Culture

Across the United States and Canada, demand for local specialty cut flowers is increasing, and production has correspondingly jumped. To accurately assess the needs of the industry, John Dole, Cristian Loyola, and Rebecca Dunning electronically surveyed 1098 cut flower producers and handlers regarding their current cut flower production and postharvest problems and customer issues.

The illuminating results of their survey received careful analysis and are detailed in the article, "North American Specialty Cut Flower Production and Postharvest Survey," as found open access journal HortTechnology.

Cut flower production in the United States and Canada has increased in recent years. Due to this resurgence, more information is needed regarding current production and postharvest issues. This research effort and resulting article determined the nature of those issues and provides a guide for how to best address them using 31 major crop species as a template.

The article also listed an additional 99 cut flowers species and categories grown by enterprising local farmers.

Dole adds, "Local is in with consumers, and cut flower growers have responded by producing hundreds of different types of lush, gorgeous flowers. Our research showed that growers and cut flower handlers face a host of challenges in getting those flowers to their customers."

Of the 1098 surveys sent out, the authors received 210 responses, resulting in a 19% response rate. From that, cross -section data was extrapolated.

Analysis showed that the main perceived production problem was insect management. Crop timing proved to be the second-most important problem, and disease management was ranked third.

Crop timing encompasses a range of related issues, such as determining the correct harvest stage, harvest windows that are too short, flowering all at once, or lack of control when the crop is ready to harvest.

The main postharvest problems were temperature management, hydration, and flower food management. Regarding on-farm postharvest handling, hydration and vase life were the two most mentioned issues.

For postharvest during storage and transport, damage and hydration were the most commonly reported issues.

Customer complaints were also charted, with gauging vase life and petal shattering as the most-mentioned issues.

The survey proved revelatory in that it will allow researchers and businesses to focus on the major cut flower production and postharvest issues and on crops that are most in need of improvement in North America.

The green industry in the United States is comprised of production and wholesale nurseries and wholesale/retail distribution centers, as well as related marketing interests. While the green industry traditionally has been among the fastest growing business sectors in the U.S. national economy, recently some of its segments have become stagnant or have declined in economic health.

There is substantial evidence that marketing efforts, in all business sectors, deter the decline to a significant extent, and online advertising is viewed as another dimension for businesses trying to reach more potential customers for a low to moderate investment.

Technology-based marketing has become a much more advantageous avenue for products and services to reach customers--not bound to their area, state, region, or even to their country.

Even with overwhelming amount of anecdotal benefits within view, not every business makes the jump into the realm of social media and other forms of online advertising.

Researchers Ariana Torres, Susan Barton, and Bridget Behe initiated a study from a national survey of plant producers and retailers to investigate the business and managerial characteristics that influence the decision to adopt online strategies among green industry firms.

The results of this investigation are published in the article "Evaluating the Business and Owner Characteristics Influencing the Adoption of Online Advertising Strategies in the Green Industry" as found in the open-access journal HortTechnology, published by The American Society for Horticultural Science.

The internet has facilitated the growth of online advertising over the past decade, and online advertising has moved from being a peripheral to a central advertising medium because of its unique targeting capabilities. Yet, green industry firms struggle to integrate online advertising into their existing advertising strategy.

To many running green-related businesses, there is some reluctance in stepping forward into communicating with potential customers through computer-oriented or technology-based business models. More than 70% of US farms have internet access, but less than 50% of them use the internet for farm business. Acquiring a computer is the first step to modernizing the advertising strategy.

Torres further states, "Online advertising seems to help green industry business to overcome geographical isolation by drawing customers from wider geographic range. This is especially true for smaller firms and firms selling directly to customers."

To delve into the characteristics of green industry business owners who advance their businesses with the use of online advertising, the researchers considered two factors: 1) those influencing investing in online advertising at all, and 2) those influencing the amount invested in online advertising. The researchers were interested in understanding how managerial decisions regarding market diversification may affect online advertising adoption.

Businesses in markets facing maturity have seen the return on investment that advertising can bring, and green industry firms are no exception. Although most promotion and advertising is effective for green industry businesses, online advertising seems to have the most impact businesses with smaller sales, but most business owners perceived that online marketing efforts were either somewhat or very successful.

Torres adds, "While smaller businesses tend to be more reluctant to engage in online advertising--maybe due to the lack of marketing resources and technology knowledge-- once they invest in it, they dedicate a larger percentage of advertising to online methods than do larger businesses. This finding suggests the need for education programs that help green industry businesses integrate online advertising to daily operations to break the initial barrier of adopting this type of marketing."

The findings in this article can help any green industry business, or any other type of business for that matter, understand the two-step nature of the decision to invest in online advertising: 1) whether to take that step at all, and 2) how much to invest.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers at Duke University have isolated a cluster of neurons in a mouse's brain that are crucial to making the squeaky, ultrasonic 'songs' a male mouse produces when courting a potential mate.

In fact, they now understand these neurons well enough to be able to make a mouse sing on command or to silence it so that it can't sing, even when it wants to impress a mate.

This level of understanding and control is a key advancement in the ongoing search for the mechanisms that allow humans to form speech and other communication sounds. The researchers are broadly interested in the brain's production of speech and have worked with songbirds and mice as models for humans.

"We were interested in understanding how mice produce these 'love songs,' as we call them in the lab," said Katherine Tschida, who led the research as a post-doctoral fellow in both the Richard Mooney and Fan Wang labs at Duke neurobiology.

For this study, Tschida and her colleagues focused on a part of the midbrain called the periaqueductal gray, or PAG for short, because they knew from previous work by others that it would be a key player in the vocalization circuit, she said.

With technology developed by Wang's lab, they were able to locate and isolate the specific neurons involved in the PAG's circuitry and then experiment on them.

By turning the neurons on selectively with a light-based method called optogenetics, the researchers found they could make a mouse immediately begin singing, even though it was alone.

On the other hand, silencing the activity of the PAG neurons rendered courting male mice incapable of singing, even while they persisted in all of their other courtship behaviors.

The females turned out to be less interested in the silent types, which also shows that the singing behavior is key to mouse survival.

Both experiments firmly establish that this "stable and distinct population of neurons" is the key conduit between behavior and vocal communication, Tschida said. The work will appear in the Aug. 7 edition of Neuron, but was published early online in mid-June.

"These neurons are acting as a base for vocalization. But they don't determine the individual parts of the song," Tschida said. "It's a 'gate' for vocalization."

Tschida, who will join the Cornell University faculty next year, said the research will now trace PAG's connections to neurons downstream that communicate with the voicebox, lungs and mouth, for example. And they'll work toward the behavioral centers upstream that tell the mouse there is a female present and he should start singing.

The researchers hope to form a more complete picture of why mice produce different syllables in different contexts. "We know they do it, but don't know yet what parts of the brain drive the behavior," Tschida said.

The frequency of marine heatwave days increased by 50% over the past century but our ability to predict them has been limited by a lack of understanding around the key global processes that cause and amplify these events.

Now, an international team, led by Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) and the Institute for Marine and Antarctic (IMAS) studies, has published in Nature Communications the first global assessment of the major drivers of marine heatwaves.

They found that known climate phenomena, like the El Niño - Southern Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation, with their centre-of-action in one ocean basin can increase the odds of marine heatwaves in other regions thousands of kilometres away.

"Scientific understanding of marine heatwaves is in its infancy but the damage these events do to marine ecosystems, fisheries and tourism can be immense and makes them an important area of study," said lead author of the study, IMAS Professor Neil Holbrook.

"Given marine heatwaves are increasing in frequency and this trend is expected to continue, our team wanted to set a baseline for our understanding of the physical mechanisms that drive them. Also, we were interested to get a sense of whether the likelihood of marine heatwaves may be increased or decreased based on climatic influences."

The assessment considered marine heatwaves and their drivers in 22 regions across four ocean and climate zones, based on published papers since 1950.

The team also further examined relationships between marine heatwaves and nine known climate ocscillations/patterns, and whether marine heatwave likelihood might be enhanced or suppressed by these factors. Finally, the team estimated the intensities, duration and extent of the reported marine heatwaves over the satellite observing period since 1982.

The researchers found that marine heatwaves may be influenced by several factors in combination, where processes may be both local and remote to the events.

"The El Niño - Southern Oscillation not only influences marine heatwaves in the Pacific Ocean but also in the Indian Ocean and played a leading role in the extreme marine heatwave known as the Ningaloo Niño in Western Australia in 2011," said CLEX co-author Dr Alex Sen Gupta.

"We also found that other climate phenomena such as the Indian Ocean Dipole and North Atlantic Oscillation influence marine heatwave probabilities."

The global assessment also revealed some startling extreme marine heatwave records.

The researchers found the largest area affected by the heatwaves occurred in the northeast Pacific where, in 2015, a marine heatwave covered an area almost twice as large as other previous reports around the globe.

The most intense heatwave they found was in the northwest Atlantic Ocean during 2012, where the temperature peaked at 10.3°C degrees above average for that time of year.

While the records are remarkable, the baseline knowledge from this study regarding the important drivers of marine heatwaves across the globe will be invaluable to researchers.

Like the infamous "Joe Camel" advertisements for cigarettes in the 1980s and 90s, the use of cartoon characters in ads for e-cigarettes and e-liquids may be attracting young people to the nicotine-delivery products, according to a new USC study.

The newly published research, which also found that recognition of the cartoon images among those who had never used e-cigarettes was positively associated with expectations that the products would taste good and enhance socializing, appears in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

"Among young adults who had never used e-cigarettes, we found a significant effect of cartoon-based marketing on their likelihood of using the products in the future," said Jon-Patrick Allem, co-leader of the study and assistant professor of research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "Cartoons appear to be very effective at increasing susceptibility to use e-cigarettes among individuals who aren't using them to begin with."

The relationship between cartoon recognition and likelihood of e-cigarette use

Study authors looked at two different sets of young adults who completed online surveys assessing e-cigarette use. In the first study, 778 participants with an average age of 24 years looked at several e-liquid package images with and without cartoons and were asked whether they recognized the products. In the second study, 522 participants with an average age of 30 looked at several e-liquid images with and without cartoons and rated the appeal of the products.

Among self-reported "never users" of the products, individuals who recognized the cartoons were more likely to be susceptible to future use.

Matt Kirkpatrick, co-leader of the study and assistant professor of research at the Keck School, added that cartoons are being used to market the products in two distinct ways: as logos by e-cigarette and e-liquid companies and in promotional materials by vendors that sell the products online -- including via Instagram and Twitter -- or offline. "Cartoon imagery used by some companies are part of the constellation of variables that make individuals susceptible to future use of e-cigarettes," Kirkpatrick said.

Building on prior research into cartoons and young adults' tobacco use

The findings are consistent with previous studies demonstrating the impact of cartoon-based marketing on cigarettes, unhealthy foods and other products.

Prior research indicated that Joe Camel, a cartoon character developed by RJ Reynolds as a mascot for its brand, increased awareness and appeal of -- as well as uptake and continued use of -- combustible cigarettes. One study published in JAMA in 1991 famously demonstrated that preschool children recognized "Joe" as easily as they recognized Disney's Mickey Mouse.

The USC researchers say their study builds on this work by analyzing cartoon-based marketing for emerging tobacco products among an at-risk population: young adults. In their earlier research, Allem and Kirkpatrick found e-cigarette vendors were using Pokémon Go -- a cartoon-based augmented reality game -- to sell their products on Twitter. In a previous analysis of Instagram images posted by e-liquid manufacturers and vendors, they found 21% of posts contained a cartoon.

"The data in this most recent study suggest a need for policies to extend restrictions on cartoon-based marketing of cigarettes to include marketing for e-cigarettes," Allem said.

Researchers at the University of Iowa and the U.S. Geological Survey have found that data gathered from orbiting satellites can provide more accurate information on the impact of large earthquakes, which, in turn, can help provide more effective emergency response.

The satellite imagery provides detailed information about where the earthquakes occurred, how big the surface deformation was, and where the earthquakes occurred relative to population centers, typically within two to three days of the earthquake. This information was then incorporated into a set of operational response guides managed by the USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) that is distributed to decision makers, search and rescue operations, and other groups.

In the paper published online June 6 in the journal Remote Sensing, the researchers determined that the satellite imagery gathered from each earthquake provided new information, which improved the analysis of its impact.

"This, in turn, led to more accurate estimates of the numbers of fatalities and economic losses that are critical to more accurately determine in the days and weeks following devastating earthquakes," says Bill Barnhart, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the UI and a lead author on the study.

Mainstays in determining an earthquake's impact are ground-based seismometers that measure seismic activity around the world. But these instruments are not located everywhere, which can lead to incomplete information about the effects of some earthquakes in the critical time immediately after they occur. Moreover, some quakes are more complex and can't be measured precisely by seismometers alone.

Increasingly, earthquake specialists are turning to geodetic methods--the math-based study of changes in the Earth's shape--that use satellites and other instruments to complement data gathered by seismometers.

"While this is not yet a fully operational system, we are working with the USGS to make operational earthquake response with satellite imagery a systematic component of the NEIC's global earthquake monitoring and response efforts," Barnhart says.

One example is the work done by Emma Mankin, a UI senior and geoscience major who will graduate in December. Mankin processed radar imagery, or interferograms, from a 6.9 magnitude quake that struck Indonesia in August 2018. She then used this imagery to produce a model of the earthquake and where it was located. The USGS used this model directly to update its predictions of ground shaking and earthquake impact that were incorporated into its disaster-response systems.

"Emma's rapid work on the Indonesia earthquake directly contributed to the operational analysis of a global earthquake," Barnhart says. "Her contributions improved earthquake impact estimates for that event and helped to further demonstrate that these satellite approaches can provide actionable information that benefits society."

Employment is a key determinant of quality of life for all people, including haemodialysis patients1, 2. Employment offers social support and improves patients' lifestyle, financial status, quality of life, and self-esteem, whilst unemployed people often face financial and social difficulties as well as physical and psychological problems. Unemployed people may spiral into a deep depression, sometimes accompanied by alcohol and drug abuse.

"Therefore it is important that patients with chronic kidney disease can maintain the work, especially when they reach the stage of end stage renal disease and are in need of dialysis treatment", explains Professor Alberto Ortiz, editor-in chief of CKJ, in which an interesting study3 has been published today. It analysed the employment status of 496,989 US patients initiating maintenance haemodialysis from 2006-2015 - with alarming results:

26% (n=129,622) of patients were employed 6 months prior to dialysis initiation - but this dropped to only 15% when dialysis treatment was initiated. It is not surprising that patients who were older and had more comorbidities were less likely to maintain employment, but there was also a social dimension: Females, Hispanic, African Americans, and people living in low-income zip codes lost their jobs more often.

The study showed that being made redundant was associated with mortality: Compared to those who were employed from 6 months prior to dialysis initiation, people who became unemployed in this phase had a significantly higher death rate (p

Thus, maintaining employment during the final 6 months prior to haemodialysis was associated with protection against mortality and with higher rates of transplantation. "But of course we have to be careful with the interpretation of these data, because we are faced with a chicken-or-egg question. Was the survival benefit really due to the positive effect of work on body and mind of our patients - or did it simply show that those patients with lower survival rates were unemployed, because they had already been severely ill before the initiation of the dialysis treatment?" As the study authors explained in their paper, the limitations of the study include its retrospective design, which allowed only examination of associations between known variables, not causal relationships. Besides, data on important clinical and socioeconomic variables, such as residual renal function, depression, and nutritional status, which are also key factors that impact patients' outcomes, were not included.

"Nevertheless, we know from the general population, that being unemployed impacts health negatively. Therefore, we should strive to offer opportunities to combine employment and dialysis to patients who are able to work, whenever it is possible. We should further strengthen peritoneal dialysis as well as home haemodialysis, which are often better dialysis modalities for patients who want to continue working. We should encourage our patients to stay employed while on dialysis and support them to balance job and treatment", concludes Professor Ortiz.

The iconic "stomp-stomp-clap" of Queen's "We Will Rock You" was born out of the challenge that rock stars and professors alike know all too well: How to get large numbers of people engaged in participating during a live performance like a concert -- or a lecture -- and channel that energy for a sustained time period.

Sang Won Lee, an assistant professor of computer science in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, and his collaborators tested some theories about not only engaging large audiences, but sustaining that engagement in a live music performance.

While Lee isn't part of a world-renowned, stadium-filling legendary rock band, his team uncovered something that Queen guitarist Brian May and the late Freddie Mercury didn't have that helped audience engagement: live social media.

Lee will present his findings at the Association for Computing Machinery's 12th Creativity and Cognition Conference in San Diego, California on June 26, 2019. He collaborated with Walter Lasecki and Danai Koutra, both assistant professors of computer science and engineering, and undergraduate sound engineering student Aaron Willette, all from the University of Michigan.

In addition to presenting his research findings as a formal paper, he will also perform a concert to demonstrate his smartphone participatory app and create a real-time composition for smartphones using an interactive musical piece for large-scale audience involvement called Crowd in C. The sounds of the composition will be generated solely from the audience.

"This research is important in learning what resonates with larger audiences and prompts people to not only participate in a group, but remain engaged and create an artistic artifact," said Lee. "Artifacts let the audience see the fruits of their labor as a group and give them something to invest in as far as remaining engaged."

For Lee's performance the audience will log in to an app that will present them with a pattern of dots. By moving the dots, audience members will be able to manipulate the sounds that will be collectively played over a sound system and create their own compositions in the key of C. Lee will have the real-time ability to change the chord of the instrument to make the sounds lower or higher or to play a simple melody.

In developing his composition for smartphones, Lee had three challenges. The first challenge was how to engage a large audience using an instrument that was simple enough for novices. The second challenge was keeping the audience engaged with their new music makers. The last challenge was to perform a piece of music with the crowd interacting with the app.

Lee patterned the social media engagement tools for Crowd in C after such dating apps as Tinder. Users can listen to individual compositions during the performance and hit a like button in the shape of a heart. Additionally, if two users like each other's musical profiles, they are greeted with an "it's a match" message and magic fairy wand sounds.

Lee tested the Crowd in C app last December at the Moss Arts Center in Blacksburg, Virginia, and found that 87 audience members remained engaged at a constant rate for 540 seconds, or nine minutes.
On average, audience members sent or received hearts 8.21 times. Sending hearts was driven by a small portion of people, the top 20 percent of participants sent 62.2 percent of all hearts.

While a small number of participants were responsible for sending and receiving a majority of the hearts, various individual approaches of engagement emerged over the course of Lee's performance. While some audience members were socially active, others focused on more musical interaction and contributed to the artifact.

"We saw that social interaction helped audience members stay engaged longer with the app and the performance, so this could be a tool that professors or anyone else who has to captivate large audiences at conferences could use in the future," Lee said.

He finds it promising that the computer-mediated participatory platform was flexible enough to accommodate various types of participation: some members were influencers, some were lurkers, and some were music geeks.

"Using computer science in nontraditional ways is a wonderful gateway to connect with the public and make technology relatable to people who may not interact or realize they are interacting with computer science on a regular basis," said Steve Harrison, an associate professor of practice in the Department of Computer Science and the School of Visual Arts, as well as director of the human-centered design program.

Harrison has had dual roles as associate chair and co-chair of the Creativity and Cognition and Designing Interactive Systems conferences this year.

"We are experimenting with the joint format to bring together two related computer science research communities," he said. "The conferences will host a shared art exhibition and one full day of conference programming to support dialogue between the two overlapping communities."

Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science has a large presence at both conferences this year. In addition to Harrison, Assistant Professor Kurt Luther is serving as papers co-chair of Creativity and Cognition; Professor Deborah Tatar is serving as technical program co-chair for the Designing Interactive Systems conference; and graduate student Aakash Gautam is serving as co-chair for student volunteers.

Whether it's a raucous concert or a compelling lecture, Lee's research indicates the rules of audience engagement may have gone beyond stomping and clapping and headed into the realm of computer-mediated technology that can help performers of all kinds, whether they are in the classroom or the concert hall.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- An international team of scientists, led by Penn State researchers, have identified genes that may help farmers, especially ones in low- and middle-income countries, breed chickens that can resist one of the biggest disease threats facing poultry today.

In the study, the researchers found that a set of genes differentially expressed in two breeds of chickens can fight off, in varying degrees, Newcastle disease, a virus that hampers poultry production worldwide.

Identifying the genes that help chickens survive Newcastle disease could help design breeding strategies that produce flocks that are more resilient and more productive, according to Vivek Kapur, professor of animal science and the Huck Distinguished Chair in Global Health, associate director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and an Institute for CyberScience associate, all at Penn State.

"These local ecotypes of chickens have been running around backyards for hundreds of years, even in the face of constant exposure to Newcastle disease, so, evolutionarily, there's something innate that has enabled them to survive in this environment where the disease is endemic," said Kapur. "Yet, birds that are bred for high productivity as is the case in high-income countries -- they put on weight very quickly, produce a lot of eggs -- their survival in the presence of infectious diseases was not selected for because there is usually a tradeoff between increased resistance to disease and egg or meat production. Using genomics and sophisticated analytical tools, we asked the question whether there are differences in specific genes expressed in backyard chickens that markers for lower susceptibity to Newcastle disease virus infection."

If Newcastle disease is present in a flock, the result can be devastating, according to Megan A. Schilling, lead author of the study and who recently defended her doctoral dissertation in the Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Biosciences program at the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.

"Newcastle disease is an important poultry pathogen," said Schilling. "You might not hear much about this disease in the U.S. as it is generally well-controlled, but it's endemic in a lot of African and Asian countries. If a virulent strain is introduced into a flock, it will wipe out the flock and cause significant economic burden, particularly for smallholder farmers."

There is a vaccine for the disease, but it is not used in many countries because the logistics and costs that are involved often make it impractical to use a vaccination to protect small flocks in many countries, said Kapur.

"If you have 20 chickens in your backyard, for example, you first have to find someone who will come give your flock the vaccine and there's a cost involved in that whole process and on top of that the vaccine has to be available," said Kapur. "The barriers, both real and perceptional, are therefore rather high for backyard farmers to vaccinate their chickens."

The researchers, who reported their findings in a recent issue of Scientific Reports, used an innovative technique to study the innate immune response of two breeds of chickens, the Fayoumi and Leghorn. Rather than using animal studies, or cell lines, the researchers used chicken embryos. Because the immune system of the chicken becomes viable in the egg prior to hatching, the researchers have a window to study the immune system's genes, which offers several advantages over other methods, said Schilling.

"Generally, these types of studies are either performed in cell lines, which are great to make advances in our understanding of the science, but they're not capturing the whole organism's response to the pathogen," said Schilling. "On the other hand, you have animal studies, which are expensive and you have a lot of husbandry included and bio-security is a factor, all of which might lower your sample sizes, just due to those cost or logistical constraints."

While Newcastle disease is not considered a major threat in the United States currently, that could change for Americans who are raising chickens as hobbyists and for major poultry production facilities, according to the researchers. A recent outbreak of Newcastle disease in Southern California caused the deaths of more than 1.2 million chickens.

Researchers from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire have found evidence that players born in the first quarter of the year are more likely to play in the National Football League.

Studies show children born earlier in the year may develop more quickly than their younger peers with higher participation in, for example, sports, than those born towards the end of the year. Known as the relative age effect, this phenomenon is evident in a wide range of arenas, such as youth sport and academia, but had not been closely studied in American pro football.

To investigate the matter of relative age effects among these athletes, researchers at Dartmouth assembled data on almost 20,000 players from the National Football League (NFL), including birthdays. Their research is presented in the article "Relative age effects in American professional football" published in De Gruyter's Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, by authors Michael C. Herron and Jack F. Heneghan.

Comparing the distribution of player births with births from the general population, the researchers found evidence that NFL players are more disproportionately born in the early months of the year, namely January through March. This indicated that developmental advantages possessed by relatively older players in childhood carry into adolescence and impact individuals' abilities to become professional athletes as young adults.

The authors considered whether cut-off dates used by players' school districts have led to relative age effects. Their research showed in cases where players attended public high school in the United States and the cut-off date used in their State could be confirmed, a disproportionate number of NFL players were born in fall months. This is consistent with what the authors call a school-based relative age effect.

"Even in a meritocratic environment such as the NFL, physiological factors beyond player control on athletic success are important, with the influence of these factors starting as early as childhood," explains Herron. However, the authors suggest, further studies, particularly those that trace professional athletes that may have moved between school districts as children, are needed to continue investigating this phenomenon.

A new multi-institution study spearheaded by researchers at Florida State University and the University of California, Los Angeles suggests a tiny protein could play a major role in combating heart failure related to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the most common lethal genetic disorder among children.

In collaboration with scientists from across the nation, FSU researchers found that increased levels of the protein sarcospan improve cardiac function by reinforcing cardiac cell membranes, which become feeble in patients with DMD.

Their findings were published in the journal JCI Insight.

The condition, which typically afflicts young boys, is caused by a mutation that prevents the body from producing dystrophin, a protein crucial to the health of skeletal, respiratory and cardiac muscles. Advances in treatment for certain types of DMD-related muscle degradation have helped to prolong patients' lifespans. However, as DMD patients age, their heart function declines dramatically.

"Patients typically live to 20 or 30 years of age," said lead author Michelle Parvatiyar, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food and Exercise Sciences in FSU's College of Human Sciences. "There have been important improvements in respiratory care, which used to be what a majority of patients would succumb to. Now, in their 20s and 30s, they're often succumbing to cardiomyopathy. The heart is functioning with a major component of the cell membrane missing. Over time, it wears out."

The study was part of continued efforts by UCLA biologist Rachelle H. Crosbie, the study's corresponding author, who previously identified sarcospan as a protein that could improve mechanical support in skeletal cell membranes lacking dystrophin. Her finding buoyed DMD researchers and affirmed sarcospan's potential as an effective tool in the fight against the condition.

"But nobody had really looked at how increasing the levels of this protein might affect the heart," Parvatiyar said.

Using a unique mouse model with a dearth of dystrophin, Parvatiyar and her collaborators did just that.

In their study, the team found that while it's is not a like-for-like replacement for dystrophin, an overexpression of sarcospan in cardiac cells seems to do the job of stabilizing cell membranes. Even under stress, researchers found, sarcospan overexpression was able to improve the membrane defect in dystrophin-deficient cells.

"Sarcospan doesn't quite do the job of dystrophin, but it acts as a glue to stabilize the membrane and hold protein complexes together when dystrophin is lacking," said Parvatiyar, explaining a concept developed by Crosbie.

Cardiac measurements confirmed that sarcospan does protect the cell membrane even when the heart is placed under stress. Study co-author and FSU College of Medicine Associate Professor Jose Pinto performed the measurements, along with FSU graduate student Karissa Dieseldorff Jones and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine research assistant Rosemeire Takeuchi Kanashiro.

In addition to serving as a kind of stabilizing glue, researchers said sarcospan could also act as a scaffold that supports other essential proteins at the cell membrane. That function could allow sarcospan to carry mini versions of dystrophin -- which, in its normal state, has a long and unwieldy genetic code -- to the edges of cardiac cells, where they could buttress the fragile membranes.

"The idea is that you could administer the sarcospan and the dystrophin at the same time, and the sarcospan could facilitate mini dystrophin localizing to the cell membrane and help hold those complexes in place," Parvatiyar said.

Sarcospan's two possible functions could augment existing DMD treatments, Parvatiyar said, or they could give rise to novel therapies that fortify weakened cardiac cell membranes and improve the quality of life for people with DMD.

In her previous position at UCLA, Parvatiyar had frequent interactions with DMD patients and their families. She said these interactions, and the unshakeable hope she's witnessed in those suffering from DMD, continue to drive her and her colleagues in the search for new ways to combat this debilitating condition.

"Those were the first times in my life I'd ever had someone come up to me and thank me for my work," she said. "Sometimes you can feel removed from it in the laboratory day after day. You see incremental progress. But to see people who are really yearning for help is motivating. Their positivity is incredibly inspiring."

"Epidemiological and clinical research and public policy in Europe are generally considered to be comprehensive and successful, but there is potential for improvement and scope for new opportunities", explains Professor Ziad A. Massy, Paris/France, Chair of the Nephrology and Public Policy Committee. "Especially in nephrology we have to further intensify our research activities. With 850 million people suffering from kidney diseases of any kind worldwide, nephrology has to be one of the main areas of medical research."

In 2013 a paper [1] showed that of 40,970 trials overall, only 1,054 (2.6%) were classified as nephrology. The majority of nephrology trials were for treatment (75.4%) or prevention (15.7%), with very few diagnostic, screening, or health services research studies. "Although many trials in nephrology have been initiated within the last 5-8 years, we still have to catch up. In my view it is especially important to generate epidemiologic and health care data in order to sensitize the public as well as policy makers to kidney diseases. It is high time to put the global spread of kidney diseases into focus."

To enhance research activities in nephrology, the NPPC worked out a research plan to be supported by the ERA-EDTA over the next five years. The main outline of the plan has been comprehensively described in a paper that was published in NDT yesterday [2]. Eight action points form the backbone of the plan and will stimulate research collaboration and grant applications in Europe under the umbrella of ERA EDTA:

(1) to conduct collaborative research designed to discover non-invasive diagnostic tests or new predictive markers for kidney disease complications, aimed to further improve the classification and prognosis of kidney diseases based on large scale omics data using available European patient cohorts;

(2) to review the feasibility and relevance of the development of CKD stage 4-5 registries based on on-going experiences at national level, and explore if and how these can be brought together for quality assurance and research at the European level;

(3) to plan a successful transition process from pediatric to adult care of CKD by active collaboration between pediatric and adult nephrologists and cohorts/registries;

(4) to reinforce the collaboration between the European Renal Best Practice (ERBP) experts and ERA-EDTA registry staff in order to extend the number of indicators to include the thresholds of the ERBP recommendations as part of prospectively collected datasets stemming from different national or regional cohorts and from the ERA-EDTA registry and to adapt those as new recommendations are published;

(5) to continue supporting the European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA) with its established links with the EU, allowing it to target key nephrological topics prioritized by patients and professionals, such as better quality of life in renal replacement therapy (RRT) patients and improving kidney transplantation and home treatment modalities, which also include regenerative and personalized medicine;

(6) to support the development of world-leading big data research in a number of ways including the creation of data networks and the development of educational programs;

(7) to help the Eastern European nephrology community to optimize patient care and patient-oriented research in their countries by increasing public awareness, encouraging /supporting clinical nephrology and epidemiology studies and improving training in nephrology;

(8) to create a European network of kidney units in order to extend our understanding of AKI progression and complications, including transition of AKI to CKD.

Mammary tumors in dogs are the equivalent of breast cancers in people, and, as in the human disease, the canine tumors can manifest in a variety of ways. Some are diagnosed early, others late, and they can be either slow growing or aggressive.

Yet current prognostic tools, which provide information about the tumor stage--how large or dispersed it is--and grade--how likely it is to grow quickly--don't always give veterinarians or owners clear picture of how a tumor is going to progress, and what treatments might be most appropriate.

A new "bio-scoring" system, devised by a team led by Karin Sorenmo, a veterinary oncologist at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, equips clinicians with a more reliable prognosticating method. The researchers shared their work in the journal Veterinary and Comparative Oncology.

"Mammary gland carcinomas are the most common tumors in intact dogs around the world," says Sorenmo. "Yet we still haven't made great progress in deciding which dogs are fine with just surgical treatment, which dogs might require chemotherapy, and which dogs might benefit from hormonal treatment. In testing this new approach, we found it helps identify the dogs that develop metastasis better than other methods. I'm very excited about it."

To develop and assess this new scoring method, Sorenmo relied on a unique dataset that emerged from Penn Vet's Shelter Canine Mammary Tumor Program. This initiative, spearheaded by Sorenmo, enables shelter dogs to receive treatment for their mammary tumors, then finds foster or permanent homes for each animal. Researchers such as Sorenmo and others benefit from studying the dogs, including how they respond to treatment.

The current work took data from 96 dogs treated through the program, as well as an additional 31 dogs treated in a similar fashion at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. The records they used including the pets' disease stage, grade, treatments received, and outcome--specifically, the time to metastasis, or spread of their disease within the body.

The "golden rule" for determining treatment currently, Sorenmo says, is to look at tumor stage, from stage I when the tumor is localized and small, up to stage IV when it has spread to distant organs.

"That's fine for some tumors that tend to behave in a certain way," Sorenmo notes, "but with mammary tumors it can be such a diverse disease."

Dogs can have advanced stage disease but, if their tumor has a low grade--that is, it is not fast-growing--they may have a better outcome than a dog with a lower stage but a more advanced grade. In addition, a tumor's histology, or the molecular markers that characterize the cancer cells, can further influence its behavior and the eventual outcome of treatment.

"We really didn't have a system to pull all the data together," Sorenomo says.

Looking to human oncology, Sorenmo and colleagues decided to borrow the idea of a scoring method that has been used to categorize breast cancers. They pulled together three pieces of information to attempt to more accurately determine a dog's prognosis: stage, grade, and histological type.

Some interesting findings arose from the statistical analysis. "We found that if you had a grade 1 tumor, no matter how large it gets, the vast majority of the time it doesn't cause any trouble," she says.

Since a good number of the dogs in the study had experienced long delays in receiving care due to being abandoned or in shelters, and thus had larger tumors than one would expect to see in the pet populations, the researchers were able to detect this size-independent effect.

"It's the same thing with lymph node involvement," says Sorenmo. "Everyone thinks that is a sign that the cancer has already started to move, but again we found that with a grade 1 tumor it doesn't matter. Those dogs didn't develop distant metastasis."

Using the overall bio-score, the researchers were able to differentiate dogs at lower risk of developing metastasis from those at a higher risk. If a pet has a higher bio-score, Sorenmo says, then a veterinarian or an owner may want to consider more aggressive treatment options, including chemotherapy. Dogs with a lower bio-score, on the other hand, may do just as well with surgical intervention alone.

In future work, Sorenmo would like to build on these findings by isolating the effect of hormones on mammary tumor and disease progression. Since the standard of care for treating dogs in the program is to spay them, she notes that doing so may remove a source of hormones that could be contributing to the dogs' disease in many cases.

For now, she is glad to have developed a system that can be implemented easily and immediately into treatment planning decisions.

"I try not to publish on things that most practicing veterinarians are not going to be able to use, like fancy tests that they won't routinely order," Sorenmo says. "This is practical. You look at three different things, given them a number and add it up."

Many of an organism's traits are influenced by cues from the organism's environment. These features are known as phenotypically plastic traits and are important in allowing an organism to cope with unpredictable environments.

But what are the genetic mechanisms underlying these traits?

Jennifer Brisson, an associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester, and her former postdoctoral student Benjamin Parker, now an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Tennessee, studied phenotypically plastic traits in pea aphids and uncovered, for the first time, genes that influence whether aphids produce wingless or winged offspring in response to their environment. In a new paper in the journal Current Biology, the researchers shed light on how phenotypically plastic traits evolve and address critical questions about the evolution of environmentally sensitive traits.

Pea aphids are insects that reproduce rapidly and typically give birth to offspring that do not have wings. As many gardeners know, aphids can quickly overwhelm and kill the host plants on which they live and feed. When an environment becomes too crowded with other aphids, the females begin producing offspring that have wings, rather than the typical wingless offspring. The winged offspring can then fly to and colonize new, less crowded plants.

"Aphids have been doing this trick for millions of years," Brisson says. "But some aphids are more sensitive to crowding than others. Figuring out why is key to understanding how this textbook example of phenotypic plasticity works."

The researchers used techniques from evolutionary genetics and molecular biology to identify genes that determine the degree to which aphids respond to crowding. Surprisingly, the genes they uncovered are from a virus that then became incorporated into the aphid genome. The virus, which is from a group of insect viruses called densoviruses, causes its host to produce offspring with wings. Researchers believe the virus does this in order to facilitate its own dispersal. As Brisson and Parker found, the gene from the virus retained the same function of producing winged offspring even after it was transferred and incorporated into the aphid genome.

"This is a novel role for viral genes that are co-opted by the genome for other purposes, like modulating plastic phenotypes," Parker says. "Microbial genes can become incorporated into animal genomes, and this process is important to evolution."

Most laterally transferred DNA--DNA that is inherited from other organisms, like viruses--is not expressed by its hosts because it is quickly inactivated or eliminated. However, there are examples in most organisms--even humans--where genomes co-opt genes laterally; in humans, for instance, the gene that creates a membrane between the placenta and the fetus was co-opted from a retrovirus.

Brisson and Parker found a clear case in which genes from outside an organism were co-opted by the organism's genome to modify the strength of a plastic response to environmental cues. Microbial genes like those from viruses can, therefore, play an important role in insect and animal evolution, Brisson says. "Even in ancient traits like the one studied here, new genes can start to play a role in shaping plastic traits and can help organisms cope with an unpredictable world."

A recent case study from the University of Helsinki examines different ways of framing oil spill risks with regard to the Norwegian Barents Sea where new areas have been recently opened for oil exploration and exploitation. The study demonstrates that there is an urgent need for new ways of integrating different risk frames and multiple ways of knowing into the risk governance processes of complex socio-ecological risks, such as oil spill risks.

The different, often conflicting, perceptions of risks as well as societal values present challenges in the governance of environmental risks. The opening of new areas for offshore drilling in the Arctic is highly controversial. As the ice cover in the region is melting at an alarming rate, new areas have been opened for the petroleum industry in the Norwegian Barents Sea.

The decision of the Norwegian government to open new areas for maritime operations closer to the ice edge remains highly controversial as the oil spill risks of offshore operations are exacerbated due to, e.g., the possible presence of ice, harsh weather conditions, and the ineffectiveness of current response measures. Considering the contribution of fossil fuels to climate change, opening new areas for the petroleum industry impedes reaching the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

The study indicates that the current governance framework is unapt for integrating the multiple risk frames and knowledge systems into decision-making processes.

"We suggest that social learning and collaborative knowledge production are needed to move towards developing a shared understanding of the problem situation and the solutions", says Tuuli Parviainen, doctoral student in the Ecosystem and Environment Research Programme, University of Helsinki.

Considerable differences in how risks were defined and perceived by the participants were revealed by the study. The participants emphasised a wide range of environmental, economic and social risks, including both the long-term local and global consequences of offshore drilling operations, e.g., how offshore drilling contributes to climate change. In addition, the respondents identified different knowledge sources as important when assessing the risks, including, e.g., interdisciplinary research and traditional knowledge.

Therefore, questions - such as who should take part in identifying and evaluating risks; who are seen as relevant or as "experts" in assessing risks and who are not; what governance measures are considered important; and who should be involved in ensuring the legitimacy of the decisions - need to be explored as part of oil spill risk governance processes.

In their paper, Parviainen et al. (2019) demonstrate the multiple ways in which risks with regard to the Norwegian Barents Sea are perceived and defined, and analyse the types of knowledge that the risk frames are based on. Risk frames were elicited using semi-structured interviews to construct qualitative mental models: mental modelling can be used to bring forward and illustrate the extent of uncertainties as well as the ambiguity related to evaluating and assessing oil spill risks.

"The current risk governance framework, including, e.g., the Barents Sea ecosystem-based management plan and the industry risk assessments, have largely focused on natural sciences and engineering studies, and risks are understood principally in terms of probabilities and consequences. We would suggest that assessing and evaluating risks and risk control options cannot be left to experts alone", Parviainen states.