Rot A STUDY OF DECAY
Lexie Liu
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LEXIE LIU
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worldatlas.com, sciencedaily.com, thebalancesmb.com
CONTENTS Maggot Magic Mental Sleep Plastic Ocean Bacterial ‘Superbugs’
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LANDFILL MINING Decontamination of landfills and open dumpsites could prove profitable—both financially and for the environment. This is demonstrated by Yahya Jani in a new dissertation in environmental science from Linnaeus University.
In his dissertation, landfill mining is suggested as a tool to achieve an enhanced circular economy model. Viewing the landfill waste as a potential resource instead of as a problem is a common thread in Yahya’s research.
Environmental pollution, health threats and scarcity of raw materials, water, food and energy are some of the greatest challenges our world is facing today. At the same time, landfills and open dumpsites are still the dominant global waste disposal options, despite the fact that the long-term environmental impact in the form of emissions of greenhouse gases and contaminated leachates is significant. However, much of the environmentally hazardous waste that has been dumped at landfills can be recycled as energy or reused as valuable raw materials in different industries according to Yahya Jani, doctor of environmental science and chemical engineering.
“More than 50% of the deposited waste dumped at landfills and open dump sites can be recycled as energy or reused as raw materials. These materials can be used as secondary resources in different industries instead of being forgotten or viewed as garbage,” Jani explains.
A rticle from sciencedaily.com /releases/2018/03/180323090958.htm
His research also includes the extraction of metals from Småland’s art and crystal glass waste and different fine fractions. The results from Jani’s dissertation shed light on the need to view the dumped waste as a secondary resource and landfills and dumpsites as future bank accounts where future raw materials can be extracted instead of viewing them as a burden for human health and the environment.
COVID-19
The virus can be transported in microscopic water droplets, or aerosols, which enter the air through evaporation or spray, the researchers wrote in an editorial for Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology, a leading environmental journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom.
A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2020/04 /200403132347.htm
Fortunately, most water treatment routines are thought to kill or remove coronaviruses effectively in both drinking and wastewater. Oxidation with hypochlorous acid or peracetic acid, and inactivation by ultraviolet irradiation, as well as chlorine, are thought to kill coronaviruses. In wastewater treatment plants that use membrane bioreactors, the synergistic effects of beneficial microorganisms and the physical separation of suspended solids filter out viruses concentrated in the sewage sludge.
LEXIE LIU
Two researchers, Haizhou Liu, an associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California, Riverside; and Professor Vincenzo Naddeo, director of the Sanitary Environmental Engineering Division at the University of Salerno, have called for more testing to determine whether water treatment methods are effective in killing SARS-CoV-19 and coronaviruses in general.
The novel coronavirus could also colonize biofilms that line drinking water systems, making showerheads a possible source of aerosolized transmission. This transmission pathway is thought to be a major source of exposure to the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease, for example.
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Scientists know that coronaviruses, including the SARS-CoV-19 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, can remain infectious for days—or even longer—in sewage and drinking water.
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FLUID DETAILS Learning from nature, scientists from the Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan and the Korean Basic Science Institute (kbsi) have found a catalyst that efficiently transforms nitrate into nitrite—an environmentally important reaction—without requiring high temperature or acidity, and now have identified the mechanism that makes this efficiency possible. Nitrogen is an important element for various biological processes, but it is often necessary to convert it into one form or another, in a system known as the nitrogen cycle. In nature, this is usually carried out by bacteria and other microorganisms, which can perform the feat at ambient temperature and mild pH conditions. Runoff from agriculture can lead to nitrate pollution of drinking water, and the eutrophication of lakes and marshes, leading to algae growth. As a result, it has become necessary to reduce the emission of nitrate ions into the environment. Wastewater cleaning using microbes is currently performed, but it is not always possible to do this, as the concentration of nitrate can make it impossible for microorganisms to survive. There have
A rticle from sciencedaily.com /releases/2020/04 /200402100900.htm
been attempts to create catalysts that can perform the same task done by bacteria. Unfortunately, due to the high stability of nitrate, these expensive rare metal catalysts require high temperature, ultraviolet photolysis, or strongly acidic environments. Thus the development of catalysts that could cheaply perform the transformation at ambient temperatures was a major goal of research. Recently, an international team led by Ryuhei Nakamura of the riken Center for Sustainable Resource Science (csrs), decided to try to use the same method as nitrate reductase, an enzyme used by microorganisms, and succeeded in chemically synthesizing oxo-containing molybdenum sulfide, which was able to catalyze nitrate into nitrite in an aqueous electrolyte at neutral pH. According to Nakamura, “This result shows that nitrate ions can be detoxified in a mild environment without depending on rare metal catalysts. We hope that this will make possible the development of new technology for synthesizing ammonia from waste liquid.”
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MAGGOT MAGIC Scientists in the United Kingdom have developed a new wound dressing that could bring the benefits of maggot therapy to patients without putting live Greenbottle fly (blowfly) larvae into nonhealing wounds. The joint research project of Stephen Britland from Bradford University and David Pritchard of Nottingham University included colleagues from the Bradford-based biotechnology company AGT Sciences Ltd. It describes development and preliminary testing in laboratory cell cultures of the new hydrogel dressing in a report scheduled for publication in the Oct. 6 issue of the acs bimonthly journal Biotechnology Progress.
Medical use of the technique led to observations suggesting that maggots’ excretions and secretions (ESs) also may encourage regeneration of tissue and wound healing. Realizing that the ESs would have to be delivered in a controlled fashion, Britland’s group developed the hydrogel dressing, which slowly releases maggot ESs. “The present prototype hydrogel wound dressing could potentially be deployed as a device to deliver insect-derived active products to skin wounds in vivo to encourage tissue regeneration.”
The researchers note resurgence in medical use of larval biotherapy—intentionally introducing blowfly maggots into non-healing wounds to clean away dead tissue.
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A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2006/10/061009031912.htm
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MORE THAN 400 STRUCTURES DAMAGED OR DESTROYED AND CALIFORNIA BURNED California’s biggest, most ruinous wildfire this year, a wind-driven blaze that scorched 120 square miles (310 square kilometers) of Sonoma County wine country and consumed scores of homes, was declared fully contained and extinguished on Thursday, two weeks after erupting. The Kincade fire alone accounts for nearly a third of the 250,000-plus acres (101,000 hectares) laid to waste by blazes since January, many during a series of violent windstorms of historic proportion that swept California last month. The tally of more than 400 structures damaged or destroyed in the Kincade fire also represents over half the property losses from all California wildfires this year, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
A rticle from reuters.com /article/us-california-wildf ire/years-mostdestructive-california-wildf ire-declared-exting uished-after-t woweeks-idUSK BN1 X I0BA
Still, California’s current fire season to date pales by comparison to an epic spate of conflagrations in 2017 and 2018 that ranks as the deadliest and most destructive in state history. Nearly 150 lives were lost in wildfires during those two years, including 85 who perished in the Camp fire, which virtually incinerated the Northern California town of Paradise a year ago on Friday and stands as the state’s most lethal blaze on record. Cal Fire lists just three wildfire fatalities so far this year. Although weeks remain of a fire season that now effectively runs through December, the 2019 tally of a quarter-million acres burned falls far short of the 1.2 million acres and 1.6 million acres that went up in flames in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Thousands of homes were destroyed.
GARBAGE CURRENTS
Researchers from the University of New South Wales (unsw), in Sydney, Australia, have created a new model that could help determine who’s to blame for each garbage patch—a difficult task for a system as complex and massive as the ocean. The researchers describe the model in a paper published in the journal Chaos, from aip Publishing. The new model could also help determine how quickly garbage leaks from one patch into another, said Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer who collaborated with Froyland on the Chaos paper.
“We can use the new model to explore, for example, how quickly trash from Australia ends up in the north Pacific.” According to the new model, parts of the Pacific and Indian oceans are actually most closely coupled to the south Atlantic, while another sliver of the Indian Ocean really belongs in the south Pacific. “The take-home message from our work is that we have redefined the borders of the ocean basins according to how the water moves,” said van Sebille. The geography of the new basins could yield insights into ocean ecology in addition to helping track ocean debris. The researchers say their modeling technique could also be applied on a smaller scale—determining for example how much Canadian and American waters mix in the Great Lakes or how an oil spill might spread in the Gulf of Mexico.
LEXIE LIU
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of environmental concern between Hawai’i and California where the ocean surface is marred by scattered pieces of plastic, which outweigh plankton in that part of the ocean and pose risks to fish, turtles and birds that eat the trash. Scientists believe the garbage patch is but one of at least five, each located in the center of large, circular ocean currents called gyres that suck in and trap floating debris.
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A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/201 4 /09/1 4090211 4039.htm
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MENTAL SLEEP Depression, anxiety, impulsive behaviour and poor cognitive performance in children is affected by the amount of sleep they have, researchers from the University of Warwick have found. Sleep states are active processes that support reorganisation of brain circuitry. This makes sleep especially important for children, whose brains are developing and reorganizing rapidly. Measures of depression, anxiety, impulsive behaviour and poor cognitive performance in the children were associated with shorter sleep duration. Moreover, the depressive problems were associated with short sleep duration one year later. Lower brain volume of brain areas involved the orbitofrontal cortex, prefrontal and temporal cortex, precuneus, and supramarginal gyrus was found to be associated with the shorter sleep duration by using big data analysis approach. A rticle from sciencedaily.com /releases/2020/02/200204094726.htm
Professor Jianfeng Feng, from the University of Warwick’s Department of Computer Science comments: “The recommended amount of sleep for children 6 to 12 years of age is 9-12 hours. However, sleep disturbances are common among children and adolescents around the world due to the increasing demand on their time from school, increased screen time use, and sports and social activities. A previous study showed that about 60% of adolescents in the United States receive less than eight hours of sleep on school nights. “Our findings showed that the behaviour problems total score for children with less than 7 hours sleep was 53% higher on average and the cognitive total score was 7.8% lower on average than for children with 9-11 hours of sleep. It highlights the importance of enough sleep in both cognition and mental health in children.”
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TWO-FACED
Although Myles had much academic success as a teenager, his behavior had become increasingly odd during the past year. He quit seeing his friends and no longer seemed to care about his appearance or social pursuits. He began wearing the same clothes each day and seldom bathed. He lived with several family members but rarely spoke to any of them. When he did talk to them, he said he had found clues that his college was just a front for an organized crime operation. He had been suspended from college because of
missing many classes. His sister said that she had often seen him mumbling quietly to himself and at times he seemed to be talking to people who were not there. He would emerge from his room and ask his family to be quiet even when they were not making any noise. His father and sister told the staff that Myles’ great-grandmother had had a serious illness and had lived for 30 years in a state hospital, which they believed was a mental hospital. Myles’ mother left the family when Myles was very young. She has been out of touch with them, and they thought she might have been treated for mental health problems.
LEXIE LIU
Myles was a 20 year-old man who was brought to the emergency room by the campus police of the college from which he had been suspended several months ago. A professor had called and reported that Myles had walked into his classroom, accused him of taking his tuition money and refused to leave.
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A rticle from psychiatr y.org/ patients-families/schizophrenia /patient-stor y
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ARSENIC ALPHABET A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2020/04 /200407 164953.htm
Naturally occurring (geogenic) groundwater arsenic contamination is a problem of global significance, with noteworthy occurrences in large parts of the alluvial and deltaic aquifers in South and Southeast Asia. An Australian team of scientists from Flinders University, csiro and the University of Western Australia, together with their colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), have used computer modelling to integrate much of what has been learned over the years into computer simulations that mimic the complex interactions between groundwater flow, solute transport and geochemical reaction mechanisms.
The research team selected a highly arsenic polluted site near Hanoi (Vietnam) to develop and test their computer model. At the study site, changes in groundwater flow occurred over the past 50 years since the city of Hanoi markedly increased the extraction of groundwater to satisfy its steadily increasing water demand; this showed to be the main trigger for arsenic pollution in the aquifer. The organic matter contained in those muds fuelled a biogeochemical reaction that led to the release of arsenic and its km-long transport into the aquifer underlying the Van Phuc village, a process that continues to this day.
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THE LIFESPAN OF TRASH
Researchers collected air samples surrounding a landfill site, a municipal solid waste incinerator and two transfer stations (where garbage is delivered and processed). Air from both the municipal
incinerator and the landfill site had higher levels of particulate matter and bacteria than upwind locations. The team identified 16 antibiotic-resistance genes in the air samples and tracked their source to municipal solid waste and leachate in the system. These results suggest that municipal solid waste treatment systems could be a reservoir of antibiotic-resistance genes that can be transmitted to nearby residents who breathe the air, the researchers say.
LEXIE LIU
Municipal solid waste is trash—such as plastic, food scraps and lawn clippings—that goes into garbage bins and doesn’t get recycled. Most of this waste is buried in landfills or is incinerated. Now, researchers reporting in acs’ Environmental Science & Technology have shown that when disposed of in this way, municipal solid waste can be an important source of antibiotic-resistance genes in the air.
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A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2020/03/200325110906.htm
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PLASTIC OCEAN A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2020/04 /2004201 45031.htm
To address plastic pollution plaguing the world’s seas and waterways, Cornell University chemists have developed a new polymer that can degrade by ultraviolet radiation, according to research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
discovery was in 1949, the mechanical strength and photodegradation of this material was unknown before this recent work. The high isotacticity (enchainment regularity) and polymer chain length of their material makes it distinct from its historic predecessor and provides its mechanical strength.
Commercial fishing contributes to about half of all floating plastic waste that ends up in the oceans, Lipinski said. Fishing nets and ropes are primarily made from three kinds of polymers: isotactic polypropylene, high-density polyethylene, and nylon-6,6, none of which readily degrade.
Lipinski noted that while iPPO is stable in ordinary use, it eventually breaks down when exposed to UV light. The change in the plastic’s composition is evident in the laboratory, but “visually, it may not appear to have changed much during the process,” he said.
Coates and his research team have spent the past 15 years developing this plastic called isotactic polypropylene oxide, or iPPO. While its original
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LARGEST LANDFILLS IN THE WORLD
SIZE (ACRES) 2,200
CITY A PE X R EG I O N A L , L A S V EG A S , N E VA DA , U S A
927
B O R D O P O N I E N T E , M E X I C O C I T Y, M E X I C O
830
L AOGANG, SHANGHAI, CHINA
680
M A L A G R O T T A , R O M E , I T A LY
630
PUENTE HILLS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA
570
SUDOK WON, INCHEON, SOUTH KORE A
500
DELHI L ANDFILLS, NEW DELHI, INDIA
326
DONAR, MUMBAI, INDIA
272
WEST NE W TERRITORIES, HONG KONG
227
XINFENG, GUANGZHOU, CHINA
DAILY AVERAGE OVER 15,000 TONS MOUNTAINS OF GARBAGE
Mountains surround the dump valley, which is etched out into red earth terraces. The garbage is layered like a sheet cake beneath each terrace, and pipes crisscross the land, carrying away the methane generated by the decomposing garbage. Republic Services just announced a plan to convert the methane into electricity by late 2011. But that energy plant has yet to be built, so for now the place looks like a plastic bag-pocked mining site.
Giant trucks roll in at all hours from transfer stations across the valley. When it arrives at the landfill, the trash is weighed and taken to the latest dump terrace. The drivers hook their trailers up to tippers that lift the containers 90 degrees in the air, sending a cascade of garbage onto the terrace below. Huge steel-wheeled compactors— the wheels alone are at least 8 feet tall—then chop and compress the trash. A rticle from lasvegassun.com /news/2009/dec /07/ mountains-garbage/
LEXIE LIU
But very few Southern Nevadans have seen the region’s main dump. The biggest landfill in the U.S. is tucked away in a narrow valley in the Apex area an hour north of Las Vegas, just off Interstate 15 but not visible from the freeway.
The odor is a clue to its real purpose. It does faintly stink, but not as bad as one might expect, considering it stores nearly 50 million tons of rotting trash. Another 9,000 tons or so rolls in every day. During the height of the construction boom a few years ago the daily average exceeded 15,000 tons.
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“The dump” conjures images of broken couches, mounds of garbage, flies, rats, smells so strong they radiate visibly into the air.
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BACTERIAL ‘SUPERBUGS’
The findings add to our understanding of how this exchange of genetic material, also known as horizontal gene transfer, happens in bacteria that cause infections in hospitals. They also highlight that while this transfer is likely to happen frequently, it is a complex process and challenging to study with current methods. The horizontal gene transfer of mobile genetic elements allows otherwise harmless bacteria to hand off genes that provide resistance to antibiotics, turning them into drug-resistant ‘superbugs’. This has led to significant problems in hospitals especially, where bacteria have harnessed the power of horizontal gene transfer to become resistant to both antibiotics and disinfectants, allowing them to cause severe infections in patients.
To investigate this, Evans and his team screened the genomes of more than 2,000 clinical bacterial isolates gathered from a single hospital over 18 months. The isolates were collected through the Enhanced Detection System for HospitalAcquired Transmission project at the University of Pittsburgh. Once the team had identified possible mobile genetic elements in the bacteria, they searched through the patient care data associated with the bacteria that had elements of interest to see whether horizontal transfer might have happened at the hospital. Their results determined that many of the mobile elements found in the study were likely being shared among hospital bacteria. In one case, the team identified a plasmid—a circular piece of DNA found in bacterial cells—that encoded multidrug resistance and appeared to have been horizontally transferred between bacteria infecting two separate patients.
LEXIE LIU
Researchers have been able to identify and track the exchange of genes among bacteria that allow them to become resistant to drugs, according to a new study published today in eLife.
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A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2020/04 /2004 1 4 122821.htm
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LIFE IN THE PLASTISPHERE A rticle from sciencedaily.com / releases/2019/12/191202105823.htm
Millions of tons of plastic trash are fouling the world’s ocean, most of it tiny pieces of microplastic less than a quarter-inch in size. Even the smallest marine animals can ingest these microplastics, potentially threatening their survival. Marine microplastics aren’t floating solo, either— they pick up a thin coating of bacteria and other microbes, a biofilm known as “The Plastisphere.” These biofilms can influence the microplastics’ fate—causing them to sink or float, or breaking them down into even tinier bits, for example. They can even make the plastic smell or taste like food to some marine organisms. But very little is known about what kinds of microbes are in the Plastisphere, and how they interact with one another and the plastic. Now, using an innovative microscopy method developed at the Marine Biological Laboratory (mbl), Woods Hole, scientists have revealed the structure of the microbial communities coating microplastic samples from a variety of ocean sites.
The mbl team built upon an fluorescence imaging technique developed by Mark Welch and colleagues to literally see the spatial organization of microbes on the plastic samples. They did so by designing probes that fluorescently lit up and targeted major, known bacterial groups in the Plastisphere. The scientists saw diatoms and bacteria colonizing the microplastics, dominated in all cases by three phyla: Proteobacteria, Cyanobacteria, and Bacteriodetes. Spatially, the Plastisphere microbial communities were heterogeneously mixed, providing the first glimpse of bacterial interactions on marine microplastics.
T H E L I F E S PA N O F T R A S H
THE LIFESPAN OF TRASH STYROFOAM
TINFOIL
S A N I TA R Y PA D S
MONOFILAMENT FISHING LINE
ALUMINUM CANS
B AT T E R I E S
RUBBER BOOT SOLES
TIN CAN
FOAMED PLASTIC CUPS
N Y L O N FA B R I C
L E AT H E R S H O E S
LUMBER
CIGARETTE BUTTS
MILK CARTONS
WOOL CLOTHING
P LY W O O D
CANVAS PRODUCTS
ROPES
COTTON GLOVES
CARDBOARD
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MANMADE MEETS NATURAL Abstract from link.springer.com / article/10.1007/ BF01704880
It appears that proper management can greatly help to reduce the decay of the stone. A scientifically designed cleaning can inhibit the formation of crusts and the accumulation of efflorescences. The absence of the crusts and efflorescence and application of appropriate impregnants, which consolidate yet maintain the “breathability” of stone, may prolong the life of historic structures.
LEXIE LIU
In arid climates, the salts in stone and the meteorologic conditions combine to disrupt stone structures. The Great Sphinx at Giza is a prominent example of this mode of stone decay. In humid, tropical regions, such as in southern India, hydrolysis disrupts the mineral structure, causing rapid damage even to such durable stone as granite.
The human effort to save the deteriorating structures has often aggravated the problem. The sandstone at the Legislative Building in Olympia, Washington has, because of the “protective” acrylic coating, suffered greater damage than the similar but unprotected sandstone at a nearby school building.
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Stone objects decay in all environments, but the modes of decay vary from one region to another. In the modern industrial countries acid deposition has accelerated the decay of stone. Many objects that survived centuries of weathering without serious damage have, in the present century, decomposed beyond recognition. The black crusts seen on stone structures mostly contain gypsum formed by SO2 reactions with calcareous minerals. These crusts exfoliate, destroying the sculptural form. Because of the absence of proven technology to treat and restore these objects, the caryatids at the Acropolis had to be moved indoors to save them from further disfiguration.
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ORGANIZED DECOMPOSITION Shown here is the book’s grid. The red hairlines represent the most-used spots that objects align to. The grid is the basic structure of every design piece and brings order to disorganized layouts.
This is where the book ’s captions go. They provide details into the articles as well as sources for the articles.
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S T U DYO F D E CAY.C O M