Earth Day is on April 22, but we shouldn’t limit our action for the planet to one day in April.  Earth911 is honoring the 52 years of Earth Day with 52 Actions for the Earth. Each week from Earth Day 2022 to Earth Day 2023, we will share an action you can take to invest in the Earth and make your own life more sustainable.

To address the serious environmental problems posed by plastic we should all be investing in a post-plastic world. A critical component of this process is breaking free of plastic pollution. But as they say in the business world, “What gets measured gets done.” Citizen science projects help environmentalists quantify the problems. This week, you can invest in the Earth by collecting data on plastic pollution in national parks.

Action: Participate in the Plastic-Free Parks TrashBlitz

 (Para obtener información en español, visita: actionnetwork.org/events/plasticfreeparkstrashblitz)

Plastic Problems in the Parks

Our national parks are meant to be protected from pollution and development in order to preserve some of the most beautiful landscapes of our nation as truly natural areas. But in 2018, a study of tidal areas in 35 national parks found microplastics in every single sample. Plastic is not just a problem in aquatic areas. No matter how far inland, plastic pollution eventually finds its way to the sea. And there is a lot of plastic pollution in the national parks. More than 300 million people visit them each year. These visits generate nearly 80,000 tons of municipal solid waste – much of it plastic.

This year, on World Oceans Day, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland called for the department to phase out single-use plastic products and packaging from 480 million acres of federally managed lands, with a goal of eliminating the purchase, sale, and distribution of such products completely by 2032.

TrashBlitz

TrashBlitz is a campaign of The 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit working to eliminate plastic pollution through research that enables data-driven environmental solutions. From now through September, they are mobilizing volunteers to document plastic pollution at U.S. National Parks using the TrashBlitz app.

This fall the data will be included in a report that will reveal the materials, items, and brands of waste found in national parks. These results will be used to inform future legislation to keep single-use plastic out of protected spaces. It will also be used to lobby members of Congress to support the Reducing Waste in National Parks Act that was reintroduced by Representative Quigley (D-Il) last fall.

To participate, register online and download the TrashBlitz app. Then visit any national park between now and the end of September and spend some time picking up trash that you record in the app. You will automatically get an email with your raw data, and receive a copy of the final report when it’s published this fall. You will also be entered to win an America the Beautiful National Parks Pass and two tickets to Jack Johnson’s “All at Once” concert in Los Angeles on October 1.

Researchers from UC, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University at Buffalo published the results of their study demonstrating light-activated proteins can help normalize dysfunction within cells in the journal Nature Communications July 25.

The research centers on the functions of mitochondria, organelles within a cell that act as the cell’s “power plant” and source of energy. Organelles are tiny specialized structures that perform various jobs inside cells.

Jiajie Diao, PhD, one of the study’s authors, said hundreds of mitochondria are constantly coming together (a process called fusion) and dividing into smaller parts (a process called fission) to stay balanced in healthy cells. But when mitochondria are not functioning properly, there is an imbalance of this process of fission and fusion.

This imbalance can lead to a number of mitochondrial diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and certain cancers.

Diao said previous research found that another organelle within cells called a lysosome can play a role in mitochondria fission. When a mitochondria comes in contact with a lysosome, the lysosome can act like a pair of scissors and cut the mitochondria into smaller pieces.

The current research focused on jump-starting the fission process by bringing the lysosomes and mitochondria together within cells. This was accomplished using a technique known as optogenetics, which can precisely control specific cell functions using light.

“Many proteins in plants are light sensitive, informing plants whether it is day or night. Optogenetics borrows these light-sensitive proteins from plants and uses them in animal cells,” said Kai Zhang, PhD, associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and study co-author, who developed the optogenetic tools for controlling mitochondria and lysosomes with blue light. “By attaching such proteins to organelles, one can use light to control the interaction between them, such as mitochondria and lysosomes shown in this work,” he said.

The researchers attached two separate proteins to mitochondria and lysosomes within stem cells. When stimulated by blue light, the proteins naturally bind to each other to form one new protein, which also brings the mitochondria and lysosome into contact. Once they are brought together, the lysosome can cut the mitochondria, achieving fission.

“We found that it can recover the mitochondrial function,” said Diao, associate professor in the Department of Cancer Biology in UC’s College of Medicine and a University of Cincinnati Cancer Center member. “Some of the cells can even go back to normal. This proves that by just using some simple light stimulation we can at least partially recover the mitochondrial function of the cell.”

Diao said this technique could be especially useful for patients with dramatically oversized mitochondria that need to be divided into smaller pieces to achieve normal cell function. The technique could also be aimed at cancer cells, continually separating the mitochondria into smaller and smaller pieces until they can no longer function.

“Eventually the cancer cells will be killed because mitochondria is their energy,” Diao said. “Without normal functional mitochondria, all of the cancer cells will be killed.”

Since the proteins are activated by light, Diao said it allows for a more targeted approach to specific cells. Only cells exposed to the light are affected, meaning healthy cells nearby do not have their mitochondria unbalanced through the technique.

There are currently other processes that can be used to induce mitochondrial fission, but Diao said the optogenetic method is safer since it does not involve any chemicals or toxic agents.

“What we have is actually the natural process, we’re just making it faster,” Diao said. “So it’s not like a chemical or a therapy or a radiotherapy where you need to reduce the side effects.”

Next steps

Diao said his team is already at work on using the same technique to encourage fusion to address issues when mitochondria are unbalanced because they are too small and not coming together as they should within cells.

Further research from Zhang’s lab will also include developing new optogenetic systems working with different colors of light, including green, red and infrared, since a longer wavelength will be needed to penetrate human tissue.

“We would like to further expand the toolbox by introducing multicolor optogenetic systems to give us multiple ways to control how organelles behave and interact,” Zhang said. “For instance, one color makes organelles come together, while the other color forces them apart. This way, we can precisely control their interactions.”

From the current research using human stem cells, the team hopes to progress to test its efficacy using animal models on the way to eventually test the technique in humans through clinical trials. At the same time, Diao said other research groups are studying the use of magnetic fields and acoustic vibrations instead of light to accomplish similar results.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH R35GM128837 and R21AG061600 to J.D.; R01GM132438 and R01MH124827 to K.Z.). The authors declare no competing interests.

On Little Saltee, a small island off the coast of Ireland, the researchers attached tiny trackers to the feathers of Manx shearwaters. The aim of the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was to understand how underwater visibility affects seabirds’ ability to forage for fish and other prey. It is the first study to examine the impact of ocean clarity on seabirds’ diving abilities.

Climate change is leading to the oceans becoming cloudier

Jamie Darby, a marine ecologist in the School of Biological Environmental and Earth Sciences and the MaREI centre at UCC, and lead author of the study, stated “The chemical and physical properties of the planet’s oceans are changing at an unnatural rate, bringing about challenges for marine life. One consequence of climate change is that large areas of our oceans are becoming cloudier.”

Darby and the research team investigated the diving patterns of the black and white Manx shearwaters in relation to local environmental conditions like cloud cover and water clarity. Over 5000 different dives were recorded and using publicly available databases, and a range of relevant information about weather patterns and ocean conditions were amassed.

Struggling to find food

The study found that the birds dove deeper when sunlight could penetrate further underwater, suggesting that visibility is key to their ability to dive for food. As the planet warms and the ocean becomes cloudier this finding is important because it means that seabirds will have to overcome this challenge.

“Our findings support the idea that the birds needed sufficient sunlight to be able to forage at depth. While this study examined one particular seabird. The results can be extended to other animals. Many visually-dependent predators could find themselves struggling to find food as human activities continue to make the oceans murkier” stated Jamie Darby.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University College Cork. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

In their analysis researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the OACIS initiative of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, challenge the widely held view that restoring areas such as mangroves, saltmarsh and seagrass can remove large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere.

The findings of their review, published today in the journal Frontiers in Climate, identify seven reasons why carbon accounting for coastal ecosystems is not only extremely challenging but risky.

These include the high variability in carbon burial rates, vulnerability to future climate change, and fluxes of methane and nitrous oxide. The authors, who also looked at information on restoration costs, warn that extra measurements can reduce these risks, but would mean much higher costs.

However, they stress that blue carbon habitats should still be protected and, where possible, restored, as they have benefits for climate adaptation, coastal protection, food provision and biodiversity conservation.

Lead author Dr Phil Williamson, honorary reader in UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “We have looked into the processes involved in carbon removal and there are just too many uncertainties. The expected climate benefits from blue carbon ecosystem restoration may be achieved, yet it seems more likely they will fall seriously short.

“If you want to have extra carbon removal, you need extra habitat, and the scope for restoration is limited. Many of these sites have been built on, for coastal settlement, tourism and port development.

“Nevertheless, we believe that every effort should be made to halt, and wherever possible reverse, the worldwide loss of coastal vegetation. That’s because blue carbon habitats are more than carbon stores — they also provide storm protection, support biodiversity and fisheries, and improve water quality.”

The sediments beneath mangrove forests, tidal saltmarshes and seagrass meadows are rich in organic carbon, accumulated and stored over many hundreds of years.

Many recent studies and reviews have favourably identified the potential for these coastal blue carbon ecosystems to provide a natural climate solution in two ways: by conservation, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions arising from the loss and degradation of such habitats, and by restoration, to increase carbon dioxide drawdown and its long-term storage.

This new review focuses on the latter, assessing the feasibility of achieving quantified and secure carbon removal (negative emissions) through the restoration of coastal vegetation.

Increasingly businesses and states have pledged to offset their emissions by restoring these ecosystems through carbon credits, assuming reliable knowledge on how much CO₂ they will remove in future from the atmosphere.

However, Dr Williamson and co-author Prof Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of CNRS and the OACIS initiative of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, say the policy problem is more subtle. That is, CO₂ removal using coastal blue carbon restoration has questionable cost-effectiveness when considered only as a climate mitigation action, either for carbon-offsetting or for inclusion in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions, which set out their efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change under the Paris Agreement.

“If we use these ecosystems for carbon offsets in a major way, expecting that they would remove up to, say, 100 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide over the period 2025-2100, but find they only remove 10 or maybe just one gigatonne of CO₂, then climate tipping points could be crossed, with really serious consequences,” said Dr Williamson.

“If, however, such ecosystems are restored to protect biodiversity, and we find that they also remove several gigatonnes of CO₂, then that would be a bonus, assuming other means are used for climate mitigation.

“Restoration should therefore be in addition to, not as a substitute for, near-total emission reductions. Where coastal blue ecosystems restoration projects are carried out primarily for carbon removal, they need to include comprehensive long-term monitoring to verify that the intended climate benefits are being achieved.”

Prof Gattuso said: “Many important issues relating to the measurement of carbon fluxes and storage have yet to be resolved, affecting certification and resulting in potential over-crediting.

“The restoration of coastal blue carbon ecosystems is nevertheless highly advantageous for climate adaptation, coastal protection, food provision and biodiversity conservation. Such action can therefore be societally justified in very many circumstances, based on the multiple benefits that such habitats provide at the local level.”

If you spend any time camping in nature, chances are you’re going to be passionate about protecting it. While camping isn’t necessarily a high carbon footprint activity, there are always ways to minimize your environmental impact when planning a weekend or a week of trailblazing. Check out these green camping gear options before you head out.

This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase an item through one of these links, we receive a small commission that helps fund our Recycling Directory.

Charging Your Devices

Even if you’re camping to get away from it all, sometimes you want to stay in touch — just a little bit. A little wattage can be a good thing if you need to recharge your phone or GPS navigation systems or play some tunes in the tent at night. Fortunately, the power of the sun can create effective electrical charging stations for the devices you bring along.

You can string up portable solar panels at your campsite or attach them to your backpack to harness the power of the sun. Also, solar-powered backpacks store up energy as you’re trekking during the day, for use at night.

Not a sunny day? Don’t worry. Start a campfire to charge up your mobile phone. The BioLite CampStove is a small self-contained campfire that can multitask — cooking dinner while also charging your batteries. Using wood inside its canister for a smokeless campfire, an attached system generates electricity from the heat to charge small appliances.

Light Up the Night

Lights inside your tent are nice to have, but no one wants to lug around a heavy lantern? The LuminAID Solar Light not only recharges with solar power, but it’s an inflatable pouch that folds flat when not in use, minimizing space in your backpack. Or try a hat with a solar-powered headlamp built-in, like the POWERCAP Solar Headlamp. It protects your eyes from glare by day and uses stored-up solar power to light your way at night.

Hydrate

Potable water is another major source of concern when out in the wilderness. If you’re headed to a campground with a water supply, just bring some sturdy food-grade water containers pre-filled with water at your house. You’ll have your emergency water supply if you need it during the trip and you can refill your containers at the campground.

But if you’re wilderness camping, you’ll need is a filtration system that can turn nearby water, such as from a stream, into safe water to drink. The LifeStraw Flex‘s membrane microfilter lasts up to 500 gallons and protects against bacteria, parasites, microplastics, heavy metals, and more. The LifeStraw personal water filter can provide up to 1,000 gallons of safe drinking water.

Eat Up

Can’t miss your morning coffee? The 4Patriots Sun Kettle is a solar-powered kettle and thermos with a 16.9 fluid-ounce capacity. Fill it, open its reflective panels, and set it in the sun, and it will harness energy to bring liquids to a boil in approximately 45 minutes.

Ready to fuel your body after a hard day of activity? The Outdoor Herbivore creates vegetarian and vegan dried meals made with mostly U.S.-grown and organic ingredients, such as Basil Walnut Penne and Bear-ry Patch Cobbler. Many are no-cook options. But if you’re up for cooking, don’t forget your solar cooker and recipes.

Protection

Even though you might love everything about the outdoors, chances are you don’t love the biting insects. The jury is still out on whether or not DEET-based sprays are worth the exposure to the chemical but there are plenty DEET-free insect repellants if you’d rather avoid it. You can even make your own nontoxic, natural bug spray.

Originally published on June 30, 2015, this article was updated in July 2022.

Now, new research clarifies the role of these intestinal white blood cells, known as 𝛄𝛅 T cells, in colorectal cancer. It turns out that the cells have a double-edged function: They rein in early-stage tumors but, as the disease progresses, undergo biochemical changes and switch sides, strengthening the tumor. The findings, published in Science, shed further light on the role of 𝛄𝛅 T cells in tumor growth, and may open new paths toward colorectal cancer therapies.

“𝛄𝛅 T cells that live in the gut act to prevent tumor formation,” says Bernardo Reis, a research associate in the laboratory of Daniel Mucida at The Rockefeller University. “But once tumors form, gut 𝛄𝛅 T cell populations change, enter the tumor, and promote tumor growth.”

Altered T cell receptors

The intestinal lining may be the body’s most vulnerable port of entry. Composed of but a single layer of epithelial cells, this busy digestive region must absorb useful substances like nutrients, and reject harmful ones like foodborne pathogens, within a limited working space. 𝛄𝛅 T cells mind the gaps, perpetually scanning the epithelium to maintain the integrity of the intestinal lining and prevent pathogens from invading the rest of the body.

Reis set out to investigate conflicting claims over whether these cells help or hinder the growth of intestinal tumors. But as is often the case in biology, there was no simple answer.

“We had data showing 𝛄𝛅 T cells were protective, but the literature suggested that they also promote tumor growth,” Reis says. “We wanted to understand what these 𝛄𝛅 T cells were really up to.”

Working in a mouse model of colorectal cancer, Reis and colleagues derived 𝛄𝛅 T cells from the intestines of animals with early-stage tumors and from the tumors of mice with advanced cancer. In comparing these two sources of supposedly identical cells, the researchers were surprised to find vast molecular differences between them. For example, the two categories of 𝛄𝛅 T cells boasted different T cell receptors. Moreover, 𝛄𝛅 T cells that had entered the tumor produced IL-17, a cytokine that normally promotes inflammation in response to infection. In the tumor microenvironment, however, IL-17 was promoting disease — spurring tumor growth and recruiting other cells to help hide the tumor from the rest of the immune system.

“The 𝛄𝛅 T cells had completely changed,” Reis says.

To confirm their findings, the team then used CRISPR gene editing technology to selectively remove T cell receptors from the white blood cells, changing the cells from anti-tumor to pro-tumor, or vice versa. In this way, they managed to increase the number and decrease the size of tumors in mouse models. “When we depleted the original 𝛄𝛅 T cells, the mice became sicker,” Reis says. “And when we depleted the tumor invading 𝛄𝛅 T cells, the tumors shrank.”

Hope for human cancers

Reis and colleagues witnessed similar activity in 𝛄𝛅 T cells derived from human colorectal tumors and their environs. Cells inside the tumor resembled the renegade, late-stage 𝛄𝛅 T cells seen in mice, while cells hovering around the outside of the tumor looked more like the original Res. “It almost looked like a fight between these two populations,” Reis says. “Regular cells were trying to contain the tumor while cells inside were promoting tumor growth.”

In the short term, the Mucida lab will focus on shoring up our understanding what promotes 𝛄𝛅 T cells’ shift from the intestine’s stark ally into its source of ruin. Future studies will delve deeper, examining whether it might be possible to modulate normal 𝛄𝛅 T cells to curb the tumor and prevent their cancer-promoting alter egos from dominating the arena. Reis is also interested in exploring ways to manipulate the system by which altered 𝛄𝛅 T cells enter the tumor.

“Perhaps we might one day fashion 𝛄𝛅 T cells into Trojan horses that can act as anti-cancer cells right inside the tumor microenvironment,” he says.

Water is life, but for all its importance, humanity has a surprisingly limited view of Earth’s freshwater bodies. Researchers have reliable water level measurements for only a few thousand lakes around the world, and little to no data on some of the planet’s important river systems. The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite will fill that enormous gap. By helping to provide a better understanding of Earth’s water cycle, it will both aid in better management of water resources and expand knowledge of how climate change affects lakes, rivers, and reservoirs.

A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatial (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the United Kingdom Space Agency, SWOT is scheduled to launch in November from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Engineers and technicians are finishing up work on the satellite in a facility run by Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France.

SWOT has several key tasks, including measuring the height of water bodies on Earth’s surface. Over the ocean, the satellite will be able to “see” features like eddies less than 60 miles (100 kilometers) across – smaller than those that previous sea level satellites could observe. SWOT will also measure more than 95% of Earth’s lakes larger than 15 acres (6 hectares) and rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) across.

“Current databases maybe have information on a couple thousand lakes around the world,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, the NASA freshwater science lead for SWOT, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “SWOT will push that number to between 2 million and 6 million.”

Along with measuring the water height – whether it be in a lake, river, or reservoir – SWOT will also measure its extent, or surface area. That crucial information will enable scientists to calculate how much water moves through freshwater bodies. “Once you get hold of the volume of water, you can better assess the water budget, or how much water flows into and out of an area,” said Lee-Lueng Fu, SWOT project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the U.S. portion of the mission.

This is important because climate change is accelerating Earth’s water cycle. Warmer temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more water (in the form of water vapor), which can cause, for example, rain storms to be stronger than a region might typically see. This, in turn, can wreak havoc on farms, damaging crops. Such accelerating changes can make managing a community’s water resources more difficult.

“As Earth’s water cycle intensifies, predicting future extreme events like floods and droughts requires monitoring both changes in water supply from the ocean and water demand and usage on land. SWOT’s global look at all surface water on Earth will give us exactly that,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

A Bigger, Better Picture

SWOT will provide its game-changing data using a new instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn), which bounces radar pulses off the water’s surface and receives the return signal with two antennas at the same time. The antennas are spaced 33 feet (10 meters) apart on a boom, enabling researchers to gather information along a roughly 75-mile-wide (120-kilometer-wide) swath of Earth’s surface – a wider path than that of the satellite’s predecessors.

The engineering required for this kind of system is tricky because such a large antenna boom requires incredible stability, and because researchers need very precise calculations to produce measurements of Earth’s ocean and freshwater bodies. “The basic idea of SWOT dates back to the late 1990s, but turning that concept into reality – all that engineering – took a huge amount of time and effort,” Pavelsky said.

Satellites already in orbit can measure water height – in the ocean, very large lakes, and very wide rivers – or the surface area of a water body. But to calculate changes in volume over time, scientists need to match up the extent and height measurements that different instruments took on different days. This makes it difficult to determine basic details, like how much water flows through the world’s rivers and how much that volume varies. “You’d think we would already know this,” said Pavelsky. “But for a lot of rivers in the world, there just aren’t a lot of these kinds of measurements.”

SWOT will eliminate the need to cobble together the extent and height information from different satellites, and at the same time the satellite will give researchers a global view of Earth’s surface water. “It will be a tremendous change in our knowledge and understanding of fresh water,” said Sylvain Biancamaria, a SWOT science team member and freshwater researcher at the Laboratoire d’Études en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales in Toulouse, France.

Some studies, including one published last year in Nature, have used water level measurements to look at how lakes and rivers around the world change over time. However, the data that researchers expect from SWOT will provide a better understanding of water levels and surface area, both of which will be sampled more frequently and over a greater area of Earth. Once in orbit, SWOT will be sending back about one terabyte of unprocessed data a day.

Scientists like Biancamaria and Pavelsky are especially looking forward to getting information at the basin level, or the area of land drained by a lake or a river and its tributaries. “From a societal point of view – whether you’re looking at drinking water, navigation, flood control – water needs to be managed at basin scale,” said Biancamaria. “Therefore, observations covering the entire basin are needed, and SWOT will provide such data sets.”

More About the Mission

SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the United Kingdom 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 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 platform, and ground control segment. CSA is providing the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA is providing the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

To learn more about SWOT, visit:

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

News Media Contacts

Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874

[email protected] / [email protected]