Read the full story at Inside Climate News.
Climate change is taking a massive bite out of the global food supply chain, and local restaurants are bearing the brunt of the impact, according to a new report.
On Wednesday, the James Beard Foundation, a nonprofit known for its culinary awards, and the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University released an analysis investigating the impacts of climate change on independent restaurants, which are the fifth-largest employer in the U.S.
by James Urton, University of Washington News
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has discovered a major cause for a drop in nighttime pollinator activity โ and people are largely to blame.
The researchers found that nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that nighttime pollinators rely on to locate the flower. In the atmosphere, NO3 is produced by chemical reactions among other nitrogen oxides, which are themselves released by the combustion of gas and coal from cars, power plants and other sources. The findings, published Feb. 9 in the journal Science, are the first to show how nighttime pollution creates a chain of chemical reactions that degrades scent cues, leaving flowers undetectable by smell. The researchers also determined that pollution likely has worldwide impacts on pollination.
The team โ co-led by Jeff Riffell, a UW professor of biology, and Joel Thornton, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences โ studied the pale evening primrose (Oenothera pallida). This wildflower grows in arid environments across the western U.S. They chose this species because its white flowers emit a scent that attracts a diverse group of pollinators, including nocturnal moths, which are one of its most important pollinators.
At field sites in eastern Washington, the researchers collected scent samples from pale evening primrose flowers. Back in the laboratory, they used chemical analysis techniques to identify the dozens of individual chemicals that make up the wildflowerโs scent.
โWhen you smell a rose, youโre smelling a diverse bouquet composed of different types of chemicals,โ said Riffell. โThe same is true for almost any flower. Each has its own scent made up of a specific chemical recipe.โ
Once they had identified the individual chemicals that make up the wildflowerโs scent, the team used a more advanced technique called mass spectrometry to observe how each chemical within the scent reacted to NO3. They found that reacting with NO3 nearly eliminated certain scent chemicals. In particular, the pollutant decimated levels of monoterpene scent compounds, which in separate experiments moths found most attractive.
Moths, which smell through their antennae, have a scent-detection ability that is roughly equivalent to dogs โ and several thousand times more sensitive than the human sense of smell. Research suggests that several moth species can detect scents from miles away, according to Riffell.
Using a wind tunnel and computer-controlled odor-stimulus system, the team investigated how well two moth species โ the white-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata) and the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) โ could locate and fly toward scents. When the researchers introduced the pale evening primroseโs normal scent, both species would readily fly toward the scent source. But when the researchers introduced the scent and NO3 at levels typical for a nighttime urban setting, Manducaโs accuracy dropped by 50% and Hyles โ one of the chief nocturnal pollinators of this flower โ could not locate the source at all.
Experiments in a natural setting backed up these findings. In field experiments, the team showed that moths visited a fake flower emitting unaltered scent as often as they visited a real one. But, if they treated the scent first with NO3, moth visitation levels dropped by as much as 70%.
โThe NO3 is really reducing a flowerโs โreachโ โ how far its scent can travel and attract a pollinator before it gets broken down and is undetectable,โ said Riffell.
The team also compared how daytime and nighttime pollution conditions impacted the wildflowerโs scent chemicals. Nighttime pollution had a much more destructive effect on the scentโs chemical makeup than daytime pollution. The researchers believe this is largely due to sunlight degrading NO3.
The team used a computer model that simulates both global weather patterns and atmospheric chemistry to locate areas most likely to have significant problems with plant-pollinator communication. The areas identified include western North America, much of Europe, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and southern Africa.
โOutside of human activity, some regions accumulate more NO3 because of natural sources, geography and atmospheric circulation,โ said Thornton, who added that natural sources of NO3 include wildfires and lightning. โBut human activity is producing more NO3 everywhere. We wanted to understand how those two sources โ natural and human โ combine and where levels could be so high that they could interfere with the ability of pollinators to find flowers.โ
The researchers hope their study is just the first of many to help uncover the full scope of pollinator failure.
โOur approach could serve as a roadmap for others to investigate how pollutants impact plant-pollinator interactions, and to really get at the underlying mechanisms,โ said Thornton. โYou need this kind of holistic approach, especially if you want to understand how widespread the breakdown in plant-pollinator interactions is and what the consequences will be.โ
The study highlights the dangers of human-fueled pollution and its implications for all pollinators as well as the future of agriculture.
โPollution from human activity is altering the chemical composition of critical scent cues, and altering it to such an extent that the pollinators can no longer recognize it and respond to it,โ said Riffell.
Approximately three-quarters of the more than 240,000 species of flowering plants rely on pollinators, Riffell said. And more than 70 species of pollinators are endangered or threatened.
Lead author on the paper is Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen who conducted this study as a UW doctoral student in biology. Co-authors are Sriram Parasurama in the UW Department of Biology; Rachel Atlas, a postdoctoral researcher at the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute in France who participated in this study as a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences; Ursula Jongebloed, a UW doctoral students in atmospheric sciences; Ruochong Xu, a doctoral student at Tsinghua University in China; Becky Alexander, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences; and Joseph Langenhan, a professor of chemistry at Seattle University. The research was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Human Frontiers in Science Program, and the University of Washington.
For more information, contact Riffell at 206-348-0789 or jriffell@uw.edu and Thornton at 206-543-4010 or joelt@uw.edu.
Read the full story in PV Magazine.
Backed by funding from leading corporations and institutions, Solarcycle sets up shop in Mesa, Arizona, to advance a circular economy for the solar industry.
by Diana Yates, Life Sciences Editor, University of Illinois News Bureau
Plant biologists report that a species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant. The fern, Cyathea rojasiana, reconfigures these โzombie leaves,โ reversing the flow of water to draw nutrients back into the plant.
The findings are reported in the journal Ecology.
This weird phenomenon occurs only after the leaves die and droop to the ground, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James Dalling, who made the discovery with his team while studying a different plant in a Panamanian forest reserve. Dalling noticed that the fronds were strongly embedded in the soil and had sprouted a network of rootlets. Laboratory tests revealed that the zombie leaves were drawing nitrogen out of the soil.ย
Even after they are converted into roots, the wilted fronds look like decayed plant matter, which is probably why generations of plant biologists failed to notice that they were performing a life-sustaining task, Dalling said.
โThis is a truly novel repurposing of tissue. And itโs distinct from what we know other ferns do,โ he said.
Other plants, including some ferns, send out leaves or shoots that touch the ground and sprout roots to sustain a new plant, he said. But reconfiguring dead tissue to feed the original plant has never been reported. The new findings are detailed in the journal Ecology.
C. rojasiana belongs to an ancient lineage of tree ferns dating back to the Jurassic period, Dalling said. The zombie leaves are most likely an adaptation to the nutrient-poor volcanic soils.
โPanama is a land bridge between North and South America that coalesced 7 million years ago out of an archipelago of islands, and those islands are the result of volcanic activity in the past,โ he said. โIn one site we discovered, a layer of volcanic ash several meters deep looks like sand that you would dig up on a sandy beach. The plants that grow there are distinct from those that we find elsewhere in that forest reserve.โ
The patchiness of the vegetation means soil nutrients also are unevenly distributed.ย
โAnd so the tree ferns seem to be putting out tentacles to sample the surrounding soils,โ Dalling said. โTheyโre able to sample a greater range of nutrient environments for the same amount of investment of rootlets than if they just sent out a single rooting structure all around the fern. I think itโs all about the economics of how they use resources in a patchy environment.โ
The tree ferns also grow very slowly.
โTheyโre probably putting on one or two leaves a year, and so theyโre adding on the order of a few centimeters of height a year,โ Dalling said.
This means each frond is a major investment of resources that the plant repurposes after the leaf dies. The slow growth also means that the tree fern is short enough that when its fronds die, they droop all the way to the ground. The trees reach a maximum height of about two meters, Dalling said.
The finding is โanother example of the extraordinary diversity of plant adaptations that exist in resource-poor environments,โ he said.
Dalling also is a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Editorโs notes:
Story source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Read the full story in PV Magazine.
A recently completed portfolio of seven community solar projects in Illinois and New York is expected to help approximately 5,000 low- to moderate-income (LMI) households. Additional subscribers will be public schools, a municipality, non-LMI households, and various private organizations, including two affordable housing providers, a community recreation center, religious institutions, and a housing association.
Read the full story at Recycling Today.
RecyClass has updated its Recyclability Evaluation protocols and released a new set of Design for Recycling Guidelines for all plastic packaging streams following the findings of 18 testing campaigns commissioned in 2023. The latest set provides the industry with the most up-to-date recommendations for improving the recyclability of plastic packaging, according to RecyClass, which is a nonprofit, cross-industry initiative facilitating the transition toward a circular plastic future.
The latest design recommendations have been used to update the RecyClass Online Tool and the RecyClass Recyclability Certification Scheme. New testing campaigns are underway and will further complement the recommendations found in the RecyClass Design for Recycling Guidelines, according to the organization.
Read the full story at Recycling Today.
A new study with 100 senior executives who work for fashion brands and retailers in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia claims 88 percent of respondents plan to stop using plastic in packaging altogether, while 8 percent plan to abolish plastic within the next 12 months.
The study, conducted by United Kingdom-based biodegradable polymer developer Aquapak Polymers Ltd. in November 2023, says 14 percent of respondents plan to eliminate the use of plastic in their packaging within one to two years, while 19 percent plan to do the same within two to three years, 30 percent will do so within three to four years and 28 percent will do so within four to five years.
Read the full story at Environment + Energy Leader.
Pandora, the worldโs largest jewelry brand in terms of production, is now sourcing only recycled silver and gold for all its jewelry after changing its precious metal supply.
The shift will cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, with recycling taking fewer resources and requiring less energy than mining for new metals. In fact, the carbon footprint of recycled silver is one-third compared to mined silver, and recycling gold emits less than 1% of the carbon emissions from mining gold, according to Pandora. The company said it will avoid 58,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year with the change.
Read the full story in Horizon.
In an old-growth forest in Slovakia, dozens of sensors are placed in the soil, tree trunks and air. The devices are tracking how soil hydrology and tree growth affect carbon stored in the ground.
This round-the-clock electronic watch in the Dobroฤ forest is part of Europeโs largest research project into the central โ but little understood โ role of forest soils in the fight against climate change. Called HoliSoils, the initiative began in May 2021 and runs through October 2025.
Read the full story from Rhodium Group.
Over the last two years, the US has made historic investments in climate progress, and federal regulations and state policies have helped bend the projected greenhouse gas emissions curve further down. Additional policies could help put the USโs target under the Paris Agreement within reach, to cut emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030. However, thereโs a long way to go to get on track for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The emissions that remain in 2030, assuming the US reaches its Paris target, will almost certainly be more difficult to eliminate than the emissions abated through 2030. Much of the remaining emissions will come from sectors that have been less of a focus to date.
In this note, we revisit our 2023 updated Pathways to Paris scenarios, in which the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act plus the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as additional ambitious federal and state policies, reduce emissions to 41-52% below 2005 levels in 2030, and explore the sources of remaining emissions at the end of this decade. We identify the key emitting subsectors and the specific underlying emissions drivers within each, and we provide high-level decarbonization solutions that could address these drivers. Light-duty vehicles, the power sector, and residential and commercial buildings remain the top emitting sectors in 2030, despite some decarbonization gains, while other sources like freight trucks, chemical production, and natural gas systems increase their overall share of emissions contributions.
Cutting these remaining emissions will be challenging, but we find that a substantial fraction of emissions can be tackled using existing and widely available decarbonization solutions. Common areas of decarbonization focus across subsectors include increasing electrification, the use of low-carbon fuels and other sources of clean heat, improving energy efficiency, and use of point-source carbon capture. Additional policies will certainly be required to reduce these emissions, and future Rhodium Group work will identify sets of policies that can do just that.
Move over Spider-Man: Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a strain of bacteria that can turn plastic waste into a biodegradable spider silk with multiple uses.
Their new study marks the first time scientists have used bacteria to transform polyethylene plastic โ the kind used in many single-use items โ into a high-value protein product.
That product, which the researchers call โbio-inspired spider silkโ because of its similarity to the silk spiders use to spin their webs, has applications in textiles, cosmetics, and even medicine.
โSpider silk is natureโs Kevlar,โ said Helen Zha, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and one of the RPI researchers leading the project. โIt can be nearly as strong as steel under tension. However, itโs six times less dense than steel, so itโs very lightweight. As a bioplastic, itโs stretchy, tough, nontoxic, and biodegradable.โย
All those attributes make it a great material for a future where renewable resources and avoidance of persistent plastic pollution are the norm, Zha said.
Polyethylene plastic, found in products such as plastic bags, water bottles, and food packaging, is the biggest contributor to plastic pollution globally and can take upward of 1,000 years to degrade naturally. Only a small portion of polyethylene plastic is recycled, so the bacteria used in the study could help โupcycleโ some of the remaining waste.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the bacteria used in the study, can naturally consume polyethylene as a food source. The RPI team tackled the challenge of engineering this bacteria to convert the carbon atoms of polyethylene into a genetically encoded silk protein. Surprisingly, they found that their newly developed bacteria could make the silk protein at a yield rivaling some bacteria strains that are more conventionally used in biomanufacturing.
The underlying biological process behind this innovation is something people have employed for millennia.
โEssentially, the bacteria are fermenting the plastic. Fermentation is used to make and preserve all sorts of foods, like cheese, bread, and wine, and in biochemical industries itโs used to make antibiotics, amino acids, and organic acids,โ said Mattheos Koffas, Ph.D., Dorothy and Fred Chau สผ71 Career Development Constellation Professor in Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering, and the other researcher leading the project, and who, along with Zha, is a member of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer.ย
To get bacteria to ferment polyethylene, the plastic is first โpredigested,โ Zha said. Just like humans need to cut and chew our food into smaller pieces before our bodies can use it, the bacteria has difficulty eating the long molecule chains, or polymers, that comprise polyethylene.
In the study, Zha and Koffas collaborated with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, who depolymerized the plastic by heating it under pressure, producing a soft, waxy substance. Next, the team put a layer of the plastic-derived wax on the bottoms of flasks, which served as the nutrient source for the bacteria culture. This contrasts with typical fermentation, which uses sugars as the nutrient source.
โItโs as if, instead of feeding the bacteria cake, weโre feeding it the candles on the cake,โ Zha said.
Then, as a warming plate gently swirled the flasksโ contents, the bacteria went to work. After 72 hours, the scientists strained out the bacteria from the liquid culture, purified the silk protein, and freeze dried it. At that stage, the protein, which resembled torn up cotton balls, could potentially be spun into thread or made into other useful forms.
โWhatโs really exciting about this process is that, unlike the way plastics are produced today, our process is low energy and doesnโt require the use of toxic chemicals,โ Zha said. โThe best chemists in the world could not convert polyethylene into spider silk, but these bacteria can. Weโre really harnessing what nature has developed to do manufacturing for us.โ
However, before upcycled spider silk products become a reality, the researchers will first need to find ways to make the silk protein more efficiently.
โThis study establishes that we can use these bacteria to convert plastic to spider silk. Our future work will investigate whether tweaking the bacteria or other aspects of the process will allow us to scale up production,โ Koffas said.
โProfessors Zha and Koffas represent the new generation of chemical and biological engineers merging biological engineering with materials science to manufacture ecofriendly products. Their work is a novel approach to protecting the environment and reducing our reliance on nonrenewable resources,โ said Shekhar Garde, Ph.D., dean of RPIโs School of Engineering.
The study, which was conducted by first author Alexander Connor, who earned his doctorate from RPI in 2023, and co-authors Jessica Lamb and Massimiliano Delferro with Argonne National Laboratory, is published in the journal โMicrobial Cell Factories.โย
Story source: RPI News
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