“The more efficiently we burn methane and the less energy we use to burn it, the less greenhouse gas and pollutants it produces. So, anything we can do to get this combustion temperature down is an environmental win,” said Reza Shahbazian-Yassar, professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Shahbazian-Yassar and colleagues facilitated the development of a cutting edge catalyst made up of 10 different elements — each of which on its own has the ability to reduce the combustion temperature of methane — plus oxygen. This unique catalyst can bring the combustion temperature of methane down by about half — from above 1400 degrees Kelvin down to 600 to 700 degrees Kelvin.

Their findings are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.

In previously-published research, Shahbazian-Yassar and colleagues demonstrated the ability to create multi-element nanoparticle catalysts, known as high entropy alloys using a unique shock-wave technique. Before this, materials scientists didn’t make serious attempts to create nanoparticles out of more than three elements because of the tendency of each elements’ atoms to separate from each other and become useless.

Taking advantage of the unique real-time, high-temperature electron microscopy system at UIC, Shahbazian-Yassar’s team showed that high entropy nanoparticles made up of 10 metal oxides were highly stable at temperatures up to 1,073 degrees Kelvin and the individual elements were distributed evenly throughout each nanoparticle forming a single, solid-state stable crystalline structure.

Their metal oxide alloy contained various mixtures of transition metals, which are rare-earth elements, and noble metals plus oxygen.

“It is almost impossible to maintain a perfect mix of these elements in a solid phase due to the differences in atomic radius, crystal structure, oxidation potential, and electronic properties of the elements,” said Zhennan Huang, a Ph.D. student in Shahbazian-Yassar’s lab and co-first author in the paper. “But we were able to show that this is possible.”

“Among multiple alloys with multiple elements that we created, the particles made of 10 elements not only were most effective in reducing the combustion point of methane gas but also the most stable at those temperatures,” said Shahbazian-Yassar, who is a corresponding author on the paper.

The researchers believe the catalyst could be used to reduce the output of harmful greenhouse gases produced by burning natural gas in individual households, to power turbines and even in cars that run on compressed natural gas.

Tangyuan Li, Yonggang Yao, Menghao Yang, Jinglong Gao, Alexandra Brozena, Liangbing Hu, Yifei Mo, Glenn Pastel, Miaolun Jiao, Qi Dong, Jiaqi Dai and Shuke Li of the University of Maryland; Pengfei Xie, Kaizhu Zeng, Han Zong and Chao Wang of Johns Hopkins University; Zhenyu Liu and Guofeng Wang of the University of Pittsburgh; Miaofang Chi of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Jian Luo of the University of California, San Diego, are co-authors on the paper.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Illinois at Chicago. Original written by Sharon Parmet. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

John Johnson, professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State, recently conducted research with several colleagues revealing that an individual’s enjoyment of horror films could have better prepared them for the COVID-19 pandemic as opposed to others who do not enjoy frightening entertainment. Their findings are documented in Personality and Individual Differences.

“My latest research collaboration was unique in that my colleagues wanted to identify factors beyond personality that contributed to people’s psychological preparedness and resilience in the face of the pandemic,” Johnson explained. “After factoring out personality influences, which were actually quite strong, we found that the more movies about zombies, alien invasions and apocalyptic pandemics people had seen prior to COVID-19, the better they dealt with the actual, current pandemic. These kinds of movies apparently serve as mental rehearsal for actual events.

To me, this implicates an even more important message about stories in general — whether in books, movies or plays. Stories are not just entertainment, but preparation for life.”

Johnson said that in what might be considered retirement, his emeritus status has allowed him to continue to be engaged in the research projects of his choosing, while also helping other researchers along the way.

“Now that I am retired, I have all the time in the world and the freedom to choose any kind of research project that I find truly interesting,” said Johnson. “Many of my most recent projects began at the invitation of other researchers who hoped that I could lend my expertise to these projects. Most of these researchers are just beginning their careers, so in a way, I am teaching and mentoring them as well as helping them conduct their research.”

Johnson’s impact on personality research continues to be felt even in retirement, as young researchers and longtime colleagues still reach out to draw on his expertise.

“This study was conceived by a graduate student in human development and biology at the University of Chicago, Coltan Scrivner,” Johnson said. “I had recently reviewed a terrific paper he wrote on morbid curiosity, so I knew who he was. Coltan conducts research on the psychology of horror, and therefore contacted two Danish researchers who were experts on horror, Mathias Clausen and Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, to see if they would collaborate with him. I had previously conducted and published research with Mathias and Jens on what attracts people to horror and villains, so they invited me to the project. We all had input; mine was primarily on how to measure personality, preparedness and resilience, and how to conduct the statistics. Coltan collected the data online, and we quickly wrote up the results and submitted to a journal that was looking for studies on COVID-19. It has been an absolute joy to work with the Danish research team and their colleagues.”

The researchers designed a survey they pilot-tested. They administered the final survey to 310 persons via a website. Thirteen items in the survey assessed positive and negative resilience. A set of six questions covered preparedness for the pandemic.

Participants then indicated the extent to which they were fans of horror, zombie, psychological thriller, supernatural, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic, science fiction, alien-invasion, crime, comedy, and romance genres in movies and television. Next, participants were asked about the past and present experience with and interest in films that were explicitly about pandemics. Other questions appeared in the survey for other projects and as controls.

The results of their collaborated effort may be enough to make many feel justified in staying up late to watch horror films, in spite of what their mothers told them.

“What we found was that people who watched certain kinds of movies before the pandemic seemed to be helped by them during the pandemic,” Johnson said.

Though, for those ready to fire up Netflix and get their horror fix now, they may be late to the party in preparing for the COVID pandemic. But, as Johnson explained, it is never too late to make ready for the next hurdle in life.

“I’m not sure that watching such movies now would be helpful for our current situation,” he said. “However, my understanding of pandemics and other life-challenging events is that similar future challenges are absolutely inevitable. The past is often forgotten too easily. Who remembered the Spanish flu epidemic until scientists brought up that piece of history during COVID-19? This reinforces my belief that consuming stories from books, films and maybe even video games is not just an idle pastime, but a way for us to imagine simulated realities that help prepare us for future challenges.”

Idle pastimes are not something easily understood by an individual with Johnson’s passion, and his continued efforts beyond his teaching days highlight that.

“I think that a lot of people assume that when professors retire with emeritus rank, they spend all of their time traveling, pursuing hobbies, or just relaxing at home,” said Johnson. “Although I have certainly done those things since I retired, I have also continued to conduct research and publish articles, often collaborating with younger researchers who need my expertise in personality measurement.”

Now, researchers at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), in collaboration with oceanographers and marine biologists in Cuba, have identified microbes living within the slimy biofilms of some coral species that may help protect the coral against certain nutrient imbalances.

The team found these microbes can take up and “scrub out” nitrogen from a coral’s surroundings. At low concentrations, nitrogen can be an essential nutrient for corals, providing energy for them to grow. But an overabundance of nitrogen, for instance from the leaching of nitrogen-rich fertilizers into the ocean, can trigger mats of algae to bloom. The algae can outcompete coral for resources, leaving the reefs stressed and bleached of color.

By taking up excess nitrogen, the newly identified microbes may prevent algal competition, thereby serving as tiny protectors of the coral they inhabit. While corals around the world are experiencing widespread stress and bleaching from global warming, it seems that some species have found ways to protect themselves from other, nitrogen-related sources of stress.

“One of the aspects of finding these organisms in association with corals is, there’s a natural way that corals are able to combat anthropogenic influence, at least in terms of nitrogen availability, and that’s a very good thing,” says Andrew Babbin, the Doherty Assistant Professor in Ocean Utilization in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “This could be a very natural way that reefs can protect themselves, at least to some extent.”

Babbin and his colleagues have reported their findings in the the ISME Journal.

Dead zone analogues

Babbin’s group studies how marine communities in the ocean cycle nitrogen, a key element for life. Nitrogen in the ocean can take various forms, such as ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Babbin has been especially interested in studying how nitrogen cycles, or is taken up, in anoxic environments — low-oxygen regions of the ocean, also known as “dead zones,” where fish are rarely found and microbial life can thrive.

“Locations without enough oxygen for fish are where bacteria start doing something different, which is exciting to us,” Babbin says. “For instance, they can start to consume nitrate, which has then an impact on how productive a specific part of the water can be.”

Dead zones are not the only anoxic regions of the ocean where bacteria exhibit nitrogen-feasting behavior. Low-oxygen environments can be found at smaller scales, such as within biofilms, the microbe-rich slime that covers marine surfaces from shipwrecked hulls to coral reefs.

“We have biofilms inside us that allow different anaerobic processes to happen,” Babbin notes. “The same is true of corals, which can generate a ton of mucus, which acts as this retardation barrier for oxygen.”

Despite the fact that corals are close to the surface and within reach of oxygen, Babbin wondered whether coral slime would serve to promote “anoxic pockets,” or concentrated regions of low oxygen, where nitrate-consuming bacteria might thrive.

He broached the idea to WHOI marine microbiologist Amy Apprill, and in 2017, the researchers set off with a science team on a cruise to Cuba, where Apprill had planned a study of corals in the protected national park, Jardines de la Reina, or Gardens of the Queen.

“This protected area is one of the last refuges for healthy Caribbean corals,” Babbin says. “Our hope was to study one of these less impacted areas to get a baseline for what kind of nitrogen cycle dynamics are associated with the corals themselves, which would allow us to understand what an anthropogenic perturbation would do to that system.”

Swabbing for scrubbers

In exploring the reefs, the scientists took small samples from coral species that were abundant in the area. Onboard the ship, they incubated each coral specimen in its own seawater, along with a tracer of nitrogen — a slightly heavier version of the molecules found naturally in seawater.

They brought the samples back to Cambridge and analyzed them with a mass spectrometer to measure how the balance of nitrogen molecules changed over time. Depending on the type of molecule that was consumed or produced in the sample, the researchers could estimate the rate at which nitrogen was reduced and essentially denitrified, or increased through other metabolic processes.

In almost every coral sample, they observed rates of denitrification were higher than most other processes; something on the coral itself was likely taking up the molecule.

The researchers swabbed the surface of each coral and grew the slimy specimens on Petri dishes, which they examined for specific bacteria that are known to metabolize nitrogen. This analysis revealed multiple nitrogen-scrubbing bacteria, which lived in most coral samples.

“Our results would imply that these organisms, living in association with the corals, have a way to clean up the very local environment,” Babbin says. “There are some coral species, like this brain coral Diploria, that exhibit extremely rapid nitrogen cycling and happen to be quite hardy, even through an anthropogenic change, whereas Acropora, which is in rough shape throughout the Caribbean, exhibits very little nitrogen cycling. “

Whether nitrogen-scrubbing microbes directly contribute to a coral’s health is still unclear. The team’s results are the first evidence of such a connection. Going forward, Babbin plans to explore other parts of the ocean, such as the tropical Pacific, to see whether similar microbes exist on other corals, and to what extent the bacteria help to preserve their hosts. His guess is that their role is similar to the microbes in our own systems.

“The more we look at the human microbiome, the more we realize the organisms that are living in association with us do drive our health,” Babbin says. “The exact same thing is true of coral reefs. It’s the coral microbiome that defines the health of the coral system. And what we’re trying to do is reveal just what metabolisms are part of this microbial network within the coral system.”

This research was supported, in part, by MIT Sea Grant, the Simons Foundation, the MIT Montrym, Ferry, and mTerra funds, and by Bruce Heflinger ’69, SM ’71, PhD ’80.

Although the principles of DNA origami are straightforward, the technique’s tools and methods for designing new structures are not always easy to grasp and have not been well documented. In addition, scientists new to the method have had no single reference they could turn to for the most efficient way of building DNA structures and how to avoid pitfalls that could waste months or even years of research.

That’s why Jacob Majikes and Alex Liddle, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who have studied DNA origami for years, have compiled the first detailed tutorial on the technique. Their comprehensive report provides a step-by-step guide to designing DNA origami nanostructures, using state-of-the-art tools. Majikes and Liddle described their work in the Jan .8 issue of the Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“We wanted to take all the tools that people have developed and put them all in one place, and to explain things that you can’t say in a traditional journal article,” said Majikes. “Review papers might tell you everything that everyone’s done, but they don’t tell you how the people did it. “

DNA origami relies on the ability of complementary base pairs of the DNA molecule to bind to each other. Among DNA’s four bases — adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) — A binds with T and G with C. This means that a specific sequence of As, Ts, Cs and Gs will find and bind to its complement.

The binding enables short strands of DNA to act as “staples,” keeping sections of long strands folded or joining separate strands. A typical origami design may require 250 staples. In this way, the DNA can self-assemble into a variety of shapes, forming a nanoscale framework to which an assortment of nanoparticles — many useful in medical treatment, biological research and environmental monitoring — can attach.

The challenges in using DNA origami are twofold, said Majikes. First, researchers are fabricating 3D structures using a foreign language — the base pairs A, G, T and C. In addition, they’re using those base-pair staples to twist and untwist the familiar double helix of DNA molecules so that the strands bend into specific shapes. That can be difficult to design and visualize. Majikes and Liddle urge researchers to strengthen their design intuition by building 3D mock-ups, such as sculptures made with bar magnets, before they start fabrication. These models, which can reveal which aspects of the folding process are critical and which ones are less important, should then be “flattened” into 2D to be compatible with computer-aided design tools for DNA origami, which typically use two-dimensional representations.

DNA folding can be accomplished in a variety of ways, some less efficient than others, noted Majikes. Some strategies, in fact, may be doomed to failure.

“Pointing out things like ‘You could do this, but it’s not a good idea’ — that type of perspective isn’t in a traditional journal article, but because NIST is focused on driving the state of technology in the nation, we’re able to publish this work in the NIST journal,” Majikes said. “I don’t think there’s anywhere else that would have given us the leeway and the time and the person hours to put all this together.”

Liddle and Majikes plan to follow up their work with several additional manuscripts detailing how to successfully fabricate nanoscale devices with DNA.