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Bluebird feathers inspire battery and filter material

Sunday December 10th, 2023

Under the microscope, the bluebird’s wing feathers show a network of channels that have diameters about a thousandth the width of human hair. Light bounces around in these channels in a way that produces a bright blue.

But the unique structure of interconnected channels, which create a huge surface area, are useful for certain applications. Such porous nanostructured materials could, for instance, be used to make battery electrodes that store a lot of energy and could be charged faster, and more effective filters for removing bacteria or chemical contaminants from water.

New 3D printing methods could be used to create such intricate microscopic structures. But those methods are complex, costly, and time-consuming. This limits the size of the final material they can produce.

Materials scientist Eric Dufresne and colleagues came up with a simple, one-step process instead. They start by putting transparent silicone rubber into an oily solution, and heating it to a temperature of 60°C, which mixes the two otherwise immiscible materials.

The rubber swells over a period of a few days. Then the team cooled the material, which separates the rubber from the oil, resulting in the formation of a microscopic network of channels. The channels were much like those found in bluebird feathers, only four times wider. They are now exploring the use of natural polymers such as cellulose to make similar materials that are more sustainable and are significantly cheaper.

Source: Patel, Prachi. “Bluebird Feathers Inspire Battery and Filter Material.” Anthropocene, 6 Dec. 2023, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/12/bluebird-feathers-inspire-battery-and-water-filter-material/.

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What’s on the menu? For cats, just about everything.

Saturday December 9th, 2023

Over the last two decades, the Auburn University ecologist has amassed a tally of all the different creatures domesticated cats have been documented eating. The number has passed 2,000 species and shows no signs of slowing.

“It sure seems there’s not a lot that a cat would pass up,” says Lepczyk.

Despite all the cute cat videos, it’s been long known Felis catus is a fierce killer, particularly when it comes to birds and small mammals. By one estimate domestic cats kill as many as 4 billion birds and 22.3 billion mammals per year in the United States alone.

But Lepczyk wanted to know just how broad these animals’ palates are. The findings could have implications for scientists and policymakers trying to understand how cats are contributing to changes in ecosystems or affecting the fates of endangered species.

Cats have evolved to depend on animal protein. Their bodies aren’t built to metabolize plants, meaning they rely on meat to get most of their nutrition. Over the years, as Lepczyk went about his regular research, he kept a growing list of species turning up in any scientific papers that documented cat diets. The number has continued growing and growing. That, in itself, makes Lepczyk suspect the list will keep getting longer.

Source: Cornwall, Warren. “What’s on the Menu? For Cats, Just about Everything.” Anthropocene, 9 Dec. 2023, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/12/whats-on-the-menu-for-cats-just-about-everything/.

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This ‘living paint’ traps carbon dioxide and produces oxygen

Friday December 8th, 2023

A new paint harnesses living bacteria to capture carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. The robust “living paint” can withstand harsh conditions, which means it could be used anywhere on Earth to trap carbon.

It produces high levels of oxygen and carbon capture for at least one month despite being completely dried and then rehydrated, researchers from the University of Surrey report in the journal Microbiology Spectrum. Such biocoatings could be further developed for a variety of applications, they say, “including carbon capture, wastewater treatment and biofuel production.”

Bacteria are tiny but powerful workhorses, able to perform complex chemical reactions. By tweaking the genetics of various natural bacteria, researchers have engineered the microbes to produce ammonia, synthesize drugs and fuels, break down plastics, convert waste to fuel, and even produce power.

Source: Patel, Prachi. “This ‘living Paint’ Traps Carbon Dioxide and Produces Oxygen.” Anthropocene, 1 Nov. 2023, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/11/this-living-paint-traps-carbon-dioxide-and-produces-oxygen/.

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Ultrathin film keeps crops warm and slashes food waste! No energy required!

Thursday December 7th, 2023

A team of researchers from China, used a silicon-like metalloid called germanium and zinc-sulfide a naturally-occurring salt. The crystals that make up these two ingredients have 'nanophotonic' properties, meaning that at nanoscopic scales they are able to interact with and respond to wavelengths of light, a trait the researchers realized that they could exploit to trap heat. 

So, they took their invention out into the field at night during the wintertime, laid their ultrathin film over the stop of a U-shaped structure, and used a thermometer-like device to measure the temperature below. Then they compared this to the performance of two other film-like covers on the market.

This field experiment showed temperatures that were a whopping 4.4°C warmer than those allowed by one type of alternative film, and 2.1°C warmer compared to the other. These cozier conditions were maintained under different types of weather, the researchers found, and while there was some heat loss under the nanophotonic film, it was up to fourfold lower than its competitors. 

For crops, this invention holds the potential of a less frigid future that keeps the nip of frost at bay—and gets more greens directly onto our plates instead of leaving them to waste away on the field. The film “heralds a promising approach to energy conservation in diverse scenarios,” the researchers believe, “thereby paving the way for a new paradigm in the pursuit of carbon neutrality.” 

Source: Bryce, Emma. “Ultrathin Film Keeps Crops Warm and Slashes Food Waste.” Anthropocene, 7 Dec. 2023, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/12/an-ingenious-ultrathin-film-keeps-crops-warm-at-night-and-slashes-food-waste-no-energy-required/.

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Study ties amphibian collapses with increased malaria outbreaks

Wednesday December 6th, 2023

A study by Weill and others, recently presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, describes a link between amphibian die-offs and human malarial infections in several parts of Central America, providing an example of “the often hidden human welfare costs of conservation failures,” the authors write.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, is a highly contagious fungus that infects the skin of amphibians, blocking them from breathing and eventually killing them. Ponds hit by Bd are quickly choked by belly-up frogs. It is so deadly and so easily spread that it has caused the extinction of an estimated 90 species, and reduced the populations of another 124 species by over 90%. This makes it “the most destructive pathogen ever described by science,” as the biologist Wendy Palen put it in an article last year. One study traced its emergence to Korea in the 1950s, after which humans spread it across the world.

Malaria, meanwhile, is a disease caused by a single-celled Plasmodium parasite and transmitted by mosquitos. It kills hundreds of thousands of people every year and sickens millions more, mostly in equatorial countries. Vaccines for it are few and not particularly effective, and preventative medicines are expensive and can come with difficult side effects, so the best anti-malarial strategies involve reducing contact between people and mosquitos, often through nets and insecticides. 

Frogs and other amphibians are great mosquito-reducers. If you remove a huge number of them from the landscape, what happens to malaria rates? To investigate, researchers cross-referenced dates of Bd-driven amphibian decline in different parts of Costa Rica and Panama with changes in malaria incidence in those same places. Bd swept across these two countries over the course of about twenty-five years, starting in northwest Costa Rica and progressing south and east. They found that, generally, around a year after Bd entered a county, malaria cases began to increase. They continue to rise for two years, then stay at that higher level for six more, before beginning to attenuate 9 years after the fungus arrived. 

Source: Giaimo, Cara. “Amphibian Die-Offs Tied to Increased Malaria Outbreaks.” Anthropocene, 22 Jan. 2021, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/12/amphibian-die-offs-can-cause-human-health-problems/.

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A new way to fight Lyme Disease: Prescribed fire

Tuesday December 5th, 2023

Pinhead-sized parasites might seem to have a remote connection to landscape-changing forest fires. But tick-borne diseases such as Lyme Disease add up to a major and growing health problem. As many as 60,000 cases are reported in a year in the U.S. Such planet-changing forces as global warming are thought to be contributing to the problem, as rising temperatures make more places hospitable for ticks.

When Europeans arrived in North America, eastern forests tended to be spacious, airy landscapes filled with widely spaced pine, oak and chestnut trees. Frequent low-intensity fires set by lightning and indigenous peoples burned off fallen leaves, debris and underbrush.

Such a landscape could pose problems for ticks, who thrive in moist environments with moderate temperatures and lots of underbrush, which they can climb to latch onto passing victims. These forests of old were drier and less overgrown and would have been hotter in the summer and colder in the winter when there was less vegetation to act as insulation, the scientists reported in a recent edition of Ecological Applications.

Tick numbers might have fallen at first as Europeans pushed indigenous inhabitants out of eastern forests. That’s because many of the forests were felled for timber and fuel. But starting in the 20th century, two things happened that would reverse this trend. Eastern forests began to regrow as people left their farms for cities and switched from wood to other fuels such as coal. And land management agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service adopted a policy of extinguishing all wildfires.

Those changes helped created forests that have more built-up detritus, more bushes, and more dense tree canopies. Scientists have a fancy word for this: mesophication. For the purposes of the new research, a better term might be “tick heaven.”

Fire could help reverse this phenomenon, Gallagher and his colleagues argue. They point to past studies, such as an experiment in Georgia and Florida that showed tick numbers fell in parts of a forest that were burned.

Source: Cornwall, Warren. “A New Way to Fight Lyme Disease: Prescribed Fire.” Anthropocene, 26 Oct. 2022, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2022/10/a-new-way-to-fight-lyme-disease-forest-fires/.

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Synthetic fats made from only water and air could be environmentally transformative.

Monday December 4, 2023

Consider a scoop of ice cream: part of what makes this dessert so delicious is palm oil, a product that comes from vast plantations, which have been linked to millions of hectares of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Such devastation in the name of nutritionally-unimportant foods such as ice cream—or biscuits, crisps, and pizza dough, which also contain palm oil—seems like a travesty. 

But now a new review suggests that exciting advances in food tech could enable us to make molecularly-identical fats, without any farmland or crops, and near zero emissions.

Researchers calculate that if we had already taken steps to replace palm oil with synthetic fats, in palm-oil intensive Malaysia alone, this would have so far diverted over a gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, and saved 100 million hectares of tropical habitat, according to agricultural figures from 2017. Beyond emissions and land-use, synthetic fats would also require between 100 and 800 times less water than their agricultural counterparts. 

Source: Bryce, Emma. “Synthetic Fats Made from Water and Air Could Be a Carbon Win.” Anthropocene, 13 Nov. 2023, www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/11/synthetic-fats-made-from-only-water-and-air-could-be-environmentally-transformative/.