Mammalian sperm are unusually picky. They prefer cooler environments, thriving below normal body temperature. Yet, they must navigate the female reproductive tract, which is warmer. So how do they survive and succeed?



New research from <a href="https://medicine.washu.edu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Washington University</a> School of Medicine in St. Louis explains how. Sperm use the temperature difference as a signal.



 When they enter the warmer female reproductive tract, they switch behavior. They move from calm, forward swimming to a vigorous, whip-like thrash. This change helps them pierce the egg for <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/our-current-fertility-rate-isnt-enough-for-human-survival/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fertilization</a>.



This discovery sheds light on male fertility. It also opens new directions for contraception.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-heat-flips-a-sperm-switch">Heat flips a sperm switch</h2>



All mammals carry a sperm-surface protein called CatSper. It regulates ion entry, powering the tail’s strong motions. Scientists found that temperatures above 38°C (100.4°F) activate this protein.



“That hyperactive state in sperm is key for successful fertilization, and no one knew exactly how temperature triggers it,” said Polina Lishko, PhD, professor of cell biology and physiology at WashU Medicine. 



“Our work has identified a temperature-controlled switch in sperm that triggers these increased movements precisely when they are needed during <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/global-fertility-rates-are-quickly-declining-and-little-is-being-done-about-it/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fertilization</a>.”



Before this study, CatSper was thought to respond only to pH and progesterone. But most mammalian sperm ignore progesterone. Temperature turns out to be the real switch.



This change explains why testicles hang outside the body. <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/resveratrol-may-boost-female-fertility-naturally/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Evolution</a> keeps them cool so sperm remain inactive until they reach warmer territory - then, they activate at just the right moment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mammals-evolved-to-keep-sperm-cool">Mammals evolved to keep sperm cool</h2>



Humans aren't the only species with clever cooling tricks. Dolphins pass blood through their dorsal fins to cool it before it reaches their testes. Elephants do the same through their ears. These adaptations protect the sperm’s sensitivity.



Birds, which lack CatSper, don’t need this. Their sperm do not rely on the same activation signal. This protein, and its temperature-based switch, is unique to mammals.



Using advanced tools, the researchers watched electric charges shift inside individual <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/poor-semen-quality-signifies-more-than-just-fertility-problems/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sperm</a>. When exposed to higher temperatures, CatSper lit up. This marked the start of vigorous movement - just in time for fertilization.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-using-heat-to-make-sperm-hyperactive">Using heat to make sperm hyperactive </h2>



CatSper’s exclusive presence in sperm makes it an ideal drug target. Previous attempts to block it didn’t work well. But Lishko suggests a twist: instead of blocking it, activate it too early.



“Instead of creating inhibitors, it might be possible to activate CatSper with temperature thus, prematurely switching on this channel to drain the sperm of energy, so that by the time the sperm cell is ready to do its job and enter the egg cell, it is powerless,” said Lishko.



If successful, this method could prevent fertilization without affecting the rest of the body. It may also help men struggling with infertility by ensuring proper sperm activation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ovarian-changes-reduce-fertility">Ovarian changes reduce fertility </h2>



While sperm need temperature to activate, the female reproductive system faces a different aging problem. 



The researchers examined 62 human ovaries from donors aged 20 to 77. Using advanced gene-mapping tools, they found that different ovarian regions age at different rates.



The ovarian cortex, which houses immature eggs, showed signs of decline after age 40. The follicular niche - the support system for eggs - starts breaking down. In the medulla, immune activity ramps up by age 30. These changes reduce fertility well before menopause.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-egg-support-in-aging-ovaries">Egg support in aging ovaries</h2>



Granulosa and stromal cells showed the most dramatic aging. Fibroblasts, the builders of connective tissue, multiply in aging ovaries. They deposit fibrotic proteins that stiffen the ovarian tissue.



One key factor behind this fibrosis is reduced TGF-beta signaling. This pathway helps regulate repair and inflammation. Its loss leads to unchecked buildup of scar-like tissue in the ovarian cortex.



Over time, this damages the egg’s environment, even if some eggs remain. Fertility fades not just because of egg loss, but because the surrounding support system collapses.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-future-fertility-treatments">Future fertility treatments </h2>



These studies together offer a broader view of fertility. In men, it’s about activation - timing sperm behavior using heat. In women, it’s about preservation - protecting the ovarian environment from early decline.



New therapies might target these weak points. In men, premature CatSper activation could offer safe birth control. In women, boosting TGF-beta or controlling fibrosis might preserve fertility longer.



Understanding both perspectives - activation and aging - could help design next-generation fertility treatments that support both partners in reproduction.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58824-0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature Communications</a>.



-----



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Sperm have a heat-activated switch that may be key to fertility

Mammalian sperm are unusually picky. They prefer cooler environments, thriving below normal body temperature. Yet, they must navigate the female reproductive tract, which is warmer. So how do they survive and succeed? New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis explains how. Sperm use the temperature difference as a signal. When they enter the warmer female reproductive tract, they switch behavior. They move from calm, forward swimming to a vigorous, whip-like thrash. This change helps them pierce the egg for fertilization. This discovery sheds...

Herring spawn after removal of Wynants Kill dam. A few days after a long-abandoned industrial dam was removed from the mouth of a Hudson River tributary this spring, hundreds of river herring swarmed up into the shallow waters to spawn for the first time in 85 years.
The removal of the rusted steel dam on the Wynants Kill near Albany was the first of what ecologists hope will be many barriers removed in Hudson tributaries to restore spawning habitat for herring and other ocean-going species that have been devastated by habitat loss, <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=pollution&amp;cvid=2ebb3bdadbbf4a6c9e5bb098789c38f0&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">pollution</a> and overfishing.
The project is part of a larger movement that has dismantled almost 250 dams across the country since 2012, according to the conservation group American Rivers. Herring spawn after removal of Wynants Kill dam
"There are more than 1,500 dams in the Hudson estuary watershed, most of them no longer in use," said Frances Dunwell, coordinator of the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River Estuary Program. "One of the key items on our to-do list by 2020 is to remove as many of these barriers as possible."
The estuary, which extends 150 miles north from the Atlantic Ocean, is an important breeding ground for several species of herring including American shad and alewife. In Colonial times, Hudson tributary streams flashed silver with herring during spring spawning runs. Dams built during the Industrial Revolution caused herring populations to crash along the Atlantic coast from South Carolina to Maine, and pollution and overfishing in more recent years made things worse.
Herring, especially American shad, are not only highly valued commercial and sport fish, but also are an integral part of the aquatic food chain. In the Atlantic, many species of fish, bird and mammal rely on herring as their primary food source. Striped bass recreational fishing, a major business in the Hudson estuary, uses river herring as baitfish.
In 2013, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission required the 15 states it covers to submit plans for restoring historical spawning and nursery habitat, dams and climate change were cited as the largest threats.
"Every dam should have an existential crisis," said John Waldman, a biology professor at Queens College and long-time proponent of dam removal. "These are artifacts of the Industrial Revolution that are persisting and doing harm. We should decide which dams still serve a purpose and which should be removed."
A precedent for restoring a major river by dismantling a hydropower dam was set recently on Maine's Penobscot River, where the removal of two dams and construction of a fish bypass at a third opened 1,000 miles of habitat used by 11 species of sea-run fish. The dams' owner was able to increase total generation through enhancements at other dams in the watershed.
Most dam-removal projects are small dams that have far outlived their purposes. Last spring, shad swam up White Clay Creek in Delaware for the first time since a mill owner built a dam there in 1777. The timber-and-stone obstruction on the Delaware River tributary was removed in 2014 with $200,000 in federal and conservation group funding.
In the Hudson estuary, Dunwell said at least six privately owned unused dams have been targeted as good candidates for removal. The Department of Environmental Conservation will offer the owners grants and technical support for restoration projects.
The City of Troy removed the dam on the Wynants Kill tributary last month with a $12,500 grant from the state Environmental Protection Fund.
The dam, long hidden by the ruins of an old iron works, was discovered three years ago by John Lipscomb, who patrols the Hudson by boat for the Riverkeeper environmental group looking for polluters and testing water quality. On a recent tour of the former dam site, Lipscomb said decades of cleanup work have made the river much cleaner, but that's not enough.
"Success is not just a fishable or swimmable river," Lipscomb said beside the concrete-lined channel at the mouth of the Wynants Kill. "Now we want to restore the biological integrity to make it a living river again. That's the last step."
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Herring spawn after removal of Wynants Kill dam

Herring spawn after removal of Wynants Kill dam. A few...

<div>

Multitasking is key to utilizing abandoned mountain rainforests. How must a landscape be utilized in order to fulfill both ecological and socio-economical requirements? This question has been answered by an international research team with the participation of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), using abandoned pasturage in the Ecuadorean mountain rainforests. By means of simulations, the scientists ascertained that the key to this is multitasking, which is to say the most diverse utilization possible. The results have now been published in Nature Communications.

"We wanted to find out how a landscape has to be composed in order to render many ecosystem services at the same time and as safely as possible", explains the lead author of the study Prof. Thomas Knoke of the Institute of Forest Management at the TUM. Experts use the term ecosystem services to refer to the effects of an ecosystem that are important for human well-being, such as protection against erosion, soil formation or provision of energy sources.

In their study, Knoke and his colleagues simulated various land use concepts. The results have now been published in the magazine "Nature Communications". The simulations are based on data that had been gathered by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in the tropical rainforest of Ecuador over a period of 15 years. There, the scientists had investigated the reintegration of abandoned agricultural areas into forestry or agricultural production.

Compensating for uncertainties

The aim of the simulations carried out on the basis of these investigations was to take 22 indicators into account in a land use plan on as equal a footing as possible. Sixteen of the indicators are criteria from the field of ecology such as e.g. carbon storage, protection against erosion, reduction of the runoff of surface water and climate regulation. Eight criteria are from the field of socio-economics, including the question of how profitable the use is and what kind of cultivation the local farmers would prefer.

Uncertainties were also incorporated into the simulations. Reasons for these uncertainties include, for example, fluctuations in the production of foodstuffs and wood as well as price changes. A good mixture of different land use forms has a balancing effect in this context, because not all land use forms are affected by the uncertainties to an equal degree. "It works like a share portfolio in which the risk is of course spread over many investments", explains Knoke.

Area mosaic of five concepts

The scientists had already worked out the following five usage concepts for the abandoned agricultural areas in a preceding study and were able to use the results for the simulation of multifunctional land use:
<ul>
 	<li>no cultivation - abandoned pasture areas are left alone,</li>
 	<li>forestry utilization - planting with an indigenous species of alder,</li>
 	<li>forestry utilization - planting with an introduced species of pine,</li>
 	<li>extensive pasture utilization - mechanical weed control, then utilization after initial fertilization,</li>
 	<li>intensive pasture utilization - chemical weed control, then utilization with regular fertilization.</li>
</ul>
The optimum result provided by the simulations was a kind of area mosaic: 46 percent of forestry utilization, with 21 percent indigenous alders and 25 percent of exotic pines, 10 percent extensive pasture utilization, 20 percent intensive pasture utilization. 24 percent of the landscape is not to be used at all, but instead rather left to natural succession. The concept of combining different land use options provides a buffer in the event of under-average ecosystem services from an individual land use component, because the other land use alternatives can balance this out.

Few indicators will not lead to optimal multitasking

If, instead of 22 indicators, only individual ecosystem services are optimized, such as only socio-economic ones for example, very uniform landscapes can arise. Although a land-use mosaic is the best concept for balancing out uncertainties, the influence of the uncertainties is not great enough in all scenarios. It depends on precisely which ecosystem services are optimized and how great their uncertainties are. If, for example, only biomass production, hydrological indicators or climate regulation are defined as the sole aim of the land use then this will result in uniform landscapes which are either solely characterized by agriculture or by forestry.

Protection for the rainforest

On 385 to 472 million hectares of land around the world, the previous <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/climate-smart-agricultural-practices-will-boost-global-food-security/">agricultural</a> or forestry use of the land has been abandoned. If these area resources could be transformed into productive, multifunctional landscapes, this would contribute to the protection of the endangered tropical forest. "At the moment there is the tendency to afforest such areas solely with exotic types of trees", says forest scientist Knoke. "This is, however, to be critically regarded against the background of the now clearly proven major advantages of diversified land use." He says, on the other hand, that incentives are necessary - especially financial support of the farmers - in order to be able to implement the concept of diversified land use.

The researchers now want to apply their planning approach to other types of landscapes around the world as well. In this application, the existing forms of land use, such as e.g. natural forest, active agricultural land use and plantations, are also to be incorporated. Another important point is the explicit spatial distribution of the types of land use and structural elements of the landscape - such as hedges.
###
Publication: Knoke T., et al. (2016): Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties, Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11877

The study was funded by the German Research Foundation (research group FOR 402 and 816, transfer projects PAK 823-825, <a href="http://www.tropicalmountainforest.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www. tropicalmountainforest. org/ </a>). Scientists from the following institutes were involved in the study: Technical University of Munich; University of Bayreuth; University of Marburg; University of Münster; Justus Liebig University Gießen; Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador; Memorial University, St. John's, Canada; Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Knoke
Technical University of Munich
Institute of Forestry Management
Tel.: +49 8161 71-4700
<a href="mailto:knoke@tum.de">knoke@tum.de</a>
<a href="http://waldinventur.wzw.tum.de/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://waldinventur. wzw. tum. de</a>

</div>

Multitasking is key to utilizing abandoned mountain rainforests

Multitasking is key to utilizing abandoned mountain rainforests. How must...

<div>

A model that predicts outbreaks of zoonotic diseases -- those originating in livestock or wildlife such as Ebola and Zika -- based on environmental changes in climate, population growth and land use has been developed by a UCL-led team of researchers.

"This model is a major improvement in our understanding of the spread of diseases from animals to people. We hope it can be used to help communities prepare and respond to disease outbreaks, as well as to make decisions about environmental change factors that may be within their control," said lead author Professor Kate Jones, UCL Genetics, Evolution &amp; Environment and ZSL.

More than 60% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic and although Ebola and Zika are well-known, there are many other diseases including Rift Valley fever and Lassa fever which affect thousands already and are predicted to spread with changing environmental factors.

"Our model can help decision-makers assess the likely impact of any interventions or change in national or international government policies, such as the conversion of grasslands to agricultural lands, on zoonotic transmission. Importantly, the model also has the potential to look at the impact of global change on many diseases at once, to understand any trade-offs that decision-makers may have to be make," Professor Jones added.

The study published today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution tested the new model with Lassa fever. It was carried out by partners in the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, which was funded under the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme.

Lassa fever is endemic across <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=west+africa&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=PF&amp;cvid=0e615f01aad945ebb97f8a0d0206bf77&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AXK1c4IvZoNqPoPnS%21QRLOMAjS%21RFp6jzZWJ7AkCsIYKMKeHuVK65tMSID4Q9i5W56xXw8WWX6APf03AW%21YzHlZ1gV*E7yh1vq1RY*BVkB4V&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">West Africa</a> and is caused by Lassa virus passing to people from rats. The model predicts the number of people with the disease will double from 195,125 to 406,725 by 2070 due to climate change and a growing human population.

Like Ebola virus, Lassa virus causes haemorrhagic fever and can be fatal. How many people are affected by Lassa fever each year is unclear as many don't have severe symptoms and those that do are often misdiagnosed with malaria; current estimates range from 100,000 to one million.

"Our new approach successfully predicts outbreaks of individual diseases by pairing the changes in the host's distribution as the environment changes with the mechanics of how that disease spreads from animals to people, which hasn't been done before. It allows us to calculate how often people are likely to come into contact with disease-carrying animals and their risk of the virus spilling over. Alongside population increases, the expected future changes to climatic patterns will drive an expansion of the areas of West Africa considered high risk, especially the western most regions around Senegal and Guinea, the coastline of Cote d'ivoire and Ghana, and in Central <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/nigerian-music-drums-ripe-watermelon/">Nigeria</a>," added first author, Dr David Redding, UCL Genetics, Evolution &amp; Environment.

The team used the locations of 408 known Lassa fever outbreaks in West Africa between 1967-2012 and the changes in land use and crop yields, temperature and rainfall, behaviour and access to healthcare. They also identified the sub-species of the multimammate rat (Mastomys natalensis) which transmits Lassa virus to humans to map its location against ecological factors.

The model was then developed using this information along with forecasts of climate change, future population density and land-use change.

The approach has already proved successful by predicting the current disease patterns of Lassa fever. The researchers say the model could be refined to consider zoonotic disease transmission within human populations by including the impact of travel infrastructure, human-to-human contact rates and poverty -- something that would have been of enormous use in the recent Ebola and Zika outbreaks.


</div>
<div></div>

Predicting disease outbreaks using environmental changes

A model that predicts outbreaks of zoonotic diseases -- those...

The secrets of subglacial lakes in North America. Researchers at the University of Sheffield have provided a unique glimpse into one of the least understood environments on <a href="http://www.earth.com/video/remarkably-detailed-view-of-earth-at-night/">Earth</a> by revealing for the first time former subglacial lakes and their drainage routes beneath the North American ice sheets.

By investigating a very strange flat spot and associated channel in Alberta, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada">Canada</a>, which had no water in it, academics discovered the former existence of a lake trapped beneath an ice sheet during the last glaciation.

As this relict lake is no longer covered by many kilometres of ice, they were able to reconstruct what the lake would have looked like and how it drained from the landforms and sediments.

Their observations, published in the journal Nature Communications today (Monday 13 June 2016), suggest the lake existed as a shallow lens of water which repeatedly drained through channels cut into the bed.

The team's results provide constraints for the modelling of similar subglacial lake drainages beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. These are a crucial component of the subglacial hydrological system, able to store and rapidly drain large volumes of meltwater, but we do not know enough about the drainage process to fully understand their influence on ice flow.The secrets of subglacial lakes in North America

Dr Stephen Livingstone, from the University's Department of Geography and lead author of the paper, said: "We've seen these flat spots connected to relict channels in Canada, and are inferring these as former subglacial lakes and their drainage imprint. As ice no longer covers these relict lakes, our discovery has allowed us to reconstruct how the subglacial lakes would have looked and how they drained from the landforms and sediments. Our results provide key constraints for the investigation of modern subglacial lakes beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets."
###
<a href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The University of Sheffield</a>

With almost 27,000 of the brightest students from over 140 countries, learning alongside over 1,200 of the best academics from across the globe, the University of Sheffield is one of the world's leading universities.

A member of the UK's prestigious Russell Group of leading research-led institutions, Sheffield offers world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines.

Unified by the power of discovery and understanding, staff and students at the university are committed to finding new ways to transform the world we live in.

Sheffield is the only university to feature in The Sunday Times 100 Best Not-For-Profit Organisations to Work For 2016 and was voted number one university in the UK for Student Satisfaction by Times Higher Education in 2014. In the last decade it has won four Queen's Anniversary Prizes in recognition of the outstanding contribution to the United Kingdom's intellectual, economic, cultural and social life.

Sheffield has five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and its alumni go on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence all over the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields.

Global research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Glaxo SmithKline, Siemens and Airbus, as well as many UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.

For further information, please visit <a href="http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.sheffield.ac.uk</a>

For further information please contact: Hannah Postles, Media Relations Officer on 0114 222 1046 or email <a href="mailto:h.postles@sheffield.ac.uk">h.postles@sheffield.ac.uk</a>

The secrets of subglacial lakes in North America

The secrets of subglacial lakes in North America. Researchers at...

The climate consequences of oil price uncertainty. Sustained high (US$110-120 per barrel) or low (US$40-55 per barrel) oil prices could have an important impact on future carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Energy. The magnitude of the impact is found to depend not just on oil prices, but also on other uncertainties connected to energy supply and demand technologies, alternative resources and climate policy. Based on the authors' calculations, the emissions differences resulting from vastly diverging oil price paths could be on the order of 5 to 20% of the total budget for staying below the internationally agreed 2°C target. The climate consequences of oil price uncertainty.

They also find that a continuation of currently low oil prices could harm the climate as much as countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are expected to help it. If oil prices were to remain low for decades, the analysis shows that energy efficiency and decarbonization efforts could be considerably hampered. The resulting emissions increases from this could be of the same magnitude as the reductions expected, in aggregate, from countries' NDCs, which were agreed to at the Paris climate conference last year. On the other hand, while sustained high oil prices could provide climate change mitigation efforts a mild boost, the study concludes that such market developments would be no substitute for concerted global policy to limit climate change to below 2°C above preindustrial levels.

The new study relies on the IIASA energy system model MESSAGE in order to explore a variety of long-term scenarios for the development of oil prices up to 2050. "Oil prices have a history of rising and falling. They are currently pretty low, but the question is where they go from here. Our aim was to explore the longer-term impacts of completely different oil price futures, in terms of the future energy mix and carbon emissions," says IIASA energy researcher David McCollum, who led the study. "What we find is that sustained low or high oil prices could have a major impact on the global energy system over the next several decades; and depending on how the fuel substitution dynamics play out, the carbon dioxide consequences could be significant."

A key insight of the study is that the future fuel mix will depend in large part on whether oil and natural gas prices decouple at globally over the next several decades. IIASA Energy Deputy Program Director Volker Krey, who also worked on the study, says, "It was surprising to see how much the future energy picture depends on the link between oil and gas prices. Crude oil and natural gas prices have historically risen and fallen in concert. But this situation has changed in the <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/united-states-global-waste/">US</a>, thanks in part to the boom in shale gas production. If such developments were to occur elsewhere, either because of shale gas or the advent of a truly global natural gas market, then, according to our analysis, this could have a major impact on the use of different fuels - oil, gas, coal, renewables, and nuclear."

Other critical uncertainties identified by the authors include the potential for sustainable biofuels to replace <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=oil&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=PF&amp;cvid=62398c0c160d4594ba60a429bea5c346&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AXK1c4IvZoNqPoPnS%21QRLOMAjS%21RFp6jzZWJ7AkCsIYK9cL6kcUqZO189QA1v7Dres53bd6Uij7eoJyHf5BuXH*zVI7X3O7CRNy%219nN*1nGr&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">oil</a> and the growth of the electric vehicle market.

Because oil and gas are so intertwined with the rest of the energy system and global economy, measuring the net impacts of different price futures presents a challenge. IIASA Energy Program Director Keywan Riahi explains, "Low oil and gas prices make it harder for coal and renewables to compete. From a climate perspective, a reduction in coal is a good thing, whereas a reduction in renewables is not so good. Basically, the parallel movement of these high- and low-carbon substitutes to oil and gas partially cancels out the emissions benefits and consequences of one or the other."

The study gives rise to additional questions and uncertainties, for example what effects sustained low prices could have on long-lived energy infrastructure.

The climate consequences of oil price uncertainty

The climate consequences of oil price uncertainty. Sustained high (US$110-120...

Storage technologies for renewable energy can pay off. Utility companies or others planning to install renewable energy systems such as solar and wind farms have to decide whether to include large-scale energy storage systems that can capture power when it's available and release it on demand. This decision may be critical to the future growth of renewable <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=energy&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=PF&amp;cvid=7584a64c36474716928a103289c9e04b&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AXK1c4IvZoNqPoPnS%21QRLOMAjS%21RFp6jzZWJ7AkCsIYKjvYrDQ9iPkO5GwEz8v6YZbU4sCLLmhz5S9Ye6gBv3Pe81apdkQqWx7ZGB%21%21FTZwC&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">energy</a>.

The choices can be complicated: Would such a system actually pay for itself through increased revenues? If so, which kind of system makes the most sense, and which features of the system are most important? If not, how much cheaper do storage technologies need to be?

A new study by researchers at MIT shows how to evaluate the technology choices available, including batteries, pumped hydroelectric storage, and compressed air energy storage, and demonstrates that even with today's prices for these technologies, such storage systems make good economic sense in some locations, but not yet in others. The study, by Jessika Trancik, the <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/atlantic-coastline-southern-brazil/">Atlantic</a> Richfield Career Development Assistant Professor of Energy Studies at MIT, and graduate students William Braff and Joshua Mueller, was just published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"Researchers and practitioners have struggled to compare the costs of different storage technologies," Trancik explains, "because of the multiple dimensions of cost and the fact that no technology dominates along all dimensions. Storage technologies can only be compared by looking at the contexts in which they are going to be used." But the study found that regardless of the particular circumstances at a given location, certain features of how electricity prices fluctuate are common across locations and do favor some specific types of storage solutions over others.

Selling at the peak price

For example, the team found that in Texas today, pumped hydro systems can provide added value today for solar or wind installations. In these systems, excess power is used to pump water uphill to a reservoir for storage, and then the water is released through a turbine to generate power when it is needed. The increased revenue the plant can produce, by waiting to sell the power into the grid until spot-prices for electricity -- the constantly-changing market rate that electricity distributors pay to producers -- are at their peak, would exceed the costs of the added storage system.

Further, they found that such pumped hydro storage provides more value than a storage system using lead-acid batteries even though its power capacity components would cost several times more. This is because a pumped hydro system has lower energy-capacity costs than lead-acid battery system. (Energy capacity refers to the overall amount of energy that can be stored in the system, and power capacity refers to how much energy can be delivered at a given moment from that system). A compressed air storage system could also add value comparable to that of the pumped hydro system. However, batteries are attractive, the researchers note, because they can be installed essentially anywhere and do not rely on natural features that exist only in some locations.

The researchers point out that much research on storage systems for renewable energy sources has focused on using the systems to smooth out the intermittent outputs to better match fluctuating demand. But in practice, most of these wind or solar farms are feeding into the grid, so what matters to potential investors is the price curve rather than the demand curve.

Surprisingly, it turned out that despite wide regional variations in the average prices and the amount of variability in demand and pricing, "the best storage technology in one location is also the best in the other," Trancik says. "This is because of the similarity across locations in the distribution of the duration of electricity price spikes. This pattern likely emerges because of constraints imposed by the daily cycle, and similarities in when people go to work and go home, and generally how they spend their time."

Whether an energy storage system is worth the cost today varies widely by location, because of large variations in the frequency and magnitude of spikes in the price and how the solar and wind resources fluctuate over time, she says. But the cost characteristics of the optimal storage systems are similar in all locations, the researchers found, because of certain common, emergent properties of electricity price fluctuations.

"This means that these results can be used to inform investments in storage technology development by the private sector and government, and can inform engineering efforts in the lab," Trancik says. "The results would have been less general and less useful to technology development efforts if we'd found that the direction of optimal cost improvement, trading off energy capacity and power capacity costs, was different across locations."

Costs still need to drop

At this time, the study found, the costs of such systems don't yet make them profitable enough without policy support to enable the kind of widespread adoption that is needed to make a large dent in global greenhouse gas emissions. But, Trancik says, this study does suggest that market adoption already makes sense in some locations, and could be boosted with modest public policy support, which in turn would stimulate technological improvement in storage to encourage further growth. The study also provides guidance on how much the costs of a given technology need to be brought down in order to enable such deployment, and which aspects of the system need the greatest improvement -- and thus, where research needs to be focused. For example it provides cost targets for various flow batteries that are in development.

For this study, the team examined three states: Texas, California, and Massachusetts. They found storage systems make economic sense today in Texas and California but not yet in Massachusetts. They plan to broaden the study to more locations to see if their overall conclusions apply more widely.

In one somewhat counterintuitive finding, they say that as the cost of wind and solar power systems comes down, the cost of storage systems will need to come down as well or they will no longer be profitable. That's because at some point it would be more profitable to simply add more generating capacity rather than more storage capacity. The researchers note that there is a window of opportunity now for storage to be adopted in the marketplace. But they warn that the incentives will diminish over time if no action is taken now, and if wind and solar costs fall further.

Trancik says this research falls in an area she refers to as "directed innovation," in which decisions about what areas of research, technology designs, and policies are most needed in order to achieve specific societal goals can be based on clearly quantifiable criteria. "The idea is to use data and models to accelerate energy technology development," she says.
###
This work was supported by the MIT Portugal Program, Lockheed Martin, and the SUTD-MIT International Design Center.

By David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

Storage technologies for renewable energy can pay off

Storage technologies for renewable energy can pay off. Utility companies...

Antarctica lakes are a repository for ancient black carbon Signature of dissolved black carbon also indicates more recent contributions from fossil fuel burning

Remote lakes in a perpetually ice-free area of Antarctica show not only the chemical signature of ancient wildfires, but also some much more recent evidence of fossil-fuel combustion, according to National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The research is based on examination of the levels of dissolved black carbon (DBC) that persist in freshwater and saline lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, a mountainous polar desert across McMurdo Sound from the NSF's logistics hub in Antarctica, McMurdo Station. NSF manages the US. Antarctic Program.Antarctica lakes are a repository for ancient black carbon

In addition to being almost completely scoured of ice and snow by high winds, the Dry Valleys are the site of ice-covered lakes, which experience seasonal, temperature-related advances and retreats in their amount of ice cover during the Southern Hemisphere's summer months, sometimes resulting in a temporary "moat" around the icy surface of the lakes.

They also have some unusual characteristics that make them scientifically interesting repositories for materials like DBC, which are carried into the lakes by local streams or through atmospheric circulation.

Michael Gooseff, the lead principal investigator for the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Project, noted, for example, that in the very recent geological past -- several thousand years ago -- the lakes were at much higher levels and filled the Valleys. The lakes that remain are thought to be remnants of those larger bodies of water and to have collected materials like DBC over a very long time.

He added that the lakes in the Dry Valleys are, like most other lakes, storehouses of materials that find their way into them. But they also have an unusual characteristic important to DBC research; they are closed basins with no outlets.

In short, Gooseff said, "What goes into the lake, stays."

Alia L. Khan, with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Institute of Arctic and Alpine Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder is lead author on the paper. She is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

She and other researchers with the Dry Valleys LTER, argue in the paper that brines in the lake bottoms retain DBC whose "woody signature" indicates the source is likely to have been burning -- such as wildfires and other natural events -- at lower latitudes as many as 2,500 years ago or more.

Black carbon from those fires -- more commonly known as soot -- would have been transported by atmospheric winds and deposited in Antarctic glaciers and later entered in lakes through freshwater run-off from nearby glaciers.

The research also indicates DBC levels from fossil fuel traces have increased in the past 25 years, but these concentrations are small in comparison to those associated with wildfires from more than 1,000 years ago. The researchers argue that these more modern traces could have two possible sources.

The first is that helicopters frequently fly in and out of the Dry Valleys to transport researchers and scientific cargo into the field. Most of this flying occurs at the peak of the Antarctic summer when the lake surfaces in the valleys experience a seasonal melt.

The researchers hypothesize, therefore, that emissions from the flights could settle into the moats and become DBC.

They also add that some of the carbon could come from long-range transport of carbon produced by burning of fossil fuels in other areas of the globe.

In either event, they note, their measurements may serve as baselines for tracking environmental quality in the Dry Valleys. "This fossil fuel signature could serve as an indicator of anthropogenic influences in Antarctic environments, which may continue to expand in the future."

--

<a href="http://www.nsf.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Science Foundation</a>

Antarctica lakes are a repository for ancient black carbon

Antarctica lakes are a repository for ancient black carbon Signature...

The future of wildfire activity in the South. A new study by U.S. Forest Service scientists and collaborators projects a four percent increase overall in acres burned by wildfire in the Southeast by 2060, but with substantial uncertainties and large variations by state and ecoregion, including a 34 percent increase in acres burned due to lightning-caused fires. The study, just published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, is one of the first to account for land use and other societal changes in making projections of future acres burned by wildfires.

"Wildfire activity in the South is determined by two major factors - climate and society, both of which are changing," said Jeff Prestemon, Forest Service researcher who led the study in collaboration with other scientists from the Forest Service and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In making wildfire projections, it's important to account for the role of humans, since they ignite the majority of wildfires and suppress nearly all of them. Land use change - more development and infrastructure - also limits the spread of wildfires by breaking up the fuels that fires need and allowing for faster firefighting responses."

The researchers set out to quantify how wildfire area burned could be altered in the 13 southeastern U.S. states from 2011 to 2060, incorporating climate change models as well as projections of land use, population, and personal income. Their study developed nine alternative views of climate and society that, taken together, provide a more complete picture of the possible futures of wildfire in the region than those previously available.

"The study extends earlier efforts in several ways," said Prestemon. "This is the first study we're aware of that projects future area burned in the southeastern U.S. Our estimates quantify the effects of changing climate and also changes in forests and society. In addition, we address issues of incomplete historical wildfire data that are common in wildfire activity databases in a way that has not been previously applied in wildfire projections."

Scenarios used for the study generally projected rising population numbers and densities, rising incomes, and falling forest area for the region - all of which would tend to lead to less wildfire in the region. At the same time, warming temperatures and erratic precipitation patterns forecast under climate change scenarios tend to favor more wildfire, especially that caused by lightning.

Specifically, the results project that in the Southeast, by 2056-2060, as compared to 2016-2020:
<ul>
 	<li>Median annual area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire increases by 34 percent;</li>
 	<li>Human-ignited wildfire decreases by 6 percent; and</li>
 	<li>Total wildfire increases by 4 percent.</li>
</ul>
"Our projections indicate that overall the Southeast would not experience a large increase in annual area burned," said Prestemon. "But considerable uncertainty remains in how wildfire, climate, and society will actually evolve and interact over the coming decades, and our results show ample scope for either increases or decreases. Wildland fire managers and policymakers would do well to plan for either eventuality when considering future costs and concerns such as air quality. Our simulations provide context for the range of possibilities they should consider."
###
Access the full text of the article at <a href="http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/51075" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/51075</a>.

For more information, email Jeff Prestemon at <a href="mailto:jprestemon@fs.fed.us">jprestemon@fs.fed.us</a>

Headquartered in Asheville, NC, the Southern Research Station comprises more than 120 scientists and several hundred support staff who conduct natural resource research in 20 locations across 13 southern states (Virginia to Texas). The Station's mission is "...to create the science and technology needed to sustain and enhance southern forest ecosystems and the benefits they provide." Learn more about the Southern Research Station at: <a href="http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/</a>.

The future of wildfire activity in the South

The future of wildfire activity in the South. A new...

Scientists: Future summers will continue to get hotter than ever. In 50 years, summers across most of the globe could be hotter than any summer experienced by people to date, according to a study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.

If climate change continues on its current trajectory, the probability that summers between 2061 and 2080 will be warmer than the hottest on record stands at 80 percent across the world's land areas, excluding <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=antarctica&amp;cvid=6777561a14b9406190259b2075e6a0e8&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Antarctica</a>, which was not studied. Scientists: Future summers will continue to get hotter than ever

If greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, however, that probability drops to 41 percent.

"Extremely hot summers always pose a challenge to society," said NCAR scientist Flavio Lehner, lead author of the study. "They can increase the risk for health issues, and can also damage crops and deepen droughts. Such summers are a true test of our adaptability to rising temperatures."

The study is part of an upcoming special issue of the journalClimatic Change that will focus on quantifying the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Simulating a range of summers

The research team, which includes NCAR scientists Clara Deser and Benjamin Sanderson, used two existing sets of model simulations to investigate what future summers might look like.

They created both by running the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model 15 times, with one simulation assuming that greenhouse gas emissions remain unabated and the other assuming that society reduces emissions.

NSF and the U.S. Department of Energy fund the Community Earth System Model. The team ran the simulations on the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center's Yellowstone system.

"We've thought of climate change as 'global warming,' but it's important to understand how this overall warming affects conditions that hit people locally," said Eric DeWeaver, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funds NCAR.

"Extreme temperatures pose risks to people around the globe," DeWeaver said. "These scientists show the power of ensembles of simulations for understanding how these risks depend on the level of greenhouse gas emissions."

By using simulations created by running the same model multiple times, with only tiny differences in the initial starting conditions, the scientists could examine the range of expected summertime temperatures for future "business-as-usual" and reduced-emissions scenarios.

"This is the first time the risk of record summer heat and its dependence on the rate of greenhouse gas emissions have been so comprehensively evaluated from a large set of simulations with a single state-of-the-art climate model," Deser said.

The scientists compared results to summertime temperatures recorded between 1920 and 2014 and to 15 sets of simulated summertime temperatures for the same period.

By simulating past summers -- instead of relying solely on observations -- the researchers established a large range of temperatures that could have occurred naturally under the same conditions, including greenhouse gas concentrations and volcanic eruptions.

"Instead of just comparing the future to 95 summers from the past, the models give us the opportunity to create more than 1,400 possible past summers," Lehner said. "The result is a more comprehensive look at what should be considered natural variability and what can be attributed to climate change."

Emissions cuts could yield big benefits

The results show that between 2061 and 2080, summers in large parts of North and South America, central Europe, Asia, and Africa have a greater than 90 percent chance of being warmer than any summer in the historic record if emissions continue unabated.

That means virtually every summer would be as warm as the hottest to date.

In some regions, the likelihood of summers being warmer than any in the historical record remained less than 50 percent, but in those places -- including Alaska, the central U.S., Scandinavia, Siberia and continental Australia -- summer temperatures naturally vary greatly, making it more difficult to detect effects of climate change.

Reducing emissions would lower the global probability of future summers that are hotter than any in the past, but would not result in uniformly spread benefits. In some regions, including the U.S. East Coast and large parts of the tropics, the probability would remain above 90 percent, even if emissions were reduced.

But reduced emissions would result in a sizable boon for other regions of the world.

Parts of Brazil, central Europe, and eastern China would see a reduction of more than 50 percent in the chance that future summers would be hotter than the historic range. Since these areas are densely inhabited, a large part of the global population would benefit significantly from climate change mitigation.

"It's often overlooked that the majority of the world's population lives in regions that will see a comparably fast rise in temperatures," Lehner said.

Scientists: Future summers will continue to get hotter than ever

Scientists: Future summers will continue to get hotter than ever....

2016 sets carbon dioxide record thanks to El Nino. The human-caused rise in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is being given an extra boost this year by the natural climate phenomena of El Niño, say climate scientists in a paper published in today's edition of the journal Nature <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/water-vapor-buoyancy-mitigates-climate-warming-in-the-tropics/">Climate</a> Change. As a result, 2016 will be the first year with concentrations above 400 parts per million all year round in the iconic Mauna Loa carbon dioxide record.

Lead author Professor Richard Betts, of the Met Office Hadley Centre and <a href="http://www.exeter.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of Exeter</a>, said: "The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is rising year-on-year due to human emissions, but this year it is getting an extra boost due to the recent El Niño event - changes in the sea-surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This warms and dries tropical ecosystems, reducing their uptake of carbon, and exacerbating forest fires. Since human emissions are now 25 per cent greater than in the last big El Niño in 1997/98, this all adds up to a record CO2 rise this year."

The rising trend in CO2 was seen by Charles David Keeling when he began recording CO2 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, in 1958. His early measurements were around 315 parts per million of carbon dioxide, 60 years later this has been rising at an average rate of 2.1 parts per million, but using a seasonal climate forecast model and statistical relationship with sea temperatures, Professor Betts and colleagues forecast the rise this year to be a record 3.15 + - 0.53 parts per million. The average concentration in 2016 is forecast to be 404.45 +-0.53 parts per million, dropping to 401.48 +- 0.53 in September before resuming their ongoing rise next year. The scientists already successfully predicted this year's maximum concentration of 407 parts per million last month.

<a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=carbon+dioxide&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=PF&amp;cvid=7ad0f174d1f54788aefc7e07d6423895&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AXK1c4IvZoNqPoPnS%21QRLOMAjS%21RFp6jzZWJ7AkCsIYK2MnxaEi9aA7IxI7Q3IKQ4UuyPEbAwp%21yDnd03m0LkAWHBHn6XLQI84WwiMKIW*AU&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">Carbon dioxide</a> concentrations also show modest ups-and-downs with the seasons. Plants draw down CO2 in the summer and release it again in the autumn and winter. Professor Betts said: "Carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa is currently above 400 parts per million, but would have been expected to drop back down below this level in September. However, we predict that this will not happen now, because the recent El Niño has warmed and dried tropical ecosystems and driven forest fires, adding to the CO2 rise".

Since natural processes only remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere gradually, levels will remain high even if human emissions began to decline. Scientists expect the concentrations to now remain above 400 parts per million for at least a human lifetime.

Prof Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is a co-author on the paper, said: "Back in September last year, we suspected that we were measuring CO2 concentrations below 400 parts per million for the last time. Now it is looking like this was indeed the case." The ongoing CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa used in this study are made by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and an independent set of measurements are made by the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the Mauna Loa Observatory.

Chris Jones, also of the Met Office Hadley Centre and another co-author, said: "Studying how these natural cycles interact with human influences is an important part of climate science. Making and testing predictions like this helps us build our understanding and further develop climate models."

2016 sets carbon dioxide record thanks to El Nino

2016 sets carbon dioxide record thanks to El Nino. The...

Carbon dioxide emissions from dry and oxygen-rich environments are likely to play a much greater role in controlling future rates of climate change caused by permafrost thaw than rates of methane release from oxygen-poor wetlands in the Arctic, according to research by a scientist at the <a href="http://www.exeter.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of Exeter</a>.

Dr Iain Hartley, an associate professor in the department of Geography, and his co-authors found that both temperature and soil conditions affected the quantity of carbon released from thawing permafrost. A 10 °C increase in soil temperature released twice as much carbon into the atmosphere, but even more importantly, drier, oxygen-rich soil conditions resulted in more than three times more carbon release than wetter, low oxygen soil conditions.

The study published in Nature Climate Change and led by Northern Arizona University assistant research professor, Christina Schädel, analysed 25 Arctic soil incubation studies and discovered that the majority of that carbon emitted was in the form of carbon dioxide even in the low oxygen conditions, with only five per cent of the total anaerobic products being methane.

This means that even though methane packs 34 times the climate warming punch of carbon dioxide, methane fluxes were not high enough to compensate for the smaller total quantity of carbon released under low oxygen conditions in wet soils.

Dr Hartley said: "In different boreal and arctic ecosystems, permafrost thaw can expose previously-frozen organic matter to very different soil conditions. The results of our study indicate that where the soils remain dry there is much greater potential for large amounts of carbon to be released to the atmosphere and for there to a positive feedback to climate change."

Scientists in the international Permafrost Carbon Network that Schädel co-leads with <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=northern+arizona&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=LS&amp;cvid=02bedc8147934b25ba2cf822091a6063&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AXK1c4IvZoNqPoPnS%21QRLOOncircQbKhy8wgeiACO*7%21Zq521%21bwM58aLSRNDLivQcRC5I8O9dRtU9N%21A6vHNYA2jvzEtPclHV%21yI*5HjY0Q&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">Northern Arizona</a> University professor of ecosystem ecology, Ted Schuur, provided much of the data.

Dr Schädel said: "Our results show that increasing temperatures have a large effect on carbon release from permafrost but that changes in soil moisture conditions have an even greater effect," says Schädel. "We conclude that the permafrost<a href="http://www.earth.com/news/forest-service-releases-state-by-state-details-on-carbon-emissions/"> carbon</a> feedback will be stronger when a larger percentage of the permafrost zone undergoes thaw in a dry and oxygen-rich environment."

As the permafrost thaws, microbes wake up and begin digesting the newly available remains of ancient plants and animals stored as carbon in the soil. This digestion produces either carbon dioxide or methane, depending on soil conditions. Scientists want to understand the ratio of carbon dioxide to methane gas released by this process because it affects the strength of the permafrost carbon feedback loop: greenhouse gases released due to thawing permafrost cause temperatures to rise, leading to even more thawing and carbon release. Furthermore, the Arctic permafrost is like a vast underground storage tank of carbon, holding almost twice as much as the atmosphere. At that scale, small changes in how the carbon is released will have big effects.

The current study zeroed in on two factors: soil temperature and the availability of oxygen. Soils in the lab were incubated at a range of warmer temperatures projected for the future. The availability of oxygen is important because it determines how microbes digest carbon. Oxygen-rich, or aerobic, conditions are found in dry soils and produce carbon dioxide. Oxygen-poor, or anaerobic, conditions are found in wet soils and produce both carbon dioxide and methane. Lab incubations mimicked these two conditions.

The question of whether wet or dry soils will dominate the future Arctic permafrost zone remains. This study highlights the need to monitor changes in wetness associated with permafrost thaw, changes that will ultimately determine how much carbon will be released from across the Arctic landscape.

Carbon dioxide emissions biggest player in permafrost thaw

Carbon dioxide emissions from dry and oxygen-rich environments are likely...

Global ethane emissions, an air pollutant and greenhouse gas, are on the uptick again, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The team found that a steady decline of global ethane emissions following a peak in about 1970 ended between 2005 and 2010 in most of the Northern Hemisphere and has since reversed, said CU-Boulder Associate Research Professor Detlev Helmig, lead study author. Between 2009 and 2014, ethane emissions in the Northern Hemisphere increased by about 400,000 tons annually, the bulk of it from North American oil and gas activity, he said.Global ethane emissions, an air <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/honey-trace-environmental-pollutants/">pollutant</a> and greenhouse gas, are on the uptick again

The decline of Global <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=ethane&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=PF&amp;cvid=0a87032420a444e8b8101e95b2004215&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AXK1c4IvZoNqPoPnS%21QRLOMAjS%21RFp6jzZWJ7AkCsIYKV8oVjmOoIS6LTmfAh9BQ%21Ev7i7tohVox8H*rfkk%217drjoztKh*10dwyAKYu11io5&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">ethane</a> emissions, an air pollutant and greenhouse gas, are on the uptick againethane and other non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) starting around 1970 is believed to be primarily due to better emission controls, said Helmig. The controls resulted in reduced emissions from oil and gas production, storage and distribution, as well as combustion exhaust from cars and trucks.

"About 60 percent of the drop we saw in ethane levels over the past 40 years has already been made up in the past five years," said Helmig. "If this rate continues, we are on track to return to the maximum ethane levels we saw in the 1970s in only about three more years. We rarely see changes in atmospheric gases that quickly or dramatically."

Ethane, propane and a host of other NMHCs are released naturally by the seepage of fossil carbon deposits, volcanic activity and wildfires, said Helmig. But human activities, which also include biomass burning and industrial use, constitute the most dominant source of the NMHCs worldwide.

"These human sources make up roughly three-quarters of the atmospheric ethane that is being emitted," said Helmig.

The air samples for the study were collected from more than 40 sites around the world, from Colorado and Greenland to Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand and the Earth's polar regions. More than 30,000 soda bottle-sized air containers were sampled at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Earth Systems Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder over the past decade.

The study also showed that among the air sampling locations around the world, the largest increases in ethane and shorter-lived propane were seen over the central and eastern United States, areas of heavy oil and gas activity, said Helmig.

"We concluded that added emissions from U.S. oil and gas drilling have been the primary source for the atmospheric ethane trend reversal," he said.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, also indicated that emissions of total NMHC in the Northern Hemisphere are now increasing by roughly 1.2 million tons annually.

The findings from the flask network, which INSTAAR and NOAA have been operating for more than 10 years, were supported by additional measurements showing very similar ethane behavior from a number of continuous global monitoring sites, he said.

A component of natural gas, ethane plays an important role in Earth's atmosphere. As it breaks down near Earth's surface it can create ground-based ozone pollution, a health and environmental risk.

Chemical models by the team show that the increase in ethane and other associated hydrocarbons will likely cause additional ground-based ozone production, particularly in the summer months, he said.

"Ethane is the second most significant hydrocarbon emitted from oil and gas after methane," said Helmig. "Other studies show on average there is about 10 times as much methane being emitted by the oil and gas industry as ethane."

There is high interest by scientists in methane since it is a strong greenhouse gas, said Helmig. The new findings on ethane increases indicate there should be more research on associated methane emissions.
###
Other CU-Boulder co-authors on the study included INSTAAR graduate student Samuel Rossabi and researcher Jacques Hueber. The paper also included scientists from NOAA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and institutes in Germany, England, Switzerland, Belgium and New Zealand.

Global ethane emissions are rising again

Global ethane emissions, an air pollutant and greenhouse gas, are...

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing it with probiotics and prebiotics, aiming to create a treat that satisfies cravings while supporting gut health. 



The challenge lies in maintaining chocolate's beloved texture and flavor while adding health benefits.



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https://youtu.be/Ug657J67iEo?si=w96YjGMsg939LD_3
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Probiotics - beneficial microbes that balance gut bacteria and aid digestion - are typically fragile and can be destroyed by stomach acid or processing. 



Prebiotics act as food for these microbes, helping them thrive. Together, they form "synbiotics," a powerful health combination.



Researchers Smriti Gaur and Shubhi Singh from India's Jaypee Institute of Information Technology took an innovative approach, using natural prebiotics like corn and honey instead of complex processing methods. 



They created five chocolate varieties: a control and four synbiotic versions containing different combinations of prebiotics, probiotics (Lactobacillus strains), and flavor enhancers (cinnamon or orange).



Laboratory simulations of human digestion showed the probiotics remained viable for over five hours, suggesting they could survive long enough to benefit gut health.



Taste tests were positive, with researchers particularly enjoying the orange-flavored variety, describing it as having "vibrant citrus notes" complementing the "rich cocoa" with a "luxurious" texture.



This research represents just the beginning. With further refinement of strains, textures, and flavors, chocolate could evolve beyond mere indulgence to become a functional food that nourishes while it delights.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.4c00741" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ACS Food Science &amp; Technology</a>.

Is chocolate the next nutritional powerhouse?

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



---



By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

[sendtonews key="0ynNMYkMKa-2340414-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

[sendtonews key="LvS8v8bp9z-2564889-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

[sendtonews key="QGPzYnXEtN-1712599-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Carl...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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How does salt makes things taste better?

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Santiago, Chile in South America

[sendtonews key="JRaP49ISmm-2357509-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

[sendtonews key="e4ZG0Jawp3-2374785-12187" type="single"] Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have created...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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How the immune system responds to injury

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

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Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

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