Culture

Reno, Nev. (Sept. 22, 2020) - For people who suffer from asthma, wildfire smoke is more hazardous than other types of air pollution, according to a new study from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), the Renown Institute for Health Innovation (Renown IHI) and the Washoe County Health District (WCHD).

The study, which published last month in the journal Environmental Health, examined associations between airborne particulate matter (PM) from sources such as wildfire, transportation and industry, and medical visits for asthma at Renown Health's emergency departments and urgent care centers in Reno, Nev. during the six-year period from 2013-2018.

According to their results, on days when wildfire smoke was present, elevated levels of PM2.5 (fine particles of 0-2.5 micrometers in size, about 30 times smaller than a human hair) led to a 6.1 percent increase in medical visits for asthma patients when compared with days of similar pollution levels that came from non-wildfire sources.

"Since we found significantly stronger associations of PM2.5 with asthma visits when wildfire smoke was present, our results suggest that wildfire PM is more hazardous than non-wildfire PM for patients with asthma," said lead author Daniel Kiser, M.S., Data Scientist with DRI and Renown IHI.

An increase in the harmfulness of PM from wildfires compared to PM from other sources may be attributable to differences in the chemical composition of PM or changes in human behavior, since people are more likely to be outdoors in the summer, when wildfires typically occur. The research team notes that caution should be used when applying these results to other areas of the country, such as the Southeastern United States, since the harmfulness of wildfire smoke may be affected by the type of fuel that is being burned. Other factors, such as the distance that wildfire smoke was carried by the wind and burn temperature, may also play a role in the harmfulness of wildfire smoke.

The researchers found that air quality in the Reno area was affected by wildfire smoke on a total of 188?days during the study period. A total of 18,836 asthma-related emergency room and urgent care visits occurred over the same five-year period of time, indicating that the influences of wildfire smoke and other types of air pollution on this medical condition are important to understand.

"In places like Reno, where wildfire events occur regularly during parts of the year and are expected to become more frequent in the future, an accurate understanding of the impacts of wildfire smoke on population health is critical," Kiser said.

The small blood vessels in muscles of women after menopause are less able to grow compared to young women, according to new research published today in the Journal of Physiology. This means exercising before menopause is all the more important for women in order to develop blood vessels in muscles, and thus the ability to develop muscle strength.

Recent studies have shown that there are some substantial differences in the way the blood vessels, which influences susceptibility to conditions like heart disease and stroke, are affected by aging and physical activity between women and men, a difference which to a large extent is related to the female sex-hormone, estrogen.

Estrogen is protective of the heart and blood vessels in women for about half of their lives, but, at menopause, there is an abrupt permanent loss of estrogen, leading to a decline in the health of our blood vessels.

In this study, the researchers at the University of Copenhagen examined the smallest of blood vessels in muscle, called capillaries. The number of capillaries in skeletal muscle can change a lot and is mainly affected by how much the muscle is used, such as during exercise. This is the first study to isolate and examine cells from skeletal muscle samples of young and old women.

Capillaries in skeletal muscle (as opposed to heart muscle) are very important for skeletal muscle function, physical capacity and health as it is here that oxygen and nutrients, such as sugar and fats, are taken up into muscle when needed. It is known that loss of capillaries in muscle can affect insulin sensitivity and thereby the development of Type II diabetes.

The study also found that, when the aged women completed a period of aerobic exercise training by cycling, they did not achieve an increase in the number of capillaries in muscle, in contrast to what has been repeatedly shown in young and older men.

Aging is known to lead to a loss of capillaries in the muscle, an effect which, in men, has been shown to be counteracted by a physically active lifestyle. This new study suggests that women do not attain capillary growth as readily and that an underlying cause may be a flaw in the cells that make up capillaries.

It is important to underline that both men and women have a vast benefit from being physically active throughout life, regardless of age, but the current study supports the idea that women may benefit from being physically active before menopause, while they still have estrogen, so that they have a good physical starting point as they get older.

The researchers studied older women (over 60 years old) and young (around 25 years old) ones. The women underwent a series of physical tests, and the researchers obtained small samples from their thigh muscles.

The muscle biopsies were used to isolate blood vessel cells and muscle cells for further detailed study in the lab. The older women then also conducted 8 weeks of cycling training, where they trained three times per week at moderate to high intensity.

The women were tested for fitness and several other parameters before and after the training. After the training period samples were again obtained from the thigh muscle and used for analysis of capillary number and specific proteins.

Line Nørregaard Olsen, first author on the study said:

"Another aspect that is worth highlighting is that many people doubted that the older women could handle such intensive training. However, the women, who conducted the cycle exercise training (spinning training) 3 times per week for 8 weeks, with heart rates over 80% of maximal heart rate for more than 60% of the time, were excited and handled the training without problems. This underlines that the popular view of how hard women of that age can train should be revised."

A systematic review of evidence being presented at this week's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease shows that air around patients with COVID-19, as well as patients toilets, and staff and public areas in hospitals are all show significant levels of contamination with SARS-CoV-2. The study is by Dr Gabriel Birgand, University Hosptial Centre Nantes, France, and colleagues.

Controversy remains worldwide regarding the transmission mode of SARS-CoV-2 virus in hospital settings. In this study, the authors reviewed the current evidence on the air contamination with SARS-CoV-2 in hospital settings, the viral load and the particle size, and the factors associated to the contamination.

The authors searched the MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science databases for original English-language articles detailing COVID-19 air contamination in hospital settings between 1 December 2019 and 21 July 2020.

The positivity rate of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA and culture were described and compared according to the setting, clinical context, air ventilation system, and distance from patient. The SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations in copies per m3 of air were pooled and their distribution were described by hospital areas.

Among 2,034 records identified, 17 articles were deemed eligible and included in the review. Overall, 27.5% (68/247) of air sampled from close patients' environment were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, with no difference between settings (ICU: 27/97, 27.8%; non-ICU: 41/150, 27.3%). Just 1/67 (1.5%) of samples in the air less than 1 metre from the patient tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and just 4/67 (6%) of samples 1-5 metres away. (see results in abstract and poster)

In other areas, the positivity rate was 23.8% (5/21) in patient toilets, 9.5% (20/221) in clinical areas, 12.4% (15/121) in staff areas, and 34.1% (14/41) in public areas (see table in abstract). A total of 78 viral cultures were performed, and 3 (4%) were positives (meaning the virus was viable and capable of reproduction), all from close patients' environment (3/39, 7.7%) in non-ICU settings.

The median SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations were found to be 10 times higher in patient toilets than in the patients' rooms.

The authors conclude: "In hospital, the air near COVID-19 patients is frequently contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 RNA, with however, poor proof of its infectivity - meaning we detected the viral RNA, but when trying to culture (grow) these samples, there was little evidence of viable virus. High viral loads found in toilet/bathrooms, staff and public hallways means these areas require strong compliance with cleaning measures and personal protective equipment."

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Squeezed by changing ocean conditions that limit their food options and the long-term loss of old forest needed for nesting, marbled murrelets would benefit most from conservation efforts that take both ocean and forest into account, new research by Oregon State University shows.

Published in Conservation Letters, the findings are based on two decades of murrelet surveys at nearly 20,000 sites in the Oregon Coast Range and illustrate how the elusive seabird is at risk of its habitat gradually shrinking to the point of local extinctions or worse.

"It turns out that the same ocean conditions that influence salmon returns, including the forage fish murrelets need to successfully nest, had a huge influence on the likelihood that murrelets will come inland to breed," said lead author Matt Betts, a researcher in the Oregon State College of Forestry and the director of the OSU-based Forest Biodiversity Research Network. "Given that these prey items tend to be in lower abundance when ocean temperatures are high, changing climate conditions could reduce prey availability as well as the tendency for murrelets to nest in the future."

Marbled murrelets are closely related to puffins and murres, but unlike those birds, murrelets raise their young as much as 60 miles inland in mature forests. Disturbance in either the ocean or forest environment has the potential to impact murrelet populations.

"There aren't many species like it," said study co-author and project director Jim Rivers, also a faculty member in the College of Forestry. "There's no other bird that feeds in the ocean and commutes such long distances inland to nest sites. That's really unusual."

The dove-sized bird spends most of its time in coastal waters eating krill, other invertebrates and forage fish such as herring, anchovies, smelt and capelin. Murrelets can only produce one offspring per year, if the nest is successful, and their young require forage fish for proper growth and development.

Murrelets generally nest in solitude, although multiple nests sometimes occur within a small area. They typically lay their single egg high in a tree on a horizontal limb at least 4 inches in diameter, with Steller's jays, crows and ravens the main predators of murrelet nests.

"The end goal for these birds is to be very secretive and quiet so predators don't find their nests and they can produce young,' said Rivers.

Along the West Coast, marbled murrelets are found regularly from Santa Cruz, California, north to the Aleutian Islands. Their populations have been declining by about 4% a year in Washington, Oregon and California, and the species is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in those states.

"Early on in our work, we noticed strong fluctuations in the numbers of marbled murrelets coming inland to nest, so this study was about trying to get to the bottom of those highs and lows," Betts said. "We found the first evidence that ocean conditions combined with old-forest nesting habitat influence the murrelets' long-term occupancy dynamics. In particular, we learned ocean conditions are a key driver of those dynamics."

The finding has potential key implications for forest policy in Oregon, where any state-owned site that goes two consecutive years without murrelet detection is classified as unoccupied and thus available for timber harvest.

"Our data show that below-average ocean conditions might last for more than two successive years," Rivers said. "That means there could be a scenario where sites on state lands that are suitable for breeding go unused for more than two years which, under current guidelines, would let them be considered available for harvest. Thus, murrelets might be missing from inland sites not because the forest is unsuitable for nesting, but because they have inadequate forage fish during the summer breeding season. That means it is critical that we consider factors that influence both marine food resources and terrestrial nesting habitat when considering how to recover murrelet populations."

Betts was part of a research collaboration that published a 2019 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that showed that old forest is still declining across the Pacific Northwest 25 years into the Northwest Forest Plan, a 100-year federal road map to protect older forests.

"This is now less due to the saw and more due to fire," he said. "That means that even with strong land conservation measures, climate could not only result in warmer ocean conditions but also greater fire frequency and extent, and therefore more old forest loss."

From toilet paper to industrial chemicals, there's no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive to global supply chains.

But how important are large, multinational companies in maintaining both local and international logistic networks and should governments be so focused on maintaining larger organisations through subsidies and bail-outs over their smaller counterparts?

A new network analysis by researchers from the University of Sydney's School of Project Management and the Centre for Complex Systems within the School of Civil Engineering has found that large, multi-national organisations are not always as crucial to local supply chains, and that it's sometimes the smaller operators that can deliver the hardest logistic shocks to a community when disrupted.

"In the current context where a pandemic is spreading in the world, industry output has already been severely impacted and supply chains have been disrupted. The full effect of this will only become apparent in coming months and years, but it's clear that COVID-19 has already caused 'kinks' in the movement of goods and services around the globe," said lead author Dr Mahendra Piraveenan from the Faculty of Engineering.

"Our study has sought to understand whether types of businesses play more central or local roles, and how shocks might cascade along the chain of firms.

"Governments often provide bail-out packages to large organisations in a bid to save jobs. However, organisations which are central to supply chains should also be supported, even if they are relatively small, because they may be more important to a country's economy.

"For example, there is no point bailing out a car manufacturer if many of the companies that supply the necessary parts go bankrupt - that will mean the car manufacturer cannot get back on its feet regardless."

School of Project Management academic, Dr Petr Matous said that when the operations of some organisations are disrupted by social distancing policies, they may send shocks "downstream" to their clients who cannot access their components, which in turn triggers disruptions to the clients of clients.

"However, how much a failure of one firm affects economies around the world depends on multiple factors, it's not so simple that a disruption of a larger firm would always cause more losses. The structure of the international supply networks plays a role in this," said Dr Matous.

Organisations deliver supply chain shocks like COVID-19 super-spreaders

"Similarly to COVID-19 "super-spreaders", organisations that can facilitate the spread of supply chain shocks are not always the biggest ones nor necessarily the ones with the most supply chain connections," said Dr Matous.

"We identified when supply chain clusters overlap with country boundaries but often they don't and in such cases and industries, fast international contagion of shocks is possible," he said.

The researchers also found that organisations that originate from a certain country, but register themselves elsewhere, are often less central to the supply chain network of the country in which they are registered, yet are more central in the global supply chain network due to their international roots.

For example, a Chinese packaging group that was registered in the United States was found not to be important to their supply chains but was important on a global scale.

Strength in numbers

The study found that structural clustering - known as community structures - of global supply chains are strongly influenced by the industries that organisations belong to.

"We identified industry sectors and countries which tend to form strong communities in terms of supply chains, and are therefore are less vulnerable to fluctuations in the global supply chain network, such as finance, insurance, real estate, transportation, construction, manufacturing," said Dr Piraveenan.

Insight-HXMT, China's first space X-ray astronomical satellite, has discovered a low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) above 200 kiloelectron volts (keV) in a black hole binary, making it the highest energy low-frequency QPO ever found. The scientists also found that the QPO originated from the precession of a relativistic jet (high-speed outward-moving plasma stream) near the event horizon of the black hole. These discoveries have important implications for resolving the long-running debate about the physical origin of low-frequency QPOs.

This work, published online in Nature Astronomy on Sept. 21, was primarily conducted by scientists from the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (Germany), and the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of CAS.

Low-frequency QPOs, discovered in the 1980s, are a common observational timing feature in transient black hole binaries. They are quasi-periodic, but not precisely periodic, modulations in light curves. For more than 30 years, the origin of low-frequency QPOs was not understood. The two most popular models explaining their origin are: 1) the oscillations are caused by the instability of the accretion disk when matter rotates around and finally falls into the black hole; and 2) the quasi-periodic X-ray modulations are produced by the oscillation or precession of the coronal X-ray emitting region close to the black hole.

Before the era of Insight-HXMT, X-ray satellites could only detect and study low-frequency QPOs below 30 keV; thus, it was difficult to test these models. Insight-HXMT, in contrast, has a wide effective energy range of 1-250 keV and has the largest effective area above 30 keV. Therefore, after Insight-HXMT was launched, scientists expected it would detect rich low-frequency QPOs above 30 keV, and thus be able to fully test previous models.

The new black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070, consisting of a black hole of several solar masses and a companion star, started to undergo an outburst on March 11, 2018. It has been one of the brightest X-ray sources in the sky for a long time. Insight-HXMT quickly responded and performed high-cadence pointing observations on this source for several months, accumulating a huge amount of observational data.

Based on these data, the scientists found that the low-frequency QPO of MAXI J1820+070 appeared in a wide energy range and its maximum detection energy exceeded 200 keV, which is almost an order of magnitude higher than previous QPOs observed by other telescopes, indicating that the QPO could not come from the thermal radiation region of the accretion disk. Further studies revealed that the frequency and variability amplitude of the QPO are energy independent and the high-energy QPO precedes the low-energy one.

These results unambiguously conflicted with most currently existing models. Therefore, the scientists proposed that the low-frequency QPO was produced by the precession of a jet near the black hole's event horizon; the precession was probably caused by the frame-dragging effect of general relativity, generated by the rotation of the black hole.

Jets are high-speed matter streams moving at close to the speed of light. Plenty of jets have been observed in black hole binaries and distant quasars hosting supermassive black holes (i.e., those of millions to tens of billions of solar masses) in the radio, optical and X-ray bands. Jets are an important observational characteristic of black hole systems, and are the main means by which black holes influence the surrounding environment via feedback when swallowing nearby matter.

However, these jets are far from black holes. They are usually located at a distance of more than a million times the black hole's event horizon. At such a long distance, the black hole's gravitational force actually has no effect. Therefore, it is unclear where these jets are generated, how far they are from the black holes, how they can escape from the strong gravitational field of the black holes and how they are accelerated to a speed close to the speed of light.

Insight-HXMT's discovery is particularly important because it's the first time a jet has been found only hundreds of kilometers away from a black hole (i.e., several times the black hole's event horizon). As the closest relativistic jet observed in a black hole so far, the finding is of great significance for studying the relativistic effects, dynamical processes and radiation mechanisms.

The Institute of High Energy Physics proposed the Insight-HXMT satellite project and leads the development of its payloads, ground application system and scientific research. The China Academy of Space Technology, Tsinghua University, the National Space Science Center of CAS and Beijing Normal University have also participated in the project and have made important contributions.

New bioarchaeology research from a University of Otago PhD candidate has shown how infectious diseases may have spread 4000 years ago, while highlighting the dangers of letting such diseases run rife.

Yaws - from the same bacteria species responsible for syphilis (Treponema pallidum) - is a childhood disease causing highly infectious skin lesions. It is spread via touch from person to person and, in advanced cases, can leave sufferers with severe bone disfigurement. While it is easily curable in its early stages, the bone disfigurements are irreversible.

The disease has been eradicated from much of the world but is still prevalent in the Western Pacific, affecting some 30,000 people. A previous global attempt to eradicate this tropical disease failed at the last hurdle in the 1950's and a new attempt was curtailed by the COVID-19 outbreak, University of Otago Department of Anatomy PhD candidate Melandri Vlok says.

Ms Vlok's PhD research uses archaeology to shed light on the spread of diseases when different human populations interact for the first time. Her specific interest is in what she calls the "friction zone", where ancient agricultural people met hunter gatherer people.

In 2018 she travelled to Vietnam to study skeletal remains from the Man Bac archaeological site. From the Ninh Bình Province in the north of the country, Man Bac was excavated in 2005 and 2007 and has delivered a treasure trove of information for archaeologists thanks to its role during the transition away from foraging to farming in Mainland Southeast Asia.

Now housed in Hanoi's Institute of Archaeology those remains are well-studied but had not been analysed for evidence of yaws, Ms Vlok says.

Her supervisor at Otago, renowned bioarchaeologist Professor Hallie Buckley, had seen what she thought might be yaws on a photograph of Man Bac remains. Professor Buckley travelled with Ms Vlok and together with a passionate team of experts from Vietnam they confirmed their suspicions, Ms Vlok says. Later, Ms Vlok found a second example of the disease.

This was significant, as the Man Bac site dates back 4000 years. Till now, there was no strong evidence for yaws in prehistoric Asia.

Ms Vlok's research suggests yaws was introduced to hunter-gathers in present-day Vietnam by an agricultural population moving south from modern-day China. These hunter-gathers descended from the first people out of Africa and into Asia who also eventually inhabited New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Australia.

The farmers had been in China for at least 9000 years but it wasn't until around 4000 years ago farming was introduced to Southeast Asia. It is possible this movement of people brought diseases, including yaws, at the same time.

Ms Vlok says the length of time the disease has existed in the region is relevant when addressing how hard it has been to eradicate.

"This matters, because knowing more about this disease and its evolution, it changes how we understand the relationship people have with it. It helps us understand why it's so difficult to eradicate. If it's been with us thousands of years it has probably developed to fit very well with humans."

This year's COVID-19 pandemic has focused people's attention on infectious diseases, and there are lessons to be learned from the past, Ms Vlok says.

"Archaeology like this is the only way to document how long a disease has been with us and been adapting to us. We understand with COVID-19 today how fantastic that disease is at adapting to humans. And Treponema has been with us for so much longer.

"So, this shows us what happens when we don't take action with these diseases. It's a lesson of what infectious diseases can do to a population if you let them spread widely. It highlights the need to intervene, because sometimes these diseases are so good at adapting to us, at spreading between us."

Classifying olive oils into the categories of extra virgin (EVOO), virgin (VOO) and lampante (LOO) is still quite a challenge to deal with since the official method includes physical-chemical and sensory analyses by means of a panel of tasters. These tasters need to be specialized, and on many occasions are not available, in addition to being expensive and slow. All of this has created the necessity to develop new analytical methods using affordable, reliable tools that are transferable to the industry.

The AGR-287 research group, led by Professor Lourdes Arce, was a pioneer in demonstrating the possibilities that Gas Chromatography along with Ion Mobility Spectrometry (GC-IMS) could provide in order to classify oils into three categories (EVOO, VOO and LOO). This methodology allows for analyzing two samples an hour. When a representative number of samples has been analyzed, the chemical information gathered is dealt with using statistical tools in order to create calibration equations that will allow for classification of samples of unknown oil into their respective categories in the future.

A crucial point in the validation of this method is the number of samples needed to calibrate the equipment. The research done has shown that, in order to obtain good results, it is not only necessary to analyze a representative number of samples but to also have samples of olive oil belonging to each of the three categories, from different varietals, from different seasons and tasted by at least two panels whose results coincide. Hence, these methods do not seek to substitute, but rather complement and support, the role of accredited tasting panels. In these research projects, the importance of building a bank of oil samples has been demonstrated, so that they can be reference standards that will be used to construct calibrated equations. These equations will establish the categories of analyzed oil samples.

The results obtained from this research have aroused interest among different businesses in the oil sector that are currently collaborating on carrying out transferring this research to the industry. What is more, using the knowledge ensuing from this research, a new instrument is being developed that will classify oils based on the use of IMS technology. This makes up one of the lines of Project Innolivar, whose aim is to increase competitiveness, international positioning, technological capacity and financial profitability of olive groves and their associated business sector.

Another research project being carried out by doctoral student Natividad Jurado, has revealed that the proper classification of oils requires taking the chemical compounds that each taster discerns into consideration as well. The proposed methodology is based on the extraction of certain compounds present in oil, for instance polyphenols, and then determining them using capillary electrophoresis (CE-UV) - a technique to separate different molecules - coupled with an ultraviolet detector. In a paper published in Talanta, the integrated use of both techniques (CE-UV and GC-IMS) was suggested in order to detect non-volatile compounds detected by the mouth, and also the volatile compounds detected by the nose. All the information obtained with both techniques is dealt with by statistical tools suitable for classifying an oil sample into the correct category. This fusion of data has been proven to be useful when classifying borderline samples that are at the interface of two groups (EVOO/VOO or VOO/LOO).

In the aurora borealis on Earth, electrically charged particles of the solar wind move along the Earth's magnetic field. At high latitudes, these strike nitrogen and oxygen atoms and molecules in the upper Earth's atmosphere and cause them to glow. These kinds of or similar aurora phenomena have also been discovered on other planets and their moons. As an international team reported today in the Nature Astronomy journal, the phenomenon has now been discovered at comet Chury. The solar wind's particles are responsible for the aurora at Chury as they strike the gas around the comet, also known as the coma. "The resulting glow is one of a kind," says Marina Galand of Imperial College London, lead author of the study. "It's caused by a mix of processes, some seen at Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Europa and others at Earth and Mars."

Aurora observed in far ultraviolet light at a comet for the first time

Thanks to the analysis of data from the European Space Agency ESA's Rosetta mission, the researchers were able to prove that in the case of Chury solar wind electrons are accelerated towards the comet and strike the gas in the coma there. "Since this process is very high energy, the resulting glow is also highly energized and therefore in the ultraviolet range, which is invisible to the human eye," explains Martin Rubin, co-author of the study from the University of Bern Physics Institute.

These UV emissions had in fact been observed earlier at Chury. At that time though it was wrongly assumed that these emissions were caused by particles of sunlight, known as photons, similar to the so-called "nightglow" on Earth. "By analyzing the Rosetta data though, it was revealed that solar wind electrons are the reason for the glow and not in fact photons, as previously assumed," continues Galand.

"Rosetta is the first mission to observe an ultraviolet aurora at a comet," says Matt Taylor, ESA project scientist. "Auroras are inherently exciting - and this excitement is even greater when we see one somewhere new, or with new characteristics".

Data on gas composition from Bern

"The analysis was complicated and required data from various instruments," explains Kathrin Altwegg, head of ROSINA, the mass spectrometer at the University of Bern, which had collected data from comet Chury on board ESA's Rosetta space probe, providing information on the composition and density of the coma, among other things. According to Kathrin Altwegg, the study is evidence that our understanding can be deepened and new insights gained by using data from different teams, instruments and computer models. "And this even years after the official end of the mission in 2016 with the controlled crash of the Rosetta probe onto comet Chury's surface," continues Altwegg.

For the current study, Marina Galand and her team analyzed data from the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Gas Analysis (ROSINA) and the Alice UV spectrograph, Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) Ion and Electron Spectrometer (IES) and the Langmuir Probe (LAP), the Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO) and the Visible and InfraRed Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS).

Aurora as a tool for observing the solar wind

Aurora phenomena are observed in the most diverse environments in our solar system and beyond. "A magnetic field like the one on Earth is not needed for this, as comet Chury does not have one itself," explains Martin Rubin. The aurora phenomenon at Chury is therefore more diffuse than on Earth. "The observation of cometary aurora phenomena definitely has an aesthetic value. Beyond that the UV observations from Earth could one day also provide information about the solar wind at these comets - even without a space probe like Rosetta being on site," explains Martin Rubin.

Is the heat still bearable, or should I take my hand off the hotplate? Before the brain can react appropriately to pain, it must evaluate and integrate sensory, cognitive and emotional factors that modulate the perception and processing of the sensation itself. This task requires the exchange of information between different regions of the brain. New studies have confirmed that there is a link between the subjective experience of pain and the relative levels of neural activity in functional structures in various sectors of the brain. However, these investigations have been carried out primarily in contexts in which the perception of pain was intensified either by emotional factors or by consciously focusing attention on the painful stimulus. Now, LMU neuroscientist Enrico Schulz, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oxford, has asked how cognitive strategies that affect one's subjective perception of pain influence the patterns of neural activity in the brain.

In the study, 20 experimental subjects were exposed to a painful cold stimulus. They were asked to adopt one of three approaches to attenuating the pain: (a) counting down from 1000 in steps of 7, (b) thinking of something pleasant or beautiful, and (c) persuading themselves - by means of autosuggestion - that the stimulus was not really that bad. During the experimental sessions, the subjects were hooked up to a 7T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to visualise the patterns of neural activity in the brain, which were later analysed in detail.

In order to assess the efficacy of the different coping strategies, participants were also asked to evaluate the subjective intensity of the pain on a scale of 0 to 100. The results revealed that the countdown strategy was the most effective of the three methods. "This task obviously requires such a high level of concentration that it distracts the subject's attention significantly from the sensation of pain. In fact some of our subjects managed to reduce the perceived intensity of pain by 50%," says Schulz. "One participant later reported that she had successfully adopted the strategy during the most painful phase of childbirth."

In a previous paper published in the journal Cortex in 2019, the same team had already shown that all three strategies help to attenuate the perception of pain, and that each strategy evoked a different pattern of neural activity. In the new study, Schulz and his collaborators carried out a more detailed analysis of the MRI scans, for which they divided the brain into 360 regions. "Our aim was to determine which areas in the brain must work together in order to successfully reduce the perceived intensity of the pain," Schulz explains. "Interestingly, no single region or network that is activated by all three strategies could be identified. Instead, under each experimental condition, neural circuits in different brain regions act in concert to varying extents."

The attenuation of pain is clearly a highly complex process, which requires a cooperative response that involves many regions distributed throughout the brain. Analysis of the response to the countdown technique revealed close coordination between different parts of the insular cortex, among other patterns. The imaginal distraction method, i.e. calling something picturesque or otherwise pleasing to mind, works only when it evokes intensive flows of information between the frontal lobes. Since these structures are known to be important control centres in the brain, the authors believe that engagement of the imaginative faculty may require a greater degree of control, because the brain needs to search through more 'compartments' - to find the right memory traces, for instance. Comparatively speaking, counting backwards stepwise - even in such awkward steps - is likely to be a more highly constrained task. "To cope with pain, the brain makes use of a recipe that also works well in other contexts," says Anne Stankewitz, a co-author of the new paper: "success depends on effective teamwork." Her team now plans to test whether their latest results can be usefully applied to patients with chronic pain.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a nosocomial pathogen in outbreaks of hospital infections. It is one of the major factors for morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients especially those infected with colistin resistant pathogens. Many plant essential oils have antimicrobial activities and have been investigated as natural sources to combat multiple antibiotic resistances. Moreover; recent advances in phytonanotechnology have created exciting opportunities for the management of many infections.

This study aims at investigating the antimicrobial and antibiofilm effect of rosemary and ginger essential oil-based nano-sized formulations on colistin resistant K. pneumonia clinical isolates.

Isolation and identification of 30 K. pneumonia isolates from different human samples was done followed by antibiotic susceptibility testing and detection of biofilm gene (mrkD). Examination of the activity of the tested essential oils and their chitosan nanoparticle formulations against the selected isolates was made by determination of their MICs using broth microdilution method followed by biofilm inhibition test and quantitative real-time PCR for the expression of mrkD gene in the presence of the oils and nanoparticles formulations compared to untreated bacterial isolates.

Our results showed that the minimum inhibitory concentrations of rosemary and ginger oils were found to be 1250 μg/ml, nanostructured lipid carrier-rosemary oil and nanostructured lipid carrier-ginger oil were 625 μg/ml and rosemary oil loaded chitosan nanoparticles and ginger oil loaded chitosan nanoparticles were 156 μg/ml. Results also revealed complete (100%) inhibition for mrkD gene expression when compared to untreated K. pneumonia.

We can conclude that oil loaded chitosan nanoparticles show a high antimicrobial and antibiofilm activity.

The concept of sustainable nature tourism plays a key role in mediating conflicts between tourism and nature conservation, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows.

The study takes a geo-historical approach to analysing the environmental conflict surrounding the founding of Koli National Park in Finland, where the idea of sustainable nature tourism was used as a way out of the conflict. In Koli National Park, sustainable nature tourism has proven to be useful concept for conflict resolution.

"Adopting the principles of sustainable nature tourism helped the national park's management to reach nature conservation goals. Moreover, the hopes and wishes of local residents and companies on how to develop tourism and the economy were also taken into consideration as part of sustainability, and this fostered a positive attitude towards the national park among locals," Researcher Jani Karhu from the University of Eastern Finland says.

The study was published in Tourism Geographies. The researchers interviewed managers and designers of Koli National Park, and they also analysed local newspaper articles.

National parks are a key instrument of nature conservation, and one of the most recognised institutions in nature tourism worldwide. Koli National Park was founded in 1991. The founding of the park was preceded by heated debate over whether the area should be developed into a modern resort for mass tourism, or whether its unique national landscape and nature should be protected. In Koli, the approach to solving the conflict was through sustainable nature tourism.

"Creating more jobs, preventing environmental harm, guaranteeing the satisfaction of tourists, and operating within the local cultural and social frameworks all constitute part of sustainable tourism. All of these aspects should be developed equally."

Emphasis on economy fuels new conflicts

In the early 2000s, the concept of sustainable nature tourism was largely accepted as a principle that guided the planning and management of Finnish national parks. Nowadays, this principle is widely accepted also among tourism developers. However, there are also indications that the concept of sustainable nature tourism is used for green washing extensive tourism projects. In Koli, too, the past few years have witnessed the revival of large projects that have failed in the past.

"These economy-driven ideas of sustainability push the idea of sustainable nature tourism away from nature itself, and serve as fuel for new conflicts," Karhu points out.

History awareness and cultural heritage are becoming part of nature tourism

Funded by Kone Foundation, the study constitutes part of the geo-historical research project Lively Border: The Nature Tourism and History Politics in the Finnish-Russian-Norwegian Border Region, focused on the historical sites and conservation areas within the Finnish-Russian-Norwegian border region. In the Fennoscandian Green Belt, history awareness and cultural heritage are only now becoming part of an eco-friendly tourism concept that is based on natural heritage.

"In the future we may have large Green Parks, a new type of conservation area, which doesn't push people away but rather highlights coexistence with nature, interaction with other people, and well-being," says Professor Maria Lähteenmäki, the project's Principal Investigator.

Homicides near schools negatively impact on the educational attainment of children, a new study in the Journal of Labor Economics reports.

During this unique study, researchers from the University of Surrey and University of Birmingham investigated if exposure to homicides had an impact on the educational outcomes of children in schools close by.

According to statistics from the World Bank, Brazil has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. The rate of homicides in the country is more than 29 per 100,000 people, which is approximately 6 times the US rate and 29 times the UK rate. To estimate the effect of these homicides on educational outcomes, researchers used georeferenced data from 2,470 homicides in Sao Paulo and linked these to nearby schools, comparing test scores, attendance of students and school progression.

Researchers found that when a homicide occurred within the close vicinity of a school (25 metre radius), children's math test scores decreased by 5 per cent of a standard deviation and similar-sized effects on Portuguese language test scores were found. This effect is of a similar magnitude to reducing the quality of teachers by one standard deviation. Interestingly, it was found that boys' attainment levels were more affected by exposure to violence than girls', both for math and language test scores.

Exposure to violence also negatively impacted attendance of students. Researchers found that for each additional homicide in the vicinity of a school, attendance was reduced by 1 per cent in the school year. Similarly to attainment scores, exposure to homicide impacted attendance rates of boys more than girls. However, an in-depth analysis of the data indicated that the reduction in attendance is unlikely to be the main reason for the decline in student achievement.

Researchers also investigated the impact of violence in the vicinity of a school on the aspirations and attitudes towards education. It was found that when exposed to homicides, boys changed their attitude towards education and generally displayed less interest in further education, had a more negative perception about their performance at school, and demonstrated lower effort towards education, whereas for girls no negative effect on this area was identified.

Dr Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner, Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Surrey, said: "Violence has a negative effect on the education of exposed children and has the potential to damage their and their communities' futures. Boys, more so than girls, are affected by violence close to their schools, which may contribute to the reversed gender gap in education observed in Brazil and other Latin American countries."

Dr Livia Menezes from the University of Birmingham added: "In middle-income countries like Brazil, individuals from a lower socioeconomic background are disproportionally more exposed to violence. If this exposure also has an impact on their human capital accumulation, violence can be an important mechanism resulting in the persistence of poverty."

Confuciusornis was a crow-like fossil bird that lived in the Cretaceous ~120 million years ago. It was one of the first birds to evolve a beak (Fig. 1). Early beak evolution remains understudied. Using an imaging technique called Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence, researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) address this by revealing just how different the beak and jaw of Confuciusornis were compared to birds we see today.

Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence (LSF) is an imaging technique co-developed at HKU that involves shining a laser onto a target. It is well-known in palaeontology for making fossil bones and the soft tissues preserved alongside them glow-in-the-dark. LSF has revealed fine skin details and other previously-invisible soft tissue in a wide range of fossils, especially those of early birds and other feathered dinosaurs (see notes).

HKU PhD student Case Vincent Miller and his supervisor Research Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Pittman (Vertebrate Palaeontology Laboratory, Division of Earth and Planetary Science & Department of Earth Sciences) led this study with Thomas G. Kaye of the Foundation for Scientific Advancement (Arizona, USA) and colleagues at the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature (Pingyi, China). Under LSF, which was co-developed by Dr. Pittman and Mr. Kaye, the team revealed the fingernail-like 'soft beak' of Confuciusornis, a feature that covers the beak of every bird and is called the rhamphotheca. The example the team found in Confuciusornis was preserved detached from the bony part of the beak (Fig. 2). "Fossilised rhamphothecae have been reported in fossil birds before," said Dr. Pittman, "but no one has really asked what they tell us about the earliest beaked birds."

The international research team reconstructed what the beak looked like in life (Fig. 3), and used this to consolidate knowledge of the beak of Confucusornis across all known specimens. In highlighting that the rhamphotheca was easily-detachable and by performing the first test of jaw strength in a dinosaur-era bird, the team suggested that this early beaked bird was suited to eating soft foods (Fig. 4). Finally, the team highlight differences in how the beak is assembled to show that despite looking like living birds, the early beaks of Confuciusornis and its close relatives are fundamentally different structures to those seen in modern birds.

Regarding future plans, Mr. Miller said, "Our research has raised a lot of interesting questions going forward. We know so little about fossil rhamphothecae and plan on using LSF to study even more fossils to find more of these hidden gems. I am particularly interested in seeing whether beak attachment strength in living birds has any correlation with the overall strength of their jaw. This might help us to better understand fossil birds. This study is only the first glimpse into this interesting and new line of study into early beaks, so I am very excited."

Some of the genetic differences that have arisen between domesticated chickens and their wild ancestors, the red junglefowl, are linked to epigenetic changes, according to a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Scientists at Linköping University in Sweden have discovered a small number of "hotspots" in the DNA that control epigenetic changes at hundreds of other locations throughout the genome.

Humans started to domesticate certain wild animals, including chickens, several thousand years ago, and change their characteristics through breeding. Domestication led to considerable differences between the domesticated variant and their wild counterpart with respect to behaviour, anatomy and physiology. The largest differences, however, have often arisen relatively recently, during the past few hundred years. Controlled breeding of chickens in the 20th century has led to two different types: laying hens for egg production and broilers that give more meat. A broiler chicken, for example, weighs 6-7 times more than its wild ancestor, the red junglefowl.

Not only do modern domesticated chickens differ in their properties from the junglefowl, they also have differences in their genetic material, in a part of the material known as the "epigenetic code". Epigenetic changes can be thought of as small flags that sit on the DNA. They can regulate how the genes are expressed and in this way affect the properties of the organism.

The scientists who conducted the new study wondered whether the epigenetic differences between modern domesticated chickens and their wild relatives play a role in driving the rapid change associated with domestication. They investigated this in an advanced cross-breed between the junglefowl and a certain type of domesticated chicken. By crossing these with each other through eight generations, the researchers bred chickens whose genetic material is a random mixture of very short fragments of "domesticated DNA" and "wild DNA". They identified markers in the genetic material to make it possible to see which small fragments came from the junglefowl and which came from the domesticated chicken. They could then study the genetic material at very high resolution.

The research group has previously investigated how the expression of certain genes regulates fear behaviour in chickens, which is one of the properties that differ significantly between domesticated chickens and their wild ancestors. The scientists could now measure the most common type of epigenetic marker, DNA methylation, in specimens from exactly the same area of the brain, the hypothalamus. They could then use advanced calculations to see the relationships between the methylation pattern, gene expression, mutations in the genome, and the behavioural properties of the individual animal.

"We found long, continuous parts of the genetic material where it seemed that the domestication process has caused lower levels of methylation in domesticated chickens than in the wild junglefowl. We also found several 'hotspots' - parts of the genetic material that regulate the methylation at hundreds of other locations separated by long distances. This is extremely exciting", says Dominic Wright, professor in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University. He has led the study, which has now been published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

It was initially believed that the methylation of DNA always reduces gene expression, leading to changed properties, but it is now necessary to modify this as research has shown that the true picture is not quite as simple, with methylation both increasing and reducing gene expression. This study shows that, while it is true that methylation influences the expression of certain genes, the inverse can also happen: a mutation in the DNA may influence gene expression, which in turn can regulate methylation.

"It's extremely interesting that the methylation of specific parts of the genetic material seems to be so carefully controlled. The study shows that the regulation of methylation during the domestication of chickens has been extremely complex", says Dominic Wright.

This study has looked at the regulation of methylation in the cross-breeds between wild and domesticated chickens. The scientists are now planning the next step. They are curious about what happens to the methylation pattern when domesticated chickens become feral, and slowly but surely adapt to life in the wild. They have already started to investigate fowl populations on Hawaii, where feral chickens are found that are cross-breeds between junglefowl and domestic chickens without human interference. This will allow them to see how DNA methylation is regulated in wild chickens in natural environments.