Distance education during pandemic led to less care for mental ill health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

HELENA SVALERYD, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AT UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

view more 

CREDIT: MIKAEL WALLERSTEDT

Upper secondary school students were less likely to seek help for mental ill health when they were forced to study at home during the pandemic. A similar decrease was not seen for secondary school students aged 14–16 who remained in school. This has been shown in a new study at Uppsala University, based on data covering all of Sweden's upper secondary school students between 2015–2021.

“We have examined usage rates in healthcare. A key question is whether the reduction we see reflects the fact that healthcare became less accessible during the pandemic, but everything points to an actual reduction in mental ill health,” notes Helena Svaleryd, Professor of Economics at Uppsala University.

From mid-March to mid-June 2020, Swedish upper secondary school students, especially those on theoretical programmes, were taught remotely. Over the same period, care for psychiatric conditions, particularly depression and anxiety, decreased by 4.4 percent in this group compared to secondary school students aged 14–16 who continued to attend school. This difference persisted for at least 21 months after schools reopened.

“This shows that Sweden managed to transition to distance education without negative consequences for the mental health of 14–16-year-old students,” continues Svaleryd.

The shift to distance education during the pandemic gave researchers an opportunity to investigate whether teaching methods and the study environment could affect mental health. In a new study, they conclude that there is no evidence that the decline in mental ill health care was due to a general reluctance to seek care. The researchers also saw a significant reduction in unplanned and emergency contact with healthcare.

“This suggests that the decrease is not due to reduced accessibility. If young people were not accessing healthcare through normal channels, such as school health services, we should be seeing that they are more likely to seek emergency or unplanned care. Instead, we are seeing the opposite,” continues Svaleryd.

Another reason could be the cancellation of the national exams, but they were also cancelled for 14–16-year-olds and there was no reduction in care for mental ill health. The study is unable to specify why distance education led to a reduction in psychiatric disorders, but the researchers suggest several possible explanations: reduced stress, more flexible schedules, reduced social pressure and a reduction in the perceived demands of academic performance.

Sweden stands out in terms of the level of care and medication for psychiatric conditions among young people when compared to our neighbouring countries, according to a previous study (Wesselhoeft et al 2020). There are no clear answers as to why this is. 

“This study shows that one contributing factor may be the school environment. More generally, research on how the school environment affects mental health seems warranted,” adds Svaleryd.

Björkegren, E., Svaleryd, H. and J. Vlachos, “Remote Instruction and Student Mental Health. Swedish Evidence from the Pandemic”, forthcoming in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20220699

 

---

ARTICLE TITLE

“Remote Instruction and Student Mental Health. Swedish Evidence from the Pandemic”

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Feb-2024

 

Breakthrough in understanding the cause of a rare and life-threatening condition related to sleep apnea

Findings link the Central Congenital Hypoventilation Syndrome (CCHS) to the ubiquitin transfer system

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV

BEER-SHEVA and TEL AVIV, Israel, February 5, 2024 – Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev's Prof. Gad Vatine and Tel Aviv University's Dr. Avraham Ashkenazi are up and coming young principal investigators. Vatine is an expert in studying rare disorders using patient-specific stem cells, and Ashkenazi is an expert in tri-nucleotide repeat expansion disorders and protein clearance pathways. While they don't work on the same diseases, the Yad Laneshima patient organization thought they could work together to find treatments for Central Congenital Hypoventilation Syndrome (CCHS), which causes young children to stop breathing as soon as they fall asleep. This means that if they fall asleep without ventilatory support they will suffocate to death. 

Sponsored initially by the Israeli organization Yad Laneshima, and then by the international CCHS Network, Prof. Vatine and Dr. Ashkenazi were intrigued by the challenge and began a collaboration. That collaboration has yielded important new information about the cause of CCHS, which could lead to future treatments.  

Their findings were published last month in the prestigious EMBO Journal (https://doi.org/10.1038/s44318-023-00018-9). 

CCHS is caused by a mutation in the PHOX2B gene, a key transcription factor in the development of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), a system that controls non-voluntary body functions such as breathing, digestion and heart rate. PHOX2B and eight other nuclear proteins that cause various neural disorders have a poly-alanine tract. In these disorders, a mutation that expands the poly-alanine tract causes the disease.  

The women PhD students Fatima Amer-Sarsour from Ashkenazi's lab and Daniel Falik from Vatine's lab identified a poly-alanine that is also present in one of the enzymes of the ubiquitin transfer system. Profs. Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko from Israel with Prof. Irwin Rose were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 "for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation”. In a healthy condition, this poly-alanine stretch is required for enzyme recognition enabling proper ubiquitin transfer to target proteins, such as those involved in neural development, thereby controlling their degradation. In a disease, such as in CCHS, the Vatine and Ashkenazi research teams discovered that the expansion mutation of the poly-alanine tract in PHOX2B (and in other poly-alanine disease-causing proteins) causes aberrant interaction with the poly-alanine recognizing enzyme of the ubiquitin transfer system. This interaction disrupts the proper ubiquitin transfer to neural proteins, which inhibits the ubiquitous normal functions, leading to cell death and eventually triggering CCHS.  

To make this discovery clinically relevant, The Vatine lab at the Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell (RMSC) research center at BGU used patient-specific stem cells, termed induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The BGU-stem cell-core is the premier research facility of its kind in Israel, providing research support nationally and internationally. They use a technique called ‘reprogramming’ that was developed by the Japanese Nobel Prize winner, Shinya Yamanaka. This technique enables easily accessible cells (like blood cells or skin cells), to be "taken back in time" to become identical to embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Unlike ESCs, iPSCs are generated without destroying embryos, and can be generated from any individual. The iPSCs from CCHS patients were then differentiated into PHOX2B-expressing cells of the ANS, which revealed the disease mechanism in the most vulnerable of the patient's nerve cells.   

Daniel Falik: “Using personalized, cutting-edge technologies, we have uncovered insights that can pave the way for significant advances in the disease therapeutics.”  

Fatima Amer-Sarsour: “I am thrilled with the progress we have made in identifying defective pathways in CCHS, as this opens up exciting research avenues to explore the development and function of the ANS.” 

Prof. Vatine and Dr. Ashkenazi are very excited about the potential of this groundbreaking discovery: “Now that we know what goes wrong in the CCHS patient neurons, we can start developing modalities to fix it with the goal of promoting neuron survival that will allow better quality of life for the patients.” 

---

JOURNAL

The EMBO Journal

DOI

10.1038/s44318-023-00018-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Disease-associated polyalanine expansion mutations impair UBA6-dependent ubiquitination

 

Virus ancestry could aid bid to predict next pandemic, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Virus family history could help scientists identify which strains have potential to become the so-called Disease X that causes the next global pandemic.

A study has identified 70 virus lineages – groups of related viruses – that pose the biggest risk. Viruses from other genetic backgrounds are unlikely to cause a high number of infections in humans, the research shows.

The findings will support ongoing efforts to monitor and prepare for future pandemics, including guiding vaccine and diagnostic development, experts say.

Disease X is the generic term used by the World Health Organization to represent a hypothetical, unidentified pathogen that could pose a significant threat to people.

RNA viruses carry their genetic information as RNA, a structure similar to DNA. They cause many diseases, including the common cold, Covid-19 and measles, and have been responsible for most epidemics, or global pandemics, in recent history.

Monitoring RNA viruses in animal populations could help to identify those that are most likely to emerge and spread rapidly in humans. However, the huge number in circulation makes this extremely challenging and expensive.

The University of Edinburgh-led research team traced the lineage, or family tree, of 743 distinct RNA virus species to track how they evolved, including all species currently known to infect humans.

Researchers compared the development of strictly zoonotic viruses – those that spread from animals to humans, but not between people – with human-transmissible viruses, which can spread within human populations.

The findings showed that viruses that can spread within human populations typically evolve separately from strictly zoonotic viruses.

Human-transmissible viruses often emerge when related viruses from the same lineage can already spread between humans.

Strictly zoonotic viruses have historically not led to epidemics in human populations. Having a close relative that can infect humans, but not spread between them, does not appear to increase the risk of epidemic potential.

The research team caution that there is still a chance the next pandemic could come as the result of a strictly zoonotic virus – such as bird flu – or an entirely new virus. However, the findings offer a route to help streamline surveillance for Disease X among the vast number of RNA viruses in existence.

The study is published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/41/1/msad272/7577304. The research team included scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Liverpool and Peking University in China. The study was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme and the BBSRC.

Professor Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Viruses without the right ancestry don't seem to cause epidemics. Out of potentially huge numbers of mammal and bird viruses in circulation, we should concentrate on the ones that are related to existing human viruses with epidemic potential. This research narrows the search for the next Disease X enormously.”

JOURNAL

Molecular Biology and Evolution

DOI

10.1093/molbev/msad272 

ARTICLE TITLE

Temporal Dynamics, Discovery, and Emergence of Human-Transmissible RNA Viruses

 

Bacterial test for raw, organic milk may require more precision

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell food scientists show that a standard quality test used for raw, organic milk is insufficient for distinguishing between specific groups of bacteria, suggesting that the criteria for determining milk quality at processing plants needs to be updated.

Their work was published Jan. 20 in the Journal of Dairy Science.

“Testing milk should not be one size fits all,” as tests should be used appropriately to give the best feedback to dairy producers, said lead author Renee Lee ’21, a master’s student who works in the laboratory of Martin Wiedmann, Ph.D. ’97, the Gellert Family Professor in Food Safety in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

If the current test causes milk to be downgraded or rejected by processors, the farmers will earn less money or not get paid at all.

The present test, called the Laboratory Pasteurization Count (LPC), looks for thermoduric bacteria (strong enough to endure pasteurization) and does not differentiate whether bacteria form spores or not – a key factor in determining both the quality of milk and how producers need to address milk-production hygiene.

The latest scientific literature on this test is more than two decades old.

“You have to know what’s in the milk before you can troubleshoot it and develop the right corrective action,” Lee said. “There are different ways to address it.”

Some types of thermoduric bacteria that form spores are ever-present in the farm environment, found in bedding, feed and the air, Lee said. These types of bacteria can cause dairy products like milk and cheese to spoil, which contributes to food waste.

Non-sporeforming thermoduric bacteria can be found in improperly cleaned milking equipment and can be addressed by producers with improved maintenance and sanitation. Distinguishing between these two groups of thermoduric bacteria is important to reducing the time organic farmers spend troubleshooting elevated LPC results.

When dairies deliver organic milk to processors, the milk is sometimes tested for thermoduric bacteria using LPC. Under current standards, if thermoduric bacterial counts are high, the milk can be downgraded or even rejected by the processor.

In the paper, the researchers said that despite the test being used as a proxy for levels of bacterial spores in raw milk, there is limited knowledge of the types of organisms identified by this test in raw milk.

Organic milk is an important economic component for the dairy industry. New York state, for example, has more than 650 certified organic milk producers (as of June 2023) with more than half certified by Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York.

“We’re giving organic farmers the knowledge they need to make high-quality raw milk and for it to be economically viable,” said senior author Nicole H. Martin ’06, M.S. ’11, Ph.D. ’18, assistant research professor in dairy foods microbiology and the associate director of the Milk Quality Improvement Program in the Department of Food Science (CALS). “It will make a better dairy product in the end.”

In addition to Lee, Wiedmann and Martin, co-authors of “Troubleshooting High Laboratory Pasteurization Counts in Organic Raw Milk Requires Characterization of Dominant Thermoduric Bacteria, Which Includes Non-Sporeformers As Well As Sporeformers” are: researcher Rachel L. Evanowski ’13, M.S. ’19; Halle E. Greenbaum, graduate student, the University of Georgia; and Deborah Pawloski of the Quality Milk Production Services, Animal Health Diagnostic Center, College of Veterinary Medicine.

The research was funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Organic Research and Extension Initiative.

-30-

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Dairy Science

DOI

10.3168/jds.2023-24330 

ARTICLE TITLE

Troubleshooting high laboratory pasteurization counts in organic raw milk requires characterization of dominant thermoduric bacteria, which includes non-sporeformers as well as sporeformers

 

European research grant facilitates production of valuable fuels and chemicals using microbial cell factories

Grant and Award Announcement

ESTONIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL

 

IMAGE: 

KASPAR VALGEPEA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GAS FERMENTATION TECHNOLOGIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TARTU

view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT TO THE AUTHOR ANDRES TENNUS

Kaspar Valgepea, Associate Professor of Gas Fermentation Technologies at the University of Tartu, will advance understanding of gas-consuming bacteria, supported by European Research Council grant funding. The project will pioneer a novel method for creating a large number of genetically engineered strains and compile a knowledgebase that will accelerate engineering of cell factories and research in the field of biotechnology, as well as knowledge transfer supporting a circular economy.

Acetogen bacteria are microorganisms capable of consuming both exhaust gases and gasified organic waste, including the most common household waste. While bacterial strains present in nature can produce a handful of useful compounds, bioengineering their metabolism would allow gas-fermenting acetogens to produce the necessary compounds for fuels and chemicals more efficiently and in a notably larger range. This process is called gas fermentation. It is a technology that is already in industrial use in the world, but so far mainly for the production of ethanol.

The unsolved mystery of the bacterium

One of the reasons for the current restricted use of acetogens is the lack of knowledge about which genes exactly influence which processes. As these bacteria live in environments without oxygen and consume toxic and explosive gases, studying them is challenging. So far, genetically modified strains have essentially been handmade one-by-one that is very time-consuming. Therefore, it is still unclear what exactly are the functions of the majority of the roughly 4,000 genes in the studied acetogen bacterium (Clostridium autoethanogenum).

For the same reason, there is also a lack of a comprehensive dataset describing how modifications in different genes affect bacterial phenotypes at systems-level. According to Valgepea, such datasets have only been compiled for a few of the most studied microorganisms, such as the bacterium Escherichia coli or baker's yeast. Even for them, around 160 strains are characterised in the datasets.

Impact on the future of biotechnology

The novelty of Valgepea's project is that, within five years, it will create nearly 750 modified bacterial strains and consolidate the collected data as well as existing similar information about acetogens in a public knowledgebase (A-BASE). As the method for creating genetically modified strains would also be applicable to other microorganisms, the expected impact of the project is significant for the fields of microbiology, synthetic biology, and biotechnology, both for research and industrial applications.

The distinctiveness of the method being developed by Valgepea is that in addition to creating a large-scale library of strains, it also aims to find a way how to grow and study the strains individually. In selecting the genes for modification, the researchers will focus on three aspects, the exploration of which has had a great impact on other bacterial strains. Thus, they will be exploring genes essential for growth, factors that influence DNA transcription, and proteome "dark matter" that play an important role in engineering of bacterial metabolism. Applying data mining and machine learning on the data collected while focusing on the three aspects will enable to find the best target mutations faster than before, so that acetogen cell factories could more efficiently produce a greater number of compounds, which production would otherwise have a significant environmental footprint in the traditional chemical industry.

"The key issue in reducing the environmental impact of the global economy is how to move from carbon mining to carbon recycling. According to the McKinsey Institute, nearly 60% of the physical inputs to the global economy can be produced via biological systems. My project has a significant impact on the development of one technology contributing to the latter – gas fermentation“, explained Valgepea, who at the Institute of Bioengineering, University of Tartu is the leader of one of the few laboratories in the world that could execute such a project. The amount of the Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council is slightly above two million euros. The project lasts five years.

Microbial division of labor produces higher biofuel yields

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

 

IMAGE: 

A RESEARCH TEAM CO-LED BY FOOD SCIENCE AND HUMAN NUTRITION PROFESSOR YONG-SU JIN, PICTURED HERE, WITH BIOENGINEERING PROFESSOR TING LU, NOT PICTURED, FOUND A WAY TO INCREASE ETHANOL PRODUCTION FROM A MIXTURE OF SUGARS USING A MICROBIAL DIVISION-OF-LABOR APPROACH AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING.

 

view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY FRED ZWICKY

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have found a way to boost ethanol production via yeast fermentation, a standard method for converting plant sugars into biofuels. Their approach, detailed in the journal Nature Communications, relies on careful timing and a tight division of labor among synthetic yeast strains to yield more ethanol per unit of plant sugars than previous approaches have achieved.

“We constructed an artificial microbial community consisting of two engineered yeast strains: a glucose specialist and a xylose specialist,” said Yong-Su Jin, a professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who co-led the new research with U. of I. bioengineering professor Ting Lu. “We investigated how the timing of mixing the two yeast populations and the ratios in which the two populations were mixed affected the production of cellulosic ethanol.”

Postdoctoral researcher Jonghyeok Shin and Siqi Lao, a Ph.D. student in the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology at the U. of I., carried out the work.

Glucose and xylose are the two most abundant sugars obtained from the breakdown of plant biomass such as agricultural wastes. The team was trying to overcome a common problem that occurs when using yeast to convert these plant sugars into ethanol. In the wild, the yeast strain of interest, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, prefers glucose and lacks the ability to metabolize xylose. Other scientists have used genetic engineering to alter the yeast so that it also consumes xylose, but these engineered strains still prefer glucose, reducing their overall efficiency in ethanol production.

Some scientists have pursued the idea that communities of microbes, each with its own special function, can operate more efficiently than a single, highly engineered strain.

“My group is dedicated to the design, analysis and engineering of synthetic microbial communities. Jin’s lab specializes in yeast metabolic engineering and biofuel production,” Lu said.

“Our complementary expertise enabled us to test whether a division-of-labor approach among yeast might work well in biofuels production.”

The researchers conducted a series of experiments testing the use of their two specialist yeast strains. They altered the order in which the different strains were added to the sugar mixture and the timing of each addition.

“We also investigated the ratios at which the two populations were mixed to determine their effects on the rapid and efficient production of cellulosic ethanol,” Jin said.

The team also developed a mathematical model that accurately predicts their yeasts’ performance and ethanol yields.

“We used the data from the experiments to train our mathematical model so that it captures the characteristic ecosystem behaviors,” Lu said. “The model was then used to predict optimal fermentation conditions, which were later validated by corresponding experiments.”

The researchers discovered that adding the xylose-fermenting yeast specialist to the mixture first, followed 14 to 29 hours later by the glucose specialist, dramatically boosted ethanol production, more than doubling the yield.

“This study demonstrates the functional potential of division of labor in bioprocessing and provides insight into the rational design of engineered ecosystems for various applications,” the authors wrote.

Yong-Su Jin and Ting Lu also are professors in the Biosystems Design theme in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I. Jonghyeok Shin is now a scientist at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology.

The Department of Energy and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology supported this research.

 

Editor’s notes: 

To reach Yong-Su Jin, email ysjin@illinois.edu.  

To reach Ting Lu, email luting@illinois.edu.
 

The paper “Compositional and temporal division of labor modulates mixed sugar fermentation by an engineered yeast consortium” is available online or from the U. of I. News Bureau.

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45011-w

---

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-45011-w 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Compositional and temporal division of labor modulates mixed sugar fermentation by an engineered yeast consortium

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Feb-2024

 

Ammonia attracts the shipping industry, but researchers warn of its risks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 

IMAGE: 

THE USE OF AMMONIA AS A SHIP FUEL COULD CONTRIBUTE TO EUTROPHICATION AND ACIDIFICATION, DUE TO AMMONIA LEAKAGE AND EMISSIONS OF NITROGEN OXIDES. ONE OF THE POSSIBLE EMISSIONS IS LAUGHING GAS, WHICH IS ALSO A GREENHOUSE GAS WITH A MUCH HIGHER WARMING IMPACT THAN CARBON DIOXIDE.

view more 

CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION: CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY/PETRA PERSSON

Switching to ammonia as a marine fuel, with the goal of decarbonisation, can instead create entirely new problems. This is shown in a study from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, where researchers carried out life cycle analyses for batteries and for three electrofuels including ammonia. Eutrophication and acidification are some of the environmental problems that can be traced to the use of ammonia – as well as emissions of laughing gas, which is a very potent greenhouse gas.

In the search for viable fossil-free marine fuels, ammonia has been on the agenda for several years as one of the strongest alternatives. Ammonia (NH3) is a carbon-free fuel and has the advantage of a higher energy density than, for example, hydrogen. It can also be liquefied fairly easily although it is a gas at standard conditions. However, a significant disadvantage is that the production of electro-ammonia – which requires electricity – is very energy intensive.

Moreover, the new study shows that an eagerness to rid the shipping sector of carbon emissions, by using ammonia, might create entirely new problems instead.

“Although ammonia is carbon-free, its combustion in engines is not free from greenhouse gas emissions”, says Selma Brynolf, Chalmers researcher and co-author of the paper. “Engine tests have shown varying degrees of emissions of laughing gas, which is a very potent greenhouse gas with more than 200 times the global warming impact than carbon dioxide.”

“There is simply a lack of deeper risk analyses of what a switch to ammonia could mean”, says Fayas Malik Kanchiralla, PhD student at the Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences at Chalmers and lead author of the paper.

The alternative with the lowest cost is environmentally problematic

The researchers used life cycle assessment and life cycle cost to evaluate technical viability, environmental impacts, and economic feasibility for four types of renewable energy carriers, for three different types of ships. The energy carriers examined included electricity via batteries, and three electrofuels: hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia. The energy carriers were in turn used in combination with both engines and fuel cells.

The study shows that ammonia and methanol have the lowest cost of the alternatives studied.

“The market is usually drawn by costs, and since electro-ammonia has the lowest cost, the market is aiming towards it. There is a hype around this fuel in shipping today. But if, and when, we make a shift to ammonia, it is to solve the problem of using fossil fuels, and at the moment it seems like we might end up creating more problems instead”, says Fayas Malik Kanchiralla.

This is because ammonia comes with a set of environmental disadvantages. Its use as a fuel can affect air and water quality due to ammonia leakage and emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), such as laughing gas (N2O). Fayas Malik Kanchiralla and his colleagues stress the importance of controlling this for ships operating in areas with emission controls, for example a sensitive marine area such as the Baltic Sea.

Electrofuels are synthetic fuels that are produced with electricity, in a process where energy-rich molecules are made from other molecules. These fuels are defined as ‘green’ when they are produced with renewable electricity. But the study shows that all three green electrofuels have a higher environmental impact than traditional fuels in terms of human toxicity, use of resources such as minerals and metals, and water use.

Eutrophication and acidification are some of the risks

The use of ammonia is associated with substantial toxicity challenges and risks, which are manageable, but would increase the complexity of the safety systems required. This would potentially limit the use of the fuel to only deep-sea cargo ships.

“Among the environmental problems that can be traced to use of ammonia are eutrophication and acidification”, says Fayas Malik Kanchiralla. “To sum up; even though green ammonia is a fossil-free and relatively clean fuel, it is probably not green enough for the environment as a whole. More risk assessments on the emissions of ammonia, and the related nitrogen compounds, need to be done before adopting this fuel for shipping.”

The study also shows that it is very difficult to find a simple non-fossil fuel solution that both works for all types of ships and is able to meet the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in shipping. Assessing the environmental and economic aspects of different fuel options for the shipping sector is complex, and several factors need to be considered when developing climate strategies for various types of ships and modes of operation.

“From a life cycle perspective, one needs to find different types of solutions for decarbonisation for different kinds of ships”, says Fayas Malik Kanchiralla. “There is no silver bullet. More research and more life cycle analyses need to be done.”

More on the research:
The study How do variations in ship operation impact the techno-economic feasibility and environmental performance of fossil-free fuels? A life cycle study has been published in Applied Energy and is written by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and Research Institutes of Sweden. The research was funded by the Swedish Transport Administration, the competence center TechForH2 and the project ‘HOPE’.

---

JOURNAL

Applied Energy

DOI

10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121773 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

How do variations in ship operation impact the techno-economic feasibility and environmental performance of fossil-free fuels? A life cycle study

 

Brazilian researcher helps describe a novel species of jellyfish discovered in a remote location in Japan

The animal has been sighted only twice in a deep-sea volcanic structure called Sumisu Caldera, in the Ogasawara Islands. The researcher was on the team that has published a description of a rare medusa found at a depth of 812 meters.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

 

IMAGE: 

THE SCIENTISTS NAMED THE JELLYFISH SANTJORDIA PAGESI BECAUSE OF ITS BRIGHT RED STOMACH THAT RESEMBLES THE CROSS OF ST GEORGE 

view more 

CREDIT: DHUGAL JOHN LINDSAY/JAMSTEC

A gelatinous animal with a diameter of about 10 cm and a red stomach resembling the Cross of St George when seen from above. This is Santjordia pagesi, a newly described species of medusa. Medusae are a type of free-swimming, umbrella-shaped jellyfish with a reduced stalk.

The new species is described in an article published in the journal Zootaxa. The study was conducted by an international group of researchers that included a Brazilian scientist supported by FAPESP. 

The scientist in question is André Morandini, last author of the article. He is a professor of zoology at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Biosciences (IB-USP) and Director of the Center for Marine Biology (CEBIMar) at the same university.

While he was conducting the research, Morandini was supported by FAPESP’s Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use (BIOTA-FAPESP) via three projects (10/50174-7, 11/50242-5 and 13/05510-7.

The other authors are researchers at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), in Japan, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), also in Japan.

The St George’s Cross Medusa, as it has been named, apparently lives only in the Sumisu Caldera in Ogasawara Islands, some 460 km south of Tokyo. The caldera is a hydrothermally active deep-sea volcanic structure with a diameter of about 10 km and a depth of 812 m. 

“The species is very different from all the deep-sea medusae discovered to date. It’s relatively small, whereas others in this kind of environment are much larger. The bright red coloring of its stomach probably has to do with capturing food,” Morandini explained.

Like all jellyfish, S. pagesi is transparent, and the bright red stomach ensures that bioluminescent organisms cannot be seen by predators after they are swallowed. Bioluminescence (emission of light by living organisms) is common in the darkness of the deep sea.

The species epithet pagesi was chosen to honor Dr. Francesc Pagès, a jellyfish taxonomist from Barcelona who died recently. The authors determined that the medusa belongs to a new genus (Santjordia, St George in Catalan) and subfamily (Santjordiinae) in the jellyfish family Ulmaridae.

Rare and inaccessible

Discovery of a new species usually entails the collection of several specimens, but S. pagesi is very rare, and it was so hard to collect that the description was based on a single specimen, although the scientists did see another nearby and expect future surveys of the deep ocean to discover more members of the group.

The specimen was captured in 2002 by the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Hyperdolphin during a dive in the Sumisu Caldera, which can only be accessed by scientific expeditions with this type of special equipment. No other specimens were found until 2020, when the KM-ROV filmed, but was unable to collect, another individual of the same species.

“We opted to publish the description and call attention to the species that are present at the site, which has a substrate rich in minerals and the potential to be commercially developed. Unfortunately, research can’t be conducted in such places without partners who have interests of this kind,” Morandini said. 

Because it is so different even from closely related species, the researchers believe S. pagesi may have an arsenal of venoms that are also unlike those discovered to date. “Who knows? Maybe it holds secrets more valuable than all the mineral wealth that could be extracted from that place. All this with the advantage of keeping the species and the site intact,” he stressed.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

 

 

---

JOURNAL

Zootaxa

DOI

10.11646/ZOOTAXA.5374.4.5 

ARTICLE TITLE

A new subfamily of ulmarid scyphomedusae, the Santjordiinae, with a description of Santjordia pagesi gen. et sp. nov. (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa: Discomedusae: Semaeostomeae: Ulmaridae) from the Sumisu Caldera, Ogasawara Islands, Japan