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, October 19, 2020
Deep sea coral time machines reveal ancient CO2 burps
IMAGE: CORAL IMAGES: ANALYSIS OF THE FOSSIL REMAINS OF DEEP-SEA CORALS (PICTURED HERE) WERE USED TO EXAMINE THE HISTORY OF THE OCEANS AND CONNECTIONS TO GLOBAL CLIMATE. view more
CREDIT: DANN BLACKWOOD, USGS.
The fossilised remains of ancient deep-sea corals may act as time machines providing new insights into the effect the ocean has on rising CO2 levels, according to new research carried out by the Universities of Bristol, St Andrews and Nanjing and published today [16 October] in Science Advances.
Rising CO2 levels helped end the last ice age, but the cause of this CO2 rise has puzzled scientists for decades. Using geochemical fingerprinting of fossil corals, an international team of scientists has found new evidence that this CO2 rise was linked to extremely rapid changes in ocean circulation around Antarctica.
The team collected fossil remains of deep-sea corals that lived thousands of metres beneath the waves. By studying the radioactive decay of the tiny amounts of uranium found in these skeletons, they identified corals that grew at the end of the ice age around 15,000 years ago.
Further geochemical fingerprinting of these specimens - including measurements of radiocarbon - allowed the team to reconstruct changes in ocean circulation and compare them to changes in global climate at an unprecedented time resolution.
Professor Laura Robinson, Professor of Geochemistry at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences who led the research team, said: "The data show that deep ocean circulation can change surprisingly rapidly, and that this can rapidly release CO2 to the atmosphere."
Dr James Rae at St Andrew's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, added: "The corals act as a time machine, allowing us to see changes in ocean circulation that happened thousands of years ago.
"They show that the ocean round Antarctica can suddenly switch its circulation to deliver burps of CO2 to the atmosphere."
Scientists have suspected that the Southern Ocean played an important role in ending the last ice age and the team's findings add weight to this idea.
Dr Tao Li of Nanjing University, lead author of the new study, said: "There is no doubt that Southern Ocean processes must have played a critical role in these rapid climate shifts and the fossil corals provide the only possible way to examine Southern Ocean processes on these timescales."
In another study published in Nature Geoscience this week the same team ruled out recent speculation that the global increase in CO2 at the end of the ice age may have been related to release of geological carbon from deep sea sediments.
Andrea Burke at St Andrew's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, added: "There have been some suggestions that reservoirs of carbon deep in marine mud might bubble up and add CO2 to the ocean and the atmosphere, but we found no evidence of this in our coral samples."
Dr Tianyu Chen of Nanjing University said: "Our robust reconstructions of radiocarbon at intermediate depths yields powerful constraints on mixing between the deep and upper ocean, which is important for modelling changes in circulation and carbon cycle during the last ice age termination.
Dr James Rae added: "Although the rise in CO2 at the end of the ice age was dramatic in geological terms, the recent rise in CO2 due to human activity is much bigger and faster. What the climate system will do in response is pretty scary."
IMAGE: RICE PADDIES WHICH WERE ORIGINALLY WETLAND ARE ABLE TO PROVIDE A NEW HOME FOR THE ORIGINAL WETLAND PLANT SPECIES THAT WERE PRESENT. CONVERSELY, PADDIES WHICH WERE NOT ORIGINALLY WETLAND ARE... view more
CREDIT: TOKYO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University studied the biodiversity of wetland plants over time in rice paddies in the Tone River basin, Japan. They found that paddies which were more likely to have been wetland before agricultural use retained more wetland plant species. On the other hand, land consolidation and agricultural abandonment were both found to negatively impact biodiversity. Their findings may one day inform conservation efforts and promote sustainable agriculture.
The Asian monsoon region is home to a vast number of rice paddies. Not only have they fed its billions of inhabitants for centuries, they are also an important part of the ecosystem, home to a vast array of wetland plant species. But as the population grows and more agricultural land is required, their sheer scale and complexity beg an important question: what is their environmental impact?
A team from Tokyo Metropolitan University led by Associate Professor Takeshi Osawa and their collaborators have been studying how rice paddies affect local plant life. In their most recent work, they investigated the biodiversity of wetland plants in rice paddies around the Tone River basin Japan. The Tone River is Japan's second longest river, and runs through the 170,000 square kilometer expanse of the Kanto plains. Previous studies have looked at how a particular species or group of species fare in different conditions. Instead, the team turned their attention to the range of species that make up the plant community, with a particular focus on the number of wetland and non-wetland species present. Changes were tracked over time using extensive survey data from 2002, 2007 and 2012.
They found that not all rice paddies are equal when it comes to how well they support original wetland species. In fact, there was a correlation between how likely it was that the land was wetland before it was put to agricultural use, and the number of wetland species which were retained over time. Here, the team measured this using flow accumulation values (FAVs) for different plots of land, a simple metric which showed how easily water could accumulate. Importantly, this kind of approach might help us predict how amenable new rice paddies might be to the local wetland flora by calculating a simple number using the local terrain. However, they also found that things like land consolidation and agricultural abandonment could also have a negative impact. The emerging story is that both current human usage and original geographical conditions play an important role in deciding how 'friendly' rice paddies could be for the original wetland ecosystem.
The team believe that the same approach could be applied to different locations such as plantation forests which were (or were not) originally woodland. After all, many nations are turning to large scale tree planting to offset carbon emissions. The ability to systematically 'assign' how new land usage might impact local ecosystems is sure to greatly help restoration and conversation efforts.
###
This work was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (4-1805, 4-1705) of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan, the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN: a constituent member of NIHU) Core Project No. 14200075, and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 20K06096.
Glimpse deep into Earth's crust finds heat source that may stabilize continents
IMAGE: ROCKS COLLECTED FROM KILBOURNE HOLE CRATER IN NEW MEXICO REVEALED THE THINNING LITHOSPHERE IN THE RIO GRANDE CONTINENTAL RIFT PROVIDES HEAT NECESSARY TO STABILIZE CONTINENTS OVER BILLIONS OF YEARS. view more
CREDIT: PENN STATE
Rocks from the Rio Grande continental rift have provided a rare snapshot of active geology deep inside Earth's crust, revealing new evidence for how continents remain stable over billions of years, according to a team of scientists.
"We tend to study rocks that are millions to billions of years old, but in this case we can show what's happening in the deep crust, nearly 19 miles below the surface of the Earth, in what geologically speaking is the modern day," said Jacob Cipar, a graduate student in geosciences at Penn State. "And we have linked what's preserved in these rocks with tectonic processes happening today that may represent an important step in the development of stable continents."
The team, led by Penn State scientists, found evidence that heat from the mantle is melting the lower crust at the rift, where tectonic forces are pulling apart and thinning the lithosphere, or the crust and upper mantle that make up the rigid outer layer of Earth.
Heating the continental crust is considered important to its development. But the process is often associated with crustal thickening, when continental plates collide and form mountains like the Himalayas, the scientists said.
"Our research suggests that these rocks that have been thought of as related to mountain building may have actually been cooked by a thinning lithosphere like what's happening in the modern-day Rio Grande rift," Cipar said. "And more broadly, thinning lithosphere may be more important than previously recognized for stabilizing continents and preventing them from sinking back into the mantle."
The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Earth's continents feature a unique silicon-rich, buoyant crust that allows land to rise above sea level and host terrestrial life, the scientists said. The crust also contains heat-producing elements like uranium that could destabilize it over geological time.
Heating the crust creates molten rock that carries those elements toward the surface, resulting in a cooler and stronger lower crust that can protect continents from being absorbed into the mantle, the scientists said. But questions remain about the sources of that heat.
"We are suggesting that thinning of the lithosphere is really the removal of a barrier that keeps that heat away from the crust," said Andrew Smye, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State and Cipar's adviser. "Removing or thinning that barrier at the Rio Grande rift appears to be what is generating the heat needed to initiate this process of stabilizing continental crust. And this has been overlooked in our understanding of how continents become so stable."
The scientists tapped into rocks brought to the surface 20,000 years ago by volcanoes in New Mexico. The rocks are considered geologically young and are significant because they retain the context of the lower crust, the scientists said.
"In contrast, what we see in the rock record around the world is that oftentimes what it takes to get them up to the surface has disrupted their original relationship with the lower crust," said Joshua Garber, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State. "This makes it really challenging to use older rocks to try to understand tectonics, and it makes the Rio Grande probably the best place to do this research."
The scientists used analytical techniques to link the age of minerals in the rocks to the pressure and temperature they faced as they made their way through the crust.
Similarities between the pressure and temperature path from the Rio Grande lower crust and rocks from other locations suggest that a thinning lithosphere is important for stabilizing Earth's continents, the scientists said.
"The snapshots of data we do have from other locations really nicely aligns with what we found in the Rio Grande rift," Garber said. "So that tells us this is not just happening now in the western United States. This shows the guts of continents have probably undergone this globally at least for the last billion years."
###
Andrew Kylander-Clark, a senior development engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also contributed to this work.
The National Science Foundation and the Slingerland Early Career Fellowship at Penn State supported the research.
Why school bullying prevention programs that involve peers may be harmful to victims
School bullying has been identified as harmful to students' mental health. Many studies have evaluated the effectiveness of bullying prevention programs, finding mixed results in general and no benefits overall for secondary school students. Looking at the specific components of bullying prevention programs helps to explain the complicated pattern: Unlike intensive programs that include parent training, firm disciplinary methods or improved playground supervision, interventions that involve work with peers tend to lead to increases in bullying. A new review explores why encouraging peers to defend victims may actually cause more harm than good.
The analysis was written by a researcher at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and the University of Queensland, Brisbane. It appears in Child Development Perspectives, a journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.
"Many school bullying prevention programs encourage and train peer bystanders (helpers) to get actively involved in assisting with possible instances of bullying," said Karyn L. Healy, research officer from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, who authored the analysis. "Although this approach is very common and well-intentioned, there is no evidence that it helps victims. Encouraging peers to actively defend victims of bullying may actually produce adverse outcomes for victims."
Most research on the effectiveness of bullying prevention programs assumes that each program affects bullying and victimization in a simple and unified way. But many programs combine a range of different strategies and participants, which are likely to produce differential effects.
Healy identified several mechanisms through which bystander interventions that involve peer defense of the victim could increase victimization and distress of victims: 1) by disempowering victims, 2) by reinforcing or provoking bullying, or 3) by eroding broader support for victims by the peer group.
"Having lots of peers involved makes the situation more public, which can be damaging to the social reputation of victims," said Healy. "Having a trained bystander step in also prevents the victim from handling a situation themselves and may make them look weak in the eyes of the bully. Training students to intervene in bullying also has the potential of leading to overuse of peer defense strategies because of benefits to helpers, such as making helpers feel they have higher status or increasing helpers' feelings of belonging in school."
Recent evidence suggests that even when programs are successful in reducing bullying, they may still be harmful to the individual students who are victimized the most. "This could potentially be the case for any program that aims to reduce overall bullying without taking into account the impacts on victims," explains Healy.
To lessen the risk to vulnerable students, Healy suggests that schools be wary of bullying prevention programs that lack evidence of effectiveness for reducing bullying and victimization. Schools should avoid using strategies that boost peer visibility of victimization (e.g., identifying a victim in a class meeting). In addition, evaluations of bullying prevention programs that look at the school as a whole should be cautious of hidden negative outcomes for individual students who remain victimized.
###
Summarized from Child Development Perspectives, Hypotheses for Possible Iatrogenic Impacts of School Bullying Prevention Programs by Healy, KL (QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and the University of Queensland, Brisbane). Copyright 2020 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cannabis reduces OCD symptoms by half in the short-term
PULLMAN, Wash. - People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, report that the severity of their symptoms was reduced by about half within four hours of smoking cannabis, according to a Washington State University study.
The researchers analyzed data inputted into the Strainprint app by people who self-identified as having OCD, a condition characterized by intrusive, persistent thoughts and repetitive behaviors such as compulsively checking if a door is locked. After smoking cannabis, users with OCD reported it reduced their compulsions by 60%, intrusions, or unwanted thoughts, by 49% and anxiety by 52%.
The study, recently published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, also found that higher doses and cannabis with higher concentrations of CBD, or cannabidiol, were associated with larger reductions in compulsions.
"The results overall indicate that cannabis may have some beneficial short-term but not really long-term effects on obsessive-compulsive disorder," said Carrie Cuttler, the study's corresponding author and WSU assistant professor of psychology. "To me, the CBD findings are really promising because it is not intoxicating. This is an area of research that would really benefit from clinical trials looking at changes in compulsions, intrusions and anxiety with pure CBD."
The WSU study drew from data of more than 1,800 cannabis sessions that 87 individuals logged into the Strainprint app over 31 months. The long time period allowed the researchers to assess whether users developed tolerance to cannabis, but those effects were mixed. As people continued to use cannabis, the associated reductions in intrusions became slightly smaller suggesting they were building tolerance, but the relationship between cannabis and reductions in compulsions and anxiety remained fairly constant.
Traditional treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder include exposure and response prevention therapy where people's irrational thoughts around their behaviors are directly challenged, and prescribing antidepressants called serotonin reuptake inhibitors to reduce symptoms. While these treatments have positive effects for many patients, they do not cure the disorder nor do they work well for every person with OCD.
"We're trying to build knowledge about the relationship of cannabis use and OCD because it's an area that is really understudied," said Dakota Mauzay, a doctoral student in Cuttler's lab and first author on the paper.
Aside from their own research, the researchers found only one other human study on the topic: a small clinical trial with 12 participants that revealed that there were reductions in OCD symptoms after cannabis use, but these were not much larger than the reductions associated with the placebo.
The WSU researchers noted that one of the limitations of their study was the inability to use a placebo control and an "expectancy effect" may play a role in the results, meaning when people expect to feel better from something they generally do. The data was also from a self-selected sample of cannabis users, and there was variability in the results which means that not everyone experienced the same reductions in symptoms after using cannabis.
However, Cuttler said this analysis of user-provided information via the Strainprint app was especially valuable because it provides a large data set and the participants were using market cannabis in their home environment, as opposed to federally grown cannabis in a lab which may affect their responses. Strainprint's app is intended to help users determine which types of cannabis work the best for them, but the company provided the WSU researchers free access to users' anonymized data for research purposes.
Cuttler said this study points out that further research, particularly clinical trials on the cannabis constituent CBD, may reveal a therapeutic potential for people with OCD.
This is the fourth study Cuttler and her colleagues have conducted examining the effects of cannabis on various mental health conditions using the data provided by the app created by the Canadian company Strainprint. Others include studies on how cannabis impacts PTSD symptoms, reduces headache pain, and affects emotional well-being.
###
UMD-led study shows fear and anxiety share same bases in brain
Transformational findings could ultimately lead to better models of emotion and more effective interventions for anxiety and depression
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Anxiety, the most common family of mental illnesses in the U.S., has been pushed to epic new heights by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that nearly 1 in 3 U.S. adults and a staggering 41% of people ages 18-29 experienced clinically significant anxiety symptoms in late August. Now, the findings of a recent UMD-led study indicate that some long-accepted thinking about the basic neuroscience of anxiety is wrong.
The report by an international team of researchers led by Alexander Shackman, an associate professor of psychology at UMD, and Juyoen Hur, an assistant professor of psychology at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, provides new evidence that fear and anxiety reflect overlapping brain circuits. The findings run counter to popular scientific accounts, highlighting the need for a major theoretical reckoning. The study was published last week in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"The conceptual distinction between 'fear' and 'anxiety' dates back to the time of Freud, if not the Greek philosophers of antiquity," said Shackman, a core faculty member of UMD's Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, and 2018 recipient of a seed grant award from UMD's Brain and Behavior Initiative, "In recent years, brain imagers and clinicians have extended this distinction, arguing that fear and anxiety are orchestrated by distinct neural networks.
However, Shackman says their new study adds to a rapidly growing body of new evidence suggesting that this old mode is wrong. "If anything, fear and anxiety seem to be constructed in the brain using a massively overlapping set of neural building blocks," he said.
Prevailing scientific theory holds that fear and anxiety are distinct, with different triggers and strictly segregated brain circuits. Fear--a fleeting reaction to certain danger--is thought to be controlled by the amygdala, a small almond-shaped region buried beneath the wrinkled convolutions of the cerebral cortex. By contrast, anxiety--a persistent state of heightened apprehension and arousal elicited when threat is uncertain--is thought to be orchestrated by the neighboring bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). But new evidence from Shackman and his colleagues suggests that both of these brain regions are equally sensitive to certain and uncertain kinds of threats.
Leveraging cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques available at the Maryland Neuroimaging Center, their research team used fMRI to quantify neural activity while participants anticipated receiving a painful shock paired with an unpleasant image and sound--a new task that the researchers dubbed the "Maryland Threat Countdown".
The timing of this "threat" was signaled either by a conventional countdown timer--i.e. "3, 2, 1..."--or by a random string of numbers--e.g. "16, 21, 8." In both conditions, threat anticipation recruited a remarkably similar network of brain regions, including the amygdala and the BNST. Across a range of head-to-head comparisons, the two showed statistically indistinguishable responses.
The team examined the neural circuits engaged while waiting for certain and uncertain threat (i.e. "fear" and "anxiety"). Results demonstrated that both kinds of threat anticipation recruited a common network of core brain regions, including the amygdala and BNST.
These observations raise important questions about the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework that currently guides the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health's quest to discover the brain circuitry underlying anxiety disorders, depression, and other common mental illnesses. "As it is currently written, RDoC embodies the idea that certain and uncertain threat are processed by circuits centered on the amygdala and BNST, respectively. It's very black-and-white thinking," Shackman noted, emphasizing that RDoC's "strict-segregation" model is based on data collected at the turn of the century.
"It's time to update the RDoC so that it reflects the actual state of the science. It's not just our study; in fact, a whole slew of mechanistic studies in rodents and monkeys, and new meta-analyses of the published human imaging literature are all coalescing around the same fundamental scientific lesson: certain and uncertain threat are processed by a shared network of brain regions, a common core," he said.
As the crown jewel of NIMH's strategic plan for psychiatric research in the U.S., the RDoC framework influences a wide range of biomedical stakeholders, from researchers and drug companies to private philanthropic foundations and foreign funding agencies. Shackman noted that the RDoC has an outsized impact on how fear and anxiety research is designed, interpreted, peer reviewed, and funded here in the U.S. and abroad.
"Anxiety disorders impose a substantial and growing burden on global public health and the economy," Shackman said, "While we have made tremendous scientific progress, existing treatments are far from curative for many patients. Our hope is that research like this study can help set the stage for better models of emotion and, ultimately, hasten the development of more effective intervention strategies for the many millions of children and adults around the world who struggle with debilitating anxiety and depression."
###
This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and University of Maryland, College Park.
The research team also included Allegra S. Anderson, Vanderbilt University; Jinyi Kuang, University of Pennsylvania; Manuel Kuhn, Harvard Medical School; Andrew S. Fox, University of California, Davis; and Jason F. Smith, Rachael M. Tillman, Hyung Cho Kim, and Kathryn A. DeYoung, all from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Driver of the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth identified
New study provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the Permian-Triassic boundary event
Life on Earth has a long, but also an extremely turbulent history. On more than one occasion, the majority of all species became extinct and an already highly developed biodiversity shrank to a minimum again, changing the course of evolution each time. The most extensive mass extinction took place about 252 million years ago. It marked the end of the Permian Epoch and the beginning of the Triassic Epoch. About three quarters of all land life and about 95 percent of life in the ocean disappeared within a few thousands of years only.
Gigantic volcanic activities in today's Siberia and the release of large amounts of methane from the sea floor have been long debated as potential triggers of the Permian-Triassic extinction. But the exact cause and the sequence of events that led to the mass extinction remained highly controversial. Now, scientists from Germany, Italy and Canada, in the framework of the EU-funded project BASE-LiNE Earth led by Prof. Dr. Anton Eisenhauer from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in cooperation with the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, have for the first time been able to conclusively reconstruct the entire cascade of events at that time using cutting-edge analytical techniques and innovative geochemical modelling. The study has been published today in the international journal Nature Geoscience.
For their study, the BASE-LiNE Earth team used a previously often neglected environmental archive: the shells of fossil brachiopods. "These are clam-like organisms that have existed on Earth for more than 500 million years. We were able to use well-preserved brachiopod fossils from the Southern Alps for our analyses. These shells were deposited at the bottom of the shallow shelf seas of the Tethys Ocean 252 million years ago and recorded the environmental conditions shortly before and at the beginning of extinction", explains Dr. Hana Jurikova. She is first author of the study, which she conducted as part of the BASE-LiNE Earth project and her doctoral thesis at GEOMAR.
By measuring different isotopes of the element boron in the fossil shells, the team was able to trace the development of the pH values in the ocean 252 million years ago. Since seawater pH is tightly coupled to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, the reconstruction of the latter was also possible. For the analyses, the team used high-precision isotope analyses at GEOMAR as well as high-resolution microanalyses on the state-of-the-art large-geometry secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) at GFZ.
"With this technique, we can not only reconstruct the evolution of the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but also clearly trace it back to volcanic activity. The dissolution of methane hydrates, which had been suggested as a potential further cause, is highly unlikely based on our data", explains Dr. Marcus Gutjahr from GEOMAR, co-author of the study.
As a next step, the team fed their data from the boron and additional carbon isotope-based investigations into a computer-based geochemical model that simulated the Earth's processes at that time. Results showed that warming and ocean acidification associated with the immense volcanic CO2 injection to the atmosphere was already fatal and led to the extinction of marine calcifying organisms right at the onset of the extinction. However, the CO2 release also brought further consequences; with increased global temperatures caused by the greenhouse effect, chemical weathering on land also increased.
Over thousands of years, increasing amounts of nutrients reached the oceans via rivers and coasts, which then became over-fertilized. The result was a large-scale oxygen depletion and the alteration of entire elemental cycles. "This domino-like collapse of the inter-connected life-sustaining cycles and processes ultimately led to the observed catastrophic extent of mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic boundary," summarizes Dr. Jurikova.
The study was conducted within the framework of the EU-funded ITN project BASE-LiNE Earth, in which the use of brachiopods as an environmental archive was systematically studied for the first time, and relevant analytical methods were improved and newly developed. "Without these new techniques it would be difficult to reconstruct environmental processes more than 250 million years ago in the same level of detail as we have done now", emphasizes Prof. Dr. Anton Eisenhauer from GEOMAR, the former BASE-LiNE Earth project coordinator and co-author of the new study, "in addition, the new methods can be applied for other scientific applications".
###
LSU Health New Orleans review suggests HNB tobacco products may threaten health
New Orleans, LA - A review of heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco products from the laboratory of Dr. Jason Gardner, Professor of Physiology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, reports an association with elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, cell death, and circulatory dysfunction shown by early studies. Additionally, chemicals found in the vapor produced by HNB devices have previously been shown to impair lung function, put users at risk of heart attack and stroke, cause cancers, increase circulating low-density lipoprotein ("bad cholesterol") and more. The review is published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, available online here.
Cigarette smoking continues to decline globally, but vaping is becoming more popular, especially among youth and young adults. Recent cases of vaping-associated lung injury may lead consumers to try new methods of nicotine consumption. Heat-not-burn products are newcomers to the U.S. market. They produce nicotine-containing vapor by heating tobacco at low temperatures. This is in contrast to cigarettes that use high temperatures to burn tobacco and produce smoke or e-cigarettes that heat e-liquid, which contains nicotine but not tobacco, to produce vapor.
Due to the novelty of these products, little research has been conducted on HNB devices. The Gardner lab compiled findings from dozens of human, animal, and cell culture studies to determine associated inhalants and potential health effects, with an emphasis on the heart, arteries, and veins. Findings suggest that HNB devices produce fewer pollutants than cigarettes, but it is unclear if these reductions are reflected in health outcomes of users.
"While relatively new to the U.S., heat-not-burn products have become popular in other countries including Japan, Italy, and Korea," notes lead author Nicholas Fried, an MD/PhD student in Dr. Gardner's laboratory. "These products are often touted as a replacement for cigarettes, but the evidence does not necessarily support that. Almost all Korean users of heat-not-burn products are also current cigarette smokers; nearly half of Italian users had never even smoked a cigarette. These trends worryingly suggest that heat-not-burn may be a compliment or gateway to cigarette smoking, rather than a 'healthy' replacement. More troubling, nearly 2% of high school students in the U.S. are already using HNB tobacco products, and surveys show that 25% of students are susceptible to trying them. There is potential for these devices to become a significant public health issue."
Dr. Gardner adds, "Heat-not-burn devices are marketed as a safer alternative to cigarettes for existing smokers. However, as we have learned from vaping and e-cigarettes, these products are very likely to be used by minors and never-smokers due to marketing, flavor options, and lack of social stigma that is found with traditional cigarettes."
The authors conclude, "Use of these products can lead to nicotine addiction and additional clinical, basic science, and epidemiological studies are needed to better understand the health effects of HNB products. This knowledge will assist consumers, physicians, lawmakers, and regulatory bodies in making informed decisions about these products."
###
The authors are supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's flagship health sciences university, LSU Health New Orleans includes a School of Medicine with branch campuses in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, Nursing, and Graduate Studies. LSU Health New Orleans faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSU Health New Orleans research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSU Health New Orleans faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu, http://www.twitter.com/LSUHealthNO, or http://www.facebook.com/LSUHSC.
IMAGE: A MAP SHOWS LOW, MID-RANGE AND HIGH ESTIMATES FOR THEORETICAL WATER-HOLDING CAPACITY CHANGES IN SOIL WITH THE ADDITION OF BIOCHAR. A STUDY BY RICE UNIVERSITY SCIENTISTS SHOWED HOW BIOCHAR CAN... view more
CREDIT: MASIELLO LAB/RICE UNIVERSITY
HOUSTON - (Oct. 19, 2020) - The abstract benefits of biochar for long-term storage of carbon and nitrogen on American farms are clear, and now new research from Rice University shows a short-term, concrete bonus for farmers as well.
That would be money. To be precise, money not spent on irrigation.
In the best-case scenarios for some regions, extensive use of biochar could save farmers a little more than 50% of the water they now use to grow crops. That represents a significant immediate savings to go with the established environmental benefits of biochar.
The open-access study appears in the journal GCB-Bioenergy.
Biochar is basically charcoal produced through pyrolysis, the high-temperature decomposition of biomass, including straw, wood, shells, grass and other materials. It has been the subject of extensive study at Rice and elsewhere as the agriculture industry seeks ways to enhance productivity, sequester carbon and preserve soil.
The new model built by Rice researchers explores a different benefit, using less water.
"There's a lot of biochar research that focuses mostly on its carbon benefits, but there's fairly little on how it could help stakeholders on a more commercial level," said lead author and Rice alumna Jennifer Kroeger, now a fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "It's still an emerging field."
The study co-led by Rice biogeochemist Caroline Masiello and economist Kenneth Medlock provides formulas to help farmers estimate irrigation cost savings from increased water-holding capacity (WHC) with biochar amendment.
The researchers used their formulas to reveal that regions of the country with sandy soils would see the most benefit, and thus the most potential irrigation savings, with biochar amendment, areas primarily in the southeast, far north, northeast and western United States.
The study analyzes the relationship between biochar properties, application rates and changes in WHC for various soils detailed in 16 existing studies to judge their ability to curtail irrigation.
The researchers defined WHC as the amount of water that remains after allowing saturated soil to drain for a set period, typically 30 minutes. Clay soils have a higher WHC than sandy soils, but sandy soils combined with biochar open more pore space for water, making them more efficient.
WHC is also determined by pore space in the biochar particles themselves, with the best results from grassy feedstocks, according to their analysis.
In one comprehensively studied plot of sandy soil operated by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Agricultural Water Management Network, Kroeger calculated a specific water savings of 37.9% for soil amended with biochar. Her figures included average rainfall and irrigation levels for the summer of 2019.
The researchers noted that lab experiments typically pack more biochar into a soil sample than would be used in the field, so farmers' results may vary. But they hope their formula will be a worthy guide to those looking to structure future research or maximize their use of biochar.
More comprehensive data for clay soils, along with better characterization of a range of biochar types, will help the researchers build models for use in other parts of the country, they wrote.
"This study draws attention to the value of biochar amendment especially in sandy soils, but it's important to note that the reason we are calling out sandy soils here is because of a lack of data on finer-textured soils," Masiello said. "It's possible that there are also significant financial benefits on other soil types as well; the data just weren't available to constrain our model under those conditions."
"Nature-based solutions are gaining traction at federal, state and international levels," Medlock added, noting the recently introduced Growing Climate Solutions Act as one example. "Biochar soil amendment can enhance soil carbon sequestration while providing significant co-benefits, such as nitrogen remediation, improved water retention and higher agricultural productivity. The suite of potential benefits raises the attractiveness for commercial action in the agriculture sector as well as supportive policy frameworks."
###
Rice alumna Ghasideh Pourhashem, a nonresident faculty scholar at the Center for Energy Studies (CES) at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy, is co-author of the paper. Masiello is the W. Maurice Ewing Professor, a professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences and a faculty scholar at the CES. Medlock is the James A. Baker, III, and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics at the Baker Institute, senior director of the CES and an adjunct assistant professor of economics.
The Rice Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and the Rice Shell Center for Sustainability supported the research.
Biochar's benefits for the long-term sequestration of carbon and nitrogen on American farms are clear, but new research from Rice University shows it can help farmers save money on irrigation as well. The study showed that sandy soil, in particular, gains ability to retain more water when amended with biochar. (Credit: Masiello Lab/Rice University)
A map shows low, mid-range and high estimates for theoretical water-holding capacity changes in soil with the addition of biochar. A study by Rice University scientists showed how biochar can help curtail excess irrigation in agriculture, depending on the type of soil and biochar characteristics. (Credit: Masiello Lab/Rice University)
Rice University alumna Jennifer Kroeger led a study that shows how America's farmers could save money on irrigation through the use of biochar. (Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Kroeger/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,978 undergraduates and 3,192 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review.
LISTERIA
American Frozen Food Institute's international expert panel publishes new manuscript
Arlington, VA - The American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) announces the publication of a new manuscript, "Alternative Approaches to the Risk Management of Listeria monocytogenes in Low Risk Foods," now available online in Food Control, an international scientific journal for food safety and process control professionals.
The manuscript represents the proceedings and recommendations of AFFI's Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) International Expert Panel, comprised of eminent researchers in Listeria science, epidemiology, risk modeling, food microbiology, and regulatory and public health policy. AFFI assembled the expert panel in December 2018 as part of its efforts to merge available Lm research and data with the most recent scientific thinking on regulatory policies governing the prevalence of Lm in foods. The panel set out with the objective to develop a scientific basis and rationale for Lm regulatory policies.
"The frozen food industry is committed to advancing food safety practices to prevent and control Listeria monocytogenes," said AFFI President and CEO Alison Bodor. "We're grateful for the insights and guidance from the Lm International Expert Panel and believe their new recommendations should guide practical and sustained approaches to Listeria regulatory policy that improve public health."
Key elements of the manuscript include discussions on:
The importance of using risk-based approaches to regulate the presence of Lm across the broad category of ready-to-eat foods.
The benefits of policies that acknowledge the ubiquity of Lm and encourage finding and destroying, controlling cross contamination and preventing growth of the pathogen.
A framework to facilitate further reduction of public health impact relative to Lm by expending limited resources (aLmost solely) on high-risk foods.
Establishing a regulatory action level for low-risk foods, particularly where foods do not support growth of Lm.
Alternate sampling and testing protocols to address Lm risk.
Effective testing by industry of low-risk foods to better protect public health.
This latest publication furthers AFFI's commitment to raising the bar on food safety practices to help prevent and control Lm. AFFI has undertaken numerous efforts to advance understanding of Lm through scientific research, innovation, education and training, including launching the AFFI Food Safety Zone.
###
About AFFI
The American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) is the member-driven national trade association that advances the interests of all segments of the frozen food and beverage industry. AFFI works to advance food safety and advocates before legislative and regulatory entities on the industry's behalf to create an environment where members' foods and beverages are proudly chosen to meet the needs of a changing world.
