A new Europe-wide study compiled information on the occurrence of over 75 pathogenic microbes across Europe from almost 400 bird- and 40 bat species. Combining data on occurrence with climatic factors revealed that the occurrence of most pathogens was associated with temperature or rainfall. The study was published in Ecography.
A new Europe-wide study compiled information on the occurrence of over 75 pathogenic microbes across Europe from almost 400 bird- and 40 bat species. Combining data on occurrence with climatic factors revealed that the occurrence of most pathogens was associated with temperature or rainfall. The study was published in Ecography.

« In general, the occurrence of pathogenic bacteria increased in areas with a warm and dry climate. On the other hand, pathogenic viruses prefer moist climate, » says lead author Yanjie Xu from the Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki.
The association between climatic factors and pathogens could be investigated on the 17 pathogen taxa with most data. The observed associations varied.
« Temperature was positively associated with occurrence of avian flu virus, malaria -parasite, and bacteria that cause chlamydia, salmonella, Q-fever and typhus in birds and bats, » explains university lecturer Arto Pulliainen from the University of Turku Institute of Biomedicine.
Rainfall had both positive and negative associations with the occurrence of pathogens. For instance, increasing rainfall increased the probability for the occurrence of Usutu-, Sindbis- and avia flu viruses, as well as that of the occurrence of salmonella bacteria.
« Usutu- and Sindbis- viruses are vectored by mosquitoes, and rainfall can increase the occurrence of wetlands favored by mosquitoes. Similarly, avian flu and salmonella are prevalent particularly in waterfowl, for whom wetlands are also of importance, » says academy research fellow Thomas Lilley from the Finnish Museum of Natural History.
The study, compiling results of over 700 research papers and almost half a million observations, bolsters the notion that climate change can alter the risk of succumbing to infectious diseases. Climate change modifies the distribution ranges of both the pathogens and their hosts, the wild animals. The distribution ranges of birds have already been observed to shift northwards by over a kilometer per year. Climate change also influences the occurrence of pathogens in the environments, for instance in water bodies.
« There is a possibility that for instance thermophilic pathogens become more common in northern Europe as a cause of climate change, » says senior curator Aleksi Lehikoinen from the Finnish Museum of Natural History.

The Japan Trench is located on the « Pacific Ring of Fire, » a region of special interest in earthquake and deep-water research.
The Japan Trench is located on the « Pacific Ring of Fire, » a region of special interest in earthquake and deep-water research.

« It is here that oceanic plates bend, form ultra-deep-water trenches and move below overriding plates in so-called subduction zones, while accumulating long-term global plate tectonic strain, » says Dr. Ken Ikehara from National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, and co-chief scientist of IODP Expedition 386. « This energy is released cataclysmically during so-called megathrust earthquakes, like it happened in 2011 during the devastating Tohoku-oki Earthquake. »
Earthquake-related seafloor deformation and shaking can remobilize large amounts of sediments and fresh organic carbon that is subsequently transferred by gravity flows into the terminal sink of hadal trench basins. In order to study the long-term history of megathrust earthquakes and investigate the roles of earthquakes in the ultra-deep-water environment, the IODP Expedition 386 team has collected and analyzed 58 sediment cores taken from holes cored up to 37.82 meters deep in the sea bed at 15 sites along the 500-km-long trench axis.
« These operational expedition achievements of successful deep-subsurface sampling at water depths between 7,445 and 8,023 m below sea level set two new records in over 50 years of scientific ocean drilling and coring, » says Prof. Michael Strasser from the University of Innsbruck and co-chief scientist of the IODP Expedition 386. « We have cored the deepest water site at a water depth of 8,023 meters and recovered the deepest sub-sea level sample from 8,060.74 meters below sea level. »
Analysis of such unprecedented samples and research led by Prof. Rui Bao at Ocean University of China has found a large amount of labile dissolved carbon stored in the sediment interstitial water. The dissolved carbon storage implies active organic carbon remineralization in the hadal trenches that is much greater than in other deep-water environments of the open ocean. Using advanced radiocarbon techniques, the team discovered aging and accumulation of the dissolved organic and inorganic carbon in the deep subsurface sediments.
« These are exciting results, because these dissolved carbon fractions may have great impacts on the deep carbon cycle as they are buried still deeper into the trench sediments and the subduction zone, » said Mengfan Chu, Ph.D. candidate at Ocean University of China, and lead-author of the study now published in Nature Communications.
A comprehensive geochemistry investigation on the sediment interstitial water based on IODP Expedition 386 results supports the hypothesis. Huge storages of methane are found in sediments along the whole Japan Trench, together with other outstanding geochemical characteristics of the interstitial water.
This points to intensive microbial methanogenesis in the hadal trenches and is interpreted as an enhancement effect of repeated large earthquakes along the subduction zone. Through increasing organic carbon fluxes and regulating the physical and chemical characteristics of the sediment deposits, earthquakes serve as a powerful modulator in the trench carbon cycle and the deep biosphere metabolisms in these extreme environments.
« These discoveries provide strong evidence that the hadal trenches are not ‘tranquil’ deep-sea environments as previously considered. We’re excited to say that more discoveries about the hadal trench carbon cycle are bound to be made in the future. » says Prof. Rui Bao.
« For instance, in our study we also report the occurrence of authigenic carbonates in the deep subsurface of Japan Trench sediments, which suggests active transformation of carbon between its different forms (sedimentary, dissolved, gaseous and mineral) and implies that hadal trench environments host dynamic carbon cycling, which link the Earth’s surface and its deeper interior along subduction zones, providing great opportunities for future studies, » Prof. Bao continues.
The new discoveries of a dynamic carbon cycle in the Japan trench represent the first major scientific achievement resulting from the novel high temporal and high spatial resolution subsurface sampling and investigation of hadal oceanic trench achieved by Expedition 386 in the Japan Trench. Alongside this first scientific IODP-Expedition 386 related publication, the preliminary results of the entire expedition are now released by IODP.
Along with the new perspectives and further potential to advance our understanding of deep-sea elemental cycles and their influence on hadal environments, samples and data from this expedition also reveal fascinating event records ranging back more than 24,000 years. This enables now-ongoing research and new perspectives for the discussion on long-term recurrence and hazards of major megathrust earthquakes.
Thirty-six scientists with expertise in different geoscience disciplines from Austria, Australia, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, and the United States are now conducting further research using the samples acquired by the advanced ocean drilling platform of IODP. More substantial scientific advances are expected to push the frontier of ultra-deep-water, subduction zone and earthquake research.

Agriculture relies on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which is made using energy- and carbon-intensive processes and creates nitrate-containing runoff. Researchers have long sought solutions to reduce emissions from the industry that accounts for 3% of energy consumption each year.
Agriculture relies on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which is made using energy- and carbon-intensive processes and creates nitrate-containing runoff. Researchers have long sought solutions to reduce emissions from the industry that accounts for 3% of energy consumption each year.

A collaboration between two labs at Northwestern University, partnering with the University of Toronto, has found that producing the fertilizer urea using electrified synthesis could both denitrify wastewater while enabling low-carbon-intensity urea production. The process, which includes converting carbon dioxide and waste nitrogen by using a hybrid catalyst made of zinc and copper, could benefit water treatment facilities by reducing their carbon footprint and supplying a potential revenue stream.
The findings are published today in the journal Nature Catalysis.
« It’s estimated that synthetic nitrogen fertilizer supports half of the global population, » said Northwestern professor Ted Sargent, a corresponding author on the paper. « A chief priority of decarbonization efforts is to increase quality of life on Earth, while simultaneously decreasing society’s net CO2 intensity. Figuring out how to use renewable electricity to power chemical processes is a big opportunity on this score. »
Sargent is the co-executive director of the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy (formerly ISEN) and a multidisciplinary researcher in materials chemistry and energy systems, with appointments in the department of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the department of electrical and computer engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering.
In Sargent’s field, many researchers have developed alternate routes to make ammonia, a precursor to many fertilizers, but few have looked at urea, which is a shippable, ready-to-use fertilizer. It represents a $100 billion industry. The team said the research stemmed from asking the question « Can we use waste nitrogen sources, captured CO2, and electricity to create urea? »
Yuting Luo, the paper’s first author, a post-doctoral fellow in the Sargent Group and a Banting Postdoctoral Researcher, said a deep dive into historical references helped identify what would become their « magic » hybrid catalyst. Typically, chemists use alloys or more complicated materials to trigger reactions, limiting them to favor a single reaction step at a time. « It’s quite uncommon to put two catalysts together that cooperate in a relay mode, » Luo said. « The catalyst is the real magic here. »
The team saw references dating back to the 1970s that implied pure metals—like zinc and copper—can be useful in processes involving carbon dioxide and nitrogen conversion.
These preliminary experiments, which the Sargent lab went on to replicate, converted relatively little of the initial ingredients into the desired product (the team found about a 20-30% conversion efficiency to urea).

Creating change within industries requires careful cost-benefit analyses that definitively prove a new production route will ultimately pay off in both energy and cost savings. That’s where chemical engineering professor Jennifer Dunn’s research came in. Chayse Lavallais, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Dunn lab, helped the team conduct a thorough life-cycle analysis, carefully including each energy input and output in a variety of scenarios.
« Using an average U.S. grid, the energy emissions are about the same, » Lavallais said. « But when you go to renewable sources, several factors lower energy emissions, including CO2 sequestration and carbon credits stored in end-use polymers. In a water treatment facility, if it adds emissions or energy, they’re not encouraged to use the technology. We saw this doesn’t impact the daily operational costs significantly, and there’s potential to sell the product. »
They found the conversion efficiency would need to reach 70% to be practical.
The researchers ultimately reached their target starting with a simple mistake. Their hypothesis was solid—a layer of zinc on copper would result in better performance. But initially, they weren’t finding that at all because they were applying the layer of zinc too thick and using a one-to-one ratio of zinc to copper, resulting in the material behaving as if it was only interacting with zinc. At one point, someone added less binder than was typical to the mix and some zinc washed away, and the experiment worked very well. The team then tuned the metals accordingly and determined a ratio of one part zinc to 20 parts copper resulted in optimal performance.
The Sargent group also applied a computational lens to uncover why copper and zinc worked so well together, and why it seemed there needed to be synergy between the two reactions. Because it’s impossible to capture these reactions visually—they happen at the scale of nanoseconds—one must calculate them and determine how electrons move across a reaction.
This process had two distinct sections. First, the carbon must interact with zinc, as a reaction with copper produces a weak reaction. In the second stage, the opposite is true—nitrogen and copper create an efficient reaction, while zinc does very little.
There’s a way to go before the process can be commercialized, the researchers said. Primarily, the reaction as it stands does not account for impurities found in a water treatment context. They also hope to increase the amount of time their process can operate.