Earth's Atmosphere Can Clean Itself

Scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery that could change the way we think 

about air pollution. (CREDIT: Creative Commons)

Scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery that could change the way we think about air pollution. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have found that a strong electric field between airborne water droplets and surrounding air can create a molecule called hydroxide (OH) by a previously unknown mechanism.


This molecule is crucial in helping to clear the air of pollutants, including greenhouse gases and other chemicals.


The discovery is outlined in a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which suggests that the traditional thinking around the formation of OH in the atmosphere is incomplete. Until now, it was thought that sunlight was the primary driver of OH formation, but this new research shows that OH can be created spontaneously by the special conditions on the surface of water droplets.


“You need OH to oxidize hydrocarbons, otherwise they would build up in the atmosphere indefinitely,” said Sergey Nizkorodov, a University of California, Irvine professor of chemistry, who was part of the research team.


“OH is a key player in the story of atmospheric chemistry. It initiates the reactions that break down airborne pollutants and helps to remove noxious chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide, which are poisonous gases, from the atmosphere.”


The implications of this discovery are significant. It could change the way we model air pollution, as the assumption has always been that OH comes from the air and is not produced in the droplet directly. This means that existing models may need to be revised to take into account this new source of OH.  READ MORE...

Sleeping Giant in Our Oceans

Red medusa found just off the bottom of the deep sea in Alaska. 

Credit: Hidden Ocean 2005/NOAA

A previously overlooked factor — the position of continents — helps fill Earth’s oceans with life-supporting oxygen. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing the majority of deep ocean creatures.

“Continental drift seems so slow, like nothing drastic could come from it, but when the ocean is primed, even a seemingly tiny event could trigger the widespread death of marine life,” said Andy Ridgwell, University of California, Riverside geologist. Ridgwell is co-author of a new study on forces affecting oceanic oxygen.

As the water at the ocean’s surface approaches the north or south pole, it becomes colder and denser and then sinks. When the water sinks, it transports oxygen pulled from Earth’s atmosphere down to the ocean floor.

Eventually, a return flow brings nutrients released from sunken organic matter back to the ocean’s surface, where it fuels the growth of plankton. Today’s oceans feature an incredible diversity of fish and other animals that are supported by both the uninterrupted supply of oxygen to lower depths and organic matter produced at the surface.

New research has found that this circulation of oxygen and nutrients can end quite suddenly. Using complex computer models, the scientists investigated whether the locations of continental plates affect how the ocean moves oxygen around. They were surprised to find that it does.

This finding led by researchers based at UC Riverside is detailed in the journal Nature. It was published today (August 17, 2022).  READ MORE...

We Were Ocean Dwellers in Early Life

By studying the genetic tree of life, scientists have determined that the first life on Earth may have lived underwater, where it would be shielded from harmful ultraviolet light from the sun.

The origin of life on Earth remains a mystery, but scientists are slowly putting together genetic puzzle pieces to learn more about how the first life on Earth lived, between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago. Now, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Riverside, have used machine learning to trace the evolutionary development of a protein-based molecule called rhodopsin back to some of the most ancient microbial life-forms to have existed on Earth. The results may also inform the search for life beyond Earth, the scientists argue.

"It's like taking the DNA of many grandchildren to reproduce the DNA of their grandparents," astrobiologist Edward Schwieterman of the University of California Riverside, a co-author on the new research, said in a statement(opens in new tab).

The researchers suspect that rhodopsin provided the battery power for early life, turning light from the sun into energy. On modern Earth, rhodopsin can absorb blue, green, yellow and orange light. (It is also tangentially related to the light-absorbing rods and cones that our eyes use to see the world.)

Schwieterman and his colleagues began by using machine learning to look for the genes that control rhodopsin in as wide a swathe of life on Earth as possible, then identifying those genes that had the longest lineages.

This analysis suggested that ancient rhodopsin absorbed just blue and green light. This reduced capability makes sense in a scenario in which early life may have originated in the ocean, where blue and green wavelengths of light penetrate deeper into a column of water than other optical wavelengths: Being able to absorb these wavelengths to derive energy would have been vitally important.  READ MORE...

The Beginning of Outer Space

When mountaineers climb Mount Everest, they routinely carry oxygen cylinders, devices that allow them to breathe freely at high altitudes. This is necessary because the closer you get to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, the less oxygen there is available compared with the plentiful amounts found at sea level.

This is just one example of how variable Earth's atmosphere is and showcases the elemental makeup of its layers, from the troposphere, near sea level, to the exosphere, in its outermost regions. Where each layer ends and begins is defined by four key traits, according to the National Weather Service: temperature change, chemical composition, density and the movement of the gases within it.

So, with this in mind, where does Earth's atmosphere actually end? And where does space begin?

Each of the atmosphere's layers plays a role in ensuring our planet can host all manner of life, doing everything from blocking cancer-causing cosmic radiation to creating the pressure required to produce water, according to NASA.

"As you get farther from Earth, the atmosphere becomes less dense," Katrina Bossert, a space physicist at Arizona State University, told Live Science in an email. "The composition also changes, and lighter atoms and molecules begin to dominate, while heavy molecules remain closer to the Earth's surface."

As you move up in the atmosphere, the pressure, or the weight of the atmosphere above you, weakens rapidly. Even though commercial planes have pressurized cabins, rapid changes in altitude can affect the slim eustachian tubes connecting the ear with the nose and throat. "This is why your ears may pop during takeoff in an airplane," said Matthew Igel, an adjunct professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Davis.  READ MORE...

A Unified Theory of Math

Within mathematics, there is a vast and ever expanding web of conjectures, theorems and ideas called the Langlands program. That program links seemingly disconnected subfields. It is such a force that some mathematicians say it—or some aspect of it—belongs in the esteemed ranks of the Millennium Prize Problems, a list of the top open questions in math. Edward Frenkel, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, has even dubbed the Langlands program “a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics.”

The program is named after Robert Langlands, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Four years ago, he was awarded the Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics, for his program, which was described as “visionary.”

Langlands is retired, but in recent years the project has sprouted into “almost its own mathematical field, with many disparate parts,” which are united by “a common wellspring of inspiration,” says Steven Rayan, a mathematician and mathematical physicist at the University of Saskatchewan. It has “many avatars, some of which are still open, some of which have been resolved in beautiful ways.”

Increasingly mathematicians are finding links between the original program—and its offshoot, geometric Langlands—and other fields of science. Researchers have already discovered strong links to physics, and Rayan and other scientists continue to explore new ones. He has a hunch that, with time, links will be found between these programs and other areas as well. “I think we’re only at the tip of the iceberg there,” he says. “I think that some of the most fascinating work that will come out of the next few decades is seeing consequences and manifestations of Langlands within parts of science where the interaction with this kind of pure mathematics may have been marginal up until now.” Overall Langlands remains mysterious, Rayan adds, and to know where it is headed, he wants to “see an understanding emerge of where these programs really come from.”  READ MORE...

Cryptocurrency's Computing Problem

Cryptocurrencies hold the potential to change finance, eliminating middlemen and bringing accounts to millions of unbanked people around the world. Quantum computers could upend the way pharmaceuticals and materials are designed by bringing their extraordinary power to the process.

Here's the problem: The blockchain accounting technology that powers cryptocurrencies could be vulnerable to sophisticated attacks and forged transactions if quantum computing matures faster than efforts to future-proof digital money.

Cryptocurrencies are secured by a technology called public key cryptography. The system is ubiquitous, protecting your online purchases and scrambling your communications for anyone other than the intended recipient. The technology works by combining a public key, one that anyone can see, with a private key that's for your eyes only.

If current progress continues, quantum computers will be able to crack public key cryptography, potentially creating a serious threat to the crypto world, where some currencies are valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. If encryption is broken, attackers can impersonate the legitimate owners of cryptocurrency, NFTs or other such digital assets.

"Once quantum computing becomes powerful enough, then essentially all the security guarantees will go out of the window," Dawn Song, a computer security entrepreneur and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Collective[i] Forecast forum in October. "When public key cryptography is broken, users could be losing their funds and the whole system will break."

Quantum computers get their power by manipulating data stored on qubits, elements like charged atoms that are subject to the peculiar physics governing the ultrasmall. To crack encryption, quantum computers will need to harness thousands of qubits, vastly more than the dozens corralled by today's machines. The machines will also need persistent qubits that can perform calculations much longer than the fleeting moments possible right now.

But makers of quantum computers are working hard to address those shortcomings. They're stuffing ever more qubits into machines and working on quantum error correction methods to help qubits perform more-sophisticated and longer calculations.

"We expect that within a few years, sufficiently powerful computers will be available" for cracking blockchains open, said Nir Minerbi, CEO of quantum software maker Classiq Technologies.  READ MORE...

Mangroves Trapped in Time

It has been hiding away for around 125,000 years.

Scientists have uncovered the origin of a mysterious landlocked mangrove forest in the heart of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

Normally, trees of this species — known as red mangroves, or Rhizophora mangle — grow only in salt water, along tropical coastlines. But this forest is located near the San Pedro River in the state of Tabasco, more than 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the nearest ocean. Somehow, these mangroves have adapted to live exclusively in this freshwater environment in southeast Mexico.

Exactly how this ecological enigma came about has baffled scientists. But now, an international, multidisciplinary team of researchers has revealed that this out-of-place ecosystem began growing around 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were much higher and the ocean covered most of the region.

"The most amazing part of this study is that we were able to examine a mangrove ecosystem that has been trapped in time for more than 100,000 years," lead author Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, a marine ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. It was like putting together a "lost world," he added.

TO FIND OUT HOW IT GOT HERE, CLICK HERE...

Dopamine

Neuroscientists show that mice can learn to manipulate random dopamine impulses for reward.

From the thrill of hearing an ice cream truck approaching to the spikes of pleasure while sipping a fine wine, the neurological messenger known as dopamine has been popularly described as the brain’s “feel good” chemical related to reward and pleasure.

A ubiquitous neurotransmitter that carries signals between brain cells, dopamine, among its many functions, is involved in multiple aspects of cognitive processing. 

The chemical messenger has been extensively studied from the perspective of external cues, or “deterministic” signals. Instead, University of California San Diego researchers recently set out to investigate less understood aspects related to spontaneous impulses of dopamine. 

Their results, published on July 23, 2021, in the journal Current Biology, have shown that mice can willfully manipulate these random dopamine pulses.  READ MORE

Our Gut & Diet

YOUR GUT IS A THRIVING UNIVERSE UNTO ITSELF. This tiny cosmos is inhabited by thousands on thousands of microorganisms, which together make up your gut microbiome.

Among other things, this internal ecosystem contains bacteria that we rely on to help us break down and process the foods that we’re not readily equipped to digest. But a slew of recent scientific studies shows that our gut also connects more broadly to our holistic health, even to things that are seemingly unrelated, like our brains.

The science is preliminary, but there is compelling evidence that what you eat — and in turn, that changes the gut microbiome — has an outsized influence on your health. But not in the way you’d think.

WHAT’S NEW — A new study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances looks at how diet could alter multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms via the gut microbiome. By feeding mice with an MS-like condition a specific diet, scientists were able to reprogram their gut bacteria — and reduce their symptoms.

The study started with the observation that the gut microbiomes of people with MS lack a kind of bacteria that, in most folks’ gut, breakdowns a nutrient called isoflavones. This nutrient is commonly found in everyday staple foods, like soy and beans.

So, the team hypothesized that MS might be related to the absence of these bacteria — and in turn, eating more foods with isoflavones in them could alleviate the symptoms.

From there, they were able to demonstrate the critical difference that the bacteria’s presence or absence can make in this disease.

WHY IT MATTERS — This study is so intriguing because it identifies a clear relationship between the gut, the food we eat, and our brain and body health.

In the new study, the researchers go further than past work by not only establishing a clear link between gut bacteria and diet, but also the mechanisms driving the relationship — and how to potentially game it to our advantage.

“The hypothesis has always been that bacterial composition is tightly linked to diet,” says Sergio Baranzini, a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the research. While other studies have investigated this relationship, “what those studies fell short of is showing what could be the potential mechanism.”

Social Dominance

Mental health symptoms appear to influence how people respond to being placed in dominant and subordinate positions, according to new research published in PLOS One. The study indicates that manic symptoms and depressive symptoms in particular are related to psychological and physiological responses to social dominance.

“A couple years ago, I worked with colleagues to review the literature on social dominance and psychopathology,” said study author Sheri Johnson, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and the director of the CALM Program.

“I was amazed by the rich number of studies suggesting how important social dominance is to many different forms of psychopathology — anxiety, depression, mania, psychopathy, among others. Moreover, there was human and animal literature, and researchers had tested biological, social and psychological facets of the dominance system.”

“Still, though, the literature was fragmented because researchers were not using the same measures to study the various psychopathologies,” Johnson explained. “I wanted to fill that gap, and to do so using careful methods chosen from social psychology, where researchers had done so much work to think about how we can test reactivity to social dominance cues.”

The researchers conducted a laboratory experiment with 81 undergraduate students, who had previously completed psychological measures of depression, social anxiety, manic tendencies, and psychopathic traits.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...