Microfluidic system used by the researchers to study the dissolution of calcium carbonate in marine snow mounted. Photo: Yuval Jacobi

As any diver knows, oceans can be cloudy places. Even on sunny days, snow-like particles drift through the water column, obscuring the aquatic world below.

Scientists have long known that this “marine snow” carries inorganic calcium carbonate – the building block of shells – but couldn’t explain how the mineral dissolves in the upper part of the ocean.

New research from Rutgers University-New Brunswick points to the culprit: bacteria.

“Think of marine particles as the megacities of the ocean,” said Benedict Borer, an assistant professor of marine and coastal sciences at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and lead author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Within these tiny spaces, there are huge amounts of microbial activity. It’s here where calcium carbonate dissolves.” 

The findings could reshape how climate scientists model carbon sequestration – the natural or engineered process by which carbon dioxide gas is removed from the atmosphere – and ocean carbon cycling (the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and the ocean), Borer said.

Benedict Borer.

“Oceanographers often think about the macro-scale, but in this instance, what’s happening in microscopic particles is controlling the entire ocean,” he said. 

Oceans are central to the planet’s biological carbon pump. At the surface, microscopic algae called phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – including that released by the burning of fossil fuels – and convert it into biomass and, in the case of a phytoplankton called coccolithophores, calcium carbonate shells. 

When marine organisms die and sink, billions of tons of organic and inorganic carbon are carried downward each year. The deeper the carbon sinks, the longer it is stored. Eventually, in the cold, acidic depths, calcium carbonate dissolves, carbon dioxide is released, and the cycle continues.

However, while oceanographers have long known that calcium carbonate dissolves in the upper few thousand meters of the ocean, they could not explain the mechanism. The chemistry doesn’t favor it, Borer said.

Recent studies have provided clues, showing that acidic microenvironments in the guts of zooplankton enhance calcium carbonate dissolution, and suggesting that the interiors of marine snow particles may be additional hotspots for calcite dissolution, the crystalline form of calcium carbonate.

To test this theory, Borer and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution studied how the chemistry of marine snow behaves in shallow seas.

In the lab, Borer built a three-layer microfluidic chip to mimic marine snow sinking through the water column. The middle layer held marine particles with calcite and marine bacteria. The top and bottom layers sealed the system, while artificial seawater flowed through the narrow channel between them, simulating particle sinking.

By controlling gas pressure, temperature, oxygen, and bacterial abundance, the team recreated the conditions within a sinking particle and measured how bacterial growth affected calcite.

As particles settled, bacterial respiration increased acidity around them, accelerating calcite dissolution. As a critical consequence, less calcite acting as ballast means that particles sink more slowly.

The results suggest that microbially driven changes in marine snow may dissolve enough calcite near the surface to slow sinking rates and reduce the efficiency of carbon sequestration. And because growing bacteria release carbon dioxide as a byproduct, the process may accelerate the return of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, Borer said.

More work is needed to confirm the findings in the open ocean, but the discovery clarifies bacteria’s role in carbon cycling and could improve future climate models and inform geoengineering approaches, he said.

“Our results provide a critical first step to decipher the influence of microbial-enhanced calcite dissolution in marine snow particles, and how it impacts the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon at the global scale,” Borer said.

He added: “The question now is how the biological carbon pump will change in the future. Will the transport of carbon to depth become more efficient, or will bacteria respire the carbon more quickly, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere? To predict this, we need to understand all mechanisms that impact carbon transport to depth, such as the microbially enhanced dissolution of ballasting calcite. What I find quite scary, honestly, is that this process could go either way.”

This article first appeared in Rutgers Today.

Adélie penguins in Antarctica. Photo credits Oscar Schofield

Penguins waddling across Antarctic ice might seem far removed from a classroom in New Jersey, but a new study shows that these charismatic birds can be a powerful hook for teaching young people about climate change — and inspiring them to see themselves as future scientists.

The study was led by researchers at Rutgers University, including affiliates of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute Janice McDonnell, Associate Dean of Research Impact at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, and Oscar Schofield, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. In addition, the lead author, Marissa Staffen, and co-author Matthew Newman are both county agents from the Department of 4-H Youth Development at Rutgers.

Published in the Journal of Geoscience Education, the study evaluates a program called Data to the Rescue: Penguins Need Our Help! — an eight-session after-school club designed for middle schoolers in grades 5 to 8. The program invites students to join a virtual research team studying real penguin population data from Antarctica, collected by the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program at Palmer Station.

Students work with actual scientific data using an online tool called CODAP to graph and analyze how Adélie, Gentoo, and Chinstrap penguin populations have changed over time — and why. The program ends with a creative “Data Jam,” where students turn their findings into poems, art, videos, or other projects to share with their communities.

The program directly connects climate change in the polar regions — where warming is happening much faster than the global average — to real consequences like sea ice loss and shrinking penguin populations. It also draws lines from those distant changes to local impacts like sea level rise and extreme weather, helping students understand that what happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica.

“This program shows that when you give young people real scientific data and a compelling story — in this case, penguins — they don’t just learn facts, they start to see themselves as part of the solution. Building that sense of identity and agency in students, especially for young people that don’t see themselves represented in STEM, is one of the most important things we can do for both STEM education and climate action,” said Staffen.

Students in the Data to the Rescue program explore real penguin population data collected at Palmer Station, Antarctica, connecting distant ecosystems to local climate change impacts. Photo credit Matthew Newman

Over three years and across 46 program sites in the U.S., 1,571 youth took part. The study found that after completing the program, students showed a statistically significant increase in ‘science identity’ — meaning students felt more like they belonged in science. This was especially meaningful given that the program intentionally reached out to groups underrepresented in STEM, including girls, Black and Hispanic youth, and students from low-income communities.

Students who started with little knowledge of polar science showed the biggest gains in learning. Many who began by answering “I don’t know” to questions about the Arctic and Antarctic finished the program with real, substantive answers.

Interestingly, overall fascination with science dipped slightly by the end of the program — but the authors suggest this may reflect a more realistic understanding of what science actually involves, including the hard work and challenges, rather than a loss of interest. Students with lower initial fascination actually showed gains.

The implications of this research go beyond penguins. The program offers a replicable, low-cost model for informal science education that can be run in after-school clubs, community centers, summer camps, libraries, or 4-H programs — and all materials are available for free in both English and Spanish. The authors argue that building climate literacy and data skills in young people, particularly those from underserved communities, is essential for developing an informed public and a diverse STEM workforce capable of tackling global challenges like climate change. Explore Data to the Rescue resources and read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed by Marissa Staffen, Janice McDonnell, Matthew Newman, and Oscar Schofield, co-authors on the study.

Image by Smileus, licensed via Adobe Stock (Education License)

Plants are remarkably good at adjusting how they capture sunlight and produce food through photosynthesis. A new computer model helps scientists better understand these adjustments by looking at what happens at different heights within a plant canopy, from the sun-drenched leaves at the top to the shaded leaves near the ground.

Chi Chen, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, and affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, is the author of the study.

The research, published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, introduces a model called GMC-OPT (Global Multilayer Canopy OPTimization) that tracks how plants adjust their photosynthesis hour by hour and season by season. Unlike simpler models that treat an entire forest or field as one big leaf, this model considers how conditions change at different heights. Leaves at the top receive intense sunlight but risk damage, while lower leaves get less light and are more limited by energy availability. 

The model reveals several interesting patterns. First, the best time for leaves to maximize photosynthesis is not always at solar noon when sunlight is strongest. Upper canopy leaves actually perform best in the morning, before the sun becomes too intense, the environment becomes too dry, and conditions become potentially harmful to photosynthesis. Second, beyond instantaneous stomatal regulation, leaves adjust their photosynthetic capacity based on their position in the canopy at seasonal scales – called photosynthetic acclimation. The relationship between light and acclimated leaf photosynthetic capacity is not simply a straight line. Upper leaves can become saturated with too much light and other stresses, while lower leaves respond more efficiently to the light they receive.

The model also discovered that different types of vegetation manage their leaves differently through the seasons. Tree-dominated forests like evergreen and mixed forests prioritize keeping their upper, light-gathering leaves healthy. In contrast, grasslands and deciduous forests replace leaves more uniformly throughout the canopy. This helps explain why different ecosystems respond differently to seasonal changes and why forests and grasslands have distinct growth patterns.

Understanding these patterns has important implications for climate science. Photosynthesis is the largest carbon flux on land, meaning plants absorb enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Better models of photosynthesis help scientists predict how ecosystems will respond to climate change, increasing temperatures, and rising carbon dioxide levels. They also help farmers and land managers understand how plants use water and nutrients, which is crucial for sustainable agriculture and water management.

“By understanding how plants optimize photosynthesis at different levels of the canopy and across different timescales, we can better predict how ecosystems will respond to environmental changes. This knowledge is essential for managing our forests, crops, and natural areas in a way that maximizes carbon capture while conserving water and nutrients,” said Chen.

The model was tested against data from 119 monitoring stations worldwide and accurately predicted carbon uptake at hourly to annual scales. While the model is complex, requiring detailed information about canopy structure and radiation, it provides insights that simpler models cannot. As satellite technology improves, scientists will be able to gather the detailed vertical structure information needed to apply this model globally, leading to better predictions of how vegetation affects our climate. Read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed and edited by Chi Chen, the author of the study.

Image by freshidea, licensed via Adobe Stock (Education License)

New research finds that news stories about who is most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change can have very different effects — depending on whether they focus on race or income.

Climate change doesn’t harm everyone equally. Flooding, heat waves, and other extreme weather events tend to hit lower-income communities and communities of color the hardest. But when news stories highlight those differences, do they actually help people understand the problem — or do they make things worse? A new study published in the journal Science Communication set out to answer that question, and the findings have important lessons for journalists, policymakers, and anyone trying to build public support for climate action.

One of the authors of this work is Lauren Feldman, professor and chair of Department of Journalism and Media Studies, and affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute.

The study recruited more than 2,800 people across the United States to participate in an online survey experiment. Participants were asked to read a short news article that described how climate change is increasing the risk of either flooding or heat waves. One version of the article noted that Black communities face the greatest risk. Others pointed to poor or working-class communities. A final group read an article that didn’t single out any group at all. Afterward, participants were asked about their beliefs and whether they support policies and aid to help affected communities. An additional control group did not read a news article and only answered the survey questions.

What They Found

The results were striking. When the news story focused on the increased risk to Black communities, people — especially White participants and those who hold what researchers call “symbolic racism” beliefs — were less likely to believe that climate change impacts are unequal and less supportive of helping affected communities. In other words, framing climate change as a racial issue actually lowered support among certain groups.

Stories that focused on class — describing poor or working-class communities as most at risk — did not trigger the same pushback. In fact, in some cases, those stories increased belief in unequal impacts and boosted support for action.

Symbolic racism refers to a system of beliefs rooted in the ideas that racial discrimination is not a serious problem and that racial minorities do not face systemic discrimination and thus do not need specific help to deal with resulting disadvantages. The study found that people with higher levels of these beliefs responded most negatively to race-focused climate stories.

“These findings send a clear signal to communicators: how you talk about climate inequality really matters. Our work suggests that leading with class-based framing may build broader support for the communities who need it most; however, it is critical to not ignore the very real, race-linked vulnerabilities that also exist. The challenge now is finding ways to tell the full story without triggering the kind of backlash that leaves the most vulnerable communities without the support they deserve,” said Feldman.

The study also found consistent differences between Black and White participants overall. Black participants showed stronger beliefs in unequal climate impacts and more support for affected communities across both flooding and heat wave contexts — consistent with the idea that people who are personally connected to a risk are more likely to recognize and act on it.

Why It Matters

These findings carry real-world weight for how climate policy gets communicated and debated. Climate justice — the idea that climate action should prioritize those who are most vulnerable — is increasingly central to state and local policy conversations. But this study shows that some messaging strategies meant to build support for climate justice could actually reduce it among key audiences.

For journalists, advocates, and public officials, the takeaway is nuanced: class-based framing may be a more effective way to build broad coalitions, but ignoring racial disparities means leaving out a crucial part of the story. The authors call for future research into communication strategies that can present the full picture — including race — without triggering bias-driven backlash.

The study used a one-time exposure to news articles, so it’s not yet clear whether repeated exposure over time would change the results. And while the findings held across both flooding and heat wave scenarios, the strength of the effects varied between the two, suggesting that the type of climate risk matters too. Read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed and edited by Lauren Feldman, a co-author on the study.

Inspired by the maneuverability of birds and insects, researchers are designing bird like robots that promise greater flexibility and control than current drones can achieve.

A bird banking in a crosswind doesn’t rely on spinning blades. Its wings flex, twist and respond instantly to its environment.

Engineers at Rutgers University have taken a major step toward building bird-like drones that move the same way, flapping their wings like real birds, using electricity-driven materials instead of conventional electromagnetic motors to power them.

Professor Onur Bilgen (at center) works with Rutgers engineering students on prototypes of a bird‑like robot powered by voltage‑driven smart materials. (From left) Graduate students Ayhan Ozel, Dario Gosevski, Bezawit Gebre and Batuhan Yildirim display models headed for wind‑tunnel tests.
Courtesy of the Bilgen Lab

In a study published in Aerospace Science and Technology, aerospace researchers Xin Shan and Onur Bilgen describe a “solid state” bird-like drone, typically referred to as an ornithopter, whose flexible wings flap and twist without motors, gears or mechanical linkages. Instead, the system relies on the piezoelectric effect, special materials that change shape when voltage is applied.

“We apply electricity to the piezoelectric materials, and they move the surface directly, without extra joints, extra linkages or motors,” said Bilgen, an affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute and an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the Rutgers School of Engineering. “The wing is a composite including a piezoelectric material layer and a carbon-fiber layer. Apply voltage to the piezoelectric layer, and the whole composite flexes.”

With their bird-like design, ornithopters offer a level of flexibility that makes such drones well suited for future tasks such as search and rescue, environmental monitoring, inspection of hard-to-reach places, and urban package delivery, where aircraft must navigate around buildings, wires, people, and so much more.

The research team also developed a powerful computer model that connects all the important physics involved in flight at once: wing and body motion, aerodynamics, electrical dynamics, and the control architecture. That allows engineers to test and optimize designs virtually before building physical prototypes, saving time and money while speeding development.

“We’ve scientifically demonstrated that this type of ornithopter can be possible when we make certain material assumptions,” he said. “We can show the feasibility of designs that are not yet physically possible.”

For now, the primary obstacle is the performance of the piezoelectric material.

In this computer-generated flight sequence, the ornithopter’s wings beat without any gears or motors—powered instead by thin piezoelectric actuators that flex the entire structure.
Courtesy of the Bilgen Lab

“Today’s piezoelectric materials are not capable enough,” Bilgen said. “However, our mathematical model allows us to look into the future with reasonable assumptions.”

Bilgen first encountered ornithopters in 2007 while he was a graduate student, but he said his interest deepened in 2013, when he began seriously exploring how flapping-wing flight might be reimagined using smart materials. Various companies have built experimental bird-like drones, but most existing designs rely on motors, gears and conventional actuators to drive wing motion.

Those systems, Bilgen said, struggle to match the performance of natural wings, which flex and respond continuously to changing air.

Bilgen says nature offers powerful lessons for engineers.

“Things that need to move fast must be lightweight,” he said. “That’s why bird wings are delicate structures, and aircraft wings mimic bird wings.”

While birds and insects provide inspiration for the work, Bilgen’s goal isn’t simple imitation.

“We don’t want to just mimic nature,” he said. “We want to exceed what nature does.” 

So far, most prototypes of robotic birds rely on mechanisms that imitate bones and muscles. Bilgen’s team is taking a simpler path.

“We want to achieve flapping flight without bone-like structures or muscle-like actuators, flapping in a much simpler way,” he said.

Advanced simulation tools developed at Rutgers help engineers optimize bird like drones in software first, accelerating innovation while reducing the need for repeated prototypes. Courtesy of the Bilgen Lab

Instead of motors acting as muscles, thin strips called Macro Fiber Composites (MFCs) are glued directly on their models onto flexible wings. When electricity flows through them, the wings flap, twist and morph.

“The carbon fiber acts like feathers and bone, and the surface-mounted MFCs act like muscles and nerves,” Bilgen explained.

Because the system has no gears or joints, the researchers call it a mechanism-free, or solid state, ornithopter.

Flapping wings offer advantages that spinning propellers found on conventional drones cannot, especially at small scales. “When flapping wings come in contact with the environment, they’re less destructive to themselves and to what they contact,” Bilgen said.

The use of piezoelectric materials or other smart materials could also improve renewable energy systems.

“A turbine blade is basically a rotating wing,” Bilgen said. “We’ve been looking at applying piezoelectric materials to turbine blades to see if there are aerodynamic benefits.”

By subtly changing blade shape in real time, engineers may be able to influence how air flows across the blade surface. That could lead to more efficient wind turbines, he said.

The article first appeared in Rutgers Today.

Researchers are examining the relationship between childhood obesity and future success. Sergio Arjona, Shutterstock

Childhood obesity may be quietly undermining one of the central promises of American life.

 A study by a Rutgers researcher has found that children who are obese are far less likely to climb the economic ladder as adults, raising concerns that a rising health problem also could deny many young Americans the chance to achieve the American dream.

“Childhood obesity isn’t just a health crisis,” said Yanhong Jin, a professor with the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a coauthor of the study. “It is an economic mobility crisis.”

The research, published in the Journal of Population Economics, examined how childhood obesity affects intergenerational mobility, which measures whether children grow up to earn more than their parents.

The study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, often called Add Health, a nationwide project that has followed thousands of Americans from adolescence into adulthood for more than two decades. The study is composed of a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 adolescents who were in grades 7 through 12 during the 1994-1995 school year, and have been followed for six waves of data collection to date, with the  most recent wave from 2022 to 2025. The dataset includes information about participants’ health, education, income and genetic markers linked to body weight.

Professor Yanhong Jin, an agricultural and health economist, is exploring whether children today have the same opportunities their parents had at the same age.

Jin conducted the study with economists Maoyong Fan of Ball State University and Man Zhang of Renmin University in China.

Using the Add Health data allowed researchers to explore the question in a new way. The study includes genetic information that helped the team separate the effect of obesity itself from other factors such as family income or neighborhood conditions.

The results were striking. Adults who were obese as children ended up much lower on the national income ladder than those who had a normal weight as children. A child is considered obese if his or her Body Mass Index is at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex, based on standardized growth charts.

“If children are obese compared with normal weight children, assuming everything else is the same, their income ranking is about 20 percentile points lower relative to their parents,” Jin said.

The researchers then examined why that economic gap appears to emerge over time.

“The evidence points to lower educational attainment, persistent health problems and disadvantages within the labor market,” said Fan, a coauthor of the study. “These include higher reported job discrimination and adverse occupational sorting.”

For Jin, an agricultural and health economist, the topic carries personal meaning. As a first-generation immigrant from China, she said she has long been interested in the idea that each generation should have a chance to do better than the one before.

Her interest in intergenerational mobility deepened as she began thinking about the American dream and whether children today still have the same chances their parents had.

“We wanted to explore the link between childhood conditions and intergenerational mobility to see what we can do,” she said.

The researchers also found that people who were obese as children were less likely to live in neighborhoods with strong economic opportunities later in life. They were less likely to live in areas with higher average incomes and less likely to live in communities with low poverty rates.

Most previous research on economic mobility has focused on neighborhood conditions and family background. Jin said her team wanted to explore another factor that had received less attention.

Studies that focused on the long-term impacts of obesity were more likely to examine its relationship with social stigma and educational attainment.

“But few have considered its relationship to intergenerational mobility,” Jin said.

The effects weren’t the same for everyone. The study found that the economic penalty linked to childhood obesity was larger for girls than for boys. It also was stronger among children from low-income families and among those who grew up in the South and Midwest.

Jin said the findings highlight the importance of preventing obesity early in life. Many policies focus on treating obesity after it develops, but the research suggests that prevention in childhood before it develops could have long-term benefits for both health and economic opportunity.

“If you are obese in childhood, for whatever the reason, you have a penalty in your adult economic status,” Jin said.

For policymakers, the study offers a broader way to think about the issue, the researchers said. Childhood obesity has often been viewed mainly as a medical concern. The research suggests that, if left unaddressed, childhood obesity may also shape economic opportunity and social mobility for decades to come.

“Interventions that reduce childhood obesity can deliver benefits well beyond lowering medical spending,” said coauthor Zhang. “They can support higher educational attainment, improve job prospects and increase upward economic mobility for the next generation.”

This article first appeared in Rutgers Today.

L-R: Frances Wood (UKRI), and collaborators Bruce Greive (U Manchester), Siobain Duffy (Rutgers), Linda Hanley-Bowdoin (North Carolina State U), Hujun Yin (U Manchester), Jose Trino Ascencio-Ibáñez (NCSU), Vasthi Alonso-Chavez (Rothamsted Research) pictured at the Pioneering UK–US Breakthroughs (PUB) Award event on March 4, 2026. Photo credit: Thomas Pospiech – UKRI North America Thomas.Pospiech@ukri.org

At a reception hosted at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. on March 4, Professor Siobain Duffy and her international research team were recognized with the Pioneering UK–US Breakthroughs (PUB) Award, a distinction honoring seven collaborative teams whose work is addressing some of the world’s most urgent challenges.

Presented by His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States, Sir Christian Turner, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) International Director Frances Wood, the award highlights the global impact of cross-border scientific partnerships. Duffy, professor and chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, was part of one of the seven selected teams, recognized for pioneering a transformative technology to detect crop vi

Duffy serves as principal investigator on the NSF-BBSRC-funded project, “US-UK Collab: Resurrecting a role for roguing: Presymptomatic detection with multispectral imaging to quantify and control the transmission of cassava brown streak disease.” The research introduces a novel multispectral imaging device capable of detecting viral infections in crops earlier, faster, and more cost-effectively than traditional genetic testing.

Genetic analysis of cassava brown streak disease root necrosis using image analysis and genome-wide association studies. Copyright © 2024 Nandudu, Strock, Ogbonna, Kawuki and Jannink.

“This award reflects the strength of international collaboration in tackling complex global problems,” said Duffy. “By bringing together expertise across disciplines and continents, we are developing tools that can make a real difference for farmers and food systems worldwide.”

At the center of the team’s work is cassava brown streak disease, a devastating viral infection threatening cassava crops across sub-Saharan Africa. Cassava, a staple food for hundreds of millions of people, is also gaining traction globally as a climate-resilient alternative to wheat because it requires less water and can survive in harsher conditions.

The challenge, Duffy explains, is that the disease often goes undetected until it is too late. “The symptoms of the disease are often so subtle on the above-ground parts of the plant that farmers do not know their fields are infected,” she said. “The disease spreads throughout the growing season, and when the roots are harvested, they are full of necrotic lesions.”

To address this, the team has developed a cutting-edge multispectral imaging system that scans cassava leaves using wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum. Combined with machine learning models, the device can identify infected plants before visible symptoms appear—and even earlier than conventional molecular diagnostics.

“Our team has developed a multi-spectral imager that scans cassava leaves with many wavelengths of light,” Duffy explained. “Extensive training has yielded machine learning models that can detect diseased plants earlier than molecular tests, and much earlier than slight symptoms develop.” Early detection enables farmers to remove infected plants before the disease spreads. “If we had a better way to detect which plants were infected earlier in the season, then farmers could ‘rogue’ the diseased plants and prevent further spread of the disease,” she added.

A new device for field-testing crops for Cassava Mosaic and Brown Streak disease. Photo courtesy of UKRI.

The project brings together a highly interdisciplinary team spanning institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and East Africa, including molecular virologists, evolutionary biologists, engineers and AI specialists, mathematical modelers, and field-based researchers working directly with farming communities. Field testing of the imaging device is currently underway in Tanzania, where the team is evaluating its effectiveness in real-world conditions.

Looking ahead, Duffy notes that if the technology proves successful, the team plans to partner with Tanzania’s clean seed system to ensure that certified cassava planting material is free of the disease.

The broader implications of the research are significant. By enabling earlier detection and containment of plant viruses, the technology has the potential to reduce crop loss, boost yields, and decrease reliance on expensive laboratory diagnostics. In doing so, it supports local livelihoods, strengthens rural economies, and contributes to more resilient global food systems.

“This technology can help safeguard food security,” said Duffy, underscoring its importance for regions where cassava is a dietary and economic cornerstone.

Funded jointly by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council through the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease Program, the project exemplifies how international collaboration can drive innovation with meaningful, far-reaching impact.

Image by Dragon Claws, licensed via Adobe Stock (Education License)

Ask a New Jersey middle schooler what they think about when choosing what to eat, and you’ll probably hear: taste, texture, and whether it’ll upset their stomach. Ask them what they do to help the planet, and they’ll mention picking up litter or recycling. What most won’t mention? The connection between the two. A new study out of Rutgers University set out to understand what drives food choices among New Jersey fifth graders — and why so few of them link their diet to climate change — with the goal of building better classroom curricula to bridge that gap.

The study was led by Rutgers researchers, including affiliates of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Sara Elnakib, lead author and associate professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Health Sciences at Rutgers Cooperative Extension; and co-authors Shauna Downs, associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy at Rutgers School of Public Health; Peggy Policastro, director of Behavioral Nutrition-Rutgers Dining Services; and Ethan Schoolman, associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University; and— all co-authors on the study.

The authors interviewed 41 fifth graders from three different New Jersey schools — an urban school serving low-income students, an urban school serving middle-income students, and a rural school serving middle-income students. The schools were chosen to reflect the diversity of communities across the state. The students were asked about what factors matter to them when choosing food, and separately, what they do to take care of the planet.

The findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, showed that taste topped the list when it came to food choices, followed by health, hunger, and how food affects the body — including digestion. Family influence also played a big role, as did friends, who often nudged kids toward less healthy options. Notably, most students didn’t think much about food price or convenience unless their parents brought it up.

When asked about helping the planet, students were engaged and thoughtful — but their ideas centered on littering, recycling, and protecting forests and oceans. Almost none of them connected food choices to climate change. Only one student mentioned avoiding meat for environmental reasons. This gap is significant: food production — especially beef and other red meat — is a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions. Shifting toward more plant-based diets is one of the most impactful ways individuals can reduce their carbon footprint.

“These kids genuinely care about the environment; they just haven’t been shown how their everyday food choices are part of the picture. If we can connect what they eat to the things they already care about, like reducing waste, we have a real opportunity to shape healthier habits and a more sustainable food system at the same time,” stated Downs.

The study’s findings carry direct implications for education policy. In 2020, New Jersey became the first U.S. state to require climate change education in schools — and this research was designed to help shape how that curriculum addresses food and diet. The authors suggest that effective messaging should focus on taste and texture of plant-based foods, connect environmental impact to tangible behaviors students already understand (like “this meal uses as much water as leaving your tap on for X minutes”), and tie food choices to protecting animal habitats — something the students cared deeply about. Involving families alongside students could also amplify impact, particularly in communities where parents have strong influence over what kids eat.

As states across the U.S. begin integrating climate education into their schools, this kind of research offers a roadmap for making those lessons stick — by meeting students where they are and connecting big global issues to the everyday choices they already care about. Read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed by Shauna Downs and Sara Elnakib, co-authors on the study.

Images of healthy (left) and SCTLD-diseased (right) Montastrea cavernosa corals in waters near the Dominican Republic. Images by divers at the Marine Innovation Center, Punta Cana. Photo credit: Debashish Bhattacharya

A mysterious disease has been quietly destroying coral reefs across the Caribbean for over a decade. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, causes coral tissue to simply fall away, killing entire colonies — and no one has been able to pinpoint exactly what causes it. Now, new research is offering some of the clearest clues yet.

Debashish Bhattacharya, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology and affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, supervised the work that was led by graduate student Shrinivas Nandi in his lab and published in ISME Communications. The research examined the microscopic communities — bacteria, viruses, and other microbes — living inside diseased and healthy corals collected from reefs in the Dominican Republic.

The authors found that when corals get SCTLD, the rich and diverse community of microbes that normally lives inside a healthy coral essentially collapses. In its place, harmful bacteria move in and take over. The study also found strong evidence that viruses may be setting this collapse in motion — disrupting the healthy microbiome and opening the door for dangerous bacteria to thrive. This phenomenon is referred to as dysbiosis.

Five specific viruses were found in significantly higher amounts in diseased corals. Strikingly, the same viruses turned up in SCTLD-affected corals from Florida — over 1,000 miles away — suggesting these viruses are consistently linked to the disease across the Caribbean.

Perhaps the most surprising finding was the discovery of two coral colonies that appeared healthy for at least nine months after sampling, yet contained the same viruses found in sick corals. These “asymptomatic” corals had a different bacterial community than diseased ones, hinting that the right mix of microbes or a resistant coral genotype might protect some colonies from getting sick — even when the virus is present.

“Finding corals that appear resistant to this disease is genuinely exciting. It opens the door to the possibility of identifying beneficial microbial communities (natural probiotics) or resistant genotypes that could be used for coral conservation. Given how rapidly SCTLD is spreading across the Caribbean, there is also a need for SCTLD diagnostic tools to screen wild and nursery populations for signs of the disease (virus DNA), an area we are actively working on with our partners in the region,” said Bhattacharya.

As climate change warms and stresses the ocean, coral diseases like SCTLD are expected to become more severe and widespread. These findings offer a potential path forward: by identifying the molecular “fingerprints” of disease — and resistance — scientists may be able to develop early warning tools to flag at-risk reefs and guide targeted conservation efforts before it’s too late.

You can read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed and editted by Debashish Bhattacharya, senior author of the study.

New research has shown a way to easily differentiate healthy guts from unhealthy guts headed toward disease.

Scientists have identified a new way to distinguish healthy guts from diseased ones and track how some illnesses progress by measuring how gut bacteria interact with one another.

According to a study published in Science, a Rutgers-led team of scientists found that healthy and diseased digestive systems behave like two distinct ecological states, driven not by individual microbes but by how entire bacterial communities compete and cooperate.

“Instead of asking which bacteria are there, we started asking how they are related to other bacteria,” said Juan Bonachela, an assistant professor with the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a senior author of the study. “That change in perspective allowed us to see health and disease as two fundamentally different states of the gut microbiome.”

To measure how bacterial communities shift between health and disease, the team developed a new metric called the Ecological Network Balance Index, or ENBI, which captures whether microbial communities are dominated by competitive or cooperative interactions.

Applied to stool samples, ENBI consistently separated healthy individuals from patients across multiple diseases. In colorectal cancer, the index rose as the disease progressed.

“This new measure captures this shift using stool samples and can distinguish healthy people from diseased people,” said Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and an author of the study. 

Rod-shaped bacteria and spherical cocci, shown here in contrasting colors, represent different microbes that share the gut’s complex ecosystem. Scientists have found that shifts in how these microbes compete and cooperate can signal the difference between health and disease. Graphic: Xuesong Zhang/Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine

Dominguez-Bello said the findings show how disease emerges when microbial communities reorganize themselves.

“This work shows that gut health is not just about which bacteria are present, but how they interact with one another,” she said. “In diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, C. difficile infection, irritable bowel syndrome and colorectal cancer, bacteria form more cooperative, tightly connected groups that can dominate and disrupt normal function.”

Martin Blaser, an author of the study and director of Rutgers Health’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, said the findings help explain why so many gut-related diseases have been difficult to predict and treat.

“This gives us a new way to think about what goes wrong in the microbiome,” Blaser said. “Instead of focusing on individual microbes, it shows that disease emerges when the entire system shifts. That opens the door to earlier detection and more targeted interventions.”

The team started their research by building computer models that simulate how gut bacteria compete for nutrients and exchange metabolic byproducts.

“At first we were just testing whether the model could reproduce basic features of real microbiomes,” said Roberto Corral Lopez, the study’s lead author, who conducted the research as a Fulbright doctoral scholar at Rutgers and now is a postdoctoral associate at the Universidad de Granada and the Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional in Spain. “But very early on, we saw that it naturally produced two distinct patterns, one that looked like health and one that looked like disease.”

That prompted the researchers to compare their simulations with stool DNA data from patients.

“When we checked the data, we saw the same pattern,” Corral Lopez said. “That’s when we realized we were capturing something fundamental about how these communities reorganize in disease.”

The gut microbiome consistently settled into one of two configurations: a diverse, competitive state associated with health, and a second state dominated by small, tightly connected groups of cooperating bacteria linked to disease.

Bonachela said the insights and the tool could eventually help doctors identify problems earlier.

“In theory, it should be possible to measure it from just stool samples, which is a very non-invasive way to monitor gut health,” he said.

The findings also may help explain why gut therapies such as probiotics and fecal microbiota transplants sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.

“Treatments are typically based on the idea that you need particular bacteria to be there,” Bonachela said. “But if that is not the issue, if the issue is the relationships, then it does not matter that you give the bacteria.”

With fecal transplants, he said, the benefit may come not from introducing individual species, but from restoring entire microbial communities.

“The interesting aspect is not that you introduce the species,” Bonachela said. “It is that you introduce a whole community, and therefore you are keeping the interactions that allow that community to be healthy. It is not that bacteria need to be there. They need to be there with the right partners.”

Corral Lopez said the work eventually could make microbiome-based therapies more predictable.

“Right now, donor selection is largely based on availability and basic health screening,” said Corral Lopez, referring to the process preceding fecal transplants. “What this opens up is the possibility of matching microbial communities based on how their interaction networks fit together, rather than just which species are present. That could help us design treatments that are tailored to each patient’s microbiome instead of relying on trial and error.”

Bonachela said the team hopes their work will eventually lead to earlier detection and more personalized care.

“We are trying to understand how these systems work so we can make a real difference in people’s lives,” he said.

Michael Manhart of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School contributed to the study. Other contributors include Simon Levin of Princeton University and Miguel Munoz of the Universidad de Granada.

This article originally appeared in Rutgers Today.