Culture

The impacts of global warming are felt especially in mountainous regions, where the rise in temperatures is above average, affecting both glacierized landscapes and water resources. The repercussions of these changes are manifold and varied, from retreating glaciers to an increase in the frequency and intensity of snow avalanches. A team of researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has employed dendrochronology- the reconstruction of past disasters as recorded in growth series of trees- to disentangle the role of global warming in the triggering avalanches. The results of this study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academic of Science - PNAS.

Avalanches are a natural phenomenon and occur repeatedly in mountain areas; nonetheless, rising temperatures are altering their triggering. This can lead to disasters and serious consequences in mountain areas where they can severely affect the socio-economic development and the destruction of traffic infrastructure, and buildings. This is the case in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where increasing residential numbers and tourism are exerting pressure on land use. Along the road to Leh, 500 km north of New Delhi, the Indian government has started to drill one of the largest tunnels of the Indian sub-continent. With the ongoing climate warming, the access road to the tunnel is becoming increasingly threatened by snow avalanches. This is why UNIGE researchers conducted their fieldwork at the spot from 2013 to 2015, in a valley located at between 3,000 and 4,000 m.

Trees: silent witnesses to the upsurge in the number of avalanches

The aim of the research group was to evaluate - and add to - the information currently available about avalanches with two goals: i. to identify the nature of the changes in avalanche activity currently taking place; and ii. to assess future needs for tackling these changes. In the absence of data comparable to the information collected in European surveys, for which records often exist for the past few centuries, the UNIGE researchers focused on trees: they examined stumps (when the tree had been removed) or cored trees that were still standing to reconstruct past snow avalanches at the study site. The scientists were able to date individual events by analysing the growth rings and wounds left on the trees by avalanches. The research included nearly 150 trees. &laquoSince we knew the position of each affected tree, we were able to reconstruct the dynamics, lateral extent and runout distance of every avalanche,» explains Juan Antonio Ballesteros-Cánovas, a senior lecturer at UNIGE's Institute for Environmental Sciences (ISE). &laquoThis technique meant we could go back to 1855 and record 38 avalanches over this period in the valley, the largest survey conducted to date in the Himalayas.»

The models used for testing the impact of climate change combine the risks of avalanche with local climate data. They were adjusted to include the likely effect on topographical features resulting from earlier avalanches. Since they destroy the plant cover, they are an aggravating risk factor. The results brooked no argument: from the second half of the twentieth century, there has been an increase in the number of avalanches, both in terms of frequency and intensity. The frequency has risen from one event per decade to almost one event every year.

The impact of temperature on the cryosphere

Avalanches are bigger, travel greater distances and are triggered earlier in the year. These changes can be attributed clearly to rising temperatures, which have reached 0.2 to 0.4 degrees annually in some parts of the Himalayas. And rising air temperature are also affecting the cryosphere: glaciers are receding and permafrost is melting, losing its role as a sediment stabiliser. In addition, the structure of the snowpack is changing: it is being transformed by increasingly warmer air temperatures and/or altered by rain-on-snow events. Snow is now also falling earlier in the season, and is being destabilised before spring, at a time when it is thicker, leading to an increase in the number and intensity of avalanches. Since the snow is wet, avalanches are descending slowly but over a greater distances than in the past.

The research was being carried out within the framework of the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Program (IHCAP), a partnership led jointly by the Indian and Swiss authorities with strong scientific input from UNIGE.

HOUSTON, March 14, 2018 - Two University of Houston scientists are reporting that defects in a portion of the brain's hippocampus, called the dentate gyrus, is regulated by the nuclear receptor LXRβ (Liver X receptor Beta). The dentate gyrus, or DG, is responsible for emotion and memory and is known to be involved in autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Margaret Warner, professor of biology and biochemistry, and Jan-Åke Gustafsson, professor of biology, biochemistry and founding director of the UH Center of Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling, describe the work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For four decades they have worked together, making discovery after discovery about the role of nuclear receptors in brain functions, and they show no sign of slowing down.

Tracking down the culprit

Neurogenesis, or the regulation of growth of the dentate gyrus, occurs prenatally and postnatally.

"Our findings suggest early changes in DG neurogenesis ultimately provide an aberrant template upon which to build the circuitry that is involved in normal social function," said Warner.

Their studies propose that defects in the neurogenesis of the DG seem to be involved in the etiology of autism spectrum disorders and their associated behaviors. Specifically, defects in the nuclear receptor LXRβ has emerged as the possible culprit of defects in the DG.

Why this gray matter matters

In the world of physiology (how the organisms in our bodies communicate and keep us alive), nuclear receptors rule the day. They are a class of proteins within cells that control hormones and regulate metabolism. One of these proteins, LXRβ, may be the one that holds the key to the genesis of autism. Warner and Gustafsson established this the only way they could - by taking LXRβ out of the equation.

"Knocking out LXRβ led to autistic behavior and reduced cognitive flexibility," said Warner. "In this paper we share our findings that that deletion of the LXRβ causes hypoplasia or underdevelopment in the DG and autistic-like behaviors, including abnormal social interaction and repetitive behavior."

They went on to report: "The behavioral studies confirmed that ablation of LXRβ caused behavior disorders relevant to major ASD symptoms. Social interaction deficits, as key phenotypic traits of ASD, were evident..."

Gustafsson said the findings are the path forward in autism research.

"The Liver X receptor Beta is important in the dentate gyrus and in autism and more studies on the receptor are going to help us cure or treat autism," he said.

He should know. He's the scientist who discovered LXRβ in 1996.

"Until 1996 we did not know that this receptor even existed and it is so important in brain function," said Warner.

[Background]

Most medications, agricultural chemicals and functional materials, indispensable for maintaining and improving our lives, are composed of organic molecules. Organic synthesis using a catalyst is the method for the rapid and large scale supply of such organic molecules without imposing a heavy burden on the environment. In this research field, Prof. Noyori in 2001 and Profs. Suzuki and Negishi in 2010 were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Prof. Noyori, for "chirally catalyzed hydrogenation reactions," and Profs. Suzuki and Negishi, for "palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings."

In recent years, catalysts consisting of only organic molecules but without metal elements, i.e. organocatalysts, have been regarded to be next-generation catalysts, and have received much attention. However, some organic chemistry reactions cannot take place with a single catalyst. Many investigations have therefore been carried out on using two or more catalysts in a synergistic manner for organic synthesis, creating a new category in this research field. In the human body, for example, several catalysts (enzymes) work in a synergistic manner for synthesizing complex organic molecules that exert important functions. Likewise, organic synthesis could potentially be carried out by two or more catalysts in one flask. Nonetheless, it has been thought to be a difficult task to realize such catalytic systems because catalysts themselves react with each other in many cases to abolish their catalytic ability.

[Results]

The research team of Kanazawa University successfully synthesized a ketone from an aldehyde and a benzyl, or from an aldehyde and an allylic carbonate, by the synergistic action of an organocatalyst and a palladium catalyst in one flask (Figure 1). Thorough examination of the reaction conditions revealed the importance of thiazolium N-heterocyclic carbene as the organocatalyst and palladium with augmented activity by bisphosphine, an organic phosphorus compound, as the metal catalyst (Figure 2). It should be mentioned that no catalytic reactions were found to take place in the absence of either of the two catalysts, indicating that two catalysts are indispensable for such a reaction to take place.

Synthetic conversion of an aldehyde into a ketone by conventional methods required a complicated process with multiple chemical reaction steps or a metal reagent that would impose a substantial burden on the environment. The newly developed protocol, on the other hand, enables the synthesis of a ketone of complex chemical structure from an aldehyde under simple and mild conditions (Figure 3). The key to success is that the aldehyde, which is known to act as an electrophile in chemical reactions, in fact worked here as a nucleophile. Thus, the novel protocol enables the rapid and simple synthetic conversion of an aldehyde into a ketone, which is an important basic structure found in a variety of medications and medication candidate chemicals.

[Future prospects]

It was thought to be difficult for a transition metal catalyst and an organocatalyst to function in a synergistic manner in one flask with their individual functional activities maintained. The present study represents a milestone in this field. Furthermore, a novel design guideline has now been established in the field of "organic synthesis using catalysts." It is expected that, by changing the combination of catalysts to be employed, a variety of synthetic reactions that have so far been difficult could be developed, which should pave the way for new technologies for synthesizing medications and medication candidates in a simple and easy manner but without waste.

A new lab-based study has shown that when airway cells damaged by cigarette smoke are exposed instead to glo vapour, the biological effects caused by smoke exposure are reversed.

glo is British American Tobacco's tobacco heating product (THP). It is designed to heat rather than burn tobacco, and the vapour produced has around 90-95% less of certain toxicants compared to cigarette smoke**.

Previous studies have shown that the biological impact of glo vapour on cells in the lab is much reduced compared to cigarette smoke. But the reversibility of the damage following switching to a product like glo has not been extensively studied.

'Products like glo are very new, so understanding the biological impact of vapour from glo and how that compares to cigarette smoke is a core component of our scientific research,' said Dr James Murphy, Head of Reduced Risk Substantiation at British American Tobacco.

In this study, human airway cells were exposed repeatedly to either cigarette smoke or vapour over a period of four weeks. For the first two weeks, the lung tissue was exposed to cigarette smoke for 15 minutes at a time, three times a week. The exposed tissue was then split into three groups: one group continued to be repeatedly exposed only to cigarette smoke for a further 2 weeks; a second group was exposed repeatedly to glo vapour and a third group was exposed only to air.

The results obtained were then compared to results obtained by exposing airway tissue only to air for the full 4-week period.

The results show that switching completely to glo after 2 weeks of repeated exposure to cigarette smoke reversed some of the biological impacts of the smoke. Significant reductions were observed in the amount of certain molecules produced in response to inflammation, for example, in comparison to that seen in lung tissue exposed to cigarette smoke for the full 4-week period.

These results add to evidence suggesting that glo may have the potential to be reduced risk compared to smoking conventional cigarettes.

'We have developed a suite of tests to assess our next generation products, because we know it is by taking the results of all these tests together that gives us a real feel for the bigger picture and the potential for glo to be reduced risk compared to a conventional cigarette,' says Murphy.

The results are presented today at the annual conference of the Society of Toxicology in San Antonio, Texas, US.

(Boston)--For the first time, researchers have produced a nearly complete three-dimensional structure for the yeast Nuclear Pore Complex (NPC). This discovery represents a major step toward identifying the atomic structure of the NPC, which soon may provide researchers with a better understanding of how the central transport channel functions.

The NPC is the largest channel in the cell and spans the double membrane of the nuclear envelope. This remarkable channel provides a gateway to transport macromolecules back and forth between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. Due to its large size and dynamic nature a full structural and functional understanding of the NPC had been impeded until now.

The structure of the NPC was determined using a novel Integrative Modeling approach in which information from a large number of different experiments was used to computationally determine a set of models that best fit all the input data. The sheer size and complexity of the channel required data contributed directly from nine laboratories. In total, researchers were able to accurately place 552 NPC proteins, known as nucleoporins, within this large channel which is shaped somewhat like a wagon wheel with eight major spokes that connect the core scaffold to a more flexible central channel region (the central transporter).

"This transport gateway provides a control point to regulate development and cell growth. Unraveling the architecture of this mammoth transport machine provides us with a great deal of insight into how this channel is constructed and suggests how it may function," explained corresponding author Christopher Akey, PhD, professor physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine.

According to the researchers, these findings may one day help explain changes in cancer cells.

In February 2016, faced with a drastic increase in the number of Zika infections and in order to establish a link between the virus and neurological complications, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)". In March 2016, with the aid of the REACting consortium, Inserm took charge of the establishment, sponsorship and scientific follow-up of a cohort of pregnant women exposed to Zika in the French territories in the Americas, monitored by the French Antilles-French Guiana Clinical Investigation Center (Inserm CIC 1424). The objective? To study the fetal and neonatal complications associated with Zika virus infection in an epidemic situation. This cohort was funded by the French Ministry of Health and Solidarity (Exceptional Support of Research and Innovation) and included in the European ZIKAlliance program.

Several thousand women who were pregnant during the Zika epidemic in the French territories in the Americas were enrolled in this cohort between March 2016 and August 2017. The article published in NEJM addresses those women from the cohort who presented with Zika virus infection confirmed by laboratory testing between March 2016 and November 2016. These women were then monitored every month until the end of their pregnancy. All complications and treatments received were recorded and if fetal abnormality was detected during an ultrasound, an additional examination by magnetic resonance imaging was performed.

The results obtained by the researchers show a 7 % rate of congenital neurological abnormalities observed in the fetuses and neonates of the cohort, which is a lot lower than that initially observed in Brazil, and close to what was observed in the US registry.

The study confirms an especially high risk in the event of infection occurring during the first trimester.

When broken down, the results show that the frequency of neurological complications is:

12.7% when the mother is infected during the 1st trimester

3.6% when the mother is infected during the 2nd trimester

5.3% when the mother is infected during the 3rd trimester

Likewise, the percentage of severe microcephaly (head circumference

3.7% when the mother is infected during the 1st trimester

0.8% when the mother is infected during the 2nd trimester

0 when the mother is infected during the 3rd trimester

"These are the initial findings of the analyses of this cohort, given that the babies are still very young. It will be essential to monitor all the children in order to identify any later complications," explains Bruno Hoen, physician researcher at Inserm and University Hospital of Guadeloupe and principal investigator of the study.

"Even if these complication rates are low in relation to other viral infections in pregnant women, they remain worrying given that the Zika virus can infect over 50 % of a given population in the epidemic phase", comments Arnaud Fontanet, who heads the Emerging Diseases Epidemiology Unit at Institut Pasteur, and who is co-investigator of the study.

REACTing (REsearch and ACTion targeting emerging infectious diseases)

Inserm and its Aviesan partners have created REACTing, a multidisciplinary consortium that brings together research groups and laboratories of excellence, in order to prepare for and coordinate research to combat the health crises linked to emerging infectious diseases. Since its creation, REACTing has also set up programs centered around the Chikungunya, Ebola and Zika epidemics.

Clinical research at Inserm

The Clinical Research Unit manages sponsor activities for the clinical trials of which Inserm is a sponsor and, together with the Directorate of Health Care Supply (DGOS), jointly supervises the Clinical Investigation Centers (CIC). In 2017, he was in charge of 238 studies, including 15 European and/or international projects.

Mongooses living in large groups develop "specialist" diets so they don't have to fight over food, new research shows.

Banded mongooses cooperate closely but are also prone to violence - both between groups and within them - and competition for food increases as a group grows.

To get round this, individual mongooses find a dietary "niche", according to researchers from the universities of Exeter and Roehampton.
Group living has advantages and disadvantages, and the findings suggest specialisation is one way to prevent groups being torn apart by fighting.

"Social animals can gain many benefits from group living, but they also suffer from competition over shared food resources," said Professor Michael Cant, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"Our research shows that banded mongooses respond to this competition by developing specialised foraging preferences.

"The study helps to explain why animals vary so much in their foraging behaviour, even when they live in the same place and have access to the same food."

The study examined wild banded mongooses in Uganda. Their diet includes millipedes, ants, termites and beetles, and sometimes vertebrates such as frogs, mice and reptiles.

The researchers tested opposing theories: that increased competition would lead to more varied diets, or that it would cause mongooses to find a dietary "niche".

They were able to compare individual mongoose diets by analysing the chemical composition of their whiskers, using the stable isotope facility at the Environment and Sustainability Institute, also at Exeter's Penryn Campus.

Rather than eating a wider range of foods, mongooses in large groups tended to become specialists in eating certain things - leaving other foodstuffs for different members of their groups.

"This is the first test of these competing ideas about the effect of social competition on diet in mammals," Dr Harry Marshall, Lecturer in Zoology at the Centre for Research in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour at the University of Roehampton.

"This research confirms the hypothesis that mongooses adopt niche dietary preferences in response to competition from within their social groups.

"The findings suggest that group living may be one of the processes that promotes greater specialisation."

The findings are part of the Banded Mongoose Research Project, which has been running in Uganda for more than 20 years.

The paper, published in the journal Ecology Letters, is entitled: "Intragroup competition predicts individual foraging specialisation in a group-living mammal."

Researchers have fused living and non-living cells for the first time in a way that allows them to work together, paving the way for new applications.

The system, created by a team from Imperial College London, encapsulates biological cells within an artificial cell. Using this, researchers can harness the natural ability of biological cells to process chemicals while protecting them from the environment.

This system could lead to applications such as cellular 'batteries' powered by photosynthesis, synthesis of drugs inside the body, and biological sensors that can withstand harsh conditions.

Previous artificial cell design has involved taking parts of biological cell 'machinery' - such as enzymes that support chemical reactions - and putting them into artificial casings. The new study, published today in Scientific Reports, goes one step further and encapsulates entire cells in artificial casings.

The artificial cells also contain enzymes that work in concert with the biological cell to produce new chemicals. In the proof-of-concept experiment, the artificial cell systems produced a fluorescent chemical that allowed the researchers to confirm all was working as expected.

Lead researcher Professor Oscar Ces, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: "Biological cells can perform extremely complex functions, but can be difficult to control when trying to harness one aspect. Artificial cells can be programmed more easily but we cannot yet build in much complexity.

"Our new system bridges the gap between these two approaches by fusing whole biological cells with artificial ones, so that the machinery of both works in concert to produce what we need. This is a paradigm shift in thinking about the way we design artificial cells, which will help accelerate research on applications in healthcare and beyond."

To create the system, the team used microfluidics: directing liquids through small channels. Using water and oil, which do not mix, they were able to make droplets of a defined size that contained the biological cells and enzymes. They then applied an artificial coating to the droplets to provide protection, creating an artificial cell environment.

They tested these artificial cells in a solution high in copper, which is usually highly toxic to biological cells. The team were still able to detect fluorescent chemicals in the majority of the artificial cells, meaning the biological cells were still alive and functioning inside. This ability would be useful in the human body, where the artificial cell casing would protect the foreign biological cells from attack by the body's immune system.

First author of the study Dr Yuval Elani, an EPSRC Research Fellow also from the Department of Chemistry, said: "The system we designed is controllable and customisable. You can create different sizes of artificial cells in a reproducible manner, and there is the potential to add in all kinds of cell machinery, such as chloroplasts for performing photosynthesis or engineered microbes that act as sensors."

To improve the functionality of these artificial cell systems, the next step is to engineer the artificial coating to act more like a biological membrane, but with special functions.

For example, if the membrane could be designed to open and release the chemicals produced within only in response to certain signals, they could be used to deliver drugs to specific areas of the body. This would be useful for example in cancer treatment to release targeted drugs only at the site of a tumour, reducing side effects.

While a system like that may be a way off yet, the team say this is a promising leap in the right direction. The work is the first example of fusing living and non-living components to emerge from Imperial and King's College's new FABRICELL centre for artificial cell science.

Having a larger family is linked to a heightened tooth loss risk for mums, suggest the results of a large European study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

The popular saying: 'gain a child, lose a tooth' suggests that fertility may be linked to tooth loss, but there are no hard data to back this up.

To try and plug this gap, the researchers drew on data from Wave 5 of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

SHARE contains information on the health, educational attainment, and household income of more than 120,000 adults aged 50+ from 27 European countries plus Israel.

Wave 5 was conducted in 2013, and included questions on the full reproductive history and number of natural teeth of 34,843 survey respondents from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and Israel.

The average age of the respondents in Wave 5 was 67, and they reported an average of 10 missing teeth--normally adults have 28 plus 4 wisdom teeth in their mouth.

As might be expected, tooth loss increased with age, ranging from nearly 7 fewer teeth for women in their 50s-60s up to 19 fewer teeth for men aged 80 and above. Higher levels of educational attainment were also linked to lower risk of tooth loss among women.

The researchers looked at the potential impact of having twins or triplets rather than singletons, and the sex of the first two children, on the assumption that if the first two were of the same sex, the parents might be tempted to try for a third child.

They applied a particular type of statistical technique (instrumental variables regression), which exploits random natural variation in a variable that is only associated with the exposure and affects the outcome only through that exposure, so mimicking a randomised controlled trial.

A third child after two of the same sex was associated with significantly more missing teeth for women, but not men, if compared with parents whose first two children were different sexes.

This suggests that an additional child might be detrimental to the mother's, but the not the father's, mouth health, say the researchers.

They acknowledge that their analyses covered narrow groups with particular types of fertility patterns, and relatively small numbers in the groups of interest, so the results should be interpreted with caution and taken as evidence of cause only for this small group.

What's more, the precise contribution of parenting rather than pregnancy related factors needs to be unravelled further, they say.

But they conclude: "On the basis of our findings, enhanced promotion of oral hygiene, tooth friendly nutrition and regular (preventive) dental attendance - specifically targeted at expecting and parenting mothers - seem to be sensible strategies for clinicians and health policy."

Before the Wi-fi and the Internet, the telephone and the telegraph, the original instant messaging services of society were homing pigeons. After becoming the first domesticated birds, for an estimated 2,000 years, these reliable messengers have brought news from battlefronts and between heads of state.

Then, about 200 years ago, fanciers from Belgium created an international sporting sensation, breeding racing pigeons to have ever faster flights and longer homing skills. Nowadays, these birds can fly up to 1,000 kilometers from home at speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour, and the best of them fetch thousands of euros on the breeding market in a continual effort to one-up the competition.

Recently, scientists have been using state-of-the art genomic tools to also help home in on the special traits of racing pigeons.

A scientific team led by Malgorzata Anna Gazda and Miguel Carneiro, performed the first whole genome sequencing of 10 racing pigeons as well as data from 35 different breeds, and has now identified new clues in racing pigeons that may help enhance their performance. The study also including looking at gene expression differences (using RNA sequencing expression data) in the brains and muscle tissue of racing pigeons versus other breeds.

"Our genome-wide scan of selection sheds light on the genetic architecture and mode of selection underlying the faster flight, endurance, and accurate navigation of racing pigeons," said Malgorzata Anna Gazda. "It furthermore provides a catalog of candidate genes, with some compelling examples of genes likely to underlie racing performance phenotypes."

Their analyses demonstrated that racing pigeons are unique, and genetically differentiated from other pigeon breeds, and that there is adaptation in several regions of their genomes, and key differences in gene expression in brain and muscle tissues.

But as with other traits, there is no single gene responsible for the differences.

"Strikingly, among a dataset of 17,425,765 million variants, we did not find a single example of a variant with diagnostic alleles between racing and non-racing pigeons," said Miguel Carneiro. "It is unlikely that any single genetic change is sufficient to account for the superior flight and orientation abilities of racing pigeons. In addition, we recovered a considerable number of signatures of selection across the genome, indicating a polygenic basis for the adaptations to extreme performance in this breed. This pattern is perhaps expected considering the number of body systems that must interact for superior racing performance (cardiovascular, respiratory, musculoskeletal, and nervous systems)."

In particular, they have identified a number of candidate genes that were found to have variants in the racing pigeons, with (one, called is also differentially expressed in muscle, and both have functions can be related to athletic performance).

"Despite the paucity of fixed genetic variation between racing and non-racing pigeons, our genome-wide screen suggests that signatures of positive selection are common across the genome of racing pigeons," said Miguel Carneiro.

Their RNA-seq analysis revealed low to moderate changes in gene expression between racing and non-racing pigeons. The patterns from a total of 242 RNA transcripts were shown to be differentially expressed with brain showing fewer differences (29) when compared to muscle (213).

"The genes CASK, SIK1, and PTPRD are good candidates to be implicated in racing performance phenotypes," said Malgorzata Gazda. "CASK has been implicated in the development of neuromuscular junctions which play a critical role in the function of skeletal muscle. Differences in the morphology and physiology of such junctions have been associated with muscle performance. SIK1 has been shown to regulate muscle function and growth by controlling the expression of muscle specific genes SIK1 has also been shown to regulate hepatic lipogenesis, which plays an important role in energy homeostasis. Finally, PTPRD influences the magnitude of long-term potentiation of synapses in the hippocampus, a brain region that plays a role in spatial memory and is thought to be associated with bird navigation."

The authors conclude from that the greater athleticism and superior navigation of racing pigeons are complex, polygenic traits, and that adaptive changes in this breed were the result of selection on variation present in the breeds that formed the founding population.

Future follow-up studies, such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS) or selective breeding to map locations near candidate genes, will be performed to delve deeper into the complex physiological and adaptive changes of racing pigeon navigation, flight and faster speeds.

Astronomers have discovered that all galaxies rotate once every billion years, no matter how big they are.

The Earth spinning around on its axis once gives us the length of a day, and a complete orbit of the Earth around the Sun gives us a year.

"It's not Swiss watch precision," said Professor Gerhardt Meurer from the UWA node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

"But regardless of whether a galaxy is very big or very small, if you could sit on the extreme edge of its disk as it spins, it would take you about a billion years to go all the way round."

Professor Meurer said that by using simple maths, you can show all galaxies of the same size have the same average interior density.

"Discovering such regularity in galaxies really helps us to better understand the mechanics that make them tick-you won't find a dense galaxy rotating quickly, while another with the same size but lower density is rotating more slowly," he said.

Professor Meurer and his team also found evidence of older stars existing out to the edge of galaxies.

"Based on existing models, we expected to find a thin population of young stars at the very edge of the galactic disks we studied," he said.

"But instead of finding just gas and newly formed stars at the edges of their disks, we also found a significant population of older stars along with the thin smattering of young stars and interstellar gas."

"This is an important result because knowing where a galaxy ends means we astronomers can limit our observations and not waste time, effort and computer processing power on studying data from beyond that point," said Professor Meurer.

"So because of this work, we now know that galaxies rotate once every billion years, with a sharp edge that's populated with a mixture of interstellar gas, with both old and young stars."

Professor Meurer said that the next generation of radio telescopes, like the soon-to-be-built Square Kilometre Array (SKA), will generate enormous amounts of data, and knowing where the edge of a galaxy lies will reduce the processing power needed to search through the data.

"When the SKA comes online in the next decade, we'll need as much help as we can get to characterise the billions of galaxies these telescopes will soon make available to us."

In a world first, Australian researchers have harnessed the power of diamonds in a breakthrough that could lead to radical improvements in the way human bodies accept biomedical implants.

Researchers from RMIT University have for the first time successfully coated 3D printed titanium implants with diamond.

The development is the first step toward 3D printed diamond implants for biomedical uses and orthopaedics -- surgical procedures involving the human musculoskeletal system.

While titanium offers a fast, accurate and reliable material for medical grade and patient-specific implants, our bodies can sometimes reject this material.

This is due to chemical compounds on titanium, which prevent tissue and bone from interacting effectively with biomedical implants. Synthetic diamond provides an inexpensive solution to this problem.

The breakthrough has been made by biomedical engineer Dr Kate Fox and her team at RMIT's School of Engineering.

"Currently the gold standard for medical implants is titanium but too often titanium implants don't interact with our bodies the way we need them to," Fox said.

"To work around this, we have used diamond on 3D scaffolds to create a surface coating that adheres better to cells commonly found in mammals.

"We are using detonation nanodiamonds to create the coating, which are cheaper than the titanium powder.

"This coating not only promotes better cellular attachment to the underlying diamond-titanium layer, but encouraged the proliferation of mammalian cells. The diamond enhances the integration between the living bone and the artificial implant, and reduces bacterial attachment over an extended period of time.

"Not only could our diamond coating lead to better biocompatibility for 3D-printed implants, but it could also improve their wear and resistance. It's an exceptional biomaterial."

The breakthrough was made possible with recent advances in the 3D printing of titanium scaffolds at RMIT's Advanced Manufacturing Precinct. The coating is created via a microwave plasma process at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication. The titanium scaffolds and diamond are combined to create the biomaterial.

"It will be a number of years before a technology like this is rolled out, and there are many steps to take until we see it available to patients," Fox said. "But what we have done is taken the first crucial step in a long and potentially incredible journey."

PhD researcher Aaqil Rifai, who is working on the new technology with Fox, said diamond is so effective because carbon is a major component of the human body.

"Carbon has an incredible level of biocompatibility," Rifai said. "Our body readily accepts and thrives off diamond as a platform for complex material interfacing."

In addition to orthopaedics, diamond has also been used to coat cardiovascular stents - tubes that help keep the heart's arteries open - and on joints, as well as in bionics and prosthetics.

For now, the researchers are concentrating on how the technology can be used for orthopaedics.

"3D printing is a groundbreaking revolution in the modern era. With 3D printing we can design patient specific implants of medical grade. The technology is fast, accurate, reliable and saves labour time," Rifai said.

"The scalability of 3D printing is growing rapidly, so we can expect to see diamond coatings to become common in orthopaedics sometime in the near future."

The breakthrough has been reported in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and involved researchers from a range of disciplines at RMIT and other Australian universities.

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a microbial detection technique so sensitive that it allows them to detect as few as 50-100 bacterial cells present on a surface. What's more, they can test samples more efficiently -- up to hundreds of samples in a single day.

The technique was validated by sampling hundreds of surfaces in three different environments: the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology; the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Jacobs Medical Center at UC San Diego Health; and an endangered white abalone rearing facility at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif.

Details of the technique, called KatharoSeq, are published March 13 in the journal mSystems. ("Katharos" is Greek for "pure," and "Seq" is short for sequencing.) KatharoSeq has already revealed new insights about the three testing sites that could help optimize how the Mars 2020 Rover is assembled, how bacteria are tracked in hospitals, and how endangered white abalone are raised and returned to the wild.

"The more we know about the microbial communities in a given environment, the more likely it is we can reshape them to improve environmental and human health," said senior author Rob Knight, PhD, professor of pediatrics and computer science and engineering, and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego.

Here's what KatharoSeq has revealed so far:

The Spacecraft Assembly Facility at Jet Propulsion Laboratory is where NASA builds spacecraft and machinery to be launched into space. Engineers and staff must account for every biological organism sent into space in order to prevent contamination of other planets.

In this part of the study, Knight's team wondered if KatharoSeq might be able to detect microbes in what is thought to be a sterile facility. Of the three sites tested, the Spacecraft Assembly Facility had the lowest microbial diversity. But bacteria were still present -- KatharoSeq detected 32 types. The most abundant type was Acinetobacter Iwoffi, which is associated with human foot traffic.

Knight's team will now work with Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff to create a map of the microbes living in the facility over the next six months, including the Mars 2020 Rover. Their goal is to send a sterile rover to Mars.

The NICU at Jacobs Medical Center at UC San Diego Health is relatively new -- the 245-bed advanced specialty hospital opened in La Jolla in late 2016, about four months before samples were collected for this study. The 52-room NICU was designed to give each baby and his or her family a private room, with the idea that it would not only provide a better patient experience, but also prevent the spread of infection among this vulnerable population.

In this study, the NICU samples contained more bacterial species than the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, but fewer than the white abalone rearing facility. Consistent with other hospital findings, the researchers using KatharoSeq found that staphylococcal bacteria were the most prominent type in the facility, the majority of which were the harmless skin resident Staphylococcus epidermidis.

The NICU has two sections -- one with higher acuity (a higher health care provider-to-patient ratio) and one with lower acuity. The team found more staphylococcal bacteria on the surfaces of the high acuity wing, which at the time of the study correlated with a higher culture rate in that area (six positive cultures in 14 high-acuity rooms, vs. six in five of 37 low-acuity rooms).

Using KatharoSeq, surfaces in one of the NICU rooms tested positive for the bacterium Serratia marcescens. Unbeknownst to Knight's team at the time, the infant staying in that room had had a lung infection with that bacterium. But they noted that the bacteria were absent from the rooms on either side, supporting the assumption that private patient rooms provide a barrier to infection.

"All hospitals have bacteria," Knight said. "But this is the kind of information we don't yet have -- which bacteria are found where, and for how long. Pathogen monitoring currently requires taking samples from patients and sending them to be cultured, where lab technicians wait to see which bacteria grow in a petri dish. Being able to monitor and predict pathogens by routine, noninvasive sampling of the built environment and sequencing to identify the bacteria, rather than waiting for cultures to grow, could be a useful approach for identifying potential hotspots of transmission that are currently unknown."

In the future, co-author Jae Kim, MD, PhD, associate clinical professor of pediatrics and nutrition medical director of the Supporting Premature Infant Nutrition Program, and his team hope to investigate probiotic interventions in the NICU. They want to know if treating patients with beneficial bacteria might help prevent colonization with pathogenic bacteria over time, both on the patient and within the built environment of the room.

NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center raises endangered white abalone to help reestablish their populations in the wild. These shellfish were the first marine invertebrate added to the endangered species list -- in the late 1990s. Since their populations have declined in part due to a withering syndrome caused by a type of Rickettsia bacteria, infection control is vitally important to the rearing facility, particularly when abalone are transferred in from other aquariums. The white abalone tank receives seawater that has been UV-treated and filtered.

In this study, KatharoSeq detected a diverse microbial community in the white abalone tanks. The researchers found many types of marine bacteria, including symbiotic species that may help the fish digest algae. The white abalone had more bacteria in common with their surrounding environment than with the nearby red abalone. But researchers did not detect any of the troubling Rickettsia. Going forward, Knight's team hopes to work with the rearing facility to determine the optimal microbial make-up of the white abalone and its surrounding environment to improve transplantation success.

"When it comes to human and environmental health, sterile is not necessarily better," said co-author Russ Vetter, a senior scientist at NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center. "We want to compare wild and aquarium-raised abalone, and better understand how an aquarium-raised abalone's resident bacteria help or harm them once they are released into the ocean. Do they need a probiotic bath before release, or will a different diet to help prepare them? We don't know yet."

Technical details. The first author of this study, Jeremiah Minich, a graduate student working on his thesis in Knight's lab and in the lab of Eric E. Allen, PhD, associate professor at UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography, swabbed each of these sites while wearing protective gowning and gloves to avoid unintentional contamination of the environments. He took the samples back to the lab on dry ice, then ran them through the typical microbial DNA sequencing protocol: extract DNA from the samples, amplify microbe-specific "barcodes" known as 16S rRNA using a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), run them through a sequencer and analyze the data.

What's new in KatharoSeq is that Minich integrated a sample pooling strategy, appropriate positive and negative controls, high-throughput DNA extraction and a magnetic bead-based DNA clean-up approach. Most researchers pass their samples through a filter in a column to purify DNA before sequencing, but Minich and team found that a lot of material is inadvertently lost that way. With KatharoSeq, the researchers improved their level of microbial detection by about two orders of magnitude and increased the rate at which they can process samples about five-fold, as compared to standard sampling and sequencing methods.

"We can get results as quickly as 48 hours after receiving a biological sample," Minich said. "And we think we could do it even faster once we scale it up and incorporate more automation into the KatharoSeq process."

The rising prevalence of dental erosion and dentin hypersensitivity has led to the emergence of more and more toothpastes on the market that claim to treat these problems. While no such toothpaste existed 20 years ago, today, many brands with different attributes are being offered.

However, a study conducted at the University of Bern in Switzerland with the participation of a researcher supported by a scholarship from the São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP showed that none of the nine analyzed toothpastes was capable of mitigating enamel surface loss, a key factor in tooth erosion and dentin hypersensitivity.

"Research has shown that dentin must be exposed with open tubules in order for there to be hypersensitivity, and erosion is one of the causes of dentin exposure. This is why, in our study, we analyzed toothpastes that claim to be anti-erosive and/or desensitizing," said Samira Helena João-Souza, a PhD scholar at the University of São Paulo's School of Dentistry (FO-USP) in Brazil and first author of the article.

According to an article published in Scientific Reports, all of the tested toothpastes caused different amounts of enamel surface loss, and none of the toothpastes afforded protection against enamel erosion and abrasion.

The authors of the study stressed that these toothpastes perform a function but that they should be used as a complement, not as a treatment, strictly speaking. According to João-Souza, at least three factors are required: treatment prescribed by a dentist, use of an appropriate toothpaste, and a change in lifestyle, especially diet.

"Dental erosion is multifactorial. It has to do with brushing, and above all, with diet. Food and drink are increasingly acidic as a result of industrial processing", she said.

The researcher highlights that dental erosion is a chronic loss of dental hard tissue caused by acid without bacterial involvement - unlike caries, which is bacteria-related. When it is associated with mechanical action, such as brushing, it results in erosive wear. In these situations, patients typically experience discomfort when they drink or eat something cold, hot or sweet.

"They come to the clinic with the complaint that they have caries, but actually, the problem is caused by dentin exposure due to improper brushing with [a] very abrasive toothpaste, for example, combined with frequent consumption of large amounts of acidic foods and beverages," said Professor Ana Cecília Corrêa Aranha, João-Souza's supervisor and a co-author of the article.

In our clinical work, we see patients with this problem in the cervical region between [the] gum and tooth. The enamel in this region is thinner and more susceptible to the problem," she added.

Methodology

The scientists tested eight anti-erosive and/or desensitizing toothpastes and one control toothpaste, all of which are available from pharmacies and drugstores in Brazil or Europe.

The research simulated the effect of brushing once a day with exposure to an acid solution for five consecutive days on tooth enamel. The study used human premolars donated for scientific research purposes, artificial saliva, and an automatic brushing machine.

"We used a microhardness test to calculate enamel loss due to brushing with the toothpastes tested. The chemical analysis consisted of measuring toothpaste pH and levels of tin, calcium, phosphate and fluoride," João-Souza explained.

The physical analysis consisted of weighing the abrasive particles contained in the toothpastes, measuring their size, and testing wettability - the ease with which toothpaste mixed with artificial saliva could be spread on the tooth surface.

"During brushing with these toothpastes mixed with artificial saliva, we found that the properties of the toothpastes were different, so we decided to broaden the scope of the analysis to include chemical and physical factors. This [broadening] made the study more comprehensive," João-Souza said.

Statistically similar

All of the analyzed toothpastes caused progressive tooth surface loss in the five-day period. "None of them was better than the others. Indication will depend on each case. The test showed that some [toothpastes] caused less surface loss than others, but they all resembled the control toothpaste [for] this criterion. Statistically, they were all similar, although numerically, there were differences," Aranha said.

"We're now working on other studies relating to dentin in order to think about possibilities, given that none of these toothpastes was found capable of preventing dental erosion or dentin hypersensitivity, which is a cause of concern."

The researchers plan to begin a more specific in vivo study that will also include pain evaluations.

An electronic consultation system designed to reduce excessive wait times for appointments with specialists experienced exponential growth during a recent five-year period. The Champlain BASE eConsult service was created to provide primary care clinicians in Ontario, Canada with a range of high quality and timely (up to one week) specialty input. Unlike electronic consultation systems that provide direct links between clinicians, this service enables primary care clinicians to search a directory, select a specialist, and contact her/him through a secure channel. The system, created in 2010, had four completed eConsult cases in April, 2011 compared to 769 cases in April, 2016, with primary care clinicians submitting 14,105 cases to 56 specialties during the 5-year period. Specialties receiving the highest number of eConsults were dermatology (17 percent); endocrinology, obstetrics/gynecology, and hematology (7 percent each); cardiology (6 percent); and neurology (6 percent). Specialists responded in a median of 21 hours; in 75 percent of cases they responded within three days. Self-reported billing time for specialists ranged from less than 10 minutes (in 48 percent of cases) to more than 20 minutes (4 percent of cases). By the end of the study period, approximately 80 percent of primary care clinicians in the region had adopted the eConsult service, which is poised for expansion across Canada. The study demonstrates that, once integrated into a practice's specialty referral workflow, the eConsult service has the potential to reduce wait times for specialty care.

Sustainability of a Primary Care-Driven eConsult Service
Clare Liddy, MD, MSc, CCFP, et al
C.T. Lamont Primary Health Care Research Centre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
http://www.annfammed.org/content/16/2/120.full