Better battery manufacturing: Robotic lab vets new reaction design strategy

Mixing unconventional ingredients in just the right order can make complex materials with fewer impurities. The robotic lab that tested the idea could be widely adopted.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Images  //  Video 

New chemistries for batteries, semiconductors and more could be easier to manufacture, thanks to a new approach to making chemically complex materials that researchers at the University of Michigan and Samsung's Advanced Materials Lab have demonstrated. 

Their new recipes use unconventional ingredients to make battery materials with fewer impurities, requiring fewer costly refinement steps and increasing their economic viability.

"Over the past two decades, many battery materials with enhanced capacity, charging speed and stability have been designed computationally, but have not made it to market," said Wenhao Sun, the Dow Early Career Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at U-M and the corresponding author of the study published in Nature Synthesis.

"A lot of times, a simple material is a good starting point, but when you add a little bit of compound A and a little bit of compound B, magic happens and you get big improvements in capacity or charging rate. However, these chemically complex materials are often difficult to manufacture at scale with high purity.

Battery materials are typically made by mixing several different oxide powders and firing them in an oven. However, these powders react in a sequence rather than all at the same time. The first two ingredients to react are usually those that release the most energy upon reacting. The first reaction results in an intermediate compound that then reacts with the remaining powder, and so on, until no more rections are possible.

If the chemical bonds in the intermediate compounds are difficult to break, they might not fully react with the other ingredients. When they don't fully react, the intermediates hang around as undesired impurities in the final material.

"We designed a strategy to make impurity-free materials more reliably," said Jiadong Chen, the first author of the study and a U-M doctoral student in materials science and engineering and scientific computing. "The trick is to only work with two ingredients at a time, and deliberately make unstable intermediates that will react completely with the remaining ingredients."

To test this strategy, Sun's team designed 224 different recipes to create 35 different known materials containing elements used in today's batteries and next-generation 'beyond-lithium' batteries. 

The researchers then partnered with Samsung Semiconductor's Advanced Materials Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to test if their recipes produced these 35 materials with fewer impurities than conventional recipes. Samsung's automated robotic lab can synthesize up to 24 different battery materials every 72 hours.

Robotic arms handle the ingredients and operate the lab equipment that assesses the purity of the resulting materials. Meanwhile, computers automatically record the results of each experiment, creating a database that researchers can use to determine which recipes worked best.

"With the automatic lab, we could broadly test our hypothesis on diverse battery chemistries," Chen said.

The experiments confirmed that the new recipes with ingredients designed to be unstable tended to produce cleaner products. The new recipes improved the materials' purity by up to 80%, and six of the target materials could only be made with new recipes.

Blueprints for the robotic lab were detailed in the team's report, which Sun hopes will enable more chemistry labs to adopt robotic labs for both science and materials manufacturing.

"We need more data—not just from successful recipes but also the unsuccessful ones—to improve materials manufacturing strategies. More robotic labs will help generate the needed data," Sun said.

These labs are within reach for most research institutions and could significantly speed up materials development, the researchers say.

"The startup cost for the robotic equipment is about $120,000—not as high as you might think. But the payoffs in throughput, reliability and data-management are invaluable," said study co-author Yan Eric Wang, principal engineer and project manager of Samsung's Advanced Materials Lab.

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Basic Energy

Sciences program.

Study: Navigating phase diagram complexity to guide robotic inorganic materials synthesis (DOI: 10.1038/s44160-024-00502-y)

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JOURNAL

Nature Synthesis

DOI

10.1038/s44160-024-00502-y 

 

Researchers reveal mechanism behind most common mammalian mRNA modification

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

RNA—in the form of messenger RNA (mRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and transfer RNA (tRNA)—transforms the genome coded by DNA into proteins that form the backbone of all cellular functions. However, biochemical modifications to RNA frequently occur, with a subsequent influence on gene expression and the potential to cause disease. The sum of these functionally relevant changes to RNA is called the epitranscriptome. 

The most common mammalian mRNA modification currently known is the methylation of nitrogen at position 6 in the adenosine base of mRNA. This modification is known as N6-methyladenosine (m6A), which is present in 0.2-0.6% of all adenosines. Nevertheless, how this common methylation occurs and is controlled has not been well understood. 

Now, however, a new study led by Prof. REN Jie and Prof. YANG Yungui from the Beijing Institute of Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China National Center for Bioinformation) has identified the mechanism underlying the m6A RNA modification. The study was published in Molecular Cell on April 2. 

The m6A modification affects the entire life cycle of mRNA, including pre-mRNA splicing, 3′-end processing, nuclear export, translation, stability, and decay. It is catalyzed by the methyltransferase complex (MTC). This complex, in conjunction with the inhibitory role of the exon junction complex, collectively shapes the distribution profile of m6A, which spreads over the gene body and exhibits specific enrichment toward stop codons. This pattern is established co-transcriptionally—i.e., before RNA synthesis is complete and while the nascent RNA is still tethered to the DNA by the polymerase—and is maintained in a steady state. However, how MTC recruitment works has been unclear. 

In previous work, the researchers had identified m6A on R-loops—three-stranded nucleic acid structures consisting of a DNA:RNA hybrid and a displaced strand of DNA. R-loops play a vital role in regulating gene expression, DNA replication, and DNA and histone modification. Based on the assumption that the majority of R-loops are formed co-transcriptionally, the researchers hypothesized that R-loops may play a role in the co-transcriptional modification of m6A. 

To test this hypothesis and investigate how m6A might be installed co-transcriptionally, the researchers performed a protein co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP) assay in combination with mass spectrometry, using the MTC subunits METTL3, METTL14, and WTAP as “bait.”  

In this process, the researchers observed that R-loops, METTL3, and the helicase DDX21 strongly colocalize. (A helicase is an enzyme that separates the two strands of a helical nucleic acid structure.) They discovered that R-loops provide anchor points for recruiting DDX21 to chromatin-bound nascent transcripts, and that DDX21, in turn, recruits METTL3 to its substrate. They noted that depletion of R-loops or DDX21 leads to a notable decrease in global m6A levels, particularly at gene ends. They thus concluded that DDX21, in collaboration with R-loops and METTL3, guides the interplay of co-transcriptional RNA modification. 

Furthermore, the researchers revealed that DDX21, in conjunction with METTL3, the resulting m6A modification, and its reader YTHDC1, plays a crucial role in facilitating XRN2-mediated transcription termination, thereby ensuring genome stability. Disruption of these concerted actions at any step may lead to incomplete transcription termination or readthrough, potentially resulting in DNA damage. 

This study uncovered new functions of DDX21 in promoting co-transcriptional m6A deposition, thus identifying the missing link between co-transcriptional methylation and its regulatory roles in coordinating transcription termination and maintaining genome stability. Further exploration of the DDX21–METTL3–m6A axis may contribute to innovative strategies for addressing diseases associated with dysregulated m6A metabolism, including cancer and neurological disorders.

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JOURNAL

Molecular Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.molcel.2024.03.006 

ARTICLE TITLE

DDX21 mediates co-transcriptional RNA m6A modification to promote transcription termination and genome stability

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Apr-2024

Three-Day Sanders Institute Event Details the Case: 'Housing Is a Human Right'

"We can't address the housing crisis by chopping the weed off at the top. We have to pull it out by the roots," said one panelist at the intimate event in Los Angeles that looked at the issue from the local, state, and federal level.


Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders and Dave Driscoll of the Sanders Institute on stage during The Gathering, a convening of experts, lawmakers, and advocates focused on the housing crisis. The three-day event took place from April 3 to April 5, 2024 at The Line Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

(Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

LONG READ

JON QUEALLY
Apr 09, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

We want to educate the public. We want to shift the narrative. We want to organize for transformational and lasting change.

Those were the stated goals and repeated themes at the heart of a three-day event in Los Angeles over recent days, a gathering focused on the national housing crisis organized by the Sanders Institute, spearheaded by co-founder Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders and executive director Dave Driscoll.

While the policy discussion around housing has a reputation for being dynamic and complex—especially as an issue that straddles municipal, state, and federal governance—the human story at the center of what it means to have a home or be housed is simple and universal, a thread woven into over a dozen panels, presentations, and keynote speeches by progressive lawmakers, top experts, frontline advocates, academics, and community organizers.

In a conversation with Common Dreams, Sanders and Driscoll explained that everyone who attended the event—kept intentionally small and low-profile—was told that the focus would be on "concrete remedies" and "replicable policies" with the ultimate purpose of informing a national audience about not only how severe the housing crisis has become, but also the concrete ways to address it.

"We believe democracy requires an informed electorate and civil discourse and bold ideas. That's part of our mission," Sanders said. "And the purpose was to come at the housing crisis from many aspects—not all of the aspects, but many of them—with the goal of actionable solutions."

"None of us are very interested in making small incremental change, which might mean building some more affordable housing or supporting this or that initiative. That's not what this is about." —Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders, The Sanders Institute

But why housing? Why now? According to Sanders, the issue is potent politically because it's an issue that is not just about the poor and unhoused, but also central to the working class.

"Everybody knows somebody that has a problem getting affordable housing or just affording their life and having to make different choices," she told Common Dreams. "It's middle-income people, it's everybody having a problem with the housing crisis, and elected officials are getting pressure. Those lawmakers and politicians are hearing it more and more. And we said, okay, now's the time to bring people together around this."

Driscoll targeted private equity, Wall Street investors, and real estate developers that have used their outsized economic and political power to further skew the nation's housing market in search of ever-larger profits, squeezing out low- or middle-income individuals and families in the process.

"It's just another way in which the gap is growing between the rich and the poor and increasing inequality," said Driscoll. "And that needs to stop."

It is powerful interests most of all, says Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), who must be named, shamed, and overcome if any of the progressive solutions championed at the gathering—including rent control, social housing models, community land trusts, more climate-resilient communities, and proven efforts to curb homelessness—are to have any hope of being implemented at the necessary scale.

Weinstein—a driving force behind the event, a supporter of the Sanders Institute, and a major player in California's healthcare and housing political landscape—agrees fully with Sanders and Driscoll that the moment, both in California and nationally, is ripe for an invigorating politics focused on housing.

Rent Control for All

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, presenting at the Sanders Institute event in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 4, 2024. 

(Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

During opening remarks focused on "perpetually affordable housing" and a 2024 ballot initiative in California that would end the state's existing ban on local rent control ordinances, Weinstein said that he has argued for years that "the housing issue was not high enough on the progressive agenda."

"This is a battle for the poor and working-class people in California," Weinstein said of the Justice for Renters campaign, an effort funded by AHF, local unions, and others to see the Justice for Renters Act become law via a ballot measure this year.

"There are 17 million renters in California—that's 45% of the population," he explained. "There are tens of millions more renters across the country. Our primary job as progressives is to improve the lives of people and housing is their greatest need."

If enacted, the law would remove the existing ban on rent control laws in California, encourage expanded rent control at the local level, and curb the power of "predatory landlords" who charge "unfair and unaffordable" rent.

While everyone at the gathering agreed more housing stock is a key part of the solution, Weinstein was among those who emphasized that the biggest obstacle is unaffordability of homes and rental units—a problem attributable to the greed of landlords and the investor class within an economy designed to siphon the wealth of workers into the coffers of the already rich.

"We can't address the housing crisis by chopping the weed off at the top. We have to pull it out by the roots," Weinstein explained. "And high rents are the root cause of the housing affordability crisis. It's that transfer of wealth that's causing the problem. And if we do nothing about rising rents, then nothing else we do in terms of producing housing or other changes will make a difference. If we continue to treat housing as a commodity, we'll never be able to house everyone. It's very similar to healthcare. If we leave it up to the marketplace, we're lost."

With the homeless population in Los Angeles estimated to be over 70,000—in a city of approximately 3.9 million—Weinstein said that L.A. is "not just the homeless capital of this country" but the "homeless capital of the world." This, he lamented, is "truly shameful," but also the reason why California has a vital role to play in showing people that the crisis can be confronted.

As a veteran healthcare advocate and the head of a nonprofit organization focused on AIDS, Weinstein rejected the accusation he sometimes receives from political opponents that he is somehow "out of his lane" by pushing so loudly and aggressively for rent control reforms. One reason that assessment is wrong, Weinstein explained, is that housing is the largest predeterminant of health, which is also why so many at the gathering rallied around the demand that housing be treated like the human right it is.

"But the main reason I'm involved in housing," Weinstein told the audience at the gathering, "is that I feel the same outrage about the housing situation and homelessness today as I did in the 1980s about AIDS, where the benign neglect saw tens of thousands of people die needlessly."

In his remarks, Weinstein stressed the crisis is a result of the most powerful in society refusing to meet the needs of its most vulnerable. But he said the galvanizing potential of housing—and the political potency and opportunities of social uplift embedded in the solutions presented at the conference—must be recognized.

"This is a cry for unity," he said. "Unity behind rent control and unity behind opposing corporate real estate and unity behind housing justice. There's no better time than now."

Putting the Housing Crisis at the Top of the Agenda

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) said during the event that Democrats are ready to put housing back at the top of the party's national agenda. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

The sense of urgency felt by attendees of the event was unmistakable.

Speaking at the opening night dinner for the conference, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), who represents parts of Los Angeles County, said the creation of the Renters Caucus in Congress last year is a sign that lawmakers are beginning to take housing more seriously at the federal level.

The goal of the new caucus, Gomez said, "is to make sure that the renters agenda is at the top of the Democratic Party agenda." This was a focus of all the members of Congress who attended the gathering in some capacity, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), also notable as Jane's husband. Driscoll is their son.

"Housing Should Be a Human Right in the Richest Country in the History of the World"

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaking with attendees at the event focused on the housing crisis, where she delivered an opening speech on the issue that focused on both the local battles for housing and, as a former member of Congress, the need for federal action. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who left Congress to provide more local leadership, said she did so because she saw that the rightward political shift at the local government level was set to take the city backward on a numerous fronts, including on the issues of affordable housing, education, and homelessness.

Calling housing "one of the most important issues of our lifetime right now," Bass praised the Sanders Institute's focus on the crisis and for bringing the event to California. "I know that you are going to be the brains behind what we need, which is a national movement," said Bass. "That's the only thing that is going to bring about the type of fundamental change that we need."

"What we need... is a national movement." —Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

Speaking after Jayapal—who had told the audience the battle for better housing policy in the United States should be viewed much like the battle for universal healthcare—Bass acknowledged there are things on the housing agenda that will require action by leaders at every level of government.

"But nothing takes the place of the grassroots day-to-day organizing that is needed," she said, "so that we can win what Pramila said: Housing should be a human right in the richest country in the history of the world, just like healthcare should be a human right."

According to Sen. Sanders, who delivered the keynote address and was an active participant throughout, the purpose of the gathering was to get beyond talk in order to get down to the real work of making change.

"Our task is to organize and to educate," Sanders said. "It's easy to come up with rhetoric—which I have done once or twice in my life—but when you're the mayor of a city, you're going to need some concrete plans. How do you do it? You're going to have to bring a lot of smart people together to figure out the best way forward."

Social Housing: A Solution That Works

California Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-25), center, and South San Francisco Mayor James Coleman, right, present on social housing models during the event in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 4, 2024.

 (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

A constant theme at the event was that not only does the housing crisis demand progressive solutions, but the implementation of those solutions are themselves opportunities to revive democracy, increase social cohesion, and expand the public imagination.

In their joint presentation on social housing, California Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-25) and South San Francisco Mayor James Coleman, also a Democrat, detailed a vision for "social housing" which aims to demolish preconceived notions that tend to dominate understandings of "public housing" throughout the United States.

When it comes to defining the term "social housing," Lee explained that he likes to "keep it simple." Social housing, he said, "is beautiful, sustainable, and publicly led developed housing that is available to everyone and for everyone."

The idea of universality, he emphasized, is critical in the U.S. context where public housing is typically subsidized housing only for low-income individuals or families. Social housing models across the world provide housing across economic classes, which creates more buy-in from communities and residents.

"There's a very deliberate reason of why we stick to the term social housing," Lee said, "even though it is three letters away from a scary thing that Americans fear." But it is the term used around the world, he explained—both in highly capitalistic economies like Singapore's as well as in the various social democracies of Europe and beyond.

Because it's housing for everyone—the poor, the middle class, and even the upper-middle class—Lee and Coleman explained that "universality" and the lack of means-testing are core components of a model they believe can transform people's understanding of what's possible in this country.

"With social housing," argued Coleman, "you'll see broad spots of the public be able to look at it and say: 'That is quality housing. I want to live there. I want my children to live there and I know I'm going to be paying lower rents than market rate.' And when people start seeing that, then they're going to want to continue to invest in social housing and we won't see the decades of disinvestment that we have seen here in the United States for our public housing program."

In an interview with Common Dreams, Lee offered a parallel example.

"In America," he said, "there is no constitutional guarantee of education, yet every parent will wake up tomorrow not having a single doubt in their mind that their child will go to school." Lee acknowledged not all children go to the same kinds of school, but said that people never doubt that education will be there for their families.

"But there is not the similar sense of options in housing—people don't have that." But they should, he said, and there are models out there—not just abroad but also examples in the U.S.—that show how it could work.

Citing housing construction in the post-war years, Lee said the country has shown it's capable of amazing things when it comes to housing.

"We could end the housing crisis in four years, at true scale," said Lee. "That's why it's really important to prove that this can work at the state level, especially in a state as populous as California. If we prove the concept here, we can show nationally how it can be done."

Like the Housing Crisis, "The Climate Crisis Is Actually a Massive Health Crisis"

Actor and activist Jane Fonda and community organizer Nalleli Cobo speak to the audience at The Gathering. 

(Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

During another session, actor and activist Jane Fonda presented alongside local activist Nalleli Cobo, a cancer survivor who has been fighting the oil industry that operates drilling wells in her urban neighborhood since she was a child.

Cobo, co-founder of the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition and a 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for the activism that she initiated while still a teenager living in South Los Angeles, told the audience that the hard-fought victories she and her allies were able to win against the fossil fuel industry "were made possible because of a frontline community that was historically viewed as silenced, invisible, and disposable finally said: 'Enough is enough. We deserve to open our windows and our home and we deserve to breathe clean air.'"

"This is the largest crisis humanity has ever faced. We're running out of time and we have to fight back." —Jane Fonda

Living her whole life in a home neighboring a fossil fuel operation beset Cobo with health challenges throughout her childhood and ultimately led to a cancer diagnosis. Now three years in remission, she said affordable and healthy housing is something that every single member of society is entitled to.

"They may not be drilling in your community right now, but they can be unless we stand up and fight back," she said.

With nearly 3 million Californians living within a mile or less from oil and gas drilling wells, Fonda championed the courage and determination of Cobo to end this toxic practice, including with a ballot fight in California this year to ban such operations permanently.

"What Nalleli didn't tell you," Fonda told the audience when she took the podium, "is that at age 10 and 11, she and her mother had to be put into a witness protection program because of her organizing in the community to shut the oil well down; that at 19 she had to have a total hysterectomy; that her dream was to be a dancer and now that is no longer possible for her."

People must understand, Fonda said, that "the climate crisis is actually a massive health crisis" for people living in communities made toxic by fossil fuels all over the country and around the world. A cancer survivor in her own life, Fonda said she was told by someone when she threatened to tattoo the phrase "climate emergency" on her bald head if the chemotherapy took her hair that "the cancer community doesn't like to be looped in with other causes."

"Causes?!" she recalled exclaiming in response. "Honey, the climate crisis is not a cause. This is the largest crisis humanity has ever faced. We're running out of time and we have to fight back."

Climate Resilience and Housing Justice

(From left): Author and labor organizer Saket Soni, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Consumer Watchdog's Jamie Court. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

Also on the climate front—which highlighted the intersectional style of the Sanders Institute's gathering—Congresswoman Jayapal joined with author and labor organizer Saket Soni as well as Jamie Court of the California-based Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, to discuss the linked issues of community resilience amid extreme weather disasters and soaring insurance costs that have arrived hand-in-hand with rising global temperatures.

While Soni in his work has been at the forefront of building up climate resilience in communities for decades—both by helping to mitigate the impact of extreme weather and also working on disaster relief and rebuilding—Jayapal explained that she has a bill in the U.S. House—called the Climate Resilience Workforce Act—that would formalize processes and establish funding to make such work a more integral part of federal, state, and local planning.

Among others, one component of the legislation would be to make sure that people in communities "disproportionately affected by climate change are actually at the table" when federal funds are dispersed.

According to the panel, the increasing impacts of climate change are a key driver of housing costs but nothing will get better without a justice lens through which to see the crisis of housing in an increasingly hotter world that is resulting in more floods, larger fires, and too little accountability for the corporate interests profiting from those extremes.

"In the context of our climate crisis," Soni explained during the panel discussion, "there is an opening for justice that Jayapal's bill is trying to take and that we're all trying to take. There is an opening where resilience is a framework that can accelerate housing justice, justice for the incarcerated, and justice for immigrants. And that's what we should all be trying to do, is look at how resilience is a real majoritarian framework—maybe one of the last ones left in our country—and inside of that there is so much consensus that we can push justice forward in many, many ways."

"There Is a Lot of Potential for Prop 1"

California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom talks with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) during the event in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 4, 2024. 

(Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)

On the state level, California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom arrived at the event to champion the recently approved measure known as Proposition 1, which will, among other things, provide state revenue from a nearly $6.4 billion bond to build and service more treatment beds for those experiencing severe mental health and addiction disorders as a way to curb homelessness across California.

During a panel discussion with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and California Secretary of Health & Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly, both Democrats, Newsom said that Prop. 1 would allow for a "strike force" that could better confront the overlapping issues of housing, homelessness, mental health, and substance addiction disorders.

Acknowledging the potential for hyperbole, Newsom said he believes what's contained in the new law "are the most significant" and far-reaching "behavioral health reforms happening anywhere in the United States of America."

While the debate over Proposition 1 was heated in the state, including among progressives who landed on various sides of the initiative, a subsequent panel focused on the implementation mostly landed on the side of cautious optimism for what it could be and what kind of model it might represent.

"There is a lot of potential for Prop 1," said Dr. Margot Kushel, professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco and director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.

"No matter where you stood on it before it passed," Kushel added, "there is a lot of potential now that it's here and we need to exercise that in the right way, which is that we need to be sure that it is used to enable these living-in-the-community, choice-driven, client-driven, but very supportive programs for people who are suffering terribly."

The evidence for what it will take to solve the mental health crisis as it pertains to homelessness, said Kushel, is overwhelming. "You don't need me to do more studies on it," she said, "we actually just need to bring to bear that funding [supplied by Prop 1] to solve some of these really sticky funding issues so that we can create the workforce, sustain the workforce, and create the programming" that will really serve the unhoused population "with dignity" in the communities they live in.

Several researchers presented on the severe impacts that homelessness and housing insecurity have on students and young people, including those in the foster care system. Other presenters described how community land trusts and other innovative housing collaborations, including faith-based initiatives, are providing models that could be replicated nationwide. Separately, a panel focused on the struggle of homeless veterans told the harrowing tale of former U.S. soldiers denied access to housing and care in Los Angeles who remain in a protracted legal fight with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs over land set aside for exactly that purpose.

"We don't suffer from scarcity in this country, we suffer from greed. We have enough money to house people and to create situations where people aren't going to fear for what tomorrow's going to look like." —Rep. Pramila Jayapal

In her reflections as a presenter and participant of the gathering, Congresswoman Jayapal explained to Common Dreams that the event was significant because "it lifted up an issue that" has been central for progressives but too often ignored and neglected by those in the media and within both major political parties.

"We don't suffer from scarcity in this country. We suffer from greed," Jayapal said. "We have enough money to house people, and to create situations where people aren't going to fear for what tomorrow's going to look like."

"We Need to Call Out the System"

Sanders Institute co-founder Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders in Los Angeles on Friday, April 5. "We're talking about transformational change," she said about the event.

 (Photo: J. Queally / Common Dreams)

The germination of the gathering, Jane Sanders explained to Common Dreams in the wake of the three days, was like "peeling back the onion" as one area of focus led to another, and a discussion with one invited expert resulted in the introduction to another.

As she realized the issue of housing was such a "hornet's nest" of intersecting issues, overlapping viewpoints, and innovative thinking, Sanders said it became increasingly clear that was exactly the reason to go forward with the event.

"We're talking about transformational change," she said of the work that she, Driscoll, and their colleagues are doing at the Sanders Institute. "None of us are very interested in making small incremental change, which might mean building some more affordable housing or supporting this or that initiative. That's not what this is about."

The Sanders Institute was initially in founded in 2018 with the goal of extending the energy, ideas, and political movement sparked during Bernie's presidential run in 2016. When the senator decided to run again in 2020, Jane and Dave decided to pause operations and then went into full hiatus when the coronavirus pandemic hit. In this context, holding an intimate housing conference in Los Angeles was conceived as a reawakening for the organization and a chance to let people know the time has now arrived to continue their original mission.

Reflecting on his experience after the gathering had concluded, Driscoll said it had been great to see so many people—whether in government or through an organization or at the grassroots level—having the chance to connect, learn from one another, and hopefully collaborate in the future.

"Sometimes this can be a lonely fight, whether or not you're fighting for housing or you're fighting for healthcare, sometimes you feel like you're not getting anywhere," he said. "But when you bring all these people together like we did over the last couple days, I felt at times a real energy in the room. People felt good about a really tough fight. So I think it inspired and fired people up, and also gave people hope for the future."

While they don't have it pinned down yet—that was the admission of the gathering—the point going forward is to clarify what the progressive agenda on housing should be and help push out to others how that fits into the broader movement for bold and lasting change.

When it comes to the opponents of such transformational proposals—national rent control, expansion of social housing, ending homelessness, or forging the Green New Deal for public housing—Driscoll said it's important that people understand powerful financial interests will fight such ideas with everything they have.

"We need to start calling people out like we did with tobacco money or with oil money," Driscoll said. "We need to start calling people out and saying, you're taking money from big real estate and developers that are causing this harm and stopping this progress." As is true in so many other areas of policy and politics, he said, following the money will be key in the battles to come.

"I don't like to call out individuals," Sanders said, "but we need to call out the system."

"It's a systematic problem that we don't say 'housing is a human right.' That's not shared in a capitalist society," she continued. "Not everybody would agree with that statement. We agree with that statement, but it's not one of those accepted truisms in this country. So what's our goal? That it become one."

Sanders Seeks Public Input for Long Covid Moonshot Legislation

"The time is long overdue for Congress to treat long Covid as the public health emergency that it is," said the Senate HELP Committee chair.


U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arrives for a hearing about long Covid on January 18, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

JESSICA CORBETT
Apr 09, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

"As chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, it is my strong belief that the crisis of long Covid is a public health emergency that we can no longer ignore."

That's how U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) began a Tuesday letter inviting public comment on a $10 billion bill he is crafting to address the crisis of at least 22 million Americans enduring chronic or relapsing symptoms after a Covid-19 infection.

"In January 2024, the HELP Committee held a hearing on the topic of long Covid where experts underscored the urgent need to aggressively find approved treatments for this terrible disease, to better educate medical professionals on how to diagnose long Covid, to better understand the risks associated with long Covid, and to identify potential therapeutic options, among many other things," notes the letter.

"Before getting Covid-19 in Los Angeles in March 2020, I was a runner for nearly two decades," Angela Meriquez Vazquez, a long Covid patient and former president of Body Politic, told the panel. "What started as a mild illness progressed over weeks with an increasingly scary set of symptoms, including severe levels of blood clots, a series of mini-strokes, brain swelling, seizures, painful heart palpitations, severe shortness of breath, extreme confusion, and numbness in my face, hands, and legs that progressed to an inability to walk for several days, and new onset of allergic anaphylaxis after every meal."

"We are living through what is likely to be the largest mass disabling event in modern history," she warned. "Not since the emergence of the AIDS pandemic has there been such an imperative for large-scale change in healthcare, public health, and inequitable structures that bring exceptional risks of illness, suffering, disability, and mortality."

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in Saint Louis and one of the experts who testified earlier this year, pointed out that there are no medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating the condition and "the ongoing and planned trials for long Covid are too slow and too small (i.e. underpowered) to provide definitive answers."

"We developed vaccines at warp speed. We are doing trials for long Covid at snail speed," the doctor said. "We don't go through an earthquake without dealing with its aftermath. We cannot live through the biggest pandemic of our lives without dealing with the aftermath."

Sanders' proposed legislation would provide a decade of mandatory funding to help the National Institutes of Health respond to the crisis. At the NIH, the bill would create a centralized coordinating entity for research activities, establish an advisory board, and require the federal agency to launch a new grant process for clinical trials as well as a database "for the storage and dissemination of de-identified patient data to make long Covid research more accessible."

The bill would also "require federal entities to provide continued education and support to patients, providers, and the public about the ongoing risks of long Covid, as well as how to identify and address it," explains the letter, which has an addendum detailing the plan.

The committee is accepting emailed feedback on the proposal at LongCovidComments@help.senate.gov through April 23.



"In my view, the time is long overdue for Congress to treat long Covid as the public health emergency that it is," Sanders said in a statement. "Congress must act now to ensure a treatment is found for this terrible disease that affects millions of Americans and their families."

Sanders, a longtime advocate of ensuring everyone in the nation has healthcare by passing Medicare for All legislation, stressed that "far too many patients with long Covid have struggled to get their symptoms taken seriously. Far too many medical professionals have either dismissed or misdiagnosed their health problems."

"That has got to change," he asserted. "We cannot turn our backs on the millions of Americans who continue to suffer from long Covid. I look forward to hearing from patients, experts, and researchers about what we must do to address this crisis."

'Victory for Cleaner Air' as Federal Court Upholds California Vehicle Emissions Standards

"This ruling ensures that the 17 other states that follow California can keep driving towards a future with cleaner air and cleaner vehicles," said one advocate.


Traffic is seen at the Otay Mesa border crossing between California and Mexico.
(Photo: Josh Denmark/U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)

JULIA CONLEY
Apr 09, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Three judges serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday affirmed the Biden administration's 2022 decision to preserve California's strict emissions standards—dealing a blow to a coalition of right-wing state attorneys general and fossil fuel industry groups that had challenged the rules.

The panel—made up of judges who were appointed by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama—ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was right to reinstate its waiver, dating back to the 1970s, which allows California to impose stricter emissions standards than the federal government.

The waiver, which has helped the massive state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by hundreds of thousands of tons annually, was introduced to help the state address smog stemming from congested freeways and roads in Los Angeles.

The Trump administration revoked the exception in 2018, and Biden reinstated it in 2022, a move that one Sierra Club leader said was "vital to California" and would have a "positive ripple effect on states across the country, driving forward climate progress and delivering cleaner air for millions of Americans."

On Tuesday, Sierra Club senior attorney Joshua Berman said the D.C. Circuit panel's ruling in Ohio v. EPA was "a victory for cleaner air and cleaner cars not just in California, but across the nation."

"The D.C. Circuit has reaffirmed California;s critical role in protecting its residents from harmful vehicle emissions, thereby benefiting the many states that rely on adoption of California's standards to achieve and maintain the Clean Air Act's air quality mandate," said Berman.

California's strict emissions standards have been adopted by 17 states and Washington, D.C. since they were first introduced. The Biden administration recently approved new emissions standards for cars as well as buses and trucks that campaigners and experts said were progress but didn't go far enough.

Alice Henderson, director and lead counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the upheld standards "will save lives, protect people from the climate crisis and unhealthy air pollution, save drivers money, and help create good new jobs."


Scott Hochberg, transportation attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, which intervened in Ohio v. EPA in support of California's waiver, called on the state to now "go full speed ahead with strong car standards."

"This year California should continue to show national leadership on clean vehicles by adopting ambitious new standards for gas-powered cars, pickups, and SUVs," said Hochberg. "Importantly, this ruling ensures that the 17 other states that follow California can keep driving towards a future with cleaner air and cleaner vehicles."

'Huge—and Long Overdue—Victory': Biden EPA Finalizes Limits on PFAS in Drinking Water

"It is the most consequential decision to regulate drinking water in 30 years," said Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook.

A family receives water deliveries after high levels of "forever chemicals" were found in their drinking water in Westminster, Massachusetts.
(Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON
Apr 10, 2024
COMMON DREAMS


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized the country's first-ever national limits on "forever chemicals" in drinking water, a move that advocates welcomed as a critical step toward protecting tens of millions of people from exposure to pervasive toxic compounds that have been linked to a range of health problems—including cancer and reproductive issues.

The EPA estimates its new standards for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which can take thousands of years to break down, would reduce exposure for around 100 million people and prevent thousands of deaths. Utility groups are expected to challenge the finalized limits in court, claiming they would be too burdensome to implement.

The new rule would require water utilities to monitor and, if necessary, reduce the levels of two forms of PFAS—known as PFOS and PFOA—to keep them in line with or below a maximum contaminant level of 4 parts per trillion. The agency set the maximum contaminant level for PFNA, PFHxS, and other compounds known as "GenX chemicals" at 10 parts per trillion.

The EPA's limits are not as bold as those recommended by scientists and green groups, including the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which nevertheless praised the finalized standards as essential progress. EWG has endorsed a 1 part per trillion PFAS limit for drinking water.


"More than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their tap water and for decades Americans have been exposed to toxic 'forever chemicals' with no oversight from their government," EWG president Ken Cook said Wednesday. "That's because for generations, PFAS chemicals slid off of every federal environmental law like a fried egg off a Teflon pan—until Joe Biden came along."

"Today's announcement of robust, health-protective legal limits on PFAS in tap water will finally give tens of millions of Americans the protection they should have had decades ago," Cook said. "It is the most consequential decision to regulate drinking water in 30 years."

"It has taken far too long to get to this point, but the scientific facts and truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons have finally prevailed over the decades of corporate cover-ups."


Recent research has shed light on how ubiquitous PFAS have become: They've been detected, often in alarmingly high amounts, in groundwater, soil, food, and common household products such as toilet paper and dental floss.

In the face of such evidence, the EPA has been accused of dragging its feet on imposing strict limits on PFAS, underestimating their levels in U.S. drinking water, and withholding key data about the compounds, which at least 11 states have moved to regulate in the absence of federal action.

Rob Bilott, an attorney who has worked for decades to uncover how DuPont and other companies exposed U.S. communities to toxic contaminants, said Wednesday that "it has taken far too long to get to this point, but the scientific facts and truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons have finally prevailed over the decades of corporate cover-ups and misinformation campaigns designed to mislead the public and to delay action to protect public health."

"Today we celebrate a huge—and long overdue—victory for public health in this country," said Bilott. "The EPA is finally moving forward to protect drinking water across the United States by adopting federally enforceable limits on some of the most toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative chemicals ever found in our nation's drinking water supply."

 CLIMATE CHANGE

Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Hit New Record Levels

"As these numbers show, we still have a lot of work to do to make meaningful progress in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere," said one NOAA scientist.

By Brett Wilkins

April 7, 2024

Source: Common Dreams

The three most critical heat-trapping gases in Earth’s atmosphere again reached record levels last year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday, underscoring the inadequacy of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions amid the worsening climate emergency.

NOAA said the three most important human-caused greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide—”continued their steady climb during 2023.”

While the levels of these heat-trapping gases did not rise “quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years,” the figures “were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.”

“We’re caught between a rock and a charred place.”

Global surface CO2 concentrations averaged 419.3 parts per million (ppm) last year, an increase of 2.8 ppm. It was the 12th straight year in which worldwide CO2 concentrations rose by more than 2 ppm.

Atmospheric methane—which while not as abundant as CO2 is up to 87 times more potent over a 20-year period—increased by 10 parts per billion (ppb) to 1,922.6 ppb, while nitrous oxide rose by 1 ppb to 336.7 ppb.

“As these numbers show, we still have a lot of work to do to make meaningful progress in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere,” Vanda Grubišić, director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, said in a statement.

According to NOAA:

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is comparable to where it was around 4.3 million years ago during the mid-Pliocene epoch, when sea level was about 75 feet higher than today, the average temperature was 7°F higher than in pre-industrial times, and large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra.

 

About half of the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to date have been absorbed at the Earth’s surface, divided roughly equally between oceans and land ecosystems, including grasslands and forests. The CO2 absorbed by the world’s oceans contributes to ocean acidification, which is causing a fundamental change in the chemistry of the ocean, with impacts to marine life and the people who depend on [it]. The oceans have also absorbed an estimated 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases.

 

“Methane’s decadal spike should terrify us,” Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist who heads the Global Carbon Project—which tracks global emissions but wasn’t part of the NOAA effort—toldNBC News.

“Fossil fuel pollution is warming natural systems like wetlands and permafrost,” Jackson added. “Those ecosystems are releasing even more greenhouse gases as they heat up. We’re caught between a rock and a charred place.”