The sewage and wastewater that are inevitably produced at any industrial worksite often contain large quantities of pollutants and environmental hormones (endocrine disruptors). Because environmental hormones do not break down easily, they can have a significant negative effect on not only the environment but also the human body. To prevent this, a means of removing environmental hormones is required.

The performance of the catalyst that is currently being used to process sewage and wastewater drops significantly with time. Because high efficiency is difficult to achieve given the conditions, the biggest disadvantage of the existing process is the high cost involved. Furthermore, the research done thus far has mostly focused on the development of single-substance catalysts and the enhancement of their performance. Little research has been done on the development of eco-friendly nanocomposite catalysts that are capable of removing environmental hormones from sewage and wastewater.

The KIST research team, led by Dr. Jae-woo Choi and Dr. Kyung-won Jung, utilized biochar, which is eco-friendly and made from agricultural byproducts, to develop a wastewater treatment process that effectively removes pollutants and environmental hormones. The team used rice hulls, which are discarded during rice harvesting, to create a biochar** that is both eco-friendly and economical. The surface of the biochar was coated with nano-sized manganese dioxide to create a nanocomposite. The high efficiency and low cost of the biochar-nanocomposite catalyst is based on the combination of the advantages of the biochar and manganese dioxide.

The KIST team used the hydrothermal method, which is a type of mineral synthesis that uses high heat and pressure, when synthesizing the nanocomposite in order to create a catalyst that is highly active, easily replicable, and stable. It was confirmed that giving the catalyst a three-dimensional stratified structure resulted in the high effectiveness of the advanced oxidation process (AOP), due to the large surface area created.

When used under the same conditions in which the existing catalyst can remove only 80 percent of Bisphenol A (BPA), an environmental hormone, the catalyst developed by the KIST team removed over 95 percent in less than one hour. In particular, when combined with ultrasound (20kHz), it was confirmed that all traces of BPA were completely removed in less than 20 minutes. Even after many repeated tests, the BPA removal rate remained consistently at around 93 percent.

Dr. Kyung-won Jung of KIST’s Water Cycle Research Center said, “The catalyst developed through this study makes use of a common agricultural byproduct. Therefore, we expect that additional research on alternative substances will lead to the development of catalysts derived from various types of organic waste biomass.” Dr. Jae-woo Choi, also of KIST’s Water Cycle Research Center, said, “We have high hopes that future studies aimed at achieving process optimization and increasing removal rates will allow for the development an environmental hormone removal system that is both eco-friendly and low-cost.”

**Biochar: a term that collectively refers to substances that can be created through the thermal decomposition of diverse types of biomass or wood under oxygen-limited conditions

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Materials provided by National Research Council of Science & Technology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In research published in Nature Communications, a group of scientists led by USF Distinguished University Professor Tim Dixon, PhD, uncovered a process that can control the “calving” of glaciers — when large chunks of glacier ice collapse into the sea, forming icebergs like the one that sank the Titanic. The discovery by the team that included USF PhD student Surui Xie; David Holland, PhD, and Irena Vaková, PhD, at New York University (NYU) and NYU-Abu Dhabi Research Institute; and Denis Voytenko, PhD, formerly at NYU and now at Nielson Communications, will help the scientific community better model future Greenland ice loss and sea level rise.

Glacier calving is one of the more dramatic aspects of climate change. Depending on the height of the glacier, calving can be akin to an ice structure the size of a tall skyscraper falling into the sea. Dixon’s team caught one such calving on video.

“Iceberg calving has been challenging to model,” Dixon said. “One of the big unknowns in future sea level rise is how fast Greenland falls apart, and iceberg calving is one of the least understood mechanisms.”

The team ventured to Greenland in the summer of 2016 to install a new radar system to better understand the process. In particular, they wanted to monitor formations known as pro-glacial “mélange” (from the French word for mixture), a combination of sea ice and icebergs in front of the glacier. The mélange can be tightly packed in the long, narrow fjords that front many of Greenland’s glaciers that meet the sea.

Scientists have long known that mélange can impede glaciers as they move toward the sea, but they haven’t had the data to fully understand the phenomenon.

Dixon’s team developed a new radar-based approach to precisely measure elevations of the mélange in front of Jakobshavn Glacier , a major outlet glacier on Greenland’s west side. Using analytical techniques developed by Xie, the scientists measured the height of the mélange. The scientists found a thick mélange wedge pressed up against the glacier in late spring and early summer.

During this period, no icebergs calved, the scientists observed. Once the wedge thinned and melted by mid-summer, calving began in earnest.

“On the surface, this mélange is a subtle thing — it appears almost flat- but underwater, there are huge variations,” Dixon said. “It’s really the underwater part that is pinning the glacier back and preventing it from calving. By precisely measuring the surface elevations, we were able to get a handle on the much bigger sub-surface variations, which define mélange thickness.”

Earlier this spring, NASA scientists reported Jakobshavn Glacier, which has been Greenland’s fastest -thinning glacier for the last 20 years, was slowing in its movement toward the ocean in what appears to be a cyclical pattern of warming and cooling. But because Jakobshavn is still giving up more ice than it accumulates each year, its sheer size makes it an important factor in sea level rise, the NASA scientists maintain.

“Our study helps understand the calving process,” Dixon said. “We are the first to discover that mélange isn’t just some random pile of icebergs in front of the glacier. A mélange wedge can occasionally ‘hold the door’ and keep the glacier from calving.”

While this acute burst of light does make it more difficult to fall back to sleep, a new Northwestern University study reports that it won’t interfere with the body’s overall circadian rhythms.

For the first time, researchers directly tested how short pulses of light are processed by the brain to affect sleep. They discovered that separate areas of the brain are responsible for short pulses versus long-term exposure to light. This finding challenges the widely accepted, long-held belief that all light information is relayed through the brain’s suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which synchronizes the body’s sleep/wake cycles.

“Prior to the widespread use of electricity, our exposure to light and darkness occurred in a very predictable pattern,” said Northwestern’s Tiffany Schmidt, who led the study. “But light has become very cheap. We all have smartphones, and their screens are very bright. We’re all getting exposed to light at the wrong times of day. It’s becoming more important to understand how these different types of light information are relayed to the brain.”

The paper will publish July 23 in the journal eLife. Schmidt is an assistant professor of neurobiology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. The study was carried out in collaboration with the laboratories of Fred Turek, the Charles and Emma Morrison Professor of Neurobiology in Weinberg, and Samer Hattar, section leader at the National Institute of Mental Health.

After light enters the eye, specialized neurons called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) carry the light information to the brain. Before Northwestern’s study, researchers widely believed that all light information went through the SCN, a densely packed area in the hypothalamus known as the body’s “circadian pacemaker.”

“Light information comes into the SCN, and that’s what synchronizes all of the body’s clocks to the light/dark cycle,” Schmidt said. “This one master pacemaker makes sure everything is in sync.”

To conduct the study, Schmidt and her team used a genetically modified mouse model that only had ipRGCs projecting to the SCN — but no other brain regions. Because mice are nocturnal, they fall asleep when exposed to light. The mice in the experiment, however, stayed awake when exposed to short pulses of light at night. The mice’s body temperature, which also correlates to sleep, also did not respond to the short-term light.

The mice maintained a normal sleep/wake cycle and normal rhythms in their body temperature, suggesting that their overall circadian rhythms remained intact. This helps explain why one night of restless sleep and smartphone gazing might make a person feel tired the following day but does not have a long-term effect on the body.

“If these two effects — acute and long-term light exposure — were driven through the same pathway, then every minor light exposure would run the risk of completely shifting our body’s circadian rhythms,” Schmidt said.

Now that researchers know that the light-response system follows multiple pathways, Schmidt said more work is needed to map these pathways. For one, it is still unknown what area of the brain is responsible for processing acute light.

After more is known, then researchers might understand how to optimize light exposure to increase alertness in those who need it, such as nurses, shift workers and emergency personnel, while mitigating the harmful effects of a wholesale shift in circadian rhythms.

“Light at the wrong time of day is now recognized as a carcinogen,” Schmidt said. “We want people to feel alert while they are exposed to light without getting the health risks that are associated with shifted circadian rhythms, such as diabetes, depression and even cancer.”

The study, “Distinct ipRGC subpopulations mediate light’s acute and circadian effects on body temperature and sleep,” was supported by the National Institutes of Health (award numbers 1DP2EY027983, GM076430 and EY024452), a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences and a Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience.

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Materials provided by Northwestern University. Original written by Amanda Morris. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

“While osteosarcoma (OS) is rare in children, it is all too common in many dog breeds, which makes it a prime candidate for the kind of comparative cancer biology studies that could enhance drug development for both children and our canine friends,” said Will Hendricks, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor in TGen’s Integrated Cancer Genomics Division, and one of the study’s senior authors.

Using multiple molecular-level testing platforms, TGen and Tufts researchers sequenced the genomes of 59 dogs, finding that canine OS shares many of the genomic features of human OS, including low mutation rates, structural complexity, altered cellular pathways, and unique genetic features of metastatic tumors that spread to other parts of the body.

Study results appeared today in the Nature journal, Communications Biology.

“These findings set the stage for understanding OS development in dogs and humans, and establish genomic contexts for future comparative analyses,” said Cheryl A. London, DVM, Ph.D., the Anne Engen and Dusty Professor in Comparative Oncology at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, and the study’s other senior author.

The study also identified new features of canine OS, including recurrent and potentially cancer-causing mutations in two genes, SETD2 and DMD. The study suggests that these findings merit further exploration.

OS is an aggressive disease and the most commonly-diagnosed primary bone tumor in dogs and children. Though a relatively rare cancer in humans — with fewer than 1,000 cases each year — OS strikes more than 25,000 dogs annually.

Although surgery and chemotherapy can extend survival, about 30 percent of pediatric OS patients die from metastatic tumors within 5 years. The cancer moves much faster in dogs, with more than 90 percent succumbing to metastatic disease within 2 years.

“The genetic similarity between dogs and humans provides a unique opportunity and a comparative model that will enable the development of new therapies within a compressed timeline,” said Heather L. Gardner, DVM, a Ph.D. candidate in Tufts’ Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, and the study’s lead author.

Jeffrey Trent, Ph.D., FACMG, TGen President and Research Director, and a contributing author, said the comparative oncology approach is vital to the rapid development of new treatments for people and pets that need help today.

“Leveraging the similarities between the human and canine forms of OS adds greatly to our understanding of how this aggressive cancer develops and spreads. More importantly, it provides an opportunity to develop therapies that make a difference in the lives of children and pets,” said Dr. Trent, who has been a proponent of comparative oncology for more than a decade.

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Materials provided by The Translational Genomics Research Institute. Original written by Steve Yozwiak. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.