Earth

The cultivation of coffee, cocoa and vanilla secures the income of many small-holder farmers and is also a driver of land-use change in many tropical countries. In particular, cultivation in agroforestry systems, in which these crops are combined with trees that provide shade, is often considered to have great potential for ecologically sustainable cultivation. Researchers at the University of Göttingen are now showing that the land-use history of agroforestry systems plays a crucial role in assessing the sustainability of agroforestry. The results have been published in the journal Conservation Letters.

Tropical agroforests differ greatly in their land-use history, i.e. the former use of the land now occupied by agroforests. On the one hand, an agroforest can be established directly in a forest - in this case the undergrowth is removed and replaced by vanilla vines, coffee or cocoa bushes. In the process, many plant and animal species and important ecosystem services are lost. On the other hand, an agroforest can be established on land that is open - for example on a pasture or cornfield which was forest in former times but had been cleared for farming. In this case, the land would be replanted with trees, and so animal species that depend on trees may benefit. Trees also store carbon and may have a cooling effect, which can reduce global warming.

"Our results show that agroforestry systems can only lead to a significant enhancement of the landscape for biodiversity if they are established on open land," says Dominic Martin, first author of the study. "The conversion of the remaining species-rich tropical forests into coffee, cocoa or vanilla plantations should, however, be avoided." This requires incentives, adds Professor Holger Kreft, Head of the Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography Group at the University of Göttingen. "Sustainability labels should take this into account and avoid giving certification to plantations that were previously forest. It is really only in this way that the ecological advantages of cultivation in agroforestry systems can be achieved. This can then help to ensure that our morning coffee can be enjoyed without a bitter aftertaste," says Kreft.

In an opinion piece, authors say that adolescents could be more susceptible to negative effects of physical distancing during COIVD-19 as they are in a period of vulnerability where peer interaction is a vital aspect of their social development.

They call for policymakers to give urgent consideration to young people when considering easing of physical distancing measures, and that reopening schools and other social environments for young people should be a priority when it is considered safe to do so.

Authors of an opinion piece, based on a review of evidence and published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal, are urging policymakers to consider the effects of physical distancing measures introduced to tackle the spread of COVID-19 on young people's social development and wellbeing.

The authors warn that adolescence is a sensitive period in young people's lives when their social environment and interactions with peers are important for brain development, mental health and developing a sense of self. They believe that reduced face-to-face social contact with peers may interrupt this and might have long-term detrimental effects.

Adolescence is a period of heightened vulnerability to mental health problems, with 75% of adults who have ever had a mental health condition reporting that they first experienced symptoms before the age of 24 years.

The authors also discuss how the use of digital technologies and social media might mitigate some of the negative effects of social distancing, by helping to maintain social connections between young people and their peers, but further research is needed.

Many questions about the impact of physical distancing on young people remain unanswered, and there is little understanding of how other stressors experienced during the COVID-19 crisis may be affecting young people, such as economic pressures, uncertainty and loss of public events marking key rites of passage.

Nevertheless, the authors argue that policymakers should give urgent consideration to young people when considering easing of physical distancing measures, and that reopening schools and other social environments for young people should be a priority when it is considered safe to do so.

Lead author, Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, UK, said: "Owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many young people around the world currently have substantially fewer opportunities to interact face-to-face with peers in their social network at a time in their lives when this is crucial for their development. Even if physical distancing measures are temporary, several months represents a large proportion of a young person's life. We would urge policymakers to give urgent consideration to the wellbeing of young people at this time." [1]

Dr Livia Tomova, one of the authors of the Viewpoint, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "It is important to note that physical distancing measures may not affect all young people in the same way. Adolescents living in a family environment, who have positive relationships with the parents, carers or siblings, may be less affected than those who do not have positive family relationships or are living alone. Given the widespread use of physical distancing policies worldwide, there is an urgent need to understand the short and long-term effects of reduced face-to-face social interaction and increased use of digital technologies on human adolescent development and mental health." [1]

The authors' Viewpoint is based on a review of peer-reviewed studies on social isolation and adolescence in animals, the social development of young people (aged 10-24), as well as studies of social media use in adolescence and mental health.

The authors note that evidence from animals and other forms of social isolation are the best evidence we have (many animal studies use rodents as their preferred animal model as these are innately social creatures and fare better in social rather than isolated housing), and while they may be indicative, they may not apply perfectly to the current situation. For example, it remains unclear how relevant findings from animal studies are for the social needs of humans. Further research is urgently needed to understand how depriving young people of social interactions, especially with their peers, affects social development and mental health.

Key findings from the animal studies looking at severe isolation suggest that even short periods of social isolation during adolescence (in mice or rats) can be associated with substantial and potentially long-term effects in the chemistry and structural development of the brain of these animals.

The authors, however, found few studies into the effects of social isolation on people. There was some evidence that extreme social isolation is associated with increased distress, depression, aggression and self-harm in adults, and these effects may be amplified in younger people, but, such studies have been conducted in situations of much more extreme isolation (such as solitary confinement in prisons) than the reduced social interaction associated with physical distancing. Other studies suggest that acute social isolation in adult humans results in increased feelings of loneliness, craving for social contact, and decreased happiness, in addition to changes in brain activity. But the authors note that more research is needed.

The authors also note that adolescents' use of digital technologies and social media might mitigate some of the negative effects of physical distancing by helping young people maintain social ties even when they are unable to interact in person.

Adolescents are among the first large-scale adopters of such technologies. Before lockdown, studies of youths found they routinely reported using digital technologies for actively social means. A study of US teenagers found they spend more than four hours a day on social media sites and almost half of them reported that they are almost constantly engaging online.

Studies on adolescent behaviour suggest that core components and qualities of face-to-face interactions, including sharing information with each other, social support, and gaining social rewards, are present when young people communicate online.

Dr Amy Orben, a co-author from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: "Evidence suggests that the type of digital technology and how it is used are important for how beneficial it is to an adolescent's wellbeing. For example, some studies have shown that active social media use, such as messaging or posting directly on another person's profile, increases wellbeing and help maintain personal relationships. However it has been suggested that passive uses of social media, such as scrolling through newsfeeds, negatively influence wellbeing."

The authors conclude that some aspects of digital communication might mitigate the consequences of physical distancing and recommend further research to explore this possibility. They also say that governments need to address the digital divide by supporting access to digital connection in families irrespective of income or location.

The origins of human innovation have traditionally been sought in the grasslands and coasts of Africa or the temperate environments of Europe. More extreme environments, such as the tropical rainforests of Asia, have been largely overlooked, despite their deep history of human occupation. A new study provides the earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow use, and perhaps the making of clothes, outside of Africa ~48-45,000 years ago -in the tropics of Sri Lanka.

The island of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, just south of the Indian subcontinent, is home to the earliest fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, in South Asia. It also preserves clear evidence for human occupation and the use of tropical rainforest environments outside of Africa from ~48,000 to 3,000 years ago - refuting the idea that these supposedly resource-poor environments acted as barriers for migrating Pleistocene humans. The question as to exactly how humans obtained rainforest resources - including fast-moving food sources like monkeys and squirrels - remains unresolved.

In this new study, published in Science Advances, an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Germany, Griffith University in Australia and the Department of Archaeology, Government of Sri Lanka, present evidence for the earliest use of bow-and-arrow technologies by humans anywhere outside of Africa. At ~48,000 years old, these tools are earlier than the first similar technology found in Europe. Clear evidence for use on the preserved bone arrowheads shows that they were likely used for hunting difficult-to-catch rainforest prey. Not only that, but the scientists show that other bone tools may have been used for making nets or clothing in tropical settings, dramatically altering traditional assumptions about how certain human innovations were linked with specific environmental requirements.

Hunting in the open and sheltering from the cold?

European cultural products in the form of cave art, amazingly detailed bone carvings, bone tool technologies, and tailored clothing have been frequently held up as the pinnacle of Late Pleistocene human cultural development. There, symbolic and technological innovations have been seen as key survival mechanisms equipping expanding populations to face cold northern climates. Meanwhile, discoveries of older bow-and-arrow technology and artistic or symbolic behaviors in open grassland or coastal settings in Africa have framed 'savannah' and marine environments, respectively, as key drivers behind early hunting and cultural experiments by Pleistocene humans in their evolutionary homeland.

As co-author of the new study, Patrick Roberts of the MPI-SHH argues that "this traditional focus has meant that other parts of Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas have often been side-lined in discussions of the origins of material culture, such as novel projectile hunting methods or cultural innovations associated with our species." Nevertheless, the last twenty years have highlighted how Pleistocene humans occupied and adapted to a variety of extreme environments as they migrated beyond Africa, including deserts, high-altitude settings and tropical rainforests such as those of Sri Lanka.

A tropical home

The new study saw scientists turn to the beautifully preserved material culture from the cave of Fa-Hien Lena, deep in the heart of Sri Lanka's Wet Zone forests. As co-author Oshan Wedage, PhD at MPI-SHH, states, "Fa-Hien Lena has emerged as one of South Asia's most important archaeological sites since the 1980s, preserving remains of our species, their tools, and their prey in a tropical context." Some of the main finds from the site include remarkable single and doubled pointed bone tools that scientists had suspected were used in the exploitation of tropical resources. Direct proof had been lacking, however, in the absence of detailed high-powered microscopic analysis.

Michelle Langley of Griffith University, the lead author of the new study, is an expert in the study of microscopic traces of tool use and the creation of symbolic material culture in Pleistocene contexts. Applying cutting edge methods to the Fa-Hien Lena material confirmed the researchers' hypothesis. As Langley states, "the fractures on the points indicate damage through high-powered impact - something usually seen in the use of bow-and-arrow hunting of animals. This evidence is earlier than similar findings in Southeast Asia 32,000 years ago and is currently the earliest clear evidence for bow-and-arrow use beyond the African continent."

The evidence for early human innovation did not stop there. Applying the same microscopic approach to other bone tools, the team identified implements which seem to have been associated with freshwater fishing in nearby tropical streams, as well as the working of fiber to make nets or clothing. "We also found clear evidence for the production of colored beads from mineral ochre and the refined making of shell beads traded from the coast, at a similar age to other 'social signaling' materials found in Eurasia and Southeast Asia, roughly 45,000 years ago," says Michelle Langley. Together, this reveals a complex, early human social network in the tropics of South Asia.

A flexible toolkit for new hunting grounds

The new study highlights that archaeologists can no longer link specific technological, symbolic, or cultural developments in Pleistocene humans to a single region or environment. "The Sri Lankan evidence shows that the invention of bows-and-arrows, clothing, and symbolic signaling occurred multiple times and in multiple different places, including within the tropical rainforests of Asia," says co-author Michael Petraglia of the MPI-SHH. In addition to insulation in cold environments, clothes may have also helped against tropical mosquitoes, "and instead of just hunting large grassland mammals," adds zooarchaeologist Noel Amano, another MPI-SHH co-author, "bows and arrows helped humans procure small, tree-dwelling primates and rodents."

While archaeologists have long focused on the uniqueness of European markers of behavioural modernity, the new study is part of a growing awareness that many regions of the world saw extraordinary and complex new technologies emerge at the end of the Palaeolithic. "Humans at this time show extraordinary resourcefulness and the ability to exploit a range of new environments," notes Nicole Boivin, Director at the MPI-SHH and study coauthor. "These skills enabled them to colonize nearly all of the planet's continents by about 10,000 years ago, setting us clearly on the path to being the global species we are today."

In order to reveal the population interactions that gave rise to Africa's enormous linguistic, cultural, and economic diversity, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Africa, Europe, and North America sampled key regions in which current models predict a legacy of significant population interactions. The collaborative study between researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), the National Museums of Kenya and other partners was led by archaeogeneticist Ke Wang and archaeologist Steven Goldstein of MPI-SHH. It sheds light on patterns of population change as food production spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

A Complex Mosaic of Interactions

While the spread of food production led to the gradual replacement of local foragers in most parts of the world, foraging lifeways have persisted in several regions of contemporary Africa among populations such as the San in the south, the Hazda in the east and the Mbuti of the central African rainforest. However, the present study shows that, thousands of years ago, the ancestors of these groups once formed an overlapping genetic cline that stretched across much of eastern and southern Africa.

"Restricted gene flow between regional forager groups in contemporary eastern, southern, and central Africa, whether due to climactic and environmental factors or as a result of encapsulation by food producing groups, has likely contributed substantially to the spatial genetic structure we can see across the continent today," says Ke Wang.

"We are still at a point where we learn a lot from every individual," Steven Goldstein adds, "the interactions between hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and farmers were more complex even into recent centuries than we previously understood."

To better understand these interactions and their impact on subsistence strategies, the researchers focused their investigations on key groups and regions previously identified as significant contributors to changes in food production: eastern and southern forager groups, eastern African Pastoral Neolithic and Iron Age groups, and Iron Age groups related to present-day Bantu speakers.

Mixture and migration during the Pastoral Neolithic

Genomic analysis of the six individuals here reported from Kenya's Pastoral Neolithic period (between 4,500 and 1,200 years ago) revealed greater ancestral complexity than previously reported individuals from the same region, supporting previous studies that have proposed early herders migrated south along multiple simultaneous but geographically distinct routes.

"In such a scenario," Dr. Emmanuel Ndiema of the National Museums of Kenya explains, "a single base population in northern Africa may have branched into many as some herding groups moved along the Nile corridor, some through southern Ethiopia, and possibly some through eastern Uganda."

Along the way, migrating pastoralists would have encountered different populations and formed varying inter-community relationships, ultimately resulting in varying integration of diverse ancestries. This model may explain why archaeologists observe stark differences in material culture, settlement strategies and burial traditions between Pastoral Neolithic populations whose ancestries are in fact closely related.

The Iron Age and the Bantu Expansion

Some of the most exciting findings come from the site of Kakapel Rockshelter in western Kenya, where the National Museums of Kenya and the MPI-SHH have teamed up to investigate early farming in the region.

At Kakapel, two individuals dated to roughly 300 and 900 years ago show significant increases in ancestry related to people speaking Nilotic languages today, such as the Dinka from South Sudan, compared to previously published genomes from the Central Rift Valley. This suggests that genetic turnover must have been region-specific and could have involved multiple divergent migrations. Genomic analysis revealed that the 900-year-old individual had close affinity with Dinka populations, but also showed influence from West-Eurasian or North-African groups, suggesting that the population that this individual represents formed between Pastoral Neolithic-related herders and incoming Nilotic (Nile Valley) agropastoralists - not from a major migration of groups with western African ancestries.

Similar evidence is detected from Botswana, where analysis detected the first archaeogenetic support for the hypotheses that herders from eastern Africa spread to southern Africa before the arrival of Bantu-speaking farmers. Despite raising questions about the uniformity of the Bantu Expansion, the current study documents the arrival of people with Bantu-related ancestry in Botswana during the first millennium CE and their subsequent admixture with eastern African pastoralist and southern African forager populations.

"We identified Bantu-related ancestry in Uganda, western Congo, Tanzania and Kenya, which is consistent with the well-documented genetic homogenization caused by the Bantu expansion," says Stephan Schiffels of the MPI-SHH, "but we also see highly variable patterns of Bantu admixture with regional forager and pastoralist populations in southern Africa."

"While supraregional studies can help reveal population interactions on a continental scale," says Schiffels, "we want to emphasize the importance of regionally focused studies to better understand local patterns of cultural and population changes in the future."

Blood vessels are the body's transportation system, carrying oxygen and nutrients to cells and whisking away waste. But this vital mission can also be co-opted by tumors or break down as a result of disease, and this process has been poorly understood. An international collaborative team led by a scientist at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) in Japan has discovered a mechanism by which the growth of these vessels' inner liner is stimulated, which may lead to therapeutics that could cut vessels off from tumors or help rebuild vessels in degenerative diseases.

The results were published on April 2 in Communications Biology, a Nature journal.

The researchers studied how the endothelial cells lining the inside of blood vessels respond to hydrostatic pressure, which is the pressure that forces blood through the vessels. The single layer of these cells forms a barrier between vessels and tissue, which controls fluid's flow in the blood vessel walls.

"Blood vessels are constantly exposed to stimuli such as fluid shear stress, cyclic tensile force and hydrostatic pressure," said Daisuke Yoshino, paper author and associate professor at the TUAT.

"Although the detailed mechanisms about cellular responses to shear stress and tensile force have been studied, we have not well understood how hydrostatic pressure affects vascular function."

Yoshino and his team applied the pressure to endothelial cells, equivalent of a person working out, to investigate how they sense hydrostatic pressure and convert it into biochemical signals, inducing vascular responses. They found that the increase in pressure triggered a water transfer through a channel called aquaporin 1, which activated a signaling pathway called Ras-ERK. This process induced endothelial cell growth, indicating a clear connection between pressure stimulation and intracellular biochemical signals, according to Yoshino.

"Our ultimate goal is to comprehensively clarify how the mechanisms described in this study are altered by differences in the blood pressure conditions, such as local conditions, magnitude and mode by which it is exerted," Yoshino said. "We hope the clarified mechanisms will lead to the development of new treatments for diseases invoking abnormalities in vascular formation, such as venous malformations."

This work was supported in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Japan Science and Technology Agency and the Mechanobiology Institute at the National University of Singapore.

Yoshino holds appointments in the Division of Advanced Applied Physics at the Institute of Engineering, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and in the Department of Applied Physics in the Graduate School of Engineering at TUAT. Other contributors include Kenichi Funamoto and Masaaki Sato, both of whom are affiliated with the Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences at Tokyo University. Funamoto is also affiliated with the Institute of Fluid Science at Tohoku University. Other authors include Kakeru Sato, previously of the Graduate School of Engineering at Tohoku University and now at the Tokyo Gas Co., Kenry of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at National University of Singapore and Chwee Teck Lim of Mechanobiology Institute, the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology at the National University of Singapore.

Tsukuba Japan -- In Sci-Fi movies, astronauts often enter an inactive state in "hibernation chambers" to cross the vastness of space. This could cut down on the required amount of food and oxygen and to prevent serious side effects from low gravity, such as muscle wasting in zero-G condition. A state of unconsciousness could also potentially minimize psychological challenges in space. Could humans hibernate in the future?

Why do some animals hibernate while others do not? Do all animals have the potential to hibernate even if they never do so in nature? Researchers from the University of Tsukuba in Japan opened the door to answering these questions by finding specific cells in the mouse brain that can trigger a hibernation-like state when activated. The study was published in the scientific journal Nature.

Animals usually enter hibernation when food becomes scarce in the winter. Their metabolism slows down, and their body temperature drops to a new set-point. This is like lowering the temperature on your thermostat in the winter--it reduces the amount of energy needed to maintain the body. Along with a slower metabolism and a new set-point comes slower heart rate, weaker breathing, and less brain activity. Importantly, when animals come out of hibernation, their body and organs are healthy, even if they have lost a little weight.

Even though mice do not hibernate, researchers led by Takeshi Sakurai at the University of Tsukuba and Genshiro Sunagawa at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research show that activating a specific type of cell in the mouse brain--dubbed Q neurons--caused them to enter a hibernation-like state for several days. "The mice exhibited distinctive qualities that met the criteria for hibernation," notes Sakurai. "In particular, the body temperature set-point lowered from about 96.8°F [36°C] to about 81°F [27°C], and the body functioned normally to maintain a lower body temperature around 22°C, even when the surrounding ambient temperature was dramatically reduced." The mice also showed all the signs of a reduced metabolism that are common during hibernation, including reduced heart rate, oxygen consumption, and respiration.

Being able to send mice into a hibernation-like state for days simply by artificially exciting Q neurons was somewhat unexpected. "Even more surprising," says first author Tohru Takahashi, "is that we were able to induce a similar hypometabolic state in rats, a species that neither hibernates nor has daily torpor." Although we do not know the answer yet, the possibility that humans also have Q neurons that can be used to induce a similar state is tantalizing.

"People might not want to hibernate for the same reasons as animals," explains Sunagawa. "But there are medical reasons for wanting to place people in suspended animation, such as during emergency transport or critically ill conditions as in severe pneumonia, when the demand for oxygen cannot meet the supply."

Sparing oxygen is not only for medicine. "In the future," Sakurai added, "we may put human in a hibernation-like state for missions to Mars and beyond."

A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that female birds benefit more from extra food in the winter. If females receive additional food, they do not need to reduce their body temperature as much as they would have otherwise, and the chances of surviving cold nights increase.

Birds possess an extreme ability to regulate their own body temperature. On cold winter nights, they reduce their body temperature several degrees to save energy and increase their chances of survival. The disadvantage is that the birds become more lethargic, and there is a risk of becoming easier prey for predators.

Now, researchers have shown that supplemental winter feeding is good for great tits, at least for females. The females that had access to extra food in winter did not reduce their body temperature at night as much as females who received no supplemental food. Among males, no difference in their body temperature response was noted.

"We believe it is due to males being dominant, and they manage to secure sufficient food regardless of how much is available. Females, on the other hand, are subordinate and do not have priority access to food. If there is only a little food, males have priority and ensure that they eat enough to maintain a high body temperature", says Johan Nilsson, biologist at Lund University.

The study was carried out in winter at Vombs Fure, a coniferous forest outside Lund. In one part of the forest, the researchers put out bird feeders. In another, the birds received no supplemental food. The researchers then measured and compared the birds' body temperature at night.

Johan Nilsson points out that the study was carried out in a forest, and it is therefore uncertain whether bird feeding in cities is always good in general.

"What we can say, with certainty, is that females in nature benefit from being fed in winter", he says.

A billion people rely on rainfall from the Indian summer monsoon (ISM). Its variability may produce impacts both locally and globally. Understanding the variability is essential to make effective adaptation planning for future events.

The variability manifested itself in a decline in monsoon rainfall over north central India starting in the 1950s, which persisted for as long as five decades before a reversal from 1999 onwards. Nailing down the predominant reasons for the decline and recovery has been vexing scientists ever since.

Dr. Xin Huang and Prof. Tianjun Zhou from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been examining the issue more closely using data provided by the UK Met Office and Germany's Max Planck Institute. Their findings, published in Journal of Climate, have examined the differing trends in pre- and post-2000 ISM rainfall.

"We found that neither the five-decade long decline before 2000 nor the subsequent increase can be solely explained as a response to external climate forcing," said Huang. "Instead, we have demonstrated the crucial role of natural variability."

External forcing includes changes in greenhouse gases, anthropogenic aerosols, and land use, etc. Natural variability refers to variations in the mean state due to internal processes within the climate system. They are often regarded as "signal" and "noise" in climate studies, respectively.

"Increase of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere generally tends to increase rainfall over India. Up to the year 2000, however, it appeared that the natural variability had been able to override this effect, resulting in the overall decrease," said Huang. "In addition to anthropogenic climate change, rainfall changes in recent decades are also influenced by natural sea surface temperature oscillation over Pacific basin."

The prominent natural variability in Pacific sea surface temperature on decadal-multidecadal timescales is usually described as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).

Positive IPO phases are characterized by a warmer than normal sea surface in the tropical central-eastern Pacific and cooler than normal conditions outside of the tropics with an opposite pattern during negative IPO phases.

The scientists found that the differing phases of the IPO played subtle, but crucial supplementary roles in the recent interdecadal variations of the ISM rainfall. Fluctuations in the IPO induced anomalous thermal contrasts between the north and south and changes to ascent and descent throughout the region. These, in turn, resulted in changes to the horizontal advection, from the west and east, of moisture into India.

Before 2000, the observed negative-to-positive IPO phase transition appeared to have decreased the externally forced rainfall trend. After 2000, the accumulative impact of external forcing and the positive-to-negative IPO transition has contributed to the observed wetting trend. The combined influences of the external forcing and IPO explained the observed rainfall changes. "This suggests, besides the forced 'signal', that we can actually extract useful information from the apparent, natural 'noise'," said Huang.

The study supports, and brings together, for the first time, many of the different explanations that have been proposed in previous studies.

"Going forward, the study emphasizes the importance of robust, reliable handling, and indeed prediction, of the IPO in climate models, to ensure that projections of future ISM climate, are suitable for use by policy makers", added Prof. Tianjun Zhou.

Together with colleagues from the University of Palermo, KFU employees offer a nano preparation based on biocompatible halloysite nanotubes and bacterial pigment prodigiosin; the latter is known to selectively disrupt cancer cells without damaging the healthy ones.

"Halloysite nanotubes are known for their low toxicity in in vitro and in vivo systems and the ability to modify the outer and inner surfaces. The cavity of a nanotube can be loaded with compounds of various nature, including drugs, and modification of the ends with polymers allows the creation of targeted delivery systems with a controlled release of loaded substances," says co-author Rawil Fakhrullin, Chief Research Associate of the Bionanotechnology Lab.

The uniqueness of this new solution is its selectivity against malignant cells, unlike chemotherapy which damages mesenchymal stem cells and fibroblasts.

"The pigment prodigiosin is synthesized by various microorganisms. We isolate it from the cells of the bacteria Serratia marcescens. The antibacterial, fungicidal and anticancer activity of prodigiosin is widely known, however, some of its physico-chemical properties, in particular hydrophobicity, limit the use of prodigiosin as a drug. The loading of prodigiosin into halloysite nanotubes circumvents these limitations. In addition, in the form of a nanopreparation, prodigiosin penetrates into the cells within 30 minutes. Moreover, the effect on cancer cells leads to the development of irreversible processes in them and to their death. At the same time, non-cancerous cells retain their activity and viability," explains co-author Ekaterina Naumenko.

This development paves way to better antitumor therapies with selective activity.

For many years, the world's oceans have suffered from absorbing human-made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which has led to the decreasing pH of saltwater, known as ocean acidification, and threatened the health of marine organisms and ecosystems. While this process has been well documented, the acidification process is complicated and poorly understood in coastal waters.

For example, the main stem of Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the east coast, has suffered from low oxygen and acidification for years in its bottom waters. Unlike ocean waters, acidification in estuaries like Chesapeake Bay is driven by both fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide as well as carbon dioxide released from the intense decomposition of algae spurred by nutrient inputs from surrounding land. Although scientists are improving their understanding of the causes of acidification, the ways in which coastal waters like Chesapeake Bay fight back and resist acidification are less known.

One possible way the Chesapeake Bay is combating ocean acidification comes in the form of an already present ally: submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). While there was a bay-wide decline of SAV from the 1960s through the 1980s, restoring these once-abundant SAV beds has been a primary outcome of efforts to reduce loads of nutrients and sediments to the estuary and SAV cover has increased by 300 percent from 1984 to 2015.

One of the largest recovered SAV beds lies in an area of the bay known as the Susquehanna Flats -- a broad, tidal freshwater region located near the mouth of the Susquehanna River at the head of the bay.

The University of Delaware's Wei-Jun Cai was part of a research group that recently conducted a study of the bay, including in the Susquehanna Flats, in order to understand how the Chesapeake Bay uses a defense mechanism against acidification - known as buffering - to help reduce carbon dioxide and acidification in its waters during the summer time.

The research team included researchers from Xiamen University in China, St. Mary's College, Oregon State University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological and Horn Point Laboratories.

They found that strong photosynthesis by the plants in SAV beds at the head of the bay and in other shallow, nearshore waters can remove nutrient pollution in the bay, can generate very high pH, and elevate the carbonate mineral saturation state, which facilitates the formation of calcium carbonate minerals. When these calcium carbonate particles and other biologically produced carbonate shells are transported downstream, they enter acidic subsurface waters where they dissolve.

This dissolution of the carbonate minerals helps to "buffer" the water against pH decreases or even support pH increases. "Just like people take Tums to neutralize the acids that cause heartburn, the idea is that SAV beds send carbonate minerals to the lower Bay to neutralize acids there," said Jeremy Testa of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and a co-author of the study.

The research was recently published in Nature Geoscience. The first author, Jianzhong Su, was a UD-Xiamen University Dual Degree doctoral student and had Cai as an adviser.

Calcium carbonate dissolution

In previous work, Cai, the Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy in UD's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, showed there was a lot of calcium carbonate dissolution in the subsurface water of the lower bay but they didn't know where that carbonate was coming from.

"This paper shows unique evidence that the carbonate comes from these submerged aquatic vegetation beds," said Cai. "Shallow waters in the upstream heads and nearshore areas can have a vast amount of submerged aquatic vegetation."

In these areas during summer time, sunlight combines with nutrients to allow dense SAV beds to initiate high rates of photosynthesis that causes the pH in the water to increase, meaning the water is less acidic.

Because the pH is so high, the researchers were able to collect and measure the carbonate particles on the surface of the leaves, which they could scrape and analyze. Co-authors Chaoying Ni, professor in UD's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Advanced Microscopy and Microanalysis, and Yichen Yao, who was a master's level student in materials engineering, did the mineral analysis.

"The lab did an image for us and showed the carbonate in these sediments and the sediment on the leaves, the particles, their concentration was a lot higher than the bottom sediment," said Cai.

Theoretical carbon formations

When the researchers went to a shallow area upstream of the Susquehanna Flats, they also found the carbonate, which led them to their theory that the carbonate forms in one location, particularly, in the SAV bed of the Susquehanna Flats, and then it's transported to the lower bay.

"We know there is a lot of carbonate dissolution in the lower bay, and we know the upper bay is where the carbonate is formed. So in the paper, we hypothesize that it's that formation in the SAV bed that gets transported downstream and dissolves and we reproduce this downstream transport with a numerical model," said Cai. "This carbonate that is transported from upstream actually acted as a way to resist, to buffer the pH of the system."

There are important ecological ramifications of this finding in that coastal nutrient management and reduction not only help to fight against low oxygen stress but also acidification stress to the environments and organisms that live there via the resurgence of submerged vegetation.

Cai said that while their preliminary results are encouraging, the next steps are to determine if the carbonate particles are really transported by the currents and tides to the lower bay and if so, how fast and under what conditions this happens. He wants to go back to the Bay to nail down the missing link between where the carbonate forms and where it dissolves.

"This is a very interesting thing," Cai said. "People talk about ocean acidification and very rarely talk about what resists it, what can buffer the system against ocean acidification. So that's what we want to find."

The suggested approach makes storage of these substances safer and more convenient while preserving key chemical properties that make isocyanides essential in many synthetic applications, such as the production of pharmaceuticals and functional materials.

Isocyanides are an important class of organic compounds owing to a wide range of chemical transformations they can undergo. These molecules are employed for the synthesis of various pharmaceuticals, polymers, catalysts, and luminophores. Widespread use of isocyanides in chemistry and chemical industry is, however, hampered by their extremely foul odor, described by some researchers as "mind-boggling", "horrid" and even "murderous". Luca Turin, one of the leading experts in fragrance chemistry, called isocyanides "the Godzilla of scent". This odor is so terrible that the United States patented the use of isocyanides (generally low on the toxicity scale) as a non-lethal chemical weapon.

While studying isocyanides, chemists from St. Petersburg State University discovered the ability of these compounds to form adducts with certain iodine-containing organic compounds. The components of the adducts are connected noncovalently by so-called halogen bonds. The latter by their nature resemble hydrogen bonds, which connect the two strands of the DNA double helix.

'The formation of a halogen bond with a carbon atom is in itself an unexpected discovery', said Alexander Mikherdov, the first author of the paper, an Assistant Professor of the Institute of Chemistry at St. Petersburg State University. 'Most importantly though, the formation of this bond led to a substantial reduction of the extremely unpleasant odor of isocyanides in their adducts. Quantitative GC-MS studies indicate up to an almost 50-fold decrease in the air concentration of isocyanide, and thus a dramatic mitigation of odor. In practice, this means that isocyanides, in the form of their adducts, no longer require a ventilated fume hood or any special precautions to work with, instead becoming benchtop reagents. It makes the chemist's job a lot easier!'

In the future, isocyanide adducts such as those described in the study may prove to be a more convenient alternative to the usual 'odorous' isocyanides, since they could be stored without special precautions. The adducts can still be used in chemical transformations leading to various important compounds and materials.

A Rutgers-led study in Colombia can help health care providers across the globe develop plans to improve surgical care access in their regions.

The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, is the first to use primary (actual) population data to assess a country's surgical needs and identify gaps in care. The study was conducted by Gregory Peck and Joseph Hanna, assistant professors of surgery at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in conjunction with researchers at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and the Colombia Ministry of Health.

According to the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, 5 billion people worldwide lack access to safe and affordable surgical and anesthesia care. Using the Commission's six core surgical indicators - access to a hospital equipped for emergency and essential surgery within two hours; density of specialist surgical providers; number of surgical procedures provided per 100,000 people; mortality rates of surgical care; and the risk that both indirect and direct costs of surgery will drive people into poverty - the researchers assessed nationwide data on Colombia.

They found that out-of-pocket health care expenses led 6.4 percent of the population in Colombia to become impoverished and 19.4 percent to incur catastrophic expenditures in 2007. In addition, 17 percent of the population did not have access to surgical, anesthetic and obstetric services within a two-hour drive.

Surgical, anesthetic and obstetric provider density in Colombia also fell short of the Commission's minimum target of 20 providers per 100,000. However, despite the high volume of surgical cases per specialists, the study found a relatively low proportion of post-surgical deaths. "The relatively high total operative volume that Colombian surgical, anesthetic and obstetric providers and nurses are able to achieve with limited resources is a testament to their hard work and remarkable dedication," said Hanna.

"This type of population study is key to understanding the health of a population and informing policy that can improve the health of communities," said Peck, who has spent nearly a decade working with Colombian hospitals to create strategic plans for improving trauma and surgical care at the whole population level. "The Colombian Ministry of Health can look at our findings to develop a comprehensive, nationwide health care plan." Strategies include improving access to public transportation and addressing the disproportionate location of surgical specialists to population need in certain regions."

"This model of population analysis can be used in the United States to identify needed health care policy improvements," said Peck, who is investigating how to apply similar population research and surgical plans in New Jersey.

"Access to surgical care is left out of 60% of health care plans worldwide, including in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that real disparity exists here with worse outcomes for poorer communities and communities of color," he said. "While New Jersey residents do not struggle with proximity to hospitals as do many in Colombia, the state has socioeconomic barriers in the quality and cost of available health care. By determining where these disparities exist, we can inform future policy here as is being done in Colombia."

More than 3 million Americans have glaucoma, a serious eye condition causing vision loss. Using human stem cell models, researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine found they could analyze deficits within cells damaged by glaucoma, with the potential to use this information to develop new strategies to slow the disease process.

The study, published June 11 in Stem Cell Reports, focused on targeting genetic mutations within retinal ganglion cells, which serve as the connection between the eye and the brain. Researchers found that when differentiating pluripotent human stem cells into retinal ganglion cells, they were able to identify characteristics associated with neurodegeneration in glaucoma.

"Once you've identified a target like this--what's going wrong in the cells--this opens up a number of possibilities for the eventual development of therapeutic approaches, especially pharmacology approaches to slow down and reverse these degenerative phenotypes," said Jason Meyer, PhD, associate professor of medical and molecular genetics at IU School of Medicine.

The team of researchers was led by Meyer, along with the co-first authors of the publication, Kirstin VanderWall and Kang-Chieh Huang, graduate students from the School of Science at IUPUI in Meyer's lab, which is located within Stark Neurosciences Research Institute. Meyer's lab had previously been located within the School of Science.

When retinal ganglion cells degenerate through glaucoma, it leads to the loss of vision and eventual blindness. Researchers in this study derived pluripotent stem cells from a patient that had a genetic form of glaucoma, Meyer said. They then differentiated the stem cells into retinal ganglion cells to search for neurodegeneration deficits.

"One of the powerful things about (stem cell research) is when you get the cells from a patient that has a genetic basis for a disease, all of the blueprints are there in the cell's DNA to develop features of the disease," Meyer said.

They also used gene editing technology--CRISPR-Cas9--to introduce a genetic mutation commonly associated with glaucoma into existing lines of the stem cells for disease modeling, as well as to correct the gene defect in patient-derived cells.

"CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing approaches not only allowed us to study the disease, but using this approach we were also able to show how correcting the gene mutation reversed the disease, demonstrating the potential for gene therapy approaches as well," Huang said.

Meyer said the team discovered dysfunction in the process of autophagy, the body's way of removing damaged cells to regenerate healthy cells.

"We found that in the glaucoma patient cells, there are some deficits in this autophagy process, so you had too much cellular junk that was being built up," Meyer said, adding that those deficits correlated with the degeneration of the cells, which would shrivel up and eventually die off.

Using a pharmaceutical compound called rapamycin--which is known to boost the process of autophagy--Meyer said they found that many of the neurodegenerative characteristics they had previously identified slowed down and the cells seemed to recover and appear more normal.

Meyer said human stem cells are instrumental in studying human disease, especially neurodegeneration. Past studies on retinal ganglion cells and glaucoma as a degenerative disease using animal models suggest differences in how cells respond between species.

"Since they are human cells, it gives somewhat of a more representative model for us to test pharmacological compounds," VanderWall added, "and it gives us a better idea of how it could potentially be toxic or nontoxic to human cells compared to testing compounds in animals."

Meyer said having identified a target within the cells--the process of autophagy--the lab's ongoing work will focus on analyzing ways to use different types of pharmaceutical compounds for treatment of glaucoma. As is the case for many neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, there are very few treatments, if any, and no cures.

"There is a dire need to try and identify new approaches to treat these diseases," Meyer said.
Grant support for this research was provided by the National Eye Institute, the Indiana Department of Health Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Fund and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.

Washington, June 11, 2020--Scholars have warned that the framing of racial "achievement gaps" in tests scores, grades, and other education outcomes may perpetuate racial stereotypes and encourage people to explain the gaps as the failure of students and their families rather than as resulting from structural racism. A new study finds that TV news reporting about racial achievement gaps led viewers to report exaggerated stereotypes of Black Americans as lacking education and may have increased implicit stereotyping of Black students as less competent than White students.

However, news reporting did not affect the explanations people gave for achievement gaps or the extent to which people ranked closing the gap as a national priority. The results were published on June 8 in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

Study author David M. Quinn, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, conducted three randomized experiments between May 2018 and May 2019 to examine the impact of "achievement gap discourse" (AGD) in news reporting on viewers' racial stereotypes, explanations for inequality, and prioritization of inequality as a national issue.

Prior scholarship argued that AGD feeds into stereotypes of Black students as less academically capable than White and Asian students, and may cause people to attribute outcome disparities to the abilities of individuals rather than to broader structural inequities.

According to Quinn, his study is the first that aims to provide experimental evidence of the impacts of AGD.

"Past U.S. presidents and education secretaries have framed the racial achievement gap as 'the civil rights issue of our time, and publicizing between-group achievement inequalities is often part of a strategy to make educational equity a national priority." said Quinn. "However, researchers have expressed concern that by focusing on student outcomes, rather than on structural inequities that lead to the outcome disparities, this framing assumes a deficit orientation that reinforces stereotypes and has a detrimental effect on public support for policies aiming to end structural inequities."

"Experimental evidence on the effects of AGD is scare," said Quinn. "As a field, we must understand these effects to conduct a collective conversation that most effectively advances equity and excellence in education. This study aimed to bring evidence to bear on these issues."

For his first experiment, conducted online, Quinn recruited 565 U.S. participants via Qualtrics Survey panels to watch either an AGD video or a counter-stereotypical video. The AGD video was a 129-second TV news story from a CBS affiliate that emphasized the White-Black test score gap; the counter-stereotypical video was a promotional piece from the Promise Academy of Harlem Children's Zone that presented Black students as studious, academically ambitious, and engaged with a positive school environment. Participants then were asked to guess the national high school graduation rate for Black students, after being told the graduation rate for White students (86 percent, as estimated by Harvard University economist Richard Murnane in 2013).

Although both groups exhibited stereotyping by underestimating the actual performance of Black students, those who watched the AGD video exhibited more exaggerated stereotyping, on average. Specifically, the AGD viewers guessed the graduation rate of Black high school students to be 49.4 percent, or 6.3 percentage points lower than the 55.7 percent rate guessed by those who watched the counter-stereotypical video. The actual high school graduation rate of Black students is 78 percent, according to Murnane's 2013 estimate.

Participants from the first experiment who viewed the AGD video showed increased implicit stereotypes of Black students as being less academically capable than White students, as measured by an adapted version of the implicit association test from Harvard University's Project Implicit.

Finally, participants were asked to rate the extent to which closing the Black-White achievement gap should be a national priority and the extent to which the following factors were responsible for achievement gaps: school quality, student motivation, parenting, discrimination and racism, genetics, neighborhood environments, home environments, and income levels.

The experiment did not find evidence that watching the AGD video, versus the counter-stereotypical video, affected viewers' prioritization of ending achievement inequalities or their beliefs about the sources of achievement inequalities.

"Given that AGDs may, in theory, cause people to deprioritize achievement inequality, it is somewhat reassuring that the AGD video did not have that affect," said Quinn. "At the same time, it is disappointing that informing participants about educational inequalities did not lead them to place a higher priority on them."

In the second experiment, Quinn tested whether watching an achievement gap news story or counter-stereotypical video affects people's stereotypes, as compared to a third control video. A total of 723 respondents were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a website for businesses to hire remote workers to perform specific on-demand tasks. Each respondent was randomly assigned to watch one of the three videos: the two videos from the first experiment and a third control video which made no reference to race or achievement.

Even though the control group underestimated the Black graduation rate, with an average guess of 62 percent, people who watched the AGD video guessed 55 percent, or 7 percentage points lower. This finding, combined with the first experiment's result, suggests that exposure to the AGD video heightened viewers' implicit stereotypes of Black students.

In the third experiment, involving 600 people recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, Quinn tested whether the AGD video affected respondents' general explicit racial stereotypes concerning intelligence and competence. The author did not find evidence that the AGD had an impact on explicit bias.

"This finding suggests that AGD's effect on viewers' guesses regarding graduation rate was not due to a change in viewers' explicit beliefs about Black Americans' capabilities," said Quinn.

Nonetheless, Quinn said, the study's overall findings on the negative effects of AGD on exaggerated stereotypes of Black Americans and potentially on implicit bias against them are very concerning.

"These findings do not mean that we should cease all measuring or reporting on between-group differences in outcomes," Quinn said. "Rather, what we need is a better understanding of how certain ways of framing inequalities may be more or less impactful on people's racial attitudes and how we can most productively conduct a public conversation about advancing equitable policy without also perpetuating harmful stereotypes."

Quinn noted that the groups of respondents in his three experiments were not nationally representative, so further research would be needed to test replication of his findings with the larger population. He also recommended that future research test the effects of AGD among other racial and ethnic groups and along other social dimensions, such as class and gender.

Soils are home to more than 25 percent of the earth's total biodiversity, supporting life on land and water, nutrient cycling and retention, food production, pollution remediation and climate regulation. Scientists have found increasing evidence that when soil organisms are put front and center, numerous global sustainability goals can be enhanced. This is because the activity and interactions of soil organisms are intimately tied to multiple processes that ecosystems and society rely on.

A research team including current and former ecologists from Colorado State University said soil biodiversity should be incorporated into the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals - which include zero hunger, sustainable cities and communities, and life on land.

It should also be incorporated into the next generation of Aichi Biodiversity Targets, a set of 20 conservation goals - established in 2010 - being revamped this year. The UN Convention of Biological Diversity, the governing body behind the Aichi Targets, already recognizes the value of soil biodiversity to people and the planet.

The researchers outline their case in "Soil biodiversity integrates solutions for a sustainable future," published earlier this year in Sustainability.

More people, policymakers recognize soil health

Elizabeth Bach, lead author and a former postdoctoral fellow at CSU, said the research team recognized the increasing awareness around the world about soil biodiversity.

"This study shows how soil biodiversity can take us to the next level and be part of the solution as we work to achieve broad sustainability goals," said Bach, a soil ecologist with The Nature Conservancy's Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois.

Global policy groups and government organizations around the world are starting to incorporate soil biodiversity into their work.

Diana Wall, Colorado State University Distinguished Professor and a co-author of the study said that this is a welcome and overdue change.

On the federal level in the United States, lawmakers addressed impacts on soil health in the 2018 Farm Bill. More recently, U.S. Rep. Chelle Pingree, a democrat and farmer from Maine, also introduced the Agriculture Resilience Act in February 2020. The measure includes a call to create a new soil health grant program for state and tribal governments and aims to explore new ways to reward farmers, including the use of future carbon markets or tax incentives for soil carbon sequestration.

In addition, the European Green Deal - created by a commission through the European Union - includes a call to reduce soil biodiversity loss and details land conservation plans for soil, air and water.

"It's similar to what happened with clean water and air," Wall explained. "People want soils maintained in high quality. That's one of the big points. We need to pay attention to what we're pouring concrete over, pay attention to how we degrade and pollute the soil. And on top of that, there's the issue of invasive species. Soil biodiversity is good for all of us."

Wall is also the director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at CSU.

Soil health is important for everyone

Bach said what's needed is a consistent agenda or framework to really move things forward.

"We want to bring home the understanding that soil biodiversity is important for people on Earth, and for life above ground and underwater."

In the paper, the researchers outline how soil biodiversity is important for sustaining people's well-being, life and diversity of life on earth and life in water. Soil biodiversity also plays a major role in regulating climate and nutrient cycling, which helps to grow healthy crops and livestock.

Pest and predator pathogens in soil help control disease outbreaks that can make people sick and also impact crops and livestock. Soil biodiversity also plays a key role in carbon cycles, regulating how much carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere.

"A lot of life we think about above-ground also relies on below-ground habitat," said Bach.

Through the study, the researchers learned how some traditional agricultural practices already leverage the benefits of soil health. Bach said this includes farmers who create spaces to grow rice in places that also support fish in China, with soil organisms turning over nutrients to support layered crops.

"This is a part of so many cultures, how they approach livelihood on the landscape," she said. "That needs more attention."

Researchers said this overview is a starting point, and also a huge advance for soil biodiversity to move into more mainstream conversations on sustainability.

Many organizations approach sustainability goals by picking and choosing to work on a few of them, said Bach. Yet soil biodiversity supports almost all of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, across the board.

"Soil biodiversity has moved beyond academic circles," said Wall. "It needs to be included in all of the conversations about biodiversity loss. We can't just talk about it from the ground up any more."