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, August 17, 2024
Research collaboration to explore the impact of cover crops on soil health and corn production to improve agriculture sustainability
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
image:
Christopher Topp, PhD, Member and Principal Investigator of the Danforth Plant Science Center and his lab members
ST. LOUIS, MO, AUGUST, 14, 2024 – Christopher Topp, PhD, Member and Principal Investigator of the Danforth Plant Science Center and his lab members Marcus Griffiths, PhD and Kong Wong, PhD, have teamed up with colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Kaiyu Guan, PhD, Bin Peng, PhD, and Sheng Wang, PhD, to explore the impact of cover crops on soil health and corn production to improve agriculture sustainability. The research findings will be used to develop tools to help farmers make decisions about when, where and what type of cover crops could be beneficial. A $650,000 award grant from the National Institutes for Food and Agriculture will support the research project.
The research team will conduct multi-year field trials of 12 cover crop species that integrate with corn production, and use root phenomics, cutting-edge sensing technologies, and machine-learning enabled agroecosystem modeling to gain an improved understanding of the variation for root traits that exists among diverse cover crop species and their influence on soil and cash crops.
“The major goal of the project is to fill key gaps in the foundational knowledge base of cover crop plant species that currently hinder their efficacy and farmer adoption,” said Topp. “Roots are the interface of the plant with soil, but there is a limited understanding of cover crop root system traits and their empirical effects on soil health and cash crop productivity.”
Cover cropping has been largely considered a major conservation approach to improve ecosystem services for sustainable agriculture. With current adoption rates low across US farmlands, extensive investments from government and private sectors have strongly encouraged farmers to employ cover crops. These efforts will be bolstered by an increased understanding of cover crop root system traits and their effect on soil and cash crops, especially across the spectrum of cover crop species diversity that will be needed to maximize benefits in many different environments and cropping systems.
“What’s unique about this project is that we will combine the unprecedented capability of the Danforth Center’s root phenotyping with our advanced modeling capability at the University of Illinois, aiming to significantly deepen our understanding of cover crop root diversity and their impacts on plant and soil. Our modeling thus can extrapolate the findings and implications to the broader geography across the Midwest to inform better practices of cover crop,” said Guan, lead principal investigator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center.
“Creating a better understanding of the impact of cover crops will help farmers be more informed about selecting cover crops that maximizes both yield and ecosystem benefits and thereby supports widespread adoption of cover crop management practices in the US,” Topp added.
About the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Founded in 1998, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is a not-for-profit research institute with a mission to improve the human condition through plant science. Research, education, and outreach aim to have an impact at the nexus of food security and the environment and position the St. Louis region as a world center for plant science. The Center’s work is funded through competitive grants from many sources, including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Agency for International Development, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and through the generosity of individual, corporate, and foundation donors. Follow us on Twitter at @DanforthCenter.
About Agroecosystem Sustainability Center: The Agroecosystem Sustainability Center was founded in 2021 to lead global efforts in harmonizing sustainable food production with thriving ecosystems. The Center strives to revolutionize agricultural systems through research, collaboration, and engagement, bridging science and practice for agricultural productivity and ecosystem sustainability. Centered in the heart of Midwest on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the umbrella of both the College of Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences (ACES) and the Institute of Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment (iSEE), ASC is positioned at the critical intersection of academia, industry, policy, and on-the-ground practice. ASC is creating a diverse and dynamic hub for driving change and is committed to transforming its research into practical and scalable solutions, fortifying our ecosystems, bolstering farm profitability, and empowering agricultural systems to proactively mitigate and adapt to the realities of climate change.
A genomic resource for the wild grass species Tausch’s goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii) has been developed by a team of international researchers led by KAUST. This new understanding will accelerate gene discovery research and shed new light on the story of wheat’s evolutionary genetics.[1].
The modern bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) evolved from the hybridization of three wild grass species. One of these (Ae. tauschii) is known as the donor of the bread wheat D genome. Today, wild wheat relatives represent a genetic reservoir of potential beneficial genes that could be used to improve modern wheat varieties.
KAUST researchers, Brande Wulff and Simon Krattinger, have collaborated on many projects to clone genes from wheat and wild plant relatives, as well as identifying the role of various compounds in wheat disease resistance. Now, Ph.D. researchers in the two groups, Emile Cavalet-Giorsa and Andrea Gonzalez-Munoz, together with post doc, Naveenkumar Athiyannan, have led an international research project that establishes a comprehensive set of genomic resources for Ae. tauschii.
The Ae. tauschii pangenome
The Wulff lab has led the effort to generate a pangenome for the species as a genomics resource for resistance gene discovery.
From an initial 900 collection samples, or accessions, of Ae. tauschii, the researchers compiled 493 genetically distinct accessions. They then reached out to the Open Wild Wheat Consortium (OWWC) to select accessions with traits of interest to other researchers. This was critical to the project, which demanded a large investment of resources. The OWWC is a major international collaboration to improve wheat by exploring useful genetic diversity in wild crop relatives. The consortium brings together research groups and researchers from 15 countries.
“Many of the accessions we selected have disease resistance genes or agronomic traits of interest, such as stress tolerance,” explains Gonzalez-Munoz. “Other researchers in the OWWC are using these lines, so they benefit from having a high quality genome assembly.”
After this input and screening to ensure the genetic diversity of the species was represented, the team compiled 46 high-quality genome assemblies of Ae. tauschii.
Gene discovery
The value of these gene assemblies is their potential for gene discovery. Gonzalez-Munoz and Athiyannan next screened the assemblies to identify rust resistance genes.
A stem rust resistance gene that had transferred — a process called introgression — into bread wheat from one of the Ae. tauschii accessions was genetically mapped to the stem rust resistance locus Sr33.
“In the case of the stem rust gene (Sr66), until now we have lacked an assembly that had both Sr33 and Sr66 in the same accession,” says Athiyannan.
“Earlier work had led us to question whether they were two separate genes or alleles of the same gene.
“Now, thanks to finding this accession that contains both genes located in different positions, we can confirm that they are different genes,” he explains.
In another significant finding, the researchers also identified a leaf rust resistance gene which encodes the recently emerging resistance class wheat tandem kinase protein with unique integrated domains.
Gonzalez-Munoz is now using the resources to uncover a gene that has a trait associated with stress tolerance
Origin and evolution of the wheat D genome
Cavalet-Giorsa, meanwhile focused on analyzing the wheat genome. “Wheat has a lot of introgressions, i.e. hybridization that occurred naturally from wild relatives,” he says.
“Understanding the contribution from different wild relatives is important to explain the diversity and adaptability of wheat and perhaps also its evolutionary history.”
These introgressions were a major driver to bring back genetic diversity following a massive genetic bottleneck. Without these early introgressions, it is unlikely that bread wheat would have become such a widely cultivated crop.
“We have developed tools that have allowed us for the first time to trace and track the dynamics of a particular introgression (L3) in detail,” notes Cavalet-Giorsa.
This work launches new questions for wheat genomics and breeding, particularly with a focus on adaptation.
Brigham researchers develop an implantable device to detect and respond to opioid overdose
In preclinical models, the subcutaneously implanted device continuously monitored vital signs and delivered naloxone automatically and rapidly when it detected opioid overdose.
Brigham and Women's Hospital
In preclinical models, the subcutaneously implanted device continuously monitored vital signs and delivered naloxone automatically and rapidly when it detected opioid overdose
The opioid epidemic continues to have devastating effects in the United States, exacerbated by the increasing presence of fentanyl in illicit opioids. Naloxone is an effective antidote, but it usually requires rapid administration from a bystander. Now, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and MIT, have developed an implantable device to detect and reverse opioid overdoses. The device, which they call “iSOS,” continuously monitors heart and respiratory systems for signs of overdose and automatically delivers naloxone when necessary. In preclinical studies, iSOS effectively detected and reversed opioid overdoses. The study is published in the journal Device.
“Naloxone is life-saving but frequently may not be delivered in time,” said co-first author Peter Ray Chai, MD, MS, Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. “The iSOS device provides a highly innovative strategy to provide detection of opioid overdose, allowing for precise administration of naloxone at the moment it is needed, hopefully saving individuals from overdose and facilitating continued recovery from opioid use disorder.”
During overdoses, people generally lose consciousness, so having an automated delivery system for naloxone could save the lives of people who use opioids by themselves.
“In overdose cases where there is a bystander nearby, that individual can be rescued through either intramuscular or intranasal administration of naloxone, but you need that bystander. We wanted to find a way for this to be done in an autonomous fashion.” said corresponding author Giovanni Traverso, MB, PhD, MBBCH, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MIT.
To do away with the need for bystander intervention, the researchers wanted to design a “closed loop” system that could both detect opioid overdose and deliver the drug without outside guidance. To enable autonomous detection, the team fitted the device with multiple sensors that continuously monitor the user’s respiratory rate, heart rate, body temperature, and blood oxygen saturation. These sensors connect to an algorithm that is trained to recognize the signs of overdose by integrating the various cardiorespiratory signals.
When the device detects a suspected opioid overdose, it begins buzzing to alert the user and sends an alert to their phone which allows the user to cancel naloxone administration if they are not experiencing an overdose. If it is not overridden, the device administers a shot of naloxone directly into the user’s tissue.
“Beyond the closed loop, the device can also serve as an early detection or warning system that can help alert others—whether it be loved ones, healthcare professionals or emergency services—to the side of the person so that they can help intervene as well,” said Traverso.
“To combat the high mortality associated with opioid overdoses, our fully implantable iSOS—with its continuous monitoring and rapid drug infusion capabilities—could serve as a pivotal next-generation antidote platform,” said co-first author Seungho Lee, PhD, a research scientist at MIT and in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
The prototype device measures 8 mm x 12 mm x 78 mm (larger than a contraceptive implant but smaller than a subcutaneous cardiac defibrillator). It has a wirelessly rechargeable battery that can last up to 14 days, a refillable drug reservoir, and can be implanted subcutaneously via a minimally invasive procedure under local anesthesia. The team tested the device’s safety and efficacy in a large animal model, finding that the device effectively detected and reversed opioid overdoses in 24 out of 25 pigs.
The researchers note that the device could be particularly useful for individuals who have previously overdosed, since these individuals are more likely to overdose again. They also say that having an implantable device may be more effective than a wearable device.
“The problem with wearables is that one has to wear them, and that in itself presents a potential challenge from an adherence perspective,” says Traverso. “If the patient really wants to help protect themselves against overdose, an implantable or ingestible device could help support this sort of general vision.”
The researchers are now working to further optimize and miniaturize the device and intend to conduct additional preclinical trials before moving onto human testing. They also plan to begin collecting data on end-user preferences to help guide their engineering efforts.
“Understanding the preferences of this patient population will be a critical part of our ongoing work to develop and mature this technology, said Traverso. “This is only the first lab-based prototype, but even at this stage we’re seeing that this device has a lot of potential to help protect high-risk populations from what otherwise could be a lethal overdose.”
Authorship: In addition to Traverso Chai, and Lee, BWH authors include co-first author Hen-Wei Huang, Tom Kerssemakers, Ali Imani, Jack Chen, Marco Heim, Jessica Y. Bo, Adam Wentworth, Fokion T. Sanoudos–Dramaliotis, Ian Ballinger, Alexander Alexiev, Jason Li, and Siheng Sean You.
Additional authors include Saurav Maji, Matt Murphy, Gloria H Kang, Niora Fabian, Josh Jenkins, Andrew Pettinari, Keiko Ishida, Alison M. Hayward, and Anantha Chandrakasan.
Disclosures: The authors declare submission of a provisional patent application (PCT/US2022/080385) describing the materials and applications of the systems described here. Complete details of all relationships for profit and not for profit for Traverso can be found at the following link. All other authors declare that they have no competing interests. Work described in this manuscript was funded by Novo Nordisk, the McGraw Family Funding, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professorship Chair. Chai funded by NIH DP2DA056107.
Funding: Novo Nordisk, The McGraw Family Foundation, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professorship Chair.
Paper cited: Huang, H et al. “An Implantable System for Opioid Safety (iSOS)” Device DOI: 10.1016/j.device.2024.100517
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About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
The authors declare submission of a provisional patent application (PCT/US2022/080385) describing the materials and applications of the systems described here. Complete details of all relationships for profit and not for profit for Traverso can be found at the following link. All other authors declare that they have no competing interests. Work described in this manuscript was funded by Novo Nordisk, the McGraw Family Funding, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professorship Chair. Chai funded by NIH DP2DA056107.
An implantable sensor could reverse opioid overdoses
The new device, which can be implanted under the skin, rapidly releases naloxone when an overdose is detected
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The most effective way to save someone who has overdosed is to administer a drug called naloxone, but a first responder or bystander can’t always reach the person who has overdosed in time.
Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a new device that they hope will help to eliminate those delays and potentially save the lives of people who overdose. The device, about the size of a stick of gum, can be implanted under the skin, where it monitors heart rate, breathing rate, and other vital signs. When it determines that an overdose has occurred, it rapidly pumps out a dose of naloxone.
In a study appearing in the journal Device, the researchers showed that the device can successfully reverse overdoses in animals. With further development, the researchers envision that this approach could provide a new option for helping to prevent overdose deaths in high-risk populations, such as people who have already survived an overdose.
“This could really address a significant unmet need in the population that suffers from substance abuse and opiate dependency to help mitigate overdoses, with the initial focus on the high-risk population,” says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the senior author of the study.
The paper’s lead authors are Hen-Wei Huang, a former MIT visiting scientist and currently an assistant professor of electrical and electronic engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; Peter Chai, an associate professor of emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; SeungHo Lee, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; Tom Kerssemakers and Ali Imani, former master’s students at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and Jack Chen, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at MIT.
An implantable device
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist, meaning that it can bind to opioid receptors and block the effects of other opioids, including heroin and fentanyl. The drug, which is given by injection or as a nasal spray, can restore normal breathing within just a few minutes of being administered.
However, many people are alone when they overdose, and may not receive assistance in time to save their lives. Additionally, with a new wave of synthetic, more potent opioids sweeping the U.S., opioid overdoses can be more rapid in onset and unpredictable. To try to overcome that, some researchers are developing wearable devices that could detect an overdose and administer naloxone, but none of those have yet proven successful. The MIT/BWH team set out to design an implantable device that would be less bulky, provide direct injection of naloxone into the subcutaneous tissue, and eliminate the need for the patient to remember to wear it.
The device that the researchers came up with includes sensors that can detect heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. In an animal study, the researchers used the sensors to measure all of these signals and determine exactly how they change during an overdose of fentanyl. This resulted in a unique algorithm that increases the sensitivity of the device to accurately detect opioid overdose and distinguish it from other conditions where breathing is decreased, such as sleep apnea.
This study showed that fentanyl first leads to a drop in heart rate, followed quickly by a slowdown of breathing. By measuring how these signals changed, the researchers were able to calculate the point at which naloxone administration should be triggered.
“The most challenging aspect of developing an engineering solution to prevent overdose mortality is simultaneously addressing patient adherence and willingness to adopt new technology, combating stigma, minimizing false positive detections, and ensuring the rapid delivery of antidotes,” says Huang. “Our proposed solution tackles these unmet needs by developing a miniaturized robotic implant equipped with multisensing modalities, continuous monitoring capabilities, on-board decision making, and an innovative micropumping mechanism.”
The device also includes a small reservoir that can carry up to 10 milligrams of naloxone. When an overdose is detected, it triggers a pump that ejects the naloxone, which is released within about 10 seconds.
In their animal studies, the researchers found that this drug administration could reverse the effects of an overdose 96 percent of the time.
“We created a closed-loop system that can sense the onset of the opiate overdose and then release the antidote, and then you see that recovery,” Traverso says.
Preventing overdoses
The researchers envision that this technology could be used to help people who are at the highest risk of overdose, beginning with people who have had a previous overdose. They now plan to investigate how to make the device as user-friendly as possible, studying factors such as the optimal location for implantation.
“A key pillar of addressing the opioid epidemic is providing naloxone to individuals at key moments of risk. Our vision for this device is for it to integrate into the cascade of harm-reduction strategies to efficiently and safely deliver naloxone, preventing death from opioid overdose and providing the opportunity to support individuals with opioid use disorder,” says Chai.
The researchers hope to be able to test the device in humans within the next three to five years. They are now working on miniaturizing the device further and optimizing the on-board battery, which currently can provide power for about two weeks.
The research was funded by Novo Nordisk, the McGraw Family Foundation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Naloxone is an effective treatment for opioid overdose, but it usually requires a bystander to step in and administer it. Now, researchers have developed an implantable device that can independently detect overdose and automatically administer naloxone. The device, which the researchers call “iSOS,” includes multiple sensors that allow it to continuously monitor the user’s heart and respiratory systems and a pump that rapidly administers naloxone when needed. It’s yet to be tested in humans, but in animal trials, iSOS successfully revived 24 out of 25 overdosed pigs within 3.2 minutes. The study is published August 14 in the journalDevice.
“Having an automated robotic system that is able to sense and reverse opiate overdose could be transformational, particularly for high-risk populations,” says senior author Giovanni Traverso (@cgtraverso), a clinician and biomedical engineer at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute. “Substance use is a fundamental disorder, and individuals who have had overdoses are at higher risk of overdosing again. To help support this population and those at the greatest risk of overdosing, we wanted to develop an automated way of providing early detection of those events, and then couple that signal with the quick release of naloxone.”
Opioid overdose from both prescription and illicit drugs can cause permanent brain damage within 3 minutes and death within 4 to 6 minutes, so rapid administration of naloxone is critical. However, because opioid use often results in a loss of consciousness, self-administration of naloxone is not usually an option, and bystanders need to be able to recognize the symptoms and respond quickly.
“The most challenging aspects of developing an engineering solution to prevent overdose mortality are addressing patient adherence and willingness to adopt new technology, minimizing false positive detections, and ensuring the rapid delivery of antidotes,” says co-first author and roboticist Hen-Wei Huang of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our proposed solution tackles these unmet needs by developing a miniaturized robotic implant equipped with multi-sensing modalities, continuous monitoring capabilities, on-board decision-making, and an innovative micro-pumping mechanism.”
The team engineered a subcutaneously implantable device with multiple sensors that allow it to continuously monitor the user’s respiratory rate, heart rate, body temperature, and blood oxygen saturation. These sensors are connected to a decision-making algorithm that integrates the various vital signs to decide whether an overdose is occurring.
The device contains a refillable drug reservoir and an active pump that can quickly release a jet of naloxone directly into the user’s muscle if an overdose is detected. When it detects a suspected overdose event, the device begins buzzing and simultaneously sends an alert to the user's smartphone that allows them to override the decision for naloxone administration in case they are not actually experiencing an overdose. Though the system is designed to be a “closed loop”—meaning it both detects and delivers the drug—it also incorporates an alarm system that could alert loved ones or health care workers to the user’s side.
In preliminary tests in pigs, the device proved effective at detecting and reversing opioid overdose. Going forward, the researchers plan to continue to optimize and miniaturize the device, which currently measures 8 mm x 12 mm x 78 mm (approximately 0.3 x 0.5 x 3 inches).
“This is only the first generation of this device, and so there's certainly room for further miniaturization and more testing in large mammals like pigs, but we’re looking to begin testing in humans in the next few years,” says Traverso.
The team also plans to begin researching and collecting data on the preferences of the people who would actually be using the device.
“Understanding the end-user preference and acceptability is a critical element,” says Traverso. “Part of our future work will be to really inform the general perception and acceptability of this type of device, which will help inform some of the engineering as we continue to develop this technology.”
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This research was supported by Novo Nordisk, the McGraw Family Foundation, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and MIT.
Device (@Device_CP) is a physical science journal from Cell Press along with Chem, Joule, and Matter. Device aims to be the breakthrough journal to support device- and application-oriented research from all disciplines, including applied physics, applied materials, nanotechnology, robotics, energy research, chemistry, and biotechnology, under a single title that focuses on the integration of these diverse disciplines in the creation of the cutting-edge technology of tomorrow. Visit https://www.cell.com/device/home. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
Newly discovered ability of comammox bacteria could help reduce nitrous oxide emissions in agriculture
Research team identifies unconventional energy source for recently discovered "green" nitrifying bacteria
University of Vienna
image:
Structure of the guanidinase enzyme of the comammox species Nitrospira inopinata, which converts guanidine into urea. The presumed entrance to a tunnel leading to the active site is highlighted in the left image. In the right section, the tunnel is shown as a green line and guanidine as a stick model. The structure was elucidated by the team led by Kristina Djinović-Carugo.
Credit: Kristina Djinović-Carugo/University of Vienna
An international research team led by the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna has discovered that comammox bacteria, first identified by them in 2015, can grow using guanidine, a nitrogen-rich organic compound, as their sole energy and nitrogen source. This unique ability opens new avenues for targeted cultivation of these enigmatic microbes and could also provide a key to reducing agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. The research findings were recently published as an article in the prestigious journal Nature.
Nitrification, the conversion of ammonia via nitrite to nitrate, is carried out by specialized microorganisms called nitrifiers. This process is extremely important for the global biogeochemical nitrogen cycle in virtually all ecosystems, but it plays an ambivalent role in global change. On one hand, nitrification contributes to the emission of the potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance nitrous oxide and leads to massive fertilizer losses in agriculture, resulting in the eutrophication of water bodies. On the other hand, nitrification is indispensable as a biological purification step for nutrient removal in wastewater treatment plants, thus protecting water bodies from excessive nitrogen input from wastewater. The study authors have now found a way that may promote nitrifiers in the environment that emit less nitrous oxide.
"Green" Nitrifiers
Comammox bacteria are considered "green" nitrifiers because, unlike many other nitrifiers, they produce only small amounts of nitrous oxide as a byproduct of their metabolism and efficiently remove nitrogen compounds from wastewater in treatment plants. Since the discovery of nitrifiers in the 19th century, it was assumed that these microorganisms could only respire ammonia and urea. In 2015, the research groups led by Michael Wagner and Holger Daims demonstrated that some nitrifiers could also use the chemically unstable cyanate for their energy metabolism. "In the recently published paper, our team has now shown that comammox bacteria can also grow with the unconventional substrate guanidine," explains Marton Palatinszky, the study's first author. "The comammox bacteria use a transporter and an enzyme, structurally and functionally characterized in detail by us, which allows them to produce ammonium from guanidine in a highly energy-efficient manner within the cell."
Guanidine is a metabolic product of microorganisms and plants. Little is known about its role in human and animal metabolism. It is formed in soils during the degradation of synthetic fertilizer additives and in wastewater during the breakdown of the commonly used drug metformin. However, little is known about the distribution and further processing of guanidine in the environment. The international research team, including microbiologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig; Germany and Aalborg University in Denmark, demonstrated that guanidine is present not only in human urine but also in livestock excreta and that comammox bacteria utilize guanidine in wastewater treatment plants. They also showed that guanidine is metabolized by nitrifiers in agricultural soils.
New Opportunities for Cultivation and Nitrous Oxide Reduction
The Vienna microbiologists are now attempting to enrich and isolate the widespread comammox bacteria from environmental samples using guanidine, as only one strain is currently available in pure culture worldwide. "This seems particularly promising as none of the other nitrifier strains we tested could grow with guanidine as the sole energy and nitrogen source," explains Katharina Kitzinger, a Senior Scientist at CeMESS. The team also wants to investigate whether adding guanidine to agricultural fertilizers could increase the abundance of comammox bacteria in arable soils, thereby reducing agricultural nitrous oxide emissions.
"This work would not have been possible without the close collaboration of many researchers involved in the 'Microbiomes Drive Planetary Health' Cluster of Excellence, launched in 2023. We extend our sincere thanks to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for this special support," says study leader Michael Wagner.
Growth of complete ammonia oxidizers on guanidine.
Article Publication Date
14-Aug-2024
US companies' global market reach linked to cloud computing use
Penn State
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — U.S. firms that use cloud computing services are more likely to export their products and services, according to a new study by researchers at Penn State and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The team said the findings were stronger for firms located outside of large cities and demonstrate the need for expanded availability of the high-speed internet required for cloud computing to support economic development.
The study, which also found that cloud-using firms exported goods and services even more than exporting firms that do not use cloud-based services, is available online now and will be published in the September issue of Telecommunications Policy.
Cloud-based services provide access to computing resources through online platforms such as web browsers or smartphone apps, allowing businesses to store data, access software applications and more. As a result, businesses often can replace in-house information technology infrastructure with solutions that are generally more scalable, flexible and cost-effective.
“Cloud computing is driving a digital transformation across industries, but little is known about how it affects the performance of the firms that use it, especially in terms of their ability to compete in the global marketplace,” said Luyi Han, a postdoctoral researcher at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD), which is based in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “This study is the first to examine this question using U.S. firm-level data and it finds a significant relationship between adoption of cloud services and export performance.”
To conduct their analysis, Han and his colleagues used two data sets through the Penn State Census Research Data Center. The first, the 2018 Annual Business Survey, administered jointly by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, collected detailed firm-level information on several firm characteristics, including the types of cloud-computing services the firm subscribes to, if any. The second, the Longitudinal Firm Trade Transactions Database contained import-export transaction records that can be linked to individual firms by unique firm identifiers. The researchers merged the two, focusing on trade data from 2017-20 and identifying roughly 30,000 U.S. exporting firms — which, in this study, refers to businesses with employees — and conducted statistical analyses to reveal how these firms differed from the 430,000 non-exporting firms in the dataset.
Specifically, they examined the relationship between a firm’s use of cloud-computing services — including billing and accounting, security and firewall, servers, data storage or analysis, collaboration and file synchronization and customer relationship management — and the extent to which it sells goods or services internationally. The researchers found that firms with any type of cloud computing subscriptions are more likely to engage in exports than firms that do not use the cloud, and this relationship is more pronounced in firms located outside of large metropolitan areas.
“The data allowed us to examine small and medium-sized firms and those located outside of large metropolitan areas in our analysis, which may be disadvantaged in terms of their international competitiveness,” said co-author Timothy Wojan, an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Established Scientist Fellow at the NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). “Their size and location often limit these firms’ access to resources that larger, urban firms enjoy and that can facilitate international transactions.”
The findings suggest that accessing cloud services may play a role in leveling the playing field for non-urban firms and may help promote their expansion into international markets, according to Wojan.
“For example, the cloud can provide access to the advanced technologies required for complex international transactions in an on-demand, scalable manner, which otherwise may not be available to rural and small-town businesses,” Wojan said.
The findings have implications for the U.S. manufacturing sector at large, according to co-author Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural and regional economics at Penn State and director of the NERCRD.
“U.S. manufacturing is increasingly concentrating in rural areas, and this corresponds with a decline of manufacturing in urban areas,” Goetz said. “Our findings suggest that to remain competitive in the international market amid this changing context, U.S. manufacturing could potentially benefit from more widespread use of cloud computing services, especially in rural and other non-urban areas.”
The U.S. currently imports more than it exports, resulting in what is known as an international trade deficit. According to the researchers, concerns about the U.S. trade deficit have prompted some policymakers to explore ways to boost exports of goods and services. For example, in Pennsylvania, the annual “Bringing the World to Pennsylvania” campaign is aimed at connecting Pennsylvania companies with international trade representatives to explore exporting opportunities.
Goetz emphasized that the study examined the association between cloud computing and exporting and did not establish causality. However, as the U.S. government continues to make large federal investments aimed at bridging the digital divide, it will be possible to conduct longitudinal studies in the future that can more effectively establish whether there is a causal link between cloud computing and exports, Goetz said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Multistate/Regional Research and Extension Appropriations, the NSF NCSES and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education supported this research in part.
Cloud computing and rural globalization: Evidence for the U.S. nonfarm economy
Texas Tech University joins US DOE’s $44 million carbon storage project
Texas Tech University
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) has selected Texas Tech University as one of nine university and industry-led projects to split $44.5 million in federal funding to advance commercial-scale carbon capture, transport and storage across the U.S.
With an award just over $6.2 million, Texas Tech intends to implement and accelerate the equitable and environmentally responsible deployment of storage-based carbon management projects in the Permian Basin. The team will provide technical and engagement support for stakeholders to develop a framework for the establishment of a carbon management hub, which will utilize carbon capture storage (CCS) and result in net-zero emissions.
“It’s a feeling of accomplishment that six years ago, we started looking into nontraditional oil and gas research topics – CCS being one of them – and pushed to develop a team and technology level where we were ready to take on this type of research,” said Marshall Watson, department chair of the Bob L. Herd Department of Petroleum Engineering. “What is even more exciting is this award aligns with our mission to serve the industry and people of West Texas.”
Texas Tech has partnered with five universities, two national laboratories, one geological survey, one private company, and a variety of regional stakeholders and local communities. These stakeholders have extensive technical, managerial, regulatory and business expertise specific to carbon transport and storage in the Permian Basin.
“They will be completing the legal and regulatory work alongside us,” Watson explained. “We are excited for this multidisciplinary collaboration.”
CCS is already an integral part of the Department of Petroleum Engineering, which has filed two related patents in addition to this award. The department also has added a CCS certificate program that became available to students graduating in May 2024 and expanded into other energy areas such as hydrogen, geothermal, emission detection/mitigation and produced water management.
“We, in petroleum engineering, are not against alternative fuels at all,” Watson said. “We’re for producing an abundant amount of energy so we can survive in an environmentally friendly manner.”
DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of FECM, will manage the Texas Tech project along with the others selected. A full list of the nine teams and a detailed list of their contributions can be found here.
