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Category Archives: Mind Building
Immune genes are altered in Alzheimer’s patients’ blood
A new Northwestern Medicine study has found the immune system in the blood of Alzheimer’s patients is epigenetically altered. That means the patients’ behavior or environment has caused changes that affect the way their genes work.
Many of these altered immune genes are the same ones that increase an individual’s risk for Alzheimer’s. Northwestern scientists theorize the cause could be a previous viral infection, environmental pollutants or other lifestyle factors and behaviors.
“It is possible that these findings implicate the peripheral immune response in Alzheimer’s disease risk,” said lead investigator David Gate, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We haven’t yet untangled whether these changes are reflective of brain pathology or whether they precipitate the disease.”
The study was published Feb. 9 in Neuron.
Previous research showed that many of the mutated genes putting a person at higher risk for Alzheimer’s are in the immune system. But scientists primarily studied the central immune system in the brain because Alzheimer’s is a brain disease. They have largely ignored the immune system in the blood, also known as the peripheral immune system.
Gate decided to study the blood. He and colleagues discovered every immune cell type in Alzheimer’s patients has epigenetic changes, indicated by open chromatin. Chromatin is the packaging of the DNA within cells. When chromatin is open — or exposed — the cells’ genome is vulnerable to alterations.
Then, Gate examined which genes are more open in these immune cells. He discovered that a receptor — CXCR3 — on the T cells was more exposed. Gate believes CXCR3 functions like an antenna on T cells that allows the cells to enter the brain. T cells do not normally enter the brain because they can cause inflammation.
“The brain is emitting a signal that it is damaged, and the T cells are homing to that signal by their antenna, CXCR3,” Gate said.
“T cells can be very toxic in the brain, but we also don’t know if these cells might be attempting to repair the damage in the brain,” Gate said.
Gate also discovered epigenetic changes in inflammatory proteins in white blood cells called monocytes.
“Altogether, these findings indicate that immune function in Alzheimer’s patients is significantly altered,” Gate said. “It could be that environmental factors, like pollutants, or infections that a person has in their lifetime cause these epigenetic changes.”
The findings revealed several genes that may be therapeutic targets for manipulating the peripheral immune system. Next steps in the research are preclinical studies using in vitro culture systems and animal models to test these targets.
Other Northwestern authors include Abhirami Ramakrishnan, Natalie Piehl, Brooke Simonton, Milan Parikh, Ziyang Zhang, Victoria Teregulova and Lynn van Olst.
The title of the article is “Epigenetic dysregulation in Alzheimer’s disease peripheral immunity.”
The research is supported by National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grant NS112458 and National Institute on Aging grant AG078713, both of the National Institutes of Health, Bright Focus Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association and Cure Alzheimer’s Fund.
Surprisingly vibrant color of 12-million-year-old snail shells
Snail shells are often colourful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on the other hand, are usually pale and inconspicuous because the pigments are very sensitive and have already decomposed. Residues of ancient colour patterns are therefore very rare. This makes this new discovery by researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW) all the more astonishing: they found pigments in twelve-million-year-old fossilised snail shells. These are the world’s first pigments from the chemical group of polyenes that have been preserved almost unchanged and found in fossils. The study was published in the journal Palaeontology.
Palaeontologists from the NHMW found snail shells of the superfamily Cerithioidea in Burgenland, Austria. The snails lived there twelve million years ago on the shores of a tropical sea. Professor Mathias Harzhauser at NHMW, who was involved in the discovery, explains: “It was unclear whether the patterns of reddish colour were from the original shell or were formed by later processes in the sediment.” Researchers at Göttingen University’s Geoscience Center solved the mystery. They analysed the pigments using Raman spectroscopy. This involves irradiating samples with laser light. The scattered light reflected from the sample can be used to clearly identify chemical compounds. They detected pigments in the fossilised shells that belong to the polyene group of chemicals. These are organic compounds that include the well-known “carotenoids,” which are responsible for producing the vibrant red, orange and yellow colours seen in birds’ feathers, carrots and egg yolks, for instance.
Dr Klaus Wolkenstein, who led the study and has been researching the chemistry of fossil pigments at Göttingen University for many years, explains: “Normally, after such a long period of time, the best we can hope for is that there are traces of degradation products of these chemicals. If degraded, however, these compounds would be devoid of colour. So, it was really surprising to discover these pigments, preserved almost intact, in fossils that are twelve million years old.”
How electron spectroscopy measures exciton ‘holes’
Semiconductors are ubiquitous in modern technology, working to either enable or prevent the flow of electricity. In order to understand the potential of two-dimensional semiconductors for future computer and photovoltaic technologies, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen, Marburg and Cambridge investigated the bond that builds between the electrons and holes contained in these materials. By using a special method to break up the bond between electrons and holes, they were able to gain a microscopic insight into charge transfer processes across a semiconductor interface. The results were published in Science Advances.
When light shines on a semiconductor, its energy is absorbed. As a result, negatively charged electrons and positively charged holes combine in the semiconductor to form pairs, known as excitons. In the most modern two-dimensional semiconductors, these excitons have an extraordinarily high binding energy. In their study, the researchers set themselves the challenge of investigating the hole of the exciton. As physicist and first author Jan Philipp Bange from the University of Göttingen explains: “In our laboratory, we use photoemission spectroscopy to investigate how the absorption of light in quantum materials leads to charge transfer processes. So far, we have concentrated on the electrons that are part of the electron-hole pair, which we can measure using an electron analyser. Up to now, we didn’t have any way to directly access the holes themselves. So, we were interested in the question of how we could characterise not just the electron of the exciton but also its hole.”
To answer this question, the researchers, led by Dr Marcel Reutzel and Professor Stefan Mathias at Göttingen University’s Faculty of Physics, used a special microscope for photoelectrons in combination with a high-intensity laser. In the process, the breaking up of an exciton leads to a loss of energy in the electron measured in the experiment. Reutzel explains: “This energy loss is characteristic for different excitons, depending on the environment in which the electron and the hole interact with each other.” In the current study, the researchers used a structure consisting of two different atomically thin semiconductors to show that the hole of the exciton transfers from one semiconductor layer to the other, similar to a solar cell. Professor Ermin Malic’s team at the University of Marburg was able to explain this charge transfer process with a model to describe what happens at a microscopic level.
Mathias summarises: “In the future, we want to use the spectroscopic signature of the interaction between electrons and holes to study novel phases in quantum materials at ultrashort time and length scales. Such studies can be the basis for the development of new technologies and we hope to contribute to this in the future.”
This research benefited from the German Research Foundation (DFG) funding for the Collaborative Research Centres “Atomic scale control of energy conversion” and “Mathematics of Experiment” in Göttingen and “Structure and Dynamics of Internal Interfaces” in Marburg.
An ultrasound sticker senses changing stiffness of deep internal organs
MIT engineers have developed a small ultrasound sticker that can monitor the stiffness of organs deep inside the body. The sticker, about the size of a postage stamp, can be worn on the skin and is designed to pick up on signs of disease, such as liver and kidney failure and the progression of solid tumors.
In an open-access study that will appear in Science Advances, the team reports that the sensor can send sound waves through the skin and into the body, where the waves reflect off internal organs and back out to the sticker. The pattern of the reflected waves can be read as a signature of organ rigidity, which the sticker can measure and track.
“When some organs undergo disease, they can stiffen over time,” says the senior author of the paper, Xuanhe Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “With this wearable sticker, we can continuously monitor changes in rigidity over long periods of time, which is crucially important for early diagnosis of internal organ failure.”
The team has demonstrated that the sticker can continuously monitor the stiffness of organs over 48 hours and detect subtle changes that could signal the progression of disease. In preliminary experiments, the researchers found that the sticky sensor can detect early signs of acute liver failure in rats.
The engineers are working to adapt the design for use in humans. They envision that the sticker could be used in intensive care units (ICUs), where the low-profile sensors could continuously monitor patients who are recovering from organ transplants.
“We imagine that, just after a liver or kidney transplant, we could adhere this sticker to a patient and observe how the rigidity of the organ changes over days,” lead author Hsiao-Chuan Liu says. “If there is any early diagnosis of acute liver failure, doctors can immediately take action instead of waiting until the condition becomes severe.” Liu was a visiting scientist at MIT at the time of the study and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Southern California.
The study’s MIT co-authors include Xiaoyu Chen and Chonghe Wang, along with collaborators at USC.
Sensing wobbles
Like our muscles, the tissues and organs in our body stiffen as we age. With certain diseases, stiffening organs can become more pronounced, signaling a potentially precipitous health decline. Clinicians currently have ways to measure the stiffness of organs such as the kidneys and liver using ultrasound elastography — a technique similar to ultrasound imaging, in which a technician manipulates a handheld probe or wand over the skin. The probe sends sound waves through the body, which cause internal organs to vibrate slightly and send waves out in return. The probe senses an organ’s induced vibrations, and the pattern of the vibrations can be translated into how wobbly or stiff the organ must be.
Ultrasound elastography is typically used in the ICU to monitor patients who have recently undergone an organ transplant. Technicians periodically check in on a patient shortly after surgery to quickly probe the new organ and look for signs of stiffening and potential acute failure or rejection.
“After organ transplantation, the first 72 hours is most crucial in the ICU,” says another senior author, Qifa Zhou, a professor at USC. “With traditional ultrasound, you need to hold a probe to the body. But you can’t do this continuously over the long term. Doctors might miss a crucial moment and realize too late that the organ is failing.”
The team realized that they might be able to provide a more continuous, wearable alternative. Their solution expands on an ultrasound sticker they previously developed to image deep tissues and organs.
“Our imaging sticker picked up on longitudinal waves, whereas this time we wanted to pick up shear waves, which will tell you the rigidity of the organ,” Zhao explains.
Existing ultrasound elastrography probes measure shear waves, or an organ’s vibration in response to sonic impulses. The faster a shear wave travels in the organ, the stiffer the organ is interpreted to be. (Think of the bounce-back of a water balloon compared to a soccer ball.)
The team looked to miniaturize ultrasound elastography to fit on a stamp-sized sticker. They also aimed to retain the same sensitivity of commercial hand-held probes, which typically incorporate about 128 piezoelectric transducers, each of which transforms an incoming electric field into outgoing sound waves.
“We used advanced fabrication techniques to cut small transducers from high-quality piezoelectric materials that allowed us to design miniaturized ultrasound stickers,” Zhou says.
The researchers precisely fabricated 128 miniature transducers that they incorporated onto a 25-millimeter-square chip.They lined the chip’s underside with an adhesive made from hydrogel — a sticky and stretchy material that is a mixture of water and polymer, which allows sound waves to travel into and out of the device almost without loss.
In preliminary experiments, the team tested the stiffness-sensing sticker in rats. They found that the stickers were able to take continuous measurements of liver stiffness over 48 hours. From the sticker’s collected data, the researchers observed clear and early signs of acute liver failure, which they later confirmed with tissue samples.
“Once liver goes into failure, the organ will increase in rigidity by multiple times,” Liu notes.
“You can go from a healthy liver as wobbly as a soft-boiled egg, to a diseased liver that is more like a hard-boiled egg,” Zhao adds. “And this sticker can pick up on those differences deep inside the body and provide an alert when organ failure occurs.”
The team is working with clinicians to adapt the sticker for use in patients recovering from organ transplants in the ICU. In that scenario, they don’t anticipate much change to the sticker’s current design, as it can be stuck to a patient’s skin, and any sound waves that it sends and receives can be delivered and collected by electronics that connect to the sticker, similar to electrodes and EKG machines in a doctor’s office.
The researchers are also hoping to work the sticker into a more portable, self-enclosed version, where all its accompanying electronics and processing is miniaturized to fit into a slightly larger patch. Then, they envision that the sticker could be worn by patients at home, to continuously monitor conditions over longer periods, such as the progression of solid tumors, which are known to harden with severity.
“We believe this is a life-saving technology platform,” Zhao says. “In the future, we think that people can adhere a few stickers to their body to measure many vital signals, and image and track the health of major organs in the body.”
This work was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health.
The ‘snowball’ fight over global deep freeze periods
A Yale-led research team has picked a side in the “Snowball Earth” debate over the possible cause of planet-wide deep freeze events that occurred in the distant past.
According to a new study, these so-called “Snowball” Earth periods, in which the planet’s surface was covered in ice for thousands or even millions of years, could have been triggered abruptly by large asteroids that slammed into the Earth.
The findings, detailed in the journal Science Advances, may answer a question that has stumped scientists for decades about some of the most dramatic known climate shifts in Earth’s history. In addition to Yale, the study included researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Vienna.
Climate modelers have known since the 1960s that if the Earth became sufficiently cold, the high reflectivity of its snow and ice could create a “runaway” feedback loop that would create more sea ice and colder temperatures until the planet was covered in ice. Such conditions occurred at least twice during Earth’s Neoproterozoic era, 720 to 635 million years ago.
Yet efforts to explain what initiated these periods of global glaciation, which have come to be known as “Snowball Earth” events, have been inconclusive. Most theories have centered on the notion that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere somehow declined to a point where “snowballing” began.
“We decided to explore an alternative possibility,” said lead author Minmin Fu, the Richard Foster Flint Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “What if an extraterrestrial impact caused this climate change transition very abruptly?”
For the study, the researchers used a sophisticated climate model that represents atmospheric and ocean circulation, as well as the formation of sea ice, under different conditions. It is the same type of climate model that is used to predict future climate scenarios.
In this instance, the researchers applied their model to the aftermath of a hypothetical asteroid strike in four distinct periods of the past: preindustrial (150 years ago), Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago), Cretaceous (145 to 66 million years ago), and Neoproterozoic (1 billion to 542 million years ago).
For two of the warmer climate scenarios (Cretaceous and preindustrial), the researchers found that it was unlikely that an asteroid strike could trigger global glaciation. But for the Last Glacial Maximum and Neoproterozoic scenarios, when the Earth’s temperature may have been already cold enough to be considered an ice age — an asteroid strike could have tipped Earth into a “Snowball” state.
“What surprised me most in our results is that, given sufficiently cold initial climate conditions, a ‘Snowball’ state after an asteroid impact can develop over the global ocean in a matter of just one decade,” said co-author Alexey Fedorov, a professor of ocean and atmospheric sciences in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “By then the thickness of sea ice at the Equator would reach about 10 meters. This should be compared to a typical sea ice thickness of one to three meters in the modern Arctic.”
As for the chances of an asteroid-induced “Snowball Earth” period in the years to come, the researchers said it was unlikely — due in part to human-caused warming that has heated the planet — even though other impacts could be as devastating.
The research was supported by the Flint Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale and the ARCHANGE project. Co-authors of the study are Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago and Christian Koeberl of the University of Vienna.
Sensors made from ‘frozen smoke’ can detect toxic formaldehyde in homes and offices
Researchers have developed a sensor made from ‘frozen smoke’ that uses artificial intelligence techniques to detect formaldehyde in real time at concentrations as low as eight parts per billion, far beyond the sensitivity of most indoor air quality sensors.
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed sensors made from highly porous materials known as aerogels. By precisely engineering the shape of the holes in the aerogels, the sensors were able to detect the fingerprint of formaldehyde, a common indoor air pollutant, at room temperature.
The proof-of-concept sensors, which require minimal power, could be adapted to detect a wide range of hazardous gases, and could also be miniaturised for wearable and healthcare applications. The results are reported in the journal Science Advances.
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a major source of indoor air pollution, causing watery eyes, burning in the eyes and throat, and difficulty breathing at elevated levels. High concentrations can trigger attacks in people with asthma, and prolonged exposure may cause certain cancers.
Formaldehyde is a common VOC and is emitted by household items including pressed wood products (such as MDF), wallpapers and paints, and some synthetic fabrics. For the most part, the levels of formaldehyde emitted by these items are low, but levels can build up over time, especially in garages where paints and other formaldehyde-emitting products are more likely to be stored.
According to a 2019 report from the campaign group Clean Air Day, a fifth of households in the UK showed notable concentrations of formaldehyde, with 13% of residences surpassing the recommended limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“VOCs such as formaldehyde can lead to serious health problems with prolonged exposure even at low concentrations, but current sensors don’t have the sensitivity or selectivity to distinguish between VOCs that have different impacts on health,” said Professor Tawfique Hasan from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, who led the research.
“We wanted to develop a sensor that is small and doesn’t use much power, but can selectively detect formaldehyde at low concentrations,” said Zhuo Chen, the paper’s first author.
The researchers based their sensors on aerogels: ultra-light materials sometimes referred to as ‘liquid smoke’, since they are more than 99% air by volume. The open structure of aerogels allows gases to easily move in and out. By precisely engineering the shape, or morphology, of the holes, the aerogels can act as highly effective sensors.
Working with colleagues at Warwick University, the Cambridge researchers optimised the composition and structure of the aerogels to increase their sensitivity to formaldehyde, making them into filaments about three times the width of a human hair. The researchers 3D printed lines of a paste made from graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon, and then freeze-dried the graphene paste to form the holes in the final aerogel structure. The aerogels also incorporate tiny semiconductors known as quantum dots.
The sensors they developed were able to detect formaldehyde at concentrations as low as eight parts per billion, which is 0.4 percent of the level deemed safe in UK workplaces. The sensors also work at room temperature, consuming very low power.
“Traditional gas sensors need to be heated up, but because of the way we’ve engineered the materials, our sensors work incredibly well at room temperature, so they use between 10 and 100 times less power than other sensors,” said Chen.
To improve selectivity, the researchers then incorporated machine learning algorithms into the sensors. The algorithms were trained to detect the ‘fingerprint’ of different gases, so that the sensor was able to distinguish the fingerprint of formaldehyde from other VOCs.
“Existing VOC detectors are blunt instruments — you only get one number for the overall concentration in the air,” said Hasan. “By building a sensor that is able to detect specific VOCs at very low concentrations in real time, it can give home and business owners a more accurate picture of air quality and any potential health risks.”
The researchers say that the same technique could be used to develop sensors to detect other VOCs. In theory, a device the size of a standard household carbon monoxide detector could incorporate multiple different sensors within it, providing real-time information about a range of different hazardous gases. The team at Warwick are developing a low-cost multi-sensor platform that will incorporate these new aerogel materials and, coupled with AI algorithms, detect different VOCs.
“By using highly porous materials as the sensing element, we’re opening up whole new ways of detecting hazardous materials in our environment,” said Chen.
The research was supported in part by the Henry Royce Institute, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Tawfique Hasan is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.
‘There is no right or wrong way to have alopecia’
Gail Porter has shown people that bald is beautiful – but she can wear wigs too, says campaigner.
Language barriers could contribute to higher aggression in people with dementia
Immigrants living with dementia were more likely to present with agitation and aggression compared with their non-immigrant counterparts, a new study by Edith Cowan University (ECU) in collaboration with The Dementia Centre, HammondCare, found.
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.”
Conversion process turns greenhouse gas into ethylene
Engineers at the University of Cincinnati created a more efficient way of converting carbon dioxide into valuable products while simultaneously addressing climate change.
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.”
