A review of the drought and pathogen/disease paradox

Amazing stuff!

"Of the hundreds of parasites known to infect humans, more than half depend on water. Some, like Giardia and Cyclospora, spread directly through contaminated drinking water or lurk on the surface of poorly washed lettuce. ...

One might assume that drought, which dries up water sources, would help curb the spread of these diseases. This assumption sometimes holds true:

In the early 2000s, for example, a major drought in Kenya reduced schistosomiasis cases in humans by killing off the snails that transmit it. And chytrid fungus, which spells doom for amphibians around the globe, tends to spread poorly under dry conditions.

In other cases, however, drought actually amplifies infectious pathogens that rely on water.

In the 2020s, when drought-induced water shortages forced people in the Horn of Africa to rely on unsafe water sources, major cholera outbreaks followed.

Two years ago, a particularly dry summer in California helped spark one of the largest outbreaks of avian botulism ever recorded.

And now, scientists suggest drought is to blame for Brazil’s first yellow fever outbreak in almost 80 years, even though the disease is spread by mosquitoes. “Species are adapting,” ...

In a review paper published last week in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, scientists set out to investigate this counterintuitive “drought-disease paradox.” By synthesizing nearly 100 previous studies, the authors identified three main mechanisms that determine how a given pathogen will fare when water dries up. “ ...

The researchers found that, as drought dries up rivers and ponds, animals are forced to congregate around a region’s few remaining [and shrinking] watering holes, creating more opportunities for pathogens to spread. ...

Drought, which does more than just reduce available water, can also influence the health of parasites and hosts alike. As water evaporates from freshwater and marine ecosystems, for example, salinity rises. Increased salt concentrations were good news for oyster-infesting Perkinsus parasites but bad news for invasive copepods, which struggled to infect their tilapia hosts during a drought in South Africa. Stress from high temperatures, dehydration, and other drought-induced risk factors, meanwhile, can weaken hosts and make them more susceptible to infection. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

Drought is becoming a defining ecological force, yet its consequences for infectious diseases remain difficult to predict across systems.

Emerging evidence shows that water limitation can intensify many water-associated diseases, challenging assumptions that drying suppresses transmission.

Rather than acting solely as a climatic stressor, drought restructures transmission by altering host aggregation, parasite persistence, community composition, and contact networks across space and time.

Divergent disease responses to drought can be explained through three recurring mechanisms: the concentration of interactions, the ecological filtering of communities, and spatial heterogeneity in transmission.

Viewing drought as a multiscale ecological restructuring process provides a general framework for predicting disease outcomes in an increasingly water-limited world.

Abstract

Droughts are intensifying worldwide, reorganizing ecosystems and threatening biodiversity and human health. Yet their effects on infectious diseases are poorly understood and sometimes paradoxical, with water limitation often amplifying water-associated infections.

This complexity arises because drought not only reduces water availability but also restructures the host–pathogen interactions that govern transmission. Synthesizing theory and empirical evidence from water-associated diseases, we identify three ecological mechanisms through which drought modifies infection dynamics:

concentrating organisms into shrinking refugia, 

selectively favoring drought-tolerant hosts, vectors, and pathogens, and

amplifying transmission heterogeneity across landscapes.

By linking hydrological change to core epidemiological and ecological processes, this framework highlights parasite traits and strategies likely to be favored during drought while providing a foundation for forecasting infections in a water-limited world."

ScienceAdviser

Drought is reshaping the spread of infectious diseases (original news release)

Plagued by drought: how water scarcity reshapes host–parasite interactions (no public access)

Across Africa’s Sahel region, groundwater reserves are recovering after decades of drought.

Good news! Global warming/climate change is not all bad! 😊

"... Aquifer reserves across Niger have risen by an estimated 15 percent, while Lake Chad reached more than 9,000 square miles in 2024, around 10 times its size in the mid-1980s.

One major reason is that rising temperatures in the North Atlantic have pulled the West African monsoon farther north, bringing more rainfall to the Sahel."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran

After Decades of Drought, Water Is Rising in the African Sahel

After Decades of Drought, Water Is Rising in the African Sahel "Warming has brought extreme rain to the parched Sahel, which is seeing aquifers refill as monsoons grow stronger. But heavier downpours alone cannot explain the groundwater revival, say hydrologists, who believe efforts to harvest rainfall may also be paying dividends."

Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe Earth did it

Recommendable!

"... It may come as a surprise, then, that scientists don’t really know how water first arrived here on Earth. ...

When astronomers look at exoplanets — worlds outside our solar system — they see a diversity of atmospheres. But when they simulate the ways the planets took shape, scientists find that many of them could have started out brimming with hydrogen. Could Earth’s formative years have been similar? ...

But in recent years, several spacecraft caught up to comets to examine them. What they found was that cometary water didn’t match ours; the chemical signatures were different. ...

Asteroids — rockier and more metal-rich than comets — then became the most popular choice. Asteroids impact Earth far more frequently than comets do, and their water reserves (while not as voluminous as those of comets) look a lot more like those on our planet. ...

Through careful observation of worlds orbiting other stars, along with some explosive laboratory experiments involving diamond anvils and lasers, scientists have realized that rocky planets like Earth have a way to make water all by themselves. All you need is an ocean of magma, a whole lot of hydrogen, and a little bit of geological alchemy. ...

asteroids. These rocky objects mostly hang out between Mars and Jupiter, and they impact our planet all the time as meteorites, though most of their material burns up in the atmosphere or lands in the ocean. Scientists have collected tens of thousands of meteorites and found that the water molecules contained in a particular group closely resemble those in our world. ...

But some studies ... found that there was hydrogen in the meteorites all along. It was just hidden in their organic molecules, silicate glasses, and sulfur compounds. Perhaps, then, Earth was also awash in hydrogen in its early days.

Earth’s ocean of magma was full of oxygen. In a paper published in 2023, three scientists wondered what might happen if the hydrogen in a planet’s atmosphere and the oxygen in its magma were to mix — somehow. Hydrogen doesn’t just spontaneously bind to oxygen, so they aren’t the most willing chemical partners. Still, the researchers concluded that such a process would let a planet make its own water; they just weren’t sure how much.

Two years later, they were thrown a lifeline by an ambitious set of experiments built by the researchers ...

how sub-Neptunes, commonplace exoplanets two to four times the diameter of Earth, can have atmospheres rich in water, as telescopic observations suggest, even when they hew close to their scorching-hot host stars. ...

if a huge amount of hydrogen put the magma under a sufficient amount of pressure. “That higher pressure is a big part of what facilitates the water production,” ... “It actually enhances the chemical reactions.” ...

To test their model, the team wanted to re-create the extreme (and extremely dangerous) conditions present on adolescent sub-Neptunes. They needed to put hydrogen, a highly flammable gas, under intense pressure using special tools called diamond anvils, and then combine it with rock samples melted with lasers. It took them five years to develop the techniques they needed to conduct these experiments safely and effectively. ...

They had hoped the hydrogen and oxygen would react to make water. And that’s what happened, to the extreme: The reaction of high-pressure hydrogen and laser-melted rock was so efficient that it made up to 1,000 times more water than scientists predicted. (A second laboratory study, published around the same time, reported similar results.) “It doesn’t seem unreasonable [that you could] produce a huge amount of water quite quickly,” ..."

Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself. | Quanta Magazine "At first, scientists thought Earth’s water came from comets. Then, asteroids. Now, they wonder if Earth’s water is homegrown."

How rocks remove CO2 from the atmosphere

Amazing stuff! Nature captures/binds much more CO2 than previously thought! Climate models are junk!

More evidence that global warming is a hoax and climate change is a religion!

We still know far too little about the highly complex natural phenomenon called climate! Climate change has become a major subject for demagogues and profiteers!

"Rocks can bind carbon dioxide — and much faster than previously thought. For a long time, it was assumed that the transformation of CO2 into carbonate rock depends on very slow, time-consuming processes. According to that view, the binding of CO2 injected industrially into the ground would take centuries. However, practical observations and theoretical calculations suggested that there may also be a much faster route from CO2 to carbonate, mediated by water acting somewhat like a catalyst. This suspected mechanism has now been demonstrated for the first time at TU Wien, using imaging techniques on the atomic scale. ...

The “bent” carbon dioxide molecule can then attach directly to the wollastonite, forming a stable bond — without the wollastonite having to dissolve first. “Without water, this is not possible, because the right docking site is missing,” says Giada Franceschi. “But even a tiny amount of water is enough to completely change the interaction between CO2 and wollastonite.” ..."

From the abstract:

"The carbonation of silicate minerals is a key process in the Earth’s carbon cycle and offers a promising avenue for long-term CO2 sequestration. However, the atomistic mechanisms by which CO2 is activated at silicate surfaces remain poorly understood, largely due to the intrinsic complexity and insulating nature of these materials.

To close this gap, wollastonite (CaSiO3) is used as a model system. Noncontact atomic force microscopy (nc-AFM) with functionalized tips is combined with density functional theory (DFT) to investigate its lowest-energy (100) surface under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV).

Upon cleaving the mineral in UHV, water vapor is released from the sample and spontaneously readsorbs into a previously unreported, exceptionally stable configuration.

The resulting surface hydration layer promotes spontaneous CO2 chemisorption and the formation of surface carbonates with negligible kinetic barriers.

Our results offer atomic-scale evidence of gas–phase carbonation on a silicate mineral, revealing a water-assisted pathway for CO2 capture that bypasses aqueous mineral dissolution."

How rock removes CO2 from the atmosphere | EurekAlert! "A remarkable mineralogical mechanism has now been demonstrated at TU Wien: with the help of water, certain minerals can convert CO2 into solid carbonate very quickly."

Molecular Views of Mineral Carbonation: Reaction of CO2 with the Wollastonite (100) Surface (open access)

Credits: CO₂ verschwindet schneller im Gestein als gedacht

Graphical abstract

One of cholera’s great enemies is found in the human gut, a bacteriophage

Recommendable!

"... found that in the Ganges Delta, cholera bacteria rapidly gain and lose special armour that protects against attacks from the virus, known as bacteriophage ICP1.

The new research ... highlighted that maintaining these anti-viral defences leads to lower disease severity of cholera in humans and reduced ability to spread outside the country for this bacterial strain. ...

By looking at the ecology of cholera in South Asia, this study challenges the long-held belief that the Ganges Delta is the global source of cholera. Knowing more about the strains and the factors that influence the spread of cholera bacteria in different regions could help provide an early warning system, identifying high-risk strains before they escalate and allowing for early intervention. ...

Globally, we are in the seventh cholera pandemic, which started in 1961, with an estimated 1.3 to 4 million cases and up to 143,000 deaths per year from the condition worldwide. It has been shown that the seventh pandemic is caused by V. cholerae strain 7PET O1, originating from the Bay of Bengal, which borders Bangladesh and India, and it was thought that the Ganges Delta was the global source of cholera.

This new research sequenced bacterial samples from across Bangladesh and North India, creating the most comprehensive dataset of cholera in this area to date, containing over 2,300 genomes collected across approximately 20 years. They found that it was the Ganges Basin, not the Ganges Delta, that was the primary global source of cholera in that time.

By tracking the bacterial spread, they also uncovered that the bacteria do not simply follow the flow of rivers. Instead, they tend to stay within national borders, suggesting that human travel and population density are more important for cholera transmission than the natural environment.

They also found V. cholerae in Bangladesh, strain 7PET O1, rapidly gain and lose genetic elements known as defence systems, which act like armour helping them survive against their viral nemesis, the bacteriophage ICP1. ..."

From the abstract:

"The seventh pandemic of cholera, caused by the seventh pandemic El Tor lineage of Vibrio cholerae, was previously shown to have emanated in three global waves from the Bay of Bengal, bordering Bangladesh and India.

However, the respective roles of the Ganges Delta and Basin regions in seeding these global pandemic waves were not known.

Here we show that, although transmission events occur between Bangladesh and India, V. cholerae in the two countries has largely evolved separately over the past 20 years, apparently constrained by national borders rather than by hydrological features, such as the Ganges Delta and Basin.

Evolution within Bangladesh was distinct from that seen in India, involving rapid gain and loss of genes and mobile genetic elements, particularly those involved in phage defence. The loss of these systems was associated with increased risk of severe disease and transmission outside Bangladesh.

Lineage replacement in Bangladesh in 2018, resulting in a major change in phage defence systems, was accompanied by a rapid change in the lineage and anti-defence system of lytic phage ICP1.

Here we show that the Ganges Basin, falling across Bangladesh and Northern India, rather than the Ganges Delta, probably acts as a global launch pad for pandemic disease. This shifts our understanding of Bangladesh as the purported global source of cholera and underscores the potential role of phage in controlling spread of lineages within the current seventh pandemic."

One of cholera’s great enemies is found in the human gut "Cholera-causing bacteria are locked in an evolutionary arms race with a viral nemesis, according to a new genomic study."

Evolution of pandemic cholera at its global source (open access)

Fig. 1: Dynamics of V. cholerae sublineages in Bangladesh and their genetic profiles over time.

Nanoconfined water shows 10,000-fold conductivity increase in nanoscale channels

Amazing stuff! 

We still do not even understand the wonders of water very well! This is one of the reasons why global warming/climate change is a hoax!

"Water confined in nanoscale channels has dramatically different electrical properties from bulk water, researchers ... have demonstrated. The differences, which include up to 10,000-fold greater conductivity along the channel, are thought to arise from alterations to the hydrogen-bonded network in this quasi-2D environment. The findings could have a significant impact on scientists’ understanding of biochemical processes. ..."

"Researchers ... have made an unexpected discovery about one of the world's most familiar substances – water. When confined to spaces a few atoms thick, water transforms into something completely unfamiliar, exhibiting properties more commonly associated with advanced materials like ferroelectrics and superionic liquids. ...

"Think of it as if water has a split personality," ... "In one direction it is electrically dead, but look at it in profile and suddenly it becomes electrically super-active. Nobody expected such dramatic behaviour." ...

The research also reveals that confined water exists in two distinct electrical regimes. For channels larger than several nanometres, water behaves like its bulk form, albeit with much higher conductivity. But once squeezed to atomic dimensions, it undergoes a sharp transition into a new "superionic-like" state.

This transformation occurs because extreme confinement disrupts water's hydrogen-bond network, which in bulk is a dynamic but rather ordered structure. At the molecular scale this network becomes disordered, allowing dipoles to align more easily with electric fields and enabling rapid proton transport.

"Just as graphene revealed unexpected physics when graphite was thinned down to a single atomic layer, this research shows that even water – the most studied liquid on Earth – can still surprise us when squeezed to its absolute thinnest” ..."

From the abstract:

"Water is essential for almost every aspect of life on our planet and, unsurprisingly, its properties have been studied in great detail1. However, disproportionately little remains known about the electrical properties of interfacial and strongly confined water, in which the structure deviates from that of bulk water, becoming distinctly layered. The structural change is expected to affect the conductivity of water and particularly its polarizability, which in turn modifies intermolecular forces that play a crucial role in many physical and chemical processes.

Here we use scanning dielectric microscopy (SDM)10 to probe the in-plane electrical properties of water confined between atomically flat surfaces separated by distances down to 1 nm. For confinement exceeding several nanometres, water exhibits an in-plane dielectric constant close to that of bulk water and its proton conductivity is notably enhanced, gradually increasing with decreasing water thickness.

This trend abruptly changes when the confined water becomes only a few molecules thick.

Its in-plane dielectric constant reaches large, ferroelectric-like values of about 1,000, whereas the conductivity peaks at several S m−1, close to values characteristic of superionic liquids.

We attribute the enhancement to strongly disordered hydrogen bonding induced by the few-layer confinement, which facilitates both easier in-plane polarization of molecular dipoles and faster proton exchange. This insight into the electrical properties of nanoconfined water is important for understanding many phenomena that occur at aqueous interfaces and in nanoscale pores."

Nanoconfined water shows 10,000-fold conductivity increase in nanoscale channels | Chemistry World "Network of quasi-2D hydrogen bonding may be responsible for effect"

Water reveals superpowers hidden at the nanoscale (original news release) "New research shows water's dramatic electrical transformation when squeezed to just a few molecular layers thick."

In-plane dielectric constant and conductivity of confined water (open access)

Fig. 1: Broadband dielectric imaging of nanoconfined water.

Fig. 3: In-plane electrical properties of water under molecular-scale confinement.

Salty ice produces electricity when bent comparable to the best piezoelectric materials

Amazing stuff!

"... Every solid exhibits some amount of electric response to being bent or deformed, called flexoelectricity. Most of these responses are far too weak to exploit ... 

But when researchers turned to ice, a prevalent solid on Earth and one of the most common solids in space, the story was different. 

Adding table salt (NaCl) created a solid where every ice particle was surrounded by a few nanometers of briny liquid. When the salty ice was bent and unbent, this fluid sloshed back and forth, creating a current of ions that conferred a flexoelectrical effect around 1000 times larger than that of pure ice and on par with specially designed materials.

Salty ice has plenty of advantages in the real world, such as being 

moldable (just think of fun-shaped ice trays), 

non-toxic, and 

requiring no trace elements, as found in typical electronics.

The simple solid could be incorporated into engineering projects in polar areas where sunlight is too low for solar power and water threatens soft robotics’ wiring and batteries, though it’s not a great candidate for deep space applications since the key briny liquid freezes at -70ºC. ..."

"... discovered that, despite not being piezoelectric, ice can generate electricity when unevenly deformed, thanks to a phenomenon known as flexoelectricity.

Building on this first discovery, the researchers have now achieved a new breakthrough: adding salt to ice significantly enhances its ability to generate electricity, opening up a wide range of potential technological applications. ..."

From the abstract:

"Despite 10% of the Earth’s surface being covered by ice, ice power remains untapped. 

Although ice is known to generate electricity upon bending via flexoelectricity, the generated electric polarization per curvature, that is, the flexoelectric coefficient, is too small (~1–10 nC m−1) to be utilized for electromechanical devices. 

Here we demonstrate that doping ice with NaCl can enhance its flexoelectric coefficient 1,000-fold, to ~1–10 μC m−1. We find that this enhancement is due to the bending-induced streaming current along ice grain boundaries.

On the basis of this mechanism, we fabricated flexural devices with an effective piezoelectric coefficient of ~4,000 pC N−1, which is comparable to that of the best piezoelectric materials. 

The high flexoelectricity of saline ice brings the vision of harnessing ice power one step closer to reality, and may also be relevant to the electrical activity of ice-covered terrestrial regions and icy ocean worlds such as Europa or Enceladus.

In addition, the model for coupling between strain gradients and streaming currents is not limited to ice and provides a general framework for extracting electromechanical activity from liquid-infused porous solids."

ScienceAdviser

Salty Ice: a New Way to Generate Electricity in Extreme Conditions (original news release)

Streaming flexoelectricity in saline ice (no public access)

Bending polycrystalline salty ice drives the flow of ions from one side to the other through small channels, generating an electrical current. 

Plants steer the way rivers meander across the landscape

Amazing stuff!

"New research confirms that the rise of land-based plant life changed the way rivers move, but not in the way geologists have thought, and taught, for decades.

The new study ... has discovered a new way in which floodplain vegetation – the plant life which grows in flat land next to a river – controls river dynamics.

Today, rivers on Earth come in 2 types: braided and meandering. ..."

"In brief

• New Stanford research redefines river evolution, suggesting meandering patterns were prevalent in Earth's landscapes earlier than thought.
• The study reveals unvegetated rivers can mimic braided rivers, altering our understanding of carbon reservoirs and ecological history.
• The findings provide important insights into Earth’s past and may impact future climate models.

..."

From the abstract:

"A primary axiom in geoscience is that the evolution of plants drove global changes in river dynamics. Notably, the apparent sinuosity of rivers, derived from the variance of sediment accretion direction measured in rocks, dramatically increased when land plants evolved, ca. 425 Ma. This led to the hypothesis that the rise of vegetation triggered river meandering. Recent studies of barren, meandering rivers challenge this notion, but the Paleozoic shift in the geometry of river deposits remains unexplained.

Here, we suggest that it occurred because vegetation changes how river bends move through space. Using satellite images to monitor river migration, we find that bank vegetation alters the orientation of point bar accretion, resulting in a 62% increase in the inferred variance of flow direction. These results explain why meandering rivers have been under-recognized in pre-vegetation stratigraphy."

Plants steer the way rivers meander across the landscape

The rise of plant life reshaped river behavior, study finds (original news release) "Research suggests that unvegetated meandering rivers were more common in the first 90 percent of Earth’s history than previously thought, challenging previous assumptions and providing new insights into the early ecology and climate of our planet."

Vegetation changes the trajectory of river bends (no public access)

A view of seasonal flow in Shoshone Creek – an unvegetated meandering stream in Nevada.

Turning a desert into an oasis: Moroccan scientists transform fog into drinking water on a large scale

Good news!

Ancient lakes and rivers unearthed in Arabia's vast desert dating to around 9,000 years ago

Amazing stuff! Climate change has been going on for millennia not only since the Industrial Revolution as so many demagogues want us to believe!

That is what I call extreme weather events! 😊

"The desert that we see today in Arabia was once a region that repeatedly underwent ‘green’ periods in the past, as a result of periods of high rainfall, resulting in the formation of lakes and rivers around 9,000 years ago. 

This is the key finding from an international, interdisciplinary team that documented an ancient water-sculpted landscape in the Empty Quarter, one of the largest and driest deserts in the world today.   ..."

From the abstract:

"Abundant geomorphological, biological, and isotopic records show that Arabia repeatedly underwent significant climate-driven environmental changes during late Quaternary humid periods. Precisely mapping how the enhancement and expansion of the African Monsoon during these humid periods have affected landscape evolution and human occupation dynamics in Arabia remains a scientific challenge.

Here we reconstruct an ancient water-sculpted landscape consisting of lake and river deposits, coupled with a large outlet valley in the Rub’ al Khali Desert of Saudi Arabia.

During the peak of the Holocene Humid Period or before, intense rainfall reactivated alluvial floodplains and filled a ~1100 km² topographic depression, which eventually breached, carving a deep ~150 km-long valley.

Coupling geologic reconstructions with transient Earth system model simulations shows that this hydrological activity was linked to higher seasonal precipitation punctuated by repeated heavy events. 

Analysis of lacustrine and fluvial sedimentary deposits implies sediment routing across distances of up to 1000 km from the Asir Mountains. Our results indicate that such intense flooding challenges the conventional view of simple, weak, and linear landscape stabilization following increased rainfall in Arabia.

Our findings highlight the crucial role of an enhanced African Monsoon in driving rapid landscape transformations in the Arabian Desert."

Ancient lakes and rivers unearthed in Arabia's vast desert

Unearthing the lush, vibrant past of the world’s largest desert (original news release)

Monsoonal imprint on late Quaternary landscapes of the Rub’ al Khali Desert (open access)

Fig. 1: Distribution of palaeohydrological and geomorphic records, archaeological sites, modeled streams, major monsoon systems, and the study site in Arabia.

Fig. 6: Inferred palaeolake levels based on geomorphic observations.

Lots of volcanic activity may have leached phosphorus into bodies of water starting life on earth

Amazing stuff! You wonder why this obvious explanation took so long!

I suspect the article got it a little bit wrong about focusing on "small", "highly alkaline soda lakes". It seems more plausible that there was generally much more volcanic activity across many areas affecting any bodies of water.

"Be they microbes or monkeys, organisms require phosphorus—and lots of it. It’s a key component of DNA and RNA, of the adenosine triphosphate that fuels living cells, and of the lipids that make up cell membranes. The element’s centrality has long puzzled researchers trying to understand early life, because phosphorus isn’t naturally abundant in most watery environments, where life probably began.

Researchers have grappled for decades with what they’ve called the “phosphorus problem,” knowing that the origin of life would likely have required high concentrations of compounds such as phosphate—a phosphorus atom surrounded by four oxygens. In oceans, rivers, and most lakes the phosphate concentration is typically 10,000 times too low.

Now, a trio of new papers supports a recent proposal that volcanic activity around highly alkaline “soda” lakes—and perhaps hot springs— could have enabled phosphorus compounds to accumulate to levels needed for life to start and spread.

Phosphorus is present in volcanic lavas, and the young Earth had a lot more volcanic activity than today. The new reports suggest that volcanic activity in and around lakes may have produced abundant phosphates and allowed them to concentrate enough in small soda lakes to promote vital biochemical reactions. Similar processes around larger soda lakes may have provided a more stable supply of phosphates that allowed early life to thrive and spread. ..."

P.S. I ignored the three scientific articles mentioned in this article.

ScienceAdviser

Unusual ‘soda lakes’ may have kick-started life on Earth by concentrating key compounds "Phosphorus leached from volcanic rocks in warm waters could have triggered reactions needed to launch biochemistry"

The first experimental observation of an exotic phase of water: Plastic ice VII

Amazing stuff!

We still do not even understand water very well! Similar, the very complex phenomenon of Earth's climate!

Keep in mind: Global warming is a hoax and climate change is a religion! It is being used as a pretext by Big Government and the elite to interfere with our lives. It is among the greatest scams and scandals of at least the last 30 years!

"... But there are in fact many more phases, some of which—predicted to exist at high temperature and pressure—are so strange they're referred to as exotic.

State-of-the-art neutron spectrometers and sample environment infrastructures at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have enabled the first experimental observation of one of these exotic phases—plastic ice VII. ...

Plastic ice VII was originally predicted more than 15 years ago by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations as a phase of water that could exist under high temperature and pressure. ..."

From the abstract:

"Water is the third most abundant molecule in the universe and a key component in the interiors of icy moons, giant planets, and Uranus- and Neptune-like exoplanets.

Owing to its distinct molecular structure and flexible hydrogen bonds that readily adapt to a wide range of pressures and temperatures, water forms numerous crystalline and amorphous phases.

Most relevant for the high pressures and temperatures of planetary interiors is ice VII, and simulations have identified along its melting curve the existence of a so-called plastic phase where individual molecules occupy fixed positions as in a solid yet are able to rotate as in a liquid.

Such plastic ice has not yet been directly observed in experiments.

Here, we present quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) measurements, conducted at temperatures between 450 and 600 K and pressures up to 6 GPa, that reveal the existence of a body centered cubic (bcc) structure, as found in ice VII, with water molecules exhibiting picosecond rotational dynamics typical for liquid water. Comparison with molecular dynamics simulations indicates that this plastic ice VII does not conform to a free rotor phase but rather exhibits rapid orientational jumps, as observed in jump-rotor plastic crystals. We anticipate that our observation of plastic ice VII will impact our understanding of the geodynamics of icy planets and the differentiation processes of large icy moons."

The first experimental observation of an exotic phase of water: Plastic ice VII

Exotic observations at the ILL (original news release)

Observation of Plastic Ice VII by Quasi-Elastic Neutron Scattering (open access)

Figure: Experimental phase diagram of water in the investigated P-T region. The region of stability of Plastic Ice VII from numerical simulations is shown as white dashed lines, pressures and temperatures are shifted in order to match the experimental melting line. The measured thermodynamic points are represented as circles with colors corresponding to the phase attribution (previous experiments are represented as squares).

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals and could save billions of dollars globally

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe drinking water. ..."

From the abstract:

"Selective removal of trace contaminants from water remains a crucial challenge in water treatment. Boron is a trace contaminant that is ubiquitous in seawater and has been widely detected in groundwater.

Current boron removal methods, such as multi-stage reverse osmosis and ion-exchange adsorption, are chemical and energy intensive, necessitating the development of more sustainable technologies.

Here we address this challenge by developing surface functionalized microporous electrodes that enable boron-selective bipolar membrane-assisted electrosorption.

Our study demonstrates that micropore functionalization with oxygen-containing (hydroxyl, lactone and carboxyl) and boron-selective (dopamine, 3-methylamino-1,2-propanediol and N-methyl-d-glucamine) functional groups substantially improves electrode performance for boron removal and selectivity.

The functionalized electrodes exhibit a boron removal selectivity that is an order of magnitude higher than that of the pristine electrode, facilitating energy efficient boron electrosorption.

We identify hydroxyl groups as the key factor in enhancing boron removal performance and selectivity during electrosorption.

Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate the underlying mechanisms of boron selectivity, highlighting the role of hydrogen bonding between hydroxyl groups and boron in governing the boron-selective electrosorption process."

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals (original news release) "Cutting acid and base treatments from conventional desalination plants could save billions of dollars globally, making seawater a more affordable option for drinking water"

A highly selective and energy efficient approach to boron removal overcomes the Achilles heel of seawater desalination (no public access)

This diagram shows how boron is removed by the researchers’ electrodes.

First a majority of the salt ions are removed with reverse osmosis.

Then the water flows into a cell containing a membrane with positive (pink) and negative (orange) layers. Similarly charged electrodes face the membrane layers, and when a current is applied, water molecules at the interface of the membranes split into hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The hydroxide ions stick to boron, causing it to stick to the positive electrode.

Human eyelashes are like umbrellas

Amazing stuff! Next time you lose an eyelash ...

"... Now, a new study has revealed that human eyelashes are good for more than just catching dust and looking pretty. As researchers report in Science Advances, they also actively fling water droplets away from the eyes, helping to keep vision clear when we swim, sweat, and cry (or shower). In the future, the team writes, the findings could inspire the design of better waterproof materials.

The scientists conducted numerous experiments, including dripping water on people’s eyelashes—using a soft plastic nozzle, they note, “to avoid stabbing the volunteers.” To analyze the lashes’ shape and structure, they also dipped individual hairs into pools of water before slowly pulling them out. These tests demonstrated that eyelashes are made up of densely-packed, hydrophobic fibers, which cause water to bead up and roll off when it makes contact. In addition, each lash is covered with overlapping scale-like cells. This “micro-ratchet” structure, the study authors write, allows water to flow easily from root to tip but blocks it from moving in the opposite direction.

The researchers also discovered that the curved, flexible structure of a human eyelash mimics a shape known as a brachistochrone curve, which physicists define as the quickest path an object can take between two points under the influence of gravity. A ball rolls faster, for example, down a ramp that starts out steep and gradually flattens than down a ramp with a uniform slope. Thanks to this curved shape, droplets that land on an eyelash are propelled rapidly away from the eye—a bit like a child getting launched off the end of a water slide. ..."

From the abstract:

"Numerous organisms exploit asymmetrical capillary forces generated by unique fiber or asymmetrical tapered structures to rapidly eliminate undesired liquid for survival in moist or rainy habitats.

Human eyelashes, the primary protector of eyes, use a yet-to-be-fully-understood mechanism to efficiently transfer incoming liquid for vision safeguarding. Here, we elucidate that human eyelashes featuring a hydrophobic curved flexible fiber array with surface micro-ratchet and macro-curvature approximating the Brachistochrone is adept at directionally and rapidly expelling incoming liquid to maintain clear vision. These structural attributes are sequentially used for liquid drainage, starting from anisotropic retention via micro-ratchet, followed by the elastic expulsion among deflected hydrophobic flexible fiber arrays and culminating in the fastest sliding off along a Brachistochrone path, which together reduce the contact time by about 20% of that on rigid linear slopes. Investigating the intricate relationship between multistructure and draining efficiency of human eyelashes may inspire the design of advanced liquid-repelling edges on outdoor devices to maintain dryness."

ScienceAdviser

Rapid water drainage on human eyelashes of a hydrophobic Brachistochrone fiber array (open access)

Hydroclimate study finds natural variations in Earth's tilt affect precipitation and humidity

More evidence how little we still know about earth's climate! Climate models are junk!

I have blogged here, here before that the fact that solar system travels through space and that the earth's axis has a precession influences climate as well. The cycle of the earth's precession is about 26,000 years.

Remember: Global Warming is a hoax and Climate Change a religion!

"A research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) has analyzed 50,000 years of mid-latitude hydroclimate of the South-East Pacific using special moisture related indicators in marine sediment cores. They have found that natural variations in the Earth's orbital parameters exert a decisive influence. ...

"However, based on the results of the deuterium measurements, our study provides concrete evidence that the hydroclimate of Chile's mid-latitudes is substantially controlled by orbital parameters. And hydroclimatic extremes in south-central Chile, such as the very high levels of precipitation during the last ice age and the pronounced drought of the early Holocene, can also be plausibly explained by orbital changes," ..."

From the abstract:

"Reconstructing rainfall variability and moisture sources is a critical aspect to understand past and future hydroclimate dynamics. Here, we use changes in the deuterium content of land-plant leaf waxes from two marine sediment cores located off Chile to reconstruct changes in rainfall amount and variation in moisture sources over the last ~50 ka. The records indicate increased moisture in central Chile during precession maxima, but an obliquity modulation is evident in southern Chile. While the southern westerly winds are the dominant factor of precipitation in southern Chile by bringing moisture and perturbations from the extratropics, the subtropics represent an additional moisture source during precession maxima due to a stronger subtropical jet increasing moisture transport from the tropics to the mid-latitudes. These findings imply that a combination of orbital modulation of moisture sources and rainfall amount explains the last glacial moisture maximum and early Holocene moisture minimum in south-central Chile."

Hydroclimate study finds natural variations in Earth's tilt affect precipitation and humidity

Orbital modulation of subtropical versus subantarctic moisture sources in the southeast Pacific mid-latitudes

Seismic detectors measure soil moisture in the desert using traffic noise

Amazing stuff! Except it depends on "pre-existing fiber-optic cables"!

"... Scientists have figured out a way to measure soil moisture by detecting the vibrations of traffic noise travelling through the ground.

The technique is called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) and it is normally used to measure seismic waves during earthquakes.

Seismological instruments have never been used to measure soil moisture at such a large scale for such an extended and continuous timespan before.

Researchers in the US repurposed a DAS system to measure moisture content in a part of the Earth known as the vadose zone. This is the shallow region between the underground water table (where the soil is fully saturated) and the surface. ...

In DAS, laser pulses are sent along unused, underground fibre-optic cables. This light bends and refracts as vibrations, such as seismic waves, pass through the cable. Measuring this tells researchers important information about the passing wave.

DAS can also be used to pick up the vibrations of ambient noise caused by humans. The more moisture there is in the vadose zone, the slower these vibrations move through it. ..."

From the abstract:

"Vadose zone soil moisture is often considered a pivotal intermediary water reservoir between surface and groundwater in semi-arid regions. Understanding its dynamics in response to changes in meteorologic forcing patterns is essential to enhance the climate resiliency of our ecological and agricultural system. However, the inability to observe high-resolution vadose zone soil moisture dynamics over large spatiotemporal scales hinders quantitative characterization. Here, utilizing pre-existing fiber-optic cables as seismic sensors, we demonstrate a fiber-optic seismic sensing principle to robustly capture vadose zone soil moisture dynamics. Our observations in Ridgecrest, California reveal sub-seasonal precipitation replenishments and a prolonged drought in the vadose zone, consistent with a zero-dimensional hydrological model. Our results suggest a significant water loss of 0.25 m/year through evapotranspiration at our field side, validated by nearby eddy-covariance based measurements. Yet, detailed discrepancies between our observations and modeling highlight the necessity for complementary in-situ validations. Given the escalated regional drought risk under climate change, our findings underscore the promise of fiber-optic seismic sensing to facilitate water resource management in semi-arid regions."

Seismic detectors measure soil moisture in the desert

Seismic Detectors Measure Soil Moisture Using Traffic Noise "Caltech researchers have developed a new method to measure soil moisture in the shallow subterranean region between the surface and underground aquifers. This region, called the vadose zone, is crucial for plants and crops to obtain water through their roots. However, measuring how this underground moisture fluctuates over time and between geographical regions has traditionally relied on satellite imaging, which only gives low-resolution averages and cannot penetrate below the surface. Additionally, moisture within the vadose zone changes rapidly—a thunderstorm can saturate a region that dries out a few days later."

Fiber-optic seismic sensing of vadose zone soil moisture dynamics (open access)

Fig. 1: Conceptual model for the vadose zone water dynamics and time-lapse seismology example on Ridgecrest DAS array.

Mars may have enough water under its surface to form a global ocean, study suggests

Amazing stuff! Will their be life in those sub surface oceans?

Water frost equal to "60 Olympic-size swimming pools" discovered on Mars equator

Amazing stuff! It is very odd that this news media does not mention who or what made the discovery.

Prediction of the existence of a stable new form of water: H4⁢O2+ or Aquodiium

Amazing stuff! Exotic!

We still do not even understand water! However, we are inundated on a daily basis with the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion!

The Russian-Chinese cooperation in science seems to work well despite the Russo-Ukrainian war.

"... Scientists have discovered the potential existence of a bizarre new molecule related to water. Dubbed “aquodiium,” this ion could form under extreme conditions and may explain some of the weirdness of our solar system’s ice giant planets. ..."

"Skoltech scientists and their Chinese colleagues have determined the conditions that enable the existence of a very peculiar ion. Dubbed aquodiium, it can be conceptualized as an ordinary neutral molecule of water with two additional protons stuck to it, resulting in a net double positive charge. The team suggests that the ion could be stable in the interior of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, and if so, it must play a part in the mechanism that gives rise to these planets’ unusual magnetic fields.

From the abstract:

"Aquodiium (H4⁢O2+), an isoelectronic analog of the ammonium ion (NH+

4), can theoretically be formed by combining a molecule of water (H2⁢O) with two protons. However, stable aquodiium has never been reported because of the high energy cost during the second protonation after hydronium (H3⁢O+). Here, by performing ab initio evolutionary structure searches combined with first-principles calculations, stable ionic phases, H4⁢O⁢F2 and H4⁢O⁢F2·HF, were predicted to be thermodynamically stable at high pressure. Analysis of bond lengths and electron density supports the formation of aquodiium under pressure in these two phases. Moreover, ab initio molecular dynamics simulations reveal that these ionic phases will enter the superionic states at lower temperatures compared to water ice. For H4⁢O⁢F2·HF, there is a plastic phase region where aquodiium ions exhibit free rotation. All aquodiium ions are fully preserved below 1000 K in these ionic phases, while after entering the diffusion state, only the H4⁢O⁢F2 phase keeps H4⁢O2+ ions. Our results suggest that pressure stabilizes the H4⁢O2+ ion, presenting an important addition to traditional physical and chemical theories such as the valence shell electron pair repulsion model, proton transfer, and acid-base theory."

Alien ion of water may explain why Uranus is so weird

Outlandish molecule suggested to lurk inside Uranus and Neptune, affecting their magnetic fields (original news release)

H4⁢O2+ ion stabilized by pressure (no public access)

Origin of freshwater on Earth pushed back half a billion years to about 4 billion years ago

Amazing stuff!

"... New research led by geologists at Western Australia’s Curtin University provides evidence that fresh water emerged on Earth about 4 billion years ago – half a billion years earlier than previously thought. ...
The  geologists examined ancient crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia, about 650km north of the state capital, Perth. The rocks in the formation are 4.4 billion years old, making them the oldest terrestrial material on Earth – our planet itself is 4.543 billion years old. ...

“By examining the oxygen isotopes in crystals of the mineral zircon, we found unusually light isotopic signatures as far back as 4 billion years ago. Such light oxygen isotopes are typically the result of hot, fresh water altering rocks several kilometres below Earth’s surface,” ...

“Evidence of fresh water this deep inside Earth challenges the existing theory that Earth was completely covered by ocean 4 billion years ago.” ..."

From the abstract:

"Widespread interaction between meteoric (fresh) water and emerged continental crust on the early Earth may have been key to the emergence of life, although when the hydrological cycle first started is poorly constrained. Here we use the oxygen isotopic composition of dated zircon crystals from the Jack Hills, Western Australia, to determine when the hydrological cycle commenced. The analysed zircon grains reveal two periods of magmatism at 4.0–3.9 and 3.5–3.4 billion years ago characterized by oxygen isotopic compositions below mantle values (that is,18O/16O ratios <5.3 ± 0.6‰ relative to Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (2 s.d)). The most negative 18O/16O ratios at around 4.0 and 3.4 billion years ago are as low as 2.0‰ and –0.1‰, respectively. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that such isotopically light values in zircon require the interaction of shallow crustal magmatic systems with meteoric water, which must have commenced at or before 4.0 billion years ago, contemporaneous with the oldest surviving remnant of Earth’s continental crust. The emergence of continental crust, the presence of fresh water and the start of the hydrological cycle probably facilitated the development of the environmental niches required for life fewer than 600 million years after Earth’s formation."

Origin of freshwater on Earth pushed back half a billion years

Fresh findings: earliest evidence of life-bringing fresh water on Earth (original press release) New Curtin-led research has found evidence that fresh water on Earth, which is essential for life, appeared about four billion years ago – five hundred million years earlier than previously thought.

Onset of the Earth’s hydrological cycle four billion years ago or earlier (no public access)

Fig. 1: Jack Hills zircon δ18O versus age for individual magmatic grains (thank the journal for the blurriness of this image).