PLOS ONE recently published a new Collection of research entitled Recent Advances in Understanding Plastic Pollution. Given the broad scope of this collection, and the potential implications this research has on both humans the rest of the biosphere globally, we are digging deeper into the findings with some of the authors from papers included in this collection. In this third installment of interviews, we learn more about how microplastics may affect metabolism, and how it is getting easier to use machine learning to analyse samples containing microplastics.

CJ O’Brien, Plastics Campaign Associate, Oceana

CJ O’Brien has worked in research and advocacy to protect the ocean from plastic pollution in the United States and Zanzibar, Tanzania. She is currently the Plastics Campaign Associate at Oceana where she works on policies to reduce the production and use of single-use plastic. Before joining Oceana, she earned a master’s degree in Development Practice from Emory University with a focus on Environmental Conservation and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). There, she grappled with the complex interactions between marine conservation, plastic pollution, and international development. CJ also has a B.S. in Biology from California Lutheran University. Her honors thesis explored the impacts of plastic on the digestive enzyme activity in marine mussels which is the study highlighted here.

CJ O’Brien’s paper in this collection: O’Brien CJ, Hong HC, Bryant EE, Connor KM (2021) The observation of starch digestion in blue mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis exposed to microplastic particles under varied food conditions. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0253802. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253802

PLOS: In this paper, you studied the effects of microplastics on blue mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis during different food regimes. Why is this species particularly interesting to study in order to understand plastic pollution?

CJO: Mytilus galloprovincialis are small but mighty in their importance to the marine ecosystem and to plastic pollution research. Many researchers study this species because they are bioindicators which means they help us monitor the overall health of the environment. Mytilus galloprovincialis filter feed and are sessile creatures, making them extremely sensitive to pollution and other anthropogenic changes. Studying this species and its physiological reaction to the exposure of microplastic allowed us as researchers to get a better look at how microplastics are not only impacting them as a species, but how microplastic might be impacting the ecosystem as a whole. 

Additionally, Mytilus galloprovincialis are crucial to the marine environment and to humans as well. This species is constantly filtering the water column in which they live, creating more clean environments for their marine neighbors. They are also found all over the world and are cultivated for food in many different regions. Not to mention they make great lab subjects as they are easy to care for. I would say that intertidal filter feeders in general are extremely fascinating organisms and crucial in our understanding of plastic pollution, the health of the ocean, and the health of humans. 

PLOS: You found that enzyme activity was affected by the presence of microplastics in the high-food regime only. Was this a result you had foreseen? How is the high-food regime reflected in the real lives of this species?

CJO: This outcome was shocking to me. I expected amylase activity to be negatively affected by the presence of microplastic in both feeding regimes. I thought that since microplastic holds no nutrition for these organisms, that filtering microplastic particles would take up a large proportion of their energy to filter, increase toxicity, or reduce available organic content available for digestion. Theoretically, these perturbations could hinder their ability to make or secrete amylase and survive. However, mussels evolved a range of digestive related characteristics to cope with fluctuations in nutrients and understanding how they modulate them when exposed to microplastic pollution is an emerging field of science.

In our experiment, we subjected mussels to fluctuating feeding environments that differ, similar to that to mussels at different shore levels. Mussels fed high food concentrations represented mussels that live lower in the water column and are exposed to more feeding options than mussels high on the shore due to daily tidal variation. With that context, I thought that the amylase activity in mussels in the low food group would be impacted more than mussels in the high food group. This inference was not observed and in fact high microplastics led to unpredictably high amylase activity.

This was interesting to me because food digestion is positively related to food abundance–the digestive modulation hypothesis–and microplastics is not food. Mussels are adapted to conserve energy as much as they can due to unpredictable environments, such as tidal, thermal, and pH variation. Any change to their energy reserves in nature could impact their growth, survival, and fitness. However, our study showed that it is possible that even under very high microplastic exposures and presumably less organic content ingested, amylase activity was actually increased to compensate for diluted food. 

PLOS: Working to combat plastic pollution must be endlessly inspiring but occasionally daunting. What motivated you to work in this field, and what are the rewards that keep you going?

CJO: Growing up in Florida, I’ve always had a deep curiosity and connection to the ocean. My motivation for getting into this field was fueled by wanting to protect the place that I loved most. I increasingly saw plastic pollution on beaches that I spent time at and as I started to learn more, I realized just how big this problem is. I was utterly fascinated that a man-made material, made to last forever but oftentimes only used for a few moments has caused so much harm–especially microplastic which can be microscopic. It is so insidious!

Currently, I work on policies that reduce the production and use of single-use plastic. While I don’t work in research anymore, I’ve seen firsthand how research influences policies that reduce single-use plastic. It is so crucial that researchers continue to investigate how this pollutant impacts the health of our oceans and the health of us as humans. Plastic production is expected to increase and if we are to have any chance in fighting the plastic pollution crisis, we will need all hands on deck from scientists, policymakers, as well as artists, musicians, community members, and young people. I feel hopeful when I see collaborative, creative, and equitable approaches to this problem.

PLOS: Several other studies in this Collection also look the effects of plastic pollution on living species. Has seeing these other research studies in the collection helped inspire any thoughts about future work you might do, or other advances your research community will make?

CJO: Our study subjected mussels to high concentrations of spherical microplastics that may have an effect on mussels in future microplastics conditions. Our results showed that these types of microplastics are not lethal over short exposures. I continue to monitor studies of microplastics on bivalves and other marine organisms in general in my role as the Plastics Campaign Associate. The Connor Lab at University of California-Irvine continues to deeply study how bivalves work from genome to phenome.

Ho-min Park, PhD Student, Ghent University

Hello, my name is Ho-min Park. I am currently pursuing a doctoral degree in computer science engineering from Ghent University, Belgium. In this context, I am working as a teaching assistant for the Informatics and Bioinformatics courses at Ghent University Global Campus in Incheon, Korea. This extended campus of Ghent University offers educational programmes in Molecular Biotechnology, Food Technology, and Environmental Technology. As a dry lab scientist, I am conducting convergence-oriented research that applies artificial intelligence to predictive tasks that have been put forward by the different wet labs at Ghent University Global Campus.

Ho-min Park’s paper in this collection: Park H-m, Park S, de Guzman MK, Baek JY, Cirkovic Velickovic T, Van Messem A, et al. (2022) MP-Net: Deep learning-based segmentation for fluorescence microscopy images of microplastics isolated from clams. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269449. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269449

PLOS: You studied various machine learning techniques for annotating microplastics from fluorescence microscopy images, which is very promising for reducing the time and effort it takes researchers to analyze microscopy images. How close are we to where machine learning can truly analyze microscopy images as well as a human can?

HP: I think we are getting very close. For quite a few image analysis and annotation efforts that take up a lot of time, I even believe that machine learning techniques are already better than humans, given that humans tend to suffer from visual fatigue rather quickly. Furthermore, when targeting high-speed and high-quality image analyses, the ideal approach will most likely consist of first having machine learning analyze an image of interest, and then ask a domain expert to validate the analysis performed.

However, we still need to obtain a better understanding of the inherent limitations of data-driven approaches. Human-made data often contain biases and errors, and where these biases and errors can propagate to machine learning models that were trained on these human-made data. For example, while annotating our microscopy images, we were able to spot several image blobs that made it hard for humans to determine whether these blobs were denoting microplastics or light bleed artifacts, and where such ambiguities typically also affect the training and decision-making capabilities of machine learning models.

PLOS: You made all data and code publicly available for the software you developed for this project. What motivated you to do this? Do you know whether other researchers have used your code or software, maybe not yet for this project, but perhaps for any other code you’ve made available in the past?

HP: In imaging of microplastics, the acquisition of data requires several steps, and where most of these steps can be considered time-consuming and labor intensive, especially when they involve chemical processes. In particular, to obtain a set of microscopy images, we had to collect numerous clam samples, subsequently digesting the proteins and lipids, staining the remaining microplastics pieces, and performing image capturing with a microscope. As a result, most studies only make available the amount and the type of microplastics, and not the original images. However, this makes it challenging for other researchers to cross-validate experimental methods and results. We therefore took the decision to open up our data and our software, thus making it easier for other researchers to build on top of our work. In this respect, we also plan to post an introductory article on our work to the Papers with Code platform in the near future. Finally, although our paper was published only recently, we already received several inquiries regarding the usage of our data and our software.

PLOS: For this paper, you had two collaborating institutions and three “first authors” who contributed equally. Can you tell us more about how this collaboration worked?

HP: The idea of building a machine learning tool first came about when Maria Krishna, who is a PhD student in Food Chemistry at Ghent University Global Campus, encountered difficulties in manually counting microplastics in the fluorescence images she collected. After discussing these difficulties with me (Maria Krishna knew about my computer vision research), and after encouragement from our doctoral advisors, we decided to experiment with a few images and a number of deep learning models. This required a lot of work, both on the chemistry side (for the acquisition of microplastics from shellfish until image collection) and on the machine learning side (for model training and development of the GUI). In this context, we received a lot of help from two student interns, Sanghyeon Park and Jiyeon Baek, with Sanghyeon even staying on for the entire duration of the project.

PLOS: As a researcher, how do you hope to inspire other researchers, and the general public, to focus on plastic pollution as a social issue? What are some ways in which researchers who do not work directly in this field can help?

HP: With increasingly better methodologies to quantify microplastics pollution, including computational methodologies that leverage machine learning, we believe it will be easier to raise awareness about the seriousness of the spread of microplastics, and where this increased awareness will hopefully trigger more research and development efforts. These research and development efforts could for instance target the creation of biodegradable plastics, the discovery and possible engineering of organisms that can break down microplastics, and a better understanding of the risks posed by microplastics and their impact on human health, and where the latter effort would be of high interest to law and policy makers.

Cover image: Port of Dover, 2014 Beach Clean (CC-BY 2.0)

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

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Last week, PLOS ONE a new Curated Collection – Recent Advances in Understanding Plastic Pollution. In this second installment of our Q&A with authors from this collection, we speak with author groups who study consumer knowledge and attitudes toward plastic products and the ease of recycling.

Emma Berry, Lecturer, Queen’s University Belfast

Emma Berry is a Health Psychology Lecturer in the School of Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast. Emma’s research interests include psychological adjustment to long-term conditions, health and environmental behaviour change, and psychosocial and behavioural intervention development. Emma is also interested in creative modes of communicating information and providing education, particularly in the format of comics.

Emma Berry’s paper in this Curated Collection: Roy D, Berry E, Dempster M (2022) “If it is not made easy for me, I will just not bother”. A qualitative exploration of the barriers and facilitators to recycling plastics. PLoS ONE 17(5): e0267284. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267284

PLOS: You carried out a study to investigate motivations and barriers to recycling plastics, and the title of your paper is quite telling – it needs to be easy for people to recycle. Was there anything about the results of this study that surprised you?

EB: A novel element of this study was to qualitatively explore how the dexterity of plastic packaging can influence recycling behaviour. It was interesting to find that, in spite of environmental concern, participants openly recognised that the complexity of recycling, which is influenced by both the packaging and the accessibility of recycling resources i.e. bins, is an important barrier to recycling behaviour. Even when people are motivated to recycle, this does not always translate into action. Moreover, experiencing environmental concern does not necessarily make recycling a priority. For many people recycling is one of many competing life priorities, so if it requires too much cognitive and/or physical effort, other competing behaviours will take precedent. Of relevance to plastic manufacturers and retailers, our study reaffirms the usefulness of simplicity in the design of plastic packaging, with clear visual cues to aid decisions about what, how, where, and when to recycle.

PLOS: It is mentioned in the paper that some of the original intentions on how the data was to be used changed. Can you elaborate on how some of these changes occurred? Sometimes it can feel like a lot of pressure for research to always work out like we hoped or planned, so it is nice to hear how things can be adapted or altered for various scenarios during an ongoing study.

EB: The value of qualitative designs is that we can adopt an inductive or bottom-up approach, enabling us to be more receptive of new and unexpected findings. This also means that we can be more flexible (within the realms of the research question) about how the data is interpreted and used, depending on the emergent themes. The decision to integrate the survey data was post-hoc, based on the qualitative themes extracted. The survey work was conducted separately and was intended to provide an overview of recycling awareness, knowledge, and behaviours in a cross-section of people living in Northern Ireland. However, following the analysis of the qualitative findings, we felt that the frequencies observed in the survey data corroborated the salience of themes relating to physical opportunity and motivational factors underpinning intentions to recycle.

PLOS: You chose to publish the peer review history of your paper online together with the paper itself. Can you tell us what motivated you to do this? Was there anything in particular about the peer review process or recommendations from the editors or reviewers that felt especially useful for enhancing the paper?

EB: Publishing the peer review history of the paper supports an open science approach and allows readers to acknowledge how the paper has evolved from the original submission. However, we also wanted to acknowledge the specific recommendations provided by peer reviewers. In particular, the helpful recommendations to improve the structure and reporting of the interview and survey findings, in order to strengthen the narrative and make the most of the data available. Moreover, the peer review process prompted us to clarify the theoretical framework applied to the methodology (the COM-B model), which is a novel and valuable element of the study. We felt it was important to acknowledge the value of the peer review process to reaffirm this.

PLOS: Two other studies in this collection also look at consumer attitudes to recycling and waste, and the use of bioplastics. These are “Chukwuone NA, Amaechina EC, Ifelunini IA (2022) Determinants of household’s waste disposal practices and willingness to participate in reducing the flow of plastics into the ocean: Evidence from coastal city of Lagos Nigeria. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0267739. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267739” and “Filho WL, Barbir J, Abubakar IR, Paço A, Stasiskiene Z, Hornbogen M, et al. (2022) Consumer attitudes and concerns with bioplastics use: An international study. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0266918. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266918” Has seeing these other research studies in the collection helped inspire any thoughts about future work you might do, or other advances your research community will make?

EB: Our paper, in conjunction with the two other studies in this collection support the need for research that focuses on the design and evaluation of interventions to support appropriate recycling behaviour and minimise inappropriate disposal of plastic waste. The paper by Filho et al. (2022) is interesting as it considers how plastic material can be altered to improve the ecological footprint of the production and degradation of packaging, and this resonates with a previous paper we collaborated on by Meta et al. (2021: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2020.12.015). All three papers collectively affirm the need to provide more behavioural scaffolding to assist recycling in day to day life. This means adjusting the choice architecture by focusing on the design of plastic packaging and the availability of cues and resources required to recycle more effortlessly.

Stay tuned for more interviews with authors from this collection.

Cover image: Port of Dover, 2014 Beach Clean (CC-BY 2.0)

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

The post Understanding Plastic Pollution: Consumer attitudes and knowledge appeared first on EveryONE.

PLOS ONE is delighted to introduce a new Curated Collection – Recent Advances in Understanding Plastic Pollution. This global challenge may have not been the biggest fixture in the media during the past couple of years, but researchers, governments, volunteers and the public have all been working hard on ensuring that it is easier than ever to be a part of the movement to reduce plastic pollution. Many of us will now be used to receiving take-away food in paper bags or boxes and being equipped with wooden forks and spoons instead of the traditional plastic ones. The PLOS ONE community of researchers working on plastic pollution have been busy reporting new results on identifying microplastic prevalence in various organisms and habitats, understanding how members of the public understand recycling and bioplastics, and how clothes shed microfibers during washing and drying. You can learn more about all of this in our new Curated Collection.

In this first installment of our Q&A with authors from this collection, we speak to some of our researchers working on how clothes may contribute to microfiber pollution during washing and drying.

Neil Lant, Research Fellow, Procter & Gamble

Dr Neil Lant joined Procter & Gamble’s Newcastle Innovation Centre in 1997 after completing a chemistry degree and PhD in bioorganic chemistry. For the past 25 years he has worked in fabric and home care product development for all regions of the world, with a strong emphasis on applying new enzyme technology to improve product performance and sustainability, resulting in over 150 families patent applications. He also leads P&G’s microfiber research program, as part of his broader interests in the role of fabric care products in improving textile sustainability.

Neil Lant’s paper in this Curated Collection: Lant NJ, Defaye MMA, Smith AJ, Kechi-Okafor C, Dean JR, Sheridan KJ (2022) The impact of fabric conditioning products and lint filter pore size on airborne microfiber pollution arising from tumble drying. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0265912. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265912

PLOS: Your studied microfiber shedding from clothes during various washing and drying conditions. You made a distinction between European and North American washing routines. What is the main difference between these? How do they differ from those in other parts of the world that were not studied?

NL: The washing machines used in Europe are almost exclusively front-loaders with a wash water volume of around 13 litres. However, in North America several very different appliance types are being used, broadly falling into three types – (i) front loaders that are essentially larger versions of European machines, (ii) traditional top-loading machines that have a large water volume of around 64 litres and (iii) high efficiency top-loading machines with a water volume of around 32 litres. We have found that microfiber release is driven by many factors but our previous publications were the first to recognise that the ratio of water volume to fabric weight was particularly important with high water to fabric ratios causing the highest levels of release. For this reason we run testing in both European and top-loading North America machines to check that the same trends are observed in very different conditions. Other appliance types are used in different regions of the world, and many consumers still wash by hand, but the European and North American washing machines are good representatives of those used in markets where tumble drying is common, as in this paper we were mainly interested in microfiber release during the drying step.

PLOS: You mention in this study that the only real solution to microfiber shedding may be to design a completely different type of dryer. What would need to be the key differences, and how close are we to being able to developing something like that?

NL: The study was focused on airborne microfiber pollution arising from vented dryers which have a air duct to the outside of the building, which is the most important type of dryer in North America with over 95% of the market. The airborne microfiber release can be eliminated by either improving the removal of fibers from that air flow (e.g. using the cyclonic filtration process used in many vacuum cleaners) or moving to fully sealed condenser dryers that collect all fibres and moisture within the appliance. The only problem with the latter is that the fibers can end up in the condensed water or on the condenser which is typically washed in a sink, running the risk of solving an air pollution issue by increasing water pollution! This suggests that we might need to redesign all tumble dryers to ensure that all fibers can be collected and disposed in household waste, with no opportunity for fibers to be released to the air or water.

PLOS: You studied how clothes shed during washing and drying. We also know that clothes shed microfibers whilst we wear them. Do we know how the microfiber release for a certain garment differs during washing vs drying vs wearing?

NL: Forensic scientists have known for a long time that fabrics lose fibers when they make contact with other surfaces, but loss of fibers to the air and their transfer to other surfaces has now been proven. We also know that fibers will be lost during line drying of clothes. Although textile scientists are gaining a better understanding of the relationship between fiber, yarn, and textile construction and microfiber shedding during washing, more research will be needed to understand whether the same principles apply to other modes of microfiber release. And we still don’t have a clear understanding of the relative quantities of microfibers being released from textiles to air and water from these sources nor the ultimate fate of these fibers. However, there is a clear consensus that steps to reduce the intrinsic ‘sheddability’ of clothing will be a move in the right direction and we anticipate future government legislation to drive any changes needed in textile manufacturing, in line with proposed legislation in several markets to include microfiber filters in new washing machines.

PLOS: Several other studies in this Collection also look the effects of plastic pollution on living species. One of these is “Kapp KJ, Miller RZ (2020) Electric clothes dryers: An underestimated source of microfiber pollution. PLoS ONE 15(10): e0239165. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239165” Has seeing these other research studies in the collection helped inspire any thoughts about future work you might do, or other advances your research community will make?

NL: Kapp and Miller’s article was a breakthrough in being the first to recognise, and begin to quantify, the contribution of vented tumble dryers to airborne (and subsequent terrestrial) pollution. Their methods involving use of snow to collect deposited microfibers were fantastic. As their study only involved two dryers and didn’t measure the relative quantities of microfibers being released during washing and drying, we were keen to build on that study with a more extensive program spanning different markets, impact of fabric care products, and evaluating some potential solutions. The quantity of literature focused on tumble drying is still very limited so we would like to continue researching this area with an emphasis on condenser dryers which are already very common outside of North America and, when integrated with heat pump technology, are much more energy efficient resulting in lower operating costs and reduced carbon footprint.

Stay tuned for more interviews with authors from this collection, including Kapp and Miller who contributed Electric clothes dryers: An underestimated source of microfiber pollution

Cover image: Port of Dover, 2014 Beach Clean (CC-BY 2.0)

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

The post Understanding Plastic Pollution – How do our clothes contribute? appeared first on EveryONE.

New and modified materials for future energy production, storage and use is an active area of research, where the progress made will shape society and support a sustainable future.  In August of 2021, PLOS ONE published a new collection of Energy Materials papers, showcasing state-of-the-art research in this exciting field. We interviewed some of the authors whose research is part of this collection, in order to shed further light on the discoveries they have made and the challenges they continue to tackle.

Sascha Raufeisen

Sascha is currently a PhD student at Institute of Technical and Environmental Chemistry at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. B.Sc. in chemistry (topic bachelor’s thesis: “Synthesis of a thiofunctionalized phosphoramidite for DNA synthesis”). M. Sc. in environmental chemistry (topic master’s thesis: “Investigation of the pyroelectrocatalytic oxidation capability of lithium niobate and lithium tantalate in an aquatic system“). Research focus: new advanced oxidation processes (AOP’s) and combinations (e.g. ultrasound with electrochemistry or photocatalysis) and pyrocatalysis (mechanism elucidation, modelling, application, catalyst development/synthesis) analytical chemistry and water analytics.

Sascha Raufeisen’s paper in this collection: Raufeisen S, Stelter M, Braeutigam P (2020) Pyrocatalysis—The DCF assay as a pH-robust tool to determine the oxidation capability of thermally excited pyroelectric powders. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0228644. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228644

Can you tell us a bit about the beginning of this project that led to your PLOS ONE paper? If you weren’t involved in the study from the start, what was your first impression of the study?

SR: In 2014, I worked on a research module on the topic of electrochemical COD determination as part of my master’s degree in environmental chemistry. During my literature research, I read a lot on the topic of new and innovative advanced oxidation processes. By chance, I came across an article by Gutmann et al. In this article, they presented for the first time a wastewater treatment process based on thermally excited pyroelectric materials. I was immediately fascinated by the underlying mechanism and the prospect of exploiting the huge residual heat potentials in industry for the purification of wastewater. When, by chance, the first author of this study was also working in Jena and we exchanged ideas with him about the topic, I was hooked. I decided to change the topic of my master’s thesis and set out on the stony path of working on a completely new topic. After many missteps, corrections, and minor successes, I finished my master’s thesis with ten times more questions than when I started. Consequently, I decided to investigate pyrocatalysis further as part of my doctoral thesis. In the course of this work, I came to the conclusion that the methodology of the DCF assay needs to be fundamentally revised, which eventually resulted in my PLOS ONE paper.

Pyrocatalysis is a very exciting new research area. Do you envision that it will be possible in the future to apply this to energy generation applications of different kinds, in addition to wastewater remediation?

SR: In my opinion, further potential fields of application are H2 generation and the disinfection of (waste)water. Pyrocatalytic H2 generation could contribute to the supply of industry (e.g. steel production) with sustainably produced H2. Pyrocatalytic disinfection may gain importance especially with regard to future pandemic prevention. At the moment, however, the application of pyrocatalysis in all these three fields of application is highly dependent on the further development of pyroelectric catalysts. The DCF assay presented in the PLOS ONE paper can make a valuable contribution here.

As an early career scientist, how did you prepare yourself for the review process when submitting your first few papers? Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d known before that first submission?

SR: In order to prepare myself, I consulted more experienced scientists at our institute. They explained what I had to pay attention to in the cover letter, the abstract and the introduction. They also helped me with the suggestion of reviewers. The communication with the reviewers went smoothly. The most challenging part of my first two publications was choosing the right journal. With such a new topic at the cross section between environmental/water chemistry and materials science, I received many rejections due to the lack of fit.

What hopes do you have for the future of research into sustainable energy solutions? Do you have a clear sense at this point where you would like to go in your career?

SR: I hope that all industrialized countries will finally recognize that we must increase our efforts extremely in order to slow down climate change as much as possible. An essential point here is the conversion of our entire energy demand (electricity and heat) to a regenerative basis. Since this is not possible with current technologies, research in this area must be accelerated. In addition to storage technologies, I believe that concepts for the use of residual heat must also be further developed. One technique could be pyrocatalysis, which could be used for wastewater treatment and H2 generation at the same time. I want to contribute to this transformation with my research.

Jeremi Dauchet

Jeremi Dauchet is a physicist who received his PhD in chemical engineering in 2012. He is expert in transport physics and radiative transfer in particular (including electromagnetic theory applied to the determination of radiative properties), with special emphasis on the Monte Carlo method. Associate professor at Pascal Institute (France), his research is applied to photoreactive processes engineering.

Jeremi Dauchet’s paper in this collection: Supplis C, Dauchet J, Gattepaille V, Gros F, Vourc’h T, Cornet J-F (2021) Radiative analysis of luminescence in photoreactive systems: Application to photosensitizers for solar fuel production. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0255002. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255002

Can you tell us a bit about the beginning of this project that led to your PLOS ONE paper? If you weren’t involved in the study from the start, what was your first impression of the study?

JD: This work was initiated by experimental results obtained by Caroline Supplis during her PhD. We observed unexpected yet significant impact of luminescence when studying bio-inspired H2 production in a benchmark photoreactor. The analysis of those experiments led us to carry the thorough radiative study presented in our PLOS ONE paper.

We noticed that you shared your Monte Carlo algorithm with your PLOS ONE paper. What motivated you to do this? Do you have any experience of using other researcher’s code from publications, or know of anyone who has used the code you’ve shared?

JD: Indeed, we are dedicated to open research and distributing open source codes and databases is part of that approach. We often provide the codes used in our publications as supplementary material or as links directed to our websites. Ensuring that these codes and databases will be available to readers in the long run is a concern. We know that our codes and databases are used by other researchers because they contact us when they need advises (or when it is no longer available at the provided url!). When those codes are mature enough, we work with Meso-Star for software development, support, maintenance, integration and distribution under GNU general public license (www.meso-star.com/projects/misc/about-en.html). Conversely we routinely use other researcher’s codes, for example the famous Mie code for electromagnetic scattering provided by Craig F. Bohren and Donald R. Huffman as an appendix in their book “Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles”.

Was there anything that surprised you during this study, or did everything go exactly according to plan?

JD: This entire study had not been envisaged when Caroline’s PhD research-plan was being drawn up! Photoreactive processes are controlled at different scales by radiative transfer and therefore, we knew that radiative analysis will be an important part of the work. But we did not anticipate such significant effects of luminescence, which led Caroline to 3 years of investigations.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

Featured image: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243296

The post Introducing the PLOS ONE Energy Materials Collection – Author Perspectives, Part 2 appeared first on EveryONE.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the role that advances within the science of energy materials may play in our lives over the next few decades. As the world grapples with the challenges of increasing energy demand and dynamic usage patterns, the community of scientists developing materials for future energy production, usage and storage are a vital part of building a sustainable future. In August of 2021, PLOS ONE published a new collection of Energy Materials papers, showcasing state-of-the-art research in this exciting field. We interviewed some of the authors whose research is part of this collection, in order to shed further light on the discoveries they have made and the challenges they continue to tackle.

Rosa Mondragón

I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Universitat Jaume I in Castelló (Spain). I defended my PhD thesis about spray drying of nanofluids in 2013 and that was my first experience with the amazing field of nanofluids. I am currently Associate Professor in the Fluid Mechanics area of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Construction in Universitat Jaume I and I belong to the Multiphase Fluids research group. My research is focused on the synthesis and characterization of nanofluids for heat transfer, thermal energy storage and solar radiation absorption applications. I have been participant member of the COST Action “Overcoming Barriers to Nanofluids Market Uptake – NANOUPTAKE” (2016-2020) whose objectives were the development of a common understanding about nanofluids preparation and characterization and the acceleration of the transfer of knowledge from fundamental research to industrial applications.

Rosa Mondragon’s paper in this collection: Mondragón R, Sánchez D, Cabello R, Llopis R, Juliá JE (2019) Flat plate solar collector performance using alumina nanofluids: Experimental characterization and efficiency tests. PLoS ONE 14(2): e0212260. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212260

Can you tell us a bit about the beginning of this project that led to your PLOS ONE paper? If you weren’t involved in the study from the start, what was your first impression of the study?

RM: I began my research on nanofluids for heat transfer applications in 2010 but after some years doing experimental characterization of thermophysical properties at the lab scale (thermal conductivity, viscosity, specific heat, etc.) we needed to move towards the analysis of its use in real applications. The only difficulty was to find any research group having the suitable facilities to start a joint collaboration. Besides, most of the facilities required quite a big volume of fluids making also a challenge sending the nanofluid to a different research centre. Fortunately, we found out that the Thermal Engineering research group of our department had recently acquired a flat plate solar collector that could be used. That was the beginning of the project that led to the paper published and some lessons learnt.

What is it about nanofluids that make them such a good candidate for use in solar collectors?

RM: The term nanofluid was coined to refer to the mixture of nanoparticles dispersed in a base fluid with improved thermal properties, specifically thermal conductivity. This thermal conductivity enhancement achieved due to the higher thermal conductivity of the solid nanoparticles leads to an increase in the heat transfer capacity of the fluid and the efficiency of the solar collector. However, there are more variables involved in the process such as the decrease in the specific heat capacity or the increase in the viscosity. As a result, a combined experimental analysis of all the nanofluid thermophysical properties is necessary to ensure a better performance of the nanofluid in transferring the thermal energy obtained from the absorbed solar energy, compared to the base fluid. It is also worth mentioning that there exist a wide variety of nanoparticles with good thermal properties, inexpensive and non-toxic that can be selected.

Was there anything that surprised you during this study, or did everything go exactly according to plan?

RM: Of course not everything went exactly according to the plan but it comes with the experimental research. We had a previous experience using the nanofluid in a thermohydraulic loop and we knew that the compatibility with the materials in pipes and pumps was very important to avoid oxidation and corrosion. If the solar collector was made to transport water, the addition of the nanoparticles should not have caused any problem. However, the acidic conditions needed to stabilize the nanoparticles in water promoted the oxidation of the materials and the corrosion of the copper tubes. Moreover, the contact of the concentrated nanofluid with the hot surface of the tubes caused a deposition layer as is shown in the paper. As a result, the enhancement theoretically predicted for the solar collector efficiency was not achieved due to the thermal resistance caused by the nanoparticle layer. The nanofluid initially white became orangish after the tests which confirmed that is highly recommended to check the compatibility of the nanofluid with the materials of the experimental facilities to ensure a good performance and to achieve the best results.

Bernhard Springer

Bernhard Springer, M. Sc. is currently a research associate at University of Applied Sciences Landshut (UAS Landshut) and a PhD student at Technical University Munich (TUM). He studied physics at the TUM from 2011 and finished his Bachelor’s degree in 2015. From 2015 till 2017 he studied Applied and engineering physics at the TUM and finished with a Master’s degree. Since 2017 he is working as a research associate at the Technology Centre Energy affiliated to the UAS Landshut. In 2018 he started with his PhD studies at the chemistry department of the TUM. Since 2019 he is working with his colleagues on the Project “SpinnAP”. His fields of research include Electrospinning, Lithium-Ion-Batteries  and solid-state electrolytes.

Bernhard Springer’s paper in this collection: Springer BC, Frankenberger M, Pettinger K-H (2020) Lamination of Separators to Electrodes using Electrospinning. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227903. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227903

Can you tell us a bit about the beginning of this project that led to your PLOS ONE paper? If you weren’t involved in the study from the start, what was your first impression of the study?

BS: The project leading to my publication is “Spinning Technologies for Advanced Battery Production” (SpinnAP) and is funded by the Bavarian Research Foundation. The project aims to improve lithium ion batteries, both liquid and solid electrolyte systems, using electrospinning. An example for such an improvement is to enable lamination on different separators using electrospinning, like described in my paper. In addition, suitable production processes as well as an improved nanofiber output for industrial applications are part of our development focus. To achieve this, we also develop our own high-output electrospinning machine within the frame of the project. We are supported by our project partners 3M Dyneon GmbH, AKE Technologies GmbH and Brückner GmbH with their respective expertise.

Electrospinning seems like a very promising method for the future of lithium ion batteries. What do you think are the main advantages this can bring to the consumer or user of lithium ion batteries?

BS: For lithium ion batteries using a liquid electrolyte, lamination can achieve two main advantages: First, lamination is able to improve the charge and discharge capability, as shown by Frankenberger et al (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jelechem.2019.02.030). Unfortunately, not all separators are capable for lamination. Using electrospinning we want to enable lamination for all types of separators to combine the advantages of lamination with the advantages of the respective separators, e.g. lower production costs or safety enhancement. Second, lamination creates a firm connection between the electrodes and the separator. This can be positive for the production speed of the cells, since the individual layers can not be displaced during the following production steps. This can lead to an increased production output and more inexpensive battery cells.

As an early career scientist, how did you prepare yourself for the review process when submitting your first few papers? Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d known before that first submission?

BS: In preparation to my first submission, I intensely discussed with my colleagues from the Technology Center Energy, a research facility of the University of Applied Sciences Landshut, about their previous experiences. In addition, I read the guidelines provided by PLOS regarding the submission process carefully.

What hopes do you have for the future of research into sustainable energy solutions? Do you have a clear sense at this point where you would like to go in your career?

BS: I do not have a clear sense where I would like to go in my career yet, but I do intend to pursue an industrial career path. At the moment I strongly focus on my dissertation.

David López Durán

David is Professor in the Department of Physics of the University of Córdoba (Spain). He obtained the MSc degree in the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), and his PhD in the Fundamental Physics Institute (FPI) of the Spanish National Research Council (SNRC) in Madrid. He has developed his work in La Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy), Argonne National Laboratory, IL (USA), and CIC Nanogune, San Sebastián (Spain), among others. His research topics are: weakly bound molecular clusters, collisions of molecules at low and ultralow temperatures, and potential energy surfaces of small molecular aggregates. Some recent scientific contributions are: (1) “The CECAM electronic structure library and the modular software development paradigm”, J. Chem. Phys. 153, 024117-1/024117-23 (2020) article promoted as part of the “Chemical Physics Software Collection” of the Journal of Chemical Physics (September 2021), and (2) interview in TV (May 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ71JPVdhtw

David López Durán’s paper in this collection: López-Durán D, Plésiat E, Krompiec M, Artacho E (2020) Gap variability upon packing in organic photovoltaics. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0234115. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234115

Can you tell us a bit about the beginning of this project that led to your PLOS ONE paper? If you weren’t involved in the study from the start, what was your first impression of the study?

DL: This article came up as part of the work supported by the “Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire” (CECAM), which is formed by several institutions in Europe and funds multiple activities, one of them a partnership between some of these institutions, network called “E-CAM”, and to which I belonged. One of the targets of E-CAM was to bring closer the academic and the industrial worlds through several initiatives, for instance a collaboration between two nodes with different profiles. This manuscript came up due to the work developed in my former institutions, CIC Nanogune (San Sebastián, Spain) and University of Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), and the industrial partner Merck Chemicals Ltd. (Southampton, United Kingdom). The climate change and global warming are, unfortunately, a hot topic in science and we tried to contribute to its solution studying organic photovoltaics. Specifically, we addressed the problem of the arrangement of the molecules in order to maximize the electric current.

How do you think that the results you obtained in this study will impact the development of organovoltaics in the future?

DL: The design of a device to generate energy based in any kind of photovoltaic molecules must include the analysis of several factors in order to obtain the maximum performance. One of them is the HOMO-LUMO band gap of the constituent molecules, which are usually a donor-acceptor pair, magnitude which dramatically depends on the geometry arrangement of these pairs. As this gap becomes smaller, the electronic transference is easier and, therefore, the generation of electric current. But to be small this gap is necessary that the molecules were arranged in a convenient way one with respect to the others, i. e. with their active electronic areas clearly accessible. In this work we study a great number of configurations of an organic donor-acceptor pair in gas phase, as previous step before moving to the solid phase of a real device. Our study will impact the subsequent research because now there are available some hints about the optimal geometry configuration of the molecules.   

Was there anything that surprised you during this study, or did everything go exactly according to plan?

DL: The donor-acceptor pair that we studied is 4modBT-4TIC, molecules which are based on others extensively employed in the organic photovoltaics field. We found several surprises, the first one being that the variation of the gap in all the studied configurations was around 0.3 eV, which is significant considering that the gaps in this context are not larger than 1 eV. The second surprise was the lack of correlation between the binding energy of the pair and the HOMO-LUMO band gap: the arrangement with the maximum binding energy was not that with the maximum gap and, in turn, the configuration with the maximum gap was not that with the maximum binding energy. A third surprise was that the arrangement with the maximum binding energy were much more bound that the rest. All these findings pose new questions and, therefore, further research is needed.

What’s the most unusual or unexpected collaboration you’ve been a part of during your research?

DL: I have never had an unusual or unexpected collaboration during my scientific career. However, I would like to mention that I feel very lucky because I have known people from all over the world. These experiences enrich you and make you think in a more broad and comprehensive way.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

Featured image: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243296

The post Introducing the PLOS ONE Energy Materials Collection – Author Perspectives, Part 1 appeared first on EveryONE.

In July, we updated our Nanomaterials Collection, featuring papers published over the past few years in PLOS ONE. This collection showcases the breadth of the nanomaterials community at PLOS ONE, and includes papers on a variety of topics, such as the fabrication of nanomaterials, nanomaterial-cell interactions, the role of nanomaterials in drug delivery, and nanomaterials in the environment.

To celebrate this updated collection, we are conducting a series of Q&As with authors whose work is included in the collection. Next out is our conversations with Roberto Vazquez-Muñoz from the University of Connecticut Health Center, Roselyne Ferrari from Université de Paris and Yerol Narayana from Mangalore University. They discuss the future potential of nanomaterials research, the value of open science practices, and their experiences of pursuing unexpected effects seen in the lab. We will be adding more author interviews over the next few weeks, so please do keep checking back.

Roberto Vazquez-Muñoz – University of Connecticut Health Center

Currently, I work at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UConn Health), USA. I’m a nanomedicine scientist with a multidisciplinary background: B.Sc. with a concentration in Biology, with postgraduate education in Microbiology (M. Sc.) and Nanotechnology (Ph.D.). My research focuses on the complex systems’ interactions between antimicrobial nanomaterials (nanoantibiotics), microbial cells (pathogens and probiotics), antibiotics, and the environment. My goal is to develop affordable, novel nanotechnology-based solutions to combat multidrug-resistant infectious diseases, particularly for communities under limited resources. My network includes international and transdisciplinary research teams to develop applied nanotechnology solutions for the agricultural, veterinary, and clinical sectors. My work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals, and I have developed patented and commercial products. I’ve been awarded by different institutions such as The Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education (Mexico), Rotary International’s Rotaract, the International Network of Bionanotechnology, and the New England I-Corps (MIT)/Accelerate (UCONN) program.

Roberto Vazquez-Muñoz’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Vazquez-Muñoz R, Meza-Villezcas A, Fournier PGJ, Soria-Castro E, Juarez-Moreno K, Gallego-Hernández AL, et al. (2019) Enhancement of antibiotics antimicrobial activity due to the silver nanoparticles impact on the cell membrane. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0224904. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224904

What motivated you to work in this field?

RVM: My motivation to work in this field comes from my interest in the impact of infectious diseases through history and our ability to create solutions to combat them. This interest led me to focus on the interactions between nanomaterials, microbial cells, and antimicrobial substances for combat infection. Additionally, as current treatments are less and less effective against pathogens, nanotechnology has proven to be an effective strategy to fight the crisis of infectious diseases.

Nanomaterials research has increased in popularity over the past few years as a research topic. Do you envision that the field can continue to grow this way, and do you see any challenges on the horizon?

RVM: Yes, nanomaterials research has increased in popularity worldwide, and we have seen exponential growth in publications. The field will continue to grow for years as we constantly discover nanomaterial’s novel structures, properties, and applications. Additionally, we continuously develop novel synthesis methods and understand the interactions between nanomaterials and other systems (organisms, materials, environment, etc.).

However, there are several challenges on the horizon. A critical challenge is understanding the impact of nanomaterials on living organisms and the environment. It is crucial to expand the research on human and ecological nanotoxicology and the fate of “nano-waste” on the environment. Another challenge is the standardization of research data. As nanomaterials research is a multidisciplinary field, there is still a lack of standard criteria for conducting and publishing research, leading to difficulties in comparing data from different studies.

Can you tell us about an experience during your research, whether in the lab or at the computer or in conversation etc., where something finally clicked or worked?

RVM: One of my experiences during my research is when I was working on how nanomaterials increase the antibacterial activity of antibiotics. Different published studies showed the impact of nanomaterials on cell structure and metabolism. At the same time, other studies reported synergistic – or antagonistic – activity between nanomaterials and antibiotics; however, their explanations about the mechanisms were primarily theoretical. Unfortunately, there was no apparent connection between the proposed mechanisms and the synergistic activity reported by other groups. To fill that knowledge gap, we conducted experimental work to evaluate the physical and chemical interactions in the nanomaterials-antibiotics-microbial cell complex system. Then, when we compared our data with the literature, we started to see the connecting dots that could explain the synergistic activity of antibiotics. Moreover, our model could also explain some results published from other groups. That project was a stimulating and satisfactory experience and contributed to a better understanding of the synergistic activity of nanoparticles with antibiotics.

Is there a specific research area where a collaboration with the nanomaterials community could be particularly interesting for interdisciplinary research?

RVM: There are many research areas where interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration with the nanomaterials community is exciting. Nanomedicine is my first pick. The novel properties of nanomaterials have raised a lot of interest from the medical community, particularly for drug delivery, controlled release, reducing toxicity, among others. Additionally, beyond treatments, the development of new instrumentation, biosensors, analytical kits, sanitizing formulations, and other related applications for the healthcare sector is on the rise, creating more opportunities to work in diverse, interdisciplinary environments. In this regard, I have an interdisciplinary background (microbiology and nanotechnology), and my work focuses on medical applications, which allows me to participate in different research groups.

Roselyne Ferrari – Université de Paris

I am an Associate Professor in the Paris Diderot University (now Université de Paris) since 1994. I defended my PhD thesis entitled “Investigation of foliar lipid peroxidation in higher plants and evaluation of antioxidant capacities of sensitive or drought-resistant plants” in 1992 (Paris Diderot University, France) in the field of Tropical Plant Biology. I then got interested in microorganisms and studied a class of enzymes capable of detoxifying fatty acid hydroperoxides: “the alkylhydroperoxide reductases”. I then investigated the ability of Escherichia coli to detoxify emerging pollutants in aquatic environments and in particular man-made metal oxide nanoparticles. I participated for 10 years in the development of laboratory tests to assess the toxicity of zinc oxide and titanium nanoparticles in natural aquatic environments. I showed, through metabolomics and proteomics, that E. coli tries to overcome the stress caused by nanoparticles by increasing its oxidative and respiratory capacity. More recently, I started to work again on polyunsaturated fatty acids and peroxidation phenomena, but this time on fungi. Recently I am also interested in the ability of some microscopic coprophilous fungi to destroy lignocellulose. These ascomycete fungi are over-equipped with hydrolytic enzymes, such as oxidases or oxygenases.

Roselyne Ferrari’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Planchon M, Léger T, Spalla O, Huber G, Ferrari R (2017) Metabolomic and proteomic investigations of impacts of titanium dioxide nanoparticles on Escherichia coli. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0178437. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178437

What is your favorite thing about nanomaterials?

RF: I am interested in the toxicology of nanoparticles in the environment and more particularly in their dissemination in the 3 compartments (soil water air). I am also interested in the fixation of environmental metal oxide nanoparticles by the bark of urban trees.

Have you had any surprises in your research recently, where the result was not what you expected?

RF: I did indeed have some surprises in the results I got in the paper I published in PLOS ONE. I did not expect that the amount of ATP would increase in Escherichia coli bacteria after they were brought into contact with the titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Unfortunately I did not pursue this line of research and I remain on this question.

Did you have to adapt your work in light of the pandemic, and if so, how?

RF: I adapted like many researchers and continued my work following the recommendations of my University.

What do you see as the greatest opportunities for disseminating research in your field, or for communicating science in general?

RF: Social networks, media in general have allowed us to continue to disseminate to our fellow researchers as well as video conferencing.

Yerol Narayana – Mangalore University

Obtained MSc and PhD from Mangalore University. Presently the Professor and Chairman, Board of Studies, Department of Physics of Mangalore University.  Area of research include ‘Environmental Radioactivity, ‘Radiation Biophysics’ and ‘Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications’. Published more than 150 research papers in International Journals and presented more than 250 research papers in conferences. Completed five major research projects and one major research project is ongoing. Guided 13 students for PhD degree and 8 students are currently working for their PhD degree.  Received ‘Commonwealth Fellowship Award’ for Post-Doctoral research in the United Kingdom during 2000-2001, ‘Wington Tiular Fellowship award’ from ACU in 2013, ‘Dr A K Ganguly Award’ from Indian Association for Radiation Protection, India in 2016, ‘Best Teacher Award’ from Mangalore University in the year 2017 and ‘Best Research Publication Award’ from Govt. of Karnataka, India, in 2019.

Yerol Narayana’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Suvarna S, Das U, KC S, Mishra S, Sudarshan M, Saha KD, et al. (2017) Synthesis of a novel glucose capped gold nanoparticle as a better theranostic candidate. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0178202. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178202

What route did you take to where you currently are in your career? 

YN: I obtained my Masters degree in physics from, Mangalore University in 1989 and PhD degree from the same University in 1994. I joined the Physics Department of Mangalore University in 1995 as Assistant Professor and subsequently became Professor in 2010. I have done my Post-doctoral research at BGS, UK during 2000-01 under the commonwealth fellowship and subsequently at University of Stirling, UK in 2014 under Wighton-Titular Fellowship. Currently I am working as Professor of Physics at Mangalore University.

How important are open science practices in your field? Do you have any success stories from your own research of sharing or reusing code, data, protocols, open hardware, interacting with preprints, or something else? 

YN: Open science practices are very useful in any field of scientific research.  In my field, open access to published scientific materials have helped in a big way in designing experiments, data analysis and furtherance of research.

If you could dream really big, is there a particular material, function or material property that seems far away at the moment, but you think could be attained in the future?

YN: At present the major challenge in Radiotherapy is the radio-resistance of tumor cells and protecting the normal cells. Researchers are working on a concept of multiple therapy i.e. simultaneous chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hyperthermia therapy and radiotherapy to overcome the radio-resistance and it has been proved to be effective. Live tumor imaging is another big challenge. Some nanoparticles have shown potential to improve the aforesaid individual treatment and imaging techniques. At present, individual nanomaterials are being tried for treatment and imaging. The usage of multiple nanomaterials simultaneously would not be safe as their unique interaction mechanism may create unforeseen problems. Therefore, we need a single nanomaterial that is capable of supporting multiple therapy and live imaging to reduce the side effects and to assure safety. We believe that it will be a reality in the near future.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

Featured image: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133088

The post Updating the PLOS ONE Nanomaterials Collection – Author Perspectives, Part 3 appeared first on EveryONE.

In July, we updated our Nanomaterials Collection, featuring papers published over the past few years in PLOS ONE. This collection showcases the breadth of the nanomaterials community at PLOS ONE, and includes papers on a variety of topics, such as the fabrication of nanomaterials, nanomaterial-cell interactions, the role of nanomaterials in drug delivery, and nanomaterials in the environment.

To celebrate this updated collection, we are conducting a series of Q&As with authors whose work is included in the collection. Next out is our conversations with Lauren Crandon from OnTo Technology and Robert Zucker from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In this Q&A, they discuss the importance of understanding the environmental fate of nanomaterials, new technology development, and their experiences of making new discoveries in the lab. We will be adding more author interviews over the next few weeks, so please do keep checking back.

Lauren Crandon – OnTo Technology

Lauren Crandon is a Research and Development Engineer with OnTo Technology in Bend, OR. She develops technology to recycle lithium-ion batteries, including nanomaterials. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University in Environmental Engineering, where she researched the environmental fate and impacts of nanomaterials.

Lauren Crandon’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Crandon LE, Boenisch KM, Harper BJ, Harper SL (2020) Adaptive methodology to determine hydrophobicity of nanomaterials in situ. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0233844. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233844

What motivated you to work in this field?

LC: I knew I wanted to study the environmental implications of emerging contaminants. When I first walked into the Harper Nanotoxicology Lab at Oregon State, I got so excited about nanomaterials. I learned that more and more fields in technology, medicine, and industry were using nanoparticles and that these would all be eventually released into the environment. In our lab, we looked at the implications of this at both the small scale (within individual organism) and the large scale (how far downstream nanoparticles will end up). If we can develop a good understanding of fate, transport, and toxicity, we can responsibly develop nano-enabled technology for the future.

Nanomaterials research has increased in popularity over the past few years as a research topic. Do you envision that the field can continue to grow in this way, and do you see any challenges on the horizon?

LC: I absolutely believe the field of nanomaterials will continue to grow. For example, lithium-ion batteries are starting to use nanomaterials to improve performance and nanoparticle-based sunscreens are becoming more popular due to concerns with their chemical alternatives. I think we will also see exciting breakthroughs in nanomedicine, among other fields. The main challenge will continue to be evaluating human and environmental safety at end-of-life for these applications. It is difficult to establish standards and regulations, since the fate and behavior of nanomaterials depends on their environment. However, this will be important for sustainable use.

Can you tell us about an experience during your research, whether in lab or at the computer or in conversation etc., where something finally clicked, or worked?

 LC: Yes! I was collaborating with a toxicology graduate student in my lab to compare the toxicity of Cu and CuO nanoparticles in zebrafish. The CuO NPs were much less toxic, but we could not explain why. They dissolved more Cu+2, which was generally accepted to be the toxic mechanism. When I applied one of the standard assays I was working on to measure reactive oxygen species (ROS), the trends matched! Cu NPs generated much more ROS than CuO, which explained the higher toxicity. Applying a standardized test to NPs in a specific testing environment allowed us to model and predict toxicity. I spent the rest of my graduate work continuing to standardize rapid assays for commercially used nanoparticles and correlating my results with their toxicity. I hope this can help us predict the potential risks of materials as they enter the market.

Is there a specific research area where a collaboration with the nanomaterials community could be particularly interesting for interdisciplinary research?

LC: I am very excited about applications of nanomaterials in energy storage devices and medicine. I hope that as these materials continue to enter the market, nanotoxicology research will continue to be funded and part of the story. Nanomaterials offer novel properties that bring major benefits but also do not always follow conventional toxicology. I would like to see collaboration with the technology industry and environmental toxicology to responsibly produce the next generation of novel materials.

Robert Zucker – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Dr. Robert Zucker is a Research Biologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment. His research involves applying biophysical technologies of imaging and flow cytometry to reproductive toxicology questions.

Robert Zucker’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Zucker RM, Ortenzio J, Degn LL, Boyes WK (2020) Detection of large extracellular silver nanoparticle rings observed during mitosis using darkfield microscopy. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0240268. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240268

What route did you take to where you currently are in your career?

RZ: I obtained a BS in physics from The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and obtained a master’s degree at UCLA in the Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology in the field of biophysics and nuclear medicine. I also received my PhD in biophysics at UCLA studying biophysical separation and characterization of hematological cells. After graduating from UCLA, I did a two-year Post-Doc at the Max Planck Institute in Munich Germany in immunology.  When I returned to America, I became a principal investigator at the Papanicolaou Cancer Institute and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Miami for 12 years. In this position, I was involved in cancer research and was a member of the Miami sickle cell center. My next position was at the EPA in Research Triangle Park, NC, applying biophysical technologies of imaging and flow cytometry to reproductive toxicology questions.

What emerging topics in your field are you particularly excited about?

RZ: Flow cytometry has been around for over 50 years. Recently, the technology has been improved by using five lasers with 64 detectors. This provides a system with better resolution. In addition, the software incorporated into the system allows the removal of autofluoresence noise to increase the detection of cells or particles. 

Optical microscopes, cameras and equipment have improved to allow scientists to easily obtain digital images, which are high resolution. The new microscopes are automated allowing the scientist to design and achieve experiments that were not previously feasible. For example, the current microscope allows us to use widefield confocal microscopy on 2D images that can be deconvolved with software built into the system for higher resolution. It is quicker than point-scanning confocal microscopy.  The machines can obtain sequential measurements over time on one field or take images from multiple fields.

How important are open science practices in your field? Do you have any success stories from your own research of sharing or reusing code, data, protocols, open hardware, interacting with preprints, or something else?

RZ: It is important to follow one’s scientific instincts—the EPA is an organization that allows this freedom to their investigators to research projects of interest to the Agency. I have two success stories to share from my own research.

Success story #1: In the field of nanoparticles, I observed that TiO2 was extremely reflective using darkfield microscopy. Using flow cytometry, granulocytes, monocytes, and neutrophils can be identified based on size (forward scatter) and internal structure (side scatter) from the granules contained in the neutrophils.  Can this scatter signal be used to detect a dose response of uptake of nanoparticles by a cell? To try to answer this question, we used two concentration of TiO2 in an experiment, and a dose response was observed with these two-concentration compared to controls.  This procedure has subsequently been reproduced by a number of investigations with various types of metal nanoparticles. One of our papers was published in PLOS One and compared the effect of different coating of silver particles coatings on uptake and toxicity by mammalian cells.

Success story #2: The confocal microscope allows scientists to see embryo and reproductive structures in 3D using fluorescence staining technology. By applying very old technologies used to clear tissues,  we were able to see very deep into tissues. This procedure allowed the internal structures of reproductive tissues and developing embryos to be observed. The data were used to support the hypothesis that studied how the chemicals affected these tissues.

If you could dream really big, is there a particular material, function or material property that seems far away at the moment, but you think could be attained in the future?

RZ: My dream would be to use the current spectral flow cytometer to predict 1) the effects of microplastics on mammalian cells 2) to detect the effects of climate change on cyanobacteria growth and toxin production 3) to spectrally detect microplastics in water.  I would want to provide a simple imaging test to 4) detect microplastics in water by their higher reflectivity 5) to provide an instant imaging quantitation of the amount of Algae and Cyanobacteria in a water sample based on differential excitation fluorescence, and 6) use spectral features of photosynthesis fluorescence and autofluoresence to determine the health of plants and cyanobacteria and then relate this data to the environment. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

Featured image: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133088

The post Updating the PLOS ONE Nanomaterials Collection – Author Perspectives, Part 2 appeared first on EveryONE.

In July, we updated our Nanomaterials Collection, featuring papers published over the past few years in PLOS ONE. This collection showcases the breadth of the nanomaterials community at PLOS ONE, and includes papers on a variety of topics, such as fabrication of nanomaterials, nanomaterial-cell interactions, the role of nanomaterials in drug delivery, and nanomaterials in the environment.

To celebrate this updated collection, we are conducting a series of Q&As with authors whose work is included in the collection. First out is our conversations with Stacey Harper from Oregon State University, David Estrada from Boise State University and Vernita Gordon from The University of Texas at Austin. They provide thought-provoking insights into the future of nanotechnology, the environmental impact of nanomaterials, new ways in which scientific advances can be shared and disseminated, and how being a researcher means being open to work taking unexpected directions. We will be adding more author interviews over the next few weeks, so please do keep checking back.

Stacey Harper – Oregon State University

Dr. Stacey Harper is a Professor in the School of Chemical, Biological & Environmental Engineering and the Department of Environmental & Molecular Toxicology at OSU.  Studies in the Harper laboratory use rapid assays with whole organisms and communities of organisms to evaluate the toxic potential of diverse nanomaterials, including nanoplastics.  Dr. Harper is the President for the Pacific Northwest Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), a member of SETAC Nano Interest Group Steering Committee, a leader of the Pacific Northwest Consortium on Plastics, and was recognized by the US National Nanotechnology Coordination Office as one of the outstanding women in nanotechnology in 2019.

Stacey Harper’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Crandon LE, Boenisch KM, Harper BJ, Harper SL (2020) Adaptive methodology to determine hydrophobicity of nanomaterials in situ. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0233844. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233844

What route did you take to where you currently are in your career?

SH: The path was clearly not straight, nor was it really planned.  I found that at every decision point in my career that I would choose the path that I found most rewarding.  Starting my graduate career in comparative physiology gave me a lot of perspective and opportunities to explore the science that I was interested in. I moved into a post-doctoral position with the Environmental Protection Agency and explored a diverse array of projects and was intrigued by the newly emerging field of nanoscience and nanotoxicology.  I enjoy the challenge of finding answers to questions and solving issues that others would pass over for something guaranteed to succeed.

What emerging topics in your field are you particularly excited about?

SH: The application of nanotechnology solutions to nearly all of the issues with water sustainability seems unlimited.  However, with any new technological solution, we need to consider the potential unintended consequences of the materials we design.  It gives me great pleasure to work in partnership with materials designers to ensure that the safety of their products during the research and development phase of product development.  It is extremely rewarding to provide manufacturers with the information they need to make the best environmentally responsible decisions.

How important are open science practices in your field? Do you have any success stories from your own research of sharing or reusing code, data, protocols, open hardware, interacting with preprints, or something else?

SH: Open science is critical to ensuring that information scientists generate are useful to the community of people that need that information.  Data sharing is one of my priorities, as such, I established an open source database (Nanomaterial Biological Interactions knowledgebase, nbi.oregonstate.edu) for data from my research group on the toxic potential of a wide range of different nanomaterials that vary in composition, size, shape and surface chemistry.  As a leader of the National Cancer Institute Nanotechnology Working Group, we developed a standard for describing nanomaterial characteristics in a detailed fashion (ASTM E2909-13):

Standard Guide for Investigation/Study/Assay Tab-Delimited Format for Nanotechnologies (ISA-TAB-Nano): Standard File Format for the Submission and Exchange of Data on Nanomaterials and Characterizations

Such standards enhance our ability to share and integrate data across the many diverse fields that make up nanoscience and nanotechnology, which is necessary to advance the field in an evidence-based manner.

If you could dream really big, is there a particular material, function or material property that seems far away at the moment, but you think could be attained in the future?

SH: Point of demand materials that could capture the energy from sunlight, even in low light environments, and convert it to usable energy without the need for energy storage.  Think about a car painted with photovoltaic paint that could do this without the need for battery storage or fuel.  That would be a game changer.

David Estrada – Boise State University

David Estrada received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013 before joining the faculty at Boise State University. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering and holds an appointment as the university’s Associate Director for the Center for Advanced Energy Studies. He is the recipient of the NSF and NDSEG Graduate Fellowships. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the National TRiO Achievers award, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Innovator of the year award. He is a Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers and his research interests are in the areas of emergent semiconductor nanomaterials and bionanotechnology.

David Estrada’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Williams- Godwin L, Brown D, Livingston R, Webb T, Karriem L, Graugnard E, et al. (2019) Open-source automated chemical vapor deposition system for the production of two- dimensional nanomaterials. PLoS ONE 14(1): e0210817. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210817

What motivated you to work in this field?

DE: The field of 2D materials is a rapidly expanding and exciting field. The ability to control the properties of materials based on their chemical composition, atomic thickness, and by surrounding environment is fascinating to me. Understanding how to leverage these attributes for specific applications is both intriguing and rewarding.

Nanomaterials research has increased in popularity over the past few years as a research topic. Do you envision that the field can continue to grow in this way, and do you see any challenges on the horizon?

DE: Absolutely. With the discovery of 2D materials and their heterostructures, pioneered by Geim and Novoselov, there is a lot of room for growth in the field of nanomaterials. I believe the greatest opportunities for discovery lie at the nexus of artificial intelligence, computational materials science, and applications in microelectronics, quantum computing, and biotechnology. The biggest challenges will be in developing scalable and reliable synthesis methods to fully leverage the unique physics and chemistry of nanomaterials.

Can you tell us about an experience during your research, whether in lab or at the computer or in conversation etc., where something finally clicked, or worked?

DE: One of my favorite memories as a graduate student was being in the lab and imaging power dissipation in graphene transistors via IR microscopy with our Postdoctoral Scholar – Dr. Myung-Ho Bae. We were able to electrostatically control the temperature distribution in graphene transistor, which was a direct observation of tuning the Fermi level across the band structure of graphene. It was truly exciting to be among the first in the world to observe such phenomena in a material that was only 1 atom thick!

Is there a specific research area where a collaboration with the nanomaterials community could be particularly interesting for interdisciplinary research?

DE: I personally believe that energy, water, and healthcare will present some of the greatest engineering challenges in the future. Understanding how/if nanomaterials can help solve some of the pressing challenges in grid level energy storage, water purification, and regenerative medicine will require teams of interdisciplinary STEM researchers working alongside policy makers and social scientists. As Herb Brooks told the 1980 Men’s US Olympic hockey team, “Great moments are born from great opportunity”. That is what scientists have today, an opportunity for enormous societal impact by leveraging our collective expertise and knowledge to solve these grand challenges. If we are successful, history will recognize our generation as a great moment in time that changed the course of civilization.

Vernita Gordon – The University of Texas at Austin

Vernita Gordon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at University of Texas at Austin, where she has been on the faculty since 2010.  Her research group studies biofilm-forming bacterial systems, with a view toward understanding how physics and biology interplay and how they impact disease course.  She did undergraduate work at Vanderbilt University and graduate work at Harvard University, as well as postdocs at University of Edinburgh and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  She likes doing science, most of the time.  She also likes running, science fiction, singing, knitting, and spending time doing fun things with her family.  She wishes the pandemic were over already.

Vernita Gordon’s paper in the Nanomaterials Collection: Kovach K, Sabaraya IV, Patel P, Kirisits MJ, Saleh NB, Gordon VD (2020) Suspended multiwalled, acid-functionalized carbon nanotubes promote aggregation of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. PLoS ONE 15(7): e0236599. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236599

What’s your favourite thing about nanomaterials?

VG: I’m not really a nanomaterials researcher.  I’m a biological physicist, with my roots in soft-matter physics, but I keep bumping up against nanomaterials in random ways.  I think my favorite thing about nanomaterials is the way their small size gives rise to applications that wouldn’t be possible for the same material in a larger size.  I’m thinking here of nanoparticles for drug delivery (I work a lot with pathogenic biofilms, which tolerate a lot of conventional antibiotic treatment, so people have to put a lot of creativity into finding ways to treat biofilm infection) and the work we recently published in PLOS ONE, which started when we were wondering how stray nanomaterials in aqueous environments might affect the mechanical strength of biofilms, and wound up with the unexpected discovery that suspended nanotubes can promote bacteria aggregating into sort of proto-biofilms.

Have you had any recent surprises in your research, where the outcome wasn’t what you had expected?

VG: Yes.  This happens all the time.  It is far more common for me to be surprised and a project take a direction that I had not anticipated than it is for everything to move forward steadily the way I thought it would.  The PLOS ONE paper I mention in my previous answer is one example of this.  Of the roughly 20 papers I’ve published since starting a faculty position, I think maybe 4 told the story I had anticipated when starting the project.

Did you have to adapt your work in light of the pandemic, and if so, how?

VG: We first had to shut down our research labs completely, I think for 2-3 months, and then we were allowed to re-open slowly, at very limited capacity.  I had graduate students who were not able to be in the lab for months.  To deal with this, we started a new modeling project, to study biofilm growth and mechanics in vitro, with colleagues at University of Edinburgh.  We also greatly extended a modeling project that we had started before the pandemic, so that what had been a small side project for a student became his only project for nearly a year.

What do you see as the big opportunities for research dissemination in your field, or how science is communicated in general?

VG: I think more-informal communication is becoming increasingly important, both for scientists learning about each other’s work and for the general public.  Platforms like Twitter and Facebook can rapidly spread “snapshots” of scientific advances, with the possibility for interested parties to dig much deeper into the actual research publication (things like Instagram and whatever else the young people are using can probably do that too, but I’m not on Instagram or TikTok so I haven’t experienced that directly).  This is one of the major ways I learn about scientific papers that I should read.  I think there’s a gap between the social-media “snapshot” and the thorny research publication that still needs to be filled with good communication of science to the general public.  YouTube and blogs seem good for this, and are already doing some good things, but I’d like to see even more of this.  One thing the pandemic has really shown is that we need to do a better job of communicating, to a broad audience, how science is done and what science is saying.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by contributors are solely those of individual contributors, and not necessarily those of PLOS.

Featured image: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133088

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