Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Chronic pain might impact how the brain processes emotions

by Sherry Landow, University of New South Wales

Neurotransmitters help regulate our emotions—but scientists have noticed a disruption to their levels in people with chronic pain.

More than 3 million Australians experience chronic pain, an ongoing and often debilitating condition that can last from months to years. This persistent pain can impact many parts of a person's life, with almost half of people with chronic pain also experiencing major anxiety and depression disorders.

Now, a new study led by UNSW Sydney and NeuRA shows that people with chronic pain have an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the part of the brain responsible for regulating emotions.

This imbalance could be making it harder for them to keep negative emotions in check—and the researchers think persistent pain might be triggering the chemical disruption.

The findings are published today in the European Journal of Pain.

"Chronic pain is more than an awful sensation," says senior author of the study Associate Professor Sylvia Gustin, a neuroscientist and psychologist at UNSW and NeuRA. "It can affect our feelings, beliefs and the way we are.

"We have discovered, for the first time, that ongoing pain is associated with a decrease in GABA, an inhibitive neurotransmitter in the medial prefrontal cortex. In other words, there's an actual pathological change going on."

Neurotransmitters help communicate and balance messages between cells. While some amplify signals (called excitatory neurotransmitters), others weaken them (inhibitive neurotransmitters).

GABA, or γ-aminobutyric acid, is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. Its role in the medial prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain where emotional regulation happens—is to help dial down our emotions.

The research team used advanced neurological imaging to scan GABA content in the medial prefrontal cortex of 48 study participants, half of which experienced some form of chronic pain. A/Prof. Gustin says this relatively small sample size is typical for neurological imaging studies, which are costly to run.

The results show that participants with chronic pain had significantly lower levels of GABA than the control group—a pattern that was consistent regardless of their type of chronic pain.

"A decrease in GABA means that the brain cells can no longer communicate to each other properly," says A/Prof. Gustin.

"When there's a decrease in this neurotransmitter, our actions, emotions and thoughts get amplified."

While the link between chronic pain and decreased levels of GABA has previously been found in animal studies, this is the first time it's been translated to human studies.

A/Prof. Gustin says she hopes the findings are encouraging for people with chronic pain who may be experiencing mental health issues.

"It's important to remember it's not you—there's actually something physically happening to your brain," she says.

"We don't know why it happens yet, but we are working on finding solutions on how to change it."

A chain reaction

GABA is one of many neurotransmitters in the medial prefrontal cortex—and it's not the only one behaving differently in people with pain.

In a previous study, A/Prof. Gustin and her team found that levels of glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, are also lower than average in people with chronic pain. These low glutamate levels were linked to increased feelings of fear, worry and negative thinking.

"Together, our studies show there's really a disruption in how the brain cells are talking to each other," says A/Prof. Gustin, who has been researching chronic pain for over 20 years.

"As a result of this disruption, a person's ability to feel positive emotions, such as happiness, motivation and confidence may be taken away—and they can't easily be restored."

A/Prof. Gustin says chronic pain is likely to be the culprit behind these neurological changes. However, this theory could only be tested by scanning participants' brains both before and after they develop chronic pain—and as brain imaging is expensive to conduct, it's unlikely such a large-scale project would be possible without major funding.

"Everything starts with stress," she says. "When someone is in pain, it increases stress hormones like cortisol, which can trigger massive increases in glutamate. This happens during the initial, acute stage of pain.

"Too much glutamate can be toxic to brain cells and brain function. We think this disruption to normal brain function may cause the GABA and glutamate levels to change—and impair a person's ability to regulate their emotions."

A new form of treatment

Medication is often used to help treat chronic pain, but there are currently no drugs that directly target the GABA and glutamate content in the medial prefrontal cortex. Instead, medication affects the entire central nervous system, and may come with side effects.

A/Prof. Gustin and her team have recently developed an online emotional recovery program, specifically targeted at people with chronic pain, as a non-pharmaceutical option for treating the neurotransmitter disruption.

The findings will be presented in a paper later this year, but the initial results are encouraging.

"The online therapy program teaches people skills to help self-regulate their negative emotions," says A/Prof. Gustin, who welcomes people interested in learning more about the program to contact the team.

"The brain can't dampen down these feelings on its own, but it is plastic—and we can learn to change it."

Neurotransmitter levels predict math ability

More information: David Kang et al, Disruption to normal excitatory and inhibitory function within the medial prefrontal cortex in people with chronic pain, European Journal of Pain (2021). DOI: 10.1002/ejp.1838

Provided by University of New South Wales

Who's most likely to get bullied at school?

by Cara Murez Healthday Reporter

Bullying remains a threat to American teens, and a new study reveals which kids may be at highest risk.

Race-based bullying takes a heavy toll on teens, the research found, but minority kids who are picked on for other reasons—whether gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability or immigration status—suffer a double whammy.

Victims' physical and mental health suffer as their exposure to violence rises, according to a survey of high school students in Pennsylvania. They're also more likely to become violent themselves.

"Oftentimes, there is a focus on really trying to capture or assess the consequences of identity-based bullying based on a single aspect of someone's identity, and we know that people are multifaceted, right? There are multiple social identities," said researcher Chardée Galán, who studied the issue while at the University of Pittsburgh. She's now an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

To evaluate the impact of bullying, her team surveyed nearly 4,000 ninth- through 12th-graders at 13 public high schools in Pittsburgh.

Almost 10% of the students reported experiencing race-based bullying, and nearly 6% had bullied someone because of their race, the study found. Young people who were part of several stigmatized groups had even higher rates of bullying.

More than one-third of respondents identified as Black; about 53% were assigned female at birth; 32% belonged to a sexual minority; and 10% were gender diverse, meaning they identified other than male or female alone.

Many of the victims did not seek medical attention, the study authors noted.

"We looked at their engagement with health care systems, which is really important to consider these youth within these larger oppressive systems and practices," Galán said. "They were also more likely to forgo medical care, which is really important for us when we try to consider how do we actually interact with these youth and engage with these youth as doctors, as physicians, as clinical providers."

The survey linked bullying with self-harm, suicidal thoughts and greater involvement in violence. That included threatening or injuring someone else with a weapon or surviving such an attack, as well as fighting, sexual assault, intimate-partner abuse or experiencing the slaying of a friend or family member.

Galán said those working with students often use a colorblind approach to dealing with problems, but there's a pitfall: It tends to ignore that specific students might have unique experiences that need to be acknowledged and addressed.

She said it is important to continue to push for antiracist practices in schools and understanding youth within larger oppressive systems. The next step is attempting to dismantle the forces driving the inequities, Galán said.

Gender-diverse Black and Hispanic youth reported the highest rates of being bullied and of bullying, the survey found.

"This emphasizes the fact that these experiences of discrimination, including discrimination based on one's gender or sexual orientation, should really be incorporated and considered as parts of programs that address race-based discrimination," Galán said.

That's important when thinking about the "school-to-prison pipeline" or the likelihood that some youth might be funneled into the criminal justice system or to respond to discrimination with potentially problematic behaviors, Galán said.

The study was published online July 23 in JAMA Network Open.

Sandra Graham, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote an editorial that accompanied the findings.

Graham said the rise in hate crimes associated with COVID-19 make this a critical time for taking the study of identity-based bullying in new directions.

It's important that students who are being bullied know that they shouldn't blame themselves, she noted.

"We need to be working very, very hard to change the social norms in schools," Graham said. "It is not OK to pick on other kids."

Graham said schools need to have more racial and ethnic diversity so groups are relatively equal in size. Instruction and activities should be organized so there is less emphasis on who has authority to shape the norms and who doesn't.

"You just have to make sure that the activities that are available in your school are available to everybody so that there's more sharing and more equality," she said.

Graham added that this could be by race, but also by all of the other dimensions of different kids in school.

"Schools have to be really sensitive to that," she said. "The main thing is that kids have to be learning tolerance for people who are different from them because the main determinant is the imbalance of power."

Has the COVID-19 pandemic lessened bullying at school?

More information: Chardée A. Galán et al, Exploration of Experiences and Perpetration of Identity-Based Bullying Among Adolescents by Race/Ethnicity and Other Marginalized Identities, JAMA Network Open (2021). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.16364

Journal information: JAMA Network Open

Exploring empathy in everyday life

by Tina Adamopoulos, University of Toronto

Researchers at the University of Toronto are studying our capacity for empathy, or our ability to sense and understand someone else's emotions, and are debunking some common misconceptions along the way.

Their work, recently published in the journal Psychological Science, is potentially important since empathy is fundamental to maintaining meaningful and healthy relationships, making it a big part of our daily lives.

"We want to get a description of empathy by looking at it in everyday life, across different emotions and social contexts," says Greg Depow, a Ph.D. student who is studying social psychology at U of T Scarborough.

"We want to study empathy more in environments closer to how it is actually experienced in real life."

The study, which was co-authored with Professor Michael Inzlicht, looked at perceptions of empathy in 246 American adults. Depow says one goal of the research is to fill in gaps from previous work to offer a deeper, more authentic view of empathy. This was done by looking at who is more likely to be empathetic and how often we take the opportunity to empathize per day. The research also looked at how empathy impacts subjective well-being, which is the scientific term for happiness and sense of purpose in life.

Opportunities to empathize with others occur when one observes the emotions of another person or stranger. This can be done in person or even on social media—for example, when you notice a friend's emotional status or posts.

The researchers found that people will empathize when they recognize the opportunity to do so, but often notice other people's emotions without flagging them as opportunities to empathize.

"People were seeing these emotional experiences of other people, but weren't flagging them as opportunities to empathize," Depow says. "If you crunch the numbers a bit, it seems as though a third of emotions people see in daily life are not seen as empathy opportunities."

Learning what differentiates missed and flagged opportunities may be key to learning how to recognize and provide opportunities empathy more successfully, Depow says.

"One thing that I'm interested in is differentiating missed opportunities from the ones people are noticing. This is important because people may be missing opportunities to connect with others and promote happiness for both parties."

While previous studies have typically focused on how empathy is measured based on the suffering of strangers and its effects on the empathizer, it turns out people are three times more likely to empathize with positive emotions than negative ones.

"If I look just at negative emotions that people are empathizing with, that's actually associated with reduced subjective well-being," Depow says. "[But] because people are empathizing with positive emotions three times as often, overall empathy is associated with increased subjective well-being."

Who we empathize with is also an important factor. Most studies tend to focus on how people empathize with strangers, but Depow says the evidence shows that people are more likely to support those who are close to them.

He adds that confidence appears to affect our experience with empathy. People who are confident about their experiences seem to experience increased levels of well-being.

"People find empathy difficult more or less in different situations and that seems to change people's experience of empathy and the extent to which they empathize."

The researchers also found that receiving empathy ourselves may make us more receptive to empathizing with others. By contrast, those who empathized with others were no more or less likely to notice another opportunity to empathize with someone else.

Childhood empathy important predictor of aggression

More information: Gregory John Depow et al, The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life, Psychological Science (2021). DOI: 10.1177/0956797621995202

Journal information: Psychological Science

Provided by University of Toronto

Leader effectiveness may depend on emotional expression

by Holly Ober, University of California - Riverside

office group — Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Women leaders must often battle sexist stereotypes that label them "too emotional" for effective leadership. A surprising new study shows that when they express calm, happy emotions, however, women are perceived as more effective leaders than men. The effect is most pronounced for leaders in top positions in an organization.

The study, conducted by psychology professor Thomas Sy at UC Riverside and management professor Daan van Knippenberg at Drexel University, is the first to examine prototypes for the types of emotions displayed by leaders and concludes that people use implicit theories of leadership emotions when evaluating leader effectiveness.

Cognitive leadership prototypes, known as implicit theories of leadership, have been well-studied. Research consistently finds that effective leaders are seen as intelligent, dynamic, and charismatic, among other qualities. Men are also thought to be seen as possessing more of these qualities than women.

It is commonly understood that some types of emotional expression can diminish perceptions of leader effectiveness. Sy, an organizational psychologist who studies leadership, wondered if people also have implicit emotional prototypes, or schemas, that influence how they react to leaders.

With van Knippenberg, he designed a series of studies that asked respondents to describe what types of emotions leaders feel and express. The results revealed six emotional schemas associated with leadership. Three of them—cheer, calm, pride—were associated with effective leadership. The other three—anger, fear, remorse—were associated with ineffective leadership.

"Every role has emotions that must be expressed, including leaders. To be effective, leaders must perform emotional labor," Sy said. "What was surprising in our research is that women were rated more effective, and this could be explained by implicit theories of leadership emotions."

Although men have more leeway for expressing negative emotions, Sy and van Knippenberg found that when women don't express negative emotions they are seen as more effective than men.

Implicit theories of leadership emotions had the most impact on perceptions of leadership effectiveness for leaders at the highest levels of management. Moreover, expression of negative emotions did not undermine the effectiveness of top leaders to the same extent they did for low-ranking leaders. Low-ranking leaders, both men and women, were penalized for expressing anger.

"When we interact with a leader regularly, such as our immediate boss or supervisor, we have enough firsthand information to evaluate their effectiveness," Sy said. "But we usually have little contact with leaders at the highest levels and less information about them. Therefore we tend to rely on schemas. Schemas are powerful. Even in the absence of data they shape our behavior."

Implicit theories of leadership emotions influence perceptions of effectiveness, with positive schemas associated with positive outcomes and negative schemas associated with negative outcomes.

"Past research shows the emotions of a leader affect performance of followers," Sy said. "The leader's emotions are contagious, spread throughout the team, and affect effectiveness of the whole group."

The findings should help leaders manage their emotions to maximize effectiveness, improve the performance and satisfaction of team members, and provide a roadmap for future leadership researchers.

The paper, "The emotional leader: Implicit theories of leadership emotions and leadership perceptions" is published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Narcissists are drawn to leadership theories

More information: Thomas Sy et al, The emotional leader: Implicit theories of leadership emotions and leadership perceptions, Journal of Organizational Behavior (2021). DOI: 10.1002/job.2543

Provided by University of California - Riverside

Animals are better sprinters than humans

by University of Cologne

An interdisciplinary group of scientists from the universities of Cologne, Koblenz, Tübingen, and Stuttgart has studied the characteristics determining the maximum running speed in animals. The model they developed explains why humans cannot keep up with the fastest sprinters in the animal kingdom. Based on these calculations, the giant spider Shelob from "The Lord of the Rings" would have reached a maximum speed of 60 km/h.

Many four-legged mammals can reach considerably higher running speeds than two-legged humans. Animals perfectly adapted to sprinting, such as cheetahs or antelopes, are characterized by a slender body shape, long legs, and a particularly mobile spine to achieve very high speeds when running. An interdisciplinary team including researchers at the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology has now developed a model that takes these characteristics into account and can calculate the maximum running speeds for animals of any size. The results of their research have been published in the article "Rules of nature's Formula Run: Muscle mechanics during late stance is the key to explaining maximum running speed" in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

The Tokyo Olympics are just around the corner, and one of the highlights will be the men's 100-meter sprint. Top sprinters can reach running speeds of almost 45 km/h. That sounds impressive, but actually is not when compared to sprinting performance in the animal kingdom. It is only roughly equivalent to the top speed of a domestic cat. Cheetahs can run more than twice as fast (over 100 km/h), but other animals such as antelopes (90 km/h), or even warthogs and hares (just under 60 km/h) would outrun human sprinters.

The research team led by Dr. Michael Günther (University of Stuttgart) investigated the physical and biological factors on which the top speed of these animals depend. In the process, the researchers developed comprehensive answers to questions about the importance of body design, such as: "Why are natural maximum speeds achieved by medium-sized animals?" "Which main characteristics determine the maximum running speed?" and "What characteristics set limits to speed?"

The core of their theoretical work is the physical balance of propulsive leg force and air resistance to be overcome, as well as the inertia of the propelling muscles. They show a kind of main pathway for changing the structural shape of animal bodies as a function of body size (allometry) in adaptation to fast leg-driven locomotion. "This main pathway describes how the shape of an organism must change as a function of body size in order to achieve a high running speed, and how specific shapes affect the maximum speed that can be achieved," said Dr. Tom Weihmann from the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology.

The classic example is the mouse and the elephant. An elephant-sized mouse would simply not be viable because its bones would break under their own weight. Elephants have much thicker and heavier bones relative to their weight as well as much longer and more straightened legs. These features make the enormous size of the animals possible. However, heavy bones and straight legs limit their top speed, which is much lower than that of cheetahs—even though elephant legs are much longer.

However, top speeds depend not only on size but also on construction, such as the number of legs and the mobility of the spine. For example, many four-legged mammals are able to reach much higher running speeds than bipedal designs such as humans and birds because they can gallop, using their trunk muscles for propulsion. "If the animals become too heavy, however, even more powerful muscles won't help because larger muscles take more time to contract at top speed. Accordingly, the weight limit above which sprinting speeds start to decrease again is around 50 kg, which is fairly close to the average weight of cheetahs and pronghorns, the fastest sprinters on our planet," Weihmann explained.

The model can even be applied to fantasy creatures. For example, the giant spider Shelob from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings' would be able to reach a top speed of about 60 km/h. In terms of human body geometry, the model shows that top sprinters in sports are already very close to their speed optimum. Apart from technical applications like special running shoes or exoskeletons, providing lengthening levers or additional elasticity, only longer legs or more elastic tendons would allow even higher speeds.

A speedy trial: What it takes to be the fastest land predator

More information: Michael Günther et al, Rules of nature's Formula Run: Muscle mechanics during late stance is the key to explaining maximum running speed, Journal of Theoretical Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2021.110714

Journal information: Journal of Theoretical Biology

Provided by University of Cologne

Monarch butterflies raised in captivity can still join the migration

by Alana Wilcox, Ryan Norris, The Conversation

Each year, thousands of hobbyists and educators across North America collect monarch eggs or caterpillars from the wild to raise indoors and patiently wait for butterflies to emerge. Raising monarch butterflies indoors has become an increasingly popular activity that can have numerous benefits.

Captively reared monarchs provide a unique opportunity for people to learn about the complex life cycle of butterflies and, at the same time, help raise awareness about monarch conservation. However, rearing monarchs (and other butterflies) must be done responsibly and in moderation to make sure that it does not have a negative effect on the population.

Monarch butterflies undergo a multi-generational migration in spring and summer that will bring them as far north as Canada and then, in the fall, a new generation of monarchs undergo a unique transformation that prepares them for a single-bout long-distance migration south. These larger, stronger monarch butterflies will travel more than 4,500 kilometers to congregate and overwinter by the millions in the tree canopies high in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico.

Population decline

The overwintering population of eastern monarch butterflies, however, has been dwindling from an occupancy level of 44.95 hectares in 1997 to 14.95 hectares in 2019 to five hectares this year. Some causes of this decline are thought to be loss of milkweed on which caterpillars feed, long-term changes in climate and deforestation at their overwintering sites. This has caused concern about the likelihood of extinction and the loss of the migratory phenomenon.

Rearing monarchs indoors has been touted as a way to help bolster population numbers and mitigate declines. In reality, indoor rearing probably does little to supplement the wild population, but arguably goes a long way towards awareness and education.

A PBS Nature special on overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico.

The practice of indoor rearing is not without controversy and has been considered potentially harmful due to the negative impact it could have on butterfly health and the risk it could pose to the butterflies' ability to migrate to Mexico.

However, our recent research provides some evidence that monarchs raised indoors may still be able to migrate south to their overwintering grounds.

Disoriented butterflies

Our team at the University of Guelph raised monarch caterpillars on milkweed indoors in controlled environmental conditions that approximated what monarchs would experience naturally in the wild. Once butterflies emerged from their cocoons, they were tested in a flight simulator, a large open vessel with a digital sensor that recorded which direction the monarchs attempted to fly.

The results from this experiment were consistent with previous research showing that indoor-reared monarchs, on average, did not orient in the proper direction for migration to Mexico.

Monarch butterflies' inability to orient in the flight simulator could be the result of a lack of exposure to natural and direct sunlight during development. Many animals are equipped with an internal clock that tells the animal when to perform certain activities. For monarch butterflies, this internal clock is located in their antennae and, when coupled with visual information on the sun's position, tells the monarch which direction it should fly each fall.

Recalibration in natural light

Given this, our research team went one step further to determine if indoor-reared monarchs exposed to natural environmental conditions and sunlight after they were released could calibrate their internal compass and fly south.

To do so, our team attached tiny radio transmitters to a second group of indoor-reared monarchs and released the butterflies into the wild. The radio transmitters emit a signal during migration and, if a monarch flies close enough, can be received at one of several hundred automatic radio receiving towers scattered across North America, called the Motus telemetry array.

We detected 29 butterflies at the beginning of migration and found that, given some time outdoors, these butterflies were able to get their bearings and fly southward. This suggests that under certain controlled conditions, raising monarchs indoors may not affect their orientation and ability to start migration.

Indoor rearing offers a valuable tool for learning and fostering a connection to nature. Our results help curb concern that indoor rearing negatively impacts monarch orientation.

While more research needs to be conducted to determine how monarchs perform under different indoor conditions and at different rearing locations in North America, our research suggests that monarch enthusiasts may be able to continue enjoying the wonderful experience of raising these butterflies at home.

Monarchs raised in captivity can orient themselves for migration, study reveals

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Upcycling plastic waste into high-performing mechanical lubricants

by Steve Kuhlmann, Texas A&M University

plastic trash — Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Finding new solutions to address the challenges posed by plastic waste can dramatically improve global sustainability practices and help achieve a greener future. While many researchers are working to solve this problem on an international scale, a new, multi-institutional team is seeking to turn that waste into a high-performing contributor.

The research team is working on upcycling plastic waste into liquid lubricants, including oil, hydraulic fluids, heat transfer fluids and greases.

Led by Iowa State University, the project team includes Argonne National Laboratory, Chevron Philips Chemical Company, Chemstations Inc., American Packaging Corp., the City of Ames Resource Recovery Facility and Hy-Vee, alongside Texas A&M University. Ali Erdemir, Halliburton Chair in Engineering Professor and professor in the J. Mike Walker' 66 Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, leads the efforts for Texas A&M.

The project is one of 12 funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Plastics Innovation Challenge, an initiative designed to reduce plastic waste in oceans and landfills, as well as help to position the U.S. as a global leader in plastics recycling technologies and in the manufacture of new plastics that are recyclable by design. Their research was recently published in the journal ChemSusChem.

Erdemir said the team is working toward the common goal of demonstrating that plastic wastes can be responsibly and economically upcycled into high-performance lubricants and used to minimize friction and wear. If successful, the team hopes their research could help reduce both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

"This project aims to reduce the adverse impacts made by hundreds of millions of tons of waste plastics through upcycling in order to support a circular economy with minimal environmental impact," Erdemir said. "These responsibly recycled materials will provide new economic incentives by developing through a novel upcycling process to produce innovative value-added products."

Erdemir said the general public could see day-to-day benefits from this research through a less adverse impact from plastic waste, and cheaper—and potentially better functioning—lubricants used in cars and other industrial activities.

"Reducing plastic wastes to lubricating oils is quite remarkable and may lead to a greener and more sustainable future," Erdemir said. "Benefits could be huge as the end-products of this project will not only help reduce the adverse environmental impacts of plastic wastes, but also put them in use in a very green and continuously recyclable manner."

By turning the waste into high-performing lubricants that perform as well or even better than their traditional counterparts, Erdemir said the mechanical components that utilize the lubricants for smooth and safe operation could benefit through mechanical durability, energy efficiency and environmental compatibility.

Moving forward, the team will be researching both the cost and technology needed to upcycle the plastic waste into lubricants, as well as how well the product ultimately performs.

"By the end of our project, we hope that we turn plastic trash into lubricating treasures in a sound and cost-effective way, thus helping alleviate the dire consequences of plastic wastes, which are already hurting our planet in so many ways," Erdemir said. "If proven commercially viable, we expect our research findings to turn into a wide range of lubricating products—including engine oils and a wide range of industrial lubricants—that could help reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint of future transportation and other industrial systems."

Plastic waste has some economic benefit for developing countries

More information: Ryan A. Hackler et al, Synthetic Lubricants Derived from Plastic Waste and their Tribological Performance, ChemSusChem (2021). DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202100912

Provided by Texas A&M University

Returning nitrogen to soils without chemicals

by Flinders University

While agricultural production around the world struggles with declining soil health, Australian researchers are investigating production of a sustainable organic nitrogen fertilizer made from aquatic cyanobacterial biomass—ideally suited for badly degraded areas reliant on chemical fertilizers.

"Many soils are degraded and becoming less fertile. This challenges agriculture to produce sufficient high-quality food to feed the continuously growing population, which is further exacerbated by climatic instability threatening crop production," says Flinders University researcher Associate Professor Kirsten Heimann.

Scientists in Australia, US and Europe are testing a new biofertiliser made from a fast-growing freshwater cyanobacterium Tolypothrix, which can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere without the need for additional nitrogen fertilization, making the biomass inexpensive to produce compared to alternative microalgal and macroalgal biofertilisers.

This form of non-toxic blue-green algae can be cultivated in freshwater, and even slightly saline or industrial wastewater such as from coal-fired power stations, the research team has found. Capturing biofuel may also be used to offset production costs.

Energy inputs for the production of Tolypothrix biomass can be offset by producing biogas, essentially a methane-rich gas for either drying the biomass to extract high-value health supplement phycocyanin or to produce carbon and nitrogen-rich liquid and solid biofertilisers to remediate soil infertility.

In a recent paper in Chemosphere, Dr. Heimann and colleagues in Australia, the US and Spain investigate Tolypothrix production as a sustainable solution for biological soil improvement, which when combined with biogas or the spirulina-like nutritional powder promises "strong economic returns for regional and remote farming communities."

"Australian soils, in particular in the marginal wheat belt in Western Australia, are structurally degraded, which cannot be overcome by applications of synthetic fertilizers," says Associate Professor Heimann, from the Flinders University Centre for Marine Bioproducts Development in South Australia.

"To improve soil structure, organic carbon applications are required to return the soils' capacity to sustain a healthy soil microbiome and to improve the soils' cation exchange of nutrients and water-holding capacity."

Researchers say conversion of pond-produced cyanobacterial biomass produced on farming land would provide a major in-situ source of renewable nitrogen-rich fertilizer, also helping to reduce carbon emissions from chemical fertilizer production and transport.

Higher energy and food demands are forecast as a consequence of expected global population growth, predicted by the UN to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion in 2100.

These projections encourage research into biofertilizer and biogas production through sustainable energy generation using waste organic material of controlled production of biomass such as microalgae and multicellular cyanobacteria.

Researchers have previously reported photosynthetic fixation of CO2by cyanobacteria of 100 to >200 tons CO2ha−1y−1under outdoor cultivation conditions in open ponds, raceway ponds, photobioreactors and attached growthbioreactors.

Unlike many cyanobacterial species,Tolypothrixsp., a freshwater cyanobacterium, is filamentous and forms aggregates that self-flocculate, making it very easy to harvest from suspension cultures, reducing dewatering costs by up to 90%, studies suggest.

The article, "Biomass pre-treatments of the N2-fixing cyanobacterium Tolypothrix for co-production of methane," by C Velu, OP Karthikeyan, DL Brinkman, S Cirés and K Heimann, has been published in Chemosphere

Peatland fires reduce future methane production in peat soils

More information: Chinnathambi Velu et al, Biomass pre-treatments of the N2-fixing cyanobacterium Tolypothrix for co-production of methane, Chemosphere (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.131246

Journal information: Chemosphere

Provided by Flinders University

More research needed to predict eruption of supervolcanoes

by Cardiff University

Scientists say it is extremely challenging to try and predict when a supervolcano might erupt again due to the sheer diversity of events that have gone before.

Writing today in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, the team say there is not a single model which can describe how these catastrophic events play out, making it extremely difficult to determine how supervolcanoes may erupt in the future.

Supervolcanoes are defined as a volcano that has had at least one explosion of magnitude 8, the highest ranking on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, meaning it has released more than 1000 cubic kilometers of material.

When these huge volcanic systems explode, the associated 'supereruption' represents the most catastrophic of events caused by a natural hazard, resulting in widespread ash-fall blankets and ground-hugging pyroclastic flows, which can be hundreds of meters thick, covering thousands to tens of thousands of square kilometers.

These events also leave huge holes in the ground called Calderas due to the collapse of the Earth's surface through removal of such large volumes of magma.

However, these events are extremely rare, occurring roughly once every 100,000 years. To date, there are no unique explanations for the mechanisms, timings and extreme volumes of supereruptions.

In their study, the team, including scientists from Cardiff University, performed an in-depth review of field, geochemical and petrological evidence from 13 supereruptions that have occurred over the last two million years. They also reviewed geophysical studies of modern volcanic systems which provide a complimentary current snapshot of the magmatic system.

The events ranged from the most recent eruption at the Taupō volcano in New Zealand, over 24,000 years ago, to the oldest at Yellowstone in the U.S. roughly two million years ago.

Analysis of the data revealed no single, unified model that described how each of the 13 events played out and showed that the supereruptions could start mildly over weeks to months or go into vigorous activity immediately. Individual supereruptions could occupy periods of days to weeks, or be prolonged over decades.

Evidence from the Youngest Toba Tuff, Indonesia, which erupted74,000 years ago, suggest the eruption began abruptly, with immediate collapse of the chamber roof. In contrast, the Oruanui eruption, New Zealand, which erupted 25,400 years ago, started slowly, depositing a large ash blanket before Caldera collapse, and progressed intermittently including pauses of several months.

The source of the magma that eventually spews out from the volcano also varies, from single bodies of magma to multiple magma bodies that are simultaneously or sequentially tapped.

"Supereruptions can start literally with a bang and collapse of the chamber roof or begin gradually, with hesitancy before escalating into catastrophic activity," said co-author of the study Dr. George Cooper, from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"Overall, the eruption can be rapid, uninterrupted events over a few days or an episodic sequence prolonged over decades.

"The uncertainty associated with these events therefore makes it very challenging to determine when and how these volcanos may potentially erupt in the future."

The team have called on more research to be undertaken to help answer these questions, including the use of machine learning algorithms situated at monitoring stations to help interpret signals that show the movement of stored magma towards the surface in the hours or days leading up to an eruption.

They also call for more education amongst the public, specifically regarding the nature and frequency of eruptions at these large volcanoes.

"Yellowstone is an example where misinformation has led to the public perception that a catastrophic eruption may be imminent, whereas, in reality, it is extremely unlikely. Therefore, we need to improve our understanding and communication as to the difference between normal non-eruptive unrest, versus indicators that an eruption may be about to happen," continued Dr. Cooper.

Volcano researchers learn how Earth builds supereruption-feeding magma systems

More information: Colin J. N. Wilson et al, No single model for supersized eruptions and their magma bodies, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43017-021-00191-7

Provided by Cardiff University

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