Science

vaporizing-plastics-recycles-them-into-nothing-but-gas

Vaporizing plastics recycles them into nothing but gas

chemistry, plastics, recycling, Science, Sustainability / /

Breakdown —

Polypropylene and polyethylene can be broken down simultaneously.

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A man stands next to piles of compressed plastic bottles.

Our planet is choking on plastics. Some of the worst offenders, which can take decades to degrade in landfills, are polypropylene—which is used for things such as food packaging and bumpers—and polyethylene, found in plastic bags, bottles, toys, and even mulch.

Polypropylene and polyethylene can be recycled, but the process can be difficult and often produces large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane. They are both polyolefins, which are the products of polymerizing ethylene and propylene, raw materials that are mainly derived from fossil fuels. The bonds of polyolefins are also notoriously hard to break.

Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have come up with a method of recycling these polymers that uses catalysts that easily break their bonds, converting them into propylene and isobutylene, which are gasses at room temperature. Those gasses can then be recycled into new plastics.

“Because polypropylene and polyethylene are among the most difficult and expensive plastics to separate from each other in a mixed waste stream, it is crucial that [a recycling] process apply to both polyolefins,” the research team said in a study recently published in Science.

Breaking it down

The recycling process the team used is known as isomerizing ethenolysis, which relies on a catalyst to break down olefin polymer chains into their small molecules. Polyethylene and polypropylene bonds are highly resistant to chemical reactions because both of these polyolefins have long chains of single carbon-carbon bonds. Most polymers have at least one carbon-carbon double bond, which is much easier to break.

While isomerizing ethenolysis had been tried by the same researchers before, the previous catalysts were expensive metals that did not remain pure long enough to convert all of the plastic into gas. Using sodium on alumina followed by tungsten oxide on silica proved much more economical and effective, even though the high temperatures required for the reaction added a bit to the cost

In both plastics, exposure to sodium on alumina broke each polymer chain into shorter polymer chains and created breakable carbon-carbon double bonds at the ends. The chains continued to break over and over. Both then underwent a second process known as olefin metathesis. They were exposed to a stream of ethylene gas flowing into a reaction chamber while being introduced to tungsten oxide on silica, which resulted in the breakage of the carbon-carbon bonds.

The reaction breaks all the carbon-carbon bonds in polyethylene and polypropylene, with the carbon atoms released during the breaking of these bonds ending up attached to molecules of ethylene.“The ethylene is critical to this reaction, as it is a co-reactant,” researcher R.J. Conk, one of the authors of the study, told Ars Technica. “The broken links then react with ethylene, which removes the links from the chain. Without ethylene, the reaction cannot occur.”

The entire chain is catalyzed until polyethylene is fully converted to propylene, and polypropylene is converted to a mixture of propylene and isobutylene.

This method has high selectivity—meaning it produces a large amount of the desired product. That means propylene derived from polyethylene, and both propylene and isobutylene derived from polypropylene. Both of these chemicals are in high demand, since propylene is an important raw material for the chemical industry, while isobutylene is a frequently used monomer in many different polymers, including synthetic rubber and a gasoline additive.

Mixing it up

Because plastics are often mixed at recycling centers, the researchers wanted to see what would happen if polypropylene and polyethylene underwent isomerizing ethenolysis together. The reaction was successful, converting the mixture into propylene and isobutylene, with slightly more propylene than isobutylene.

Mixtures also typically include contaminants in the form of additional plastics. So the team also wanted to see whether the reaction would still work if there were contaminants. So they experimented with plastic objects that would otherwise be thrown away, including a centrifuge and a bread bag, both of which contained traces of other polymers besides polypropylene and polyethylene. The reaction yielded only slightly less propylene and isobutylene than it did with unadulterated versions of the polyolefins.

Another test involved introducing different plastics, such as PET and PVC, to polypropylene and polyethylene to see if that would make a difference. These did lower the yield significantly. If this approach is going to be successful, then all but the slightest traces of contaminants will have to be removed from polypropylene and polyethylene products before they are recycled.

While this recycling method sounds like it could prevent tons upon tons of waste, it will need to be scaled up enormously for this to happen. When the research team increased the scale of the experiment, it produced the same yield, which looks promising for the future. Still, we’ll need to build considerable infrastructure before this could make a dent in our plastic waste.

“We hope that the work described…will lead to practical methods for…[producing] new polymers,” the researchers said in the same study. “By doing so, the demand for production of these essential commodity chemicals starting from fossil carbon sources and the associated greenhouse gas emissions could be greatly reduced.”

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adq731

Vaporizing plastics recycles them into nothing but gas Read More »

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NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS—unless Russia gets in the way

human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space / /
This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft.

Enlarge / This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA/Roscosmos

A little more than two years ago, Dmitry Rogozin, the bellicose former head of Russia’s space agency, nearly brought the International Space Station partnership to its knees.

During his tenure as director general of Roscosmos, Rogozin was known for his bombastic social media posts and veiled threats to abandon the space station after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin tersely dismissed Rogozin in July 2022 and replaced him with Yuri Borisov, a former deputy prime minister.

While the clash between Russia and Western governments over the war in Ukraine has not cooled, the threats against the International Space Station (ISS) ended. The program remains one of the few examples of cooperation between the US and Russian governments. Last year, Russia formally extended its commitment to the ISS to at least 2028. NASA and space agencies in Europe, Japan, and Canada have agreed to maintain the space station through 2030.

It’s this two-year disparity that concerns NASA officials plotting the final days of the ISS. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in June to develop a deorbit vehicle based on the company’s Dragon spacecraft to steer the more than 450-ton complex toward a safe reentry over a remote stretch of ocean.

“We do have that uncertainty, 2028 through 2030, with Roscosmos,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS program at NASA Headquarters, in a meeting of the agency’s advisory council this week. “We expect to hear from them over the next year or two as far as their follow-on plans, hoping that they also extend through 2030.”

Fighting through the tension

Roscosmos works in four-year increments, so Russia’s decision last year extended the country’s participation in the space station program from 2024 until 2028. Russian space officials know the future of the country’s space program is directly tied to the ISS. If Russia pulls out of the space station in 2028, Roscosmos will be left without much of a human spaceflight program.

There’s no chance Russia will have its own space station in low-Earth orbit in four years, so abandoning its role on the ISS would leave Russia’s Soyuz crew ferry spacecraft without a destination. Russian and Chinese leaders have fostered closer ties in space in recent years, but China’s Tiangong space station is inaccessible from Russia’s launch sites.

The US and Russian segments of the ISS depend on one another for critical functions. The US section generates most of the space station’s electricity and maintains the lab’s orientation without using precious rocket fuel. Russia is responsible for maintaining the station’s altitude and maneuvering the complex out of the path of space junk, although Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft has also demonstrated an ability to boost the station’s orbit.

While Russia’s space program would feel the pain if Roscosmos made an early exit from the space station, the relationship between Russia and the West is volatile. US and European leaders may soon give Ukraine the green light to use Western-supplied weapons for attacks deep inside Russian territory. Putin said last week that this would be tantamount to war. “This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia,” he said.

NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS—unless Russia gets in the way Read More »

grid-scale-batteries:-they’re-not-just-lithium

Grid-scale batteries: They’re not just lithium

batteries, chemistry, Science / /
A shipping container labeled with a battery symbol, set among wind turbines and solar panels.

As power utilities and industrial companies seek to use more renewable energy, the market for grid-scale batteries is expanding rapidly. Alternatives to lithium-ion technology may provide environmental, labor, and safety benefits. And these new chemistries can work in markets like the electric grid and industrial applications that lithium doesn’t address well.

“I think the market for longer-duration storage is just now emerging,” said Mark Higgins, chief commercial officer and president of North America at Redflow. “We have a lot of… very rapid scale-up in the types of projects that we’re working on and the size of projects that we’re working on. We’ve deployed about 270 projects around the world. Most of them have been small off-grid or remote-grid systems. What we’re seeing today is much more grid-connected types of projects.”

“Demand… seems to be increasing every day,” said Giovanni Damato, president of CMBlu Energy. Media projections of growth in this space are huge. “We’re really excited about the opportunity to… just be able to play in that space and provide as much capacity as possible.”

New industrial markets are also becoming active. Chemical plants, steel plants, and metal processing plants have not been able to deploy renewable energy well so far due to batteries’ fire hazards, said Mukesh Chatter, co-founder and CEO of Alsym Energy. “When you already are generating a lot of heat in these plants and there’s a risk of fire to begin with, you don’t want to deploy any battery that’s flammable.”

Chatter said that the definition of long-duration energy storage is not agreed upon by industry organizations. Still, there are a number of potential contenders developing storage for this market. Here, we’ll look at Redflow, CMBlu Energy, and BASF Stationary Energy Storage.

Zinc-bromine batteries

Redflow has been manufacturing zinc-bromine flow batteries since 2010, Higgins said. These batteries do not require the critical minerals that lithium-ion batteries need, which are sometimes from parts of the world that have unsafe labor practices or geopolitical risks. The minerals for these zinc-bromine batteries are affordable and easy to obtain.

Flow batteries contain liquid or gaseous electrolytes that flow through cells from tanks, according to the International Flow Battery Forum website:

The interconversion of energy between electrical and stored chemical energy takes place in the electrochemical cell. This consists of two half cells separated by a porous or an ion-exchange membrane. The battery can be constructed of low-cost and readily available materials, such as thermoplastics and carbon-based materials. Many parts of the battery can be recycled. Electrolytes can be recovered and reused, leading to low cost of ownership.

Building these can be quite different from other batteries. “I would say that our manufacturing process is much more akin to… an automotive manufacturing process than to [an] electronics manufacturing process… like [a] lithium-ion battery,” Higgins said. “Essentially, it is assembling batteries that are made out of plastic tanks, pumps, fans, [and] tubing. It’s a flow battery, so it’s a liquid that flows through the system that goes through an electrical stack that has cells in it, which is where most of Redflow’s intellectual property resides. The rest of the battery is all… parts that we can obtain just about anywhere.”

The charging and discharging happen inside an electrical stack. In the stack, zinc is plated onto a carbon surface during the charging process. It is then dissolved into the liquid during the discharging process, Higgins said.

The zinc-bromine electrolyte is derived from an industrial chemical that has been used in the oil and gas sector for a long time, Higgins added.

This battery cannot catch fire, and all of its parts are recyclable, Higgins told Ars. “You don’t have any of the toxic materials that you do in a lithium-ion battery.” The electrolyte liquid can be reused in other batteries. If it’s contaminated, it can be used by the oil and gas industry. If the battery leaks, the contents can be neutralized quickly and are subsequently not hazardous.

“Right now, we manufacture our batteries in Thailand,” Higgins said. “The process and wages are all fair wages and we follow all relevant environmental and labor standards.” The largest sources of bromine come from the Dead Sea or within the United States. The zinc comes from Northern Europe, the United States, or Canada.

The batteries typically use an annual maintenance program to replace components that wear out or fail, something that’s not possible with many other battery types. Higgins estimated that two to four years down the road, this technology will be “completely competitive with lithium-ion” from a cost perspective. Some government grants have helped with the commercialization process.

Grid-scale batteries: They’re not just lithium Read More »

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Human cases of raccoon parasite may be your best excuse to buy a flamethrower

Baylisascaris procyonis, eggs, health, infectious diseases, larvae, parasite, raccoon, roundworm, Science / /

kill it with fire —

The infection is very rare, but it’s definitely one you want to avoid.

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Young raccoon looking out from a tree.

Enlarge / Young raccoon looking out from a tree.

If you were looking for a reason to keep a flamethrower around the house, you may have just found one.

This week, the Los Angeles County health department reported that two people were infected with a raccoon parasite that causes severe, frequently fatal, infections of the eyes, organs, and central nervous system. Those who survive are often left with severe neurological outcomes, including blindness, paralysis, loss of coordination, seizures, cognitive impairments, and brain atrophy.

The parasitic roundworm behind the infection, called Baylisascaris procyonis, spreads via eggs in raccoons feces. Adult worms live in the intestines of the masked trash scavengers, and each female worm can produce nearly 200,000 eggs per day. Once in the environment, those eggs can remain infectious for years. They can survive drying out as well as most chemical treatments and disinfectants, including bleach.

Humans get infected if they inadvertently eat soil or other material that has become contaminated with egg-laden feces. Though infections are rare—there were 29 documented cases between 1973 and 2015—younger children and people with developmental disabilities are most at risk.

For instance, an 18-month-old boy with Downs syndrome in Illinois died from the infection after he chewed and sucked on pieces of contaminated firewood bark. An autopsy later found three worm larvae per gram of his brain tissue, with a total estimated burden of 3,027 parasitic larvae, according to a 2016 report.

Burn it down

In a news release this week, the LA health department said the risk to the general public is “low” but that the two cases are “concerning because a large number of raccoons live near people, and the infection rate in raccoons is likely high. The confirmed cases of this rare infection are an important reminder for all Los Angeles County residents to take precautions to prevent the spread of disease from animals to people, also known as zoonotic disease.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the best prevention methods for raccoon roundworms is to kill it with fire. While chemicals stand little chance of killing off infectious eggs, extreme heat destroys them instantly.

If you have raccoons around your property, you might need to employ this method. Raccoons tend to poop in communal, pungent latrines, which are often at the base of trees, on raised surfaces—such as tree stumps, woodpiles, decks, and patios—as well as in attics and garages.

If you suspect you have an outdoor raccoon latrine on your property, the CDC recommends dousing the area in boiling water or setting it ablaze. While the CDC recommends a propane torch, specifically, a personal flamethrower could also do the trick. The agency does caution that flaming a latrine site “could cause a fire, burn injury, or surface damage.”

“Before flaming any latrine site, call your local fire department for details on local regulations and safety practices,” the CDC says. “Concrete pads, bricks, and metal shovels or garden implements can be flamed without damage. Do not attempt to flame surfaces that can melt or catch fire.”

For indoor latrines, the CDC advises not to use fire. Instead, it outlines a cautious cleaning method with hot, soapy water. However, if you want, any removed feces or contaminated material can be flamed outside, if not buried or put in the trash.

Human cases of raccoon parasite may be your best excuse to buy a flamethrower Read More »

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One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon

artemis, intuitive machines, Science, Space, Uncategorized / /

Talking to the Moon —

“This has really been a transformational year for us.”

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The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Enlarge / The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Intuitive Machines

One of the miracles of the Apollo Moon landings is that they were televised, live, for all the world to see. This transparency diffused doubts about whether the lunar landings really happened and were watched by billions of people.

However, as remarkable a technical achievement as it was to broadcast from the Moon in 1969, the video was grainy and black and white. As NASA contemplates a return to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, it wants much higher resolution video and communications with its astronauts on the lunar surface.

To that end, NASA announced this week that it had awarded a contract to Houston-based Intuitive Machines for “lunar relay services.” Essentially this means Intuitive Machines will be responsible for building a small constellation of satellites around the Moon that will beam data back to Earth from the lunar surface.

“One of the requirements is a 4K data link,” said Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, in an interview. “That kind of high fidelity data only comes from a data relay with a larger antenna than can be delivered to the surface of the Moon.”

About the plan

This is part of NASA’s plan to build a more robust “Near Space Network” for communications within 1 million miles of Earth (the Moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth). Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth as much as $4.82 billion over the next decade, depending on the level of communication services that NASA chooses to purchase.

The space agency is also expected to award a ground-based component of this network for large dishes to receive signals from near space, taking some of this burden off the Deep Space Network. Altemus said Intuitive Machines has also bid on this ground component contract.

The Houston company, with its IM-1 mission, made a largely successful landing on the Moon in February. A second lunar landing mission, IM-2, is scheduled to take place in late December or January, a few months from now. Funded largely by NASA, the IM-2 mission will carry a small drill to the South Pole of the Moon to search for water ice in Shackleton Crater.

Then, approximately 15 months from now, the company is planning to launch another lander, IM-3. This mission is likely to carry the first data-relay satellite—each is intended to be about 500 kg, Altemus said, but the final design of the vehicles is still being finalized—to lunar orbit. Assuming this first satellite works well, the two following IM missions will each carry two relay satellites, making for a constellation of five spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

Two of the satellites will go into polar orbits and serve NASA’s Artemis needs at the South Pole, Altemus said. Two more are likely to go into halo orbits, and a fifth satellite will be placed into an equatorial orbit. This will provide full coverage of the Moon not just for communications, but also for position, navigation, and timing.

Intuitive Machines rising

A former deputy director of Johnson Space Center, Altemus founded Intuitive Machines in 2013 along with an investor, Kam Ghaffarian, and an aerospace engineer named Tim Crain. It hasn’t always been easy. Development of Intuitive Machines’ Nova C lander took years longer than anticipated; there were setbacks such as a propellant tank failure, and money was at times tight.

In part to address these financial difficulties, the company went public in 2023, at the tail end of the mania in which space companies were becoming publicly traded via special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Many space companies that went public this way have struggled mightily, and Intuitive Machines has also faced similar pressures.

“It’s been a challenge,” Altemus said. “We went public in 2023, and navigating that was the story of last year, as well as getting to the launch pad.”

But then good things started happening. Despite some technical troubles, including the failure of its altimeter, the company’s first lander managed a soft touchdown on the Moon on its side. Even with this untinended orientation, the Intuitive Machines-1 mission still managed to complete the vast majority of its science objectives. In August, the company won its fourth task order from NASA—essentially a lunar delivery mission—under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

And then the company won the massive data relay contract this week.

“This has really been a transformational year for us,” Altemus said. “The vision for the company is finally coming together.”

One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon Read More »

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Senate panel votes 20–0 for holding CEO of “health care terrorists” in contempt

contempt, HELP, hospital chain, medicine, Policy, ralph de la torre, Science, steward / /

Not above the law —

After he rejected subpoena, contempt charges against de la Torre go before Senate.

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Ralph de la Torre, founder and chief executive officer of Steward Health Care System LLC, speaks during a summit in New York on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016.

Enlarge / Ralph de la Torre, founder and chief executive officer of Steward Health Care System LLC, speaks during a summit in New York on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016.

A Senate committee on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to hold the wealthy CEO of a failed hospital chain in civil and criminal contempt for rejecting a rare subpoena from the lawmakers.

In July, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) subpoenaed Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre to testify before the lawmakers on the deterioration and eventual bankruptcy of the system, which included more than 30 hospitals across eight states. The resulting dire conditions in the hospitals, described as providing “third-world medicine,” allegedly led to the deaths of at least 15 patients and imperiled more than 2,000 others.

The committee, chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), highlighted that amid the system’s collapse, de la Torre was paid at least $250 million, bought a $40 million yacht, and owned a $15 million luxury fishing boat. Meanwhile, Steward executives jetted around on two private jets collectively worth $95 million.

De la Torre initially agreed to appear at the September 12 hearing but backed out the week beforehand. He claimed, through his lawyers, that a federal order stemming from Steward’s bankruptcy case prohibited him from discussing the hospital system’s situation amid reorganization and settlement efforts. The HELP committee rejected that explanation, but de la Torre was nevertheless a no-show at the hearing.

In a 20–0 bipartisan vote Thursday, the HELP committee held de la Torre in civil and criminal contempt, with only Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) abstaining. It is the first time in modern history the committee has issued civil and criminal contempt resolutions. The charges will now go before the full Senate for a vote.

If upheld by the full Senate, the civil enforcement will direct the Senate’s legal counsel to bring a federal civil suit against de la Torre in order to force him to comply with the subpoena and testify before the HELP Committee. The criminal contempt charge would refer the case to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia to criminally prosecute de la Torre for failing to comply with the subpoena. If the trial proceeds and de la Torre is convicted, the tarnished CEO could face a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison sentence of up to 12 months.

On Wednesday, the day before the committee voted on the contempt charges, a lawyer for de la Torre blasted the senators and claimed that testifying at the hearing would have violated his Fifth Amendment rights, according to the Boston Globe.

In a statement Thursday, Sanders slammed de la Torre, saying that his wealth and expensive lawyers did not make him above the law. “If you defy a Congressional subpoena, you will be held accountable no matter who you are or how well-connected you may be,” he said.

Senate panel votes 20–0 for holding CEO of “health care terrorists” in contempt Read More »

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Homeopathic company refuses to recall life-threatening nasal spray, FDA says

fda, homeopathy, nasal spray, Science, snorestop / /

Dangerous —

Consumers should stop using SnoreStop, FDA says.

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Homeopathic company refuses to recall life-threatening nasal spray, FDA says

The maker of a homeopathic nasal spray with a history of contamination is refusing to recall its product after the Food and Drug Administration once again found evidence of dangerous microbial contamination.

In a warning Thursday, the FDA advised consumers to immediately stop using SnoreStop nasal spray—made by Green Pharmaceuticals—because it may contain microbes that, when sprayed directly into nasal cavities, can cause life-threatening infections. The FDA highlighted the risk to people with compromised immune systems and also children, since SnoreStop is marketed to kids as young as age 5.

According to the regulator, an FDA inspection in April uncovered laboratory test results showing that a batch of SnoreStop contained “significant microbial contamination.” But, instead of discarding the batch, FDA inspectors found evidence that Green Pharmaceuticals had repackaged some of the contaminated lot and distributed it as single spray bottles or as part of a starter kit.

In response, Green Pharmaceuticals destroyed the remainder of the tainted lot and stopped selling the nasal spray on its website. (It is still selling its SnoreStop throat spray, chewable tablets, and pet products, which includes a nasal spray.) But, according to the FDA, it refused to recall products that may contain product from the tainted lot. The agency said it “reiterated its recall recommendation multiple times” in August and September. But, “To date, the company has not taken action to recall this potentially dangerous product from the market.”

Ars has reached out to Green Pharmaceuticals for comment but has not received a response.

Tainted history

SnoreStop.

Enlarge / SnoreStop.

This isn’t new territory for the company. In 2022, Green Pharmaceuticals got warnings from the FDA and issued a recall due to microbial contamination in its SnoreStop nasal spray. In June 2022, the FDA held a conference with the company over findings of bacteria and fungi in the spray. Some of the results suggested high levels of microbial contamination. “The individual sample results varied between 420 and up to 6,200 colony forming units (CFU)/mL for total aerobic microbial count… and between 30 and up to 3,800 CFU/mL for total yeast and mold counts,” the FDA reported in a December 2022 warning letter sent after the fact.

The FDA also noted finding the specific bacterial pathogen Providencia rettgeri, an opportunistic germ that can lurk in health care settings. It’s most often linked to urinary tract infections, but it can also cause pneumonia, brain and spinal cord infections, heart infections, and wound and bloodstream infections in vulnerable people, according to a 2018 review.

“The high bioburden in conjunction with the route of administration with this drug product poses a high risk of harm to vulnerable patients, including children,” the FDA wrote in its warning letter. Green Pharmaceuticals recalled SnoreStop in June 2022, after its meeting with the FDA.

Dangerous dilutions

Aside from the gross microbial contamination, the FDA also noted in its letter that SnoreStop appears to be an unapproved new drug, illegally claiming to treat a disease without FDA approval. SnoreStop is a homeopathic product, meaning it is based on pseudoscience. Homeopaths falsely believe that if substances, including poisons, cause the same symptoms as illnesses, the substance can cure those illnesses (“like cures like”). The reason the products don’t poison users is because homeopaths also believe that diluting substances into oblivion enhances their curative properties (“law of infinitesimals”). Some dilutions are so extreme that not a single molecule of the starting substance is present in homeopathic products. And some homeopaths have argued that water molecules can have a “memory” of the substance, which, they contend, explains how the products work.

SnoreStop is said to contain dilutions of: nux vomica (a natural source of strychnine), belladonna (deadly nightshade), Ephedra vulgaris (a source of the drug ephedrine), hydrastis canadensis (a toxic herb), Kali Bichromicum (potassium dichromate, which is considered toxic and carcinogenic), Teucrium marum (similar to catnip), and Histaminum hydrochloricum (Histamine dihydrochloride).

Consumer advocates have worked for years to try to get homeopathic products off of store shelves, where they’re sometimes sold alongside evidence-based, FDA-approved over-the-counter medicines. While homeopathic products are mostly harmless and ineffective—offering placebo effects at best—they can turn deadly when manufacturers mishandle the dilutions. For instance, in 2016, the FDA linked improperly diluted belladonna in homeopathic teething products to the deaths of 10 infants and the poisonings of more than 400 others.

Homeopathic company refuses to recall life-threatening nasal spray, FDA says Read More »

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A key NASA commercial partner faces severe financial challenges

artemis, axiom space, CLDs, NASA, Science, Space, space station / /

Station struggles —

“The business model had to change.”

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Spacious zero-g quarters with a big TV.

Enlarge / Rendering of an individual crew quarter within the Axiom habitat module.

Axiom Space

Axiom Space is facing significant financial headwinds as the company attempts to deliver on two key commercial programs for NASA—the development of a private space station in low-Earth orbit and spacesuits that could one day be worn by astronauts on the Moon.

Forbes reports that Axiom Space, which was founded by billionaire Kam Ghaffarian and NASA executive Mike Suffredini in 2016, has been struggling to raise money to keep its doors open and has had difficulties meeting its payroll dating back to at least early 2023. In addition, the Houston-based company has fallen behind on payments to key suppliers, including Thales Alenia Space for its space station and SpaceX for crewed launches.

“The lack of fresh capital has exacerbated long-standing financial challenges that have grown alongside Axiom’s payroll, which earlier this year was nearly 1,000 employees,” the publication reports. “Sources familiar with the company’s operations told Forbes that co-founder and CEO Michael Suffredini, who spent 30 years at NASA, ran Axiom like a big government program instead of the resource-constrained startup it really was. His mandate to staff up to 800 workers by the end of 2022 led to mass hiring so detached from product development needs that new engineers often found themselves with nothing to do.”

The report underscores a lot of what Ars has been hearing about the financial struggles of Axiom in recent months. Dozens of employees have been laid off, and Thales officials have made no secret of their discontent at not being paid in full for the production of pressure modules for the Axiom space station. Although the departure of Suffredini as chief executive was framed as being his decision for personal reasons, it seems probable that he moved out of the company for performance reasons.

Space station troubles

All of this raises significant questions about Axiom’s ability to deliver on the primary reason the company was created—to build a successor to the International Space Station. Suffredini joined Ghaffarian in the venture after serving as manager of NASA’s space station program for more than a decade. When they founded the company in 2016, the plan was to launch an initial space station module in 2020.

The timeline for station development has since been delayed multiple times. Presently, Axiom plans to launch its first module to the International Space Station no earlier than late 2026. And the company’s ambitions have been downsized, according to the report. Instead of a four-module station that would be separated from the government-operated space station by 2030, Axiom is likely to go forward with a smaller station consisting of just two elements. This station would have lower power and reduced commercial potential, according to the article.

“The business model had always counted on having significant power for microgravity research, semiconductor production, and pharmaceutical production, plus supporting life in space,” a source told the publication. “The business model had to change… and that has continued to make it challenging for the company to get around its cash flow issues.”

Axiom is one of several companies—alongside Blue Origin, Voyager Space, Vast Space, and potentially SpaceX—working with NASA to devise commercial replacements for the International Space Station after that facility retires in 2030.

NASA plans to issue a “request for proposals” for the second round of commercial space station contracts in 2025 and make an award the following year. Multiple sources have indicated that the space agency would like to award at least two companies in this second phase. However, Ghaffarian told Forbes that he would prefer NASA to decide next year and award a single competitor.

“Today there’s not enough market for more than one,” he said.

This may be true, although some of Axiom’s competitors may dispute it. Nevertheless, Ghaffarian’s desire for an award next year, and for a sole winner, underscores the evident urgency of Axiom’s fundraising needs.

Dragons and spacesuits

The report also notes that Axiom has lost significant amounts of funding on three private astronaut missions it has flown to the International Space Station to date. Ghaffarian said these missions were conducted at a loss to build relationships with global space agencies. This does make some sense, as space agencies in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere are likely to be customers of commercial space stations in the next decade. However, Axiom is ill-positioned to absorb such launches financially.

The publication reveals that Axiom is due to pay $670 million to SpaceX for four Crew Dragon missions, each of which includes a launch and ride for four astronauts to and from the station encompassing a one- to two-week period. This equates to $167.5 million per launch, or $41.9 million per seat.

Axiom’s other major line of business is a $228 million development contract with NASA to develop spacesuits for the Artemis Program, which will allow astronauts to venture outside the Starship lunar lander on the Moon’s surface. According to the Forbes report, this initiative has pulled resources away from the space station program.

Multiple sources have told Ars that, from a financial and technical standpoint, this spacesuit program is on better footing than the station program. And at this point, the spacesuit program is probably the one element of Axiom’s business that NASA views as essential going forward.

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Boar’s Head will never make liverwurst again after outbreak that killed 9

boar's head, CDC, contamination, deli meat, health, listeria, liverwurst, outbreak, Science, USDA / /

Insanitary —

The Jarratt, Virginia, plant is now closed indefinitely.

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A recall notice is posted next to Boar's Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California.

Enlarge / A recall notice is posted next to Boar’s Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California.

The Boar’s Head deli-meat plant at the epicenter of a nationwide Listeria outbreak that killed nine people so far harbored the deadly germ in a common area of the facility deemed “low risk” for Listeria. Further, it had no written plans to prevent cross-contamination of the dangerous bacteria to other products and areas. That’s according to a federal document newly released by Boar’s Head.

On Friday, the company announced that it is indefinitely closing that Jarratt, Virginia-based plant and will never again produce liverwurst—the product that Maryland health investigators first identified as the source of the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes. The finding led to the recall of more than 7 million pounds of Boar’s Head meat. The Jarratt plant, where the company’s liverwurst is made, has been shuttered since late July amid the investigation into how the outbreak occurred.

In the September 13 update, Boar’s Head explained that:

[O]ur investigation has identified the root cause of the contamination as a specific production process that only existed at the Jarratt facility and was used only for liverwurst. With this discovery, we have decided to permanently discontinue liverwurst.

While the statement seems to offer some closure on the outbreak’s source, previously released inspection reports described a facility riddled with sanitation failures. Between August 1, 2023, and August 2, 2024, the facility was cited for 69 violations, which included water leaks, mold in numerous places, algal growth, “meat buildup” caking equipment, and walls that were also crawling with flies and gnats, sightings of other insects, rancid smells, trash and debris on the floors, and even “ample amounts of blood in puddles.”

The New York Times also reported that a 2022 inspection found that the plant posed an “imminent threat” to public health and that inspectors cited “extensive rust, deli meats exposed to wet ceilings, green mold and holes in the walls.”

Cross-contamination

The document newly released by Boar’s Head is a letter dated July 31 from the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service notifying the company that the Jarratt facility was suspended. The basis of the suspension was an inspection finding from July 24 and 25 of L. monocytogenes contaminating a pallet jack in a large room where ready-to-eat meats were processed. The room was a common area not specific to liverwurst processing and was deemed by Boar’s Head to be “low risk” for Listeria.

Meats from eight processing lines were in the room, with lines 1 through 4 on the left side and 5 through 8 on the right, handling hot dogs and other small sausages. The contaminated pallet jack was designated for production line 2, which was handling Beechwood Hams, and was used to move racks of hams from blast coolers to production lines in the processing room.

However, inspectors noted that the pallet jacks and product racks in the room weren’t kept to designated production lines, and instead, employees moved them between all of the lines and all of the blast coolers, enabling cross-contamination. And, while the equipment was moved around, people did, too. Although employees typically stuck to one production line, they would sometimes move between lines, and there were no procedures for employees to change personal protective equipment (PPE)—gloves, disposable aprons, and arm covers—when they switched. Inspectors saw them switching without changing their PPE.

“They also observed employees who freely move between all lines without directly interacting with product such as those removing garbage, removing product debris from the floors, removing condensation from overhead structures, or performing maintenance,” the USDA officials wrote.

Outbreak spread

Given that this was in a room full of meats that were supposedly ready to eat, the USDA concluded that Boar’s Head “failed to maintain sanitary conditions” and that its Listeria control program was “ineffective.”

To date, 57 people from 18 states have been sickened. All 57 were hospitalized, and nine people died. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that health officials have interviewed 44 people sickened during the outbreak, who said they ate various deli-sliced meats. Only 25 reported eating deli-sliced liverwurst.

In light of the outbreak, Boar’s Head said it is revamping its safety and quality assurances at its other facilities and hiring experienced food safety experts. “You have our promise that we will work tirelessly to regain your trust and ensure that all Boar’s Head products consistently meet the high standards that you deserve and expect. We are determined to learn from this experience and emerge stronger.”

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Mice made transparent with a dye used in Doritos

biochemistry, Biology, optics, refractive index, Science, transparency / /

Under the skin —

Matching refractive indexes lets some wavelengths pass cleanly through the skin.

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Zihao Ou, who helped develop this solution, holds a tube of it.

Enlarge / Zihao Ou, who helped develop this solution, holds a tube of it.

One key challenge in medical imaging is to look past skin and other tissue that are opaque to see internal organs and structures. This is the reason we need things like ultrasonography, magnetic resonance, or X-rays. There are chemical clearing agents that can make tissue transparent, like acrylamide or tetrahydrofuran, but they are almost never used in living organisms because they’re either highly toxic or can dissolve away essential biomolecules.

But now, a team of Stanford University scientists has finally found an agent that can reversibly make skin transparent without damaging it. This agent was tartrazine, a popular yellow-orange food dye called FD&C Yellow 5 that is notably used for coloring Doritos.

Playing with light

We can’t see through the skin because it is a complex tissue comprising aqueous-based components such as cell interiors and other fluids, as well as protein and lipids. The refractive index is a value that indicates how much light slows down (on average, of course) while going through a material compared to going through a vacuum. The refractive index of those aqueous components is low, while the refractive index of the proteins and lipids is high. As a result, light traveling through skin constantly bends as it endlessly crosses the boundary between high and low refractive index materials.

This scatters the light—once it penetrates the skin, it never gets back. What we see is just the light that bounces off the skin’s surface. The trick to making things transparent is mostly about making their refractive index uniform, so light, or at least some part of the spectrum, doesn’t bend all the time and doesn’t get scattered. This is exactly where the Doritos dye came in.

“The most surprising part of this study is that we usually expect dye molecules to make things less transparent,” says Guosong Hong, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and senior author of the paper. “For example, if you mix blue pen ink in water, the more ink you add, the less light can pass through the water. However, in our experiment, when we dissolve tartrazine in an opaque material like muscle or skin, which normally scatters light, the more tartrazine we add, the clearer the material becomes. This goes against what we typically expect with dyes.”

Transparency lotion

Hong’s team simply dissolved the dye in an aqueous solution and created a transparency-inducing lotion of sorts. It worked, because the dye reduced the difference in refractive index between water and lipids in the skin. Then the team started massaging it gently into a bit of polymer gel that emulated the light-scattering properties of tissue. From there, they moved to thinly sliced chicken breasts and to live mice.

The “transparency lotion” needed just a few minutes to start working when applied to a mouse’s skin. Massaged into a shaven scalp, it lets the scientists see the cerebral blood vessels with laser speckle contrast imaging, a technique that normally requires removal of the scalp to work. When applied to the mouse’s abdomen, it made all the internal organs, including the liver, bladder, and small intestine, visible to the naked eye. All that was needed to reverse the effect and make the skin opaque again was washing the lotion off with water.

There were some problems, though. One of them was that tartrazine absorbed most light at wavelengths around 257 and 428 nanometers, which let us see shades of violet and blue. On the other hand, it had minimal absorption above 600 nanometers, which meant that the transparent skin tinted everything red. The second issue was the depth of penetration. The lotion worked well only at spots where the skin was thin, and couldn’t penetrate deep enough where the skin was thicker.

Finally, its formulation was not universal. It relied on finding a chemical that could match the refractive index of lipids when dissolved in water, but the exact composition of the lotion was determined through trial and error. If there’s a lot of mouse-to-mouse variation, it might make it hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution.

Tattoos and needles

The problem of penetrating deeper into thick skin was partially solved by making the application a bit more painful. “Using microneedle patch applicators or subcutaneous injections could help deliver the molecules through thicker layers of skin,” Hong explains. The red tint issue, he suggested, might be handled by testing different dyes. “The research in my lab is currently focused on identifying molecules with sharp absorption in the near-ultraviolet region, minimizing spectral tailing into the visible range to ensure tissue transparency without the presence of a red tone,” Hong said.

“This study has only been conducted on animals. However, if the same technique could be applied to humans, it could offer a variety of benefits in biology, diagnostics, and even cosmetics,” Hong suggests. The benefits he is focusing on include evaluating deep-seated tumors without relying on biopsies, making blood tests less stressful by making locating the veins easier, and even things like improved laser tattoo removals by allowing the pigment beneath the skin to be targeted precisely.

But there is some bad news. Even though the FD&C Yellow 5 dye is widely available, replicating Hong’s results at home and making the transparency lotion on your own is not the brightest idea. “We strongly discourage attempting this on the human skin, as the toxicology of dye molecules in humans, particularly when applied topically, has not been fully evaluated,” Hong says.

And, in the end, it might not even work. “The human skin is significantly thicker than mouse skin, with the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the epidermis, serving as a substantial barrier that prevents effective delivery of molecules into the dermis,” Hong explains

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adm6869

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Bizarre, nine-day seismic signal caused by epic landslide in Greenland

climate change, glaciers, Greenland, Science, seismology, syndication / /

Big splash —

Unidentified seismic object resulted in skyscraper-high tsunami.

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Ice calving from a glacier

Earthquake scientists detected an unusual signal on monitoring stations used to detect seismic activity during September 2023. We saw it on sensors everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica.

We were baffled—the signal was unlike any previously recorded. Instead of the frequency-rich rumble typical of earthquakes, this was a monotonous hum, containing only a single vibration frequency. Even more puzzling was that the signal kept going for nine days.

Initially classified as a “USO”—an unidentified seismic object—the source of the signal was eventually traced back to a massive landslide in Greenland’s remote Dickson Fjord. A staggering volume of rock and ice, enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, plunged into the fjord, triggering a 200-meter-high mega-tsunami and a phenomenon known as a seiche: a wave in the icy fjord that continued to slosh back and forth, some 10,000 times over nine days.

To put the tsunami in context, that 200-meter wave was double the height of the tower that houses Big Ben in London and many times higher than anything recorded after massive undersea earthquakes in Indonesia in 2004 (the Boxing Day tsunami) or Japan in 2011 (the tsunami which hit Fukushima nuclear plant). It was perhaps the tallest wave anywhere on Earth since 1980.

Our discovery, now published in the journal Science, relied on collaboration with 66 other scientists from 40 institutions across 15 countries. Much like an air crash investigation, solving this mystery required putting many diverse pieces of evidence together, from a treasure trove of seismic data, to satellite imagery, in-fjord water level monitors, and detailed simulations of how the tsunami wave evolved.

This all highlighted a catastrophic, cascading chain of events, from decades to seconds before the collapse. The landslide traveled down a very steep glacier in a narrow gully before plunging into a narrow, confined fjord. Ultimately, though, it was decades of global heating that had thinned the glacier by several tens of meters, meaning that the mountain towering above it could no longer be held up.

Uncharted waters

But beyond the weirdness of this scientific marvel, this event underscores a deeper and more unsettling truth: climate change is reshaping our planet and our scientific methods in ways we are only beginning to understand.

It is a stark reminder that we are navigating uncharted waters. Just a year ago, the idea that a seiche could persist for nine days would have been dismissed as absurd. Similarly, a century ago, the notion that warming could destabilize slopes in the Arctic, leading to massive landslides and tsunamis happening almost yearly, would have been considered far-fetched. Yet, these once-unthinkable events are now becoming our new reality.

The “once unthinkable” ripples around the world.

As we move deeper into this new era, we can expect to witness more phenomena that defy our previous understanding, simply because our experience does not encompass the extreme conditions we are now encountering. We found a nine-day wave that previously no one could imagine could exist.

Traditionally, discussions about climate change have focused on us looking upwards and outwards to the atmosphere and to the oceans with shifting weather patterns, and rising sea levels. But Dickson Fjord forces us to look downward, to the very crust beneath our feet.

For perhaps the first time, climate change has triggered a seismic event with global implications. The landslide in Greenland sent vibrations through the Earth, shaking the planet and generating seismic waves that traveled all around the globe within an hour of the event. No piece of ground beneath our feet was immune to these vibrations, metaphorically opening up fissures in our understanding of these events.

This will happen again

Although landslide-tsunamis have been recorded before, the one in September 2023 was the first ever seen in east Greenland, an area that had appeared immune to these catastrophic climate change induced events.

This certainly won’t be the last such landslide-megatsunami. As permafrost on steep slopes continues to warm and glaciers continue to thin, we can expect these events to happen more often and on an even bigger scale across the world’s polar and mountainous regions. Recently identified unstable slopes in west Greenland and in Alaska are clear examples of looming disasters.

Landslide-affected slopes around Barry Arm fjord, Alaska. If the slopes suddenly collapse, scientists fear a large tsunami would hit the town of Whittier, 48km away.

Enlarge / Landslide-affected slopes around Barry Arm fjord, Alaska. If the slopes suddenly collapse, scientists fear a large tsunami would hit the town of Whittier, 48km away.

Gabe Wolken/USGS

As we confront these extreme and unexpected events, it is becoming clear that our existing scientific methods and toolkits may need to be fully equipped to deal with them. We had no standard workflow to analyze the 2023 Greenland event. We also must adopt a new mindset because our current understanding is shaped by a now near-extinct, previously stable climate.

As we continue to alter our planet’s climate, we must be prepared for unexpected phenomena that challenge our current understanding and demand new ways of thinking. The ground beneath us is shaking, both literally and figuratively. While the scientific community must adapt and pave the way for informed decisions, it’s up to decision-makers to act.

The authors discuss their findings in more depth.

Stephen Hicks is a Research Fellow in Computational Seismology, UCL and Kristian Svennevig is a Senior Researcher, Department of Mapping and Mineral Resources, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A single peptide helps starfish get rid of a limb when attacked

biochemistry, Biology, muscles, Science, signaling, Starfish / /

You can have it —

A signaling molecule that’s so potent injected animals may drop more than one limb.

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A five-armed starfish, with orange and yellow colors, stretched out across a coral.

For many creatures, having a limb caught in a predator’s mouth is usually a death sentence. Not starfish, though—they can detach the limb and leave the predator something to chew on while they crawl away. But how can they pull this off?

Starfish and some other animals (including lizards and salamanders) are capable of autonomy (shedding a limb when attacked). The biology behind this phenomenon in starfish was largely unknown until now. An international team of researchers led by Maurice Elphick, professor of Animal Physiology and Neuroscience at Queen Mary University of London, have found that a neurohormone released by starfish is largely responsible for detaching limbs that end up in a predator’s jaws.

So how does this neurohormone (specifically a neuropeptide) let the starfish get away? When a starfish is under stress from a predatory attack, this hormone is secreted, stimulating a muscle at the base of the animal’s arm that allows the arm to break off.

The researchers confirmed this neuropeptide “acts as an autotomy-promoting factor in starfish and such it is the first neuropeptide to be identified as a regulator of autotomy in animals,” as they said in a study recently published in Current Biology.

Holding on

Elphick’s team studied how the neuropeptide known as ArSK/CCK1 facilitates autonomy in the European Starfish, Asterias rubens. ArSK/CCK1 is already known to inhibit feeding behavior in A. rubens by causing the stomach to contract, and muscle contraction plays a role in limb loss. The researchers found that its ability to trigger contractions goes beyond feeding.

Starfish underwent an experiment that simulated conditions where a predator’s jaw clamped down on one arm. Clamps were placed on one of three sections on a single arm, either on the end, middle, or at the site in the base where autotomy is known to occur, also known as the autotomy plane. The starfish were then suspended by these clamps above a glass bowl of seawater. During the first part of the experiment, the starfish were left to react naturally, but during the second part, they were injected with ArSK/CCK1.

Without the injection, autotomy was seen mostly in animals that had arms that were clamped closest to the autotomy plane. There was not nearly as much of a reaction from starfish when the arms were clamped in the middle or end.

In the second half of the experiment, the clamping used before was combined with an injection of ArSK/CCK1. For comparison, some were injected with the related neuropeptide ArSK/CCK2. A staggering 85 percent of ArSK/CCK1-injected animals that were clamped in the middle of the arm or closer to the autotomy plane exhibited autonomy, and some autotomized additional arms. This only happened in about 27 percent of those injected with ArSK/CCK2.

Letting go

While ArSK/CCK1 proved to be the most effective chemical trigger for autotomy, its activity in the autotomy plane depends on certain aspects of a starfish’s anatomy.

Like all echinoderms, starfish have endoskeletons built of tiny bones, or ossicles, linked by muscles and collagen fibers that allow the animals to change posture and move. Two exclusive features only found in the autotomy plane allow this structure to break. Under the skin of the autotomy plane, there is a region where bundles of collagen fibers are positioned far apart to make breakage easier. The second of these features is a band of muscle close to the region of collagen bundles. Known as the tourniquet muscle, this muscle is responsible for the constriction that allows an arm in danger to fall off.

Analyzing starfish arm tissue while it was undergoing autotomy gave the scientists a new perspective on this process. Right after a starfish has its arm seized by a predator,  ArSK/CCK1 tells nerves in the tourniquet muscle to start constricting in the region right by the autonomy plane. While this is happening, the collagen in the body wall in that region softens and breaks, and so do the muscles and ligaments that hold together ossicles. It is now thought that ArSK/CCK1 is also involved in the softening of this tissue that prepares it for breakage.

After starfish autotomize a limb, that limb eventually regenerates. The same happens in other animals that can use autotomy to their advantage (such as lizards, which also grow their tails back). In the future, finding out why some animals have the ability to regenerate may tell us why we either never evolved it or some of our ancestors lost the ability. Elphick acknowledged that there might still be other unidentified factors working together with ArSK/CCK1, but further insight could someday give us a clearer picture of this process.

“Autotomy is a key adaptation for survival that has evolved in several animal taxa,” the research team said in the same study, “[and] the findings of this study provide a seminal insight into the neural mechanisms that control this remarkable biological process,”

Current Biology, 2024.  DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.08.003

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