Earth

Conversion of energy is a constant process but measuring the efficiency of this conversion is not an easy task. Quantifying the heat emission of the object that absorbs energy has been proven to be a good indicator. Scientists have now devised a technique that can perform this measurement easily and accurately, and this novel technology can shed light on the energy transfer processes in systems ranging from plants to solar cells.

Energy is in a constant universal cycle of use, reform, and reuse. Through this process, there are often several situations where energy is received in one form and converted to another form, or even to a non-energy form; photosynthesis is an apt example for this. In this process, as we know, the sun's energy, in the form of sunlight, falls on leaves, and leaves convert this solar energy into other forms of stored energy through a set of reactions. But, what is the efficiency of this energy conversion? To put in simple terms, energy conversion efficiency is the ratio of useful output of an energy-converting system like a plant and the total energy that it receives in the first place. This value is important especially in the planning of energy-efficient structures like solar cells. However, although the theory is simple, there is no established method to accurately measure factors that determine light energy conversion efficiency, like total energy or total electrical power generated.

One alternative technique that has been explored for solving this issue is the measurement of heat over light. Everything that absorbs energy tends to dissipate that energy in the form of heat. This release of heat is greater immediately following energy absorption and reduces as time passes. This is in contrast with light emission by systems like "phosphorescent" or glow-in-the-dark materials, which absorb energy and only release light much later. Therefore, measuring heat release as a function of excitation light wavelength―or to use the technical term, the "photothermal excitation spectrum" or PTES―can be a viable method to measure energy conversion efficiency. Photothermal deflection spectroscopy is one method for the direct application of PTES. However, very little research has investigated PTES independently of light emission.

Scientists at the Tokyo University of Science, Japan decided to address this knowledge gap. This team of scientists led by Prof Eiji Tokunaga had previously created a Sagnac interferometer photothermal deflection spectroscopy (SIPDS) technique, which improved the efficiency of the existing techniques by one magnitude. Photothermal spectroscopy detects the heat generated when the irradiated light is absorbed by the sample, and therefore, it can measure the absorption spectrum for samples of any shape and with any properties, such as "scatterers" whose transmitted light cannot be measured. Prof Tokunaga says, "Since about 2010, we have been working on increasing the sensitivity of photothermal deflection spectroscopy using an interferometer, and with the collective efforts of everyone including students, we could analyze samples in air that have seldom been analyzed before, giving us the ability to measure the absorption spectrum over the entire visible light range." Why was this so important? "This upgraded technology," states Prof Tokunaga, "enabled us to evaluate the quantum efficiency of luminescence or chemical energy conversion."

Taking this technology another step forward, these scientists, along with Dr Kohsei Takahashi and Dr Naoto Hirosaki from the Sialon Group, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), have now integrated "balanced detection," which is essentially a technique to measure small variances in values, into their SIPDS technology. This new innovation uses a white-light lamp as a source of energy and can measure the photothermal excitation spectrum of materials in the air. The scientists noticed that no heat is generated, meaning that light energy is converted to effective energy, so the difference from the absorption spectrum could be measured to determine the light energy conversion efficiency.

They were able to use this technology to measure the heat spectrum (PTES) of a high-efficiency luminescent red phosphor of white LED, made by NIMS, successfully and compared it with their photoluminescence excitation spectrum (PLES), which showed the amount of light emitted by the phosphor as a function of excitation light wavelength (Figure). This comparison provided accurate photoluminescence efficiency values of the phosphor as well, which is a measure of how well a substance can emit light. "We can use our technology to measure the thermal relaxation spectra of materials over the whole visible range in the weak excitation limit 50µW/cm2, which is a never-before-achieved breakthrough," remarks Prof Tokunaga. Thus, the measurement of energy conversion efficiency, which had previously required expensive and different devices such as phosphors, solar cells, and photosynthesis (to measure the converted effective energy [emission energy, electrical energy, chemical energy]), could be done using one simple, unified method.

The future prospects of this technology are exciting: once developed further, measuring the energy conversion efficiency of even photosynthesis in "live" leaves can be performed. Hopefully, these findings can stimulate and accelerate research aimed at improving the conversion efficiency of substances and realize a society with high energy conversion efficiency.

Tokyo University of Science (TUS) is a well-known and respected university, and the largest science-specialized private research university in Japan, with four campuses in central Tokyo and its suburbs and in Hokkaido. Established in 1881, the university has continually contributed to Japan's development in science through inculcating the love for science in researchers, technicians, and educators.

With a mission of "Creating science and technology for the harmonious development of nature, human beings, and society", TUS has undertaken a wide range of research from basic to applied science. TUS has embraced a multidisciplinary approach to research and undertaken intensive study in some of today's most vital fields. TUS is a meritocracy where the best in science is recognized and nurtured. It is the only private university in Japan that has produced a Nobel Prize winner and the only private university in Asia to produce Nobel Prize winners within the natural sciences field.

Website: https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/

About Professor Eiji Tokunaga from Tokyo University of Science

Dr Eiji Tokunaga is a Professor at the Faculty of Science Division I, Department of Physics of the Tokyo University of Science. He completed his undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral education at the University of Tokyo. A respected and senior researcher, he has more than 82 publications to his name. He works with his team to explore optical spectroscopy and condensed matter physics. Having spent almost three decades in these fields, Prof Tokunaga has introduced several new concepts related to the optical properties of materials.His research can be found at https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/fac/p/index.php?3b4e.

Eiji Tokunaga Professor Tokyo University of Science, Faculty of Science Division I, Department of Physics https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/fac/p/index.php?3b4e

Funding Information

This research was partly funded by Ichimura Foundation for New Technology.

Journal

Applied Sciences

DOI

10.3390/app10031008

The Swedish Malaise Trap Project (SMTP) was launched in 2003 with the aim of making a complete list of the insect diversity of Sweden. Over the past fifteen years, an estimated total of 20 million insects, collected during the project, have been processed for scientific study. Recently, the team behind this effort published the resulting inventory in the open-access journal Biodiversity Data Journal. In their paper, they also document the project all the way from its inception to its current status by reporting on its background, organisation, methodology and logistics.

The SMTP deployed a total of 73 Malaise traps - a Swedish invention designed to capture flying insects - and placed them across the country, where they remained from 2003 to 2006. Subsequently, the samples were sorted by a dedicated team of staff, students and volunteers into over 300 groups of insects ready for further study by expert entomologists. At the present time, this material can be considered as a unique timestamp of the Swedish insect fauna and an invaluable source of baseline data, which is especially relevant as reports of terrifying insect declines keep on making the headlines across the world.

The first author and Project Manager of the SMTP, Dave Karlsson started his academic paper on the project's results years ago by compiling various tips, tricks, lessons and stories that he had accumulated over his years as SMTP's Project Manager. Some fun examples include the time when one of the Malaise traps was destroyed by a moose bull rubbing his antlers against it, or when another trap was attacked and eaten by a group of 20 reindeer. The project even had a trap taken out by Sweden's military! Karlsson's intention was that, by sharing the details of the project, he would inspire and encourage similar efforts around the globe.

Karlsson has worked with and trained dozens of workers in the SMTP lab over the past decade and a half. Some were paid staff, some were enthusiastic volunteers and a good number were researchers and students using SMTP material for projects and theses. Thus, he witnessed first-hand how much excitement and enthusiasm the work on insect samples under a microscope can generate, even in those who had been hesitant about "bugs" at first.

Stressing the benefits of traditional morphological approaches to inventory work, he says: "Appreciation for nature is something you miss when you go 'hi-tech' with inventory work. We have created a unique resource for specialists in our sorted material while fostering a passion for natural history."

Sorted SMTP material is now available to specialists. Hundreds of thousands of specimens have already been handed over to experts, resulting in over 1,300 species newly added to the Swedish fauna. A total of 87 species have been recognised as new to science from the project thus far, while hundreds more await description.

The SMTP is part of the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative, from where it also receives its funding. In its turn, the latter is a project by the Swedish Species Information Center, a ground-breaking initiative funded by the Swedish Parliament since 2002 with the aim of documenting all multicellular life in Sweden.

The SMTP is based at Station Linné, a field station named after the famous Swedish naturalist and father of taxonomy, Carl Linneaus. Situated on the Baltic island of Öland, the station is managed by Dave Karlsson. Co-authors Emily Hartop and Mathias Jaschhof are also based at the station, while Mattias Forshage and Fredrik Ronquist (SMTP Project Co-Founder) are based at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Doctors prescribe more branded medications after marketing visits by the makers of those drugs, new research co-authored by a Cornell University economist confirms.

But while the 4% average monthly increase in sales of those drugs in the year following such marketing represents a substantial return on investment, it is well below what some previous studies have suggested, said Colleen Carey, assistant professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell.

Additionally, the study found that drug firms' "detailing" visits - a controversial practice involving in-kind payments to doctors, commonly meals - does not lead them to prescribe higher-quality drugs, as industry advocates have argued.

"We took seriously the claim that there is educational value to these marketing encounters," Carey said. "We just don't find any evidence for it."

Carey is the author, with Ethan Lieber of the University of Notre Dame and Sarah Miller of the University of Michigan, of "Drug Firms' Payments and Physicians' Prescribing Behavior in Medicare Part D," released Feb. 17 as a working paper by National Bureau of Economic Research.

Leveraging new data and an improved study design, the paper is the first to track doctors' prescribing behavior before and after payments related to all drugs, not just a single drug or class of drugs. It also accounted for which doctors were already likely to prescribe these medications based on their patient mix, and therefore be targeted for detailing.

The analysis showed that doctors shared similar prescribing trends before any payments occurred. But in the month after receiving a payment, doctors increased the number of patients taking the drug marketed to them.

"The prevalence of the practice implies that the financial impacts are economically large," the researchers wrote.

The researchers estimated that for every additional dollar spent on detailing visits, drug firms could expect to reap $2.64 in increased drug revenue over the next year - a 164% return on investment. Previous estimates were much higher, ranging from 200% to 1,700%, according to the study.

It's easy, Carey said, to see why detailing - now banned by some academic medical centers - is a good investment: The visits are cheap, and the drugs are expensive.

"You don't need a big behavior change for these visits to make economic sense for the drug firms," she said. "For a lot of these drugs, if you get the doctor to prescribe it once more over the next year, you would have broken even."

Overall, doctors' interactions with drug firm sales representatives increased firm revenues, but the study did not find that they improved prescribing quality.

"We do not find clear evidence that such payments are harmful to patients," the researchers concluded, "only that they do not seem to be obviously helpful."

DURHAM, N.C. -- Even kids who are nearly grown still need a parental figure to help them navigate the long path to adulthood -- and our closest animal relatives are no exception.

A new study of wild chimpanzees finds that males whose moms were present during their tween and teen years had higher odds of survival later in life, compared with their peers who lost their mothers before they finished puberty.

The results appear in the February 2020 issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Beginning in the 1960s, researchers led by primatologist Jane Goodall started monitoring the wild chimpanzees living in Gombe National Park in western Tanzania, making note of things like births, deaths, who was related to who and how the animals interacted. Using more than 50 years of data for 247 chimpanzees, a team from Franklin & Marshall College, The George Washington University and Duke University examined the impacts of having or losing a mother at different stages of a chimpanzee's growing up.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they found that a mom's continued presence after weaning means better outcomes for her kids. Chimpanzees whose mothers were still around by their tenth birthdays lived longer than their orphaned peers.

But at later stages of growing up, the effect was stronger for sons than daughters. Sons whose mothers were still around between the ages of 10 and 15 were more likely to survive than sons who lost their mothers during that time, whereas daughters did just fine either way.

There's a good reason for mom's diminishing influence on daughters, the researchers say. In Gombe National Park, half of all chimpanzee females leave their birth families behind at puberty. But adolescent males stay put, which means mothers and sons are more likely to form lifelong bonds.

Exactly how a mom's continued presence enhances her adolescent offspring's survival is still unclear, the researchers say.

Compared to other mammals, primates such as chimps and humans take a long time to grow up. Young chimps continue to travel around with their moms and stay within her sight for four to five years after they're weaned.

"Primates are unique in having a really long period of juvenility," said associate professor Elizabeth Lonsdorf of Franklin & Marshall College.

Young adult chimpanzees have been known to turn to their moms for comfort or reassurance after tussles with other members of their group, said senior author Anne Pusey, professor emerita of evolutionary anthropology at Duke. She recalls a time at Gombe in the early 1970s when she saw a 20-year-old male named Figan hurt his hand during a tense encounter with another male. "He just went screaming to his mom," Pusey said. "The next week he traveled constantly with his mother while his hand got better."

Adolescent chimps could also be benefitting from their mom's wealth of experience and knowledge about things like how to avoid predators, or how to get food, such as which fruit trees ripen when and where to find them.

"There's a lot more research to be done about what mom actually does," Pusey said.

But the take-home is that while a mother's role may change after the nursing years, she continues to matter even when her offspring are nearly grown, especially to her sons.

"Even after infants are weaned, mothers still matter somehow," said Margaret Stanton, a visiting assistant professor at Franklin & Marshall College and first author of the study.

A study of gliding animals has challenged the idea that evolutionary innovations - adaptations that bring new abilities and advantages - spur the origin of other new body types and other characteristics in descendent species. The research, undertaken by evolutionary biologists at UNSW Sydney and universities in the US and Spain, examined the key innovation of gliding in two types of gliding animals: 'flying' dragons (family Agamidae) and 'flying' squirrels (family Sciuridae), both common to forests in Southeast Asia. "Gliding Dragons and Flying Squirrels: Diversifying versus Stabilizing Selection on Morphology following the Evolution of an Innovation," published in The American Naturalist 195, no. 2 (February 2020), confirms previous assumptions that gliding animals originated from arboreal ancestors and likely arose as a means of escaping predators some 25-30 million years ago.

Lead author Dr. Terry Ord, an evolutionary ecologist with UNSW's Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, says another advantage that gliding brought was the ability to exploit a new three dimensional environment and explore more of the forest than just one tree. "From an evolutionary biologist's perspective, these types of innovation that open up new opportunities are assumed to drive even more adapted diversification," Dr. Ord says. "Suddenly there's all these new microhabitats available offering up new resources and you have new species moving into those particular microhabitats where you would expect them to adapt even more."

The evolution of flight in birds, insects and bats is an example where the changes brought about by 'taking to the wing' caused an explosion in diversity. Millions of species of insects, tens of thousands of birds and more than a thousand species of bats developed greatly different shapes, sizes, behaviors and habitats since their ancestors first evolved to fly. But in the case of the gliding animals like the dragons and squirrels, the advantage of gliding has not led to a proliferation of changes to body shapes, sizes and functions. In fact, for the dragons the key innovation of gliding appears to have done the opposite. "In the case of the dragon lizards, gliding appears to be a constraint on subsequent adaptation because of the aerodynamics of having to glide," Dr. Ord says. "Basically the heavier you are, the more difficult it is to glide. So there is a constraint on general body size and shape - meaning a halt to the evolution of longer limbs and bigger heads, for example, that would normally reflect adaptation to particular microhabitats. But instead, the dragons have to glide, and that means limiting their body sizes to stay small and aerodynamic - which has what we call stabilizing selection on their bodies."

Interestingly, some species of flying dragons actually did go on to evolve larger bodies, at the expense of their gliding abilities. To offset their poor gliding, they had to develop new behaviors such as flattening their bodies against the tree trunk to blend in with the bark, Dr. Ord says. "So they're almost regressing from that gliding lifestyle. But in this case, the reason why they're changing their body size is to overcome competition with other lizards." There were no such bodily constraints with squirrels, due to key differences in the gliding membranes. Whereas the ribs of the dragon lizards evolved to extend laterally as the 'wings' of the animals, the squirrels' gliding membrane developed as a flap of skin joining their wrists to their ankles. "So squirrels just evolve longer limbs which means the size of the membrane increases proportionally to the longer limbs, enabling somewhat bigger bodied animals to glide without sacrificing too much ability," says Dr. Ord. But despite squirrel body sizes not being as constrained, the body sizes and characteristics of gliding squirrels are no more diverse than non-gliding squirrels. "So again the expectation of a key innovation driving the evolution of greater diversity was thwarted in the case of gliding squirrels."

Dr. Ord says his research has implications for our understanding of the way key innovations and competition come into play in evolution. "Evolutionary innovations are evocative because they're often amazing curiosities. And perhaps this has led us to infer they're also key in opening the door to even more adaptation. But it seems that interactions with other organisms - competition for resources - is a far more powerful force for generating adaptive diversity," he says. Looking ahead, Dr. Ord will be following up with research into the dragon lizards to find out how they use another evolutionary innovation, their dewlaps - the colorful flap of skin that hangs beneath their jaws - to communicate.

The research report "Refugee Protection in Germany" by the EU project "Multilevel Governance of Migration (RESPOND)" paints a gloomy picture of the human rights protection for asylum seekers in Germany. Among other things, the authors speak of a "differential exclusion" of ever larger groups from German asylum law on the basis of more or less arbitrary criteria. Although the basic right to asylum in Germany is officially unaffected, the authors argue that the many legal exceptions and hurdles lead to the fact that the protection standards of the Geneva Convention on Refugees and the European Charter of Human Rights are becoming less and less applicable in Germany. Professor Sabine Hess from the University of Göttingen led the research in Germany.

The 97-page report describes the development of the German asylum system since 2011. 25 interviews with lawyers and employees of NGOs and ministries as well as 60 interviews with refugees form the basis of the report. "Our report shows how under the impact of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015/2016 access to the asylum system, procedural standards and asylum system protection mechanisms based on human and EU law have been massively reduced," says Hess. This has partly been achieved by means of legislative packages which have excluded more and more groups from full asylum protection, and partly by the implementation of the regulations.

According to the researchers, the acceleration of the procedures at the expense of thoroughness, expertise and procedural rights of fugitives and the accommodation in large accommodation facilities such as the "anchor centres" and mass reception centres also severely undermined the chances of refugees of getting a fair hearing. "The result is a highly fragmented, confusing and perforated asylum law in Germany with severely restricted procedural and protection rights", says Hess, adding that "civil society support for refugees therefore remains all the more necessary".

MRI brain scans suggest there are characteristic differences in brain structure of individuals who exhibit life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour.

Individuals who exhibit life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour - for example, stealing, aggression and violence, bullying, lying, or repeated failure to take care of work or school responsibilities - may have thinner cortex and smaller surface area in regions of the brain previously implicated in studies of antisocial behaviour more broadly, compared to individuals without antisocial behaviour, according to an observational study of 672 participants published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal.

However, there were no widespread structural brain abnormalities observed in a larger group of individuals who exhibited antisocial behaviour only during adolescence.

Previous epidemiological studies have demonstrated marked individual differences in the age of onset and duration of antisocial behaviour. Some individuals display life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour that begins in childhood and lasts into adulthood, whereas for others antisocial behaviour arises in adolescence but desists as they mature into adulthood.

The study is the first to compare structural brain differences using neuroimaging in individuals with either life-course-persistent or adolescent-only antisocial behaviour and those without antisocial behaviour, providing the first robust evidence to suggest that underlying neuropsychological differences are primarily associated with life-course-persistent persistent antisocial behaviour.

Lead author Dr Christina Carlisi, UCL, UK, says: "Our findings support the idea that, for the small proportion of individuals with life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour, there may be differences in their brain structure that make it difficult for them to develop social skills that prevent them from engaging in antisocial behaviour. These people could benefit from more support throughout their lives." [1]

Continuing, she cautions: "Most people who exhibit antisocial behaviour primarily do so only in adolescence, likely as a result of navigating socially difficult years, and these individuals do not display structural brain differences. It is also these individuals who are generally capable of reform and go on to become valuable members of society." [1]

The study used MRI brain scans from 672 participants aged 45 years. Based on reports from parents, carers and teachers, as well as self-reports of conduct problems between ages seven and 26 years old, the 672 participants were previously categorised in terms of the patterns of behaviour they exhibited - 12% (80 people) had life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour, 23% (151) had adolescent-only antisocial behaviour, and 66% (441) had no history of persistent antisocial behaviour.

Analysing the brain scans, the authors measured and compared the average cortical thickness and cortical surface area (indices of grey matter - a type of brain tissue - size), between these three groups. They also analysed differences in the surface area and cortical thickness of 360 different regions of the cortex.

On average, across the entire brain, individuals with life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour had a smaller mean surface area and lower mean cortical thickness than people who showed no persistent antisocial behaviour. In addition, people who showed life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour had reduced surface area in 282 of 360 brain regions, and had thinner cortex in 11 of 360 regions, most of which have been previously linked to antisocial behaviour through their involvement in goal-directed behaviour, regulation of emotions, and motivation.

However, widespread differences in brain structure were not found for the adolescence-limited group compared with either non-antisocial or life-course-persistent antisocial groups.

The authors say their findings provide the first robust evidence to suggest that underlying neuropsychological differences exist in people with life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour and have implications for the way we treat juvenile offenders.

Adolescents exhibiting life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour which began in childhood are often diagnosed with conduct disorder, and these children are at an increased risk for incarceration and poor physical and mental health later in life. [2]

Co-author Terrie Moffitt, Duke University, USA, says: "Political approaches to juvenile offending often swing back and forth between punitive measures and approaches that give young offenders room to reform. Our findings support the need for different approaches for different offenders - however, we caution against brain imaging being used for screening, as the understanding of brain structure differences are not robust enough to be applied on an individual level. Instead, we need to recognise that individual development can be one driver of serious repeat offending, but to also appreciate that this is not the case for all juvenile offenders." [1]

Acknowledging the limitations of their study, co-author Professor Essi Viding, UCL, UK, cautions: "It is unclear whether these brain differences are inherited and precede antisocial behaviour, or whether they are the result of a lifetime of confounding risk factors (eg, substance abuse, low IQ, and mental health problems) and are therefore a consequence of a persistently antisocial lifestyle."

The authors call for more long-term studies of antisocial behaviour which include multiple measurements of behaviour, brain, genes, and environment to understand how life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour unfolds.

Treatment of patients suffering from bile duct cancer could be improved by tailoring medication to the levels of a key protein in people with the disease, according to new research.

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a deadly disease with few treatments, but researchers in the UK and Thailand have discovered that the PRH/HHEX protein is a key driver in the disease, with increased levels affecting the response of cancer cells to therapeutic drugs.

Formation of CCA is driven by alterations in the levels of the PRH protein which controls genes and signaling pathways in the body - a discovery which could allow doctors to use specific drugs to treat the cancer.

Researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham worked with partners at the Chulabhorn Research Institute, in Bangkok. The study, funded by the Medical Research Council (Newton Fund) and Thailand Research Fund, is published in Cancer Research and featured on front cover of Cancer Research Feb 15th 2020 issue.

Dr Padma Sheela Jayaraman, from the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham, commented: "Clinical efficacy of chemotherapeutic strategies is likely to depend on PRH expression level. Tailoring patient medication according to the individual level of PRH expression could improve clinical usefulness of several compounds, recently suggested as potential novel treatments for bile duct cancer."

Aberrant Notch and Wnt signalling are known drivers of CCA, but the underlying factors controlling these pathways were not previously known.

The researchers found that hyper-activation of Notch and Wnt signalling is connected to dysregulation of PRH. Moreover, they suggest new therapeutic options based on the dependence of specific Wnt, Notch, and CDK4/6 inhibitors on PRH activity.

They demonstrate that expression of PPH is elevated in cases of CCA and that reduction in PRH levels reduced CCA tumour growth in a model of cancer. They showed that high PRH expression in primary human biliary epithelial cells isolated from human liver, by Dr Simon Afford from the University of Birmingham's Centre for Liver and Gastrointestinal Research, tended to increase cancer cell properties such as invasion and anchorage-independent growth.

Professor Kevin Gaston, from the University of Nottingham School of Medicine and Biodiscovery Institute, commented: "We are excited by the outcomes of this international collaborative study and we are working towards translating these findings into new ways of treating individual patients in the UK and in Thailand, where there is a particularly high incidence of CCA."

February 12, 2020, Nutley, NJ - Reversing runaway inflammation in the bone marrow could lead to major breakthroughs in treatments for some blood cancers, according to a new publication by scientists at Hackensack Meridian Health's Center for Discovery and Innovation.

The CDI team's findings could ultimately improve cancer treatments for people of advanced age, like that of adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML), as they indicate in the paper in the journal Nature Communications.

The study, published Feb. 3, demonstrates how endothelial (blood vessel lining) cells orchestrate inflammatory stress within the microenvironment of the bone marrow.

The scientists demonstrated the function of two connected pathways involved in myelosuppressive injuries (like those caused by chemotherapy), in which bone marrow activity decreases, leading to less blood cell production.

The myelosuppression leads to chronic activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway - causing local and systemic inflammation, in turn driven by the Nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB) signaling pathway. This chronic inflammation resulted in disruption of the integrity of blood vessels and functional defects to the hematopoietic stem cell.

Utilizing a genetic model to block the NF-kB dependent endothelial inflammation, led to the discovery of a novel protein, Stem Cell Growth Factor Alpha (SCGFa).

The SCGFa was tested, and the models' data showed promise. The SCGFa preserved vascular function and promoted hematopoietic recovery and hematopoietic stem cell function when infused following myelosuppressive treatments, such as chemotherapy. The scientists were also able to tamp down the vascular and hematopoietic inflammation by the administration of SCGFa, which boosted the recovery following the inflammation.

"We showed that SCGFa could be used therapeutically, to allow recovery of these crucial systems following myelosuppression," said Pradeep Ramalingam, the study's lead author.

"The elderly population tend to do worse following cancer treatments that result in myelosuppressive injury, since their bodies can't sustain as much chemotherapy as the young can," said Jason Butler, Ph.D., an associate member of the CDI, and the senior author, whose work is also part of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center's National Cancer Institute-designated consortium. "But if we infuse patients with SCGFa, we may be able to protect their hematopoietic system and allow for rapid regeneration and rejuvenation of their bone marrow. This would allow us to potentially give patients more chemotherapy - and ultimately lead to better outcomes and lower relapse rates."

Dr. Butler and his laboratory are currently working on exciting future directions for the work, including the direct effects of SCGFa on hematopoietic stem cells - and how SCGFa may enhance the homing, engraftment, and function of hematopoietic stem cells following bone marrow transplants.

"These studies will become important to understand the precise molecular mechanisms by which SCGFa enhances hematopoietic regeneration and to develop treatment strategies directed towards protecting the hematopoietic system and the (bone marrow) endothelial niche following myelosuppressive therapies," the authors concluded.

A Swansea University academic has contributed to a major study published in the journal Science, which shows the increases in aridity in some parts of the world will damage ecosystems in areas where more than 2 billion people live.

Dr Rocio Hernandez-Clemente, a senior lecturer from the University's Department of Geography, joined an international team of researchers from the Dryland Ecology and Global Change Lab at the University of Alicante to examine the Earth's dryland ecosystem, which covers 41% of the world's surface and is home to around a third of its population.

The study found for the first time that as aridity increases, dryland ecosystems undergo a series of abrupt changes. This results first in drastic reductions in the capacity of plants to fix carbon from the atmosphere, followed by substantial declines of soil fertility and ending with the disappearance of vegetation under the most arid and extreme conditions.

Climate change and ecosystems

The team found that increases in aridity in line with current climate change forecast, led to abrupt shifts in dryland ecosystems worldwide which limit their capacity to sustain life. This is because climate largely determines the amount and types of plants that can be found in a given place, how fertile the soil is, and how the landscapes look like. Understanding how changes in climatic conditions affect organisms and the ecosystem processes and services that depend on them, such as food and biomass production, is key to understanding, forecasting and mitigating climate change impacts on both ecosystems and societies.

The study

The team led by Dr. Miguel Berdugo, at the University of Alicante, pulled together the largest compilation of empirical data to date to evaluate how key ecosystems change along the wide aridity gradients that can be found in drylands worldwide. Dr Hernandez-Clemente performed the data extraction, processing and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data analysis of 60000 points distributed worldwide and used as an indicator of plant productivity in drylands. She also contributed to the quality assessment analysis and validation of the data and derived trends to detect abrupt shifts through remote sensing data.

Dr. Berdugo said: "The purpose of our work was to look at how these ecosystem change as we move towards more arid zones in order to better understand what we may expect in the future as the climate becomes drier, and more arid, in drylands worldwide."

The study identified three phases of accelerated ecosystem change in response to increases in aridity, measured as the inverse ratio between rainfall and the rate by which water evaporates from the land to the atmosphere.

Key findings

The key findings of the study were:

If aridity increases just a small amount of 0.5, there are rapid and often abrupt ecosystem changes

The landscape changes and is dominated by species adapted to more arid conditions and drought.

If aridity increases by 0.7, soil loses its structure and becomes more vulnerable to erosion.

Soil organisms that play essential roles in maintaining ecosystem functioning are also negatively affected.

There are large increases in the presence of pathogens at the expense of more beneficial organisms.

If aridity levels are raised beyond a threshold of 0.8, the system collapses, plants cannot thrive and the land becomes desert.

According to climatic forecasts, more than 20% of land may cross one or several of the thresholds identified in this study by 2100 due to climate change.

Dr Berdugo said: "Life will not disappear from drylands with forecasted aridity increases, but our findings suggest that their ecosystems may experience abrupt changes that will reduce their capacity to provide ecosystem services more than 2 billion people, such as soil fertility and biomass production."

Dr Rocio Hernandez-Clemente said: "The reduced global ability of the land to sustain life is predicted to become an increasing problem with climate change. This study demonstrates the possibility of detecting abrupt changes and monitoring how land turns into desertification processes with remote sensing data.

"The use of satellite image data helps scientists to monitor, predict and quantify the consequences of the increasing aridity in drylands ecosystems worldwide. International cooperation is essential for assessing land degradation and abrupt shifts. The next steps of our research will be focused in the use of earth observation data for look for changes of desertification processes."

In pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), high blood pressure in the lungs' arteries causes the heart to work extra hard to pump blood to the lungs and around the rest of the body. The condition is rare but deadly, and current treatments are expensive and have side effects and inconvenient modes of delivery. There is no cure.

With a goal of developing a more effective, convenient, and affordable therapy, research led by Henry Daniell of Penn's School of Dental Medicine produced a protein drug in lettuce leaves to treat PAH. He worked with other scientists, including Steven M. Kawut of Penn's Perelman School of Medicine; Tim Lahm from the Indiana University School of Medicine; Maria Arolfo and Hanna Ng of the Stanford Research Institute, on toxicology and pharmacokinetic studies; and Cindy McClintock and Diana Severynse-Stevens of RTI International, on regulatory studies.

The protein drug, composed of the enzyme angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) and its protein product angiotensin (1-7), can be taken orally and, in an animal model of PAH, reduced pulmonary artery pressure and remodeling. In addition, rigorous toxicology and dose-response studies suggested the drug's safety in animals. Further work will be necessary to develop this novel treatment approach for patients with PAH. The team's findings appear in the March issue of the journal Biomaterials.

"We completed extensive investigations to highly express these proteins in lettuce plants and to ensure the product is safe and effective," says Daniell. "We're ready to progress with further work to move this to the clinic."

Daniell has employed his innovative platform to grow biomedically important proteins of many kinds in the leaves of plants. The system works by physically bombarding plant tissue with the genes of interest, prompting chloroplasts into taking up genes and then stably expressing that protein. Propagating those plants then creates a kind of pharmaceutical farm from which the researchers can harvest, dry, and process the leaves, resulting in a powder that can be placed in a capsule or suspended in a liquid for use as an oral medication.

A 2014 publication in the journal Hypertension, on which the current study was based, earned Daniell a prize from the American Heart Association, and support from the National Institutes of Health through its Science Moving TowArds Research Translation and Therapy (SMARTT) program, which aims to efficiently translate promising basic science discoveries into therapies that can make a difference in people's lives.

That earlier publication had shown that ACE2 and angiotensin (1-7) could be expressed in tobacco leaves and, when fed to rats with a condition that models pulmonary arterial hypertension, could significantly reduce the animals' pulmonary artery pressure while also improving cardiac function.

To create a drug that humans could safely ingest, however, required moving from a tobacco to a lettuce-based platform. The new work takes advantage of other advancements the Daniell lab has made during the last several years. He and colleagues have successfully devised methods to enhance expression of human genes in the plants and to remove the antibiotic resistance gene that is used to select for angiotensin-producing plants. They've also worked with a partner to produce genetically engineered plants in a production facility that adheres to FDA standards.

In the current work, the researchers demonstrated that they could accurately evaluate the dose of the ACE2 and angiotensin (1-7) proteins in lettuce, and that the products could be dried and kept shelf stable for as long as two years.

Funding from the SMARTT program enabled animal studies evaluating toxicology, pharmacodynamic, and pharmacokinetic studies, which evaluate the safety of the drug, where it goes in the body, and how long it persists in the body at different doses, in work done at Stanford University.

And to confirm that the lettuce formulation of the product had a positive impact on experimental PAH, the team fed rats a solution containing the drug for four weeks. Their lung pressures went down 30-50%, and the structure of their arteries also improved.

"This is an innovative approach to targeting the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system in pulmonary arterial hypertension," says Penn Medicine's Kawut, "which may hold promise in this and other diseases."

"We are very excited about this work that shows efficacy of bioencapsulated ACE2 and angiotensin (1-7) in our animal model of pulmonary arterial hypertension," says Indiana University's Lahm. "We now need to confirm that the intervention also works in other animal models and when given later in the disease. Ultimately, our goal is to move this to the clinic for trials in patients, but we need to make sure we learn as much as possible from animal studies and from studies in healthy human subjects to make sure this intervention is safe and efficacious in patients."

In other future work, Daniell hopes to continue evaluating the effects of ACE2 and angiotensin (1-7) in treating different types of cardiovascular disease, such as heart failure.

"There are some potentially broad applications of this drug that we're hoping to investigate," says Daniell.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Wildlife need to move to survive: to find food, reproduce and escape wildfires and other hazards. Yet as soon as they leave protected areas like national forests or parks, they often wind up on a landscape that is very fragmented in terms of natural boundaries and human ones.

To help create more corridors for wildlife movement, a team led by Washington State University graduate student Amanda Stahl have developed a way to map not only the vegetation but also the types of legal authority governing the landscape. In a paper published online in the journal Conservation Biology on Feb. 14, the researchers apply their new mapping system to the areas next to streams in Okanogan County in northeastern Washington.

"I am a scientist. I didn't come to this research expecting to study law, but I realized that all the questions I was asking were about how we can address this problem now without making any new laws," said Stahl, the lead author on the paper. "If we want to create a network of corridors for wildlife, you have to deal with the question of who has legal authority to act on every single parcel of land."

Stahl and her co-authors, WSU Associate Professor Alexander Fremier and University of Idaho Law Professor Barbara Cosens, studied habitat maps and dozens of legal documents applying to Okanogan County stream areas. They developed two weighted scales for each area of land, giving them a rating based on the naturalness and another based on the strength of the legal authority governing it. For example, if there were only voluntary recommendations in place to restore the habitat next to the stream that would be a weaker legal authority rating in comparison to wetlands that are protected through mandatory permitting and reporting under the Clean Water Act.

The idea was to use the overlapping values to find a path of least resistance in creating new wildlife corridors. The maps can help organizations prioritize conservation projects and reveal potential areas of coordination to maximize the impact of restoration.

"There are places where if you make the habitat better, you will not only improve that area but also help build a longer corridor," said Stahl.

The potential of this kind of mapping is already being recognized, and the researchers are in talks with conservation groups and planning officials about mapping larger regions, including the entire state of Washington.

Okanogan County was a good test case, Stahl said, because it stretches from the Rocky Mountain foothills to the Cascades and wildlife, such as black bears and lynx, could benefit from better connectivity between them. The county also has many different types of landowners, including the federal, state and tribal governments as well as private landowners.

The researchers focused on streams since many existing laws already regulate the areas around them, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and Washington State's Shoreline Management Act and Growth Management Act.

Streams are also good targets for conservation because restoring streamside habitat has advantages not just for terrestrial mammals but for salmon who benefit from shaded water, migratory birds who use riparian areas and for humans who benefit from improved water quality and potentially increased property values on land located on scenic river corridors.

"The more you do along a stream, the more the benefits are multiplied," Stahl said.

Berkeley Lab Helps Reveal How Dinosaur Blood Vessels Can Preserve Through the Ages
-- By Aliyah Kovner

A team of scientists led by Elizabeth Boatman at the University of Wisconsin Stout used X-ray imaging and spectromicroscopy performed at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) to demonstrate how soft tissue structures may be preserved in dinosaur bones - countering the long-standing scientific dogma that protein-based body parts cannot survive more than 1 million years.

In their paper, now published in Scientific Reports, the team analyzed a sample from a 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex tibia to provide evidence that vertebrate blood vessels - collagen and elastin structures that don't fossilize like mineral-based bone - may persist across geologic time through two natural, protein-fusing "cross-linking" processes called Fenton chemistry and glycation.

First, the scientists used imaging, diffraction, spectroscopy, and immunohistochemistry to establish that structures present in the sample are indeed the animal's original collagen-based tissue. Then, Berkeley Lab co-authors Hoi-Ying Holman and Sirine Fakra respectively performed synchrotron radiation-based Fourier-transform infrared spectromicroscopy (SR-FTIR) to examine how the cross-linked collagen molecules were arranged, and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mapping to analyze the distribution and types of metal present in T. rex vessels.

"SR-FTIR takes images and spectra of the same sample, and so you can reveal the distribution of protein-folding patterns, which helps to identify the possible cross-linking mechanisms," said Holman, a senior scientist in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division.

Fenton chemistry and glycation are both non-enzymatic reactions - meaning they can occur in deceased organisms - that are driven by the iron present in the body. "The XRF microprobe revealed the presence of finely crystalline goethite, a very stable iron oxyhydroxide mineral, on the vessels that likely contributed to the preservation of organic molecules," said Fakra, an ALS research scientist.

The authors believe that the cross-linking reactions they found evidence of, combined with the protection offered from being surrounded by dense mineralized bone, can explain how original soft tissues persist.

Read more about this research

Joint Genome Institute Study Reveals Diversity of Giant Viruses Worldwide
-- By Aliyah Kovner

A team led by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI) at Berkeley Lab has reconstructed the genomes of 2,074 large and giant viruses found across the globe, drastically increasing the number of known viruses and providing a resource for future studies on this poorly understood group of viruses, called nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs).

The work, recently published in Nature, drew from more than 8,500 publicly available metagenome datasets generated from samples of microbial communities, many of which were from freshwater ecosystems. (A metagenome is the entire collection of genetic information captured in a sample.)

The genomes of the large and giant viruses - which carry between 10 and 100 times more genes than most well-studied viruses - were digitally extracted from the other genetic information by filtering for a NCLDV-specific protein and then organized into distinct genomes known as metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). This process was performed, in part, using capabilities of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), also located at Berkeley Lab.

"This is the first study to take a more global look at giant viruses by capturing genomes of uncultivated giant viruses from environmental sequences across the globe, then using these sequences to make inferences about the biogeographic distribution of these viruses in the various ecosystems, their diversity, their predicted metabolic features and putative hosts," said Tanja Woyke, senior author of the study and head of JGI's Microbial Genomics Program.

After analyzing the genes identified in the viral MAGs, Woyke and her colleagues found that NCLDVs have evolved strategies to alter the metabolism of their host organisms (primarily single-celled eukaryotes, but also multicellular eukaryotic organisms) in order to optimize conditions for viral replication. Because eukaryotic microbes are known to play a big part in biogeochemical processes such as carbon and nitrogen cycling, the findings suggest that NCLDVs are a key part of understanding how ecosystems function.

Read the full release by JGI

X-Ray Technology Sheds New Light on Antibiotic Synthesis
--By Aliyah Kovner

Atomic-scale structural analyses performed at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) are helping scientists understand the inner workings of the enzyme "assembly lines" that microbes use to produce an important class of compounds, many of which have uses as antibiotics, antifungals, and immunosuppressants.

These cellular machines, known as nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs), are large, multi-enzyme clusters that synthesize compounds by passing a precursor molecule from one module to the next, with each "station" catalyzing a change in the molecule. In the past decade, researchers have learned a great deal about how individual NRPS modules work, but an understanding of how the assembly lines function as a whole has been lacking. In the hopes of eventually engineering custom NRPSs to make new and improved medicines, a team led by McGill University began investigating the bacterial NRPS that synthesizes the antibiotic gramicidin.

The scientists used the SIBYLS X-ray scattering beamline at the ALS to validate X-ray crystallography and small-angle X-ray scattering performed at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatchewan and the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The results, published in Science, show that the modules are surprisingly physically flexible, and that the assembly line can function in many different arrangements.

Gregory Hura, a Berkeley Lab biophysicist on the SIBYLS team and head of the Structural Biology Department in the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division, notes that the analytic capabilities of the beamline are helping decode the functionality of many important large molecules. "There is no surprise that macromolecules, responsible for the complex activities of life, are dynamic, modular, and multifaceted - but our appreciation for those dynamics has been hindered by a lack of modalities for sensing them. The newly upgraded SIBYLS beamline provides unique insights that complement crystallography and electron microscopy, and together, these technologies are helping us develop new medicines."

The low-pressure area that had once been Tropical Cyclone Francisco has been lingering in the Southern Indian Ocean since Feb. 6 when it weakened below tropical cyclone status. Since then, Francisco's remnants moved into an area of warm waters and low wind shear allowing the low-pressure area to re-organize, consolidate and re-form. NASA's Aqua satellite provided forecasters with a visible image of the zombie storm.

On Feb. 14, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image that showed the storm had re-developed a rounded shape with bands of thunderstorms spiraling into the low-level center. A more rounded shape of a tropical cyclone indicates it is becoming a more organized storm. Satellite imagery shows a compact system with strong thunderstorms persisting over the low-level circulation. In addition, satellite microwave imagery indicates deep convective banding of thunderstorms over the western semicircle wrapping into the north and east quadrants of a defined low-level circulation center.

On Feb. 14 at 4 a.m. EST (0900 UTC), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that Francisco's maximum sustained winds powered back up to 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph). Francisco re-formed near latitude 19.0 degrees south and longitude 49.3 east, approximately 114 nautical miles east of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Francisco has tracked southwestward.

Meteo Madagascar issued a Red Vigilance Advisory for heavy rain over central and eastern Madagascar that includes Toamasina, Brickaville, Mahanoro, and the Vatomandry Districts.

The JTWC forecast said the system is expected to make landfall later today over the southeast coast of Atsinanana Region, close to Vatomandry City. That is far to the south of the coastal city of Toamasina. Francisco is expected to weaken steadily as it tracks inland and dissipate sometime on Feb. 15 over land.

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

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

The paradox of Schrödinger's cat - the feline that is, famously, both alive and dead until its box is opened - is the most widely known example of a recurrent problem in quantum mechanics: its dynamics seems to predict that macroscopic objects (like cats) can, sometimes, exist simultaneously in more than one completely distinct state. Many physicists have tried to solve this paradox over the years, but no approach has been universally accepted. Now, however, theoretical physicist Franck Laloë from Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (ENS-Université PSL) in Paris has proposed a new interpretation that could explain many features of the paradox. He sets out a model of this possible theory in a new paper in EPJ D.

One approach to solving this problem involves adding a small, random extra term to the Schrödinger equation, which allows the quantum state vector to 'collapse', ensuring that - as is observed in the macroscopic universe - the outcome of each measurement is unique. Laloë's theory combines this interpretation with another from de Broglie and Bohm and relates the origins of the quantum collapse to the universal gravitational field. This approach can be applied equally to all objects, quantum and macroscopic: that is, to cats as much as to atoms.

The idea of linking quantum collapse to gravity has already been proposed by the great English physicist and philosopher Roger Penrose, but he never developed his ideas into a complete theory. Laloë proposes a model that goes in the same direction, agrees with physical observations and may one day prove testable experimentally. It is relatively simple - 'naive', even - and introduces only one additional parameter to the standard equation. Laloë is planning to explore more consequences of his model in different situations. Furthermore, he suggests that a theory that combines quantum mechanics with gravitation may have implications in astrophysics.