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What a Joe Biden Administration Means for Science

By Julia Preszler

Between misinformed coronavirus briefings, derision of the nation’s chief infectious disease expert and casting doubt on well-established climate science in the midst of raging wildfires, the Trump administration has not been a friend to science. So much so that respecting science became one of the core tenets in President-Elect Joe Biden’s “battle for the soul of a nation.” 

For many scientists, the impending transfer of power from Trump to Biden has allowed them to release a sigh of relief. The problems they seek to solve will not become any easier, but at least they will not need to fight an uphill battle when it comes to support from the person occupying this nation’s highest office. 

In an open letter to Biden written by Ben Santer, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, he writes that federally funded science agencies were unraveled and reconstructed in order to advance President Trump’s agenda. “The Environmental Protection Agency became the Environmental Pollution Agency, rolling back protections on clean air and clean water, and providing regulatory relief to President Trump’s campaign contributors from the fossil fuel industry,” Santer wrote. 

Scientists working in government agencies felt effectively censored, Santer said. Some worried whether their green-card applications could be negatively affected if they published a study that went among the administration’s beliefs and agenda. 

Biden has already announced that he will immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules from Obama’s administration. 

While Trump has largely left the coronavirus pandemic response up to each individual state, Biden will likely strive for a more cohesive nationwide plan, and has already urged people to wear masks throughout his campaign and during his first public appearances after the election. “We never had a united plan for the United States,” said Dr. Howard Koh, a professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services during the Obama Administration, in an interview with Time Magazine. “The 50 states have been going in 50 different directions. To continue doing what we are doing now will only prolong the pandemic unnecessarily and cause more unnecessary suffering.” 

Of course, the Biden administration and scientists will still need to contend with those who supported Trump’s anti-science rhetoric, and the skepticism he stowed among the public. Only about half of Americans polled by Gallup in October said they would get vaccinated if a free, FDA-approved vaccine were available immediately. 

In her debate with Vice President Mike Pence, Kamala Harris said “If the public-health professionals, if Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, if doctors tell us we should take it, I would be first in line. If Donald Trump tells us we should take it, then I’m not taking it.”

Whether having Biden as president will affect people’s perception of a forthcoming vaccine remains to be seen. 

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Every coronavirus-related death leaves nine grieving, study says

By Maria Lovato

As of Nov. 2, 231,320 Americans have died of the coronavirus, according to John Hopkins University. This grim count takes on new consequence when looking at the COVID-19 “bereavement multiplier,” a model created by researchers that estimates that every person who dies from the coronavirus in the U.S. leaves nine close family members behind.

This means that, according to the bereavement multiplier, more than 2 million Americans are grieving the loss of a close family member due to the pandemic.

The team of sociologists from Pennsylvania, California and Canada published their finding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal in July, writing that studying how mortalities reverberate through the population “expands understanding of the social impacts of health crises.” Having a family member recently die is linked to a decline in physical and mental health and has long-term effects on communities and individuals’ social and economic well-being, the researchers said.

Close family members were designated as parents, children, grandparents, siblings and spouses for the purpose of the study. The researchers created simulations using demographics and estimates of the average person’s familial network based on data from the Census Bureau and other surveys. The researchers also accounted for age and race when simulating who would experience the death of a close relative.

But the study may not account for the true societal impact of COVID-19 deaths, said Barbara Wolfe, a professor of economics, population health sciences and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study. Because of the infectious nature of the disease, many deaths are occurring within the same family.

“In one idea, we think if two related people die, then in a real sense, there may be less lose,” Wolfe said over email. “So, since we see such a pattern with COVID-19, this aspect should be taken into account.”

Nadia Abuelezam, an epidemiologist and professor at Boston College with experience in mathematical modeling who was not involved in the study, said a bereavement multiplier helps to humanize the toll of the pandemic. She sees it as a welcome addition to the many mathematical models available right now that look solely at predicted death counts or infection rates.

“Oftentimes, as epidemiologists and public health officials, we’re only concerned with the numbers … and sometimes it’s really hard for folks when they see these numbers, to remember that there’s actually lives behind [them],” she said.

“It helps people understand that there are lives, not just one, but many lives that are affected.”

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In Science We Trust

Many people have called into question science’s relationship with politics, and if scientists and science organizations should take side. A new podcast series from Nature says yes.

Many were shocked this past October when publications like Nature and Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden for the next U.S. president. Why? Well, science is supposed to be objective, right?

That is what many Nature readers wrote in to say when the magazine thoughtfully laid out a list of examples of President Donald Trump’s attacks on scientific investigation and expertise and why “Joe Biden must be given an opportunity to restore trust in truth, in evidence, in science, and in other institutions of democracy.”

Nature Podcast | Listen via Stitcher for Podcasts
Nature’s podcast covers science stories from all sides – research, publishing, culture, politics, and more. Credit: Nature

In response to their readers’ outcry, Nature released a trilogy of podcast episodes investigating the interface of science and politics, and if science is supposed to be (and can be) truly objective. The first episode “A brief history of politics and science,” Nick Howe delves into Nature’s history with politics. His conclusion: Nature has always been political.

In its first volume, published in 1869, Nature argues for science to be taught in schools in the UK—an extreme view in a time where most education was privatized and led by religious institutions. This radical take does not begin to compare to what they published in 1870—scientific education should be available to all…especially women.

Bottom line, science and politics are inseparable at Nature, given their history. Howe and his interviewed experts go on to make many more significant points about science’s presence in politics today (and vice versa).

The following episode, “Politics of the life scientific,” Howe focuses on how politics determines if and how science gets done—he talks funding, giving examples like the lack of research opportunities in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, grant money management in the United States Congress, and the funding restrictions in the UK.

Howe echoes the sentiment and conflict that many researchers face—“if you can’t beat them, join them. If you want the money, you have to play the game—in other words, you have to get political. And you can see that in [researcher’s] grants.” This mystical theory of perfect objectivity in science suffers when science is funded by agenda-bound institutions.

Ultimately, Nature’s podcast series concludes that science and politics are indistinguishable, and if you still have your doubts, give their series a listen.

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The Next Big Step for Fusion Energy?

A collaboration between MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems may be on the verge of groundbreaking fusion technology

Nuclear fusion is the process that causes stars to emit enormous amounts of energy as light and heat. If we can figure out a way to efficiently replicate this process here on Earth, that would mean abundant renewable energy for almost everyone on Earth.

To that end, seven papers were recently released explaining advances in the science of fusion energy as part of the SPARC project, a collaboration between MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. 

The point of the SPARC project is to build a system that produces at least twice as much power as it uses. It is not meant to be a viable source of power generation. As Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center and co-leader of the SPARC project, put it, “the idea is that it sparks the imagination of the public about fusion energy.”

A digital representation of SPARC

Normally, hydrogen exists as a single proton and a single electron bound together by an attractive force. However, the extreme temperature within the cores of stars causes the hydrogen that comprises them to break down into its single proton and electron constituents, hydrogen in this form is called plasma. Within the plasma, protons and electrons zip around the core of the star at enormous speeds. While zipping, protons occasionally collide with one another. These collisions cause the protons to fuse (hence the name nuclear fusion) into helium and release massive amounts of energy. 

Unfortunately (or luckily depending on who you ask), the temperature on Earth is a bit cooler than that of the core of a star. Thus, scientists have had to come up with clever ways to recreate the extreme conditions necessary for nuclear fusion here on Earth in order to directly harness the energy released from the collisions. 

So far, the best way to recreate nuclear fusion is through the use of a tokamak, which is “a donut-shaped magnetic cage in which one can confine a very hot hydrogen plasma” according to Hartmut Zohm, the head of the Tokamak Scenario Development Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Tokamaks use superconducting magnets to induce the magnetic field within their cage. Superconducting magnets are necessary because the current running through them experiences no resistance. According to Zohm, “even the (small) resistance of copper magnets would consume too much energy for fusion reactors to be efficient.” When it comes to fusion energy, every little bit counts towards making a reactor more efficient. That is why SPARC will be using a new kind of superconducting magnet. 

A look at the inside of a tokamak

SPARC will use rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting magnets. Not only are REBCO magnets superconducting, but they are “highly tolerant” of higher magnetic fields, says Whyte. They also retain their superconductivity at higher temperatures. These two properties of REBCO magnets allow them to create a whopping magnetic field of over 20 T (T is for Teslas, not the car, but a unit of magnetic field strength) at the magnets themselves. The field strength where the fusion reaction takes place is around 12 T, still a huge magnetic field. 20 and 12 may not seem like large numbers, but a common fridge magnet is only about 0.01 T!

SPARC is not the fusion energy reactor that will provide us with abundant clean energy. It’s not meant to be. SPARC is an experiment meant to test new technology that will lead us towards that goal of abundant clean energy. Whyte compared the SPARC experiment to the Wright Flyer, “which only flew for about 10 or 12 seconds…they didn’t build the 747.” The 747 of fusion energy is still many years away, but “the moment you know you can fly changes everything.”

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US voters will decide the future of the world’s climate

On Wednesday, the U.S. will become the first country to leave the Paris Agreement, three years after the Trump administration decided to cease the country’s participation in the 190-nation agreement dedicated to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. 

At the same time, either current President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden, as chosen by U.S. voters, will soon be announced as the next president and inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021. The two months from now until January will not alter the world’s climate, but the next four years will. 

The U.S. is currently the world’s second-biggest carbon polluter and has reduced its yearly carbon emissions by less than one percent from 2016 to 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The Associated Press reported that “more than 60 countries cut emissions by higher percentages than the U.S. in that time period.” By leaving the Paris Agreement, the U.S. is no longer required to report its carbon emissions to the U.N.  

If elected, Former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris Agreement on day one, and $2 trillion on clean energy investments. From his website: 

“On day one, Biden will use the full authority of the executive branch to make progress and significantly reduce emissions.”

The Paris Agreement was created to limit global temperature rise below 1.5 C, the benchmark decided by scientists to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The U.S. was once a leader in fighting climate change. The $3 billion that the Obama Administration had pledged to help developing countries transition to low-carbon technologies was retracted by the Trump Administration, undermining the country’s credibility on the international field. Without the U.S. to lead the fight, countries have also begun proposing transferring production of goods to countries lenient about their emissions, cases in which “global emissions would not be reduced.” 

Irrespective of who wins in this election, the U.S. will leave the Paris Agreement tomorrow. Whether or not it will rejoin remains to be seen. 

Featured Image: Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis that rated the U.S. “Critically Insufficient,” indicating that the country’s carbon emissions “are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit.   

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The dangerous zeal to slow climate change by dumping iron into oceans

Uncertainties persist within the scientific community about the seemingly simple and inexpensive solution to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Few scientists claim this method could cause ocean forests to develop within weeks while others urge for the focus to shift to reducing emissions rather than trying to come up with band-aids.

Countries have only 10 years left to lower greenhouse gas emissions to steer clear of the worst impacts of climate change, and every scenario to do so requires sucking carbon dioxide, the persistent and dominant greenhouse gas, from the air. 

An international team of researchers makes a tantalizing proposition: manually “dumping” volcanic ash into oceans, after which a series of processes will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it in seafloor sediments like rocks, soil and remnants of marine organisms. Researchers say the gas will not return to the atmosphere for thousands of years.

In a study published on Sept. 12 in Anthropocene, researchers describe that the iron content in volcanic ash stimulates phytoplankton growth, causing “ocean forests to develop within weeks, which in turn absorbs more carbon dioxide. When they die, planktons sink to the seafloor along with the absorbed carbon dioxide. Laboratory experiments hint that every ton of added iron could remove 30,000 to 110,000 tons of carbon from the air.

Jack Longman, a research fellow at the University of Southampton and one of the authors of the study, says the proposal to manually add volcanic ash, also called tephra, to oceans is merely an enhancement of a natural process.

“Quite a lot [of volcanic ash] enters the ocean naturally, which is why we call the idea simply an augmentation of the process,” says Longman. Sourcing the material wouldn’t be a problem, he explained. “There’s still a lot of tephra which falls on land and could easily be collected. Places like Iceland are covered in tephra, which is poorly consolidated and easy to collect. In other locations like Indonesia and the Philippines, ash is actually a real issue, so any idea which involves removal of terrestrial tephra would be well-received.”

Researchers say this method does not require new technology and is “an order of magnitude cheaper” than other approaches. Longman adds that “it would be a case of a few weeks from digging up the tephra, loading it onto barges, and then releasing [it] at sea.” 

Despite the enticing possibility of low costs and easy execution, there may be unintended consequences. Some of the 13 so-called ocean fertilization experiments showed that phytoplankton flourish briefly, but how much carbon they’ve absorbed is not clear. The mere existence of abundant phytoplankton is problematic because they contain a toxin called domoic acid which “accumulates in the brain and can cause dizziness, disorientation and eventually death” in birds and mammals. Moreover, iron deoxygenates water, risking the health of marine organisms. 

Of the past 13 experiments, one released iron into the ocean off Argentina in spite of severe backlash. Another was an undercover operation without scientific peer review. The most recent attempt, which released 100 tons of iron sulphate off the coast of British Columbia, was deemed illegal. 

Locations of 13 ocean fertilization experiments performed between 1995 and early 2000s. Credits: Morrissey and Bowler/Adapted from Trick et al.

In response to these experiments and the gaps in scientific knowledge, The London Convention and the London Protocol, two international treaties to protect marine environments from human activities, banned ocean fertilization efforts in 2007. Although the treaties amended their ban to allow only legitimate scientific research to perform ocean fertilization experiments, Longman’s research is still blocked from being tested on international waters. 

“This amendment would be binding under international law but it has not yet been approved by enough countries for it to come into force,” says Jesse Reynolds, a scholar of international environmental policy at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law who was not involved in the study.

Even if the ban were to be removed, a 2020 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says modifying the environment through ocean fertilization, even strategically, is unlikely to help on a global scale. Instead, it disrupts delicately balanced nutrient levels which currently result in “just enough iron” in oceans.  

“Among techniques of carbon dioxide removal, [ocean fertilization] currently seems too uncertain, environmentally risky, and politically controversial to warrant much serious consideration,” says Reynolds. “At the same time, I would like it to receive some consideration, including resuming field tests. After all, climate change poses serious risks and we are not reducing (and will not reduce) greenhouse gas emissions rapidly enough. We are in an ‘all hands on deck’ situation.”

Featured image: Wikipedia Commons/NASA

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Dire wolves, long thought to only have lived in the Americas, may have lived in Asia as well

By Maria Lovato

A fossil that researchers say belonged to a dire wolf was found in Asia. | Quaternary International

Before the surprising discovery of a unique canine fossil in China, dire wolves, fierce predators that went extinct thousands of years ago, were thought to have only lived in southern North America and South America. But in a study published earlier this month in the journal Quaternary International, a group of scientists claims that the fossil found in China in 2017 belonged to a dire wolf, marking the first evidence of dire wolves in Europe or Asia.

The fossil, fragments of a lower jaw and tooth, was found in an underwater sand mine near Harbin in Northeastern China. The jaw was too big to be from a gray wolf, and the measurements matched with other dire wolf fossils, Dan Lu, Yangheshan Yang, Qiang Li and Xijun Ni wrote in the study. The research team was based out of Beijing, China.

During the dire wolf’s lifetime, North America and Asia were connected by the Bering land bridge. It was previously thought that dire wolves did not cross over from the Americas because the cold temperatures and ice made the conditions too difficult for them. However, the researchers behind this discovery propose that the dire wolves did cross over, but did not thrive in Asia due to competition from hyenas, which were dominant in that region, explaining the lack of dire wolf fossils in Asia.

“This discovery clearly shows that dire wolves dispersed to Asia, though it does not appear to have been a dominant predator in Asia,” the researchers wrote in the study.

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What To Do with Agricultural Plastics

Recycling companies are stepping up to meet the great need to recycle agricultural plastics, but the initiative deserves more effort and attention. 

Reduce, reuse, recycle: a mantra many of us know. We generally associate it with household items like bottles, cans, paper, and cardboard, and that is the demand that many plastics recycling companies have met. However, the U.S. agricultural sector, an industry that uses around one billion pounds of plastic every year, is struggling to dispose of their plastics in an environmentally conscious way. 

Common plastic items used on farms include irrigation piping, grain and silage covers, greenhouse film and mulch film, tarps, and fertilizer bags, among others. They are often overlooked as viable for recycling due to their cumbersome nature and the fact that they do not meet the specifications for most market plastic recycling companies. The plastics are often burned, releasing pollutants into the air, or they are buried in landfills or dumped somewhere on the farms themselves. 

A handful of companies have sprung up specifically for recycling agricultural plastics, such as Revolution Plastics, which collects low density polyethylene (LDPE) film from farms in the Midwest, to be processed and sold by Delta Plastics. Others, like Casella Waste Systems in the Northeast, expanded their existing waste collection system to collect LDPE films.

Most companies only collect LDPE film from farms for recycling. Other types of plastic are still being put in landfills, like high density polyethylene, which is used for pesticide containers and nursery pots. Research is being done to figure out how HDPE and other plastics can be processed and resold, and increasing demand in the market for post-consumer resin made from recycled plastics would help propel this process. 

Universities are also taking initiative: Cornell University’s Waste Management Institute launched the Recycling Agricultural Plastics Program in 2009, and worked until 2016 in conjunction with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, the Cornell Cooperative Extension, and county governments and waste management companies to make it more accessible for farmers in New York State to recycle their plastics. The University of Maine Cooperative Extension has launched a greenhouse plastics collection program for the fall and winter of 2020, funded by a grant from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

There are also biodegradable plastic alternatives to consider, however they are more expensive than traditional plastic and currently only substitute LDPE, mainly mulch films. Recycling looks to be a cost-effective and easy way for farmers to conscientiously dispose of their plastic materials right now, though there are still strides that have to be made before every bit of agricultural plastic can be reduced, reused, or recycled. 

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Where are the personal stories about COVID-19?

Now over seven or nine months into the pandemic in the U.S., I often worry that news about COVID-19 has become stale, that perhaps the general public has grown tired of hearing about it.

In August, reported by The Washington Post, the WHO warned that younger people in their 20s, 30s and 40s were primarily driving the spread of COVID-19 in many countries. This month, the CDC warned that rising cases in the U.S. are most often linked to small household gatherings, according to The Hill. Some public schools and some universities have opened for hybrid and in-person schooling. More people are generally going out more, and the trend for COVID-19 cases is rising this fall.

Increasingly, I have observed friends on social media post images of themselves standing next to each other without face masks on, as if we aren’t currently still dealing with a deadly pandemic. This type of close contact – with people outside of one’s primary household – would have been unthinkable in late March. 

Back then, people were afraid of leaving their homes; doctors were facing severe shortages of personal protective equipment and just figuring out how to treat patients for a novel coronavirus; and the CDC was still discussing whether or not they should be recommending the general public to wear face masks.

Earlier this month, after Donald Trump and several other politicians and White House staff tested positive for the virus, journalists followed through: covering Trump’s condition and treatment regimen; criticizing Trump’s physician for his complicity during press conferences; examining who might be infected related to the White House super-spreader event; tracking White House cases; and debunking Trump’s claims of being “immune” to COVID-19.

Appropriately, there was an inundation of COVID-19 stories in the context of the White House. Ed Yong of The Atlantic reminded readers that even though Joe Biden tested negative following the first presidential debate, that does not guarantee he is not infected, given his close proximity to Trump’s shouting and the fact that COVID-19 has an incubation period of up to 14 days, so a too-early test may end up being a false negative.

Yong writes, “When thinking about COVID-19 transmission, there are no absolutes, only probabilities.”

This type of thinking should reflect how people act during the pandemic if they wanted to keep themselves or their loved ones as safe as possible. But I think many Americans have become complacent in neglecting guidelines of social distancing. Have some people become overly confident with testing negative one time? They might then assume themselves all clear to visit a friend’s house for a small gathering or neglect to wear face masks when spending time outdoors with friends and without social distancing.

If so, I think there needs to be a return to how journalists reported on COVID-19 in March. Journalists should not only be reminding people of the pandemic when it becomes relevant to politicians because it affects us all.

When I think about earlier news coverage, I recall stories of people in crisis. From The New York Times, I remember this video of a nurse showing the inside of a New York City hospital treating COVID-19 patients, intimate profiles of healthcare workers and stories of families who have lost loved ones. 

I wonder if once again, the news cycle needs an overhaul. National news used to be flooded with Trump coverage prior to the pandemic. When the novel coronavirus took over our lives, it also turned journalists’ focus back on the people: to a healthcare worker, a family or a local neighborhood. Maybe we need more stories about long-haulers and other people who are living with COVID-19. Maybe COVID-19 news needs more personal stories about people who are affected by the disease, so that the public begins to regard the pandemic seriously again.

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Good reporting is vital, now more than ever.

Now, more than ever, easily accessible and understandable science reporting on topics like COVID-19 are important to spread accurate facts and not the kinds of mis- and disinformation that might spread on social media.

For that reason, The New York Times’ recent coverage on various facets of the vaccine production process struck me as important reporting. In a set of (currently) four pieces of content collected under the group title “The Road to a Coronavirus Vaccine”, The Times dove into the nitty-gritty details of vaccine production and public release.

Of the coverage, two pieces specifically stood out to me. Firstly, the Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker is an impressive collection of data and information packaged in an easy to follow format. The ability to filter vaccine candidates by their point in the process gives easy clear access to the information. Perhaps more importantly, the section titled “The Vaccine Testing Process” gives a succinct starter’s guide to understanding what each phase means.

The other coverage that stood out to me was the article “3 Covid-19 Trials Have Been Paused for Safety. That’s a Good Thing.” Published Oct. 14, it hooks on the recent news that two late-stage clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines were put on pause. It doesn’t stay there, however, exploring, rather, what it means when a vaccine trial is paused.

For an average layperson — especially one caught in the midst of a pandemic — a pause in the vaccine testing process can seem daunting, with a lot of hope hanging on the big-name vaccine candidates in the works to bring relief from the intricacies of our new normal (something another article in the set of four explains might not be so simple). The article addresses that a pause isn’t just normal, it makes the process safer.

By grouping coverage that makes such specific details so accessible, The Times’ coverage finds ways to successfully, helpfully, contribute positive and accurate information to the ever-changing landscape of content regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.