Diamond owes its unique mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical, chemical, and biocompatible materials properties to its complete sp(3)-carbon network bonding. Crystallinity is another major controlling factor for materials properties. Although other Group-14 elements silicon and germanium have complementary crystalline and amorphous forms consisting of purely sp(3) bonds, purely sp(3)-bonded tetrahedral amorphous carbon has not yet been obtained. In this letter, we combine high pressure and in situ laser heating techniques to convert glassy carbon into "quenchable amorphous diamond", and recover it to ambient conditions. Our X-ray diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and electron energy-loss spectroscopy experiments on the recovered sample and computer simulations confirm its tetrahedral amorphous structure and complete sp(3) bonding. This transparent quenchable amorphous diamond has, to our knowledge, the highest density among amorphous carbon materials, and shows incompressibility comparable to crystalline diamond.

The direct and diffuse components of downward shortwave radiation (SW), and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) at the Earth surface play an essential role in biochemical (e.g. photosynthesis) and physical (e.g. energy balance) processes that control weather and climate conditions, and many ecological processes. Space based observations have the unique advantage of providing reliable estimates of SW and PAR globally with sufficient accuracy for constructing Earth's radiation budget and estimating land-surface fluxes that control these processes. However, most existing space-based SW and PAR estimations from sensors onboard polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites have inherently low temporal resolution and/or limited spatial coverage of the entire Earth surface. The unique location/orbit of Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) provides an unprecedented opportunity to obtain global estimates of SW and PAR accurately at a high temporal resolution of about 1-2 h. In this study, we developed and used a model (random forest, RF) to estimate global hourly SW and PAR at 0.1 degrees x 0.1 degrees (about 10 km at equator) spatial resolution based on EPIC measurements. We used a combination of EPIC Level-2 products, including solar zenith angle, aerosol optical depth, cloud optical thickness, cloud fraction, total column ozone and surface pressure with their associated quality flags to drive the RF model for estimating SW and PAR. We evaluated the model results against in situ observations from the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) and Surface Radiation Budget Network (SURFRAD). We found the EPIC SW and PAR estimates at both hourly and daily time scales to be highly correlated and consistent with these independently obtained in situ measurements. The RMSEs for estimated daily diffuse SW, direct SW, total SW, and total PAR were 19.10, 38.47, 33.52, and 14.09 W/m(2), respectively, and the biases for these estimates were 1.71, -0.77, 1.04 and 4.11 W/m(2), respectively. We further compared the estimated SW and PAR with the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System Synoptic 1 degrees x 1 degrees (CERES SYN1deg) products and found a good correlation and consistency in their accuracy, spatial patterns and latitudinal gradient. The EPIC SW and PAR estimates provide a unique dataset (i.e. observations from single instrument from pole-to-pole for the entire sunlit portion of Earth) for characterizing their diurnal cycles and their potential impact on photosynthesis and evapotranspiration processes.

Following the disruption of Russian natural gas flows to Europe, we investigate the impact of collaborative and selfish behavior of European countries to tackle energy scarcity and supply electricity, heat, and industrial gas to end users. We study how the operation of the European energy system will need to adapt to the disruption and identify optimal strategies to overcome the unavailability of Russian gas. Those strategies include diversifying gas imports, shifting energy generation to non-gas-based technologies, and reducing energy demands. Find-ings suggest that: (1) selfish behavior of Central European countries exacerbates the energy scarcity for many Southeastern European countries; (2) proactive collaborative energy savings, together with a mild winter, can fully relieve the stress of the gas shortage; (3) diversification of gas imports leads to bottlenecks in the gas network, especially in Southeastern Europe; and (4) electricity genera-tion is mostly shifted to coal-based power plants, causing higher carbon emissions.

Multi-energy systems can improve the performance of traditional energy systems, where energy carriers and sectors are decoupled, in terms of economic, environmental, and social sustainability, measured as the total cost of energy, emissions per energy demand, and self-sufficiency, respectively. This study assesses the impact that policy mechanisms can have in enabling these sustainability benefits. A mixed-integer linear problem is implemented, which optimizes the design and operation of multi-energy systems to minimize the total annual cost of supplying energy to residential end-users. Four policy types are tested for a Swiss case study, namely a feed-in tariff, an investment support mechanism, a carbon tax, and a regulation-based carbon cap. To assess how the policy impact varies between different end-users, we distinguish between passive consumers, that cannot access subsidies, and prosumers, who can. In our case study, subsidies, such as a feed-in tariff and an investment support mechanism, decrease the cost of energy for prosumers by up to 10%, but increase the cost for consumers by up to 33%, which points to the need of including energy equity considerations when designing policies. The carbon cap and the carbon tax impact all end-users equally, and tend to perform better in terms of reducing emissions. Emission reductions of up to 60% and 39% are observed for the carbon cap and carbon tax, respectively. The feed-in tariff and carbon cap perform best in fostering self-sufficiency and achieve balanced energy autonomy for high policy levels, revealing a trade-off between the different sustainability dimensions.

Designing decentralized energy systems in an optimal way can substantially reduce costs and environmental burdens. However, most models for the optimal design of multi-energy systems (MESs) exclude a comprehensive environmental assessment and consider limited technology options for relevant energy-intensive sectors, such as the industrial and mobility sectors. This paper presents a multi-objective optimization framework for designing MESs, which includes life cycle environmental burdens and considers a wide portfolio of technology options for residential, mobility, and industrial sectors. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear program that minimizes costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while meeting the energy demands of given end-users. Whereas our MESs optimization framework can be applied for a large range of boundary conditions, the geographical island Eigeroy (Norway) is used as a showcase as it includes substantial industrial activities. Results demonstrate that, when properly designed, MESs are already cost-competitive with incumbent energy systems, and significant reductions in the amount of natural gas (92%) and GHG emissions (73%) can be obtained with a marginal cost increase (18%). Stricter decarbonization targets incur larger costs. A broad portfolio of technologies is deployed when minimizing GHG emissions and integrating the industrial sector. Environmental trade-offs are identified when considering the construction phase of energy technologies. Therefore, we argue that (i) MES designs and assessments require a thorough life cycle assessment beyond GHG emissions, and (ii) the entire life cycle should be considered when designing MESs, with the construction phase contributing up to 80% of specific environmental impact categories.

The maintenance and differentiation of highly potent animal stem cells generates an epigenetic cycle that underlies development. Drosophila female germline stem cells (GSC) produce cystoblast daughters that differentiate into nurse cells and oocytes. Developmental chromatin analysis profiling the differentiation of GSCs into cystoblasts and nCs of increasing ploidy shows that cystoblasts start developing by forming heterochromatin while in a transient syncytial state, the germline cyst, reminiscent of early embryonic cells. The open GSC chromatin state is further restricted by Polycomb repression of targets that include testis expressed genes briefly active in early female germ cells. like other highly potent stem cells, GSC metabolism is reprogrammed and Myc-dependent growth is upregulated by altering mitochondrial membrane transport, gluconeogenesis and other processes. Thus, the animal generational cycle comprises similar but distinct maternal and zygotic stem cell epigenetic cycles. We propose that the pluripotent stem cell state and daughter cell differentiation were shaped by the pressure to resist transposon activity over evolutionary time scales. In this GEO submission, we present data and analyses pertaining to H3K27ac, H3K27me3, and H3K9me3 ChIPseq, ATACseq, and RnAseq of Germline Stem Cells (GSCs) and nurse Cells (nCs) from Drosophila melanogaster ovaries.

Aubrites and enstatite chondrites (ECs) are isotopically similar to the Earth and therefore may resemble the primary materials that accreted to form our planet. Recent bulk H elemental and isotopic analyses of ECs and the Norton County aubrite suggest that enstatite-rich materials are H-rich and may represent a significant source of terrestrial water, with measured values of 3000 & PLUSMN;2000 & mu;g/g H2O and 5300 & PLUSMN;900 & mu;g/g H2O in the bulk and enstatite fractions of Norton County (Piani et al., Science, 2020). Here, we present a detailed investigation of in situ H2O concentrations in enstatite, diopside, forsterite, and plagioclase from a suite of main group aubrites, including Norton County, and Shallowater. We find that enstatite (4 & PLUSMN;2 & mu;g/g H2O), diopside (4.8 & PLUSMN;0.5 & mu;g/g H2O), and forsterite (5 & PLUSMN;3 & mu;g/g H2O) have similar H2O concentrations, and all are significantly lower than plagioclase (24 & PLUSMN;3 & mu;g/g H2O). We combine our in situ analyses of H2O contents with equilibrium partition coefficients and bulk mineralogies to estimate the bulk H2O content of our samples. We compare these first order estimates with bulk volatile analyses conducted using sample pyrolysis and find that the previous bulk H2O analyses of aubrites predominantly reflect terrestrial contamination and alteration. If our conclusion that the reported bulk H2O analyses of Norton County primarily reflect terrestrial contamination and alteration extends to bulk analyses of ECs, then EC-like material may not be a significant source of terrestrial water. Our results support the hypothesis that thermal metamorphism, melting, and differentiation leads to efficient desiccation of planetesimals relative to chondrites, and that differentiated planetesimals contributed, at most, trace amounts to Earth's water budget.& COPY; 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.