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)
The churning of the upper ocean in the tropics of Atlantic Ocean plays a crucial role in shaping long-term climate patterns across the world, a new study has found.
Researchers have discovered that changes in the ocean's mixed layer - the topmost section where wind and waves blend warm surface waters with cooler depths - are the primary force behind a climate phenomenon known as Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) in the tropics.
The AMV has far-reaching effects on global climate. It influences weather patterns from North America to Europe and Africa, affecting everything from hurricane activity in the Caribbean to rainfall in the Sahel region.
Dr Balaji Senapati, lead author of the study at the University of Reading, said: “Until now, it was believed that changes in heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere drove the climate patterns that affect weather in the various parts of the world. Our new study challenges that view, demonstrating that the depth of the ocean's mixed layer is the key player in global climate variability.
“This research advances our understanding of Atlantic climate variability and highlights the complex relationship between the ocean and atmosphere in shaping our planet's climate. Insights into natural climate variability become increasingly valuable for developing effective mitigation strategies as we face the challenges of climate change.”
Forecasting improvements
The study, published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, found that when the extratropical North Atlantic is warmer than average, trade winds become weaker. This weakening causes the mixed layer of the ocean to become shallower, especially during summer. As a result, the sun's energy warms a thinner layer of water, leading to more intense warming of the tropical Atlantic.
This process creates a feedback loop: warmer waters in the northern part of the Atlantic weaken the trade winds, which then leads to a shallower mixed layer and further warming in the tropics. When the AMV shifts to its cooler phase, this process reverses, resulting in cooler temperatures across the Atlantic.
The findings have significant implications for climate modelling and long-range forecasting. Many current climate models may not accurately represent these upper-ocean processes, potentially leading to poor predictions of the AMV and its global impacts. By incorporating this new understanding of ocean mixing into climate models, scientists hope to improve their ability to forecast long-term climate trends and their associated effects on weather patterns worldwide.
Industrial Microbes (iMicrobes) is partnering with the iFAB Tech Hub’s Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to harness microbes to produce acrylic acid, a versatile chemical compound that is fundamental in the production of a wide range of products across various industries. They are beginning their first pilot-scale test run at IBRL to demonstrate proof of concept.
The global acrylic acid market is expected to hit almost $15 billion by 2030. Companies like iMicrobes, looking to secure some of this market share, can scale their biomanufacturing technologies right here in Central Illinois, said Beth Conerty, who leads the iFAB consortium and IBRL business development within the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
“With the support of the landmark EDA grant, iFAB is building a robust biomanufacturing ecosystem across Central Illinois that empowers companies to bring their bioinnovations from the laboratory to full-scale production,” Conerty said. “Our goal is to make Central Illinois the go-to destination for enterprises turning scientific advancements into real-world, eco-friendly solutions that redefine industrial chemistry.”
iMicrobes President Derek Greenfield said they aim to replace the manufacturing industry’s ubiquitous petroleum-derived chemicals with a bio-based, net-zero acrylic acid for the burgeoning bioeconomy. Acrylic acid produces things like greener diapers and period products, durable bioplastics, fabrics, water treatment chemicals, adhesives, sealants, paints — and much more.
"Through the power of synthetic biology, we've programmed microorganisms to harness a variety of renewable feedstocks, moving away from petroleum-based processes,” Greenfield said. “The result is a molecular product that mirrors its conventional counterpart, yet offers the groundbreaking benefit of net-zero or even negative emissions."
Other groups are partnering with the IBRL to leverage precision fermentation in the production of other universal industrial chemicals: the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation is generating a precursor to acrylic acid (3HP); BioMADE has funded a project to produce succinic acid, which is used in biodegradable plastics, synthesizing pharmaceuticals, enhancing flavors in food and beverages, maintaining the quality of cosmetics, and more.
"As we look to the future, iFAB is not just fostering innovation; we are actively inviting businesses and entrepreneurs to join us in Central Illinois, the emerging epicenter of sustainable biomanufacturing,” Conerty said. “Our facilities, resources, and expertise are geared towards transforming bold ideas into market-ready solutions that lead the way in environmental stewardship and economic growth. Together, we can redefine the landscape of industrial manufacturing, making it greener, more efficient, and infinitely more sustainable."
To learn more about kickstarting your precision fermentation project, contact Conerty at bconerty@illinois.edu.
About iFAB
The Illinois Fermentation and Agriculture Biomanufacturing (iFAB) Tech Hub is poised to become the global leader in precision fermentation and biomanufacturing — an industry expected to grow to $200 billion over the next 15 years. Leveraging biology as a manufacturing technology of the future, iFAB is uniquely uniting world-class R&D, industry leaders, innovative startups, scalable infrastructure, abundant feedstock production, unparalleled transportation networks, and strong relationships with corn and soybean suppliers within a 51-mile radius. This unique lab-to-line approach establishes the iFAB region (Champaign, Piatt, and Macon counties) as the preeminent destination for the biomanufacturing industry.
Could manure and compost act like probiotics, reducing antibiotic resistance in urban soils?
UMD researchers shed light on impacts of organic-based soil amendments in urban farms and community gardens.
NFSC PhD student Qingyue Zeng (left), first author of the paper, and undergraduate student Derek Konsen collecting soil cores in an amended plot at a local urban farm.
Urban soils often contain chemical contaminants, such as heavy metals or trace amounts of antibiotics, along with higher levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. New research from the University of Maryland suggests that, in some cases, boosting urban soil health with compost and treated manure may reduce the amount of “bad” bacteria. Understanding these dynamics has important implications for improving the quality and safety of fresh produce in urban agriculture. The study was published online July 13, 2024, in the Journal of Food Protection.
“Urban farming brings people together and now we see that it can help clean up the environment, at least from certain antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” said Ryan Blaustein, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at UMD and an author of the study. “Growing organically may promote healthier vegetable ‘microbiomes’ that we are exposed to as consumers.”
Urban farmers and community gardeners often amend their soil with biological additives, like animal manure, or composts made from mixtures of plant material and food scraps that may include fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk, meat, or shellfish waste. These types of soil amendments are regulated, and must be properly composted or pasteurized before application, because they carry a risk of introducing microbes like salmonella and E. coli, which cause food-borne illness. But little is known about the potential effects of using organic soil amendments on antibiotic resistance in bacteria in urban food systems.
To help fill this gap, Blaustein and his colleagues analyzed soils and leafy green vegetables like kale and lettuce from seven urban farms and community gardens around Washington, D.C. They tested for levels of total bacteria and bacteria resistant to antibiotics like ampicillin and tetracycline. At each location, they tested leafy greens as well as soil that had been treated with manure or compost and soil that had not been treated.
Their results showed that amended soils treated with manure or compost had much more total bacteria than untreated soils, but not necessarily more harmful bacteria or antibiotic-resistant strains. Meaning, the proportion of resistant bacteria and food safety indicators were actually lower in the amended soil. Further studies need to be done to determine the long-term impacts, but their results suggest that manure and compost could act like probiotics for the soil, perhaps introducing or stimulating beneficial bacteria that outcompetes and suppresses the antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The researchers also found that the pH in soil was strongly associated with concentrations of tetracycline-resistant bacteria, suggesting that managing pH has applications for controlling associated risks. In addition, they saw large differences in bacteria levels between sites, sometimes within the same farm, depending on what amendments were used and what greens were grown. Blaustein said these results highlight the need to build a systems-level understanding of soils in urban farming environments.
This information has important implications for understanding the role of compost and manure for improving soil health and managing harmful bacteria and ensuring a healthy food supply from urban agricultural settings.
NFSC PhD student Qingyue Zeng (left), first author of the paper, and undergraduate student Derek Konsen collecting soil cores in an amended plot at a local urban farm.
NFSC undergraduate student Kevin Kevin Lam (Right) and Autumn Salcedo collecting lettuce samples
Effects of Organic Soil Amendments on Antimicrobial-Resistant Bacteria in Urban Agricultural Environments
Article Publication Date
13-Aug-2024
Rising mercury pollution in soil could be related to climate change, study says
American Chemical Society
In 2017, the Minamata Convention on Mercury went into effect, designed to help curb mercury emissions and limit exposure across the globe. However, a new study of mercury levels in soil suggests that the treaty’s provisions might not be enough. The study published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology estimates that soil stores substantially more mercury than previously thought, and it predicts that increases in plant growth due to climate change may add even more.
Mercury is a persistent environmental pollutant, moving through air, water and soil, and accumulating within plants and animals. Soil is the primary reservoir for mercury, storing three times the amount found in the oceans and 150 times the amount found in the atmosphere. Typically, the heavy metal naturally moves through these reservoirs, but humans have altered this cycling. Human-caused climate change increases carbon dioxide levels, promoting vegetation growth and most likely depositing more mercury in the soil when the vegetation decomposes. Previous studies on soil mercury levels have mostly focused on small, regional scales. But Xuejun Wang, Maodian Liu and colleagues wanted to develop a more accurate, worldwide model of soil mercury levels that could take into account the effects of a continuously warming climate.
The team began by compiling nearly 19,000 previously published soil mercury measurements, producing one of the largest databases of its kind. The dataset was fed into a machine learning algorithm to estimate the global distribution of mercury in both topsoil and subsoil. They found that the total amount of mercury stored in the first 40 inches (around 1 meter) of soil is approximately 4.7 million tons. This value is double what some previous estimates concluded, though some of those studies accounted for a shallower depth of soil. The team’s model identified the highest levels of mercury in plant-dense areas such as low latitudes of the tropics, but also in permafrost and areas with high human density. Conversely, bare land such as shrubland or grassland had relatively low levels of soil mercury.
To understand how climate warming could affect mercury soil levels, the researchers combined their initial model with datasets of environmental factors representing future climate scenarios. Their model predicts that as temperatures increase around the globe, vegetation growth will be promoted as well, which could raise soil mercury levels in turn. This symbiotic effect would outweigh the reduction efforts proposed by current worldwide control schemes, like those in the Minamata Convention. Though additional research and observations are needed, the researchers say that this work emphasizes the need for stricter, long-term and simultaneous control of mercury and carbon dioxide emissions.
The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China; the High-Performance Computing Platform of Peking University; the Beijing Natural Science Foundation; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation; and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Peking University.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
“Warming-Induced Vegetation Greening May Aggravate Soil Mercury Levels Worldwide”
Article Publication Date
14-Aug-2024
As US election approaches, national poll shows which health topics concern older adults most
All types of health care costs, and financial scams, rise to the top in University of Michigan study
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan
image:
Top health concerns among people age 50 and older, showing the percentage who said they are "very concerned" about each topic for older adults in their community.
More than half of the people who voted in the 2020 election were age 50 and older, making this age group a key demographic for candidates up and down the ballot.
Now, a new study shows what issues top their lists of health-related concerns going into this November’s election.
Five of the top six issues that the highest percentage of older adults reported being very concerned about have to do with the cost of different kinds of health care, from medical care and prescription drugs to long-term care, health insurance and dental care. Financial scams and fraud, which can cause intense stress and mental distress, also made the top six.
Published in JAMA by a team from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, the study is based on data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging. The poll, conducted in February and March 2024, asked more than 2,500 adults ages 50 and older nationwide how concerned they were about 26 different health-related topics for older adults in their community, not just for themselves.
Five of the top six topics all earned a ‘very concerned’ rating from at least 50% of older adults, with dental care costs not far behind at 45%.
The new research shows some differences among older adults based on age, gender and self-reported political ideology.
For example, 67% of those who called themselves liberal were very concerned about the cost of medical care for older adults in their community, compared with 56% of those who called themselves moderate and 51% who said they are politically conservative.
When it came to the cost of prescription drugs, 64% of self-identified liberals said they were very concerned, compared with 54% of moderates and 51% of conservatives.
The new analysis also shows that higher percentages of women than men were very concerned about both types of cost, at 59% vs. 54% for medical care costs and 58% vs. 51% for cost of prescription drugs.
Those in their 50s and early 60s were also more likely to say they’re very concerned about the cost of medical care for older adults in their community than those over age 65, at 60% vs 53%.
And among those who live in rural areas, 62% said they are very concerned about the cost of medical care, compared with 56% of those in living in metropolitan areas that include both cities and their suburbs.
“It’s important for candidates for president, the U.S. House and Senate, and state offices to be well-informed about the top concerns of older voters,” says John Z. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., lead author of the new study and director of IHPI. “There have been efforts in recent years to reduce costs of some types of care for older adults, especially those enrolled in Medicare, but these findings suggest a strong interest in more action, across the political spectrum and various demographic groups.”
Rounding out the top 10 concerns were access to quality care in their home or nursing homes and assisted living facilities; health care quality; inaccurate or misleading health information; and access to affordable healthy foods.
The new study is based on a survey response rate of 71% and a statistically adjusted analysis of results from the poll’s core population.
The National Poll on Healthy Aging is funded by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center. Ayanian is editor of JAMA Health Forum, but JAMA has a separate peer review process.
In addition to Ayanian, the research letter is authored by poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., and members of the poll team Matthias Kirch, M.S., Dianne Singer, M.P.H., Erica Solway, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.W., Scott Roberts, Ph.D., and Nicholas Box, M.P.A.
Ayanian and Kullgren are faculty in the Division of General Medicine in the U-M Medical School’s Department of Internal Medicine, and both hold joint appointments in the U-M School of Public Health, where Roberts is a member of the faculty. Ayanian also has a faculty appointment in the U-M Ford School of Public Policy.
A major international study has explained how bread wheat helped to transform the ancient world on its path to becoming the iconic crop that today sustains a global population of eight billion.
“Our findings shed new light on an iconic event in our civilisation that created a new kind of agriculture and allowed humans to settle down and form societies,” said Professor Brande Wulff, a wheat researcher at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) and one of the lead authors of the study which appears in Nature.
Professor Cristobal Uauy, a group leader at the John Innes Centre and one of authors of the study said: “This work exemplifies the importance of global collaboration and sharing of data and seeds across countries; we can achieve so much by combining resources and expertise across institutes and across international boundaries.”
The secret of bread wheat’s success, according to the research by institutes that make up the Open Wild Wheat Consortium (OWWC), lies in the genetic diversity of a wild grass called Aegilops tauschii.
Bread wheat is a hybrid between three wild grasses containing three genomes, (A, B and D) within one complex plant.
Aegilops tauschii, an otherwise inconspicuous weed, provided bread wheat’s D-genome when it crossed with early cultivated pasta wheat in the Fertile Crescent sometime between eight and eleven thousand years ago.
The chance hybridisation on the banks of the southern Caspian Sea spawned an agricultural revolution. Cultivation of bread wheat rapidly spread across a wide new range of climates and soils as farmers enthusiastically adopted this dynamic new crop, with its high gluten content that creates an airier elasticated breadmaking dough.
This rapid geographical advance has puzzled wheat researchers. There is no wild bread wheat: and the kind of hybridisation event that added the new D genome to wheat’s existing A and B genomes created a genetic bottleneck, whereby the new species had a much-reduced genetic diversity compared to its surrounding wild grasses.
This bottleneck effect coupled with the fact that wheat is an in-breeding species - meaning it is self-pollinating - would suggest that bread wheat might struggle outside its Fertile Crescent origins. So how did it become well-travelled and widely adopted across the region?
In solving this conundrum, the international collaboration assembled a diversity panel of 493 unique accessions spanning the geographical range of Aegilops tauschii from north-western Turkey to eastern China.
From this panel the researchers selected 46 accessions reflecting the species traits and genetic diversity, to create a Pangenome, a high-quality genetic map of Aegilops tauschii.
Using this map, they scanned 80,000 bread wheat landraces - locally adapted varieties - held by CIMMYT and collected from around the world.
This data showed that around 75% of the bread wheat D-genome is derived from the lineage (L2) of Aegilops tauschii which originates from the southern Caspian Sea. The remaining 25% of its genetic make-up is derived from lineages across its range.
“This 25% influx of genetic material from other lineages of tauschii has contributed and defined the success of bread wheat,” said Professor Simon Krattinger, lead author of the study.
“Without the genetic viability that this diversity brings, we would most likely not eat bread on the scale we do today. Otherwise, bread wheat today would be a regional crop - important to the Middle East but I doubt that it would have become globally dominant without this plasticity that enabled bread wheat to adapt.”
A previous study by OWWC revealed the existence of a distinct lineage of Aegilops tauschii geographically restricted to present day Georgia in the Caucasus region - 500 kilometers from the Fertile Crescent. This Aegilops tauschii lineage (L3) is significant because it has provided bread wheat with the best-known gene for dough quality.
In this study the researchers hypothesised that if this were an historic introgression, akin to a Neanderthal genetic footprint in the human genome, they would find landraces in the CIMMYT collections that had a higher proportion of it.
Data analysis showed that CIMMYT wheat landraces collected from the Georgian region contained 7% L3 introgressions in the genome, seven times more than that of bread wheat landraces collected from the Fertile Crescent.
“We used the L3 tauschii accessions as a guinea pig to track and trace the hybridizations using 80,000 bread wheat landraces,” said Professor Krattinger.
“The data beautifully supports a picture where bread wheat emerges in the southern Caspian, then with migration and agricultural expansion it reached Georgia and here with gene flow and hybridisations with the peculiar, genetically distinct and geographically restricted L3 accessions it resulted in the influx of new genetic material.”
“This is one of the novel aspects of our study and it confirms that using our new resources we can trace the dynamics of these introgressions in bread wheat.”
In addition to solving this age-old biological mystery the new Aegilops tauschii open source Pangenome and germplasm made available by the OWWC, are being used by researchers and breeders worldwide to discover new disease resistance genes that will protect wheat crops against age-old agricultural plagues like wheat rust. They can also mine this wild grass species for climate resilient genes which can be bred into elite wheat cultivars.
Researchers at the John Innes Centre worked closely with colleagues from KAUST using bioinformatic approaches to track levels of DNA contributed to bread wheat by the L3 lineage of Aegilops tauschii.
Professor Uauy concluded: “The study highlights the importance of maintaining genetic resources such as the BBSRC funded Germplasm Resources Unit here at the John Innes Centre which maintains historic collections of wild grasses that can be used to breed valuable traits such as disease resistance and pest resistance into modern wheat.”
Origin and evolution of the bread wheat D genome appears in Nature.
Credit: Photo by Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University.
A team of researchers has made strides in understanding the formation of massif-type anorthosites, enigmatic rocks that only formed during the middle part of Earth’s history. These plagioclase-rich igneous rock formations, which can cover areas as large as 42,000 square kilometers and host titanium ore deposits, have puzzled scientists for decades due to conflicting theories about their origins.
A new study published in Science Advanceson Aug. 14 highlights the intricate connections between Earth’s evolving mantle and crust and the tectonic forces that have shaped the planet throughout its history. It also provides new ways to explore when plate tectonics began, how subduction dynamics operated billions of years ago and the evolution of Earth’s crust.
The research team, led by Rice’s Duncan Keller and Cin-Ty Lee, studied massif-type anorthosites to test ideas about the magmas that formed them. The research focused on the Marcy and Morin anorthosites, classic examples from North America’s Grenville orogen that are about 1.1 billion years old.
By analyzing the isotopes of boron, oxygen, neodymium and strontium in the rocks as well as conducting petrogenetic modeling, the researchers discovered that the magmas that formed these anorthosites were rich in melts derived from oceanic crust altered by seawater at low temperatures. They also found isotopic signatures corresponding to other subduction zone rocks such as abyssal serpentinite.
“Our research indicates that these giant anorthosites likely originated from the extensive melting of subducted oceanic crust beneath convergent continental margins,” said Keller, the Clever Planets Postdoctoral Research Associate, Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and the study’s lead author. “Because the mantle was hotter in the past, this process directly connects the formation of massif-type anorthosites to Earth’s thermal and tectonic evolution.”
The study, which combines classical methods with the novel application of boron isotopic analysis to massif-type anorthosites, suggests that these rocks formed during very hot subduction that may have been prevalent billions of years ago.
Because massif-type anorthosites don’t form on Earth today, the new evidence linking these rocks to very hot subduction on the early Earth opens new interdisciplinary approaches for understanding how these rocks chronicle the physical evolution of our planet.
“This research advances our understanding of ancient rock formations and sheds light on the broader implications for Earth’s tectonic and thermal history,” said Lee, the Harry Carothers Wiess Professor of Geology, professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences and study co-author.
