It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
PRISON NATION U$A
Rehabilitative reform
MU researcher Kelli Canada is using a $2.8 million grant to help improve prison conditions for both residents and employees.
The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. And that’s not the only challenge — nearly 44% of U.S. citizens who are released from prison end up returning in less than a year. While many shy away from the statistics, University of Missouri researcher Kelli Canada has taken note and devoted her career as a social worker to improving the mental health and well-being of those in the criminal justice system.
“When you look at the data, specifically regarding prison re-entry, it’s clear to see something isn’t working,” Canada said. “I’m passionate about improving the conditions for those who live and work inside prisons, and my ultimate goal is to help incarcerated individuals re-enter society with the skills and resources they need to be successful long-term.”
A multi-pronged mission
Canada and her research team recently received a $2.8 million grant from Arnold Ventures to help transform the ways people live and work in four Missouri prisons. The five-year project has four key components: staff training, changes to physical spaces within prisons, personal skill building for residents, and community connections.
Staff training Prison staffers will be trained on the importance of empathetic listening and using more humanizing language, such as calling residents by their names rather than referring to them by a specific number that was associated with them upon imprisonment.
"We also want to promote referring to incarcerated individuals as 'residents' rather than 'offenders' or 'inmates,'" Canada said. "These might seem like small changes, but they can have a big impact on how people feel about themselves, ultimately improving their mental health."
Physical transformations The physical environment of prisons will be altered to provide increased privacy for residents. Other changes include painting the walls of the prison, adding additional lighting, creating communal spaces with games and coloring books for residents to spend time with their kids and families, and increasing access to outdoor spaces.
One of Canada's biggest priorities is restructuring prisons to increase privacy for residents who often have to use the restroom in front of their cell roomates.
"Residents often have to go to the bathroom in front of their roommates," Canada said. "Giving them space to use the bathroom in private and have some quiet time to themselves is a healthy practice that can help people de-stress, especially when they are going through a tough period in their life. We will also be creating more comfortable communal spaces for residents to read newspapers or magazines together outside of their cells, and we are excited to be constructing communal kitchens so residents can prepare a meal together in a 'normal' kitchen environment."
Personal skills Residents will learn skills like budgeting money and cooking meals when their family or friends come to visit.
"These might seem like basic skills, but one thing we've learned over the years is some residents, especially younger residents, have never had to the opportunity to learn these skills before," Canada said. "Not only can it do a lot to improve their self-confidence if they can cook a meal to share with their family or friends who come to visit, but these are skills they can take with them back into society when they exit prison."
Community connections Finally, the project aims to help residents feel like a connected community by assigning various tasks for keeping common areas clean. Some examples include rotating schedules for sweeping and mopping floors, cleaning the communal kitchens and making sure old food in the refrigerators is thrown away.
"By holding each other accountable, we can teach the importance of treating others with respect and thinking about how one's own actions can impact the broader community," Canada said. "We also want to give the residents more resources so they are successful upon re-entry to society, so we will be setting up job interviews via Zoom and improving work-release programs to better facilitate job trainings after release from prison."
Finding common ground
Canada’s latest work builds off her recent Prison Research and Innovation Network (PRIN) project, which used a community-engaged research model to bring together staff members and prison residents at the Moberly Correctional Center to discuss ways to improve conditions in the prison.
“It has been incredible to see what changes can happen when you allow prison staff and residents to brainstorm collaborative ideas and build innovations together,” Canada said. “We can’t change things for one group and not the other, and I am proud to support MU’s land-grant mission by conducting research that improves lives out in the broader community.”
Editor's note
Canada’s collaborators on the project include MU’s Ashley Givens, Francis Huang and Rabia Faizan, as well as Beth Huebner from Arizona State University and Janet Garcia-Hallett from University of New Haven.
Tanks of the Triassic: new crocodile ancestor identified
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
IMAGE:
AN ARTIST’S INTERPRETATION OF THE NEWLY IDENTIFIED AETOSAUR GARZAPELTA MUELLER.
Dinosaurs get all the glory. But aetosaurs, a heavily armored cousin of modern crocodiles, ruled the world before dinosaurs did. These tanks of the Triassic came in a variety of shapes and sizes before going extinct around 200 million years ago. Today, their fossils are found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia.
Scientists use the bony plates that make up aetosaur armor to identify different species and usually don’t have many fossil skeletons to work with. But a new study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin centers on an aetosaur suit of armor that has most of its major parts intact.
The suit — called a carapace — is about 70% complete and covers each major region of the body.
“We have elements from the back of the neck and shoulder region all the way to the tip of the tail,” said William Reyes, a doctoral student at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences who led the research. “Usually, you find very limited material.”
The research was published in The Anatomical Record.
Reyes and his collaborators used the armor to identify the specimen as a new aetosaur species — which they named Garzapelta muelleri. The name “Garza” recognizes Garza County in northwest Texas, where the aetosaur was found, and “Pelta” is Latin for shield, a nod to aetosaurs’ heavily fortified body. The species name “muelleri” honors the paleontologist who originally discovered it, Bill Mueller.
Garzapelta lived about 215 million years ago and resembled a modern American crocodile — but with much more armor.
“Take a crocodile from modern day, and turn it into an armadillo,” said Reyes.
The bony plates that covered Garzapelta and other aetosaurs are called osteoderms. They were embedded directly in the skin and formed a suit of armor by fitting together like a mosaic. In addition to having a body covered in bony plates, Garzapelta’s sides were flanked by curved spikes that would have offered another layer of protection from predators. Although crocodiles today are carnivores, scientists think that aetosaurs were primarily omnivorous.
The spikes on Garzapelta are very similar to those found in another aetosaur species, but surprisingly, researchers found that the two species are only distantly related. The similarities, they discovered, are an example of convergent evolution, the independent evolution of similar traits in different species. The development of flight in insects, birds, mammals and now-extinct pterosaurs is a classic example of this phenomenon.
According to Reyes, an array of unique features on Garzapelta’s plates clearly marked it as a new species. They range from how the plates fit together to unique bumps and ridges on the bones. However, figuring out where Garzapelta fit into the larger aetosaur family tree was more of challenge. Depending on which portion of the armor the researchers emphasized in their analysis, Garzapelta would end up in very different places. Armor that ran down its back resembled armor from one species, while its midsection spikes resembled armor from another.
Once the researchers determined that the spikes evolved independently, they were able to work out where Garzapelta fit best among other aetosaur species. Nevertheless, Reyes said the research shows how convergent evolution can complicate things.
“Convergence of the osteoderms across distantly related aetosaurs has been noted before, but the carapace of Garzapelta muelleri is the best example of it and shows to what extent it can happen and the problems it causes in our phylogenetic analyses,” Reyes said.
Garzapelta is part of the Texas Tech University fossil collections. It spent most of the past 30 years on a shelf before Reyes encountered it during a visit. Bill Parker, an aetosaur expert and park paleontologist at Petrified Forest National Park who was not part of the research, said that university and museum collections are a critical part of making this type of research possible.
“These specimens weren't just dug in the field yesterday,” he said. “They've been sitting in the museum for decades and it just takes someone like Will to come along and finally decide to study them and make them come to life.”
In addition to different species having different armor, it’s possible that an animal’s age or sex could also affect armor appearance. Reyes is currently exploring these questions by studying aetosaur fossils in the Jackson School’s collection, most of which were found during the 1940s as part of excavations done by the Works Progress Administration.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Jackson School.
The study co-authors are Jeffrey Martz, an associate professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, and Bryan Small, a research associate at the Museum of Texas Tech University.
William Reyes, a doctoral student at the Jackson School of Geosciences, examines an aetosaur specimen on display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
A bony plate of armor called an osteoderms from the trunk region of Garzapelta muelleri. Top image is the osteoderm as seen from above. The bottom image is the osteoderm seen from the side. Scale bar is 5 centimeters.
CREDIT
William Reyes
A hypothetical reconstruction of the aetosaur Garzapelta muelleri, as seen from above, based on fossilized carapace remains in the Texas Tech vertebrate collections. The reconstruction is pictured with examples of its plated and spiked armor in cross-section.
Garzapelta muelleri gen. et sp. nov., a new aetosaur (Archosauria: Pseudosuchia) from the Late Triassic (middle Norian) middle Cooper Canyon Formation, Dockum Group, Texas, USA, and its implications on our understanding of the morphological disparity of the aetosaurian dorsal carapace
The majority of Americans do not support anti-democratic behavior, even when elected officials do
Despite rampant political polarization, the majority of Democrats and Republicans support democratic values and oppose political violence
A new study from the Polarization Research Lab, a collaboration among researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, and Stanford University, has found that despite this surge in anti-democratic behavior by U.S. politicians, the majority of Americans oppose anti-democratic attitudes and reject partisan violence.
From September 2022 to October 2023, a period which included the 2022 midterm elections, the researchers surveyed more than 45,000 Democrats and Republicans on their attitudes toward five specific democratic norm violations:
Reducing polling stations in areas where the other party is popular
Being more loyal to party than election rules and the Constitution
Censoring partisan media
Believing that the president should circumvent Congress
Believing that elected officials of one’s own party should consider ignoring court decisions when the judges who issued these decisions were appointed by a president of the other party
They also gauged these Americans’ feelings about four acts of political violence — assault, arson, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder — as well as their perceptions about the other party.
Broad Opposition to Political Violence
After a year of weekly polling, researchers found that supermajorities of Americans oppose violations of democratic norms and political violence of all kinds.
“Public opposition to anti-democratic actions and political violence was not only overwhelming, but also remarkably stable throughout the year,” says paper co-author Yphtach Lelkes, Polarization Research Lab Co-Director and Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School.
Of the five norm violations included in the surveys, 17.2% of Democrats and 21.6% of Republicans supported one norm violation. Only 6% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans supported two violations or more, suggesting that broad anti-democratic attitudes are very rare.
“Although any support for anti-democratic behavior is a cause for concern, the data show there is not a large anti-democratic constituency in America. Those who are the most likely to support anti-democratic actions are also less likely to be electorally important,” says Lelkes.
Throughout the year, support for political violence within both parties was always below 4%.
The researchers also found that both Democrats and Republicans overestimate the opposing party’s support for norm violations, in some cases by four to five times.
"Democracy is under threat in America, but these data show we are not on the brink of a citizen-supported push toward authoritarianism,” says Sean J. Westwood, Polarization Research Lab Co-Director and Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.
Americans have low levels of support for political violence
CREDIT
Derek E. Holliday, Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes, and Sean J. Westwood
Elected Officials and the Public
Once survey results showed that the majority of Americans oppose anti-democratic actions and political violence, the researchers wondered whether the politicians who do endorse democratic norm violations and political violence — such as the denial of election results and the January 6 insurrection — might merely be reflecting the sentiments of their specific constituents.
To test this, they gathered data on the U.S. House Representatives who either voted to overturn the 2020 election results or publicly denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.
They then examined whether survey respondents represented by a Member of Congress who denies election results were more inclined to prioritize party loyalty over adherence to election rules and the Constitution. However, they discovered that in these instances, there was no significant correlation between constituents' opinions and policymakers' actions.
"The real gap in support for democracy is not between Democratic and Republican voters, but between Republican voters and Republican representatives,” says lead author Derek Holliday, Polarization Research Lab Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. “While it is encouraging to see Republican voters, like Democrats, broadly support democratic norms, it is alarming that election-denying Republicans continue to win elections despite their democratic backsliding behavior."
“Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Anti-Democratic Attitudes In The American Public” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and authored by Derek E. Holliday, Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes, and Sean J. Westwood.
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Anti-Democratic Attitudes In The American Public
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
18-Mar-2024
COI STATEMENT
All authors declare no competing interests.
Americans support democratic norms, elected officials don't
Study shows a strong divide between the attitudes of citizens and elected officials.
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
Following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, many Americans have raised concerns about the future of democracy in the United States.
Yet the American public, including Democrats and Republicans alike, strongly oppose anti-democratic actions and partisan violence, according to a new study by the Polarization Research Lab.
"Democracy is under threat in America, but these data show we are not on the brink of a citizen-supported push toward authoritarianism," says the lab's director and study senior author Sean Westwood, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth.
The research team surveyed the public to measure support for violations against democratic norms, political violence, and partisan animosity.
The researchers drew on two data sets: approximately 45,100 Americans of which 1,000 individuals were interviewed each week, from September 2022 to October 2023, which included the 2022 midterm elections; and a subset of 5,230 Americans, who were interviewed at multiple time points.
"When it comes to anti-democratic behavior, there is a misperception that citizens of one political party are more likely to violate democratic norms than the other but that's just not the case," says lead author Derek Holliday, a postdoctoral fellow at the Polarization Research Lab.
Respondents were surveyed on their support for four democratic norm violations: 1) if the number of polling stations in areas that typically support the other political party should be reduced; 2) if a candidate who questions an election outcome should be more loyalty to their own political party than election rules and the Constitution; 3) if current elected officials should consider ignoring court decisions issued by judges appointed by the opposing political party; and 4) if the government should be able to censor media that spends more time attacking their own political party than the other party.
The results show that most Americans support democracy with 17.2% of Democrats and 21.6% of Republicans supporting one or more of the four norm violations.
When the researchers looked at the data, support for each of the four democratic norm violations was almost identical for both parties. For example, support for reducing polling stations in areas dominated by the other party was 8.8% for Republicans and 9.2% for Democrats.
The norm violation that had the most support pertained to censoring partisan media, and had just under 20% support.
The findings also reveal decreasing levels of support for political violence. Although up to 59% of Americans think that members of the other political party support assault, actual support was 3% for assault, 2.4% for arson, 1.9% for assault with a deadly weapon, and 1.7% for murder. "There's a massive mismatch between actual attitudes and how Americans view the other side," says Westwood.
“Public opposition to anti-democratic actions and political violence was not only overwhelming, but also remarkably stable throughout the year,” says co-author Yphtach Lelkes, Polarization Research Lab co-director and associate professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
While both Democrat and Republican respondents indicated that they strongly oppose loyalty to their own party rather than the Constitution in contested elections, a near majority of elected Republicans indicated they would be comfortable violating that democratic norm.
The researchers also examined if respondents who were represented by an elected official who supported overturning the 2020 election were more likely to support anti-democratic norms but found no such evidence.
"Support for norm violations doesn’t appear to form a divide between everyday Democrats and Republicans, but it is instead a divide between ordinary Americans who support democracy and elected officials who are pushing back against democratic governance," says Westwood.
"It's good news that the public are so uniformly opposed to democratic norm violations, but it's bad news that everyday Americans continue to vote for elected officials who pose a threat to democracy."
Polarization Research Lab co-director Shanto Iyengar, a professor of political science at Stanford University, also contributed to the study.
###
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Uncommon and Nonpartisan: Anti-Democratic Attitudes In The American Public
Breakthrough in melting point prediction: over 100-year-old physics problem solved by Queen Mary Professor
QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
A longstanding problem in physics has finally been cracked by Professor Kostya Trachenko of Queen Mary University of London's School of Physical and Chemical Sciences. His research, published in the Physical Review E, unveils a general theory for predicting melting points, a fundamental property whose understanding has baffled scientists for over a century.
For decades, our understanding of the three basic states of matter – solids, liquids, and gases – relied on temperature-pressure phase diagrams. These diagrams depict the conditions under which each state exists, with distinct lines separating them. However, one crucial line, the melting line – marking the transition between solid and liquid – lacked a universal description.
Professor Trachenko's theory bridges this gap. By developing a new framework that incorporates recent advancements in liquid theory, he demonstrates that melting lines can be described by a simple parabolic equation. This not only offers a practical tool for predicting melting points but also reveals a surprising universality across different material types. This universality comes from observing that parameters in the parabolic equation are governed by fundamental physical constants such as the Planck constant and electron mass and charge.
"The simplicity and universality of this result are particularly exciting," explains Professor Trachenko. "It suggests that melting, despite its complexities, exhibits a fundamental unity across diverse systems, from noble gases to metals."
This discovery holds significant implications beyond theoretical physics. Accurate prediction of melting points is crucial in materials science, with applications ranging from drug development to designing advanced materials and other areas where predicting phase diagrams is important. Professor Trachenko's work paves the way for a deeper understanding of phase transitions and the creation of new materials with tailored properties.
THE 2023 BILLION-TON REPORT IDENTIFIES FEEDSTOCKS THAT COULD BE AVAILABLE TO PRODUCE BIOFUELS TO DECARBONIZE THE TRANSPORTATION AND INDUSTRIAL SECTORS WHILE POTENTIALLY TRIPLING THE U.S. BIOECONOMY. THE MAP INDICATES A MATURE MARKET SCENARIO, INCLUDING EMERGING RESOURCES. CREDIT: ORNL/U.S. DEPT. OF ENERGY
The United States could triple its current bioeconomy by producing more than 1 billion tons per year of plant-based biomass for renewable fuels, while meeting projected demands for food, feed, fiber, conventional forest products and exports, according to the Department of Energy’s latest Billion-Ton Report led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The 2023 Billion-Ton Report, or BT23, announced by DOE, is the fourth in a series of national biomass resource assessments spanning two decades. The report identifies feedstocks that could be available to produce biofuels to decarbonize transportation and industrial processes.
The report examines different levels of market maturity to assess the quantity of biomass that could be produced, its price, geographical density and distribution. The report covers biomass production capacity from some 60 resources, including winter oilseed crops, trees and brush harvested to prevent forest wildfires, purpose-grown energy crops, macroalgae such as seaweed cultivated in ocean farms, waste captured from cities and carbon dioxide from industrial plants. Harnessing emerging resources, such as algae, could boost biomass availability by another 250 million tons per year, depending on price, the report found.
The United States currently uses about 342 million tons per year of biomass to generate 5% of the nation’s energy. In a mature market where between 1.1 and 1.5 billion tons per year of biomass is available, the nation could produce 60 to 85 billion gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuel, reaching the goal of meeting 100% of the sector’s demand by 2050. Another use would be producing enough electricity to replace the power currently generated with fossil fuels.
No single source of biomass can supply all that’s needed, and the report identifies opportunities for biomass production down to the county level based on local conditions and evolving technologies. These resources and easy-to-use tools are available on DOE’s Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework website.
“An economy based on clean, sustainable biotechnologies and biomanufacturing is within reach,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. “The latest Billion-Ton report provides invaluable information to develop science-based solutions for a greener, more prosperous future. ORNL is excited to be part of that.”
“The report describes biomass production capacity in response to different market demand and pricing scenarios. The results show resources that would be accessible within economic and environmental constraints, including protecting food production,” said Matthew Langholtz, natural resources economist at ORNL and the project lead. “Even with these constraints, in a mature market with sufficient supply and demand, we could produce 1.5 billion tons of biomass annually, and even more with the new resources we identify.”
Farmers and bioeconomy stakeholders can use the report as a first step to identify biomass production opportunities. Hardy perennial crops such as poplar trees and switchgrass that need less water and fertilizer, and winter oilseed crops like carinata and pennycress can provide additional farm income. Cities could capture waste discarded in landfills, supporting a circular economy.
The report follows the 2005 U.S. Billion-Ton Study, the 2011 U.S. Billion-Ton Update and the 2016 U.S. Billion-Ton Report, all managed by ORNL researchers. The new assessment includes contributions and reviews by 52 experts from 11 federal agencies, national laboratories, universities and industry.
“Data behind the new Billion-Ton Report — as well as data from past reports — can be used to drive local, regional and national decision-making,” said Maggie Davis, natural resources data scientist at ORNL. “We leveraged modern data methods to make accessing and using the data easy for government decision-makers, industry leaders, farmers, researchers and other stakeholders who support the bioeconomy. The information can also be used to chart a course for larger investments in support of strategically targeted scientific research.”
The 2023 report “is the culmination of 20 years of meticulous analysis taking into account the potential from croplands, forests and new sources of biomass along with economic and environmental considerations, transportation and logistics and evolving technologies. We identify pathways to boost both rural and urban bioeconomies in support of a cleaner future,” said Erin Webb, lead for the Bioresource Science and Engineering group and relationship manager for DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office at ORNL.
ORNL’s biomass resource expertise, including Billion-Ton data and analysis, also supported the Roads To Removal national report released in December 2023 that identified 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide removal potential in the United States, charting a path toward the goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
The United States could triple its current bioeconomy by producing more than 1 billion tons per year of plant-based biomass for renewable fuels, while meeting projected demands for food, feed, fiber, conventional forest products and exports, according to the Department of Energy’s latest Billion-Ton Report led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The 2023 Billion-Ton Report, or BT23, announced by DOE today, is the fourth in a series of national biomass resource assessments spanning two decades. The report identifies feedstocks that could be available to produce biofuels to decarbonize transportation and industrial processes.
The report examines different levels of market maturity to assess the quantity of biomass that could be produced, its price, geographical density and distribution. The report covers biomass production capacity from some 60 resources, including winter oilseed crops, trees and brush harvested to prevent forest wildfires, purpose-grown energy crops, macroalgae such as seaweed cultivated in ocean farms, waste captured from cities and carbon dioxide from industrial plants. Harnessing emerging resources, such as algae, could boost biomass availability by another 250 million tons per year, depending on price, the report found.
The United States currently uses about 342 million tons per year of biomass to generate 5% of the nation’s energy. In a mature market where between 1.1 and 1.5 billion tons per year of biomass is available, the nation could produce 60 to 85 billion gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuel, reaching the goal of meeting 100% of the sector’s demand by 2050. Another use would be producing enough electricity to replace the power currently generated with fossil fuels.
No single source of biomass can supply all that’s needed, and the report identifies opportunities for biomass production down to the county level based on local conditions and evolving technologies. These resources and easy-to-use tools are available on DOE’s Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework website.
“An economy based on clean, sustainable biotechnologies and biomanufacturing is within reach,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. “The latest Billion-Ton report provides invaluable information to develop science-based solutions for a greener, more prosperous future. ORNL is excited to be part of that.”
“The report describes biomass production capacity in response to different market demand and pricing scenarios. The results show resources that would be accessible within economic and environmental constraints, including protecting food production,” said Matthew Langholtz, natural resources economist at ORNL and the project lead. “Even with these constraints, in a mature market with sufficient supply and demand, we could produce 1.5 billion tons of biomass annually, and even more with the new resources we identify.”
Farmers and bioeconomy stakeholders can use the report as a first step to identify biomass production opportunities. Hardy perennial crops such as poplar trees and switchgrass that need less water and fertilizer, and winter oilseed crops like carinata and pennycress can provide additional farm income. Cities could capture waste discarded in landfills, supporting a circular economy.
The report follows the 2005 U.S. Billion-Ton Study, the 2011 U.S. Billion-Ton Update and the 2016 U.S. Billion-Ton Report, all managed by ORNL researchers. The new assessment includes contributions and reviews by 52 experts from 11 federal agencies, national laboratories, universities and industry.
“Data behind the new Billion-Ton Report — as well as data from past reports — can be used to drive local, regional and national decision-making,” said Maggie Davis, natural resources data scientist at ORNL. “We leveraged modern data methods to make accessing and using the data easy for government decision-makers, industry leaders, farmers, researchers and other stakeholders who support the bioeconomy. The information can also be used to chart a course for larger investments in support of strategically targeted scientific research.”
The 2023 report “is the culmination of 20 years of meticulous analysis taking into account the potential from croplands, forests and new sources of biomass along with economic and environmental considerations, transportation and logistics and evolving technologies. We identify pathways to boost both rural and urban bioeconomies in support of a cleaner future,” said Erin Webb, lead for the Bioresource Science and Engineering group and relationship manager for DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office at ORNL.
ORNL’s biomass resource expertise, including Billion-Ton data and analysis, also supported the Roads To Removal national report released in December 2023 that identified 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide removal potential in the United States, charting a path toward the goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
The 2023 Billion-Ton Report identifies emerging resources that could triple the U.S. bioeconomy, producing as much as 1.5 billion tons per year of biomass in a mature market.
