In response, the researchers involved — from AMBER, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research, TrinityHaus and the Schools of Engineering and Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin — have developed a set of recommendations for infant formula preparation when using plastic IFBs that minimise MP release.

Led by Dr Jing Jing Wang, Professor John Boland and Professor Liwen Xiao at Trinity, the team analysed the potential for release of MPs from polypropylene infant-feeding bottles (PP-IFBs) during formula preparation by following international guidelines. They also estimated the exposure of 12-month-old infants to MPs in 48 countries and regions and have just published their findings in the high-profile journal Nature Food.

Key findings

• PP-IFBs can release up to 16 million MPs and trillions of smaller nanoplastics per litre. Sterilisation and exposure to high temperature water significantly increase microplastic release from 0.6 million to 55 million particles/l when temperature increases from 25 to 95 °C
• Other polypropylene plastic-ware products (kettles, lunchboxes) release similar levels of MPs
• The team undertook a global survey and estimated the exposure of 12-month-old infants to microplastics in 48 regions. Following current guidelines1 for infant-feeding bottle sterilisation and feeding formula preparation the average daily exposure level for infants is in excess of 1 million MPs. Oceania, North America and Europe have the highest levels of potential exposure, at 2,100,000, 2,280,000, and 2,610,000 particles/day, respectively
• The level of microplastics released from PP-IFBs can be significantly reduced by following modified sterilisation and formula preparation procedures

Recommended sterilisation and formula preparation procedures

• Sterilising infant feeding bottles
• Sterilise the bottle following WHO recommended guidelines and allow to cool
• Prepare sterilised water by boiling in a non-plastic kettle/cooker (e.g. glass or stainless steel)
• Rinse the sterilised bottle using room temperature sterilised water at least 3 times

Preparing infant formula

• Prepare hot water using a non-plastic kettle/cooker
• Prepare infant formula in a non-plastic container using at least 70oC water. Cool to room temperature and transfer prepared formula into a high-quality plastic infant feeding bottle

Standard Precautions

• Do not reheat prepared formula in plastic containers and avoid microwave ovens
• Do not vigorously shake the formula in the bottle at any time
• Do not use sonication to clean plastic infant feeding bottles

Studying microplastics through a project of scale

There is growing evidence to suggest that micro2 and nano plastics are released into our food and water sources through the chemical and physical degradation of larger plastic items. Some studies have demonstrated the potential transfer of micro and nano plastics from oceans to humans via the food chain3 but little is known about the direct release of microplastics (MPs) from plastic products through everyday use.

Polypropylene (PP) is one of the most commonly produced plastics in the world for food preparation and storage. It is used to make everyday items such as lunch boxes, kettles and infant-feeding bottles (IFBs). Despite its widespread use the capacity of PP to release microplastics was not appreciated until now.

Measuring Polypropylene microplastic release (PP-MPs) from infant feeding bottles (IFB)

Drawing on international guidelines for infant formula preparation (cleaning, sterilising, and mixing techniques), the team developed a protocol4 to quantify the PP-MPs released from 10 representative infant-feeding bottles that account for 68.8% of the global infant-feeding bottle market.

When the role of temperature on the release of PP-MPs was analysed a clear trend emerged; the higher the temperature of liquid inside the bottle, the more microplastics released.

Under a standardised protocol, after sterilisation and exposure to water at 70?C, the PP-IFBs released up to 16.2 million PP-MP per litre. When the water temperature was increased to 95?C, as much as 55 million PP-MP per litre were released, while when the PP-IFB’s were exposed to water at 25?C — well under international guidelines for sterilisation or formula preparation — 600,000 PP-MP per litre were generated.

Estimating the exposure of 12-month-old infants to MPs from PP-IFBs

Given the widespread use of PP-IFBs and the quantity of MPs released through normal daily use, the team realised the potential exposure of infants to MPs is a worldwide issue. The team estimated the exposure of 12-month-old infants to MPs in 48 countries and regions by using MP release rates from PP-IFBs, the market share of each PP-IFB, the infant daily milk-intake volume, and breastfeeding rates.

The team found that the overall average daily consumption of PP-MPs by infants per capita was 1,580,000 particles.

Oceania, North America and Europe were found to have the highest levels of potential exposure corresponding to 2,100,000, 2,280,000, and 2,610,000 particles/day, respectively.

Mitigating exposure

Given the global preference for PP-IBFs it is important to mitigate against unintended generation of micro and nanoplastics in infant formula. Based on their findings the team devised and tested a series of recommendations for the preparation of baby formula that will help minimise the production of MPs.

They note though, that given the prevalence of plastic products in daily food storage and food preparation, and the fact that every PP product tested in the study (infant bottles, kettles, lunch boxes and noodle cups) released similar levels of MPs, there is an urgent need for technological solutions.

As Professor John Boland, AMBER, CRANN, and Trinity’s School of Chemistry explains:

“When we saw these results in the lab we recognised immediately the potential impact they might have. The last thing we want is to unduly alarm parents, particularly when we don’t have sufficient information on the potential consequences of microplastics on infant health.

“We are calling on policy makers, however, to reassess the current guidelines for formula preparation when using plastic infant feeding bottles. Crucially, we have found that it is possible to mitigate the risk of ingesting microplastics by changing practices around sterilisation and formula preparation.”

Professor Liwen Xiao at TrinityHaus and Trinity’s School of Engineering said:

“Previous research has predominantly focused on human exposure to micro and nanoplastics via transfer from ocean and soils into the food chain driven by the degradation of plastics in the environment.

“Our study indicates that daily use of plastic products is an important source of microplastic release, meaning that the routes of exposure are much closer to us than previously thought. We need to urgently assess the potential risks of microplastics to human health. Understanding their fate and transport through the body following ingestion is an important focus of future research. Determining the potential consequences of microplastics on our health is critical for the management of microplastic pollution.”

Lead authors, Dr Dunzhu Li and Dr Yunhong Shi, researchers at CRANN and Trinity’s School of Engineering, said:

“We have to accept that plastics are pervasive in modern life, and that they release micro and nano plastics through everyday use. We don’t yet know the risks to human health of these tiny plastic particles, but we can develop behavioural and technological solutions and strategies to mitigate against their exposure.”

Dr Jing Jing Wang, Microplastics Group at AMBER and CRANN, said: “While this research points to the role of plastic products as a direct source of microplastic the removal of microplastics from the environment and our water supplies remains a key future challenge.

“Our team will investigate specific mechanisms of micro and nano plastic release during food preparation in a host of different contexts. We want to develop appropriate technologies that will prevent plastics degrading and effective filtration technologies that will remove micro and nanoplastics from our environment for large scale water treatment and local distribution and use.”

This work has been undertaken by the Microplastics Group led by Dr Jing Jing Wang at AMBER and CRANN, with internal collaboration from TrinityHaus and Trinity’s School of Engineering and School of Chemistry. This research was supported by Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, a School of Engineering Scholarship at Trinity, and the China Scholarship Council.

This well-preserved, ancient asteroid, known as Bennu, is currently more than 200 million miles (321 million kilometers) from Earth. Bennu offers scientists a window into the early solar system as it was first taking shape billions of years ago and flinging ingredients that could have helped seed life on Earth. If Tuesday’s sample collection event, known as “Touch-And-Go” (TAG), provided enough of a sample, mission teams will command the spacecraft to begin stowing the precious primordial cargo to begin its journey back to Earth in March 2021. Otherwise, they will prepare for another attempt in January.

“This amazing first for NASA demonstrates how an incredible team from across the country came together and persevered through incredible challenges to expand the boundaries of knowledge,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Our industry, academic, and international partners have made it possible to hold a piece of the most ancient solar system in our hands.”

At 1:50 p.m. EDT, OSIRIS-REx fired its thrusters to nudge itself out of orbit around Bennu. It extended the shoulder, then elbow, then wrist of its 11-foot (3.35-meter) sampling arm, known as the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), and transited across Bennu while descending about a half-mile (805 meters) toward the surface. After a four-hour descent, at an altitude of approximately 410 feet (125 meters), the spacecraft executed the “Checkpoint” burn, the first of two maneuvers to allow it to precisely target the sample collection site, known as “Nightingale.”

Ten minutes later, the spacecraft fired its thrusters for the second “Matchpoint” burn to slow its descent and match the asteroid’s rotation at the time of contact. It then continued a treacherous, 11-minute coast past a boulder the size of a two-story building, nicknamed “Mount Doom,” to touch down in a clear spot in a crater on Bennu’s northern hemisphere. The size of a small parking lot, the site Nightingale site is one of the few relatively clear spots on this unexpectedly boulder-covered space rock.

“This was an incredible feat — and today we’ve advanced both science and engineering and our prospects for future missions to study these mysterious ancient storytellers of the solar system,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “A piece of primordial rock that has witnessed our solar system’s entire history may now be ready to come home for generations of scientific discovery, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.”

“After over a decade of planning, the team is overjoyed at the success of today’s sampling attempt,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Even though we have some work ahead of us to determine the outcome of the event — the successful contact, the TAGSAM gas firing, and back-away from Bennu are major accomplishments for the team. I look forward to analyzing the data to determine the mass of sample collected.”

All spacecraft telemetry data indicates the TAG event executed as expected. However, it will take about a week for the OSIRIS-REx team to confirm how much sample the spacecraft collected.

Real-time data indicates the TAGSAM successfully contacted the surface and fired a burst of nitrogen gas. The gas should have stirred up dust and pebbles on Bennu’s surface, some of which should have been captured in the TAGSAM sample collection head. OSIRIS-REx engineers also confirmed that shortly after the spacecraft made contact with the surface, it fired its thrusters and safely backed away from Bennu.

“Today’s TAG maneuver was historic,” said Lori Glaze, Planetary Science Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The fact that we safely and successfully touched the surface of Bennu, in addition to all the other milestones this mission has already achieved, is a testament to the living spirit of exploration that continues to uncover the secrets of the solar system.”

“It’s hard to put into words how exciting it was to receive confirmation that the spacecraft successfully touched the surface and fired one of the gas bottles,” said Michael Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The team can’t wait to receive the imagery from the TAG event late tonight and see how the surface of Bennu responded to the TAG event.”

The spacecraft carried out TAG autonomously, with pre-programmed instructions from engineers on Earth. Now, the OSIRIS-REx team will begin to assess whether the spacecraft grabbed any material, and, if so, how much; the goal is at least 60 grams, which is roughly equivalent to a full-size candy bar.

OSIRIS-REx engineers and scientists will use several techniques to identify and measure the sample remotely. First, they’ll compare images of the Nightingale site before and after TAG to see how much surface material moved around in response to the burst of gas.

“Our first indication of whether we were successful in collecting a sample will come on October 21 when we downlink the back-away movie from the spacecraft,” Moreau said. “If TAG made a significant disturbance of the surface, we likely collected a lot of material.”

Next, the team will try to determine the amount of sample collected. One method involves taking pictures of the TAGSAM head with a camera known as SamCam, which is devoted to documenting the sample-collection process and determining whether dust and rocks made it into the collector head. One indirect indication will be the amount of dust found around the sample collector head. OSIRIS-REx engineers also will attempt to snap photos that could, given the right lighting conditions, show the inside of the head so engineers can look for evidence of sample inside of it.

A couple of days after the SamCam images are analyzed, the spacecraft will attempt yet another method to measure the mass of the sample collected by determining the change in the spacecraft’s “moment of inertia,” a phrase that describes how mass is distributed and how it affects the rotation of the body around a central axis. This maneuver entails extending the TAGSAM arm out to the side of the spacecraft and slowly spinning the spacecraft about an axis perpendicular to the arm. This technique is analogous to a person spinning with one arm extended while holding a string with a ball attached to the end. The person can sense the mass of the ball by the tension in the string. Having performed this maneuver before TAG, and now after, engineers can measure the change in the mass of the collection head as a result of the sample inside.

“We will use the combination of data from TAG and the post-TAG images and mass measurement to assess our confidence that we have collected at least 60 grams of sample,” said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at Goddard. “If our confidence is high, we’ll make the decision to stow the sample on October 30.”

To store the sample, engineers will command the robotic arm to place the sample collector head into the Sample Return Capsule (SRC), located in the body of the spacecraft. The sample arm will then retract to the side of the spacecraft for the final time, the SRC will close, and the spacecraft will prepare for its departure from Bennu in March 2021 — this is the next time Bennu will be properly aligned with Earth for the most fuel-efficient return flight.

If, however, it turns out that the spacecraft did not collect enough sample at Nightingale, it will attempt another TAG maneuver on Jan. 12, 2021. If that occurs, it will touch down at the backup site called “Osprey,” which is another relatively boulder-free area inside a crater near Bennu’s equator.

OSIRIS-REx launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Sept. 8, 2016. It arrived at Bennu Dec. 3, 2018, and began orbiting the asteroid for the first time on Dec. 31, 2018. The spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth Sept. 24, 2023, when it will parachute the SRC into Utah’s west desert where scientists will be waiting to collect it.

Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information on OSIRIS-REx:

“People tend to think of empowerment in uniformly positive ways,” said Nicholas Hays, study co-author and associate professor of management in MSU’s Eli Broad College of Business. “After all, humans crave independence and control so giving it to them at work should be a good thing. However, as people feel increasingly autonomous, they can also become unmoored from others’ needs, expectations and social norms.”

Hays explained that, in recent decades, companies have increasingly implemented various forms of empowerment initiatives that assume empowered leaders will translate into empowered workers.

The paper — published in Journal of Applied Psychology — found that, when properly implemented, empowerment initiatives can lead to heightened motivation, productivity and creativity. However, whether these initiatives are effective at all levels of the organization depends on the management style of the person implementing them.

Hays — along with Broad College of Business colleague, Russell E. Johnson, MSU Foundation Professor of management, and Hun Whee Lee, assistant professor of management at Ohio State University and lead author of the study — found that superiors who value being respected will respond to empowerment initiatives by, in turn, empowering their workers. But, superiors who value being in charge will, somewhat ironically, respond to empowerment initiatives by closely controlling, dominating and managing their employees.

The researchers conducted three separate studies measuring outcomes of empowerment initiatives that considered personality trait data and leader behavior.

“We found that leaders who really care about being respected by their subordinates tend to react to empowerment initiatives by ‘paying it forward’ with certain behaviors. This could include things like allowing subordinates to set their own goals or decide how to accomplish tasks,” Lee said. “In contrast, leaders who prefer to be in control and tell others what to do tend to react to these initiatives by doubling down on their desire for control. This is when we see things like micromanaging or setting specific goals for subordinates.”

If an employee is uncomfortable with a superior’s leadership style, the researchers say it may be beneficial to have a candid conversation between worker and boss.

“Many leaders are receptive to feedback and want to provide employees what they need to succeed at work,” Hays said. “If that doesn’t work, looking for different groups to join — either within an organization and with a different supervisor or even by changing organizations altogether — is sometimes the best option.”

And in the unprecedented workplace environment of 2020, Hays also offered insight into what he believes the paper’s findings may indicate for employees in real time.

“To the extent that leaders prioritize dominance and being in charge, they may go out of their way to micromanage employees by, for example, monitoring their online status and requesting frequent check-ins,” Hays said. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize this as abusing an empowerment initiative, but certainly could rub employees the wrong way.”

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Materials provided by Michigan State University. Original written by Caroline Brooks and Zach Richardson. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The gravity associated with massive pockets of dark matter that lie between Earth and these galaxies, however, plays havoc with those galactic light signals. Gravity distorts galaxies’ light — a process called gravitational lensing — and also slightly aligns the galaxies physically, resulting in additional gravitational lensing light signals that contaminate the true data.

In a study first published Aug. 5 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, University of Texas at Dallas scientists demonstrated the first use of a method called self-calibration to remove contamination from gravitational lensing signals. The results should lead to more accurate cosmological models of the universe, said Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the corresponding author of the study.

“The self-calibration method is something others proposed about 10 years ago; many thought it was just a theoretical method and moved away from it,” Ishak-Boushaki said. “But I intuitively felt the promise. After eight years of persistent investigation maturing the method itself, and then the last two years applying it to the data, it bore fruit with important consequences for cosmological studies.”

A Lens on the Universe

Gravitational lensing is one of the most promising methods in cosmology to provide information on the parameters that underlie the current model of the universe.

“It can help us map the distribution of dark matter and discover information about the structure of the universe. But the measurement of such cosmological parameters can be off by as much as 30% if we do not extract the contamination in the gravitational lensing signal,” Ishak-Boushaki said.

Due to the way distant galaxies form and the environment they form in, they are slightly physically aligned with the dark matter close to them. This intrinsic alignment generates additional spurious lensing signals, or a bias, which contaminate the data from the galaxies and thus skew the measurement of key cosmological parameters, including those that describe the amount of dark matter and dark energy in the universe and how fast galaxies move away from each other.

To complicate matters further, there are two types of intrinsic alignment that require different methods of mitigation. In their study, the research team used the self-calibration method to extract the nuisance signals from a type of alignment called intrinsic shape-gravitational shear, which is the most critical component.

“Our work significantly increases the chances of success to measure the properties of dark energy in an accurate way, which will allow us to understand what is causing cosmic acceleration,” Ishak-Boushaki said. “Another impact will be to determine accurately whether Einstein’s general theory of relativity holds at very large scales in the universe. These are very important questions.”

Impact on Cosmology

Several large scientific surveys aimed at better understanding the universe are in the works, and they will gather gravitational lensing data. These include the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

“The big winner here will be these upcoming surveys of gravitational lensing. We will really be able to get the full potential from them to understand our universe,” said Ishak-Boushaki, who is a member and a convener of the LSST’s Dark Energy Science Collaboration.

The self-calibration method to remove contaminated signals was first proposed by Dr. Pengjie Zhang, a professor of astronomy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a co-author of the current study.

Ishak-Boushaki further developed the method and introduced it to the realm of cosmological observations, along with one of his former students, Michael Troxel MS’11, PhD’14, now an assistant professor of physics at Duke University. Since 2012 the research has been supported by two grants to Ishak-Boushaki from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“Not everyone was sure that self-calibration would lead to such an important result. Some colleagues were encouraging; some were skeptical,” Ishak-Boushaki said. “I’ve learned that it pays not to give up. My intuition was that if it was done right, it would work, and I’m grateful to the NSF for seeing the promise of this work.”

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Materials provided by University of Texas at Dallas. Original written by Amanda Siegfried. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.