It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, July 27, 2024
World Hepatitis Day 2024: Madrid study shows decrease in active hepatitis C infection among risk groups, indicating effectiveness of public health measures
The study was conducted in a mobile screening unit from 2017-2023 and found that HCV infection decreased from 23% to 6% in that period among PWUDs who visited the unit
EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR DISEASE PREVENTION AND CONTROL (ECDC)
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HCV: HEPATITIS C VIRUS; IDU: INJECTING DRUG USE; PWID: PEOPLE WHO INJECT DRUGS; PWUD: PEOPLE WHO USE DRUGS.
TEMPORAL TRENDS OF ACTIVE HCV INFECTION RATES BY CALENDAR YEARS WERE PERFORMED USING LOGISTIC REGRESSION. STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES ARE SHOWN IN BOLD.
A study conducted through a mobile screening unit in Madrid, Spain from 2017 to 2023 and published in Eurosurveillance found that active hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection decreased from 23% to 6% in that period among people who use drugs (PWUD) that visited the unit. The study found that the use of intravenous drugs was the most significant risk factor for infection among PWUD. It confirmed that HCV screening and treatment programmes targeting this at-risk population are effective and can help achieve the World Health Organization goal of HCV elimination as public health threat by 2030.
Study participants and methods
Participants were recruited in ‘hotspots’ in Madrid where high-risk individuals gathered for dealing and drug consumption. The study included individuals over 18 and with active drug use in the year before being screened.
A mobile screening unit approached these ‘hotspots’’. A nurse collected blood samples from participants for HCV testing, and investigators gathered data on demographic, epidemiology, substance use and sexual risk behaviour.
Results and public health implications
2 349 participants of the initial cohort of 5 270 were actively using drugs. Of these, 2 264 (43%) underwent an HCV antibody test, with 195 (8.6%) participating more than once. Among the group who were tested, 685 (13%) tested positive for anti-HCV antibodies. Of those, 605 participants agreed to undergo HCV-RNA testing, with an active HCV infection detected in 314 (51.9%) individuals.
Participants who reported using drugs and with an active HCV infection were significantly older and were more likely to be of European (Western Europe and Eastern Europe) origin, homeless, consuming cocaine and heroin, injecting drugs, and undergoing opioid substitution treatment than participants who used drugs without an active HCV infection. Significantly, the use of a mobile screening unit led almost 70% of participants who tested positive to start treatment.
The study observed a strong decrease in active HCV infection across the entire population from 23.4% in 2017 to 6% in 2023. However, the prevalence remains 30 and 70 times higher among people who use drugs and people who inject drugs, respectively, than in the general population.
The decrease could be attributed to measures that have helped users of intravenous drugs overcome barriers to testing and treatment, such as better access to testing and care through decentralised approaches, simplified one-step diagnosis, and fewer treatment restrictions. Public health campaigns have also helped raise awareness of the risks related to intravenous drug use.
Additional outputs on hepatitis
Ahead of World Hepatitis Day, Eurosurveillance has also published a study conducted in Australia demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of using surveillance systems to improve access to treatment and care of hepatitis C. Additionally, it has published research on the prevalence of chronic hepatitis C infections in Estonia and Romania, with levels shown to be low in both countries, as well as an accompanying editorial highlighting steps needed to achieve the goal of eliminating hepatitis C as public health threat by 2030.
Purdue researchers receive $175 thousand from Purdue Innovates to strengthen market readiness of their work
...CALLS THE TUNE
In latest round, Trask Innovation Fund supports innovations in cancer therapeutics, cellular manipulation and superabsorbent materials
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
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ANDREA KASINSKI, A PURDUE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER, IS DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE, NONTOXIC THERAPIES TO TREAT NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER. KASINSKI IS ONE OF FOUR PURDUE RESEARCHERS WHO RECEIVED A TOTAL OF $175,000 FROM THE PURDUE INNOVATES INCUBATOR’S TRASK INNOVATION FUND TO MAKE THEIR INNOVATIONS MORE ATTRACTIVE FOR COMMERCIAL USE.
CREDIT: PURDUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE PHOTO/ALISHA REFERDA
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University researchers in the College of Agriculture, College of Pharmacy and College of Science have received $175,000 from the Trask Innovation Fund to develop Purdue-owned intellectual property for commercial use. The innovations are in the areas of cancer therapeutics, cellular targeting and manipulation, and superabsorbent materials.
The fund is managed by the Purdue Innovates Incubator, which provides programming for the Purdue University community to ideate, refine and support their solutions. Funding recipients can receive up to $50,000 for their initial project; they may reapply a maximum of three times to receive up to an aggregate cap of $100,000 to support the same technology.
Between the 2013 and 2023 fiscal years, around $3 million in Trask funding has been awarded to 81 projects. Forty percent of the technologies that have received Trask funding have been licensed or optioned to industry.
The application deadline for the next round of funding is Sept. 27. The Trask Proposal Template can be downloaded and edited. Questions about applications can be submitted to trask@prf.org.
The spring 2024 Trask Innovation Fund recipients, their projects and award amounts are:
Andrea Kasinski; College of Science, Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, and Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery; “A First-in-Class Fully Modified MicroRNA for Targeted Cancer Treatment”; $45,920
Kasinski is deputy director of the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research and an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. She and her research team are developing effective, nontoxic therapies to treat non-small cell lung cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund International reported almost 2.5 million new cases were diagnosed in 2022. Kasinski said most patients are diagnosed after the tumor has metastasized, or spread from the lungs to other parts of the body.
“Patients with metastatic disease have a dismal five-year survival of around 8%,” she said. “Our agents can help these patients.”
Most cancers are not caused by a single change, which means they require therapies that target a variety of cancer-causing genes. This has led to traditional combinatorial therapy, or treatment with multiple agents.
Kasinski’s research targets multiple cancer drivers with a single agent, acting as a multidrug cocktail.
“The ability to simultaneously target multiple genes that cancer cells are addicted to results in increased efficacy and reduces the chance that the tumor will recur,” she said.
Research to develop the Purdue agents will focus on achieving specific delivery and improving stability. The agents are small RNA, or ribonucleic acids, single-strand nucleic acids found in all living cells. Kasinski and her team have developed a chemically modified version that is 400-fold more stable and has achieved specific delivery to cancer cells.
“The Trask funding will allow us to complete studies to highlight our agents’ improved efficacy and reduced toxicity compared to previously tested formulations,” she said. “We will also conduct stability and pharmacology experiments, which will significantly de-risk our therapy, leading to increased interest by investors.”
Senay Simsek; College of Agriculture; “New Technologies for Developing Bio-Based Superabsorbent for Industrial Applications”; $50,000
Simsek leads a team of researchers using cellulose extracted from hemp and refined through a sequence of treatments to create the patent-pending superabsorbent materials. Simsek is a professor in and the head of the Department of Food Science, and holds the Dean’s Chair in Food Science.
“We are passionate about the potential of our product to make a significant environmental impact,” Simsek said. “By introducing a commercial product that helps save our planet, we aim to lead the way in sustainable innovation — helping to heal the planet one application at a time.”
Simsek and her team tested the hemp-based superabsorbent materials using standardized absorbency tests, comparing them against traditional superabsorbent materials. She said hemp hurd showed significantly higher absorption capacity than traditional materials.
“This validation underscores not only the effectiveness of our technology but also its potential to replace less sustainable options in the market, offering a biodegradable and renewable alternative,” she said.
Simsek will use the funding to acquire larger-scale bioreactors and scale up the technology to produce superabsorbent material in greater quantities.
“Until now, our results have been based on lab-scale experiments,” she said. “Scaling up is a critical step for testing in various industrial applications and a crucial move toward turning our ideas into reality.”
Yoon Yeo; College of Pharmacy, Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, and Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery; “Immunoactive Complex for Cancer Immunotherapy”; $50,000
Yeo leads a team of researchers developing a nanoparticle formulation called IMAX, or immunoactive complexes, to explore how the body’s innate immune system can be harnessed to cure cancer. Yeo is the Lillian Barboul Thomas Professor in and the associate head of the Department of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics with a courtesy appointment in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering.
The current immunotherapy approaches largely focus on the adaptive immune system, including checkpoint inhibitors and engineering T cells. Yeo said the innate immune system, which is crucial for initiating adaptive responses, remains underexplored.
“Innate immune cells, such as dendritic cells and natural killer cells, often remain inactive or even promote tumor growth due to immunosuppressive factors in the tumor microenvironment,” she said. “Effective strategies are needed to overcome this suppression and coordinate a robust antitumor response, supporting both innate and adaptive immune functions.”
IMAX stimulates the innate immune system and induces immunogenic cell death to trigger robust antitumor responses. When administered intratumorally, IMAX eliminates primary tumors and protects against metastasis and tumor relapse.
“IMAX has been validated in preclinical mouse models of various cancers, including breast cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, head and neck cancer, and melanoma,” Yeo said. “In these studies, IMAX consistently demonstrated robust antitumor activity, increased survival rates and conferred resistance to tumor recurrence. The methodology and results were published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
Yeo said the funding will be used in performing preclinical studies to support the translation of IMAX technology.
“We will evaluate the pharmacokinetics, biodistribution and safety of IMAX to de-risk the technology and gain confidence of commercialization partners and investors,” she said. “This study will also help us to get NIH (National Institutes of Health) Small Business Innovation Research funding that supports small business.”
Jesse Chi Zhang; College of Science, Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, and Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease; “Precision Opto-Control System To Manipulate Chemical Processes in Cells”; $30,000
Zhang leads a team of researchers working on real-time precision opto-control, or RPOC, which uses a laser-based approach to provide users with site-specific and chemical-specific control of chemical processes within live cells. Zhang is an assistant professor in Purdue’s James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry.
“The imaging capability of our system has been compared to that of a commercial confocal fluorescence microscope, showing very similar results in resolution and imaging speed,” he said. “What sets it apart is its opto-control capability, a feature not offered by traditional confocal microscopes.”
RPOC’s initial applications are within the life sciences, namely fundamental biological research. Zhang said RPOC also exhibits considerable potential for pharmaceutical research because it can facilitate the elucidation of site-specific drug functions within cells or animals.
“We are actively exploring using RPOC to regulate cell division, embryo development and cancer cell migration by precisely uncaging or activating compounds at desired subcellular sites,” he said. “This pursuit holds promise for the development of novel methodologies to manipulate cellular behaviors and cell fate.”
Zhang said the Trask funding will be used to purchase two more lasers and a faster galvanometer scanning system to complete construction of the RPOC prototype.
Awards from the Trask Innovation Fund support Purdue researchers through the “valley of death,” which is the time between the creation of a new innovation and its adoption in the marketplace.
Sometimes it takes years for an innovation to garner industry attention. Matt Dressler, Purdue Innovates Incubator’s funds manager, said researchers may face several obstacles during that time.
“These challenges include a technology becoming obsolete or an inventor feeling dispirited because of a lack of progress,” he said. “Trask funding can address those challenges as Purdue faculty develop a discovery into a viable marketplace product. The fund complements several other Purdue Innovates resources provided to university inventors and entrepreneurs.”
About Purdue Innovates Incubator
Purdue Innovates Incubator is the front door to the rich ecosystem of programs and services designed to help early-stage startups take their next step. Programs provide settings for cohort work and one-on-one consultations. Content includes clarifying problems from the customer’s perspective, developing a business model, conducting customer discovery interviews, team building, determining regulatory pathways and legal structures, and more. Purdue alumni and community members interested in becoming mentors are invited to contact the Incubator team.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.
In addition to the Purdue Canada settlement, B.C.'s application to certify its class-action lawsuit in the B.C. Supreme Court has been scheduled for fall 2023.
In the biggest opioid case to date, Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin, reached a tentative settlement last week with 23 states and attorneys ...
Oct 21, 2020 ... Justice Department Announces Global Resolution of Criminal and Civil Investigations with Opioid Manufacturer Purdue Pharma and Civil Settlement ...
FOREVER CHEMICALS
New $12 million research project aims to provide ‘practical solutions to critical environmental challenges’
Rice and Army Research Center tackle PFAS pollution with innovative techniques
Scientists at Rice University, in collaboration with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), part of the Army Corp of Engineers, are making headway in addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination. These persistent pollutants, which pose a serious threat to the environment and human health, have proven difficult to eliminate using conventional methods.
The research effort, led by Rice chemist James Tour, has been bolstered by a new four-year, $12 million cooperative agreement with the ERDC which will support the development and scaling of innovative techniques for PFAS remediation and resource recovery.
The research team has introduced a rapid electrothermal mineralization (REM) process. This method uses electrical input plus biochar, an environmentally friendly conductive additive, to heat PFAS-contaminated soil to over 1,000°C in seconds through direct current pulse input. The process transforms PFAS into nontoxic calcium fluoride with removal efficiencies over 99.9% and mineralization ratios exceeding 90%, making it an effective solution.
The REM process not only preserves essential soil properties but also demonstrates scalability, capable of treating large volumes of soil once scaled and deployed.
“This is a substantial improvement over previous methods, which often suffer from high energy and water consumption, limited efficiency and often require the soil to be removed,” Tour said.
The research team is exploring urban mining of electronic and industrial waste to recover rare earth and critical elements. Moreover, they are developing a new generation of flash heating technology known as flash-within-flash, which allows for the bulk synthesis of key materials. These efforts are supported by theoretical frameworks and optimized through machine learning.
“The significance of this advancement extends beyond environmental remediation,” Tour said.
The new methods build on the team’s prior success with the cooperative agreement “Flash Joule Heating to Destroy Hazardous Waste and Repurpose it For Energy or Urban Mining of Valuable Metals.”
By offering a scalable, efficient and environmentally friendly solution for PFAS remediation, this work addresses a pressing environmental issue with significant societal impact. Further, the potential for urban mining of e-waste opens new avenues for sustainable resource recovery, reducing reliance on traditional mining practices and mitigating environmental damage.
Looking ahead, the team plans to field test the REM process and further explore the potential of their urban mining technologies.
“This research advances scientific understanding but also provides practical solutions to critical environmental challenges, promising a cleaner, safer world,” said Christopher Griggs, a senior research physical scientist at the ERDC.
THEORETICAL OPTIMISM STUDIES
Good lives can be provided to the whole world’s population while reducing environmental damage
UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Ending mass human deprivation and providing good lives for the whole world’s population can be done while at the same time achieving ecological objectives. This is demonstrated by a new study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the London School of Economics and Political Science, recently published in the scientific journal World Development Perspectives.
Around 80% of humanity cannot access necessary goods and services and lives below the threshold for “decent living”. Some narratives claim that addressing this problem will require massive economic growth on a global scale, multiplying existing output many times over, which would exacerbate climate change and ecological breakdown.
The authors of the new study dispute this claim and argue that human development does not require such a dangerous approach. Reviewing recent empirical research, they find that ending mass deprivation and provisioning decent living standards for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments.
This would ensure that everyone in the world has access to nutritious food, modern housing, high-quality healthcare, education, electricity, induction stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigerators, heating/cooling systems, computers, mobile phones, internet, and transport, and could also include universal access to recreational facilities, theatres, and other public goods.
The authors argue that, to achieve such a future, strategies for development should not pursue capitalist growth and increased aggregate production as such but should rather increase the specific forms of production that are necessary to improve capabilities and meet human needs at a high standard, while ensuring universal access to key goods and services through public provisioning and decommodification.
In the Global South, this requires using industrial policy to increase economic sovereignty, develop industrial capacity, and organize production around human well-being.
At the same time, in high-income countries, less-necessary production (of things like mansions, SUVs, private jets and fast fashion) must be scaled down to enable faster decarbonization and to help bring resource use back within planetary boundaries, as degrowth scholarship holds.
The authors demonstrate that the standard development strategy, which is to increase aggregate economic growth, is inefficient at achieving human development. In the existing economy, capital invests in what is most profitable, rather than what is most necessary for human development. As a result, poverty may persist – or even increase – despite economic growth.
Furthermore, in many cases the prices of essential goods like food and housing increase at a faster rate than prices across the rest of the economy, particularly during periods of privatization and market deregulation. This means that people may suffer reduced access to essential goods even as their PPP incomes increase. This problem can be addressed through strategies of decommodification, public provisioning and price controls.
“If human well-being is the objective, it is not GDP (aggregate production in market prices) that matters, but whether people have access to the specific goods and services they need to live good lives. We need to distinguish between what is important for human well-being and what is not”, says Jason Hickel, researcher from ICTA-UAB and the UAB Department of Anthropology.
“Poverty is not an intractable problem that requires long timeframes and large increases in production that conflict with ecological objectives. The solution is straightforward. We can do it right now, by shifting production away from capital accumulation and elite consumption in order to focus instead on providing socially beneficial goods and services for all,” Hickel said.
Co-author Dylan Sullivan, from ICTA-UAB and Macquarie University, says: “This research shows a post-growth economy could ensure universal access to the benefits of industrialization, all while leaving a substantial surplus of energy and resources for recreation, public luxury, and technological advancement. It’s really exciting to think about what we could do with this surplus, what kind of modernity we want to build.”
Local decentralized energy systems, known as microgrids, can make urban infrastructures more resilient and reduce risks for the population, for example, in large-scale power outages due to natural hazards or cyberattacks. In the current issue of the Nature Sustainability journal, researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) present design criteria for microgrids that allow for fair treatment of different social groups alongside technical factors. The study shows how cities can shape the transformation towards a secure and more sustainable energy supply more equitable (DOI: 10.1038/s41893-024-01395-7).
Climate change increases the probability of extreme events, as we have seen during the massive flooding of large parts of southern Germany in June. The question of how cities and municipalities can make power supply more resilient and more secure in the face of such crises is bringing so-called microgrids into focus. Decentralized systems for generating, storing, and distributing energy, for example with networked photovoltaic power-generation systems and combined heat and power plants, are intended to make large-scale power outages in the entire urban area less likely and to ensure that critical infrastructures for the provision of public services will continue functioning.
A group of German and US researchers, led by Dr. Sadeeb Simon Ottenburger, Head of Department at the Institute for Thermal Energy Technology and Safety (ITES) at KIT, has developed a model for the spatial design of microgrids. Their study provides urban planners with a template for a planning process that integrates various aspects – including socio-economic factors and issues related to societal participation in the planning process. Involved were employees of ITES, KIT’s Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), and, in the USA, the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at the University of North Carolina and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado.
„Energy Gerrymandering”: Who Has Access to the Energy Supply?
“A special feature of our approach is that we do not consider technical parameters or cost issues as isolated factors, but rather look at the question of what role the design of microgrids plays in terms of a fair energy distribution,” explains Ottenburger. “Imagine the city as a jigsaw puzzle. The size and arrangement of its pieces can vary. The boundaries of energy networks are the result of deliberate decisions and have an impact on the population. In the event of a crisis, it makes a difference how the health, security, and food provision services are distributed within individual microgrids, but also throughout the entire urban area.” The study uses the term “degrees of freedom” to emphasize the importance of design flexibility. To refer to the potentially negative impact of districting that does not take social equity issues into account, the authors used the term “energy gerrymandering”, akin to “political gerrymandering” known from the USA, where electoral districts are divided to the advantage of certain groups. Thus, microgrid districts might be defined in a way that creates an unfair distribution of resources and benefits. Strong and wealthy groups could be favored, while socially weaker and vulnerable groups could be left behind. “Resilience also includes a definition of how access is designed for different groups of the population,” says Ottenburger.
Metrics for Assessing Well-being
The study focuses on the relationship between the different vulnerabilities of socio-economic groups and equitable access to energy and other services. To this end, the researchers have developed metrics using existing vulnerability indices that describe the well-being of the population as a measurable variable and show how power disruptions affect socially and economically vulnerable groups in particular: The sick or elderly, families with children, and low-income earners.
Data from Case Study After Hurricane
The study evaluated data from a comprehensive case study conducted after the power outages caused by Hurricane Florence in New Hanover County, North Carolina, in September 2018. The data was contributed by the US project partners. It allowed the researchers to analyze the critical infrastructure, its vulnerability in relation to the geographical distribution of socially disadvantaged households, and their access to basic services. The project team used this data to develop a universal design that allows for a comprehensive assessment of urban resilience for each city and to generate proposals for the design of microgrids, taking technical and social aspects into account.
Multiple Microgrids per City
One of the authors’ specific recommendations is that a city should have not just one, but several microgrids to ensure a fair distribution and accessibility of critical services such as health and safety structures. Concerning the districting of supply networks, city administrations should actively involve institutions in the areas of health care and security, representatives of different social groups, educational institutions, and social services in the planning and decision-making processes to fairly consider the needs of all social groups.
“The search for optimized microgrid designs is highly complex and new algorithms are needed to develop viable models from the available data,” says Ottenburger. “The key point is that resilient solutions are not necessarily a question of more investment, but above all of sophisticated planning. We should make sure that all groups have a voice and can participate in these processes.”
Original publication
Sadeeb S. Ottenburger, Rob Cox, Badrul H. Chowdhury, Dmytro Trybushnyi, Ehmedi Al Omar, Sujay A. Kaloti, Ulrich W. Ufer, Witold-R. Poganietz, Weijia Liu, Evgenia Deines, Tim O. Müller, Stella Möhrle, Wolfgang Raskob: Sustainable urban transformations based on integrated microgrid designs, Nature Sustainability, 16 July 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41893-024-01395-7
Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 10,000 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,800 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.
Sustainable urban transformations based on integrated microgrid designs
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
26-Jul-2024
XAOS THEORY
A rare form of ice at the center of a cool new discovery about how water droplets freeze
INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
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RESEARCHERS FROM THE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO HAVE FOUND THAT ICE STARTS FORMING NEAR THE SURFACE OF WATER VIA STRUCTURES SIMILAR TO A RARE, RECENTLY DISCOVERED TYPE OF ICE, WHICH HELPS US UNDERSTAND ICE FORMATION BETTER.
CREDIT: INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
Tokyo, Japan – Ice is far more complicated than most of us realize, with over 20 different varieties known to science, forming under various combinations of pressure and temperature. The kind we use to chill our drinks is known as ice I, and it’s one of the few forms of ice that exist naturally on Earth. Researchers from Japan have recently discovered another type of ice: ice 0, an unusual form of ice that can seed the formation of ice crystals in supercooled water.
The formation of ice near the surface of liquid water can start from tiny crystal precursors with a structure similar to a rare type of ice, known as ice 0. In a study published this month in Nature Communications, researchers from the Social Cooperation Research Department “Frost Protection Science,” at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo showed that these ice 0-like structures can cause a water droplet to freeze near its surface rather than at its core. This discovery resolves a longstanding puzzle and could help redefine our understanding of how ice forms.
Crystallization of ice, known as ice nucleation, usually happens heterogeneously, or in other words, at a solid surface. This is normally expected to happen at the surface of the water’s container, where liquid meets solid. However, this new research shows that ice crystallization can also occur just below the water’s surface, where it meets the air. Here, the ice nucleates around small precursors with the same characteristic ring-shaped structure as ice 0.
“Simulations have shown that a water droplet is more likely to crystallize near the free surface under isothermal conditions,” says lead author of the study Gang Sun. “This resolves a longstanding debate about whether crystallization occurs more readily on the surface or internally.”
Ice 0 precursors have a structure very similar to supercooled water, allowing water molecules to crystallize more readily from it, without needing to directly form themselves into the structure of regular ice. The tiny ice 0 precursors are formed spontaneously, as a result of negative pressure effects caused by the surface tension of water. Once crystallization begins from these precursors, structures similar to ice 0 quickly rearrange themselves into the more familiar ice I.
Senior author, Hajime Tanaka stresses the wide-ranging implications of this study, noting that, “The findings regarding the mechanism of surface crystallization of water are expected to contribute significantly to various fields, including climate studies and food sciences, where water crystallization plays a critical role.”
A more detailed understanding of ice and how it forms can give invaluable insight into a variety of areas of study. This work may have particular importance in meteorology, for example, where ice formation via ice 0-like precursors may have a much more noticeable effect in small water droplets like those found in clouds. Understanding ice can have benefits in technology too, from food sciences to air conditioning.
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The article, “Surface-induced water crystallization driven by precursors formed in negative pressure regions” was published in Nature Communications at DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50188-1.
About Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
The Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo (UTokyo-IIS) is one of the largest university-attached research institutes in Japan. UTokyo-IIS is comprised of over 120 research laboratories—each headed by a faculty member—and has over 1,200 members (approximately 400 staff and 800 students) actively engaged in education and research. Its activities cover almost all areas of engineering. Since its foundation in 1949, UTokyo-IIS has worked to bridge the huge gaps that exist between academic disciplines and real-world applications.
