The butterfly effect was initially developed by mathematician Edward Lorenz in the 1960s. He posited that a tornado could have been caused by something so seemingly unrelated as a butterfly flapping its wings halfway around the world weeks prior. In decades since, it has become a catch–all way to describe how everything in the universe is interconnected, and a seemingly minor shift can ultimately cause a much larger change.
Lorenz’s example might not be true, but the underlying concept is. Nothing in the universe exists in a vacuum, and actions ripple across time and space in unpredictable ways. Any glance at an environmental science textbook would describe Earth as a minuscule part of a broader interconnected system, where matter and energy constantly flux between states and locations. A single molecule of water may evaporate from the ocean, travel thousands of miles in the air, fall as rain, be consumed and excreted by a plant, run off into a river, and end up back in the ocean—trillions of times.
Many of the major scientific breakthroughs making headlines today emerged from decades of research that was collected before scientists even knew they were creating a life–saving invention. GLP–1 drugs like Ozempic are the result of research on the venom of Gila monsters. NASA innovations surrounding durable materials for space missions led to improved thermal insulation and scratch–resistant glass. The inventions of today are the products of the pure science work of yesteryear. The work being done today is laying the groundwork for the miracle products of tomorrow.
Across Penn, researchers are working to find solutions for some of the most pressing problems facing humankind as a result of destructive activities vis–à–vis the environment. One step at a time, they are working to invent a better future for all of us.
Among these scientists is Earth and Environmental Science professor Irina Marinov, who studies the interaction of these complex systems that make up our world. Her work focuses on a key example of interconnectedness: the oceans, those swirling masses of quadrillions of gallons of water without which life on Earth as we know it would cease to exist. Specifically, she studies the power of the oceans to absorb harmful excesses of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“The ocean absorbs about 25% to 30% of all the anthropogenic CO2 that we release into the atmosphere every year,” Marinov says. “It helps us slow global warming. Without the ocean, the atmosphere would have much higher CO2 levels, and global warming would be much more severe.”
However, she has found that the ocean’s ability to reduce atmospheric CO2 has been weakened over time. Although research is still ongoing, she believes that the shift is a result of oceans’ increasing temperatures and acidification given that warm, acidic water absorbs less CO2 than cold, basic water. Furthermore, the increase in global CO2 emissions over the past century and a half has meant that the level of CO2 in the ocean has accumulated over time. But, given that there is only so much CO2 that the ocean can hold, it cannot be counted on as a permanent solution.
While researchers’ work, like Marinov’s, may not be very flashy, that doesn’t make it any less important. Most projects will not end up in a product you interact with for years, decades, or ever. Sometimes you won’t even be aware that a piece of technology improving lives came from basic science research.
Engaging in this preliminary yet crucial research, Samantha McBride, a professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, leads a lab focused on interfacial science and fluid physics. Essentially, she’s working to design new processes for filtering and purifying critical substances like water in a variety of situations, ranging from wastewater treatment to desalination. She also collaborates with other scientists who work on designing new membranes for water filtration.
She explains how the chemical and physical properties of water are different from many other solvents, making it an interesting substance to study. Most of her work centers around examining the ways in which various interfaces can remove potentially harmful substances dissolved in water.
Many of the chemicals that McBride’s research focuses on have not been studied at length. While current water treatment methods are designed to purify water of large particles and disease–causing microorganisms, less attention has been paid to emerging contaminants, such as microplastics and Per– and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. The reasons for the relative lack of research are twofold: There is a delay between consumption and harmful health outcomes, and scientists only recently learned about these chemicals’ prevalence.
The cause–and–effect relationship between bacteria or viruses and water–borne diseases has been known since the aftermath of a London cholera outbreak in the 1850s. That is an example of acute toxicity, when consumption of a harmful substance leads quickly to illness, making the causation relatively clear.
However, McBride says that “a lot of these emerging contaminants [like] microplastics and … PFAS … tend to be less acute and more chronic.” In cases of chronic toxicity, the cause–and–effect is much more difficult to trace, as it can take a long time to take effect, and will often manifest in diseases like cancers or endocrine disorders.
Beyond working to detect and remove these chemicals and particles from water, McBride and her team are also working on non–toxic alternative compounds. PFAS are found in products like electronics and non–stick cookware because they are heat–resistant and repel water. While McBride’s lab is considering alternatives such as naturally occurring fatty acids, coconut oil, and beeswax, the chemical structure of PFAS molecules makes them uniquely durable and water–resistant.
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professor Chinedum Osuji is working on a similar project. His lab focuses on various aspects of soft materials. A significant part of his work is dedicated to matching the molecular structure of various materials to a specific property. In many cases, the desired characteristic of a material is its ability to filter out specific contaminants from a solvent such as water.
The work takes advantage of the fact that many molecules, under certain conditions, will self–assemble into a specific shape like sheets. Sometimes, these structures will contain pores that are ideally small enough to allow certain materials to pass through while trapping others. He is not only looking to create novel molecules with new properties but also ones that could be used for filtering out specific substances.
Both McBride and Osuji work in experimental laboratories, mixing chemicals to create new materials and to test their performance. McBride also collaborates with the Singh Center for Nanotechnology to fabricate sustainable compounds. Meanwhile, much of Marinov’s work is done on a computer, taking in voluminous amounts of data to simulate climate outcomes. These climate models are enormously complex—one person’s entire Ph.D. research could boil down to adding a few lines of code to an existing model—but efficient and are able to model causes and effects from microscopic to planetary scales.
“I'm an armchair oceanographer, so I do all of my stuff remotely,” she says. “I analyze output from many climate models. Under the auspices of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, all the major model groups from around the world run the same set of climate simulations … to predict how the ocean, atmosphere, and the land will behave in the future. With my students, I take output from all these models and compare these projections into the future.”
Zhengxia Dou, School of Veterinary Medicine professor of Agricultural Systems, carries out research that exists on a different scale entirely. She is aiming to develop more sustainable ways to feed large animals such as cows. Instead of chemically engineering synthetic substances in a laboratory, she works with farmers near Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa. to test out various diets on cows.
Dou is trying to solve a profound problem. According to Dou, animal feed takes up 60% of the production costs of raising animals and 43% of all agricultural land on Earth. By experimenting with new ways to feed animals, Dou is attempting to build a way to make meat and dairy production less land and money intensive.
One project she recently worked on involved feeding dairy cows fruit—specifically oranges and kiwis—which would have otherwise been discarded after they were harvested and deemed unsuitable for human consumption. During the course of the experiment, Dou and her team fed each cow 7.1 kilograms of fruit per day. Over the course of a year, this equates to 415 metric tons (almost a million pounds) of fruit consumed if the whole herd was fed this diet.
Dou found that using wasted fruit as opposed to conventional animal feed could have profound benefits for the environment. Around 14 acres would be saved and dedicated to the cultivation of human food or the laying of fallow and regeneration of soil. Additionally, large quantities of synthetic fertilizer—which has significantly contributed to global warming—wouldn’t be used.
The work that these four scientists have been doing is gleaning crucial insights about our planet and ways to mitigate the impacts of harmful human behavior. It might not be implemented into everyday products and policies immediately, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. Science often moves slowly and methodically. Information needs to be rigorously tested and verified before it can be applied. Even when it seemed to move at tremendous speed, such as the development of COVID–19 vaccines, it was built upon decades of research in microbiology.
Implementation often moves even slower. McBride says that the water treatment industry moves on an especially slow timeline and would be unlikely to implement new filtration technologies without policy and/or financial incentives.
“The challenge with any technology, no matter how good it is, is adaptation, especially for the water treatment industry, because it is … a very conservative industry,” McBride says. “So even if you have the best technology in the world, getting municipalities to implement it in their actual systems, that's going to take probably more than five years, probably more than 10 years. The industry tends to rely on tried and true technologies.”
Dou agrees that policy innovations are necessary to encourage more stakeholders in the food distribution system—from dairy farmers to supermarket chains—to adopt some of the sustainable farming practices that her team studies. They’ve figured out how to turn waste products that would otherwise end up in landfills into useful animal feed, reducing the carbon footprint without changing the productivity of dairy cows. She believes that carbon credits could be an important incentive for farmers to use alternative feed ingredients such as discarded fruit.
Osuji believes that the innovations he has found have the potential to make an impact on everyday life if widely implemented. Furthermore, he says that his team made a breakthrough which could speed up the commercial implementation of these membrane materials. When creating filtration membranes, it is important for them to be as thin as possible. In the past, Osuji’s lab would achieve this thinning by physical compression, similar to rolling out a piece of dough.
Now, they are able to dissolve the membrane material in a substance like water, pour a relatively thick layer into a vessel, and as the water evaporates, the material becomes thinner and more concentrated, eventually forming a semi–permeable membrane. Similar versions of this process are already prevalent in manufacturing, paving the way for large–scale fabrication of membranes.
Osuji says that some of these chemicals are “not ready for prime time yet,” citing further advances needed to achieve more effective filtration. However, he acknowledges that the chemistry needed to make these advances is not complicated, and so progress could move quickly.
In Middlemarch, the sweeping epic of English country life, George Eliot writes that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and … half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” The quote is as true now as it was in the late 19th century. Progress has been occurring in a broad number of fields and further advances are coming. Some will be publicized, while others will linger in the background, known to a select few. All of them will be just as essential to building a better world.