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)
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Extreme precipitation in Central Asia connected to drought in mainland Southeast Asia
Rice researchers find frequencies of extreme hydroclimate events increasing in both regions
In much of Asia, the effects of climate change are felt through the increase of extreme weather events, especially water-related ones. Droughts are becoming more common in mainland Southeast Asia, while periods with unusually large amounts of rainfall are increasing in Central Asia. Rice University’s Na Wang and Sylvia Dee were interested in understanding if these two extremes were related to one another, despite being geographically distant. The researchers’ findings were recently published in Nature Geoscience.
“Understanding patterns in these climate extremes can help affected communities build climate resiliency and prepare for water-related disasters,” said Dee, an associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary studies and the senior author on this study. “We wanted to know if the increase in both droughts and extreme precipitation were happening independent of one another, or if they were being driven by the same large-scale climate factors.”
To do so, Dee’s team needed to look far back in the region’s climate history — a much longer history than recorded weather data could provide. So they turned to paleoclimate records, sets of data created by natural sources like tree rings, sediments and ice sheets that hold evidence of long-ago weather patterns. For example, the varying width of tree rings can indicate which years in a tree’s life were dryer or wetter. Sediment layers, taken from places like lake beds or salt marshes, can provide another clue. Darker layers indicate wet periods, while lighter ones indicate dry periods. By carefully analyzing and combining different types of records created by nature, scientists can reconstruct weather patterns from thousands or even millions of years ago.
“We used paleoclimate records gathered together for the region to reconstruct historic moisture patterns in mainland Southeast and Central Asia going back thousands of years,” said Wang, a Rice alumnus and the first author on this paper. “Then we used climate model simulations to look at the mechanisms driving simultaneous precipitation and drought extremes, investigating potential physical pathways that could be linking them.”
The models showed that concurrent drought and extreme precipitation had been occurring in mainland Southeast Asia and Central Asia for the last two thousand years. This meant, Wang explained, that even though drought and extreme precipitation were diametrically opposed events, they were linked to one another by large-scale climate patterns.
The team then compared the current drought and high precipitation periods to the historical record. While the periods of drought and high precipitations have always been a regular feature of weather in the region, the researchers found that the frequency of these events had recently, and significantly, increased.
“If we look at the recent drought record in mainland Southeast Asia, what stands out is not only that these are among the most extreme droughts of the past millennium, but also that droughts are occurring much more frequently,” Wang said. “We also now know that this high drought frequency is linked to increased periods of precipitation in Central Asia. Model projections suggest that under future warming scenarios, the connection between hydroclimate extremes in these two regions will not only persist but the frequency of short-term extreme events is also expected to increase.”
Extreme hydroclimate events, like droughts or high precipitation periods, often have the greatest impact on their ecosystems and surrounding communities. An increase in frequency of these events, regardless of their severity, can have drastic impacts.
“These results highlight the importance of understanding extreme weather and climate change as an evolving system, rather than focusing on isolated events,” Dee said. “In order to understand, respond to and predict climate change, we have to first understand the climate system’s baseline state using its past as prologue for future risks.”
This work was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Paleoclimate Perspectives on Climate Change (2102814 and 102812).
Opposing hydroclimate extremes in Central and mainland Southeast Asia over past millennium
Most Salt Lake County residents concerned about Great Salt Lake decline
New University of Utah-led research finds that 69% are concerned about the shrinking lake, with levels of concern varying by social group, birthplace and personal experiences.
Credit: Grineski et. al. Environment and Behavior (2026)
Residents of Salt Lake County, Utah are highly concerned about the shrinking Great Salt Lake, according to new University of Utah-led research examining local perceptions of the lake’s health, economic and environmental impacts.
The survey of 515 residents found that 69% reported concern about the lake’s decline, with habitat loss and risks to human health ranking as the top issues.
The study also found that concern varied across communities. Hispanic/Latinx, Pacific Islander and foreign-born residents expressed greater levels of concern about several impacts, including wildlife habitat loss, regional identity and the region’s ability to sustain life. Researchers say the findings show how lived experience and background can shape views about rapid, environmental changes.
“Our study helps clarify how people with different experiences make sense of the impacts of the drying Great Salt Lake,”said Sara Grineski, professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Utah (U) and the study’s lead author. “Asking residents about various dimensions associated with a local hazard reveals residents’ specific concerns. These insights could help policymakers prioritize interventions that address the most significant sources of concern.
Although public attitudes toward climate change have been widely studied, far less is known about how people perceive an environmental crisis in their own backyard. The new survey is the first to examine how concerns about the Great Salt Lake’s decline differ across Salt Lake County residents based on their backgrounds and personal experiences with the lake with regards to multiple dimensions of impact.
The Great Salt Lake hit record-low levels in 2022, driven by a combination of water use, prolonged drought and rising temperatures. As the climate warms, more frequent droughts and extreme heat are expected to speed up the lake’s water loss. The researchers asked respondents how concerned they were about seven possible consequences of the lake drying up—for example, dust-related health risks, economic impacts on farmers, harm to lake recreation, loss of regional identity and threats to critical bird habitat.
“Our results suggest that policies for the Great Salt Lake will gain stronger public support if they are framed as actions needed to protect wildlife or other key values rather than actions to stabilize water levels,” said Tim Collins,professor at the U’s School of Environment, Society & Sustainability and coauthor of the study.
The study, published in the journal Environment and Behavior on May 31, 2026, was coauthored by Malcolm Araos, assistant professor at New York University who conducted the research as a U postdoctoral researcher.
Among their conclusions:
69% of Salt Lake County residents are concerned about the drying lake.
77% are concerned about the loss of animal habitats, 73% about the impacts of dust emissions on human health, 65% about economic effects, 64% about quality of life, 57% about the region’s ability to sustain life, 55% about a loss of regional identity, and 48% about the effects on lake-related recreation.
Hispanic/Latinx and Pacific Islanders had levels of concern of the lake drying up that were 10% greater than those of white residents. They were also more concerned about the loss of animal habitats and regional identity, consequences for recreation and the region’s ability to sustain life for future generations.
Women’s concern about the lake drying was 16% higher than men’s, consistent with previous research showing that women tend to perceive environmental risks as more serious than men.
Residents under age 30 had levels of general concern about the lake drying up that were 14% higher than those of 31-64 years old.
Foreign-born residents versus U.S.-born residents were more concerned about quality of life.
People who read news articles about the drying lake or had personal experiences with the lake had greater degrees of concern. For example, those who visited the lake in the previous year had a level of concern about health impacts that was 7% higher than those who did not.
The researchers expected residents to be most concerned about dust storms because of the direct health risks. A 2024 study by Grineski, Collins and other U scientists found that everyone in Salt Lake County is exposed to unhealthy levels of dust from the drying lake. Loss animal habitat narrowly beat dust as the greatest concern, suggesting that residents place a high value on the lake’s ecosystems. A separate state-wide survey by Utah State University found that ecological health mattered moat to Utahns, indicating that harm to wildlife is a major public concern as climate change threatens the Great Salt Lake.
The researchers were also surprised that greater exposure to windblown dust was not linked to higher levels of concern about the drying lake. The authors estimated dust exposure separately and linked it to survey data based on the participants’ neighborhoods.
“Areas with higher dust exposure in the northwestern portion of the country also have higher chronic air pollution from more visible sources like industry and traffic, which they may be more concerned about than episodic dust from the lake,” Collins said.
The study also found that concern about the lake’s decline was greatest among women, younger people, foreign-born residents and racial and ethnic minority residents—populations that previous research has identified to be particularly vulnerable to a warming climate.
The authors suggest these patterns could help create more effective policy approaches.
“Social movement leaders and policymakers can use the issues that most resonate with locals as a frame to catalyze action, with the aim of building momentum and support for policies that would raise the lake’s water levels and better sustain quality of life in the region,” Grineski said.
Frequency of concerns about the drying Great Salt Lake
Credit
Grineski et. al. Environment and Behavior (2026)
The project was funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with principal investigator Nancy Daher, associate professor in the U’s Occupational Environmental Health Division, and coprincipal investigators Grineski, Collins and Kerry Kelly, associate professor in the U’s Department of Chemical Engineering.
Concerns about the drying Great Salt Lake: What do people care about and who cares most?
Reinventing food packaging with safe and sustainable oxygen-scavenging biodegradable plastic
Researchers used cellulose derived from fermented coconut water to develop strong, multilayered biodegradable PLA-based films designed to help preserve food quality
Conventional food packaging plastics protect food from oxygen-induced spoilage but contribute to plastic pollution and long-term environmental challenges. To address this problem, researchers led by Prof. Andi Dirpan from Hasanuddin University, Indonesia, have reportedly developed multilayered biodegradable polylactic acid films reinforced with cellulose obtained from fermented coconut water (also known as nata de coco) and butylated hydroxytoluene, that combines oxygen-scavenging functionality with enhanced mechanical performance, offering a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative.
Credit: Avlxyz from Openverse via Flickr Image source link: https://openverse.org/image/7dd5b698-7be7-4dc2-b338-a0719a211320
From ensuring that food remains fresh for a longer time to extending its shelf life for future consumption – the role of food packaging in modern society is indispensable. Conventional food packaging plastics are sturdy and highly effective at keeping oxygen out, one of the main drivers of food spoilage. Unfortunately, however, widely used materials, such as those used in everyday wrappers and containers, can persist in the environment for decades after disposal. As concerns over plastic waste continue to grow in the world today, scientists are seeking safe and eco-friendly alternatives that can preserve food effectively while also offering improved biodegradability after use.
Plant-based biodegradable plastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA), are a promising alternative, but fall short of conventional plastics; they typically do not block oxygen as well, nor do they hold up mechanically. Researchers have tried introducing additives to improve their strength or make them actively scavenge oxygen. However, these two enhancements are rarely combined and tested together. The real challenge lies in building a biodegradable plastic that actively manages oxygen while maintaining the strength and functionality required for food packaging.
With this goal in mind, Professor Andi Dirpan and his team at Hasanuddin University, Indonesia, have developed multilayer PLA-based films reinforced with microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and enhanced with an oxygen-scavenging compound, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). This innovative biodegradable material combines oxygen-scavenging functionality with enhanced mechanical performance, offering a promising alternative to conventional plastics.
A notable aspect of this work was the selection of cellulose source. Rather than using cellulose from wood or crops, the researchers produced bacterial cellulose from fermented coconut water, mimicking the process used to make ‘nata de coco,’ a jelly-like food produced by fermented coconut water. Why? Well, because bacterial cellulose is highly pure and rich in fiber, making it an effective reinforcing component. During fermentation, the bacteria produced a dense cellulose membrane, which the researchers purified and processed into MCC powder for use as an additive. It was then blended into a PLA film built in three thin layers, with the oxygen scavenger BHT placed only in the two inner layers that would face the food.
The team tested films made with different amounts of MCC powder and compared their coconut water-derived cellulose (MCC nata de coco) to a common commercial alternative (MCC avicel pH 102). Adding more cellulose made the films mechanically stronger and lowered the amount of oxygen that could pass through. However, it also made the films denser and noticeably stiffer. At a microscopic level, MCC nata de coco produced a more uniform, defect-free structure than the commercial alternative, which the researchers attributed to its higher purity and fiber content. Oxygen permeability tests also showed the resulting film performed better than plain PLA.
Notably, the film broke down quickly and steadily when buried in soil. “The biodegradation rate was found to be 28.86% over 25 days,” explains Prof. Dirpan. Adding further, he says, “These results show that the level of biodegradation is in accordance with that of biodegradable plastics made from similar polymers, which is over 25% within a period of 25 days.”
Through careful analysis of the relationship between structure, properties, and functions, the study highlighted an important trade-off. Although the reinforced film showed improved stiffness and useful oxygen-scavenging properties, it was brittle and did not stretch well before breaking. This matters because packaging materials must protect food while withstanding manufacturing, transport, and day-to-day handling. Simply put, the results show that combining reinforcing and oxygen-scavenging additives in a multilayer biodegradable system is promising, but the balance between barrier performance and flexibility still needs improvement.
Overall, this research provides useful design criteria for creating truly ecological plastics for food packaging in the future. As is evident from the bibliometric analysis conducted by the team, there has been an exponential growth in studies on advanced packaging technologies, driven by increasing demand for sustainable and functional materials. Against this backdrop, the efforts by the team of researchers led by Prof. Dirpan at Hasanuddin University are truly meaningful. Sharing his concluding thoughts, Prof. Dirpan says, “Our approach supports sustainable food packaging development and contributes to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly responsible production (SDG 12), climate action (SDG 13), and food preservation (SDG 2).”
***
Reference Title of original paper: Multilayer Oxygen-Scavenging Biodegradable Polylactic Acid Films Reinforced with Microcrystalline Cellulose and Butylated Hydroxytoluene: Experimental Study of Structure-Property-Function Relationships Completed with Bibliometric Analysis toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Journal: ASEAN Journal for Science and Engineering in Materials URL: https://ejournal.bumipublikasinusantara.id/index.php/ajsem/article/view/946
About Hasanuddin University, Indonesia Hasanuddin University (Universitas Hasanuddin or Unhas) is one of Indonesia’s largest autonomous universities, located in Makassar. Established on September 10, 1956, and named after Sultan Hasanuddin of the Gowa Kingdom, the university has grown into a major center for higher education with 17 faculties, including medicine, engineering, law, agriculture, and natural sciences. Its origins date back to 1947 with an economics faculty linked to the University of Indonesia. Today, Unhas focuses on advancing science, technology, arts, and culture, with a strong emphasis on the Indonesian Maritime Continent, aiming to develop innovative and globally competitive graduates. Learn more, here: https://www.unhas.ac.id/about/
About Professor Andi Dirpan from Hasanuddin University, Indonesia Dr. Andi Dirpan is a Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Technology at Hasanuddin University, Indonesia. He specializes in post-harvest technology, fruit quality, agriculture technology products, and smart packaging. Dr. Dirpan has published more than 100 papers in reputed journals till date, which have been cited more than 1900 times.
Funding information This research was supported by the RIIM LPDP and BRIN Grants, with grant numbers 113/IV/KS/07/2025 and 3259/UN4.1.7/PT.01.03/2025.
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Publication Date
1-Mar-2027
COI Statement
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.
Common plastic additive makes stretchable OLED displays brighter and more elastic
Research led by a University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering undergraduate found that an everyday plasticizer can boost the efficiency and stretchability of light-emitting polymer films
The same class of chemical additive that makes plastic wrap pliable and vinyl flooring soft could be the key to unlocking the next generation of wearable displays. Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have discovered that blending a common plastic softener into light-emitting polymer films makes those films both brighter and more stretchable.
The work, led by a UChicago PME undergraduate student in the class of 2025, offers a surprisingly straightforward solution to one of the central challenges in stretchable OLED technology: making light-emitting materials flexible without reducing how efficiently they emit light.
“In the past, we’d been trying to come up with all kinds of complicated, new chemical structures for stretchable emitters,” said Sihong Wang, an associate professor of molecular engineering at UChicago PME and senior author of the new study published in Nature Communications. “But this method is really simple; you just mix two things together, and one of them is a commercially available additive that people have used for decades to soften everyday plastics.”
Pushing polymer chains apart
Engineers have long been trying to create stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)—especially useful in wearable electronics, humanoid robots, and 3D displays in general. For Wang, stretchable OLEDs are one piece of a larger vision: a suite of body-compatible electronics that can sense, compute, and communicate directly on or inside the body. His lab has developed stretchable computing patches and biosensors toward that goal, and bright, efficient stretchable displays are a critical component. But balancing brightness and skin-like softness in these materials has been challenging.
Wang’s lab has previously worked to develop stretchable TADF (thermally activated delayed fluorescence) polymers, which are far more efficient than conventional emitters. But when these polymers are packed closely together in a film, neighboring units can interfere with each other. Their energies cancel out before any light is released, a phenomenon known as concentration quenching.
Wang and his colleagues suspected that introducing tiny bits of physical space between the polymers could solve this quenching problem. At the same time, such physical space created between light-emitting polymer chains could facilitate to more easily slide past each other under mechanical stretching—just like how plasticizers make commodity polymers softer.
To test this idea, undergraduate Glingna Wang turned to dioctyl phthalate (DOP), a plasticizer already widely used in everyday plastics like vinyl.
“Other groups had demonstrated that plasticizers can add some stretchability, but no one had tested the use of plasticizers in light-emitting polymers before,” said Glingna Wang.
A simple solution with outsized effects
The results surprised the research team. DOP didn’t just make the TADF films more stretchable; it also made them more efficient at fluorescing. The efficiency climbed from 60% for the untreated film to nearly 100%, approaching the theoretical maximum. At the same time, the film’s stretchability improved dramatically, from a crack-onset strain of just 5% to more than 110%.
Crucially, the effect was not limited to one polymer. When the team added DOP to four other TADF polymers with different chemical structures, all showed substantial gains in both efficiency and stretchability. That broad applicability is what distinguishes this approach from conventional strategies, which typically require custom chemical synthesis for each new material.
“We found a potentially broadly applicable physical method that could work across different types of polymer-based emitters,” said Sihong Wang.
In working OLED devices, the plasticized films led to a 35% improvement in efficiency over devices made without DOP.
Led by an undergraduate
Glingna Wang, who is now beginning a PhD degree at Northwestern University, said that when she joined the Wang lab, she didn’t expect to become the first author on a paper.
“I wasn’t expecting as an undergrad to be leading an independent project,” said Glingna Wang. “But from the great trust and guidance of Prof. Wang, and the supportive environment in the Wang group, gradually I got to learn and be able to tackle problems and face actual research issues on my own.”
She added that the experience prepared her well for graduate school, where she plans to keep studying biomedical applications of electronics.
At UChicago PME, Sihong Wang and colleagues are continuing to incorporate the new emitters into display arrays and are exploring their use in optical therapies and light-based biomedical devices.
Citation: “Approaching-unity PLQY and high stretchability in polymer emitters via molecular spacers,” Wang et al., Nature Communications, May 22, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-73223-9
Funding: This research was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2239618), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (1DP2EB034563), the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357) and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515).
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Biomedical engineers at Brown University have developed a fully automated workflow that simplifies and accelerates the preparation of bacterial samples for genetic sequencing.
The method, dubbed Pathogen2Read, streamlines a critical bottleneck in the genetic sequencing process and could enable small labs without high-throughput automation to more effectively participate in outbreak-monitoring networks operated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control. That could make for faster responses to foodborne illnesses and other outbreaks.
“Next-generation sequencing has become a staple in outbreak detection and prevention,” said Kathryn Whitehead, a graduate student in Brown’s School of Engineering who led the work. “But sample preparation involves labor-intensive manual preparation and culture isolation, which can delay real-time outbreak responses. Our laboratory has developed what is, to our knowledge, the first fully automated scientific method that bypasses these limitations.”
Research describing and testing the method, which was developed in collaboration with researchers at the FDA and with funding from the biotech firm Revvity, is published in BMC Genomics.
Next-generation sequencing has revolutionized modern epidemiology by allowing scientists to rapidly sequence the entire genomes of potential pathogens in just a few hours or days. That enables researchers and public health professionals to quickly identify pathogens involved in illness outbreaks or to pinpoint new genetic mutations that may make known pathogens harder to treat.
But the process involved in preparing samples for sequencing is complex and labor-intensive. It’s a multistep process that involves isolating microbes, breaking cell membranes open (a process called lysis), extracting and purifying the DNA, and arranging it into readable segments. Current techniques require eight to 10 hours of hands-on work plus up to 16 hours of waiting time. Any mistakes along the way could require doing the entire process all over again.
The Pathogen2Read workflow includes assay preparation steps, custom software and a specially prepared enzyme cocktail that enables a desktop liquid-handling machine to handle all the steps of DNA sample prep — lysis, extraction and library preparation — entirely on its own. The researchers successfully compressed the hands-on preparation time from nearly a full day to under 45 minutes. Once an operator loads the raw samples and reagents onto a single plate, the system handles the rest automatically over a six-hour run, outputting pristine, sequencer-ready DNA libraries.
The quality of the DNA libraries is critical, particularly when looking for mutations in a bacterial strain.
“Because you're looking for small mutations that may be involved in drug resistance, for example, it’s easy to miss them if you’re not capturing all the sequences,” said co-author Anubhav Tripathi, a professor of engineering and a faculty affiliate of Brown’s Institute for Biology, Engineering and Medicine. “So the quality of the sample preparation is critically important.”
At the crux of the new workflow, Whitehead says, is the enzyme cocktail, which quickly and effectively breaks open different types of bacteria. Bacteria come in two broad structural forms, gram-negative and gram-positive. The membrane structure of gram-positive bacteria makes them more difficult to crack open to extract DNA. That can cause the presence of gram-positive bacteria to be missed in a sample if the preparation process fails to crack them open. The researchers demonstrated an enzyme cocktail that had a nearly 2.5-fold improvement over standard methods in capturing gram-positive DNA, and reduced waiting time from 16 hours to 30 minutes.
The researchers are hopeful the method will improve outbreak monitoring and prevention by bringing smaller, local public health laboratories into the fold.
“The reason we're so excited about this is it was developed with real-world impact in mind,” Whitehead said. “Having that collaboration with the FDA, being able to get their responses and their input on what they need to see, has allowed us to develop a method that actually can be used and doesn't have some of the limitations that you may sometimes see going from academic to translational research.”
