New real-time method for environmental monitoring

Ruhr-University Bochum

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Not all plastics are the same. When it comes to recycling, it is important to find out exactly which material you are dealing with. A newly developed method could help to achieve this.

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Credit: RUB, Kramer

Researchers from Bochum, Duisburg, Karlsruhe and Münster have developed a new method for environmental monitoring. It is based on near-infrared (NIR) light and enables users to obtain detailed spectral information from various materials and biological samples. The team headed by Jan Stegemann and Professor Sebastian Kruss from the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, showed that the HyperNIR technology can be used for non-contact identification of different types of plastic, for example, which is useful for recycling processes and the detection of microplastics. The researchers have published a paper on the technology in the journal “Advanced Science”, online on March 4, 2025.

Near-infrared light, which is invisible to humans, contains valuable information about the chemical composition of a sample. Previous methods displayed it either as a grayscale image or as a spectrum, i.e. as an intensity distribution for different wavelengths. The new method is based on hyperspectral imaging, i.e. the combination of spectral and spatial information. Using inexpensive and commercially available components, the researchers are able to transform any standard camera into a HyperNIR camera in order to convert spectral information into images. They use controllable polarization optics for this purpose. External markers, such as dyes, can also be captured, but are not required.

Process works in real time

The system takes three images of each sample, which provide detailed spectral information. While conventional methods require time-consuming scanning of a sample, the HyperNIR camera is significantly faster. “The ability to analyze different materials and their properties in real time can considerably increase the efficiency of processes in environmental monitoring,” predicts Sebastian Kruss.

The researchers showed, for example, that the HyperNIR technology enabled them to track in real time how a bell pepper plant absorbs water – without contact and without using dyes. “Such hyperspectral imaging can potentially be transferred to other molecules,” says Jan Stegemann. “It could be used to monitor the nutrient content in a plant or to detect pest infestation and plant stress at an early stage.”

Applications also feasible in biomedicine

The HyperNIR method can also be combined with fluorescence microscopy to differentiate between various fluorescent molecules that are used as markers. This means that the system is potentially of interest for biomedical research. The team headed by Jan Stegemann and Sebastian Kruss hopes to explore this area of application in more detail in the future.

“Integrating the process into drones could also help to solve pressing environmental issues in the field of agriculture by opening up a new dimension in data collection and analysis,” as Sebastian Kruss outlines a potential next stage in the development of the technology.

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Journal

Advanced Science

DOI

10.1002/advs.202415238 

Using the newly developed HyperNIR technology, the researchers tracked how a bell pepper plant absorbs water into its leaves. With the camera mounted on top of the plant, they were able to observe the processes inside the plant in near-infrared light.

Credit

Jan Stegemann

 

A less toxic way to manufacture daily goods

University of California - San Diego

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Diisocyanates are used in the preparation of all polyurethanes, ranging from the foams used in shoe soles to the thermoplastics used in cell phone cases. Aromatic diisocyanates, which give polyurethane foams their structure, are commonly prepared on the megaton scale in highly secure facilities due to the use of phosgene, a highly reactive and toxic chemical reagent. Michael Burkart’s lab at UC San Diego recently reported the preparation of fully bio-based aromatic diisocyanates from a simple monosaccharide, D-galactose. This new route avoids the use of transition metals, gaseous reagents or any high-pressure/temperature reactions. As an application, the team demonstrates the synthesis of a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) using these renewable diisocyanates, which show excellent material properties equivalent to petroleum-based TPUs. These materials can serve as drop-in replacements for existing polyurethanes, which can now be sourced from 100% bio-based materials. Next, the team is developing scale-up procedures to prepare them on kilogram quantities for prototype applications.

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Journal

Angewandte Chemie

DOI

10.1002/anie.202421540 

Article Title

Renewable Terephthalates and Aromatic Diisocyanates from Galactose

Article Publication Date

17-Feb-2025

COI Statement

Michael D. Burkart is founder and holds an equity position in Algenesis Materials.

 

VR study reveals how pain and fear weaken sense of body ownership

A virtual reality experiment suggests that fear, pain, and expectations shaped by prior experiences can disrupt the mind’s grip on the body.

Hiroshima University

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This illustration shows our experimental setup where participants viewed a virtual body through VR goggles and received touch on their back. The experiment revealed that different interpretations of the virtual body led to different outcomes: when interpreted as "my body," the illusion occurred, but when interpreted as "my body with abdominal pain," the illusion was inhibited.

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Credit: Kazuki Yamamoto & Takashi Nakao, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University

A study from Hiroshima University found that when people were told to imagine their virtual bodies in pain, their brains resisted the illusion of ownership. Their findings could provide insights into why some people may struggle with feeling connected to their own bodies, particularly in contexts involving depersonalization or negative physical states.

The sense of body ownership—the feeling that our body belongs to us—is crucial in distinguishing ourselves from objects and responding to threats. Researchers study it using techniques like the rubber hand illusion (RHI) and full-body illusion (FBI), in which an individual is somehow influenced to identify with ownership of a fake or virtual body. To explore how body ownership can be disrupted, researchers test whether top-down factors—where previous knowledge, memories, and beliefs shape how we perceive and interpret new information or stimuli—weaken the illusion when participants are asked to identify with a virtual body in a negative physical state.

Researchers published their results in Frontiers in Psychology in December 2024.

“Using the full-body illusion in virtual reality—where people begin to feel a virtual body as their own— we investigated how interpreting the virtual body as one's own body, while in a negative physical state, affects this illusion. This research can possibly relate to depersonalization, a condition where people struggle to feel their body as their own,” said Kazuki Yamamoto, researcher and author of the study.

Participants were instructed to view a virtual body from the back using a virtual reality (VR) headset and imagine it as their own. Participants would watch the virtual body have their back stroked while their own physical body was stroked also which successfully illicited the illusion. This is a means of using bottom-up factors, which starts with an external stimulus to integrate visual-tactile information, and is a well-tested way to successfully influence the FBI.

To test the effect of top-down factors, the same course of action was instructed with the addition of identifying with the virtual body as their own in a negative physical state (feeling abdominal pain). After the participant watches their virtual body being stroked along their back, a fear stimulus is presented in the form of a knife driving into the virtual body’s back. The fear response is measured using a skin-conductance response and the degree of conductance measures is then related to how strongly the participant is identifying with their virtual body.

One of the main points of this study is using top-down factors, which are expectation or biases on what something should feel like based on prior experience or interactions, to determine if these can also influence a sense of body ownership.

Results indicated that the full-body illusion was inhibited when asked to view the virtual body as their own with abdominal pain, and the higher the degree of depersonalization tendencies within the participants resulted in a lower degree of FBI.

Researchers suggest this could be due to multiple factors, one of which being the manipulation of using top-down factors. Another suggestion is that the participants might have had difficulty perceiving the negative physical symptoms, therefore they had difficulty fully establishing the connection of “the virtual body is my body” which is key for the illusion to occur.

Given the findings of the study, more research can be done to fully understand why an inhibition of the illusion occurred.

“While we observed this inhibitory effect, further research is needed to determine whether it was specifically due to the negative interpretation or to differences between actual and virtual body states,” said Takashi Nakao, researcher and author of the study.

The foundation provided by this study and subsequent studies can aid in clinical intervention for those suffering from disturbed body ownership, such as individuals with depersonalization-derealization disorder. This work can improve those individuals’ sense of body ownership, which can greatly improve lives, not only for safety purposes but also sensory and perception purposes.

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Kazuki Yamamoto and Takashi Nakao of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University contributed to this research.

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science funded this research.

About Hiroshima University

Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 5 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan. English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en

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Journal

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1399218 

Article Title

The manipulation of top-down interpretation as one’s symptomatic body reduces the sense of body ownership

 

NIH researchers develop eye drops that slow vision loss in animals

Treatment shows potential to slow the progression of human degenerative eye diseases, including retinitis pigmentosa

NIH/National Eye Institute

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Model of PEDF protein alongside the 17-mer and H105A peptides. Amino acid 105, which is changed from histidine in PEDF and the 17-mer peptide to alanine in the H105A peptide, is shown in green.

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Credit: NIH/National Eye Institute

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed eye drops that extend vision in animal models of a group of inherited diseases that lead to progressive vision loss in humans, known as retinitis pigmentosa. The eye drops contain a small fragment derived from a protein made by the body and found in the eye, known as pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF). PEDF helps preserve cells in the eye’s retina. A report on the study is published in Communications Medicine.

“While not a cure, this study shows that PEDF-based eye drops can slow progression of a variety of degenerative retinal diseases in animals, including various types of retinitis pigmentosa and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD),” said Patricia Becerra, Ph.D., chief of NIH’s Section on Protein Structure and Function at the National Eye Institute and senior author of the study. “Given these results, we’re excited to begin trials of these eye drops in people.”

All degenerative retinal diseases have cellular stress in common. While the source of the stress may vary—dozens of mutations and gene variants have been linked to retinitis pigmentosa, AMD, and other disorders—high levels of cellular stress cause retinal cells to gradually lose function and die. Progressive loss of photoreceptor cells leads to vision loss and eventually blindness.

Previous research from Becerra’s lab revealed that, in a mouse model, the natural protein PEDF can help retinal cells stave off the effects of cellular stress. However, the full PEDF protein is too large to pass through the outer eye tissues to reach the retina, and the complete protein has multiple functions in retinal tissue, making it impractical as a treatment. To optimize the molecule's ability to preserve retinal cells and to help the molecule reach the back of the eye, Becerra developed a series of short peptides derived from a region of PEDF that supports cell viability. These small peptides can move through eye tissues to bind with PEDF receptor proteins on the surface of the retina.

In this new study, led by first author Alexandra Bernardo-Colón, Becerra’s team created two eye drop formulations, each containing a short peptide. The first peptide candidate, called “17-mer,” contains 17 amino acids found in the active region of PEDF. A second peptide, H105A, is similar but binds more strongly to the PEDF receptor. Peptides applied to mice as drops on the eye’s surface were found in high concentration in the retina within 60 minutes, slowly decreasing over the next 24 to 48 hours. Neither peptide caused toxicity or other side effects.

When administered once daily to young mice with retinitis pigmentosa-like disease, H105A slowed photoreceptor degeneration and vision loss. To test the drops, the investigators used specially bred mice that lose their photoreceptors shortly after birth. Once cell loss begins, the majority of photoreceptors die in a week. When given peptide eye drops through that one-week period, mice retained up to 75% of photoreceptors and continued to have strong retinal responses to light, while those given a placebo had few remaining photoreceptors and little functional vision at the end of the week.

“For the first time, we show that eye drops containing these short peptides can pass into the eye and have a therapeutic effect on the retina,” said Bernardo-Colón. “Animals given the H105A peptide have dramatically healthier-looking retinas, with no negative side effects.”

A variety of gene-specific therapies are under development for many types of retinitis pigmentosa, which generally start in childhood and progress over many years. These PEDF-derived peptide eye drops could play a crucial role in preserving cells while waiting for these gene therapies to become clinically available.

To test whether photoreceptors preserved through the eye drop treatment are healthy enough for gene therapy to work, collaborators Valeria Marigo, Ph.D. and Andrea Bighinati, Ph.D., University of Modena, Italy, treated mice with gene therapy at the end of the week-long eye drop regimen. The gene therapy successfully preserved vision for at least an additional six months.  

To see whether the eye drops could work in humans – without actually testing in humans directly – the researchers worked with Natalia Vergara, Ph.D., University of Colorado Anschutz, Aurora, to test the peptides in a human retinal tissue model of retinal degeneration. Grown in a dish from human cells, the retina-like tissues were exposed to chemicals that induced high levels of cellular stress. Without the peptides, the cells of the tissue model died quickly, but with the peptides, the retinal tissues remained viable. These human tissue data provide a key first step supporting human trials of the eye drops.

The research was funded by the NEI Intramural Research Program. Additional funding was provided by the Prevention of Blindness Society, Fondazione Telethon, HEAL-ITALIA Foundation, CellSight Development Fund, and Research to Prevent Blindness.

Reference: Bernardo-Colón A, Bighinati A, Parween S, Debnath S, Piano I, Adani E, Corsi F, Gargini C, Vergara N, Marigo V, and Becerra SP. “H105A peptide eye drops promote photoreceptor survival in murine and human models of retinal degeneration.” Mar 21, 2025, Comms Med. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-025-00789-8

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NEI leads the federal government’s research on the visual system and eye diseases. NEI supports basic and clinical science programs to develop sight-saving treatments and address special needs of people with vision loss. For more information, visit https://www.nei.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit https://www.nih.gov/.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

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Journal

Communications Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s43856-025-00789-8 

Method of Research

Experimental study

 SPACE /COSMOS

How black holes could nurture life

A new study co-led by Dartmouth researchers shows how radiation from black holes could have a nurturing effect on life.

Dartmouth College

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At the center of most large galaxies, including our own Milky Way, sits a supermassive black hole. Interstellar gas periodically falls into the orbit of these bottomless pits, switching the black hole into active galactic nucleus (AGN)-mode, blasting high-energy radiation across the galaxy.

It's not an environment you'd expect a plant or animal to thrive in. But in a surprising new study in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers at Dartmouth and the University of Exeter show that AGN radiation can have a paradoxically nurturing effect on life. Rather than doom a species to oblivion, it can help ensure its success.

The study may be the first to concretely measure, via computer simulations, how an AGN's ultraviolet radiation can transform a planet's atmosphere to help or hinder life. Consistent with studies looking at the effects of solar radiation, the researchers found that the benefits—or harms—depend on how close the planet is to the source of the radiation, and whether life has already gained a toehold.

"Once life exists, and has oxygenated the atmosphere, the radiation becomes less devastating and possibly even a good thing," says the study's lead author, Kendall Sippy, who graduated from Dartmouth last year. "Once that bridge is crossed, the planet becomes more resilient to UV radiation and protected from potential extinction events."

The researchers simulated the effects of AGN radiation on not only Earth, but Earth-like planets of varying atmospheric composition. If oxygen was already present, they found, the radiation would set off chemical reactions causing the planet's protective ozone layer to grow. The more oxygenated the atmosphere, the greater the effect.

High-energy light reacts readily with oxygen, splitting the molecule into single atoms that recombine to form ozone. As ozone builds up in the upper atmosphere, it deflects more and more dangerous radiation back into space. Earth owes its favorable climate to a similar process that happened about 2 billion years ago with the first oxygen-producing microbes.

Radiation from the sun helped Earth's fledgling life oxygenate, and add ozone, to the atmosphere. As our planet's protective ozone blanket thickened, it allowed life to flourish, producing more oxygen, and yet more ozone. Under the Gaia hypothesis, these beneficial feedback loops allowed complex life to emerge.

"If life can quickly oxygenate a planet's atmosphere, ozone can help regulate the atmosphere to favor the conditions life needs to grow," says study co-author Jake Eager-Nash, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria. "Without a climate-regulating feedback mechanisms, life may die out fast."

Earth, in real life, is not close enough to its resident black hole, Sagittarius A, to feel its effects, even in AGN-mode. But the researchers wanted to see what could happen if Earth were much closer to a hypothetical AGN, and thus exposed to radiation billions of times greater.

Recreating Earth's oxygen-free atmosphere in the Archean, they found that the radiation would all but preclude life from developing. But as oxygen levels rose, nearing modern levels, Earth's ozone layer would grow and shield the ground below from dangerous radiation.

"With modern oxygen levels, this would take a few days, which would hopefully mean that life could survive," Eager-Nash says. "We were surprised by how quickly ozone levels would respond."

When they looked at what could happen on an Earth-like planet in an older galaxy with stars clustered closer to its AGN, they found a much different picture. In a "red nugget relic" galaxy like NGC 1277, the effects would be lethal. Stars in more massive galaxies with an elliptical shape, like Messier-87, or our spiral Milky Way, are spread out more, and thus, farther from an AGN's dangerous radiation.

The stars align aboard the Queen Mary 2

Sippy came to Dartmouth with a keen interest in black holes, and by the end of second term, had joined the lab of study co-author Ryan Hickox, professor and chair of physics and astronomy. Later, while debating a potential senior project on AGN radiation, fate intervened.

Heading to England for a sabbatical in 2023, Hickox booked a trip on the Queen Mary 2 so he could bring his dog, Benjamin. Aboard the ship, he got to chatting with an astrophysicist from Exeter, Nathan Mayne, who was a guest speaker on the ship. They quickly realized they had a mutual interest in radiation, and that the PALEO software Mayne had been using to model solar radiation on exoplanet atmospheres could be applied to the more powerful rays of an AGN.

The encounter would clear the way for Sippy to work with Eager-Nash, then a PhD student in Mayne's lab. Using the programing language Julia, they input into their model the initial concentrations of oxygen, and other atmospheric gases, on their Earth-like planet.

"It models every chemical reaction that could take place," says Sippy. "It returns plots of how much radiation is hitting the surface at different wavelengths, and the concentration of each gas in your model atmosphere, at different points in time."

The feedback loop they discovered in an oxygenated atmosphere was unexpected. "Our collaborators don't work on black hole radiation so they were unfamiliar with the spectrum of a black hole and how much brighter an AGN could get than a star depending how close you are to it," says Hickox.

Without the kismet that brought the two labs together, the project might never have happened. "It's the kind of insight you can only really get by combining different sets of expertise," he adds.

After graduating from Dartmouth, Sippy left for Middlebury College, to work as a post-baccalaureate researcher in the lab of McKinley Brumback, who worked in Hickox's lab as a PhD student and is now an assistant professor of physics at Middlebury studying accreting neutron star X-ray binaries.

She brought a unique perspective to the project. In the X-ray binaries that she studies, a neutron star pulls matter from a normal star, causing in-falling material to heat up and emit X-rays.

While an AGN can take up to millions of years to flip between active and inactive states, X-ray binaries can change in mere days to months. "A lot of the same physics that applies to AGNs applies to X-ray binaries, but the time scales are much faster than for an AGN," she says.

Brumback contributed to the AGN analysis and served as a "slightly removed reader" to make sure the paper was accessible to non-experts, she says.

"Thanks to Kendall's excellent writing, it definitely was!"

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Journal

The Astrophysical Journal

DOI

10.3847/1538-4357/adac5d 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Impacts of UV Radiation from an AGN on Planetary Atmospheres and Consequences for Galactic Habitability