And yet, a new study supports the longstanding idea that if life exists, it might make a home in Venus’ clouds. The study’s authors, from MIT, Cardiff University, and Cambridge University, have identified a chemical pathway by which life could neutralize Venus’ acidic environment, creating a self-sustaining, habitable pocket in the clouds.

Within Venus’ atmosphere, scientists have long observed puzzling anomalies — chemical signatures that are hard to explain, such as small concentrations of oxygen and nonspherical particles unlike sulfuric acid’s round droplets. Perhaps most puzzling is the presence of ammonia, a gas that was tentatively detected in the 1970s, and that by all accounts should not be produced through any chemical process known on Venus.

In their new study, the researchers modeled a set of chemical processes to show that if ammonia is indeed present, the gas would set off a cascade of chemical reactions that would neutralize surrounding droplets of sulfuric acid and could also explain most of the anomalies observed in Venus’ clouds. As for the source of ammonia itself, the authors propose that the most plausible explanation is of biological origin, rather than a nonbiological source such as lightning or volcanic eruptions.

As they write in their study, the chemistry suggests that “life could be making its own environment on Venus.”

This tantalizing new hypothesis is testable, and the researchers provide a list of chemical signatures for future missions to measure in Venus’ clouds, to either confirm or contradict their idea.

“No life that we know of could survive in the Venus droplets,” says study co-author Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But the point is, maybe some life is there, and is modifying its environment so that it is livable.”

The study’s co-authors include Janusz Petkowski, William Bains, and Paul Rimmer, who are affiliated with MIT, Cardiff University, and Cambridge University.

Life suspect

“Life on Venus” was a trending phrase last year, when scientists including Seager and her co-authors reported the detection of phosphine in the planet’s clouds. On Earth, phosphine is a gas that is produced mainly through biological interactions. The discovery of phosphine on Venus leaves room for the possibility of life. Since then, however, the discovery has been widely contested.

“The phosphine detection ended up becoming incredibly controversial,” Seager says. “But phosphine was like a gateway, and there’s been this resurgence in people studying Venus.”

Inspired to look more closely, Rimmer began combing through data from past missions to Venus. In these data, he identified anomalies, or chemical signatures, in the clouds that had gone unexplained for decades. In addition to the presence of oxygen and nonspherical particles, anomalies included unexpected levels of water vapor and sulfur dioxide.

Rimmer proposed the anomalies might be explained by dust. He argued that minerals, swept up from Venus’ surface and into the clouds, could interact with sulfuric acid to produce some, though not all, of the observed anomalies. He showed the chemistry checked out, but the physical requirements were unfeasible: A massive amount of dust would have to loft into the clouds to produce the observed anomalies.

Seager and her colleagues wondered if the anomalies could be explained by ammonia. In the 1970s, the gas was tentatively detected in the planet’s clouds by the Venera 8 and Pioneer Venus probes. The presence of ammonia, or NH_3, was an unsolved mystery.

“Ammonia shouldn’t be on Venus,” Seager says. “It has hydrogen attached to it, and there’s very little hydrogen around. Any gas that doesn’t belong in the context of its environment is automatically suspicious for being made by life.”

Livable clouds

If the team were to assume that life was the source of ammonia, could this explain the other anomalies in Venus’ clouds? The researchers modeled a series of chemical processes in search of an answer.

They found that if life were producing ammonia in the most efficient way possible, the associated chemical reactions would naturally yield oxygen. Once present in the clouds, ammonia would dissolve in droplets of sulfuric acid, effectively neutralizing the acid to make the droplets relatively habitable. The introduction of ammonia into the droplets would transform their formerly round, liquid shape into more of a nonspherical, salt-like slurry. Once ammonia dissolved in sulfuric acid, the reaction would trigger any surrounding sulfur dioxide to dissolve as well.

The presence of ammonia then could indeed explain most of the major anomalies seen in Venus’ clouds. The researchers also show that sources such as lightning, volcanic eruptions, and even a meteorite strike could not chemically produce the amount of ammonia required to explain the anomalies. Life, however, might.

In fact, the team notes that there are life-forms on Earth — particuarly in our own stomachs — that produce ammonia to neutralize and make livable an otherwise highly acidic environment.

“There are very acidic environments on Earth where life does live, but it’s nothing like the environment on Venus — unless life is neutralizing some of those droplets,” Seager says.

Scientists may have a chance to check for the presence of ammonia, and signs of life, in the next several years with the Venus Life Finder Missions, a set of proposed privately funded missions, of which Seager is principal investigator, that plan to send spacecraft to Venus to measure its clouds for ammonia and other signatures of life.

“Venus has lingering, unexplained atmospheric anomalies that are incredible,” Seager says. “It leaves room for the possibility of life.”

This research was supported in part by the Simons Foundation, the Change Happens Foundation, and the Breakthrough Initiatives.

In a paper published Dec. 17 in the journal Science Advances, authors from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (also referred to as UT Health San Antonio) report that norepinephrine, a fundamental chemical for brain performance, is locally regulated in a brain region called the visual cortex.

“Before our study, research suggested the possibility of local regulation of norepinephrine release, but it had never been directly demonstrated,” said study senior author Martin Paukert, MD, assistant professor of cellular and integrative physiology at UT Health San Antonio. The work of the team, which included Shawn R. Gray, PhD, and Liang Ye, MD, from the Paukert lab and Jing Yong Ye, PhD, from the biomedical engineering department at The University of Texas at San Antonio, was supported by the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Norepinephrine is known to be involved in paying attention. “A certain amount of this chemical needs to be released for optimum brain performance and ability to pay attention,” Dr. Paukert said. “So, if there is either too much of it or too little of it, it may affect how we process information.”

Disease states in which norepinephrine is known to be altered include substance use disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In some substance use, Alzheimer’s and ADHD, the release of norepinephrine is reduced, resulting in lower attention. In other substance use and PTSD, the level is too high.

The team’s findings also extend to cells called astrocytes that function as helper cells in the brain and central nervous system.

“When a person makes a movement, such as turning the head to listen to a parent, and that is combined with visual stimulation, then more norepinephrine is released where visual information is processed,” Dr. Paukert said. “Our second finding, also important, is that astrocytes can reliably detect the rate of norepinephrine release.”

They are sensitive to it, in other words. Astrocytes alter their response accordingly, which is expected to change brain performance.

“Understanding norepinephrine release, its local regulation and the astrocyte response may represent a mechanism by which one could enhance sensory-specific attention,” Dr. Paukert said. Research will continue in that direction.

In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers at The Ohio State University used a magnetic microscope to visualize the patterns, formed in thin films of an unusual magnetic material, manganese germanide. Unlike familiar magnets such as iron, the magnetism in this material follows helices, similar to the structure of DNA. This leads to a new zoo of magnetic patterns with names such as hedgehogs, anti-hedgehogs, skyrmions and merons that can be much smaller than today’s magnetic bits.

“These new magnetic patterns could be used for next-generation data storage,” said Jay Gupta, senior author of the study and a professor of physics at Ohio State. “The density of storage in hard disks is approaching its limits, related to how small you can make the magnetic bits that allow for that storage. And that’s motivated us to look for new materials, where we might be able to make the magnetic bits much smaller.”

To visualize the magnetic patterns, Gupta and his team used a scanning tunneling microscope in his lab, modified with special tips. This microscope provides pictures of the magnetic patterns with atomic resolution. Their images revealed that in certain parts of the sample, the magnetism at the surface was twisted into a pattern resembling the spikes of a hedgehog. However, in this case the “body” of the hedgehog is only 10 nanometers wide, which is much smaller than today’s magnetic bits (about 50 nanometers), and nearly impossible to visualize. By comparison, a single human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick.

The research team also found that the hedgehog patterns could be shifted on the surface with electric currents, or inverted with magnetic fields. This foreshadows the reading and writing of magnetic data, potentially using much less energy than currently possible.

“There is enormous potential for these magnetic patterns to allow data storage to be more energy efficient,” Gupta said, though he cautions that there is more research to do before the material could be put into use on a data storage site. “We have a huge amount of fundamental science still to do about understanding these magnetic patterns and improving how we control them. But this is a very exciting step.”

This research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research division of the U.S. Department of Defense. Other Ohio State researchers who co-authored this study include Jacob Repicky, Po-Kuwan Wu, Tao Liu, Joseph Corbett, Tiancong Zhu, Shuyu Cheng, Adam Ahmed, Mohit Randeria and Roland Kawakami.

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Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Laura Arenschield. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

After studying the impacts of mining cobalt — a common ingredient in lithium-ion batteries — on communities in Africa’s Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Northwestern University is calling for more data into how emerging technologies affect human health and livelihoods.

Such data can inform policymakers, industry leaders and consumers to make more socially and ethically responsible decisions when developing, funding and using green technologies.

The case study and perspective paper will be published on Dec. 17 in the journal One Earth.

“We have the framework and tools available to compare the environmental costs of automobiles that run on fossil fuels to battery-powered vehicles,” said Northwestern’s Jennifer Dunn, who led the study. “I can tell you the greenhouse gas emissions per mile for either one. But when it comes to the social effects, we don’t have the same capability for direct comparison. For many engineers, it’s easier to measure or calculate environmental effects than to understand the social conditions in a faraway country that they have never set foot in.”

Dunn is an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and associate director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience. To conduct the case study, Dunn led an interdisciplinary team of engineers, anthropologists and public health experts.

Environmental vs. human costs

For years, researchers have been conducting environmental life cycle assessments (E-LCA), in which they comprehensively and systematically calculate the environmental impacts of a product all the way from the extraction of raw materials required to make it to its use and ultimate disposal. More recently, researchers have attempted to develop similar frameworks to evaluate social life cycle assessments (S-LCA), which can be used to understand how emerging technologies affect human health and well-being.

To identify barriers to and opportunities for collecting better data for S-LCA, the researchers conducted exploratory field work in cobalt mining communities in the Lualaba Province, DRC. The team collected qualitative data through in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions with miners and other community members. Paper co-author Gabriel Bamana, an anthropologist on faculty at Normandale Community College in Minnesota, is native Congolese and therefore could provide significant cultural and historical context for the study.

“For this type of work, it’s important to work across fields in order to be informed,” said Sera Young, study co-author and associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. “It might be difficult for engineers who are developing the technologies to understand the social effects. By working together, we can form a whole picture of the consequences of resource extraction.”

Unintended consequences of decarbonization

What Dunn and Young discovered was deeply troubling. They found cobalt mining was associated with increases in violence, substance abuse, food and water insecurity, and physical and mental health challenges. Community members reported losing communal land, farmland and homes, which miners literally dug up in order to extract cobalt. Without farmland, Congolese people were sometimes forced to cross international borders into Zambia just to purchase food.

“You might think of mining as just digging something up,” Young said. “But they are not digging on vacant land. Homelands are dug up. People are literally digging holes in their living room floors. The repercussions of mining can touch almost every aspect of life.”

Waste generated from mining cobalt and other metals can pollute water, air and soil, leading to decreased crop yields, contaminated food and water, and respiratory and reproductive health issues. Miners reported that working conditions were unsafe, unfair and stressful. Several workers noted that they feared mineshaft collapses.

As industry leaders move toward decarbonization to slow, stop or even reverse human-caused climate change, technologies are increasingly relying on batteries instead of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the effects of these technologies on social well-being are understudied and data related to these effects are insufficient for use in policy-making decisions.

“If we’re trying to be do-gooders by caring for the environment, then the environment shouldn’t be limited to only the natural environment — but also the human environment,” said Young, who studies water insecurityacross a range of global contexts.

Offering new solutions

Throughout their work, Dunn, Young and their team found little in the way of established guidance on best practices for conducting S-LCA, including little guidance on how to conduct interviews and a lack of consensus on how to use and analyze data from stakeholders.

“Most of this work has been conceptualized by natural scientists who have limited knowledge about social impacts,” Dunn said. “Measuring environmental effects of a technology is sometimes as simple as adding a sensor to measure emissions. But trying to measure intangible social effects like mental health is much harder.”

“And things that aren’t measured remain invisible,” Young added.

Because the quality of the social impact assessment relies on the quality of the data, the researchers identified five categories of data sources, which can be leveraged to better understand localized effects of mining:

(1) interviews and focus groups of affected community members;

(2) local public records, including land-related court claims, documentation of forced migration and publicly available health records;

(3) cross-culturally validated scales, including data collected by national statistics agencies and organizations such as UNICEF and the World Bank;

(4) data collected for the Sustainable Development Goals; and

(5) remote sensing and imagery, including satellite imagery showing how farmland has changed after cobalt mining is established.

The researchers believe such methods can be applied to other scenarios beyond cobalt mining to gather social data surrounding emerging technologies.

“We have a long way to go before we can put S-LCA results in front of decision-makers in the same way we can with E-LCA results,” Dunn said. “In the meantime, our society is going through huge changes, including climate change, so we feel a sense of urgency. We hope that policy makers recognize the urgency of the human costs of cobalt mining sooner rather than later.”

The study, “Addressing the social life cycle inventory analysis data gap: Insights from a case study of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” was supported by Leslie and Mac McQuown, the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and the Carnegie Corporation.

In the study published on December 17, 2021, in Neuron, the Salk group focused on a group of neurons in the brainstem called the lateral parabrachial nucleus, which is arranged in a core-shell configuration. They found that neurons in the core project to the amygdala, an area of the brain that processes fear and the emotional experience of pain. Neurons in the shell project to the pre-Bötzinger complex, a region that generates breathing rhythm. The core and shell neurons influence each other according to inputs from these areas, making us breathe faster when we experience pain or anxiety.

“We are the first group to demonstrate how the lateral parabrachial nucleus coordinates breathing and pain,” says the paper’s senior author, Sung Han, assistant professor in Salk’s Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology. “By understanding the circuits in this brain region, we may be able to tease apart breathing regulation and pain regulation to develop a medication that inhibits feelings of pain without repressing breathing, like OIRD.”

In OIRD, opioids repress breathing as well as pain; it is the major cause of death from opioids. In previous work,Han’s lab showed that opiates like morphine repress breathing by triggering specific receptors, called mu opioid receptors (MOR), leading to the inhibition of neurons that express them. They also showed that reactivating the cells that express MOR can reverse OIRD. The current work suggests additional approaches for preventing OIRD, possibly by inhibiting neurons in the region’s core (blunting fear/anxiety) while exciting similar neurons in the shell (supporting breathing).

To show how these neurons coordinate breathing with pain and emotions, the researchers first used light and chemical agents to prove that manipulating the MOR-expressing neurons in the lateral parabrachial nucleus alters breathing rate in mice. They then used fluorescent tracers to map the inputs and outputs to the MOR-expressing neurons. Their results indicated that neurons clustered in the core of the region project to the central amygdala, while neurons clustered in the surrounding shell project to the pre-Bötzinger complex. Electrophysiological recordings of one population while stimulating the other population revealed that some of those subpopulations are reciprocally connected, with an excitatory network between them. Via this network, signals of fear and pain were coordinated with breathing rhythms.

“We have found very intricate circuits involving upstream and downstream input to these neurons. By uncovering this circuit mechanism, we can better explain why breathing can often be coordinated with pain and anxiety,” says first author Shijia Liu, a graduate student in Han’s lab.

Han is eager to see the team’s discovery have a translational application. “The biggest problem these days is that opioids reduce pain but also reduce breathing, so people die,” says Han, holder of the Pioneer Fund Development Chair. “By understanding those two mechanisms in our research, maybe we can manipulate certain populations of neurons by pharmacological intervention so that we can control pain without changing the breathing.”

Han’s group is currently working on genetic analyses of the core and shell population to identify functional markers that specifically regulate pain or breathing.

Other authors on the study are Mao Ye, Gerald M. Pao, Jinho Jhang, Jonghyun Kim, Sukjae Joshua Kang, Dong-Il Kim of Salk; and Samuel Myeongsup Song and Haibei Jiang of the University of California San Diego.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Brain Research Foundation, the Mary K. Chapman Foundation, the Jesse & Caryl Philips Foundation, the National Institutes of Health-National Cancer Institute and the Waitt Foundation.

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