Culture

OKLAHOMA CITY AND DENMARK - Campylobacter infection, one of the most common foodborne illnesses in the Western world, can also be spread through sexual contact, according to a new research discovery by an OU Hudson College of Public Health faculty member, working in conjunction with colleagues in Denmark.

The team's research has been published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is the first known study to prove this mode of transmission for Campylobacter. During a time when COVID-19 has dominated news about infectious diseases, the research is a reminder that many other pathogens affect lives around the world every day. The study was led by infectious disease epidemiologist Katrin Kuhn, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the OU Hudson College of Public Health.

"This research is important for public health messaging and for physicians as they talk to their patients about risks associated with sexual contact," Kuhn said. "Although Campylobacter infection is usually not a serious disease, it causes diarrhea, which can result in people missing work, losing productivity or perhaps losing their job. It poses an additional risk for people with underlying health conditions."

Campylobacter infections usually occur when people eat chicken that has not been cooked thoroughly or when juices from uncooked poultry make their way into other food. Infections can also be caused by drinking unpasteurized milk or water that has been contaminated by the feces of infected animals. However, those didn't account for all cases of infection, Kuhn said, and she wondered if there was another route of transmission that remained unproven. An outbreak of Campylobacter infections in northern Europe among men who have sex with men prompted her to study that population of people in Denmark, where she was working when the research began.

The study results showed that the rate of Campylobacter infection was 14 times higher in men who have sex with men than the control subjects. Although the study focused on men who have sex with men, the results are relevant to people of any sexual orientation who engage in sexual behavior that may involve fecal-oral contact, Kuhn said.

Two other bacteria, Salmonella and Shigella, were used as comparisons in the study. Salmonella is spread primarily through infected foods, while Shigella can be transmitted through food or sexual contact. Salmonella has a high infectious dose, meaning people must ingest a significant amount of the bacteria before they become ill. However, Shigella and Campylobacter have low infectious doses, which makes transmission easier.

"That's an additional reason why we believe Campylobacter can be transmitted through sexual contact like Shigella is - because people can become infected when only small amounts of the bacteria are present," Kuhn said.

Campylobacter infections are probably more prevalent than the numbers show. For every one person who goes to the doctor and is diagnosed, epidemiologists estimate that 20 more people are infected, Kuhn said. Although treatment is usually required only for severe cases, complications can occur, especially in people who have compromised immune systems. In some cases, infection can result in reactive arthritis, in which the body's immune system attacks itself, causing pain in the joints. Infection can also lead to Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a serious nerve disorder that can cause paralysis.

"This is an interesting time because COVID-19 has made people more aware of the importance of monitoring infectious diseases in general, not only during a pandemic," she said. "There are many infections like the one caused by Campylobacter that make people sick. It's important that we spotlight the fact that these diseases exist and that we continue to conduct research on their effects and modes of transmission."

Before arriving at the OU Hudson College of Public Health, Kuhn served as a senior infectious disease epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark. Her work focused on food- and water-borne infections, and she was responsible for the national surveillance of Campylobacter and Shigella. She began this study while in Denmark and completed it after moving to Oklahoma. Statens Serum Institut is the Danish national institute for infectious diseases and the primary institute for surveillance of and research on infectious diseases in Denmark.

"A formal collaboration between OU Hudson College of Public Health and Statens Serum Institut will build a solid foundation for strengthening transatlantic research and, not least, improving the way that we monitor, understand and prevent infectious diseases in Oklahoma," Kuhn said.

Despite the increasing frequency and severity of floods, storms, wildfires and other natural hazards, some firms in disaster-prone areas prepare while others do not.

That issue was examined in a new study by Jennifer Oetzel, professor, American University and Chang Hoon Oh, William & Judy Docking Professor of Strategy, University of Kansas published in the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ).

"Due to the increased frequency and severity of floods, storms, epidemics, wildfires and other natural hazards anticipated over the coming decades (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), there is growing pressure on managers and their firms to develop strategies for managing natural disaster risk," write the researchers.

"Preparing for future events that may never occur is challenging. Day-to-day events tend to crowd out long-term planning, but business continuity depends on managers anticipating and planning for large scale disasters. For these reasons, our goal in this study was to understand the antecedents associated with disaster preparation so that managers can better prepare for natural disasters."

They defined disaster preparedness as the acquisition of the skills and capabilities needed to reduce damage to a firm, to minimize disruption to the supply chain, and business activity more generally, and to save lives and protect employees.

Disaster preparedness can entail a wide variety of initiatives including conducting an assessment of firm vulnerability to natural disasters, establishing a natural disaster response plan, training employees about natural disaster preparedness, purchasing insurance, developing a business continuity plan, and arranging to move business operations temporarily to another location, among others.

Emergency preparedness pays off. A review conducted by the Wharton Risk Center that focused on floods suggested that for every dollar spent on flood risk reduction, on average, five dollars is saved through avoided and reduced losses. But despite the documented value of preparing, most firms fail to do so.

"Since not all firms located in disaster prone areas prepare for disasters, what are the antecedents to disaster preparation? To answer this question," write the authors, "we looked at several factors that are likely to affect whether or not businesses will prepare. The first factor is organizational experience with disaster, which can be a transformational and powerful motivator for change when managers see the value of disaster preparation and planning."

The mechanisms driving the relationship between experience and preparedness are multifaceted. Managers may fail to learn from past experiences if they do not consider a recently experienced disaster as representative of future events. Even when managers learn from experience and see preparation as valuable, they may lack the organizational influence and find that they are unable to leverage learning to inform decision-making.

Aside from experience, strategic decisions around disaster preparation are likely to be affected by managers' subjective judgments and/or knowledge about disaster risks. Depending upon the nature of their experience, managers may either over- or under-estimate disaster risk and thus over or under prepare.

Research has also shown that willingness to learn from other organizations about how to manage natural disaster risk is also important. External sources of information provide different perspectives and may help organizations to avoid internal biases in decision making.

"Another set of factors that are presumed to affect preparation are the characteristics of disasters, including their type, frequency, and impact," write the researchers. "Historical records and scientific data indicate whether or not a given location is subject to natural disasters and, if so, of what type.

"Natural scientists examining climate change trends are raising concerns, however, that past experiences may not be predictive of the future. In certain geographic areas (e.g., Houston, Texas), the frequency of major disasters may be increasing substantially, deviating significantly from the past."

In conducting two studies -- an international survey in 18 disaster-prone countries and a U.S. survey in New York City and Miami - Oetzel and Oh found that managers are more likely to prepare when their companies experienced prior disasters. The likelihood of preparedness is even higher when companies work with and learn from other organizations and stakeholders.

"Managers operating in locations characterized by high impact, low frequency disasters are more willing to learn from others," they wrote. "In contrast, managers in areas characterized by low impact, high frequency disasters, are more likely to prepare alone. Since effective disaster preparation typically entails working with, and learning from others, those companies that choose a go-it-alone strategy may misjudge disaster risk."

The SMJ is published by the Strategic Management Society (SMS), comprised of 3,000 academics, business practitioners, and consultants from 80 countries, focuses on the development and dissemination of insights on the strategic management process, as well as on fostering contacts and interchanges around the world.

The human body is constantly exposed to various environmental actors, from viruses to bacteria to fungi, but most of these microbial organisms provoke little or no response from our skin, which is charged with monitoring and protecting from external dangers.

Until now, researchers weren't quite sure how that happened -- and why our skin wasn't constantly alarmed and inflamed.

In a study published May 21, 2021 in Science Immunology, scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine identify and describe two enzymes responsible for protecting our skin and body's overall health from countless potential microbial intruders. These enzymes, called histone deacetylases (HDACs), inhibit the body's inflammatory response in the skin.

"We have figured out why we tolerate certain microbes living on our skin, while the same bacteria would make us very sick if exposed elsewhere in the body," said Richard Gallo, MD, PhD, Ima Gigli Distinguished Professor of Dermatology and chair of the Department of Dermatology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "In our research, we identified enzymes that act on the chromosome of specific skin cells that provide immune tolerance by the skin.

"Without these enzymes telling our cells to ignore certain bacteria, we'd have a constant rash on our skin."

Gallo and colleagues say the potential mechanism for how the environment can interact and alter cell function is through epigenetic control of gene expression. Within the skin cells, proteins called toll-like receptors (TLRs) allow the cells to sense their surroundings and potential dangers.

In most organs, TLRs act as a warning system that triggers an inflammatory response to threats. But in skin cells, the two identified HDAC enzymes, HDAC8 and HDAC9, inhibit the inflammatory response.

"This is one of the first demonstrations of how the microbiome can interact with epigenetic factors in the skin and modulate the skin's behavior through the inflammatory response," said George Sen, PhD, associate professor of dermatology and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "Whatever environment we're facing can change a person's specific response to it. Since this epigenetic change is reversible, unlike alterations to our DNA, we can potentially control our skin inflammatory response through targeting of these enzymes."

The research was initially conducted in mouse models in which HDAC8 and HDAC9 had been genetically knocked out. As a result, the mice's skin could not tolerate microbial or viral exposures, resulting in a heightened immune reaction. The team then reproduced the findings with human cells in a culture dish.

Gallo said the work could change how doctors treat certain types of skin inflammation or other dermatologic conditions.

"This is a completely new way to think about skin immune regulation," said Gallo. "Through alterations in HDAC activity, we've provided a possible way to explore and quiet down unnecessary inflammation by working with skin cells themselves. In the future, drugs designed to turn these enzymes on or off could help treat skin disease as an alternative to antibiotics."

For decades scientists have been puzzled by the formation of rare hyper-enriched gold deposits in places like Ballarat in Australia, Serra Palada in Brazil, and Red Lake in Ontario. While such deposits typically form over tens to hundreds of thousands of years, these "ultrahigh-grade" deposits can form in years, month, or even days. So how do they form so quickly?

Studying examples of these deposits from the Brucejack Mine in northwestern British Columbia, McGill Professor Anthony Williams-Jones of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and PhD student Duncan McLeish have discovered that these gold deposits form much like soured milk. When milk goes sour, the butterfat particles clump together to form a jelly.

Q&A with Anthony Williams-Jones and Duncan McLeish

What did you set to find out?

Scientists have long known that gold deposits form when hot water flows through rocks, dissolving minute amounts of gold and concentrating it in cracks in the Earth's crust at levels invisible to the naked eye. In rare cases, the cracks are transformed into veins of solid gold centimetres thick. But how do fluids with such low concentrations of gold produce rare ultrahigh-grade gold deposits?

What did you discover?

Our findings solve the paradox of "ultrahigh-grade" or "bonanza" gold formation, which has frustrated scientists for over a century. The paradox of bonanza gold deposits is that there is simply not enough time for them to form, they should not exist, but they do!

As the concentration of gold in hot water is very low, very large volumes of fluid need to flow through the cracks in the Earth's crust to deposit mineable concentrations of gold. This process would require millions of years to fill a single centimetre wide crack with gold, whereas these cracks typically seal in days, months, or years.

Using a powerful electron microscope to observe particles in thin slices of rock, we discovered that bonanza gold deposits form from a fluid much like milk. Milk consists of little butterfat particles that are suspended in water because they repel each other, like the negative ends of two magnets. When the milk goes sour the surface charge breaks down, and the particles clump together to form a jelly. It is the same with gold colloids, which consist of charged nanoparticles of gold which repel each other, but when the charge breaks down, they "flocculate" to form a jelly. This jelly gets trapped in the cracks of rocks to form the ultra high-grade gold veins. The gold colloids are distinctively red and can be made in the lab, whereas solutions of dissolved gold are colourless.

Why are the results important?

We produced the first evidence for gold colloid formation and flocculation in nature and the first images of small veins of gold colloid particles and their flocculated aggregates at the nano-scale. These images document the process by which the cracks are filled with gold and, scaled up through the integration of millions of these small veins, reveal how bonanza veins are formed.

How will this discovery impact the mining industry?

Our results are important to the mineral exploration and mining industry in Canada and around the world. Now that we finally understand how bonanza deposits form, mineral exploration companies will be able to use the results of our work to better explore for bonanza deposits as well as gold deposits. Genetic studies of Canada's most fertile metallogenic districts - such as the one we have just completed at Brucejack - are required to improve our understanding of how world-class mineral deposits form, and thereby develop more effective strategies for their exploration.

What's next for this research?

We suspect that the colloidal processes that operated at Brucejack and other bonanza gold systems may also have operated to form more typical gold deposits. The challenge will be to find suitable material to test this hypothesis. At Brucejack, the next step will be to better understand the reasons why colloid formation and flocculation occurred on the scale observed and reconstruct the geological environment of these processes. We have also been preparing gold colloids in the lab in an attempt to simulate what we discovered at Brucejack.

Business shutdowns reduce COVID-19 deaths, though with rapidly diminishing returns, with study of Italian lockdowns estimating they saved over 9,400 lives in under a month.

Neurotic personalities found the pandemic most traumatic, while agreeable and conscientious personalities offered protection from the pandemic's negative impacts.

New York, NY (May 21, 2021) --Women who were highly exposed to ultra-fine particles in air pollution during their pregnancy were more likely to have children who developed asthma, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in May. This is the first time asthma has been linked with prenatal exposure to this type of air pollution, which is named for its tiny size and which is not regulated or routinely monitored in the United States.

Slightly more than 18 percent of the children born to these mothers developed asthma in their preschool years, compared to 7 percent of children overall in the United States identified as having asthma by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other types of pollutants are routinely monitored and regulated to reduce potential health effects, such as larger-size particulate pollution and gaseous pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. These have been associated with asthma risk in children in prior research. This study controlled for exposure to these other types of pollution and exposure to pollutants following birth, and it still found an elevated risk of asthma in children born to mothers with heightened exposure to ultra-fine particles in pregnancy.

Ultra-fine particulate pollution--particles that are smaller than the width of an average human hair--can get deeper into our lungs and pass into our circulation to cause various health effects. Because of this, the researchers said their toxic effects may actually be greater.

"One reason ultra-fine particulates are not routinely monitored is that there have been a number of unique challenges to measuring them accurately. Fortunately, recent methods have been developed to provide such exposure data which allowed us to conduct this study," said lead author Rosalind Wright, MD, MPH, Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in Children's Health Research, Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Co-director of the Institute for Exposomic Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

This study included 376 mothers and their children, most of them Black or Latinx, who live in the Boston metropolitan area and were already being followed to assess their health. Mount Sinai researchers partnered with a group of scientists at Tufts University in the Boston area who had developed a way to provide valid daily estimations of ultra-fine particulate exposure which could be linked to the area of the mothers' and children's homes. Many of these women were more likely to live near major roadways with higher traffic density where exposure to these tiny particles tends to be higher.

The researchers followed up with the mothers to find out whether the children were diagnosed with asthma. Most of the diagnoses of asthma occurred just after three years of age.

Pollution's effect in utero can alter lung development and respiratory health. This can lead to pediatric disorders like asthma. How this happens is not completely understood but pollution can alter certain bodily regulatory systems like neuroendocrine and immune function that have been linked with asthma in other studies.

While both boys and girls were affected by prenatal ultrafine particle exposure, this study found that girl babies were more sensitive to ultra-fine particle pollution's effects on asthma risk when exposed in late pregnancy. The reason for this phenomenon is also unclear, but studies show it is possibly due to endocrine-disrupting effects of the pollution exposure.

"This research is an important early step in building the evidence base that can lead to better monitoring of exposure to ultrafine particles in the United States and ultimately to regulation. As we advance methods for measuring these tiny particles, we hope for replication of these findings, both within different geographic areas across the United States as well as globally. Childhood asthma remains a global epidemic that is likely to grow with the anticipated rise in particulate air pollution exposures due to effects of climate change," Dr. Wright said.

More than 100 kg of highly toxic uranium (U) and plutonium (Pu) was dispersed in the form of tiny 'hot' radioactive particles after the British detonated nine atomic bombs in remote areas of South Australia, including Maralinga.

Scientists say that these radioactive particles persist in soils to this day, more than 60 years after the detonations. Previously, we had limited understanding of how Pu was released from these "hot" particles into the environment for uptake by wildlife around Maralinga.

But now, a new study published today in Scientific Reports and led by Monash University researchers warns that the particles are actually more complex and varied than previously thought. This means that the processes which slowly release Pu into the environment are also much more complex and varied.

"The British detonated nine nuclear bombs and conducted hundreds of nuclear tests in outback South Australia between 1953 and 1963," said lead study author Megan Cook, a PhD student from the Monash University School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment. "The resulting radioactive contamination and cover-up continues to haunt us."

"The results of our study profoundly changes our understanding of the nature of hot particles at Maralinga - despite the fact that those were some of the best studied particles anywhere in the world," said study co-author Associate Professor Vanessa Wong.

The research team used synchrotron radiation at the Diamond Light Source near Oxford, UK to decipher the physical and chemical make-up of the particles.

At Monash University they dissected some of the hot particles using a nano-sized ion beam, and further characterised the complex make-up of these particles down to the nano-size in exquisite details.

The researchers demonstrated that the complexity of the hot particles arose from the cooling of polymetallic melts from thousands of degrees Celsius in the explosion cloud during their formation.

"We found that the particles contained low-valence plutonium-uranium-carbon compounds that are typically highly reactive, yet, had been stabilised in the hot-particle matrix for nearly 60 years," said corresponding author Dr Barbara Etschmann.

Between 1950 and 1988 alone there were more than 230 recorded nuclear weapon accidents, including at least 10 with documented release of radioactive particles into the environment. The risks of such incidents are only increasing as international treaties such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty were cancelled.

"Understanding the fate of hot particles in the unique setting of the Australian outback is critical for securing Australia in case of nuclear incidents in the region, and returning all the native land affected by the British tests to the traditional Anangu owners of the Maralinga Tjarutja lands," said study co-author Professor Joël Brugger.

Scientists from Hokkaido University have discovered a novel defensive response to SARS-CoV-2 that involves the viral pattern recognition receptor RIG-I. Upregulating expression of this protein could strengthen the immune response in COPD patients.

In the 18 months since the first report of COVID-19 and the spread of the pandemic, there has been a large amount of research into understanding it and developing menas to treat it. COVID-19 does not affect all infected individuals equally. Many individuals are asymptomatic; of those who are symptomatic, the large majority have mild symptoms, and only a small number have severe cases. The reasons for this are not fully understood and are an important area of ongoing research.

A team of scientists from Hokkaido University, led by Professor Akinori Takaoka of the Institute for Genetic Medicine, has shown that RIG-I, a biological molecule that detects RNA viruses, restrains SARS-CoV-2 replication in human lung cells. Their findings, which could help predict COVID-19 patient outcomes, were published in the journal Nature Immunology.

To date, over 162 million people have been affected by COVID-19. About 40% - 45% of these individuals are asymptomatic; as for the rest, around 35% - 40% experienced a mild form of the disease, while the remaining 19% were affected by symptoms that were severe enough to warrant hospitalisation or were fatal, which are usually associated with comorbidities and risk factors such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This range of symptoms indicates that there are vast differences between individual responses to the virus.

Microbial pathogens in our body are detected by proteins called pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which also trigger immune responses to these pathogens. Viral infections are detected by a subset of PRRs; the scientists focused their attention on the protein RIG-I, which belongs to this subset. RIG-I is known to be critical for the detection and response to RNA viruses such as the influenza virus.

In experiments carried out in cell culture lines, the scientists found that there was little innate immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in pulmonary cells, suggesting the signaling pathway leading to immune response was aborted. Nevertheless, viral replication was suppressed. The scientists investigated the role of RIG-I and found that its deficiency caused increased viral replication. Further experiments confirmed that the suppression of viral replication was dependent on RIG-I.

A single previous study has shown that RIG-I expression is downregulated in pulmonary cells of COPD patients. Using primary pulmonary cells from two COPD patients, the scientists showed that this downregulation of RIG-I resulted in the detection of viral replication after 5 days . They also demonstrated that treatment of these COPD cells with all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), which upregulates the expression of RIG-I, significantly reduced viral titres in the cells. Furthermore, using RIG-I mutants, they were able to elucidate the mechanisms by which RIG-I suppressed SARS-CoV-2 replication: The helicase domain, a structural element in RIG-I, interacts with the viral RNA, blocking a virus-derived enzyme responsible for replication.

This study has demonstrated a unique viral recognition mode of RIG-I, termed the RIG-I-mediated signaling-abortive anti-SARS-CoV-2 defense mechanism. It has also indicated that RIG-I expression levels are one of the potential parameters for the prediction of COVID-19 patient outcomes. Further work must be done to uncover factors or conditions that modulate RIG-I expression levels, and may lead to new strategies to control SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The issue of concern was that the Escherichia coli (E. coli) genome, consisting of 4.6 million base pairs of a single circular DNA, is too large to manipulate following the extraction and transfer to other bacteria.

In the present study, a group of Rikkyo University researchers led by Assistant Professor Takahito Mukai and Professor Masayuki Su'etsugu has succeeded in splitting the E.coli genome into tripartite-genome of 1 million base pairs per genome (split-genome) using the smallest E. coli genome strain established so far. In addition, they successfully extracted the split-genome from bacteria and installed it in other E. coli.

It is a major breakthrough that E. coli could stably proliferate even after the bacterial genome was split into tripartite-genome. Going forward, it is imperative to clarify how the replication and distribution of the tripartite-genome are controlled. Also, this research group has been developing the technology for synthesizing gigantic DNA without using cells (cell-free) and reported a cell-free technique for amplifying 1 million base pairs of circular DNA. In the future, the installation of cell-free synthesized split genomes in E. coli is expected to lead to the creation of artificial E. coli with designed valuable functions, such as material production.

This achievement is expected to lead to the clarification of the mechanism of genome replication/segregation and also to the application of tools in synthetic biology to convert the genome, the blueprint of life, so that we can create functionally designed life. The results in the present study have been published in the online version as a breakthrough paper in Nucleic Acids Research on April 28, 2021.

"Abominable mystery" -- the early origin and evolution of angiosperms (flowering plants) was such described by Charles Robert Darwin. So far, we still have not completely solved the problem, and do not know how the earth evolved into such a colorful and blooming world.

Recently, a new angiosperm was reported based on numerous exceptionally well-preserved fossils from the Lower Cretaceous of Jiuquan Basin, West Gansu Province, Northwest China. The new discovery is the earliest and unique record of early angiosperms in Northwest China. The study has been accepted for publication in the journal National Science Review and is currently available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab084.

The new angiosperm was named Gansufructus saligna, and all the fossil specimens were collected from the grayish green mudstone of the upper Zhonggou Formation in Hanxia Section. Remarkably, the plant fossils are almost completely preserved with branched axes, attached leaves and paniculate infructescences, providing valuable materials for the morphological studies of early angiosperms.

Gansufructus saligna is erect and graceful, three to four times branched, with alternate arranged axes and leaves. Leaves are simple and willow-shaped, leaf margin is entire, leaf apex is acute and leaf base is decurrent and estipulate with short petiole. Leaf venation is poorly organized with low-rank venations, primary vein prominent, secondary veins pinnate, and tertiary veins reticulate. The infructescences are loose panicles bearing fruits in different stages of maturity. Each fruit is formed from four basally syncarpous carpels borne in a whorle arrangement. And each carpel subtended by a small and persistent tepal at the base and contains three to five anatropous seeds.

Gansufructus saligna is supposed to be a small, slender plant with flexible stems, delicate leaves and paniculate infructescences, and is suggested to be a terrestrial herbaceous eudicot based on the morphology of both vegetative and reproductive organs. It probably grew along the lakeshores, where the environment is low-lying and humid. Moreover, the current fossil specimens together with other fossil records of early angiosperms from the Jehol biota and other regions, indicate that the presence of diverse early eudicots of low stature colonizing areas during the middle-late Early Cretaceous. This study is of great significance in exploring the origin, evolution, diversity and habitat preferences of early eudicots.

Sloughed off skin and bodily fluids are things most people would prefer to avoid.

But for marine biologist like Cheryl Lewis Ames, Associate Professor of Applied Marine Biology in the Graduate School of Agricultural Science at Tohoku University (Japan), such remnants of life have become a magical key to detecting the unseen.

Any organism living in the ocean will inevitably leave behind traces containing their DNA - environmental DNA (eDNA) - detectable in water samples collected from the ocean

Only recently has molecular sequencing technology become advanced enough to conduct eDNA analysis in the field to identify species that may be endangered, invasive or dangerous, and could otherwise go unnoticed.

Ames chose sampling sites in the Florida Keys (USA) where species of upside-jellyfish Cassiopea occur to test out their newly developed Fieldable eDNA sequencing kit - called FeDS.

Using eDNA for multiple species identification is a multistep process known as metabarcoding. Since the mixed DNA template must first be amplified using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), metabarcoding experiments in the field have only recently been possible thanks to battery-operated thermocyclers and other portable devices.

Determining the identity of a species from small bits of DNA filtered from seawater requires the use of a Next Generation Sequencer (NGS), a machine that traditionally takes up the whole desktop counter in a laboratory and requires an electrical outlet. A novelty of the portable technology used in this study - Nanopore MinION -- is that as pieces of DNA pass through a microscopic pore in the device, differences in electrical current determine the unique code of each DNA strand.

Instead of the typically large sequencing machines used to complete such a task, Ames and her team were testing a Nanopore system the size of a cellphone, powered by a laptop computer. A drop of the prepared eDNA mixture added to the portable sequencer reveals on the screen the genetic code of all the DNA passing through it in real-time.

Then, DNA sequences are searched against a huge database of sequences to determined which species are represented by the eDNA collected onsite that day. Upgraded "offline" versions of the necessary software and pre-downloading of the reference database to the laptop meant that the whole metabarcoding process could be conducted beyond the walls of a laboratory, away from internet connection.

Ames and the team detected 53 species of jellyfish including Cassiopea, the upside-down jellyfish, two venomous species of box jellyfish, many species with hydroid forms, and two species of stalked jellyfish which were previously unreported in the Florida Keys, indicating that the process could reveal species that would otherwise go unnoticed.

"My hope is that one day this system is used for sting mitigation, almost like a weather forecast app that also reports 'jellyfish stings risk' at certain beaches," said Ames.

Ames has spent much of her time conducting research in areas where jelly stings are common, and warnings about whether venomous jellies are in the area could prevent countless injuries to swimmers. Besides practical purposes in fisheries and conservation, the fact that a sample of ocean water can reveal the organisms in the vicinity is truly a marvel.

Researchers at the University of Zurich show how climate mitigation scenarios can be improved by taking into account that the financial system can play both an enabling or a hampering role on the path to a sustainable economic system.

To limit global warming, a profound transformation of energy, production and consumption in our economies is required. The scale of the transformation means that the financial system must have a proactive role. New green investments are needed, as well as a reallocation of capital from high to low-carbon activities. The Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), of which the Swiss National Bank is a member, was recently established with the aim of better understanding and managing the financial risks of climate change. The climate mitigation scenarios developed by the NGFS in collaboration with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations (IPCC) have been a major step in providing financial actors with forward looking views on how low and high-carbon economic activities could evolve over the next decades. However, at this stage, these scenarios are based on large-scale Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that do not take into account the dynamic nature of the financial system and its actors. "We need to consider how the risk perception of the financial system from the scenarios can change the scenarios themselves," explains Stefano Battiston, professor at the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich.

Expansion of climate mitigation models

In their paper published in Science, Battiston and an international research group - with two authors being also authors of the upcoming IPPC Assessment Report - present a dynamic approach to complement climate mitigation scenarios. By describing what the world might look like in the coming decades, and being endorsed by financial authorities and large investors, climate mitigation scenarios have the power to change markets' expectations today. But this has an impact on the scenarios. "The economic system could go in the direction of the low-carbon transition, but it could also go the opposite way. It depends on what perception of risk the actors form from the scenarios," Battiston says. If investors find climate policies credible, they will adjust their expectations in a timely manner and reallocate capital to low-carbon investments early and gradually, which enables the transition to a more sustainable economy and a smoother adjustment of prices.

In contrast, investors could find the policies non-credible, delay revising their expectations, and do so later and in a sudden way. In particular, Battiston continues, "if financial actors collectively underestimate the risk of a late and sudden transition, the chance of this scenario materializing increases. This outcome could be a problem for financial stability and would therefore be more costly to society. It is thus also a concern for central banks and financial authorities. And it could lead to insufficient reallocation of capital into low-carbon investments. This is why it is so important."

Evaluate climate-financial risk and look at it dynamically

The authors of the study combine the current IAMs with a climate-financial risk assessment (CFR) in a circular way. In doing so, they show how the perception of the financial system and the timing of the introduction of climate policy measures interact in the low-carbon transition. The feedback loop map possible changes in investors' expectations and thus lead to more coeherent scenarios to assess climate-related financial risk.

The findings from the study have practical implications for the implementation of fiscal policy measures, and financial policy and regulation. They shed also new light on the discussion around the principle of "double materiality", which involves taking into account financial as well as non-financial opportunities and risks for financial firms.

Just half a degree Celsius less warming would save economic losses of Chinese railway infrastructure by approximately $0.63 billion per year, according to a new paper published by a collaborative research team based in Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

The study, which appears in Transportation Research Part D recently, found that the rainfall-induced disaster risk of railway infrastructure has increased with increasing extreme rainfall days during the decades 1981-2016. Limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5oC instead of 2.0oC would significantly reduce the disaster susceptibility of Chinese railway infrastructure to extreme precipitation, according to LIU Kai, the first author of the paper.

LIU is an associated professor at the Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Beijing Normal University.

"Flood disaster can inundate the railway track, cause failures of the subgrade and track structure. Based on our statistics, a total of 975 historical railway rainfall-induced disasters was reported from 1981 to 2016. The rainfall-induced debris flow had the largest contribution, about 42%, followed by the rainfall-induced flood, which is about 26%, rainfall-induced landslide--about 18%-- and rainfall-induced compound hazards, about 14%,"Liu said.

The team used a random forest (RF) machine-learning model to calculate the disaster susceptibility and quantify the relationship between susceptibility and precipitation change.

"We found a remarkable increase in the disaster susceptibility of railway lines along the Yangtze River valley, which is the economic center of China with the largest population density." Said LIU, "The disaster susceptibility has increased by 30% during the period 1999-2016 relative to that in 1981-1998 ."

Liu and her team, collaborated with Dr. Tianjun Zhou, professor of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, combined CMIP5, an archive of comprehensive climate models, with socio-economic projections to investigate future climate changes and the accompanying impacts. The researchers specifically examined extreme precipitation changes under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios [RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios represent a possible range of radiative forcing values in the year 2100 relative to pre-industrial values (+4.5 and +8.5 W/m2, respectively)] over three time periods including near term (2020-2039), mid-term (2040-2059), and long term (2080-2099).

The scientists found that 32.0% and 45.0% of land area will be exposed to an increase in the annual average extreme rainfall days of more than 0.5 days by 2050 and 2090 under RCP8.5. The proportion of railway infrastructure with high disaster susceptibility is projected to increase from the baseline period level (1981-1998) of 1.1% to 4.5% by 2050 and up to 12% by 2090 under RCP8.5.

"We extended the projection to the changes in the proportions of railway lines at high risk for specific levels of 1.5oC, 2oC, and 3oC global warming and measure the benefits of mitigation by calculating the avoided impact. The avoided impact, or railway exposure to high disaster susceptibility, would be 90% and 391% if warming was limited to 1.5oC compared to the impact for 2oC and 3oC warming under RCP8.5, respectively." said Prof. Zhou, the co-author of the study. Under RCP8.5, with a global average temperature increase of 1.5oC, the direct damage and repair cost could increase to an annual amount of $1.47 billion. With 2oC warming, the damage doubles, and the loss grows to $2.10 billion.

"This study quantifies the influence of the climate change with its associated rainfall change on railway infrastructures in China. Chinese railway is still under large expansion. The mileage of China's railway lines will reach about 200,000 km in 2035 compared to about 140,000 km in 2020. The design of newly planned high-speed railway lines should incorporate climate change effects. How to reduce the disaster susceptibility of the world's most densely populated railway network should be planned to limit the adverse impact," Liu said.

Ending our dependence on coal is essential for effective climate protection. Nevertheless, efforts to phase out coal trigger anxiety and resistance, particularly in mining regions. The governments of both Canada and Germany have involved various stakeholders to develop recommendations aimed at delivering just transitions and guiding structural change. In a new study, researchers at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) compare the stakeholder commissions convened by the two countries, drawing on expert interviews with their members, and examine how governments use commissions to legitimize their transition policies.

In the study, the researchers identify similarities and differences in the broader contexts of the respective transitions. Coal-fired power generation plays a far more significant role in Germany than in Canada, for example. Nevertheless, there are many similarities; in both Canada and Germany, the coal sector is largely concentrated in rural, economically disadvantaged regions. As a result, concerns about job losses have hampered efforts to phase out coal-fired energy generation sooner rather than later. The federal systems of the two countries are not always conducive to a rapid energy transition: the Canadian provinces and Germany's Länder can put the brakes on national ambitions.

Under these circumstances, coming up with a roadmap for the coal phase-out was no easy task. "The national governments of Canada and Germany attempted to legitimize their respective decisions to phase out coal through the strategic involvement of key stakeholders and potential veto players. This was an attempt to strike a balance between different interests," says lead author Konrad Gürtler. The Canadian government set up a task force with a rather limited mandate that focused on achieving a local just transition for workers and communities. Germany's Coal Commission, on the other hand, had to navigate complex expectations around the timing and pathway for the coal phase-out, its impact on the energy transition, and structural change in the affected regions.

In focus: Climate justice, just transitions, and energy justice

In both cases, the governments pursued their legitimation strategies in a two-stage process, explains Gürtler: "Governments involved stakeholders, who in turn had to respond to the expectations of various societal groups. In the process, negotiations engaged with very different ideas of justice: Climate justice, fair transitions, energy justice." The Canadian task force had a strong focus on affected regions and on identifying and representing the needs of communities; in the case of the German Coal Commission, a wide range of stakeholders - from industry associations and trade unions to scientists and environmental activists - brought their concerns to the table.

In early 2019 the Canadian task force presented the government with recommendations for a plan of action, which the government intends to implement within the framework of its proposed "Just Transition Act". This legislation has not yet been passed, however. In Germany, the Coal Commission negotiated a minimal compromise, which was only partially adopted by the federal government. The implementation of this compromise has since been questioned by former members of the Coal Commission and could be overtaken by new developments, such as the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court on the Climate Protection Act.