WAR IS ECOCIDE

Russia’s invasion could cause long-term harm to Ukraine’s prized soil
Physical and chemical damage to farmland could linger for years

A team works to destroy an unexploded missile in a field near Hryhorivka, Ukraine. War damage done to the country’s fertile soil could affect agriculture for years.
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Rebecca Dzombak
JUNE 21,2022

By now, wheat planted late last year waves in fields across Ukraine. Spring crops of sunflowers and barley are turning swaths of dark earth into a fuzz of bright green. But with Russia’s war being waged in some of the most fertile regions of Ukraine, uncertainty looms over summer harvesting.

Ukrainian farmers braved a war zone to carry out close to 80 percent of spring planting, covering roughly 14 million hectares. Still, Russia’s invasion has raised fears that not only are this year’s crop yields in jeopardy, but also that Ukraine’s agricultural output could be diminished for years. At the root of this worry, in part, is how warfare impacts soil.

Ukraine is home to some of the most fertile soil in the world, making it a top global producer of cereals, such as wheat and maize, as well as seed oils like sunflower oil. The country’s exports feed millions of people from Europe and Africa to China and Southeast Asia.

With the war in its fourth month, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates at least 20 percent of Ukraine’s crops planted in winter will remain unharvested or went unplanted. And despite farmers’ best efforts, many spring crops went unplanted. This summer’s winter wheat harvest could be cut approximately in half (a loss of about 2 million hectares) and sunflower products cut by a third.

With warfare able to degrade and contaminate soil for years, crop yields — and the people who depend on them — could suffer long after a cease-fire.

“In many ways, the welfare of the soil system in postwar nations is really intricately tied to the welfare of the people,” says soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe of University of California, Merced. “And in many ways, it’s going to dictate their long-term future, too.”
Super soil

A type of grassland soil called chernozem covers nearly two-thirds of agricultural lands in Ukraine. Meaning “black earth,” chernozem is a Ukrainian and Russian word that describes highly fertile soils distinguished by one to two meters of dark, rich organic matter. Over the last 10,000 years, it accumulated along the Eurasian steppes, slowly building up as a black bed atop fine, windblown sediments called loess, which coated the region as the glaciers retreated. At the same time in North America, grassland soils similar to chernozems called mollisols formed over the Great Plains, creating twin breadbaskets.

Chernozem (shown) is nutrient-rich dark soil that is essential for agriculture in Ukraine.

SOIL MUSEUM/SOIL EDUCATION CENTER/UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE IN KRAKÓW, COURTESY OF PIOTR PACANOWSKI

Chernozems are rich in elements that plants need to grow, such as nitrogen, potassium and calcium. Those nutrients come from organic matter and underlying loess. Chernozems also hit the sweet spot of clay content — just enough to help hold the soil together and cling onto nutrients but not so much that roots have a hard time penetrating the ground.

In their natural state, chernozems come preloaded with vitamins and minerals, like a super-smoothie of plant nutrition. “Plants growing in these soils are lucky,” Berhe says. “They’re growing in an environment that has everything they need to grow, with or without additional fertilizers or extra supplements.”
Bombing fields

There’s a term for what war does to soil: bombturbation. It’s grim wordplay on the natural process of bioturbation — earthworms and other animals stirring up soil. In this case, though, exploding bombs and artillery fire fling clods of dirt and dig craters. Joseph Hupy, a soil geomorphologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., coined the term with coauthor Randall Schaetzl in 2006 while studying soils’ battlefield scars.

At France’s World War I battlefield at Verdun, Hupy dug meter-long trenches with a backhoe across bomb craters and in their vicinity, looking for signs of disturbance. He wanted to understand how the landscape recovered, with or without human help. He found decades-old chaos beneath the surface. His cross sections revealed rubble, chunks of limestone bedrock embedded in a slurry of sandy soil and organics. That chaos was reflected on the surface too: Where there were craters, water flow had changed, leading to different patterns of vegetation growth, Hupy and a colleague reported in 2012 in Geomorphology. Because of shifts in hydrology and a lack of human management, the landscape reverted from agriculture to forest. “It’s a completely new ecosystem,” he says.

Shelling left a deep crater in a field on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine. This type of damage can change vegetation growth.

BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP PHOTO

Hupy noted similar changes at Vietnam’s Khe Sanh, which the United States heavily bombed in 1968. Aerial images of Ukrainian battle zones show pockmarked fields, reminiscent of the sites Hupy studied in Vietnam. Problems in Ukrainian soil may not be limited to the surface. Even if farmers smooth over the top of the soil, underground rubble can act like a barrier or sluice for water, which could make it harder to grow crops.

When there’s a highly compacted area beneath where the teeth of a plow can go, that impermeable layer of soil “can create standing water, and all other sorts of problems from an agricultural standpoint,” Hupy says.

Trouble with tanks

Bombs may leave some of the most obvious impacts, but they aren’t the only thing that can physically disturb soil. Soggy, thawing soils in Ukraine bogged down Russian tanks as if a metaphor of resistance: The land itself was fighting back. But what’s bad for invading tanks is also bad for the soil. When tanks roll over a field, their weight makes soil clump and stick together. Wet soil can compound the problem, exacerbating compaction. And chernozems are particularly vulnerable to compaction: With their thick layer of organic matter, they’re fluffy and light.

Compaction can temporarily cut crop yields by anywhere from 10 percent to nearly 60 percent because it makes it more difficult for roots to reach nutrients and prevents water and fertilizers from penetrating the soil. A study in International Agrophysics on compaction and crop yields in Eastern European chernozems, for instance, found chernozem-grown barley plants yielded about half the amount of crops when highly compacted. Earlier work suggested compaction could impact yields for up to five years if it reached deep enough into the chernozem. For all but the worst compaction, though, several seasons of typical planting will help heal the land, says soil scientist DeAnn Presley of Kansas State University in Manhattan.

“If you had tank traffic go right through a crop field, the farmer is probably going to go out and just till up the field pretty well after the conflict is over. And you may never see that [compaction] again,” Presley says. Compaction “will definitely look terrible and you’ll have yield losses, but I don’t think they’ll be forever or permanent.”

Outside Kharkiv, a destroyed Russian tank sits in a field. Tanks can pack down the fluffy chernozem soil and that compaction can cut crop yields.

DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A study of military vehicles rolling over prairie soils outside Fort Riley, Kan., revealed it took as little as one year for dry soil to recover from being compacted, but up to four years for wet soil to recover, both without tilling, scientists reported in Soil Science Society of America Journal. Tank traffic can alter the community of soil microbes and reduce the abundance of other organisms, like soil-aerating earthworms, for several years as well, members of the same team reported in Applied Soil Ecology.

Chernozems’ fluffiness might put it at greater risk of compaction, but it can also help the soil spring back afterward, helping prevent it from becoming a longer-term problem. Hardy, deep-rooting plants like some of Ukraine’s native grasses could also loosen stubborn soils, Presley says, but it would take years.

Chemical contamination

Countering compaction can be a relatively quick fix; not so with chemical contamination. Fuel spills, spent ammunition, chemical weapons, and animal and human remains can all foul the soil, sometimes for decades or longer.

Potentially toxic metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury can leach out of ammunition and weaponry and into the soil. Pollutants from warfare are still found in soils contaminated by wars as old as World War I, researchers reported in 2020 in Sustainability. At Ypres, a World War I battlefield in Belgium, scientists estimate that shells and artillery left more than 2,800 metric tons of copper in the top half-meter of soil. In Iran, soils remain laced with mercury and chlorine from the 1980s.

As crops grow, they can draw up these potentially toxic elements. Other elements, such as zinc and nickel, can severely stunt crop growth, says Ganga Hettiarachchi, a soil chemist also at Kansas State University. But soil contamination can be a hidden danger. If it doesn’t damage the plants, there may be no way of knowing if the soil is contaminated without careful testing, she says.

In some ways, chernozems are well-equipped to stop contaminants in their tracks in a matter of months. The soil’s organic matter and clay can trap toxic elements before they can enter a plant, sucking out contaminants – even in a matter of days in optimal lab conditions, Hettiarachchi says. But in real life, many chernozems are also slightly acidic, which can let those elements stay in a form that plants can take up for months before being stopped.

Because of this uncertainty, every potentially contaminated patch of soil must be checked to see if crops can be safely grown. “We have to monitor the soil and the crops as well, at least until we understand what’s going on,” says Hettiarachchi.

Potentially toxic metals can leach out of munitions, such as this rocket a team is working to remove from a field in Borodianka, Ukraine. Ridding the country of this weaponry could take decades.

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES

For some elements, farmers could remediate by planting plants known to extract those elements over time, says Hettiarachchi, but that would require several years of planting. Other options include altering the soils’ pH to lock away metals or adding extra fertilizer, which can also immobilize potentially toxic elements. But even after remediation occurs, farmers must test to see if soil conditions are keeping the contaminants locked away, or if the war is coming back to haunt them from the ground.

Depending on the extent of contamination, “it might not be possible for Ukrainian farmers to avoid growing in contaminated soils,” she says. Soil testing and time will tell.
Looking toward the future

With Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine still ongoing, the effect on the country’s soil is still uncertain. There are some hints, though. This isn’t the first time the Donbas region — a disputed area in eastern Ukraine — has come under fire. Russian-backed separatists attacked it beginning in 2014 too.

Scientists working in the Donbas to improve soil health there have faced a litany of challenges: The region’s agriculture already suffered from degradation due to irrigation waters polluted by coal mines, researchers reported in 2020 in Mineralogical Journal. Decades of intense farming had also taken a toll. Since 2014, conflict has exacerbated those problems, creating new issues and hampering scientists’ ability to help.

The region’s “chernozems have suffered and are experiencing irreparable military degradation,” Ukrainian soil scientists and a lawyer wrote in 2021 in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy. “It is easy to predict [the degradation of chernozems], but very difficult to overcome.”

Even as the fighting has been concentrated in eastern Ukraine, this assessment now may apply to a far broader swath of the country. “Our unique soils, chernozems, are in unprecedented conditions,” representatives from Ukraine’s Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research wrote Science News in an e-mail. “The extent of the damage has yet to be ascertained. In fact, we have just begun to work in this direction … in difficult military conditions.”

CITATIONS

J.P. Hupy and R.J. Schaetzl. Introducing “bombturbation,” a singular type of soil disturbance and mixing. Soil Science, Vol. 171, November 2006, p. 823. doi: 10.1097/01.ss.0000228053.08087.19.

J.P. Hupy and R.J. Schaetzel. Soil development on the WWI battlefield of Verdun, France. Geoderma. Vol. 145, May 2008, p. 37. doi: 10.1016/j.geoderma.2008.01.024.

J.P. Hupy and T. Koehler. Modern warfare as a significant form of zoogeomorphic disturbance upon the landscape. Geomorphology. Vol. 157-158, July 2012, p. 169. doi: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2011.05.024.

M.F. Nawaz, G. Bourrié and F. Trolard. Soil compaction impact and modelling. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development. Vol. 33, January 31, 2012, p. 291. doi: 10.1007/s13593-011-0071-8.

J. Lipiec et al. Effect of soil compaction on root growth and crop yield in Central and Eastern Europe. International Agrophysics. Vol. 17, 2003, p. 61. YADDA: bwmeta1.element.agro-article-486b0405-0d68-4f7a-9782-3fd0415d847e.

P.S. Althoff, S.J. Thien and T.C. Todd. Primary and residual effects of Abrams tank traffic on prairie soil properties. Soil Science Society of America Journal. Vol. 74, November 2010, p. 2151. doi: 10.2136/sssaj2009.0091.

P.S. Althoff et al. Response of soil microbial and invertebrate communities to tracked vehicle disturbance in tallgrass prairie. Applied Soil Ecology. Vol. 43, September 2009, p. 122. doi: 10.1016/j.apsoil.2009.06.011.

V.A. Korolev. Specific features of water permeability in virgin and cultivated chernozems. Eurasian Soil Science. Vol. 40, September 2007, p. 962. doi: 10.1134/S1064229307090062.

P. Broomandi et al. Soil contamination in areas impacted by military activity: A critical review. Sustainability. Vol. 12, 2020, p. 9002. doi: 10.3390/su12219002.

M. Van Meirvenne et al. Could shelling in the First World War have increased copper concentrations in the soil around Ypres? European Journal of Soil Science. Vol. 59, April 2008, p. 372. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2389.2007.01014.x.

N.O. Ryzhenko, S.V. Kavetsky and V.M. Kavetsky. Heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Zn, and Cu) uptake by spring barley in polluted soils. Polish Journal of Soil Science. Vol. 48, 2016, p. 111. doi: 10.17951/pjss.2015.48.1.111.

V.O. Pryvalov, O.A. Panova and A.V. Pryvalov. Geology in environmental management issues of the Donbas within the context of its forthcoming restoration. Mineralogical Journal. Vol. 42, 2020, p. 76. doi: 10.15407/mineraljournal.42.01.076.

S. Pozniak, N. Havrysh and T. Yamelynets. Chernozems of Ukraine and its evolution under the influence of anthropogenic factors. Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy.Vol. 64, 2021, p. 156.

J.P. Hupy. Khe Sanh, Vietnam: Examining the long-term impacts of warfare on the physical landscape. Chapter in Modern Military Geography. Routledge, 2010.

Meteorite Discovery Challenges Our Understanding of How Mars Formed

Sirenum Fossae on Mars. (NASA)


MICHELLE STARR
20 JUNE 2022

A small chunk of rock that once broke away from Mars and found its way to Earth may hold clues that reveal surprising details about the red planet's formation.

A new analysis of the Chassigny meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1815, suggests that the way Mars obtained its volatile gasses – such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and noble gasses – contradicts our current models about how planets form.

Planets are born, according to current models, from leftover star stuff. Stars form from a nebular cloud of dust and gas when a dense clump of material collapses under gravity. Spinning, it spools in more material from the cloud around it to grow.

This material forms a disk, whirling around the new star. Within that disk, dust and gas begin to clump together in a process that grows a baby planet. We've seen other baby planetary systems forming in this way, and evidence in our own Solar System suggests it formed the same way, around 4.6 billion years ago.

But how and when certain elements were incorporated into the planets has been tricky to piece together.

According to current models, volatile gasses are taken up by a molten, forming planet from the solar nebula. Because the planet is so hot and mushy at this stage, these volatiles are slurped into the global magma ocean that is the forming planet, before later being partially outgassed into the atmosphere as the mantle cools.

Later, more volatiles are delivered via meteorite bombardment – volatiles bound up in carbonaceous meteorites (called chondrites) are released when these meteorites break apart on introduction to the planet.

So, the interior of a planet should reflect the composition of the solar nebula, while its atmosphere should reflect mostly the volatile contribution of meteorites.

We can tell the difference between these two sources by looking at ratios of isotopes of noble gasses, particularly krypton.

And, because Mars formed and solidified relatively quickly in about 4 million years, compared to up to 100 million years for Earth, it's a good record for those very early stages of the planetary formation process.

"We can reconstruct the history of volatile delivery in the first few million years of the Solar System," said geochemist Sandrine Péron, formerly of the University of California Davis, now at ETH Zurich.

That is, of course, only if we can access the information we need – and this is where the Chassigny meteorite is a gift from space.

Its noble gas composition differs from that of the Martian atmosphere, suggesting that the chunk of rock broke away from the mantle (and flung into space, precipitating its arrival at Earth), and is representative of the planetary interior and thus the solar nebula.

Krypton is quite tricky to measure, however, so the precise isotope ratios have eluded measurement. However, Péron and her colleague, fellow geochemist Sujoy Mukhopadhyay of UC Davis, employed a new technique using the UC Davis Noble Gas Laboratory to perform a new, precise measurement of krypton in the Chassigny meteorite.

And this is where it got really weird. The krypton isotope ratios in the meteorite are closer to those associated with chondrites. Like, remarkably closer.

"The Martian interior composition for krypton is nearly purely chondritic, but the atmosphere is solar," Péron said. "It's very distinct."

This suggests that meteorites were delivering volatiles to Mars much earlier than scientists previously thought, before the solar nebula had been dissipated by solar radiation.

The order of events, therefore, would be that Mars acquired an atmosphere from the solar nebula after its global magma ocean cooled; otherwise, the chondritic gasses and the nebular gasses would be much more mixed than what the team observed.

However, this presents another mystery. When solar radiation did eventually burn away the remnants of the nebula, it ought to have burnt away the nebular atmosphere of Mars, too. This means that the atmospheric krypton present later must have been preserved somewhere; perhaps, the team suggested, in polar ice caps.

"However, that would require Mars to have been cold in the immediate aftermath of its accretion," Mukhopadhyay said.

"While our study clearly points to the chondritic gasses in the Martian interior, it also raises some interesting questions about the origin and composition of Mars' early atmosphere."

The team's research has been published in Science.

It's Worse Than We Thought: Food Miles Account For a Sickening Amount of Emissions

(Massimo Ravera/Getty Images)

JACINTA BOWLER
21 JUNE 2022

In many places around the world, grocery store produce aisles are a delightful array of colors, even in the depths of winter, when it feels like not much could grow outside.

But this year-round variety has a real cost on the planet, with a new study finding that 'food miles' account for 19 percent of all food emissions – three times more than previously thought.

Even worse, with only 12.5 percent of the world's population, high income countries generate 46 percent of the world's food-mile emissions.

"Our study estimates global food systems, due to transport, production, and land use change, contribute about 30 percent of total human-produced greenhouse gas emissions. So, food transport – at around six percent – is a sizable proportion of overall emissions," says the study's lead author, University of Sydney environmental modeling researcher Mengyu Li.

"Food transport emissions add up to nearly half of direct emissions from road vehicles."

You can imagine that modeling the entire food chain around the world is a difficult process, and most papers in the past have either looked at specific countries, or specific products (for example tomato ketchup or beef), but this isn't able to scale out to give a very good overall picture of what's happening.

"Although carbon emissions associated with food production are well documented," the team write in their new paper, "the carbon footprint of the global trade of food, accounting for the entire food supply chain, has not been comprehensively quantified."

Instead, the researchers used a framework called FoodLab to take in 74 countries, 37 economic sectors – like livestock, coal, and fruit and veg – and four transportation modes to create a model that incorporates the entire global supply-chain network.

The results are not exactly comforting. Food transport alone contributes 3 gigatonnes of emissions annually – equivalent to 19 percent of all food-related emissions, including land use.

The researchers also looked at what would happen if everyone just ate locally. The team worked out that it would reduce food miles emissions by 0.27 gigatonnes (0.24 gigatonnes for high-income countries alone!), and food production emissions by 0.11 gigatonnes.

Unfortunately, eating entirely locally is unrealistic, as some places aren't able to grow their own food, but it gives a good suggestion of where we can go from here.

"We tend to interpret information around us in simplistic terms, like 'meat is bad and vegetables are good' but we wanted a much more comprehensive picture," University of Sydney nutritional ecologist David Raubenheime told The Guardian.

"Our study shows that in addition to shifting towards a plant-based diet, eating locally is ideal, especially in affluent countries," he added.

The researchers suggest that in this case, consumers have the most chance of causing widespread change. So, for those of us in high income countries, individually choosing the local or seasonal option is one of the best ways forward.

This is particularly important with fruit and vegetables, as they need to be refrigerated to be sent around the world, creating even more emissions.

Sometimes grocery stores will include a country-of-origin label to assist in more local selections. It's even better if you know that the crop was grown in your state or area of the country.

The other issue is that many of us are now used to being able to buy avocados, asparagus, berries, and citrus at any time of year.

"One example is the habit of consumers in affluent countries demanding unseasonal foods year-round, which need to be transported from elsewhere," says Raubenheime.

"Eating local seasonal alternatives, as we have throughout most of the history of our species, will help provide a healthy planet for future generations."

You might be a little fuzzy with what fruits and vegetables are available in which seasons, so check out this link if you're in the US and want a refresher. There's other tips as well, like choosing frozen or canned vegetables when not in season, as these are able to be stored when they are most plentiful.

The research has been published in Nature Food.

Olive trees were first domesticated 7,000 years ago, study finds

Researchers: 'Earliest evidence for cultivation of a fruit tree'

Date: June 16, 2022

Source: Tel-Aviv University

Summary:

A new study has unraveled the earliest evidence for domestication of a fruit tree, researchers report. The researchers analyzed remnants of charcoal from the Chalcolithic site of Tel Zaf in the Jordan Valley and determined that they came from olive trees. Since the olive did not grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, this means that the inhabitants planted the tree intentionally about 7,000 years ago.

FULL STORY

A joint study by researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University unraveled the earliest evidence for domestication of a fruit tree. The researchers analyzed remnants of charcoal from the Chalcolithic site of Tel Zaf in the Jordan Valley and determined that they came from olive trees. Since the olive did not grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, this means that the inhabitants planted the tree intentionally about 7,000 years ago.

The groundbreaking study was led by Dr. Dafna Langgut of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology & Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University. The charcoal remnants were found in the archaeological excavation directed by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University. The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports from the publishers of Nature.

Dr. Langgut: "I am the head of the Laboratory of Archaeobotany & Ancient Environments, which specializes in microscopic identification of plant remains. Trees, even when burned down to charcoal, can be identified by their anatomic structure. Wood was the 'plastic'of the ancient world. It was used for construction, for making tools and furniture, and as a source of energy. That's why identifying tree remnants found at archaeological sites, such as charcoal from hearths, is a key to understanding what kinds of trees grew in the natural environment at the time, and when humans began to cultivate fruit trees."

In her lab, Dr. Langgut identified the charcoal from Tel Zaf as belonging to olive and fig trees. "Olive trees grow in the wild in the land of Israel, but they do not grow in the Jordan Valley," she says. "This means that someone brought them there intentionally -- took the knowledge and the plant itself to a place that is outside its natural habitat. In archaeobotany, this is considered indisputable proof of domestication, which means that we have here the earliest evidence of the olive's domestication anywhere in the world. I also identified many remnants of young fig branches. The fig tree did grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, but its branches had little value as either firewood or raw materials for tools or furniture, so people had no reason to gather large quantities and bring them to the village. Apparently, these fig branches resulted from pruning, a method still used today to increase the yield of fruit trees."

The tree remnants examined by Dr. Langgut were collected by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University, who headed the dig at Tel Zaf. Prof. Garfinkel: "Tel Zaf was a large prehistoric village in the middle Jordan Valley south of Beit She'an, inhabited between 7,200 and 6,700 years ago. Large houses with courtyards were discovered at the site, each with several granaries for storing crops. Storage capacities were up to 20 times greater than any single family's calorie consumption, so clearly these were caches for storing great wealth. The wealth of the village was manifested in the production of elaborate pottery, painted with remarkable skill. In addition, we found articles brought from afar: pottery of the Ubaid culture from Mesopotamia, obsidian from Anatolia, a copper awl from the Caucasus, and more."

Dr. Langgut and Prof. Garfinkel were not surprised to discover that the inhabitants of Tel Zaf were the first in the world to intentionally grow olive and fig groves, since growing fruit trees is evidence of luxury, and this site is known to have been exceptionally wealthy.

Dr. Langgut: "The domestication of fruit trees is a process that takes many years, and therefore befits a society of plenty, rather than one that struggles to survive. Trees give fruit only 3-4 years after being planted. Since groves of fruit trees require a substantial initial investment, and then live on for a long time, they have great economic and social significance in terms of owning land and bequeathing it to future generations -- procedures suggesting the beginnings of a complex society. Moreover, it's quite possible that the residents of Tel Zaf traded in products derived from the fruit trees, such as olives, olive oil, and dried figs, which have a long shelf life. Such products may have enabled long-distance trade that led to the accumulation of material wealth, and possibly even taxation -- initial steps in turning the locals into a society with a socio-economic hierarchy supported by an administrative system."

Dr. Langgut concludes: "At the Tel Zaf archaeological site we found the first evidence in the world for the domestication of fruit trees, alongside some of the earliest stamps -- suggesting the beginnings of administrative procedures. As a whole, the findings indicate wealth, and early steps toward the formation of a complex multilevel society, with the class of farmers supplemented by classes of clerks and merchants."

Journal Reference:Dafna Langgut, Yosef Garfinkel. 7000-year-old evidence of fruit tree cultivation in the Jordan Valley, Israel. Scientific Reports, 2022; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-10743-6

Researchers reconstruct the genome of centuries-old E. coli using fragments extracted from an Italian mummy

Date:June 16, 2022

Source:McMaster University

Summary: 

Researchers have identified and reconstructed the first ancient genome of E. coli, using fragments extracted from the gallstone of a 16th century mummy.

FULL STORY

An international team led by researchers at McMaster University, working in collaboration with the University of Paris Cité, has identified and reconstructed the first ancient genome of E. coli, using fragments extracted from the gallstone of a 16th century mummy.

The discovery is published online today in the journal Communications Biology.

E. coli is a major public health concern, causing significant death and morbidity, yet is not a source of pandemics. It is known as a commensal, a bacteria that resides within us and can act asan opportunistic pathogen infecting its host during periods of stress, underlying disease or immunodeficiency.

Its full evolutionary history remains a mystery, including when it acquired novel genes and antibiotic resistance, say researchers.

Unlike well-documented pandemics such as the Black Death, which lingered for centuries and killed as many as 200 million people worldwide, there are no historical records of deaths caused by commensals such as E. coli, though the impact on human health and mortality was likely tremendous.

"A strict focus on pandemic-causing pathogens as the sole narrative of mass mortality in our past misses the large burden that stems from opportunistic commmensals driven by the stress of lives lived," says evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, who is director of McMaster's Ancient DNA Centre and a principal investigator at the university's Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.

Modern E. coli iscommonly found in the intestines of healthy people and animals. While most forms are harmless, some strains are responsible for serious, sometimes fatal food poisoning outbreaks and bloodstream infections. The hardy and adaptable bacterium is recognized as especially resistant to treatment.

Having the genome of a 400-year-old ancestor to the modern bacterium provides researchers a point of comparison for studying how it has evolved and adapted since that time.

The mummified remains used for the new study come from a group of Italian nobles whose well-preserved bodies were recovered from the Abbey of Saint Domenico Maggiore in Naples in 1983.

For the study, the researchers conducted a detailed analysis of one of the individuals, Giovani d'Avalos. A Neapolitan noble from the Renaissance period, he was 48 when he died in 1586, and thought to have suffered from chronic inflammation of the gallbladder due to gallstones.

"When we were examining these remains, there was no evidence to say this man had E. coli. Unlike an infection like smallpox, there are no physiological indicators. No one knew what it was," explains lead author of the study, George Long, a graduate student of bioinformatics at McMaster who conducted the analysis with co-lead author Jennifer Klunk, a former graduate student in the university's Department of Anthropology.

The technological feat is particularly remarkable because E. coli is both complex and ubiquitous, living not only in the soil but also in our own microbiomes. Researchers had to meticulously isolate fragments of the target bacterium, which had been degraded by environmental contamination from many sources. They used the recovered material to reconstruct the genome.

"It was so stirring to be able to type this ancient E. coli and find that while unique it fell within a phylogenetic lineage characteristic of human commensals that is today still causing gallstones," says Erick Denamur, the leader of the French team that was involved in the strain characterisation.

"We were able to identify what was an opportunistic pathogen, dig down to the functions of the genome, and to provide guidelines to aid researchers who may be exploring other, hidden pathogens," says Long.

The work was done in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pisa and the Université Paris Cité /French Institute of Medical Research (INSERM) and is funded by the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research.

Journal Reference:George S. Long, Jennifer Klunk, Ana T. Duggan, Madeline Tapson, Valentina Giuffra, Lavinia Gazzè, Antonio Fornaciari, Sebastian Duchene, Gino Fornaciari, Olivier Clermont, Erick Denamur, G. Brian Golding, Hendrik Poinar. A 16th century Escherichia coli draft genome associated with an opportunistic bile infection. Communications Biology, 2022; 5 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03527-1

Once seen as fleeting, a new solar tech proves its lasting power

30-year perovskite solar cells and the new approach to testing them for the long  haul

Date:June 16, 2022Source:Princeton University, Engineering School

Summary:

Researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. The team projects their device can perform above industry standards for around 30 years, far more than the 20 years used as a threshold for viability for solar cells.

FULL STORY

Princeton Engineering researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology. The team projects their device can perform above industry standards for around 30 years, far more than the 20 years used as a threshold for viability for solar cells.

The device is not only highly durable, it also meets common efficiency standards. It is the first of its kind to rival the performance of silicon-based cells, which have dominated the market since their introduction in 1954.

Perovskites are semiconductors with a special crystal structure that makes them well suited for solar cell technology. They can be manufactured at room temperature, using much less energy than silicon, making them cheaper and more sustainable to produce. And whereas silicon is stiff and opaque, perovskites can be made flexible and transparent, extending solar power well beyond the iconic panels that populate hillsides and rooftops across America.

But unlike silicon, perovskites are notoriously fragile. Early perovskite solar cells (PSC), created between 2009 and 2012, lasted only minutes. The projected lifetime of the new device represents a five-fold increase over the previous record, set by a lower efficiency PSC in 2017. (That device operated under continuous illumination at room temperature for one year. The new device would operate for five years under similar lab conditions.)

The Princeton team, led by Lynn Loo, the Theodora D. '78 and William H. Walton III '74 Professor in Engineering, revealed their new device and their new method for testing such devices in a paper published June 16 in Science.

Loo said the record-setting design has highlighted the durable potential of PSCs, especially as a way to push solar cell technology beyond the limits of silicon. But she also pointed past the headline result to her team's new accelerated aging technique as the work's deeper significance.

"We might have the record today," she said, "but someone else is going to come along with a better record tomorrow. The really exciting thing is that we now have a way to test these devices and know how they will perform in the long term."

Due to perovskites' well-known frailty, long-term testing hasn't been much of a concern until now. But as the devices get better and last longer, testing one design against another will become crucial in rolling out durable, consumer-friendly technologies.

"This paper is likely going to be a prototype for anyone looking to analyze performance at the intersection of efficiency and stability," said Joseph Berry, a senior fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who specializes in the physics of solar cells and who was not involved in this study. "By producing a prototype to study stability, and showing what can be extrapolated [through accelerated testing], it's doing the work everyone wants to see before we start field testing at scale. It allows you to project in a way that's really impressive."

While efficiency has accelerated at a remarkable pace over the past decade, Berry said, the stability of these devices has improved more slowly. For them to become widespread and rolled out by industry, testing will need to become more sophisticated. That's where Loo's accelerated aging process comes in.

"These kinds of tests are going to be increasingly important," Loo said. "You can make the most efficient solar cells, but it won't matter if they aren't stable."

How they got here

Early in 2020, Loo's team was working on various device architectures that would maintain relatively strong efficiency -- converting enough sunlight to electric power to make them valuable -- and survive the onslaught of heat, light and humidity that bombard a solar cell during its lifetime.

Xiaoming Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Loo's lab, had been working on a number of designs with colleagues. The efforts layered different materials in order to optimize light absorption while protecting the most fragile areas from exposure. They developed an ultra-thin capping layer between two crucial components: the absorbing perovskite layer and a charge-carrying layer made from cupric salt and other substances. The goal was to keep the perovskite semiconductor from burning out in a matter of weeks or months, the norm at that time.

It's hard to comprehend how thin this capping layer is. Scientists use the term 2D to describe it, meaning two dimensions, as in something that has no thickness at all. In reality, it's merely a few atoms thick -- more than a million times smaller than the smallest thing a human eye can see. While the idea of a 2D capping layer isn't new, it is still considered a promising, emerging technique. Scientists at NREL have shown that 2D layers can greatly improve long-haul performance, but no one had developed a device that pushed perovskites anywhere close to the commercial threshold of a 20-year lifetime.

Zhao and his colleagues went through scores of permutations of these designs, shifting minute details in the geometry, varying the number of layers, and trying out dozens of material combinations. Each design went into the light box, where they could irradiate the sensitive devices in relentless bright light and measure their drop in performance over time.

In the fall of that year, as the first wave of the pandemic subsided and researchers to returned to their labs to tend to their experiments in carefully coordinated shifts, Zhao noticed something odd in the data. One set of the devices still seemed to be operating near its peak efficiency.

"There was basically zero drop after nearly half a year," he said.

That's when he realized he needed a way to stress test his device faster than his real-time experiment allowed.

"The lifetime we want is about 30 years, but you can't take 30 years to test your device," Zhao said. "So we need some way to predict this lifetime within a reasonable timeframe. That's why this accelerated aging is very important."

The new testing method speeds up the aging process by illuminating the device while blasting it with heat. This process speeds up what would happen naturally over years of regular exposure. The researchers chose four aging temperatures and measured results across these four different data streams, from the baseline temperature of a typical summer day to an extreme of 230 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than the boiling point of water.

They then extrapolated from the combined data and forecast the device's performance at room temperature over tens of thousands of hours of continuous illumination. The results showed a device that would perform above 80 percent of its peak efficiency under continuous illumination for at least five years at an average temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Using standard conversion metrics, Loo said that's the lab equivalent of 30 years of outdoor operation in an area like Princeton, NJ.

Berry of NREL concurred. "It's very credible," he said. "Some people are still going to want to see it play out. But this is much more credible science than a lot of other attempts at forecasting."

The Michael Jordan of solar cells

Perovskite solar cells were pioneered in 2006, with the first published devices following in 2009. Some of the earliest devices lasted only seconds. Others minutes. In the 2010s the device lifetimes grew to days and weeks and finally months. Then in 2017, a group from Switzerland published a groundbreaking paper on a PSC that lasted for one full year of continuous illumination.

Meanwhile, the efficiency of these devices has skyrocketed over the same period. While the first PSC showed a power-conversion efficiency of less than 4 percent, researchers boosted that metric nearly tenfold in as many years. It was the fastest improvement scientists had seen in any class of renewable-energy technology to date.

So why the push for perovskites? Berry said a combination of recent advances make them uniquely desirable: newly high efficiencies, an extraordinary "tunability" that allows scientists to make highly specific applications, the ability to manufacture them locally with low energy inputs, and now a credible forecast of extended life coupled with a sophisticated aging process to test a wide array of designs.

Loo said it's not that PSCs will replace silicon devices so much that the new technology will complement the old, making solar panels even cheaper, more efficient and more durable than they are now, and expanding solar energy into untold new areas of modern life. For example, her group recently demonstrated a completely transparent perovskite film (having different chemistry) that can turn windows into energy producing devices without changing their appearance. Other groups have found ways to print photovoltaic inks using perovskites, allowing formfactors scientists are only now dreaming up.

But the main advantage in the long run, according to both Berry and Loo: Perovskites can be manufactured at room temperature, whereas silicon is forged at around 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. That energy has to come from somewhere, and at the moment that means burning a lot of fossil fuels.

Berry added this: Because scientists can tune perovskite properties easily and broadly, they allow disparate platforms to work smoothly together. That could be key in wedding silicon with emerging platforms such as thin-film and organic photovoltaics, which have also made great progress in recent years.

"It's sort of like Michael Jordan on the basketball court," he said. "Great on its own, but it also makes all the other players better."


Journal Reference:Xiaoming Zhao, Tianran Liu, Quinn C. Burlingame, Tianjun Liu, Rudolph Holley, Guangming Cheng, Nan Yao, Feng Gao, Yueh-Lin Loo. Accelerated aging of all-inorganic, interface-stabilized perovskite solar cells. Science, 2022; DOI: 10.1126/science.abn5679

Engineers create single-step, all-in-one 3D printing method to make robotic materials

Advance shows promise for 'meta-bots' designed to deliver drugs or aid rescue missions

Date:June 16, 2022

Source:University of California - Los Angeles

Summary:

Engineers have developed a new design strategy and 3D printing technique to build robots in one single step. The breakthrough enabled the entire mechanical and electronic systems needed to operate a robot to be manufactured all at once by a new type of 3D printing process for engineered active materials with multiple functions (also known as metamaterials). Once 3D printed, a 'meta-bot' will be capable of propulsion, movement, sensing and decision-making.

A team of UCLA engineers and their colleagues have developed a new design strategy and 3D printing technique to build robots in one single step.

A study that outlined the advance, along with the construction and demonstration of an assortment of tiny robots that walk, maneuver and jump, was published in Science.

The breakthrough enabled the entire mechanical and electronic systems needed to operate a robot to be manufactured all at once by a new type of 3D printing process for engineered active materials with multiple functions (also known as metamaterials). Once 3D printed, a "meta-bot" will be capable of propulsion, movement, sensing and decision-making.

The printed metamaterials consist of an internal network of sensory, moving and structural elements and can move by themselves following programmed commands. With the internal network of moving and sensing already in place, the only external component needed is a small battery to power the robot.

"We envision that this design and printing methodology of smart robotic materials will help realize a class of autonomous materials that could replace the current complex assembly process for making a robot," said the study's principal investigator Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. "With complex motions, multiple modes of sensing and programmable decision-making abilities all tightly integrated, it's similar to a biological system with the nerves, bones and tendons working in tandem to execute controlled motions."

The team demonstrated the integration with an on-board battery and controller for the fully autonomous operation of the 3D printed robots -- each at the size of a finger nail. According to Zheng, who is also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, the methodology could lead to new designs for biomedical robots, such as self-steering endoscopes or tiny swimming robots, which can emit ultrasounds and navigate themselves near blood vessels to deliver drug doses at specific target sites inside the body.

These "meta-bots" can also explore hazardous environments. In a collapsed building, for example, a swarm of such tiny robots armed with integrated sensing parts could quickly access confined spaces, assess threat levels and help rescue efforts by finding people trapped in the rubble.

Most robots, no matter their size, are typically built in a series of complex manufacturing steps that integrate the limbs, electronic and active components. The process results in heavier weights, bulkier volumes and reduced force output compared to robots that could be built using this new method.

The key in the UCLA-led, all-in-one method is the design and printing of piezoelectric metamaterials -- a class of intricate lattice materials that can change shape and move in response to an electric field or create electrical charge as a result of physical forces.

The use of active materials that can translate electricity to motions is not new. However, these materials generally have limits in their range of motion and distance of travel. They also need to be connected to gearbox-like transmission systems in order to achieve desired motions.

By contrast, the UCLA-developed robotic materials -- each the size of a penny -- are composed of intricate piezoelectric and structural elements that are designed to bend, flex, twist, rotate, expand or contract at high speeds.

The team also presented a methodology to design these robotic materials so users could make their own models and print the materials into a robot directly.

"This allows actuating elements to be arranged precisely throughout the robot for fast, complex and extended movements on various types of terrain," said the study's lead author Huachen Cui, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in Zheng's Additive Manufacturing and Metamaterials Laboratory. "With the two-way piezoelectric effect, the robotic materials can also self-sense their contortions, detect obstacles via echoes and ultrasound emissions, as well as respond to external stimuli through a feedback control loop that determines how the robots move, how fast they move and toward which target they move."

Using the technique, the team built and demonstrated three "meta-bots" with different capabilities. One robot can navigate around S-shaped corners and randomly placed obstacles, another can escape in response to a contact impact, while the third robot could walk over rough terrain and even make small jumps.

Other UCLA authors of the study are graduate students Desheng Yao, Ryan Hensleigh, Zhenpeng Xu and Haotian Lu; postdoctoral scholar Ariel Calderon; development engineering associate Zhen Wang. Additional authors are Sheyda Davaria, a research associate at Virginia Tech; Patrick Mercier, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego; and Pablo Tarazaga, a professor of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University.

The research was supported by a Young Faculty Award and a Director's Fellowship Award from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with additional funding from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

The advance incorporates 3D printing techniques previously developed by Zheng and Hensleigh while both were researchers at Virginia Tech, which holds the patent. The researchers plan to file an additional patent through the UCLA Technology Development Group for the new methodology developed at UCLA.


Related Multimedia:3D-printed "meta-bot"

Journal Reference:Huachen Cui, Desheng Yao, Ryan Hensleigh, Haotian Lu, Ariel Calderon, Zhenpeng Xu, Sheyda Davaria, Zhen Wang, Patrick Mercier, Pablo Tarazaga, Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng. Design and printing of proprioceptive three-dimensional architected robotic metamaterials. Science, 2022; 376 (6599): 1287 DOI: 10.1126/science.abn0090

Missing for Decades: Researchers Identify Over 500 Species As “Lost”

By SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY JUNE 19, 2022

Researchers have reviewed the data of over 32,000 species and identified 562 of those species as “lost.” 75 of these 562 lost species are categorized as “possibly extinct.”

A new study has identified 562 lost species

An international study provides the first worldwide assessment of all terrestrial vertebrate species that have not been declared extinct and finds more than 500 ‘lost’ species—those that have not been observed by anybody in more than 50 years.

Researchers examined data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List) of 32,802 species and identified 562 lost species. On May 16th, 2022, their results were published in the journal Animal Conservation.

Black-browed babbler, a songbird species endemic to Borneo that went unrecorded for 172 years before being rediscovered in 2020. Credit: Panji Akbar

Extinct is defined by the IUCN Red List as “when there is no reasonable doubt the last individual of a species has died,” which can be hard to prove. According to Arne Mooers, a biodiversity professor at Simon Fraser University and research co-author, the Red List classifies 75 of the 562 lost species as ‘probably extinct.’ The presence of numerous species with unknown conservation status may become more problematic if the extinction crisis worsens and more species disappear, according to the researchers.

Since 1500, 311 terrestrial vertebrate species have been declared extinct, indicating that 80% more species are deemed lost than are pronounced extinct

Reptiles led the way with 257 species considered lost, followed by 137 species of amphibians, 130 species of mammals, and 38 species of birds. Most of these lost animals were last seen in megadiverse countries such as Indonesia (69 species), Mexico (33 species), and Brazil (29 species).

Miles’ robber frog (Craugastor milesi), is endemic to Honduras and thought to be extinct but was rediscovered in 2008. Credit: Tom Brown

While not surprising, this concentration is important, according to researchers. “The fact most of these lost species are found in megadiverse tropical countries is worrying, given such countries are expected to experience the highest numbers of extinctions in the coming decades,” says study lead author Tom Martin from the UK’s Paignton Zoo.

Mooers, who anchored the study, says: “While theoretical estimates of ongoing ‘extinction rates’ are fine and good, looking hard for actual species seems better.”

Gareth Bennett, an SFU undergraduate student who did much of the data combing, adds: “We hope this simple study will help make these lost species a focus in future searches.”

The authors suggest that future survey efforts concentrate on the identified ‘hotspots’ where the existence of many particular species remains in question. More funding would be needed to support such hotspot-targeted fieldwork to either rediscover lost species or to remove the reasonable doubt that a particular lost species does, in fact, still exist.

Reference: “‘Lost’ taxa and their conservation implications” by T. E. Martin, G. C. Bennett, A. Fairbairn and A. O. Mooers, 16 May 2022, Animal Conservation.
DOI: 10.1111/acv.12788

SwRI scientists identify a possible source for Charon’s red cap

Research combined spacecraft data with new lab experiments, models of Pluto’s largest moon

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE SCIENTISTS COMBINED DATA FROM NASA’S NEW HORIZONS MISSION WITH NOVEL LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS AND EXOSPHERIC MODELING TO REVEAL THE LIKELY COMPOSITION OF THE RED CAP ON PLUTO’S MOON CHARON AND HOW IT MAY HAVE FORMED. NEW FINDINGS SUGGEST DRASTIC SEASONAL SURGES IN CHARON’S THIN ATMOSPHERE COMBINED WITH LIGHT BREAKING DOWN THE CONDENSING METHANE FROST MAY BE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF CHARON’S RED POLAR ZONES. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA / JOHNS HOPKINS APL / SWRI

SAN ANTONIO — June 21, 2022 — Southwest Research Institute scientists combined data from NASA’s New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modeling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto’s moon Charon and how it may have formed. This first-ever description of Charon’s dynamic methane atmosphere using new experimental data provides a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this moon’s red spot as described in two recent papers.

“Prior to New Horizons, the best Hubble images of Pluto revealed only a fuzzy blob of reflected light,” said SwRI’s Randy Gladstone, a member of the New Horizons science team. “In addition to all the fascinating features discovered on Pluto’s surface, the flyby revealed an unusual feature on Charon, a surprising red cap centered on its north pole.”

Soon after the 2015 encounter, New Horizons scientists proposed that a reddish “tholin-like” material at Charon’s pole could be synthesized by ultraviolet light breaking down methane molecules. These are captured after escaping from Pluto and then frozen onto the moon’s polar regions during their long winter nights. Tholins are sticky organic residues formed by chemical reactions powered by light, in this case the Lyman-alpha ultraviolet glow scattered by interplanetary hydrogen molecules.

“Our findings indicate that drastic seasonal surges in Charon’s thin atmosphere as well as light breaking down the condensing methane frost are key to understanding the origins of Charon’s red polar zone,” said SwRI’s Dr. Ujjwal Raut, lead author of a paper titled “Charon’s Refractory Factory” in the journal Science Advances. “This is one of the most illustrative and stark examples of surface-atmospheric interactions so far observed at a planetary body.”

The team realistically replicated Charon surface conditions at SwRI’s new Center for Laboratory Astrophysics and Space Science Experiments (CLASSE) to measure the composition and color of hydrocarbons produced on Charon’s winter hemisphere as methane freezes beneath the Lyman-alpha glow. The team fed the measurements into a new atmospheric model of Charon to show methane breaking down into residue on Charon’s north polar spot.

“Our team’s novel ‘dynamic photolysis’ experiments provided new limits on the contribution of interplanetary Lyman-alpha to the synthesis of Charon’s red material,” Raut said. “Our experiment condensed methane in an ultra-high vacuum chamber under exposure to Lyman-alpha photons to replicate with high fidelity the conditions at Charon’s poles.”

SwRI scientists also developed a new computer simulation to model Charon’s thin methane atmosphere.

“The model points to ‘explosive’ seasonal pulsations in Charon’s atmosphere due to extreme shifts in conditions over Pluto’s long journey around the Sun,” said Dr. Ben Teolis, lead author of a related paper titled “Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot” in Geophysical Research Letters.

The team input the results from SwRI’s ultra-realistic experiments into the atmospheric model to estimate the distribution of complex hydrocarbons emerging from methane decomposition under the influence of ultraviolet light. The model has polar zones primarily generating ethane, a colorless material that does not contribute to a reddish color.

“We think ionizing radiation from the solar wind decomposes the Lyman-alpha-cooked polar frost to synthesize increasingly complex, redder materials responsible for the unique albedo on this enigmatic moon,” Raut said. “Ethane is less volatile than methane and stays frozen to Charon’s surface long after spring sunrise. Exposure to the solar wind may convert ethane into persistent reddish surface deposits contributing to Charon’s red cap.”

“The team is set to investigate the role of solar wind in the formation of the red pole,” said SwRI’s Dr. Josh Kammer, who secured continued support from NASA’s New Frontier Data Analysis Program.

“Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot” in Geophysical Research Letters can be found at https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097580.

“Charon’s refractory factory” article in ScienceAdvances can be found at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq5701.

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Southwest Research Institute directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern, and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.

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JOURNAL

Geophysical Research Letters

DOI

10.1029/2021GL097580 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

“Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot”

75% of teens aren’t getting recommended daily exercise

New study suggests supportive school environment is linked to higher physical activity levels

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Three out of every four teens aren’t getting enough exercise, and this lack is even more pronounced among female students.

But new research from the University of Georgia suggests improving a school’s climate can increase physical activity among adolescents.

School environments play a critical role in helping children develop healthy behaviors, like creating healthy eating habits, said lead study author Janani R. Thapa. And the same goes for physical activity.

“The length of recess, physical facilities and social environments at schools have been found to affect physical activity among students,” said Thapa, an associate professor of health policy and management at UGA’s College of Public Health.

The state of Georgia has implemented policies and programs to boost physical activity in K-12 schools. Thapa has been one of the lead evaluators of these programs.

“Over time, the state has observed declining levels of physical activity among all adolescents, but the rate is higher among female middle and high school students,” she said.

Thapa suspected that school climate could play an important role in determining how comfortable students feel participating in school sports or other physical activity. School climate includes factors such as social support, safety and bullying.

“We do not know much about the role of school climate on physical activity,” said Thapa. “There must have been barriers that were faced by certain groups of students. Hence, we wanted to investigate the difference by gender.”

Using data from a statewide survey of over 360,000 Georgia high school students that included questions about physical activity levels and school climate, Thapa and her co-authors were able to test that relationship.

The data included eight characteristics of climate: school connectedness, peer social support, adult social support, cultural acceptance, physical environment, school safety, peer victimization (bullying) and school support environment.

Overall, female students reported less physical activity than their male counterparts, only 35% were active compared to 57% of males. And physical activity declined steadily from ninth grade to 12th grade for both genders.

However, students of both genders were more physically active when school climate was perceived to be positive across most measures.

One thing that stood out was the influence of bullying. Female students who reported being bullied were more likely to be physically active, while male students who reported being bullied were less likely to be physically active.

Bullying was the only measure of school climate that differed for male and female students. This disparity could be explained, said the authors, by the different norms about exercise and masculine versus feminine ideals.

“For example, female students who are active in sports and physically active may not fit the gender norm and hence may face bullying,” said Thapa.

These findings suggest that K-12 schools that want to promote participation in physical activity should consider how to improve students’ sense of safety at school and bolster peer and adult support of exercise.

Co-authors include Justin Ingels, Kiran Thapa and Kathryn Chiang with UGA’s College of Public Health and Isha Metzger with UGA’s Department of Psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

The study, “School climate-related determinants of physical activity among high school girls and boys,” published in the Journal of Adolescence.

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DOI

10.1002/jad.12052 

ARTICLE TITLE

School climate-related determinants of physical activity among high school girls and boys