Month: July 2024

SRI Stories: Costa Rica Field Trip

July 30, 2024

SRI Stories: Finding the Right Path

July 29, 2024

“I absolutely loved this trip to Costa Rica. I learned things I could’ve only learned by experiencing them firsthand. We all got really close with one another. I think it’s an amazing opportunity. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s probably one of the best highlights of [my experience at] University.”

This sentiment from Chloe Brackenbury is echoed by every student who shared her experience. Over the last two spring breaks, a handful of University of Utah students have had the opportunity to embark on a Science Research Initiative (SRI) trip across Costa Rica, affectionately referred to in Spanish as "Pura Vida" (or Pure Life). The trip was sponsored by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy.

Designed by SRI Postdoctoral Fellow Rodolfo Probst and with support from the Monteverde Institute (MVI), SRI students immersed themselves in a thriving environment for learning. There they interacted with local experts and community members and fostered new connections while tackling real-world climate issues and getting a first-hand sense of what long-term scientific endeavors look like.

Join us here for a virtual trip through the celebrated tropical clime of Costa Rica . . .

from the SRI student perspective!

On a research outing such as this, students could study the local wildlife up close while also assisting in rebuilding and enriching bird habitats. By catching and tracking different bird species (from tucanets to woodcreepers), students could confirm that birds were recolonizing areas recovered after deforestation. Ainsley Parkins, currently working under Rodolfo Probst’s SRI stream on identifying bird species using DNA tools, was overjoyed by the rich biodiversity surrounding her. In the accompanying video she delightedly shares just some of the fascinating lessons that would quite literally walk across the student’s path. No longer bound to the textbook to her, beautiful tropical birds could be freely observed in their natural habitats.

The many destinations of Costa Rica were also a wonderful source of learning. The MVI has been active in the country for decades, with a constant mission to integrate into the local culture. As such, students could see, via example, how scientific endeavors should actively strive to work with and assist local communities. That there are both benefits to and drawbacks of the growth of tourism, the importance of preserving the local culture as well as the local environment. An experience that made clear that conservation efforts are most effective when everyone is working together. I was lucky to speak with Jack Longino who views the institution as “One of the great success stories” of this kind. He sees a future where a constant cycle of undergraduate students could naturally slot into and assist these ongoing projects as part of their educational journey. To give them valuable firsthand experience in the field and show the importance of continually supporting scientific endeavors.

As exciting as these lessons can be, it's often the hard lessons that are the most valuable. Gabby Karakcheyeva (Photographer of the nature photos in the accompanying video!) describes how her experience helped tackle college burnout, clarify her future plans and discover that fieldwork was worth pursuing. Caden Collins realized the opposite: that while he enjoys fieldwork he'd “rather be the one the data is brought to.” A segment of the trip was led by bio-artist Rosemary Hall, whose focus on the soundscapes and exploration of natural spaces showcased the sheer variety of forms conservation efforts can take. And others still were caught off guard by the severe humidity and heat, or nocturnal creatures with no concept of personal space. One student in particular had a rude reality check as a scorpion dropped on their head. As amusingly put by Ainsley, “The outside doesn't like to stay outside!”

Regardless of the lesson learned, these experiences provide crucial context for students deciding their future careers. They’ve been devoting years of their lives to their studies, so to have avenues like this trip where they can clarify that the academic path they are walking is right for them is truly invaluable. And in this case, they got to do so while experiencing the beauty and culture of a new region and building strong friendships with their peers. The idea of going out into the world to make it a better place was an idea no longer. It was real, right in front of them, a beacon of hope that long-term conservation projects are thriving everywhere you look. With learning experiences like these and community partners eager to help, they know there’s a future where we join hands and walk down the path towards a better tomorrow.

Video and commentary by Michael Jacobsen

The students in this video story would like to thank post-doctoral researcher Rodolfo Probst, facilitator and director of the SRI field trip to Costa Rica. His expertise and generosity ensured students experienced an enjoyable, educational and safe experience in Central America. 

You can read more about Rodolfo’s research here.

Don’t Let This Blow You Away: Yellowstone’s Steam Threat

July 30, 2024

Don't Let This Blow You Away: Yellowstone's Steam Threat

July 29, 2024
Above: Yellowstone National Park officials survey damage near Biscuit Basin from a hydrothermal explosion that occurred Tuesday morning, July 23. Photo courtesy NPS/Jacob W. Frank

A hydrothermal explosion on July 23 at Yellowstone National Park sent visitors running for cover as steam shot into the air and rocks rained down on a popular viewing area.

The blast occurred about 10 a.m. local time near the Black Diamond Pool in Biscuit Basin, about two miles northwest of Old Faithful. No injuries were reported.

“Steam explosions like Tuesday’s incident have long been considered one of the most significant hazards posed to Yellowstone visitors,” says Tony Lowry, associate professor in Utah State University’s Department of Geosciences. “Biscuit Basin has had smaller, but still dangerous, events in the recent past.”

USU alum Jamie Farrell, research associate professor in the University of Utah’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and chief seismologist of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, says it was “very lucky” no one was hurt in today’s blast.

“Hydrothermal explosions happen quite frequently in the park, though they often occur in the uninhabited back country," says Farrell, who earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Utah State in 2001. Farrell says the blasts aren’t volcanic eruptions and no magma is involved.“These incidents occur when very hot, mineral-laden water builds up and clogs the plumbing, so to speak; pressure builds up and is forced upward through pre-existing fractures to erupt at the surface,” he says.

Read the full article by Mary-Ann Muffoletto, Utah State University. 

Solving the Puzzle of Utah’s Summer Ozone

July 30, 2024

Solving the Puzzle of Utah's Summer Ozone

July 29, 2024
Above: A view of Salt Lake City shot from NOAA’s research aircraft. Credit: NOAA.

The Salt Lake Valley’s summertime ozone pollution is a complicated puzzle because so many different kinds of emissions contribute to the problem, which in turn is affected by the time of day or year, the weather and many other factors.

Without knowing which emissions are most culpable or understanding the role of the region’s topography, solutions to Utah’s ozone mess will remain elusive. In collaboration with University of Utah faculty and funding from the state, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is helping find answers.

A team of NOAA scientists is in Salt Lake City for the next few weeks gathering masses of air quality data that is expected to yield new insights that could help bring relief. Building on a long record of air quality data compiled by U scientists and the Utah Division of Air Quality (DAQ) over several years, this new snapshot data is hoped to illuminate what is driving elevated ozone levels along the Wasatch Front, according to Steven Brown, one of the NOAA research chemists leading the Utah Summer Ozone Study.

John Lin, professor of atmospheric sciences, on the roof of the Browning building where a phalanx of air quality monitoring instruments are stationed. Photo credit: Brian Maffly.

“Every city in the United States has an ozone problem, but every city is also different in terms of the sources that contribute to that ozone. And Salt Lake is no exception in that regard,” Brown said. “We’re certainly trying to understand the influence of wildfires. But then you’ve got this mix of industrial and urban sources in a valley with very unusual meteorology. We’re trying to characterize all those sources. What does that meteorology look like, and how do those things combine to produce the unique ozone problem that affects Salt Lake City?”

NOAA’s multi-platform study is being coordinated with the U’s Utah Atmospheric Trace Gas & Air Quality (UATAQ)) lab, headed by John Lin, a professor of atmospheric sciences. Also involved is Lin’s colleague Gannet Hallar, whose students are launching weather balloons and providing weather forecast briefings most days of the study to support NOAA’s regular overflights.While Utah has made strides reducing the severity of its particulate pollution-trapping winter inversions, summertime ozone has worsened to the point that Salt Lake City is out of attainment of the federal standard.

The primary ozone precursors are volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which are emitted from countless sources—including oil refineries, gas stations, wildfire, paints, even personal care products, like deodorant—and nitrogen oxides, or NOx, a product of combustion.

“Photons are needed to break up certain molecules, so the reactions typically will not happen without sunlight,” said John Lin, the associate director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. “It essentially chops up those chemical bonds. Then ozone reacts with other things and levels get lower at night.”

Read the full article by Brian Maffly in @TheU.

Satellite measurements of carbon emissions

July 30, 2024

Monitoring urban Carbon emissions at the global scale

July 30, 2024
Above: A map of the 77 cities at which the urban emissions monitoring framework was applied.

“We’re starting to see a globally consistent system to track [carbon] emission changes take shape,” says atmospheric scientist John Lin.

Faculty in the University of Utah's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Lin is co-author of a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters about a new satellite-based system for measuring CO2 emissions in support of global collective climate mitigation actions. As nations and cities continue to state their intentions to decarbonize for the purpose of becoming, in their activities, carbon-neutral, “we want to be able to see it happen from space.” 

Now we have a system to do so. 

That system is the culmination from standing on the shoulders of previous data scientists. It’s a story about how data is collected, interpreted and expanded through new technologies. It’s also about how this recursive process — now turbocharged with the advent of machine learning and AI — creates a space for potential application, innovation and policy that can change our world for the better, including mitigating carbon emissions that are warming our earth at a startling and deleterious rate.

But before any attempt can be made to save the planet, scientists have to secure a consistent measurement framework to better understand what’s happening as well as where it’s happening and how much.

The Backstory

John Lin

The backstory to this tale first begins in the Pacific Ocean. Tracking carbon emissions dates back decades to a single site in Hawai’i where, on a largely inactive volcano on the Big Island, instruments measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At a high elevation, the site was very good at characterizing broad scale changes in carbon dioxide, globally, a “poster child for climate change because over time,” explains Lin who is also associate director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, “we know that from these Hawai’i  measurements, CO2 has this distinct cycle, seasonally, but then this upward trend due to all of us burning fossil fuels.”

Human-caused carbon emissions are not only leading to CO2 buildup everywhere in the atmosphere but the issue is widespread in public discourse. Whether it’s on the micro level of mitigating one’s personal “carbon footprint” by taking the bus, or on the meta level of international initiatives like the Kyoto Accords or the United Nations-brokered Paris Agreement, the effects of carbon emissions are on everyone’s mind. A cascade of cities and whole nations have established goals for mitigating emissions, but their estimates of carbon emissions have been relying on data that are inconsistent and sometimes missing altogether in parts of the world. 

That cities have singly established and even accelerated their carbon-neutral goals is a good thing, considering that over 70 percent of human-emitted CO2 into the atmosphere stems from cities around the globe.

Tracking progress toward city-scale emissions reduction targets is essential by providing “actionable information for policy makers,” the paper states. This while the authors acknowledge that earlier measurements and claims from municipal entities are based on “self-reported emissions inventories,” whose methodology and input data often differ from one another. These practices hamper “understanding of changes in both city-scale emissions and the global summation of urban emissions mitigation actions.”

Orbiting Carbon Observatory

This is where outer space in general comes into play and, in particular, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). The NASA mission is designed to make space-based observations of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere to better understand the characteristics of climate change. After a literal “failure to launch” in 2009, NASA successfully placed a satellite (OCO2) in 2014 with equipment measuring CO2 emissions from space. Satellite-transmitted data promised to be an independent way to calculate, globally, emissions from cities. Not surprisingly, it has taken a while to learn how to use the data. In 2020 a graduate student in Lin’s research group, Dien Wu, developing early methods, did exactly that, looking comprehensively at a total of twenty cities around the world.

Based on essentially the same data set used by Lin and Wilmot in their current paper, but with fewer years, Wu was able to get estimates of the amounts of human emitted CO2 from OCO2 satellite transmissions. Separating out what carbon human activity is emitting to the atmosphere versus those from urban vegetation has now been determined through an expansion of the analyses over the additional years by Lin’s team of researchers, including a later graduate student by the name of Kai Wilmot, co-author of the current study.

In this round, four times as many urban areas as Wu studied and distributed over six continents, have now been assessed. This plant/human conundrum is further complicated by vegetation outside the city which has very different characteristics from vegetation inside the city. The difference creates patterns of CO2  that have to be taken out to distill the human component.

Strangely beautiful animations

Kai Wilmot

In short, Lin and company’s findings, published in Environmental Research Letters, represents a new capacity based on recent developments in modeling. And the animations of the assembled and interpreted satellite CO2 data delivered by the team are startling, even strangely beautiful. In one chart the left side displays latitude vs CO2. “This narrow swath,” explains Lin, indicates “each time … [the satellite] orbits. There's this narrow slice of data that becomes available.”

Using that data, he continues, “the NASA scientists can construct this nice animation of CO2 change in each latitude band over time.” Lin points to what he calls “ridges and valleys” on the the chart that represent the seasonal cycle, and he personifies the entire Earth as if it is “breathing in the carbon dioxide through photosynthesis during the summer growing season and then releasing it in the winter. They have these very sharp ridges — high CO2, low CO2, higher CO2 [the breaths] — but overall, the rug is going up, because we're emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

Here, researchers are only looking at a small fraction of data points, the ones that intersect the targeted cities. They then do a more detailed look at whether they’re seeing a signal or not and whether they’re getting enough data.

“Personally,” says Wilmot, “I think the particularly neat aspect of this work is the capacity for global application. Leveraging satellite data and atmospheric modeling, we are able to gain some insight into urban emissions at cities around the world. We can see interactions between these emissions and socioeconomic factors, and we can identify large changes in emissions over time.”

 

The possibilities of creating more rigorous models, and more revealing data about how much cities emit carbon to the atmosphere are tantalizing. And so are the findings of the research. “This kind of information can be used by cities and the UN process,” Lin says. “But I’m pretty sure what they want is something more dynamic through time, how these emissions evolve. And also, probably more frequent updates.” As it was in this study, researchers had to aggregate multiple years of data to get enough points for each city. “So the challenge, I think, is to be able to track more dynamically these emissions over time.”

More to come

NASA’s next iteration of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory — OCO3 — has already been successfully docked on the International Space Station, although it was de-installed for a period of time recently to allow another instrument to carry out measurements. (It turns out that prime real estate on the crowded station is, well, at a premium.) But new data is forthcoming. 

Meantime, researchers have their work cut out for themselves in the data crunching/parsing/interpreting part of this saga. Scientists typically accrue data far faster than they are able to use and interpret them . . . and create cool animations for general consumption.

A log-log plot of the scaling relationship between direct emissions per capita and effective population density for all 77 cities.

“Naturally,” concludes Lin, “to bend the curve in terms of trying to reduce carbon emissions in cities is a primary focus. And there's a lot of excitement and social energy around reducing carbon emissions in cities, including here in Salt Lake. Many mayors have pledged carbon reduction plans, and the University of Utah has their own [pledge]. Lots of cities have very ambitious goals to reduce carbon.”

For Wilmot, this project will only add to the increased “social energy” around the issue of carbon emission mitigation. Satellite measuring will help identify a path toward monitoring urban emissions at the global scale in order to identify effective policy levers for emissions reductions. “Of course, realizing this monitoring ability is contingent on further development of the modeling, satellite observations, and a number of necessary input datasets,” he says. “So by no means am I saying that we are there already.” 

Clearly, this research has shown that the co-authors’ designed, multi-component satellite framework is capable of monitoring CO2 emissions across urban systems and identifying relevant driving factors. Their analysis not only pulled out data of the emissions from individual cities, but, because it is global, they could then do pattern analyses. In fact, the researchers, using an established relationship between emission-per-capita vs population density were able to plot from the data what happened, emissions-wise, during the COVID shutdown.

But, as co-author Kai Wilmot infers about work yet to be done, the ending to this story — from the Hawaiian Islands to outer space — is one of not-quite-yet “mission accomplished.”

“It’s more like mission half-accomplished,” John Lin concedes, “which is often the case in research.”

By David Pace

Read the complete paper in Environmental Research Letters.  

 

Scientists use AI to predict a wildfire’s next move

July 29, 2024

Scientists use AI to predict
a wildfire's next move

July 29, 2024

University of Utah Atmospheric Scientist Derek Mallia joins seven other researchers at University of Southern California and elsewhere in developing a new method to accurately predict wildfire spread.

By combining satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, their model offers a potential breakthrough in wildfire management and emergency response.

Detailed in an early study proof published in Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems, the USC model uses satellite data to track a wildfire's progression in real time, then feeds this information into a sophisticated computer algorithm that can accurately forecast the fire's likely path, intensity and growth rate.

Above : DEREK VINCENT MALLIA, Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

The study comes as California and much of the western United States continues to grapple with an increasingly severe wildfire season. Multiple blazes, fueled by a dangerous combination of wind, drought and extreme heat, are raging across the state. Among them, the Lake Fire, the largest wildfire in the state this year, has already scorched over 38,000 acres in Santa Barbara County.

Reverse-engineering wildfire behavior with AI

The researchers began by gathering historical wildfire data from high-resolution satellite images. By carefully studying the behavior of past wildfires, the researchers were able to track how each fire started, spread and was eventually contained. Their comprehensive analysis revealed patterns influenced by different factors like weather, fuel (for example, trees, brush, etc.) and terrain.

They then trained a generative AI-powered computer model known as a conditional Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network, or cWGAN, to simulate how these factors influence how wildfires evolve over time. They taught the model to recognize patterns in the satellite images that match up with how wildfires spread in their model.

They then tested the cWGAN model on real wildfires that occurred in California between 2020 and 2022 to see how well it predicted where the fire would spread.

Read the rest of the story in ScienceDaily.

U Physics Alumna Heads to Paris Olympics

July 29, 2024

PHysics of Olympic Pistol Shooting

July 29, 2024
Above: Alexis Lauren Lagan, BS'17

With a pistol program desperate for success, Alexis (Lexi) Lauren Lagan BS'17 physics represents the next generation of athletes ready to take her sport to a new level. This month she heads to Paris. Her second Olympics.

Despite a degree in physics and a law degree in the works, Lexi can’t shake an Olympic dream so enticing she’s put her career on hold to represent her country in Paris this summer.

Lexi started shooting with her dad at a young age and enjoyed going to the range with her family as a bonding activity. While pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Pre-Law Physics, she began shooting international pistol at the University of Utah. At the collegiate level, she won a handful of national titles in women’s, mixed team events, and earned her spot on several All-American Teams.

Lexi participated in pistol for fun and to make friends in college, but as the Rio Games approached, she realized she wanted to pursue her interest in international shooting sports. She won the Olympic Alternate seat in Women’s Air Pistol in 2016, narrowly missing the opportunity to join Team USA in Rio. This only fueled her passion into the Tokyo 2020 Games and now Paris 2024.

In addition to visiting the range with her family, Lexi grew up dancing and singing. At 14, She received a medal and certificate from the White House for singing the National Anthem at more than 150 performances. She enjoys camping and hiking, and has a corgi named Guinevere who is frequently featured on her Instagram.

Read more about the sport.

Read more about U-affiliated athletes at the Games.

The Hidden Space Race and Vardeny’s Spintronic Revolution

July 19, 2024

The Hidden Space Race and Vardeny's Spintronic Revolution

July 19, 2024
Above: Valy Vardeny, Distinguished Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Photo Credit: Dung Hoang

Vardeny was a pioneer of organic spin waves known as “Spintronics.” Spin waves transfer information much faster with far less heat.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon fifty years ago, Zeev Valentine Vardeny was a young man living in Israel. The “space race” was palpable at the time. The “race” for ever-increasing technological innovation is profoundly felt in Israel. Putting brain power to work to maintain Israel’s safety is nothing short of a national mission.

Distinguished Professor of Physics & Astronomy Zeev Valentine Vardeny at the University of Utah in is certainly an All-Star of physics. While most Utahns have never heard of him, Vardeny opened up an entirely new branch of physics. He has helped innovate significant advances leading to OLED (organic LEDs), organic spin-wave and technology. If these aren’t familiar then next time you look at your organic LED flat-screen TVs or put your 96 gig flash memory card in your computer, just know that Vardeny and his work are a key part of that technology.

His field of Solid State Physics refers to how electrons behave when traveling through materials. Electrons flow through all of our electrical devices to provide them power. Computers transmit information and energy, but they also produce heat.

Vardeny says, " Using spintronic technology will help pave the way for vast changes in computer abilities that are known as quantum computers. First off. In regular computers the bits of regular computers are either a one or a zero. But if you have a quantum computer the bits can have infinite possibilities. There is an infinite number of numbers between zero and one.”

The Department of Defense is spending a lot of money is in using quantum computers and spin waves to create an entirely new form of communication.

You can read more about Vardeny and his research at the U in Utah Stories , Science Direct and Mirage News.

Ants and Trees: A Tale of Evolutionary Déjà Vu in the Rainforest

July 19, 2024

Ants and Trees: A Tale of Evolutionary Déjà Vu in the Rainforest

July 19, 2024
Above: Rodolfo Probst leads field research with U undergraduates in Costa Rica in March.

U biologist Rodolfo Probst finds multiple ant species that have independently evolved the same specialized relationship with understory trees

Ants are famous for their regimented and complex social behaviors. In the tropics, they are also famous for forming mutualisms with plants. Certain species of trees have conspicuous hollow swellings that house ants, often feeding the ants with specialized ant food. In return, the ants are pugnacious bodyguards, swarming out to aggressively defend the plant against enemies. Scientists have observed these mutualisms for centuries, but an enduring question is how these intriguing interactions evolved in the first place.

That remains a mystery, but new research led by University of Utah field biologist Rodolfo Probst offers insights that could broaden our understanding of ant-plant symbioses.

Published last week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, his research focused on an ant genus called Myrmelachista. Most Myrmelachista species nest in dead or live stems of plants, without any specialized mutualistic association. But one group of species in Central America was known to nest only in the live stems of certain species of small understory trees, in a specialized symbiosis similar to other ant-plant mutualisms. These tiny yellow ants hollow out the stems without harming the host plants, and can be found throughout Central America.

Jack Longino. Credit: Rodolfo Probst

Probst made a remarkable discovery. Using DNA sequence data to unravel their evolutionary history, he found that these nine species occurred as two clusters in different parts of the evolutionary tree. That means that this complex relationship, with all its distinctive characteristics, evolved twice from non-specialist ancestors.

His two coauthors are renowned entomologist Jack Longino, better known among U students as The Astonishing Ant Man for his expertise and vast personal collection of ant specimens kept on campus, and former U School of Biological Sciences’ postdoctoral researcher Michael Branstetter, now with U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pollinating Insect Research Unit at Utah State University.

Probst is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences and the university’s Science Research Initiative, or SRI, and was recently recognized with the Outstanding Postdoctoral Researcher Award by the College of Science. Through the SRI, Probst has involved U undergraduates in his research. For example, students accompanied Probst and Longino to Costa Rica with funding support from the U’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.

With continuing help from SRI undergraduates, Probst is looking to conduct whole genomic sequencing to tease out the genes involved in ant-plant associations, looking “under the hood” of a phenomenon that has intrigued naturalists for centuries.

Read more about the story on ants and trees by Brian Maffly @TheU.

Rethinking Carbon Offsets

July 18, 2024

Rethinking the Carbon Offsets Market

July 18, 2024

 

Around 1989 an energy company was trying to see if they could plant trees in Guatemala and then use the absorption of carbon from those trees to offset their emissions of a new coal-fired power plant in the United States.

Libby Blanchard

It was the dawn of carbon-off-setting, emitting one place and then reducing or removing emissions elsewhere and calling that climate neutral.

Following the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1996/97, industrialized countries, including the U.S., picked up on the idea of carbon crediting and carbon off-setting and explored flexible market mechanisms that, according to Libby Blanchard, would potentially make it more economically feasible for industrialized countries to meet the goals and carbon-reduction metrics of the 2015 United Nations-brokered Paris Agreement.

Three and half decades after that first experiment in Guatemala with carbon off-sets the idea seems to have hit an inflection point. “A carbon credit becomes an offset when it’s used to trade against emissions somewhere else,” reiterates Blanchard, a postdoctoral research associate at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy and the School of Biological Sciences here at the University of Utah. “And a carbon credit is supposed to be one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent reduced or removed from the atmosphere over a predetermined period of time. The big problem with carbon credits is a large majority are not real or are what we call over-credited, or both, meaning that they’re not representing or are over-representing the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent actually reduced or removed for the atmosphere."

In this episode of the Talking Climate podcast, produced by the Wilkes Center for Climate Sciences & Policy, Ross Chambless, Wilkes Center community engagement manager, interviews Blanchard on a new “Contribution Approach” replacement of the struggling carbon offsets market.

Read more about the Nature-based climate solutions in an article published in One Earth.

Listen to the full podcast and view the transcript.

Watch a video with Libby Blanchard below.

 

 

 

A Framework for Cancer Ecology and Evolution

July 17, 2024

A Framework for Cancer Ecology and Evolution

July 17, 2024

Why do the vast majority of cancers arise late in subjects’ lives?

Fred Alder. Credit: Mathew Crawley

A traditional explanation in the development of cancers, known as the somatic theory, is a paradigm focused on mutations in individual cells. In this theory a cascade of approximately six mutational changes in a single cell is the source that triggers cancer.  This theory explains the rapidly increasing “power function” that describes how cancer incidence increases with age.

But this power function which lines up with cancer’s six classic hallmarks is now being challenged by a different paradigm that casts doubt on the primacy of individual cells in cancer development. It also challenges the notion that cancer marks a strict change between “normal” and aberrant tissues, particularly as the body ages.

In a paper published today in The Royal Society Interface out of the United Kingdom, “A modeling framework for cancer ecology and evolution” is explored by University of Utah mathematics professor Frederick Adler with a joint appointment in biology.

Cancer's complexity

 

Adler says he has struggled for a long time to come up with an alternative modeling approach for cancer that has the flexibility to capture the complexity of cancer, while standing by the dictum that cancer cells are still cells. “It involved a plane trip where I worked out an extremely complicated approximate version of the method before figuring out, on solid ground, that the exact version was thoroughly simple.” 

Simple didn’t just mean elegant, but also getting results in a reasonable amount of time by optimizing code, something he can appreciate as the current Director of the busy School of Biological Sciences, one of the largest academic units at the University of Utah. 

The dynamics of escape in a person with imperfect initial control.  We see replacement by increasingly dark shades of gray that indicate cells that are growing faster and faster, leading to an increase in the total cell population (black line at top) above the healthy level (horizontal orange line).

Adler’s findings build on those of others that countermand the primacy of individual cells. These include observations of mutations common in non-cancerous tissues, and sometimes more common than in nearby cancers. “This implies,” the paper states, “that cancers depend on interactions with the surrounding tissue.” A second emphasis on cancer ecology and evolution is now highlighting “the ecology of nutrients, acids and physical factors and the role of cell interactions.”

“Detailed study of adults shows that few if any of their cells are ‘normal,’” says Adler. “Tissues are instead made up of lineages with ever-increasing numbers of aberrant traits, many of which promote excess growth. The vast majority of these incipient growths are contained by controls within those cells and by other cells.”

In Adler’s parsing of the ecological paradigm, senescence theory plays a critical role, focusing on the breakdown of the system of controls within and around individual cells. “[M]any cancers,” for example, “develop much later than their originating oncogenic mutations.” Furthermore, mutant cells in his models are restrained “by systems that remove their growth advantage, but which can weaken with age due to changes such as impaired intercellular communication. Remarkable data on genetic diversity in healthy tissues show that cancer-related mutations are ubiquitous, and often under positive selection despite not being associated with progression to cancer.”

Overview of CAGRM framework. Cells include an arbitrary number of potential lineages, beginning with all cells in the unmutated lineage C0 and evolving first into C1 and eventually a branching evolutionary tree of lineages here indicated collectively by Ci. There are four forms of regulation (indicated by flat-headed arrows): contact inhibition by other cells (C ), inhibition by antigrowth factor (A), depletion of growth factor (G) and depletion of resources (R). Mutualist cells can aid cell replication by suppressing antigrowth factor or by supplementing growth factor or resources.

Tracking the dual nature of cells

 

In the paper, Adler first presents a modeling framework which incorporates evolution, stochasticity (a measure of how random a process is, or the quality of lacking a predictable order or plan) and control and breakdown of control. Using a differential equation, the model then tracks the dual nature of individual cells as ecological competitors for resources and space. 

Using this framework Adler then tested whether the ecological model of cancer initiation generates realistic age-incidence patterns similar to the somatic mutation theory. Another test was made to determine how initial defects in the control systems accelerate the process. 

In this comprehensive systems view, cancer, and an incipient cancer in particular, is not an invader. “It is a set of cells,” the paper reads, “that escape the many layers of internal and tissue level regulation, and then grow to damage the host. The success of a cancer, or equivalently the failure of the regulatory system, requires that the cancer co-opts or evades the systems of control and repair.”

This model/framework, according to the author, assumes a particular structure of the control system but has capacity for “several other extensions” to make it more “realistic.” Those extensions would address, for example, cell differentiation and a clearer class of driver mutations for the genetic model of quantitative trait. Another might address why the mutualist cells in the tests maintain a constant phenotype in spite of what we know about how cells alter behavior in cancer’s presence.

Statistically, we understand that cancer emerges more frequently in older individuals. But how and why is what Adler is attempting to determine. His model, says Adler, “reproduces the rapid increase of cancer incidence with age, identifies the key aspects of control, and provides a complement to the focus on mutations that could lead to new treatment strategies.”

Fred Adler points out that the control system in the model differs greatly across species in concert with their body size and lifespan, thus revealing a paradox known as Peto’s:  cancer rates are similar across organisms with a wide range of sizes and lifespan. “This robustness,” concludes the paper, “is a special case of the principle that all biological systems must be overbuilt to deal with uncertainty.” Referencing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Adler states that this development in excess of demand exists “to survive ‘the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to’… This model seeks to place those shocks in the ecological and evolutionary context that makes long life possible.” 

 

by David Pace

Read about Fred Adler's related work in modeling cancer development, specifically with breast cancer.