Editor’s note: We’ve been living with COVID-19 for almost three years now and nearly 70% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. Unfortunately, along with a bad flu season and high number of recorded RSV cases, the COVID virus continues to evolve, and cases are expected to rise as people spend more time indoors. We urge everyone to follow the CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the flu, and RSV. 

The coronavirus continues to spread throughout the world, with more than 650 million confirmed cases worldwide. Since this article was first published in January 2021, several vaccines for COVID-19 have been approved and are available. These vaccines are effective at helping protect against severe disease and death from the virus.

In addition to getting vaccinated and following CDC guidelines, you can take steps to boost the immune system — its job is to protect us against harmful substances and germs. The better it can do its job, the healthier we will be. Let’s explore how to keep our immune systems healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Adequate Vitamin D

This fat-soluble vitamin is a hormone our bodies produce in response to the sun. Vitamin D is critical for a healthy immune system and bone health. Unfortunately, studies show that 42% of the population is deficient. This is especially common in colder or cloudy climates and in individuals with darker skin. For example, studies show that Blacks — and to a lesser extent, Latinos — have higher instances of Vitamin D deficiency than their white counterparts.

Some foods contain Vitamin D, and our bodies can produce it when in the presence of sunlight. Typically, diet alone is not sufficient, and supplementing is recommended. The National Institutes of Health recommends intake of 600 IUs of Vitamin D for youth and adults and 800 IUs for seniors over 70 years of age. However, recommendations vary for optimum health, with some considerably higher. Also, exposure to sunlight helps boost Vitamin D levels. Unfortunately, this can be difficult in cold climates when the skin is covered and the sun is relatively weak.

Balanced & Healthy Diet

As we all know, a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables promotes health. Specifically, there is also evidence that zinc, selenium, iron, copper, folic acid, and vitamins A, B6, C, and E impact our immune systems. Avoid fried and processed foods and eat a variety of nutrient-dense foods.

Restful Sleep

In 1910, most people slept nine hours per night. Now, 40% of adults in the U.S. report getting less than six hours each night. About 30% to 40% of people in the U.S. report experiencing insomnia each year. The trend of inadequate sleep seems to be increasing over time. Although many of us are aware of the importance of sleep, we just don’t get enough of it.

There are many things we can do to embrace sound sleep. One of the most crucial steps is to acknowledge its importance and make restful sleep a priority.

Create a sleep routine and try to go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time each day. Ensure the bedroom is dark while you sleep and avoid electronic screens before bed. Don’t eat large meals or drink alcohol late at night. Relax before going to bed, allowing yourself to unwind. Make sure that your pillows and mattress are comfortable for your body type and sleep position.

Proper Hydration

Because every cell, tissue, and organ in our bodies relies on proper hydration, it is essential to immune health. How much water we need depends on our level of activity, body size, climate, diet, and other factors. Although there is no agreed-upon recommendation for water intake, some sources recommend eight glasses a day. One way to ensure you are adequately hydrated is to drink enough water that your urine is clear and you don’t feel thirsty.

Reduce Stress

Because of the strong mind-body connection, stress has a significant impact on our overall health. Although some stress is unavoidable, establish healthy habits to help combat it. Regular exercise, yoga, meditation, vibrant friendships, laughter, and creative outlets are all helpful. Likewise, it’s crucial to avoid factors that increase stress, such as toxic relationships and overspending.

Gut Health

There is an increasing body of evidence that our gut health shapes our physical health. Our microbiome can impact mental health, body weight, immune health, and the prevalence of disease. Some of the factors that impact gut health are listed above, such as reducing stress, adequate hydration, regular exercise, and eating a balanced diet. Also, eating a prebiotic and probiotic-rich diet can help.

Probiotics are microorganisms that can improve gut flora while inhibiting unhealthy bacteria. Prebiotics help increase the growth and activity of probiotics. Thus, it’s helpful to have the two combined for a balanced gut.

Prebiotic-rich foods include onions, garlic, asparagus, oats, apples, flaxseeds, seaweed, and dandelion greens. Probiotic-rich foods include raw kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt (with active or live cultures), kefir, pickles (not containing vinegar), and miso. Also, taking a probiotic supplement can be helpful.

Originally published on January 11, 2021, this article was updated in December 2022.

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched into Earth orbit on Friday, Dec. 16, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, and engineers are working to prepare the mission to begin measuring the height of water on over 90% of Earth’s surface, providing a high-definition survey of our planet’s water for the first time.

But before it can do that, the satellite would need to unfold its large mast and antenna panels (see above) after successfully deploying the solar panel arrays that power the spacecraft. The mission monitors and controls the satellite using telemetry data, but it also equipped spacecraft with four customized commercial cameras to record the action.

The solar arrays fully deployed shortly after launch, taking about 10 minutes.

The antennas successfully deployed over four days, a process that was completed on Dec. 22. The two cameras focused on the KaRIn antennas captured the mast extending out from the spacecraft and locking in place but stopped short of capturing the antennas being fully deployed (a milestone the team confirmed with telemetry data.)

Thirty-three feet (10 meters) apart, at either end of the mast, the two antennas belong to the groundbreaking Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument. Designed to capture precise measurements of the height of water in Earth’s freshwater bodies and the ocean, KaRIn will see eddies, currents, and other ocean features less than 13 miles (20 kilometers) across. It will also collect data on lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres (62,500 square meters) and rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) across.

KaRIn will do this by bouncing radar pulses off the surface of water on Earth and receiving the signals with both of those antennas, collecting data along a swath that’s 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide on either side of the satellite.

The data SWOT provides will help researchers and decision-makers address some of the most pressing climate questions of our time and help communities prepare for a warming world.

More About the Mission

SWOT was jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA is providing the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES is providing the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations. CSA is providing the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA is providing the launch vehicle and the agency’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, is managing the associated launch services.

To learn more about SWOT, visit:

https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/

These biofilms aren’t just unpleasant and unappealing however, they can be seriously troublesome. For example, in the medical field, the formation of biofilm can reduce the effectiveness of antibiotic treatments. The key to understanding biomass formation lies in understanding how bacteria behave en masse.

A new paper in EPJE by Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany, researcher Davide Breoni and his co-authors presents a mathematical model for the motion of bacteria that includes cell division and death, the basic ingredients of the cell cycle.

The team developed a mathematical model of bacterial movement in process creating a link between statistical physics and biophysics.

“Our new model belongs to a class of models for ‘active matter’ that currently encounter a lot of interest in statistical physics,” Breoni says. “This field studies the collective properties of particle systems that have their own energy source — bacteria are an exemplary case.”

The model devised by the team delivered a surprise by suggesting that when it comes to movement bacteria can act as a unit.

“In the course of our investigation, we found out that the model predicts that the formation of bacterial colonies can occur through the build-up of travelling waves, concentrated ‘packages’ of bacteria,” Breoni adds. “We did not expect this to arise from such a simple model as ours.”

He believes that the results should be interesting to the general public who may be aware of bacterial colonies, but not know how they move in a collective way.

Breoni concludes by pointing out this is a very simple model suggesting how the research could proceed from here. “We could try to make the model more realistic and confront the results to experiment to test its predictions,” he says. “On the other hand, this research is very much curiosity-driven and results from intense discussions among the researchers — an approach we’d like to maintain so we can continue to surprise ourselves with our findings.”

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Fucoidan: Brown algae slime is not a favourite dish

Algae take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use the carbon to grow. They release up to a third of the carbon they absorb back into the seawater, for example in the form of sugary excretions. Depending on the structure of these excretions, they are either quickly used by other organisms or sink towards the seafloor.

“The excretions of brown algae are very complex and therefore incredibly complicated to measure,” says first author Hagen Buck-Wiese from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. “However, we have managed to develop a method to analyse them in detail.” With this method, the researchers scrutinised a large number of different substances. The so-called fucoidan turned out to be particularly exciting. “Fucoidan made up about half of the excretions of the brown algae species we studied, the so-called bladderwrack,” says Buck-Wiese. Fucoidan is a recalcitrant molecule. “The fucoidan is so complex that it is very hard for other organisms to use it. No one seems to like it.” As a result, the carbon from the fucoidan does not return to the atmosphere quickly. “This makes the brown algae particularly good helpers in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the long term — for hundreds to thousands of years.”

Brown algae could bind almost all of Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions

Brown algae are remarkably productive. It is estimated that they absorb about 1 gigaton (one billion tons) of carbon per year from the air. Using the results of the present study, this would mean that up to 0.15 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to 0.55 gigatons of carbon dioxide, are sequestered by brown algae each year in the long term. For comparison: Germany’s annual greenhouse gas emissions currently amount to about 0.74 gigatons of carbon dioxide, according to the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, estimation for 2020).

“And even better: The fucoidan does not contain any nutrients such as nitrogen,” Buck-Wiese explains further. Thus, the growth of the brown algae is not affected by the carbon losses.

More species and sites

For the current study, Buck-Wiese and his colleagues from the MARUM MPG Bridge Group Marine Glycobiology, which is based at both the Bremen Max Planck Institute and MARUM — Centre for Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, conducted their experiments at the Tvärminne Zoological Station in southern Finland. “Next we want to look into other brown algae species and other locations,” says Buck-Wiese. “The great potential of brown algae for climate protection definitely needs to be further researched and utilised.”

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Despite setbacks from the pandemic, renewable energy deployment is increasing. The Inflation Reduction Act extends renewable energy tax credits and helps remove barriers for low-income households to use clean energy. Although supply chain shortages have created hurdles across the energy industry, 2023 has the potential to be a promising year for the transition to clean energy. Let’s examine the forces at play for renewables in 2023.

High Fossil Fuel Costs Make Renewable Energy More Cost-Effective

The price of oil, natural gas, and coal has been rising, and quite erratic, partly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A natural gas shortage has temporarily spiked interest in coal, causing prices to soar last March and then rise and dip repeatedly since. Although some markets are using more coal during natural gas shortages, a return to coal power is counterproductive for mitigating the climate crisis.

An increase in natural gas and coal prices impacts our electricity rates because so much electricity in the U.S. is produced from fossil fuels. Last year, 22% of electricity was generated from coal and 38% from natural gas. As a result of higher gas and coal prices, the average cost of electricity has increased by around 8% from 2021 to 2022, according to estimates from the Energy Information Administration. However, the transition to renewable energy requires investments and a few years to bring utility-scale projects online.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is prompting a wholesale reorientation of global energy trade, leaving Russia with a much-diminished position,” according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). To help shield consumers from rising prices, many governments are “accelerating the flow of new renewables projects.”

Although wind and solar energy have become cost-competitive with other energy sources?, the increase in coal and natural gas costs makes solar and wind power? more cost-effective than fossil fuels in most cases. According to BloombergNEF, “New onshore wind now costs about $46 per megawatt-hour, while large-scale solar plants cost $45 per megawatt-hour. In comparison, new coal-fired plants cost $74 per MWh, while gas plants are $81 per MWh.”

Also, as the cost of electricity increases, installing a rooftop solar energy system becomes more cost-effective, and solar panels pay for themselves in savings more quickly.

Energy Storage Technology and Deployment Is Advancing

Most renewable power sources are intermittent because the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. Thus, energy storage is critical for renewables to become more widespread. The price of energy storage is still relatively high, but it is gradually decreasing. Likewise, promising energy storage technologies are advancing, such as solid-state batteries.

These batteries could eventually overtake lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, using a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid or gel found in current Li-ion batteries. They have a higher energy density, so they are more compact. Also, they don’t require the cooling and control components that Li-ion batteries do, so they have a smaller footprint and lower weight. This feature is essential for electric vehicles but also helpful for stationary battery energy storage systems.

“Solar PV homeowners will love our solid-state energy storage systems because they offer superior performance and are non-explosive, non-flammable, non-toxic, and 100% recyclable,” said Damir Perge, CEO and co-founder of Ampricity. The company plans to start manufacturing solid-state batteries for residential and commercial use in its U.S. factory by 2024.

Researchers from MIT recently announced that they created an aluminum-sulfur battery, which they say can be deployed for a fraction of the price of Li-ion batteries, are safer, and are recyclable. Although they aren’t ready for widescale production, this development shows that battery technology is advancing.

Innovative Approaches to Solar Energy Becoming More Common

An increasing number of states have policies that encourage community solar farms, which allow subscribers to enjoy many of the benefits of solar energy without installing solar panels on their properties. This makes solar energy more feasible for renters, low to moderate-income households, multifamily unit dwellers, and people with shaded roofs.

Some of the best states for community solar are Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. However, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Virginia have recently passed laws supporting community solar, so these markets are likely to heat up.

Increasingly, solar developers are incorporating innovative practices at solar farms, such as planting native wildflowers to promote pollinator habitat or grazing sheep instead of using gas-powered mowers. Some solar developers are even experimenting with planting crops at solar farms, in a practice known as agrivoltaics. In California, solar developers are installing solar panels on some irrigation canals to prevent evaporation and efficiently use space.

However, as solar and wind farms become more prevalent, some communities oppose them for various reasons. Adding dual-use features such as food production can help overcome concerns while providing additional benefits.

The state of the global energy industry will be in a state of flux in 2023 due to fluctuating supplies and shifting demand. However, as technology matures, the capabilities of renewable energy technologies and energy storage are also advancing.

“Large uncertainties exist for the current forest assessments internationally. By mapping the carbon stock of all individual trees, accuracy is greatly improved. Further, the way different countries make their inventories is not consistent due to different contexts, goals, and available datasets. We hope that this method will establish itself as a standard, thereby enabling better comparisons between countries,” says PhD Researcher Maurice Mugabowindekwe, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources Management (IGN), University of Copenhagen. He is first author on the scientific article presenting the new method. The article has been accepted for publication by Nature Climate Change, one of the most prominent journals for the field.

Maurice Mugabowindekwe being Rwandan himself is helpful during the work, but the choice of Rwanda for development of the method was scientifically based, he emphasizes:

“The country has a rich landscape variation including savannas, woodlands, sub-humid and humid forests, shrubland, agro-ecosystem mosaics, and urban tree ecosystems which are representative of most tropical countries. We wanted to prove the method for all these landscape types. Moreover, Rwanda is a signatory to several international agreements on forest preservation and climate change mitigation. For instance, Rwanda has pledged to restore about 80 % of its surface area by 2030 under the Bonn Challenge. So, it is highly relevant to have a reliable method for monitoring tree carbon.”

First method for mapping individual trees

Preservation of natural forests and planting of new trees are recognized as vital routes to limiting climate change. However, large uncertainties regarding the carbon content of the trees have made it hard to assess the efficiency of concrete initiatives. The University of Copenhagen researchers have overcome this problem.

The new method benefits from databases which give the relationship between the extent of the crown and the total carbon content of an individual tree.

“Mapping individual trees and calculating their carbon stocks has traditionally been done in forestry, albeit at a much smaller scale. Basically, what we do equals scaling up these approaches from a very local to a national level,” says Researcher Ankit Kariryaa, working 50:50 at IGN and at the Department of Computer Sciences (DIKU). Scientists from these two University of Copenhagen departments have developed the method with IGN as lead, in collaboration with other international scientists.

The new method will support Rwanda in verifying fulfilment of commitments under schemes such as the global forestry climate change mitigation scheme REDD+ or the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative, AFR 100.

Many trees are found outside forests

Manually mapping the trees of an entire country would be a huge endeavor and excessively costly. Thus, the new method constitutes a breakthrough since no other method would realistically be able to provide the same information at the level of individual trees.

“It is important to take a holistic approach and also include trees which are outside forests,” says Ankit Kariryaa, noting that 72 % of the mapped trees were in farmlands and savannas, and 17 % in plantations.

At the same time, the relatively small proportion of trees which are found in natural forests — 11 % of the total tree count — comprise about 51 % of the national carbon stock of Rwanda. This is possible mainly because natural forests have a very high carbon content per tree volume, thanks to the very low human disturbance secured through national legislation.

“This suggests that conservation, regeneration, and sustainable management of natural forests is more effective at mitigating climate change than plantation,” Maurice Mugabowindekwe comments.

Rainforest appears to be “a huge green blanket”

It is paramount that the computer can distinguish the individual trees. This is because the relationship between the extent of the crown and the total carbon content of a tree is very different depending on the size of a tree. One very large tree will have a much higher carbon content than a group of trees with the same joint crown extent. So, if the group was mistaken for one tree, the carbon content would be significantly overestimated. A deep neural network is used for detecting the individual trees.

“Especially for the rainforest, it is highly challenging to determine how many different trees are present in an image. At first glance, the forest just appears to be one huge green blanket. But by using methods from Machine Learning and Computer Vision, our system can also be applied to identify the individual trees in overstory of dense forests,” explains Christian Igel, Professor of Machine Learning at DIKU.

Training the computer on verified samples is at the core of Machine Learning. In the Rwandan study, the computer was trained on a set of some 97,500 manually delineated tree crowns representing the full range of biogeographical conditions across the country.

The study used publicly available aerial and satellite images of Rwanda at 0.25 x 0.25 m resolution. These images were collected in June-August 2008 and 2009 and were provided by the Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority and the University of Rwanda. More than 350 million trees were mapped.

Applications beyond Rwanda

Nine researchers from University of Copenhagen visited Rwanda in July 2022 with a dual purpose of field work and presenting results from the first nation-wide mapping to the Rwandan authorities and other stakeholders in the country’s forestry sector.

“The presentation was well received,” reports Maurice Mugabowindekwe. He was immediately tasked by the Rwandan authorities with an updated mapping based on newer aerial images acquired in 2019. This work is now ongoing.

Further, the method has already been tested for a handful of countries besides Rwanda. These include Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya.

“We hope countrywide high-resolution satellite imagery can also be acquired for these and more countries, to enable the application of the same approach. Also, we advocate the inclusion of funding for regular high-resolution imagery along with localized field inventory databases in development packages to enable similar works across the globe,” says Maurice Mugabowindekwe, adding:

“The method has yielded good results when applied directly to a new country or region. If the model is further trained on a local set of samples, the accuracy becomes even higher. In my opinion, inventory of the available woody plants, their location, size, and carbon stock, is the first step towards monitoring the impact of landscape restoration efforts as well as conservation. If you are not able to create an accurate and reliable inventory, there is a risk of lacking a framework to track the impact of landscape restoration. This could make the conservation and sustainable management of both forests and other tree-dominated landscapes impossible. Therefore, this is science which is likely to have an impact.”

To better understand which species are most vulnerable and identify the most cost-effective actions, researchers combined expert assessments with scientific data to evaluate threats and conservation strategies for Antarctica. They asked 29 experts to define possible management strategies, estimate their cost and feasibility, and assess the potential benefit to different species between now and 2100.

Climate change was identified as the most serious threat to Antarctic biodiversity and influencing global policy to limit warming was the most beneficial conservation strategy. Under current management strategies and more than 2 degrees Celsius of warming, 65% of land plants and animals will decline by 2100. Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) were identified as the most vulnerable, followed by other sea birds and soil nematode worms. However, regional management strategies could benefit up to 74% of plants and animals at an estimated cost of 1.92 billion US dollars over the next 83 years, equating to 0.004% of global GDP in 2019. The regional management strategies identified as offering the greatest return on investment were minimizing the impacts of human activities, improving the planning and management of new infrastructure projects, and improving transport management.

As Antarctica faces increasing pressure from climate change and human activities, a combination of regional and global conservation efforts is needed to preserve Antarctic biodiversity and ecosystem services for future generations, the authors say.

Lee adds, “What this work shows is that climate change is the greatest threat to Antarctic species and what we need is global mitigation efforts to save them. This will not only help to secure their future, but also our own.”

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