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)
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
SwRI completes 8-year-long NEXTCAR energy efficiency project
SwRI’s award-winning NEXTCAR project demonstrated vehicle energy savings up to 30%
SwRI engineers — including (left to right) Robert Harold, Stas Gankov and Piyush Bhagdikar —demonstrated SwRI’s NEXTCAR vehicle at the June 5, 2025, ARPA-E Field Day event at the American Center for Mobility in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan. Guided by the Institute’s custom localization and drive-by-wire controllers, the vehicle performed highly accurate and repeatable automated driving tasks along a pre-mapped route.
SAN ANTONIO — July 22, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has successfully completed its ambitious eight-year-long connected and automated (CAV) vehicle technology project.
As part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E) NEXTCAR (NEXT-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated On-Road Vehicles) program, SwRI developed an automated vehicle that combines CAV technology and SAE Level 4 automation to demonstrate up to 30% energy savings compared to traditional hybrid vehicles, without modifications to the powertrain hardware. The completed SwRI NEXTCAR vehicle was adapted from a commercially available plug-in hybrid sedan. SwRI showcased its technology at the NEXTCAR program’s capstone event, known as the ARPA-E Field Day, which took place at the American Center for Mobility in Michigan in June.
SwRI’s NEXTCAR automated driving platform combines widely adopted sensing technologies, such as lidar, with SwRI’s patented Ranger localization technology. The vehicle is equipped with a specialized algorithm suite that includes cooperative control capabilities and smart lane merging and changing functionality. It also uses SwRI-developed drive-by-wire technology to automate operations of the vehicle’s accelerator, brake pedals and electronic power steering system.
During the Field Day, SwRI’s NEXTCAR vehicle, guided by the Institute’s custom localization and drive-by-wire controllers, performed highly accurate and repeatable automated driving tasks along a pre-mapped route. The vehicle’s eco-driving controller, developed on an Android app, showed spectators the optimized speed information in real-time. Attendees included SwRI staff from the Powertrain Engineering and Intelligent Systems divisions, ARPA-E representatives, and mobility industry stakeholders; it also included demonstrations from fellow NEXTCAR teams from Ohio State University and Michigan Technological University.
SwRI’s NEXTCAR project was an iterative program that built upon the success of each phase, year-by-year. The “Eco-Mobility with Connected Powertrains” technology suite developed in the first phase of the program (2017-2021) received an R&D 100 Award in 2021. That same year, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded SwRI a three-year, $5.25 million grant through the ARPA-E NEXTCAR program to continue the work in a second phase.
“The Field Day demonstration was the culmination of years of hard work, collaboration and innovation by the SwRI NEXTCAR Team,” said Stas Gankov, an SwRI manager and the project’s principal investigator. “Our team pulled multidisciplinary experts from across SwRI’s many research divisions to showcase the potential benefits CAV technology and automation offer for a greener mobility industry. The project has yielded incredible results on that front.”
Through its NEXTCAR program, SwRI collected vast amounts of data as part of a larger Institute effort to develop connected vehicle technology. The comprehensive process involved traffic simulations, custom high-fidelity vehicle simulators, algorithm refinement and rigorous testing on a CAV dynamometer. The project team seeks collaborators and industry members for a potential joint industry program/consortium to expand on the work completed during NEXTCAR.
“I am proud of what our team accomplished over this eight-year-long effort,” said Daniel Stewart, vice president of the SwRI Powertrain Engineering Division. “While the demonstration was conducted with a plug-in hybrid vehicle, the CAV technology applies to all vehicle powertrains, including pure electric, combustion engine only and conventional hybrid vehicles. The technology is extremely valuable for heavy-duty and fleet vehicles. We look forward to collaborating with industry to commercialize the technology.”
The “Eco-Mobility with Connected Powertrains” technology suite and Phase II developments are available to license. For more information, visit Connected Powertrain Solutions or contact Stas Gankov at +1 210 522 6206 to learn more.
Lightning has a greater impact on forests than previously thought. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed new model calculations that, for the first time, estimate the global influence of lightning on forest ecosystems. According to their findings, an estimated 320 million trees die each year due to lightning strikes. Tree losses caused by direct lightning-ignited wildfires are not included in these figures. In the future, lightning-induced tree mortality could rise due to an increase in flash frequency.
Lightning damage in forests is often hard to detect and has only been systematically studied in a few locations. Until now, it remained unclear how many trees worldwide die each year due to direct lightning-related damage. The TUM research team has developed the first method to estimate how many trees are so severely affected by lightning that they eventually die. Their conclusion: the ecological impact of lightning has been underestimated.
While earlier studies focused on field observations in individual forests, the TUM researchers took a mathematical approach. They extended a widely used global vegetation model by integrating observational data and global lightning patterns. “We’re now able not only to estimate how many trees die from lightning strikes annually, but also to identify the regions most affected and assess the implications for global carbon storage and forest structure,” explains Andreas Krause, lead author of the study and researcher at the Chair of Land Surface–Atmosphere Interactions.
The number of trees killed could increase in the future
According to their estimates, lightning kills about 320 million trees annually, accounting for 2.1 to 2.9 percent of all plant biomass loss annually. This biomass decay is estimated to emit between 0,77 and 1,09 billion tons of CO₂ annually. The researchers emphasize that these emissions are surprisingly high: they are comparable in magnitude to the approximately 1,26 billion tons of CO₂ released annually by the combustion of living plants in wildfires. However, the total CO₂ emissions from wildfires are substantially higher — about 5,85 billion tons per year — since they also include burning deadwood and organic soil material.
“Most climate models project an increase in lightning frequency in the coming decades, so it’s worth paying closer attention to this largely overlooked disturbance,” says Krause. “Currently, lightning-induced tree mortality is highest in tropical regions. However, models suggest that lightning frequency will increase primarily in middle- and high-latitude regions, meaning that lightning mortality could also become more relevant in temperate and boreal forests.”
A new study, led by experts at the University of Nottingham, has found that the Covid-19 pandemic may have accelerated people’s brain health, even if they were never infected with the virus.
What does it mean to grow older, not just in years, but in terms of brain health? Can stress, isolation, and global disruption leave their mark on people’s minds?
The findings of this new study, which are published in Nature Communications, showed that people who lived through the Covid-19 pandemic showed signs of faster brain ageing over time than those scanned entirely before it. The changes were most noticeable in older individuals, in men, and in people from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
Only participants who were infected by Covid-19 between their scans showed a drop in certain cognitive abilities, such as mental flexibility and processing speed. This may suggest that the pandemic’s brain ageing effect, on its own (without infection) may not cause symptoms. Also, the authors highlight that the observed brain ageing may be reversible.
The study was led by a team of experts from the University’s School of Medicine and was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre and the Medical Research Council (MRC) DEMISTIFI programme.
Dr Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad led the study, he said: “What surprised me most was that even people who hadn’t had Covid showed significant increases in brain ageing rates. It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.”
The research team looked at longitudinal brain scans from nearly 1,000 healthy adults, taken as part of the UK Biobank study. Some participants had scans before and after the pandemic; others, only before. Using advanced imaging and machine learning, the researchers estimated each person’s “brain age”—how old their brain appeared to be compared to their actual age.
The brain age model was developed using brain scans from over 15,000 healthy individuals, without comorbidities, allowing the researchers to build an accurate model for estimating brain age.
“This study reminds us that brain health is shaped not only by illness, but by our everyday environment,” said Dorothee Auer, Professor of Neuroimaging and senior author on the study. “The pandemic put a strain on people’s lives, especially those already facing disadvantage. We can’t yet test whether the changes we saw will reverse, but it’s certainly possible, and that’s an encouraging thought.”
Stamatios Sotiropoulos, Professor of Computational Neuroimaging, and co-lead author added: “The longitudinal MRI data acquired before and after the pandemic from the UK Biobank gave us a rare window to observe how major life events can affect the brain.”
ENDS
Notes to editors:
About the University of Nottingham
Ranked 97 in the world and 17th in the UK by the QS World University Rankings, the University of Nottingham is a founding member of Russell Group of research-intensive universities. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience, and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our students. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement.
The University is among the best universities in the UK for the strength of our research, positioned seventh for research power in the UK according to REF 2021. The birthplace of discoveries such as MRI and ibuprofen, our innovations transform lives and tackle global problems such as sustainable food supplies, ending modern slavery, developing greener transport, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
The University is a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally - and our graduates are the third most targeted by the UK's top employers, according to The Graduate Market in 2024 report by High Fliers Research. We lead the Universities for Nottingham initiative, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, a pioneering collaboration between the city’s two world-class institutions to improve levels of prosperity, opportunity, sustainability, health and wellbeing for residents in the city and region we are proud to call home. More news…
About NIHR
The mission of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. We do this by:
Funding high quality, timely research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care;
Investing in world-class expertise, facilities and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services;
Partnering with patients, service users, carers and communities, improving the relevance, quality and impact of our research;
Attracting, training and supporting the best researchers to tackle complex health and social care challenges;
Collaborating with other public funders, charities and industry to help shape a cohesive and globally competitive research system;
Funding applied global health research and training to meet the needs of the poorest people in low and middle income countries.
NIHR is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. Its work in low and middle income countries is principally funded through UK international development funding from the UK government.
Accelerated brain ageing during the COVID-19 pandemic
Article Publication Date
22-Jul-2025
FOSSILS
Tiny fossil suggests spiders and their relatives originated in the sea
Finely preserved brain features in a tiny marine arthropod fossil suggest that arachnids – spiders and their close kin – may have first evolved in the ocean rather than on land, challenging conventional wisdom.
A new analysis of an exquisitely preserved fossil that lived half a billion years ago suggests that arachnids – spiders and their close kin – evolved in the ocean, challenging the widely held belief that their diversification happened only after their common ancestor had conquered the land.
Spiders and scorpions have existed for some 400 million years, with little change. Along with closely related arthropods grouped together as arachnids, they have dominated the Earth as the most successful group of arthropodan predators. Based on their fossil record, arachnids appeared to have lived and diversified exclusively on land.
In a study led by Nicholas Strausfeld at the University of Arizona and published in Current Biology, researchers from the U.S. and United Kingdom undertook a detailed analysis of the fossilized features of the brain and central nervous system of an extinct animal called Mollisonia symmetrica. Until now, it was thought to represent an ancestral member of a specific group of arthropods known as chelicerates, which lived during the Cambrian (between 540 and 485 million years ago) and included ancestors of today’s horseshoe crabs. To their surprise, the researchers found that the neural arrangements in Mollisonia's fossilized brain are not organized like those in horseshoe crabs, as could be expected, but instead are organized the same way as they are in modern spiders and their relatives.
"It is still vigorously debated where and when arachnids first appeared, and what kind of chelicerates were their ancestors," said Strausfeld, a Regents Professor in the U of A Department of Neuroscience, "and whether these were marine or semi-aquatic like horseshoe crabs.”
Mollisonia outwardly resembles some other early chelicerates from the lower and mid-Cambrian in that its body was composed of two parts: a broad rounded "carapace" in the front and a sturdy segmented trunk ending in a broad, tail-like structure. Some scientists have referred to the organization of a carapace in front, followed by a segmented trunk as similar to the body plan of a scorpion. But nobody had claimed that Mollisonia was anything more exotic than a basal chelicerate, even more primitive than the ancestor of the horseshoe crab, for example.
What Strausfeld and his colleagues found indicating Mollisonia's status as an arachnid is its fossilized brain and nervous system. As in spiders and other present-day arachnids, the anterior part of Mollisonia’s body (called the prosoma) contains a radiating pattern of segmental ganglia that control the movements of five pairs of segmental appendages. In addition to those arachnid-like features, Mollisonia also revealed an unsegmented brain extending short nerves to a pair of pincer-like "claws," reminiscent of the fangs of spiders and other arachnids.
But the decisive feature demonstrating arachnid identity is the unique organization of the mollisoniid brain, which is the reverse of the front-to-back arrangement found in present-day crustaceans, insects and centipedes, and even horseshoe crabs, such as the genus Limulus.
"It's as if the Limulus-type brain seen in Cambrian fossils, or the brains of ancestral and present days crustaceans and insects, have been flipped backwards, which is what we see in modern spiders," he said.
According to co-author Frank Hirth from King’s College London, the latter finding may be a crucial evolutionary development, because studies of existing spider brains suggest that this back-to-front arrangement provides shortcuts from neuronal control centers to underlying circuits that coordinate a spider’s (or its relative’s) amazing repertoire of movements. This arrangement likely confers stealth in hunting, rapidity in pursuit and in the case of spiders, an exquisite dexterity for the spinning of webs to entrap prey.
"This is a major step in evolution, which appears to be exclusive to arachnids," Hirth said. "Yet already in Mollisonia, we identified brain domains that correspond to living species with which we can predict the underlying genetic makeup that is common to all arthropods."
"The arachnid brain is unlike any other brain on this planet," Strausfeld added, "and it suggests that its organization has something to do with computational speed and the control of motor actions.”
The first creatures to come onto land were probably millipede-like arthropods and probably some ancestral, insect-like creatures, an evolutionary branch of crustaceans, according to Strausfeld.
"We might imagine that a Mollisonia-like arachnid also became adapted to terrestrial life making early insects and millipedes their daily diet," he said, adding that the first arachnids on land may have contributed to the evolution of a critical defense mechanism: insect wings, hence flight and escape.
"Being able to fly gives you a serious advantage when you're being pursued by a spider," Strausfeld said. "Yet, despite their aerial mobility, insects are still caught in their millions in exquisite silken webs spun by spiders."
For the study, Strausfeld spent time at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, where the Mollisonia specimen is housed, taking scores of photographs under various directions of illumination, light intensities and polarization light, and magnifications.
To rule out the possibility that the congruence between Mollisonia's brain and that of spiders was the result of parallel evolution – in other words, coincidence rather than derived by a common lineage – co-author David Andrew, a former graduate student in the Strausfeld laboratory who is now at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, performed a statistical analysis comparing 115 neuronal and related anatomical traits across arthropods, both extinct and living. The results placed Mollisonia as a sister group of modern arachnids, lending further weight to the idea that Mollisonia's lineage gave rise to the clade that today includes spiders, scorpions, sun spiders, vinegarroons and whip scorpions, amongst many others.
Unfortunately, other Mollisonia-like arthropods are not preserved in a way that allows for a detailed analysis of their nervous system. But if they shared the same unique kind of brain, the authors suggest, their descendants might have established diverging terrestrial lineages that today account for the various branches of the arachnid tree of life.
A side-by-side comparison of the brains of a horseshoe crab (left), the Mollisonia fossil (center) and a modern spider (right) reveal the surprising findings of this study: The organization of Mollisonia's three brain regions (green, magenta and blue) are inverted when compared to the horseshoe crab, and instead resemble the arrangement found in modern spiders.
Advanced imaging techniques allowed the research team to identify key anatomical features in the fossilized remains of the Mollisonia specimen.
The brachiopod Nucleospira calypta and its setae preserved as iron oxides: interior mold of the ventral valve and close-ups of setae (A–D), together with SEM images and EDS spectra (E–H).
Understanding how ancient species arranged themselves in space is a key puzzle in paleoecology, but direct evidence of how prehistoric organisms used their body structures to regulate spacing has long eluded scientists. Now, researchers in China have uncovered the first direct evidence: Approximately 436-million-year-old brachiopods from the early Silurian period used tiny, bristle-like structures called setae to maintain orderly, "checkerboard" spacing—ensuring they had enough room to thrive on the ancient seafloor.
The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), come from a research team led by Prof. HUANG Bing and Prof. RONG Jiayu at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The researchers studied fossilized remains of Nucleospira calypta, a brachiopod species, preserved in rocks from Guizhou Province's Tongzi and Renhuai regions.
Brachiopods—shelled marine creatures once dominant in Paleozoic oceans—left behind exceptionally well-preserved fossils there, capturing not just their shells but also their delicate setae. These slender, flexible structures, found along the edge of the brachiopod's mantle, are rarely found in fossil form—especially in post-Cambrian rocks—due to their tiny size (about 20 micrometers in diameter, thinner than a human hair).
To uncover how the setae survived approximately 436 million years, the team used advanced imaging tools: scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and micro-CT. They found the setae were preserved through a unique process: They were first rapidly mineralized by pyrite in oxygen-free waters, then coated in calcite as ocean conditions became less acidic. This double protection shielded them from both crushing and decay, even as the pyrite later rusted into iron oxides.
With the setae's identity confirmed, the team turned to the broader population. Using spatial analysis tools—including nearest neighbor mapping and Thiessen polygons—they discovered that the brachiopods weren't scattered randomly. Instead, they formed a non-random, checkerboard-like pattern, suggesting active regulation of spacing between individuals.
The researchers found a clear mathematical relationship: The average distance between brachiopods was 1.5 to 2 times the length of their setae. How did stationary-looking creatures achieve this? Unlike some brachiopods, Nucleospira calypta lacked a stalk (or pedicle) and had a smooth, disc-shaped shell—traits that likely let them slide slowly, millimeters at a time, either pushed by weak currents or via tiny movements of their bodies. When two individuals got too close, their extended setae would touch, prompting gradual adjustments over time. The result was a stable arrangement that minimized competition—critical for filter-feeders needing space to draw in food.
"This is the first time we've directly connected a specific anatomical feature—these tiny setae—to a statistically significant spatial pattern in fossils," the researchers noted. This study offers rare evidence that ancient communities weren't just shaped by chance or environmental forces, but also by biological interactions—organisms using their bodies to carve out space.
Morphology of N. calypta setae preserved beneath the mineralized coating (A–F), their microstructure (F–H), and Micro-CT three-dimensional reconstructions (I–K).
In-situ fossil assemblage of N. calypta with XRF elemental maps (A–D), a Thiessen-polygon (Voronoi) analysis of spatial distribution (E), and an additional example of a small cluster (F).
Credit
Image by Prof. HUANG Bing
Specimen-based reconstruction of a single N. calypta individual with marginal setae (A) and an ecological reconstruction of the living assemblage (B).
