Earth

Information from electron microscope images and protein databases has been used to develop a detailed 3D model of SARS-CoV-2, which can be readily updated as new data becomes available. The modeling tool has potential for visualizing components in other biological organisms, ranging from 10 to 100 nanometers in size.

"Our 3D model demonstrates the current state-of-the-art structure of SARS-CoV-2 at the atomistic level and reveals details of the virus that were previously impossible to see, like how we think nucleocapsid proteins form a rope-like structure inside it," says KAUST research scientist Ond?ej Strnad. "The approach we used to develop the model could steer biological research into new, promising directions for fighting the spread of COVID-19, as it could help scientists rapidly incorporate newly discovered information into the model and thus provide an up-to-date structure of the virus," he says.

The modeling system is intuitive and easy to use. It takes information from readily discernible structures in a small number of electron microscope images of an organism. For SARS-CoV-2, this involved information on the shape and size of the virus's membrane and on the protein structures attached to it.

Scientists can then incorporate information into the model about other proteins within the cell from existing databases. This included information on SARS-CoV-2's single RNA strand and the nucleocapsid proteins protecting it. Finally, a set of rules is created that defines how each of the components is oriented and interacts with the others. "The system uses the provided information to predict the overall shape of the cell and generate a 3D model," explains Strnad.

The team used their approach to develop a 3D representation of SARS-CoV-2. "Our model shows the complete viral ultrastructure as we know it to date, and not just some arbitrarily placed, incomplete spike proteins on a lipid membrane," explains KAUST computer science Ph.D. student Ngan Nguyen. "Other available models also don't show the interior of the virus, as its details are not currently known. Scripps Research Institute, U.S., provided us with the most likely hypothesis for the structure's interior based on current data. If this hypothesis is proven wrong, then we can easily update the model," she explains.

The team hopes their SARS-CoV-2 model will help reveal aspects about the virus and its structure that could hasten drug discovery for treating COVID-19. They also hope scientists from different biological fields will share information and exchange rules relating to protein conformations to use the modeling system for their research.

Further improvements to the system are needed. The team plans to design a user-friendly graphical user interface to make it easy to use. They would also like to make it applicable within a virtual reality environment.

We perceive the world relative to our own body from a self-centered perspective. Yet our brain is able to transform this information into a world-centered, cognitive map of the environment, guiding us independent of where we look or the direction we face. The mechanism behind this has remained unsolved for decades. Now scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and Goethe University Frankfurt discover a neural circuit in the rodent brain that may play a key role in translating both perspectives and help the animal to detect boundaries to avoid collision.

"Animals use landmarks in the environment as a reference point to identify the self's position and navigate their surroundings. In rodents, this ability is supported by very specialized types of neurons, including place cells and grid cells, that fire only when the animal is at a precise location in the environment, even in an open arena", explains Hiroshi Ito, head of the Memory and Navigation Circuits Research Group and the senior author of the new study.

The retrosplenial cortex is an important brain area for processing landmark information. However, the exact function of individual neurons in this brain region is still unknown. "By recording from the retrosplenial cortex in the rat, we discovered a new type of neuron that signals the location of the room's boundaries such as walls from the animal's perspective", says Joeri van Wijngaarden, lead author of the study. "Border cells fire with high precision. In this case, only when the boundary is at a particular distance and direction away from the animal". But how do border cells know when to be active? Do they use direct sensory cues, such as vision or their whiskers, to detect the walls? To address this question, the researchers manipulated the sensory experience of the animal. "To our big surprise, we saw no difference when the rat explored the maze in complete darkness. The cells kept firing as they did before", says van Wijngaarden.

Interaction between border cells and spatial cells

Inspired by this unexpected finding, the scientists decided to investigate how border cells interact with spatial cells in a connected brain region, the entorhinal cortex, that is crucial for spatial processing and forming an internal map of the environment. "We recorded activity from spatial cells in the entorhinal cortex while silencing border cells in the retrosplenial cortex with a drug", van Wijngaarden explains their approach. "At first, we saw no effect. However, when we switched gears and instead silenced spatial cells in the entorhinal cortex, we suddenly noticed a disruption of border cell activity in the retrosplenial cortex", explains van Wijngaarden. "This was a big surprise as it suggests that border cells capture landmark information without the need to sense it directly. Instead, they rely on spatial information from other brain areas to calculate their position".

"What struck me most though", shares van Wijngaarden, "is that there is a close relationship between the activity of these neurons and the animal's following motion. When the rat approaches a wall to the left, border cells in the right hemisphere are activated, just before the animal turns right. Conversely, border cells in the left hemisphere are active just before left turns, as to avoid collision". "These findings bring in a whole new perspective to the field. They provide the first insight into how the brain's internal map can be used to guide our moves during navigation. Hopefully, this will improve our understanding of how the brain makes sense of the world around us in order to get from one place to the next", concludes Ito.

Mammals, birds and amphibians worldwide have lost on average 18% of their natural habitat range as a result of changes in land use and climate change, a new study has found. In a worst-case scenario this loss could increase to 23% over the next 80 years.

The study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, analysed changes in the geographical range of 16,919 species from 1700 to the present day. The data were also used to predict future changes up to the year 2100 under 16 different climate and socio-economic scenarios.

A diverse abundance of species underpins essential ecosystem functions from pest regulation to carbon storage. Species' vulnerability to extinction is strongly impacted by their geographical range size, and devising effective conservation strategies requires a better understanding of how ranges have changed in the past, and how they will change under alternative future scenarios.

"The habitat size of almost all known birds, mammals and amphibians is shrinking, primarily because of land conversion by humans as we continue to expand our agricultural and urban areas," said Dr Robert Beyer in the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, first author of the report.

Some species are more heavily impacted than others. A worrying 16% of species have lost over half their estimated natural historical range, a figure that could rise to 26% by the end of the century.

Species' geographical ranges were found to have recently shrunk most significantly in tropical areas. Until around 50 years ago, most agricultural development was in Europe and North America. Since then, large areas of land have been converted for agriculture in the tropics: clearance of rainforest for oil palm plantations in South East Asia, and for pasture land in South America, for example.

As humans move their activities deeper into the tropics, the effect on species ranges is becoming disproportionately larger because of a greater species richness in these areas, and because the natural ranges of these species are smaller to begin with.

"The tropics are biodiversity hotspots with lots of small-range species. If one hectare of tropical forest is converted to agricultural land, a lot more species lose larger proportions of their home than in places like Europe," said Beyer.

The results predict that climate change will have an increasing impact on species' geographical ranges. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will alter habitats significantly, for example: other studies have predicted that without climate action, large parts of the Amazon may change from canopy rainforest to a savannah-like mix of woodland and open grassland in the next 100 years.

"Species in the Amazon have adapted to living in a tropical rainforest. If climate change causes this ecosystem to change, many of those species won't be able to survive - or they will at least be pushed into smaller areas of remaining rainforest," said Beyer.

He added: "We found that the higher the carbon emissions, the worse it gets for most species in terms of habitat loss."

The results provide quantitative support for policy measures aiming at limiting the global area of agricultural land - for example by sustainably intensifying food production, encouraging dietary shifts towards eating less meat, and stabilising population growth.

The conversion of natural vegetation to agricultural and urban land, and the transformation of suitable habitat caused by climate change are major causes of the decline in range sizes, and two of the most important threats to global terrestrial biodiversity.

"Whether these past trends in habitat range losses will reverse, continue, or accelerate will depend on future global carbon emissions and societal choices in the coming years and decades," Professor Andrea Manica in the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, who led the study.

He added: "While our study quantifies the drastic consequences for species' ranges if global land use and climate change are left unchecked, they also demonstrate the tremendous potential of timely and concerted policy action for halting - and indeed partially reversing - previous trends in global range contractions. It all depends on what we do next."

A new study has found that a commonly prescribed anti-depressant may halt growth of a type of cancer known as childhood sarcoma, at least in mice and laboratory cell experiments. The findings, from researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas, ignite hope of novel treatment strategies against this disease. The study is published in the journal Cancer Research.

"Although this study was done in mice and we do not yet know how translatable the results are to humans, it gives us hope for repurposing common drugs for young cancer patients desperately requiring better treatment options," says the study's first author, Caitrín Crudden, a former PhD student in the receptor signaling pathology group at the Department of Oncology-Pathology at Karolinska Institutet.

The study examined commonalities between two large groups of cell surface receptors, the so-called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and the receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs). GPCRs are targeted by more than half of all developed drugs to treat conditions such as allergies, asthma, depression, anxiety and hypertension, but have so far not been widely used to treat cancers.

RTKs, on the other hand, are targeted by drugs against cancers, such as breast and colon cancers, due to their implication in a variety of cellular abnormalities. One receptor in the RTK family that plays a key role in many cancers, including childhood sarcoma, is the insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF1R). However, previous attempts to develop anti-cancer drugs against this receptor have failed.

In this study, the researchers scrutinised the IGF1R and found that it shares a signaling module with the GPCRs, meaning it may be possible to affect its function through drugs targeting the GPCRs. This strategy opens new possibilities of repurposing well-tolerated drugs to silence this tumour-driving receptor and thereby halt cancer growth.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers treated childhood (Ewing) sarcoma cells and mouse models with Paroxetine, an anti-depressant drug that impairs a serotonin reuptake receptor that is part of the GPCR-family. They found that this drug significantly decreased the number of IGF1R receptors on the malignant cells and thereby suppressed the growth of the tumour. The researchers also uncovered the molecular mechanism behind this cross-targeting.

"We have developed a novel strategy to control the activity of these tumour-driving receptors by striking the GPCRs," says Leonard Girnita, researcher in the Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet, and principle investigator of the study. "To our knowledge this represents a new paradigm for the entire class of cancer-relevant RTKs and could be used as a starting point for the rational design of specific therapeutics in virtually any pathological conditions. This is especially important considering the huge number of GPCR-targeting medicines already in clinical use and with low toxicity."

Next, the researchers plan to develop their strategy to selectively cross-target multiple RTKs and to verify their findings in a clinical setting.

Leipzig/Jena/Minnesota. Increasing plant diversity enhances the natural control of insect herbivory in grasslands. Species-rich plant communities support natural predators and simultaneously provide less valuable food for herbivores. This was found by a team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), who conducted two analogous experiments in Germany and the USA. Their results were published in Science Advances and show that increasing plant biodiversity could help reduce pesticide inputs in agricultural systems by enhancing natural biological control.

Biodiversity - the biological diversity of all species on Earth, their interactions and the diverse ecosystems they form - is crucial for providing and maintaining ecosystem functions and services in planted and natural grasslands. With an increasing demand to feed the world's growing population by intensifying agriculture, these grasslands are put under pressure, too. Insect herbivores are causing an estimated 18-26% loss in global crop production, which has driven significant growth in the use of environmentally costly pesticides.

To investigate whether and how increasing plant diversity can naturally reduce the impacts of herbivores on plants, an international team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig University (UL) and Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) made use of two long-running grassland biodiversity experiments in Europe and North America: the Jena Experiment in Germany and the Cedar Creek Biodiversity Experiment in Minnesota (USA). Over the course of two years, the scientists collected data from these two analogous experiments, providing deep insight into the food web structure of monocultures and species-rich grasslands. "These two long-term experiments have generated invaluable insight, for both fundamental and applied research, that has brought to light the importance of maintaining biodiversity," said senior author Nico Eisenhauer, professor at UL and head of a research group at iDiv as well as speaker of the Jena Experiment.

Species-rich plant communities less attractive to herbivores

The researchers found that plants in more diverse communities lose significantly less energy to herbivorous insects. In high-diversity mixtures, the feeding rate of herbivores per gram of plant biomass was 44% lower than in monocultures. Thus, for every gram of plant biomass produced, plants lose just under half as much energy to arthropod herbivores when planted in species-rich communities. "That ultimately means that where multiple species are planted together, this will yield more plant biomass per square meter, and each individual plant in diverse mixtures will receive lower damage from herbivores," said first author and iDiv alumnus Andrew Barnes, now senior lecturer at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

In patches with higher plant diversity, arthropod herbivores have lower chances of encountering their preferred plant species - which makes it less likely that they will remain in these high-diversity patches. In addition, previous research had shown lower levels of tissue protein (nitrogen) in plant communities with high species richness, making these plants less nutritious for herbivores.

Predators benefit from increased plant diversity

Although the total biomass of herbivores and predators both increased in species-rich grasslands, predators benefited more strongly from diverse plant communities: Compared to monocultures, they increased notably in both their total biomass and feeding rates. A possible explanation could be that arthropod predators such as spiders, some beetles or wasps benefit significantly from the more complex habitat of high-diversity plant communities, which reduces their risk of being detected and eaten by vertebrate predators such as birds and mammals.

Increasing plant diversity, thus, has several positive side effects: Compared to monocultures, high-diversity plant communities produce more total biomass. In addition, both natural enemies and resource concentration act in concert to constrain the negative effects of herbivores on plant performance. Andrew Barnes said: "In other words, more diverse plant communities pose a double-edged problem for herbivores--that is, more predators and less preferred food--that could help to naturally reduce herbivore impacts."

Plant biodiversity can limit herbivore pest outbreaks

By contrast, pest control that relies heavily on insecticides can lead to detrimental rebounds of herbivore pests as pesticide application may destabilise the communities of natural enemies. "Our experiments show that conserving plant diversity provides multiple benefits for controlling herbivore pests, which could play a key role in reducing inputs of agrochemicals and enhancing plant productivity," said Andrew Barnes. Nico Eisenhauer added: "Ultimately, this study demonstrates that supporting biodiversity can leverage the sustainable management of ecosystems and the benefits to people."

New research published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describes a fossil family that illuminates the origin of perissodactyls - the group of mammals that includes horses, rhinos, and tapirs. It provides insights on the controversial question of where these hoofed animals evolved, concluding that they arose in or near present day India.

With more than 350 new fossils, the 15-year study pieces together a nearly complete picture of the skeletal anatomy of the Cambaytherium - an extinct cousin of perissodactyls that lived on the Indian subcontinent almost 55 million years ago.

Among the findings includes a sheep-sized animal with moderate running ability and features that were intermediate between specialized perissodactyls and their more generalized mammal forerunners. Comparing its bones with many other living and extinct mammals, revealed that Cambaytherium represents an evolutionary stage more primitive than any known perissodactyl, supporting origin for the group in or near India - before they dispersed to other continents when the land connection with Asia formed.

This new landmark article was selected for publication as a part of the prestigious Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir Series, a special yearly publication that provides a more in-depth analysis of the most significant vertebrate fossils.

Cambaytherium, first described in 2005, is the most primitive member of an extinct group that branched off just before the evolution of perissodactyls, providing scientists with unique clues to the ancient origins and evolution of the group.

"The modern orders Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates), Perissodactyla, and Primates appeared abruptly at the beginning of the Eocene around 56 million years ago across the Northern Hemisphere, but their geographic source has remained a mystery," explained Ken Rose, emeritus professor at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study.

Prof. Rose became intrigued by a new hypothesis suggesting that perissodactyls may have evolved in isolation in India. Then India was an island continent drifting northwards, but it later collided with the continent of Asia to form a continuous landmass.

"In 1990, Krause & Maas proposed that these orders might have evolved in India, during its northward drift from Madagascar, dispersing across the northern continents when India collided with Asia."

Armed with this new hypothesis, Rose and colleagues obtained funding from The National Geographic Society to explore India for rare fossil-bearing rocks of the correct age that might provide critical evidence for the origin of perissodactyls and other groups of mammals.

The first trip to Rajasthan in 2001 had little success, "Although we found only a few fish bones on that trip, the following year our Indian colleague, Rajendra Rana, continued exploring lignite mines to the south and came upon Vastan Mine in Gujarat."

This new mine proved much more promising. Rose added: "In 2004 our team was able to return to the mine, where our Belgian collaborator Thierry Smith found the first mammal fossils, including Cambaytherium."

Encouraged, the team returned to the mines and collected fossilized bones of Cambaytherium and many other vertebrates, despite challenging conditions.

"The heat, the constant noise and coal dust in the lignite mines were tough--basically trying to work hundreds of feet down near the bottom of open-pit lignite mines that are being actively mined 24/7," he said.

Through the cumulation of many years of challenging fieldwork, the team can finally shed light on a mammal mystery. Despite the abundance of perissodactyls in the Northern Hemisphere, Cambaytherium suggests that the group likely evolved in isolation in or near India during the Paleocene (66-56 million years ago), before dispersing to other continents when the land connection with Asia formed.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon where an electric circuit loses its resistance and becomes extremely efficient under certain conditions. There are different ways in which this can happen which were thought to be incompatible. For the first time researchers discover a bridge between two of these methods to achieve superconductivity. This new knowledge could lead to a more general understanding of the phenomena, and one day to applications.

If you're like most people, there are three states of matter in your everyday life: solid, liquid and gas. You might be familiar with a fourth state of matter called plasma, which is like a gas that got so hot all its constituent atoms came apart, leaving behind a super hot mess of subatomic particles. But did you know about a so-called fifth state of matter at the complete opposite end of the thermometer? It's known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).

"A BEC is a unique state of matter as it is not made from particles, but rather waves," said Associate Professor Kozo Okazaki from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo. "As they cool down to near absolute zero, the atoms of certain materials become smeared out over space. This smearing increases until the atoms -- now more like waves than particles -- overlap, becoming indistinguishable from one another. The resulting matter behaves like it's one single entity with new properties the preceding solid, liquid or gas states lacked, such as superconduction. Until recently superconducting BECs were purely theoretical, but we have now demonstrated this in the lab with a novel material based on iron and selenium (a nonmetallic element)."

This is the first time a BEC has been experimentally verified to work as a superconductor; however, other manifestations of matter, or regimes, can also give rise to superconduction. The Bardeen-Cooper-Shrieffer (BCS) regime is an arrangement of matter such that when cooled to near absolute zero, the constituent atoms slow down and line up, which allows electrons to pass through more easily. This effectively brings the electrical resistance of such materials to zero. Both BCS and BEC require freezing-cold conditions and both involve atoms slowing down. But these regimes are otherwise quite different. For a long time, researchers have believed that a more general understanding of superconduction could be reached if these regimes could be found to overlap in some way.

"Demonstrating the superconductivity of BECs was a means to an end; we were really hoping to explore the overlap between BECs and BCSs," said Okazaki. "It was extremely challenging but our unique apparatus and method of observation has verified it -- there is a smooth transition between these regimes. And this hints at a more general underlying theory behind superconduction. It is an exciting time to be working in this field."

Okazaki and his team used the method of ultralow-temperature and high-energy resolution laser-based photoemission spectroscopy to observe the way electrons behaved during a material's transition from BCS to BEC. Electrons behave differently in the two regimes and the change between them helps fill some gaps in the bigger picture of superconduction.

Superconduction is not just a laboratory curiosity though; superconducting devices such as electromagnets are used in applications already, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, being one such example. However, as explained above, these require ultracold temperatures which prohibit the development of superconducting devices we might expect to see every day. So it's no surprise there is great interest in finding ways to form superconductors at higher temperatures, perhaps one day even room temperature.

"With conclusive evidence of superconducting BECs, I think it will prompt other researchers to explore superconduction at higher and higher temperatures," said Okazaki. "It may sound like science fiction for now, but if superconduction can occur near room temperature, our ability to produce energy would greatly increase, and our energy needs would decrease."

Stem and progenitor cells exhibit diversity in early brain development that likely contributes to later neural complexity in the adult cerebral cortex, this according to a new study published Nov. 6 in Science Advances. Researchers from the Center for Neuroscience Research (CNR) at Children's National Hospital say this research expands on existing ideas about brain development, and could significantly impact the clinical care of neurodevelopment diseases in the future. the study was done in collaboration with a research team at Yale University led by Nenad Sestan, M.D Ph.D.

"Our study provides a new glimpse into the landscape of the developing brain. What we are seeing are new complex families of cells very early in development," says Tarik Haydar, Ph.D., director of CNR at Children's National, who led this study. "Understanding the role of these cells in forming the cerebral cortex is now possible in a way that wasn't possible before."

The cerebral cortex emerges early in development and is the seat of higher-order cognition, social behavior and motor control. While the rich neural diversity of the cerebral cortex and the brain in general is well-documented, how this variation arises is relatively poorly understood.

"We've shown in our previous work that neurons generated from different classes of cortical stem and progenitor cells have different functional properties," says William Tyler, Ph.D., CNR research faculty member and co-first author of the study. "Part of the reason for doing this study was to go back and try to classify all the different progenitors that exist so that eventually we can figure out how each contributes to the diversity of neurons in the adult brain."

Using a preclinical model, the researchers were able to identify numerous groups of cortical stem and precursor cells with distinct gene expression profiles. The team also found that these cells showed early signs of lineage diversification likely driven by transcriptional priming, a process by which a mother cell produces RNA for the sole purpose of passing it on to its daughter cells for later protein production.

Using novel trajectory reconstruction methods, the team observed distinct developmental streams linking precursor cell types to particular excitatory neurons. After comparing the dataset of the preclinical model to a human cell database, notable similarities were found, such as the surprising cross-species presence of basal radial glial cells (bRGCs), an important type of progenitor cell previously thought to be found mainly in the primate brain.

"At a very high level, the study is important because we are directly testing a fundamental theory of brain development," says Zhen Li, Ph.D., CNR research postdoctoral fellow and co-first author of the study. The results add support to the protomap theory, which posits that early stem and progenitor diversity paves the way for later neuronal diversity and cortical complexity. Furthermore the results also hold exciting translational potential.

"There is evidence showing that neurodevelopmental diseases affect different populations of the neural stem cells differently," says Dr. Li. "If we can have a better understanding of the complexity of these neural stem cells there is huge implication of disease prevention and treatment in the future."

"If we can understand how this early landscape is affected in disorders, we can predict the resulting changes to the cortical architecture and then very narrowly define ways that groups of cells behave in these disorders," adds Dr. Haydar. "If we can understand how the cortex normally achieves its complex architecture, then we have key entry points into improving the clinical coruse of a given disorder and improving quality of life."

Future topics the researchers hope to study include the effects of developmental changes on brain function, the origin and operational importance of bRGCs, and the activity, connections and cognitive features enabled by different families of neurons.

An international team of researchers led by the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (UMR 5031, CNRS -University of Bordeaux) has discovered a novel way to design magnets with outstanding physical properties, which could make them complementary to, or even competitive with traditional inorganic magnets, which are widely used in everyday appliances.

Magnets are an integral part of our everyday lives and are found in many medical and electronic devices, including household appliances, electric motors, and computers. The demand for new magnetic materials has significantly increased in recent years. Many of such materials are composed of metallic elements or rare earth metals that can be used at room temperature. In 2019, the global market for these inorganic magnets was worth US$ 19.5 billion, and is expected to reach US$ 27.5 billion by 2025.

However, inorganic magnets can be expensive to fabricate and access to their constituent elements is often limited.

For decades, chemists have been trying to fabricate high-performance magnets at low energy and financial cost using molecular units of abundant metal ions and inexpensive organic ligands. So far, very few molecule-based magnets operating at room temperature have been reported, and the few known examples cannot store information.

New magnets have possible real-world applications

An international team of researchers led by CNRS researcher Rodolphe Clérac at the University of Bordeaux, has found a new chemical strategy to design magnets based coordination networks composed of an organic radical (a molecule with an unpaired electron, thus carries spin) and a paramagnetic (spin-carrying) metal ion to generate a very strong magnetic interaction.

These new magnets have many desirable physical properties, including high operating temperature (up to 242 °C), large coercivity (i.e. the ability to store information) and low density.

The new lightweight magnets with densities around 1.2 g cm-3 vs. more than 5 g cm-3 for traditional inorganic magnets exhibit large room temperature coercivity up to 7500 Oe (2 orders of magnitude higher than previously reported for molecule-based systems) and high operating temperatures that exceed the current record for coordination networks by more than 100 °C.

In addition to the outstanding physical properties, the process of synthesizing these magnets is relatively straightforward, and may be easily applied to many metal-organic materials for conversion to metal-organic magnets.

Despite the relative ease of preparing the new magnets, they are very air-sensitive and poorly crystalline, yet the researchers were able to overcome these obstacles to fully characterize these magnets. The electronic and magnetic properties of these magnets were characterized in an element-selective manner through several international collaboration. While the BM01 and ID12 beamlines at the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) were key to understanding these materials with regards to their structure and magnetic properties, however, recent Academy of Finland research fellow Aaron Mailman contributed to the analytical and spectroscopic characterization of these magnets.

''The synthetic strategy used in this work should be widely applicable to related systems and while these results represent new benchmarks for coercivity and critical temperature, in low density, lightweight metal-organic magnets, I expect future results will lead to further improvements and real-world technology applications'' says Aaron Mailman.

Rodolphe Clérac says ''To be honest, I hadn't considered applications of my research before this work, as my team and I do fundamental science, but it is now clear to me that we can potentially use these materials in magnetoelectronic, magnetic sensors and recording technologies, especially when the weight is an issue, for example, in smartphones or satellites", he concludes.

In the quest to image exceedingly small structures and phenomenon with higher precision, scientists have been pushing the limits of optical microscope resolution, but these advances often come with increased complication and cost.

Now, researchers in Japan have shown that a glass surface embedded with self-assembled gold nanoparticles can improve resolution with little added cost even using a conventional widefield microscope, facilitating high-resolution fluorescence microscopy capable of high-speed imaging of living cells.

Because optical microscopes magnify light to obtain detailed images of a structure, the size of objects that can be distinguished has long been limited by diffraction--a property of light that causes it to spread when passing through an opening.

Researchers have been developing techniques to overcome these limits with highly advanced optical systems, but many of them depend on the use of strong lasers, which can damage or even kill living cells, and scanning of the sample or processing of multiple images, which inhibits real-time imaging.

"Recent techniques can produce stunning images, but many of them require highly specialized equipment and are incapable of observing the movement of living cells," says Kaoru Tamada, distinguished professor at Kyushu University's Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering.

Imaging cells using real-time fluorescence microscopy methods, Tamada and her group found that they could improve resolution under a conventional widefield microscope to near the diffraction limit just by changing the surface under the cells.

In fluorescence microscopy, cell structures of interest are tagged with molecules that absorb energy from incoming light and, through the process of fluorescence, re-emit it as light of a different color, which is collected to form the image.

Though cells are usually imaged on plain glass, Tamada's group coated the glass surface with a self-assembled layer of gold nanoparticles covered with a thin layer of silicon dioxide, creating a so-called metasurface with special optical properties.

Only 12 nm in diameter, the organized metal nanoparticles exhibit a phenomenon known as localized surface plasmon resonance, which allows the metasurface to collect energy from nearby light-emitting molecules for highly efficient re-emission, thereby producing enhanced emission confined to the 10-nm thick nanoparticle surface.

"By introducing the nanoparticles, we have effectively created a light-emitting plane that is only several nanometers thick," explains Tamada. "Because the light of interest is emitted from such a thin layer, we can better focus on it."

Additional benefits arise from energy transfer to the metasurface being fast, further localizing emission points by reducing diffusion, and the metasurface's high refractive index, which helps to improve resolution according to Abbe's diffraction limit.

Using the metasurface, the researchers imaged in real-time mouse cells known as 3T3 fibroblasts that were genetically engineered to produce a protein called paxillin that is modified to emit green light when excited. Paxillin plays a key role in creating focal adhesions--points where molecules in the cell membrane interact with the outside world.

Illuminating the entire sample with laser light perpendicular to the surface, the researchers were able to image changes in paxillin near the cell membrane with a higher resolution using the metasurface instead of glass.

Tilting the illumination light to achieve total internal reflection, the researchers could obtain images with even higher contrast because most of the illumination light is reflected off the surface with only a small amount reaching the cell side, thereby reducing stray emission produced by illumination penetrating deep into the cell.

Analysis of images recorded every 500 milliseconds with a super-resolution digital camera revealed clear differences in intensity over spots covering only a few pixels, indicating the resolution was about 200 nm--close to the diffraction limit.

Cells could also be imaged longer on the metasurface because the emission was enhanced despite a lower input energy, thereby reducing cell damage over time.

"Metasurfaces are a promising option for improving resolution for researchers around the world using conventional optical microscopes that they already have," comments Tamada.

In addition to continuing to improve the surfaces for use with conventional microscopes, the researchers are also exploring the advantages they can have for more sophisticated microscope systems.

Long neck, small head and a live weight of several tons - with this description you could have tracked down the Plateosaurus in Central Europe about 220 million years ago. Paleontologists at the University of Bonn (Germany) have now described for the first time an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile Plateosaurus and discovered that it looked very similar to its parents even at a young age. The fact that Plateosaurus showed a largely fully developed morphology at an early age could have important implications for how the young animals lived and moved around. The young Plateosaurus, nicknamed "Fabian", was discovered in 2015 at the Frick fossil site in Switzerland and is exhibited in the local dinosaur museum. The study was published in the journal "Acta Palaeontologica Polonica".

In order to study the appearance of dinosaurs more closely, researchers today rely on a large number of skeletons in so-called bone beds, which are places where the animals sank into the mud in large numbers during their lifetime. However, juvenile animals had hardly been found in these until now. Researchers described fossils of still juvenile plateosaurs for the first time just a few years ago, but these were already almost as large as the adults. One possible reason: "The smaller individuals probably did not sink into the mud quite as easily and are therefore underrepresented at the bone beds," suspects study leader Prof. Martin Sander of the University of Bonn.

He and his team used comparative anatomy to examine the new skeleton, which was immediately remarkable because of its small size. "Based on the length of the vertebrae, we estimate the total length of the individual to be about 7.5 feet (2.3 meters), with a weight of about 90 to 130 lbs. (40 to 60 kilograms)," explains Darius Nau, who was allowed to examine the find for his bachelor's thesis. For comparison: Adult Plateosaurus specimens reached body lengths of 16 to 33 feet (five to ten meters) and could weigh more than four tons. Because of its small size alone, it was obvious to assume that "Fabian" was a juvenile animal. This assumption was confirmed by the fact that the bone sutures of the spinal column had not yet closed. Background: Similar to skull sutures in human babies, bone sutures only fuse over the course of life.

Young and old resembled each other anatomically and in their body proportions

Researchers found that the young dinosaur resembled its older relatives both in anatomical details, such as the pattern of the laminae on the vertebrae (bony lamellae connecting parts of the vertebrae, which are important anatomical features in many dinosaurs), and in the rough proportions of its body. "The hands and neck of the juveniles may be a little longer, the arm bones a little shorter and slimmer. But overall, the variations are relatively small compared to the variation within the species overall and also compared to other dinosaur species," stresses Nau. The juveniles of the related Mussaurus for instance were still quadrupeds after hatching, but the adults were bipeds.

"The fact that the Plateosaurus juvenile already looked so similar to the adults is all the more remarkable considering that they were ten times heavier," emphasizes paleontologist Dr. Jens Lallensack from the University of Bonn. It is however conceivable that the morphological development differed greatly from animal to animal, depending on the climatic conditions or the availability of food. Such differences are still seen in reptiles today.

The well-known descendants of Plateosaurus, the sauropods, are the subject of a current exhibition at the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn. The largest Plateosaurus skeleton ever found can be seen there.

Scientists probing a prehistoric crocodile group's shadowy past have discovered a timeless truth - pore over anyone's family tree long enough, and something surprising will emerge.

Despite 300 years of research, and a recent renaissance in the study of their biological make-up, the mysterious, marauding teleosauroids have remained enduringly elusive.

Scientific understanding of this distant cousin of present day long snouted gharials has been hampered by a poor grasp of their evolutionary journey - until now.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh have identified one previously unknown species of teleosauroid and seven of its close relatives - part of a group that dominated Jurassic coastlines 190 to 120 million years ago.

Their analysis offers tantalising glimpses of how teleosauroids adapted to the momentous changes that occurred during the Jurassic period, as the earth's seas experienced many changes in temperature.

"Our study just scratches the surface of teleosauroid evolution," says study lead Dr Michela M. Johnson, of the University's School of GeoSciences. "But the findings are remarkable, raising interesting questions about their behaviour and adaptability.

"These creatures represented some of the most successful prehistoric crocodylomorphs during the Jurassic period and there is so much more to learn about them."

The study reveals that not all teleosauroids were engaged in cut and thrust lifestyles, snapping at other reptiles and fish from the seas and swamps near the coast.

Instead, they were a complex, diverse group that were able to exploit different habitats and seek out a variety of food sources. Their physical make-up is also more diverse than was previously understood, the scientists say.

Previous research had provided insights into the origins and evolution of this fossilised croc's whale-like relatives metriorhynchids, but less was known about teleosauroids.

To address this, the expert team of palaeontologists examined more than 500 fossils from more than 25 institutions around the world.

Cutting edge computer software enabled the team to glean swathes of revealing data regarding their
anatomical similarities and differences, by examining the entire skeleton, teeth and bony armor, which indicated whether species were closely related or not.

This information enabled the team to create an up-to-date family tree of the teleosauroids group from which emerged two new large groups, whose anatomy, abundance, habitat, geography and feeding styles differ from one another significantly.

The first group, teleosaurids, were more flexible in terms of their habitat and feeding. The second group known as machimosaurids - which included the fearsome turtle crushers, Lemmysuchus and Machimosaurus - were more abundant and widespread.

Names given by the team to seven newly described fossils, found in both teleosaurids and machimosaurids, reflect a curious range of anatomical features - among them Proexochokefalos, meaning 'large head with big tuberosities' and Plagiophthalmosuchus, the 'side-eyed crocodile'.

There are even hints of their diverse behavioural characteristics and unique locations - Charitomenosuchus, meaning 'graceful crocodile' and Andrianavoay, the 'noble crocodile' from Madagascar.

Researchers have named the newly discovered species, Indosinosuchus kalasinensis, after the Kalasin Province in Thailand, where the fossil - now housed in Maha Sarakham University - was found.

The recognition of I. kalasinensis shows that at least two species were living in similar freshwater habitats during the Late Jurassic - an impressive feat as teleosauroids, with the exception of Machimosaurus, were becoming rare during this time.

Dr Steve Brusatte, Reader in Vertebrate Palaentology, at the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, said: "The same way family trees of our own ancestors and cousins tell us about our history, this huge new family tree of teleosauroids clarifies their evolution. They were some of the most diverse and important animals in the Jurassic oceans, and would have been familiar sights along the coastlines for tens of millions of years."

Through a large-scale study with so-called geolocators, researchers led by Miriam Liedvogel of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, were able to uncover some of the mysteries surrounding the phenomenon of the blackcap's bird migration.

Many species of birds have always migrated south in the fall to spend the winter there, including the small blackcap, which often weighs only a few grams and yet covers thousands of kilometers. However, changes in our landscapes and climate change are not leaving migratory birds unaffected. They change their behavior, the destinations of their journey, the time of their departure or even the decision whether to fly away at all. So far, these habits have been studied either experimentally with birds in captivity or by irregular recaptures of ringed birds.

A group of international researchers led by Miriam Liedvogel from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön has now for the first time conducted a large-scale study with geolocators. These are ultra-light, tiny devices that are attached to the backs of free-flying birds and record the light intensity with exact time data. After the birds have been caught again, the respective flight route can be calculated exactly. Altogether the scientists could document and analyze the migrations of 100 individual birds.

Different migration destinations depending on the breeding area

It was already known beforehand that there is a migration divide in Europe: east of this imaginary line, the blackcaps migrate southeast in the fall, and west of this line, they move southwest. Through targeted breeding experiments, it was already successfully shown in the 1990s that the direction of migration is inherited by the parents. These experiments also showed that offspring crossed in captivity between western- and easterly blackcaps show an intermediate orientation, i.e. they migrate exactly in the direction of the south. The assumption was that this would be avoided in nature, since the southern route would lead the birds over the Alps, the Mediterranean and possibly over the Sahara desert.

The scientists were now able to show that this intermediate orientation direction does indeed occur in nature and that the birds that choose this migratory direction also successfully return to their breeding areas despite the ecological barriers they have to overcome in this way. The area in which the orientation preference changes is surprisingly narrow and covers only 27 kilometers.

Some birds move north

Another exciting finding from the data obtained concerns a group of birds which, at the end of the year, do exactly the opposite of what one would expect: they do not migrate to the warm south but northwards and spend the winter in Great Britain. Since the 1960s, there has been a steady increase in the number of blackcaps that choose this strategy, probably due to milder winters and the winter feeding in English gardens. The new investigations show for the first time that these birds come from brood-areas scattered over whole Europe. Why do they not let themselves be dissuaded from this strategy by uncomfortable winters?

On the basis of the evaluated data it was to be recognized that these birds returned in the spring approximately ten days earlier to their breeding places than those which spent the winter in the south. The hibernators from Great Britain possibly had an advantage in the search for breeding places. For the evolutionary scientists, these findings are only a beginning. Bird migration behavior is largely genetic, and this study now lays the groundwork for finding the genes that control where birds migrate and when they fly.

A new study shows that increased heat from Arctic rivers is melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and warming the atmosphere.

The study published this week in Science Advances was led by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, with contributing authors in the United States, United Arab Emirates, Finland and Canada.

According to the research, major Arctic rivers contribute significantly more heat to the Arctic Ocean than they did in 1980. River heat is responsible for up to 10% of the total sea ice loss that occurred from 1980 to 2015 over the shelf region of the Arctic Ocean. That melt is equivalent to about 120,000 square miles of 1-meter thick ice.

"If Alaska were covered by 1-meter thick ice, 20% of Alaska would be gone," explained Igor Polyakov, co-author and oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center and Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Rivers have the greatest impact during spring breakup. The warming water dumps into the ice-covered Arctic Ocean and spreads below the ice, decaying it. Once the sea ice melts, the warm water begins heating the atmosphere.

The research found that much more river heat energy enters the atmosphere than melts ice or heats the ocean. Since air is mobile, this means river heat can affect areas of the Arctic far from river deltas.

The impacts were most pronounced in the Siberian Arctic, where several large rivers flow onto the relatively shallow shelf region extending nearly 1,000 miles offshore. Canada's Mackenzie River is the only river large enough to contribute substantially to sea ice melt near Alaska, but the state's smaller rivers are also a source of heat.

Polyakov expects that rising global air temperatures will continue to warm Arctic rivers in the future. As rivers heat up, more heat will flow into the Arctic Ocean, melting more sea ice and accelerating Arctic warming.

Rivers are just one of many heat sources now warming the Arctic Ocean. The entire Arctic system is in an extremely anomalous state as global air temperatures rise and warm Atlantic and Pacific water enters the region, decaying sea ice even in the middle of winter. All these components work together, causing positive feedback loops that speed up warming in the Arctic.

"It's very alarming because all these changes are accelerating," said Polyakov. "The rapid changes are just incredible in the last decade or so."

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is a frequently used technique for the structural analysis of simple and complex molecules. It has wide applications in both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of proteins in different samples. The technique provides a clear picture of primary, secondary or tertiary structure of a protein to biochemists. Infrared radiation is useful in assessing different vibrational modes which arise from variations in the structural components of a protein.

View the video by the researchers defining this review: https://youtu.be/lMzQeXQSmJg

This review, written by Dr. Rohit Bhatia, ISF College of Pharmacy, Ferozepur, India, presents a report of different studies published around the world on the use of IR spectroscopic techniques to elucidate protein structure and function. The review explains the basics of IR spectroscopic techniques alongside the observed trends in their use in protein chemistry. The reviewers have presented the information with the help of informative tables that can benefit researchers by providing a handy summary when designing their own experiments. The team has observed that fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) has been widely utilized for prediction of secondary structure of protein in the past few years. FTIR has the ability to trace out various structural modifications in the protein structure which arise due to interactions with other inorganic materials. It is also evident it can be utilized to quantify the proteins in variety of samples.

The review presents a brief but informative summary of different types of IR spectroscopic methods, numerical parameters for experimentation, sampling techniques, their advantages and disadvantage as well as recent advances. Recent findings about protein content in different types of food and natural samples are also explained.