Culture

An international study led by the ICTA-UAB states that recognizing indigenous peoples' and local communities' rights and agency is critical to addressing the current biodiversity crisis

Policies established by the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) could be ineffective if the rights and agency of indigenous peoples and local communities are not recognized and fully incorporated into biodiversity management. This is supported by an international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and recently published in the journal Ambio.

The Convention on Biological Diversity is now working to formulate the goals that will frame global biodiversity policy in the years to come. This will be done through an ambitious international plan commonly known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The objective of this framework is to promote a profound transformation at the social level that allows halting biodiversity loss at global level. Unfortunately, the framework, as currently written, still has a long way to go towards fully recognizing Indigenous Peoples' rights and agency, scientists argue.

"Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' understandings of nature align perfectly well with the Convention on Biological Diversity's vision of Living in Harmony with Nature", says ICREA Research Professor at the ICTA-UAB Victoria Reyes-García, leader of the study. "It seems paradoxical that global discussions on the collective future of the planet do not heed the voices of Indigenous Peoples' and local communities, one of the groups of actors that has contributed the most to safeguarding the planet's biodiversity".

The study, signed by 21 scientists from all over the world, presents a set of arguments why foregrounding Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' rights and agency is essential to the success of future biodiversity policy. Based on an in-depth review of literature, the study highlights that Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold critical knowledge for setting realistic, legitimate and effective biodiversity targets.

"The Global Biodiversity Framework should recognize and address the views and perspectives of Indigenous Peoples and local communities", states Dr. Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, co-author of the study and researcher at the University of Helsinki. "There is crystal-clear evidence that their knowledge systems, practices and values have so much to offer in addressing the current biodiversity crisis".

The authors argue that Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' participation in biodiversity policy contribute to recognizing and upholding human rights, and call on the Convention on Biological Diversity to fully recognize Indigenous Peoples' and local communities not only as stakeholders, but also as rights, agency and knowledge-holders.

Scientists at the Ural Federal University (UrFU, Russia) have created clay bricks that are able to attenuate ionizing radiation to a level that is safe for the human body. To the composition of bricks scientists add waste from the industry, which protects against radiation. The article describing the technology was published in the journal Applied Radiation and Isotopes.

"Bricks are a relatively cheap and convenient material with which we can quickly erect protective rooms, structures, walls around objects with radiation," says scientific head of the project, associate professor of the Department of Nuclear Power Plants and Renewable Energy Sources at UrFU Oleg Tashlykov. "The bricks are alloyed with heavy metals - wastes from the metallurgical enterprises. These substances have pronounced radiation-protective properties. Thus, we solve two problems at once. First, by adding crushed absorbers of ionizing radiation to the matrix, in this case from clay, we obtain building materials with the desired protective properties. Secondly, in this way we find a way to utilize industrial waste."

The ultimate goal of scientists is to develop a wide range of materials based not only on clay, but also cement mortars or concrete, artificial polymers with different chemical composition and concentration of absorbing substances. In other words, with specified protective properties that meet specific conditions (isotopic composition of radioactive contamination, types of radiation, etc.) at nuclear power plants, in radioactive waste storage facilities, as well as in medical institutions where diagnostics and treatment are carried out using X-ray equipment and irradiating devices.

"Tungsten is widely known to be the most reliable protection against gamma or X-ray radiation, but it is very expensive," says research coauthor, research engineer of the Department of Nuclear Power Plants and Renewable Energy Sources at UrFU Karem Makhmud. "Lead is cheaper but toxic. And, besides, it is plastic and in an upright position can slide under its own weight, forming holes in the radiation protection system and reducing its stability. Our materials are optimal in terms of radiation protection efficiency and ease of manufacture, strength, durability, cost. The latter factor is important, since today the contribution of biological protection to the cost of nuclear power facilities reaches 20-30%."

Scientists use high-precision computational codes to create bricks. Also they use for their experimental research the reactor plant of the Institute of Reactor Materials of the State Corporation "Rosatom" (Russia), as well as the production technologies of the Sealing Materials Plant (Russia). The products of joint activities are of great interest to domestic and foreign enterprises of the nuclear industry. There are plans to further study the mechanical and radiation-protective parameters of various natural substances, including those common in the partner countries of Rosatom (Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh), where nuclear power plants are being built with the participation of Russian specialists.

Chronic skin itching drives more people to the dermatologist than any other condition. In fact, the latest science literature finds that 7% of U.S. adults, and between 10 and 20% of people in developed countries, suffer from dermatitis, a common skin inflammatory condition that causes itching.

"Itch is a significant clinical problem, often caused by underlying medical conditions in the skin, liver, or kidney. Due to our limited understanding of itch mechanisms, we don't have effective treatment for the majority of patients," said Liang Han, an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Biological Sciences who is also a researcher in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

Until recently, neuroscientists considered the mechanisms of skin itch the same. But Han and her research team recently uncovered differences in itch in non-hairy versus hairy areas of the skin, opening new areas for research.

Their research, published April 13 in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), could open new, more effective treatments for patients suffering from persistent skin itching.

Itch Origins More Than Skin Deep

According to researchers, there are two different types of stimuli from the nervous system that trigger the itch sensation through sensory nerves in the skin ? chemical and mechanical. In their study, Han and her team identified a specific neuron population that controls itching in 'glabrous' skin ?the smoother, tougher skin that's found on the palms of hands and feet soles.

Itching in those areas poses greater difficulty for sufferers and is surprisingly common. In the U.S., there are an estimated 200,000 cases a year of dyshidrosis, a skin condition causing itchy blisters to develop only on the palm and soles. Another chronic skin condition, palmoplantar pustulosis (a type of psoriasis that causes inflamed, scaly skin and intense itch on the palms and soles), affects as many as 1.6 million people in the U.S. each year.

"That's actually one of the most debilitating places (to get an itch)," said first author Haley R. Steele, a graduate student in the School of Biological Sciences. "If your hands are itchy, it's hard to grasp things, and if it's your feet, it can be hard to walk. If there's an itch on your arm, you can still type. You'll be distracted, but you'll be OK. But if it's your hands and feet, it's harder to do everyday things."

Ability to Block, Activate Itch-causing Neurons in Lab Mice

Since many biological mechanisms underlying itch -- such as receptors and nerve pathways -- are similar in mice and people, most itch studies rely on mice testing. Using mice in their lab, Georgia Tech researchers were able to activate or block these neurons.

The research shows, for the first time, "the actual neurons that send itch are different populations. Neurons that are in hairy skin that do not sense itch in glabrous skins are one population, and another senses itch in glabrous skins."

Why has an explanation so far eluded science? "I think one reason is because most of the people in the field kind of assumed it was the same mechanism that's controlling the sensation. It's technically challenging. It's more difficult than working on hairy skin," Han said.

To overcome this technical hurdle, the team used a new investigative procedure, or assay, modeled after human allergic contact dermatitis, Steele said.

The previous method would have involved injecting itch-causing chemicals into mice skin, but most of a mouse's skin is covered with hair. The team had to focus on the smooth glabrous skin on tiny mice hands and feet. Using genetically modified mice also helped identify the right sensory neurons responsible for glabrous skin itches.

"We activated a particular set of neurons that causes itch, and we saw that biting behavior again modeled," said Steele, referring to how mice usually deal with itchy skin.

One set of study mice was given a chemical to specifically kill an entire line of neurons. Focusing on three previously known neuron mechanisms related to itch sensation found in hairy skin, they found that two of the neurons, MrgprA3+ and MrgprD+, did not play important roles in non-hairy skin itch, but the third neuron, MrgprC11+, did. Removing it reduced both acute and chronic itching in the soles and palms of test mice.

Potential to Drive New Treatments for Chronic Itch

Han's team hopes that the research leads to treatments that will turn off those itch-inducing neurons, perhaps by blocking them in human skin.

"To date, most treatments for skin itch do not discriminate between hairy and glabrous skin except for potential medication potency due to the increased skin thickness in glabrous skin," observed Ron Feldman, assistant professor in the Department of Dermatology in the Emory University School of Medicine. Georgia Tech's findings "provide a rationale for developing therapies targeting chronic itching of the hands and feet that, if left untreated, can greatly affect patient quality of life," he concluded.

What's next for Han and her team? "We would like to investigate how these neurons transmit information to the spinal cord and brain," said Han, who also wants to investigate the mechanisms of chronic itch conditions that mainly affect glabrous skin such as cholestatic itch, or itch due to reduced or blocked bile flow often seen in liver and biliary system diseases.

"I joined this lab because I love working with Liang Han," added Steele, who selected glabrous skin itch research for her Ph.D. "because it was the most technically challenging and had the greatest potential for being really interesting and significant to the field."

When Charles Darwin published Descent of Man 150 years ago, he launched scientific investigations on human origins and evolution. This week, three leading scientists in different, but related disciplines published "Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin's Descent of Man," in Science, in which they identify three insights from Darwin's opus on human evolution that modern science has reinforced.

"Working together was a challenge because of disciplinary boundaries and different perspectives, but we succeeded," said Sergey Gavrilets, lead author and professor in the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Their goal with this review summary was to apply the framework of modern speciation theory to human origins and summarize recent research to highlight the fact that Darwin's Descent of Man foreshadowed many recent scientific developments in the field.

They focused on the following three insights:

1. We share many characteristics with our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes, which include genetic, developmental, physiological, morphological, cognitive, and psychological characteristics.

2. Humans have a talent for high-level cooperation reinforced by morality and social norms.

3. We have greatly expanded the social learning capacity that we see already in other primates.

"The paper's insights have important implication for understanding behavior of modern humans and for developing policies to solve some of the most pressing problems our society faces," Gavrilets said.

Gavrilets is director of the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity (DySoC) at UT, which promotes transdisciplinary research into the origins, evolution, and futures of human social complexity. This paper is one of the outcomes of activities from the Center. Other related outcomes include free online learning modules on cultural evolution and a series of online webinars about cultural evolution and human origins, which thousands of students and researchers worldwide have watched.

Depressive disorders are among the most frequent illnesses worldwide. The causes are complex and to date only partially understood. The trace element lithium appears to play a role. Using neutrons of the research neutron source at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a research team has now proved that the distribution of lithium in the brains of depressive people is different from the distribution found in healthy humans.

Lithium is familiar to many of us from rechargeable batteries. Most people ingest lithium on a daily basis in drinking water. International studies have shown that a higher natural lithium content in drinking water coincides with a lower suicide rate among the population.

In much higher concentrations lithium salts have been used for decades to treat mania and depressive disturbances. However, the exact role lithium plays in the brain is still unknown.

Physicists and neuropathologists at the Technical University of Munich joined forensic medical experts at Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich (LMU) and an expert team from the Research Neutron Source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) to develop a method which can be used to precisely determine the distribution of lithium in the human brain. The team hopes to be able to draw conclusions for therapy as well as to gain a better understanding of the physiological processes involved in depression.

Neutrons detect the slightest traces of lithium

The scientists investigated the brain of a suicidal patient and compared it with two control persons. The investigation focused on the ratio of the lithium concentration in white brain matter to the concentration in the gray matter of the brain.

In order to determine where how much lithium is present in the brain, the researchers analyzed 150 samples from various brain regions - for example those regions which are presumably responsible for processing feelings. At the FRM II Prompt Gamma-Ray Activation Analysis (PGAA) instrument the researchers irradiated thin brain sections with neutrons.

"One lithium isotope is especially good at capturing neutrons; it then decays into a helium atom and a tritium atom," explains Dr. Roman Gernhäuser of the Central Technology Laboratory of the TUM Department of Physics. The two decay products are captured by detectors in front of and behind the sample and thus provide information on where exactly the lithium is located in the brain section.

Since the lithium concentration in the brain is usually very low, it is also very difficult to ascertain. "Until now it wasn't possible to detect such small traces of lithium in the brain in a spatially resolved manner," says Dr. Jutta Schöpfer of the LMU Munich Institute for Forensic Medicine. "One special aspect of the investigation using neutrons is that our samples are not destroyed. That means we can repeatedly examine them several times over a longer period of time," Gernhäuser points out.

Significant difference between depressive patients and healthy persons

"We saw that there was significantly more lithium present in the white matter of the healthy person than in the gray matter. By contrast, the suicidal patient had a balanced distribution, without a measurable systematic difference," summarizes Dr. Roman Gernhäuser.

"Our results are fairly groundbreaking, because we were able for the first time to ascertain the distribution of lithium under physiological conditions," Schöpfer is glad to report. "Since we were able to ascertain trace quantities of the element in the brain without first administering medication and because the distribution is so clearly different, we assume that lithium indeed has an important function in the body."

Just a beginning

"Of course the fact that we were only able to investigate brain sections from three persons marks only a beginning," Gernhäuser admits. "However, in each case we were able to investigate many different brain regions which confirmed the systematic behavior."

"We would be able to find out much more with more patients, whose life stories would also be better known," says Gernhäuser, adding that it might then also be possible to answer the question as to whether the deviating lithium distribution in depressive persons is a cause or a result of the illness.

Social scientists have had a longstanding fixation on moral character, demographic information, and socioeconomic status when it comes to analyzing crime and arrest rates. The measures have become traditional markers used to quantify and predict criminalization, but they leave out a crucial indicator: what's going on in the changing world around their subjects.

An unprecedented longitudinal study, published today in the American Journal of Sociology, looks to make that story more complete and show that when it comes to arrests it can come down to when someone is rather than who someone is, a theory the researchers refer to as the birth lottery of history.

Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson and Ph.D. candidate Roland Neil followed arrests in the lives of more than 1,000 Americans as they transitioned out of adolescence to being young adults over a 23-year span. This was a time period that saw some of the largest social change in recent memory, and the results indicate how these changes, which included the rise of mass incarceration, aggressive policing tactics, and the mid-1990s sudden drop in crime that became known as the "great American crime decline" -- helped shape how these adolescents and young adults came into contact with the criminal justice system.

"What we're attempting to do is to look at birth cohorts who were coming of age at different times during these social changes," said Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences. "The setting is roughly the last quarter-century or so. We focused on that because it's a time of great social change in the United States. Mass incarceration comes to the top of many people's minds, but we also saw a rise in violence before that and then a large decline in violence over most of the past 25 years. We saw tremendous changes in policing practices, and most recently, concerns about police brutality and police killings have risen."

What Sampson and Neil tried to do is link those changes with what it's like to grow up when it comes to criminalization, particularly arrest -- the trigger generating a criminal record in the first place. It sheds new light on the arrest patterns of people who came of age in different eras of the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and plummeting violence starting in the 1990s.

The researchers based their work on a multi-cohort longitudinal study of 1,057 children who were originally enrolled in a National Institute of Justice study called the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a study of how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development. The oldest individuals tracked were born between 1980 and the mid-1980s and were ages nine, 12, and 15 at the start of the study. The youngest in the study were born in 1995. All participants were tracked from 1995 to 2018.

All participants in the study, originally all Chicagoans, were followed over the course of nearly twenty-five years as they came of age. They were selected randomly based on a representative sample reflecting the diversity of contemporary urban America. Blacks and Latinos each comprised over a third of the sample while white participants made up 20 percent. More than a third of the individuals came from immigrant families. The researchers also collected information through interviews with caretakers and the participants over multiple rounds of data collection. It allowed Sampson and Neil to dig deep into the characteristics of the participants, their families, and early-life neighborhood conditions.

They used data based on criminal history records that were collected through the end of 2018 for all participants, allowing them to study arrest over a 23-year span. The analysis showed large differences in patterns of arrest among the four age cohorts across substantial portions of their lives "We wanted to know not only if there were differences in arrest rates for the different cohorts, but why were there differences," Neil said. "Do these differences reflect fundamental differences in who these people were, or differences in what happened early on in their life? Or did they reflect differences in the larger context through which they were aging?"

The researchers found it was the latter. In many cases, for example, even people who shared the same kind of character traits, grew up in similar families, and came from similar economic backgrounds had much higher or lower chances of getting arrested depending on the years during which they were 17 to 23 years old, the peak ages for arrest.

For instance, younger cohorts (those born in the 1990s) came of age during a radically different and, in some ways, more peaceful world than the older cohorts, who were born in the 1980s. In fact, the chances of arrest for the older cohorts were nearly double -- 96 percent higher -- than the younger cohorts, according to the study.

"The explanation for this can't just be reduced to the usual suspects -- childhood experiences, family structure, demographics, social class, family upbringing -- or individual characteristics," Sampson said.

This is where the birth lottery of history comes in, meaning the fortune of when they were born factored into their chances of arrest. Analysis showed just how significant a few years of social changes can make when it comes to arrest rates by looking at what are often cited as the two leading explanations for crime: socioeconomic disadvantage and having low self-control.

Approximately 70 percent of children born in the 1980s to disadvantaged families were arrested by their mid-20s while only about a quarter of disadvantaged children born in the mid-1990s were arrested by that same age. For participants from more advantaged backgrounds changes were moderate. Looking at those same cohorts, the study found that those born in the 1980s with higher self-control had about the same arrest rates as those born in the 1990s with low self-control.

"We should really be looking at not what was virtuous or wrong with individuals of a particular cohort but rather looking at what's right or wrong with the larger social environment during the historical period in which they happen to come of age," Sampson said. "This study is showing that historical changes are built into those very criminal records."

Changing law enforcement patterns explained about half the cohort differences in criminalization, with disorderly conduct and drug arrests falling substantially in the period they studied. However, the researchers make clear that these differences were not driven by aggressive policing alone.

They believe behavioral changes caused by larger societal changes also led to lower arrests for younger cohorts. For example, from the mid-90s to 2018, parts of urban Chicago underwent revitalization, gentrification, repopulation, and saw an influx of immigrants. In more recent years the rise of technologies such as smartphones, video games, the internet, and social media have also transformed the lives of young people, potentially reducing time spent in risky situations for arrest.

"Put simply, our results show that when we are matters as much and perhaps more than who we are or even what we have done. To the extent that arrest is a result of substantial social changes in both criminal justice practices and societal norms that strongly differentiate the life experience of successive birth cohorts, independent of individual or family differences, the idea of an individual's propensity to crime needs reconsideration," Sampson said.

The study pointed out potential caveats such as the study being limited to people originally from Chicago and only looking at 20 years of a person's life.

The researchers hope to expand their theory and the data they collected on cohort inequalities in criminalization. They plan on doing new interviews and continuing to add to the records they've built to dig into the data further.

Paleontologists had to adjust to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many had to postpone fossil excavations, temporarily close museums and teach the next generation of fossil hunters virtually instead of in person.

But at least parts of the show could go on during the pandemic -- with some significant changes.

"For paleontologists, going into the field to look for fossils is where data collection begins, but it does not end there," said Christian Sidor, a University of Washington professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the UW's Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture. "After you collect fossils, you have to bring them to the laboratory, clean them off and see what you've found."

Among other adaptations during the pandemic, Sidor and his UW colleagues have spent more time cleaning, preparing and analyzing fossils excavated before the pandemic, as well as managing new pandemic-related struggles -- such as a misplaced shipment of irreplaceable specimens.

For Sidor's team, a recent triumph came from an analysis -- led by UW postdoctoral researcher Bryan Gee -- of fossils of Micropholis stowi, a salamander-sized amphibian that lived in the Early Triassic, shortly after Earth's largest mass extinction approximately 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period. Micropholis is a temnospondyl, a group of extinct amphibians known from fossil deposits around the globe. In a paper published May 21 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Gee and Sidor report on the first occurrence of Micropholis in ancient Antarctica.

"Previously, Micropholis was only known from South African specimens," said Gee. "That isolation was considered fairly typical for amphibians in the Southern Hemisphere during the Early Triassic. Each region -- South Africa, Madagascar, Antarctica, Australia -- will have its own set of amphibian species. Now, we're seeing that Micropholis was more widespread than previously recognized."

Out of more than 30 Early Triassic amphibians in the Southern Hemisphere, Micropholis is now only the second found in more than one region, according to Gee. That is surprising given Earth's geography. In the Early Triassic, most of Earth's continents were connected as a part of a single, large landmass, Pangea. Places like South Africa and Antarctica were not as far apart as they are today, and may have had similar climates. Some scientists theorize that these closely placed regions could harbor different amphibian species as a consequence of the end-Permian mass extinction.

"It had been proposed that there were only small populations of survivors and low movement of species in the Early Triassic, which could have explained these regional differences," said Gee.

Finding Micropholis in two regions may indicate that this species was a "generalist" -- adaptable to many types of environments -- and could easily spread after the mass extinction.

Alternatively, it's possible that many other amphibians actually lived in multiple regions, like Micropholis, but paleontologists haven't found evidence yet. While some Southern Hemisphere regions like South Africa have been well sampled, others have not -- like Antarctica, which in the Early Triassic was relatively temperate, but is today largely covered by ice sheets.

Sidor's team collected skulls and other fragile body parts from four individuals of Micropholis during a 2017-2018 collection trip to the Transantarctic Mountains. In 2019, Gee agreed to come to the UW to lead the analysis of amphibian fossils from that trip after completing his doctoral degree at the University of Toronto. He completed his degree early in the pandemic and moved to Seattle during the second wave of COVID-19.

With social distancing measures in place on campus, Sidor delivered the fossils and a microscope to Gee's home, where he analyzed the specimens in his living room.

"Having access to the microscope was really the most essential piece of equipment, to be able to identify all the small-scale anatomical features that we need to definitively prove these were Micropholis fossils," said Gee.

On the same trip, Sidor's team collected another rare find: a well-preserved skull of a therocephalian, a group of extinct mammal relatives that lived in the Permian and Triassic periods. Therocephalians were a widespread group of both herbivores and carnivores.

"But the Antarctic record for these animals is very poor," said Sidor. "So this was a rare find."

It was a rare find that nearly went extinct again. Sidor shipped the therocephalian skull in October 2019 to Chicago's Field Museum, where it was cleaned and prepped by his longtime colleague Akiko Shinya.

"Not being able to travel to museums to do research, we've been shipping fossils to each other -- which we don't like to do, but sometimes we have to in order to keep the work going," said Sidor.

In early April, Shinya shipped the finished specimens overnight back to Sidor in Seattle, but the package did not show up at the projected time. As Sidor recounted on Twitter, the skull was apparently lost in a transfer facility in Indiana -- he feared for good. After several days, the package was found, and was promptly transported to Seattle and delivered safely to the UW.

"I was so relieved," said Sidor. "When I thought it was lost, I had been thinking about the insurance forms. How do you put a dollar value on a specimen that you needed an LC-130 Hercules to collect?"

The skull is undergoing analysis at the UW. As for the Antarctic Micropholis specimens, they'll soon receive a new home. Later this year, they'll go on display at the Burke Museum.

DALLAS - May 21, 2021 - One member of a large protein family that is known to stop the spread of bacterial infections by prompting infected human cells to self-destruct appears to kill the infectious bacteria instead, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists shows. However, some bacteria have their own mechanism to thwart this attack, nullifying the deadly protein by tagging it for destruction.

The findings, published online today in Cell, could lead to new antibiotics to fight bacterial infections. And insight into this cellular conflict could shed light on a number of other conditions in which this protein is involved, including asthma, Type 1 diabetes, primary biliary cirrhosis, and Crohn's disease.

"This is a wonderful example of an arms race between infectious bacteria and human cells," says study leader Neal M. Alto, Ph.D., professor of microbiology at UTSW and a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Previous research has shown that the protein, called gasdermin B (GSDMB), was different from other members of the mammalian gasdermin family. Related gasdermin proteins form pores in the membranes of infected cells, killing them while allowing inflammatory molecules to leak out and incite an immune response. However, GSDMB - found in humans but not in some other mammalian species, including rodents - doesn't form pores in the membranes of cultured mammalian cells, leaving its target a mystery.

Using a novel screening technology, Alto and colleagues discovered that a protein toxin called IpaH7.8 from shigella flexneri, a bacterium that causes diarrheal disease, directly inhibits GSDMB. Biochemical experiments show that IpaH7.8 places a chemical tag on GSDMB that marks it for cellular destruction.

To understand why shigella flexneri rids human cells of GSDMB, the researchers placed GSDMB within synthetic mammalian and bacterial cell membranes. While GSDMB left the synthetic mammalian membranes unharmed, it poked holes in the bacterial membranes. Further investigation showed that immune cells called natural killer cells stimulate this process.

Alto notes that inhibiting the ability of shigella IpaH7.8 to counteract GSDMB could lead to new types of antibiotics. And because genetic variants of GSDMB have been linked to a variety of inflammatory diseases and cancer, better understanding this protein could lead to new treatments for these conditions too.

OKLAHOMA CITY AND DENMARK - Campylobacter infection, one of the most common foodborne illnesses in the Western world, can also be spread through sexual contact, according to a new research discovery by an OU Hudson College of Public Health faculty member, working in conjunction with colleagues in Denmark.

The team's research has been published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is the first known study to prove this mode of transmission for Campylobacter. During a time when COVID-19 has dominated news about infectious diseases, the research is a reminder that many other pathogens affect lives around the world every day. The study was led by infectious disease epidemiologist Katrin Kuhn, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the OU Hudson College of Public Health.

"This research is important for public health messaging and for physicians as they talk to their patients about risks associated with sexual contact," Kuhn said. "Although Campylobacter infection is usually not a serious disease, it causes diarrhea, which can result in people missing work, losing productivity or perhaps losing their job. It poses an additional risk for people with underlying health conditions."

Campylobacter infections usually occur when people eat chicken that has not been cooked thoroughly or when juices from uncooked poultry make their way into other food. Infections can also be caused by drinking unpasteurized milk or water that has been contaminated by the feces of infected animals. However, those didn't account for all cases of infection, Kuhn said, and she wondered if there was another route of transmission that remained unproven. An outbreak of Campylobacter infections in northern Europe among men who have sex with men prompted her to study that population of people in Denmark, where she was working when the research began.

The study results showed that the rate of Campylobacter infection was 14 times higher in men who have sex with men than the control subjects. Although the study focused on men who have sex with men, the results are relevant to people of any sexual orientation who engage in sexual behavior that may involve fecal-oral contact, Kuhn said.

Two other bacteria, Salmonella and Shigella, were used as comparisons in the study. Salmonella is spread primarily through infected foods, while Shigella can be transmitted through food or sexual contact. Salmonella has a high infectious dose, meaning people must ingest a significant amount of the bacteria before they become ill. However, Shigella and Campylobacter have low infectious doses, which makes transmission easier.

"That's an additional reason why we believe Campylobacter can be transmitted through sexual contact like Shigella is - because people can become infected when only small amounts of the bacteria are present," Kuhn said.

Campylobacter infections are probably more prevalent than the numbers show. For every one person who goes to the doctor and is diagnosed, epidemiologists estimate that 20 more people are infected, Kuhn said. Although treatment is usually required only for severe cases, complications can occur, especially in people who have compromised immune systems. In some cases, infection can result in reactive arthritis, in which the body's immune system attacks itself, causing pain in the joints. Infection can also lead to Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a serious nerve disorder that can cause paralysis.

"This is an interesting time because COVID-19 has made people more aware of the importance of monitoring infectious diseases in general, not only during a pandemic," she said. "There are many infections like the one caused by Campylobacter that make people sick. It's important that we spotlight the fact that these diseases exist and that we continue to conduct research on their effects and modes of transmission."

Before arriving at the OU Hudson College of Public Health, Kuhn served as a senior infectious disease epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark. Her work focused on food- and water-borne infections, and she was responsible for the national surveillance of Campylobacter and Shigella. She began this study while in Denmark and completed it after moving to Oklahoma. Statens Serum Institut is the Danish national institute for infectious diseases and the primary institute for surveillance of and research on infectious diseases in Denmark.

"A formal collaboration between OU Hudson College of Public Health and Statens Serum Institut will build a solid foundation for strengthening transatlantic research and, not least, improving the way that we monitor, understand and prevent infectious diseases in Oklahoma," Kuhn said.

Despite the increasing frequency and severity of floods, storms, wildfires and other natural hazards, some firms in disaster-prone areas prepare while others do not.

That issue was examined in a new study by Jennifer Oetzel, professor, American University and Chang Hoon Oh, William & Judy Docking Professor of Strategy, University of Kansas published in the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ).

"Due to the increased frequency and severity of floods, storms, epidemics, wildfires and other natural hazards anticipated over the coming decades (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), there is growing pressure on managers and their firms to develop strategies for managing natural disaster risk," write the researchers.

"Preparing for future events that may never occur is challenging. Day-to-day events tend to crowd out long-term planning, but business continuity depends on managers anticipating and planning for large scale disasters. For these reasons, our goal in this study was to understand the antecedents associated with disaster preparation so that managers can better prepare for natural disasters."

They defined disaster preparedness as the acquisition of the skills and capabilities needed to reduce damage to a firm, to minimize disruption to the supply chain, and business activity more generally, and to save lives and protect employees.

Disaster preparedness can entail a wide variety of initiatives including conducting an assessment of firm vulnerability to natural disasters, establishing a natural disaster response plan, training employees about natural disaster preparedness, purchasing insurance, developing a business continuity plan, and arranging to move business operations temporarily to another location, among others.

Emergency preparedness pays off. A review conducted by the Wharton Risk Center that focused on floods suggested that for every dollar spent on flood risk reduction, on average, five dollars is saved through avoided and reduced losses. But despite the documented value of preparing, most firms fail to do so.

"Since not all firms located in disaster prone areas prepare for disasters, what are the antecedents to disaster preparation? To answer this question," write the authors, "we looked at several factors that are likely to affect whether or not businesses will prepare. The first factor is organizational experience with disaster, which can be a transformational and powerful motivator for change when managers see the value of disaster preparation and planning."

The mechanisms driving the relationship between experience and preparedness are multifaceted. Managers may fail to learn from past experiences if they do not consider a recently experienced disaster as representative of future events. Even when managers learn from experience and see preparation as valuable, they may lack the organizational influence and find that they are unable to leverage learning to inform decision-making.

Aside from experience, strategic decisions around disaster preparation are likely to be affected by managers' subjective judgments and/or knowledge about disaster risks. Depending upon the nature of their experience, managers may either over- or under-estimate disaster risk and thus over or under prepare.

Research has also shown that willingness to learn from other organizations about how to manage natural disaster risk is also important. External sources of information provide different perspectives and may help organizations to avoid internal biases in decision making.

"Another set of factors that are presumed to affect preparation are the characteristics of disasters, including their type, frequency, and impact," write the researchers. "Historical records and scientific data indicate whether or not a given location is subject to natural disasters and, if so, of what type.

"Natural scientists examining climate change trends are raising concerns, however, that past experiences may not be predictive of the future. In certain geographic areas (e.g., Houston, Texas), the frequency of major disasters may be increasing substantially, deviating significantly from the past."

In conducting two studies -- an international survey in 18 disaster-prone countries and a U.S. survey in New York City and Miami - Oetzel and Oh found that managers are more likely to prepare when their companies experienced prior disasters. The likelihood of preparedness is even higher when companies work with and learn from other organizations and stakeholders.

"Managers operating in locations characterized by high impact, low frequency disasters are more willing to learn from others," they wrote. "In contrast, managers in areas characterized by low impact, high frequency disasters, are more likely to prepare alone. Since effective disaster preparation typically entails working with, and learning from others, those companies that choose a go-it-alone strategy may misjudge disaster risk."

The SMJ is published by the Strategic Management Society (SMS), comprised of 3,000 academics, business practitioners, and consultants from 80 countries, focuses on the development and dissemination of insights on the strategic management process, as well as on fostering contacts and interchanges around the world.

The human body is constantly exposed to various environmental actors, from viruses to bacteria to fungi, but most of these microbial organisms provoke little or no response from our skin, which is charged with monitoring and protecting from external dangers.

Until now, researchers weren't quite sure how that happened -- and why our skin wasn't constantly alarmed and inflamed.

In a study published May 21, 2021 in Science Immunology, scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine identify and describe two enzymes responsible for protecting our skin and body's overall health from countless potential microbial intruders. These enzymes, called histone deacetylases (HDACs), inhibit the body's inflammatory response in the skin.

"We have figured out why we tolerate certain microbes living on our skin, while the same bacteria would make us very sick if exposed elsewhere in the body," said Richard Gallo, MD, PhD, Ima Gigli Distinguished Professor of Dermatology and chair of the Department of Dermatology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "In our research, we identified enzymes that act on the chromosome of specific skin cells that provide immune tolerance by the skin.

"Without these enzymes telling our cells to ignore certain bacteria, we'd have a constant rash on our skin."

Gallo and colleagues say the potential mechanism for how the environment can interact and alter cell function is through epigenetic control of gene expression. Within the skin cells, proteins called toll-like receptors (TLRs) allow the cells to sense their surroundings and potential dangers.

In most organs, TLRs act as a warning system that triggers an inflammatory response to threats. But in skin cells, the two identified HDAC enzymes, HDAC8 and HDAC9, inhibit the inflammatory response.

"This is one of the first demonstrations of how the microbiome can interact with epigenetic factors in the skin and modulate the skin's behavior through the inflammatory response," said George Sen, PhD, associate professor of dermatology and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "Whatever environment we're facing can change a person's specific response to it. Since this epigenetic change is reversible, unlike alterations to our DNA, we can potentially control our skin inflammatory response through targeting of these enzymes."

The research was initially conducted in mouse models in which HDAC8 and HDAC9 had been genetically knocked out. As a result, the mice's skin could not tolerate microbial or viral exposures, resulting in a heightened immune reaction. The team then reproduced the findings with human cells in a culture dish.

Gallo said the work could change how doctors treat certain types of skin inflammation or other dermatologic conditions.

"This is a completely new way to think about skin immune regulation," said Gallo. "Through alterations in HDAC activity, we've provided a possible way to explore and quiet down unnecessary inflammation by working with skin cells themselves. In the future, drugs designed to turn these enzymes on or off could help treat skin disease as an alternative to antibiotics."

For decades scientists have been puzzled by the formation of rare hyper-enriched gold deposits in places like Ballarat in Australia, Serra Palada in Brazil, and Red Lake in Ontario. While such deposits typically form over tens to hundreds of thousands of years, these "ultrahigh-grade" deposits can form in years, month, or even days. So how do they form so quickly?

Studying examples of these deposits from the Brucejack Mine in northwestern British Columbia, McGill Professor Anthony Williams-Jones of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and PhD student Duncan McLeish have discovered that these gold deposits form much like soured milk. When milk goes sour, the butterfat particles clump together to form a jelly.

Q&A with Anthony Williams-Jones and Duncan McLeish

What did you set to find out?

Scientists have long known that gold deposits form when hot water flows through rocks, dissolving minute amounts of gold and concentrating it in cracks in the Earth's crust at levels invisible to the naked eye. In rare cases, the cracks are transformed into veins of solid gold centimetres thick. But how do fluids with such low concentrations of gold produce rare ultrahigh-grade gold deposits?

What did you discover?

Our findings solve the paradox of "ultrahigh-grade" or "bonanza" gold formation, which has frustrated scientists for over a century. The paradox of bonanza gold deposits is that there is simply not enough time for them to form, they should not exist, but they do!

As the concentration of gold in hot water is very low, very large volumes of fluid need to flow through the cracks in the Earth's crust to deposit mineable concentrations of gold. This process would require millions of years to fill a single centimetre wide crack with gold, whereas these cracks typically seal in days, months, or years.

Using a powerful electron microscope to observe particles in thin slices of rock, we discovered that bonanza gold deposits form from a fluid much like milk. Milk consists of little butterfat particles that are suspended in water because they repel each other, like the negative ends of two magnets. When the milk goes sour the surface charge breaks down, and the particles clump together to form a jelly. It is the same with gold colloids, which consist of charged nanoparticles of gold which repel each other, but when the charge breaks down, they "flocculate" to form a jelly. This jelly gets trapped in the cracks of rocks to form the ultra high-grade gold veins. The gold colloids are distinctively red and can be made in the lab, whereas solutions of dissolved gold are colourless.

Why are the results important?

We produced the first evidence for gold colloid formation and flocculation in nature and the first images of small veins of gold colloid particles and their flocculated aggregates at the nano-scale. These images document the process by which the cracks are filled with gold and, scaled up through the integration of millions of these small veins, reveal how bonanza veins are formed.

How will this discovery impact the mining industry?

Our results are important to the mineral exploration and mining industry in Canada and around the world. Now that we finally understand how bonanza deposits form, mineral exploration companies will be able to use the results of our work to better explore for bonanza deposits as well as gold deposits. Genetic studies of Canada's most fertile metallogenic districts - such as the one we have just completed at Brucejack - are required to improve our understanding of how world-class mineral deposits form, and thereby develop more effective strategies for their exploration.

What's next for this research?

We suspect that the colloidal processes that operated at Brucejack and other bonanza gold systems may also have operated to form more typical gold deposits. The challenge will be to find suitable material to test this hypothesis. At Brucejack, the next step will be to better understand the reasons why colloid formation and flocculation occurred on the scale observed and reconstruct the geological environment of these processes. We have also been preparing gold colloids in the lab in an attempt to simulate what we discovered at Brucejack.

Business shutdowns reduce COVID-19 deaths, though with rapidly diminishing returns, with study of Italian lockdowns estimating they saved over 9,400 lives in under a month.

Neurotic personalities found the pandemic most traumatic, while agreeable and conscientious personalities offered protection from the pandemic's negative impacts.

New York, NY (May 21, 2021) --Women who were highly exposed to ultra-fine particles in air pollution during their pregnancy were more likely to have children who developed asthma, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in May. This is the first time asthma has been linked with prenatal exposure to this type of air pollution, which is named for its tiny size and which is not regulated or routinely monitored in the United States.

Slightly more than 18 percent of the children born to these mothers developed asthma in their preschool years, compared to 7 percent of children overall in the United States identified as having asthma by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other types of pollutants are routinely monitored and regulated to reduce potential health effects, such as larger-size particulate pollution and gaseous pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. These have been associated with asthma risk in children in prior research. This study controlled for exposure to these other types of pollution and exposure to pollutants following birth, and it still found an elevated risk of asthma in children born to mothers with heightened exposure to ultra-fine particles in pregnancy.

Ultra-fine particulate pollution--particles that are smaller than the width of an average human hair--can get deeper into our lungs and pass into our circulation to cause various health effects. Because of this, the researchers said their toxic effects may actually be greater.

"One reason ultra-fine particulates are not routinely monitored is that there have been a number of unique challenges to measuring them accurately. Fortunately, recent methods have been developed to provide such exposure data which allowed us to conduct this study," said lead author Rosalind Wright, MD, MPH, Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in Children's Health Research, Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Co-director of the Institute for Exposomic Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

This study included 376 mothers and their children, most of them Black or Latinx, who live in the Boston metropolitan area and were already being followed to assess their health. Mount Sinai researchers partnered with a group of scientists at Tufts University in the Boston area who had developed a way to provide valid daily estimations of ultra-fine particulate exposure which could be linked to the area of the mothers' and children's homes. Many of these women were more likely to live near major roadways with higher traffic density where exposure to these tiny particles tends to be higher.

The researchers followed up with the mothers to find out whether the children were diagnosed with asthma. Most of the diagnoses of asthma occurred just after three years of age.

Pollution's effect in utero can alter lung development and respiratory health. This can lead to pediatric disorders like asthma. How this happens is not completely understood but pollution can alter certain bodily regulatory systems like neuroendocrine and immune function that have been linked with asthma in other studies.

While both boys and girls were affected by prenatal ultrafine particle exposure, this study found that girl babies were more sensitive to ultra-fine particle pollution's effects on asthma risk when exposed in late pregnancy. The reason for this phenomenon is also unclear, but studies show it is possibly due to endocrine-disrupting effects of the pollution exposure.

"This research is an important early step in building the evidence base that can lead to better monitoring of exposure to ultrafine particles in the United States and ultimately to regulation. As we advance methods for measuring these tiny particles, we hope for replication of these findings, both within different geographic areas across the United States as well as globally. Childhood asthma remains a global epidemic that is likely to grow with the anticipated rise in particulate air pollution exposures due to effects of climate change," Dr. Wright said.