Category: Science

Animal-based food comes with lots of information labels, but still aren’t very clear about animal welfare claims.

Those labels include organic, natural, grass-fed, humanely raised, and pasture-raised.

“There’s some confusion about food labels related to animal welfare,” says Marisa Erasmus, associate professor of animal sciences and a specialist in animal behavior and welfare at Purdue University. “It’s typically up to the consumer to do their homework and figure out what these different claims mean. Labels do provide consumers with a choice because, in theory, you can choose products that align with your personal and social values.”

The United States Department of Agriculture’s has recently launched an effort to strengthen the validity of animal-raising claims. Erasmus and her colleagues will be watching to see what additional documentation animal food producers will need to provide regarding food label claims.

In general, she notes, producers need to submit certain claims about their food products to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service for approval. The FSIS regulates certain food labels and claims on meat and poultry products. Some claims require that producers submit documentation before approval is granted.

“One point of confusion is which claims are associated with animal welfare certification organizations that use third-party verification,” Erasmus says. “Producers that work with one of these organizations can put the latter’s seal on their products to indicate that the animals were raised according to certain standards. Typically, those standards are intended to offer higher animal welfare than what you would see with a conventional product. But a lot of consumers don’t necessarily know what these different seals mean. And the absence of a label claim does not mean that food animals were raised inhumanely.”

Other labels have more to do with how people perceive the health benefits of a product and do not relate as much to the animal’s welfare.

“We definitely want to make sustainable, healthy choices,” Erasmus says. “But just because an animal product has an organic label on it doesn’t always mean that animal had a better life than an animal that wasn’t raised organically.”

The USDA regulates organics through the National Organic Program, which offers a label distinct from those provided by other sources.

The idea of “no antibiotics added” is another claim that can cause confusion.

“This label is confusing because antibiotics are occasionally used to treat live animals or prevent illness, but antibiotics are not added to meat products.”

If animals are given antibiotics at some point in their lives, then there is a mandatory withdrawal period. That period allows the antibiotics to pass from the animal’s system before any products are created from that animal.

Erasmus and her colleagues work closely with producers across the US to support humane animal production practices and conduct research providing guidelines for animal welfare and management. The Poultry Extension Collaborative provides more details about animal food product labeling in the July 2023 issue of Poultry Press.

Source: Purdue University

For people with diabetes, loneliness is a bigger risk factor for heart disease than diet, exercise, smoking, and depression.

“The quality of social contact appears to be more important for heart health in people with diabetes than the number of engagements,” says study author Lu Qi, professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

“We should not downplay the importance of loneliness on physical and emotional health. I would encourage patients with diabetes who feel lonely to join a group or class and try to make friends with people who have shared interests.”

Patients with diabetes are at greater risk of cardiovascular disease and are more likely to be lonely than their healthy peers. Previous studies have found that loneliness and social isolation are both related to a higher likelihood of cardiovascular disease in the general population.

The new study, published in the European Heart Journal, looked at whether diabetics who were lonely or socially isolated were more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than those who were not. The study included 18,509 adults aged 37 to 73 years in the UK with diabetes but no cardiovascular disease.

Loneliness and isolation were assessed with questionnaires. High-risk loneliness features were feeling lonely and never or almost never being able to confide in someone. High-risk social isolation factors were living alone, having friends and family visit less than once a month, and not participating in a social activity at least once per week.

The researchers looked at the association between loneliness, isolation, and incidents of cardiovascular disease after adjusting for other health and lifestyle factors.

Over the next decade, 3,247 participants developed cardiovascular disease; 2,771 participants developed coronary heart disease, and 701 experienced strokes (some patients had both). The risk of cardiovascular disease was 11 to 26% higher in those with the highest scores for loneliness compared to those with the lowest scores. Similar results were observed for coronary heart disease but the association with stroke was not significant. Social isolation scores were not significantly related to any of the cardiovascular outcomes.

The researchers also assessed the relative importance of loneliness, compared with other risk factors, on the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Loneliness showed a weaker influence than kidney function, cholesterol, and BMI, but a stronger influence than depression, smoking, physical activity, and diet.

“Loneliness ranked higher as a predisposing factor for cardiovascular disease than several lifestyle habits. We also found that for patients with diabetes, the consequence of physical risk factors (i.e. poorly controlled blood sugar, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and poor kidney function) was greater in those who were lonely compared to those who were not,” Qi says.

“The findings suggest that asking patients with diabetes about loneliness should become part of standard assessment, with referral of those affected to mental health services.”

Source: Tulane University

A new study clarifies the factors that influence moms, particularly in rural areas where breastfeeding is less common, when deciding how to feed their babies.

In the study, Karry Weston, a doctoral student at the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing, interviewed women in Missouri who chose to breastfeed their babies about the influences that affected their decision-making. She learned that when these women were both educated about the health benefits of breastfeeding and also had the support of family, friends, neighbors, or coworkers who also chose to breastfeed as moms, the stigma surrounding breastfeeding was reduced with increased community exposure.

“There was one woman in particular who was from a very rural area and she told me that in her community, no one breastfed since formula feeding was the cultural norm and nobody wanted to stick out like a sore thumb,” Weston says. “However, once she took a leap of faith and started to breastfeed her baby, soon her friends, who were also moms, started to do it too because they felt comfortable after seeing their friend do it, so it became more normalized.”

Weston, who grew up in rural Missouri herself, is currently working on a project to better understand the factors that affect mothers’ decisions about whether or not to breastfeed specifically in rural areas, with grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“If we can increase both education and community exposure, people can broaden their horizons, change their minds, and learn about different options or different ways of doing things, which has enormous potential implications for improving health care outcomes,” Weston says.

“Right now my focus is on boosting breastfeeding rates given the health benefits, but down the road I think studying the factors that influence decision-making can help in other areas like research on diabetes management or even exercise.”

The study appears in the journal Public Health Nursing. Funding came from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Nursing Research and the University of Missouri Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Source: University of Missouri

A new metallic gel that is highly electrically conductive can be used to print three-dimensional solid objects at room temperature, researchers report.

“3D printing has revolutionized manufacturing, but we’re not aware of previous technologies that allowed you to print 3D metal objects at room temperature in a single step,” says Michael Dickey, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University and co-corresponding author of the study in the journal Matter. “This opens the door to manufacturing a wide range of electronic components and devices.”

To create the metallic gel, the researchers start with a solution of micron-scale copper particles suspended in water. The researchers then add a small amount of an indium-gallium alloy that is liquid metal at room temperature. The resulting mixture is then stirred together.

As the mixture is stirred, the liquid metal and copper particles essentially stick to each other, forming a metallic gel “network” within the aqueous solution.

“This gel-like consistency is important, because it means you have a fairly uniform distribution of copper particles throughout the material,” Dickey says. “This does two things. First, it means the network of particles connect to form electrical pathways. And second, it means that the copper particles aren’t settling out of solution and clogging the printer.”

The resulting gel can be printed using a conventional 3D printing nozzle and retains its shape when printed. And, when allowed to dry at room temperature, the resulting 3D object becomes even more solid while retaining its shape.

However, if users decide to apply heat to the printed object while it is drying, some interesting things can happen.

The researchers found that the alignment of the particles influences how the material dries. For example, if you printed a cylindrical object, the sides would contract more than the top and bottom as it dries. If something is drying at room temperature, the process is sufficiently slow that it doesn’t create structural change in the object.

However, if you apply heat—for example, put it under a heat lamp at 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit)—the rapid drying can cause structural deformation. Because this deformation is predictable, that means you can make a printed object change shape after it is printed by controlling the pattern of the printed object and the amount of heat the object is exposed to while drying.

“Ultimately, this sort of four-dimensional printing—the traditional three dimensions, plus time—is one more tool that can be used to create structures with the desired dimensions,” Dickey says. “But what we find most exciting about this material is its conductivity.

“Because the printed objects end up being as much as 97.5% metal, they are highly conductive. It’s obviously not as conductive as conventional copper wire, but it’s impossible to 3D print copper wire at room temperature. And what we’ve developed is far more conductive than anything else that can be printed. We’re pretty excited about the applications here.

“We’re open to working with industry partners to explore potential applications, and are always happy to talk with potential collaborators about future directions for research,” Dickey says.

Ruizhe Xing, a former visiting scholar at NC State affiliated with Northwestern Polytechnical University and Tianjin University is the paper’s lead author.

Additional coauthors are from the National University of Singapore, Tianjin University, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Taiyuan University of Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, and NC State.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China and the China Scholarship Council funded the work.

Source: NC State

A new analysis of the dietary habits of elephants showed surprising variation from meal to meal.

Elephants eat plants. That’s common knowledge. Yet figuring out exactly what kind of plants the iconic herbivores eat is more complicated.

For the new study, a team of conservation biologists used innovative methods to efficiently and precisely analyze the dietary habits of two groups of elephants in Kenya, down to the specific types of plants eaten by which animals in the group.

Their findings on the habits of individual elephants help answer important questions about the foraging behaviors of groups, and help biologists understand the conservation approaches that best keep elephants not only sated but satisfied.

“It’s really important for conservationists to keep in mind that when animals don’t get enough of the foods that they need, they may survive—but they may not prosper,” says Tyler Kartzinel, an assistant professor of environmental studies and of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Brown University and author of the study in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“By better understanding what each individual eats, we can better manage iconic species like elephants, rhinos, and bison to ensure their populations can grow in sustainable ways.”

What’s an elephant’s favorite food?

One of the main tools that the scientists used to conduct their study is called DNA metabarcoding, a cutting-edge genetic technique that allows researchers to identify the composition of biological samples by matching the extracted DNA fragments representing an elephant’s food to a library of plant DNA barcodes.

Brown has been developing applications for this technology, says Kartzinel, and bringing together researchers from molecular biology and the computational side to solve problems faced by conservationists in the field.

This is the first use of DNA metabarcoding to answer a long-term question about social foraging ecology, which is how members of a social group—such as a family—decide what foods to eat, Kartzinel says.

“When I talk to non-ecologists, they are stunned to learn that we have never really had a clear picture of what all of these charismatic large mammals actually eat in nature,” Kartzinel says. “The reason is that these animals are difficult and dangerous to observe from up close, they move long distances, they feed at night and in thick bush, and a lot of the plants they feed on are quite small.”

Not only are the elephants hard to monitor, but their food can be nearly impossible to identify by eye, even for an expert botanist, according to Kartzinel, who has conducted field research in Kenya.

The researchers compared the new genetic technique to a method called stable isotope analysis, which involves a chemical analysis of animal hair. Two of the study authors, George Wittemyer at Colorado State University and Thure Cerling at the University of Utah, had previously shown that elephants switch from eating fresh grasses when it rains to eating trees during the long dry season.

While this advanced study by allowing researchers to identify broad-scale dietary patterns, they still couldn’t discern the different types of plants in the elephant’s diet.

Clues in elephants’ poo

The scientists had saved fecal samples that had been collected in partnership with the non-profit organization Save the Elephants when Wittemyer and Cerling were conducting the stable isotopes analyses almost 20 years ago. Study author Brian Gill, then a Brown postdoctoral associate, determined that the samples were still usable even after many years in storage.

The team coupled combined analyses of carbon stable isotopes from the feces and hair of elephants with dietary DNA metabarcoding, GPS-tracking, and remote-sensing data to evaluate the dietary variation of individual elephants in two groups.

They matched each unique DNA sequence in the sample to a collection of reference plants—developed with the botanical expertise of Paul Musili, director of the East Africa Herbarium at the National Museums of Kenya—and compared the diets of individual elephants through time.

In their analysis, they showed that dietary differences among individuals were often far greater than had been previously assumed, even among family members that foraged together on a given day.

This study helps address a classic paradox in wildlife ecology, Kartzinel says: “How do social bonds hold family groups together in a world of limited resources?”

In other words, given that elephants all seemingly eat the same plants, it’s not obvious why competition for food doesn’t push them apart and force them to forage independently.

The simple answer is that elephants vary their diets based not only on what’s available but also their preferences and physiological needs, says Kartzinel. A pregnant elephant, for example, may have different cravings and requirements at various times in her pregnancy.

While the study wasn’t designed to explain social behavior, these findings help inform theories of why a group of elephants may forage together: The individual elephants don’t always eat exactly the same plants at the same time, so there will usually be enough plants to go around.

These findings may offer valuable insights for conservation biologists. To protect elephants and other major species and create environments in which they can successfully reproduce and grow their populations, they need a variety of plants to eat. This may also decrease the chances of inter-species competition and prevent the animals from poaching human food sources, such as crops.

“Wildlife populations need access to diverse dietary resources to prosper,” Kartzinel says. “Each elephant needs variety, a little bit of spice—not literally in their food, but in their dietary habits.”

The National Science Foundation supported the work.

Source: Brown University

Animal industries in the United States pose serious risk of future pandemics and the US government lacks a comprehensive strategy to address these threats, a new study concludes.

The analysis calls for tightening existing regulations and implementing new ones in order to prevent zoonotic-driven outbreaks.

The report is the first to comprehensively map networks of animal commerce that fuel zoonotic disease risk in the US. It analyzes 36 different animal industries, including fur-farming, the exotic pet trade, hunting and trapping, industrial animal agriculture, backyard chicken production, roadside zoos, and more, to assess the risks each poses of generating a large-scale disease outbreak.

The report states, far from being a problem that only exists elsewhere, many high-risk interactions between humans and animals that happen routinely and customarily inside the US could spark future pandemics. All of the animal industries the report examines are far less regulated than they should be and far less than the public believes they currently are. Today, wide regulatory gaps exist through which pathogens can spillover and spread, leaving the public constantly vulnerable to zoonotic disease.

“COVID has infected more than 100 million Americans and killed over a million of them. But the next pandemic may be far worse and might happen sooner than we think. The stakes are simply too high for the problem to be ignored,” says Ann Linder, one of the report’s lead authors and a research fellow with the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School.

The immense and increasing scale of animal use in the United States makes the country uniquely vulnerable to zoonotic outbreaks. For example, the US is the largest importer of live wildlife in the world, importing more than 220 million wild animals a year, many without any health checks or disease testing.

The US also produces more livestock than almost any other nation. In 2022, the US processed more than 10 billion livestock, the largest number ever recorded. Yet, the USDA does not regulate on-farm production of livestock. At slaughterhouses inspections are cursory, with each inspector tasked with examining more than 600 animals per hour for signs of disease.

The US is one of the world’s largest producers of pigs and poultry, two important carriers of influenza viruses—viruses that scientists believe are most likely to produce a large-scale human pandemic.

• The largest avian influenza outbreak in US history is currently ongoing and has left 58 million poultry dead since it began in 2022. The virus has spread to several species of mammals in the US and has infected a man in Colorado. Even a slight shift in the viruses’ composition could allow it to move rapidly through human populations.
• The US also has recorded more “swine flu” infections than any other country since 2011. Most of these infections occurred in children exhibiting pigs at state and county fairs, which attract 150 million visitors each year and have given rise to multistate outbreaks of influenza. Despite this, animal fairs remain largely unregulated.

In addition, the people most vulnerable to zoonotic disease in the US are those who work hands-on with farmed animals. Such jobs tend to be disproportionately staffed by people of color and those in rural communities who may be the least likely and the least able to report disease or seek medical care.

Studies estimate that swine workers have a 30 times greater risk of zoonotic influenza infection than the general public, but these viruses have the potential to spread far beyond livestock workers. The CDC estimates the 2009 “swine flu” hospitalized over 900,000 Americans.

Live animal markets in the US (elsewhere called “wet markets“), where animals are stored alive and slaughtered onsite for customers, also pose serious disease risks. New York City alone is home to at least 84 live animal markets.

• A detailed study of pigs in two live animal food markets in Minneapolis found high rates of influenza viruses not only in and on the animals but also in the air and on surfaces throughout the market.
• A shocking 65% of workers at the market tested positive for influenza during the 12-week study, as did a 12-year-old customer who became sick after touching the railings of a pig pen and one of the animals.

Wildlife also poses significant risk. Hundreds of millions of live wild animals are imported into the US each year, many without ever being looked at by anyone. Only scant and incomplete information exists about these animals, where they are originating, and where they go after they arrive. For example:

• The $15 billion US exotic pet trade brings high-risk species of wildlife into American homes, initiating close human-animal interactions that serve as potential flashpoints for spillover of zoonotic disease—with roughly 14% of American households owning one or more exotic animal from among hundreds of species that range from monkeys to monitor lizards.
• Animals carrying zoonotic disease are sold through legal channels such as pet stores without health checks or veterinary oversight, as well as through the black market.
• Some exotic animal dealers keep more than 25,000 wild animals together at a single facility, often in poor conditions that facilitate disease spread, before they are shipped off to customers across the country.
• During a major mpox outbreak, which originated in one of these facilities after it received a shipment of exotic animals from overseas, CDC agents were not able to track down a large number of infected prairie dogs that had been sold through pet stores and swap meets.

Even lesser-known animal industries in the US pose serious risks to human health. Crocodile farms have facilitated the spread of West Nile Virus to humans and mink in fur farms have transmitted COVID-19 to humans.

Still, many industries that generate risk are loosely regulated or not regulated at all. Policy change is often reactive, the report explains, happening only after outbreaks occur. Rarely, it says, do agencies take proactive steps to address zoonotic risk, even when they are aware of the danger to the public. For many industries, the government lacks even basic data and has no system to screen animals for disease or to identify zoonotic threats proactively. In some industries, government action actually drives zoonotic risk and increases human exposure to pathogens.

“While zoonotic risks cannot be eliminated, they can be managed and reduced in ways that make all of us safer. But we need to look them in the eye. The risks that these markets present have been ignored or downplayed for far too long,” says Dale Jamieson, director of New York University’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection.

This US report is being released ahead of a larger global policy report overseen by the same researchers from Harvard Law School’s Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program and New York University’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. The full report, which will be released later this year, examines global policy responses to live animal markets in 15 countries and the role these markets play in zoonotic disease transmission. The project aims to provide a comprehensive assessment that will assist global policymakers and increase public awareness of the dangers posed by zoonotic diseases.

Source: NYU

Structural racism and geographic inequity are advancing the global crisis of diabetes, report researchers.

These factors leave people with diabetes 50% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and twice as likely to die compared to those without diabetes, especially among minority populations.

A narrative literature review recently published in The Lancet, led by Saria Hassan, assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine and Rollins School of Public Health, and coauthored by faculty of the Emory Global Diabetes Research Center (EGDRC) and Morehouse School of Medicine, addresses and summarizes the current understanding of diabetes disparities by examining differences between and within race and ethnic groups and among young people aged 18 years and younger.

As part of the newly published The Lancet series, “Global Inequity in Diabetes“, the study also evaluates structural racism’s prominent role in diabetes disparities and offers recommendations to improve equity in diabetes care.

“Focusing solely on adults overlooks the degree to which the accelerating epidemic of type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents is contributing to the growing burden of disease and worsening disparities across the US,” Hassan told The Lancet.

The researchers used a conceptual framework to categorize the causes of diabetes disparities across the lifespan, which looked at factors in five domains. In terms of structural racism, the researchers found that it affects diabetes disparities at all levels, from policies and interpersonal relationships to the community level.

“Your environment in many ways dictates your health,” says Hassan. “It’s well-established that obesity, health behaviors, lifestyle, and access to quality care are risk factors for diabetes. However, at the community level, neighborhoods with primarily Black and Hispanic individuals tend to have little space for physical activity, have more food deserts, and higher levels of toxic environmental exposures.”

Estimates indicate that rates of diabetes are almost 1.5 times higher among minority ethnic groups, such as American Indians and Alaska Natives, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians compared to the white population.

Significant diabetes disparities persist in the US, from the number of people suffering from the disease and have complications to who has access to effective medications. Medical cost and lost wages of people with diabetes contribute to $327 billion annually, further burdening minority groups and those of lower socioeconomic status.

African Americans are 19% less likely and American Indian and Native Americans 41% less likely to access newer diabetes treatment such as GLP1.

“Because of structural racism, Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to be low-income, which means that they are less likely to be able to afford high co-pay medications or are uninsured and under-insured” says Hassan.

As a result of their review, the researchers provided key recommendations to community partners, researchers, practitioners, health system administrators, and policy makers to reduce disparities.

These recommendations include:

• Research needs to be action-oriented, community-based, and multidisciplinary.
• Those who fund research and activities to address diabetes disparities must ensure equitable, sustainable, and cost-effective research that adopts a health equity plan.
• Practitioners on the front lines need to know and understand the multilevel factors contributing to diabetes disparities.
• Policy makers need to recognize how policies historically have contributed to health disparities, and work to ensure future policies dismantle these disparities and do not worsen them.

Source: Emory University

A new way to examine the hepatitis C virus has helped clarify how it evades the human immune system and spreads through the body: it puts on a “mask.”

An estimated 50 million people worldwide are infected with chronic hepatitis C. The hepatitis C virus can cause inflammation and scarring of the liver, and in the worst case, liver cancer.

Hepatitis C was discovered in 1989 and is one of the most studied viruses on the planet. Yet for decades, how it manages to evade the human immune system and spread through the body has been a riddle.

Donning a mask allows the virus to remain hidden while making copies of itself to infect new cells. The mask cloaks the virus in the form of a molecule already in our cells. Disguised by the molecule, our immune systems confuse the virus with something harmless that needn’t be reacted to.

“How the hepatitis C virus manages to hide in our liver cells without being detected by the immune system has always been a bit of a mystery,” says co-lead researcher Jeppe Vinther, associate professor in the biology department at the University of Copenhagen.

“Our revelation of the virus’ masking strategy is important, as it could pave the way for new ways of treating viral infections. And it is likely that other types of viruses use the same trick.”

Hepatitis C mystery solved

The mask the hepatitis virus uses to hide in our cells is called FAD, a molecule composed of vitamin B2 and the energy carrying molecule ATP. FAD is vital for our cells to convert energy. The FAD molecule’s importance and familiarity to our cells makes it ideal camouflage for a malicious virus.

For several years, the research team had a good idea that FAD was helping the virus hide in infected cells, but they lacked a clear way to prove it. To solve the challenge, they turned to Arabidopsis, a well-known experimental plant among researchers.

“We were getting desperate to find a way to prove our hypothesis, which is when we purified an enzyme from the Arabidopsis plant that can split the FAD molecule in two,” says Anna Sherwood from the biology department, who together with Lizandro Rene Rivera Rangel are first authors of the study.

Using the enzyme, the researchers were able to split the FAD and prove that the hepatitis C virus used it as a mask.

Hiding from immune system

Like both the coronavirus and influenza virus, hepatitis C is an RNA virus. Its genetic material consists of RNA that must be copied once the virus enters its host organism. New RNA copies are used to take over new cells, and one end of the RNA’s genetic material is masked by the FAD.

It is very realistic that other RNA viruses use similar masking techniques to spread without being detected by cellular control systems, Vinther says. In fact, researchers have already found another virus that uses the same strategy. And there are likely more.

“All RNA viruses have the same need to hide from the immune system and there is a good chance that this is just the beginning. Now that we’re attuned to this trick, it opens up the possibility of developing new and perhaps improved methods of tracking and treating viral infections in the future,” Vinther says.

The study is published in Nature.

Independent Research Fund Denmark funded the work.

Source: University of Copenhagen

New research shows a likely large Earth-like granite system is present on the moon.

The finding, which appears in a Nature paper, may help expand knowledge of geothermal lunar processes.

Granites, which result from magma due to igneous activity, are nearly absent in our solar system outside Earth. Yet over the past decade, evidence from remote sensing systems used by geoscientists including Timothy Glotch of Stony Brook University, has proven that notable silicic features like granites within a volcanic complex are on the moon.

Previously, only a sampling of grains of granite were detected in the hundreds of kilograms of rocks returned by Apollo astronauts, and remote sensing studies since have found only a few small granite or granite like features on the moon.

For the new work, the research team used remote sensing measurements, specifically orbital microwave radiometry and gravity measurements, to detect a large (greater than 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) in diameter) granitic body underneath the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex (CBVC) on the moon’s far side.

“Typically, granites require either plate tectonics or water-bearing magmas to form,” says Glotch, coauthor and professor in the geosciences department. “While the lunar interior contains small amounts of water, the moon has never undergone plate tectonics. Therefore, this discovery of the granitic complex, or batholith underneath the CBVC, points to some not-yet-understood process that is responsible for the granitic formation.”

While Glotch and coauthors are not yet sure what the process is, there could a number of possibilities.

These could include a fractionation of KREEP (potassium-rare-earth-elements-and-phosphorus) basaltic liquids, or partial melting KREE-rich crust. If either of these were the case, it would require an abnormally hydrous mantle underneath the CBVC and a compositionally heterogenous lunar mantle.

The authors theorize that “the surprising magnitude and geographic extent of this feature imply an Earth-like, evolved granite system larger than believed possible on the moon, especially outside of the Procellarum region… a phenomenon previously documented only on Earth.”

In addition to the discovery, the authors say of the remote sensing method that “this work illustrates a new tool for mapping planetary geothermal gradient from orbit through passive microwave radiometry, which can provide a window into crustal and interior heat-producing structures.”

Furthermore, they say that the methods used are generalizable, and “similar uses of passive radiometric data could vastly expand our knowledge of geothermal processes on the moon and other planetary bodies.”

Glotch worked with the lead author, Matthew A. Siegler, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, to conceptualize the study. The research is built out of more than 10 years of work by Glotch and other collaborators nationally to use remote sensing measurements of the moon to map the presence and quality properties of anomalously silicic features on the lunar surface and interior.

The researchers previously identified a number of volcanoes, including CBVC and the Gruithuisen domes, as having granite-like compositions. These regions will be the target of a NASA rover mission in 2026.

Source: Stony Brook University

Pleobot is a krill-inspired robot offering potential solutions for underwater locomotion and ocean exploration, both on Earth and moons throughout the solar system.

Picture a network of interconnected, autonomous robots working together in a coordinated dance to navigate the pitch-black surroundings of the ocean while carrying out scientific surveys or search-and-rescue missions.

In a new study in Scientific Reports, a team led by Brown University researchers has presented important first steps in building these types of underwater navigation robots.

In the study, the researchers outline the design of a small robotic platform called Pleobot that can serve as both a tool to help researchers understand the krill-like swimming method and as a foundation for building small, highly maneuverable underwater robots.

Pleobot is currently made of three articulated sections that replicate krill-like swimming called metachronal swimming. To design Pleobot, the researchers took inspiration from krill, which are remarkable aquatic athletes and display mastery in swimming, accelerating, braking, and turning. They demonstrate in the study the capabilities of Pleobot to emulate the legs of swimming krill and provide new insights on the fluid-structure interactions needed to sustain steady forward swimming in krill.

According to the study, Pleobot has the potential to allow the scientific community to understand how to take advantage of 100 million years of evolution to engineer better robots for ocean navigation.

“Experiments with organisms are challenging and unpredictable,” says Sara Oliveira Santos, a PhD candidate at Brown’s School of Engineering and lead author of the new study. “Pleobot allows us unparalleled resolution and control to investigate all the aspects of krill-like swimming that help it excel at maneuvering underwater. Our goal was to design a comprehensive tool to understand krill-like swimming, which meant including all the details that make krill such athletic swimmers.”

The effort is a collaboration between Brown researchers in the lab of Monica Martinez Wilhelmus, assistant professor of engineering, and scientists in the lab of Francisco Cuenca-Jimenez at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

A major aim of the project is to understand how metachronal swimmers, like krill, manage to function in complex marine environments and perform massive vertical migrations of over 1,000 meters (about 3281 feet)—equivalent to stacking three Empire State Buildings—twice daily.

“We have snapshots of the mechanisms they use to swim efficiently, but we do not have comprehensive data,” says Nils Tack, a postdoctoral associate in the Wilhelmus lab. “We built and programmed a robot that precisely emulates the essential movements of the legs to produce specific motions and change the shape of the appendages. This allows us to study different configurations to take measurements and make comparisons that are otherwise unobtainable with live animals.”

The metachronal swimming technique can lead to remarkable maneuverability that krill frequently display through the sequential deployment of their swimming legs in a back to front wave-like motion. The researchers believe that in the future, deployable swarm systems can be used to map Earth’s oceans, participate in search-and-recovery missions by covering large areas, or be sent to moons in the solar system, such as Europa, to explore their oceans.

“Krill aggregations are an excellent example of swarms in nature: they are composed of organisms with a streamlined body, traveling up to one kilometer each way, with excellent underwater maneuverability,” Wilhelmus says. “This study is the starting point of our long-term research aim of developing the next generation of autonomous underwater sensing vehicles. Being able to understand fluid-structure interactions at the appendage level will allow us to make informed decisions about future designs.”

The researchers can actively control the two leg segments and have passive control of Pleobot’s biramous fins. This is believed to be the first platform that replicates the opening and closing motion of these fins. The construction of the robotic platform was a multi-year project, involving a multi-disciplinary team in fluid mechanics, biology, and mechatronics.

The researchers built their model at 10 times the scale of krill, which are usually about the size of a paperclip. The platform is primarily made of 3D printable parts and the design is open-access, allowing other teams to use Pleobot to continue answering questions on metachronal swimming not just for krill but for other organisms like lobsters.

In the study, the group reveals the answer to one of the many unknown mechanisms of krill swimming: how they generate lift in order not to sink while swimming forward. If krill are not swimming constantly, they will start sinking because they are a little heavier than water. To avoid this, they still have to create some lift even while swimming forward to be able to remain at that same height in the water, says Oliveira Santos.

“We were able to uncover that mechanism by using the robot,” says Yunxing Su, a postdoctoral associate in the lab. “We identified an important effect of a low-pressure region at the back side of the swimming legs that contributes to the lift force enhancement during the power stroke of the moving legs.”

In the coming years, the researchers hope to build on this initial success and further build and test the designs presented in the article. The team is currently working to integrate morphological characteristics of shrimp into the robotic platform, such as flexibility and bristles around the appendages.

A NASA Rhode Island EPSCoR Seed Grant partially funded the work.

Source: Brown University