Researchers from ECU’s Centre for Research in Aged Care and HammondCare’s The Dementia Centre noted that behaviours and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), such as agitation and aggression, are common; however, its presentation may be influenced by the cultural background of the person.

A study investigated differences in clinical and demographics characteristics and BPSD between immigrants and non-immigrants living with dementia in residential aged care homes who were referred to Dementia Support Australia (DSA) programs. The study found that immigrants were more likely to present with agitation or aggression, while non-immigrants were more likely to present with hallucinations and delusions.

DSA, a free, Australian Government-funded dementia behaviour support program, has supported over 60,000 clients and 98 percent of aged care homes in every state and territory since 2016.

BPSD were common between the groups, with language barriers and cultural considerations frequently observed for immigrants, adding to the contributing factors.

“In Australia, over 400,000 people are living with dementia, a number projected to double by 2058, At least 54% of people living in residential aged care homes (RACHs) in 2019 — 2020 had a dementia diagnosis,” said lead researcher Pelden Chejor.

“Over 31% of aged care residents were also born overseas, and 9.2% of people using aged care preferred a language other than English. In 2019 — 2020, 21% of people living with dementia in RACHs were immigrants from non-English speaking countries. International studies have reported that immigrants experience a higher prevalence of dementia due to differing life experiences including those related to trauma, low literacy, and socioeconomic status.”

Chejor and his colleagues noted that loneliness, boredom, language barriers, and cultural considerations significantly contributed to BPSD for non-English-speaking immigrants compared with non-immigrants, with the largest significant differences being for language barriers and cultural considerations. There were no differences in the prevalence of contributing factors between English-speaking immigrants and non-immigrants.

“Our findings indicated a significantly lower rate of hallucinations for immigrants and non-English-speaking immigrants compared to non-immigrants. Additionally, non-English-speaking immigrants were significantly lower on delusions and disinhibition than non-immigrants.

“The higher severity of agitation or aggression is likely driven by communication difficulties as there was no difference for the English-speaking immigrants. Cognitive decline can impair both the ability to express and comprehend spoken language and people living with dementia who have English as their additional language may lose their ability to communicate in English and subsequently use their first language as the primary language of communication,” said Chejor.

“Our study calls for increased awareness and education on the impact of culture and language for people receiving residential care and exhibiting BPSD. Future research should explore related factors such as length of stay in Australia and English language proficiency to learn more about BPSD presentations for different immigrant groups. By doing so, we can better manage these symptoms.”

Head of DSA Marie Alford said the study reinforced the importance of understanding the person living with dementia, including their cultural background and experiences, likes, dislikes and routines when responding to BPSD.

“Communicating effectively with the person living with dementia, and taking the time to know them, including their language background and culture, is essential,” Alford said. “In many cases this can mean responding with support without the need for a pharmacological intervention.”

In his chemical engineering lab in UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, Associate Professor Jingjie Wu and his team found that a modified copper catalyst improves the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide into ethylene, the key ingredient in plastic and a myriad of other uses.

Ethylene has been called “the world’s most important chemical.” It is certainly among the most commonly produced chemicals, used in everything from textiles to antifreeze to vinyl. The chemical industry generated 225 million metric tons of ethylene in 2022.

Wu said the process holds promise for one day producing ethylene through green energy instead of fossil fuels. It has the added benefit of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

“Ethylene is a pivotal platform chemical globally, but the conventional steam-cracking process for its production emits substantial carbon dioxide,” Wu said. “By utilizing carbon dioxide as a feedstock rather than depending on fossil fuels, we can effectively recycle carbon dioxide.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering.

Wu’s students, including lead author and UC graduate Zhengyuan Li, collaborated with Rice University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University and Arizona State University. Li received a prestigious graduate student award last year from the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

The electrocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide produces two primary carbon products, ethylene and ethanol. Researchers found that using a modified copper catalyst produced more ethylene.

“Our research offers essential insights into the divergence between ethylene and ethanol during electrochemical CO2 reduction and proposes a viable approach to directing selectivity toward ethylene,” lead author Li said.

“This leads to an impressive 50% increase in ethylene selectivity,” Wu said. “Ideally, the goal is to produce a single product rather than multiple ones.”

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Its Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office is leading efforts to reduce fossil fuels and carbon emissions in industry wherever possible.

Li said the next step is refining the process to make it more commercially viable. The conversion system loses efficiency as byproducts of the reaction such as potassium hydroxide begin forming on the copper catalyst.

“The electrode stability must be improved for commercial deployment. Our next focus is to enhance stability and extend its operation from 1,000 to 100,000 hours,” Li said.

Wu said these new technologies will help make the chemical industry greener and more energy efficient.

“The overarching objective is to decarbonize chemical production by utilizing renewable electricity and sustainable feedstock,” Wu said. “Electrifying the conversion of carbon dioxide to ethylene marks a significant stride in decarbonizing the chemical sector.”

However, storing and transporting H₂ safely and efficiently remains a challenge. Compressed gaseous hydrogen poses a significant risk of explosion and leakage, whereas liquid hydrogen must be maintained at extremely low temperatures, which is costly. But what if we could store hydrogen directly in the molecular composition of other liquid or solid materials?

This was the focus of a team of scientists from Japan, who, in a recent study published in the journal Small, investigated the potential of hydrogen boride (HB) sheets as practical hydrogen carriers. Storing hydrogen in HB sheets is not an entirely new concept, and many aspects of their potential applications as hydrogen carriers have already been studied. However, getting the hydrogen out of the sheets is the tricky part. Heating at high temperatures or strong ultraviolet (UV) illumination is required to release hydrogen (H₂) from HB sheets. However, both approaches have inherent disadvantages, such as high energy consumption or incomplete H₂ release.

Thus, the team delved into a potential alternative: electrochemical release. Based on the mechanism of UV-induced H₂ release from HB sheets, the team speculated that electron injection from a cathode electrode into HB nanosheets by an electric power supply could be a superior way to release H₂ compared to UV irradiation or heating.

Based on this theory, the researchers dispersed HB sheets into acetonitrile — an organic solvent — and applied a controlled voltage to the dispersion. These experiments revealed that nearly all of the electrons injected into the electrochemical system were used to convert H⁺ ions from the HB sheets into H₂ molecules. Notably, the Faradaic efficiency of this process, which measures how much electrical energy is converted into chemical energy, was over 90%.

The team also conducted isotope tracing experiments to confirm that the electrochemically released H₂ originated from the HB sheets and not through some other chemical reaction. Moreover, they also employed scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to characterize the sheets before and after H₂ release, yielding further insights into the underlying mechanisms of the process.

These findings contribute to the development of safe and lightweight hydrogen carriers with low energy consumption. Although the team studied the dispersed form of the HB sheets in the published paper, the current findings are applicable to film or bulk-based HB sheet systems for H₂ release. Moreover, the team will investigate the rechargeability of HB sheets after dehydrogenation in a future study.

With any luck, this line of research will help pave the way to cleaner energy sources and more sustainable societies!

As many real-world quantum sensing devices are emerging, one promising direction is the use of microscopic defects inside diamonds to create “qubits” that can be used for quantum sensing. Qubits are the building blocks of quantum devices.

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a technique that enables them to identify and control a greater number of these microscopic defects. This could help them build a larger system of qubits that can perform quantum sensing with greater sensitivity.

Their method builds off a central defect inside a diamond, known as a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, which scientists can detect and excite using laser light and then control with microwave pulses. This new approach uses a specific protocol of microwave pulses to identify and extend that control to additional defects that can’t be seen with a laser, which are called dark spins.

The researchers seek to control larger numbers of dark spins by locating them through a network of connected spins. Starting from this central NV spin, the researchers build this chain by coupling the NV spin to a nearby dark spin, and then use this dark spin as a probe to find and control a more distant spin which can’t be sensed by the NV directly. The process can be repeated on these more distant spins to control longer chains.

“One lesson I learned from this work is that searching in the dark may be quite discouraging when you don’t see results, but we were able to take this risk. It is possible, with some courage, to search in places that people haven’t looked before and find potentially more advantageous qubits,” says Alex Ungar, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and a member of the Quantum Engineering Group at MIT, who is lead author of a paper on this technique, which is published today in PRX Quantum.

His co-authors include his advisor and corresponding author, Paola Cappellaro, the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and professor of physics; as well as Alexandre Cooper, a senior research scientist at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing; and Won Kyu Calvin Sun, a former researcher in Cappellaro’s group who is now a postdoc at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Diamond defects

To create NV centers, scientists implant nitrogen into a sample of diamond.

But introducing nitrogen into the diamond creates other types of atomic defects in the surrounding environment. Some of these defects, including the NV center, can host what are known as electronic spins, which originate from the valence electrons around the site of the defect. Valence electrons are those in the outermost shell of an atom. A defect’s interaction with an external magnetic field can be used to form a qubit.

Researchers can harness these electronic spins from neighboring defects to create more qubits around a single NV center. This larger collection of qubits is known as a quantum register. Having a larger quantum register boosts the performance of a quantum sensor.

Some of these electronic spin defects are connected to the NV center through magnetic interaction. In past work, researchers used this interaction to identify and control nearby spins. However, this approach is limited because the NV center is only stable for a short amount of time, a principle called coherence. It can only be used to control the few spins that can be reached within this coherence limit.

In this new paper, the researchers use an electronic spin defect that is near the NV center as a probe to find and control an additional spin, creating a chain of three qubits.

They use a technique known as spin echo double resonance (SEDOR), which involves a series of microwave pulses that decouple an NV center from all electronic spins that are interacting with it. Then, they selectively apply another microwave pulse to pair the NV center with one nearby spin.

Unlike the NV, these neighboring dark spins can’t be excited, or polarized, with laser light. This polarization is a required step to control them with microwaves.

Once the researchers find and characterize a first-layer spin, they can transfer the NV’s polarization to this first-layer spin through the magnetic interaction by applying microwaves to both spins simultaneously. Then once the first-layer spin is polarized, they repeat the SEDOR process on the first-layer spin, using it as a probe to identify a second-layer spin that is interacting with it.

Controlling a chain of dark spins

This repeated SEDOR process allows the researchers to detect and characterize a new, distinct defect located outside the coherence limit of the NV center. To control this more distant spin, they carefully apply a specific series of microwave pulses that enable them to transfer the polarization from the NV center along the chain to this second-layer spin.

“This is setting the stage for building larger quantum registers to higher-layer spins or longer spin chains, and also showing that we can find these new defects that weren’t discovered before by scaling up this technique,” Ungar says.

To control a spin, the microwave pulses must be very close to the resonance frequency of that spin. Tiny drifts in the experimental setup, due to temperature or vibrations, can throw off the microwave pulses.

The researchers were able to optimize their protocol for sending precise microwave pulses, which enabled them to effectively identify and control second-layer spins, Ungar says.

“We are searching for something in the unknown, but at the same time, the environment might not be stable, so you don’t know if what you are finding is just noise. Once you start seeing promising things, you can put all your best effort in that one direction. But before you arrive there, it is a leap of faith,” Cappellaro says.

While they were able to effectively demonstrate a three-spin chain, the researchers estimate they could scale their method to a fifth layer using their current protocol, which could provide access to hundreds of potential qubits. With further optimization, they may be able to scale up to more than 10 layers.

In the future, they plan to continue enhancing their technique to efficiently characterize and probe other electronic spins in the environment and explore different types of defects that could be used to form qubits.

This research is supported, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

The researchers, whose results were published Feb. 8 in Science, discovered that during the transition from lung adenocarcinoma to small cell lung cancer (SCLC), the mutated cells appeared to undergo a change in cell identity through an intermediate, stem cell-like state, which facilitated the transformation.

“It is very difficult to study this process in human patients. So my aim was to uncover the mechanism underlying the transformation of lung adenocarcinoma to small cell lung cancer in a mouse model,” said study lead Dr. Eric Gardner, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Harold Varmus, the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine and a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. The complex mouse model took several years to develop and characterize but has allowed the researchers to crack this difficult problem.

This study was in collaboration with Dr. Ashley Laughney, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics and a member of the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and Ethan Earlie, a graduate student in the Laughney lab and part of the Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine program.

“It is well known that cancer cells continue to evolve, especially to escape the pressure of effective treatments,” said Dr. Varmus. “This study shows how new technologies — including the detection of molecular features of single cancer cells, combined with computer-based analysis of the data — can portray dramatic, complex events in the evolution of lethal cancers, exposing new targets for therapeutic attack.”

Catching Transformation in the Act

SCLC most commonly occurs in heavy smokers, but this type of tumor also develops in a significant number of patients with lung adenocarcinomas, particularly after treatment with therapies that target a protein called Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR), which promotes tumor growth. The new SCLC-type tumors are resistant to anti-EGFR therapy because their growth is fueled by a new cancer driver, high levels of Myc protein.

To unravel the interplay of these cancer pathways, the researchers engineered mice to develop a common form of lung adenocarcinoma, in which lung epithelial cells are driven by a mutated version of the EGFR gene. They then turned the adenocarcinoma tumors into SCLC-type tumors, which generally arise from neuroendocrine cells. They did this by shutting off EGFR in the presence of several other changes including losses of the tumor suppressor genes Rb1 and Trp53 as well as turning up the production of Myc,a known driver of SCLC.

Oncogenes, such as EGFR and Myc, are mutated forms of genes that normally control cell growth. They are known for their roles in driving the growth and spread of cancer. Tumor suppressor genes, on the other hand, normally inhibit cell proliferation and tumor development.

Context Matters

Surprisingly, this study showed that oncogenes act in a context-dependent manner. While most lung cells are resistant to becoming cancerous by Myc, neuroendocrine cells, are very sensitive to the oncogenic effects of Myc. Conversely, epithelial cells, which line the air sacs of the lungs and are the precursors to lung adenocarcinomas, grow excessively in response to mutated EGFR.

“This shows that an ‘oncogene’ in the wrong cell type doesn’t act like an oncogene anymore,” Dr. Laughney said. “So, it fundamentally changes how we think about oncogenes.”

The researchers also discovered a stem cell-like intermediate that was neither adenocarcinoma nor SCLC. Cells in this transitional state became neuroendocrine in nature only when mutations in the tumor suppressor genes RB1 and TP53 were present. They observed that loss of another tumor suppressor called Pten accelerated this process. At that stage, oncogenic Myc could drive these intermediate stem-like cells to form SCLC-type tumors.

This study further supports efforts seeking therapeutics that target Myc proteins, which are implicated in many types of cancers. The researchers now plan to use their new mouse model to further explore the adenocarcinoma-SCLC transition, detailing, for example, how the immune system normally responds to this transition.

A new study published in Science suggests that closing the knowledge gap between what treatments health care providers think patients want and what treatments patients really want could help save half a million lives a year and reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics.

“Even when children seek care from a health care provider for their diarrhea, as most do, they often do not receive ORS, which costs only a few cents and has been recommended by the World Health Organization for decades,” said Neeraj Sood, senior author of the study, senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and a professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy.

“This issue has puzzled experts for decades, and we wanted to get to the bottom of it,” said Sood, who also holds joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Marshall School of Business.

A closer look at childhood illness in India

There are several popular explanations for the underprescription of ORS in India, which accounts for the most cases of child diarrhea of any country in the world:

• Physicians assume their patients do not want oral rehydration salts, which come in a small packet and dissolve in water, because they taste bad or they aren’t “real” medicine like antibiotics.
• The salts are out of stock because they aren’t as profitable as other treatments.
• Physicians make more money prescribing antibiotics, even though they are ineffective against viral diarrhea.

To test these three hypotheses, Sood and his colleagues enrolled over 2,000 health care providers across 253 medium-size towns in the Indian states of Karnataka and Bihar. The researchers selected states with vastly different socioeconomic demographics and varied access to health care to ensure the results were representative of a broad population. Bihar is one of the poorest states in India with below-average ORS use, while Karnataka has above-average per capita income and above-average ORS use.

The researchers then hired staff who were trained to act as patients or caretakers. These “standardized patients” were given scripts to use in unannounced visits to doctors’ offices where they would present a case of viral diarrhea — for which antibiotics are not appropriate — in their 2-year-old child. (For ethical considerations, children did not attend these visits.) The standardized patients made approximately 2,000 visits in total.

Providers were randomly assigned to patient visits where patients expressed a preference for ORS, a preference for antibiotics or no treatment preference. During the visits, patients indicated their preference by showing the health care provider a photo of an ORS packet or antibiotics. The set of patients with no treatment preference simply asked the physician for a recommendation.

To control for profit-motivated prescribing, some of the standardized patients assigned as having no treatment preference informed the provider that they would purchase medicine elsewhere. Additionally, to estimate the effect of stockouts, the researchers randomly assigned all providers in half of the 253 towns to receive a six-week supply of ORS.

Provider misperceptions matter most when it comes to ORS underprescribing

Researchers found that provider perceptions of patient preferences are the biggest barrier to ORS prescribing — not because caretakers do not want ORS, but rather because providers assume most patients do not want the treatment. Health care providers’ perception that patients do not want ORS accounted for roughly 42% of underprescribing, while stockouts and financial incentives explained only 6% and 5%, respectively.

Patients expressing a preference for ORS increased prescribing of the treatment by 27 percentage points — a more effective intervention than eliminating stockouts (which increased ORS prescribing by 7 percentage points) or removing financial incentives (which only increased ORS prescribing at pharmacies).

“Despite decades of widespread knowledge that ORS is a lifesaving intervention that can save lives of children suffering from diarrhea, the rates of ORS use remain stubbornly low in many countries such as India,” said Manoj Mohanan, co-author of the study and professor of public policy, economics, and global health at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. “Changing provider behavior about ORS prescription remains a huge challenge.”

Study authors said these results can be used to design interventions that encourage patients and caretakers to express an ORS preference when seeking care, as well as efforts to raise awareness among providers about patients’ preferences.

“We need to find ways to change providers’ perceptions of patient preferences to increase ORS use and combat antibiotic resistance, which is a huge problem globally,” said Zachary Wagner, the study’s corresponding author, an economist at RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School. “How to reduce overprescribing of antibiotics and address antimicrobial resistance is a major global health question, and our study shows that changing provider perceptions of patient preferences is one way to work toward a solution.”

This research was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (Grant 5R01DK126049).

The findings from a large survey study, co-authored by Kyle Hull, Kevin Smith and Clarisse Warren, demonstrate the willingness of people to bend their morals — even behave unethically — when engaging in the political realm.

Results also suggest that hostility toward outgroups (i.e., opposing party) is the driving factor for the moral ambiguity exercised when respondents switch from the personal to the political arena.

And there is not just one guilty party.

“People, regardless of age or ideology, were more willing to engage in immoral behaviors and judgments if the behaviors were in the political realm,” said Hull, a visiting assistant professor in political science. “And a lot of it was just driven by genuine internal dislike of the ‘other’ side.”

The researchers developed a survey and engaged four different samples of adults, totaling 2,472 respondents. The survey included nonpolitical and political moral behavior scales and political and nonpolitical moral tolerance scales.

“Basically, we were taking the same person and asking them virtually the same questions,” said Smith, Leland J. and Dorothy H. Olson Professor of Political Science. “The only difference in the items is we changed ‘person’ to ‘politician.’ And that was enough to shift people’s moral judgment. It changes in a way that induces more flexibility in our moral assessments.”

That includes assessments of politicians’ bad behavior, as the co-authors found people are more morally tolerant of politicians they liked, similar to the behavior they were willing to tolerate from a friend.

In an increasingly polarized — and often toxic — political environment, the researchers said the results highlight the harm of outrage politics.

“I think there’s some reason for concern,” Hull said. “As long as there is some internalized dislike of the outgroup, there’s certainly a risk of behaviors that may be involved when people are willing to act less morally. Politics makes us do things that we just normally wouldn’t do and tolerate things we wouldn’t normally tolerate. It brings out, sometimes, the worst in us.

“The way some politicians and media speak about the other party fuels that fire in a way. The more we engage in pitting one party or the other as the bad guys, and the more you feel that way, the more you are willing to set your morals aside.”

The research builds on Smith’s work exploring how political engagement and ideology drive moral values and choices, not the other way around.

“If that’s true, then people will probably be using different standards for moral behavior or moral choices in their personal lives than they are in the political world,” Smith said. “And that’s what we found. It’s not like politics makes bastards of the left or the right, or the young or the old, or the rich or the poor. Politics seems to make bastards of us all.”

By feeding worms with plastics and cultivating microbes found in their guts, researchers from NTU’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) have demonstrated a new method to accelerate plastic biodegradation.

Previous studies have shown that Zophobas atratus worms — the larvae of the darkling beetle commonly sold as pet food and known as ‘superworms’ for their nutritional value — can survive on a diet of plastic because its gut contains bacteria capable of breaking down common types of plastic. However, their use in plastics processing has been impractical due to the slow rate of feeding and worm maintenance.

NTU scientists have now demonstrated a way to overcome these challenges by isolating the worm’s gut bacteria and using them to do the job without the need for large scale worm breeding.

NTU Associate Professor Cao Bin at the School of CEE and Principal Investigator at SCELSE said, “A single worm can only consume about a couple of milligrams of plastic in its lifetime, so imagine the number of worms that would be needed if we were to rely on them to process our plastic waste. Our method eliminates this need by removing the worm from the equation. We focus on boosting the useful microbes in the worm gut and building an artificial ‘worm gut’ that can efficiently break down plastics.”

The study, published in Environment International in January, is aligned with the University’s commitment to fostering innovation and translating research into practical solutions that benefit society under its NTU2025 five-year strategic plan.

Developing an artificial worm gut

To develop their method, the NTU scientists fed three groups of superworms different plastic diets — High-density polyethylene (HDPE), Polypropylene (PP) and Polystyrene (PS) — over 30 days. The control group was fed a diet of oatmeal.

The NTU scientists selected the plastics as they are among the most common plastics in the world, used in everyday items like food boxes and detergent bottles. HDPE is a type of plastic known for its high-impact resistance, making it difficult to break down.

After feeding the worms plastic, scientists extracted the microbiomes from their gut and incubated them in flasks containing synthetic nutrients and different types of plastics, forming an artificial ‘worm gut’. Over six weeks, the microbiomes were left to grow in the flasks at room temperature.

Increase in plastic-degrading bacteria

The scientists found that compared to the control group, the flasks which contained the gut microbiomes from the plastic-fed worms showed a significant increase in plastic-degrading bacteria.

Furthermore, the microbial communities colonising the plastics in the flasks were simpler and more tailored to the specific type of plastic than the microbes found on plastics that had been fed directly to the worms . When the microbial communities are simpler and targeted to a specific type of plastic, this translates to potential for more efficient plastic degradation when used in real-life applications.

First author of the study Dr Liu Yinan, Research Fellow at the School of CEE and SCELSE, said, “Our study represents the first reported successful attempt to develop plastic-associated bacterial communities from gut microbiomes of plastic-fed worms. Through exposing the gut microbiomes to specific conditions, we were able to boost the abundance of plastic-degrading bacteria present in our artificial ‘worm gut,’ suggesting that our method is stable and replicable at scale.”

The researchers say their proof-of-concept lays the foundation for developing biotechnological approaches that use worms’ gut microbiomes to process plastic waste.

For their next steps, the researchers want to understand how the bacteria in the superworm’s gut break down the plastics at the molecular level. Understanding the mechanism will help scientists engineer plastic-degrading bacterial communities to break down plastics efficiently in the future.