Earth

MADISON, Wis. -- Coral reefs are vibrant communities that host a quarter of all species in the ocean and are indirectly crucial to the survival of the rest. But they are slowly dying -- some estimates say 30 to 50 percent of reefs have been lost -- due to climate change.

In a new study, University of Wisconsin-Madison physicists observed reef-forming corals at the nanoscale and identified how they create their skeletons. The results provide an explanation for how corals are resistant to acidifying oceans caused by rising carbon dioxide levels and suggest that controlling water temperature, not acidity, is crucial to mitigating loss and restoring reefs.

"Coral reefs are currently threatened by climate change. It's not in the future, it's in the present," says Pupa Gilbert, a physics professor at UW-Madison and senior author of the study. "How corals deposit their skeletons is fundamentally important to assess and help their survival."

Reef-forming corals are marine animals that produce a hard skeleton made up of aragonite, one form of the mineral calcium carbonate. But how the skeletons grow has remained unclear. One model suggests that dissolved calcium and carbonate ions in the corals' calcifying fluid attach one at a time into the crystalline aragonite of the growing skeleton. A different model, proposed by Gilbert and colleagues in 2017 and based on a study of one species of coral, suggests instead that undissolved nanoparticles attach and then slowly crystallize.

In the first part of a new study, published Nov. 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gilbert and her research team used a spectromicroscopy technique known as PEEM to probe the growing skeletons of five freshly-harvested corals, including representatives of all four possible reef-forming coral shapes: branching, massive, encrusting, and table. PEEM chemical maps of calcium spectra allowed the scientists to determine the organization of different forms of calcium carbonate at the nanoscale.

PEEM results showed amorphous nanoparticles present in the coral tissue, at the growing surface, and in the region between the tissue and the skeleton, but never in the mature skeleton itself, supporting the nanoparticle attachment model. However, they also showed that while the growing edge is not densely packed with calcium carbonate, the mature skeleton is -- a result that does not support the nanoparticle attachment model.

"If you imagine a bunch of spheres, you can never fill space completely; there is always space in between spheres," Gilbert says. "So that was the first indication that nanoparticle attachment may not be the only method."

The researchers next used a technique that measures the exposed internal surface area of porous materials. Large geologic crystals of aragonite or calcite -- formed by something not living -- are found to have around 100 times less surface area than the same amount of material made up of nanoparticles. When they applied this method to corals, their skeletons gave nearly the same value as large crystals, not nanoparticle materials.

"Corals fill space as much as a single crystal of calcite or aragonite. Thus, both ion attachment and particle attachment must occur," Gilbert says. "The two separate camps advocating for particles versus ions are actually both right."

This new understanding of coral skeleton formation can only make sense if one more thing is true: that seawater is not in direct contact with the growing skeleton, as has been commonly assumed. In fact, recent studies of the coral calcifying fluid found that it contains slightly higher concentrations of calcium and three times more bicarbonate ions than seawater does, supporting the idea that the growing skeleton is indeed isolated from seawater.

Instead, the researchers propose a model where the corals pump calcium and carbonate ions from seawater through coral tissue, which concentrates those minerals near the skeleton. Importantly, this control allows corals to regulate their internal ion concentrations, even as oceans acidify due to rising carbon dioxide levels.

"Up until this work, people had assumed that there was contact between seawater and the growing skeleton. We demonstrated that the skeleton is completely separate from seawater, and this has immediate consequences," Gilbert says. "If there are to be coral reef remediation strategies, they should not focus on countering ocean acidification, they should focus on countering ocean warming. To save coral reefs we should lower the temperature, not increase water pH."

New York, NY--November 9, 2020--Computer scientists at Columbia Engineering have shown for the first time that it is possible to analyze how thousands of Android apps use cryptography without needing to have the apps' actual codes. The team's new tool, CRYLOGGER, can tell when an Android app uses cryptography incorrectly--it detects the so-called "cryptographic misuses" in Android apps. When given a list of rules that should be followed for secure cryptography--guidelines developed by expert cryptographers and organizations such as NIST and IETF that define security standards to protect sensitive data--CRYLOGGER detects violations of these rules.

Android apps use cryptographic algorithms to secure users' data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers, etc. If used correctly, cryptography protects sensitive data by making them unintelligible. Each cryptographic algorithm is appropriate for a specific scenario and requires the configuration of specific parameters. App and library developers, however, can misuse the application programming interfaces (API) of such algorithms by using constant keys, weak passwords, or by misconfiguring other specific parameters.

"Choosing the correct algorithm and configuring its parameters are critical to keep users' data secure, but it requires an understanding of cryptography," says the study's lead author Luca Piccolboni, a PhD student who is advised by Luca Carloni, professor of computer science. "Wrong choices of the algorithms and/or misconfigurations of their parameters can result in data breaches."

CRYLOGGER is the first tool that detects cryptographic misuses by running the app instead of analyzing its code. This new approach is described in a paper that will be presented May 23-27 at IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2021. In addition to Piccolboni and Carloni, the paper is authored by Giuseppe Di Guglielmo, associate research scientist in the computer science department, and Simha Sethumadhavan, associate professor of computer science and an expert in cybersecurity.

CRYLOGGER, which is open source, has several key advantages:

It can analyze closed-source apps, and does not need to modify the code of the app or its binary.

It analyzes the actual parameters used by the apps instead of doing analysis on their source code and it focuses only on the code that is actually run.

It can perform inter-application analysis: it can detect when two apps communicate in non-secure ways or when data is shared across multiple apps when it should not.

The researchers ran 1,780 popular Android apps downloaded from the official Google Play Store--the largest case study on cryptographic misuses not based on code analysis--and discovered that almost all the apps contained code or used libraries that did not strictly adhere to security standards. Many of them used broken algorithms and others adopted unsafe cryptographic practices to protect users' data.

Each violation does not necessarily mean that an attack is possible. The rule violations should be treated as warnings to be further investigated. Some violations can be false alarms because it is very hard to precisely discriminate in all situations. The researchers contacted more than 300 developers for confirmation, but only 10 provided useful feedback.

"Many developers do not consider attacks such as privilege escalation and side-channel attacks to be possible on phones, and so they store data locally without sufficient safeguards," notes Sethumadhavan.

The team also manually analyzed the code of 28 Android apps and found that some of the violations reported by CRYLOGGER could potentially be exploited. They see two significant applications of CRYLOGGER. Developers can use it to find cryptographic misuses in their apps as well as in the third-party libraries they use. App stores, such as the Google Play Store, can use CRYLOGGER to screen submitted apps to ensure they meet security standards and are safe for final users to download. Google already uses similar screening technologies to get rid of unsafe or scam apps and these could be extended to consider cryptographic misuses.

The researchers are working on improving the accuracy of CRYLOGGER by defining techniques that will further reduce the number of false alarms. They are also using CRYLOGGER to perform inter-app analysis so that it can analyze how apps exchange data and determine if sensitive data are kept secure. In addition, they are putting rule checking for cryptographic misuses into hardware, rather than software, to force applications to use safe practices in critical contexts.

"While we keep working to improve the accuracy of CRYLOGGER, our approach can be used by app stores to promote better security practices," Carloni adds. "And we believe that CRYLOGGER's technique of analyzing thousands of Android applications by running them and collecting information that can be later analyzed offline could also be used in other security domains."

Famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí once said, "Anything created by human beings is already in the great book of nature." Among different man-made architectures and art, spherical structures and shapes have been the most fantastical geometrical form that fascinated the figments of the human imagination. Making perfect spherical architectures is challenging due to their geometric purity and technical complexity and therefore these structures are both enchanting as well as rare. On one hand, perhaps inspired by the huge celestial bodies, architects like Fuller have designed geodesic dome structures such as the Montreal Biosphère; on the other side, there are chemists who are the architects of the world's most miniature aesthetic structures. The latter draw most of their inspiration from the complex self-assembled structures present in nature such as the highly symmetric hollow spherical virus capsids and protein cages. Making such purely organic, atomically precise hollow molecular spheres or cages is synthetically challenging. Previous approaches for constructing pure organic cages usually allowed the formation of small-sized organic cages (cavity diameter

Now, a team led by Director KIM Kimoon at the Center for Self-assembly and Complexity within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Pohang, South Korea successfully developed a template-free, one-pot synthesis of a porphyrin-based gigantic organic cages composed of multi-porphyrin units (see animation). In general, the progress of a chemical reaction or process is favored by an increase in randomness or entropy of the system. However, during cage formation, when randomly scattered multiple cage subunits organize to form a single 3D structure, the process becomes entropically unfavorable. To coerce multiple molecules to assemble in a 3D spherical space and amalgamate them into a single spherical molecule through covalent bonds, researchers have previously synthesized and utilized other molecules specifically to act as templates to promote the preorganization process. Circumventing these challenges, Kim and colleagues were however, been able to synthesize P12L24 cages built with 36 components, i.e. 12 square-shaped porphyrins (P) units and 24 bent linkers (L), without the use of a template based strategy. "We hypothesized that it would be possible to synthesize such large organic cages, if the shape, rigidity, length and bent angles of component molecules (porphyrin derivative and bent linker) were judiciously designed," explains KOO Jaehyoung, the first author of this study.

In 2015, the same research group reported porphyrin boxes consisting of 6 four-connecting porphyrins and 8 three-connecting triamine linkers (P6L8) with a cube-shaped geometry. This result inspired them to venture a step further to construct larger porphyrinic cages by changing their synthetic design with four-connecting porphyrins and two-connecting bent linkers. The presently synthesized P12L24 cage possess a truncated cuboctahedron structure with 12 square faces, 8 regular hexagonal faces, and 6 regular octagonal faces (see animation). The cage has an outer dimension of 5.3 nm and an inner cavity, 4.3 nm in diameter (Figure 1). The overall structure of the P12L24 cage is reminiscent of the structure of the transport protein cage COPII, which possess a cuboctahedral shape and consists of heterotetrameric units other coat components meeting at the tetrameric vertex similar to the porphyrin and linker subunits in P12L24 (Figure 2).

The researchers additionally explored the potential applicability of such large hollow molecular spheres or cages such as the encapsulation of host molecules and in photocatalysis. The present results will definitely facilitate the synthesis of multivariate large organic cages in the future, which may be suitable for transport of large cargoes, synthesis of uniform-sized nanoparticles, reactivity modulation of bound guests, molecular recognition, catalysis, and so on. "This is a major step forward in the synthesis of gigantic sphere-shaped molecules. If we can make the P12L24 cages water soluble, perhaps they can serve as an efficient container for large guest molecules such as proteins and assist their storage, delivery, and other applications. Our study may offer a breakthrough in establishing a smart and easy way of constructing a superstructure composed of a large number of building blocks by defeating the entropy issue," notes Director Kim. He further adds, "The other significance of these structures is exploiting the presence of the porphyrin subunits, which showcases interesting photophysical properties such as light-harvesting, energy transfer, electron transfer, etc."

A research team has developed a new method for creating metal-organic framework (MOF) thin films that can be applied to sensors and electric devices.

Like sponges, porous materials contain pores. The pore size affects the property of the material. For example, small pores create more absorbent surface areas. Silica gel, which is often used in food packaging to soak up moisture, is one typical example.

Recent studies on porous materials have led to the development of new materials with designable pores, affording scientists with greater control over the properties of such materials.

MOF is a porous material made up of metal ions coordinated by organic linking molecules. Well-ordered nanopores in MOFs have potential applications in material science and pharmacology.

Despite a growing interest in MOFs, researchers have yet to establish an effective method for forming MOF into thin films. Most studies on MOF preparation focus exclusively on the powdered form. Forming MOF into thin films opens up its use for humidity sensing, gas sensing and resistive switching devices.

Researchers from Tohoku University, Iwate University and the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) overcame this obstacle by controlling the growth of MOF into films. This involved a simple "layer-by-layer" method, which uses sequential immersing of substrates into ingredient solutions.

The research group chose four types of commonly used plastic materials as a substrate for MOF film growth. They cultivated the growth of MOF films on plastic materials such as nylon and acrylic resin.

"The facile and versatile fabrication techniques used in this study have opened up MOFs to new application fields such as sensors and memory devices," said Shunsuke Yamamoto, co-author of the study. "We hope our research serves as the starting point for using MOF films with electronic devices."

Further studies on the film growing mechanism are expected to provide important insights into the coating on flexible and transparent plastic substrates under ambient conditions.

Social distancing introduced in response to COVID-19 is increasing feelings of loneliness in Scotland's older population and impacting their wellbeing, according to a new University of Stirling study.

The research has identified a link between increases in loneliness in over 60s and the worsening of wellbeing and health. Increasing loneliness due to social distancing was associated with a smaller social network, lower perceived social support and a decrease in wellbeing, the study found.

The findings emerge from research launched under the Scottish Government's Chief Scientist Office Rapid Research in COVID-19 programme in May. Professor Anna Whittaker, of the University's Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport, led the work and hopes it will help to inform decision-making on the virus and support post-pandemic recovery strategies.

Professor Whittaker said: "Previous studies have demonstrated the negative impacts of social isolation and loneliness. This is a key issue for older adults who may be more likely to have few social contacts. We know that social distancing guidelines introduced in response to COVID-19 have restricted social activity engagement and impacted vulnerable groups, including older adults.

"Our study, which involved a survey of more than 1,400 older people, examined the impact of social distancing during the pandemic on social activity, loneliness and wellbeing. The majority of survey participants reported that social distancing has made them experience more loneliness, social contact with fewer people, and less social contact overall.

"We found that a larger social network and better perceived social support seems to be protective against loneliness and poorer health and wellbeing, due to social distancing. This underlines the importance of addressing loneliness and social contact in older adults, but particularly during pandemics or situations where the risk of isolation is high."

Of the 1,429 survey participants, 84 percent were aged 60 or over and had an average social network of five people. On average, the participants socialised five days per week, for more than 6.6 hours per week. Fifty-six percent reported that social distancing regulations made them experience more loneliness - with scores that were significantly higher than reported norms; the same quality of perceived support; but social contact with fewer people and less social contact overall.

Greater loneliness was significantly associated with a smaller social network, lower perceived social support, and a decrease in social support frequency, quality, and amount - and a worsening of wellbeing and health.

Physical activity

Using the same survey data, the research also considered the impact of social distancing on physical activity. The majority of participants reported continuing to meet physical activity guidelines during lockdown - with 35 percent moderately active and 41 percent highly active. Walking was the greatest contributor to total physical activity, with just over a quarter (26.4%) walking more than before lockdown. Those living in rural areas reported greater volumes of physical activity.

Forty percent of people said they were walking less, compared to before lockdown, and a similar proportion were engaging in less moderate physical activity. Those who reported in engaging in lower physical activity had poorer wellbeing.

Individuals who reported no change in moderate physical activity were the most active pre-lockdown and those who reported no change in walking had significantly higher levels of total physical activity pre-lockdown.

Professor Whittaker said: "Physical activity engagement during lockdown varied and this study indicates a positive link with wellbeing - supporting the notion that physical activity should be considered an important contributor in recovery strategies targeted at older adults as we emerge from the pandemic.

"There appears to be a relationship between pre-lockdown physical activity and physical activity changes due to lockdown. This may be of significance in the context of trying to get older adults to maintain or increase physical activity, where appropriate, as we emerge from this pandemic, given our understanding of the benefits of physical activity in this age group.

"Additionally, irrespective of pre-lockdown physical activity, older adults should continue to be encouraged to be active, and particularly to engage in some sort of strength and balance training - such as tai chi, yoga, or weights - which was very low in the sample but is vital for maintaining balance and physical function. Just 12 percent of the sample met the physical activity guidelines, which indicate strength training should be undertaken at least twice per week."

In order to escape predators, many fish - including insects, fish and birds - have developed strategies for rapidly transmitting information on threats to others of their species. This information is transmitted within a group of hundreds, or even thousands, of individuals in (escape) waves. This collective response is also, in the case of fish, known as shoal behaviour. Special parasites can, however, manipulate such a survival strategy. Researchers at the University of Münster have discovered that infected individual fish disturb the transmission of flight behaviour and, as a result, increase not only their own risk of being eaten, but also that of other - non-infected - members of the group. The results of the study have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Background and methodology

In order to study social responsiveness in fish, the researchers used the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus as a parasite. The three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus - an important model in ecological and evolutionary parasitology - was used as an intermediate host. The parasite ensures that the fish is less prone to be scared and more courageous and, as a result, increases its risk-taking behaviour. This poses the threat that the stickleback will very probably fall prey to the final host of the parasite, a fish-eating bird. In aquariums the scientists simulated a bird strike on shoals of sticklebacks. "When the shoal consisted only of healthy - in other words, non-infected - sticklebacks, the escape wave continued quickly through the entire shoal after the bird strike, even though the sticklebacks at the back were only able to see the response of their conspecifics and not the bird strike itself", explains Nicolle Demandt from the Institute of Evolution and Biodiversity at the University of Münster and lead author of the study. "When we placed infected sticklebacks in the middle of the shoal, the escape wave came to a virtual halt and it only got through to the fish at the back to a limited extent."

Although the manipulation of behaviour on the part of parasites is widespread in the animal kingdom, many studies carried out so far have only concentrated on the infected animals themselves and on the manipulation of their behaviour. "Ours is the first experimental study which shows how individuals whose behaviour has been manipulated by parasites can influence the transmission of information and, as a result, collective flight responses - in other words, shoal behaviour," explains Prof. Joachim Kurtz, in whose laboratory the study was carried out. The researchers examined the connection between parasitic infection and flight depth, as well as the time the fish spent in the danger zone before and after the bird strike.

Sticklebacks with a high parasitic infection displayed a tendency to take flight to not such a deep level and they remained in the danger zone for a longer period of time than did sticklebacks with less parasitic infection. "The result indicates that the loss of energy might play a role in the extent to which behaviour is manipulated," explains Dr. Jörn Scharsack, who led the study. "Parasites remove energy from their hosts, which leads for example to a reduction in fat reserves and a higher food requirement. Infected fish should therefore invest less energy in flight response and return more quickly to looking for food."

As sticklebacks are found in very different aquatic systems - e.g. clear lakes, turbid rivers and sea environments - transferring the results of the study to the fishes' natural habitats depends on the local surroundings. In clear waters, the results can indeed be transferred to the natural habitat as the fish use their eyes to react to the signals from other sticklebacks taking flight. In more turbid surroundings, however, the fish can rely more on other senses. For example, by means of their lateral line organs they can feel even the smallest changes in pressure caused by the movements made by their neighbours in the shoal. Other factors influencing the transfer of the laboratory study to a natural environment are the size of the shoal, the number of infected individuals and the extent of their parasitic infection.

Should it be a general phenomenon that infected individuals have an influence on the collective responses of the entire group, this might be of wide-ranging significance for the animal kingdom - even including a possible influence of parasites on human group behaviour, say the researchers.

ADELPHI, Md. -- Army scientists developed computer-based training to help Soldiers avoid unnecessary social conflict and mitigate anger-related outcomes.

Scientists at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's, now referred to as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory and the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, developed a Hostile Bias Modification Training protocol to reduce hostile attribution bias, anger and reactive aggression in ambiguous social conflict situations, which can jeopardize social bonds, relationships with significant others, team culture and performance.

"This was a unique across agency collaborative effort bringing together clinical psychology and cognitive science Army researchers to investigate reactive aggressive behavior," said Army researcher Dr. Sue Kase. "After reading an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference publication on social bias factors associated with information transmission, Capt. Jeffery Osgood of WRAIR contacted the ARL co-authors for assistance."

At the time, in 2018, the laboratory was very fortunate to have the effort and crowdsourcing platform resources available to respond immediately to Osgood's request, Kase said.

This established a scientific alliance between the organizations by translating WRAIR's research needs to fit one of the laboratory's ongoing internal research methodologies--technological advances in large scale online data collection.

"Osgood's team brought clinical psychology expertise to the table while we offered our expertise in large scale crowdsourcing experimentation in cognitive behavior," Kase said. "When a partner agency requests our assistance, it is important to think outside the box because the potential impact could be significant and directly transition to the welfare of the Soldier. As in this case, the research will improve the psychological health of Soldiers both in the field and in post-service."

The study consisted of two crowdsourced experiments investigating if HBMT could reduce overall hostile attribution bias as well as perceived hostility, anger and aggression.

HBMT exposed participants to three types of word fragments: ambiguous, aggressive and non-aggressive. Participants were instructed to only form non-aggressive words and not respond in other cases.

Next, participants reacted to vignettes where in some cases the wrongdoer was clearly hostile while in others it was ambiguous.

Participants returned after several days to complete the second part of the study on real-world situations such as driving and social media behavior.

The results of the study, published in the journal Cognitive Therapy and Research, indicate that HBMT was effective in reducing hostile attribution bias, anger and reactive aggression in ambiguous situations.

"Most importantly, these effects appear to extend beyond the laboratory to real world aggression including aggressive driving and virtual aggression on social media," Kase said. "The effects sustained for the entire duration of the study (up to 96 hours). HBMT appears to be an easily implemented intervention to mitigate anger-related outcomes and its online delivery would enable mobile use in the field."

While the results of the study are very promising, the research team said there is more work to be done moving in to the future.

"Though more research is needed, we believe that HBMT could be effective as both a standalone tool for use at home, in field settings, or in concert with other therapeutic options to help mitigate unwarranted anger and aggression," Osgood said. "We are excited about HBMT's potential to both prevent and treat behavioral health concerns."

Kase said that the research team believes this research will positively impact Soldiers operating in both non-hostile and hostile environments.

"Positive team dynamics and task performance are critical when working in close coordination during challenging critical missions," Kase said. "Unwarranted anger in these types of situations can degrade individual team member cognitive processes and physical performance and potentially lead to violence-related consequences. Results from the study help us understand more about unwarranted aggressive behavior and, more generally, contribute to improving the psychological health of Soldiers, including those who have separated from the service. The knowledge gained is applicable to avoiding unnecessary social conflict and mitigating anger-related outcomes in both operational field settings and civilian populated areas."

The Earth is getting warmer at a faster rate than ever. 93% of the net energy is absorbed by global ocean surface in the form of the Ocean Heat Uptake (OHU), which is the key factor modulating the rate of global warming.

The Southern Ocean (surrounding the Antarctic continent, south of 30°S ) plays a dominant role in global OHU while the North Atlantic takes a small share.

Future emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols in the 21st century will be different from those in the historical period (since 1850), according to a new study published in Science Advances on Nov. 6.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators from University of California Riverside (UCR).

The researchers revealed the effects of aerosols and GHGs on regional OHU under different future warming scenarios. Based on the target of the 2015 Paris Agreement that limits global warming of 1.5°C or 2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, the new study first found the hemispheric asymmetry of OHU and its reasons under a low-emission scenario.

It also found that during the 21st century, the projected OHU showed collectively positive trends in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean under the high-emission scenario. While under the low-emission scenario, as compared to the negative long-term trend of Southern Ocean OHU, North Atlantic OHU had a positive long-term trend, which makes the North Atlantic the focus of global OHU in the future.

The opposite OHU trends in the Southern Ocean could be attributed partially to distinct GHG trajectories under the two scenarios. While the common positive OHU trends in the North Atlantic in the two scenarios were due to the total effects from anthropogenic aerosols and GHGs.

The researchers also presented that projected decline in anthropogenic aerosols induced a weakening of the AMOC and divergence of meridional ocean heat transport, which leads to enhanced OHU in the North Atlantic.

Previous studies have found that comparing to the historical period, from the middle to high emission scenarios, the North Atlantic OHU takes more and more percentages in global OHU while the Southern Ocean OHU takes less and less share even though the Southern Ocean still contributes most to global OHU. However, the regional OHU change under the low-emission scenario is not well understood.

"We discover an obvious hemispheric asymmetry in OHU under the low-emission scenario. In the long term, North Atlantic OHU keeps increasing and will become the main region of OHU. Our finding reveals the importance of aerosol effects and AMOC influences, which are helpful to the attribution of climate events," said the lead author Xiaofan Ma, a Ph.D. candidate from IAP.

"To sustain the balance of Earth's ecosystem, human societies have been taking measures to slow down the global warming. Our work shows the scientific significance of the low-warming target. It also helps us to better understand and project the climate change under low-emission scenarios," said the corresponding author Prof. Gang Huang from IAP.

Huang also noted that due to the limits of observations, these results rely on the climate model simulations. He looks forward to carrying out further studies with the development of ocean observation systems and datasets.

UPTON, NY--Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), the Materials Project at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of California, Berkeley, and European collaborators have developed a new way to decipher the atomic-level structure of materials based on data gleaned from ground-up powder samples. They describe their approach and demonstrate its ability to solve the structure of a material that shows promise for shuttling ions through sodium-ion batteries in a paper just published in the journal Chemistry of Materials.

"Our approach combines experiment, theory, and modern computational tools to provide the high-quality structural data needed to understand important functional materials, even when only powder samples are available," said corresponding author Peter Khalifah, who holds a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab and SBU.

The technique is in some ways a form of reverse engineering. Instead of solving the structure directly from the experimental data measured on the powder sample--a problem too complex to be possible for many materials--it uses computer algorithms to build and evaluate all the plausible structures of a material. By analyzing the "genome" associated with a material in this way, it can be possible to find the correct structure even when this structure is so complex that conventional methods for structure solution fail.

Battery cathode freeze-frame

For the study described in the paper, x-ray powder diffraction experiments were performed at the ALBA synchrotron in Barcelona, Spain, by European collaborators Matteo Bianchini and Francois Fauth, part of a team led by Christian Masquelier. Scientists used that facility's bright x-ray beams to study the atomic arrangement of a sodium-ion battery cathode material known as NVPF at a variety of temperatures ranging from room temperature down to the very low cryogenic temperatures at which atmospheric gases liquefy. This work is necessary because the disorder in the room temperature structure of NVPF disappears when it is cooled to cryogenic temperatures. And while batteries operate near room temperature, deciphering the material's cryogenic structure is still critically important because only this disorder-free, low-temperature structure can give scientists a clear understanding of the true chemical bonding that is present at room temperature. This chemical bonding environment strongly
influences how ions move through the structure at room temperature and thus affects NVPF's performance as a battery material.

"The bonding environment around sodium atoms--how many neighbors each one has--is essentially the same at low temperature as it is at room temperature," Khalifah explained, but trying to capture those details at room temperature is like trying to get kids to sit still for a photo. "Everything gets blurred because the ions are moving around too quickly to allow a picture to be taken." For this reason, some of the bonding environments inferred from the room temperature data are not correct. In contrast, cryogenic temperatures freeze the motion of sodium ions to provide a true picture of the local environment where the sodium ions sit when they're not moving around.

"As the material is cooled, twenty-four neighboring sodium ions are each forced to choose one of two possible sites, and their lowest-energy preferred 'ordering' pattern can be resolved," Khalifah said.

A preliminary analysis of the powder x-ray diffraction data by Bianchini indicated that the pattern of ordering is very complex. For materials with such complex orderings, it is not typically possible to solve their three-dimensional atomic structure using powder diffraction data.

"Powder diffraction data gets flattened to one dimension, so a lot of information is lost," Khalifah said.

But materials made of many different types of elements, as is the case for NVPF--which is built from atoms of sodium, vanadium, phosphorus, fluorine, and oxygen with an overall chemical formula of Na3V2(PO4)2F3--are too hard to grow into larger crystals for more conventional 3-D x-ray crystallography.

So, the Brookhaven group collaborated with John Dagdelen and other researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop a new "genomic" approach that can solve very complex structures using only powder diffraction data. The collaborative work was carried out within the Materials Project, a DOE-funded research team led by Kristin Persson at LBNL that is developing innovative computational approaches for accelerating the discovery of novel functional materials.

"Instead of using the powder diffraction data to directly solve the structure, we took an alternate approach," Khalifah said. "We asked, 'what are all the plausible arrangements of sodium ions in the structure,' and then we tested each of those in an automated fashion to compare it with the experimental data to figure out what the structure was."

The NVPF structure is one of the most complex ever solved for a material using only powder diffraction data.

"We couldn't have done this science without modern computational tools--the enumeration methods used to generate the chemically plausible structures and the sophisticated automated scripts for refining those structures that utilized the pymatgen (Python Materials Genomics) software library," Khalifah said.

Zeroing in on the structure

Based on the available structural knowledge for NVPF and on a set of basic chemical rules for bonding, there are more than half a million plausible ordering patterns for the sodium atoms in NVPF. Even after applying computational algorithms to identify equivalent structures generated through different ordering choices, nearly 3,000 unique possible orderings remained.

"These 3,000 trial structures are more than can reasonably be tested by hand, but their correctness could be evaluated by a single computer working non-stop for about two days," Khalifah said.

The correctness of each trial structure was evaluated using software to predict what its powder x-ray diffraction pattern would look like, and then comparing the calculated results to the experimentally measured diffraction data, work done by Stony Brook Ph.D. student Gerard Mattei. If the difference between the predicted and observed diffraction patterns is relatively small, the software can optimize any trial structure by tweaking the positions of its constituent atoms to improve the agreement between the calculated and observed patterns.

But even after such tweaking, almost 2,500 of the optimized structures could be used to fit the experimental diffraction data well.

"We weren't expecting to get so many good fits," Khalifah said. "So, we had a second challenge of determining which one of those many possible structures was correct by looking at which one had the correct symmetry."

Crystallographic symmetry provides the rules that constrain how atoms can be arranged in a material, so fully understanding the symmetry of a structure is necessary to correctly describe it, Khalifah noted.

The team had generated each of the trial structures with a specific set of symmetry constraints. And although it was very challenging to determine the true symmetry of any one trial structure after its optimization, a comparison of all 2,500 optimized structures allowed the researchers to determine which symmetry elements were needed to correctly describe the true structure of NVPF.

The ability to compare results across many trials allows a higher degree of confidence in the final solution and is an additional advantage that the novel method used in this work has over traditional approaches. Furthermore, theoretical calculations done by LBNL researchers John Dagdelen and Alex Ganose indicated that the final solution is stable against distortions, confirming the validity of this result.

The solved structure revealed that there is much greater diversity in the bonding of sodium atoms than had been previously recognized.

"From the room temperature data, it misleadingly appeared that all sodium atoms were bonded to either six or seven neighboring atoms," Khalifah said. "In contrast, the low temperature data clearly indicated that some sodium atoms have as few as four neighbors. One result of this is that the sodium atoms with fewer neighbors are much less locked into place and are thus expected to have an easier time moving throughout the structure--a property that is essential for battery function."

The authors believe this novel approach should be broadly applicable for solving the complex structures that commonly occur in battery materials when ions are removed during charging. This is especially relevant in materials used in sodium- and potassium-ion batteries, which are being developed as lower-cost and more-abundant alternatives to lithium-ion battery materials. This research thus should play an important role in unlocking the potential of earth-abundant materials that can be used to scale up energy storage capabilities to meet societal needs such as grid-scale storage.

This research was funded by the DOE Office of Science.

Southern small-leaved oak forests are the habitats with a higher level of spider endemism in the Iberian Peninsula, according to an article published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. The study analyses the factors that affect biodiversity patterns of spider communities in the national park network of Spain, and explains the role of the environmental factors in the distribution of the biodiversity of this faunistic group in the peninsular territory.

The study is led by Professor Miquel Arnedo, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, and it counts on the participation of the experts Luis Carlos Crespo, Marc Domènec and Carles Ribera (UB-IRBio), Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte and Pedro Cardoso, from the University of the Azores (Portugal), and Jordi Moya-Laraño, from the Experimental Station of Arid Zones in Almeria (EEZA-CSIC).

Iberian spiders: how are they distributed throughout the peninsular territory?

There are many doubts on the biology and ecology of Iberian spider communities, a group with a fundamental role in natural ecosystems. There might be more than 1,400 species in the peninsular territory, which has a great climate diversity and natural habitat. In some cases, there are species with a limited distribution -regional or local endemism- and this would explain the observed changes among the communities of different areas.

The new study focuses on the study of spider communities in the national parks of Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici, Ordesa y Monte Perdido, Picos de Europa, Monfragüe, Cabañeros and Sierra Nevada. In particular, they studied the spider communities -a total of 20,552 specimens from 375 species- in different types of oak trees (Quercus spp), widely distributed around the peninsula, such as those that include the sessile oak (Quercus petraea), the Valencian oak (Quercus faginea) and the Pyrinean oak (Quercus pyrenaica).

"The results reveal that Valencian oak forests (Q. faginea) are those with a higher number of spider species, probably due to the combined effects of the physical structure of the habitat and climate conditions", notes Professor Miquel Arnedo, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences.

The study also confirms the previous studies that point to a decrease of species in southern forest ecosystems, which is caused by the reduction of connectivity of ecosystems with the rest of the continent.

"However, we suggest that these changes in the number of species could be the result of complex interactions between the geographical position, habitat and local climate. This would make it possible, for instance, for us to find spider communities in the Cabañeros National Park (Castilla - La Mancha) with a higher number of species than in Picos de Europa (Asturias)", notes Arnedo.

Climate, geography and endemism of Iberian spiders

Another relevant contribution of the study is the identification of a pattern that relates the increase of the level of endemism in the spider communities with the rise of temperatures and decrease of annual precipitation, which are typical from the Mediterranean climate.

"Spider communities in Mediterranean areas seem to be more endemic -when we consider distributions of all species in each community- and have a higher number of exclusively Iberian species", notes the expert Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte, first signatory of the article. Other groups of spiders show a higher level of endemism depending on certain ecological features, according to the authors.

"In this case, we saw that those spiders that spread more frequently through the air using silk, known as ballooning, show a more extensive geographical distribution and therefore, are less endemic. For instance, this would be the case of some species from the Lindyphiidae family".

Spiders, indicators of environmental quality

Despite the ecological value of spiders, these arthropods have been rarely used as bioindicators. This study sheds light in this field of ecology studies, and suggests that the presence and abundance of spider families with high levels of endemism -for instance, Oonopidae, Dysderidae, Zodariidae and Sparassidae families- could be used by researchers as indicators of the singularities and ecological qualities of some natural areas.

"In the studied communities, these families are those with a higher level of endemism. If we consider the difficulty when identifying certain Iberian species and the likelihood to find undescribed species, the option of using spider families -instead of species- could ease the use of spiders as ecological and conservation indicators", authors say.

Improving biodiversity conservation strategies

The lack of many experts able to identify and describe spider species and the great diversity of this group are factors that make it difficult for researchers to study the ecology of Iberian spider communities, and by extension, many others. Expanding the knowledge on the biodiversity of the peninsular spider fauna requires the promotion of monitoring programs and a regular control of temporary changes in the communities.

In this context, the published article in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation brings new information to improve the conservation and management of national parks and protected areas in general. It reveals new data on the number and composition of species in the communities in the national parks, information that enables having a reference for future monitoring plans. Also, it identifies the most relevant groups depending on their endemic levels (that is, those with potentially high values for conservation).

"Our study also states that different habitats within the same area or park could have a differential value regarding conservation and scientific interest, and consequently, they could be an object of several levels of prioritization in conservation actions", conclude the researchers.

Researchers from the University of Ottawa and The Ottawa Hospital have been awarded $1,050,000 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support facilities for manufacturing innovative treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.

The funding will support new equipment and infrastructure at The Ottawa Hospital's Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre (BMC), which has been successfully manufacturing therapies using cells, genes and viruses for clinical trials in Canada and abroad for more than 10 years.

The funding will enhance the BMC's ability to support projects related to COVID-19, including:

A clinical trial of a cell-based therapy for severely ill COVID-19 patients. It is hoped that this experimental therapy may be able to dampen an overactive immune response and help repair lung damage patients with severe COVID-19 infections;

Antibody-based treatments for high-risk individuals who have been exposed to COVID-19;

Vaccines for COVID-19, including a home-grown vaccine inspired by research on cancer-fighting viruses.

"Our Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre has already played a crucial role in launching more than 15 world-first clinical trials," said Dr. Duncan Stewart, Executive Vide-President of Research at The Ottawa Hospital and a professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

"Today's funding will now allow us to harness this success to help in the global fight against COVID-19."

The funding was announced by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, as part of a national announcement of more than $28 million for infrastructure related to COVID-19 research.

BUFFALO, N.Y - The transition to remote learning coupled with an unequal distribution of second-shift responsibilities has placed teachers who are also mothers under immense stress, according to new University at Buffalo research.

The study explored the experiences and challenges facing teacher-mothers who perform the roles of educator in the classroom and parent at home, while also typically carrying out more household labor than their partners.

These responsibilities are exacerbated by technology that blurs the line between work and home, inadequate parental leave policies and low teacher pay, says study co-author Julie Gorlewski, PhD, chair of the Department of Learning and Instruction in the UB Graduate School of Education.

"Balancing a teaching career and motherhood seems to be becoming more difficult," Gorlewski says. "Both roles carry an expectation of selfless nurturing and can result in physical and emotional exhaustion.

"The implications of this work are particularly relevant today, where the roles of motherhood and teacher are intensified by the shift to online learning as a result of the pandemic. Through a greater understanding of the lived experiences of teacher-mothers, this study can inform policy and practice to better support an integral segment of the education workforce."

The research was published in late October in Educational Studies.

Additional investigators include Mary A. Hermann, PhD, JD, first author and associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University; Robyn Walsh, PhD, assistant professor at Capital University; Lindsay Kozachuk, PhD, assistant professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University; UB Graduate School of Education doctoral candidate Elizabeth Ciminelli; and Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education doctoral candidates Dana Brookover and Michael Deitz.

Fatigue from rising expectations

The researchers surveyed 12 teacher-mothers across the nation working in elementary, middle and high school settings. During the interviews, several themes emerged around work-life balance, problematic cultural norms and financial difficulties.

The participants shared the benefits of both roles, including how being a mother allowed them to better relate to the parents of their students, and how their work as a teacher provided them with greater awareness of their children's development. However, they also experienced frequent exhaustion from perpetual caregiving, says Gorlewski.

Technology and the transition to remote learning have raised expectations for teachers, who are expected to maintain contact with parents throughout the day and with their students at all hours. These demands build on the additional work teachers perform after school hours on grading and lesson planning.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents became responsible for homeschooling their children after many schools shuttered. For teachers who have children, this responsibility in the household often fell on them as the parent better trained to provide instruction, says Gorlewski.

Societal norms compound these pressures for mothers, who face elevated expectations at home, says Gorlewski. The research found that teacher-mothers reported performing more second-shift activities (household labor such as cooking, cleaning and child care) than their partners. Even when partners contributed more equally toward household labor, mothers typically engaged in significantly more mental labor planning and managing tasks, she says.

Homemaking standards are also magnified by portrayals of the perfect home on social media, and women are more likely to face judgement if their households do not match these heightened expectations, says Gorlewski.

Opportunity in a time of crisis

The researchers advocate for numerous policy changes to reduce the challenges faced by teacher-mothers, including improved parental leave and teacher pay.

Most participants reported that they had to use sick and personal days to earn pay while they were on maternity leave, leaving them with little to no time off after their child's birth to attend follow-up doctor's appointments. Teachers in their early career are particularly disadvantaged, says Gorlewski, as they have less accrued time off.

Due to the small amount of paid maternity leave and pressure to breastfeed from doctors, nurses and friends, some teacher-mothers reported having to pump at work between classes or while preparing the next day's lesson.

In addition to the second shift, many teacher-mothers also work a second job. One in every six teachers work a second job, and teachers are three times more likely than other professions to have multiple jobs, says Gorlewski.

The researchers encourage schools to enact mentoring programs for new mothers as well, as many participants appreciated being able to ask colleagues for advice on parenting and managing multiple roles.

The pandemic presents the opportunity for the nation to rethink the norms in education and family systems, and for teacher-mothers to renegotiate policies in the classroom and expectations in the household, says Gorlewski.

She calls on partners to take equal responsibility for second-shift labor, and suggests teacher-mothers abandon perfectionistic standards of child care and household maintenance on social media in favor of portrayals that show the messiness of authentic parenthood.

"This unanticipated and challenging global event has the potential to reveal some of the invisible work of mothers and educators," says Gorlewski. "Advocates can use these results to promote better norms and policies to support teachers and all working mothers."

Future research will compare the experiences of teacher-mothers with teacher-fathers and teachers who are not parents.

Maintaining forest cover is an important natural climate solution, but new research shows that too often, communities lose out when local forest management is formalised.

The new study published today in Nature Sustainability, led by Dr Johan Oldepkop at The University of Manchester and Reem Hajjar at Oregon State University, is based on 643 case studies of community forest management (CFM) in 51 different countries, from 267 peer-reviewed studies.

It provides the most comprehensive global analysis of CFM to date and shows that whilst CFM policies often have positive environmental and economic impacts, CFM often results in weakened rights and less access to forests for local populations.

Around the world, 1.6 billion people live within 5km (3 miles) forest, with 71% located in low or middle income countries.

"Improving forests can be a vital way to both tackle climate change and address poverty - however, our study shows that too often local communities lose out when the management of community forests is formalised by governments," said Dr. Oldekop. "With the clock ticking on catastrophic climate change, the world needs to learn from successes in countries like Nepal, where we saw some cases with simultaneous economic, environmental, and resource rights outcomes."

Previous research by Dr. Oldekop demonstrated that community-forest management in Nepal led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3% relative reduction in poverty.

Around the globe, forests regulate climate, sequester carbon, are home to a large proportion of the worlds plants and animals and contribute substantially to the livelihoods of people living in or near them.

"Around 14% of forests worldwide and 28% of forests in low-middle-income countries are formally owned or managed by Indigenous people and local communities," said Reem Hajjar. "Case studies that show positive outcomes abound. But gaining a better understanding of the trade-offs - this outcome got better but at the expense of other outcomes getting worse - is critical for understanding forest governance systems' potential for addressing multiple sustainability objectives at the same time".

The new study analysed 643 examples of CFM in Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific, to gain a better understanding of the social, economic and environmental trade-offs which are occurring and what changes can help ensure goals across the spectrum are successful.

Of the 524 cases that tracked the environmental condition of a forest following a formalised CFM initiative, 56% cited improvement but for 32% it decreased.

Of the 316 cases that reported on livelihoods, 68% found an increase in income, 36% showed no change and 6.3% reported a fall.

Among the 249 cases reporting on resource access rights, 34% indicated an increase compared to 54% that showed a decrease.

However, clear trade-offs were visible in cases which assessed joint outcomes. Of the 122 studies which looked at all three CFM goals, just 18% reported positive outcomes across the three goals.

"Community Forest Management can improve both forests and the lives of the people near them. While it is heartening to see improving incomes in 68% of cases, reduced environmental impacts in 56% and gains in resource rights in 34% of cases, the overall results are significantly less transformative than they could be. Governments need to do more to ensure it's a triple win for people and the environment, rather than a series of trade-offs between them," added Dr Oldekop.

New research examines the dynamics between men's health literacy, their discussions with their doctors, and their decisions on whether to get tested for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a potential marker of prostate cancer. The findings are published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society (ACS).

Controversy exists over PSA testing for prostate cancer because it may lead to overdiagnosis and subsequent over-treatment. In 2012, guidelines recommended against PSA screening for all men, but the most recent guidelines from 2017 state that for men between the ages of 55 to 69 years, physicians and patients should have meaningful discussions concerning PSA screening's advantages and disadvantages so as to make choices based on shared decision-making.

This approach depends on both physicians' ability to clearly and accurately explain relatively complex clinical concepts and engage patients in the process, as well as on patients' ability to understand the information provided. In this respect, health literacy, or the degree to which individuals have the capacity to understand health information and services to make appropriate health decisions, is important.

To better understand the effect of health literacy and shared decision-making on patients' likelihood of undergoing PSA screening, investigators examined 2016 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual health survey of a random sample of U.S. adults. The analysis included information representing more than 12 million men aged 50 years or older who reported their last year's PSA screening status.

Higher health literacy was associated with higher rates of PSA screening, a surprising result given the 2012 guidelines' recommendation against screening. This finding suggests that men with the highest health literacy may request to undergo PSA testing despite knowledge of the recommendations, or that physicians may be more likely to offer PSA screening to patients with higher health literacy compared with other patients.

The researchers also identified a dynamic interplay between health literacy and shared decision-making. Specifically, in the presence of shared decision-making, patients with higher health literacy were less likely to undergo PSA screening compared with patients with low health literacy.

"This finding should inform the creation and promulgation of shared decision-making guidelines and interventions, specifically when considering patients with low health literacy," said lead author David-Dan Nguyen, MPH, a research fellow at the Center for Surgery and Public Health (a joint initiative of the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), under the supervision of Dr. Jesse Sammon, DO, an assistant professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. Nguyen noted that physicians may also need guidance in assessing patients' health literacy. "Providers consistently overestimated patients' health literacy, and this poor accuracy may diminish the providers' ability to successfully personalize communication with patients and engage them in shared decision-making, especially for patients with the lowest levels of health literacy," he said.

An accompanying editorial notes that the study provides important information on the relationship between health literacy, shared decision-making, and PSA screening, and notes the findings offer less insight for the character of this dynamic in the general population. "Further prospective investigation into how best to educate and empower vulnerable populations with lower health literacy to make informed decisions is required in order to design effective interventions to improve PSA screening in populations at greatest risk," the authors wrote.

The use of antipsychotics in young children is declining but doctors continue to prescribe these medications off-label for conditions not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and without the recommended psychiatric consultation, a Rutgers study found.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, looked at 301,311 antipsychotic prescriptions filled by privately insured children ages 2 to 7 in the United States from 2007 to 2017.

While results are encouraging that antipsychotic prescribing declined in recent years, the researchers noted that they continued to be prescribed for conditions lacking safety and effectiveness data such as conduct disorder, ADHD, anxiety and depression.

"We lack information on the effectiveness and safety of antipsychotics for treating those conditions in young children," said lead author Greta Bushnell, a member of the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Public Health. "Guidelines recommend that psychosocial services are used before antipsychotic treatment and that children are carefully assessed before initiating antipsychotics. However, fewer than half of the children receiving antipsychotic treatment in our study had a visit with a psychiatrist or a psychotherapy claim."

Pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) -- characterized by delays in the development of socialization and communication skills -- accounted for the most antipsychotic prescribing in recent years.

"While there is some evidence supporting the use of antipsychotics in young children with PDD or intellectual disabilities, antipsychotics are not FDA approved for conduct disorders or ADHD," said Bushnell. "Despite continued prescribing, there is limited evidence for the efficacy of antipsychotics for conduct or disruptive behavior disorders in very young children and the long-term outcomes remain poorly understood."

In addition, the study found that antipsychotics were more often prescribed to boys, especially between ages 6 and 7, and that most of the children receiving antipsychotics also filled a prescription for another class of psychotropic medications, such as stimulants, clonidine or guanfacine for managing ADHD symptoms, and antidepressants.

Children who take antipsychotic medication are at risk of weight gain, sedation, diabetes, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and unexpected death. In very young children, antipsychotics might cause developmental and other long-term adverse effects. "The low rate of use of safer first-line psychosocial treatments, such as parent-child interaction therapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy, potentially puts children at unnecessary risks associated with antipsychotic treatment," Bushnell said.