Diets rich in plant protein may help women stay healthy as they age

A new Tufts University-led study found women who ate more plant-based protein developed fewer chronic diseases and were generally healthier later in life

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TUFTS UNIVERSITY

 

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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION OF A SERVING OF NUTS, APPROXIMATELY THE SIZE OF A GOLF BALL.

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CREDIT: ALONSO NICHOLS/TUFTS UNIVERSITY

Women who consume higher amounts of protein, especially protein from plant-based sources, develop fewer chronic diseases and are more likely to be healthier overall as they age, according to a study led by researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University and published Jan. 17 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Analyzing self-reported data from more than 48,000 women, the researchers saw notably less heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, and cognitive and mental health decline, in those who included more protein in their diets from sources such as fruits, vegetables, bread, beans, legumes, and pasta, compared to those who ate less.

“Consuming protein in midlife was linked to promoting good health in older adulthood,” said Andres Ardisson Korat, a scientist at the HNRCA and lead author of the study. “We also found that the source of protein matters. Getting the majority of your protein from plant sources at midlife, plus a small amount of animal protein seems to be conducive to good health and good survival to older ages.”

Findings were derived from the seminal Harvard-based Nurses’ Health Study, which followed female health care professionals from 1984 to 2016. The women were between the ages of 38 and 59 in 1984 and deemed to be in good physical and mental health at the start of the study.

Ardisson Korat and fellow researchers, including senior author Qi Sun of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examined thousands of surveys collected every four years from 1984 to 2016 on how frequently people ate certain foods to pinpoint dietary protein and its effects on healthy aging. They calculated protein intake by multiplying the number of times each food item was consumed by its protein content and then, using the Harvard University Food Composition Database, totaling the amount of protein across all food items.

The researchers then compared the diets of women who didn’t develop 11 chronic diseases or lose a lot of physical function or mental health, with the diets of those who did. Women who ate more plant-based protein, which in 1984 was defined as protein obtained from bread, vegetables, fruits, pizza, cereal, baked items, mashed potatoes, nuts, beans, peanut butter, and pasta, were 46 percent more likely to be healthy into their later years. Those who consumed more animal protein such as beef, chicken, milk, fish/seafood, and cheese, however, were 6 percent less likely to stay healthy as they aged.

“Those who consumed greater amounts of animal protein tended to have more chronic disease and didn’t manage to obtain the improved physical function that we normally associate with eating protein,” said Ardisson Korat.

Animal protein was modestly tied with fewer physical limitations in older age, but plant protein had a stronger, more consistent correlation across all observed models, and was more closely linked with sound mental health later in life. For heart disease in particular, higher plant protein consumption came with lower levels of LDL cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol), blood pressure, and insulin sensitivity, while higher animal protein intake was tied to higher levels, along with increased insulin-like growth factor, which has been detected in multiple cancers.

Dairy protein alone (mainly milk, cheese, pizza, yogurt, and ice cream) was not significantly associated with better health status in older adulthood.

The team acknowledged that the benefits of plant protein might derive from components in plant-based food, rather than the protein—compared to animal foods, plants contain a higher proportion of dietary fiber, micronutrients, and beneficial compounds called polyphenols that are present in plants, rather than exclusively protein.

Ardisson Korat also said data from other groups is needed, as the Nurses’ Health Study surveyed primarily white females working in health care. “The data from the study tended to be very homogeneous in terms of demographic and socioeconomic composition, so it will be valuable to follow up with a study in cohorts that are more diverse. It’s a field that is still evolving,” said Ardisson Korat.

But the team’s findings so far support the recommendation that women eat most of their protein in the form of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, although they should also consume some fish and animal protein for their iron and vitamin B12 content.

“Dietary protein intake, especially plant protein, in midlife plays an important role in the promotion of healthy aging and in maintaining positive health status at older ages,” Ardisson Korat said.

 

Research reported in this article was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, and by the National Institutes of Health under award numbers UM1CA186107 (National Cancer Institute), P01CA87969 (National Cancer Institute), R01DK120870 (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), U2CDK129670 (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), R01DK127601 (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), R01HL060712 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute), R01HL034594 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute), R01HL035464 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute), and R01HL088521 (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute). Andres Ardisson Korat was supported by training grant KL2TR002545 from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Complete information on authors, funders, limitations and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the National Institutes of Health.

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

DOI

10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.11.010 

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jan-2024

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition launches new article series to educate physicians and other health care professionals on nutrition

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR NUTRITION

Rockville, MD (January 16, 2024) – To educate physicians and other health care professionals on the fundamentals of nutrition, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has launched a new article series titled Nutrition for the Clinician. The effort supports the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and its directives to expand nutrition knowledge of health care providers, an effort long supported by the American Society for Nutrition. Nancy Krebs, MD, MS, Professor of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, is the Associate Editor for the series. 

Through case-based learning, Nutrition for the Clinician provides continuing education that enhances clinical reasoning and use of the best nutrition evidence in practice. Each clinical case will feature a clearly identified nutrition problem and defined learning objectives. Cases will be published in the journal’s regular issues periodically throughout the year. 

“Nutrition plays a pivotal role in health and disease,” stated Christopher Duggan, MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “By presenting nutritional challenges seen in hospital and outpatient care and describing evidence-based treatment approaches, we hope physicians will gain a deeper understanding of how nutrition significantly impacts patient outcomes, as well as see firsthand the clinical reasoning process of top clinicians.” 

Titled “A Perfect Storm in a Pandemic – A Child with Complex Medical History and Special Diet Encounters COVID,” the inaugural case highlights a six-year-old child with undernutrition and acute COVID-19 infection. 

Authors Nancy Krebs, MD and Stephanie Waldrop, MD (University of Colorado) provide medical history, laboratory results, and clinical findings and offer commentary and questions to guide readers through the case. The authors analyze the differential diagnosis and treatment considerations at the outset and reassess them as new data emerges over the course of care. 

The case is freely accessible at the following link: https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)66234-3/fulltext. The American Society for Nutrition is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The ASN designates this activity for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. For details on claiming CME credit for reading Nutrition for the Clinician, click here. 

“Having knowledge of nutrition is important for all medical specialists, yet studies have shown that nutrition education and training in medical schools and residency programs is lacking,” expressed Kevin Schalinske, PhD, President, American Society for Nutrition. “We hope this new resource will pique the interest of physicians and advanced practice providers and inspire them to learn more about nutrition care in clinical practice.” Dietitians also may find interest in the range of medical scenarios and accompanying nutritional diagnostics and therapies presented. 

The AJCN welcomes contributions to this new series from both individual providers and interprofessional teams. Prospective authors can direct pre-submission inquiries to ajcn.editorialoffice@jjeditorial.com. 

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About The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, one of the most influential journals in biology and medicine, publishes research in human nutrition and fosters the application of science into clinical practice. Topics include high-impact clinical, observational, public health, and epidemiologic studies in all areas of nutrition including obesity and metabolism; micronutrients; body composition; and nutrition in clinical settings. Genetic and novel precision nutrition approaches are featured. Visit us online at ajcn.nutrition.org or follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @AJCNutrition #AJCN.

About the American Society for Nutrition (ASN)
The American Society for Nutrition (ASN) is the preeminent professional organization for scientists and clinicians around the world. Founded in 1928, the society brings together the top nutrition researchers, medical practitioners, policy makers and industry leaders to advance the science, education, and practice of nutrition, reaching more than 55 million people annually. ASN publishes four peer-reviewed journals and provides education and professional development opportunities year-round. Since 2018, the American Society of Nutrition has presented NUTRITION, the leading global annual meeting for nutrition professionals. Visit us at www.nutrition.org.

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

DOI

10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.09.029 

 

Online versus reality: social media influences perceptions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – People may form inaccurate impressions about us from our social media posts, finds new Cornell University research that is the first to examine perceptions of our personalities based on online posts.

An analysis of Facebook status updates found substantial discrepancies between how viewers saw the authors across a range of personality traits, and the authors’ self-perceptions. Viewers rated the Facebook users on average as having lower self-esteem and being more self-revealing, for example, than the users rated themselves.

Status updates containing photos, video or links in addition to text facilitated more accurate assessments than those with just text, the researchers found. Overall, they said, the study sheds light on the dynamic process by which a cyber audience tries to make sense of who we are from isolated fragments of shared information, jointly constructing our digital identity.

“The impression people form about us on social media based on what we post can differ from the way we view ourselves,” said Qi Wang, professor of psychology and director of the Culture & Cognition Lab. “A mismatch between who we are and how people perceive us could influence our ability to feel connected online and the benefits of engaging in social media interaction.”

Wang is the lead author of “The Self Online: When Meaning-Making is Outsourced to the Cyber Audience,” published in PLOS One.

Prior research has focused on perceptions of personality traits gleaned from personal websites, such as blogs or online profiles, finding that readers can assess them accurately. The Cornell researchers believe their study is the first to investigate audience perceptions of social media users through their posts, on platforms where users often don’t share cohesive personal narratives while interacting with “friends” they may know only a little or sometimes not at all.

Interestingly, the study found that Facebook status updates generated perceptions of users that were consistent with cultural norms in offline contexts concerning gender and ethnicity – even though viewers were blind to their identities. For example, female Facebook users were rated as more extraverted than male users, in line with general findings that women score higher on extraversion. White Facebook users were seen as being more extraverted and having greater self-esteem than Asian users, whose cultures place more emphasis on modesty, Wang said.

“We present ourselves in line with our cultural frameworks,” she said, “and others can discern our ‘cultured persona’ through meaning making of our posts.”

The scholars said future research should explore this “outsourced meaning-making process” with larger samples of posts, and on other popular platforms such as Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter.

Wang said the findings could help developers design interfaces that allow people to express themselves most authentically. For users, misunderstandings about who they are on social media might not cause direct harm, she said, but could hinder their efforts to foster good communication and relationships.

“If people’s view of us is very different from who we actually are, or how we would like to be perceived,” Wang said, “it could undermine our social life and well-being.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0294990 

ARTICLE TITLE

The self online: When meaning-making is outsourced to the cyber audience

 TECHNOCRACY MEETS THE JASONS

Global collaboration of scientists needed to solve polycrisis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

According to the research authors, a ‘global polycrisis’ occurs when crises in multiple systems interact in ways that greatly magnify their threat to humanity’s well being.

Heightened global interconnectivity and human pressures on planetary boundaries generate increasingly harmful and extensive crisis interactions that make it impossible to solve any one problem alone, findings published in Cambridge University Press journal Global Sustainability reveal.

The polycrisis concept is valuable for understanding the interaction between crises and helping address them.

Researchers have identified five key properties of global systems that help generate polycrises while hampering crisis mitigation: multiple causes, non-linearity, hysteresis, boundary permeability, and “black swan outcomes”.

They also identified five key global systems currently undergoing radical change: the Earth’s environmental system, the global human energy system, the international security system, the global economic system, and the information system.

Tackling the polycrisis

An international group of natural and social scientists from the Cascade Institute, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Research Institute for Sustainability is calling on scientists from around the world to work together to better understand the growing interconnections between the world’s problems.

The climate crisis and its ties to other global systems show just how urgent that call is. 

Climate change is already threatening food production by altering growing conditions and generating increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events. The resulting dilemma shows just how entangled our problems have grown. Food production could adapt by deepening its dependence on industrial methods and converting further ecosystems into farmlands, but these strategies will increase greenhouse gas emissions while threatening biodiversity, placing even further stress on food systems. Yet food production will have to expand to reliably feed a still growing human population.

A worldwide transition to renewable energy sources could help reduce agricultural and other emissions, but such a transformation requires immense amounts of cement, plastic, and steel, none of which can yet be produced in the quantities needed without consuming large amounts of fossil fuels.

Lead author of the new research, Dr. Michael Lawrence of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University, said: “The concept of polycrisis highlights several difficult features of contemporary global crises: specifically, that their combined effects are different than those the crises would have separately; they lack single causes and thus have no simple solutions; and they stem, in part, from the dense interconnectivity within and between global systems, which makes them especially difficult to understand and manage. 

“The growing popularity of the term polycrisis indicates that more and more people recognise that the world's problems require new ways of thinking and acting. Orthodox responses are not up to the task. 

“Above all else, the polycrisis concept emphasises that crises interact with one another in highly consequential ways that are grossly underappreciated by academic and policymaking institutions that study those crises individually, in separate silos.”

Looking forward

The researchers made three policy recommendations based on their findings.

• Focus on crisis interactions, not isolated crises.
• Address systems architecture, not just events.
• Exploit high-leverage intervention points.

In considering polycrisis, it is vital to remember that a single, well-formulated solution might ease several crises simultaneously – meaning, it might do multiple good things. A global effort to keep climate heating under 2°C (if not 1.5°C) could limit extreme weather, the disruption of ecosystems, pernicious health effects, and climate-propelled migration, significantly improving humanity’s prospects.

Research co-author, Prof. Ortwin Renn of the Research Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, said: “The complex and interconnected world creates major challenges and problems, but it also provides new opportunities.

“If we are able to understand the key triggers that are responsible for releasing a whole set of interdependent consequences, we may also be able to use them prudently to induce positive changes with many positive repercussions.”

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JOURNAL

Global Sustainability

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jan-2024

 

Artificial ‘power plants’ harness energy from wind and rain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

 

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THIS “POWER PLANT,” FEATURING BEIGE, LEAF-SHAPED GENERATORS, CAN CAPTURE ENERGY FROM GENTLE BREEZES AND FALLING RAINDROPS.

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CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM ACS SUSTAINABLE CHEMISTRY & ENGINEERING, 2024, DOI: 10.1021/ACSSUSCHEMENG.3C03620

Fake plants are moving into the 21st century! Researchers developed literal “power plants” — tiny, leaf-shaped generators that create electricity from a blowing breeze or falling raindrops — and described them in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. The team tested the energy harvesters by incorporating them into artificial plants.

Electrical energy can be produced from nature in several ways. For example, solar panels convert light energy from the sun, and wind turbines transform the kinetic energy of moving air. But these methods typically rely on a single source and therefore are only effective when that source is available. Solar panels don’t work after sunset, for example, and a calm day won’t generate much wind power. More recently, multi-source energy harvesters have emerged as a method to capture energy from different renewable sources in one device, maximizing potential output. So, Ravinder Dahiya and colleagues wanted to create a multi-source energy harvester that could generate power from both wind and rain.

The team built two different types of energy collectors: a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) to capture kinetic energy from the wind and a droplet-based energy generator (DEG) to collect energy from falling raindrops. The TENG consisted of a layer of nylon nanofibers sandwiched between layers of polytetrafluoroethylene, more commonly known as Teflon™, and copper electrodes. When the layers pressed into each other, static charges were generated and converted into electricity. Teflon was also used to make the DEG, which was waterproofed and covered with a conductive fabric to act as the electrodes. As raindrops hit one of the electrodes, it caused an imbalance in charges, generating a small current and high voltage. Under optimal conditions, the TENG produced 252 volts of power and the DEG 113 volts, but only for short periods of time.

The team mounted the DEG atop the TENG and incorporated leaf-shaped versions into an artificial plant. When the leaf-shaped generators were exposed to conditions mimicking natural wind and rain, they powered 10 LED lights in short flickers. This proof-of-concept “power plant” device could be further developed into larger systems or networks of power plants to produce clean energy from natural sources, the researchers say.

The authors do not acknowledge a funding source for this work.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Follow us: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

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JOURNAL

ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

DOI

10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c03620 

ARTICLE TITLE

Multisource Energy Harvester on Textile and Plants for Clean Energy Generation from Wind and Rainwater Droplets

 

Chapman University’s environmental scientist, Dr. Joshua Fisher contributes to milestone study on OpenET’s precision in monitoring water use

Sustainable water management is an increasing concern in arid regions around the world, and scientists and regulators are turning to satellites to help track and manage water resources

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY

A new study co-authored by Joshua Fisher, associate professor in Chapman University’s Schmid College of Science and Technology has played a crucial role in assessing the accuracy of OpenET, an advanced satellite-based system for monitoring water use by crops and ecosystems. The study, published yesterday in Nature Water, provides a thorough analysis of the accuracy of OpenET data for various crops and natural land cover types. 

OpenET is a collaborative effort among government agencies, academia and industry leaders that employs satellite data to monitor evapotranspiration, an environmental process that impacts the availability of water. Professor Fisher's satellite monitoring method is a critical component to the effort because it detects changes in evapotranspiration, which can contribute to food insecurity and access to clean water. Participating organizations include NASA, the USDA, Chapman University and Google.

Fisher emphasizes the significance of OpenET in addressing contemporary challenges related to climate change, overpopulation, and water scarcity. “Decades ago, water managers and farmers didn’t have to make many difficult decisions about our most essential resource. But climate change and overpopulation have led to a water crisis,” notes Fisher. “Luckily, OpenET, with its remarkable accuracy, guides decision-makers precisely in allocating this critical resource. The results of this paper are truly impressive in showing how accurate this system is, which should give people confidence in using OpenET for a myriad of applications.”

The study, led by scientists from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), compares OpenET data produced by 152 ground-based micrometeorological. According to Dr. John Volk, lead author of the study, “One of the biggest questions for OpenET is how accurate it is, given the magnitude and implications of the use of the data for water resource management. A lot of groups want to know what the expected rates of error are in agricultural lands, so that’s the major question that we wanted to address for this paper.”

Impressively, OpenET demonstrated high accuracy in assessing evapotranspiration in agricultural settings, especially for annual crops like wheat, corn, soy, and rice. The results were particularly reliable in arid regions like California and the Southwest, where OpenET contributes to addressing ongoing water sustainability challenges.

About Chapman University

Founded in 1861, Chapman University is a nationally ranked private university in Orange, California, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles. Chapman serves nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, with a 12:1 student-to-faculty ratio. Students can choose from 123 areas of study within 11 colleges for a personalized education. Chapman is categorized by the Carnegie Classification as an R2 "high research activity" institution. Students at Chapman learn directly from distinguished world-class faculty including Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur fellows, published authors and Academy Award winners. The campus has produced a Rhodes Scholar, been named a top producer of Fulbright Scholars and hosts a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most prestigious honor society. Chapman also includes the Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine. The university features the No. 4 film school and No. 60 business school in the U.S. Learn more about Chapman University: www.chapman.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

Nature Water

DOI

10.1038/s44221-023-00181-7 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Assessing the accuracy of OpenET satellite-based evapotranspiration data to support water resource and land management applications

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Jan-2024

Active membranes: The future of fresh water is bright

CALIFORNIA NANOSYSTEMS INSTITUTE

 

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ACTIVE MEMBRANES WINS WATER TECHNOLOGY IDOL 2023 AWARD

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CREDIT: ACTIVE MEMBRANES

The growth of Los Angeles as a startup hub is highlighted by a robust and diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem within UCLA. The Magnify Incubator at CNSI is no exception to showcasing the range of early-stage businesses.

One such company within the Magnify incubator, Active Membranes, is innovating the future of fresh water through membrane desalination. As freshwater is becoming increasingly scarce around the globe, resources such as seawater and industrial wastewater are costly to procure and operate. The company’s patented technology is electrically conducting nanofiltration and reverse osmosis spiral wound membrane modules capable of actively resisting scaling and fouling.  

Active Membranes’ technology substantially reduces the cost and footprint of these processes. Because it can be applied to any membrane-based water treatment system, at any scale from household point-of-use to large commercial plants, the combined market opportunity exceeds $20B.

“The value add to a startup company from a university standpoint is a showcase that goes beyond teaching, and creates an engine for business ideas and growth,” said David Jassby, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA as well as co-founder and advisor for Active Membranes. “Here at UCLA, we are growing and developing young minds for success after college which is directly translatable to future skills and solving societal problems and that is exciting when we can create ideas that address specific problems. In the case of Active Membranes, it is fresh water.”

The company is also receiving accolades not just in their industry, but from the startup community as well. Active Membranes recently won the 2023 GWI Water Tech Idol Award for “Developing innovative solutions for inland desalination plants to reduce concentrate volumes and increase fresh water supplies in water short areas.”

The company also recently won $30,000 in funding as part of the inaugural UCLA Innovation Showcase at Google’s Venice Beach headquarters presented by the Venture Accelerator at UCLA Anderson School of Management. The showcase enabled startup founders across UCLA’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to pitch venture capitalists and compete for funding opportunities. Active Membranes co-founder Arian Edalat was recognized for the company’s innovative work in the water treatment and desalination space.

“We are targeting water problems that are local which is providing fresh, clean water to Southern California,” said Edalat. “But all this translates to global climate efforts. We are seeing the support for entrepreneurship not only in our campus administration but in the local and state sectors as well.”

The company boasts an impressive roster of co-founders and staff, including co-founder Eric Hoek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA and member of the CNSI, who coincidentally had success with the first Magnify incubator startup company, NanoH20, which was acquired by LG Chem in 2014.

Hoek also had a hand in giving the company Active Membranes its name.

“The state-of-the-art membranes today are passive barriers to contaminants while allowing water to pass,” said Hoek. “Those contaminants build up in the membrane surface and cause dramatic, sometimes catastrophic loss of performance. Active’s membranes have the same basic separation performance, while actively resisting the buildup of contaminants, and so they maintain high performance much longer and with less pretreatment than the current generation of commercial products. Hence, the name Active Membranes.”

Active Membranes is currently the only water company in the Magnify incubator at CNSI, which provides resources such as co-working laboratory and office spaces along with business resources to startup companies.

“This support allows startups like Active Membranes to succeed by accelerating their access to innovation infrastructure needed while increasing their capital efficiency and market opportunities,” said Nikki Lin, Director of the Magnify Incubator.

Edalat acknowledges the support Magnify provides has been crucial in their early success.

“There is so much networking taking place in the incubator environment,” said Edalat. “As founders we see each other regularly, showcase our businesses and technologies and get ideas from each other.”

For now, the future looks bright for Active Membranes. The company is moving into a new facility in the next few months and conducting field pilots in California and Arizona.

“We are looking for people who are interested to come to these events, see how our technology works, taste the water,” said Edalat. “We want everyone to see how this can be an engine for growth to recover more water, minimize water pretreatment requirements and is ultimately a less complex solution with a smaller footprint.”

For more information on Active Membranes visit https://activemembrane.com and to learn more about CNSI’s Magnify incubator visit https://magnify.cnsi.ucla.edu/

 

Climate change in the South China Sea has global impacts on weather patterns

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OCEAN-LAND-ATMOSPHERE RESEARCH (OLAR)

 

IMAGE: 

 KNOWN GLOBAL IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE SCSSA.

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CREDIT: YANG ET AL. (2023)

As the threat of global warming looms, researchers are racing to understand how complex, interconnected weather systems affect one another. Unprecedented changes to weather patterns, sometimes in defiance of models and predictions, point to the need for a global perspective.

A paper published in Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research on December 20, highlights how one region, the South China Sea and its surrounding areas, have global impacts on weather patterns.

Complex climate interactions between the ocean, land, and atmosphere in these regions, which include the Indo-Pacific Oceans, Southeast Asia, and the Tibetan Plateau, mean that the climate is changing more rapidly in this area. However, this rapid warming affects weather patterns all over the globe, not just in the South China Sea and the surrounding regions. “This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex interactions and consequences of climate change in the South China Sea and its surrounding areas, which is crucial for predicting weather extremes in extratropical regions and for mitigating the broader impacts of climate change on a global scale,” said Song Yang, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China.

Researchers sought to study the distinctive features of climate change in this region and how they impact regional and global climate patterns, including how air-sea interactions across tropical and subtropical factors drive climate change. With a deeper understanding of warming patterns in the region, the researchers also make projections for the future of climate change in the area and its far-reaching global implications.

One defining feature of this region are the three overlapping, large-scale atmospheric overturning circulations: the regional Hadley circulation, the Walker circulation, and the Asian monsoon circulation. Air moves across the globe in predictable patterns. These patterns are called circulations or cells. Circulations are important on a regional and global scale because they connect the region with the wider globe. For example, heating experienced in the western Pacific and South Asian monsoon region can make droughts worse on the other side of the globe thanks to air movement between the Pacific and North Africa. Changes in the South China Sea and the surrounding areas can even impact weather in the Arctic.   

“Climate change in the South China Sea and its surrounding areas is very complex. It has a significant impact on shaping not only regional climates, but also exerting far-reaching impacts on weather and climate patterns across the globe,” said Yang.

The researchers studying these regions also wanted to understand future projections, both for the South China Sea and its surrounding areas and how changes in these areas will come to impact climate change globally. The three overlapping circulations are already shifting thanks to climate change. Researchers point to the predicted changes in the Hadley circulation as an example, which is a cell that connects tropics and extratropics. In a warmer climate, the ascending branch of the Hadley circulation would become stronger and narrower, while the descending branch will shift poleward. These changes are expected to increase dry weather and decrease humidity in the extratropical regions. As the climate gets warmer, current climate models project increasing precipitation over South Asia, East Asia, and northern Australia, due to the warmer sea surface temperature, increased water vapour supply, and these strengthened overlapping circulations over the South China Sea and surrounding regions.

Looking ahead, researchers will continue to explore the interconnectedness of weather patterns across the globe on different time scales. “This paper seeks to catalyze further research, provide valuable contributions to the understanding of climate dynamics in this region and its global implications, and ultimately improve predictions for weather extremes,” said Yang.

Other contributors include Deliang Chen of the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden and Kaiqiang Deng at Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China.

The National Natural Sciences Foundation of China, the Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research, the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies, and the Innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory supported this research.

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JOURNAL

Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research

DOI

10.34133/olar.0038 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Global Effects of Climate Change in the South China Sea and Its Surrounding Areas

U.S. voters’ climate change opinions swing elections

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

When voters cast their ballots in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, many were driven by their concern for climate change, according to new research out of CU Boulder’s Center for Environmental Futures (C-SEF). The new report determined that views on climate change played a significant role in whom people voted for, concluding that the climate issue very likely cost Republicans the 2020 election, all else equal. 

“This is obviously information that politicians and advocates across the political spectrum will want to know, heading into the 2024 election cycle,” said Matthew Burgess, CIRES Fellow and C-SEF director. “How to reduce political polarization of climate change is one of the questions our research group is most interested in currently, and this provides some insight.”

In their new assessment, published today, Burgess and his co-authors, two C-SEF graduate students and researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of California Santa Barbara, sought to understand the importance of climate change as a voter issue in the two most recent presidential elections. The team used data from the nonpartisan Voter Study Group, to analyze how issue opinions and demographics affected the 2016 and 2020 elections. 

The research team used several techniques to assess how climate change opinion shaped voters' choices: logistic regression, a machine learning model, and a simulation of the Electoral College in which they could turn the role of climate change on or off. Their conclusion: Republicans could have gained at least a 3-percent swing in the popular vote, which almost certainly would have been enough to have taken the White House in 2020.

The team found personal views on climate change were one of the strongest predictors of voting behavior in 2020, especially among independents. Not surprisingly, they found the majority of Democrats and independents are worried about climate change. And, many younger and moderate Republicans also see climate change as an important issue—one-quarter of Republicans who think climate change is “very important” voted for President Biden in 2020. 

Such widespread concern about climate change is currently a clear upper hand for the Democratic party. The party holds a 26-point advantage over Republicans on the issue, a lead larger than any other opposing topic between the two parties, in a recent poll. Voters from a broad range of political persuasions seem to see Democrats as more capable of finding solutions and instating policies to address problems created by climate change, even if not every Democratic climate change policy is necessarily popular. 
 
While the issue of climate change strongly predicts whom people voted for in 2020, overall, it is not the number-one concern among voters. Less than 5 percent of adults rank climate change as the single most important issue. More pressing issues include those that affect people’s daily lives, like the economy, healthcare, education, and crime. 

If climate change isn’t voters’ top issue, why is it such a strong predictor?

“One reason might be that most people see the evidence for climate change as so strong that, if a candidate were to deny or minimize that issue, they might trust that candidate less on other issues,” Burgess said. “Another reason might be that voters are beginning to see a connection between climate change and the kitchen table issues they care about more, like the economy, security, and health. But we can’t say for sure, and this is a key question for future research.”

As the country prepares for the next election, the odds are good that climate change will influence whom they vote for. 
 

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DOI

10.5281/zenodo.10494414