Earth

New Rochelle, NY, May 1, 2020--A new study provides a detailed characterization of two sisters - one a supercentenarian and one a semi-supercentenarian--aimed at providing new insights into what allowed them to live such long lives. The authors conclude that supercentenarians have a relatively increased resistance to age-related diseases and can approach the limits of the functional human reserve to avoid the acute causes of death. The article is published in Rejuvenation Research, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to access the full-text article free on the Rejuvenation Research website through June 1, 2020.

The article is entitled 'The Phenotypic Characterization of the Cammalleri Sisters, an Example of Exceptional Longevity" and is coauthored by Calogero Caruso, MD, University of Palermo, Italy, and a large team of researchers. The researchers collected data via a detailed questionnaire that assessed factors such as main illnesses, drugs taken, cognitive status, rating on a geriatric depression scale, activities of daily living, and sleep and eating habits. They also investigated the family history. Blood sample testing allowed for genomic analysis and the study of chromosomal and genetic characteristics associated with aging.

The sisters never smoked and slept 5-6 hours per night. They did not show a close adherence to the Mediterranean Diet. Based on the phenotypic and genotypic characterization, the researchers believe that inflammation and oxidative stress predict centenarian mortality.

"The study of those who attain exceptional longevity is among the most impactful areas of biomedical gerontology, especially because it generally arises from staying healthy until an exceptional age. This unique case of two sisters reaching such extreme ages offers a remarkable chance to unearth secrets to maintaining health, and Dr. Caruso's team have done the field a great service with this study," says Editor-in-Chief Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey, SENS Research Foundation, Mountain View, CA.

Proven cardiovascular anti-inflammatory therapies should be used to treat COVID-19 patients that are at risk of, or have developed, cardiovascular problems, recommend leading cardiologists from Beijing, China, who have used their expertise in this area to detail treatment options for these patients.

Published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, the researchers have described the different ways COVID-19 can trigger serious inflammatory-related cardiovascular problems and provide clinicians with guidance for treating these issues. Potential problems with drugs currently being administered to fight this virus are also highlighted.

"We are the first to comprehensively discuss the application of cardiovascular anti-inflammatory treatments for patients severely affected by COVID-19," says Professor Shuyang Zhang, lead author of this research, based at the Department of Cardiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital Beijing, China.

"Our study sets out guidance for the selection of specific cardiovascular anti-inflammatory therapies for COVID-19 patients, depending on the severity of disease and a patient's response to therapy. In addition, we highlight the known risks to the cardiovascular system of treatments currently being tested on patients with COVID-19."

Risk to the cardiovascular system

The risk of pneumonia and respiratory distress in COVID-19 patients is well known, but there is increasing evidence of severe cardiovascular problems associated with the disease.

"Inflammation plays an important role in the development and complications of cardiovascular diseases and we have seen that COVID-19 patients with greater signs of an inflammatory response are more likely to suffer serious cardiovascular events and are at greater risk of dying," explains Zhang.

"We have identified a number of ways that COVID-19 can trigger cardiovascular issues. The virus could directly infect and cause inflammation of the heart's tissues, aggravate existing cardiovascular problems, or trigger an over-excessive immune response in the body, often referred to as a 'cytokine storm', which leads to the body attacking itself."

By examining current promising COVID-19 treatments as well as cardiovascular anti-inflammatory therapies that have been verified in clinical trials with positive results, Zhang and her colleagues highlight potentially effective treatments and suggest ongoing anti-inflammatory treatment to aid recovery.

"Many clinical trials have been conducted over the past decade to directly test the feasibility of using different anti-inflammatory agents for cardiovascular protection under various conditions, Accumulating evidence supports their ability to improve cardiovascular outcomes," explains Zhang.

"Using current knowledge of cardiovascular anti-inflammatory therapies might be of great value in the management of COVID-19 and we recommend referring to this knowledge and experience in clinical practice and conduct related COVID-19 clinical trials."

Use with caution

The researchers warn against using new, pre-clinical drugs for treating COVID-19 because of their unknown efficacy and safety risks. In addition, the use of certain anti-viral drugs, some currently under clinical assessment for treating COVID-19, should be used with caution.

"Some drugs currently in use for COVID-19 patients such as lopinavir/ritonavir, interferon-α, ribavirin, azithromycin, and hydroxychloroquine may actually increase the risk of cardiovascular impairment," explains Zhang. "Considering that these drugs may be essential in the clinical management of COVID-19 patients, especially the anti-viral agents, cardiovascular protective strategies are urgently needed to improve the overall prognosis."

The researchers believe that sharing their knowledge and experience through this study will make a difference to patients severely affected by this disease.

"We hope our study provides useful information to the global community hoping to improve the clinical management of COVID-19 during this pandemic."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers have discovered a system of ridges spread across the nearside of the Moon topped with freshly exposed boulders. The ridges could be evidence of active lunar tectonic processes, the researchers say, possibly the echo of a long-ago impact that nearly tore the Moon apart.

"There's this assumption that the Moon is long dead, but we keep finding that that's not the case," said Peter Schultz, a professor in Brown University's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the research, which is published in the journal Geology. "From this paper it appears that the Moon may still be creaking and cracking -- potentially in the present day -- and we can see the evidence on these ridges."

Most of the Moon's surface is covered by regolith, a powdery blanket of ground-up rock created by the constant bombardment of tiny meteorites and other impactors. Areas free of regolith where the Moon's bedrock is exposed are vanishingly rare. But Adomas Valantinas, a graduate student at the University of Bern who led the research while a visiting scholar at Brown, used data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to spot strange bare spots within and surrounding the lunar maria, the large dark patches on the Moon's nearside.

"Exposed blocks on the surface have a relatively short lifetime because the regolith buildup is happening constantly," Schultz said. "So when we see them, there needs to be some explanation for how and why they were exposed in certain locations."

For the study, Valantinas used the LRO's Diviner instrument, which measures the temperature of the lunar surface. Just as concrete-covered cities on Earth retain more heat than the countryside, exposed bedrock and blocky surfaces on the Moon stays warmer through the lunar night than regolith-covered surfaces. Using nighttime observations from Diviner, Valantinas turned up more than 500 patches of exposed bedrock on narrow ridges following a pattern across the lunar nearside maria.

A few ridges topped with exposed bedrock had been seen before, Schultz says. But those ridges were on the edges of ancient lava-filled impact basins and could be explained by continued sagging in response to weight caused by the lava fill. But this new study discovered that the most active ridges are related to a mysterious system of tectonic features (ridges and faults) on the lunar nearside, unrelated to both lava-filled basins and other young faults that crisscross the highlands.

"The distribution that we found here begs for a different explanation," Schultz said.

Valantinas and Schultz mapped out all of the exposures revealed in the Diviner data and found an interesting correlation. In 2014, NASA's GRAIL mission found a network of ancient cracks in the Moon's crust. Those cracks became channels through which magma flowed to the Moon's surface to form deep intrusions. Valantinas and Schultz showed that the blocky ridges seemed to line up just about perfectly with the deep intrusions revealed by GRAIL.

"It's almost a one-to-one correlation," Schultz said. "That makes us think that what we're seeing is an ongoing process driven by things happening in the Moon's interior."

Schultz and Valantinas suggest that the ridges above these ancient intrusions arestill heaving upward. The upward movement breaks the surface and enables regolith to drain into cracks and voids, leaving the blocks exposed. Because bare spots on the Moon get covered over fairly quickly, this cracking must be quite recent, possibly even ongoing today. They refer to what they've found as ANTS, for Active Nearside Tectonic System.

The researchers believe that the ANTS was actually set in motion billions of years ago with a giant impact on the Moon's farside. In previous studies, Schultz and a co-worker proposed this impact, which formed the 1500-mile South Pole Aitken Basin, shattered the interior on the opposite side, the nearside facing the Earth. Magma then filled these cracks and controlled the pattern of dikes detected in the GRAIL mission. The blocky ridges comprising the ANTS now trace the continuing adjustments along these ancient weaknesses.

"This looks like the ridges responded to something that happened 4.3 billion years ago," Schultz said. "Giant impacts have long lasting effects. The Moon has a long memory. What we're seeing on the surface today is testimony to its long memory and secrets it still holds."

Using the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, a team of scientists led by the University of Washington has made precise measurements of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.

In a new study published in the journal Science on April 30, scientists found the net loss of ice from Antarctica, along with Greenland's shrinking ice sheet, has been responsible for 0.55 inches (14 millimeters) of sea level rise to the global ocean since 2003. In Antarctica, sea level rise is being driven by the loss of the floating ice shelves melting in a warming ocean. The ice shelves help hold back the flow of land-based ice into the ocean.

The findings come from the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2), which was launched into orbit in fall 2018 and began taking detailed global elevation measurements, including over Earth's frozen regions. By comparing the new data with measurements taken by the original ICESat from 2003 to 2009, researchers have generated a comprehensive portrait of the complexities of ice sheet change - and insights into the future of Greenland and Antarctica.

"If you watch a glacier or ice sheet for a month, or a year, you're not going to learn much about what the climate is doing to it," said lead author Benjamin Smith, a glaciologist at the University of Washington. "We now have a 16-year span between ICESat and ICESat-2 and can be much more confident that the changes we're seeing in the ice have to do with the long-term changes in the climate. And ICESat-2 is a really remarkable tool for making these measurements. We're seeing high-quality measurements that carpet both ice sheets, which let us make a detailed and precise comparison with the ICESat data."

Previous studies of ice loss or gain often analyze data from multiple satellites and airborne missions. The new study takes a single type of measurement - height as measured by an instrument that bounces laser pulses off the ice surface - providing the most detailed and accurate picture of ice sheet change to date.

The researchers took tracks of ICESat measurements and overlaid the denser tracks of ICESat-2 measurements from 2019. Where the two data sets intersected - tens of millions of sites - they ran the data through computer programs that accounted for the snow density and other factors, and then calculated the mass of ice lost or gained.

"The new analysis reveals the ice sheets' response to changes in climate with unprecedented detail, revealing clues as to why and how the ice sheets are reacting the way they are", said co-author Alex Gardner, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The study found that Greenland's ice sheet lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year, and Antarctica's ice sheet lost an average of 118 gigatons of ice per year. One gigaton of ice is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Of the sea level rise that resulted from ice sheet meltwater and iceberg calving, about two-thirds of it came Greenland, the other third from Antarctica, Smith and his colleagues found.

"It was amazing to see how good the ICESat-2 data looked, right out of the gate," said co-author Tom Neumann at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "These first results looking at land ice confirm the consensus from other research groups, but they also let us look at the details of change in individual glaciers and ice shelves at the same time."

In Greenland, there was a significant amount of thinning of coastal glaciers, Smith said. The Kangerlussuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers, for example, have lost 14 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) of elevation per year. Warmer summer temperatures have melted ice from the surface of the glaciers and ice sheets, and in some places warmer ocean water erodes away the ice at their fronts.

In Antarctica, the dense tracks of ICESat-2 measurements showed that the ice sheet is getting thicker in parts of the continent's interior, likely as a result of increased snowfall, Smith said. But the loss of ice from the continent's margins, especially in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, far outweighs any gains in the interior. In those places, the ocean is also likely to blame.

"In West Antarctica, we're seeing a lot of glaciers thinning very rapidly," Smith said. "There are ice shelves at the downstream end of those glaciers, floating on water. And those ice shelves are thinning, letting more ice flow out into the ocean as the warmer water erodes the ice."

These ice shelves, which rise and fall with the tides, can be difficult to measure, said co-author Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Some of them have rough surfaces, with crevasses and ridges, but the precision and high resolution of ICESat-2 allows researchers to measure overall changes, without worrying about these features skewing the results.

This is one of the first times that researchers have measured loss of the floating ice shelves around Antarctica simultaneously with loss of the continent's ice sheet.

Ice that melts from ice shelves doesn't raise sea levels, since it's already floating - just like an ice cube in a full cup of water doesn't overflow the glass. But the ice shelves do provide stability for the glaciers and ice sheets behind them.

"It's like an architectural buttress that holds up a cathedral," Fricker said. "The ice shelves hold the ice sheet up. If you take away the ice shelves, or even if you thin them, you're reducing that buttressing force, so the grounded ice can flow faster."

The researchers found ice shelves in West Antarctica, where many of the continent's fastest-moving glaciers are located, are losing mass. Patterns of thinning show that Thwaites and Crosson ice shelves have thinned the most, an average of about five meters (16 feet) and three meters (10 feet) of ice per year, respectively.

The extent to which solar activity (and thus the number of sunspots and the solar brightness) varies can be reconstructed using various methods - at least for a certain period of time. Since 1610, for example, there have been reliable records of sunspots covering the Sun; the distribution of radioactive varieties of carbon and beryllium in tree rings and ice cores allows us to draw conclusions about the level of solar activity over the past 9000 years. For this period of time, scientists find regularly recurring fluctuations of comparable strength as during recent decades. "However, compared to the entire lifespan of the Sun, 9000 years is like the blink of an eye", says MPS scientist Dr. Timo Reinhold, first author of the new study. After all, our star is almost 4.6 billion years old. "It is conceivable that the Sun has been going through a quiet phase for thousands of years and that we therefore have a distorted picture of our star," he adds.

Since there is no way of finding out how active the Sun was in primeval times, scientists can only resort to the stars: Together with colleagues from the University of New South Wales in Australia and the School of Space Research in South Korea, the MPS researchers investigated, whether the Sun behaves "normally" in comparison to other stars. This may help to classify its current activity.

To this end, the researchers selected candidate stars that resemble the Sun in decisive properties. In addition to the surface temperature, the age, and the proportion of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, the researchers looked above all at the rotation period. "The speed at which a star rotates around its own axis is a crucial variable", explains Prof. Dr. Sami Solanki, director at MPS and co-author of the new publication. A star's rotation contributes to the creation of its magnetic field in a dynamo process in its interior. "The magnetic field is the driving force responsible for all fluctuations in activity," says Solanki. The state of the magnetic field determines how often the Sun emits energetic radiation and hurls particles at high speeds into space in violent eruptions, how numerous dark sunspots and bright regions on its surface are - and thus also how brightly the Sun shines.

A comprehensive catalogue containing the rotation periods of thousands of stars has been available only for the last few years. It is based on measurement data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which recorded the brightness fluctuations of approximately 150000 main sequence stars (i.e. those that are in the middle of their lifetimes) from 2009 to 2013. The researchers scoured this huge sample and selected those stars that rotate once around their own axis within 20 to 30 days. The Sun needs about 24.5 days for this. The researchers were able to further narrow down this sample by using data from the European Gaia Space Telescope. In the end, 369 stars remained, which also resemble the Sun in other fundamental properties.

The exact analysis of the brightness variations of these stars from 2009 to 2013 reveals a clear picture. While between active and inactive phases solar irradiance fluctuated on average by just 0.07 percent, the other stars showed much larger variation. Their fluctuations were typically about five times as strong. "We were very surprised that most of the Sun-like stars are so much more active than the Sun," says Dr. Alexander Shapiro of MPS, who heads the research group "Connecting Solar and Stellar Variabilities".

However, it is not possible to determine the rotation period of all the stars observed by the Kepler telescope. To do this, scientists have to find certain periodically re-appearing dips in the star's lightcurve. These dips can be traced back to starspots that darken the stellar surface, rotate out of the telescope's field of view and then reappear after a fixed period of time. "For many stars, such periodic darkenings cannot be detected; they are lost in the noise of the measured data and in overlying brightness fluctuations," explains Reinhold. Viewed through the Kepler telescope, even the Sun would not reveal its rotation period.

The researchers therefore also studied more than 2500 Sun-like stars with unknown rotation periods. Their brightness fluctuated much less than that of the other group.

These results allow two interpretations. There could be a still unexplained fundamental difference between stars with known and unknown rotation period. "It is just as conceivable that stars with known and Sun-like rotation periods show us the fundamental fluctuations in activity the Sun is capable of," says Shapiro. This would mean that our star has been unusually feeble over the past 9000 years and that on very large time scales phases with much greater fluctuations are also possible.

There is, however, no cause for concern. For the foreseeable future, there is no indication of such solar "hyperactivity". On the contrary: For the last decade, the Sun has been showing itself to be rather weakly active, even by its own low standards. Predictions of activity for the next eleven years indicate that this will not change soon.

Rochester, MN, April 30, 2020 - According to a new study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, published by Elsevier, taking cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) into account along with traditional risk factors such as age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking, improves the accuracy of mortality risk assessment.

"We found that within a contemporary adult UK population with a varied and relatively low pre-test risk profile, greater CRF was strongly associated with a lower risk of mortality. The findings enabled new insights into the incremental prognostic value of a CRF evaluation," explained lead investigator Jari A. Laukkanen, MD, PhD, Cardiologist, Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland. "The predictive accuracy of CRF levels was even more evident when factored in with traditional risk factors such as age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking."

Although conventional risk factors such as age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking can significantly contribute to the risk of vascular disease and mortality, these established risk factors are often absent in a large proportion of cardiovascular disease patients. This contributes to difficulties in identifying individuals at increased risk for vascular disease and/or death.

CRF is recognized as an important marker of both functional ability and mortality and a wealth of literature shows this measure to be inversely and independently associated with vascular disease and mortality. However, physicians do not routinely assess fitness - in either general or specialized clinical settings -- when testing for traditional risk factors.

This study was based on data from the large-scale UK Biobank Study, which gathered information on close to 60,000 participants aged 40-69 years. It assessed CRF using submaximal exercise testing in the form of a six-minute stationary bicycle protocol. This protocol is easily available, has a good safety profile, reliability, and validity. The investigators evaluated the impact of the CRF assessment against and in conjunction with risk factors typically measured in clinical practice. Investigators used mortality data from the National Health Service Information Centre (England and Wales) and the Scottish Morbidity Record, from which they were able to classify the causes of death.

This is one of the first large scale population-based studies showing that risk prediction can be improved in a pre-screened relatively low risk population by adding information on CRF, estimated on the basis of a submaximal exercise test, to conventional cardiovascular risk factors. During a median follow-up of 5.8 years, 936 deaths occurred within the study group.

"Do we really need to make CRF evaluations a standard part of a medical exam? Based on what we learned, the answer is 'yes.' Our findings clearly validate them as vital clinical risk predictors in conjunction with the other factors," noted Dr. Laukkanen. "Submaximal exercise testing in order to factor in CRF levels with conventional risk factors should be routinely used by clinicians to determine whether high-risk patients need additional interventions."

In an accompanying editorial, Carl J. Lavie, MD, Cardiologist, John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute, Ochsner Clinical School - University of Queensland School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, USA, and co-authors observed that "Certainly, numerous studies show the powerful impact of CRF in predicting risk. Although the gold standard assessment of CRF is cardiopulmonary exercise testing and using gas exchange to measure peak oxygen consumption, many clinicians do not have easy access to such testing, and neither do they have the equipment and personnel to monitor these tests, not to mention the moderate expense of this testing. The unique aspect of the present UK Biobank study was using a submaximal six-minute bicycle test in a very large cohort to assess CRF and mortality combined with established CVD risk factors."

CRF is an index of habitual physical activity, particularly aerobic exercise. Good CRF helps to ward off chronic diseases, provides general wellbeing, and reduces the risk of premature death. In addition to good nutrition and, adequate rest and relaxation, individuals can improve their fitness levels by undertaking regular exercise. Fitness and exercise are potential ways to avoid daily stress, which can take a substantial toll on human health.

"We need to do a better job promoting physical activity and exercise training (aerobic and resistance) throughout the healthcare system, schools, the workplace, and society for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. The long-term health of our populations will depend on the success of these efforts," commented Dr. Lavie and co-authors.

Microplastic particles entering the sea surface were thought to settle to the seafloor directly below them, but now, a new study reveals that slow-moving currents near the bottom of the ocean direct the flow of plastics, creating microplastic hotpots in sediments of the deep sea. Importantly, these "bottom" currents supply oxygen and nutrients to deep sea creatures, and so, by following the same route, these toxic microplastics may be settling into biodiversity hotspots, increasing the chance of ingestion by creatures of the deep. Currents are known to control the global distribution of plastics on the sea surface, creating patches of floating garbage. However, sea surface plastic concentrations account for only 1% of the estimated global marine plastic budget. Most of the plastic ends up in the deep sea, though it's largely unknown how they're distributed there. Using high-resolution data from sediments sampled from the Tyrrhenian Sea (off the western coast of Italy), as well as numerical modeling, Ian Kane and colleagues demonstrate that the ultimate fate of microplastics (those smaller than one millimeter) is strongly controlled by bottom currents. They found microplastics were focused within depths of 600 to 900 meters, where these currents have the greatest interaction with the seafloor, transporting fine-grained particles that result in large sediment accumulations, called contourite drifts. All seafloor samples were found to contain microplastics - most of which were fibers - and the highest concentrations occurred on the mounds of contourite drifts. On average, bottom currents created microplastic hotspots of up to 1.9 million pieces per square meter, one of the highest reported values for any seafloor setting, globally. The authors note that above a certain threshold of the currents' shear force on the deep seabed, microplastics no longer became concentrated at the seafloor.

Ice sheet losses from Greenland and Antarctica have outpaced snow accumulation and contributed approximately 14 millimeters to sea level rise over 16 years (2003 to 2019), a new analysis of data from NASA's laser-shooting satellites has revealed. By combining data from the first polar-orbiting space laser, ICESat, and next-generation ICESat-2, scientists here were able to account for even subtle changes in ice masses, which had been previously overlooked and resulted in small, yet significant biases on ice mass changes. The tug of war between ice mass loss and gain - highly dependent on interactions among ice, ocean, and atmosphere, increasingly affected by a warming climate - dictates contributions to sea level rise. Since the 1990s, laser-shooting satellites have provided a record of ice mass by measuring the changing height of polar ice. However, it has been challenging to form a unified estimate of mass changes (resolving differences in instruments, methodologies and study periods) in both grounded ice sheets and floating ice shelves that also accounts for the icy bodies' interactions with the atmosphere and ocean in a changing climate. Here, Ben Smith and colleagues aggregated 2018 and 2019 data from ICESat-2 to 2003 to 2008 data from ICESat. In order to form more accurate predictions, they restricted their analysis to areas covered throughout both missions and factored in several atmospheric and oceanic impacts, such as ocean tides, to raw data on height changes. They found that, while losses from Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers were partially offset by gains via snow accumulation in East Antarctica and central Greenland, total losses outpaced the rate of gain. Lost ice was most apparent in northwest and southeast Greenland and West Antarctica; specifically, the melting of West Antarctica's floating ice shelves - a process that directly affects the rate of ice flow into the ocean - accounted for over 30% of the region's total mass loss. Their data projects melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica will increasingly contribute to sea level rise within tens to hundreds of years, the authors say.

An international research project has revealed the highest levels of microplastic ever recorded on the seafloor, with up to 1.9 million pieces in a thin layer covering just 1 square metre.

Over 10 million tons of plastic waste enters the oceans each year. Floating plastic waste at sea has caught the public's interest thanks to the 'Blue Planet Effect' seeing moves to discourage the use of plastic drinking straws and carrier bags. Yet such accumulations account for less than 1% of the plastic that enters the world's oceans.

The missing 99% is instead thought to occur in the deep ocean, but until now it has been unclear where it actually ended up. Published this week in the journal Science, the research conducted by The University of Manchester (UK), National Oceanography Centre (UK), University of Bremen (Germany), IFREMER (France) and Durham University (UK) showed how deep-sea currents act as conveyor belts, transporting tiny plastic fragments and fibres across the seafloor.

These currents can concentrate microplastics within huge sediment accumulations, which they termed 'microplastic hotspots'. These hotspots appear to be the deep-sea equivalents of the so-called 'garbage patches' formed by currents on the ocean surface.

The lead author of the study, Dr Ian Kane of The University of Manchester said: "Almost everybody has heard of the infamous ocean 'garbage patches' of floating plastic, but we were shocked at the high concentrations of microplastics we found in the deep-seafloor.

"We discovered that microplastics are not uniformly distributed across the study area; instead they are distributed by powerful seafloor currents which concentrate them in certain areas."

Microplastics on the seafloor are mainly comprised of fibres from textiles and clothing. These are not effectively filtered out in domestic waste water treatment plants, and easily enter rivers and oceans.

In the ocean they either settle out slowly, or can be transported rapidly by episodic turbidity currents - powerful underwater avalanches - that travel down submarine canyons to the deep seafloor (see the group's earlier research in Environmental Science & Technology). Once in the deep sea, microplastics are readily picked up and carried by continuously flowing seafloor currents ('bottom currents') that can preferentially concentrate fibres and fragments within large drifts of sediment.

These deep ocean currents also carry oxygenated water and nutrients, meaning that seafloor microplastic hotspots can also house important ecosystems that can consume or absorb the microplastics. This study provides the first direct link between the behaviour of these currents and the concentrations of seafloor microplastics and the findings will help to predict the locations of other deep-sea microplastic hotspots and direct research into the impact of microplastics on marine life.

The team collected sediment samples from the seafloor of the Tyrrhenian Sea (part of the Mediterranean Sea) and combined these with calibrated models of deep ocean currents and detailed mapping of the seafloor. In the laboratory, the microplastics were separated from sediment, counted under the microscope, and further analysed using infra-red spectroscopy to determine the plastic types. Using this information the team were able to show how ocean currents controlled the distribution of microplastics on the seafloor.

Dr Mike Clare of the National Oceanography Centre, who was a co-lead on the research, stated: "Our study has shown how detailed studies of seafloor currents can help us to connect microplastic transport pathways in the deep-sea and find the 'missing' microplastics. The results highlight the need for policy interventions to limit the future flow of plastics into natural environments and minimise impacts on ocean ecosystems."

Dr Florian Pohl, Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, said: "It's unfortunate, but plastic has become a new type of sediment particle, which is distributed across the seafloor together with sand, mud and nutrients. Thus, sediment-transport processes such as seafloor currents will concentrate plastic particles in certain locations on the seafloor, as demonstrated by our research."

A new study by researchers from IIASA and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for the first time systematically explored and compared the use of the Human Life Indicator as a viable alternative to the conventional Human Development Index as a means of measuring progress in development.

Reducing inequalities between and within countries is a core component of the Sustainable Development Goals, which is why it is important to have a reliable means of measuring the different degrees of development across any given territory. The Human Development Index (HDI) has been widely used to benchmark progress in terms of development for the past three decades, and has also been the core measure underpinning the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports. It has however been widely criticized for a number of problems related to calculation and interpretation. In addition, sub-national HDIs are subject to the same criticisms as national level indices - potentially even more so. In response to this, IIASA researchers previously designed the Human Life Indicator (HLI) - a much simpler measure of development.

The HLI expresses wellbeing in terms of years of life, similar to life expectancy at birth. However, unlike any other conventional measure, it takes not only the mean value, but also the inequality in longevity into account. Compared to the HDI, HLIs are characterized by simpler calculation and interpretation, fewer data requirements, less measurement errors, more consistency over time, and no trade-offs between components. Due to the wide availability of mortality data, the HLI can also be used for reliable comparisons of wellbeing across countries, in the past as well as the present. In their new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, the authors for the first time systematically explored and compared HLI and HDI over time at the sub-national level.

"We wanted to determine whether the HLI could operate as a simpler and more transparent substitute for the HDI when looking at development at the sub-national level. Using life tables for the United States, we calculated HLIs for each state for the period 1959 to 2016. We also calculated the extent to which mortality is distributed across the life course as a further measure of inequality and the role of the social determinants of health," explains study author Stuart Gietel-Basten, a researcher at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The authors opted to use the US as a case study due to the comparatively long run of available sub-national life tables. The HLI clearly shows how striking regional inequalities exist across the country and that HLI and HDI for the most recent time period are strongly correlated. According to the authors, a current challenge of producing sub-national HLIs is the general lack of comprehensive civil registration and vital statistics systems in many parts of the world - especially in the Global South - from which sub-national life tables can be generated. However, as more and more countries develop these systems the potential to produce HLIs will inevitably increase.

"The HLI is much easier to calculate and interpret. We have shown that it can operate as a good substitute to HDI. By using the HLI rather than the HDI, we can not only better communicate human development more generally, but also the inequalities that exist between regions. This can give a better and clearer idea for policymakers to design means of bridging these gaps," concludes study author Sergei Scherbov, a researcher in the IIASA World Population program.

Apoptosis is a form 'cell suicide', in which a series of programmed molecular steps in a cell lead to its death. "When a cell senses that something is wrong, it can commit 'suicide', or apoptosis, to prevent itself from dividing and spreading the problem. This is a normal mechanism present in all cells of the body and one way by which the body gets rid of unneeded or abnormal cells.

"Most cancers block this process, so that they can proliferate forever. So, understanding the process and knowing the actors that are involved is important in order to identify new targets that can be used to develop therapy for cancer, for instance", explains Dominique Leboeuf, Skoltech Center for Life Sciences PhD student and one of the authors of the study.

Apoptosis is an essential process for proper organ development, immune system functioning, and defense against viral infections and cancerous transformation. Once the apoptotic program is initiated in a cell, special enzymes, called caspases, are activated and cleave a very specific set of proteins.

"The goal of the study was to sort out this set and identify the proteins that are important in the apoptotic program. To do this, we looked at the evolutionary conservation of caspase substrates and additional characteristics of these proteins, based on sequence, structure and biochemical properties. We believed that the proteins that were the most preserved, and met our selection criteria, would be critical in the apoptotic process," stated Skoltech Neurobiology and Brain Restoration Center professor Konstantin Piatkov.

Using the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, scientists have made precise, detailed measurements of how the elevation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.

The results provide insights into how the polar ice sheets are changing, demonstrating definitively that small gains of ice in East Antarctica are dwarfed by massive losses in West Antarctica. The scientists found the net loss of ice from Antarctica, along with Greenland's shrinking ice sheet, has been responsible for 0.55 inches (14 millimeters) of sea level rise between 2003 and 2019 - slightly less than a third of the total amount of sea level rise observed in the world's oceans.

The findings come from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2), which launched in 2018 to make detailed global elevation measurements, including over Earth's frozen regions. By comparing the recent data with measurements taken by the original ICESat from 2003 to 2009, researchers have generated a comprehensive portrait of the complexities of ice sheet change and insights about the future of Greenland and Antarctica.

The study found that Greenland's ice sheet lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year, and Antarctica's ice sheet lost an average of 118 gigatons of ice per year.

One gigaton of ice is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools or cover New York's Central Park in ice more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) thick, reaching higher than the Chrysler Building.

"If you watch a glacier or ice sheet for a month, or a year, you're not going to learn much about what the climate is doing to it," said Ben Smith, a glaciologist at the University of Washington and lead author of the new paper, published online in Science April 30. "We now have a 16-year span between ICESat and ICESat-2 and can be much more confident that the changes we're seeing in the ice have to do with the long-term changes in the climate."

ICESat-2's instrument is a laser altimeter, which sends 10,000 pulses of light a second down to Earth's surface, and times how long it takes to return to the satellite - to within a billionth of a second. The instrument's pulse rate allows for a dense map of measurement over the ice sheet; its high precision allows scientists to determine how much an ice sheet changes over a year to within an inch.

The researchers took tracks of earlier ICESat measurements and overlaid the tracks of ICESat-2 measurements from 2019, and took data from the tens of millions of sites where the two data sets intersected. That gave them the elevation change, but to get to how much ice has been lost, the researchers developed a new model to convert volume change to mass change. The model calculated densities across the ice sheets to allow the total mass loss to be calculated.

"These first results looking at land ice confirm the consensus from other research groups, but they also let us look at the details of change in individual glaciers and ice shelves at the same time," said Tom Neumann, ICESat-2 project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

In Antarctica, for example, the detailed measurements showed that the ice sheet is getting thicker in parts of the continent's interior as a result of increased snowfall, according to the study. But the loss of ice from the continent's margins, especially in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, far outweighs any gains in the interior. In those places, the loss is due to warming from the ocean.

In Greenland, there was a significant amount of thinning of coastal glaciers, Smith said. The Kangerlussuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers, for example, have lost 14 to 20 ft (4 to 6 m) of elevation per year; the glacial basins have lost 16 gigatons per year and 22 gigatons per year, respectively. Warmer summer temperatures have melted ice from the surface of the glaciers and ice sheets, and in some basins the warmer ocean water erodes away the ice at their fronts.

"The new analysis reveals the ice sheets' response to changes in climate with unprecedented detail, revealing clues as to why and how the ice sheets are reacting the way they are," said Alex Gardner, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and co-author on the Science paper.

The study also examined ice shelves - the floating masses of ice at the downstream end of glaciers. These ice shelves, which rise and fall with the tides, can be difficult to measure, said Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, and co-author on the Science paper. Some of them have rough surfaces, with crevasses and ridges, but the precision and high resolution of ICESat-2 allows researchers to measure overall changes.

This is one of the first times that researchers have used laser altimetry to measure loss of the floating ice shelves around Antarctica simultaneously with loss of the continent's ice sheet.

The researchers found ice shelves are losing mass in West Antarctica, where many of the continent's fastest-moving glaciers are located as well. Patterns of thinning over the ice shelves in West Antarctica show that Thwaites and Crosson ice shelves have thinned the most, an average of about 16 ft (5 m) and 10 ft (3 m) of ice per year, respectively.

Ice that melts from ice shelves doesn't raise sea levels, since it's already floating - just like an ice cube already in a full cup of water doesn't overflow the glass when it melts. But the ice shelves do provide stability for the glaciers and ice sheets behind them.

"It's like an architectural buttress that holds up a cathedral," Fricker said. "The ice shelves hold the ice sheet up. If you take away the ice shelves, or even if you thin them, you're reducing that buttressing force, so the grounded ice can flow faster."

AMHERST, Mass. - For many years, the conservation community has embraced the idea that improving connectivity, that is, creating corridors so species can follow their preferred climate, will benefit biodiversity, says Toni Lyn Morelli at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Climate Adaptation Science Center.

But, she adds, "I also work with invasive species experts and conservationists who know that new species can be problematic. So one community is saying yes, species arrivals are good, the other one says species arrivals are bad, and so far they aren't talking much."

In a new perspective paper out today, with co-first author Piper Wallingford at the University of California, Irvine, Morelli and other colleagues address that disconnect. Writing in Nature Climate Change, they propose that reconciling these differing views will allow for better management of species that are shifting their ranges because of changing climates.

Morelli says, "This is us saying let's be thoughtful about this, let's have a dialogue. We're going against two decades of established wisdom and we expect some pushback, but really any discussion will be helpful. We're not saying that no species should move around. In fact, most species will have to move to avoid extinctions from climate change. But let's look at what that means."

To that end, Morelli, Wallingford and colleagues suggest using a tool like the Environmental Impact Classification of Alien Taxa (EICAT) - developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature - to assess risk and develop management priorities. They write, "By adapting existing invasion risk assessment frameworks, we can identify characteristics shared with high-impact introductions and thus predict potential impacts." Further, "Ecological impacts of range-shifting species could be predicted by leveraging knowledge of invasion ecology and existing risk assessments."

The authors also point out that "with the exception of some problematic species, few studies have assessed the community and ecosystem impacts of species tracking their climate into new areas. The lack of studies on range shift impacts is surprising given that the introduction and spread of new species is often viewed by ecologists through the lens of invasion biology, where the primary concern is the potential for negative impacts on the recipient community."

They recommend considering the ecological costs and benefits to recipient communities and ecosystem processes. Morelli adds, "If species that would have massive impacts are expected to move, we could know ahead and potentially take steps to stop or slow that."

Wallingford adds, "Our point of view is that more information is better. We can weigh the risks for both range-shifting species and the communities they're moving to and then use those assessments to develop a strategy. In some cases, we may want to limit the extent of a range shift, but other range shifts may need to be helped along - with endangered species, for example."

Morelli notes, "The effects of new range shifters are already being seen. We used to have the northern flying squirrel in Massachusetts, but with climate change the larger southern species has recently moved north. It carries a parasite that is fatal to the northern species. Now the northern flying squirrel is gone from Massachusetts."

The authors point out that as species from many taxonomic groups and ecosystems are redistributing towards higher latitudes and elevations in response to climate change, range shifts can no longer be seen as overwhelmingly beneficial to biodiversity conservation.

They urge more attention to "the importance of considering the ecological impacts of range-shifting species in terms of both the benefits, particularly to their persistence, as well as the potential costs to recipient communities and ecosystem processes."

A Rutgers engineer has created a mathematical model that accurately estimates the death toll linked to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and could be used around the world.

"Based on data available on April 28, the model showed that the COVID-19 pandemic might be over in the United States, meaning no more American deaths, by around late June 2020," said Hoang Pham, a distinguished professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "But if testing and contact tracing strategies, social-distancing policies, reopening of community strategies or stay-at-home policies change significantly in the coming days and weeks, the predicted death toll will also change."

The model, detailed in a study published in the journal Mathematics, predicted the death toll would eventually reach about 68,120 in the United States as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. That's based on data available on April 28, and there was high confidence (99 percent) the expected death toll would be between 66,055 and 70,304.

The model's estimates and predictions closely match reported death totals. As of April 29, more than 58,000 Americans had succumbed to COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Tracking Map.

The next steps include applying the model to global COVID-19 death data as well as to other nations such as Italy and Spain, both of which have experienced thousands of deaths due to COVID-19. The model could also be used to evaluate population mortality and the spread of other diseases.

A mass move to working-from-home accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic might not be as beneficial to the planet as many hope, according to a new study by the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS).

The majority of studies on the subject analysed by University of Sussex academics agree that working-from-home reduced commuter travel and energy use - by as much as 80% in some cases.

But a small number of studies found that telecommuting increased energy use or had a negligible impact, since the energy savings were offset by increased travel for recreation or other purposes, together with additional energy use in the home.

The authors found that more methodologically rigorous studies were less likely to estimate energy savings - all six of the studies analysed that found negligible energy reductions or increases were judged to be methodologically good.

Dr Andrew Hook, Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Sussex, said:

"While most studies conclude that teleworking can contribute energy savings, the more rigorous studies and those with a broader scope present more ambiguous findings. Where studies include additional impacts, such as non-work travel or office and home energy use, the potential energy savings appear more limited - with some studies suggesting that, in the context of growing distances between the workplace and home, part-week teleworking could lead to a net increase in energy consumption."

Dr Victor Court, Lecturer at the Center for Energy Economics and Management, IFP School, said:

"It is our belief from examining the relevant literature that teleworking has some potential to reduce energy consumption and associated emissions - both through reducing commuter travel and displacing office-related energy consumption. But if it encourages people to live further away from work or to take additional trips, the savings could be limited or even negative."

Studies indicate it would be better for workers to continue working from home for all of the working week rather than splitting time between office and home once lockdown rules are relaxed. Similarly, companies will need to encourage the majority of staff to switch to home working and to downsize office space to ensure significant energy savings.

Even the mass migration of workers to home working might have only a small impact on overall energy usage. One study noted that even if all US information workers teleworked for four days a week, the drop in national energy consumption would be significantly less effective than a 20% improvement in car fuel efficiency.

The study also warns that technological advances could erode some of the energy savings due to the short lifetime and rapid replacement of ICTs, their increasingly complex supply chains, their dependence on rare earth elements and the development of energy-intensive processes such as cloud storage and video streaming.

The authors add that modern-day work patterns are becoming increasingly complex, diversified and personalised, making it harder to track whether teleworking is definitively contributing energy savings.

Steven Sorrell, Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, said:

"While the lockdown has clearly reduced energy consumption, only some of those savings will be achieved in more normal patterns of teleworking. To assess whether teleworking is really sustainable, we need to look beyond the direct impact on commuting and investigate how it changes a whole range of daily activities."

The paper, published in Environmental Research Letters, provides a systematic review of current knowledge of the energy impacts of teleworking, synthesising the results of 39 empirical studies from the US, Europe, Thailand, Malaysia and Iran published between 1995 and 2019.

Among the potential energy increases from working-from-home practices the study identified include:

Teleworkers living further away from their place of work so making longer commutes on days they worked in the office - one study found UK teleworkers have a 10.7 mile longer commute than those who travelled into work every day.

The time gained from not participating in daily commute used by teleworkers to make additional journeys for leisure and social purposes.

Teleworking households' spending money saved from the daily commute on goods, activities and services also requiring energy and producing emissions.

Isolated and sedentary teleworkers taking on more journeys to combat negative feelings.

Other household members making trips in cars freed up from the daily commute

Benjamin K Sovacool, Professor of Energy Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, said:

"The body of research on the subject shows that it is too simple to assume that teleworking is inevitably a more sustainable option. Unless workers and employers fully commit to the working from home model, many of the potential energy savings could be lost. A scenario after the threat of Coronavirus has cleared where workers will want the best of both worlds; retaining the freedom and flexibility they found from working from home but the social aspects of working at an office that they've missed out on during lockdown, will not deliver the energy savings the world needs."