Earth

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, together with colleagues from several other European institutions, have investigated whether particulate matter from certain sources can be especially harmful to human health. They found evidence that the amount of particulate matter alone is not the greatest health risk. Rather, it could be the so-called oxidative potential that makes particulate pollution so harmful. They are publishing their results today in the scientific journal Nature.

Particulate matter is one of the greatest health risks stemming from air pollution and, according to several studies, it is responsible for several million deaths each year. This means that poor air quality and particulate matter are among the five most important health risk factors, alongside high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, and obesity. What makes particulate pollution so dangerous, however, is not yet precisely known. Together with an international collaborative team, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have now found out that the amount of particulate pollution is not the only decisive factor when it comes to health risks.

Oxidative potential of particulate matter as a health risk

"In this study we were primarily interested in two points", says Kaspar Dällenbach from the gas-phase and aerosol chemistry research group at PSI. "First, which sources in Europe are responsible for the so-called oxidative potential of particulate matter (also known as aerosols) and, second, whether the health risk from this particulate matter is caused by its oxidative potential."

Here the term "oxidative potential" refers to the ability of particulate matter to reduce the amount of antioxidants, which can lead to damage in cells and tissues of the human body. In a first step, the researchers exposed cells from the human airways, so-called bronchial epithelial cells, to particulate samples and tested their biological reaction. When these cells are under stress, they give off a signalling substance for the immune system, which initiates inflammatory reactions in the body. The researchers were able to show that particulate matter with an elevated oxidative potential intensifies the cells' inflammatory reaction. This suggests that the oxidative potential determines how harmful the particulate matter is. The causal connection between elevated oxidative potential and a danger to health still has not been definitely established, according to Dällenbach. "But the study is another clear indication that this connection actually does exist."

A partner study led by the University of Bern showed that the cells of patients who suffer from a special pre-existing illness, cystic fibrosis, exhibit a weakened defense against particulate matter. While in healthy cells an antioxidant defense mechanism was able to stop the progression of the inflammatory reaction, the defense capacity in sick cells was insufficient. This led to increased cell mortality.

Where does particulate matter and their oxidative potential come from?

In addition, the researchers collected particulate samples at various locations in Switzerland. Using a mass spectrometry technique developed at PSI, they analysed the composition of the particulate matter. The chemical profile obtained in this way for each particulate sample indicates the sources from which it originates. Furthermore, colleagues in Grenoble determined the oxidative potential of the same samples in order to get an indication of the danger to human health. With the help of detailed analyses and statistical methods, the researchers then determined the oxidative potential for all relevant emission sources. On the basis of these experimental data, they used a computer model to calculate the locations in Europe with the highest oxidative potential due to particulate matter throughout the year, and they identified mainly metropolitan areas such as the French capital Paris and the Po Valley in northern Italy as critical regions.

"Our results show that the oxidative potential of particulate matter and the amount of particulate matter are not determined by the same sources", Dällenbach sums up. The largest portion of particulate matter consists of mineral dust and so-called secondary inorganic aerosols, such as ammonium nitrate and sulphate. The oxidative potential of particulate matter, on the other hand, is primarily determined by so-called anthropogenic secondary organic aerosols, which come mainly from wood combustion, and by metal emissions from brake and tire wear in road traffic. The researchers found not only that the population in urban areas is exposed to a higher amount of particulate matter, but also that this particulate matter in these regions has a higher oxidative potential and is therefore more harmful to health than particulate pollution in rural areas. "Our results show that regulating the amount of particulates alone might not be effective", says Dällenbach. In addition, the study by the University of Bern suggests that population groups with pre-existing illnesses could especially benefit from appropriate measures to reduce particulate matter pollution.

Northwestern University researchers have developed a highly effective, environmentally friendly method for converting ammonia into hydrogen. Outlined in a recent publication in the journal Joule, the new technique is a major step forward for enabling a zero-pollution, hydrogen-fueled economy.

The idea of using ammonia as a carrier for hydrogen delivery has gained traction in recent years because ammonia is much easier to liquify than hydrogen and is therefore much easier to store and transport. Northwestern's technological breakthrough overcomes several existing barriers to the production of clean hydrogen from ammonia.

"The bane for hydrogen fuel cells has been the lack of delivery infrastructure," said Sossina Haile, lead author of the study. "It's difficult and expensive to transport hydrogen, but an extensive ammonia delivery system already exists. There are pipelines for it. We deliver lots of ammonia all over the world for fertilizer. If you give us ammonia, the electrochemical systems we developed can convert that ammonia to fuel-cell-ready, clean hydrogen on-site at any scale."

Haile is Walter P. Murphy Professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering with additional appointments in applied physics and chemistry. She also is co-director at the University-wide Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern.

In the study, Haile and her research team report they are able to conduct the ammonia-to-hydrogen conversion using renewable electricity instead of fossil-fueled thermal energy because the process functions at much lower temperatures than traditional methods (250 degrees Celsius as opposed to 500 to 600 degrees Celsius). Second, the new technique generates pure hydrogen that does not need to be separated from any unreacted ammonia or other products. Third, the process is efficient because all of the electrical current supplied to the device directly produces hydrogen, without any loss to parasitic reactions. As an added advantage, because the hydrogen produced is pure, it can be directly pressurized for high-density storage by simply ramping up the electrical power.

To accomplish the conversion, the researchers built a unique electrochemical cell with a proton-conducting membrane and integrated it with an ammonia-splitting catalyst.

"The ammonia first encounters the catalyst that splits it into nitrogen and hydrogen," Haile said. "That hydrogen gets immediately converted into protons, which are then electrically driven across the proton-conducting membrane in our electrochemical cell. By continually pulling off the hydrogen, we drive the reaction to go further than it would otherwise. This is known as Le Chatelier's principle. By removing one of the products of the ammonia-splitting reaction--namely the hydrogen--we push the reaction forward, beyond what the ammonia-splitting catalyst can do alone."

The hydrogen generated from the ammonia splitting then can be used in a fuel cell. Like batteries, fuel cells produce electric power by converting energy produced by chemical reactions. Unlike batteries, fuel cells can produce electricity as long as fuel is supplied, never losing their charge. Hydrogen is a clean fuel that, when consumed in a fuel cell, produces water as its only byproduct. This stands in contrast with fossil fuels, which produce climate-changing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Haile predicts that the new technology could be especially transformative in the transportation sector. In 2018, the movement of people and goods by cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes and other vehicles accounted for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.--more than any other economic sector according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Battery-powered vehicles are great, but there's certainly a question of range and material supply," Haile said. "Converting ammonia to hydrogen on-site and in a distributed way would allow you to drive into a fueling station and get pressurized hydrogen for your car. There's also a growing interest for hydrogen fuel cells for the aviation industry because batteries are so heavy."

Haile and her team have made major advances in the area of fuel cells over the years. As a next step in their work, they are exploring new methods to produce ammonia in an environmentally friendly way.

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Two recently published studies from Kansas State University researchers and collaborators have led to two important findings related to the COVID-19 pandemic: Domestic cats can be asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2, but pigs are unlikely to be significant carriers of the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

"Other research has shown that COVID-19-infected human patients are transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to cats; this includes domestic cats and even large cats, such as lions and tigers," said Jürgen A. Richt, the Regents distinguished professor at Kansas State University in the College of Veterinary Medicine. "Our findings are important because of the close association between humans and companion animals."

There are about 95 million house cats in the U.S. and about 60 million to 100 million feral cats, Richt said.

Richt is the senior author on the two recent collaborative publications in the journal Emerging Microbes & Infections: "SARS-CoV-2 infection, disease and transmission in domestic cats" and "Susceptibility of swine cells and domestic pigs to SARS-CoV-2."

Through their in-depth study at the K-State Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, at Pat Roberts Hall, the researchers studied susceptibility to infection, disease and transmission in domestic cats. They found that domestic cats may not have obvious clinical signs of SARS-CoV-2, but they still shed the virus through their nasal, oral and rectal cavities and can spread it efficiently to other cats within two days. Further research is needed to study whether domestic cats can spread the virus to other animals and humans.

"This efficient transmission between domestic cats indicates a significant animal and public health need to investigate a potential human-cat-human transmission chain," said Richt, who is also the director of the university's Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, known as CEEZAD, and the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, known as CEZID.

For the study involving pigs, the researchers found that SARS-CoV-2-infected pigs are not susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and do not appear to transmit the virus to contact animals.

"Pigs play an important role in U.S. agriculture, which made it important to determine the potential SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility in pigs," Richt said. "Our results show that pigs are unlikely to be significant carriers of SARS-CoV-2."

The BRI has provided the high-security laboratories for Richt and collaborators to study SARS-CoV-2. It is a biosafety level-3 and biosafety level-3 agriculture facility that houses important multidisciplinary research, training and educational programs on pathogens that affect animals, plants and insects, as well as food safety and security.

Richt and his collaborators plan further studies to understand SARS-CoV-2 transmission in cats and pigs. They also plan to study whether cats are immune to SARS-CoV-2 reinfection after they have recovered from a primary SARS-CoV-2 infection.

"This research is important for risk assessment, implementing mitigation strategies, addressing animal welfare issues, and to develop preclinical animal models for evaluating drug and vaccine candidates for COVID-19," Richt said.

A new pair of papers published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has shown that sexual lineage matters for how offspring receive adaptations from parents in stickleback fish. Researchers in the Bell lab studied how parents who were exposed to predators passed the behavioral information to their offspring in different ways based on sex.

Bell's research group is interested in how experience (nurture) and genetic information (nature) merge to influence how animals develop and behave. Between parents and offspring, this can happen through transgenerational plasticity, when parental environments alter future generations.

Dr. Jennifer Hellmann (assistant professor, University of Dayton, former postdoctoral researcher in the Bell lab) led the study, which examined how maternal versus paternal exposure to the same environmental condition can have different effects on offspring and future generations.

In the first paper of the study, researchers exposed mothers, fathers or both parents to visual cues of predation risk. The team then measured the offspring antipredator traits and brain gene expression in the offspring. Stickleback fish typically have paternal care, and previous research in the Bell lab found that a predator-exposed father will change his behavior towards his offspring. However, in this study the stickleback offspring were separated from their father, meaning that subsequent behavioral differences were due only what the offspring inherited from their father through sperm.

"Originally, we thought that there would be sex specific effects," said Alison Bell, professor of evolution, ecology and behavior and co-author of the study. "Sons would be more impacted (than daughters) by what happened to their fathers. That's not what we found at all."

Results from the study showed that predator?exposed fathers produced sons that were more risk?prone, whereas predator?exposed mothers produced more anxious sons and daughters. In addition, the ways in which daughters and sons were impacted by the same inherited exposure were different. "If you scare a mother, those changes look different than if you had scared a father," said Bell. "Different traits are affected. The sex of the parent matters and the sex of the offspring matters."

In the second paper of the study, the researchers tested one generation further to see how long these brain gene expression and behavioral trait changes persisted. Given what researchers had previously found about sex-dependent inheritance, they once again tracked the sex lineage of which now-grandparent(s) were exposed. "We were evaluating four different groups through maternal, paternal, both or neither grandfather exposed, which was an incredible amount of work - but these effects are clearly sex-dependent and we wanted to understand that further," said Bell. "How many generations will have this effect persist, and how does the grandparent source of the change matter?"

Here again, the researchers' results were surprising. Findings suggested unique patterns of inheritance - for example, predator-exposed fathers would impact their daughters, who would produce grandsons that were affected by their maternal grandfather's exposure. Along another inheritance line - exposed grandfather to son to granddaughters, for example - those exposure impacts would look different.

"So sex and where these traits came from matters," explained Bell. "Fathers don't just contribute DNA in their sperm, they're also passing down information about their environment in their sperm. Both parents are passing down this kind of environmental information, and what those changes look like depends on sex every step of the way - grandparent, parent, and offspring."

This study is one of the most careful to date examining the sex lineage in transgenerational plasticity, and was supported by a Postdoctoral National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health to Hellmann, NIH and the School of Integrative Biology.

Abu Dhabi, UAE: Mentorship contributes to the advancement of individual careers in scientific research and can be an important factor in minimizing persistent barriers to entry, especially for women.

A new study by researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi examined data representing thousands of mentor-protégé relationships and found that mentorship quality predicted the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés -- without their mentors -- after their mentorship. Significantly, the researchers also found that increasing the proportion of female mentors was associated not only with a reduction in post-mentorship impact of female protégés, but also a reduction in the gain of female mentors.

Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science Bedoor Al Shebli, Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy Kinga Makovi, and Associate Professor of Computer Science Talal Rahwan report their new findings in The Association between Early Career Informal Mentorship in Academic Collaborations and Junior Author Performance, published in Nature Communication. They identified and studied mentorship in the form of scientific collaborations in more than 300 million research publications. Looking at the career timelines of scientists through their publications, they were able to identify junior and senior scientists working together on a given research paper. In these collaborations, they identified a "protégé" and all of her or his mentors, i.e., senior scientists in the institution where they authored a given publication, who were scholars in the same discipline, and the researchers' academic age.

"What makes this study of mentorship different to other previous studies is that we didn't look at mentorship in the formal sense of a student and his or her advisor," said Al Shebli. "Instead, we acknowledge that mentorship as a whole can come from multiple seniors throughout a junior scientist's early career years, and a mentor does not necessarily have to take on a formal advisory role to fulfil such a role."

The research team identified three million protégé-mentor pairs and surveyed a random sample of the protégés to verify that they view their senior co-authors as mentors in their career years. They then quantified mentorship quality using two measures: the "big-shot experience," which measures how successful the mentor was at the time of their collaboration through the average number of citations they accumulated by the beginning of the mentorship period, and the "hub experience," which measures how connected a mentor was by looking at her or his network of collaborators by the beginning of the mentorship period.

Al Shebli added, "While current diversity policies encourage same-gender mentorships to retain women in academia, our findings raise the possibility that opposite-gender mentorship may actually increase the impact of women who end up pursuing a scientific career. Our findings add a new perspective to the policy debate on how to best elevate the status of women in science."

(November 18, 2020) -- UTSA researcher Manuel Cano, assistant professor in the Department of Social Work in the UTSA College for Health, Community and Policy is shedding light to understand the topic of drug overdose deaths in the Hispanic community.

In the article "Drug Overdose Deaths Among US Hispanics: Trends (2000-2017) and Recent Patterns" published in "Substance Use & Misuse" Cano used national death certificate data (data recording all deaths of U.S. residents) to examine drug overdose mortality in different Hispanic subgroups, based on heritage, place of birth and gender.

Cano explains, "In the context of the current opioid crisis, drug overdose in the media is often presented as a problem affecting white individuals. However, this tragedy affects all racial/ethnic groups and no racial/ethnic group should be overlooked or left behind in the national response. Opioids are killing a lot of people but so are other drugs affecting different groups. There is substantial variation considering race and ethnicity," Cano said.

The national data on drug overdose mortality shows lower rates of drug overdose deaths in Hispanics compared to Non-Hispanic Whites or Blacks. However, the study revealed people of Puerto Rican heritage have a higher rate of drug overdose mortality compared to Non-Hispanic Whites or Blacks.

Among those of Puerto Rican heritage, those born in Puerto Rico - many of whom may speak Spanish as a first language- were overrepresented in drug overdose deaths, suggesting that culturally-tailored and accessible services in Spanish are necessary for this group. In contrast, the majority of individuals of Mexican-heritage who died of drug overdose were born in the U.S.

"The more we understand which subgroups are most affected, the more we can provide culturally-appropriate services that better address their needs. Drug overdose is preventable," Cano added.

Cano concluded, "Hispanic cultures have many rich cultural values and strengths that can be protective factors against overdose, for example, the value of the family and respect."

Machine learning can be used to fill a significant gap in Canadian public health data related to ethnicity and Aboriginal status, according to research published today in PLOS ONE by a University of Alberta research epidemiologist.

Kai On Wong, senior data scientist at the Real World Evidence unit of the Northern Alberta Clinical Trials and Research Centre (NACTRC), said ethnicity and Aboriginal status are recognized as key social determinants of health but are often not reported in large databases that track acute and chronic diseases such as asthma, influenza, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, disability and mental illness.

"If a database currently lacks ethnicity information, we will not be able to tell whether certain ethnic groups have higher rates of disease or worse clinical outcomes," Wong said, "This is a way to unlock that missing dimension from existing data sources, which may help us understand, monitor and address issues such as social inequities and racism in Canada."

Wong created a machine learning framework to analyze the names and geographic locations of 4.8 million people surveyed in the 1901 census, examining features such as spelling and phonetics to predict whether they belonged to one of 13 ethnic groups.

"Different ethnic and linguistic groups have different manifestations of features such as how the name sounds, how many letters in the name, how many vowels and unique letter sequences, and so on," said Wong, who created the program and shared it as a public GitHub repository as part of his doctoral thesis at the U of A's School of Public Health.

"Machine learning is like having a team of agents who are given vast amounts of information. They are instructed to detect and retain useful patterns to solve practical problems such as predicting the ethnicity from the readily available information," he said.

Wong said the program performed best at identifying individuals of Chinese, French, Japanese and Russian heritage based on name only, while the accuracy was improved for the Aboriginal classification when locations were also included.

Both the World Health Organization and the Government of Canada recognize ethnicity and Indigeneity as determinants of health, along with other factors such as income, education and gender. Wong first became interested in inequities in health care that affect Indigenous groups when he served as acting territorial epidemiologist for the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Wong said while American health records tend to include questions about ethnicity, this information is not collected consistently in Canadian databases ranging from hospital discharge records to cancer registries.

By using machine learning to uncover this missing information, researchers and policy-makers will be able to learn more from existing records rather than having to carry out new population-level surveys, which are expensive and time-consuming.

"A future step forward will be to validate this research with real-world applications using health evidence augmented with ethnicity generated by the machine learning framework and comparing it with existing literature, particularly on health and social inequities," Wong said.

Wong recommends first updating the ethnicity prediction tool using more recent census information and testing its accuracy when applied to various health records.

"It is unrealistic to expect machine learning predictions to be 100 per cent accurate at all times," Wong said. "The goal is to make predictions that are accurate and generalizable enough to discern underlying patterns in a meaningful way for a particular problem or application."

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women, and metastasis from the breast to other areas of the body is the leading cause of death in these patients. Detecting circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream could help doctors find and treat metastases at an earlier stage, increasing chances of survival. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sensors have developed a method that could more sensitively detect CTCs within the complex environment of blood.

CTCs are tumor cells that are shed from a primary tumor into the bloodstream, where they can travel to other sites and possibly establish new tumors. Measuring CTCs could help doctors determine a patient's prognosis and best course of treatment, but these tumor cells are very rare compared with other blood cells, making them difficult to detect. Although some technologies have been developed to identify CTCs in blood, they suffer from limited sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, Zai-Sheng Wu and colleagues wanted to find a way to boost a fluorescent signal for CTCs so that they could be more easily identified.

To develop their method, the researchers chose a breast cancer cell line that, like many breast tumors, produces large amounts of two proteins, ErbB-2 and EpCAM. They isolated the breast cancer cells from a buffer solution with magnetic beads attached to antibodies against ErbB-2. Then, they added a strand of DNA that contained multiple copies of a single-stranded DNA sequence, called an aptamer, that recognizes EpCAM. The strand also carried short DNA sequences that could be used to perform an enzymatic amplification reaction to create many new copies that could bind to fluorescent probes. Using fluorescence spectrometry, as few as nine breast cancer cells could be detected in 200 μL of buffer solution. When the team spiked breast cancer cells into whole blood, they observed a similar fluorescent signal as in the buffer, suggesting that the assay could be a powerful tool for screening rare CTCs in real samples.

How much can society gain by cutting consumption of materials --  by using materials smarter, using less or recycling materials? A new report from the International Resource Panel for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) says the gains are substantial and can be key to enabling countries to meet their emissions targets.

The International Resource Panel (IRP) Report, Resource Efficiency and Climate Change: Material Efficiency Strategies for a Low-Carbon Future is the first comprehensive scientific analysis of potential GHG emission savings from material efficiency. The report, for which Edgar Hertwich, International Chair in Industrial Ecology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology was a lead author, focused on two carbon-intensive sectors: residential buildings and passenger vehicles.

"Materials are ignored by climate policy, yet emissions from the production of materials production have grown fast!" says Hertwich. "If you are concerned about eating meat or flying on airplanes because of your carbon footprint, you should also be even more worried about cement and steel."

The researchers found that 80% of emissions from the production of materials come from the construction and manufacturing sectors, in particular from our homes and cars.

Applying material efficiency strategies can reduce GHG emissions from the life-cycle of construction, operation, and deconstruction of homes by an average of 40% in seven major developed countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States (G7 countries) and by 70% in China and India, the researchers found.

It can also reduce GHG emissions from the manufacturing, operations and end-of-life management of cars by 40% in the G7 and by 35% in China and India.

"This report makes it clear that natural resources are vital for our well-being, our housing, our transportation and our food. Their efficient use is central to a future with universal access to sustainable and affordable energy sources, emissions-neutral infrastructure and buildings, zero-emission transport systems, energy-efficient industries and low-waste societies. The strategies highlighted in this report can play a big part in making this future a reality," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UNEP, in a press release.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has proposed a carbon budget under which the G7 would need to limit their remaining CO2 emissions to 50 gigatons for global average temperature increases to stay at 1.5°C.

The IRP estimates that 23 gigatons of emissions could be saved in the G7 through material efficiency strategies in 2016-2060. The IRP report found that the most promising strategy comes from the consumption side - which would involve more intensive use.

"We were not sure society could live with less materials. Our study show it can: we can easily reduce the amount of primary materials required for a reasonably comfortable living through a combination of less materialistic lifestyles and smarter technologies," says Hertwich.

For cars, this means ride-sharing, car-sharing and a shift towards smaller vehicle sizes. If one in four journeys in the G7, China or India was a shared ride, then the carbon footprint of the use and production of cars would decline by as much as 20%.

For homes, more intensive use means increasing use rates through, for example, peer-lodging, or smaller and more efficiently designed homes. IRP modelling shows that reducing demand for floor space by up to 20% could lower GHG emissions from the production of materials by up to 73% in 2050.

"Limiting the growth in the size of our homes, and sharing rides and vehicles turned out to be the most effective ways to reduce emissions," says Hertwich.

Other material efficiency strategies to be considered include the recycling of building materials, less material by design in both cars and homes, and the use of alternative low-carbon materials (for example, sustainably sourced wood instead of reinforced concrete in homes).

"Climate mitigation efforts have traditionally focused on enhancing energy efficiency and accelerating the transition to renewables. While this is still key, this report shows that material efficiency can also deliver big gains," Andersen, UNEP's Executive Director, said.

The cuts revealed by the report are on top of emission savings generated by the decarbonization of electricity supply, the electrification of home energy use, and the shift towards electric and hybrid vehicles. If the world focuses on energy efficiency without boosting material efficiency, it will be almost impossible and substantially more expensive to meet the Paris climate targets, the report warns.

The report notes that the only way to make many of these kinds of emissions reductions is if countries themselves create enabling policy environments and incentives.

The strongest effect comes from policies that apply across sectors, such as building certification, green public procurement, virgin material taxes, and removal of virgin material subsidies.

The IRP report urges policymakers to consider resource efficiency and materials in the next generation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),  broadening the scope of targets and increasing the magnitude of the intended mitigation ambition.

Some countries have started doing this, as described in the Resource Efficiency and Climate report. For example, China's NDC specifically mentions a commitment to the efficient use of materials. It includes measures aimed at improving the efficiency and lifespan of existing and new buildings and promoting recycled construction materials.

Japan's NDC includes a commitment to use blended cement, while India's NDC refers to recycling, "enhanced resources efficiency and pollution control" (in addition to energy efficiency) and the general need to "use natural resources wisely."

"There will be no progress until policy makers turn their attention to this issue," says Hertwich. "Unfortunately, many countries have policies in place that inadvertently increase the use of materials, such as through tax breaks for home ownership. Such policies favour the wealthy and increase material use, so revising them creates a win-win situation."

TAMPA, Fla. (Nov. 18, 2020)- For more than 10,000 years, the people who lived on the arid landscape of modern-day western New Mexico were renowned for their complex societies, unique architecture and early economic and political systems. But surviving in what Spanish explorers would later name El Malpais, or the "bad lands," required ingenuity now being explained for the first time by an international geosciences team led by the University of South Florida.

Exploring an ice-laden lava tube of the El Malpais National Monument and using precisely radiocarbon- dated charcoal found preserved deep in an ice deposit in a lava tube, USF geosciences Professor Bogdan Onac and his team discovered that Ancestral Puebloans survived devastating droughts by traveling deep into the caves to melt ancient ice as a water resource.

Dating back as far as AD 150 to 950, the water gatherers left behind charred material in the cave indicating they started small fires to melt the ice to collect as drinking water or perhaps for religious rituals. Working in collaboration with colleagues from the National Park Service, the University of Minnesota and a research institute from Romania, the team published its discovery in "Scientific Reports."

The droughts are believed to have influenced settlement and subsistence strategies, agricultural intensification, demographic trends and migration of the complex Ancestral Puebloan societies that once inhabited the American Southwest. Researchers claim the discovery from ice deposits presents "unambiguous evidence" of five drought events that impacted Ancestral Puebloan society during those centuries.

"This discovery sheds light on one of the many human-environment interactions in the Southwest at a time when climate change forced people to find water resources in unexpected places," Onac said, noting that the geological conditions that supported the discovery are now threatened by modern climate change.

"The melting cave ice under current climate conditions is both uncovering and threatening a fragile source of paleoenvironmental and archaeological evidence," he added.

Onac specializes in exploring the depths of caves around the world where ice and other geological formations and features provide a window to past sea level and climate conditions and help add important context to today's climate challenges.

Their study focused on a single lava tube amid a 40-mile swatch of treacherous ancient lava flows that host numerous lava tubes, many with significant ice deposits. While archaeologists have suspected that some of the surface trails crisscrossing the lava flows were left by ancient inhabitants searching for water, the research team said their work is the earliest, directly dated proof of water harvesting within the lava tubes of the Southwest.

The study characterizes five drought periods over an 800-year period during which Ancestral Puebloans accessed the cave, whose entrance sits more than 2,200 meters above sea level and has been surveyed at a length of 171 meters long and about 14 meters in depth. The cave contains an ice block that appears to be a remnant of a much larger ice deposit that once filled most of the cave's deepest section. For safety and conservation reasons, the National Park Service is identifying the site only as Cave 29.

In years with normal temperatures, the melting of seasonal ice near cave entrances would leave temporary shallow pools of water that would have been accessible to the Ancestral Puebloans. But when the ice was absent or retreated in warmer and dryer periods, the researchers documented evidence showing that the Ancestral Puebloans repeatedly worked their way to the back of the cave to light small fires to melt the ice block and capture the water.

They left behind charcoal and ash deposits, as well as a Cibola Gray Ware pottery shard that researchers found as they harvested a core of ancient ice from the block. The team believes the Ancestral Puebloans were able to manage smoke within the cave with its natural air circulation system by keeping the fires small.

The discovery was an unexpected one, Onac said. The team's original goal in its journey into the lava tube was to gather samples to reconstruct the paleoclimate using ice deposits, which are slowly but steadily melting.

"I have entered many lava tubes, but this one was special because of the amount of charcoal present on the floor in the deeper part of the cave," he said. "I thought it was an interesting topic, but only once we found charcoal and soot in the ice core that the idea to connect the use of ice as a water resource came to my mind."

Unfortunately, researchers are now racing against the clock as modern climate conditions are causing the cave ice to melt, resulting in the loss of ancient climate data. Onac said he recently received support from the National Science Foundation to continue the research in the lava tubes before the geological evidence disappears.

Prostate cancer is caused by elevated hormone levels, and tumours are generally treated using hormone therapy. However, after some time, tumour growth is no longer dependent on hormones, which results in resistance to treatment. As a result, new types of treatments are urgently needed. A research team headed by Lukas Kenner of the Department of Pathology at MedUni Vienna in collaboration with David Heery from the University of Nottingham/UK and Sarka Pospisilova and Suzanne Turner of the University of Brno/Czech Republic have shown that the protein μ-crystallin (CRYM) plays a significant part in tumour growth. Their findings were based on genetic analysis of numerous tissue samples. The higher the levels of this protein that are present, the better the prognosis. The study was published in the International Journal of Cancer, a leading journal.

Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed forms of cancer in men and affects around 5,600 men in Austria each year. Hormone therapy is one of the core treatment strategies, but it is only effective for a certain period of time. It has been known for some time that the thyroid hormone T3 potentially plays a part in the development of prostate tumours, but until now the question of how it does so has remained unanswered.

A research team led by Lukas Kenner of the Department of Pathology at MedUni Vienna in collaboration with David Heery from the University of Nottingham/UK and Sarka Pospisilova and Suzanne Turner of the University the University of Brno/Czech Republic has now shown that the protein CRYM binds to the hormone T3 and inhibits tumour growth. The findings were based on an analysis of protein molecules in tissue sections and genetic data from hundreds of prostate cancer patients. According to lead author Lukas Kenner, a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center established by MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital (AKH): "Our work shows that CRYM is a key regulator of T3 metabolism and is also closely linked with androgen metabolism. The more advanced the disease, the lower the levels of CRYM found in the tumour tissue." Low CRYM levels are associated with a poor prognosis. CRYM also blocks cells' absorption of choline, which is a vital component in the formation of cell membranes. As tumours are characterised by rapid cell division and therefore require lots of new cell membranes, CRYM can inhibit tumour growth by impeding the uptake of choline.

As a result, CRYM counteracts the growth of prostate tumours in two respects, making it an important anti-tumour control mechanism which opens up new treatment options. The study concludes that activating CRYM could be used as a means to block tumour growth. The findings also suggest a similar form of interaction between cancer cells and T3 in other hormone-related forms of cancer.

Osaka, Japan - Successful drug development has a significant impact on people's quality of life worldwide. Being able to track how molecules get into target cells, and observing what they do when they are inside, is key to identifying the best candidates. Analysis techniques therefore form an important part of the drug discovery process. Researchers from Osaka University, in collaboration with RIKEN, have reported a Raman microscopy-based approach for visualizing small-molecule drugs that uses gold nanoparticles. The team's findings are published in ACS Nano.

Small drug molecules are often traced by attaching them to fluorescent probes that are visible when they are irradiated with light. Microscopy can then be used to see these molecules inside cells in real time. However, fluorescent molecules can be bulky, which can affect the way the small molecules behave. Additionally, some fluorescent molecules lose their fluorescence if they are exposed to too much light, making it difficult to see them over the course of long studies.

One alternative to fluorescent labels is a much smaller tag known as an alkyne, which composed of carbon-carbon triple bonds. The particular arrangement of atoms in alkynes is not found naturally in cells; therefore, they provide a highly specific marker. Furthermore, their small size means that alkynes have minimal effect on the small-molecule behavior. Instead of emitting fluorescence under laser light, alkynes produce what is known as a Raman signal, which can be clearly identified among the cell material signals.

However, looking for the Raman signal of alkyne groups is tricky when there aren't many of them around because of the low efficiency of Raman scattering. The researchers have therefore combined alkyne-tagging with the use of gold nanoparticles. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) microscopy can stimulate gold nanoparticles to produce enhanced electric fields that boost the Raman signal of the alkyne groups, making them easier to detect.

"Our approach is a combination of techniques that have been used for tracking small molecules in live cells," study lead author Kota Koike explains. "Gold nanoparticles are particularly useful messengers for reporting the presence of alkyne groups because they enhance the alkyne signal, as well as providing a surface that the alkynes like to interact with. The two components therefore come together naturally to generate the enhanced signal."

Gold nanoparticles are readily taken up by numerous different types of cells, making the technique broadly applicable. The nanoparticles enter the lysosome compartments inside the cell and then enhance the signal of the alkyne-tagged molecules that subsequently arrive in the lysosomes and interact with them.

"Our SERS technique has the potential to be used with a variety of different cell types as well as a virtually limitless number of drug candidates," study corresponding author Katsumasa Fujita explains. "This is particularly exciting for drug discovery where any means of better understanding drug dynamics in real time is extremely valuable for development."

Detailed modeling of the effect of volcanic eruptions on the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has shown that the climate response to these events depends on the timing of the eruption and the preceding conditions. The research, led by KAUST researchers Evgeniya Predybaylo and Georgiy Stenchikov, settles a long-standing debate about the role of volcanic eruptions in global climate perturbations.

"The ENSO is a feature of the tropical Pacific Ocean climate, with patterns of temperature, precipitation and wind that oscillate between warmer El Niño and cooler La Niña phases every two to seven years," explains Predybaylo. "Due to the vast size of the tropical Pacific, the ENSO controls the climate in many other parts of the globe and is responsible for droughts, floods, hurricanes, heat waves and other severe weather events. To evaluate these risks, it is essential to have proper projections and predictions of future ENSO behavior."

Climate modeling indicates that the ENSO is very sensitive to external perturbations, such as increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or volcanic eruptions. Even though major volcanic eruptions, like the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991, are known to have caused widespread cooling due to the reflection of solar radiation, such effects have been difficult to prove by modeling.

"There was previously no modeling consensus on how the Pacific Ocean responds to such climatologically large volcanic eruptions, with climate models predicting diverse and often contradictory responses," says Sergey Osipov from the research team.

Because the tropical Pacific climate is itself highly variable, the modeling needs to be performed carefully to separate the eruption-driven ocean response from random variations. This requires a large number of climate simulations using a model that can simulate both the radiative impact of volcanic eruptions and a realistic ENSO cycle. To achieve this, the team collaborated with Andrew Wittenberg from Princeton University, US, to run the CM2.1 climate model using KAUST's supercomputer.

"After running more than 6,000 climate simulations covering nearly 20,000 model years and analyzing the data," says Predybaylo, "we found that the ENSO response to stratospheric volcanic eruptions strongly depends on the seasonal timing of the eruption and the state of the atmosphere and ocean in the Pacific at the time."

In particular, the research showed that even very large eruptions seem to have little discernible effect on the ENSO in winter or spring, while summer eruptions almost always produce a strong climate response.

"The principles and techniques developed in our study could also be applied to various types of observational data and multimodel studies of future climate change, including the effects of global warming," says Predybaylo.

Researchers have discovered that a protein thought to only be involved in the development of neurons in the brain also plays a major role in the development and growth of pancreatic cancer. Their findings demonstrate for the first time how the protein, called Netrin-G1, helps pancreatic cancer cells survive by protecting them from the immune system and supplying them with nutrients.

Pancreatic cancer is difficult to treat because tumours are often fibrotic, which means they develop extra connective tissue throughout the pancreas. This connective tissue aids the growth of pancreatic cancer and provides a physical and biochemical protective barrier against drugs and the immune system. This protective barrier is made up of a type of cell called a cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF), which interact with cancer cells to help them grow and survive.

Dr Edna Cukierman, Associate Professor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and Co-Director of the Marvin and Concetta Greenberg Pancreatic Cancer Institute, who led the study, said: "Using a system we developed to study CAFs in a fibrous-like environment that mimics how they would behave inside the pancreas, we identified Netrin-G1 as being highly expressed in CAFs, and found that it supports the survival of pancreatic cancer cells. We uncovered that Netrin-G1 allows CAFs to provide cancer cells with nutrition as well as secreting factors that inhibit anti-tumour immune cell function."

The study, published in Cancer Discovery and part-funded by UK charity Worldwide Cancer Research, also found that an antibody that neutralises Netrin-G1 was able to stunt the development of progression of pancreatic tumours in mice, demonstrating the potential of developing new treatments for pancreatic cancer that target Netrin-G1.

Dr Cukierman, said: "We saw that many patients express Netrin-G1 in CAFs and that these patients tend to survive for a shorter time so in the future detection of Netrin-G1 could be used to help diagnose patients. We believe that limiting Netrin-G1 function provides the starting point for the design of new treatments in a type of cancer that is in dire need for effective therapies.

"We next plan to continue investigating the biology behind Netrin-G1 expression in CAFs, figure out a practical way to detect it in patients, and partner with industry to design Netrin-G1 blocking drugs. This way we hope that targeting Netrin-G1 could serve, one day, to treat pancreatic cancer patients."

In the UK, over 10,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year and over 9,000 people lose their life to the disease. Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates of any cancer with only around 1 in 20 people surviving for 10 years or more after their diagnosis. Only 1 in 4 people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the UK will survive beyond one year.

Dr Helen Rippon, Chief Executive of Worldwide Cancer Research, said: "This is a fascinating new finding in cancer research which shows for the first time how a molecule thought to be involved in the brain is also able to help tumours grow in organs elsewhere in the body. We're delighted to see such great progress from Dr Cukierman's project which offers a starting point for the future development of treatments against a particularly deadly type of cancer. These positive findings come at a dark time for all of us and are a stark reminder of how dedicated our researchers are - working tirelessly towards new cancer cures even amid a global pandemic. I'm sure this news will be welcomed by all of us who have had to experience the loss of a loved one to cancer."

Adam Coulson, a husband and father from East Lothian, Scotland, who lost both his parents to cancer, said: "My family and I were thrilled to hear of this breakthrough made thanks to research funded by Worldwide Cancer Research. In November 2006 we lost my dad to pancreatic cancer. I was only 22, Dad - just 54. When Dad died, Mum became two parents in one. She really was the glue that held us together. Losing Dad was heart-breaking, but having Mum there kept everyone going - and everyone together. So, when Mum told us she had bowel cancer, our worlds fell apart. Again.

"Cancer has had a devastating effect on our lives. I think almost every single one of my family and friends has been affected in some way or another. That's why we support Worldwide Cancer Research. It was too late to save my mum and dad, but hopefully one day we can stop the suffering caused by cancer. And this breakthrough is taking us closer to that day."

Current chemotherapy regimens slow cancer progression and save lives, but these powerful drugs affect both healthy and cancerous cells. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have designed DNA-based nanogels that only break down and release their chemotherapeutic contents within cancer cells, minimizing the impacts on normal ones and potentially eliminating painful and uncomfortable side effects.

Once ingested or injected, chemotherapy medications move throughout the body, indiscriminately affecting healthy cells along with those that are responsible for disease. Since many of these drugs are toxic to all cells, the desired tumor shrinkage can be accompanied by undesirable side effects, such as hair loss, gastrointestinal issues and fatigue. Nanogels made of DNA are one way that these drugs could be delivered, but they would still enter all cells. Tianhu Li, Teck-Peng Loh and colleagues reasoned that biomarkers -- proteins or other components that are present in differing amounts in cancer cells and their healthy counterparts -- could play a role in breaking down a nanogel, causing it to release its contents only in those that are cancerous. A biomarker called FEN1, a repair enzyme that cuts certain types of DNA, is present in larger amounts in cancer cells compared with healthy ones. The researchers wanted to see whether they could design a DNA nanogel that would specifically be degraded in cancer cells by FEN1.

To make DNA nanogels, the researchers used special DNA structures that FEN1 could recognize and cut. With cell-free systems, the researchers observed that the DNA-based nanogels were broken down by FEN1 but not by other DNA repair enzymes or compounds. When live cells were incubated with the DNA-based nanogels, healthy ones did not have enough FEN1 to break them down, but cancer cells did. When the chemotherapeutic drugs doxorubicin and vinorelbine were incorporated into the nanogel, human breast cancer cells died at higher rates than normal, healthy breast cells. These findings indicate DNA-based nanogels can introduce drugs into cancer cells with a high specificity, reducing the risk of side effects. The researchers say that the nanogels also could be used as probes for the biomarker enzyme, helping physicians more directly diagnose cancer compared with current methods.

The authors acknowledge funding from Northwestern Polytechnical University in China and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore.

The abstract that accompanies this paper is available here.

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