Earth

Children are set to move more, improve their skills, and come up with their own creative tennis games with the launch of 'HomeCourtTennis', a new initiative to assist teachers and coaches with keeping kids active while at home.

Part one of the initiative, Games-making, will be introduced across Australia via a series of videos for teachers and coaches.
The free HomeCourtTennis content will support teachers in their physical education classes as they shift to distance learning, while coaches will use the material to remain connected to their players.

Games-making is designed to encourage students to create their own tennis games using various equipment from around their home environment, whether that is their lounge room, kitchen, bedroom, backyard, garage or driveway.

The initiative is supported by a new peer-reviewed research paper exploring this concept of games-making.

Written by Flinders University Associate Professor Shane Pill, Mitch Hewitt from Tennis Australia and Richard Baldock from the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (ACHPER), the paper puts a spotlight on the opportunity for coaches and teachers to challenge players and students to problem-solve, be creative and to design their own tennis games based on their choice and ability.

"With so many kids currently at home, it's more important than ever to keep them active, motivated and engaged," says Tennis Australia Chief Tennis Officer Matt Dwyer, who says 'HomeCourtTennis' has been designed to increase children's physical activity as well as develop a range of skills, regardless of their playing space and equipment.

"For instance, kids may choose to use a balloon instead of a tennis ball and position two chairs together as a net - as you will see in these videos, anywhere can be a tennis court.

"Even more importantly, Games-making is designed to play to the individual strengths of each child, emphasising what they can do, and what they want to do, rather than what they can't do - there are no limitations and we encourage them to get creative."

HomeCourtTennis will provide a meaningful way for coaches and teachers to stay connected with their players and students during this challenging time, Mr Dwyer adds.

"Games-making also offers the opportunity for parents and children to play together at home and enjoy tennis as a game for all generations," he added.

Physical Education and Sport Associate Professor Pill has been working with Tennis Australia since 2011 on development of Tennis for Schools Programs.

"The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the general decline in physical activity and increasing sedentary lifestyle in Australia," says Associate Professor Pill.

"This initiative grew from the need to get more children, young people and adults active outside of PE.

"Backyard, driveway and even beach games of tennis are fun ways for everyone to learn tennis.

"Driveway tennis can be played anywhere, anytime, by anyone."

Tennis Australia will share inspiration and creative ideas from HomeCourtTennis on its social media @TennisAustralia and digital channels.

Children can learn more about Games-making by getting in touch with their local tennis coach or teacher.

In the Eocene, some of the world's most important mountain ranges emerged and large climate changes took place that affected the future of the planet. In this era, about 50 million years ago, large groups of mammals and other animals also came , as did Daniellia clade, an array of legume plants which carry environmental relevance.

This is one of the main conclusions of a research project on which the University of Cordoba collaborated. This project places the origins of these trees in North Africa. As the only Spanish researcher on the study, Manuel de la Estrella, pointed out, this kind of legume boasts interest from the scientific community due to systematic and environmental reasons. Though most grow in humid rainforests, some have been able to adapt to dry areas that are completely different, such as savannahs and hearty forests of Madagascar, known for their emblematic baobabs. What is more, in contrast to what happens with other tropical plants, the diversity of these species is greater in Africa than in other tropical regions of Asia or the Americas.

The study, that was tracking these plants from the beginning, unlocked some of the mysteries about the plant group's distribution and diversity. As the research shows, this group emerged in North Africa when tropical rainforests flooded the northern part of the continent and even Europe, with the Paris basin being the location where the oldest fossil of this group was found. The emergence of a drier climate afforded a new lineage that spread to Madagascar, where nowadays species adapted to little rainfall grow. Several climate changes that occurred later brought about diversifications that led to the 10 species described in Africa.

In order to trace this evolution, explains Manuel de la Estrella, the fossil record was studied and they used a dating technique known as "molecular clock", a phylogenetic method that deduces the timeline of events using DNA sequences from different species.

Endangered species

The study also assessed the state of conservation of these legumes in accordance with IUCN categories with the aim of establishing conservation priorities. Even if these trees have demonstrated their enormous ability to adapt for 50 million years, eight of the fourteen species in Africa and Madagascar are currently endangered, due to climate change, among other reasons. "Although many of these species arose precisely as a consequence of previous climate changes, those changes happened gradually over millions of years, and so they were given time to adapt", explains the sole Spanish author of the article.

Furthermore, overexploitation by mankind is another main factor threatening the future of these species. Deforestation and dependence upon wood for use in construction and as fuel exerts heavy pressure, especially in areas in the savannah where trees are few and far between.

This research, says Manuel de la Estrella "allows us to understand how these plants emerged and understand how threatened their diversity is, which will help us to make better decisions". Conservation measures such as storing seeds and reintroducing genetically diverse plants in appropriate, protected habitats could help to guarantee the long-term survival of these species.

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2020 -- Growth of high-quality substrates for microelectronic applications is one of the key elements helping drive society toward a more sustainable green economy. Today, silicon plays a central role within the semiconductor industry for microelectronic and nanoelectronic devices.

Silicon wafers of high purity (99.0% or higher) single-crystalline material can be obtained via a combination of liquid growth methods, such as pulling a seed crystal from the melt and by subsequent epitaxy. The catch is that the former process can't be used for the growth of silicon carbide (SiC), because it lacks a melting phase.

In the journal Applied Physics Reviews, from AIP Publishing, Giuseppe Fisicaro and an international team of researchers, led by Antonio La Magna, describe a theoretical and experimental study of the atomic mechanisms governing extended defect kinetics in cubic SiC (3C-SiC), which has a diamondlike zincblende (ZnS) crystal structure that manifests both stacking and anti-phase instabilities.

"Development of a technological framework for the control of crystalline imperfections within SiC for wide bandgap applications can be a game-changing strategy," said Fisicaro.

The researchers' study pinpoints the atomistic mechanisms responsible for extended defect generation and evolution.

"Anti-phase boundaries -- planar crystallographic defects representing the contact boundary between two crystal regions with switched bonds (C-Si instead of Si-C) -- are a critical source of other extended defects in a plethora of configurations," he said.

Eventual reduction of these anti-phase boundaries "is particularly important to achieve good-quality crystals that can be used in electronic devices and enable viable commercial yields," said Fisicaro.

So they developed an innovative simulation Monte Carlo code based on a superlattice, which is a spatial lattice that contains both the perfect SiC crystal and all crystal imperfections. It helped "shed light on the various mechanisms of defect-defect interactions and their impact on the electronic properties of this material," he said.

Emerging wide bandgap semiconductor devices, such as the ones built with SiC, are significant because they have the potential to revolutionize the power electronics industry. They are capable of faster switching speeds, lower losses and higher blocking voltages, which are superior to those of standard silicon-based devices.

Huge environmental benefits are also involved. "If the world's silicon power devices used within this range with were replaced by 3C-SiC devices, a reduction of 1.2x10^10 kilowatts per year could be obtained," Fisicaro said.

"This corresponds to a reduction of 6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions," he said.

The researchers concluded that the low cost of the 3C-SiC hetero-epitaxial approach and the scalability of this process to 300-millimeter wafers and beyond make this technology extremely competitive for motor drives of electric or hybrid vehicles, air conditioning systems, refrigerators, and light-emitting diode lighting systems.

Hepatocytes are responsible for diverse metabolic activities in a liver. Proper ribosome biogenesis is essential to sustain the function of hepatocytes. There are approximately 200 factors involved in ribosome biogenesis, however, few studies have focused on the role of these factors in maintaining liver homeostasis. The digestive organ expansion factor (def) gene encodes a nucleolar protein Def that participates in ribosome biogenesis. In addition, Def forms a complex with cysteine protease Calpain3 (Capn3) and recruits Capn3 to the nucleolus to cleave protein targets including the tumor suppressor p53 and ribosome biogenesis factor Mpp10. However, the function of Def has not been characterized in the mammalian digestive organs.

In this report, researchers show that conditional knockout of the mouse def gene in hepatocytes causes cell morphology abnormality and constant infiltration of inflammatory cells in the liver. As age increase, the def conditional knockout liver displays multiple tissue damage foci and biliary hyperplasia. Moreover, partial hepatectomy leads to sudden acute death to the def conditional knockout mice and this phenotype is rescued by intragastric injection of the anti-inflammation drug dexamethasone one day before hepatectomy. These results demonstrate that Def is essential for maintaining the liver homeostasis and liver regeneration capacity in mammals.

Overview

Associate Prof. Kazuhiro Takahashi and Mr. Shin Kidane (Master's Program) of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology and others developed a test chip using graphene, a sheet material with a thickness of one carbon atom. The chip has a trampoline structure with a narrow gap of 1 micrometer or less formed under a monoatomic graphene film, and can specifically trap a biomarker, a protein included in bodily fluids such as blood, urine or saliva which is derived from a disease, on graphene. The biomarker adsorbed by the graphene generates force which deforms the graphene into a dome shape. The group thus succeeded in detecting the amount of deformation as changes in color using the interference properties of light. It is expected that viruses and diseases will be able to be simply and quickly examined using the developed test chip.

Details

A measuring device to simply and quickly examine a disease is extremely important for accurate diagnosis, verification of therapeutic effects, and investigation of recurrence and metastasis. If diseases can be examined using a very minute amount of body fluid such as blood or urine, physical condition can be simply, quickly and cheaply controlled. A test technique for determining the presence or absence of a disease by specifically trapping a biomarker on a flexibly deformable thin film formed using semiconductor micromachining techniques, has been investigated. The research group has developed a sensor technique for detecting film deformation caused when a marker molecule is adsorbed as changes in color. As the thickness of the film to adsorb the biomarker decreases, the sensitivity of this sensor element can be increased. It is thus expected that the sensitivity of the sensor will be improved by 1000 times or more using a material called graphene, a material with a thickness of 1 nanometer or less, formed from a single atomic layer.

In a previous report using suspended graphene in a bridge shape, however, changes at the time of physical adsorption of a molecule to suspended graphene were measured, and it was difficult to specifically detect the molecule to be measured. As for the reason for this, it is thought that since modification using an antibody to recognize and specifically bind a molecule is commonly carried out in a solution, the suspended structure of graphene was destroyed during the solution treatment.

The research team, therefore, made a trampoline structure in which the unevenness of the substrate was covered with a graphene sheet, as a suspended structure of graphene which could withstand the solution treatment, and were able to modify graphene with an antibody molecule. The surface of the graphene was functionalized with an antibody molecule to provide the ability to recognize a molecule, and an ultrasensitive biosensor which could specifically detect a biomarker was able to be produced. A light detection technique unique to the research team was used as a technique for detecting a biomarker bound to the surface of the graphene. In a gap of 1 micrometer or less between the suspended graphene and the semiconductor substrate, color is changed depending on the length of the gap by the interference action of light. Using this effect, the appearance of a molecule adsorbed to suspended graphene in a test solution was revealed by changes in color. According to the biosensing technique developed this time, it is expected that sensitivity per unit area will be improved to 2000 times that of conventional sensors.

Future Outlook

In addition to blood tests, the research team has also investigated a chemical sensor to detect odors and chemical substances, and feels that the sensor can be applied to a novel compact sensor device contributing to IoT society. The sensor can be applied to the detection of various biomarkers and also to the detection of viruses by changing the probe molecules modifying the surface of the graphene.

The Earth's surface represents a very complex system where a multitude of natural and man-made structures and terrains interact, including forests, water bodies, grasslands, farmlands, mines, and mountains. Over time, these interactions shape the natural habitat and resources that sustain life as we know it. The present distribution of materials on Earth's soils is the result of a long interplay of various driving forces, ranging from geological processes that started millions of years ago to recent mining activity. In view of the current worldwide environmental crisis, it is extremely important for researchers to understand the effect of natural physical, chemical and biological processes at the Earth's surface on distribution of chemical elements and--perhaps most importantly--the impact of human activity on this distribution.

China is a vast country with complex and diverse landscapes and a great variety of natural resources and soils. Unfortunately, recent studies found that arable land in Southwest China contained unusually high (and potentially harmful) levels of heavy metals. Mining activity in the area was thought to be the reason for this. However, understanding the processes underlying the distribution of chemical elements in soils is complicated, and so is finding evidence pointing to human activity being the culprit of changes in this distribution.

In a new study published in Earth Science Frontiers, a research team from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and China Geological Survey, led by Dr Hangxin Cheng, performed a comprehensive analysis of a particular mountainous region in Southwest China. This region, depicted in the figure below and referred to by the researchers as the Zhaotong-Bijie-Yibin-Leshan-Luzhou area, is composed mainly of mountains and valleys, covered mostly by forests and farmlands. Most importantly, this region has seen intense mining activity for lead, zinc, and silver over centuries. Dr Cheng explains: "Research in this area can reveal the driving mechanisms behind changes in the content and macroscopic distribution of elements in soil, thereby providing scientific solutions for the rational exploitation and utilization of natural resources."

In an effort to understand what phenomena are responsible for the present distribution of chemical elements, about 100 researchers and workers gathered more than 112,000 top- and deep-soil samples throughout the region and analyzed their chemical composition and acidity.

Then, the scientists carried out a very detailed analysis to understand what factors and processes are responsible for the elements found in the soils. The analysis was performed based on the "epigenetic geochemical dynamics" theory, which encompasses modern human understanding of what causes changes in the composition of surface rocks after their formation. The processes and factors considered in this theory range from naturally occurring chemical reactions involving metallic ions to the solubility in water of various substances, as well as geological dynamics and the effects of weather, elevation, and human activities.

The researchers highlighted four main findings that collectively provide an explanation for the observed distribution and state of chemical elements. First, the parent material, which is the geological material on top of which soil forms and accumulates on, largely dictates the distribution and state of chemical elements found in land resources. Second, epigenetic geochemical dynamic processes reshape the distribution patterns of these elements in the topmost layers of soil. Third, biogeochemical processes, which mostly involve organic material and its incorporation and distribution by living organisms, are responsible for driving the evolution of land quality. Finally (and as initially expected), strong human activities like mining disrupt the natural evolution of the distribution of chemical elements.

This study gives researchers a better understanding of how the various dynamic processes in one particular region on the Earth's surface determine its distribution of chemical elements, which quite literally act as a base (soil) for the local ecosystems. "Further studies should be conducted to analyze a variety of landscapes, including forests and swampy landscapes, low mountains, and alpine lakes, to represent considerable advances in epigenetic geochemical dynamics and help us establish a foundation for the development of scientific theories of Earth's systems," states Dr Cheng. The results of this study could provide a scientific foundation for designing rational land-use management strategies, as well as food safety and health protection measures in Southwest China.

Last year, about 30 common shrews from the area around Möggingen had an unusual adventure. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Radolfzell captured the animals, measured their skulls, and examined their metabolism. The animals were then released back into the wild. This all led to an exciting discovery. The measurements revealed that the animals' metabolism is equally active in summer and winter. Animals that do not hibernate usually require more energy in winter in order to maintain a constant body temperature. This gives shrews a survival advantage that has likely enabled them to colonize colder regions.

Common shrews have one of the highest metabolic rates among mammals. They must therefore consume a considerable amount of energy for their relatively low body weight. Because their fat reserves are quickly used up, they often starve to death after only a few hours without food. Nevertheless, forest shrews and their close relatives are highly evolutionarily successful and quite widespread, especially in the northern hemisphere.

Dina Dechmann, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell, hopes to find out how animals deal with large fluctuations in food supply and other resources. For example, how do tiny shrews manage to overcome the cold and food shortages in winter? But studies with wild shrews consume a great deal of time and resources. Because of their strong territorial behaviour, the animals must be kept in large individual enclosures throughout the experiments.

Shrink in autumn, grow in spring

Unlike many other animals, common shrews neither store food nor hibernate. Instead, they adapt in a completely different way: After their birth in summer, they grow rapidly to a maximum size. But in autumn, they begin to shrink and lose approximately ten to 20 percent of their body weight. Not only fat and muscle mass is reduced; internal organs such as the brain also shrink. From February onwards, the shrews begin to grow again until they reach their maximum size in spring. However, some tissues, such as the brain, only partially grow again. This seasonal change in body size, which is extremely rare in the animal kingdom, is also known as Dehnel's phenomenon.

However, this strategy seems a bit paradoxical. Despite thick winter fur, one would expect the shrews to cool down more easily in winter temperatures because smaller animals have an unfavourable body surface to body mass ratio. Because of this, they lose more heat to the cold ambient air. In fact, the relationship between body weight, temperature, and metabolic rate is a fundamental law of ecology.

Constant energy consumption

In order to find out how the seasonal change in body size affects the energy consumption of shrews, Dechmann and her team measured the animals' metabolism at the respective outdoor temperatures of the different seasons. The results were surprising. "The common shrew somehow manages to cheat evolution", says Dechmann. Despite their reduced body size, shrews do not consume more energy per gram of body weight in winter - even though temperatures can fluctuate by more than 30 degrees. This is not because they are less active in winter. The video recordings of the researcher show that although the shrews rest a little more, this can only explain a small part of the differences in energy requirements.

The scientists suspect that shrews constantly produce excessive amounts of heat because of their high metabolic activity and therefore do not need to increase their metabolic rate in winter. A smaller body size simply means that they must consume less energy overall. This is advantageous considering the scarce food supply in winter. "How this works exactly is still unclear. There are still some open questions we would like to investigate in further experiments", says Dechmann. The special metabolism of the forest shrews might even shed light onto research in human diseases in which metabolism plays a role.

Despite an extreme environment characterized by high pressure, high temperature, strong acidity and low oxygen level which resembles living condition in pre-historic time, hydrothermal vents harbor a diverse amount of creatures - most of which have huge potential for biomedical and other applications. Among other inhabitants of such difficult environment, Scaly-foot Snail, also known as "Sea Pangolin", is of particular interest to marine scientists.

Scaly-foot Snail is the only extant gastropod (a major invertebrate animal, commonly known as snails and slugs,) alive that possesses armor-like scales - an otherwise very common feature for gastropod during the Cambrian time over 540 million years ago. This snail is also the only organism in the world known to incorporate iron into its exoskeleton, and is also one of the top ten astounding marine species of the decade (2007-2017). Little is known, however, about its genome and unusual morphology, as the creature is extremely difficult to locate and collect.

Now, a research team led by Prof. QIAN Peiyuan, Chair Professor of HKUST's Department of Ocean Science and Division of Life Science, managed to collect 20 scaly-foot snails at around 2,900 meters below sea level from the Indian Ocean in collaboration with researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), and analyze the snail's genome sequence.

Contrary to many scientists' expectation that the creature contains some new special genes that give rise to its bizarre morphology, the team actually discovered that all of the snail's genes already existed in other mollusks such as squid and pearl oyster, and the snail's gene sequence has remained almost unchanged throughout its evolution. The 25 transcription factors (a key protein that regulates many downstream gene expression levels) which contribute to the snail's scale and shell formation, as the team identified, have also contributed to the formation of many other unique hard-parts in Mollusca - such as operculum in gastropods, beak in squid, spicule in chiton, or chaetae in polychaetes.

"Although no new gene was identified, our research offers valuable insight to the biomineralization - a process where the clustering, positioning and on and off switching of a combination of genes defines the morphology of a species," Prof. Qian said. "Uncovering Scaly-foot Snail's genome advances our knowledge in the genetic mechanism of mollusks, laying the genetic groundwork which paves the way for application. One possible direction is how their iron-coated shells withstand heavy blows, which can provide us insights on ways to make a more protective armor."

The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The study of genome sequencing of organisms often brings breakthrough to biomedical and other sectors. An enzyme of a microbe that lives in such vents - for example, was recently used for the detection of COVID-19 as well as other viruses such as AIDS and SARS.

The Molecular Mechanics of the Cardiovascular System group at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), led by Jorge Alegre Cebollada, in partnership with an international scientific team, has generated the first experimental mouse model that allows direct analysis of the mechanical function of proteins in living organisms.

The model, published today in Nature Communications, is based on the insertion of the HaloTag-TEV genetic cassette into titin, one of the proteins responsible for the elasticity of skeletal and cardiac muscle. The HaloTag-TEV cassette combines three key properties. Dr Alegre explained: "Thanks to the introduction of this cassette into the gene, we are able to fluorescently mark the protein, which makes it easy to track the cassette and see where it has inserted correctly."

But that's not all: "The cassette includes a target for specific protein lysis, so that the mechanical function of the target protein can be interrupted in a controlled manner at any desired moment, allowing us to study the effect of this interruption." Finally, the cassette "provides a way to anchor the isolated protein to surfaces, enabling the study of its mechanical properties by single-molecule techniques."

"All of this helps to establish a bridge between the modulation of protein mechanical properties and observing the consequences of this modulation at a cellular level," said Dr Alegre.

It is well known that cells and the living organisms they form respond to changes in the environment. But among the environmental conditions to which living beings must adapt, the purely mechanical forces that constantly act upon them are often overlooked. "This relationship between cells and the mechanical components of their environment is extremely important, and explains many phenomena related to disease, such as cancer metastasis and atherosclerosis, which underlies several cardiovascular conditions."

In recent decades, the development of new technologies has permitted the study of proteins' mechanical behavior, which is responsible at the molecular level for the ability of cells to sense and generate forces.

These techniques have enabled the characterization of the mechanical properties of individual molecules, studied one by one, and this has transformed knowledge about the relationship between force and biological molecules. However, understanding how this relationship operates in the native environment of the cell was until now not possible.

The story doesn't stop with titin. The HaloTag-TEV cassette can be inserted into other proteins with a mechanical function, so that in the future it could be used to study other systems, including those related to diverse muscular and cardiac disorders.

April 24, 2020, Alexandria, Va. USA-- JDR Clinical & Translational Research has published an invited commentary by researchers at the University of Rochester, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, N.Y., USA on dental care and the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), including the provision of dental care and protecting patients and staff during the pandemic.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed significant gaps in the collective response of global healthcare systems to a public health emergency," said JDR Clinical & Translational Research Editor-in-Chief Jocelyne Feine. "Though dentistry is a relatively small part in the COVID-19 response, dental professionals and organizations should take this opportunity to assess the role of dental care professionals in a global public health emergency."?

The authors reviewed current evidence related to the impact of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 on dental care and oral health with the aim to help dental professionals better understand the risks of disease transmission in dental settings, strengthen protection against nosocomial infections and identify areas of COVID-19 related oral health research.

Important issues related to dental care and oral health include:

SARS-CoV-2 is most frequently transmitted from human to human through direct contact and respiratory droplets and indirect contacts with fomites. Airborne transmission is also likely, but concrete confirmatory evidence is lacking. Both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic patients may be major sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

Evidence supports that oral mucosa is an initial site of entry for SARS-CoV-2 and that oral symptoms, including loss of taste and smell and dry mouth, might be early symptoms of COVID-19, although the mechanism and prognosis of oral symptoms of COVID-19 are not clear.

Rapid testing for infectious diseases in dental offices using saliva samples may be valuable in the early identification of infected patients and in disease progress assessment.
Dental clinics and dental professionals are not well prepared to perform aerosol generating procedures at the time of an infectious respiratory disease pandemic as they are not routinely fitted for the N95 respirators required for these procedures.

Increase research efforts in aerosol control in dental offices, including improving engineering control in dental office design. It may be time to consider negative pressure dental operatories.

Finally, oral health researchers may play a more active role in early identification and diagnosis of the disease through deciphering the mechanisms of dry mouth and loss of taste in COVID-19 patients.

Crossing a 23-kilometer stretch of ocean from mainland Panama to Coiba, the largest offshore island in the Eastern Pacific, a group of intrepid biologists hoped to find species never reported there before. But in addition to discovering new species, the 2015 Coiba BioBlitz crew was surprised to find that capuchin monkeys spent so much time on the ground there.

"Most of us have worked on Barro Colorado Island (the Smithsonian's research station in Panama's Lake Gatún) where capuchin monkeys are used to people, but we had never seen them spending so much time on the forest floor," said Claudio Monteza, now doing his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz. "We never saw moms carrying babies come down to the ground like we did on Coiba. Even the most habituated groups on Barro Colorado are very careful with the babies."

Meg Crofoot and Mark Grote, then at the University of California, Davis, were intrigued by this shift in behavior and the insight it might provide into why human ancestors originally descended from the trees. They encouraged Claudio to make the unusual behavior of the monkeys on Coiba the subject of his masters' thesis.

"In the Old World there are lots of primates that have adapted to life on the ground, but no one knows why this behavior is missing in New World primates," Claudio said.

Isolated from the mainland between 12-18 thousand years ago, Coiba is home to plant and animal life found nowhere else on Earth. When the Spanish first sailed to Coiba in 1516, chroniclers reported an island densely populated by indigenous peoples, but by 1550, the island had been depopulated, leaving only a small settlement of Spanish colonists. And from 1919 to 2004, the island was a penal colony where prisoners' movements were restricted, leaving most of the island to its wild inhabitants.

Claudio suspected that the fearlessness of Coiba's capuchins might have a simple explanation: Coiba lacks jaguars, pumas, tayras (large weasels), coyotes, jaguarundis and ocelots--all identified as predators based on capuchin remains in fecal samples. One of the reasons that no one has studied this before is because it is nearly impossible for researchers to observe the effects of predators that are frightened away when scientists show up.

But Claudio's team got around this problem by using cameras. They set up camera traps at knee height on the bases of trees on Coiba and a on much smaller island nearby called Jicarón. Movement triggers the video recorders in the traps. Then they compared the videos of monkeys on the islands with videos from camera traps at three mainland sites: the STRI research station on Barro Colorado Island, the nearby Gigante Peninsula and in Panama's Soberanía National Park--part of a study by staff scientist Patrick Jansen as part of the global Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network (TEAMS).

"We didn't record any mammalian predators on the ocean islands, and there were more predators in Soberanía National Park than on Barro Colorado or Gigante Peninsula," Claudio said. "The results were what we expected in the absence of predators: The party sizes of the monkeys--the number of individuals on the ground at one time--on Coiba Island were much bigger than at any of the mainland sites."

Monkeys at sites where there were predators also spent more time on the ground during the middle of the day, when predators are less active. In contrast, monkeys on the Pacific islands did not focus their activity at a certain time of day. The longest visits to the ground were made on Jicarón (14.5 minutes) and Coiba Islands (7.9 minutes).

Primates coming down from the trees played a significant role in human evolution, but the still-controversial explanations usually involve changes in climate or diet.

Millions of years ago, when the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea to form a land bridge between North and South America, global ocean currents shifted, perhaps causing a drying trend in Africa and the replacement of forests by savannahs, forcing human ancestors to spend more time on the ground.

Others suggest that human ancestors came to the ground to forage for fungi.

"Our study indicates that predators likely play a key role in explaining why there are no terrestrial primates in the Neotropics," said Crofoot, who is now director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and professor at the University of Konstanz. "When there are no predators, primates can become more terrestrial, even if they aren't 'forced' to by changes in forest structure. But Coiba is a unique place where we also discovered that these monkeys are using stone tools. Is that a result of the lack of predators, or could the capuchins' ability to use new food source be the explanation in itself?"

THE construction industry can be transformed by adoption of the practices termed Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Lean Construction.

But research at the University of Huddersfield warns that the smaller firms who form the bedrock of the sector are in danger of missing out on cutting-edge techniques that lead to radical improvements in efficiency and productivity.

The research is described in an article published by the long-established and globally-respected Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering.

Titled 'Lean Construction and BIM in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Construction', it has been named as one of the journal's "editor's choice" papers of 2020. This means it is one of a small number that can be freely accessed worldwide, so that its findings have greater impact.

The research was carried out at the University of Huddersfield's School of Art, Design and Architecture, in collaboration with colleagues at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Ireland.

Lead author of the resultant article is Dr Algan Tezel, who is Senior Lecturer in Construction Project Management at Huddersfield's Department of Architecture and 3D Design.

He explained that 80 per cent of the construction industry is made of SMEs, often working as sub-contractors for larger firms.

But when Dr Tezel and his colleagues made an in-depth study of published research that had been carried out into the adoption of BIM and Lean Construction in the building sector, they found that there was a dearth of material dealing with SMEs.

"This is a problem," said Dr Tezel, "because these two concepts - BIM and Lean Construction - have the potential to change the dynamics of the construction industry. But if you can't get them into those smaller and medium-sized players, which make up the majority of the industry, then that promise will not materialise."

There needs to be a much greater focus on the smaller operators, continued Dr Tezel.

"They might not have the profile of the larger companies and might not be responsible for the flashier projects, but they are the core people at the building workface."

The article explains the background to BIM and Lean Construction. The former is described as a process that encompasses the creation and use of a digital representation of a building or project.

BIM increases the potential for wider and deeper collaboration between stakeholders and other benefits include speeding up the design and build process; better designs via rigorous assessment; accurate prediction of environmental and life-cycle data and improved customer service, because of better visualisation.

The term 'Lean Construction' refers to the adaptation of lean manufacturing techniques that originated in the Japanese motor industry. It is focussed upon "better meeting client expectations while using less of everything," explains the article by Dr Tezel and his colleagues.

They conclude that, "despite the hype, investigations show that the wholesale uptake of BIM and Lean Construction at SMEs is problematic.

"It is not possible," they continue, "to realise the rhetorical promises of BIM and LC, two of the prominent concepts challenging the traditional practices in construction management, without giving sufficient consideration to SMEs. This is accentuated especially when there are policy initiatives in many countries towards improving productivity in the construction industry."

A drug already licensed for the treatment of breast and ovarian cancers is more effective than targeted hormone therapy at keeping cancer in check in some men with advanced prostate cancer, a major clinical trial reports.

Olaparib, a pill lacking the side effects of chemotherapy, can target an Achilles heel in prostate cancers with a weakness in their ability to repair damaged DNA. It is now on the verge of becoming approved as the first genetically targeted treatment for prostate cancer.

This precision medicine drug, a type of treatment called a PARP inhibitor which specifically targets cancer cells with faulty DNA repair genes, blocked prostate cancer growth more effectively than the modern targeted hormone treatments abiraterone and enzalutamide.

The final results from the PROfound trial, published in the prestigious journal the New England Journal of Medicine today (Tuesday), are set to herald the landmark approval of olaparib in prostate cancer in the US and Europe this year. The study was funded by AstraZeneca.

A team from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, alongside colleagues from all around the world including Northwestern University in Chicago, US, studied 387 men with advanced prostate cancer who had alterations in one or more of 15 DNA repair genes. The researchers found that using olaparib in this group of men with faulty DNA repair genes significantly delayed disease progression.

Men with prostate cancers that had faulty BRCA1, BRCA2 or ATM genes benefited the most from receiving olaparib - with their disease taking 7.4 months before it progressed, compared with 3.6 months for those who received enzalutamide and abiraterone.

Men with an alteration in any of the other 12 pre-selected DNA repair genes also benefitted from receiving olaparib.

Overall, for men with any of the 15 faulty DNA repair genes who were given olaparib, the length of time before their cancer got worse was 5.8 months on average, compared with 3.5 months with targeted hormonal treatment.

The discovery of abiraterone by The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), and its development by the ICR and The Royal Marsden, has transformed treatment for men with advanced prostate cancer.

Researchers are excited at the prospect that olaparib - which the ICR discovered how to genetically target - could be even more effective than abiraterone in selected men with DNA repair mutations.

The overall survival of men with faulty BRCA1, BRCA2 or ATM genes was 19 months on average for those who received olaparib, compared with 15 months for those who received abiraterone or enzalutamide - despite more than 80 per cent of the men who received the targeted hormone treatments switching to olaparib when their cancer progressed and spread. However, longer follow-up will be needed to show a survival improvement conclusively.

The most frequent adverse effects were anaemia and nausea, which have been associated with olaparib in the past. But overall olaparib is a well-tolerated treatment, and much kinder on patients than chemotherapy.

PROfound is the first trial to show how crucial it is to carry out genomic testing in prostate cancer patients. It is vital to identify different patient groups based on their genetics and to tailor treatment accordingly.

Researchers are now hoping to see olaparib become available on the NHS for patients with advanced prostate cancer and faulty DNA repair genes within the next two years.

Next, they will look at combining olaparib with other treatments, with the aim of improving outcomes even further.

Study co-leader Professor Johann de Bono, Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said:

"Our findings show that olaparib - a drug which targets an Achilles heel in cancer cells while sparing normal, healthy cells - can outperform targeted hormone treatments in some men with advanced prostate cancer.

"It's exciting to see a drug which is already extending the lives of many women with ovarian and breast cancer now showing such clear benefits in prostate cancer too. I can't wait to see this drug start reaching men who could benefit from it on the NHS - hopefully in the next couple of years.

"Next, we will be assessing how we can combine olaparib with other treatments, which could help men with prostate cancer and faulty DNA repair genes live even longer."

Peter Isard, 59, a patient at The Royal Marsden, said:

"Initially after diagnosis I went onto hormone therapy and then chemotherapy. Six months after finishing chemotherapy, my PSA rose rapidly and I was told my chance of living for two years would be quite low. I came to The Royal Marsden for a second opinion and Prof de Bono found I had a genetic mutation that would make me suitable for an olaparib trial. I've been on the drug for almost two years now. I had a number of tumours in my lymph nodes, but now there is only one that is visible and I feel incredibly lucky not to have experienced any side-effects whatsoever."

Professor Paul Workman, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:

"It is great to see that this treatment, which we learned how to genetically targeted at the ICR, can successfully hit an Achiles heel in some men with advanced prostate cancer. These landmark findings mean that olaparib is now set to become the first ever genetically targeted drug for the disease.

"The next step will be to find new ways to combine olaparib with other treatments in order to prevent or overcome drug resistance. It is this kind of research, which aims to target cancer's lethal ability to adapt and evolve, which we will be conducting in our pioneering Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery once it opens later this year."

Like trains running on separate but parallel tracks, sometimes the forces of evolution can affect different species running along these tracks in very similar ways.

Take the evolution of a simple trait found in birds: foot feathering.

Lead researcher Chiara Bortoluzzi and colleagues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, investigated the genetic basis of foot feathering, a phenotype that is observed in certain breeds of chicken.

"Foot feathering is an interesting case since, although it is a very recognizable trait that can be very easily selected to fixation in breeds, it is in fact not a monogenic trait, caused by a single gene," said Bortoluzzi.

The trait, known scientifically as ptilopody, can be observed in domesticated and wild avian species and is characterized by the partial or complete development of feathers on the skin of the ankles and feet.

Previous work had demonstrated that regulatory mutations in the genes Tbx5 and Pitx1 contribute to foot feathering in domesticated breeds of pigeon. Bortoluzzi wanted to investigate whether similar mutations might also be contributing to foot feathering in chickens, and if so, if also the same pathways might be altered by the same regulatory mechanisms.

Parallel evolution is known as the independent development of similar phenotypic traits in separate but related lineages. In other words, when faced to adapt, nature can go to the same genetic toolbox to come up with new solutions.

Now, in the advanced online edition of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, Bortoluzzi and co-authors report that indeed, similar mutations in the same set of genes are affecting similar molecular pathways contributing to foot feathering in domesticated chickens.

To perform their study, they used a combination of genome wide analysis , followed by comparative genomics and gene expression analysis. DNA of 169 samples from 87 traditional chicken breeds was used for whole-genome sequencing analysis, followed by tissues and gene expression analysis.

While demonstrating that genetic variants at Tbx5 and Pitx1 are major contributors to foot feathering, strikingly, the authors identified a 17,000 base-pair long genetic deletion near Pitx1. This deletion removes the same exact region in pigeons with foot feathering. Thus, not only are the same genes involved in foot feathering phenotypes in pigeons and chickens, but the nature of the mutations is also very much the same, at least in the case of Pitx1.

"It is really amazing to see that, although chicken and pigeon diverged more than 89 million years ago we were able to find in both species the exact same number of loci and exact same number of genes," said Bortoluzzi. "This similarity is even more striking and remarkable as a similar deletion at one of the loci has the same outcome in regulating gene expression."

The manuscript provides strong evidences that foot feathering has evolved by parallel evolution in chickens and pigeons.

"The interesting aspect is that foot feathering can also be observed in avian wild species, including snowy owl, golden eagle, and rock ptarmigan," said Bortoluzzi. "In these wild raptor and boreal species, ptilopody has entirely evolved by natural selection. However, the occurrence of the phenotype suggests us that the same underlying genes and mutations can evolve in different species under different types of selection and selection pressure. It would be very interesting to further validate this hypothesis in future studies on both wild and domesticated avian species."

In their search for new superhard compounds, researchers carried out a prediction of stable molybdenum borides and their crystal structures. They revealed that the highest borides contain four to five boron atoms per each molybdenum atom. The estimated Vickers hardness of MoB5 is 37-39 GPa, which makes it a potential superhard material. The study supported by Russian Science Foundation was published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Earlier, a group of researchers led by Artem Oganov, professor at Skoltech and MIPT, published a study in the Journal of Applied Physics, in which they compiled a list of hard and superhard materials that may have many industrial applications. This list, made using the evolutionary algoritm USPEX and new model of Vickers hardness (pressure required to leave a pyramid-shaped indentation in the material) and fracture toughness (ability of a material to resist propagation of a fracture), was dubbed a "treasure map" for experimenters by its authors.

In the new paper, scientists from Skoltech, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, A. M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute of RAS, Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, and Northwestern Polytechnical University (Xi'an, PRC) studied the molybdenum borides part of the "map". Transition metal borides are a potential replacement for traditional hard alloys and superhard materials in various technological applications. Unlike widely used diamond and cubic boron nitride, transition metal borides do not require high pressure for their synthesis, making their production cheaper.

High valence electron density of the metal atoms resists compression (due to electrons starting to repel each other) and covalent boron-boron and boron-metal bonds resist elastic and plastic deformations.

"The simulated X-Ray diffraction (XRD) patterns are usually compared to the one suggested in the experiment in order to determine whether the predicted structure is compatible with the experimental one. However, considering transition metal borides, such as molybdenum borides, the XRD pattern will only show signals from the heavier atoms while positions of the light boron atoms will be essentially invisible. This is why crystal structure models built based only on experimental data are often unrealistic and unstable. Therefore, a comprehensive approach to determining crystal structures requires state-of-the-art theoretical calculations," says Alexander Kvashnin, one of the authors and a senior research fellow at Skoltech and MIPT.

Molybdenum pentaboride MoB5 was found to be the stable highest boride, however the simulated XRD patterns were close but not identical to the experimental data. The predicted pentaboride had a few weak peaks that were not observed in the experiments. This hinted towards a higher symmetry in the experimental sample. Key structural elements of the new compound are boron atoms arranged in graphene-like layers, molybdenum layers, and triangles of boron atoms. Boron and molybdenum atoms are arranged in alternating layers with some Mo atoms replaced with B3 triangles spread evenly throughout the crystal's volume.

"We made a hypothesis that the structure of the highest boride is disordered and boron triangles statistically replace molybdenum atoms. In order to prove that, we developed a lattice model that enabled us to define the rules that governed how the boron units should position themselves to achieve the lowest energy," says Dmitry Rybkovskiy, research fellow at Skoltech and A. M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute and the first author of the work.

The brute force search for the positions of molybdenum atoms and boron triangles, sampling different variants, allowed the researchers to reveal the patterns related to stability. Stable phases contain four to five boron atoms per one metal atom, and MoB4.7 is the most stable of such compounds and gives the best match to the experimental XRD pattern.

"This study is an interesting example of interaction between theory and experiment. Theory predicted a compound that demonstrates peculiar properties and new structure but the experiment suggested that the actual material is more complex and its structure is partially disordered. The theory we formulated based on these findings allowed us to reproduce all experimental observations and understand the exact composition and structure of this material, as well as its detailed properties. In particular, the calculated hardness is close to the range of superhard materials,' said Artem Oganov, professor at Skoltech and MIPT, and the leader of the team of authors.

Superhard materials have a wide range of industrial applications, such as machine tool building, jewelry, or mining. They are used in cutting, polishing, grinding, drilling, so the search for new superhard compounds is an important task.