Earth

NASA's Terra satellite provided a night-time look at what is now Post-Tropical Storm Dolly in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. Terra found that all of Dolly's clouds were on one side of the storm as the storm weakened further.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) defines a post-tropical cyclone as a former tropical cyclone. This generic term describes a cyclone that no longer possesses sufficient tropical characteristics to be considered a tropical cyclone. Post-tropical cyclones can continue carrying heavy rains and high winds. Note that former tropical cyclones that have become fully extratropical and remnant lows are two classes of post-tropical cyclones.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the NHC issued their final advisory on Post-Tropical Storm Dolly as the storm weakened to a remnant low-pressure area. The center of Post-Tropical Cyclone Dolly was located near latitude 42.5 north, longitude 57.8 west. That is about 370 miles (595 km) southwest of Cape Race Newfoundland, Canada. Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 kph) with higher gusts.

The estimated minimum central pressure is 1007 millibars. The post-tropical cyclone is moving toward the northeast near 16 mph (26 kph) and this general motion is expected to continue through tonight.

In the early morning hours of June 24, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured an infrared image of Post-Tropical Cyclone Dolly's brightness temperatures. Brightness temperature is actually a measure of the photons seen in the 11-micron wavelength by the MODIS instrument aboard Terra. They are presented in units of temperature. The infrared image provided temperature data that revealed the coldest, highest clouds were about 213.8 Kelvin (minus 76.2 degrees Fahrenheit/minus 60.1 degrees Celsius). Those areas indicated the strongest thunderstorms within the low-pressure area and were all displaced to the south of the center.

Because Dolly is now moving over cool waters below 20 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit), forecasters do not expect any more development of strong thunderstorms. Tropical cyclones require sea surface temperatures of at least 26.6 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) to maintain strength and generate thunderstorms.

Therefore, the low-pressure area is forecast to gradually spin down through Wednesday [June 24] night. It will likely open to an elongated area of low pressure known as a surface trough sometime on Thursday as it continues to move northeastward.

The National Hurricane Center said, "Gradual weakening is expected, and Post-Tropical Cyclone Dolly is expected to dissipate by Thursday [June 25] morning."

NASA's Terra satellite is one in a fleet of NASA satellites that provide data for hurricane research.

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes 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 updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

The team of Professor Tobias Bollenbach from the Institute for Biological Physics at the University of Cologne has published a study on a new approach to improving the effectiveness of antibiotics in bacterial infections. The study 'Highly parallel lab evolution reveals that epistasis can curb the evolution of antibiotic resistance,' on ways to controlling antibiotic resistance through targeted gene interactions has appeared in 'Nature Communications'.

'We wanted to know how genetic disorders in the bacterium E. coli interact with the later evolutionary adaptation to the drug,' said Bollenbach. Doctoral researcher Marta Lukačišinová developed a robotic platform together with Bollenbach and the technician Booshini Fernando with which hundreds of genetically altered Escherichia coli populations could be created simultaneously, and the course of their evolution investigated. 'Our most important result was that we found an entry point for suppressing the spontaneous development of resistance to the administered drug,' Lukačišinová added.

At first, the team identified a prototypical pattern in the development of resistance: Those bacterial strains that initially reacted more sensitively to drugs developed a greater resistance to the drug during the course of the evolutionary experiment. However, the researchers were particularly interested in the conditions under which this pattern is broken and virtually no resistance develops. The study showed that this happens when the bacterium exhibits certain functional disorders. The researchers identified the areas of membrane transport and chaperones, which play a decisive role in the error-free production of proteins. If these functions are not fully intact in the bacterium, an antibiotic can attack these areas much more effectively and improve its effectiveness in the long term. In the future, these molecular targets may help to improve antibiotics.

As head of the 'Biological Physics and Systems Biology' research group at the University of Cologne, Tobias Bollenbach is investigating new ways to minimize or even prevent the development of drug resistance.

Barn swallows live almost everywhere on the planet, recognizable by their forked tail and agility in the air. Yet while they share these characteristics, these little birds often look slightly different in each place they live--with some so distinct they're splitting off to become new species.

Researchers at CU Boulder think that local parasites are influencing why barn swallows in Europe, the Middle East and Colorado are choosing their mates differently. Their new research, published in Evolution, finds that these parasites could be playing an important role in changing the traits displayed to attract mates early in the process of the creation of new species.

"It's possible we haven't appreciated just how important parasites might be in shaping the evolution of their hosts," said lead author Amanda Hund, who conducted the research as a doctoral candidate in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department.

Every organism, including humans, has co-evolved with a unique community of parasites, that by definition live at the expense of their host. While they are not beneficial to us like many other microbes are, parasites have shaped our own immune system, pheromones and even our mate selection, previous research has shown.

Hund set out to characterize as many parasite communities as she could in barn swallows, to find out if they could be influencing their mate selection, and therefore the male birds' physical traits and the creation of new species.

Hund and her colleagues studied barn swallows at sites in Colorado, the Czech Republic and Israel over four years. They measured the number and types of parasites on them, in their nests and in their blood and tracked who they chose to mate with in a given breeding season, their sexual signals--breast color, throat color and tail shape--and their health and the survival rate of their offspring.

In all but one population in the study, the most "attractive" males had fewer parasites. Somehow the male birds' breast color, throat color and tail shape allowed females to make informed choices about their health and the likelihood of reproductive success with that partner.

Many birds also had multiple parasites with connections to the same physical trait. For example, in Colorado, males with darker breast color are less likely to have mites, but more likely to have malaria. Nest mites are detrimental to the nestlings' survival--whereas malaria only impacts the male bird.

"Males are investing in traits to attract females, and it looks like that comes at a cost--where they are more attractive, but also more susceptible to malaria," said Hund, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. "It is a tradeoff."

Evolution in action

Researchers who study the origin of biodiversity, or why the Earth has so many different species, often examine which traits animals are choosing in their partners. But the real question is: Why are they choosing those specific combinations of traits?

To answer that question requires a very detailed type of scientific research, looking at the full reproductive cycle, health and survival rate of a population, in order to create a rich data set that unpacks how evolution is working between closely related populations.

"Most people are really good at characterizing the pattern. But Amanda's work is very special in terms of trying to unpack the process," said Rebecca Safran, associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and co-author on the study.

Many factors affect the divergent evolution of species. But as opposed to something like the weather, parasites are evolving as rapidly as their host species--leading to a co-evolutionary relationship. While this has been studied in other animals, it has only previously been studied in one barn swallow population in Europe.

Barn swallows make a great study specimen: they're ubiquitous and charismatic.

"These birds have evolved alongside humans for thousands of years. Every culture that we've visited seems to have its own unique story or relationship with this bird," said Safran.

But because they nest almost exclusively in human made structures--barns, bridges, culverts and the like--barn swallows often live on private land. It turns out that winning the trust of landowners is as much a part of the work as catching the birds.

"Public relations is a very large part of barn swallow research," said Hund.

Safran has been working with dozens of collaborators all over the world for over a decade. Hund built off these connections to do this research in Europe and the Middle East, facing unique circumstances and language barriers along the way.

In Israel Hund lived on a Kibbutz, a collective community, in order to complete her research over several months. In the Czech Republic, Hund used award-winning skills from her childhood and rode horses at an equestrian center to build trust and gain access to an important nesting site.

And here in Colorado, there were landowners who were unsure or suspicious of the project at the start of the breeding season. "But by the end, they were having us over for dinner," said Hund.

The work doesn't stop here. The researchers are already trying to answer the next big question: why are local parasites and certain sexual traits linked?

"And once you really figure that out, you can export that knowledge and our study methods to other populations and actually watch mate selection decisions and the associated reproductive consequences unfold," said Safran. "It's like watching evolution in action."

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Fish exposed to very low levels of chemicals commonly found in waterways can pass the impacts on to future generations that were never directly exposed to the chemicals, according to Oregon State University researchers.

"What that gets at is something your grandparents may have come into contact with in their environment can still be affecting the overall structure of your DNA in your life today," said Kaley Major, a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

The study focused on synthetic (man-made) endocrine disrupting chemicals, which mimic the body's hormones. They are found in many household and industrial products including flame retardants, food, toys, cosmetics and pesticides. Previous research has shown exposures to the chemicals can lead to altered sex ratios, lower fertility rates and deformities in fish.

Endocrine disruptors can cause adverse biological effects in other animals, including humans, by altering natural hormones in the body that are responsible for development, behavior and fertility. Past research done elsewhere has shown that those adverse alterations in humans can be passed to future generations.

"It's really important to understand how animals can deal with stress in the environment, particularly when we are introducing new stressors on a daily basis," said Susanne Brander, an assistant professor and aquatic toxicologist in OSU's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife with whom Major worked.

"Our research helps show what animals do to respond to these changes and how quickly they can respond to them. That's going to help us understand our impact on the environment in the long run."

The researchers conducted the study with inland silversides, a fish found in estuaries that averages about 4 inches in length and is native in eastern North America and the Gulf of Mexico. They have also been introduced in California. They primarily feed on zooplankton and are an important prey species for birds and commercially valuable fish.

Previous research had shown negative impacts on fish exposed to high levels of endocrine disruptors, but little is known about fish exposed to low levels of the chemicals, Major said.

In the experiment, the inland silversides were exposed to the equivalent of a few drops of each endocrine disruptor in an Olympic-size swimming pool. The researchers studied three generations of fish over 21 months to see if the effects of endocrine disruptor exposure only to the parents were passed from generation to generation.

The experiment focused on methylation, a process by which a set of carbon and hydrogen atoms known as a methyl group is added to a DNA molecule. Methylation can be tracked and can be an important indicator of how an organism will develop.

Previous research with mammals and other species of fish has found that endocrine disruptors impact methylation. That led Brander, Major and their collaborators to wonder whether endocrine disruptors, particularly low concentrations, would impact methylation in fish that live in estuaries, ecosystems which are important for biodiversity and often impacted by nearby urban areas.

The results were surprising, the researchers said. They found consistent patterns of methylation across the three generations of fish they studied, even though only the first generation was exposed to endocrine disruptors for a few weeks in early life.

The researchers believe the methylation patterns they observed across the three generations may influence expression of genes associated with the skewed sex ratios, reduced hatching and developmental defects observed by Ph.D. student Bethany DeCourten as part of the larger study. Future research will help the scientists understand more about what the methylation markers mean and what that says about how pollutants may affect evolution of inland silversides.

Because of how aggressively they divide, cancer cells have an increased demand for building materials and energy. They meet these added demands by altering their metabolism -- taking in larger amounts of fuel, for example.

Historically, these metabolic changes have been considered a consequence rather than a cause of cancer, and therefore not good drug targets. However, a new study from the Sloan Kettering Institute laboratory of Hans-Guido Wendel challenges that assumption.

"We find that increased activity of a normal metabolic enzyme, called SHMT2, is sufficient to transform normal B cells into B cell lymphomas," says Sara Parsa, a postdoctoral fellow in the Wendel lab and the first author of a paper describing these results. The paper was published June 22 in the journal Nature Cancer.

Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions. SHMT2's main role is to speed the conversion of the amino acid serine into glycine, simultaneously generating a small molecule called a methyl group. This methyl group, the researchers found, binds to the on/off switch (called a promoter) of genes that encode previously unrecognized tumor suppressor proteins. This binding turns off these tumor suppressors, resulting in B cell lymphoma. (Because this change does not involve a change in the DNA sequence of genes, it is an example of epigenetics.)

SHMT2 sits on a region of chromosome 12 that is often amplified (present in multiple copies) in B cell lymphoma. The increased number of gene copies leads to more of the enzyme being made. In animals, this is enough to cause lymphomas.

Other cancer cells, the researchers note, also carry the same gene amplification and contain abundant SHMT2, revealing this to be a common theme that could be exploited therapeutically.

While scientists have documented previous links between metabolism and cancer, most of these involve metabolic proteins that are mutated (genetically altered). "This may be the first time that anyone has shown that too much of a normal metabolic enzyme can drive cancer," Dr. Wendel says. "It reinforces the idea that metabolic changes can be a cause rather than simply an effect of cancer."

He notes that the research reveals that SHMT2 could be a potential drug target for cancer therapies, provided there is a way to target it specifically in cancer cells.

Volume 11 Issue 25 of @Oncotarget reported that Indoximod has shaped the understanding of the biology of IDO1 in the control of immune responses, though its mechanism of action has been poorly understood.

Indoximod can have a direct effect on T cells, increasing their proliferation as a result of mTOR reactivation.

Further, indoximod modulates the differentiation of CD4+ T cells via the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, which controls transcription of several genes in response to different ligands including kynurenine.

Indoximod increases the transcription of RORC while inhibiting transcription of FOXP3, thus favoring differentiation to IL-17-producing helper T cells and inhibiting the differentiation of regulatory T cells.

Indoximod can also downregulate expression of IDO protein in vivo in murine lymph node dendritic cells and in vitro in human monocyte-derived dendritic cells via a mechanism that involves signaling through the Ah R. Together, these data improve the understanding of how indoximod influences the effects of IDO, beyond and distinct from direct enzymatic inhibition of the enzyme.

"Together, these data improve the understanding of how indoximod influences the effects of IDO, beyond and distinct from direct enzymatic inhibition of the enzyme"

Dr. Erik L. Brincks from NewLink Genetics Corporation as well as Lumos Pharma, Inc. said "Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO1) plays an important role in the regulation of acquired local and peripheral immune tolerance in normal and pathological scenarios."

In cancer, IDO1 can be expressed either directly by the tumor cells or induced indirectly in host antigen presenting cells by the tumor.

IDO1 expression by tumor cells has been associated with significantly worse clinical prognosis and reduced survival in malignant melanoma, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, both pediatric and adult acute myelogenous leukemia, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, and others.

The cellular pharmacodynamic effects of IDO1 activity include the inhibition of antigen-specific CD8+ T cell proliferation, stimulation of differentiation of na�ve CD4+ T cells to Fox P3+ regulatory T cells, the activation of Tregs, and the recruitment of MDSC to the tumor.

Both isomers are capable of restoring T-cell proliferation in an MLR assay with IDO+ dendritic cells as the stimulator cells, or in syngeneic antigen-dependent T-cell proliferation assays using IDO+ dendritic cells isolated from tumor-draining lymph nodes.

L1m T is a competitive inhibitor and substrate of IDO1 enzymatic activity in cell-free assays using purified recombinant IDO1 enzyme, and in tumor cells treated with INFγ or in tumor cell lines transfected with expression vectors that encode IDO1 under the control of an heterologous promoter.

The Brincks Research Team concluded in their Oncotarget Research Paper that these effects are independent on the Trp metabolizing activity of IDO and/or TDO but happen to oppose the effects of the enzymatic activity of IDO and TDO by multiple mechanisms that act on cell types commonly affected by the IDO and TDO pathways.

Indoximod creates a Trp-sufficiency signal which leads to reactivation of MAP4K3 which leads to activation of mTORC1 activity, thus opposing and bypassing the effects of Trp deprivation that lead to GCN2 activation and MAP4K3 and mTOR inactivation.

This effect requires a relatively high concentration of indoximod, is observed in both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and leads to an increase in the proliferative capacity of activated effector and helper T cells.

This effect takes place at clinically relevant concentrations of indoximod and is independent of IDO/TDO activity or exogenous Kyn, though it happens to oppose the Kyn/Ah R effects on T cell differentiation.

Indoximod can downregulate IDO1 protein expression in dendritic cells, with potency of approximately 20 μM, via a mechanism that involves the function of Ah R thus exerting a true IDO pathway inhibitory function, by blocking both the enzymatic and non-enzymatic signaling functions of IDO1 that contribute to T cell anergy, to the reduction of effector T cell proliferation, and to the promotion of regulatory T cell activation and differentiation.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool are making significant progress in the quest to develop new sulfur polymers that provide an environmentally friendly alternative to some traditional petrochemical based plastics.

University of Liverpool chemist and Royal Society Research Fellow, Dr Tom Hasell and his team, have published two papers which demonstrate practical and exciting developments for sulfur polymer technologies and application.

This new research builds on their game changing discovery in 2019 when they reported a new catalytic process to make polymers out of sulfur.

Sulfur is a waste product from many industrial processes and in recent years a growing number of materials scientists have become interested in using it as an environmentally alternative to oil from which to manufacture plastics. As well as being in plentiful supply, sulfur also has the added advantage of leading to more easily recyclable polymers.

In a paper published in Angewandte Chemie, Dr Hasell and colleagues make an exciting discovery that addresses the weakness of sulfur polymers, a factor that has limited its application.

Led by PhD student Peiyao Yan, the paper demonstrates that adding a second type of bonding, urethane bonds, to the materials increases the strength of sulfur polymers by up to 135 times. The way this second type of bonding is introduced means that its amount can be controlled, and in turn controls the physical properties of the polymers.

The strengthened sulfur polymers were found to have shape-memory effects - they can be set in one shape, before being temporarily deformed into another. When heated a little, they 'remember' the previous shape and go back to it. This setting process and temporary deformation can be repeated multiple times.

This is a first for sulfur polymers, and despite these unusual properties, the sulfur bonds of the polymers mean they are still easy to recycle and opens up potential applications in areas such as soft robotics, medicine, and self-repairing objects.

In a second paper, published in Chemical Science, Dr Hasell's group teamed up with researchers at Flinders University in Australia to show that sulfur polymers could form rubber like materials that could be easily self-repaired to their original strength within minutes, just by applying an amine catalyst that helps the bonds in the broken surfaces heal back together.

This new kind of rubber and catalyst can be used with low energy consumption to make flexible, repairable, sustainable objects - providing a very real and useful application for these new sulfur polymers.

Dr Tom Hasell said: "Both of these papers really show the potential of polymers made from waste sulfur to be a viable replacement material for some traditional petrochemical based plastics.

"Not only as a substitute material, but as one that is easier to recycle, and has exciting new properties for materials chemists to explore.

"We are excited to see what ideas researchers have for using these new findings, in particular the memory shape and "re-programming" properties."

Dengue infections are rising, even as public health authorities are battling to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Dengue virus serotype 2 (DENV2) had previously been the predominant serotype but DENV3 has re-emerged in Singapore after almost three decades. This means the Singapore population has lower immunity to DENV3 and, consequently, a large proportion of the population is susceptible to DENV3 infection.

So far, there are no highly protective vaccines or therapeutic agents that target DENV. This is due to the possibility that antibodies raised against any one of the four known serotypes (DENV1-4) may enhance disease severity when an individual is infected with a different serotype in a secondary infection. This suggests an effective vaccine has to be able to stimulate equally strong protective responses simultaneously against all four serotypes. Adding further complication to vaccine development is the fact that there are different virus strains within each serotype, and different strains can exhibit vastly different shapes, enabling them to escape detection by a host's immune system. The Duke-NUS team had previously discovered that the surface of the DENV2 can change from smooth to bumpy depending on host conditions.

"Previous structural work focused mostly on DENV2, and therefore the other serotypes that are equally important are not well studied," said Professor Sheemei Lok from the Duke-NUS' Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) programme and corresponding author of this study. "In this study, we found that DENV3 can dramatically transform itself from a smooth, round particle to a club-shaped particle -- like golf clubs, which would help the virus to evade hosts' immune response, vaccines and therapeutics."

The team also found some strains capable of transforming into club-shaped particles in DENV1, DENV2 and zika, though these exist as a minority of the virus population. Nonetheless, this suggests that flaviviruses have the potential to turn themselves into a conformation that is vastly different from their original structure, which can make vaccines and therapeutics ineffective against them.

"While Singapore has seen a recent spike in dengue cases, annually this virus infects about 400 million people worldwide, with a high prevalence in tropical and sub-tropical regions. In line with Duke-NUS vision of transforming medicine, this study gives new direction to developing better therapies and vaccines to treat or prevent dengue infections, and contribute to public health outcomes," said Prof Patrick Casey, Senior Vice Dean for Research at Duke-NUS.

The team is currently studying more DENV3 clinical strains to determine if this structural transformation is common.

By preventing sugar uptake, researchers succeeded in increasing the cancer cells' sensitivity to chemotherapeutic treatment. The studies, led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden, were carried out on cancer cells in a lab environment. The results were recently published in the research journal Haematologica.

Just like the body's cells, cancer cells need energy like the sugar molecule, glucose. Researchers have long been interested in finding out if it is possible to "starve" cancer cells by preventing sugar uptake. It is also known that some cancer cells increase their intake of sugar molecules as a survival strategy, which can reduce the effect of treatment. Would it be possible to prevent glucose from entering the cancer cell and in that way increase the effect of chemotherapy?

This is what researchers at Lund University and the University of Pisa have studied.

To enable sugar molecules to enter the cancer cell through the cell membrane, the cell uses so-called sugar transporters, which can be likened to swing doors that let substances in and out. In total, the researchers can currently identify 14 such sugar transporters. In the present study, the researchers investigated number 1, GLUT1, and its role in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).

By introducing specially designed inhibitors - substances that prevent or impede activities in the cell membrane - the researchers succeeded in blocking sugar uptake to the cancer cells.

"We then examined whether the effect of the chemo used in the treatment of AML was improved when we blocked the sugar uptake. It was clear that the cancer cells became far more sensitive to the chemo drugs", says Karin Lindkvist, Professor of Cell Biology at Lund University who led the study.

The form of cancer the researchers studied, acute myeloid leukaemia, is one of the most common forms of leukaemia among adults. AML has a relatively poor prognosis and a high risk of relapse, above all among the elderly population, as they often cannot tolerate the tough treatment regime as good as younger patients can.

"Our hope is that combining chemotherapy with inhibitors that block the sugar uptake to the cancer cells, can improve the effect of the treatment and thereby cure more patients in the future", states Anna Hagström, Senior Lecturer at the Division of Clinical Genetics, Lund University, and co-author of the study.

Understanding these proteins and how they regulate its swing doors is an important field of research, says Karin Lindkvist.

"Membrane proteins are targets of interest in the development of new treatments and it is commonly known that around half of all drugs on the market today target membrane proteins. There is a lot happening in the cell, and these proteins control what goes in and out of the cell. This particular sugar transporter appears to play a key role, as it is highly effective at helping the cell to take up sugar. It is also why the cancer cells make more of this transporter in order to obtain more energy", says Karin Lindkvist.

A lot of research remains to be done before it can be used in patients.

"The results need to be repeated both in experimental studies and clinical trials. My hope is that someone will take this further with the aim to treat patients suffering from AML or other cancer diseases that we know use GLUT1 transporters for sugar uptake", she concludes.

Mother's chronic prenatal psychological distress and elevated hair cortisol concentrations are associated with gut microbiota composition of the infant, according to a new publication from the FinnBrain research project of the University of Turku, Finland. The results help to better understand how prenatal stress can be connected to infant growth and development. The study has been published in the esteemed Psychoneuroendocrinology journal.

Prenatal stress can be associated with infant growth and development. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are not yet fully understood.

- We were able to show that maternal chronic psychological distress and elevated hair cortisol concentrations during pregnancy are associated with infant gut microbiota composition but not diversity, says Doctoral Candidate, Doctor Anna Aatsinki.

The study used hair cortisol analysis which enabled measuring the concentration averages of stress hormone cortisol over several months. In addition, the symptoms of the mother were assessed three times during pregnancy. The infant gut microbiota was analysed early at the age of 2.5 months with next generation sequencing.

Previously, similar studies have focused on animals and two have been smaller human studies making this data consisting of 399 mothers and their infants the largest in the world so far. The received results provide significant new information on the phenomenon. In addition, this study was able to confirm previously made observations.

Studying the Role of Microbes as Mediators of Stress

Both Proteobacteria and Lactobacillus are common infant gut microbes.

- We discovered, for instance, that mother's chronic prenatal psychological distress was linked to increased abundances of Proteobacteria genera in infant microbiota. In addition, chronic psychological symptoms were connected to decreased abundances of Akkermansia genera which is considered to promote health at least in adults, summarises Aatsinki.

According to Aatsinki, it was also interesting that low cortisol concentrations were associated with increased abundances of Lactobacillus in infant gut microbiota. Lactobacillus bacteria are considered to promote health.

However, Proteobacteria also contain species that are able to cause inflammation in the body. Proteobacteria can also be associated with the child's disease risk later in life. Therefore, researchers consider it important to study how the observed changes are connected to later child development.

- Our study does not explain the cause-effect relationship, or whether prenatal psychological stress is linked to differences in microbial metabolic products or e.g. in immune system function. In other words, important questions still need to be answered, notes Aatsinki.

The study is part of the FinnBrain research project and its gut-brain axis sub-project. The sub-project led by Docent, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Linnea Karlsson studies how prenatal stress affects infant microbiota development and how infant gut microbes affect later brain development.

The FinnBrain research project of the University of Turku studies the combined influence of environmental and genetic factors on the development of children. Over 4,000 families participate in the research project and they are followed from infancy long into adulthood.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A five-minute role-play done with men before the birth of their first child predicted the quality of their parenting after the baby arrived, a new study showed.

Researchers videotaped 182 expectant fathers during the third trimester of their partners' pregnancy, observing how the men interacted with a doll that they were told represented the baby they were about to have.

Ratings given to the fathers on their levels of "intuitive parenting" while playing with the doll predicted how well they were rated on parenting quality nine months after their baby was born.

"We were able to detect the capacity for positive parenting in these men before they even became fathers," said lead study author Lauren Altenburger, who began the work as a doctoral student at The Ohio State University.

Altenburger is now an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University-Shenango, where the study was completed.

The intuitive parenting skills measured as the men interacted with the doll included talking directly to the face of the "baby," using baby talk and smiling, and showing concern for the baby's well-being.

The good news is that the intuitive parenting skills measured in this study can be taught, said Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State.

"We can help expectant fathers learn these parenting skills," said Schoppe-Sullivan, who is a senior research associate on the board of the Council on Contemporary Families. "Not all parents start out knowing how to do these things, but they can be shown how."

The research was published online June 22, 2020 in the Journal of Family Psychology.

The couples in the study were participating in the New Parents Project, a long-term study co-led by Schoppe-Sullivan that is investigating how dual-earner couples adjust to becoming parents for the first time.

Researchers visited the couples' homes during the third trimester of the woman's pregnancy.

The procedure using dolls was developed by researchers in Switzerland, but has rarely been used in the United States.

"It may seem silly to have adults play with dolls, but it is actually pretty easy for them to do," Altenburger said.

"The birth is right around the corner, so they are already thinking about what it is going to be like. They took the role playing seriously."

The doll they used was custom-made and consisted of a footed infant sleeper sewn shut with 7-8 pounds of rice inside to make its weight similar to a newborn. A doll's head made of green fabric was sewn onto the footed sleeper.

In the videotaped procedure, an assistant playing the role of a nurse presented the "baby" to the parents.

"We were looking for how natural fathers acted with the baby. Did they hold it properly, smile at it and do things like gently pinching the baby's foot or other positive behaviors that many people just instinctively do with babies," Schoppe-Sullivan said.

Trained assistants viewed the videotape and rated the fathers on their level of intuitive parenting behaviors.

Nine months after the birth of the baby, the fathers' parenting quality was assessed by a different team of research assistants who watched the fathers try to teach their babies to play with either a shape sorter or stacking rings.

The assistants rated how well the fathers paid attention and responded to their child, how engaged they were, and their expression of positive feelings.

"Those dads who were rated as showing more intuitive parenting skills with the doll a year earlier tended to have a more positive interaction with their real child," Altenburger said.

This was true even after taking into account several other factors that could affect how well fathers did at parenting their infant, such as the men's personality traits, their co-parenting relationship with the child's mother and the child's temperament.

Findings showed that dads who showed more high-quality parenting skills when their baby was 9 months old also tended to score higher on tests of two personality traits.

One trait was being open to new experiences, which is obviously helpful for dads becoming parents for the first time.

The other trait was conscientiousness, which is being careful and diligent with your responsibilities.

The researchers found that a good co-parenting relationship between the mother and father - how they worked together to raise their child - also predicted better parenting quality in dads. Co-parenting relationship quality was observed between mothers, fathers, and their 3-month-old baby.

The child's temperament was not related to fathers' parenting quality in this study. But the researchers said this should be interpreted with caution, because temperament was reported by fathers at a single time point.

The New Parents Project involves couples in which both partners have jobs and are mostly white and well-educated, Schoppe-Sullivan said, so the results may not apply in the same way to all fathers.

The researchers said the results could help health care professionals and others who work with expectant couples to identify and help fathers who may need extra help learning their role as a parent.

"Although it is called 'intuitive parenting,' it isn't really intuitive for everyone. We need to work with fathers to make sure they know how to be the best fathers they can be," Schoppe-Sullivan said.

Every summer, tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon migrate from the Barents Sea to the Teno River, Finland, to spawn in the streams where they were born. This journey is a feat of endurance: salmon stop feeding and must navigate fast flowing water, leap over obstacles, and avoid predators, hooks, and fishing nets to arrive at their spawning grounds.

The marathon doesn't stop there though: once they arrive at their spawning grounds, they must fight for the possibility to mate with members of the opposite sex. Who are the winners of this evolutionary competition? It turns out that the largest fish produce the most offspring, but there are far fewer of these fish on the spawning ground battling for reproductive success than their younger - and smaller - competitors, according to researchers at the University of Helsinki and the Natural Resources Institute Finland.

The study, recently published in the scientific journal Molecular Ecology, is part of a long-term monitoring program. A small piece of fin tissue was removed for genetic fingerprinting of more than 5000 adults and juveniles before they were released back into the wild. Adults were also fitted with a unique identification tag after a few scales were carefully sampled. The scales are particularly valuable, as they record annual growth cycles, much like tree rings.

"Great care was taken to not harm the fish," explains Dr. Kenyon Mobley, lead author of the article. "In fact, we have recaptured adults returning to spawn several years later and juveniles returning to spawn as adults."

Larger salmon have more offspring

Most salmon in Teno River spend between one and four years at sea before migrating back to breed. The more time salmon spend at sea, the larger they grow. Females generally take between 2-3 years to mature, but most males return after just one year at sea.

Mobley's study showed that for every year spent at sea, females gain over 4 kilograms of body weight and produce 60% more offspring. Males, on the other hand, gain nearly 5 kilograms of body weight and produce 200% more offspring for every year they spend at sea.

However, spending more time at sea comes with a significant cost. Very few of these older larger fish return to spawn. "This is presumably because spending more time at sea exposes fish longer to predators, fishing, and diseases, and thus a higher risk of death before having a chance to spawn," explains Mobley.

"Knowing the reproductive contributions of different sized fish in this river section can help us to develop more accurate models of offspring production. These are needed for developing Teno salmon management guidelines," says Professor Jaakko Erkinaro from Natural Resources Institute Finland. "It also helps our ongoing research aimed at predicting how many large adults may survive at sea to return to spawn," Mobley adds.

Larger salmon have more mating partners

Like most animals in nature, salmon are not monogamous and can have up to eight mating partners, the study shows. Having more mating partners ensures successful fertilization of eggs and passing on their genes to the next generation.

Nearly all females captured in the study produced offspring, mating on average with more than two males, and gained 35% more mates for each year they spent at sea. Males have, on average, less than one mate, indicating that many males are excluded from mating presumably through strong competition by bigger males. For each year spent at sea, males gain 60% more mates. This means that larger salmon, in particular males, have a distinct advantage when it comes to finding mates.

Where are the females?

In the study population, females are a rare commodity. There are up to seven males for every female at the spawning ground near the entrance of the Utsjoki River. This pattern is consistent across all years of the study. Having a high number of males likely increases fights among males for opportunities to mate with the few available females. Why so few females return to this particular site remains a mystery, as other locations in the Teno River have a more balanced mix of males and females.

Early life-history affects female reproduction

Prior to entering the sea, juvenile salmon usually spend between 3-5 years in freshwater. The researchers were surprised to find that the longer the females stay in freshwater, the fewer years they spend at sea, and return to spawn at a much smaller size. Because these females are smaller, they have fewer eggs and produce less offspring. Males, on the other hand, do not seem to be affected by spending more time in freshwater.

"These results show how overlooked aspects of salmon life-history are important to the long-term conservation of these fish," said Mobley.

Blocking a pair of sugar-transporting proteins may be a useful treatment approach for lung cancer, suggests a new study in mice and human cells published today in eLife.

Cancer cells use a lot of sugar to fuel their rapid growth and spread. This has led scientists to consider cutting off their sugar supply as a way to treat cancer. The current study suggests this could be an effective approach but it will be necessary to block multiple pathways at once to be effective.

Proteins called glucose transporters supply sugar to cells making them an appealing target for therapies intended to starve cancer cells. But scientists don't know the best ways to do this, or if cancer cells would just switch to alternative fuel sources if they are denied sugar.

"Inhibiting sugar use in lung tumours could be an efficient treatment strategy, but whether glucose transporters should be targeted and which ones to target remains unclear," says lead author Caroline Contat, a PhD student and Doctoral Assistant at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland.

To find out, Contat and her colleagues genetically engineered mice with lung cancer that were missing a glucose transport protein called Glut1 or an alternate sugar transporter called Glut3. The team found that tumours grew just as fast in the mice lacking Glut1 or Glut3 as they did in mice with both transporters.

However, when they genetically engineered mice with lung cancer that lack both Glut1 and Glut3, they found that the animals grew fewer tumours and survived longer. By using an imaging technology called positron emission tomography (PET) and sugar labelled with radioactive tags, the team confirmed that the tumours used less sugar. The tumour cells also grew more slowly.

Finally, they deleted Glut1 and Glut3 in four different human lung cancer cell lines grown in the laboratory, which caused these cells to grow more slowly. "These experiments suggest Glut1 and Glut3 together are needed to fuel the growth of lung cancer," Contat says.

Using nanoscale imaging studies, the team also found that most of the sugar-derived biomass in mouse lung tumour cells accumulates in cellular compartments called lamellar bodies and that Glut1 is necessary for this fuel storage.

"While more studies of these tumour fuel storage compartments are needed, our results suggest a new approach to lung cancer treatment that focuses on starving tumour cells of energy," says senior author Etienne Meylan, Assistant Professor at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, EPFL. "In particular, treatments that block Glut1 and Glut3 simultaneously will be necessary to help stop lung tumour growth."

Throughout California, the effects of climate change are evident from increasing frequencies of intense wildfires and mudslides to widespread and prolonged droughts. These changes also threaten one of California's most iconic endemic species: coastal redwoods. Coastal redwoods are not only some of the tallest and oldest trees on Earth, but redwood forests are also capable of storing three times more carbon than any other forests on Earth. Identifying suitable habitats for these vulnerable species has important implications for carbon sequestration and redwood forest biodiversity. This is especially urgent given that some regions within the current redwood distribution in California (south of SF Bay) could become unsuitable for redwoods as soon as 2030.

To better understand redwood habitat suitability, a team of researchers from the University of Texas, Arizona State University, University of Miami, and Stanford University combined high-resolution redwood distribution maps with data on moisture availability to identify the environmental factors that shape redwood distribution. The study was published today in Ecography.

"Habitat suitability of coast redwood has been studied before, but not using high-resolution data at the landscape scale. The approach we employed here could be applied in other forest types to gain new insight into the role of moisture availability in landscape-scale patterns of habitat suitability for many tree species that may be vulnerable to climate change," said Emily Francis, lead author of the study.

The research was conducted in three redwood forests in California spanning approximately one-third of redwood latitudinal range. After analyzing spatial patterns in redwood distributions over more than 34,800 hectares (87,000 acres) across the three forests, the scientists found that redwood habitat suitability significantly varied in relation to moisture availability and fog across different landscape elevations. Redwood habitats were consistently more suitable at sites located closer to streams. The study also found that habitat suitability for redwoods ranged from 22-75% within a single landscape, underlining the importance of considering landscape-scale variation while identifying sites that will continue to be suitable for redwoods, even as surrounding areas become inhospitable due to climate change.

"This study highlights the value of mapping the composition of our forests at high spatial resolution. Doing so provides leverage to say something about the individual inhabitants within a forest, not just the forest as a blanket average. This, in turn, both enhances our knowledge and presents possible options for managing sensitive ecosystems undergoing climate change," said co-author Greg Asner, director of the ASU Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science.

The authors emphasized that predicting how climate change will impact future redwood distribution will require additional study to understand how both environmental and biological factors, such as tree seed dispersal and plant competition, will influence where redwoods are able to grow and survive.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- "Mommy brain" is a long-held perception that mothers are more forgetful and less attentive.

"In most studies, however, attention and memory tests are given to mothers very early postpartum," said Valerie Tucker Miller, a Ph.D. student in Purdue University's Department of Anthropology department. Miller is studying the effects of motherhood on attention, memory and other psychological processes.

"There are few issues with that," she added. "When you first have a child, you have a cascade of hormones and sleep deprivation that might be affecting attention and memory processes in the brain."

In a new study testing the prevalence of "mommy brain," Miller used a revised version of the Attention Network Test (ANT), called the ANT-R, to compare reaction times among 60 mothers, all of whom were at least one year postpartum, and 70 non-mothers. The results, published online in the journal Current Psychology, show that mothers performed equally as well or better compared with women who had never been pregnant or had children.

"For this particular study, we recruited moms who were past that first year postpartum because we wanted to see the long-term effects of maternity," she said. "Overall, moms did not have significantly different attention than non-mothers, so we did not find evidence to support 'mommy brain' as our culture understands it. It's possible, if anything, that maternity is related to improved, rather than diminished, attentiveness."

Co-author Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue, said the mixed-method study may be the first to investigate the long-term effects of biological motherhood on real-life attention network functioning. Lisa A. VanWormer, a Purdue University alumna and visiting associate professor of psychology at St. Norbert College, also is a co-author.

Researchers used a seven-point scale to measure participants' responses to survey questions such as, "How sleepy do you feel?" and "How do you think your attentiveness is?" Women's perceived attention functioning was strongly associated with their tested attention scores, regardless of motherhood status, Veile said.

"This means that women have accurate awareness of their cognitive state, and that their concerns regarding their perceived attentional functioning should be taken seriously," she said. "We also believe that 'mommy-brain' may be a culture-bound phenomenon, and that mothers will feel the most distracted and forgetful when they feel stressed, overextended and unsupported. Unfortunately, many U.S. moms feel this way, especially now in the midst of economic and political instability and pandemic."

During the computer test, a cue box flashes for 100 milliseconds in one of two possible locations where a target image will appear on the screen. Next, an image of five arrows, each pointing left or right in consistent or conflicting directions, flashes on the screen for 500 milliseconds. Participants are then asked to press a button that corresponds to the direction of only the middle arrow.

Miller said the test measures response times and provides scores for the three main networks of attention: The alerting network helps the brain prepare for incoming stimuli; the orienting network directs the brain's attention to something new; and the executive control network helps resolve conflicting information.

Mothers in the study were, on average, 10 years older than non-mothers. Even after controlling for age, however, the researchers found that mothers had similar alerting and orienting attention, and better executive control attention, compared to non-mothers.

"Moms were not as distracted by those outside, incongruent items," Miller said. "It makes perfect sense that moms who have brought children into this world have more stimuli that needs to be processed to keep themselves and other humans alive, and then to continue with all the other tasks that were required before the children."

Heightened attention isn't always a good thing. It could become amplified with feelings of stress and isolation, which many U.S. moms experience, causing them to develop anxiety, Veile said.

"We plan to do cross-cultural investigations to further examine how narratives of motherhood and social support are associated with maternal tested attention and well-being around the world," she said.