Brain

Zika virus is a mild infection for most people but it can be dangerous during pregnancy, causing infants to be born with abnormally small heads (microcephaly) and other congenital malformations. A new study published in Frontiers in Immunology has shown that Zika virus can establish a persistent, replicating infection in the placenta, which is present months after the onset of the acute infection. This increases the chances of the virus reaching the fetus and may regulate factors that impact brain development. These findings are a major step forward in understanding mother to baby transmission of Zika virus, and importantly, how to stop it.

We are all too familiar with viral outbreaks and the constant threat that they pose to human health. To date, Zika virus has been reported in 86 countries, with large outbreaks in several, most notably Brazil.

Lead researchers Dr. Marciano Paes, of Oswaldo Cruz Institute-Fiocruz and Dr. Kissila Rabelo, of Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil, stated that "we observed Zika spread rapidly in Brazil and saw with our own eyes the situation of pregnant women. It was really impactful and made us question how the scientific community could know so little about this disease. So as research group that already works with arboviruses, we dedicated ourselves to understanding the pathogenesis of this disease."

This study was a joint effort by a team of scientists, biologists, physicians and nurses from different institutions in Brazil. The team examined placenta samples of pregnant women from during the peak of the Zika outbreak in Brazil in 2015-2016. They took samples from 5 women who had not been infected with Zika virus and 10 women who had been infected with Zika virus, 5 of which had given birth to babies with microcephaly and 5 without microcephaly.

One of the key functions of the placenta is to protect a fetus during pregnancy, and it is typically very effective at preventing viral infections. The results of this study, however, showed that Zika was able to bypass these efforts and continue to replicate in the placenta tissue, creating a robust inflammatory environment that could last for months after the beginning of infection.

The researchers were able to determine that this inflammatory environment was a result of an exacerbated response by several immune cells, such as macrophages, CD8+ T lymphocytes, and cytokines that lead to cytotoxicity. They further showed that this can cause pathological changes in the tissue and increased vascular permeability, which in some cases, impact the fetus development.

Rabelo says that "these findings will be very useful for scientists to establish an infection profile and further understand the immune response caused by Zika virus." She adds that "this could generate countless developments, from a basis for the detection of plasma biomarkers to the development of drugs and vaccines. All of which are vital for controlling future zika outbreaks, which according to epidemiologists are likely to happen again."

Enzymes that control a plant's response to lower oxygen levels could be manipulated to make vital crops resistant to the impacts of flooding triggered by climate change, new research shows.

Co-author Dr Mark White in the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney said: "Climate change is a major global issue, not least for its impact on food security. We hope these findings can help produce flood-tolerant crops to help mitigate the devasting social and economic impact of extreme weather events on food production."

The research, largely done at the University of Oxford, is published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Climate change has increased the number and intensity of global flooding events, threatening food security through significant crop loss. Plants, including staple crops such as rice, wheat and barley, can survive temporary periods of flooding by activating energy pathways that don't rely on air in response to the low oxygen conditions in water.

These responses are controlled by oxygen-sensing enzymes called the Plant Cysteine Oxidases (PCOs), which use oxygen to regulate the stability of proteins that control gene activity.

The research describes the molecular structures of the PCOs for the first time, identifying chemical features that are required for enzyme activity.

"The results provide a platform for future efforts to manipulate the enzyme function in an attempt to create flood-resistant crops that can mitigate the impact of extreme weather events," Dr White said.

Eager to learn the latest in instructional practices that research says will better engage and educate her students, an assistant professor of biochemistry attends a virtual workshop devoted to exactly that.

A seminal theory proposed in the mid-20th century would suggest that she, as an early adopter of the innovations, might share them with fellow faculty in her department, maybe in her college, possibly even across her university. New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that she will, too -- but probably just with the choir of faculty who are already practicing what she's preaching.

Surveys and network analyses of 192 STEM faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of South Florida and Boise State University revealed that frequent users of evidence-based instructional practices are far more likely to engage one another than colleagues less familiar with the practices.

The finding suggests that faculty networks alone are not enough to disseminate and drive the adoption of evidence-based practices that could improve undergraduate instruction and address inequities for students historically underserved by STEM classrooms.

"The idea has been that you could spread knowledge by capturing a smaller group of people, and that would then propagate out from that small group to the larger department," said Brian Couch, associate professor of biological sciences at Nebraska. "But if we're thinking of these people as having specialized knowledge that would be of value to the rest of the department, then the existing social structure is not providing robust channels for that information to be spread.

"It's really allowing those high users to reflect and learn from each other, but there's not a lot of evidence that the information is getting outside of that group."

Led by the University of Minnesota's Kelly Lane, South Florida's Luanna Prevost, the University of Virginia's Marilyne Stains and Couch, the research team also conducted in-depth interviews with 19 of the STEM faculty who reported regularly using evidence-based practices in the classroom. When explaining how they decide which colleagues to engage in teaching discussions, 58% of the interviewees said they seek out peers with similar teaching values, and 37% cited expertise or experience as a reason to reach out. Just 5% said they engage colleagues specifically because those colleagues conduct similar research or have similar faculty appointments.

"The categories that seemed to be driving interactions between people were more about values and expertise -- things that people might have regardless of where they're teaching or what they're teaching -- whereas the categories that weren't as highly cited were more structural or could be assigned to a faculty member," Couch said. "So it was really more about shared philosophy rather than obligations or other happenstance reasons that they'd be connected to each other."

Numerous instructional practices have held up to rigorous evaluation across dozens or even hundreds of studies throughout recent years, Couch said, making them among the most proven and promising ways to support learning in STEM classrooms. Chief among those are active-learning strategies that eschew or demote traditional lecturing in favor of organizing students into groups, asking those groups to answer relevant questions, then having them discuss and share the thought processes that yielded those answers. Another well-supported practice, just-in-time teaching, involves adapting instruction on a week-to-week or even class-to-class basis, depending on how students answer curriculum-specific questions posed prior to classes.

Some of those practices appear to especially improve outcomes for underrepresented and underserved populations, including students of color, first-generation students, and those from low-income backgrounds.

"The excitement behind them, and the reason a lot of different agencies and institutions are trying to promote their use, is because we know there are deficiencies in education -- that business as usual produces outcomes that are lower than we would want, that are inequitable in different ways for different groups," Couch said. "So finding teaching practices that can help address some of those issues is valuable."

But finding those teaching practices means little without also figuring out how to increase their implementation in higher education, said the researchers, who proposed several ways to do it. One of them -- prompting conversations by asking two or more faculty to co-teach a course -- is especially appealing because many institutions are familiar with it and already incorporating it to some extent.

"Many departments have an introductory course series with different faculty teaching different sections, and there has to be some level of coordination across those sections," Couch said. "That's a place where people have cause to talk. And maybe with a little more deliberateness and intentionality around those teams and those relationships, we can start to engage broader faculty in conversations. That feels like an area that is ripe for advancement and maybe just needs a little more follow-through."

Another potential solution: incentivizing the adoption of evidence-based practices to a degree that they simply are not at most institutions, the researchers said. That lagging incentive structure might help explain why the diffusion of innovation theory, which often captures the dissemination of technologies whose benefits are obvious and immediate, fails to do the same for instructional practices.

Given that institutional and departmental leaders influence the hiring, promotion and evaluation of faculty, along with the allocation of resources, the researchers said those leaders also have the power to make evidence-based practices a larger priority on campuses. Establishing or changing a culture of teaching in less direct ways could likewise go a long way, the team said.

"We know that leaders have a strong voice in where people are teaching and what they're teaching and what types of expectations are on those teaching," Couch said. "Those leaders, as they're thinking about teaching assignments, mentoring networks, junior faculty and so on, can be really deliberate about how to find structures that would keep people engaged -- to maintain cohesiveness and not let the nodes in the network get too dispersed.

"We need to be thinking about these alternative ways of engaging faculty and helping them develop their teaching through their relationships, rather than just incentives that they would receive or not receive based on some outcome."

The good news? Just as research has shown the need to facilitate conversations between faculty who do and don't use evidence-based practices, it also suggests that the faculty who do converse are both better for it, Couch said.

"What's neat about it is: If a low user and a high user talk to each other, it's not that the low user becomes more like high user, and a high user becomes more like a low user," he said. "What we actually see is that both of them can shift together in the same direction. There appears to be an influence of who you talk to, and that influence can be positive for both parties."

The cause of the allergic reaction are T lymphocytes (T cells). These cells are part of the body's defences and normally react to viruses or bacteria in the skin. In the case of a nickel allergy, they also respond to electrically charged nickel atoms (ions) that can be released from nickel-containing products. These ions are then "identified" by the T cells in the form of a metal ion complex together with the body's own proteins. For explanation: Humans have a wide variety of T cells. Each of these T cells has unique docking sites (receptors) with which it can "identify" a very specific protein complex. The receptor consists both of variable subunits mainly concerned with the specific protein complex identification and of a selection of defined receptor segments. Together, the T cells have many millions of different receptors with which pathogens can be identified and combated with high precision (specific) in the event of an infection. The BfR researchers discovered peculiarities in human receptors that react to nickel ions. About 43 percent of the corresponding T cells have the amino acid histidine in the specific identification part of the docking site (i.e. the variable subunit of the receptor). This amino acid can bind to nickel ions. In addition, a surprisingly large number of human T cells with a certain additional "component", a defined receptor segment was identified. This is the case for around 35 percent of the T-cells that react to nickel ions. These findings are an important indicator of how the human immune system identifies nickel ions - and potentially represents an explanation for why people suffer from nickel allergy so often. The current findings were obtained using two new methods: The T-cells reacting to nickel ions were identified using an activation marker. At the same time, high-throughput sequencing de-tected many T-cell receptors. The benefits of the new results for medical practice cannot yet be assessed. So far, no differences in the receptors in the blood in allergic and non-allergic people have been detected. However, the BfR is working on extending the new methods to other allergens and applying them to T cells that are associated with allergies.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- In 2019, Google claimed it was the first to demonstrate a quantum computer performing a calculation beyond the abilities of today's most powerful supercomputers.

But most of the time, creating a quantum algorithm that stands a chance at beating a classical computer is an accidental process, Purdue University scientists say. To bring more guidance to this process and make it less arbitrary, these scientists developed a new theory that may eventually lead to more systematic design of quantum algorithms.

The new theory, described in a paper published in the journal Advanced Quantum Technologies, is the first known attempt to determine which quantum states can be created and processed with an acceptable number of quantum gates to outperform a classical algorithm.

Physicists refer to this concept of having the right number of gates to control each state as "complexity." Since the complexity of a quantum algorithm is closely related to the complexity of quantum states involved in the algorithm, the theory could therefore bring order to the search for quantum algorithms by characterizing which quantum states meet that complexity criteria.

An algorithm is a sequence of steps to perform a calculation. The algorithm is usually implemented on a circuit.

In classical computers, circuits have gates that switch bits to either a 0 or 1 state. A quantum computer instead relies on computational units called "qubits" that store 0 and 1 states simultaneously in superposition, allowing more information to be processed.

What would make a quantum computer faster than a classical computer is simpler information processing, characterized by the enormous reduction in the number of quantum gates in a quantum circuit compared with a classical circuit.

In classical computers the number of gates in circuits increases exponentially with respect to the size of the problem of interest. This exponential model grows so astonishingly fast that it becomes physically impossible to handle for even a moderately sized problem of interest.

"For example, even a small protein molecule may contain hundreds of electrons. If each electron can only take two forms, then to simulate 300 electrons would require 2300 classical states, which is more than the number of all the atoms in the universe," said Sabre Kais, a professor in Purdue's Department of Chemistry and member of the Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute.

For quantum computers, there is a way for quantum gates to scale up "polynomially" - rather than just exponentially like a classical computer - with the size of the problem (like the number of electrons in the last example). "Polynomial" means that there would be drastically fewer steps (gates) needed to process the same amount of information, making a quantum algorithm superior to a classical algorithm.

Researchers so far haven't had a good way to identify which quantum states could satisfy this condition of polynomial complexity.

"There is a very large search space for finding the states and sequence of gates that match up in complexity to create a useful quantum algorithm capable of performing calculations faster than a classical algorithm," said Kais, whose research group is developing quantum algorithms and quantum machine learning methods.

Kais and Zixuan Hu, a Purdue postdoctoral associate, used the new theory to identify a large group of quantum states with polynomial complexity. They also showed that these states may share a coefficient feature that could be used to better identify them when designing a quantum algorithm.

"Given any quantum state, we are now able to design an efficient coefficient sampling procedure to determine if it belongs to the class or not," Hu said.

Among all the curious states of matter that can coexist in a quantum material, jostling for preeminence as temperature, electron density and other factors change, some scientists think a particularly weird juxtaposition exists at a single intersection of factors, called the quantum critical point or QCP.

"Quantum critical points are a very hot issue and interesting for many problems," says Wei-Sheng Lee, a staff scientist at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES). "Some suggest that they're even analogous to black holes in the sense that they are singularities - point-like intersections between different states of matter in a quantum material - where you can get all sorts of very strange electron behavior as you approach them."

Lee and his collaborators reported in Nature Physics today that they have found strong evidence that QCPs and their associated fluctuations exist. They used a technique called resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to probe the electronic behavior of a copper oxide material, or cuprate, that conducts electricity with perfect efficiency at relatively high temperatures.

These so-called high-temperature superconductors are a bustling field of research because they could give rise to zero-waste transmission of energy, energy-efficient transportation systems and other futuristic technologies, although no one knows the underlying microscopic mechanism behind high-temperature superconductivity yet. Whether QCPs exist in cuprates is also a hotly debated issue.

In experiments at the UK's Diamond Light Source, the team chilled the cuprate to temperatures below 90 kelvins (minus 183 degrees Celsius), where it became superconducting. They focused their attention on what's known as charge order - alternating stripes in the material where electrons and their negative charges are denser or more sparse.

The scientists excited the cuprate with X-rays and measured the X-ray light that scattered into the RIXS detector. This allowed them to map out how the excitations propagated through the material in the form of subtle vibrations, or phonons, in the material's atomic lattice, which are hard to measure and require very high-resolution tools.

At the same time, the X-rays and the phonons can excite electrons in the charge order stripes, causing the stripes to fluctuate. Since the data obtained by RIXS reflects the coupling between the behavior of the charge stripes and the behavior of the phonons, observing the phonons allowed the researchers to measure the behavior of the charge order stripes, too.

What the scientists expected to see is that when the charge order stripes grew weaker, their excitations would also fade away. "But what we observed was very strange," Lee said. "We saw that when charge order became weaker in the superconducting state, the charge order excitations became stronger. This is a paradox because they should go hand in hand, and that's what people find in other charge order systems."

He added, "To my knowledge this is the first experiment about charge order that has shown this behavior. Some have suggested that this is what happens when a system is near a quantum critical point, where quantum fluctuations become so strong that they melt the charge order, much like heating ice increases thermal vibrations in its rigid atomic lattice and melts it into water. The difference is that quantum melting, in principle, occurs at zero temperature." In this case, Lee said, the unexpectedly strong charge order excitations seen with RIXS were manifestations of those quantum fluctuations.

Lee said the team is now studying these phenomena at a wider range of temperatures and at different levels of doping - where compounds are added to change the density of freely moving electrons in the material - to see if they can nail down exactly where the quantum critical point could be in this material.

Thomas Devereaux, a theorist at SIMES and senior author of the report, noted that many phases of matter can be intertwined in cuprates and other quantum materials.

"Superconducting and magnetic states, charge order stripes and so on are so entangled that you can be in all of them at the same time," he said. "But we're stuck in our classical way of thinking that they have to be either one way or another."

Here, he said, "We have an effect, and Wei-Sheng is trying to measure it in detail, trying to see what's going on."

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis identifies a specific gene's previously unknown role in fertility. When the gene is missing in fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice, the animals are infertile or lose their fertility unusually early but appear otherwise healthy. Analyzing genetic data in people, the researchers found an association between mutations in this gene and early menopause.

The study appears Aug. 28 in the journal Science Advances.

The human gene -- called nuclear envelope membrane protein 1 (NEMP1) -- is not widely studied. In animals, mutations in the equivalent gene had been linked to impaired eye development in frogs.

The researchers who made the new discovery were not trying to study fertility at all. Rather, they were using genetic techniques to find genes involved with eye development in the early embryos of fruit flies.

"We blocked some gene expression in fruit flies but found that their eyes were fine," said senior author Helen McNeill, PhD, the Larry J. Shapiro and Carol-Ann Uetake-Shapiro Professor and a BJC Investigator at the School of Medicine. "So, we started trying to figure out what other problems these animals might have. They appeared healthy, but to our surprise, it turned out they were completely sterile. We found they had substantially defective reproductive organs."

Though it varied a bit by species, males and females both had fertility problems when missing this gene. And in females, the researchers found that the envelope that contains the egg's nucleus -- the vital compartment that holds half of an organism's chromosomes -- looked like a floppy balloon.

"This gene is expressed throughout the body, but we didn't see this floppy balloon structure in the nuclei of any other cells," said McNeill, also a professor of developmental biology. "That was a hint we'd stumbled across a gene that has a specific role in fertility. We saw the impact first in flies, but we knew the proteins are shared across species. With a group of wonderful collaborators, we also knocked this gene out in worms, zebrafish and mice. It's so exciting to see that this protein that is present in many cells throughout the body has such a specific role in fertility. It's not a huge leap to suspect it has a role in people as well."

To study this floppy balloon-like nuclear envelope, the researchers used a technique called atomic force microscopy to poke a needle into the cells, first penetrating the outer membrane and then the nucleus's membrane. The amount of force required to penetrate the membranes gives scientists a measure of their stiffness. While the outer membrane was of normal stiffness, the nucleus's membrane was much softer.

"It's interesting to ask whether stiffness of the nuclear envelope of the egg is also important for fertility in people," McNeill said. "We know there are variants in this gene associated with early menopause. And when we studied this defect in mice, we see that their ovaries have lost the pool of egg cells that they're born with, which determines fertility over the lifespan. So, this finding provides a potential explanation for why women with mutations in this gene might have early menopause. When you lose your stock of eggs, you go into menopause."

McNeill and her colleagues suspect that the nuclear envelope has to find a balance between being pliant enough to allow the chromosomes to align as they should for reproductive purposes but stiff enough to protect them from the ovary's stressful environment. With age, ovaries develop strands of collagen with potential to create mechanical stress not present in embryonic ovaries.

"If you have a softer nucleus, maybe it can't handle that environment," McNeill said. "This could be the cue that triggers the death of eggs. We don't know yet, but we're planning studies to address this question."

Over the course of these studies, McNeill said they found only one other problem with the mice missing this specific gene: They were anemic, meaning they lacked red blood cells.

"Normal adult red blood cells lack a nucleus," McNeill said. "There's a stage when the nuclear envelope has to condense and get expelled from the young red blood cell as it develops in the bone marrow. The red blood cells in these mice aren't doing this properly and die at this stage. With a floppy nuclear envelope, we think young red blood cells are not surviving in another mechanically stressful situation."

The researchers would like to investigate whether women with fertility problems have mutations in NEMP1. To help establish whether such a link is causal, they have developed human embryonic stem cells that, using CRISPR gene-editing technology, were given specific mutations in NEMP1 listed in genetic databases as associated with infertility.

"We can direct these stem cells to become eggs and see what effect these mutations have on the nuclear envelope," McNeill said. "It's possible there are perfectly healthy women walking around who lack the NEMP protein. If this proves to cause infertility, at the very least this knowledge could offer an explanation. If it turns out that women who lack NEMP are infertile, more research must be done before we could start asking if there are ways to fix these mutations -- restore NEMP, for example, or find some other way to support nuclear envelope stiffness."

People who did not have a large heart rate response to a stress task surprised researchers later -- after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic -- when they showed more symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder related to the crisis than others who also did the stress task and COVID-19 stress ratings.

Researchers had anticipated that the reverse would be true -- that those with higher heart rate reactions to the stress task would experience more distress related to COVID-19. Previous work shows individuals with a PTSD have higher responses to stress. But very few studies have examined heart rate responses to acute stress before the onset of a traumatic event, researchers said.

"The study shows that diminished biological arousal -- how the body responds when it is exposed to something startling or stressful -- before a global pandemic may predict PTSD symptoms related to the event," said principal investigator Annie T. Ginty, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University.

The biological reactions were measured by blood pressure and heart rate, said co-author Danielle Young, Psy.D., research coordinator in the Baylor Behavioral Medicine Lab.

The study, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, grew out of an ongoing study of undergraduate students at Baylor University.

"The research also showed that some college students were experiencing distress related to the pandemic in its earliest stages, even when social distancing was just beginning," Ginty said.

In the study's first phase, with 120 participants, researchers measured their resting heart rate and blood pressure before and during a standard acute psychological stress test. They asked students to do mental math, rather than writing down figures or using a calculator, and give the scorers verbal responses. In a four-minute test, they were asked to add consecutive single-digit numbers while remembering the most recent and adding it to the next number presented. They did this while being videotaped with a scorer present and looking at themselves in a mirror.

"The standard acute psychological stress task is meant to increase levels of stress by including requirements of cognitive effort, social evaluation, self-evaluation and competition," Ginty said. "The task substantially increases heart rate and feelings of stress."

The study's first phase, which ended in February 2020, was done in Central Texas. After the pandemic's onset, researchers launched a second phase between March 26 and April 5, sending participants a follow-up questionnaire about COVID-19. The participants were in 22 states after early campus closure due to COVID-19. When asked, none had tested positive for COVID-19 and 87.5 percent were living in a city/state with a "shelter in place" order.

The questionnaire included standard items used to measure PTSD symptoms of intrusion (dreaming about the event and having trouble staying asleep), hyperarousal (irritability and having trouble concentrating) and avoidance (trying not to think or talk about the event) in the seven days before they responded to the questionnaire.

The findings are in line with a previous study of soldiers, which showed that a lower response of cortisol -- the primary stress hormone -- to an acute psychological stress task before deployment predicted greater PTSD symptoms post deployment.

The present study supports growing evidence that lower biological arousal in response to psychological stress may be bad for health outcomes, particularly mental health outcomes. The findings support Ginty's previous work, which demonstrated that lower arousal to acute stress is associated with higher levels of perceived stress -- meaning that people rate their environment as more stressful.

Previous work also has shown that higher levels of biological arousal may be associated with developing PTSD symptoms. But those studies used what are considered passive tasks -- such as hearing loud bursts of noise. Lower biological responses to stress tasks that require participants to actively engage in the task may be a unique biomarker for mental health outcomes.

Ginty said that future research should aim for more comprehensive measures of biological reactivity and include a lifetime history of traumatic event exposure. However, the current study did account for childhood trauma and diagnosis of a mental health condition before the pandemic's onset.

"Since findings suggest that individuals with diminished arousal to active stress may be at greater risk for negative mental health outcomes, it could be helpful to offer preventive treatment or resources to them at the early stages of stress or trauma exposure," Ginty said.

Approximately 40 per cent of terrestrial ecosystems are projected to have experienced shifts in temperature during the past 21,000 years that are similar in pace and magnitude to regional-scale future forecasts.

An international team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University of Adelaide, has identified and examined past warming events similar to those anticipated in the coming decades, to better understand how species and ecosystems will cope.

"Studying locations in regions such as the Arctic, Eurasia, the Amazon and New Zealand can yield knowledge of how climate has changed and how this has impacted plants and animals. Using advanced new methods, including the use of DNA to map biodiversity and precise methods for dating climate change, we have taken advantage of opportunities to find precise causalities. The past climate changes are similar to those that we expect in coming decades," explains Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen.

By mapping the prevalence of species using combined fossil data archives, researchers were able to see how individual plant and animal species -- and entire ecosystems -- have responded to historical temperature increases:

"During large climate shifts of the past, such as the warming from the last ice age to our current interglacial period 11-18,000 years ago, Arctic temperatures have increased by more than 10 degrees Celsius. This is a warming of the same magnitude as the UN predicts can occur in the future, as is described in IPCC reports and forecasts," says Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen.

Researchers observed that some species, such as antelope, were able to migrate northward, while others, including the Arctic fox, became extinct in areas of what is now Russia.

This knowledge can be used to predict how plants and animals will respond to future climate changes. During the last interglacial period -- the Eemian Interglacial Stage, from 115-128,000 years ago -- it was warmer, particularly in Arctic regions.

During this time, the central Siberian tundra shifted 200 km northwards, hippos roamed England and giant turtles crawled lazily about the US Midwest.

More accurate forecasts, based upon the past

The new knowledge compiled by researchers can be used to develop more accurate forecasts concerning which plant and animal species are being threatened with extinction.

This in turn can allow for quicker intervention through international conservation measures. The knowledge also makes it possible to map robust ecosystems, which are less sensitive to climate change.

"We have gained access to completely new knowledge about how ecosystems, plants and animals have responded to temperature increases similar to those that we are confronted with today and will be in the future. We can use this knowledge to be at the forefront of protecting and conserving biodiversity. It provides knowledge for us to protect the species that remain," says Associate Professor Anders Svensson of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute.

"Conservation biologists are taking full advantage of the long-term history of the planet as recorded in paleo-archives, such as those gathered by the team, to understand biological responses to abrupt climate changes of the past, quantify trends, and develop scenarios of future biodiversity loss from climate change," says the study's main author, Damien Fordham, of the University of Adelaide and the University of Copenhagen's Globe Institute.

Research into the past demonstrates that many ecosystems are able to adapt to sudden climate change, even when migration is not an option. Thus, it is important to acquire more knowledge and ensure healthy interaction between the planners of future ecosystems and this historical knowledge.

Historical archives also demonstrate that other factors, such as the impact of humans and the establishment of cities, the clearing of forests and changes to ecosystems, also have had a very significant impact on species extinction.
Results just published in the journal Science.

The research article illustrates how interdisciplinary research among climate and biodiversity researchers, and the deployment of new methods, better dating and climate models can be used to generate knowledge that will advance our ability to create and preserve ecosystems.

Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how the enteric nervous system forms, which could pave the way for new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's.

The findings, published in the journal Stem Cell Reports, pave the way for using stem cells to understand and treat a range of diseases linked to the enteric nervous system - which is embedded in the walls of the esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, pancreas, gallbladder and biliary tree.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield and University College London (UCL) identified a key stage in the formation of the enteric nervous system using pluripotent stem cells, which can generate any cell type in the body, and were able to generate enteric neurons in the lab.

The enteric nervous system contains between 400-600 million nerves and is crucial for everyday functions such as digestion, fluid absorption and communicating with the immune system.

Faults in the enteric nervous system are often linked to life-threatening digestive disorders such as Hirschprung's disease, where nerves in the system are missing. Ongoing research has also suggested that Parkinson's disease is initiated in the enteric nervous system before reaching the brain.

Dr Anestis Tsakiridis,Group Leader of the Study from the University of Sheffield's Centre for Stem Cell Biology, said: "Our findings show new promise for using stem cells to treat a range of diseases. We now plan to utilise these findings as the basis for developing stem cell-based approaches to treat and model diseases caused by dysfunction of the enteric nervous system."

Dr Tom Frith, from the Francis Crick Institute who led the study said: "This work was the result of an exciting collaboration with experts from the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health.

"These results are a key first step into generating cells in a dish that may one day be used to help treat patients."

The team involved in the study have been awarded a £1.2 million grant from the Medical Research Council (MRC), which focuses on the development of a stem cell therapy for the treatment of Hirschprung's disease.

Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification is affecting corals' ability to build their skeletons, but it has been challenging to isolate its effect from that of simultaneous warming ocean temperatures, which also influence coral growth. New research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) reveals the distinct impact that ocean acidification is having on coral growth on some of the world's iconic reefs.

In a paper published Aug. 27, 2020, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers show a significant reduction in the density of coral skeleton along much of the Great Barrier Reef--the world's largest coral reef system--and also on two reefs in the South China Sea, which they attribute largely to the increasing acidity of the waters surrounding these reefs since 1950.

"This is the first unambiguous detection and attribution of ocean acidification's impact on coral growth," says lead author and WHOI scientist Weifu Guo. "Our study presents strong evidence that 20th century ocean acidification, exacerbated by reef biogeochemical processes, had measurable effects on the growth of a keystone reef-building coral species across the Great Barrier Reef and in the South China Sea. These effects will likely accelerate as ocean acidification progresses over the next several decades."

Roughly a third of global carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by the ocean, causing an average 0.1 unit decline in seawater pH since the pre-industrial era. This phenomenon, known as ocean acidification, has led to a 20 percent decrease in the concentration of carbonate ions in seawater. Animals that rely on calcium carbonate to create their skeletons, such as corals, are at risk as ocean pH continues to decline. Ocean acidification targets the density of the skeleton, silently whittling away at the coral's strength, much like osteoporosis weakens bones in humans.

"The corals aren't able to tell us what they're feeling, but we can see it in their skeletons," said Anne Cohen, a WHOI scientist and co-author of the study. "The problem is that corals really need the strength they get from their density, because that's what keeps reefs from breaking apart. The compounding effects of temperature, local stressors, and now ocean acidification will be devastating for many reefs."

In their investigation, Guo and his co-authors examined published data collected from the skeletons of Porites corals--a long-living, dome-shaped species found across the Indo-Pacific-- combined with new three-dimensional CT scan images of Porites from reefs in the central Pacific Ocean. Using these skeletal archives, which date back to 1871, 1901, and 1978, respectively, the researchers established the corals' annual growth and density. They plugged this information, as well as historical temperature and seawater chemistry data from each reef, into a model to predict the corals' response to constant and changing environmental conditions.

The authors found that ocean acidification caused a significant decline in Porites skeletal density in the Great Barrier Reef (13 percent) and the South China Sea (7 percent), starting around 1950. Conversely, they found no impact of ocean acidification on the same types of corals in the Phoenix Islands and central Pacific, where the protected reefs are not as impacted by pollution, overfishing, runoff from land.

While carbon dioxide emissions are the largest driver of ocean acidification on a global scale, the authors point out that sewage and runoff from land can exacerbate the effect, causing even further reductions of seawater pH on nearby reefs. The authors attribute the declining skeletal density of corals on the Great Barrier Reef and South China Sea to the combined effects of ocean acidification and runoff. Conversely, reefs in marine protected areas of the central Pacific have so far been shielded from these impacts.

"This method really opens a new way to determine the impact of ocean acidification on reefs around the world," said Guo. "Then we can focus on the reef systems where we can potentially mitigate the local impacts and protect the reef."

Co-authors of the paper include Rohit Bokade (Northeastern University), Nathaniel Mollica (MIT-WHOI joint program), and Muriel Leung (University of Pennsylvania), as well as Russell Brainard of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and formerly at the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

WASHINGTON - Adults in the United States believe children should be almost 5 years old before talking with them about race, even though some infants are aware of race and preschoolers may have already developed racist beliefs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Delays in these important conversations could make it more difficult to change children's misperceptions or racist beliefs, said study co-author Jessica Sullivan, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Skidmore College.

"Children are capable of thinking about all sorts of complex topics at a very young age," she said. "Even if adults don't talk to kids about race, children will work to make sense of their world and will come up with their own ideas, which may be inaccurate or detrimental."

In an online study with a nationally representative sample, more than 600 participants were asked the earliest age at which they would talk with children about race. They were also asked when they thought children first develop behaviors and cognitive abilities relating to race and other social factors. More than half of the participants were parents while 40% were people of color. The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

The participants believed conversations about race should begin near a child's fifth birthday even though children begin to be aware of race when they are infants. Previous research has shown that 3-month-old babies prefer faces from certain racial groups, 9-month-olds use race to categorize faces, and 3-year-old children in the U.S. associate some racial groups with negative traits. By age 4, children in the U.S. associate whites with wealth and higher status, and race-based discrimination is already widespread when children start elementary school.

Participants who believed children's capacities to process race developed later also believed conversations about race should occur later. The researchers were surprised that the participants' race did not affect the age at which they were willing to talk with children about race. The participants' parental status, gender, education level, or experience with children also didn't have any bearing on the findings.

Another online experiment in the study found that when participants learned about children's developmental abilities relating to race, they said adults should start talking about it when children are 4 years old. This was approximately a year earlier than in the previous experiment.

Many white parents often use well-meaning but ineffective strategies that ignore the realities of racism in the United States, said study co-author Leigh Wilton, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Skidmore College. Some harmful approaches include a colorblind strategy (e.g., telling children "Skin color doesn't matter," or "We're all the same on the inside") or refusing to discuss it (e.g., "It's not polite to talk about that").

The study didn't address exactly when or how adults should talk with children about race, but Wilton said this can begin early.

"Even if it's a difficult topic, it's important to talk with children about race, because it can be difficult to undo racial bias once it takes root," she said. "Toddlers can't do calculus, but that doesn't mean we don't teach them to count. You can have a conversation with a toddler about race that is meaningful to them on their level."

Parents, especially white parents, need to become comfortable talking about race or it will only get more difficult as their children get older, Wilton said.

"If we wait until a child is old enough to ask a tough question about the history of racial violence, then it will be that much harder to talk about if there haven't been any meaningful discussions about race earlier in their lives."

On Aug. 26, 2020, NASA's Terra satellite was able to image the two areas in California where the fires have been most active and using the false color reflectance bands on the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Infrared Spectroradiometer) instrument aboard. Using these bands, the burned areas or fire-affected areas are characterized by deposits of charcoal and ash, removal of vegetation and/or the alteration of vegetation structure. When bare soil becomes exposed, the brightness in Band 1 may increase, but that may be offset by the presence of black carbon residue; the near infrared (Band 2) will become darker, and Band 7 becomes more reflective. When assigned to red in the image, Band 7 will show burn scars as deep or bright red, depending on the type of vegetation burned, the amount of residue, or the completeness of the burn. The bands are colored as such: Red = Band 7, Green = Band 2, Blue = Band 1.

The LNU (Lake Napa Unit) Lightning Complex fire is near the Napa Valley in northern California and the SCU (Santa Clara Unit) Lightning Complex fire is near Santa Clara in northern California as well. Both fires began during a particularly large number of lighting strikes from thunderstorms on Aug. 17-18. The measurement tool within the Worldview application can measure distances in miles and kilometers, and it can also measure square miles. This tool was used to show the square miles that have been burned to date in both the LNU and the SCU Lightning complex fires using the reflectance band colors to outline and measure the burn scars.

The LNU Lightning complex fire is listed as being 33 percent contained on the CAL Fire website on Aug. 27. Using the Worldview measurement tool the fire is approximately 583.11 square miles in size from the satellite image taken on Aug 26. The SCU Lightning complex fire which CAL Fire reports as being 35 percent contained is approximately 666.47 square miles from the satellite image taken on Aug. 16. The SCU fire has burned 368,671 acres and the LNU fire has burned 368,868 according to the CAL fire website on Aug. 27. These two complexes continue to be the second and third largest fires in California's history. Only the 2018 Mendocino Complex fire was larger at 459,123 acres. With the exception of two fires (2007 and 1932) the top ten largest fires in California's history have all happened within the last decade.

NASA's satellite instruments are often the first to detect wildfires burning in remote regions, and the locations of new fires are sent directly to land managers worldwide within hours of the satellite overpass. Together, NASA instruments detect actively burning fires, track the transport of smoke from fires, provide information for fire management, and map the extent of changes to ecosystems, based on the extent and severity of burn scars.

A University of Cincinnati biologist helped organize a fitting tribute to one of America's legendary conservationists and botanists, E. Lucy Braun.

Denis Conover, a professor of biology in UC's College of Arts and Sciences, collaborated with Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum to replace the nonnative plants adorning her grave with native ones found in the eastern United States.?

No doubt, Braun would have approved.

"Lucy Braun was a great botanist, plant ecologist and conservationist," Conover said. "For years I thought it was too bad that she had English ivy, a nonnative and invasive species, growing on her grave. I thought how nice it would be if they could replace it with native plants."

Conover and David Gressley, the cemetery's director of horticulture, carefully selected a mix of native ground cover that would be suitable for her plot, which sits in the shade of a holly tree near one of Ohio's oldest and most impressive white oak trees. Instead of English ivy, which can spread like a blanket across the forest floor, they chose a mix of creeping mint, golden star and Allegheny spurge, all flowering plants that are native to deciduous forests in Eastern North America.

Conover wrote about the living tribute in the journal Ecological Restoration.

Spring Grove ended its practice of introducing nonnative ground cover on new cemetery plots in the late 1990s, Gressley said.

"The evergreen ground cover signifies everlasting life, which was the intent when it was planted," he said.

Today, the cemetery experiments with native plants for that purpose, he said. The tribute to Braun was overdue, he said.

"She was a pioneer. She gave definition to what today is known as the field botanist," he said. "Her work remains extremely influential. People have built on her work, but she provided the foundation."

Braun wrote about invasive species such as Amur honeysuckle, imported as an ornamental shrub from Asia, in her 1961 book "The Woody Plants of Ohio." It was just beginning to show up in Hamilton County. Today, it's the bane of foresters and backyard gardeners all over Ohio and other parts of Eastern North America.

Braun (1889-1971) was a pioneer in so many ways. Author of 180 published articles and reference books, she was the first female president of the Ecological Society of America. Her masterwork, "Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America," was hugely influential in the study of plant ecology, Conover said.

She inspired generations of students at UC to pursue science careers, including Margaret H. Fulford, namesake of UC's herbarium.

But it wasn't enough for her to study the region's flora. She wanted to save it. She led the effort to preserve the biologically rich habitats of southern Ohio, now known as the Edge of Appalachia Nature Preserve. At the time of her death, she was fighting to protect Red River Gorge from a proposed federal dam. The conservation effort was successful.

Sophia Antipolis, France -26 Aug 2020: Depression or anxiety in adolescence is linked with a 20% greater likelihood of having a heart attack mid-life, according to research released today at ESC Congress 2020.1

In a warning to parents, study author Dr. Cecilia Bergh of Örebro University in Sweden, said: "Be vigilant and look for signs of stress, depression or anxiety that is beyond the normal teenage angst: seek help if there seems to be a persistent problem (telephone helplines may be particularly helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic). If a healthy lifestyle is encouraged as early as possible in childhood and adolescence it is more likely to persist into adulthood and improve long-term health."

There are indications that mental well-being is declining in young people. This study investigated whether conditions like depression in adolescence (age 18 or 19) are associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. The researchers also examined the possible role of stress resilience (ability to cope with stress in everyday life) in helping to explain any associations.

The study included 238,013 men born between 1952 and 1956 who underwent extensive examinations in late adolescence (as part of their assessment for compulsory military service) and were then followed into middle age (up to the age of 58 years). The assessments at the age of 18 or 19 years included medical, psychiatric, and physical examinations by physicians and psychologists.

Stress resilience was measured by an interview with a psychologist and a questionnaire, and based on familial, medical, social, behavioural and personality characteristics.

A total of 34,503 men were diagnosed with a non-psychotic mental disorder (such as depression or anxiety) at conscription. Follow-up for cardiovascular disease was through hospital medical records.

The study found that a mental disorder in adolescence was associated with the risk of having a myocardial infarction (heart attack) by middle age. Compared to men without a mental illness in adolescence, the risk of myocardial infarction was 20% higher among men with a diagnosis - even after taking into account other characteristics in adolescence such as blood pressure, body mass index, general health, and parental socioeconomic status.

The association between mental illness and heart attack was partly - but not completely - explained by poorer stress resilience and lower physical ?tness in teenagers with a mental illness. "We already knew that men who were physically fit in adolescence seem less likely to maintain fitness in later years if they have low stress resilience," said Dr. Bergh. "Our previous research has also shown that low stress resilience is also coupled with a greater tendency towards addictive behaviour, signalled by higher risks of smoking, alcohol consumption and other drug use."

Dr. Bergh said: "Better fitness in adolescence is likely to help protect against later heart disease, particularly if people stay fit as they age. Physical activity may also alleviate some of the negative consequences of stress. This is relevant to all adolescents, but those with poorer wellbeing could benefit from additional support to encourage exercise and to develop strategies to deal with stress."