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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2024 at 8:50am

Extinct volcanoes a 'rich' source of rare earth elements, research suggests

A mysterious type of iron-rich magma entombed within extinct volcanoes is likely abundant with rare earth elements and could offer a new way to source these in-demand metals, according to new research.

Rare earth elements are found in smartphones, flat screen TVs, magnets, and even trains and missiles. They are also vital to the development of electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines.

The iron-rich magma that solidified to form some extinct volcanoes is up to a hundred times more efficient at concentrating rare earth metals than the magmas that commonly erupt from active volcanoes.

The findings suggest that these iron-rich extinct volcanoes across the globe, such as El Laco in Chile, could be studied for the presence of rare earth elements." The researchers simulated volcanic eruptions in the lab by sourcing rocks similar to those from iron-rich extinct volcanoes. They put these rocks into a pressurized furnace and heated them to extremely high temperatures to melt them and learn more about the minerals inside the rocks.

This is how they discovered the abundance of rare earth elements contained in iron-rich volcanic rocks. 

Silicate and iron phosphate melt immiscibility promotes REE enrichment, Geochemical Perspectives Letters (2024). DOI: 10.7185/geochemlet.2436

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2024 at 8:29am

The scientists created a model for testing smart lighting that aims to keep plants' ability to photosynthesize steady over the course of a day, while still lowering electricity costs. They found that an optimization algorithm could cut electricity costs by 12% without compromising plants' carbon fixation, just by varying the intensity of the light.

They then tested whether varying light intensity affected the growth of leafy plants like spinach which are often grown in vertical farms, and found that there was no negative effect. This remained true even when the plants were subject to irregularly changing light intensity, rather than a predictable, regular pattern.

Vertical farming goes dynamic: optimizing resource use efficiency, product quality, and energy costs, Frontiers in Science (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fsci.2024.1411259

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2024 at 8:28am

Indoor vertical farming could future-proof food demand

To make sure everyone eats well in our crowded world, we need to innovate. Vertical farming systems, which grow plants intensively in an indoor setting, could be part of the answer—but to use them on a large scale we need to overcome key problems, especially the management of the energy-intensive, expensive light the plants need to grow.

Now scientists show how manipulating light according to the needs of specific crops could make them grow stronger and healthier while minimizing energy use.

The biggest benefit of vertical farming systems is that healthy food  can be grown much more closely to consumers in places where this is impossible otherwise: in mega-cities, in deserts, and in places that are cold and dark during large parts of the year. But the biggest challenge is the costs associated with electricity use.

  Many vertical farming systems are run using constant environmental conditions, which require lots of expensive electricity for maintenance. The scientists' analysis shows that these demanding conditions are unnecessary: using dynamic environmental control, they suggest, we can achieve vertical farming which is more cost-effective and which raises healthier plants.

Scientists were motivated by the rhythms that plants show on diurnal as well as on developmental timescales, which require their growing environment to be adjusted regularly in order to steer their growth perfectly.

They outlined a strategy that makes use of plant physiology knowledge, novel sensing and modeling techniques, and novel varieties specifically bred for vertical farming systems.

Because plants' biological functions are heavily influenced by environmental conditions like temperature changes, light wavelengths, and the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere, manipulating the environment allows a vertical farming system to manipulate plant development.

Lighting is a critical variable; all plants need it to photosynthesize, and different light wavelengths have different effects on different plants. This variable is also particularly sensitive to electricity pricing, so offers opportunities to make efficiency gains.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 10:04am

COVID origin at Wuhan market, says study
The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has circled back to an animal market in Wuhan, China that was linked to many of the earliest cases of the disease. Researchers reanalysed genomes collected from the market shortly after it was shut down on 1 January 2020. They identified several animal species that could have passed SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to people. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus. The researchers argue that their reanalysis adds weight to the market being the site of the first spillover events, in which animals infected humans.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867424009012%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03026-9?utm_source=Live+...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 9:20am

Acidic water damages corals, shellfish and the phytoplankton that feeds a host of marine species.

This means it also disrupts food supplies for billions of people, as well as limiting the oceans' capacity to absorb more CO2 and thus help limit global warming.

The only one of the nine planetary boundaries that is not close to being crossed concerns the state of the planet's protective ozone layer.

Man-made chemicals have damaged this shield, causing acid rain, but it has started recovering since a number of these chemicals were banned in 1987.

A ninth threshold—concerning concentrations of minute particles in the atmosphere that can cause heart and lung diseases -– is close to the danger limit.

But the researchers said the risk showed signs of receding slightly due to efforts by several countries to improve air quality, such as banning the most pollutant petrol and diesel cars.
They warned, however, that concentrations of fine particles could still soar in countries that are rapidly industrializing.

The PIK set these nine planetary danger levels to warn humans against tipping Earth's natural systems past points of no return.

"These tipping points... if crossed, would lead to irreversible and catastrophic outcomes for billions of people and many future generations on Earth", experts say.
All nine planetary boundaries are "interconnected" so breaching one crucial limit can destabilize Earth's entire life system.

Source: AFP and other news agencies

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 9:19am

World's oceans near critical acidification level: Report

The world's oceans are close to becoming too acidic to properly sustain marine life or help stabilize the climate, a new report said this week.

The report by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) details nine factors that are crucial for regulating the planet's ability to sustain life.

In six of these areas, the safe limit has already been exceeded in recent years as a result of human activity.

The crucial threshold for ocean acidification could soon become the seventh to be breached, according to the PIK's first Planetary Health Check.

The safe boundaries that have already been crossed concern crucial—and related—factors including climate change; the loss of natural species, natural habitat and freshwater; and a rise in pollutants, including plastics and chemical fertilizers used in agriculture.

The sustainable level of ocean acidification is now also set to be exceeded, largely as a result of ever-increasing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) created by burning fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.

As CO2 emissions increase, more of it dissolves in sea water... making the oceans more acidic.

Even with rapid emission cuts, some level of continued acidification may be unavoidable due to the CO₂ already emitted and the time it takes for the ocean system to respond.

Therefore, breaching the ocean acidification boundary appears inevitable within the coming years.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 8:55am

High-pressure reactions can turn nonporous rocks into sponges

In deep Earth, rocks take up and release water all the time, and the effects can be wide reaching. Dehydration can cause rocks to crack and trigger earthquakes, and over geologic timescales, this water cycling can influence plate tectonics and move continents.

Researchers asked how water can move through impermeable rocks, such as those found in mantle wedges, the deep lithosphere, and the lower crust. They hypothesize that certain reactions can cause temporary porosity in these rocks. By mathematically modeling the hydration and dehydration of rock at high pressure, they derived equations to estimate how the porosity of rock changes as water cycles through it. 

The research is published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

Previous work suggested that at very high temperatures, minerals can react with each other to form denser minerals, squeezing water out of the minerals and generating less dense, more porous rocks in the process.

As the reaction progresses, a "dehydration front" moves through the rock. On the other hand, some reactions cause rocks to act like dry sponges, soaking up surrounding water and becoming denser. The progression of this reaction is known as a hydration front.

In the study, the researchers presented 1D simulations for three scenarios (one for a hydration front and two for dehydration fronts) in which a rock with no porosity becomes temporarily porous.

Stefan M. Schmalholz et al, (De)hydration Front Propagation Into Zero‐Permeability Rock, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2023GC011422

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 8:51am

Throughout the evolution of the universe, the behavior of neutrinos impacted the growth of large-scale structures, such as clusters of galaxies across vast reaches of space that we see today. Neutrinos are one of the most abundant subatomic particles in the universe, but they're as mysterious as they are ubiquitous. One reason physicists want to know the mass scale of neutrinos is that it can help them get a better understanding of how matter clustered as the universe evolved.

Cosmologists—those who study the origin and development of the universe—have long thought that massive neutrinos kept matter in the universe from clustering as much as it otherwise might have over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution.

But rather than the expected suppression of matter clustering, the data instead favors enhanced matter clustering, meaning matter in the cosmos is more clumped than one would expect.

Explaining this enhancement may point toward some problem with the measurements, or it could require some new physics not included in the Standard Model of particle physics and cosmology.

The Standard Model of particle physics—the one that students likely learned in physics class—has long been scientists' best theory to explain how the basic building blocks of matter interact. This finding of neutrinos is the latest measurement, similar to what's referred to as "the Hubble tension," to hint that we might not know our universe as well as we think we do, say these experts.

In their study, Meyers and his colleagues looked into scenarios where physicists might need to tweak the Standard Model, but not throw it out entirely. They also examined introducing new concepts of physics. And they also explored whether systematic errors of key measures could account for the surprising DESI finding.

It will likely take years to know which of the researchers' theories is correct. But the study gives a blueprint for future research.

Nathaniel Craig et al, No νs is Good News, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2405.00836

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 8:49am

 Experts suggest possibility of updating fundamental physics concepts

An unexpected finding about how our universe formed is again raising the question: do we need new physics? The answer could fundamentally change what physics students are taught in classes around the world.

A study from SMU and three other universities, available on the arXiv preprint server, delved into the possibility of updating fundamental physics concepts.

SMU played a significant part in the analysis, using the university's high-performance computing capabilities to explore different scenarios that could explain the findings.

The data from what's known as DESI, or Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, combined with what we already had, is the most precise data we've seen so far, and it is hinting at something unlike what we would have expected.

DESI is creating the largest, most accurate 3D map of our universe, providing a key measurement that enables cosmologists to calculate what they call the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. This absolute mass scale was determined based on new measurements from the so-called baryonic acoustic oscillations from DESI, plus information physicists already had from the "afterglow" of the Big Bang—when the universe was created—known as the cosmic microwave background.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 24, 2024 at 8:43am

Researchers discover the deadly genetics of cholera, which could be key to its prevention

Experts have used a cutting-edge computational approach to discover the genetic factors that make the bacteria behind cholera so dangerous—which could be key to preventing this deadly disease.

The innovative research combines machine learning, genomics, genome-scale metabolic modeling (GSMM), and 3D structural analysis to uncover the genetic secrets of Vibrio cholerae—the bacteria behind cholera.

Cholera is a deadly diarrheal disease that continues to threaten millions worldwide, with up to 4 million cases and as many as 143,000 deaths each year.

Vibrio cholerae, is evolving in ways that make the disease more severe and harder to control.

There is even less knowledge about the genomic traits responsible for the severity of cholera resulting from these lineages. About 1 in 5 people with cholera will experience a severe condition owing to a combination of symptoms (primarily diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration).

In this new study the  research team analyzed bacterial samples from cholera patients across six regions in Bangladesh, collected between 2015 and 2021. They identified a set of unique genes and mutations in the most recent and dominant strain of Vibrio cholerae responsible for the devastating 2022 outbreak.

These genetic traits are linked to the bacteria's ability to cause severe symptoms like prolonged diarrhea, intense abdominal pain, vomiting, and dehydration—symptoms that can lead to death in severe cases.

The findings of the study also revealed that some of these disease-causing traits overlap with those that help the bacteria spread more easily. The findings show how these genetic factors enable Vibrio cholerae to survive in the human gut, making it more resilient to environmental stress and more efficient at causing disease. This research highlights the complex interactions between the bacteria's genetic makeup and its ability to cause severe illness.

This new computational framework is a major step forward in the fight against cholera. By identifying the key genetic factors that make Vibrio cholerae more dangerous, scientists can develop better treatments and more targeted strategies to control and prevent future outbreaks.

 Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52238-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52238-0

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