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)
Monday, August 29, 2022
There's finally (peer reviewed) chemistry in wine and food pairings (video)
IMAGE: RED WINE GOES WITH MEAT; WHITE WINE GOES WITH FISH. PORT GOES WITH STILTON. NEVER DRINK WINE AFTER EATING ARTICHOKES. THESE RULES ABOUT HOW TO PAIR WINE WITH FOOD HAVE SOLID CHEMICAL UNDERPINNINGS — BUT MANY OTHERS DON’T. THE HOLY GRAIL OF FOOD AND WINE PAIRING SCIENCE WOULD BE A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING WHY SOME PAIRINGS WORK AND PREDICTING THE RESULTS OF NEW ONES. FIND OUT HOW CLOSE WE ARE TO DISCOVERING THAT FRAMEWORK AND LEARN ABOUT SOME HIGHLY UNEXPECTED PAIRINGS (COFFEE, CHOCOLATE AND … GARLIC!?): HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/PITGSXIDFXS.view more
CREDIT: THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2022 — Red wine goes with meat; white wine goes with fish. Port goes with Stilton. Never drink wine after eating artichokes. These rules about how to pair wine with food have solid chemical underpinnings — but many others don’t. The holy grail of food and wine pairing science would be a framework for understanding why some pairings work and predicting the results of new ones. Find out how close we are to discovering that framework and learn about some highly unexpected pairings (coffee, chocolate and … garlic!?): https://youtu.be/pITgSxidfXs.
Reactions is a video series produced by the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to Reactions at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions.
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.
A new type of defibrillator met safety, effectiveness goals in global clinical study
A new type of extravascular implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) using a lead (thin wire) placed behind the sternum met safety and effectiveness goals for participants in a premarket global clinical study. The device effectively terminated acute and chronic life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias. The findings were presented during a late-breaking session at the European Society of Cardiology Congress and were simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia happen in the lower heart chambers, or ventricles. They are dangerous because they interfere with the normal coordinated filling and pumping of blood through the heart. These arrhythmias can cause collapse and death if not rapidly treated. The ability of ICDs to accurately detect and terminate ventricular arrhythmias in high-risk patients saves lives.
For study participants, the lead of the extravascular ICD was inserted under the sternum, compared to transvenous ICD leads that are inserted through the veins into the heart, or subcutaneous ICDs that have a lead placed beneath the skin above the sternum. Patients with prior open-heart surgery, or who required pacing for a slow heart rate or had a pacemaker, were not candidates for this study.
This study is encouraging. By placing the lead in this new position behind the sternum, the uncommon but serious risks associated with transvenous ICDs, such as lung collapse, damage to heart valves and heart perforation, can be avoided. Limitations of the subcutaneous ICD are also overcome. Since the lead is behind the sternum and close to the heart, pacing can be delivered, and defibrillation requires less energy with a longer battery life than with the subcutaneous ICD, says Paul Friedman, M.D., a cardiac electrophysiologist, and principal global investigator and first author of the study. Dr. Friedman chairs the Department of Cardiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
The new extravascular ICD delivered anti-tachycardia pacing — rapid pacing — to painlessly terminate 70% of ventricular tachycardia episodes for which it was applied, (which is) at least as good as transvenous ICDs and not available in the subcutaneous ICD," says Dr. Friedman. "The extravascular ICD was also able to provide backup pacing to prevent pauses and was able to effectively defibrillate using a device half the size of the subcutaneous ICD."
Researchers from 17 countries participated in the study. Of the 316 patient participants with an attempted implant, 299 were discharged with a working extravascular ICD system. The defibrillation success rate was 98.7%. At six months, 92.6% of participants had no major system or procedure-related complications.
"It is important to note that electrophysiologists do not routinely place device leads behind the sternum. However, we found that with a robust training program, we could safely do so in the electrophysiology lab. Initial implantations at each site included a cardiologist and a cardiac surgeon. The average procedure time was 74 minutes, similar to that of the early subcutaneous ICD experience," says Yong-Mei Cha, M.D., director of the Implantable Device Lab at Mayo Clinic and site principal investigator of the study.
"While encouraging, these results reflect an early experience, and there is more to be learned with longer follow-up and greater usage," says Dr. Friedman. "The rates of inappropriate shock are higher than with current devices but similar or lower than the early experience with other types of defibrillators, and steps have already been taken to lower it. Additionally, this new device is not for everyone. Patients with previous open-heart surgery were excluded from the study and would not be candidates for this treatment at present."
The study was sponsored by Medtronic Inc., which also developed the device. The extravascular ICD is premarket and has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But it can be available, pending review, through a continued access study.
###
About Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.
Bacterial meningitis is a life-threatening infectious disease of the brain that leaves many survivors with long-lasting neurological impairments. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show in a study on rats that the brain’s tool for waste clearance, the glymphatic system, malfunctions during bacterial meningitis, causing a buildup of toxic garbage that damages brain cells. The findings are published in the journal mBio.
“Our study shows that the glymphatic system loses its functionality when an infection occurs in the brain,” says Federico Iovino, associate professor (docent) and group leader at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet and leading author of the study. “Even though we’ve only studied rats so far, we believe it’s possible that the same mechanisms are at play in humans and that the glymphatic system could be a new avenue to explore in the hopes of finding treatments to prevent neurological disabilities caused by bacterial meningitis.”
The glymphatic system was first described in 2013 as a sort of washing-machine that clears waste from the central nervous system, which comprises the brain and the spinal cord. Several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, have since been associated with its dysfunction.
In this study, the research group of Dr. Federico Iovino and collaborators at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in the U.S. and the University of Southern Santa Catarina in Brazil examined the glymphatic system in rats infected with the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.S.pneumoniae is the leading pathogen causing bacterial meningitis, a potentially deadly infection that in many cases leads to permanent disabilities.
The researchers found higher amounts of bacterial waste products in the brains of rats with meningitis than in a control group. The concentrations were highest in the brain’s cerebrospinal fluid compartments. In contrast, blood tests revealed low levels of bacterial components, indicating the glymphatic system had failed to drain the brain from bacteria and associated rest products. Over time, increased signs of neuroinflammation and neuronal damage were observed, with a corresponding loss of cognitive abilities.
“About half of pneumococcal meningitis survivors suffer from neurological impairments, such as hearing loss, motor and cognitive delay and psychiatric disorders, because of neurons damaged by the infection,” Federico Iovino says. “Since damaged neurons often cannot be repaired or replaced, it is important to find ways to prevent the injury, and the first step in that direction is to understand the molecular mechanisms.”
To further their understanding, the researchers examined brain tissues and cells in detail. They zeroed in on a key fluid transporter, the aquaporin-4 (AQP4)-water channel located at the end-feet of the strings of astrocytes, which are star-shaped cells that act as housekeepers of the glymphatic system.
This water channel normally regulates fluid exchanges between the cerebrospinal fluid compartments and other areas of the brain. But what the researchers found was that during pneumococcal meningitis, the AQP4-water channel lost its natural place and connection with the blood-brain barrier vessel wall. The astrocytic end-feet had detached from the vessel walls after the astrocytes swelled in response to the neuroinflammation caused by the bacterial infection.
“It’s like a snowball effect,” Federico Iovino says. “The infection causes a buildup of toxic bacterial products which activates an immune response that leads to neuroinflammation. The inflammation triggers cellular processes that lead to a detachment of astrocytic end-feet from the blood-brain barrier walls with consequent misplacement and loss of function of the important AQP4-water channel. Combined these events result in a malfunctioning glymphatic system and consequent neuronal damage.”
The study was funded by the Karolinska Institutet Committee for Research, the Karolinska Institutet Research Foundation Grants, the Swedish Research Council, the Bjarne Ahlström Foundation for research in Clinical Neurology, the Clas Groschinsky Foundation, the HKH Crown Princess Lovisa Association for Child Care, the Magnus Bergvall Foundation, the Tore Nilson Foundation, the McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of Southern Santa Catarina in Brazil, the Alzheimer's Association and the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging.
Publication: “Dysfunctional glymphatic system with disrupted aquaporin-4 expression pattern on astrocytes causes bacterial product accumulation in the CSF during pneumococcal meningitis.” Jaqueline S. Generoso*, Sigrun Thorsdottir*, Allan Collodel, Diogo Dominguini, Roberta R. E. Santo, Fabricia Petronilho, Tatiana Barichello, Federico Iovino, mBio, online Aug. 29, 2022, doi: 10.1128/mbio.01886-22 * Equal contribution
“Dysfunctional glymphatic system with disrupted aquaporin-4 expression pattern on astrocytes causes bacterial product accumulation in the CSF during pneumococcal meningitis”
Research Describes a “Health Shock” from Losing Housing Later in Life
A quarter of the participants in a long-term study of older people experiencing homelessness in Oakland died within a few years of being enrolled, UC San Francisco researchers found.
The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, recruited people who were 50 and older and homeless, and followed them for a median of 4.5 years. By interviewing people every six months about their health and housing status, researchers were able to examine how things like regaining housing, using drugs, and having various chronic conditions, such as diabetes, affected their risk of dying.
They found that people who first became homeless at age 50 or later were about 60 percent more likely to die than those who had become homeless earlier in life. But homelessness was a risk for everyone, and those who remained homeless were about 80 percent more likely to die than those who were able to return to housing.
The median age of death was 64.6 years old, and the most common causes of death for people in the study were heart disease (14.5 percent), cancer (14.5 percent), and drug overdose (12 percent).
“Becoming homeless late in life is a major shock to the system,” said Margot Kushel, MD, who directs the Benioff Housing and Homelessness Initiative and is a professor of medicine at UCSF and senior author of the study published August 29, 2022 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
“These untimely deaths highlight the critical need to prevent older adults from becoming homeless — and of intervening and rehousing those that do, quickly,” she said.
The study is unique for its prospective design. Previous studies of mortality in homeless populations were retrospective and drew information from medical records. By contrast, the current study — Health Outcomes of People Experiencing Homelessness in Older Middle agE (HOPE HOME) — followed a group of people, whether or not they received health care.
Many study participants had serious conditions that went untreated.
“We looked at how frequently people reported diagnosis of heart disease or cancer before dying of these diseases. It was really low,” said Rebecca Brown, MD, affiliated assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics at UCSF. “We think this represents a lack of access to care and delayed diagnosis. Often, we didn’t even know people were ill because they didn’t report it in their six-month interviews. But we found it on their death certificates.”
Researchers went to great lengths to track down what happened to the people in the study when they missed check-ins and couldn’t otherwise be accounted for, including looking at photos of unidentified deaths at the coroner’s office, reviewing California state death records to match their participants’ names and dates of birth, querying emergency contacts, searching social media, and reading online obituaries.
They found that as of Dec. 31, 2021, 117 of the 450 people had died since the study began enrolling in 2013. Nearly 40 percent (45) occurred after the pandemic started in March of 2020, but just three of those deaths were from COVID-19. Participants entered the study in two waves, with 350 enrolled in 2013-14 and another 100 enrolled in 2017-18; 101 of the deaths were from the first wave, and 16 were from the second.
Mortality rates were high compared to the general Oakland population. The risk of dying was 3 times higher for men and 5 times higher for women, compared to people of the same age and sex in Oakland. The median age for participants entering the study was 58, and 80 percent were black; 76 percent were male, and 24 percent were female.
The study also contained detailed information about people’s use of drugs and alcohol, as well as their mental health. But drug and alcohol use itself was not independently associated with death.
“The streets are just no place to live,” said Johná Wilcoxen, 72, who spent more than a decade living in his car when he lost Section 8 housing because his children moved out. Through his ordeal he continued working as a plumber, which gave him a place to go during the day and money for food. “The more people as we can get off the street, the better,” he said.
Authors: In addition to Kushel and Brown, the study authors include Jennifer L. Evans, MS; Karen Valle, MS; and David Guzman, MSPH, of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UCSF; and Yea-Hung Chen, PhD, of the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
Funding: National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health grants R01AG041860 and K24AG046372, and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
Disclosures: None
About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at https://ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.
BOSTON – Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-designed treatments tailor-made to fight specific infections. In early 2021, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration issued emergency use authorization for two monoclonal antibodies (bamlanivimab/etesevimab and casirivimab/imdevimab) for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in high-risk, non-hospitalized patients. However, these treatments were shown not to work against the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which emerged in the United States in December 2021 and was responsible for a record-breaking COVID-19 surge in the winter of 2021-22. As a result of the monoclonal antibodies’ reduced efficacy against the variant, the FDA deauthorized their use in early January 2022.
In a paper published in JAMA Network Open, physician-scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) assessed the use of these two monoclonal antibodies for patients with COVID-19 before and after FDA deauthorization. The team observed that though overall use of the two monoclonal antibodies declined gradually following deauthorization, a large number of doses were administered to patients well into 2022. Altogether, over 158,000 doses of monoclonal antibodies were administered, providing little to no benefit to patients and potentially contributing millions of dollars in costs. Whether the FDA will take regulatory action against those violating guidance remains unknown at this time.
“Continued use of these treatments represents low value care and may reflect conflicting state government guidance or a lack of hospital awareness of deauthorization,” said lead author Timothy Anderson, MD, MAS, Lead for Improving Value in Healthcare at Center for Healthcare Delivery Science at BIDMC and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Though the FDA clearly stated these treatments were no longer authorized for use, the FDA did not fully revoke their emergency use authorizations based on the possibility that they may work to treat future COVID-19 variants. This could have led to confusion and misinterpretation.”
Anderson and colleagues examined mandatory public reporting by hospitals to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from October 2021 to June 2022. They observed that in early 2022, hospitals administered more than 158,000 doses of the deauthorized monoclonal antibody treatments bamlanivimab/etesevimab and casirivimab/imdevimab. The researchers also saw wide variability by state in the treatments’ use following deauthorization.
While use of the ineffective medications steadily declined after deauthorization, the proportion of COVID-19 cases for which the unauthorized treatments were used did not peak until late March. Moreover, usage following deauthorization varied widely by state, with Florida and New York accounting for 24 percent and 20 percent of monoclonal antibody use in 2022 respectively. Eleven states administered more than half of their remaining supply after deauthorization, while 14 states used less than 10 percent of their remaining supply.
“We believe these findings are quite surprising and indicate a need for the FDA to investigate the continued use of treatments found to not be effective for COVID-19,” said senior author Jennifer Stevens, MD, director of the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Efforts to improve transparency, equity and value in the COVID-19 response should include public facility-level reporting for all COVID-19 therapies. We hope that our findings will lead to greater attention and more diligent regulation by health care providers and government agencies to prohibit the use of unauthorized treatments.”
Co-authors included Ashley O’Donoghue, PhD, Oren Mechanic, MD, MPH, and Tenzin Dechen, MPH, of BIDMC.
This study was funded by an unrestricted philanthropic gift from Google.org.
Anderson reports receiving grants from the National Institute on Aging, American College of Cardiology and Boston Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center outside the submitted work, and honoraria from Alosa Health, a nonprofit educational organization with no relationship to any drug or device manufacturers.
About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks as a national leader among independent hospitals in National Institutes of Health funding. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, a health care system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,800 physicians and 36,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.
About The Study: Hospitals and health systems administered more than 158,000 anti–SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) doses in early 2022 despite Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deauthorization because of a lack of efficacy against the Omicron variant. Medicare payments for mAb administration range from $450 to $750 per dose, indicating that spending on these deauthorized treatments likely exceeds $71 million. The findings suggest that the use of deauthorized mAb products was widespread, even though patients had a minimal likelihood of benefit.
Authors: Timothy S. Anderson, M.D., M.A.S., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is the corresponding author.
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.
Social scientists have urged policy-makers and governments to rethink how income inequality is measured.
In a new study published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers from the University of Exeter Business School, Harvard Business School, and the University of Bremen, found that policy-makers looking to address income inequality would be better off becoming more systematic about how to measure inequality and going beyond the most commonly used metric, the ‘Gini coefficient’.
The Gini coefficient is the most widely-used metric for understanding inequality, used by governments and statistics bureaus around the world and commonly cited in news media and policy discussions.
But according to the authors, the metric is not the most effective at measuring certain aspects of income inequality because it condenses a lot of information into a single parameter.
As a result of this shortcoming, the measure is unable to distinguish where on the income spectrum inequality is most concentrated.
Co-author Professor Jon M. Jachimowicz of the Harvard Business School explained: “If you look at the Bronx in New York and neighboring Westchester County, both have high inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient, but the Bronx’s inequality is driven predominantly by a difference between low-income and medium-to-high earners, whereas inequality in Westchester is mostly driven by the super-rich.
“If we devised policy to address inequality based solely on the Gini, we would treat the Bronx and Westchester the same. But that may not be the right thing to do.”
The researchers analysed around 3,000 US county-level income distributions – covering over 97% of the US – using 17 different models for measuring income inequality.
They found a metric comprised of two separate variables called the “Ortega parameters” outperformed the single parameter Gini co-efficient model in this dataset.
The researchers said this is because each Ortega parameter focuses on a different aspect of income distribution: the first captures income distribution between low-income earners and medium-to-high income earners, while the second captures the extent to which super-high earners compare to the rest.
An advantage of having obtained an accurate metric for measuring inequality in a given dataset is that it can reveal new insights about the relationship between inequality and policy outcomes, according to the authors.
For example, measuring inequality using the Gini co-efficient the researchers found no correlation with obesity or educational outcomes.
But using the Ortega parameters, they found links between greater ‘bottom-concentrated inequality’ (the difference between low-income and medium-to-high income earners) and more obesity and a lower share of the population having a degree.
Areas with higher top-concentrated inequality (the difference between super-high earners and the rest) were in contrast associated with less obesity and a greater share of the population having degrees.
The paper could have far reaching implications for economic research and policymakers alike.
Professor Oliver Hauser, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Exeter Business School said: “One way to understand the diverging beliefs about inequality and preferences for redistribution may be to focus on what kind of inequality people are most dissatisfied with.”
“This becomes clearer when discussing potential measures taken to redress inequality. For example, reducing top-concentrated economic inequality could be achieved by raising top income taxes, and reducing bottom-concentrated may involve raising the minimum wage.”
“Our approach and findings suggest that moving beyond the overall concentration of inequality as reflected in the Gini coefficient may be fruitful in both pinpointing how different kinds of inequality affect outcomes and how to make meaningful change to redress inequality.”
IMAGE: UC GEOLOGIST DANIEL STURMER STUDIED A MASSIVE LANDSLIDE OUTSIDE LAS VEGAS THAT SCATTERED DEBRIS OVER AN AREA THE SIZE OF A SMALL CITY MORE THAN 5 MILLION YEARS AGO.view more
CREDIT: JOSEPH FUQUA/UC
University of Cincinnati geologists reconstructed a massive landslide in Nevada that wiped out an area the size of a small city more than 5 million years ago.
UC College of Arts and Sciences graduate Nick Ferry and UC assistant professor of geology Daniel Sturmer pieced together details of the Blue Diamond landslide, a natural disaster that sent rocks and boulders tumbling more than 6 miles across what is now a desert outside Las Vegas.
The landslide in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area had such mass and force that it propelled fragmented rock 2 miles uphill, cresting the enormous Blue Diamond Hill, and flattened an area larger than downtown Cincinnati. Rubble from the landslide stretches over an area of more than 7 square miles.
“You can imagine this being pretty catastrophic in nature,” said Ferry, now a doctoral student at the University of Kansas.
The study was published in the Journal of Sedimentary Research.
The Blue Diamond catastrophe was a rock avalanche, an extremely rapid landslide that propelled fragmented rock and soil downhill at more than 5 meters per second.
Piecing together details of a landslide that occurred millions of years ago is a challenge, but geologists use a combination of field observations and laboratory analysis. By learning more about these natural disasters, researchers hope to find ways to predict future ones.
That’s becoming increasingly important as people build homes, schools and businesses in more precarious places, Sturmer said.
“Landslides are one of the major disasters in the world in areas where you have significant topography, which represents a growing percentage of where people live,” Sturmer said. “It’s critical to be able to predict these hazards and prevent them or at least be smart about construction when you’re expanding cities.
“It’s one of the critical things geoscientists are doing.”
Ferry said the landslide might have been triggered by heavy rain. This part of Nevada was much wetter millions of years ago than it is today.
“We believe one reason the landslide reached so far is because it was flowing over saturated substrate, which reduced the friction resistance,” Ferry said.
Determining the date of a landslide is a little tricky. Researchers can use radiocarbon dating for events that occurred less than 50,000 years ago. For older events, they can turn to cosmic ray exposure dating. Researchers can tell how long a rock has been exposed on the surface of the Earth by studying the isotopes of certain elements in the rocks that were affected by high-energy cosmic rays. It’s a tool also used to study the movement of glaciers.
UC researchers say the Blue Diamond landslide occurred sometime between 5 million and 23 million years ago during the Miocene Period. This was a period of rapid evolutionary diversity. One Miocene bird, Argentavis, found in South America weighed as much as 200 pounds and had a wingspan of 23 feet.
The landslide originated in the Wilson Cliffs, which today stand about 6,500 feet above sea level but were probably much higher at the time of the disaster. Material ended up 6 miles away atop Blue Diamond Hill which today stands at 4,931 feet above sea level. Sturmer said it’s possible that this hill has moved over the millennia through plate tectonics.
Regardless, the landslide would have scarred the Earth in thunderous, dramatic fashion.
“Philosophically, the way I think about landslides is that they heal the surface of the Earth. They’re big agents of change,” Sturmer said. “Plate tectonics creates these mountains with enormous potential energy. And they’re worn down by erosion and from these landslide events that reduce that potential energy.”
The study was supported by the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund and grants from the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists.
Landslides aren’t just a concern in mountainous regions. Cincinnati is extremely susceptible to landslides, Sturmer said.
Ohio’s Department of Transportation monitors and inspects more than 10,000 identified landslide-prone areas across the state. Each is rated for public risk based on its history and hazard to motorists, among other factors. The highest risk landslides are inspected each year.
“The hills in the Cincinnati area are the reason that we are so susceptible to landslides,” Sturmer said.
Ice Age glaciers created Cincinnati’s steep topography through erosion by streams and rivers that carved steep hills and valleys. Likewise, deposits from the glacier are typically loose and full of weak clays, Sturmer said. When this gets wet from heavy rain or melting snow, the hillsides can be prone to landslides, he said.
“The combination of steep-sided valleys, clay-filled, unconsolidated sediment and wet climate make the Cincinnati area one of the most landslide-prone metro areas in the country,” Sturmer said.
Geologists monitor hillsides that could threaten public safety or infrastructure and study the historical record to see if these steep hills have failed before, he said.
Sturmer said geologists look for telltale warning signs of landslide development such as crescent-shaped cracks on high slopes or the slight tilt of power poles, fence posts or trees. They also look for evidence of previous slides such as bumpy, irregular slopes or cracks in buildings or foundations and plumbing. The hillsides might have curved tree trunks from where the ground shifted or long debris scars stretching downhill, he said.
“You can see many of these features on hillsides driving around town,” he said.
Ferry said he was excited to do fieldwork as a UC geology student.
“Getting out to Nevada to see the massive scale of this landslide was amazing,” Ferry said. “As a geology student, you’re not limited to just studying geology locally. You can travel to places where you can do research that interests you.
“It was invaluable in making me a better geologist,” he said.
CAPTION
A landslide more than 5 million years ago originated at the Wilson Cliffs and covered an area of 7 square miles.
CREDIT
Nick Ferry
CAPTION
UC graduate Nick Ferry examines the geology of the Blue Diamond Hill landslide.
CREDIT
Daniel Sturmer
CAPTION
A view of the Wilson Cliffs from Blue Diamond Hill. A landslide here sent fractured rock hurtling across an area of 7 square miles.
