Earth

Seabird species such as gulls and pelicans are often overlooked when it comes to conservation and can struggle to capture the public eye. To raise awareness of their importance to people and the ecosystems we depend on, a Science & Society article appearing August 6 in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution looks at something that most of us find off-putting: their poop. The researchers say that the poop, which is also known as guano and serves as a source of fertilizer and a key contribution to coastal and marine ecosystems, could be worth more than $470 million annually. By calculating this direct benefit to people, they hope to quantify the importance of seabirds and illustrate the monetary cost of declining populations.

"Guano production is an ecosystem service made by seabirds at no cost to us--I can go to an island, collect the guano, and sell it at market price as fertilizer," says co-author Marcus V. Cianciaruso, ecology professor at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil. While few seabird species produce guano that is currently commercialized, the rest provide important nutrients to the ecosystems where their guano is deposited. "Because there is this scientific and biological importance, it's possible to quantify seabird ecosystem services in a language that the general public and policymakers can begin to understand," he says.

To do this, Cianciaruso and Daniel Plazas-Jiménez, a PhD student at the Federal University of Goiás, began by gathering data about global seabird populations producing commodifiable guano. "Because guano is a commodity, we used its market price to estimate the added value of guano produced by seabirds each year," says Plazas-Jiménez.

For the species that do not produce commodifiable guano, the researchers then estimated the value of nitrogen and phosphorus deposited every year in their colonies by calculating the cost to replace these nutrients with inorganic versions. The result is staggering: when combined, the nutrient deposition and the commodifiable guano could be worth an estimated $473.83 million per year.

Although not all guano can be commodified, these nutrients that it deposits are important to ecosystems such as coral reefs, where guano's presence can increase reef fish biomass by up to 48%. "We made a very conservative estimate that 10% of coral reef fish stocks depend on seabird nutrients," says Plazas-Jiménez. "According to the United Nations and the Australian government, the annual economic returns of commercial fisheries on coral reefs is over $6 billion. So, 10% of this value is around $600 million per year." When added to the previous figure, the value of nutrients deposited by seabirds increases to an estimated $1 billion.

Much of this value comes from threatened or endangered species. "The example of coral reefs is just for a little group of seabirds," says Plazas-Jiménez. "A huge amount of nutrient deposition happens in Antarctic ecosystems: penguins contribute half of the nitrogen and phosphorous deposited by seabirds every year. However, 60% of this contribution is made by penguin species with declining populations, and these contributions will decrease in the future if no conservation activity is taken."

The researchers hope this paper will shed light on how valuable these species are at a global scale. "Seabirds have a lot of importance to people," says Plazas-Jiménez. "Being able to calculate a monetary value of an ecological function made by a particular species is just another tool in the conservation toolbox."

Only a fraction of the value of seabirds to ecosystems and to people is represented by this estimate--among other functions, they contribute to vast birdwatching and tourism industries around the world. "If you start to look into every function that seabirds have and try to monetize this, the value is going to be much, much higher," says Cianciaruso.

Their estimate also doesn't account for the local importance of the birds. For many coastal communities, the direct and indirect benefits of living with them are essential. "In some areas, fishermen follow seabirds to find places to fish," says Plazas-Jiménez. "To that fisherman, seabirds are everything."

Researchers from the UPV/EHU's Institute of Public Economics and BC3, the Basque Centre for Climate Change, have been cooperating for several years on the study and projection of so-called security of electricity supply in Spain. The country is regarded as an "electricity island" owing to its scant interconnection with neighbouring countries. This feature underlies the projections of the country's power demand, generation capacity, and supply over the coming decades. Drawing on these projections the researchers evaluate the degree of security of supply and assess how it will change in response to the sources of electricity that are gradually abandoned or promoted. The scientific journal Energy has recently published the second article relating to this study in which another two BC3 researchers have taken part.

Starting from known values of power consumption and generation the group of researchers developed a model to project the evolution of these two variables in 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050. "Other authors have made projections of electricity consumption and reckon that it will grow one decade after another, a bit more than 1% per year. With respect to electricity sources, for the next 10 years the projections indicate that coal and nuclear will undergo a sizeable reduction, and by 2040 these two technologies will cease operation," said José Manuel Chamorro-Gómez, from the UPV/EHU's Institute of Public Economics. The former loss in generation capacity will be offset by an increase in renewables. Further, "the capacity of all the renewable plants due to come into operation will be greater than the one now available of non-renewable generation, but everything seems to suggest that the security of supply will nonetheless be affected", added the researcher.

By their very nature, renewable power sources are intermittent, uncertain, and non-dispatchable. All of these features impinge on the system and increase the risk that a fraction of demand will not be met by the available sources, which renders the supply less secure. "Right now, the existing system does not guarantee 100% of supply in any scenario, but in our models we have seen that the potentially unmet fraction will be much bigger in the future, and supply shortages will be more frequent," said the researcher.

In this study they explored thoroughly the possibilities offered by a source of renewable energy that lends itself to a more flexible management, namely hydropower. "Hydro plants can be adjusted by the people in charge of operating them; the flow of water to the turbine can be regulated at any moment, which, no doubt, would partly alleviate the risk of a supply shortage. Furthermore, hydro stations with reversible turbines play a dual purpose: in addition to increasing power generation at times of higher demand, when this is lower the turbine can be used to pump water upwards to the reservoir (by using electricity); this way, water can be stored and used later on to generate electricity once more when demand increases again. According to our results, that would alleviate, to a certain extent, the risk of being unable to meet demand when it surges," he argued.

However, the authors also refer to the environmental aspects that have to be taken into account when addressing and planning the use and operation of hydro stations. "From the viewpoint of power generation, water is obviously a resource, but this resource is of course in a context. The impact that power plants and reservoirs have on river basins is undeniable. So the administrations or policy makers above the station operators have to set the rules of the game, and these rules need to be clear in terms of ecological flows, discharge frequencies and other parameters," said Chamorro.

Besides the resource of hydro plants, the researcher listed another series of measures that could be adopted to fully address demand, thus guaranteeing security of supply. "Firstly, much research is being conducted on electricity storage. If you can come up with a system in which, say, you store the electricity generated by the wind during a period of low demand, you will have a way of using it when needed. Or you can encourage consumers to use their household appliances during non-peak hours when the price of electricity is lower. Furthermore, electric vehicles could feed their charge into the grid at a given moment to supplement supply. Progress is being made in different aspects to achieve a system in which demand peaks are met as fully as possible," he concluded.

In October 2014, the suspicion arose that the parasite worm Polydora websteri had found its way to the Wadden Sea. Following years of research, that suspicion has now been confirmed: the worm, that likely originates from the Asian Pacific, has arrived in European waters. Researchers from the German Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), confirm in a publication in Marine Biodiversity, that they have found the shell-borer in oysters near Sylt and Texel and speculate that it is likely to have spread much further.

'Trouble maker' leaves oyster unsellable

The worm Polydora websteri is a known 'trouble maker' that causes mud blisters as it bores its way through an oyster's shell, leaving the oyster vulnerable for predators in the wild, and unsellable on the market. Thieltges: 'The worm manoeuvres between the inner and outer world of the oyster. It isn't strictly speaking a parasite as it leaves the oyster's body in peace, but by attacking its shell, it drains the energy of the oyster that now needs to focus on its repair.' Wild populations of Pacific oysters, exotic species that were themselves introduced to the Wadden Sea ecosystem in the 1970s and '80s, have till now been rather safe from predators. The worm might change this. The oysters might be weakened and their shell softened, making them easier prey for crabs and birds. On the long-term, this could mean a shift in the ecosystem.

While the worm might form a big threat to aquaculture farming, it is also likely that aquaculture itself acted as the primary vector of introduction. NIOZ researcher and co-author David Thieltges: 'A large part of the invasive species in the marine ecosystem arrive with the import of commercial species and the transfer of farmed specimens between aquaculture sites.' The worm's favourite host, the Pacific oyster, is traded and cultured globally. By moving the oyster, the worm, though not -intended, becomes an international traveller as well. The researchers, including Thieltges and AWI-scientist Andreas Waser, found the first Polydora websteri in the direct vicinity of an oyster farm that imports juvenile oysters from a nursery in southern Ireland. Their travel path illustrates the global character of the trade. Thieltges and Waser: 'This site of the first record was also the site with the highest infestation. We suspect that the arrival of the worm in the northern Wadden Sea may be related to the oyster imports.'

Here to stay and to be reckoned with

Once introduced, the further spread of invasive species can continue either via dispersal of larval stages or human-aided secondary vectors such as fouling on ship hulls. This may explain that the worm was also found during sampling at the Mokbaai on Texel, an island without oyster farms. Thieltges underlines, that it is unlikely that the worms found near Texel came from Sylt. 'That they made their way from Sylt to Texel, along almost 500 kilometres of coastline, seems rather unlikely. We think there might be a different origin.'

An option would be that larval stages of the worms found in the Dutch Wadden Sea came from Zeeland where there is commercial oyster aquaculture. However, the team still needs to investigate whether the worm is already present in Zeeland as well.' Thieltges: 'Sampling at other places in the Netherlands and in Europe together with genetic research is now needed to establish the origin and distribution of the worm. We don't know its exact origins yet, but we know that it's here and that it is very likely to keep extending its range.'

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) report that anthropogenic sources of carbonyl sulfide (OCS), not just oceanic sources, account for much of the missing source of OCS in the atmosphere. Their findings provide better context for estimates of global photosynthesis (taking up CO2) using OCS dynamics.

Carbonyl sulfide (OCS) is the most stable and abundant sulfur-containing gas in the atmosphere. It is derived from both natural and anthropogenic sources and is of key interest to scientists investigating how much carbon dioxide (CO2) plants take out of the atmosphere for photosynthesis. Measuring CO2 alone cannot provide estimates of photosynthesis (taking up CO2) because plants also release CO2 through respiration. In contrast, OCS is taken up like CO2 but is not released by respiration, and can therefore provide valuable information about the rate of global photosynthesis.

Understanding the precise OCS budget (the balance of source and sink) is an ongoing challenge. The most critical point of uncertainty related to the OCS budget is its missing source. Lack of observational evidence has so far led to debate about whether the missing OCS source is oceanic or anthropogenic emission.

In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states of America (PNAS), researchers from Tokyo Tech's School of Materials and Chemical Technology and Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) have used a unique method of measuring sulfur isotope ratios (minor 34S isotope abundance relative to major isotope 32S, 34S/32S) of OCS that enabled them to distinguish oceanic and anthropogenic OCS sources.

"It's very exciting that we were able to separate anthropogenic and oceanic signals for OCS sources based on sulfur isotope ratios," says Shohei Hattori, an assistant professor at Tokyo Tech and lead author of the study. "These measurements required at least 200 liters of air for each sample measurement. We overcame this challenge by developing a new sampling system, and eventually succeeded in measuring sulfur isotope ratios of the atmospheric OCS."

The team found a north–south latitudinal gradient in the 34S isotope abundance corresponding to OCS concentrations during wintertime in eastern Asia. Their results provide evidence of the importance of anthropogenic OCS emissions from China. Also, by using the sulfur isotope level of OCS as a new constraint, they found that anthropogenic OCS sources, and not only oceanic sources, are likely to be major constituents of the missing source of atmospheric OCS.

"The higher relevance of anthropogenic OCS at mid-to-low latitudes has implications for understanding climate change and stratospheric chemistry in both past and future contexts," says co-author Kazuki Kamezaki.

Given that the historical estimation of how much CO2 is taken up by plants is sensitive to the estimate of the anthropogenic OCS inventory, a more detailed picture of the OCS budget revealed by sulfur isotopic approach will enable more precise estimation of its interactions with global change. The research team will continue to undertake more observations to make detailed quantitative estimates and predictions of the global photosynthesis rate.

"Our sulfur isotopic approach for measuring atmospheric OCS is an important step, but more observations, together with analysis using a chemical transport model, will enable detailed quantitative conclusions," Hattori says.

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2007260117

Reston, VA--A new alpha-radioimmunotherapy, 212Pb-anti-CD38, has proven effective in preventing tumor growth and increasing survival in multiple myeloma tumor-bearing mice, according to new research published in the July issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Given the long half-life, central production and worldwide distribution of 212Pb-anti-CD38, researchers have determined that the α-radioimmunotherapy is not only effective but also clinically feasible as a multiple myeloma treatment.

Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell cancer that occurs in bone marrow. It is the second most common type of blood cancer, with more than 32,000 new cases projected in 2020, according to the American Cancer Society. Despite new treatments and protocols, the prognosis of multiple myeloma patients remains poor, as remission is often followed by relapse. Innovative therapies with a distinct mechanism of action are therefore needed.

"Targeted radioimmunotherapy using antibodies against proteins expressed at the cell membrane on tumoral cells has already shown efficacy with beta-emitters, but with severe side effects," said Isabelle Quelven-Bertin, PharmD, radiopharmacist at Limoges University Hospital in Limoges, France. "Using alpha particles is very attractive because their much shorter path-length reduces unwanted radiation exposure on normal tissues, thereby reducing side effects. As such, we investigated the potential of the α-radioimmunotherapy 212Pb-anti-CD38 in the treatment of multiple myeloma."

In the study, researchers developed human myeloma cell lines, which were analyzed for cell proliferation after incubation with various concentrations of 212Pb monoclonal antibodies. Mice received subcutaneous grafts of human myeloma cell lines and were injected with 212Pb-anti-CD38, 212Pb-anti-mCD38 (mice-specific) or 212Pb-isotypic control. Biodistribution, toxicity and dose-range-finding studies were performed, as well as radioimmunotherapy experiments that measured tumor volume and overall survival.

The human myeloma cell line saw a significant inhibition of cell proliferation three days after incubation with 212Pb-anti-CD38. Likewise, the mouse model showed marked inhibition of cell proliferation for mice treated with 212Pb-anti-CD38, with a median survival of 55 days; mice that received the isotypic control had a median survival of 11 days. Biodistribution studies showed a specific tumoral accumulation of 212Pb-anti-CD38, and toxicity experiments with 212Pb-anti-mCD38 established a toxic activity of 277.5 kBq.

While 212Pb monoclonal antibodies effectively inhibited tumor growth and increased survival, whole-body SPECT/CT imaging was not possible due to the low 212Pb activity injected and the detection sensitivity. Instead, researchers performed SPECT/CT imaging with 203Pb, a chemically identical radiometal.

"This radioelement allowed us to consider a theranostic approach for 212Pb α-radioimmunotherapy, preventing the need for a radionuclide with different physical-chemical properties that would likely result in different pharmacokinetics. Combining therapy and imaging could provide an effective approach to optimizing therapeutic doses using specific dosimetry calculation and to monitoring the patient's response. Moving forward, this could be considered as an innovative theranostic approach," noted Michel Cogné, MD, PhD, professor of immunology at Limoges Medical School in Limoges, France.

Tropical Storm Isaias has transitioned into a post-tropical storm as it moved out of the U.S. and into eastern Canada on Aug. 5 and 6. NASA created an animation of nighttime satellite imagery that shows Isaias' track up the U.S. East Coast. In addition, NASA's Aqua satellite provided a view of Isaias' powerful storms over New York and New England.

What is a Post-Tropical Storm?

A Post-Tropical Storm is a generic term for a former tropical cyclone that no longer possesses sufficient tropical characteristics to be considered a tropical cyclone. Former tropical cyclones that have become fully extratropical, subtropical, or remnant lows, make up three classes of post-tropical cyclones. In any case, they no longer possesses sufficient tropical characteristics to be considered a tropical cyclone. However, post-tropical cyclones can continue carrying heavy rains and high winds.

NASA Tracks Isaias at Night

Infrared instruments enable satellites to gather imagery on storms at night because they read temperature. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. an animation of imagery from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite imagery showed the positions of Tropical Storm Isaias from Aug. 2 to Aug. 5 at night as it moved north along the U.S. East Coast.

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Worldview application provides the capability to interactively browse over 700 global, full-resolution satellite imagery layers and then download the underlying data. Many of the available imagery layers are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks "right now."

Isaias' Rain Potential Over New York and New England

On Aug. 4 at 1:53 p.m. EDT (1753 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed cloud top temperatures in Tropical Storm Isaias using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. Isaias was centered near Albany, New York at the time of the over pass.

about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud temperatures. AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius). NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

That heavy rain potential was included in the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast at 5 p.m. EDT, "Heavy rainfall near the path of Isaias, through the Hudson River Valley, is likely to result in flash flooding, particularly through urban areas and the surrounding terrain of the Catskills, Adirondack and Green Mountain Ranges through Tuesday night. Scattered minor to moderate river flooding is likely across portions of the Mid-Atlantic."

Status of Isaias on Aug. 6

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Aug. 6, the center of Post-Tropical Cyclone Isaias was located near latitude 47.5 degrees north and longitude 71.8 degrees west. That is about 55 miles (90 km) north-northwest of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The post-tropical cyclone is moving toward the north-northeast near 28 mph (44 kph), and this general motion is expected with a decrease in forward speed through tonight.

Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph (65 kph) with higher gusts. Weakening is expected, and the winds are expected to drop below tropical-storm force this morning. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 140 miles (220 km) to the northeast and east of the center primarily over and near the St. Lawrence River. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1000 millibars.

NHC Forecast for Isaias

The NHC said, "Gale-force winds will continue over and near the St. Lawrence River this morning. Gale-force wind gusts are possible elsewhere over southeastern Quebec today. Rainfall accumulations of 1 to 3 inches are expected along and near the track of Isaias across southern Quebec. The post-tropical cyclone is expected to dissipate over southeastern Canada on Thursday, Aug. 7."

NASA Researches Tropical Cyclones

Hurricanes/tropical cyclones are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration.

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

On Sept. 23, 2019, then-16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg stood before a sea of news cameras at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City and told world leaders: "People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing...How dare you continue to look away."

Within days, web searches for 'climate change' soared to levels not seen in years, and environmentalists cheered a new surge of activism. Fast forward to summer 2020: With a global pandemic monopolizing news coverage, searches around environmental issues have plummeted to new lows, according to Google analytics data.

This trend could mean serious trouble for the planet, suggests a new CU Boulder study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

"We found that simply directing your attention to an environmental risk, even momentarily, can make it seem more frightening and worthy of mitigation," said senior author Leaf Van Boven, a professor of psychology and neuroscience. "On the flip side, if you are not actively paying attention, the risk seems less dangerous and less important to address."

Previous research has shown that humans have a finite capacity for attention to risk, inherently programmed to prioritize one threat at a time. Rather than thoughtfully calculating how risky something truly is, humans tend toward "intuitive risk perception," or how something feels in the moment, Van Boven said.

"If a threat seems physically distant, far in the future, too abstract or if we are just too distracted to notice it, our perception of risk declines. Climate change is the prototypical example."

With that in mind, Van Boven and coauthors Jennifer Cole, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology, and Kellen Mrkva, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Columbia School of Business, set out to learn whether subtly directing someone's attention to environmental threats, even briefly and involuntarily, boosts their emotional response and willingness to take action.

They recruited two groups--100 college students and a diverse, national sample of 100 adult volunteers. In a series of experiments, images of 12 environmental hazards--a raging wildfire, a polluted river, an endangered polar bear, etc.--flashed on the screen in random order.

When study subjects were shown symbols of environmental threats, like polar bears or wildfires, they came to care about them more.

Meanwhile, the researchers subtly manipulated which image the subject paid attention to.

For instance, the subject might be asked to click the J key every time they see a wildfire. Or they might be asked to look for a certain letter on the screen, and then a polluted river might flash in the area where that letter appeared.

Later, the subjects were asked to rate the threats according to their severity and how frightened they were of them. In one experiment, they were asked to pick one they'd be willing to write a letter to their Congressional representative about.

Across experiments and groups, study participants prioritized subjects they had been subtly directed to pay attention to and were less interested in, or willing to take action on, issues their attention had been drawn away from.

"What was surprising was how little attention they had to direct toward something for it to begin to seem more severe to them," said Mrkva, who began the research while a doctoral student at CU. "Just a few times for a few seconds was enough to have a significant effect on how big of a threat they perceived it to be."

In a recent analysis of Google search trends, Mrkva looked to see how often people searched for information about the same 12 issues. Not surprisingly, as media coverage of coronavirus has gone up, interest in those issues has plummeted." The consequences of this reduced attention could be severe," said Mrkva.

He points to a recent Gallup Poll showing that concern about climate change is already slipping, with only 2% of Americans identifying it as the most important problem facing the country today, versus 5% in December.

Those wanting to raise the profile of environmental hazards in the media face an uphill battle, notes Van Boven.

"It's all COVID all the time right now," he said.

After Greta Thunberg's speech in New York. searches for 'climate change' soared. Amid coronavirus, they've plummeted.

The good news is this: Even the subtlest shift in attention - a single news story or reminder from a friend - may be enough to reorient people.

"You don't need to be loud or overwhelming, you just have to be persistent," Van Boven said.

He also advises people to be cognizant of how their own attention is shaped, deflected or even manipulated.

"Are we wrong to be worried about COVID? Absolutely not. But we should not forget about these other threats, and we should be careful not to let our environmental laws be jeopardized while we're not paying attention."

Researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a catalytic system that directly installs the trifluoromethyl group onto arenes. The new reaction uses simple and abundant trifluoroacetic acid as the trifluoromethylating agent, and offers a milder alternative to the existing strategies.

Published on August 5 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, the reported transformation is the first to successfully use trifluoroacetic and related acids as trifluoromethyl, chlorodifluoromethyl, and perfluoroalkyl radical sources with visible light irradiation.

Fluorinated drugs have better membrane permeability and increased bioavailability compared with their non-fluorinated analogues because of the changes in the physical and chemical properties. Trifluoromethyl group is one of the privileged moieties in modern drug discovery.

Among the top 200 small molecule pharmaceuticals by retail sales in 2018, there were 15 drugs containing at least one trifluoromethyl group, mostly (80%) on their aryl or heteroaryl scaffolds. Therefore, simple methodologies for the incorporation of trifluoromethyl group into arenes and heteroarenes are highly desirable.

Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is among the most attractive trifluoromethylation reagents with respect of its low prices, ease of handling, and availability in large quantities. However, because of its exceedingly high oxidation potential, harsh conditions are required for the direct oxidation of TFA to the trifluoroacetate radical, which after prompt CO2 extrusion affords the desired CF3 radical.

The combination of photoredox catalysis and a diaryl sulfoxide provides a platform for the facile generation of CF3 radical from trifluoroacetic acid under mild conditions. The resultant CF3 radical would then add to the (hetero) arene substrate, followed by an oxidative re-aromatization process to afford the trifluoromethylated (hetero) arene product.

This protocol is applicable for chlorodifluoromethylation and perfluoroalkylation as well. And a diverse array of arenes and heteroarenes were successfully transformed into valued fluoroalkylated compounds.

"We anticipate this visible light-promoted C-H fluoroalkylation method will find broad application," said Professor JIN Jian who led the project.

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

All life needs energy. Where there is not enough energy available, there can be no life. But how much is enough?

A new study led by James Bradley of the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ and Queen Mary University of London provides a surprising answer: Microbes in the seabed survive on far less energy than has been shown ever before. The international team is publishing its results in the journal Science Advances.

James Bradley, who started this work at the University of Southern California (USA) and continued it at GFZ, says: "When we think about the nature of life on Earth, we see plants, animals, microscopic algae and bacteria thriving on the Earth's surface and in the oceans - constantly active, growing and reproducing. But here we show that an entire biosphere of microorganisms - as many cells as are found in all the Earth's soils or oceans - has barely enough energy to survive. Many of them simply exist in a mostly inactive state. They do not grow, do not divide and do not develop further. These microbes are not dead, but use far less energy than previously thought to survive."

The global inventory and modelling revealed another important finding: Although oxygen is the most important energy source for most familiar life on Earth, it occurs in only 2.7 percent of ocean sediments, they are "oxic". The vast majority is "anoxic". There, microbes produce methane (in 64.3 percent of the sediments), and oxidise sulphate (33 percent of the sediments) as energy sources. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and the study underlines the importance of methane formation on the seabed. Although practically inactive, the microbial cells contained in the Earth's marine sediments are so numerous and survive on such exceptionally long time scales that they act as a major driver of the Earth's carbon and nutrient cycle and even influence the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere over thousands to millions of years.

The researchers, including researchers Ewa Burwics and Andrew Dale from GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Marine Research, used data from drill cores worldwide for their work, exploring the last 2.6 million years of Earth history, known as the "Quaternary" period. The data were incorporated into a model that depicts the global availability of energy in the seabed. The researchers then created a global picture of the biosphere beneath the seafloor, including the most important life forms and biogeochemical processes.

By extending the habitable limits of life to environments with lower energy availability, the results could feed into future studies of where, when and how life originated on the early Earth and where life could be found elsewhere in the solar system. The results raise fundamental questions about our definitions of what constitutes life and the limits of life on Earth and elsewhere. With so little available energy, it is unlikely that organisms would be able to reproduce or divide, but instead use this tiny amount of energy for "maintenance" - replacing or repairing their damaged parts. It is therefore likely that many of the microbes found at great depths beneath the seabed are the remains of populations that lived in shallow coastal areas thousands to millions of years ago. Unlike organisms on the Earth's surface that operate on short (daily and seasonal) time scales corresponding to the Sun, it is likely that these deeply buried microbes exist on much longer time scales, such as the movement of tectonic plates and changes in oxygen levels and circulation in the oceans.

"The results of the research challenge not only the nature and limits of life on Earth, but also elsewhere in the universe," Dr. Bradley added. "If there is life on Mars, for example, or on Europa, it would most likely seek refuge underground. If microbes require only a few zeptowatts of power to survive, there could be remnants of surviving life beneath these planets' icy surfaces. These organisms might have been dormant for a long time, but would still be technically 'alive'.

Marine heatwaves across the world's oceans can displace habitat for sea turtles, whales, and other marine life by 10s to thousands of kilometers. They dramatically shift these animals' preferred temperatures in a fraction of the time that climate change is expected to do the same, new research shows.

To measure that temporary dislocation of ocean surface temperatures, which can in turn drive ecological changes, NOAA scientists have now introduced a new metric called "thermal displacement." A research paper describing the changes and the means of measuring them was published in the journal Nature August 5.

Research scientist Michael Jacox of NOAA Fisheries' Southwest Fisheries Science Center called it a powerful new way of looking at marine heatwaves.

"When the environment changes, many species move," Jacox said. "This research helps us understand and measure the degree of change they may be responding to."

Scientists have typically characterized marine heatwaves based on how much they increase sea surface temperatures, and for how long. Such local warming particularly affects stationary organisms such as corals. In contrast, thermal displacement measures how far mobile species must move to track ocean surface temperatures.

The extent of thermal displacement caused by marine heatwaves may not necessarily correspond to their intensity.

Thermal displacement depends on the sea surface temperature gradient, the rate at which temperature changes across the ocean. If a heatwave warms an area of ocean, fish, turtles, whales, and other species may have to travel great distances if the temperature gradient is weak, but not if the gradient is strong.

"It may give us an idea how the ecosystem may change in the future," said Michael Alexander, research meteorologist at NOAA's Physical Sciences Laboratory and a coauthor of the new research. The changes may have implications for coastal communities if commercial fish species shift. Fishermen would have to travel hundreds of miles farther to reach them, he said.

Changing Temperatures Highlight Management Questions

For example, a 2012 marine heatwave in the northwest Atlantic pushed commercial species such as squid and flounder hundreds of miles northward. At the same time it contributed to a lobster boom that led to record landings and a collapse in price.

"Given the complex political geography of the United States' Eastern Seaboard, this event highlighted management questions introduced by marine heatwave-driven shifts across state and national lines," the scientists wrote.

"While these management issues are often discussed in the context of climate change, they are upon us now," the scientists wrote. "Modern day marine heatwaves can induce thermal displacements comparable to those from century-scale warming trends, and while these temperature shifts do not solely dictate species distributions, they do convey the scale of potential habitat disruption."

A 2014-2015 Pacific marine heatwave known as "the Blob," shifted surface temperatures more than 700 kilometers, or more than 400 miles, along the West Coast of the United States and in the Gulf of Alaska. That moved the prey of California sea lions farther from their rookeries in the Channel Islands off Southern California. This left hundreds of starving sea lion pups to strand on beaches.

Across the world's oceans, the average long-term temperature shift associated with ocean warming has been estimated at just over 20 kilometers, about 13 miles, per decade. By comparison, marine heatwaves have displaced temperatures an average of approximately 200 kilometers, roughly 120 miles, in a matter of months. In effect, marine heatwaves are shifting ocean temperatures at similar scales to what is anticipated with climate change--but in much shorter time frames.

The international journal Earth-Science Reviews published a paper offering an overview of the lava tubes (pyroducts) on Earth, eventually providing an estimate of the (greater) size of their lunar and Martian counterparts.

This study involved the Universities of Bologna and Padua and its coordinators are Francesco Sauro and Riccardo Pozzobon. Francesco Sauro is a speleologist and head of the ESA programmes CAVES and PANGAEA, he is also a professor at the Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bologna. Riccardo Pozzobon is a planetary geologist at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua.

"We can find lava tubes on planet Earth, but also on the subsurface of the Moon and Mars according to the high-resolution pictures of lava tubes' skylights taken by interplanetary probes. Evidence of lava tubes was often inferred by observing linear cavities and sinuous collapse chains where the galleries cracked", explains Francesco Sauro. "These collapse chains represent ideal gateways or windows for subsurface exploration. The morphological surface expression of lava tubes on Mars and the Moon is similar to their terrestrial counterpart. Speleologists thoroughly studied lava tubes on Earth in Hawaii, Canary Islands, Australia and Iceland".

"We measured the size and gathered the morphology of lunar and Martian collapse chains (collapsed lava tubes), using digital terrain models (DTMs), which we obtained through satellite stereoscopic images and laser altimetry taken by interplanetary probes", reminds Riccardo Pozzobon. "We then compared these data to topographic studies about similar collapse chains on the Earth's surface and to laser scans of the inside of lava tubes in Lanzarote and the Galapagos. These data allowed to establish a restriction to the relationship between collapse chains and subsurface cavities that are still intact".

Researchers found that Martian and lunar tubes are respectively 100 and 1,000 times wider than those on Earth, which typically have a diameter of 10 to 30 meters. Lower gravity and its effect on volcanism explain these outstanding dimensions (with total volumes exceeding 1 billion of cubic meters on the Moon).

Riccardo Pozzobon adds: "Tubes as wide as these can be longer than 40 kilometres, making the Moon an extraordinary target for subsurface exploration and potential settlement in the wide protected and stable environments of lava tubes. The latter are so big they can contain Padua's entire city centre".

"What is most important is that, despite the impressive dimension of the lunar tubes, they remain well within the roof stability threshold because of a lower gravitational attraction", explains Matteo Massironi, who is professor of Structural and Planetary Geology at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua. "This means that the majority of lava tubes underneath the maria smooth plains are intact. The collapse chains we observed might have been caused by asteroids piercing the tube walls. This is what the collapse chains in Marius Hills seem to suggest. From the latter, we can get access to these huge underground cavities".

Francesco Sauro concludes: "Lava tubes could provide stable shields from cosmic and solar radiation and micrometeorite impacts which are often happening on the surfaces of planetary bodies. Moreover, they have great potential for providing an environment in which temperatures do not vary from day- to night-time. Space agencies are now interested in planetary caves and lava tubes, as they represent a first step towards future explorations of the lunar surface (see also NASA's project Artemis) and towards finding life (past or present) in Mars subsurface".

Researchers also point out how this study opens up to a completely new perspective in planetary exploration, which is increasingly focusing on the subsurface of Mars and the Moon.

"In autumn 2019, ESA called up universities and industries with a campaign seeking ideas for developing technologies for lunar caves exploration. They are specifically looking for systems that would land on the lunar surface to operate missions exploring lunar tubes", clarifies Unibo professor Jo De Waele, who is one of the authors of the study and a speleologist. "Since 2012, in collaboration with some European universities including Bologna and Padua, ESA has been carrying out two training programmes for astronauts focusing on the exploration of underground systems (CAVES) and planetary geology (PANGAEA). These programmes include lava tubes on the island of Lanzarote. So far, 36 astronauts from five space agencies have received training in cave hiking; moreover, six astronauts and four mission and operation specialists have received geological field training".

Ecologists at the University of Turku, Finland, have discovered that the food hoards pygmy owls collect in nest-boxes ("freezers") for winter rot due to high precipitation caused by heavy autumn rains and if the hoarding has been initiated early in the autumn. The results of the study show that climate change may impair predators' foraging and thus decrease local overwinter survival. The study has been published in the internationally esteemed Global Change Biology journal.

Doctoral Candidate Giulia Masoero together with co-authors from the Department of Biology at the University of Turku analysed the unique long-term data set collected by Professor Erkki Korpimäki and his research group in 2003-2018. The aim was to study how the changing weather conditions in late autumn and winter affect the initiation of pygmy owls' food hoarding as well as the accumulation, use and preservability of the hoarded food. The data set was collected from the Kauhava region in South Bothnia with over 500 food hoards and a research area covering 1,000 square kilometres.

Pygmy owls are small predators that feed on small mammals, especially voles which are their main prey, and birds. Pygmy owls start hoarding for winter usually in late October when the temperature drops below 0° C. They hoard a large amount of prey in tree cavities or nest boxes.

The food stores may be located in multiple nest boxes some kilometres apart. Female owls that are larger than males as well as young owls accumulate larger food stores than males and adult owls.

According to Erkki Korpimäki, the hoarded food is important for pygmy owls during winter, when small mammal prey are under snow and birds are scarce.

- This hoarding behaviour is highly susceptible to global warming because the weather during autumn and winter can affect the condition and usability of the food stores. In several northern areas, autumns have already become warmer and winters milder and rainy. Predictions show that climate change will likely continue along this path and the length of winter will strongly decrease.

According to the study, the more rainy days there are between mid-October and mid-December, the more likely the food hoards of pygmy owls are to rotten. The owls use rotten food hoards particularly during poor vole years. However, the study showed that having rotten food hoards reduced the recapture probability of female owls in the study area, meaning female owls either die or are forced to leave the area.

- This result indicates that either the use of the rotten low-quality food and/or the energy waste linked with collecting a large food store that will not be used can lead to lower survival or dispersal from the study area, notes Doctoral Candidate Giulia Masoero.

Pygmy owls might be partly able to adapt to climate change by delaying food hoarding but will more likely suffer due to the changes caused by the warming climate. The results of the study together with global climate predictions thus suggest that climate change has the potential to strongly impair the foraging behaviour and food intake of wintering predators, likely having negative impacts on the boreal forest food web as a whole.

In a paper published in the journal Cancer Research, professor Levi Waldron, post-doctoral fellow Ludwig Geistlinger, and colleagues at the Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH) at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) provide new insights into how ovarian cancer grows and evolves within a person.

The paper, "Multi-omic analysis of subtype evolution and heterogeneity in high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma" [1] is of basic scientific interest for its methodology and insights into the decades-long process of tumorigenesis, and of practical interest for the implications these insights have on the viability of subtype-targeted therapies. More than 20,000 women receive a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer each year in the United States, and approximately 14,000 die each year.

"Understanding how a heterogeneous tumor evolves prior to diagnosis is difficult because we can't directly observe that evolution," says Professor Waldron. "But by observing tumors identified at different stages of that evolution, and through detailed investigation of tumor genomics and heterogeneity, we can still learn something about it. The key thing we wanted to know was whether a tumor starts as a certain subtype and stays that way, or evolves, changes, and even multiplies subtypes over time. If subtypes can evolve and multiply within one tumor, then subtype-specific therapies are unlikely to help."

To answer these questions, the team developed a new method of inferring the existence of heterogeneous subtypes from complementary types of genomic data, published separately in the Journal of Clinical Oncology - Clinical Cancer Informatics [2], and teamed up with researchers from the University of Minnesota who leveraged new technology to sequence the RNA of single cells.

"We used complementary but completely different approaches to approach the same question - one using more traditional approach using DNA and RNA sequencing of hundreds of bulk tumors, and the other using new single-cell sequencing methods for a few tumors," Waldron elaborates, "Seeing a consistent picture from both approaches really strengthened confidence in results coming from two novel approaches."

A surprising outcome of the research is a dismissal of the idea of discrete transcriptome subtypes for this cancer, and replacement by a model of continuous tumor development that includes mixtures of subclones, accumulation of mutations, infiltration of immune and stromal cells in proportions correlated with tumor stage and tissue of origin, and evolution between properties previously associated with discrete subtypes.

"Unfortunately, previous ideas of discrete subtypes were overly simplistic and unlikely to progress our understanding, prevention, or treatment of this disease," says Waldron. "Fortunately, with the clearer picture emerging of tumor heterogeneity, and the rapid development of technologies to help understand it, we are well-positioned to make progress."

B cells are white blood cells that develop to produce antibodies. These antibodies, or immunoglobulins, can bind to harmful foreign particles (such as viruses or disease-causing bacteria) to stop them invading and infecting the body's cells. Each B cell carries an individual B cell receptor (BCR) which determines which particles it can bind, rather like each lock accepts a different key. There are many millions of B cells with different receptors in the body. This immense diversity comes from rearranging the genes that code these receptors, so the receptor is slightly different in every B cell resulting in billions of possibilities of different harmful molecules that could be recognized. Intestinal microbes trigger expansion of these B cell populations and antibody production, but until now it was unknown whether this was a random process, or whether the molecules of the intestinal microbes themselves influence the outcome.

In a research article published in the journal Nature, Dr. Hai Li, Dr. Julien Limenitakis, Prof. Stephanie Ganal-Vonarburg and Prof. Andrew Macpherson of the Department for BioMedical Research, University of Bern, and Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, have analyzed the billions of genes that code the antibodies in a system that allows the responses to individual benign intestinal microbes to be understood.

The range of available antibodies depends on where beneficial microbes are in the body

The number of benign microbes living in our intestines is about the same as the number of cells in our body. Mostly these bacteria stay within the intestinal tube rather than penetrate the body tissues. Unfortunately, some penetration is unavoidable, because the intestine only has a single layer of cells that separate the inside of the tube from blood vessels that we need to absorb our food.

Dr. Limenitakis used specially designed computer programs to process millions of genetic sequences that compare the antibody repertoire from B cells, depending on whether the microbes stay in the intestine, or whether they reach the bloodstream. In both cases the antibody repertoire is altered, but in rather different ways depending on how the exposure occurs.

"Interestingly, this is rather predictable depending on the microbe concerned and where it is in the body, indicating that the intestinal microbes direct the development of our antibodies before we get a serious infection and this process is certainly not random", explains Ganal-Vonarburg.

There are different sorts of antibodies in the lining of the intestine (IgA) compared with the bloodstream (IgM and IgG). Using the powerful genetic analysis, the researchers showed that the range of different antibodies produced in the intestine was far less that those produced in central body tissues. This means that once microbes get into the body, the immune system has many more possibilities to neutralize and eliminate them, whereas antibodies in the intestine mainly just bind the bacterial molecules that they can see at any one time.

How the antibodies change when the body is exposed to different microbes

Over their life-span mammals face a huge variety of different microbial challenges. It was therefore important to know how once the antibody repertoire could change once had been shaped by a particular microbe when something else came along. The research team answered this question by testing what happened with the same microbe at different sites or with two different microbes on after another.

Although intestinal microbes do not directly produce an especially wide range of different antibodies, they sensitize the central immune tissues to produce antibodies if the microbe gets into the bloodstream. When a second microbes comes along, the rather limited intestinal antibody response changes to accommodate this microbe (rather like changing the lock in one's door). This is different from what happens when microbes get into the blood stream to reach the central body tissues when a second set of antibodies is made without compromising the first response to the original microbes (like installing another lock, so the door can be opened with different keys). This shows that central body tissues have the capacity to remember a range of different microbial species and to avoid the dangers of sepsis. It also shows that different B cell immune strategies in different body compartments are important for maintenance of our peaceful existence with our microbial passengers.

Dr. Li comments that "Our data show for the first time that not only the composition of our intestinal microbiota, but also the timing and sequence of exposure to certain members of the commensal microbiota, happening predominantly during the first waves of colonisations during early life, have an outcome on the resulting B cell receptor repertoire and subsequent immunity to pathogens."

Contrary to previous media reports, a new study led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers finds that Medicare Part D prescription drug insurance plans largely favor generic drugs over brand-name counterparts.

Published this week in Health Affairs, the study led by Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research and associate professor of Health Policy, compared Medicare Part D coverage of more than 1,360 pairs of generic and brand-name drugs. The analysis found 0.9% of plans covered only the brand name drug in 2019, compared to about 84% of plans covering only the generic drug. Roughly 15% of plans covered both the generic and brand-name version.

"What our study found is, in fact, that Part D plan formularies are designed to favor generics much more often than the brand-name counterpart, which, in the end, saves patients money," said Dusetzina, who collaborated with fellow researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Georgetown University and University of Kansas Medical School.

The analysis was done using formulary coverage data from Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage plans from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for a seven-year period from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, coverage of generic drugs increased, and brand-name only coverage decreased to less than 1%.

Another important finding is that of the plans that covered both the generic and the brand-name drug, the generic was generally on the same or lower cost-sharing tier than the brand, meaning patients paid less out of pocket for the generic.

"This is good news for patients who have chronic conditions that may need long-term treatment since generics generally will save both the patient and the program money," Dusetzina said.