#BANFLARING

Mapping intermittent methane emissions across the Permian Basin

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS HAVE MAPPED LARGE, INTERMITTENT SOURCES OF METHANE EMISSIONS (SHOWN FLARING HERE) ACROSS THE PERMIAN BASIN. view more 

CREDIT: LESLIE VON PLESS/ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND (EDF)

The Permian Basin, located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico, is the largest oil- and gas-producing region in the U.S. The oilfield operations emit methane, but quantifying the greenhouse gas is difficult because of the large area and the fact that many sources are intermittent emitters. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology Letters have conducted an extensive airborne campaign with imaging spectrometers and identified large methane sources across this area.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 38% of the nation's total oil and 17% of natural gas production took place in the Permian Basin in 2020. Therefore, quantifying emissions from these operations, which continue to expand rapidly, is of great interest to environmental scientists. Previous studies have tried to estimate methane leakage in the Permian Basin through satellite images or mobile field studies, but either the spatial resolution was too coarse to quantify methane coming from individual sources, or the studies were limited to small areas or timeframes. So Daniel Cusworth and colleagues from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Arizona and Arizona State University formed a collaboration. They wanted to quantify strong methane point source emissions (greater than 22-44 pounds of methane per hour) in the Permian Basin using airborne imaging spectrometry, a technology that would allow high-resolution mapping of those sources across large areas and multiple overflights.

From September to November 2019, the researchers conducted repeated flights in airplanes carrying imaging spectrometers, covering about 21,000 square miles and 60,000 active wells in the Permian Basin. The spectrometers detected 1,100 unique large methane point sources that were sampled at least three times. Most of these sources were highly intermittent (detected 25% or fewer of the times sampled). However, sources that were routinely persistent (detected 50-100% of the time) comprised 11% of the methane emitters but 29% of the total detected emissions, possibly indicating leaking equipment that needs repair. Half of the detected methane came from oil and gas production wells, 38% from pipelines and other equipment used to collect and transport oil and gas, and 12% from processing plants. These results show that frequent, high-resolution monitoring is necessary to understand intermittent methane emitters across large areas and to pinpoint persistent leaks for mitigation, the researchers say.

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The authors acknowledge funding from NASA, the University of Arizona, Carbon Mapper Inc. and the High Tide Foundation.

The paper's abstract will be available on June 2 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00173

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS' mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world's scientific knowledge. ACS' main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

 

Acoustic solutions made from natural fibers can reduce buildings' carbon footprints

Aalto University researchers discovered that wood-based pulp fibers are also well-suited for making acoustic materials

AALTO UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: IN HIS RESEARCH, CUCHARERO MODELLED THE EFFECT OF ACOUSTIC SOLUTIONS ON THE SOUNDSCAPE OF THREE DIFFERENT SPACES. ONE EXAMPLE OF THE EFFECTS OF ACOUSTICS BASED ON CELLULOSE FIBRES IS THE... view more 

CREDIT: MIKKO RASKINEN/AALTO UNIVERSITY

Good acoustics in the workspace improve work efficiency and productivity, which is one of the reasons why acoustic materials matter. The acoustic insulation market is already expected to hit 15 billion USD by 2022 as construction firms and industry pay more attention to sound environments. Researchers at Aalto University, in collaboration with Finnish acoustics company Lumir, have now studied how these common elements around us could become more eco-friendly, with the help of cellulose fibres.

'Models for acoustic absorption are based on tests done with synthetic fibres, and natural fibres don't adhere to these models. With natural fibres like cellulose, we can use thinner structures to achieve the same sound absorption as synthetic fibres,' says Jose Cucharero, a doctoral student at Aalto University.

Cucharero's research explores the effect of natural fibres' properties on sound absorption and how these fibres can be used in room acoustics. Synthetic fibres, such as fibreglass and rockwool, are uniform in quality. Cellulose fibres have a complex structure with natural irregularities, which can be an asset for absorbing sound indoors. The origin of fibres also seems to matter: his research has found that hardwood fibres absorb sound better than softwood fibres. Based on the research, this can be attributed to the smaller dimensions of the hardwood fibres.

In addition to their excellent acoustic properties, cellulose fibres also have positive environmental impacts compared to traditional acoustic materials. The production of cellulose fibres is considerably more energy-efficient, and the fibres also absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Using the fibre in construction materials is an effective way to store carbon: buildings last for decades, unlike single-use packaging and paper where cellulose is typically used.

'Acoustics solutions based on cellulose fibres can be applied to a wide range of facilities. For example, acoustic sprays -- which can be used on any surface to create a porous, sound-absorbing layer -- can significantly improve the comfort of buildings under renovation without changing their visual appearance,' Cucharero says.

Research results are already used in product development

Alongside his doctoral dissertation, Jose Cucharero works at Lumir Oy, which produces acoustic solutions in line with the principles of the circular economy. The results of the dissertation are used in the development of new cellulose-based acoustics solutions, and the study has been rapidly applied in product development.

The commercial perspective is also complemented by tests that ensure the products' scalable manufacturing and fire resistance. Based on the results, an industrially scalable process has been developed for the production of acoustic panels based on cellulose fibres.

'Governments around the world have set out to become carbon neutral. We can't achieve this by simply reducing emissions; we need to also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in products.' , says Lumir's R&D Director Tuomas Hänninen, Doctor of Technology and Jose Cucharero's thesis advisor.

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Findings have been most recently published in Frontiers of Built Environment and Cellulose.

 

Study of UK dental professionals shows extent of occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Research News

 

A University of Birmingham-led study of over a thousand dental professionals has shown their increased occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK.

The observational cohort study, published today (3 June 2021), in the Journal of Dental Research, involved 1,507 Midland dental care practitioners. Blood samples were taken from the cohort at the start of the study in June 2020 to measure their levels of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The team found 16.3% of study participants - which included dentists, dental nurses and dental hygienists - had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, compared to just 6% of the general population at the time. Meanwhile, the percentage of dental practice receptionists, who have no direct patient contact, with SARS-CoV-2 antibodies was comparable to the general population, supporting the hypothesis that occupational risk arose from close exposure to patients.

The study also found ethnicity was also a significant risk factor for infection, with 35% of Black participants and 18.8% of Asian participants having SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, compared to 14.3% of white participants.

Blood samples were taken from participants three months later, in September 2020, when dental practices in England had re-opened with enhanced PPE and infection control measures in place, and once again in January 2021, six months after the start of the study, during the second wave of the pandemic when healthcare workers were being vaccinated.

The results showed that of those who had previous COVID-19 infection, over 70% continued to have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies both at three months and six months later, and they were at a 75% reduced risk of re-infection with the virus.

The study also demonstrated the immunological impact of COVID-19 vaccination, with 97.7% of those without previous infection developing an antibody response at least 12 days after their first Pfizer vaccine. In those with evidence of previous infection, the antibody response was more rapid and higher in magnitude after a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Furthermore, none of the cohort with a level of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies greater than 147.6 IU/ml in their blood tested positive for COVID-19 throughout the six-month period from the first to the final blood tests.

First author Dr Adrian Shields, of the University of Birmingham's Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy, said: "Understanding what an antibody test result means to an individual with respect to their risk of infection is essential to controlling the pandemic.

"Our study has taken the first steps in defining the level of antibody in a persons' blood necessary to protect them from infection for six months. Furthermore, by comparing the antibody levels we have found in dentists to those contained in widely available reference material produced by the World Health Organization, we hope the protective level we found can be easily confirmed and compared by other laboratories."

Corresponding author Professor Thomas Dietrich, of the University of Birmingham's School of Dentistry, adds: "Critically, only 5.3% of the cohort developed an antibody response that exceeded this threshold of 147.6 IU/ml following the first wave of the UK pandemic. This suggests that natural infection alone is unlikely to generate meaningful, durable herd immunity."

Co-corresponding author Iain Chapple, Professor of Periodontology at the University of Birmingham and Consultant in Restorative Dentistry at Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust, adds: "Dental professionals are thought to be at high risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 because they routinely operate within patients' aerodigestive tract and regularly carry out aerosol-generating procedures that result in the production of airborne particles.

"Through our research, we have clearly shown that dental professionals were at increased occupational risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 prior to the new PHE guidance on PPE. The occupational health measures that have been put in place in general dental practice as a consequence of COVID-19 appear to remove that increased risk, however, this will need to be thoroughly investigated to see if they have successfully interrupted transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses."

Co-corresponding author Professor Alex Richter, also of the University of Birmingham, said: "This is the first time the occupational risk of exposure to a potentially fatal respiratory virus has been studied in a large dental cohort.

"It is important that we now progress our research to ensure we have an understanding of how people are protected from re-infection with COVID-19 following natural infection and vaccination.

"The nature and duration of immunity in these cohorts will be critical to understand as the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, particularly with respect to the efficacy of vaccination strategies -single-dose, multiple-doses, vaccine combinations - and in relation to novel viral variants of concern."

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Notes for Editors

• Shields et al (06, 2021). 'COVID-19: Seroprevalence and Vaccine Responses in UK Dental Care Professionals'. Journal of Dental Research.
• The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world's top 100 institutions, and its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 6,500 international students from nearly 150 countries.

 

Astronomers discover a massive star cluster, of intermediate age, in the constellation Scutum

INSTITUTO DE ASTROFÍSICA DE CANARIAS (IAC)

VIDEO: OPEN STAR CLUSTER VALPARAÍSO 1 view more 

CREDIT: GABRIEL PÉREZ DÍAZ, SMM (IAC).

An international team of astrophysicists led by the Stellar Astrophysics Group of the University of Alicante (UA), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and the University of Valparaíso (Chile) has discovered a massive cluster of stars of intermediate age in the direction of the Scutum constellation. This object, which has been named Valparaíso 1, lies some seven thousand light years away from the Sun, and contains at least fifteen thousand stars. To detect it, observations have been combined from ESA's Gaia satellite, and various ground-based telescopes, including the Isaac Newton Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands). The result has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

Open clusters are groups of stars which were born together, and move together, bound by gravity. This makes them natural laboratories for studying the physics and the lives of stars. The more stars there are in a cluster, the more useful it is, because the larger sample gives a better chance to find stars in less frequent evolutionary phases.

This is why astronomers are searching for the most massive clusters in our Galaxy, those with over ten thousand stars. Until twenty years ago it was thought that these are formed only in distant galaxies with exotic properties, but thanks to these searches now we know a dozen very young massive clusters (less than 25 million years old), and a few very old ones (thousands of millions of years old), which are descendants of former young clusters. But there are hardly any massive clusters known with intermediate ages, and it was not clear whether these do not exist, or whether they had not yet been found.

The newly discovered cluster, which they have called Valparaíso 1, is at some seven thousand light years from the sun, and contains at least fifteen thousand stars. Its unexpected discovery, in a well-explored part of the sky, suggests than many other massive clusters might be hidden in the very dense star fields, which observers find when looking towards the centre of our Galaxy.

"Valparaíso 1 contains dozens of stars sufficiently bright to be observable through an amateur telescope, but they are lost in the middle of a crowd of stars which don't belong to the cluster, but which are in front of it or behind it, and which disguise the structure of the cluster", explains Ignacio Negueruela, a researcher at the University of Alicante and the first author of the article.

"Previous searches tried to locate open clusters, but Valparaíso 1 does not look like a cluster similar to those which we usually find, and that is why it was not discovered before", says Ricardo Dorda, an IAC researcher who is a co-author of the article.

The cluster was detectable thanks to the Gaia satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), a space telescope which gives extremely accurate positions and distances of stars quite far away, and with this information we can measure the tiny motions across the sky shown by the stars over the years. Combining all of the information, we can detect clusters as groups of stars, which are at the same distance from us, and move together, groups of stars easier to detect using physics than just by looking at them on the sky. When the researchers had located this cluster, they used telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory (in Chile) and the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands) to derive the physical properties of its stars.

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Article: I. Negueruela, A-N. Chené, H. M. Tabernero, R. Dorda, J. Borissova, A. Marco, R. Kurtev, "A massive open cluster hiding in full sight". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, April 24, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1117

 

Broadly neutralizing antibodies against pandemic flu point to new vaccine targets

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Research News

 

A new study reveals that B cells can produce antibodies against the H1N1 influenza virus that also neutralize various other influenza strains, marking a development that could inform research into potential universal flu vaccines. The findings showed that the antibodies targeted two conserved regions of the virus - the cause of the 2009 swine flu pandemic - and that transfers of the antibodies protected mice from lethal infection. The work suggests that vaccines that target the two sites might be able to protect against a broader array of flu strains. Influenza is one of humanity's greatest microbial foes, being responsible for both seasonal flu and more severe flu pandemics that pose major threats to global health. Current vaccines for seasonal flu induce antibodies against the "head" region of hemagglutinin, the major surface antigen on influenza viruses. However, this strategy only protects against a few strains of influenza, and these antigen sites mutate frequently enough that a new vaccine is needed each year. Searching for better vaccine targets, Jenna Guthmiller and colleagues studied the properties of antibodies from memory B cells exposed to the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus. They saw that the B cells produced antibodies that targeted the receptor-binding site or lateral patch epitopes, two regions of the hemagglutinin head that are conserved across many strains of influenza. As a result, these antibodies neutralized most H1 influenza viruses the researchers tested, and antibodies against the lateral patch also reacted to the H3N2 strain and to influenza B viruses. Furthermore, transfers of the antibodies protected mice from lethal doses of H1N1 influenza, and some of the lateral patch antibodies also neutralized a natural, recent flu strain with mutations in a major antigen site.

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Covid-19 pandemic led to increased screen time, more sleep problems

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA

Research New

  

 

A new stuy in the journal Sleep finds that increased evening screen time during the Covid-19 lockdown negatively affects sleep quality.

During the lockdown period in Italy, daily internet traffic volume almost doubled compared to the same time in the previous year. Researchers here conducted a web-based survey of 2,123 Italian residents during the third and seventh week of Italy's first national lockdown. The survey ran in the third week of lockdown (March 25th - 28th, 2020) and evaluated sleep quality and insomnia symptoms, using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the Insomnia Severity Index as means of measurement. The second assessment survey, in the seventh week of lockdown (April 21st - 27th, 2020), inquired about usage of electronic devices in the two hours before falling asleep, in addition to repeating the sleep questionnaires.

Of the participants surveyed, 92.9% reported an increase in their electronic device usage between the first and second surveys. These participants showed decreased sleep quality, an increase in insomnia symptoms, shorter total sleep times, and later bedtimes and rising times. Researchers found an increased prevalence of poor sleepers and respondents with moderate to severe insomnia symptoms only within this group of respondents.

Some 7.1% of participants reported a decrease in evening screen time between the first and second survey, and conversely reported improved sleep quality and fewer symptoms of insomnia. This subgroup also demonstrated a decrease in the prevalence of poor sleepers and moderate/severe insomnia symptoms. These respondents went to bed consistently earlier after four weeks of home confinement.

Survey respondents who reported no change in their screen time exposure likewise showed no variations in their sleep habits. Notably, this group of responders had the best sleep quality and fewest insomnia symptoms in the first survey results, suggesting that the lockdown exacerbated negative sleep conditions for people already suffering from poor sleep quality.

Dr. Federico Salfi, Ph.D. student and first author of the paper, says "The overuse of electronic devices in the hours before sleep was a deeply rooted habit in our society already before the pandemic emergency, in particular among young people. In our opinion, the current period of social distancing added fuel to the fire."

Prof. Michele Ferrara, Director of the Laboratory of Sleep Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of L'Aquila, says "The evidence of a strong relationship between screen habits and the time course of sleep disturbances during the lockdown period suggests that, now, more than never, raising public awareness about the risks of evening exposure to electronic devices could be crucial to preserve general sleep health. This applies to both the ongoing pandemic and the future, as electronic technologies will find more and more space in our daily routine."

To request a copy of the study, please contact:

Emily Tobin
Emily.tobin@oup.com

 

R&D exploration or exploitation? How firms respond to import competition

Strategic Management Journal studies competition created by import penetration

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SOCIETY

Research News

 

Do firms respond to tougher competition by searching for completely new technological solutions (exploration), or do they work to defend their position by improving current technologies (exploitation)?

Competition from increased import penetration generally results in tight profit margins, low prices, and strong efficiency pressures, immediately affecting firms' bottom lines in the form of reduced profits and increased bankruptcy risk.

A firm's R&D strategy is one of the fundamental determinants of success or failure when responding to competitive threats. To ensure both short-term performance and long-term survival, firms have two basic R&D options: explore new knowledge or exploit existing knowledge bases.

A new study published in the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) examines how firms change the knowledge sources used in their R&D efforts in response to substantial increases in import penetration in their domestic market. The study was conducted by Raffale Morandi Stagni, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, Andrea Fosfuri, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy and Juan Santaló, IE University, Madrid, Spain. They studied a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms over the years 1989-2006.

"Our focus on technology reflects both its increasing importance for firm survival and competitive advantage," write the authors. "Specifically, we study competition created by import penetration, which has increased steadily in recent years to become a central concern for companies, for example, dealing with imports from China.

"We find that in the years that immediately follow an increase in import penetration, firms tend to rely more on familiar knowledge in the development of innovations and less on knowledge sources that were not previously used. This switch in R&D strategy also appears to be temporary (reversed in later years), and it is positively associated with an increased likelihood of survival."

The researchers argue that while exploration is riskier and costlier than exploitation, it also requires a longer time horizon to produce results due to its slower learning pattern.

They also tested the effects of import penetration according to the type of competition and the type of industry affected. They separated imports from low-technology countries from imports from high-technology countries.

"If technological competition has a different effect on search strategies than price-based competition, we might expect the results to differ," write the researchers. "Instead, the effects of the two types of import penetration are qualitatively similar.

"We also performed a sample split of industries in which the primary customers are other businesses (B2B) or those in which the primary customers are final consumers (B2C). Consistent with the intuition that import penetration issues a greater threat to firm survival in B2B industries, we find that the effect of import penetration on technological exploration and exploitation is stronger for that group than for B2C industries."

The final variable they researched was whether technology search strategies are moderated by factors that might alleviate or increase concerns about firm survival.

"The findings show that the negative relationship between competition and exploration is magnified for firms that are relatively more vulnerable, because they have greater degrees of operating leverage and lower degrees of product diversification," the researchers write.

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The SMJ is published by the Strategic Management Society (SMS), comprised of 3,000 academics, business practitioners, and consultants from 80 countries, focuses on the development and dissemination of insights on the strategic management process, as well as on fostering contacts and intercnges around the world.

Strategic Management Society

http://www.strategicmanagement.net

 

Major advance in fabrication of low-cost solar cells also locks up greenhouse gases

A team led by investigators at NYU Tandon created a means of vastly increasing the speed and efficiency of a key doping process for perovskite solar cells, one that also sequesters CO2

NYU TANDON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

Research News

 

BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, June 2, 2021 - Perovskite solar cells have progressed in recent years with rapid increases in power conversion efficiency (from 3% in 2006 to 25.5% today), making them more competitive with silicon-based photovoltaic cells. However, a number of challenges remain before they can become a competitive commercial technology.

Now a team at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering has developed a process to solve one of them, a bottleneck in a critical step involving p-type doping of organic hole-transporting materials within the photovoltaic cells. The research, "CO2 doping of organic interlayers for perovskite solar cells," appears in Nature.

Currently, the p-doping process, achieved by the ingress and diffusion of oxygen into the hole transporting layer, is time intensive (several hours to a day), making commercial mass production of perovskite solar cells impractical.

The Tandon team, led by André D. Taylor, an associate professor, and Jaemin Kong, a post-doctoral associate, along with Miguel Modestino, assistant professor -- all in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering -- discovered a method of vastly increasing the speed of this key step through the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of oxygen.

In perovskite solar cells, doped organic semiconductors are normally required as charge-extraction interlayers situated between the photoactive perovskite layer and the electrodes. The conventional means of doping these interlayers involves the addition of lithium bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide (LiTFSI), a lithium salt, to spiro-OMeTAD, a π-conjugated organic semiconductor widely used for a hole-transporting material in perovskite solar cells. The doping process is then initiated by exposing spiro-OMeTAD:LiTFSI blend films to air and light.

Not only is this method time consuming, it largely depends on ambient conditions. By contrast, Taylor and his team reported a fast and reproducible doping method that involves bubbling a spiro-OMeTAD:LiTFSI solution with CO2 under ultraviolet light. They found that their process rapidly enhanced electrical conductivity of the interlayer by 100 times compared to that of a pristine blend film, which is also approximately 10 times higher than that obtained from an oxygen bubbling process. The CO2 treated film also resulted in stable, high-efficiency perovskite solar cells without any post-treatments.

"Besides shortening the device fabrication and processing time, application of the pre-doped spiro-OMeTAD in perovskite solar cells makes the cells much more stable," explained Kong, the lead author. "That's partly because most of the detrimental lithium ions in the spiro-OMeTAD:LiTFSI solution were stabilized as lithium carbonates during the CO2 bubbling process."

He added that the lithium carbonates end up being filtered out when the investigators spincast the pre-doped solution onto the perovskite layer. "Thus, we can obtain fairly pure doped organic materials for efficient hole transporting layers."

The team, which included researchers from Samsung, Yale University, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, The Graduate Center of the City University, Wonkwang University, and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology also found that the CO2 doping method can be used for p-type doping of other π-conjugated polymers, such as PTAA, MEH-PPV, P3HT, and PBDB-T. According to Taylor the researchers are looking to push the boundary beyond typical organic semiconductors used for solar cells.

"We believe that wide applicability of CO2 doping to various π-conjugated organic molecules stimulates research ranging from organic solar cells to organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic field effect transistors (OFETs) even to thermoelectric devices that all require controlled doping of organic semiconductors," Taylor explained, adding that since this process consumes quite a large amount of CO2 gas, it can be also considered for CO2 capture and sequestration studies in the future.

"At a time when governments and companies alike are now looking to reduce CO2 emissions if not de-carbonize, this research offers an avenue for reacting large amounts of CO2 in lithium carbonate to improve next generation solar cells, while removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere," he explained, adding that the idea for this novel approach was a counterintuitive insight from the team's battery research.

"From our long history of working with lithium oxygen/air batteries we know that lithium carbonate formation from exposure of oxygen electrodes to air is a big challenge because it depletes the battery of lithium ions, which destroys battery capacity. In this Spiro doping reaction, however, we are actually exploiting lithium carbonate formation, which binds lithium and prevents it from becoming mobile ions detrimental to the long term stability of the Perovskite solar cell. We are hoping that this CO2 doping technique could be a stepping stone for overcoming existing challenges in organic electronics and beyond."

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The U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Research Foundation of Korea, the China Scholarship Council, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory provided support for this research.

The full study, "CO2 doping of organic interlayers for perovskite solar cells," can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03518-y.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute. A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences as part of a global university, with close connections to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. NYU Tandon is rooted in a vibrant tradition of entrepreneurship, intellectual curiosity, and innovative solutions to humanity's most pressing global challenges. Research at Tandon focuses on vital intersections between communications/IT, cybersecurity, and data science/AI/robotics systems and tools and critical areas of society that they influence, including emerging media, health, sustainability, and urban living. We believe diversity is integral to excellence, and are creating a vibrant, inclusive, and equitable environment for all of our students, faculty and staff. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.

WAIT, WHAT?

Why short selling is good for the capital markets

SINGAPORE MANAGMENT UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: NEW EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT SHORT SELLING HAS A DISCIPLINARY EFFECT ON OPPORTUNISTIC INSIDER SALES. view more 

CREDIT: SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - Short selling often gets a bad rap because it is a type of trade that bets against the success of a firm. In essence, short selling allows investors to borrow stock from a broker to sell into the market with the hope of buying the stock back at a cheaper price, thus, profiting on the difference between the sell and buy prices. Because of this practice, short selling is sometimes seen as a controversial tactic.

Furthermore, speculative short selling attacks are concerning as it can put downward pressure on the entire stock market. It is for this reason that governments and regulators have stepped in to curtail or ban short selling during times of market stress such as the Global Financial Crisis or more recently, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contrary to the negativity surrounding short selling, SMU Associate Professor Rencheng Wang told the Office of Research and Tech Transfer: "Quite honestly, there are many benefits of short selling. Short selling can drive market liquidity, price stocks more efficiently, mitigate market bubbles, as well as provide a check on upward market manipulations."

"Because of monetary gains, short sellers are motivated to detect and expose negative news such as poor firm performance that investors have yet to be informed, or unethical and opportunistic behaviours taken by managers at the cost of investors. In other words, short sellers are like detectives of the capital markets," Professor Wang adds.

Given that there are still so many unanswered questions about the positive benefits of short selling, Professor Wang and his collaborators decided to probe deeper into the issue. Specifically, Professor Wang wanted to understand how short selling affects the behaviours of the firm's managers and large shareholders.

Short sale regulation

The regulation on short selling had remained relatively intact since its introduction over 60 years ago. It was believed that the short sale rule had become increasingly susceptible to abuse and was inconsistent with market developments, which led the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) to adopt a modified version of the proposed Rule 202T in 2005.

As part of the review of the short sale rule, the SEC introduced a pilot programme for a select group of securities, of which represented a third of the securities listed on the Russell 3000 index. Rule 202T referred to a temporary exemption from Rule 202 of Regulation SHO (short selling regulation) that suspended any short sale price test for the select group of securities.

The purpose of this pilot programme was to enable the SEC to study the effects of unrestricted short selling on, among other things, market volatility, price efficiency, and market liquidity.

The research

Given this scenario, Professor Wang was able to take advantage of this temporary rule exemption by designing a quasi-experiment to compare the performance and behaviours of the designated group of securities (pilot firms) with the rest of the securities (control firms) on the Russell 3000 index.

Professor Wang elaborated: "Our intent of conducting this research was not merely to observe the impact of Rule 202T on short selling. Rather, we expect the firm's managers, whom we call insiders, to adjust their behaviours to reflect the increased threat of short selling."

The sample included 974 pilot firms and 1,935 control firms listed on the Russell 300 index. The research included a total of 55,002 firm quarters in the pre-period of Rule 202T (January 2002 - April 2005) to post-period of Rule 202T (May 2005 - July 2007).

In conveying the research findings, Professor Wang was pleased to inform the Office of Research and Tech Transfer: "We saw a reduction of 11 percent in opportunistic insider sales in the pilot firms, which means that short selling has a disciplinary effect on the behaviours of the insiders. And the threat of short selling was more pronounced in deterring insiders whose firms have higher litigation risks, greater reputation concerns and have more insiders with large stock-related holdings."

He added: "When we extended our research to the securities listed on the Chinese (Shanghai and Shenzhen) and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges, we also saw a similar pattern - short sellers can deter unethical insiders from engaging in high volume opportunistic sell offs in stock exchanges that differ in culture, market development, and legal environments - from the New York Stock Exchange to other exchanges in Asia. Thus, we provide new evidence to highlight the importance of short sellers in capital market development and governance reforms across different institutional environments."

Professor Wang's paper on short selling can be found here.

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 CARING CAPITALI$M

The uneven benefits of CSR efforts

SINGAPORE MANAGMENT UNIVERSITY

Research News

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IMAGE: WHEN REAPING BENEFITS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES, NOT ALL FIRMS ARE CREATED EQUAL. TANGIBLE ASSET-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES DO BETTER THAN INTANGIBLES-HEAVY ONES, SMU RESEARCH HAS FOUND. view more 

CREDIT: SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - Whether they are in the technology or oil sector, selling shoes or healthcare products, for many companies, green is the new black. While maximising profit might have been the sole priority for most businesses a decade ago, these days it is common for mission-oriented companies to pursue the 'triple bottom line' of people, planet and profit, particularly through corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts.

While such efforts are commendable, some investors remain primarily concerned about whether firms can do well by doing good; in other words, whether CSR actually can increase a company's value. For instance, CSR activities could enhance brand image and improve customer loyalty, or even make it easier to attract and retain talent, leading to higher future stock returns. However, the wide-ranging and vague quality of these CSR efforts - which can encompass everything from donations to charities to promoting volunteerism among company staff - have typically presented a problem for academics trying to quantify their impact.

To determine the effect of sustainability-related activities on firm value, academics from SMU and INSEAD have embarked on a research project that effectively narrows the scope of CSR efforts to concrete and measurable environmental and social (E&S) activities; for example, redesigning factory processes to reuse water. By zooming in on observable improvements in future operating performance and stock returns, the researchers were able to quantify how E&S activities led to benefits for some - but not all - firms. Interestingly, the impact of E&S activities on future operating performance was largely dependent on company-specific factors such as the nature of assets owned by the business, SMU Assistant Professor of Accounting Grace Fan shared at the SMU/NUS/NTU Accounting Research Conference on April 17, 2021.

A tale of two firms

Crunching the data for more than 4,000 US public companies from 1995 to 2016 including corporate heavyweights such as Apple and Chevron, Professor Fan and team focused on E&S scores in five main categories: environment, community, diversity, employee relations and human rights. They found that in general, E&S activities are related to future improvements in operating performance, but only for firms in tangible asset-intensive industries such as manufacturing, utilities, energy and chemicals. For companies in sectors that are more intangible asset-intensive, which rely more heavily on assets such as intellectual property to derive profits, there was no such beneficial effect.

"For the tangible asset-intensive companies, they have a lot of fixed and heavy assets and processes. We imagine they would derive more benefits from improving their process efficiency and making their workers happier as a result of E&S activities," Professor Fan shared, citing case studies of such process improvements in China, India, the Czech Republic and more.

For instance, US-based conglomerate Honeywell redesigned its chemical cleaning process in a Czech Republic-based plant, which helped reduce its production of chemical waste and consumption of natural gas. Not only did worker safety improve due to reduced handling of toxic chemicals, production time was shortened and the plant saved the company an additional $15,000 a year. Similarly in India, workers at a Honeywell plant implemented an energy conservation programme that allowed it to save an extra 5,000 kilowatt-hours of energy a month, and almost $900,000 a year, Professor Fan explained.

Tracing correlation to causation

Further tracking the impact of E&S activities on stock returns, Professor Fan and team found that E&S activities did in fact correlate with positive stock returns. However, this relationship again occurred mainly in tangible asset-intensive industries. The significant boost in stock returns also disappeared once the researchers controlled for improvements in operating performance, suggesting the positive stock returns were likely due to better internal processes and increased operational efficiencies in these tangible asset-heavy firms.

"It's possible that the stock market does not value the E&S ratings of firms in intangibles-intensive industries such as technology and consumer nondurables as much," Professor Fan said. "Or, the stock market has already incorporated the E&S activities of these firms when determining their value, since their E&S activities may be more easily observable through consumer branding and advertisements compared with tangibles-intensive firms who may embark more on internal process innovations which are more difficult to observe."

Wrapping the virtual session up, Professor Fan delved into the limitations of the study, including the difficulty of claiming causality between E&S ratings and firm value instead of mere correlation. To further investigate this issue, the team will work on collecting more specific data on firm operations, such as the level of carbon emissions and waste production, in addition to E&S ratings.

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