest’s maturity and overall health. Forest restoration projects rely on tree height as a predictor and measurement of success, but forecasting a forest’s future tree height based on observations alone is almost impossible. There are too many factors that contribute to the growth and health of trees.

Because so many factors can impact how a tree develops, researchers enhanced a predictive model called the Allometric Scaling and Resource Limitations (ASRL) model and then deployed it using Google Earth Engine, looking at forests in the northeastern United States.

The research was presented in an October 9th paper published in the Journal of Remote Sensing.

“Potential tree height can reach into the future, seeing a tree’s growth over an infinite timeline. Predicting potential tree height is important for future forest development and structure, which is profoundly significant for forest restoration planning and evaluation,” said Zhenpeng Zuo, a doctoral student at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. “With the advancement in computer simulations of forest processes at various scales, several mechanism-based models for simulating potential height have emerged.”

Models that predict potential tree heights factor in known tree growth limitations like the increasing difficulty for trees to lift water (hydraulic constraint), vulnerability to wind damage (mechanical constraint), as well as ground conditions. This study focuses on the water-balance based ASRL model. At its most basic, the ASRL model solves for the intersection of three different flow rates, using the tree’s potential water demand, water intake, and water dissipation to predict how tall a tree will be.

For this study, researchers tried to improve upon the ASRL model by highlighting forest restoration and deployed it using Google Earth Engine, a geospatial cloud computation platform, to analyze beech-maple-birch forests. This version of the ASRL model not only factored in the flow rates, but also time scale, spatial resolution, and model mechanisms. The model pulled local meteorological datasets for the last ten years (2011 to 2020) to improve predictions and then factored in three allometric measurements: tree height versus stem radius, tree height versus crown height, and tree height versus crown radius.

To show how well the modified ASRL model worked, researchers compared their results with previously reported tree height predictions. There were some cases where the ASRL model over-estimated tree height, but researchers attributed most of these over-predictions to very immature forests which are harder to predict. Compared with the original version of the ASRL model, the modified version is much more successful at predicting tree height. “The new version provides more realistic predictions for a particular species group due to improved simulation time scale, more targeted parameterization, and more complete mechanisms, and provides better spatial coverage by using gridded climate reanalysis data. It also does not use the parameter tuning tactics to fit to existing tree height observations and therefore retains the prognostic nature of the original model,” said Zuo.

In addition to testing the modified ASRL model, researchers reported the results of their findings, which predict that tree height of these beech-maple-birch forests will be negatively impacted by a hotter and less humid climate, which is likely with climate change.

Looking ahead, researchers are hoping to expand the scope of the study area. “We expect to increase the study area from the regional space to the whole contiguous United States, applying the method to more forest types and groups. This work will hopefully result in a data product of species-dependent potential forest heights,” said Zuo.

Other contributors include Luofan Dong, Yuri Knyazikhin, and Ranga B. Myneni of Boston University.

The NASA Remote Sensing Theory Project supported this research.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Remote Sensing

DOI

10.34133/remotesensing.0084 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Simulating Potential Tree Height for Beech–Maple–Birch Forests in Northeastern United States on Google Earth Engine

 

We need a global policy to encourage low-carbon construction

Expert calls for coordinated climate regulation within a decade to decarbonize construction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AALTO UNIVERSITY

International collaboration to create standards and policies for the construction industry is vital to bring down the industry’s carbon footprint, argues Professor Matti Kuittinen of Aalto University in a paper published in Buildings & Cities.

Construction is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Although the IPCC warned in 2018 that emissions from construction need to go down by 80-90% by 2050, the intervening years have seen resource use for construction continue growing. This is partly because the economics of the industry make companies wary of taking risks – so Kuittinen says that government support and intervention are needed to reverse the trend.

Rather than policies being set piecemeal by individual countries, Kuittinen advocates for neighbouring countries to collaborate if their industries operate in similar contexts. For instance, in 2019 the Nordic countries set a joint goal of becoming a global example of low carbon construction, and they have since collaborated to harmonize climate regulations in their construction industries.

Part of this process was agreeing on a standardized life cycle assessment (LCA) to determine the greenhouse gas emissions of a building. While an LCA has to be scientifically rigorous, precision needs to be balanced against factors such as the administrative burden and robust applicability in different contexts. By taking into account the needs of different stakeholders, the Nordics have developed a standard that is robust but can be readily applied at different scales and in different contexts. This guidance has made it easier for construction companies to plant their work and reduce costs while meeting environmental goals.

Kuittinen calls for a coordinated climate policy to reduce emissions in the construction industry.  ‘Technically, there’s nothing that would prevent a global effort for setting climate mitigation and adaptation policies for the built environment in a decade. It is a question of commitment and determination,’ he says. By creating policies and standards that can be readily adapted to local contexts and cultures, an international programme would provide pathways to a decarbonized built environment.

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Matti Kuittinen is a professor of sustainable construction who focuses on combining architecture, engineering, and ecology for climate change mitigation. He is a member of the Nordic working group for climate declarations for buildings. He has previously served as a senior advisor to the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, where he helps develop policies related to the circular economy and methods for whole life cycle carbon assessment in the built environment.

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JOURNAL

Buildings and Cities

ARTICLE TITLE

Climate Regulations for Buildings: International Policy Collaborations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Nov-2023

Green macroalga caulerpa has replaced seagrass in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon

Long-term (2011 to 2020) FAU Harbor Branch study provides insight of drivers of change in the lagoon

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

 

VIDEO: 

THE GREEN MACROALGA CAULERPA PROLIFERA HAS REPLACED SEAGRASS AND NOW COVERS LARGE PARTS OF THE NORTHERN INDIAN RIVER LAGOON AND BANANA RIVER.

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CREDIT: FAU HARBOR BRANCH

The Indian River Lagoon was considered one of the last “unpolluted coastal lagoons” in Florida in the 1970s. Fast forward to today and most of the 156-mile lagoon is now considered impaired because of external sources of nutrients including human waste, fertilizers, stormwater runoff, agriculture, rainfall and sub-marine groundwater discharge.

As a result, the lagoon – especially the Northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River – has experienced various harmful algal blooms, catastrophic seagrass losses, and is the epicenter of Florida manatee starvation and deaths. Seagrasses are keystone species within estuaries and provide many important ecosystem services, including the facilitation of nutrient cycling, essential habitat, sediment stabilization and carbon sequestration.

To better understand factors related to seagrass losses in the Indian River Lagoon, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute conducted a unique, long-term monitoring study that examined the cover of seagrass and macroalgae in the lagoon from 2011 to 2020 compared to factors such as nutrients and the chemical composition of macroalgae. Data from the study provide important insight into the drivers of change in the lagoon, which are necessary for managers seeking to mitigate habitat losses, facilitate recovery and improve resilience.

Results of the study, published in the journal Ecological Indicators, reveal that since the 2011 blue green “super bloom,” benthic cover in large parts of the Northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River has significantly changed from primarily the seagrass Halodule wrightii until 2015, to primarily the green macroalga Caulerpa prolifera after 2018. While native to the Indian River Lagoon, C. prolifera acts as an invasive species that can move into new spaces and dominate due to its competitive ability in impaired habitats. Though with the low seagrass cover, competition was likely not a factor in this replacement.

“The change in primary benthic cover from seagrass to green macroalgae has the potential to cause cascading ecological effects, both directly and indirectly,” said Brian Lapointe, Ph.D., senior author and a research professor at FAU Harbor Branch. “Vegetation on the bottom of a body of water responds to multiple simultaneous pressures, including variations in light availability, nutrient availability, salinity, and herbivore pressure, which is why we used a multivariate approach to determine variables that are important to change.”

For the study, researchers compared two long-term datasets from FAU Harbor Branch and St. Johns River Water Management District that included benthic plant cover and many other factors, including water temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, nutrient concentrations and macroalgal carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus content, and stable isotopes at six locations in the Northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River.

The primary factor that was relatable to changes in the benthic cover by year was the carbon-to- phosphorus ratio of macroalgae. This suggests that the change was associated with increased phosphorus availability, which may have been the result of heavy rainfall, increased sediment flux, and/or more biologically available nutrients due to seagrass losses. Salinity also was frequently identified as an important variable related to changes in the benthic cover percent composition, therefore inflow patterns of stormwater and other freshwater sources are likely influential.

The increase in C. prolifera was associated with four years (2016 to 2019) of high ammonium concentrations and macroalgal nitrogen isotope values, linking the blooms with the influence of human waste. The influence of human waste in the study area was further supported by the presence of sucralose, an artificial sweetener, in the study area in 2022 to 2023.

Ammonium is the predominant form of nitrogen in septic tank effluent that flows into groundwaters and ultimately the lagoon. The apparent relationship between increasing C. prolifera percent cover and ammonium suggests that improving wastewater infrastructure and reducing the number of homes using septic systems could help to reduce these blooms, which would favor seagrass recovery by decreasing competition with other primary producers.

“Loss of seagrasses in urbanized estuaries is common, as they are highly susceptible to watershed nutrient and sediment inputs, making seagrasses effective biological sentinels,” said Rachel Brewton, Ph.D., first author and a research scientist at FAU Harbor Branch. “Reducing stormwater runoff and inputs of human waste and the associated nutrient load will help promote the recovery of seagrasses in the Indian River Lagoon. Importantly, our study findings have implications for urbanized estuaries experiencing seagrass losses globally.”

Notably, the significant decreases in seagrasses observed since 2011, followed by subsequent increases in C. prolifera in many segments of the Northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River, occurred when a change in manatee diet was observed from primarily seagrass to primarily macroalgae.

“In addition to starvation from the catastrophic loss of seagrasses, the unusual mortality of Florida manatees also has been attributed to bacterial toxins in a prior study by other researchers, initiated by the diet switch from seagrasses to macroalgae that resulted in a lethal clostridial infection,” said Lapointe. “The green macroalgae Caulerpa produce a toxic bioactive chemical compound that is transformed into more toxic and deterrent oxytoxins and are not a suitable replacement for seagrass in manatee diets. The changing benthic cover in the lagoon has profound effects on the survival of these important herbivores.”

Currently, there is no management of C. prolifera in the Indian River Lagoon and discussions are ongoing regarding whether it should be protected as an essential habitat or harvested, along with drift macroalgae, to remove nutrients from the systems.

“Both bottom-up, nutrient-loading, and top down consumer influences interact to influence seagrass-macroalgae interactions, therefore managers must strive to consider both as they plan for seagrass recovery efforts,” said Brewton.

This research was funded by the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation through the Florida Center for Coastal and Human Health and the Indian River Lagoon Graduate Research Fellowship (2019 to 2022).

A stingray swims above the green macroalga Caulerpa prolifera.

Close-up of the green the green macroalga Caulerpa prolifera

CREDIT

FAU Harbor Branch

Rachel Brewton, Ph.D., first author and a research scientist at FAU Harbor Branch, holding the green macroalga Caulerpa prolifera. 

CREDIT

Kevin Tyre

- FAU -

About Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute:
Founded in 1971, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University is a research community of marine scientists, engineers, educators and other professionals focused on Ocean Science for a Better World. The institute drives innovation in ocean engineering, at-sea operations, drug discovery and biotechnology from the oceans, coastal ecology and conservation, marine mammal research and conservation, aquaculture, ocean observing systems and marine education. For more information, visit www.fau.edu/hboi.

 

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

 

 

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JOURNAL

Ecological Indicators

DOI

10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.111035 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The green macroalga Caulerpa prolifera replaces seagrass in a nitrogen enriched, phosphorus limited, urbanized estuary

 

Novel mineral piezocatalysts offer innovative approaches for soil remediation

Offers applications in the remediation of soil contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY & MATERIALS

 

IMAGE: 

HAP@FAP PIEZOCATALYSTS WITH BUILT-IN LATTICE STRAIN GRADIENT STRUCTURE WAS FABRICATED, SHOWING HIGH CATALYTIC ACTIVITY FOR DEGRADATION OF PHE IN SOIL.

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CREDIT: JIANMEI LU AND NAJUN LI, SOOCHOW UNIVERSITY, CHINA.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) removal in the soil environment is of great significance for repairing the long-term damaged ecosystem. However, the poor mass transfer process and low catalytic activity in most conventional methods lead to limited removal efficiency. A team of scientists has constructed a gradient F-doping hydroxyapatite core-shell structure (HAP@FAP) with the coupling effect of flexoelectricity and piezoelectricity for degradation of PAHs in soil that provide innovative approaches for soil remediation. Their work was published in the journal Industrial Chemistry & Materials in October 2023.

The poor mass transfer process in conventional soil remediation methods remains a significant factor that hampers their further application. Recently, piezocatalysis has been developed as a new energy conversion technology. The mechanical vibration (ultrasound or stirring etc.) can induce lattice distortion of piezocatalysts and accelerated mass transfer in the soil system, leading to enhanced piezocatalytic degradation of PAHs in soil, which shows great potential in soil remediation.

Hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2, HAP), as natural mineral piezocatalysts, exhibit unique advantages of environmental friendliness in the field of piezocatalytic soil remediation. However, the biggest challenge is the weak piezoelectric coefficient (1-16 pm V-1) of HAP, leading to low catalytic activity. “How to construct HAP-based mineral piezocatalysts with high piezocatalytic activity for soil remediation is the direction of our team's efforts,” explains Jianmei Lu, a professor at the Soochow University. 

The researchers successfully fabricated a gradient F-doping HAP@FAP core-shell structure via a simple ion exchange method, which induced the coupling effect of piezoelectricity and flexoelectricity by built-in strain gradient for enhanced piezocatalytic activity. The oxidative degradation of phenanthrene (PHE) in soil (200 mg kg-1) was carried out to evaluate the piezocatalytic activities of catalysts. HAP@FAP exhibited the optimized piezocatalytic activity that 79% PHE can be degraded under ultrasonic vibration for 120 min. This is significantly superior to pristine HAP and F-HAP with a solid solutions structure. In addition, the effects of catalyst dosage, water to soil ratio and ultrasonic power on degradation performance were investigated.

The research team also proposed the possible mechanism of PHE degradation caused by piezoelectric polarization. The lattice strain gradient generated in the gradient F-doping core-shell direction induced flexoelectricity enhanced piezocatalytic activity. Under continuous ultrasonic vibration, the polarized electric field in HAP@FAP drived charge carriers to the surface, generating reactive oxygen species for oxidative degradation of PHE ultimately into CO2 and H2O, achieving the goal of harmless treatment of soil pollutants.

Looking ahead, the research team hopes that their work might provide insights for the modification of piezoelectric catalysts for the remediation of organics-contaminated soils from industrial land. “We next plan to scale up to achieve the ultimate goal of industrial application. Our developed catalyst may be potentially applied in various persistent organic pollutants contaminated industrial land, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and naphthalene,” said Lu.

The research team includes Jun Han, Wenrou Tian, Ye Miao, Najun Li, Dongyun Chen, Qingfeng Xu, Hua Li and Jianmei Lu from Soochow University.

This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key Technology R&D Program, Basic Research Project of Leading Technology in Jiangsu Province and project supported by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD).

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Industrial Chemistry & Materials is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal published by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) with APCs currently waived. Icm publishes significant innovative research and major technological breakthroughs in all aspects of industrial chemistry and materials, especially the important innovation of the low-carbon chemical industry, energy, and functional materials.

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JOURNAL

Industrial Chemistry and Materials

DOI

10.1039/D3IM00093A 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Flexoelectricity in hydroxyapatite for the enhanced piezocatalytic degradation of phenanthrene in soil

Fundamentals, advances and perspectives of piezocatalysis: A marriage of solid-state physics and catalytic chemistry - ScienceDirect