Earth

New research has revealed a surprise twist in the symbiotic relationship between a type of salamander and the alga that lives inside its eggs. A new paper in Frontiers in Microbiology reports that the eggs compete with the algae to assimilate carbon from their surroundings - a finding that could inform similar processes in the dark ocean.

Plants and animals sometimes partner up in symbiotic relationships that benefit both, such as corals that provide a protective environment for algae that live inside them, and receive oxygen and nutrients from the algae in return. Originally, scientists believed that the salamander eggs and algae may be helping one another by exchanging sugar molecules - but a series of laboratory experiments showed molecular biologist John Burns and his colleagues Solange Duhamel at the University of Arizona and Ryan Kerney at Gettysburg College that this was not the case. Burns is the newest senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and much of his research explores how unusual situations in cell biology can inform understanding of the way larger systems function.

"Direct associations between algae and vertebrate animals are rare, and so one of the big questions has always been why this symbiosis exists in the first place," Burns said. "Learning about the chemical dialog between the algae and salamander eggs is essential for understanding their relationship, and implications for other symbioses."

Algae and other plants remove carbon dioxide from their surroundings for use in key biochemical processes, such as synthesizing essential molecules. Animals must assimilate, or "fix," carbon to excrete as the waste product urea. Animals also fix small amounts of carbon for use in other biochemical pathways - including, the researchers discovered, spotted salamander embryos.

Burns believes that this ability could provide a "shortcut" that makes biochemical processes in the embryos more efficient. All animals must synthesize and process dozens of molecules in order to conduct the processes necessary for life, like the conversion of food into energy and waste products. Carbon is one of the essential ingredients in these processes, and being able to quickly incorporate an additional carbon atom could confer a handy evolutionary advantage.

"Research today often doesn't account for the fact that animals can fix small amounts of carbon," Burns said. "Understanding that plants and animals can actually compete for carbon is one key to understanding what really happens in these symbiotic relationships."

Though algae and plants require light to fix carbon, the salamander eggs do not. Burns believes that the processes taking place in the eggs may be similar to those happening in some ocean microbes, and that they could serve as a useful parallel for an often-overlooked type of carbon fixation.

Previous research has shown that carbon fixation continues in the ocean even during the dark of night. It also happens in the deep ocean, beyond the reach of the sun - but it has never been clear how much of an impact these processes have on a global scale.

"Learning more about these chemical dialogs could teach us about the players in dark carbon fixation, and help us begin understanding how big an effect this has on the global ocean," Burns said. "This research into the minute world inside a salamander egg can prompt us to ask new questions about the effects of competition for inorganic carbon, particularly during symbioses, on entire food webs."

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have uncovered a novel drug target, a protein called PPP1R1B, that stops the deadly spread of pancreatic cancer, called metastasis, when inhibited in mice. Published in Gastroenterology, the findings are a first step toward a potential treatment for one of the deadliest cancers known today.

“Our study uncovers a protein, called PPP1R1B, that is completely new to pancreatic cancer researchers and that drives tumor metastasis, the major reason the cancer is so lethal,” says Anindya Bagchi, Ph.D., associate professor in the Tumor Initiation and Maintenance Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys and senior author of the study. “With this proof-of-concept data, we can start drug screens that identify an inhibitor of PPP1R1B, which, if successful, may help more people survive pancreatic cancer.”

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers: Fewer than 10% of people with this type of cancer remain alive five years later. The tumor is difficult to detect because symptoms often don’t appear until the disease has already metastasized. However, if the tumor is contained in the pancreas, the five-year survival rate increases to nearly 40%, according to the American Cancer Society. For unknown reasons, pancreatic cancer is on the rise and predicted to become the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. by 2030.

A surprising finding

In the study, the scientists set out to understand how pancreatic cancer responds to oxygen deprivation (hypoxia). Cancer researchers have long wondered how pancreatic cancers are able to thrive in such a harsh environment—and speculated that increased production of hypoxia inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF1A), a gene triggered by hypoxia, can stimulate tumor growth. Drugs that inhibit HIF1A are being explored for many hypoxic cancers, but until now the protein’s role in pancreatic cancer was unclear—presenting a hurdle to clinical trials evaluating these potentially promising drugs.

As a first step, the scientists created mice with pancreatic tumors that do not produce HIF1A. They expected that removing this protein would be beneficial and allow the mice to become cancer free. However, to their surprise, these mice had more aggressive tumors—with more invasion into nearby organs, greater metastasis and shorter survival times.

“Our original hypothesis was that if we remove HIF1A, a supposed driver of tumor survival, growth should be delayed or we should be curing the cancer,” says Bagchi. “Instead, we got the exact opposite results. When we saw this, we knew that we may have hit something really interesting, and needed to nail down exactly why we are seeing this effect.”

New drug target revealed

Digging deeper, the scientists discovered that these mice had increased levels of a protein called PPP1R1B. When they removed the gene that codes for this protein, the mice had fewer metastases--suggesting that a drug that inhibits the protein would stop pancreatic cancer from spreading.

“Our data also showed that tumor samples from people with metastatic pancreatic cancer had increased levels of PPP1R1B, adding further evidence that the protein has therapeutic potential,” says Ashutosh Tiwari, Ph.D., postdoctoral associate in the Bagchi lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys and first and co-lead author of the study. “Elevated levels of PPP1R1B have also been found in colon, lung and prostate cancers, and might also be seen in other hypoxic tumors, so an inhibitor may have benefits beyond pancreatic cancer.”

Next, the scientists plan to start drug screens that seek to identify compounds that inhibit PPP1R1B. These activities will take place at the Institute’s Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, one of the most advanced drug discovery centers in the nonprofit world.

“The path to a successful treatment for pancreatic cancer begins with a strong scientific understanding of what is driving the tumor’s growth and aggressiveness,” says Lynn Matrisian, Ph.D., chief science officer at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN), who wasn’t involved in the study. “This study has uncovered a promising drug target that, following additional research, may one day result in a treatment that helps more people fight the world’s toughest cancer.”

A team effort

Additional study authors include Kojiro Tashiro of Sanford Burnham Prebys and Ajay Dixit of the University of Minnesota, who contributed equally to the study; Aditi Soni, Keianna Vogel, Utkarsha Paithane, Bryan Hall, Guillermina Garcia, Alexandre Rosa Campos, Aniruddha J. Deshpande and Cosimo Commisso of Sanford Burnham Prebys; and Iram Shafqat, Joseph Slaughter, Nesteen Param, An Le, Emily Saunders, Jon Zettervall, Marjorie Carlson, Paolo P. Provenzano, Timothy K. Starr and York Marahrens of the University of Minnesota.

Researchers from University of Mannheim and University of Texas - Austin published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the nature and effectiveness of marketing excellence as a business strategy. The study addresses two fundamental questions: How do managers understand and exercise marketing excellence? and How do investors evaluate marketing excellence?

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Marketing Excellence: Nature, Measurement, and Investor Valuations" and is authored by Christian Homburg, Marcus Theel, and Sebastian Hohenberg.

In one study, the research team conducted 39 in-depth interviews with senior managers of global companies and augmented the data with secondary data on 150 firm strategies, applying the theories-in-use methodology. Findings reveal that marketing excellence is a strategy focused on achieving organic growth by executing three priorities: marketing ecosystem, end-user, and marketing agility. The marketing ecosystem priority is a firm's strategic means of growing the business by developing mutually beneficial networks in the proximal and distal firm environment. The end-user priority promotes engaging with the final customers who apply or consume the firm's offering and leveraging the final customer insights for growing the business. Finally, the marketing agility priority facilitates the execution of growth activities by the marketing organization and its members through simplified structures and processes, fast decision making, and trial and error learning. "What we have done," explains Homburg, "is expose the components of marketing excellence and advance the understanding of what marketing excellence is. This insight can guide managers about where they can invest in marketing excellence and how to communicate marketing excellence to internal and external stakeholders."

The second study quantifies the impact of marketing excellence on firm value (i.e., investors' expectations of future cash flows) and compares that effect with the effects of other marketing strategy concepts such as market orientation and marketing capabilities. Using 8,317 letters to shareholders from 1,727 annual reports between 1998 and 2016, the researchers measured marketing excellence with two methods, a machine learning algorithm and an original dictionary, and then assessed the impact of marketing excellence on firm value. The machine learning algorithm (4.80%) and the original dictionary (8.58%) had one-year abnormal returns significantly higher than benchmark portfolios. These performance metrics are even higher in the period from 2014 to 2017 where the marketing excellence portfolio achieved average annual returns of 16.82%, significantly outstripping market orientation and marketing capabilities portfolios (1.95% and 8.53% respectively). These results show that investors value marketing excellence more highly than they value strategies based on market orientation and marketing capabilities.

In addition to contributing to marketing academia, study results have important implications for managers and educators. Theel and Hohenberg elaborate, "First, we recommend that managers use the results to coordinate and communicate marketing excellence. For instance, the findings offer guidance for developing marketing excellence checklists and key performance indicators. Second, we recommend that educators use the findings to explain to future managers the strategic role of marketing in driving firms' organic growth." The researchers also recommend that educators develop new courses that align firms' decision fields for growth in terms of the marketing ecosystem, end user, and marketing agility. The research provides educators with direction on the content and scope of such courses.

Researchers from Esade, University of St. Gallen, HEC Paris, and Columbia University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explores the conundrum faced by firms that want to reduce their impact on the climate: Green products and their popularity with consumers can lead to an increase in sales and, with it, an increased carbon footprint for the organization as a whole.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Carbon Footprinting and Pricing Under Climate Concerns" and is authored by Marco Bertini, Stefan Buehler, Daniel Halbheer, and Donald Lehmann.

"How dare you continue to look away." This statement angrily made to world leaders by teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg brought the climate change debate sharply back into focus at the 2019 UN Action Summit in New York.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been on the world agenda for decades (197 nations formally committed to reducing carbon emissions at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992). But public opinion has reached a point where "business as usual" is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.

Marketing professionals play a critical role here because they represent the voice of consumers among internal stakeholders. They sense and measure changes in consumer preference and champion these emerging trends within their firms.

There is also a second element at play in the drive towards carbon neutrality: Climate concerns reduce profitability.

In both regards, the role of marketers is crucial: They channel climate concerns back to the firm, along with their impact on product design and prices, the climate impact of the firm, the profitability of carbon offsetting, corporate social responsibility, and green technology adoption.

With such a wide remit, managers who are balancing consumers' climate concerns with stakeholders' business goals should follow these three steps:

1. Calculate a carbon footprint

Media coverage of climate change, particularly the need to reduce the carbon footprint of an organization, is shown to motivate consumers to make more sustainable consumption decisions. Following particularly bad press, the airline industry has been very public in its commitment to carbon offsetting. EasyJet claims to offset the carbon emissions of fuel for each of its flights and British Airways promises the same for all its domestic flights. In the US, JetBlue is the first major airline to pledge to reach net zero.

The experience of airlines translates to a vast array of organizations in the manufacturing and service industries. Measuring the climate impact of their products or services in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions is a powerful metric and very much in line with the UN's "measure, reduce, offset" approach in its Climate Neutral Now initiative.

2. Decrease footprint, increase price

Changes in the carbon footprint may increase costs, but they can also increase demand. If the demand-enhancing effect of lowering the carbon footprint of a product outweighs the overall reduction in carbon footprint, the firm can fall victim to its own success. The firm could purchase carbon offsets, but that would have a further impact on profitability. In order to become "net zero" it may be optimal to increase the product price in order to offer a climate-neutral product. In this case, going net zero is a win-win strategy: Climate impact decreases, profit increases.

3. Be proactive with product design

Consumers' climate concerns provide an incentive for firms to produce greener products. But governmental regulation of carbon use in industrial design with market interventions such as carbon caps (consumption-based accounting and policy), cap-and-trade systems (regulations that limit industrial emission levels), and carbon taxes all reduce profitability.

However, while there are costs associated with climate regulations, they can also present opportunities. Investing in green technologies can reduce the cost of compliance and also generate income by selling the technology that is developed. Setting an internal carbon price--a shadow price that reflects the true overall cost of production--allows firms to design products or deliver services that achieve carbon neutrality while also maximizing organizational profits.

Climate concerns are not going to go away. Firms--and especially marketers--must be at the center of the drive to produce products that pollute less, whether the incentives come from altruism or the demand-enhancing effect of a greener offering. What they cannot do is continue to look away.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Dust explosions can be among the most dangerous and costly workplace incidents. Dust builds up in agricultural, powder-handling or manufacturing settings, causing hazards to employees and posing the risk of exploding.

Researchers at Purdue University have developed an image- and video-based application using OpenCV algorithms that detect explosible suspended dust concentration.

The Purdue team's work is published in the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries.

The app uses a camera or a video recording device to image and determine suspended dust, as well as accurately distinguish it from normal background noise.

"Determining suspended dust concentration allows employers to take appropriate safety measures before any location within the industry forms into an explosive atmosphere," said Kingsly Ambrose, an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering who leads the research team. "I believe this technology could help prevent dust explosions and will be of great benefit to the industry."

Ambrose said current technology for detecting dust levels is inconvenient because it is expensive, difficult to install in a workspace and separates dust matter into multiple filters that must be weighed and further manipulated for analysis.

Ambrose said that in testing, the algorithm successfully recognized 95% of saw dust and 93% of cornstarch particulates in the air.

"This technology is unique because it is easy to use without extended training, location independent and does not require permanent installations," Ambrose said.

Ambrose and the team have worked with the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization to patent the technology. They are looking to license it and are seeking collaborators for further development. For more information, contact Abhijit Karve of OTC at aakarve@prf.org and reference track code 2020-AMBR-68881.

A new study which provides a global estimate of rock cover on the Earth's glaciers has revealed that the expanse of rock debris on glaciers, a factor that has been ignored in models of glacier melt and sea level rise, could be significant.

The Northumbria University study, which has been published in Nature Geoscience this week, is the first to manually verify the rock debris cover on every one of the Earth's glaciers.

As glaciers shrink, their surrounding mountain slopes become exposed and eroded rock debris slides down and accumulates on glacier surfaces. This debris forms a protective layer that can be many metres thick, reducing the rate at which the ice below melts. Although the effects of this protective cover are known, it has never been carefully mapped until now, and so has not been included in global glacier models.

As well as revealing where rock debris is located on Earth's glaciers, the researchers also found and corrected key errors within the Randolph Glacier Inventory - a global inventory of glacier outlines on which hundreds of studies are based.

Using Landsat imagery, the research team from Northumbria University's Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL spent three years painstakingly examining and manually verifying more than 923,000 square kilometres of glacier worldwide.

The exercise allowed them to analyse the debris cover on a global-, regional-, as well as individual glacier-scale and created the world's first baseline dataset of glaciers in their current state.

They found more than 29,000 square kilometres of the world's mountain glacier area is covered in rock debris - an area equivalent to almost 500 Manhattan Islands.

Lead researcher Sam Herreid undertook the study for his PhD at Northumbria University and is now believed to be the only person who has examined every glacier on Earth, manually correcting the Randolph Glacier Inventory and bringing a level of consistency that has never before been present in a global glacier dataset.

He explained: "The structure of the debris cover of each glacier is unique and sensitive to climate, but until now, global glacier models have omitted debris cover from their forecasts of how glaciers respond to a changing climate.

"We now know that debris cover is present on almost half of Earth's glaciers, with 7.3% of the world's total mountain glacier area being debris covered.

"When we consider that much of this debris cover is located at the terminus, or toe, of a glacier where melt would usually be at its highest, this percentage becomes particularly important with respect to predicting future water resources and sea level rise."

The study also uncovered errors within the Randolph Glacier Inventory, finding an error rate of 3.3%. One of their findings revealed that 10,000 square kilometres of mapped glacier area was not actually glacier, but rather bedrock or vegetated ground that was either incorrectly mapped previously or glacier area that has since melted away.

This, combined with the melt reduction from debris insulating the ice below, means that all past global glacier models based on the Inventory are likely to have overestimated the true volume of glacier melt, run off and subsequent contribution to global sea level rise.

They described the 10.6% of glacier area that requires an updated approach to estimating melt as "an alarmingly high number" and said that their work provides a key dataset for revising, and likely lowering, the glacier contribution to sea level rise.

The team also devised a way to analyse how the world's debris-covered glaciers will evolve over the coming centuries.

By comparing the many states of glaciers present on Earth today, from those considered to be 'young' and icy in Greenland, to 'old' and rock covered in the Himalaya, they were able to piece together a conceptual timeline which they believe outlines how a glacier might evolve in the future.

Their timeline reveals that many glaciers are at the older end of the spectrum and can therefore be considered to be on the decline.

Co-author Francesca Pellicciotti of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and an Associate Professor at Northumbria University, explained: "The upper levels of the glaciers are constantly accumulating snow and will always be debris free, so we looked only at the lower levels of glaciers which is where rock debris can accumulate.

"Ice melts and flows away as water, but the rocks do not, and accumulate at the surface. Changes in the rate of mountain erosion as well as glacier changes in a warming climate will affect the size and shape of the rock layer at the surface of a glacier at any one time.

"Although we can't say exactly what year a glacier will evolve to a certain state, say, a state where it is almost entirely covered in rocks, we were able to place each glacier on a conceptual timeline and learn roughly how far along this line each glacier is to becoming almost entirely covered in rocks.

She added: "We found that the bulk of glaciers that have a debris cover today are beyond a peak debris cover formation state and are trending closer to the "old" Himalayan glaciers that might not be around for much longer.

"From a climate change perspective this is one more indication of the toll a warming climate is having on Earth's glaciers. However, we now have a benchmark measurement of debris cover for all of Earth's glaciers and new tools to monitor and predict the rate of changes couple to a warming climate."

Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is an infection affecting more than 20% of women worldwide. Caused by a change in the natural balance of the vaginal microbiota, this infection can lead to adverse outcomes in pregnancy as well as more susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, herpes simplex virus, chlamydia, or gonorrhea. While previous studies strongly suggest that partners' reproductive microbiomes might be exchanged in BV, a question remained: is the penile microbiota at the origin of BV onset in women?

To address this question researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago, here compare the microbiota of couples before and after the occurrence of BV. The results, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, show that men's microbiota has a role in BV onset and that BV-related bacteria present in men's penile microbiome can be used to predict with high accuracy BV incidence in their female partner.

The stakes of the study could be high for women infected by BV. "Antibiotic treatment of BV has limited long-term success, with up to 50% of women having recurrence within 6 months, so we need more effective approaches to treatment. Male sex partner treatment may be a new strategy" says Dr Supriya D. Mehta, an epidemiologist at University of Illinois at Chicago, first author of the study.

To assess the association between penile microbiota composition and BV onset, the team of researchers, followed 168 Kenyan heterosexual couples in which women did not have BV at the start of the study. Over the course of a year, more than 31% of the women developed BV. While the overall microbiota composition was different from man to man, analysis shows a direct correlation between the composition of a man's microbiome and the occurrence of BV in his female partner later in the year.

The temporal association observed suggests that the nature of penile microbiota could serve as a predictor of BV. Using machine learning algorithms, the researchers highlighted 10 BV-related bacteria, found in some men's microbiota, that could be used to predict with high accuracy the occurrence of BV in women.

But is penile microbiota the only factor responsible for BV? The authors discuss two possible scenarios. First, BV-associated bacteria found in some men's microbiome may have a direct impact on the onset of BV when transmitted to the vagina during sexual intercourse. Second, penile bacteria may only contribute to an overall perturbation of the natural balance of the vaginal microbiome and induce BV in the long term or after repetitive exposure. To uncover the exact mechanism through which penile microbiota trigger BV in female partners more studies will be needed.

Altogether, this study suggests that there may be improved effectiveness of treating BV in both partners. "I would like for clinicians, researchers, and the public to be inclusive of male sex partners in their efforts to improve women's reproductive health. Not to place directionality or blame on one partner or another, but to increase the options and opportunity for improved reproductive health, and hopefully reduce stigma from BV," says Mehta.

A new analysis of sandstones from Antarctica indicates there may be important links between the generation of mountain belts and major transitions in Earth's atmosphere and oceans.

A team of researchers analyzed the chemistry of tiny zircon grains commonly found in the Earth's continental rock record to determine their ages and chemical compositions. The team included scientists from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Michigan Technological University and ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

The study was published recently in the international peer-reviewed journal Terra Nova, which features short innovative papers about the solid Earth and planetary sciences.

"Mountain building occurs in association with the plate tectonic motions of the continents," said Paulsen, the lead author on the paper. "Geologists have long recognized that the generation of significant mountainous relief has the potential to profoundly influence the chemistry of the Earth's oceans and atmosphere."

Yet there are significant questions about the patterns of mountain building in Earth's past, especially associated with the ancient rock record leading up to the explosion of life about 541 million years ago.

"Mountains tend to be worn down by water and wind that ultimately transports their sedimentary remains to the oceans, leaving an incomplete puzzle for geologists to fit together," said Deering, a coauthor on the paper. "However, there is increasing evidence that missing pieces of the puzzle are found in the sands of ancient beaches and rivers, which are essentially the remnants of mountains produced by weathering and erosion."

The researchers' findings, based on an analysis of a large sample of zircon grains from sandstone recovered in Antarctica, may signify key links in the evolution of the Earth's rock cycle and its atmosphere and oceans.

"We found two primary periods of increased average crustal thickness associated with volcanic chains along convergent plate boundaries, implying an increased proportion of higher mountains at these times," Paulsen said.

"Both episodes occurred during major reorganization of the continents when they separated and drifted on the Earth's surface over time. They also overlap with snowball Earth glaciations--when the whole Earth was frozen over--and associated steps in oxygenation of the atmosphere, which may have been critical for the evolution of life. These correlations suggest an important causal link between plate tectonics and major transitions in Earth's atmosphere and oceans."

Tropical cyclones, also known as typhoons, wreak havoc in Asia and the Pacific. The storms can be deadly -- in 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever recorded, was responsible for 6,340 deaths -- and cost billions in damages. Current forecast models can only predict these storms 10 days in advance, at most, and they cannot precisely predict how intense the storms will become.

To rectify this, an international team of researchers has developed a model that analyzes nearly a quarter of Earth's surface and atmosphere in order to better predict the conditions that birth typhoons, as well as the conditions that lead to more severe storms. They published their results on July 27 in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

"The target problem of this study is how to foretell the genesis of typhoons," said paper author Mingkui Li, associate professor in the Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography in the Ocean University of China and the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM). "We specifically address three aspects: the onset time, central pressure and maximum wind speed."

With those three variabilities in mind, the researchers coupled prediction models of the atmosphere and the Earth's surface covering Asia and the Pacific Ocean. They examined three coupled models, each accounting for a different area depth. The researchers also accounted for the influence of one variable on another, such as wind speed on sea surface temperature, a phenomenon known as coupled data assimilation. This influence is well understood and accounted for in climate predictions and in weather forecasts, but it has not been fully applied in understanding how long-term climate affects day-to-day weather and vice versa, according to Li.

"A fine-resolution ocean-atmosphere coupled model that is initialized by downscaled coupled data assimilation is a key for forecasting the typhoon genesis," said Shaoqing Zhang, paper author and professor in the Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, QNLM and the International Laboratory for High-Resolution Earth System Model and Prediction (iHESP). "We aimed to provide insights on the time scale that can be used to forecast typhoons in advance, as well as how the resolution of coupled models can affect the prediction of formation, intensity, and track."

From their study, the researchers determined that a high-resolution coupled model with the ability to better understand the relationship between warm sea surface temperatures and weak wind shears -- conditions that favor tropical cyclone formation -- could improve typhoon predictability.

"Although completely addressing these problems, which are important in understanding issues of regional climate and extended-range forecasts, requires plenty of further study, our paper attempts to open the door for it," Zhang said, noting that the team will further improve the physics of the coupled models. "Our goal is to develop a 10 to 30-day extended range prediction system that will ultimately lead to seamless weather-climate predictions."

A new study using satellite mapping technology reveals there are nearly 20% more emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica than was previously thought. The results provide an important benchmark for monitoring the impact of environmental change on the population of this iconic bird.

Reporting this week in the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, the authors describe how they used images from the European Commission's Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission to locate the birds. They found 11 new colonies, three of which were previously identified but never confirmed. That takes the global census to 61 colonies around the continent.

Emperor penguins need sea ice to breed and are located in areas that are very difficult to study because they are remote and often inaccessible with temperatures as low as ?50°C (?58 degrees Fahrenheit). For the last 10 years, British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists have been looking for new colonies by searching for their guano stains on the ice.

Lead author Dr Peter Fretwell, a geographer at BAS says:

"This is an exciting discovery. The new satellite images of Antarctica's coastline have enabled us to find these new colonies. And whilst this is good news, the colonies are small and so only take the overall population count up by 5-10% to just over half a million penguins or around 265,500 - 278,500 breeding pairs".

Emperor penguins are known to be vulnerable to loss of sea ice, their favoured breeding habitat. With current projections of climate change, this habitat is likely to decline. Most of the newly found colonies are situated at the margins of the emperors' breeding range. Therefore, these locations are likely to be lost as the climate warms.

Dr Phil Trathan, Head of Conservation Biology at BAS, has been studying penguins for the last three decades. He says:

"Whilst it's good news that we've found these new colonies, the breeding sites are all in locations where recent model projections suggest emperors will decline. Birds in these sites are therefore probably the 'canaries in the coalmine' - we need to watch these sites carefully as climate change will affect this region."

The study found a number of colonies located far offshore, situated on sea ice that has formed around icebergs that had grounded in shallow water. These colonies, up to 180 km offshore, are a surprising new finding in the behaviour of this increasingly well-known species.

Researchers led by Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society and the Pan-American Health Organization have developed a system to monitor and forecast the environmental suitability of transmission of Zika, dengue fever, chikungunya and other diseases carried by species of Aedes mosquitos in the U.S. and neighboring regions.

Their results show that the forecasting skill of the new system is very good, with ‘hotspots’ of higher skill in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

The team published its findings in Scientific Reports.

The new system, called AeDES (https://aedes.iri.columbia.edu), is expected to help public-health authorities identify at-risk areas at least a month ahead of time, improving response and planning operations.

As a demonstration, the researchers used AeDES to predict that the current dengue outbreak in Central America will continue during the rest of 2020 and most likely will worsen. The compound effect of dengue and the ongoing COVID pandemic is expected to increase the number of coinfections in the region, the authors write.

Aedes-transmitted diseases cause more than 50 million infections every year worldwide, including in the United States, and cases have increased by 30-fold in the last 50 years because of changes in climate, land use and population.

These diseases, as with all mosquito-borne disease, are climate-sensitive–the risk of outbreaks goes up or down in part based on temperature, rainfall and humidity, which affect the life and reproductive cycle of the insects.

Supercharged climate-epidemiological modeling

"This is the first system for the region to monitor and forecast in real-time the conditions that are needed for transmission of Aedes-borne diseases," said Ángel Muñoz, a climate scientist at IRI and lead author of the paper.

“We’ve combined multiple R0 epidemiological models with multiple climate models, as well as seven decades of historical climate data,” Muñoz said. (Epidemiologists use R0 to describe how contagious an infectious disease is. A value of 2, for example, means that a person who has the disease will infect an average of two other people.)

When climate centers make probabilistic forecasts of weather and climate, they use multimodel ensembles–which generate many simulations from many models so as to give a range of possible outcomes.

Muñoz and his colleagues adapted this approach for AeDES, combining four well-known R0 models with the 96 members (or total executions per month) currently in the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME). As a result, the team generates 384 simulations each time it runs AeDES.

“Because we have such a huge sample to draw from, the probabilistic forecasts generated from these runs are really robust,” said Muñoz.

Public-health specialists can also use AeDES, which is powered by the IRI’s Data Library, to calculate and visualize the environmental suitability of disease transmission month-by-month going back to 1948, enabling them to better understand how climatic changes have been impacting different regions.

“The advantage of AeDES is that health ministry staff working at the country and subnational level will be able to adapt forecasts to their specific localities, allowing field actions to be much more targeted and tailored to their local conditions,” said co-author Ana Rivière-Cinnamond, from the Pan-American Health Organization. “Also, international and national health organizations could use the system to help identify future at-risk areas for vector-borne diseases–at border areas, for example, so as to alert authorities in advance to take action.”

In 2015, faced with a potential multi-country public-health emergency caused by the Zika virus, PAHO asked IRI to develop a system that used climate variables to try to stay a step ahead of future outbreaks. Based on the promising results of this initial collaboration (for more, read here, here and here), both PAHO and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office lent further support to IRI to develop and expand the system into what is now AeDES.

Muñoz and his team were also able to integrate the NextGen forecasting system and methodology (factsheet) developed as part of the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow (ACToday) Columbia World Project.

“It’s a great example of how advances we were able to make because of Columbia’s commitment to ACToday–a project focused food security–led to advances for the public health community,” said Muñoz.

The two are not unrelated, Muñoz added. “Covid-19 has created a serious food-security crisis in Central America, and this is exacerbating the present dengue outbreak there. It is not only important to join forces between these two projects, it’s our duty to do so.”

A lack of the mineral selenium in the diet puts people at risk of paracetamol overdose, even when the painkiller is taken at levels claimed to be safe on the packaging, according to collaborative research emerging from the University of Bath and Southwest University in China.

Paracetamol (also called Tylenol) is best known for relieving mild pain and fever, and is a leading cause of liver failure when taken at dangerous levels. For adults, the recommended maximum daily dosage is 4g (amounting to two 500mg tablets taken four times). However, the team from Bath and Chongqing has found that the micronutrient selenium affects the speed at which the painkiller is flushed from the body. As a result, taking 4g of the medication in a given day can be dangerous for people with low levels of selenium in their bodies.

"People with a selenium deficiency can struggle to eliminate the drug fast enough to keep their livers healthy," explained Dr Charareh Pourzand who led the collaborative research from the University of Bath's Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology. "They can overdose even when they follow dosage guidelines."

A huge amount of Paracetamol is consumed around the world, with an average person in the UK popping 70 tablets (or 35 grams) every year. Dr Pourzand said: "For most people, paracetamol is safe up to the stated dose. But if you are frail, malnourished or elderly, your levels of selenium are likely to be somewhat depleted, and for these people I think it's a bad idea to take paracetamol at the maximum level currently considered safe."

It is thought that insufficient selenium intake affects up to 1 billion people worldwide - or one in seven of the globe's population. It may be tempting to boost selenium levels through supplements, but based on the results of this study, Dr Pourzand advises against this course of action, as an excess of the micronutrient can be just as dangerous to the body as a deficiency.

"There is a rather limited dose range for the beneficial effects of selenium," she said. "Both mild selenium deprivation in the body and excess supplementation increase the severity of liver injury after you've taken paracetamol."

She added: "This study shows that the link between selenium status in the diet and paracetamol toxicity is very important. I hope people pay attention to these findings, given everyone has paracetamol in their home. And now with people falling ill with Covid-19, paracetamol is being taken more than ever."

Selenium helps maintain a healthy redox balance in the body within antioxidant enzymes called selenoproteins (selenium-containing proteins). Redox balance describes the mechanism by which each cell maintains a subtle balance between antioxidant and pro-oxidant levels (where some atoms gain electrons and others lose them, becoming free radicals). When the body's selenium levels fall out of the beneficial range, antioxidant enzyme activities are decreased and too many free radicals are formed in liver - the main organ where paracetamol is metabolised. This results in damage both to an individual's DNA and to their proteins.

Dr Pourzand emphasises the importance of a good diet in keeping selenium levels within the recommended range. "A healthy, balanced diet is especially important if you take paracetamol on a regular basis, for instance for chronic pain," she said.

Within the human diet, selenium is obtained from both animal and plant sources. Particularly rich sources include Brazil and cashew nuts, oily fish, eggs, brown rice, sunflower seeds, mushrooms, cottage cheese, lentils and meat. However, there is growing concern that pesticides are affecting levels of selenium in the soil. Countries with particularly low levels of the mineral in their soil include the UK, Scandinavia, New Zealand and northeast regions of China and South Atlantic states in the USA.

The size of a fly's eyes and nose reflect both its behaviour during mating and its habitat preferences, according to a new study published today in eLife.

The findings could help explain how new species of flies evolve over time, as selective pressures such as light availability and competition for habitat drive a fundamental compromise between the size of different sensory organs.

Flies of the Drosophila family, commonly known as fruit flies or vinegar flies, comprise around 1,500 species that inhabit all continents except Antarctica, and occur in almost every type of environment. Due to their vast variation in shape, behaviours such as feeding and courtship, and preferences in breeding sites, these flies can provide unique insights about driving forces in evolution.

"Little is known about the ecology of most Drosophila species, such as their habitats and ecological preferences," explains lead author Ian Keesey, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany. "We wanted to determine whether the different behavioural, physical and sensory attributes of close relatives in the Drosophilidae family help to support their co-existence in a single habitat."

The team started by studying differences between the eyes and olfactory part of the antennae (funiculus) of two closely related and often cohabiting species of Drosophila. They found that, in general, one species of fly had much larger eyes in terms of surface area and number of optical units, whereas the other had smaller eyes but larger antennal surface areas.

They then looked at the parts of the brain that process visual and olfactory information, and found differences here too. After correcting for the overall size of the flies, the measurements of the two sensory systems reflected the size of their external eyes and antennae seen in the previous experiment.

The team next looked at whether these features had any correlation with the flies' behaviours. They started by studying courtship, introducing male and female flies and watching how the males positioned themselves to attract the female's attention. Here they saw striking differences. The male flies from the species that had greater visual capacity darted around to position themselves directly in front of the female fly and displayed their wings, tilting during their wings, possibly to create a flash of colour. By contrast, the males from the species that had larger antennae positioned themselves to the side or behind the female fly, vibrating their wings towards the fly's head and singing, and by doing so likely ventilating some sex pheromones.

Having established that the differences in eye and antenna sizes mirrored differences in courtship behaviour, the team looked at whether they also influenced habitat preferences. Using a simple Y-shaped tube, they gave the flies the choice of moving towards a light or dark environment. The flies with the smaller eyes preferred to enter the arm leading to the dark environment, while the flies with larger eyes moved towards the light. This suggests that although these species might be grouped together ecologically because they live in a forest, one closely related species is more likely to prefer darker, inner forest habitats, while the other prefers open forest canopies.

The team then expanded their studies to three other closely related Drosophila species that tend to be found in the same habitat. "This allowed us to determine the relationship between eye-to-funiculus ratio and different behaviours," explains co-senior author Bill Hansson, Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. "We found that larger ratios between these organs related consistently to the flies' attraction to light, as well as to their tendency to conduct courtship behaviours directly in front of the female."

"Our work shows that several species of fly sharing common ancestry differ significantly in their eye and antenna shape and size," concludes co-senior author Markus Knaden, Group Leader in the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. "One species depends on consistent visual stimuli as a species-defining trait, whereas the other would rely more on smell. These different preferences allow them to carve out specific niches and avoid overlap with other close relatives, allowing them to live together cooperatively rather than in competition."

DURHAM, N.C. - Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a method for controlling the phase separation of an emerging class of proteins to create artificial membrane-less organelles within human cells. The advance, similar to controlling how vinegar forms droplets within oil, creates opportunities for engineering synthetic structures to modulate existing cell functions or create entirely new behaviors within cells.

The results appear online on August 3 in the journal Nature Chemistry.

Proteins function by folding into specific 3-D shapes that interact with different biomolecular structures. Researchers previously believed that proteins needed these fixed shapes to function. But in the last two decades, a large new class of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) have been discovered that have large regions that are "floppy"--that is, they do not fold into a defined 3-D shape. It is now understood these regions play an important, previously unrecognized role in controlling various cellular functions.

IDPs are also useful for biomedical applications because they can undergo phase transitions--changing from a liquid to a gel, for example, or from a soluble to an insoluble state, and back again--in response to environmental triggers, like changes in temperature. These features also dictate their phase behavior in cellular environments and are controlled by adjusting characteristics of the IDPs such as their molecular weight or the sequence in which the amino acids are linked together.

"Although there are many natural IDPs that show phase behavior in cells, they come in many different flavors, and it has been difficult to discern the rules that govern this behavior," said Ashutosh Chilkoti, the Alan L. Kaganov Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke. "This paper provides very simple engineering principles to program this behavior within a cell."

"Others in the field have taken a top-down approach where they'll make a change to a natural IDP and see how its behavior changes within a cell," said Michael Dzuricky, a research scientist working in the Chilkoti laboratory and first author of the study. "We're taking the opposite approach and building our own artificial IDPs from simple thermodynamic principles. This enables us and others to precisely tune a single property--the shape of the IDPs phase diagram--to better understand how this parameter affects biological behavior"

In the new paper, the researchers begin by looking to nature for examples of IDPs that come together to form "biomolecular condensates" within cells. These weakly-held-together structures allow cells to create compartments without also building a membrane to encapsulate it. Using one such IDP from the common fruit fly as a basis, the researchers draw from their extensive history of working with IDPs to engineer a molecularly simpler artificial version that retains the same behavior.

This simpler version allowed the researchers to make precise changes to the molecular weight of the IDP and amino acids of the IDPs. The researchers show that, depending on how these two variables are tweaked, the IDPs come together to form these compartments at different temperatures in a test tube. And by consistently trying various tweaks and temperatures, the researchers gained a solid understanding of which design parameters are most important to control the IDP's behavior.

A test tube, however, is not the same as a living cell, so the researchers then went one step further to demonstrate how their engineered IDPs behave within E. coli. As predicted, their artificial IDPs grouped together to form a tiny droplet within the cell's cytoplasm. And because the IDP's behavior was now so well understood, the researchers showed they could predictably control how they coalesced using their test tube principles as a guide.

"We were able to change temperatures in cells to develop a complete description of their phase behavior, which mirrored our test tube predictions," said Dzuricky. "At this point, we were able to design different artificial IDP systems where the droplets that are formed have different material properties."

Put another way, because the researchers understood how to manipulate the size and composition of the IDPs to respond to temperature, they could program the IDPs to form droplets or compartments of varying densities within cells. To show how this ability might be useful to biomedical engineers, the researchers then used their newfound knowledge, as nature often does, to create an organelle that performs a specific function within a cell.

The researchers showed that they could use the IDPs to encapsulate an enzyme to control its activity level. By varying the molecular weight of the IDPs, the IDPs hold on the enzyme either increased or decreased, which in turn affected how much it could interact with the rest of the cell.

To demonstrate this ability, the researchers chose an enzyme used by E. coli to convert lactose into usable sugars. However, in this case, the researchers tracked this enzyme's activity with a fluorescent reporter in real-time to determine how the engineered IDP organelle was affecting enzyme activity.

In the future, the researchers believe they could use their new IDP organelles to control the activity levels of biomolecules important to disease states. Or to learn how natural IDPs fill similar cellular roles and understand how and why they sometimes malfunction.

"This is the first time anybody has been able to precisely define how the protein sequence controls phase separation behavior inside cells," said Dzuricky. "We used an artificial system, but we think that the same rules apply to natural IDPs and are excited to begin testing this theory."

"We can also now start to program this type of phase behavior with any protein in a cell by fusing them to these artificial IDPs," said Chilkoti. "We hope that these artificial IDPs will provide new tool for synthetic biology to control cell behavior."

Scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah (U of U) report today the development of new models to study molecular characteristics of tumors of the lung and pancreas

Scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah (U of U) report today the development of new models to study molecular characteristics of tumors of the lung and pancreas that are driven by mutations in a gene named NTRK1. The findings were published today in the journal Cell Reports.

In healthy bodies, NTRK1 has critical functions in the development of nerve cells, particularly those that send signals to the brain about pain, temperature, and touch. In some cancers, these powerful genes malfunction to send signals to cells, instructing them to grow constantly.

The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, was led by Martin McMahon, PhD, senior director of preclinical translation at HCI and professor of dermatology at the U of U, and Aria Vaishnavi, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in McMahon's lab. McMahon's team focuses on cell-cell communication, like the signaling promoted in some cancers by NTRK1.

One way to examine this experimentally is to devise a way to model human cancers in mice. This process produces a new tool, a "mouse model," which allows scientists to analyze in a laboratory setting how a cancer develops, how it behaves over time, and to test potential new drugs and treatment targets. The researchers hope the new NTRK1 mouse models reported today will accelerate progress toward finding more effective treatments for patients with NTRK1-driven lung and pancreas cancers.

A conversation with Ignacio Garrido-Laguna, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist at HCI, associate professor of internal medicine at the U of U, and director of the HCI Phase I Clinical Research Program, inspired the idea for this study. Garrido-Laguna was caring for a pancreatic cancer patient who was participating in a clinical trial at HCI (NCT02568267). The patient's tumor had a mutation in NTRK1 and then had a remarkable response to the NTRK1 inhibitor drug being evaluated. Hence, it made sense to Garrido-Laguna and McMahon that the response might be related to inhibition of the mutated NTRK1.

McMahon posited that if NTRK1 signaling was responsible, disruption of that signaling might be beneficial. "Pancreatic cancers have proven to be a particularly recalcitrant to treatments, so we wanted to thoroughly evaluate such a dramatic response as we work to identify new potential treatments for this disease," said McMahon. Moreover, since the responses to the NTRK1 inhibitors are often short-lived, McMahon and colleagues wanted to design new combination therapies that prevented the onset of lethal drug resistance.

As a graduate student in the lab of Robert Doebele, MD, PhD, at the University of Colorado, Denver, Vaishnavi was the lead author on the discovery of the involvement of NTRK1 fusions in lung cancer. That work led to the rapid testing and approval of drugs called TRKA inhibitors in the clinic. These drugs were the first ever "agnostic" agents approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, meaning the drugs were approved for any patient with a type of cancer that carried the NTRK1 abnormality. Vaishnavi's background studying these molecules in lung cancer was essential to the current pancreas cancer project.

To better understand cancers that carry this abnormality, McMahon, Vaishnavi, and Conan Kinsey, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist at HCI and assistant professor of internal medicine at the U of U with expertise in pancreatic cancer biology, developed mouse models for both pancreas cancer and lung cancer driven by the NTRK1 abnormality. "The lung and pancreas are two clearly distinct organs with unique features that shape the development of solid tumors," says Vaishnavi. "It is important to study how cancers begin and operate in the correct tissue context and microenvironment."

In this study, McMahon and his colleagues evaluated rational drug combinations that greatly enhanced the durability of tumor response and prevented the onset of lethal drug resistance in the mouse models. Their hope now is for this laboratory research to progress toward clinical trials in patients, and, ultimately, to improve treatment options for patients affected by these aggressive cancers.