Facebook of the Planet Science

David Kramer, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics, has created the Facebook of plant science. Courtesy of MSU

By building PhotosynQ – a handheld device with sensors and an online data-sharing and analysis platform – a team of Michigan State University researchers is creating the plant-science equivalent of Facebook.

Following the trail blazed by successful social media networks, the team is giving away patentable devices at a nominal fee, building an active global community of plant science enthusiasts and sharing all data collected from around the world.

The goal is to allow even citizen scientists to make research-quality measurements, said David Kramer, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics.

“We’ve built a platform that everyone can access through their cell phones,” he said. “We want to create a community that sees a 12-year-old student in China ask a question about a drought-resistant plant. Then we hope that hundreds of people answer, and not only the student in China is able to grow sustainable crops, but also a farmer in Africa could benefit from those insights.”

One component of PhotosynQ is a handheld device that costs about $100, scans plants and collects a handful of key data points. Via a smartphone running Android, the data is transferred from the device to the researcher’s project page on the PhotosynQ platform.

Currently, there are about 20 research projects on the burgeoning network. As new data is collected, community members can observe the projects’ progression.

Projects range from one measuring the robustness and productivity of beans, to another monitoring the efficiency of photosynthesis. Collecting data on how well plants convert sunlight to energy can be derived from satellite images in a very limited way. To improve the data, it’s best to get on-the-ground observations as well. The more handheld devices used in the field to gather the data, the better.

PhotosynQ will enable local scientists, plant breeders and citizens to improve the productivity and security of crops in communities around the world. This low-cost approach of collecting samples from global sites could change how science has traditionally been conducted, said Greg Austic, who is leading the development in the Kramer lab.

“It’s critical that PhotosynQ stays open source,” he said. “We’re changing the model of moving new technology from academia to the world. We’re maximizing the data and building a community rather than maximizing profits.”

If only two people use the network, it’s worthless. If 2 million people join in, it’s priceless. It will be a snapshot of what’s happening in the plant world at this very moment. Successful breeding efforts, rapidly spreading diseases and other trends can be identified quicker, he added.

This nontraditional approach is indicative of Kramer’s unique lab. Soldering irons and circuit boards outnumber plants and petri dishes. Shelves are lined with electronic prototypes. The buzzing hive of nearly 40 students is a blend of biologists, programmers and engineers.

“Many times one of our biology students will come up with an idea and bounces it off some of the other students,” Kramer said. “The computer specialists write a program, and the electronics students build a prototype and a new technique is developed and used – sometimes in a single day.”

His lab is a microcosm of what he hopes he can create on a global scale; empower people with data and easy-to-use scientific instruments, and people will look at their world differently, he said.

Kramer is a professor in the College of Natural Science and the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory. His research is funded in part by MSU AgBioResearch.

Source: MSU

Stanford scientists team with indigenous people to produce detailed carbon calculations of Amazon rainforest

The late Dr. Kye Epps teaches Wapichana field researchers how to measure tree diameter, information that can then be used to calculate a tree's biomass and carbon storage.

When it comes to measuring the carbon storage potential of the Amazon forest, indigenous people might outperform sophisticated satellites.

The results from a long-term collaboration between Stanford scientists and indigenous people in Guyana suggests that traditional remote sensing techniques might be undervaluing the region's carbon storage potential by as much as 40 percent. The work could influence how indigenous people in Guyana and elsewhere manage their forests and lead to greater opportunities for these communities to engage in carbon offset programs.

The project, led by Jose Fragoso, a senior scientist in the Department of Biology at Stanford, grew out of his earlier efforts to engage indigenous peoples to gain a better understanding of ecosystems relatively undisturbed by modern civilization.

What is carbon?

The first challenge was teaching people with little to no exposure to the outside world just what carbon is. Co-author Kimberly "Kye" Epps, a postdoctoral scholar in Stanford School of Earth Sciences (who passed away during the project,) developed lesson plans for explaining that all life is based on carbon.

Epps pointed out that the black charcoal from a burnt twig is primarily carbon, and how the carbon-laden smoke enters the atmosphere and ultimately affects the global climate. The plants and trees suck carbon from the atmosphere, she explained, and store it in their trunks and leaves.

"Kye's innovative lessons helped get them to where they not only understand what carbon is, but also understand its global implications and how much they actually hold themselves on their land," said Fragoso, the senior author on the paper. "When they realized its importance, they became very invested in the work."

Next came lessons on establishing survey plots, cataloging plant species and learning how to measure plant trunk circumferences, which is a standard measurement used to calculate biomass and thus how much carbon is contained in the plot.

"The people know the trails really well, and some of them will walk two days to get to their plot and make measurements," Fragoso said. "They can make really good measurements in really isolated areas, where government workers would never get to. Generally, professional scientists will not travel these distances on foot to verify carbon estimates."

Biomass specifics

Whereas satellite observations would most likely have identified each of these plots as "forest" and assigned them a standardized value for carbon storage, Fragoso said that the field workers identified 11 habitat types with trees, each of which requires a different set of calculations for determining its carbon storage potential. Because the researchers could be more specific about the biomass of each vegetation type making up a plot, they were able to calculate that forests in Guyana contain 20 to 40 percent more carbon than previously estimated.

This difference can affect a number of different areas. For one, it means that climate models that include blanket estimations of carbon storage in lands governed by indigenous people might be missing significant data – indigenous people govern about half of all remaining undeveloped land on the planet.

Indigenous lands probably play a much larger role in the global climate than previously assumed, Fragoso said, and indigenous people need to be better represented at global climate talks. These land-owners have more carbon storage at their disposal to sell as carbon credits to governments and corporations looking to offset their greenhouse gas-producing activities.

"Having a good measurement of carbon storage really helps them to enter into discussions with the national government and surrounding communities," Fragoso said. "This helps them to both prevent global climate change while also benefiting, and that is something that the people we worked with were very interested in."

This is the first model for turning indigenous people into field researchers capable of producing scientifically rigorous calculations for carbon, said Fragoso, who is now planning to share the concept with other indigenous nations around the world.

The paper was published recently in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. The work was co-authored by Nathalie Butt of the University of Queensland, Australia, who completed Epps' work; Stanford postdoctoral fellow Takuya Iwamura; and Han Overman, a postdoc at State University of New York. While not official co-authors, Stanford professors Peter Vitousek and Pamela Matson were instrumental in providing guidance for Epps' work.

Source: Stanford

Switching to vehicles powered by electricity from renewables could save lives

Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. Credit: © Dmitry Vereshchagin / Fotolia

Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional and alternative vehicles and their air pollution-related public health impacts, published Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study also shows that switching to vehicles powered by electricity made using natural gas yields large health benefits. Conversely, vehicles running on corn ethanol or vehicles powered by coal-based or "grid average" electricity are worse for health; switching from gasoline to those fuels would increase the number of resulting deaths due to air pollution by 80 percent or more.

"These findings demonstrate the importance of clean electricity, such as from natural gas or renewables, in substantially reducing the negative health impacts of transportation," said Chris Tessum, co-author on the study and a researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering.

The University of Minnesota team estimated how concentrations of two important pollutants -- particulate matter and ground-level ozone -- change as a result of using various options for powering vehicles. Air pollution is the largest environmental health hazard in the U.S., in total killing more than 100,000 people per year. Air pollution increases rates of heart attack, stroke, and respiratory disease.

The authors looked at liquid biofuels, diesel, compressed natural gas, and electricity from a range of conventional and renewable sources. Their analysis included not only the pollution from vehicles, but also emissions generated during production of the fuels or electricity that power them. With ethanol, for example, air pollution is released from tractors on farms, from soils after fertilizers are applied, and to supply the energy for fermenting and distilling corn into ethanol.

"Our work highlights the importance of looking at the full life cycle of energy production and use, not just at what comes out of tailpipes," said Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering Assistant Professor Jason Hill, co-author of the study. "We greatly underestimate transportation's impacts on air quality if we ignore the upstream emissions from producing fuels or electricity."

The researchers also point out that whereas recent studies on life cycle environmental impacts of transportation have focused mainly on greenhouse gas emissions, it is also important to consider air pollution and health. Their study provides a unique look at where life cycle emissions occur, how they move in the environment, and where people breathe that pollution. Their results provide unprecedented detail on the air quality-related health impacts of transportation fuel production and use.

"Air pollution has enormous health impacts, including increasing death rates across the U.S.," said Civil, Environmental and Geo- Engineering Associate Professor Julian Marshall, co-author on this study. "This study provides valuable new information on how some transportation options would improve or worsen those health impacts."

Source: University of Minnesota

'Probiotics' for plants boost detox abilities; untreated plants overdose and die

The Doty lab conducts work to see how plants treated with naturally occurring endophytes might handle soils contaminated with a variety of pollutants. Graduate student Robert Tournay, for example, is interested in how the plants handle arsenic. Credit: M Levin/U of Washington

Scientists using a microbe that occurs naturally in eastern cottonwood trees have boosted the ability of two other plants -- willow and lawn grass -- to withstand the withering effects of the nasty industrial pollutant phenanthrene and take up 25 to 40 percent more of the pollutant than untreated plants.

The approach could avoid the regulatory hurdles imposed on transgenic plants -- plants with genes inserted from or exchanged with other plant or animal species -- that have shown promise in phytoremediation, the process of using plants to remove toxins from contaminated sites, according to Sharon Doty, associate professor of environmental and forestry sciences and corresponding author on a paper about the new work in Environmental Science & Technology.

"Our approach is much like when humans take probiotic pills or eat yogurt with probiotics to supplement the 'good' microbes in their guts," she said.

The microbe from the cottonwood was encouraged to colonize the roots of willows simply by dipping rooted and trimmed cuttings in solutions with the microbe. Grasses were treated with microbes in solution as seeds sprouted in soil. Once integrated into the plants, the microbe supplemented their own microbial defenses.

Microbes that take up residence in the inner tissue of plants and don't cause negative symptoms are called endophytes. In nature, endophytes have a welcomed, symbiotic relationship with plants. In polluted soil, for instance, if the right endophytes are present they consume toxins coming up through plant roots. The endophytes get fed and the plant gets help neutralizing pollutants that could kill it.

That's been one challenge of phytoremediation: plants removing pollutants can, all too quickly, succumb to the toxins.

"When the endophyte in these experiments was given to willow and grasses, it reduced the phytotoxic effects of phenanthrene compared to the control plants that did not receive the endophyte and died," said lead author Zareen Khan, a UW research scientist in environmental and forest sciences.

Phenanthrene is carcinogenic, on the Environmental Protection Agency's priority pollutants list and belongs to a class of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that get deposited into the environment via fossil fuel combustion, waste incineration or as byproducts of industrial processes. Soils that become contaminated can be capped with layers of uncontaminated soil or dug up and removed for cleaning at soil remediation facilities or storage at waste disposal facilities.

In their search, UW researchers tested six different endophytes from cottonwood and willow varieties and found one -- lab name PD1 -- from the eastern cottonwood to be superior at breaking down phenanthrene.

They introduced this endophyte into willow cuttings and lawn grass. Willows were chosen because some varieties have already proven adept at removing toxins and the shrubs have extensive root systems, take up a lot of water and grow rapidly. Lawn grass was included because it also grows fast and could be useful in parks and open-space areas.

In lab experiments, the willow cuttings with added endophyte protection continued to grow, kept their leaves and had denser root systems. Untreated plants wilted, lost leaves and their roots turned brown. When soils were analyzed, the treated willows took up 65 percent of the phenanthrene compared with untreated plants that removed 40 percent, an improvement of 25 percent.

Grass seed planted in contaminated soils and watered with solutions containing the PD1 endophyte germinated five days quicker, grew taller and had 100 more tillers, or new offshoots, after 13 days. Treated grass removed 50 percent of the phenanthrene from the soil, compared with untreated grass that removed 10 percent, an improvement of 40 percent.

In phytoremediation, plants that take up pollutants but don't degrade them have to be removed and treated as hazardous waste or otherwise disposed of safely. The willows treated in the UW experiment appear to have degraded some 90 percent of the phenanthrene to harmless components. The researchers said they'd like to determine if that promising finding holds up in mass-balance studies and want to examine the possible effects on bugs or animals that might bite the plants processing the toxins and other environmental considerations. Interestingly, other studies have shown that bugs can smell similar semi-volatile pollutants and avoid eating the plants containing them, Doty said.

The work was funded by a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and by funds provided through the Byron and Alice Lockwood Endowed Professorship that Doty holds. The other four co-authors on the paper were undergraduate volunteers: David Roman and Trent Kintz have since graduated while May delas Alas and Raymond Yap are still working on their bachelor's degrees.
Just down the road from UW is Seattle's Gas Works Park, a site Doty thinks is a prime candidate for the approach her lab reported. Contaminants in the soil, including phenanthrene, are from a now-dismantled gasification plant. Soils have been covered with uncontaminated soil.

"The idea of leaving a known carcinogen in a public place is not right," she said. "What about problems of erosion? We should do what we can to remove it. We spend so much money treating cancer, I'd like us to take steps to prevent it instead."

Source: University of Washington

Birds Sensed severe storms and fled before tornado outbreak

This golden-winged warbler spends the breeding season in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. Credit: Henry Streby and Gunnar Kramer

Golden-winged warblers apparently knew in advance that a storm that would spawn 84 confirmed tornadoes and kill at least 35 people last spring was coming, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 18. The birds left the scene well before devastating supercell storms blew in.

The discovery was made quite by accident while researchers were testing whether the warblers, which weigh "less than two nickels," could carry geolocators on their backs. It turns out they can, and much more. With a big storm brewing, the birds took off from their breeding ground in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee, where they had only just arrived, for an unplanned migratory event. All told, the warblers travelled 1,500 kilometers in 5 days to avoid the historic tornado-producing storms.

"The most curious finding is that the birds left long before the storm arrived," says Henry Streby of the University of California, Berkeley. "At the same time that meteorologists on The Weather Channel were telling us this storm was headed in our direction, the birds were apparently already packing their bags and evacuating the area."

The birds fled from their breeding territories more than 24 hours before the arrival of the storm, Streby and his colleagues report. The researchers suspect that the birds did it by listening to infrasound associated with the severe weather, at a level well below the range of human hearing.

"Meteorologists and physicists have known for decades that tornadic storms make very strong infrasound that can travel thousands of kilometers from the storm," Streby explains. While the birds might pick up on some other cue, he adds, the infrasound from severe storms travels at exactly the same frequency the birds are most sensitive to hearing.

The findings show that birds that follow annual migratory routes can also take off on unplanned trips at other times of the year when conditions require it. That's probably good news for birds, as climate change is expected to produce storms that are both stronger and more frequent. But there surely must be a downside as well, the researchers say.

"Our observation suggests [that] birds aren't just going to sit there and take it with regards to climate change, and maybe they will fare better than some have predicted," Streby says. "On the other hand, this behavior presumably costs the birds some serious energy and time they should be spending on reproducing." The birds' energy-draining journey is just one more pressure human activities are putting on migratory songbirds.

In the coming year, Streby's team will deploy hundreds of geolocators on the golden-winged warblers and related species across their entire breeding range to find out where they spend the winter and how they get there and back.

"I can't say I'm hoping for another severe tornado outbreak," Streby says, "but I am eager to see what unpredictable things happen this time."

Source: Cell Press

Origin of long-standing space mystery revealed: Origin of the 'theta aurora'

The night side of the terrestrial magnetosphere forms a structured magnetotail, consisting of a plasma sheet at low latitudes that is sandwiched between two regions called the magnetotail lobes. The lobes consist of the regions in which Earth's magnetic field lines are directly connected to the magnetic field carried by the solar wind. Different plasma populations are observed in these regions -- plasma in the lobes is very cool, whereas the plasma sheet is more energetic. The diagram labels by two red dots the location of an ESA Cluster satellite and NASA's IMAGE satellite on 15 September 2005, when particular conditions of the magnetic field configuration gave rise to a phenomenon known as 'theta aurora.'  Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/LASCO/EIT

University of Southampton researcher has helped solve a long-standing space mystery -- the origin of the 'theta aurora'.

Auroras are the most visible manifestation of the Sun's effect on Earth. They are seen as colourful displays in the night sky, known as the Northern or Southern Lights. They are caused by the solar wind, a stream of plasma -- electrically charged atomic particles -- carrying its own magnetic field, interacting with Earth's magnetic field.

Normally, the main region for this impressive display is the 'auroral oval', which lies at around 65-70 degrees north or south of the equator, encircling the polar caps.
However, auroras can occur at even higher latitudes. One type is known as a 'theta aurora' because seen from above it looks like the Greek letter theta -- an oval with a line crossing through the centre.

While the cause of the auroral oval emissions is reasonably well understood, the origin of the theta aurora was unclear until now.

Researchers observed particles in the two 'lobe' regions of the magnetosphere. The plasma in the lobes is normally cold, but previous observations suggested that theta auroras are linked with unusually hot lobe plasma.

Dr Robert Fear from the University of Southampton (formerly at the University of Leicester, where much of the research took place), and lead author of the paper published in Science this week, says: "Previously it was unclear whether this hot plasma was a result of direct solar wind entry through the lobes of the magnetosphere, or if the plasma is somehow related to the plasma sheet on the night side of Earth.

"One idea is that the process of magnetic reconnection on the night side of Earth causes a build-up of 'trapped' hot plasma in the higher latitude lobes."

The mystery was finally solved by studying data collected simultaneously by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Cluster and NASA's IMAGE satellites on 15 September 2005. While the four Cluster satellites were located in the southern hemisphere magnetic lobe, IMAGE had a wide-field view of the southern hemisphere aurora. As one Cluster satellite observed uncharacteristically energetic plasma in the lobe, IMAGE saw the 'arc' of the theta aurora cross the magnetic footprint of Cluster.

"We found that the energetic plasma signatures occur on high-latitude magnetic field lines that have been 'closed' by the process of magnetic reconnection, which then causes the plasma to become relatively hot," says Dr Fear.

"Because the field lines are closed, the observations are incompatible with direct entry from the solar wind. By testing this and other predictions about the behaviour of the theta aurora, our observations provide strong evidence that the plasma trapping mechanism is responsible for the theta aurora," he adds.

"The study highlights the intriguing process that can occur in the magnetosphere when the interplanetary magnetic field of the solar wind points northwards," adds Philippe Escoubet, ESA's Cluster project scientist.

"This is the first time that the origin of the theta aurora phenomenon has been revealed, and it is thanks to localised measurements from Cluster combined with the wide-field view of IMAGE that we can better understand another aspect of the Sun-Earth connection," he adds.

Source: University of Southampton

A kingdom of cave beetles found in Southern China

Credit: Mingyi Tian; CC-BY 4.0

A team of scientists specializing in cave biodiversity from the South China Agricultural University (Guangzhou) unearthed a treasure trove of rare blind cave beetles. The description of seven new species of underground Trechinae beetles, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, attests for the Du'an karst as the most diverse area for these cave dwellers in China.

"China is becoming more and more fascinating for those who study cave biodiversity, because it holds some of the most morphologically adapted cavernicolous animals in the world. This is specifically true for fishes and the threchine beetles, the second of which is also the group featured in this study," explains the senior author of the study Prof. Mingyi Tian.

Like most cavernicolous species, Trechinae cave beetles shows a number of specific adaptations, such as lack of eyes and colour, which are traits common among cave dwellers.

The new Trechinae beetles belong to the genus Dongodytes whose members are easily recognizable by their extraordinary slender and very elongated body. Members of this genus are usually very rare in caves, with only five species reported from China before now.

During the recent study of the cave systems in Du'an karst however this numbers drastically changed, Out of the 48 visited caves 12 held populations of trechine beetles. A total of 103 samples were collected, out of which the team of scientists determined ten different species, seven of which are new to science.

"This new discovery casts a new light on the importance of the Du'an Karst as a biological hotspot for cavernicolous Trechinae in China," adds Prof. Mingyi Tian.

Source: Pensoft Publishers

Seeing the forest for the trees: Youngest trees in a forest tell the biggest story

LSU ecologist Kyle Harms co-authors first study to quantify the process of diversification in forests and likely all other sessile ecosystems. Credit: Louisiana State University

The largest trees in a forest may command the most attention, but the smallest seedlings and youngest saplings are the ones that are most critical to the composition and diversity of the forest overall. While many people gaze up into the forest canopy, scientist Joseph Connell has spent much of his career looking down quite closely at the forest understory. Connell, who is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, established one of the world's longest, in-depth ecological research studies on the planet. The Connell Plots Rainforest Network has thus far produced a 50-year collection of data on individual trees in Australia's protected rainforests.

"Having such a long-term, detailed dataset is highly unusual. It's the kind of temporal depth we need to answer some of the big questions such as, what are the ecological processes that maintain diversity?" said Kyle Harms, professor in the LSU Department of Biological Sciences and a collaborator with Connell.

Early in his career, Harms was a post-doctoral researcher in Connell's lab at U.C. Santa Barbara. There, he met former fellow post-doctoral researcher and current collaborator Peter Green, who is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Harms and Green were inspired to use their mentor's dataset; therefore, they devised an analysis to test the long-standing hypothesis that the patterns of composition and diversity among a forest's mature trees are largely set by processes that occur in trees' earliest life stages. Harms ran statistical analyses on 7,977 individual trees across 186 species that were censused in one of Connell's tropical Australian forest plots from 1971-2013.

He repeatedly ran simulation analyses on six tiers of trees based on size in order to predict the expected outcome of diversity at each tier. Then he compared the expected levels of diversity in each tier with the true collected data.

"What we found was that the seedlings are more diverse than the statistical expectations predicted them to be, but the larger trees' levels of diversity were about the same as the predictions" he said.

These results are the first quantitative evidence that the earliest life cycle stages of individual trees are more critical than later stages to the overall relative abundances of mature trees in a forest. Their findings will be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

The stronger influence of ecological sorting processes operating at the earliest life cycle stages compared to later life stages, which they quantified, also likely occurs in other highly diverse ecosystems with rooted, or sessile, organisms including grasslands, herbaceous plant communities and marine communities of coral.

"I think this is something that is happening broadly in ecosystems across the planet," Harms said.

He and his collaborators' results underscore the importance of support for long-term, in-depth datasets, as well as the need to investigate the early life stages -- for example, the smallest, newly germinated seedlings -- where the most critical processes are occurring.

"I think it helps us understand where to focus in order to really understand the biased sorting processes that create the composition and diversity patterns in the forest overall," he said.

Source: Louisiana State University

Fracking and pollution: Technology-dependent emissions of gas extraction in the US

The KIT measurement instrument on board of a minivan directly measures atmospheric emissions on site with a high temporal resolution.
Credit: Photo: F. Geiger/KIT

Not all boreholes are the same. Scientists of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) used mobile measurement equipment to analyze gaseous compounds emitted by the extraction of oil and natural gas in the USA. For the first time, organic pollutants emitted during a fracking process were measured at a high temporal resolution using a vapor capture system. The highest values measured by this process exceeded typical mean values in urban air by a factor of about one thousand, as was reported in the ACP journal.

Emission of trace gases by oil and gas fields was studied by the KIT researchers in the USA (Utah and Colorado) together with US institutes. Background concentrations and the waste gas plumes of single extraction plants and fracking facilities were analyzed. The air quality measurements of several weeks duration took place under the "Uintah Basin Winter Ozone Study" coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The KIT measurements focused on health-damaging aromatic hydrocarbons in air, such as carcinogenic benzene. Maximum concentrations were determined in the waste gas plumes of boreholes. Some extraction plants emitted up to about a hundred times more benzene than others. The highest values of some milligrams of benzene per cubic meter air were measured downstream of an open fracking facility, where returning drilling fluid is stored in open tanks and basins. Much better results were reached by oil and gas extraction plants and plants with closed production processes. In Germany, benzene concentration at the workplace is subject to strict limits: The Federal Emission Control Ordinance gives an annual benzene limit of five micrograms per cubic meter for the protection of human health, which is smaller than the values now measured at the open fracking facility in the US by a factor of about one thousand. The researchers published the results measured in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP.

"Characteristic emissions of trace gases are encountered everywhere. These are symptomatic of gas and gas extraction. But the values measured for different technologies differ considerably," Felix Geiger of the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK) of KIT explains. He is one of the first authors of the study. By means of closed collection tanks and so-called vapor capture systems, for instance, the gases released during operation can be collected and reduced significantly.

"The gas fields in the sparsely populated areas of North America are a good showcase for estimating the range of impacts of different extraction and fracking technologies," explains Professor Johannes Orphal, Head of IMK. "In the densely populated Germany, framework conditions are much stricter and much more attention is paid to reducing and monitoring emissions."

Fracking is increasingly discussed as a technology to extract fossil resources from unconventional deposits. Hydraulic breaking of suitable shale stone layers opens up the fossil fuels stored there and makes them accessible for economically efficient use. For this purpose, boreholes are drilled into these rock formations. Then, they are subjected to high pressure using large amounts of water and auxiliary materials, such as sand, cement, and chemicals. The oil or gas can flow to the surface through the opened microstructures in the rock. Typically, the return flow of the aqueous fracking liquid with the dissolved oil and gas constituents to the surface lasts several days until the production phase proper of purer oil or natural gas. This return flow is collected and then reused until it finally has to be disposed of. Air pollution mainly depends on the treatment of this return flow at the extraction plant. In this respect, currently practiced fracking technologies differ considerably. For the first time now, the resulting local atmospheric emissions were studied at a high temporary resolution. Based on the results, emissions can be assigned directly to the different plant sections of an extraction plant. For measurement, the newly developed, compact, and highly sensitive instrument, a so-called proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS), of KIT was installed on board of a minivan and driven closer to the different extraction points, the distances being a few tens of meters. In this way, the waste gas plumes of individual extraction sources and fracking processes were studied in detail.

Source: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

A New technique could harvest more of the sun's energy

An ultra-sensitive needle measures the voltage that is generated while the nanospheres are illuminated.
Credit: AMOLF/Tremani - Figure: Artist impression of the plasmo-electric effect.

As solar panels become less expensive and capable of generating more power, solar energy is becoming a more commercially viable alternative source of electricity. However, the photovoltaic cells now used to turn sunlight into electricity can only absorb and use a small fraction of that light, and that means a significant amount of solar energy goes untapped.

A new technology created by researchers from Caltech, and described in a paper published online in the October 30 issue of Science Express, represents a first step toward harnessing that lost energy.

Sunlight is composed of many wavelengths of light. In a traditional solar panel, silicon atoms are struck by sunlight and the atoms' outermost electrons absorb energy from some of these wavelengths of sunlight, causing the electrons to get excited. Once the excited electrons absorb enough energy to jump free from the silicon atoms, they can flow independently through the material to produce electricity. This is called the photovoltaic effect -- a phenomenon that takes place in a solar panel's photovoltaic cells.

Although silicon-based photovoltaic cells can absorb light wavelengths that fall in the visible spectrum -- light that is visible to the human eye -- longer wavelengths such as infrared light pass through the silicon. These wavelengths of light pass right through the silicon and never get converted to electricity -- and in the case of infrared, they are normally lost as unwanted heat.

"The silicon absorbs only a certain fraction of the spectrum, and it's transparent to the rest. If I put a photovoltaic module on my roof, the silicon absorbs that portion of the spectrum, and some of that light gets converted into power. But the rest of it ends up just heating up my roof," says Harry A. Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science; director, Resnick Sustainability Institute, who led the study.
Now, Atwater and his colleagues have found a way to absorb and make use of these infrared waves with a structure composed not of silicon, but entirely of metal.

The new technique they've developed is based on a phenomenon observed in metallic structures known as plasmon resonance. Plasmons are coordinated waves, or ripples, of electrons that exist on the surfaces of metals at the point where the metal meets the air.
While the plasmon resonances of metals are predetermined in nature, Atwater and his colleagues found that those resonances are capable of being tuned to other wavelengths when the metals are made into tiny nanostructures in the lab.

"Normally in a metal like silver or copper or gold, the density of electrons in that metal is fixed; it's just a property of the material," Atwater says. "But in the lab, I can add electrons to the atoms of metal nanostructures and charge them up. And when I do that, the resonance frequency will change."

"We've demonstrated that these resonantly excited metal surfaces can produce a potential" -- an effect very similar to rubbing a glass rod with a piece of fur: you deposit electrons on the glass rod. "You charge it up, or build up an electrostatic charge that can be discharged as a mild shock," he says. "So similarly, exciting these metal nanostructures near their resonance charges up those metal structures, producing an electrostatic potential that you can measure."

This electrostatic potential is a first step in the creation of electricity, Atwater says. "If we can develop a way to produce a steady-state current, this could potentially be a power source. He envisions a solar cell using the plasmoelectric effect someday being used in tandem with photovoltaic cells to harness both visible and infrared light for the creation of electricity.

Although such solar cells are still on the horizon, the new technique could even now be incorporated into new types of sensors that detect light based on the electrostatic potential.
"Like all such inventions or discoveries, the path of this technology is unpredictable," Atwater says. "But any time you can demonstrate a new effect to create a sensor for light, that finding has almost always yielded some kind of new product."


This work was published in a paper titled, "Plasmoelectric Potentials in Metal Nanostructures." Other coauthors include first author Matthew T. Sheldon, a former postdoctoral scholar at Caltech; Ana M. Brown, an applied physics graduate student at Caltech; and Jorik van de Groep and Albert Polman from the FOM Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam. The study was funded by the Department of Energy, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Source: California Institute of Technology

In world first, researchers convert sunlight to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency

Solar panels

UNSW Australia's solar researchers have converted over 40% of the sunlight hitting a solar system into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported.

The record efficiency was achieved in outdoor tests in Sydney, before being independently confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at their outdoor test facility in the United States.

The work was funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and supported by the Australia-US Institute for Advanced Photovoltaics (AUSIAPV).

"This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity," UNSW Scientia Professor and Director of the Advanced Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) Professor Martin Green said.

"We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry," added Dr Mark Keevers, the UNSW solar scientist who managed the project.

The 40% efficiency milestone is the latest in a long line of achievements by UNSW solar researchers spanning four decades. These include the first photovoltaic system to convert sunlight to electricity with over 20% efficiency in 1989, with the new result doubling this performance.

"The new results are based on the use of focused sunlight, and are particularly relevant to photovoltaic power towers being developed in Australia," Professor Green said.

Power towers are being developed by Australian company, RayGen Resources, which provided design and technical support for the high efficiency prototype. Another partner in the research was Spectrolab, a US-based company that provided some of the cells used in the project.

A key part of the prototype's design is the use of a custom optical bandpass filter to capture sunlight that is normally wasted by commercial solar cells on towers and convert it to electricity at a higher efficiency than the solar cells themselves ever could.

Such filters reflect particular wavelengths of light while transmitting others.

ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said the achievement is another world first for Australian research and development and further demonstrates the value of investing in Australia's renewable energy ingenuity.

"We hope to see this home grown innovation take the next steps from prototyping to pilot scale demonstrations. Ultimately, more efficient commercial solar plants will make renewable energy cheaper, increasing its competitiveness."

The 40% efficiency achievement is outlined in a paper expected to be published soon by the Progress in Photovoltaics journal. It will also be presented at the Australian PV Institute's Asia-Pacific Solar Research Conference, which begins at UNSW Monday, December 8.

Source: University of New South Wales.

The Matched 'hybrid' systems may hold key to wider use of renewable energy

Wind farms such as this one in Idaho might be combined with other forms of alternative energy to better balance the output of sustainable energy. Credit: Nordex USA/US Department of Energy

The use of renewable energy in the United States could take a significant leap forward with improved storage technologies or more efforts to "match" different forms of alternative energy systems that provide an overall more steady flow of electricity, researchers say in a new report.

Historically, a major drawback to the use and cost-effectiveness of alternative energy systems has been that they are too variable -- if the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine, a completely different energy system has to be available to pick up the slack. This lack of dependability is costly and inefficient.

But in an analysis just published in The Electricity Journal, scientists say that much of this problem could be addressed with enhanced energy storage technology or by developing "hybrid" systems in which, on a broader geographic scale, one form of renewable energy is ramping up even while the other is declining.

"Wind energy is already pretty cost-competitive and solar energy is quickly getting there," said Anna Kelly, a graduate student in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University, and an energy policy analyst. "The key to greater use of these and other technologies is to match them in smart-grid, connected systems.

"This is already being done successfully in a number of countries and the approach could be expanded."

For instance, the wind often blows more strongly at night in some regions, Kelly said, and solar technology can only produce energy during the day. By making more sophisticated use of that basic concept in a connected grid, and pairing it with more advanced forms of energy storage, the door could be opened for a much wider use of renewable energy systems, scientists say.

"This is more than just an idea, it's a working reality in energy facilities around the world, in places like Spain, Morocco and China, as well as the U.S.," Kelly said. "Geothermal is being paired with solar; wind and solar with lithium-ion batteries; and wind and biodiesel with batteries. By helping to address the price issue, renewable energy is being produced in hybrid systems by real, private companies that are making real money."

Advanced energy storage could be another huge key to making renewable energy more functional, and one example is just being developed in several cooperating states in the West. Electricity is being produced by efficient wind farms in Wyoming; transmitted to Utah where it's being stored via compressed air in certain rock formations; and ultimately used to help power Los Angeles.

This $8 billion system could be an indicator of things to come, since compressed air can rapidly respond to energy needs and be readily scaled up to be cost-competitive at a significant commercial level.

"There are still a number of obstacles to overcome," said Joshua Merritt, a co-author on the report and also a graduate student in mechanical engineering and public policy at OSU. "Our transmission grids need major improvements so we can more easily produce energy and then send it to where it's needed. There are some regulatory hurdles to overcome. And the public has to more readily accept energy systems like wind, wave or solar in practice, not just in theory."

The "not in my back yard" opposition to renewable energy systems is still a reality, the researchers said, and there are still some environmental concerns about virtually any form of energy, whether it's birds killed by wind turbine rotors, fish losses in hydroelectric dams or chemical contaminants from use of solar energy.

The near future may offer more options, the researchers said. Advanced battery storage technologies are becoming more feasible. Wave or tidal energy may become a real contributor, and some of those forces are more predictable and stable by definition. And the birth of small, modular nuclear reactors -- which can be built at lower cost and produce no greenhouse gas emissions -- could play a significant role in helping to balance energy outflows from renewable sources.

The long-term goal, the report concluded, is to identify technologies that can work in a hybrid system that offers consistency, dependability and doesn't rely on fossil fuels. With careful matching of systems, improved transmission abilities and some new technological advances, that goal may be closer than realized, they said.

"With development, the cost of these hybrid systems will decrease and become increasingly competitive, hopefully playing a larger role in power generation in the future," the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

Source: Oregon State University

Updating air pollution measurement methods

Launching a natural research experiment in Kathmandu, Nepal, this month using advanced monitoring methods to assess health risk from air pollution, environmental health scientist Rick Peltier at the University of Massachusetts Amherst hopes to demonstrate for the first time in a real-world setting that air pollution can and should be regulated based on toxicology variables rather than simply on the volume of particles in the air.

Recent technological advances in air quality measurement methods now make it possible and practical to monitor air pollution in a much more sophisticated way than before, Peltier says. Researchers now use X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to measure air pollution metal content, ion chromatography to identify other chemicals and other tactics to assess organic and elemental carbon levels.

Peltier says, "We're interested in how air pollution directly affects health. The current regulatory method doesn't take into account the relative toxicity of components, that is the specific chemical makeup of the air we breathe. There has been a void in the science in this field. But with this experiment, for the first time we'll have biological measurements coupled with high-quality air pollution measurements in a cohort of traffic police exposed to extreme levels of pollution."

At present, the Environmental Protection Agency monitors air quality components every three days at 350 stations across the United States, but there are no such sites in Nepal. Particulates are an important signature of traffic. A poor air quality day in Los Angeles may see 40-50 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter, Peltier says, while in Kathmandu the level can be 800-900, or about 20 times worse.

Ethically, the environmental scientist adds, it would be impossible to expose people to such pollution levels in a laboratory-based experiment, and ambient levels such as those typically observed in Kathmandu are never routinely encountered anywhere in the United States. Peltier and colleagues' study will take advantage of the fact that the traffic officers already are exposed to high air pollution levels in their normal workday.

Funded by a multinational partnership led by UMass Amherst and including the Himalayan region's Intergovernmental Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, the investigation will follow a cohort of 32 traffic control officers in Kathmandu during two seasons: Cold, dry winter from this month into March, with a second study in the hot, rainy monsoon season from June to August, when air pollution levels are lower.

Peltier observes that Nepal's capital city region has poor air quality because two-stroke gasoline and diesel engines, high pollutant emitters, are common. Also, people heat their homes with coal and kerosene and routinely burn garbage and tires outdoors. For the 3 million inhabitants this poses substantial, demonstrable health risks.

"Unfortunately, the Kathmandu metropolitan area has quite poor air quality, and it's in a valley so it is a persistent problem," he adds. "We hypothesize that toxicity is related to the chemical components of pollution. We know this is true in a Petri dish, but now we'll be able to measure it in study subjects."
Participants are 16 men and 16 women, 25 to 35 years old who have similar education and income levels. For a six-day work week, each will carry a small waist pack containing research-grade, solar-powered portable air samplers. The filters will be collected for airborne metals, ions, organic carbon and black carbon analysis. The experiment will include an intervention component, as well: For half of each study week, participants will wear high-quality, particle-filtering face masks that greatly reduce air pollution exposure.

In addition to the air filters, researchers will collect blood samples and ask the traffic officers to use a spirometer several times a day to assess lung function. Their location, activity and electrocardiogram will be continuously measured in both conditions: Breathing polluted air with and without protective face masks.

Air quality samples and the health measurement data will be analyzed at UMass Amherst and compared between the different exposure conditions. Peltier and his postdoctoral fellow Kabindra Shakya will collaborate with researcher Arnico Panday of ICIMOD, Kathmandu, which along with UMass Amherst supported the work, plus Maheswar Rupakheti of the sustainability institute in Potsdam.

Source: University of Massachusetts 

Heavy metals and hydroelectricity

August 2014 GSA Today cover image: The northeastern shoreline of Lake Junín, Peru. The pristine water surface belies a high level of heavy metal contamination of surface sediments. Credit: Donald T. Rodbell

Hydraulic engineering is increasingly relied on for hydroelectricity generation. However, redirecting stream flow can yield unintended consequences. In the August 2014 issue of GSA Today, Donald Rodbell of Union College-Schenectady and coauthors from the U.S. and Peru document the wholesale contamination of the Lake Junín National Reserve by acid mine drainage from the Cerro de Pasco mining district.

According to the World Bank, about 60% of Peru's electricity is generated by hydropower, which during the dry season relies heavily on glacial meltwater to augment stream flow. The ongoing reduction in ice cover in Peru that began early in the twentieth century has reduced the aerial extent of glacial ice in some areas by nearly 30%. According to this GSA Today article, climate models project that warming will be pronounced in the highest elevation regions of the tropical Andes, and thus acceleration in ice loss is likely.

To maintain dry-season river discharge and energy generation for a growing Peruvian population, the hydropower industry in Peru has turned to hydraulic engineering, including dam construction. This study highlights an unintended consequence of early dam construction in the Cerro de Pasco region of the central Peruvian Andes, a region that has been a focal point of Peruvian mining operations for centuries.

The Cerro de Pasco mining district is among the most extensively worked mining districts in Peru. Pre-colonial mining there showed some of the earliest evidence of anthropogenic lead enrichment by aerosolic fallout in nearby lakes about 600 years ago. The first copper smelter was established there in 1906, and in 1931 the new and improved Cerro smelter held monopoly over the refining of all nonferrous metals in Peru.

In order to generate hydroelectricity for Cerro de Pasco's operations, the Upamayo Dam was constructed in 1932. The Upamayo Dam is located in the uppermost reach of the Río Mantaro, immediately downstream of the confluence between the Río San Juan, which drains southward from Cerro de Pasco, and the outflow of Lake Junín, the largest lake entirely within Peru.

The location of the Upamayo Dam and the small reservoir upstream from it has resulted in the discharge of Río San Juan waters, once destined for the Río Mantaro, directly into Lake Junín. Rodbell et al.'s GSA Today paper documents the impact of acid mine drainage from Cerro de Pasco into Lake Junín, which in 1974 was designated a Peruvian National Wildlife Reserve.

As a result of the drainage, the upper several decimeters of sediment in the lake now contain levels of lead and zinc that greatly exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits for the lake basin. Today, more than 60,000 metric tons of copper, almost 900,000 metric tons of zinc, and almost 41,000 metric tons of lead are contained in the upper 50 cm of lake sediment -- the zinc tonnage representing more than five years' worth of mining production at current rates.

Rodbell and colleagues write that among the biggest challenges that will face any attempt to mitigate the environmental disaster that has befallen Lake Junín are finding ways to stop the recycling of zinc from the lake bottom and the remobilization of all metals from the seasonally exposed and submerged deposits that are trapped behind the Upamayo Dam. Finally, they note that as future hydraulic engineering projects are developed in Peru and elsewhere, it would behoove all not to repeat the mistakes that are recorded in the mud of Lake Junín.

Source: Geological Society of America

Recovering metals and minerals from waste

When water and wastewater systems are developed in a comprehensive manner, it is possible to recover valuable metals and other materials and secure availability of clean water.

Scarcity of clean water is one of the most serious global challenges. In its spearhead programme, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed energy-efficient methods for reuse of water in industrial processes and means for recovering valuable minerals and materials from waste for recycling. Rapid tools were also developed for identification of environmental pollutants.

When water and wastewater systems are developed in a comprehensive manner, it is possible to recover valuable metals and other materials and secure availability of clean water. Cleaning and treatment processes can also be linked to energy production, and the processes and urban structures designed in such a manner that wastewater treatment does not consume energy or cause extra costs.

"Wastewater treatment and waste treatment have mainly been implemented by legal necessity. Now we should modify our way of thinking so that we would be able to regard waste disposal sites and purification plants as sources or raw materials and energy. In the near future, technology has been refined far enough to allow such waste treatment plants to operate on their own," says Mona Arnold, Principal Researcher at VTT.

Recycling valuable minerals and materials

Demand has arisen for technologies capable of recovering even tiny amounts of minerals from waste flows. Recovering them from municipal or mining wastewaters requires better recovery methods than those available today. VTT has developed extraction methods for metals and minerals from waste materials. Biological extraction methods by which metals are recovered from mining, metal and recycling industry waste by utilising microbes and chemical reactions are under testing stages and they are forcasted for market uptake within the next few years.

Other valuable elements can also be found from waste flows. For example, the food industry by-product flows contain biochemicals and proteins that can be utilised better than is currently possible, if only they could be effectively recovered from waste. One possibility is to use enzymes. VTT researchers developed an enzyme-assisted method by which feed products can be produced from side streams deriving from turnip rape processing in food industry.

Reducing energy consumption in water treatment

Treatment of water in purification plants and industrial facilities consumes vast amounts of energy. Usually water recycling and seawater desalination are based on the use of filtration membranes that consume energy. VTT developed intelligent membrane materials, reducing the need of purification, for filtration purposes.

Membrane solutions using only small amounts of energy were developed for water treatment purposes. VTT has collaborated with a university in Singapore to develop a method based on forward osmosis technology, by which metals and biocomponents can be recovered and concentrated from industrial process waters.

The pumping and distribution of water to consumers and industry also consumes major amounts of energy. The need for pumping can be minimised if the process water can be recirculated within the plant, and the distribution network is made more effective by enhanced monitoring and location of leaks.

Sensors for identifying environmental hazards

The VTT spearhead programme also developed sensor technology for easy and rapid detection of pollutants. VTT indicators facilitate rapid identification of, for example, small but hazardous cyanobacterial toxin levels and phenolic, hormone-like compounds. There is need for such indicators in developing countries, suffering from lack of trained personnel and laboratories. The technology will be ready for production use within the next few years.

Source: Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT).