Just four per cent of talented teen academy prospects make it to the top tier of professional football (called soccer in US), a new study has shown.
A sample of nearly 200 players, aged between 13-18, also revealed only six per cent of the budding ballers even go on to play in lower leagues.
The University of Essex researchers discovered the players who succeeded excelled in self-confidence, ball reception skills, dribbling and coaches’ subjective technical assessments.
The study — published in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching — looked at players within the academy system in the 2009-2011 cohort and then traced their progress 10 years after their final academy test.
Dr Jason Moran, from the School of Sport, Rehabilitation, and Exercise Sciences, looked at elite Spanish academies for two LaLiga teams in Madrid, over the course of 10 years.
It is one of the most watched club competitions in the world — featuring the like of FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Villareal — and reaches 2.8billion people globally.
It is hoped the research will shine a light on the implications and economics of the academies amid the high-profile closure and re-opening of English Premier League side Brentford FC.

Dr Moran said: “This leaves us at a crossroads in terms of the role of the modern football academy.
“As many as 95% of teenage players aren’t ‘making it’ to pro football, yet they are continuing through these academies incurring the stresses and strains that go with intensive professional training, before they are eventually deselected.
“The question must therefore be asked if academies are providing appropriate developmental experiences for the large proportion of players who are deselected from their systems?
“This relates to anything from physical literacy, to educational initiatives to prepare for life post-football.”
It also emerged none of the players who ran out professional sides were born in the last quarter of the year and 44% of all the academy players were born in January, February, or March.
Meaning coaches may have a bias against smaller less-developed athletes who are technically sound.
Of the 12 players who became professionals, seven reached Spain’s highest professional league at some point in the decade.
Five also played for teams in Spain’s second highest professional league and four played abroad.
Previous studies on Premier League academies have shown just one per cent of under-nine players make it to the top tier.

People with prediabetes are advised to reduce their weight in order to prevent manifest diabetes. Researchers from the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases of Helmholtz Munich at the University of Tübingen, a partner in the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), together with US colleagues in the “Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP),” have now been able to show for the first time that people achieve the best diabetes protection when they reduce their weight and at the same time normalize blood sugar regulation. In the specialist journal Diabetologia, the authors argue that the normalization of blood sugar levels in prediabetes should be included as a therapeutic goal in the guidelines in order to improve the prevention of type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes is widespread and is associated with an increased risk of a number of life-threatening complications such as stroke, heart attack and kidney failure. “In order to prevent the development of the disease, early therapies are already important in the prediabetes stage, a preliminary stage of type 2 diabetes. Our results can be used to change the goals of these early lifestyle interventions in order to reduce the overall development rates of diabetes,” explains first author Reiner Jumpertz-von Schwartzenberg.
Prediabetes drastically increases the risk of diabetes
Prediabetes is diagnosed when there is no manifest type 2 diabetes yet, but the fasting blood sugar is already elevated and glucose tolerance is impaired. To prevent prediabetes from becoming diabetes, affected patients are advised to reduce their weight. US guidelines from the American Diabetes Association (ADA), for example, recommend reducing body weight by at least 7 percent. This recommendation is based on the DPP study.
The research team from the Department of Internal Medicine IV, Diabetology, Endocrinology and Nephrology at the Medical University Hospital of Tübingen, the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases of Helmholtz Munich in Tübingen and the Phoenix Epidemiology and Clinical Research Branch at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Phoenix, USA, investigated whether this weight loss is sufficient, or whether it is not better to prevent diabetes by also reducing blood sugar levels such that prediabetes goes into remission.
Prevention through one-year lifestyle intervention
They analyzed data from 480 people with prediabetes who participated in the US Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) and had lost at least 7 percent of their body weight through a one-year lifestyle intervention. In 114 of them, prediabetes also went into remission during the intervention, meaning that their fasting blood sugar, glucose tolerance and HbA1c had normalized. However, the majority of the 366 study participants had not managed to significantly improve their blood sugar regulation despite successfully losing weight. Their prediabetes was not in remission at the end of the intervention.
The researchers found that significantly fewer people in the group that had lost weight and achieved prediabetes remission developed manifest diabetes thereafter. The additional remission of prediabetes resulted in a relative risk reduction for the development of diabetes of 76 percent compared to those who had not achieved normalization of their blood sugar levels. The absolute risk reduction was higher than 10%.
“In the group with additional remission of prediabetes, there was even no type 2 diabetes at all in the first 4 years after the lifestyle intervention,” reports last author Andreas Birkenfeld. “In the group that had ‘only’ lost weight, however, some study participants did develop manifest diabetes during that period.”
Jumpertz-von Schwartzenberg and Birkenfeld draw a clear conclusion: “Our results show that remission of prediabetes brings a further significant benefit in addition to weight reduction. We therefore advocate that the goal of prediabetes remission should be included in the objectives of the practice guidelines in order to significantly improve the prevention of type 2 diabetes.”

Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a deep-learning model, called PepFlow, that can predict all possible shapes of peptides — chains of amino acids that are shorter than proteins, but perform similar biological functions.
PepFlow combines machine learning and physics to model the range of folding patterns that a peptide can assume based on its energy landscape. Peptides, unlike proteins, are very dynamic molecules that can take on a range of conformations.
“We haven’t been able to model the full range of conformations for peptides until now,” said Osama Abdin, first author on the study and recent PhD graduate of molecular genetics at U of T’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. “PepFlow leverages deep-learning to capture the precise and accurate conformations of a peptide within minutes. There’s potential with this model to inform drug development through the design of peptides that act as binders.”
The study was published today in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.
A peptide’s role in the human body is directly linked to how it folds, as its 3D structure determines the way it binds and interacts with other molecules. Peptides are known to be highly flexible, taking on a wide range of folding patterns, and are thus involved in many biological processes of interest to researchers in the development of therapeutics.
“Peptides were the focus of the PepFlow model because they are very important biological molecules and they are naturally very dynamic, so we need to model their different conformations to understand their function,” said Philip M. Kim, principal investigator on the study and a professor at the Donnelly Centre. “They’re also important as therapeutics, as can be seen by the GLP1 analogues, like Ozempic, used to treat diabetes and obesity.”
Peptides are also cheaper to produce than their larger protein counterparts, said Kim, who is also a professor of computer science at U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science.

The new model expands on the capabilities of the leading Google Deepmind AI system for predicting protein structure, AlphaFold. PepFlow can outperform AlphaFold2 by generating a range of conformations for a given peptide, which AlphaFold2 was not designed to do.
What sets PepFlow apart is the technological innovations that power it. For instance, it is a generalized model that takes inspiration from Boltzmann generators, which are highly advanced physics-based machine learning models.
PepFlow can also model peptide structures that take on unusual formations, such as the ring-like structure that results from a process called macrocyclization. Peptide macrocycles are currently a highly promising venue for drug development.
While PepFlow improves upon AlphaFold2, it has limitations of its own, being the first version of a model. The study authors noted a number of ways in which PepFlow could be improved, including training the model with explicit data for solvent atoms, which would dissolve the peptides to form a solution, and for constraints on the distance between atoms in ring-like structures.
PepFlow was built to be easily expanded to account for additional considerations and new information and potential uses. Even as a first version, PepFlow is a comprehensive and efficient model with potential for furthering the development of treatments that depend on peptide binding to activate or inhibit biological processes.
“Modelling with PepFlow offers insight into the real energy landscape of peptides,” saidAbdin. “It took two-and-a-half years to develop PepFlow and one month to train it, but it was worthwhile to move to the next frontier, beyond models that only predict one structure of a peptide.”

Managing a fussy infant or a determined toddler can be a daily test of patience and endurance for parents and caregivers. New research on the origins of emotional overeating in 3-year-olds suggests that how caregivers respond to infants’ and toddlers’ negative emotions such as disappointment, fear and anger influences the children’s development of emotional overeating.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign followed more than 350 children from birth to age 3 and found direct associations between infants’ temperaments and their development of emotional overeating at age 3. However, caregivers’ supportive and non-supportive responses to the children’s negative emotions had significant influence as well.
Emotional overeating was defined in the study as consuming food to cope with feelings rather than in response to hunger.
In assessing the children’s temperaments, the researchers looked at their orienting responses — their ability as infants and toddlers to engage with, maintain and disengage their attention from external stimuli.
“Our findings show that if a child has a greater capacity to orient their attention and regulate their emotions during infancy, caregivers may be more likely to implement supportive responses — therefore the child is less likely to turn to food for self-regulation,” said first author Sehyun Ju, a graduate student in human development and family studies. Ju’s co-authors were Kelly Bost and Samantha Iwinski, a professor and graduate student, respectively, in the same department.
Supportive responses from caregivers included using problem-solving strategies to alleviate a child’s distress, validating and addressing the child’s feelings or offering encouragement. Conversely, non-supportive responses included caregivers punishing a child for expressing their emotions and minimizing or dismissing their feelings.
Some prior research found that emotional eating is driven by individuals’ ability to regulate their emotions as opposed to the feelings themselves, according to the current study, published in Frontiers in Psychology.

Accordingly, parents should be aware that emotional overeating is a complex behavior that is influenced by caregivers’ reactions to the child’s emotional expression as well as by the child’s temperament and ability to manage their feelings, Ju said.
All of the children and their caregivers were participants in the STRONG Kids 2 birth cohort study at the U. of I., a research project that examines various family environmental factors and biological characteristics that influence children’s weight and dietary habits from birth through age 9.
When the children were 3 months, 18 months and 3 years old, their parents or caregivers were surveyed on their children’s eating behaviors such as whether they ate more when bored, sad or angry; their personality traits or typical way of behaving, including how frequently they showed cheerfulness or distress; their ability to self-regulate their emotions; and how they responded to external stimuli.
Using 12 hypothetical scenarios in which the child expressed negative emotions such as sadness, fear, anger or disappointment, the caregivers indicated how likely they would be to react using supportive methods such as problem-solving strategies or non-supportive methods such as punishing the child.
The researchers found that 3-month-old infants that had high levels of cheerfulness, sociability and spontaneity were more likely to engage in emotional overeating three years later. The children’s eating behaviors also were significantly predicted by their abilities to adapt to external stimuli and self-regulate their emotions. But the children’s likelihood of consuming food as a coping mechanism was significantly affected by their caregivers’ responses to their negative emotions.
“The findings highlight the importance of the family system,” Iwinski said. “We see that things are impacting each other at multiple time points. Behaviors at 3 months of age can affect children when they are 3 years old.
“We need to consider the optimal times when we can implement interventions and provide assistance. From these findings, we see that assistance may be needed at multiple developmental milestones,” she said.
Ju said emotional overeating is an obesogenic behavior that may contribute to unhealthy weight gain, potentially increasing young children’s risks of developing serious health problems such as Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
Responding supportively to children’s negative emotions is essential to promoting their psychological health as well as their physical health because it affects how young people learn to manage their feelings as well as their approach to food, she said.

In many cases of malignant melanoma, the effect of targeted treatment is lost over time. A research team from UZH and USZ has now discovered that a factor secreted by tumor cells is responsible for the resistance. These findings could pave the way for more effective therapies.
Malignant melanoma is one of the most aggressive types of cancer. Despite recent progress in effective therapies, the tumors of many patients are either resistant from the outset or become so during the course of treatment.
“It is therefore crucial to understand the mechanism behind resistance development in melanoma,” says Lukas Sommer, professor of stem cell biology at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich (UZH). A study under his lead has now identified a mechanism that impedes the effectiveness of therapies. The result provides new ideas for treatments to suppress the development of resistance. The project was carried out in collaboration with Mitch Levesque and Reinhard Dummer from the University Hospital Zurich (USZ).
Comparing resistant and non-resistant tumor cells
For the study, the team utilized an innovative fine-needle biopsy to sample tumor cells before and during therapy. This allowed the researchers to analyze each cell individually. The patients providing the samples were undergoing targeted cancer therapy for malignant melanoma, which inhibits signalling pathways for tumor formation.
“It was important that some of the tumors responded to the therapy, while others showed resistance,” says Sommer. This allowed the team to compare the metabolism and environment of resistant and non-resistant tumor cells and look for significant differences.
Interaction between tumor factor and immune cells
One of the most relevant findings concerned the POSTN gene: it codes for a secreted factor that plays an important role in resistant tumors. In fact, the tumors of patients with rapidly progressing disease despite treatment showed increased POSTN levels. In addition, the microenvironment of these tumors contained a larger number of a certain type of macrophage — a subtype of immune cell that promotes the development of cancer.

Through a series of further experiments — both with human cancer cells and with mice — the research team was able to show how the interaction of increased POSTN levels and this type of macrophage triggers resistance: the POSTN factor binds to receptors on the surface of the macrophages and polarizes them to protect melanoma cells from cell death. “This is why the targeted therapy no longer works,” says Sommer.
No resistance without cancer-promoting macrophages
The team considers this mechanism a promising starting point. “The study highlights the potential of targeting specific types of macrophages within the tumor microenvironment to overcome resistance,” says Sommer. “In combination with already known therapies, this could significantly improve the success of treatment for patients with malignant melanoma.”

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 10 to 30 per cent of the general population has experienced some form of virus-induced cognitive impairment, including trouble concentrating, brain fog or memory loss. This led a team of researchers to explore the mechanism behind this phenomenon and pinpoint a specific protein that appears to be driving these cognitive changes.
A new study published in Nature Immunology, led by researchers at Western and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, also looked at how vaccination may help reduce the impacts of memory loss following COVID-19 infections. 
The research team, including Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry professor Dr. Robyn Klein, who joined Western from Washington University, used rodent models to better understand how COVID-19 impacts cognitive impairment. 
“We looked carefully at their brains during acute infection and then later after recovery to discover what was abnormal in terms of the different immune cells trafficking into the brain and their effects on neural cells,” said Klein, who holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Neurovirology and Neuroimmunology. 
Klein said she was concerned by reports of cognitive impairment in the early days of the pandemic, which led researchers to question whether the virus was invading the central nervous system. 
Klein’s previous work studied viruses that invade the brain. 
“We had previously shown that the virus could not be detected in human or hamster brains, and this study also showed that the virus was not invading the central nervous system,” said Klein. The finding means some other mechanism is leading to cognitive impairment.     
The team identified SARS-CoV-2 infection increased levels of brain Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), a cytokine protein that impacts the immune system. The team observed that the models with increased levels of IL-1β experienced loss of neurogenesis, the process by which new neurons are formed in the brain, and also displayed memory loss. 

Vaccination reduces cognitive symptoms
The team concluded IL-1β was one potential mechanism driving SARS-CoV-2-induced cognitive impairment, and wondered whether this may be prevented by vaccination.
Researchers then investigated how vaccinated models were impacted. They found a promising correlation between vaccination and reduced cognitive impairments like memory loss.
The researchers showed that prior vaccination reduced inflammation of the brain and lowered levels of IL-1β. As a result, the vaccinated models experienced less of an impact on memory and brain function. 
Klein says there is still more work to be done to fully understand how vaccinations are achieving this result, and whether it will translate to humans. 
“We know there’s anecdotal evidence that humans who’ve been vaccinated have a much lower risk of developing this long COVID brain fog,” said Klein. 
The vaccine used in the study is not the same as the vaccines available to people, Klein stressed, meaning more studies will need to be conducted to further investigate the connection between vaccination and reduced long COVID impacts. 

“What we do know is that if you’re vaccinated you have much less inflammation,” said Klein. 
Vaccination is about lowering the risk of the impacts of infection, not completely preventing infection, she added. For example, a vaccine can protect individuals from developing severe pneumonia, but that doesn’t mean it completely protects against pneumonia.
The same is likely true for cognitive impacts.
“People need to understand that about vaccines,” Klein said. “They need to know what vaccines can do and what they can’t do.”

Researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University (BU) Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, in collaboration with an international team of scientists, shared findings from a new study published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation: Heart Failure that explores a common cause of heart disease in older men called transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CA). The study examines the relationship between spontaneous loss of the Y chromosome (LOY), a condition in aging men where the Y chromosome is spontaneously deleted in blood cells, and ATTR-CA, a progressive disease that causes heart failure and death. The team found that men with a higher proportion of blood cells missing Y chromosomes have a higher ATTR-CA mortality rate, informing future treatment for patients with ATTR-CA. The study team included investigators from Columbia University, University of Virginia, and Osaka Metropolitan Hospital in Japan.
LOY is the most common acquired genetic mutation in men, with more than half of men in their early 90s having lost the Y chromosome in some of their blood cells according to the National Cancer Institute. While LOY has been associated with heart failure survival rates in large population studies, it has never been examined in relation to ATTR-CA. The current study suggests that men with ATTR-CA who have LOY in greater than 21.6% of their blood cells were 2.6 times more likely to not survive this form of heart disease.
“Our study suggests that spontaneous LOY in circulating white blood cells contributes both to the development of ATTR-CA in men and influences the severity of disease,” said Frederick L. Ruberg, MD, Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at BMC, Professor of Medicine at BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and lead researcher in this study. “Additionally, our study’s findings indicate that elevated LOY may be an important reason why some patients do not respond to the ATTR-CA therapy that is typically effective.”
Current treatments for ATTR-CA work well for many patients, but roughly 30 percent of patients do not respond to treatment, leading to hospitalization and death. Findings from this study support elevated LOY as a potential barrier to treatment response. The findings could one day inform a clinician’s choice in designing a treatment course for a patient with ATTR-CA and high level of LOY in hopes of a more favorable health outcome. Additionally, the findings could lead to the development of new treatments for those with heart disease, including ATTR-CA.
“Our study team represents an international collaboration that sought to explore an association between a common blood disorder and ATTR-CA that has never been previously considered,” said Ruberg. “We provide evidence that these two conditions may be related, supporting a new way of understanding how ATTR-CA progresses as well as how to develop new potential targets for treatment.”

A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, provides new evidence on the adverse effects of prenatal exposure to ethylene oxide (EO) on foetal development. The results, published in Epidemiology, show that increased EO exposure in utero is associated with a reduction in birth weight and head circumference in newborns.
Ethylene oxide is a chemical used in various industrial processes and in hospitals, is known for its mutagenic and carcinogenic properties. Human exposure to EO is mainly through inhalation of tobacco smoke and air pollution produced from various household products, including cleaning and personal care products. Workers in the healthcare and chemical industries are particularly exposed to this substance, which is commonly used in sterilisation processes. Previous studies have found that women exposed to higher levels of EO at work during pregnancy had a higher risk of miscarriage and premature birth than those with lower exposure.
This new study focused on pregnant women and newborns in the general population, rather than a specific population with known high levels of EO exposure. The research team looked at the levels of EO hemoglobin (Hb) adducts in the cord blood of 1,106 newborns from 5 countries: Greece, Spain, Norway, UK and Denmark. This measurement provides valid information on the amount of EO the foetus was exposed to during the last three months of pregnancy, which may help to better understand potential adverse effects on foetal development and birth outcomes.
The study used data from the NewGeneris project, which aimed to study genotoxic exposures in the environment on children’s health by measuring several biomarkers in cord blood. Information on birth weight, head circumference, sex and gestational age was obtained from maternity records.
Higher exposure, lower birth weight and smaller head circumference
The results of the study showed that median levels of EO-Hb adducts in the umbilical cord were higher in smoking mothers compared to non-smoking mothers. Higher levels of hemoglobin adducts were associated with lower birth weight. Specifically, mean birth weight decreased by 3.30 grams with each 10 pmol/g increase in hemoglobin adducts. Increasing levels of hemoglobin adducts were also associated with a decrease in head circumference.
“Reduced head circumference has been linked to delayed neurodevelopment, and reduced birth weight increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus and osteoporosis,” says Barbara Harding, ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study.
The team found no evidence of an association between EO Hb adduct levels and the risk of being small for gestational age (SGA), a condition that can compromise a baby’s short and long-term health.
“The study results highlight the importance of addressing EO exposure in both occupational and non-occupational settings. Policy changes to reduce EO exposure in vulnerable populations, such as women of childbearing age, could protect foetal health and improve birth outcomes,” says Manolis Kogevinas, ISGlobal researcher and senior author of the study.

Bird flu, or H5N1 virus, in unpasteurized milk is stable on metal and rubber components of commercial milking equipment for at least one hour, increasing its potential to infect people and other animals, report researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Emory University in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
The study underscores the heightened risk of bird flu exposure for dairy farm workers and signals the need for wider adoption of personal protective equipment, including face shields, masks and eye protection.
“Dairy cows have to be milked even if they are sick, and it has not been clear for how long the virus contained in residual milk from the milking process remains stable on the equipment,” said lead author Valerie Le Sage, Ph.D., research assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the Center for Vaccine Research at Pitt. “It is concerning that the virus in unpasteurized milk can remain stable for hours and potentially infect farm workers or spread from animal to animal.”
Clinical symptoms of bird flu can range from mild fever and cough to shortness of breath and pneumonia and can be lethal. Since March 2024, when the bird flu virus was first detected in dairy cattle in the U.S., the virus has spread across state lines and infected at least 3 people. While, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the current risk to the general public remains low, flu viruses can quickly adapt to spreading from person to person.
To understand the potential for spread from cattle to dairy farm workers, researchers looked at the stability of infectious flu virus particles in unpasteurized milk droplets on metal and rubber components of commercial milking equipment.
In a lab environment that mimicked the humidity and temperature of outdoor milking parlors in Texas, H5N1 virus particles suspended in milk remained stable on metal and rubber for over one hour. Particles of H1N1 virus, or swine flu, which behaves similarly to H5N1 in the lab, stayed infectious for at least 3 hours on rubber and for at least 1 hour on stainless steel.
“Our data supports that milking equipment surfaces can stay contaminated for a long time, increasing the potential spread from a sick animal to a person,” said Le Sage. “These findings underscore the importance of face shields, masks and eye protection, and enhanced sanitization of equipment between cows to reduce the risk to workers and to minimize the spread between the animals.”
Other authors of this research are Douglas Reed, Ph.D., and Paul Duprex, Ph.D., both of Pitt; and A.J. Campbell, Ph.D., and Seema Lakdawala, Ph.D., both of Emory University.
This research was supported in part by the Department of Health and Human Services (Contract No. 75N93021C00015) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases supporting the operations of Pitt’s Regional Biocontainment Laboratory within the Center for Vaccine Research (UC7AI180311).

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have developed low-cost sensors that allow for real-time, continuous monitoring of nitrate in soil types that are common in Wisconsin. These printed electrochemical sensors could enable farmers to make better informed nutrient management decisions and reap economic benefits.
“Our sensors could give farmers a greater understanding of the nutrient profile of their soil and how much nitrate is available for the plants, helping them to make more precise decisions on how much fertilizer they really need,” says Joseph Andrews, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison who led the research. “If they can buy less fertilizer, the cost savings could be quite significant at large-acreage farms.”
While nitrate is an essential nutrient for growing crops, excess nitrate can leach out of soil and into groundwater. This type of pollution is dangerous for people who drink contaminated well water and is harmful for the environment. The researchers’ new sensors could also be used as an agricultural research tool to monitornitrate leaching and help guide best practices for mitigating its harmful effects.
Current methods for monitoring nitrate in the soil are laborious, expensive and don’t provide real-time data. That’s why Andrews, an expert in printed electronics, and his team set out to create a better and less costly solution.
For this project, the researchers used an inkjet printing process to fabricate potentiometric sensors, a type of thin-film electrochemical sensor. Potentiometric sensors are commonly used to accurately measure nitrate in liquid solutions. However, these sensors aren’t typically suitable for use in soil environments, where coarse soil particles will scratch them and interfere with obtaining accurate measurements.
“The main challenge we were trying to solve is figuring out a way to enable these electrochemical sensors to work well in the harsh environment of soil and accurately sense nitrate ions,” Andrews says.
The team’s solution was to place a layer over the sensor made from polyvinylidene fluoride. Andrews says this material has two key features. First, it has very tiny pores, about 400 nanometers in size, that allow nitrate ions to pass through while blocking soil particles. Second, it’s hydrophilic, meaning it attracts water and acts like a sponge to absorb it.

“So, any nitrate-laden water gets preferentially soaked into our sensor, and this is really important because soil also acts like a sponge, and you’re going to have a losing battle for getting moisture to come to your sensor unless you can match the water absorption potential of soil,” Andrews says. “These features of the polyvinylidene fluoride layer enable us to extract the nitrate-laden water, get it to the surface of our sensor and accurately sense nitrate.”
The researchers detailed their advance in a paper published in March 2024 in the journal Advanced Material Technologies.
The team has tested its sensors in two different soil types that are relevant for Wisconsin — sandy soil, which is common in the north-central part of the state, and silt loam soil, which is common in southwestern Wisconsin — and found that the sensors produced accurate results.
The researchers are now incorporating their nitrate sensors into a multifunctional sensing system they call a “sensing sticker,” in which three different kinds of sensors are mounted on a flexible plastic surface with an adhesive on the back. These stickers also contain moisture and temperature sensors.
The researchers will attach several sensing stickers to a rod, positioning them at different heights, and then bury the rod in the soil. This setup allows them to take measurements at multiple depths in the soil.
“By measuring the nitrate, moisture and temperature at different depths, we can now quantify the process of nitrate leaching and capture how nitrate is moving through the soil, which hasn’t been possible before,” Andrews says.

In summer 2024, the researchers plan to conduct further testing with their sensors by deploying 30 sensing rods in the soil at UW-Madison’s Hancock Agricultural Research Station and Arlington Agricultural Research Station.
The researchers are patenting their technology through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
UW-Madison co-authors on the paper include Kuan-Yu Chen, Aatresha Biswas, Shuohao Cai, and Jingyi Huang, a professor of soil science.
This research was supported by the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Foundational Program (project no. WIS04075), the National Science Foundation Signals in the Soil grant 2226568, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dairy Innovation Hub.