Culture

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new coronavirus test can get accurate results from a saliva sample in less than 30 minutes, researchers report in the journal Nature Communications. Many of the components of the hand-held device used in this technology can be 3D-printed, and the test can detect as little as one viral particle per 1-microliter drop of fluid.

"We developed a rapid, highly sensitive and accurate assay, and a portable, battery-powered device for COVID-19 testing that can be used anywhere at any time," said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Huimin Zhao, who led the research. Though it is still in the prototype stage, the device is estimated to cost less than $78 and the reagents and other materials needed for testing would amount to $6-$7 per test, the researchers found.

Current coronavirus testing technologies are complex, expensive, time-consuming and require bulky equipment and expert analysts, whereas the new device can be operated by anyone with minimal training who is careful when loading samples, Zhao said.

The innovation was made possible by the recent discovery in Zhao's laboratory of a system for making artificial restriction enzymes that can be programmed to recognize and cleave specific genes in an organism's genome. In the new device, these enzymes carry DNA guides that tag the viral genes of interest. The enzyme cleaves the genes, which have been tagged with a dye that fluoresces only after the genes are cut. The resulting fluorescence signals that those genes are present - a positive test result.

The new technology, called Scalable and Portable Testing, does away with the complicated process of heating and cooling each sample to get results, as many current testing protocols require. SPOT also can detect multiple genes per sample, making it more accurate than single-gene tests, which can yield incorrect or inconclusive results. Another advantage is that it utilizes saliva, which is easier to collect and less invasive than a nasal swab.

The research team tested SPOT using 104 clinical saliva samples. They found that it accurately identified 28 out of 30 SARS-CoV-2-positive samples and 73 of 74 SARS-CoV-2-negative samples.

"Based on the data reported in the literature, the accuracy of our test is comparable to or better than other SARS-CoV-2 tests," Zhao said.

The researchers also tested SPOT with samples containing - or lacking - the influenza virus, the new coronavirus and three other human coronaviruses. It accurately identified samples containing the new coronavirus, whether or not other viruses were present in the sample.

"We are interested in exploring this technology for detection of other diseases as well," Zhao said. "One key advantage to this technology is its multiplexing capability, so in principle, we can detect many viruses simultaneously using the same device."

A new study published in Nature Communications provides an important new basis for comparing the effectiveness of different tuberculosis treatments.

Tuberculosis, a disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is typically the leading infectious cause of death globally, killing 1.2 million people each year. The availability of a new way to evaluate treatments can save lives.

In the study, faculty at the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus partnered with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Center for Tuberculosis and the Mycobacteria Research Laboratories at Colorado State University to provide a new perspective on assessing the effectiveness of tuberculosis drugs.

"A key roadblock that holds back new tuberculosis treatments is our current inability to accurately measure how effectively different treatments shorten the time needed to cure tuberculosis," said lead author Nicholas Walter, MD, PhD, associate professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "Without improved tools to measure and compare the effectiveness of drug treatments, the evaluation and roll-out of new combination drug treatments will continue to proceed slowly."

"In the past, the effectiveness of tuberculosis treatment has been judged by estimating the burden of the pathogen M. tuberculosis as enumerated via culture based approaches. This historical method correlates poorly with what we care about most, which is whether tuberculosis patients are durably cured," adds co-first author Gregory Robertson, PhD, assistant professor at Colorado State University.

In this study, the researchers measured the degree to which drugs interrupt the synthesis of ribosomal RNA, required for the protein-making machinery of the bacterium. The researchers discovered that drugs and drug regimens that shorten tuberculosis treatment duration inhibit Mtb rRNA synthesis more than less potent drugs and regimens. Their new measure, called the rRNA synthesis (RS) Ratio provides an urgently needed molecular metric of drug activity based on a key microbial physiologic property rather than recapitulation of bacterial burden.

"The RS Ratio gives us a readout of drug effect that opens a new era in understanding antibiotics. Measuring a key physiologic property of pathogens provides an innovative way of thinking beyond conventional measures of bacterial burden," said senior author Martin Voskuil, PhD, associate professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

"The RS Ratio can enable more intelligent design and evaluation of candidate drug combination regimens, accelerating the development of treatments that can cure tuberculosis faster. This has crucial implications for combatting the global tuberculosis epidemic," adds co-author Payam Nahid, MD, MPH, professor and director of the UCSF Center for Tuberculosis.

Ants are renowned in the insect world for their complex social structure and behaviors. Workers and foragers support the queen, faithfully carrying out their social roles for the overall health of the colony. This complex "superorganism" ---as scientists have dubbed it --- has become a prime model to explore the genetic and behavioral roots of social organisms.

Remarkably, there are also rare instances of ants not playing well with others and shrugging off their societal duties to become free-loading parasites amongst their free-living relatives.

Now, in a new study published in Nature Communications, an international collaboration of researchers from Europe (the Universities of Münster and Copenhagen), South America (University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay), and the U.S., (led by Arizona State University), teamed up to discover and collect these rare ant social parasites. Together, they have obtained and analyzed the full DNA genome sequences of three rare "social parasite" leaf-cutting ant species (called Acromyrmex inquilines) to better understand the differences between them and their respective host species.

It's the first time several species of socially parasitic ants could have their genomes sequenced.

"Our findings advance our understanding of the genomic consequences of transitioning to a novel, highly specialized life history and provide detailed insights into the molecular evolution of social parasitism in ants," said Christian Rabeling, an associate professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences and a corresponding author of the study.

From social to social parasite

The unusual social parasite transition is important to understand because the genomes of ants have evolved for more than 100 million years. A single major transition occurred to introduce the novel "superorganism" level of social organizational structure with queen-worker caste segregation and unconditional altruism. This superorganism was so successful, it produced a biodiversity of 17 subfamilies, 338 genera and more than 13,900 living species.

"It is therefore no surprise that parallel shifts to a highly specialized socially parasitic behavior and lifestyle abandoning this fundamental ancestral condition, usually based on outbreeding and larger effective populations, leave significant genomic footprints," said Rabeling. "The results of our analyses of just three of these species confirm that ant social parasites offer important study systems for identifying hallmarks of cooperative social colony life.

And in doing so, their analyses have confirmed that over a time span of about a million and a half years, these ant species have each found independent, separate ways to evolve and become social parasites. The signatures of genome-wide and trait-specific genetic erosion were found to be most extreme in social parasite ants.

Think of how it would start. A group of queen ants wants to just live in a colony without doing the work. And not work on the nest anymore. Next, the queen ants focus on solely producing new queens and males, and this small population size of social parasites would start frequent inbreeding to survive. This immediately reduces their genomic diversity over time. Then, over a blink in evolutionary time, due to natural selection and an increase in the prevalence of genetic drift, it would enhance the rates by which ancestral traits were lost while also slowing down the rates by which new, more adaptive traits could emerge.

It's almost like a 'snooze and lose it' phenomena occurred within the parasitic ant DNA to trigger the genome erosion.

To prove this effect within the ant genome, the research team investigated the overall genomic structure and the individual genes that may be affected by this genomic decay. First, they found widespread evidence of genomic rearrangements and inversions that are hallmarks of instability and decay. Then, within gene networks, they identified 233 genes that showed evidence of relaxed selection in at least one of the social parasite branches and signatures of intensified selection in 102 genes. "Our analysis showed that gene family evolution at three of the four social parasite nodes is indeed largely characterized by gene losses," said Rabeling.

The genome losses and reductions most affected were in the social parasite ants' sense of smell and to a lesser degree taste.

Failing the sniff test

Not only did some of the genes responsible for ant smell become lost over time, but as a result, the ants also showed a reduced size in the olfactory lobes in their brains when microCT scans were performed.

"This is no surprise because ants predominantly communicate via chemical cues and have once been described as chemical factories," explains Rabeling. "So, the loss of olfactory genes is correlated with an extreme transition of extensive morphological and behavioral changes."

This includes the reduction or complete loss of the worker caste system, simplified mouthparts, antennae and integuments, loss of certain hormonal glands, and a nervous system of reduced complexity likely associated with a drastically narrowed behavioral repertoire.

From their comparative analysis, they could also put these changes into the larger perspective of evolutionary time. They were also able to date the origins of social parasitism within the leaf-cutting ant family tree.

Two independent origins of social parasitism occurred in the ant genus Acromyrmex. Within this genus, A. heyeri, a social ant, is the host species of both A. charruanus and P. argentina parasitic species.

First, a South American lineage of social ants (A. heyeri) separated from the last common (thought to be socially parasitic) ancestor of A. charruanus and P. argentina before the two social parasites diverged. Second, a Central American speciation event occurred when A. insinuator diverged from its host A. echinatior.

Both origins of social parasitism are evolutionarily recent, estimated to be about 2.5 million years ago for the divergence between A. heyeri and the last common ancestor of A. charruanus and P. argentina, and about 1 million years ago for the divergence between A. insinuator and A. echinatior.

"We infer that relaxed natural selection accelerated general genome erosion in social parasites and alleviated evolutionary constraints, which facilitated rapid adaptive evolution of specific traits associated with a socially parasitic lifestyle," said Rabeling.

Joy of discovery

Why did it take so long to do the genome analysis? It turns out that the easiest part of the study may have been the comparative genome analysis. Finding the ants in the first place proved to be the greatest major hurdle. Why?

Populations of ant social parasites are almost invariably small and patchily distributed. How patchy?

Well, the last time that one of the species, P. argentina was seen in the wild was 1924, a time well before the discovery of DNA as the hereditary chemical unit of life.

Rabeling remembers prior trips to South America that were in vain because they could not find P. argentina. Then, about a decade ago, a phone call from colleague Martin Bollazzi and study co-author changed his life.

"Martin Bollazzi said his wife Leticia just re-discovered P. argentina!!!"

Rabeling hopped on a plane as fast as he could. When he saw P. argentina up close, it was a moment of discovery he'll never forget.

"Leticia's rediscovery of P. argentina was the find of a lifetime. What I especially love is to connect the ant field work and natural history observations with the new technologies like whole genome sequencing, and to have the opportunity to do so was such a joy."

Now, they could make their research dreams a reality by collecting P. argentina and put their field work-based hypotheses to the test by doing the first modern whole genome sequencing of social parasitic ants.

Next steps

Their results are not only important to understanding ants, but offer insights into the role of these genomic 'loss-of-function' study systems in other parasites and for identifying hallmarks of cooperative social colony life at both the phenotypic and the genomic levels.

"Social parasites came to exploit the foraging efforts, nursing behavior and colony infrastructure of their hosts," said Rabeling.

Rabeling also points to other species, such as the Mexican blind cave-dwelling fish or other parasites such as tapeworms as examples of organisms that lost important traits over time. In each case, they have developed and exploited novel ecological niches. for their species survival.

From these first 3 social parasite ant species, they have learned a lot. Next, they plan on future genomics studies of these ant social parasites to generate exciting further insights, particularly with long-read sequencing technologies allowing analyses in even greater detail.

But Rabeling and his colleagues are now involved in another race against time----as every year, more and more natural ant habitats are lost to deforestation and development. Now, our understanding of ant evolution depends on people to cooperate to save biodiversity---while we still can.

"We hope such future studies can expand our knowledge on the signatures of the evolution of social behavior in ants, for which few other model systems can offer such species-level sample sizes of several dozens."

Optimistic predictions expect reliable autonomous vehicles to be commercially available by 2030, at a time when mobility is undergoing a profound shift away from traditional modes of transportation and towards door-to-door services. Previous analysis suggested that public transport will lose market share to autonomous vehicles, but the environmental impact of changing transport use has hardly been considered. New research shows that the convenience of autonomous vehicles would likely come at an environmental cost.

A recent paper by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison addresses the use-phase implications of autonomous vehicles using a stated preference survey to reveal the potential users of autonomous vehicles and the resulting level of competition with traditional modes of transport. The results show an expected increase in environmental impacts across all the categories studied, due to a shift from less carbon intensive transportation options. The authors also confirm that the use of electric autonomous vehicles could change this environmental outcome. Their research is published today in the IOP Publishing journal Environmental Research Letters.

Autonomous vehicles are expected to offer significant benefits in terms of transport operations, safety and accessibility; however, these benefits may mask potential environmental impacts. Clearly, the adoption of autonomous vehicles will be accompanied by travel behavior changes, however research to date has mostly focused on autonomous vehicle technology and not on the environmental impacts that will result from transport mode shifts. This new research therefore examines these impacts based on four categories: energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, particulates, and pollutants.

A survey conducted in Madison, Wisconsin, examined attitudes to transport modes and found that in choice experiments between private vehicles, autonomous taxis, buses, and bicycles, respondents would use autonomous vehicle taxis 31% of the time due to their desirable operational and modal attributes. By contrast, buses had a significantly longer access time due to walking and waiting, and personal vehicles were the midway choice. However, commuters who owned a personal vehicle were less likely to choose an autonomous vehicle, implying that autonomous vehicles primarily compete with public transport; therefore, policies aiming to reduce commuting in personal vehicles might not be fully successful in reducing environmental impacts.

The researchers then examined the impacts of policy and service changes via a series of simulations, which confirmed that autonomous vehicles primarily compete with the environmentally preferred transport mode, buses. They also showed that a decrease in bus travel times would result in a significant increase in bus usage. The environmental predictions showed increases of between 5.7% and 6.85% in the energy and pollution categories, a significant impact, given that transport accounts for 28% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

To offset the environmental impacts of autonomous vehicles, the researchers considered the use of electric autonomous vehicles, considering the use phase only. The results showed that electric autonomous vehicles can offset the environmental impact of autonomous vehicles, subject to a suitable mix of electricity generation methods, and if the adoption rate of electric autonomous vehicles is over about 40%.

This new research into the use-phase environmental impacts of autonomous vehicles will help researchers and policy makers to exploit the full potential of autonomous vehicles while taking any potential environmental implications into account. Cities seeking to deploy autonomous vehicles will need to steer their deployment in ways that both match consumer adoption patterns and are environmentally beneficial.

Author Wissam Kontar said: "The transportation system is on the verge of a major paradigm shift. Emerging technologies as autonomous and electric vehicles, along with change in commuting behavior will have significant operational and environmental impacts. It is of crucial importance that we consider those impacts conjointly, if we are to forge an efficient and sustainable mobility of the future."

Information flows in a well-defined direction in the brain: Chemical and electrical signals are passed from one neuron to the other across the synapse, from the pre-synaptic to the post-synaptic neuron. Now, Peter Jonas and his group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) show that information also travels in the opposite direction at a key synapse in the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for learning and memory. At the so-called mossy fiber synapse, the post-synaptic CA3 neuron influences how the pre-synaptic neuron, the so-called mossy fiber neuron, fires. "We have shown, for the first time, that a retrograde information flow is physiologically relevant for pre-synaptic plasticity," says Yuji Okamoto, a postdoc in the group of Peter Jonas at IST Austria and co-first author of the paper published in Nature Communications.

The mossy fiber synapse is crucial for information storage in the neuronal network. Synaptic transmission is plastic meaning that a variable amount of chemical signal, the so-called neurotransmitter, is released into the synapse. To understand the mechanism of plasticity at work in this synapse, Okamoto precisely stimulated the pre-synaptic terminal of the mossy fiber synapse in rats and at the same time recorded from the post-synaptic neuron. "We need to know the synapse's exact properties - with the numerical values, e.g., for its conductance - to create an exact model of this synapse. With his exact measurements, Yuji managed to obtain these numbers," adds Peter Jonas, co-corresponding author with postdoc David Vandael.

Smart teacher reacts to overloaded student

Unexpectedly, the researchers found that the post-synaptic neuron influences plasticity in the pre-synaptic neuron. Previously, the mossy fiber synapse was assumed to be a "teacher synapse" that induces firing in the post-synaptic neuron. "Instead, we find that this synapse acts like a 'smart teacher', who adapts the lessons when students are overloaded with information. Similarly, the pre-synaptic mossy fiber detects when the post-synaptic neuron can't take more information: When activity increases in the post-synaptic neuron, the pre-synaptic neuron reduces the extent of plasticity," explains Jonas.

This finding raises the question of how the post-synaptic neuron sends information about its activity status to the pre-synaptic neuron. Pharmacological evidence points to a role for glutamate, one of the key chemicals or neurotransmitters used by neurons to send signals to other cells. Glutamate is also the transmitter that is released from pre-synaptic mossy fiber terminals. When calcium levels increase in the post-synaptic neuron - a sign that the neuron is active - the post-synaptic neuron may release vesicles with glutamate into the synapse. The glutamate travels back to the pre-synaptic neuron against the usual flow of neuronal information. "This retrograde modulation of plasticity likely helps to improve information storage in the downstream hippocampal network," says Jonas, and he adds: "Once again, exact measurements have shown that reality is more complex than a simplified model would suggest."

PULLMAN, Wash. - Alterations in the epigenetic programming of hatchery-raised steelhead trout could account for their reduced fertility, abnormal health and lower survival rates compared to wild fish, according to a new Washington State University study.

The study, published May 18 in Environmental Epigenetics, establishes a link between feeding practices that promote faster growth, as well as other environmental factors in fish hatcheries, and epigenetic changes found in the sperm and red blood cells of of steelhead trout.

The research was done at a national fish hatchery on the Methow River in Winthrop, Washington and at another hatchery close by on the Colombia River. It could have broader implications as hatchery-raised steelhead reproduce with wild steelhead after being released.

"Despite being genetically very similar, steelhead trout raised under hatchery conditions don't have the same level of health and survivability of wild-raised fish," said Michael Skinner, study co-author and professor in the WSU School of Biological Sciences.  "This research provides a molecular explanation for why we are seeing these differences."

Skinner is an expert in the field of epigenetics, which is the study of molecular factors and processes around DNA that regulate genome activity independent of the DNA sequence.

While exposure to environmental conditions doesn't typically affect an organism's genetic code, previous research has shown that a range of factors including toxicants, stress and nutrition can developmentally alter the phenotype of a variety of species through epigenetics.

In the current study, Skinner and colleagues performed a molecular analysis of sperm and red blood cells taken both from steelhead trout raised in two Washington fish hatcheries and trout that spent their entire life in the wild.

While there were negligible genetic differences between the two fish populations, the researchers identified a set of epigenetic features, called DNA methylation regions, in the sperm and red blood cells of the hatchery-raised steelhead that weren't present in their wild-raised counterparts.

Skinner's study connects the dots to identify a molecular mechanism that can help explain many of the physiological differences scientists have noted between hatchery-raised and wild fish.

For instance, it has been shown that the offspring of fish experiencing even a single generation of hatchery-rearing can have decreased fitness, changes in age at spawning, altered morphologies, and mal-adapted anti-predator behavior.

In fact, hatchery rearing has been shown to decrease reproductive success in steelhead trout by as much as 40% in the first two generations after fish are moved back to their natural environment.

Another important aspect of the epigenetic alterations Skinner identified is that they can be passed via the sperm to subsequent generations.

In places like the Methow and Columbia rivers where hatchery-raised trout are frequently released and bred with wild trout, epigenetic inheritance could have already had a substantial impact on the overall health and fitness of the fish population, Skinner said.

"We think that the large number of hatchery fish that have been released and bred with the wild fish population on the Methow River over the past 60 years has had a significant influence on the health of the overall population," he said. "Moving forward, our research suggests hatchery operations should consider not allowing interbreeding with wild fish populations. If not, impacts on wild-raised steelhead trout and the environment could be dramatic and alter the future trajectory of the overall population."

A study using a mouse model of eccentric contraction (*1) has revealed that icing injured muscles delays muscle regeneration. The discovery was made by a research group including Associate Professor ARAKAWA Takamitsu and then PhD. Student KAWASHIMA Masato from Kobe University's Graduate School of Health Sciences, and Chiba Institute of Technology's Associate Professor KAWANISHI Noriaki et al. In addition, the researchers illuminated that this phenomenon may be related to pro-inflammatory macrophages' (*2, 3, 4) ability to infiltrate damaged cells. This research raises questions as to whether or not severe muscle injuries (such as torn muscles) should be iced.

These research results were published online as one of the Journal of Applied Physiology's Articles in Press on March 25, 2021.

Main points

The research results revealed that applying an ice pack to a severe muscle injury resulting from eccentric contraction may prolong the time it takes to heal.

The cause of this phenomenon is that icing delays the arrival of pro-inflammatory macrophages, which are responsible for the phagocytosis (*5), or removal, of damaged tissue. Furthermore, this makes difficult for the macrophages to sufficiently infiltrate the damaged muscle cells.

Research Background

Skeletal muscle injuries encompass a range of damage to muscles; from a microcellular level to a severe level. These injuries include not only those that happen during sports or schools' physical education lessons but also external injuries that occur as a result of accidents and disasters.

'RICE treatment' is a common approach for skeletal muscle injuries, regardless of the extent of the injury. This acronym stands for Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation and is often used in physical education, sports and even medicine. Ice is commonly applied regardless of the type of muscle injury, yet little is known about the long-term effects of icing.

Ice is used to suppress inflammation, however, inflammation in response to tissue injury is one of the body's healing mechanisms. This has come to be understood as a vital response for tissue regeneration. In other words, suppressing inflammation with ice may also inhibit the body's attempt to repair itself.

Experiments investigating the effect of icing muscles after injury have produced conflicting results. Some have reported that it delays muscle regeneration while others have stated that it doesn't inhibit this process. However, none of the research up until now has investigated the effects of icing using an injury model that mimics common sports injuries caused by muscle contraction.

Using a mouse model of eccentric contraction injury, the current research team decided to observe the effects of post-injury icing. In this mouse model, injuries were induced to resemble severe torn muscles.

Research Methodology and Results

Eccentric contraction was induced by electrically stimulating the leg muscles of the mice and then exerting a stronger force during this stimulation to make the leg muscles move in the opposite direction. After this, the muscles were harvested. Icing was performed by placing polyurethane bags of ice on top of the skin over three 30 minute sessions per day, with each session being 2 hours apart. This was continued until two days after the injury. The icing was based on the usual clinically recommended method.

The researchers investigated the regenerated skeletal muscle two weeks after injury, comparing the icing group with the non-icing group. A significantly higher percentage of smaller regenerated muscle fibers were found in cross-sections from the icing group, with a greater number of medium to large fibers in the non-icing group (Figure 1). In other words, this revealed that skeletal muscle regeneration may be delayed as a result of icing.

Next, the researchers periodically took samples of muscle from the icing and non-icing groups of animals in order to investigate what was happening in the regeneration process up until this point.

In the regeneration process, inflammatory cells gather at the site of the injury, remove the debris from the damaged muscle and then begin to build new muscle. However, the results revealed that it is harder for inflammatory cells to enter the injured muscle cells if ice is applied (Figure 2).

Macrophages are typical of the inflammatory cells that enter the injured muscle. These consist of pro-inflammatory macrophages, which phagocyte damaged tissue thus causing inflammation, and anti-inflammatory macrophages (*6), which suppress the inflammatory reaction and promote repair. It is thought that pro-inflammatory macrophages change their characteristics, becoming anti-inflammatory. The results of this research team's experiments showed that icing delays the arrival of pro-inflammatory macrophages at the site of the injury (Figure 3).

These results indicate the possibility that macrophages are unable to sufficiently phagocyte the damaged muscle when ice is applied after severe muscle injuries caused by eccentric contraction, consequently delaying the formation of new muscle cells.

Comment from Associate Professor Arakawa

In sports, the mantra of immediately applying ice to an injury is commonplace, regardless of the injury's severity. However, the mechanism that we illuminated through this research suggests that not icing a severe muscle injury may lead to faster recovery. The idea of immediately cooling any type of injury is also entrenched in schools' physical education classes. I hope that in the future, the alternative option of speeding up recovery by not cooling severe muscle injuries will become known.

However, even though icing may disrupt the recovery process for severe muscle injuries, there is no denying the possibility that there are degrees of mild muscle injuries that can be iced. The next issue is to work out where to draw the line. We are now in the middle of investigating what effect icing has on slight muscle injuries.

Next, we will continue to investigate how icing should be carried out according to the extent of the muscle injury. We aim to contribute guidelines that will enable people in sports and clinical rehabilitation to make accurate judgements about whether or not to ice an injury.

Robust data and genetic research are providing important evidence on a colony of wild African vervet monkeys that landed in Dania Beach more than 70 years ago and settled in a thick mangrove forest near the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in South Florida.

The non-native vervet monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) population living in this urban coastal region is well known and beloved among local residents and city officials; however, it is relatively unknown to primatologists. Despite wide public interest, there has been only one scientific study (early 1990s), suggesting that the monkeys escaped from a failed roadside zoo in the 1950s and 1970s. Until now, there was no confirmation about the species' identification, geographic origins, or introduction history.

A Florida Atlantic University team of scientists combined multiple methodological approaches to determine the species of Chlorocebus monkey in Dania Beach, where they came from, and their pathway of introduction. Results of the study, published in the journal Primates, provide critical baseline information to the scientific community about a little-known population of Chlorocebus monkeys that have survived for decades in a novel environment.

Through interviews, historical archives and popular media, FAU scientists traced the monkeys to an escape from the Dania Chimpanzee Farm in 1948. The facility acted as a zoo and also provided primates imported from Africa as research subjects in the development of the polio vaccine and other medical research. Historical archives suggest that the monkeys were caught in Sierra Leone. Scientists tested the hypothesis of West African origins using three genetic markers: one mitochondrial DNA gene (cytochrome b) and two fragments from the Y-chromosome, the sex-determining gene and the zinc-finger gene. Phylogenetic analyses confirmed that the Dania Beach monkeys are in fact Chlorocebus sabaeus (green monkey) and have West African origins.

The monkeys of Dania Beach were photographed to create a database of all individuals (36). Scientists recorded the following traits to help identify species of monkey: color of their fur; presence or absence of brow band; color of tail tip; and scrotum color of adult males. These attributes were then compared to all species qualitatively within the genus Chlorocebus to estimate study species using these traits.

"Our monkeys in Dania Beach have a golden-tipped tail and greenish-brown hair, lack a pronounced brow band around the face, and males have a pale blue scrotum. These phenotypic traits are characteristic of Chlorocebus sabaeus," said Deborah "Missy" Williams, Ph.D., lead author, Biological Sciences Department in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, who leads the Dania Beach Vervet Project to conserve this population of monkeys and has been studying them for almost a decade. Williams conducted the study with Kate Detwiler, Ph.D., senior author and an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology in FAU's Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters.

This species is commonly referred to as a green monkey because of the color of its fur. Species within Chlorocebus have hair color ranging from greenish-brown to grayish olive with black faces, hands and feet. Males have a blue scrotum and red penis and perianus surrounded by white hair.

Green monkeys are endemic to West Africa, with a range from Senegal and west Guinea-Bissau into Ghana. They are the most widespread of the African monkeys and are habitat generalists, limited only by the availability of water and sleeping trees.

"Data from our study lays the groundwork for future studies to address new questions about the status of the population and how the monkeys have adapted to the urban and industrial environment of South Florida," said Detwiler. "The correct taxonomic identification and history of the introduced Dania Beach monkeys is important for community outreach and wildlife management, given the remarkable ability for Chlorocebus to thrive in most environments."

In the southeastern United States, Florida is home to three introduced, free ranging primates: Saimiri sciureus (squirrel monkey), Chlorocebus sabaeus (green monkey), and Macaca mulatta (rhesus macaque). All three primate species were introduced through various zoos, research facilities, private collections, and entertainment businesses.

Scientists from Hokkaido University have developed a rapid, efficient protocol for cross-coupling reactions, vastly expanding the pool of chemicals that can be used for the synthesis of useful organic compounds.

Chemical reactions are a vital process in the synthesis of products for a diversity of purposes. For the most part, these reactions are carried out in the liquid phase, by dissolving the reactants in a solvent. However, there are a significant number of chemicals that are partially or completely insoluble, and thus have not been used for synthesis. The starting materials required for the synthesis of many cutting-edge organic materials--such as organic semiconductors and luminescent materials--are often poorly soluble, leading to problems in solution-based synthesis. Therefore, the development of a solvent-independent synthetic approach to overcome these long-standing solubility issues in organic synthesis is highly desired to synthesize new valuable organic molecules.

In recent years, synthetic techniques using ball milling have been used to carry out solvent-free reactions in the solid phase. It has been proposed that the use of ball milling would potentially overcome the aforementioned solubility issues in synthetic chemistry, but a systematic study for such purpose has never been carried out.

A team of four scientists from Hokkaido University's Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD), led by Associate Professor Koji Kubota and Professor Hajime Ito, have developed a rapid, efficient, solvent-free protocol for Suzuki?Miyaura cross-coupling reaction of insoluble aryl halides. The protocol was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Aryl halides are popular starting materials for the synthesis of organic functional molecules, primarily by the palladium-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction -- for which Hokkaido University's Professor Emeritus Akira Suzuki shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Although the cross-coupling reactions have been employed for the synthesis of a wide range of valuable molecules, insoluble aryl halides are not suitable substrates because Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reactions have primarily been carried out in solution.

Given this limitation, the scientists focused on the development of an efficient solid-state Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling of a number of extremely unreactive insoluble aryl halides. The key equipment consisted of a ball mill, for mixing the reactants; a heat gun, to increase the temperature at which the reactions took place; and the use of a catalytic system composed of palladium acetate (the catalyst), SPhos (a high-performance ligand for Suzuki?Miyaura cross-coupling reactions) and 1,5-cyclooctadiene (dispersant and stabilizer).

The capstone of this study was the application of the solvent-free solid-state reaction to mostly-insoluble aryl halides. These reactants did not yield any products in conventional solution-based reactions. The solid-state reactions using the high-temperature ball milling, however, gave the desired products. Importantly, the team discovered a new strong photoluminescence material prepared from insoluble pigment violet 23.

"The high-temperature ball-milling technique and our catalytic system are essential for these cross-coupling reactions of insoluble aryl halides, and the protocol we have developed expands the diversity of organic molecules derived from insoluble starting materials," says Koji Kubota.

Vaccines are turning the tide of the pandemic, but the risk of infection is still present in some situations. If you want to visit a friend, get on a plane, or go see a movie, there is no highly accurate, instant test that can tell you right then and there whether or not you have a SARS-CoV-2 infection. But new research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could help get reliable instant tests on the market.

A study led by Michal Hammel and Curtis D. Hodge suggests that a highly sensitive lateral flow assay - the same type of device used in home pregnancy tests - could be developed using pairs of rigid antibodies that bind to the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein. Such a test would only require a small drop of mucus or saliva, could give results in 15 minutes, and could detect a COVID-19 infection one day before the onset of symptoms. Their work was published in the journal mABs.

The current gold standard tests for COVID-19 use a form of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to identify the presence of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid (RNA) rather than a viral protein. They are quite accurate, with false negative rates ranging less then 5% (depending primarily on the sampling site, sample type, and stage of infection). However, PCR tests must be sent away for analysis at an accredited lab.

Rapid antigen tests use antibodies to detect specific parts of the viral particle itself. Current antigen tests have a very low rate of false positives, but are plagued by high false negative rates, and therefore can't replace PCR tests for definitive COVID-19 diagnosis. If a more accurate antigen test was brought to market, it could serve as a helpful initial screening tool similar to how home pregnancy tests work. In the case of a positive result, the user would need to begin appropriate precautionary measures (isolation and other transmission-prevention behaviors) and then have the diagnosis confirmed by an official test at a health clinic.

"As we move toward gaining normalcy and reopening economies worldwide, there is continued demand for rapid, low-cost tests that can be self-administered without the need for a trained professional," said Hammel, a biophysicist in Berkeley Lab's Biosciences Area. "Currently used COVID-19 PCR tests are expensive, at about $100 per test, and on average, U.S. labs are performing one million tests per day. An accurate rapid antigen test could cost $1 each and eliminate the wait time."

Hammel, Hodge, and their colleagues used small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) performed at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) to examine about 20 antibody-antigen interactions. Their data showed that a particular pair of monoclonal antibodies bound to the nucleocapsid protein very strongly and stably, in part due to the antibodies' rigidity. All antibodies vary in their degree of rigidity based on the amino acid sequence of their "arms," which are the part of the Y-shaped molecules that bind to antigens. "The combination of the two rigid antibodies was also observed to increase networking - a process in which multiple antibodies bound to the same antigen at different sites form larger clumps or 'networks,'" explained Hodge, a postdoctoral researcher and first author on the study.

Antibody networking and high binding stability are known to improve the sensitivity of lateral flow assays, and researchers have long speculated that antibody flexibility plays a role in both properties. But studying the physical dynamics of antibody-antigen pairs to find the most effective antibodies is very difficult with traditional imaging techniques, which require the molecules to be stabilized or crystallized. The SAXS technique developed by Hammel and his colleagues allows scientists to examine antibodies and antigens in their natural state, i.e. when moving freely in a liquid.

"We showed that we can rapidly identify new antibody-antigen pairs that result in a more sensitive detection assay," said Hammel. "This technique could be applied to hundreds of antibodies in a short amount of time to identify the most suitable antibodies to achieve as-of-yet unattained sensitivity of antibody-based diagnostics, which are key for early diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 as well as other pathogens."

The team is now investigating methods of improving test sensitivity even further.

DETROIT (May 17, 2021) - A national study on childhood asthma led by Henry Ford Health System has found that family history, race and sex are associated in different ways with higher rates of asthma in children.

In a study published in JAMA Pediatrics (hyperlink goes here), researchers found that children with at least one parent with a history of asthma had two to three times higher rates of asthma, mostly through age 4. They also reported that asthma rates in black children were much higher than white children during their preschool years, but the rates of incidence dropped in black children after age 9, while they increased for white children later in childhood.

"These findings help us to better understand what groups of children are most susceptible to asthma early in life," said Christine Cole Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at Henry Ford and the study's lead author. "We can now use this information to develop interventions for those children at highest risk."

More than 12,000 children born between 1980 and 2014 were followed in the study. Data was collected from 31 different childhood asthma cohort studies in 30 U.S. states and Puerto Rico as part of the national Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. The children in the cohorts were born at 34 weeks or greater with no evidence of lung disease and had been followed from birth to at least their fifth birthday. The collected data also was based on whether the children received a doctor's asthma diagnosis and included a family history of asthma, sex, race, ethnicity, birth year and the birth mother's education. The gender of the children was nearly equal, 51% boys and 49% girls; 52% were white and 23% black.

Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Dr. Johnson and researchers sought to measure whether childhood asthma incidence differed by family history, race and sex. Key highlights:

Children with a family history of asthma had a two-fold increase risk asthma at age 4 through age 14 compared to those without a family history

Boys with a family history of asthma had higher rates of asthma than girls in their early years. By age 14, their rate of incidence was about the same

Black children had the highest rates of asthma regardless of a family history

"The ECHO consortium presents a unique opportunity for us to better understand patterns of asthma development given its large and diverse participant population," said Aruna Chandran, M.D., MPH, of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a study co-author. "We hope the results of this study will be useful to both researchers and healthcare providers to better treat and ultimately even prevent asthma in children."

Asthma is a major cause of disease in children that can lead to permanent lung damage. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1 in 12 children 17 and younger have asthma in the United States, which causes wheezing, difficulty breathing and coughing. Every year, 1 in 6 children with asthma visits the Emergency Department, and about 1 in 20 children are hospitalized.

Archaeologists at Northern Arizona University are hoping a new technology they helped pioneer will change the way scientists study the broken pieces left behind by ancient societies.

The team from NAU's Department of Anthropology have succeeded in teaching computers to perform a complex task many scientists who study ancient societies have long dreamt of: rapidly and consistently sorting thousands of pottery designs into multiple stylistic categories. By using a form of machine learning known as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the archaeologists created a computerized method that roughly emulates the thought processes of the human mind in analyzing visual information.

"Now, using digital photographs of pottery, computers can accomplish what used to involve hundreds of hours of tedious, painstaking and eye-straining work by archaeologists who physically sorted pieces of broken pottery into groups, in a fraction of the time and with greater consistency," said Leszek Pawlowicz, adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology. He and anthropology professor Chris Downum began researching the feasibility of using a computer to accurately classify broken pieces of pottery, known as sherds, into known pottery types in 2016. Results of their research are reported in the June issue of the peer-reviewed publication Journal of Archaeological Science.

"On many of the thousands of archaeological sites scattered across the American Southwest, archaeologists will often find broken fragments of pottery known as sherds. Many of these sherds will have designs that can be sorted into previously-defined stylistic categories, called 'types,' that have been correlated with both the general time period they were manufactured and the locations where they were made" Downum said. "These provide archaeologists with critical information about the time a site was occupied, the cultural group with which it was associated and other groups with whom they interacted."

The research relied on recent breakthroughs in the use of machine learning to classify images by type, specifically CNNs. CNNs are now a mainstay in computer image recognition, being used for everything from X-ray images for medical conditions and matching images in search engines to self-driving cars. Pawlowicz and Downum reasoned that if CNNs can be used to identify things like breeds of dogs and products a consumer might like, why not apply this approach to the analysis of ancient pottery?

Until now, the process of recognizing diagnostic design features on pottery has been difficult and time-consuming. It could involve months or years of training to master and correctly apply the design categories to tiny pieces of a broken pot. Worse, the process was prone to human error because expert archaeologists often disagree over which type is represented by a sherd, and might find it difficult to express their decision-making process in words. An anonymous peer reviewer of the article called this "the dirty secret in archaeology that no one talks about enough."

Determined to create a more efficient process, Pawlowicz and Downum gathered thousands of pictures of pottery fragments with a specific set of identifying physical characteristics, known as Tusayan White Ware, common across much of northeast Arizona and nearby states. They then recruited four of the Southwest's top pottery experts to identify the pottery design type for every sherd and create a 'training set' of sherds from which the machine can learn. Finally, they trained the machine to learn pottery types by focusing on the pottery specimens the archaeologists agreed on.

"The results were remarkable," Pawlowicz said. "In a relatively short period of time, the computer trained itself to identify pottery with an accuracy comparable to, and sometimes better than, the human experts."

For the four archaeologists with decades of experience sorting tens of thousands of actual potsherds, the machine outperformed two of them and was comparable with the other two. Even more impressive, the machine was able to do what many archaeologists can have difficulty with: describing why it made the classification decisions that it did. Using color-coded heat maps of sherds, the machine pointed out the design features that it used to make its classification decisions, thereby providing a visual record of its "thoughts."

"An exciting spinoff of this process was the ability of the computer to find nearly exact matches of particular snippets of pottery designs represented on individual sherds," Downum said. "Using CNN-derived similarity measures for designs, the machine was able to search through thousands of images to find the most similar counterpart of an individual pottery design."

Pawlowicz and Downum believe this ability could allow a computer to find scattered pieces of a single broken pot in a multitude of similar sherds from an ancient trash dump or conduct a region-wide analysis of stylistic similarities and differences across multiple ancient communities. The approach might also be better able to associate particular pottery designs from excavated structures which have been dated using the tree-ring method.

Their research is already receiving high praise.

"I fervently hope that Southwestern archaeologists will adopt this approach and do so quickly. It just makes so much sense," said Stephen Plog, emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Virginia and author of the book "Stylistic Variation In Prehistoric Ceramics." "We learned a ton from the old system, but it has lasted beyond its usefulness, and it's time to transform how we analyze ceramic designs."

The researchers are exploring practical applications of the CNN model's classification expertise and are working on additional journal articles to share the technology with other archaeologists. They hope this new approach to archaeological analysis of pottery can be applied to other types of ancient artifacts, and that archaeology can enter a new phase of machine classification that results in greater efficiency of archaeological efforts and more effective methods of teaching pottery designs to new generations of students.

The development of dementia, often from Alzheimer's disease, late in life is associated with abnormal blood levels of dozens of proteins up to five years earlier, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Most of these proteins were not known to be linked to dementia before, suggesting new targets for prevention therapies.

The findings are based on new analyses of blood samples of over ten thousand middle-aged and elderly people--samples that were taken and stored during large-scale studies decades ago as part of an ongoing study. The researchers linked abnormal blood levels of 38 proteins to higher risks of developing Alzheimers within five years. Of those 38 proteins, 16 appeared to predict Alzheimer's risk two decades in advance.

Although most of these risk markers may be only incidental byproducts of the slow disease process that leads to Alzheimer's, the analysis pointed to high levels of one protein, SVEP1, as a likely causal contributor to that disease process.

The study was published May 14 in Nature Aging.

"This is the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date, and it sheds light on multiple biological pathways that are connected to Alzheimer's," says study senior author Josef Coresh, MD, PhD, MHS, George W. Comstock Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School. "Some of these proteins we uncovered are just indicators that disease might occur, but a subset may be causally relevant, which is exciting because it raises the possibility of targeting these proteins with future treatments."

More than six million Americans are estimated to have Alzheimer's, the most common type of dementia, an irreversible fatal condition that leads to loss of cognitive and physical function. Despite decades of intensive study, there are no treatments that can slow the disease process, let alone stop or reverse it. Scientists widely assume that the best time to treat Alzheimer's is before dementia symptoms develop.

Efforts to gauge people's Alzheimer's risk before dementia arises have focused mainly on the two most obvious features of Alzheimer's brain pathology: clumps of amyloid beta protein known as plaques, and tangles of tau protein. Scientists have shown that brain imaging of plaques, and blood or cerebrospinal fluid levels of amyloid beta or tau, have some value in predicting Alzheimer's years in advance.

But humans have tens of thousands of other distinct proteins in their cells and blood, and techniques for measuring many of these from a single, small blood sample have advanced in recent years. Would a more comprehensive analysis using such techniques reveal other harbingers of Alzheimer's? That's the question Coresh and colleagues sought to answer in this new study.

The researchers' initial analysis covered blood samples taken during 2011-13 from more than 4,800 late-middle-aged participants in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a large epidemiological study of heart disease-related risk factors and outcomes that has been running in four U.S. communities since 1985. Collaborating researchers at a laboratory technology company called SomaLogic used a technology they recently developed, SomaScan, to record levels of nearly 5,000 distinct proteins in the banked ARIC samples.

The researchers analyzed the results and found 38 proteins whose abnormal levels were significantly associated with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's in the five years following the blood draw.

They then used SomaScan to measure protein levels from more than 11,000 blood samples taken from much younger ARIC participants in 1993-95. They found that abnormal levels of 16 of the 38 previously identified proteins were associated with the development of Alzheimer's in the nearly two decades between that blood draw and a follow-up clinical evaluation in 2011-13.

To verify these findings in a different patient population, the scientists reviewed the results of an earlier SomaScan of blood samples taken in 2002-06 during an Icelandic study. That study had assayed proteins including 13 of the 16 proteins identified in the ARIC analyses. Of those 13 proteins, six were again associated with Alzheimer's risk over a roughly 10-year follow-up period.

In a further statistical analysis, the researchers compared the identified proteins with data from past studies of genetic links to Alzheimer's. The comparison suggested strongly that one of the identified proteins, SVEP1, is not just an incidental marker of Alzheimer's risk but is involved in triggering or driving the disease.

SVEP1 is a protein whose normal functions remain somewhat mysterious, although in a study published earlier this year it was linked to the thickened artery condition, atherosclerosis, which underlies heart attacks and strokes.

Other proteins associated with Alzheimer's risk in the new study included several key immune proteins--which is consistent with decades of findings linking Alzheimer's to abnormally intense immune activity in the brain.

The researchers plan to continue using techniques like SomaScan to analyze proteins in banked blood samples from long-term studies to identify potential Alzheimer's-triggering pathways--a potential strategy to suggest new approaches for Alzheimer's treatments.

The scientists have also been studying how protein levels in the ARIC samples are linked to other diseases such as vascular (blood vessel-related) disease in the brain, heart and the kidney.

May 16, 2021 -- In a study of low-income, urban youth in the U.S., researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health found that students exposed to Photovoice, an educational intervention, experienced greater improvements in STEM-capacity scores and environmental awareness scores compared to a group of youth who were not exposed to the activity. The results suggest that the Photovoice activities may be associated with improved learning outcomes. The study is published in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

"Our findings suggest that the Photovoice activities result in greater environmental awareness and may be associated with improved learning skills," said Nadav Sprague, doctoral fellow, Environmental Life Course Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School.

Photovoice uses community-members' knowledge and perspective to address knowledge gaps in academia, research, and policy-making. Most often used in public health research. the participant is engaged through taking photos on a given topic in combination with narrative discussions in a focus group setting.

Sprague and colleagues from Washington University in St. Louis studied the STEM-capacity, environmental perceptions, and environmental awareness of 335 low-income, St. Louis Public School students aged 9 to 15. Students in the study were assigned to one of two intervention groups, a Photovoice environmental education intervention group or a traditional intervention group without a Photovoice activity. The investigators also evaluated outcomes among a control group of youth, who did not participate in either intervention.

After the intervention, both STEM-capacity and environmental awareness for the Photovoice intervention group were significantly higher than that of the control group of youth who did not participate in the intervention and did not experience any significant improvements in STEM- capacity or environmental awareness. Both environmental education interventions were run by Washington University and Gateway to the Great Outdoors (GGO), a nonprofit organization that provides environmental health and STEM education to low-income elementary and middle schools in Chicago and St Louis.

"There is an environmental justice issue. Low-income and non-White children often have less access to nature and greenspace than their high-income or White counterparts" said Sprague, who also founded Gateway to the Great Outdoors. Researchers believe focused based environmental education is a potential answer to halt or slow human-driven climate change, biodiversity loss, overuse of natural resources, environmental health disparities, deforestation, and other human-caused environmental issues.

While the findings of the current research as well as previous studies are consistent with the literature that nature-contact improves social connectedness, Sprague recommends larger intervention studies to confirm the benefits of Photovoice in Environmental Education are necessary.

"The purpose of Photovoice is to empower individuals and communities that are traditionally neglected from research and policymaking discussions," said Sprague. "Photovoice may be an effective leadership development tool for youth, as it demonstrates to youth that their opinions and views can lead to change."

KINGSTON, R.I. - May 17, 2021 - An article recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, written by University of Rhode Island College of Engineering Professor Stéphan Grilli and his colleagues, reveals new data on the Anak Krakatau volcano flank collapse, which was triggered by an eruption on December 22, 2018.

The tsunami created by the flank collapse hit the coast of Indonesia with waves as tall as 5 meters, leaving 420 people dead and 40,000 people displaced from their homes.

New Data Used for Modeling

Ever since the eruption occurred, scientists have been collecting evidence to determine exactly how it happened, just as crime scene investigators attempt to recreate a crime scene.

"Up until now, a lot of the information we had was based on satellite images and conjecture," said University of Rhode Island Distinguished Engineering Professor Stéphan Grilli. "Until there was real data, nobody could do any better."

By combining new synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, field observations from a marine geology underwater survey, and aerial photographs taken by drones, a more accurate model can now be created of the volcano before and after it collapsed.

New high-resolution seafloor and sub-seafloor hydroacoustic surveys have provided a comprehensive view of what the landslide deposits look like underwater.

"The renderings show how deep the sediment slid underwater and how large the pieces were that collapsed," said Grilli.

Published Findings

The article in Nature Communications, which is considered one of the world's leading multidisciplinary science journals, was published on May 14, 2021.

"For many researchers working in the natural sciences, publishing a paper in one of Nature's journals is really an honor and a sign that one's work is being recognized by the scientific community," said Grilli. "This also brings great visibility to the work, which is important because as we improve our understanding and modeling of how tsunamis are generated by natural hazards, we can improve our mitigation of their effects in coastal areas and hopefully save lives."

Grilli's research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Other co-project investigators at URI were Annette Grilli, associate professor of ocean engineering and Steve Carey, professor of oceanography.

Most of Stéphan Grilli's peers who are co-authors on the Nature article are from the United Kingdom and were funded by its Natural Environment Research Council.

Closer to Home

As devastating as the tsunami caused by Anak Krakatau was, a potentially much greater threat exists closer to the United States.

According to Grilli, if one of the volcanoes in the Canary Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Northwest Africa was to erupt and suffer a large flank collapse, the results would be catastrophic.

"Our sights are on the Canary Islands because that volcano shows signs of becoming unstable and an eruption could cause a major landslide on one of its flanks, which studies have shown could be up to 2,000 times larger than what we saw in Indonesia," said Grilli. "That could create a mega-tsunami, with the potential to cause inundations along the East Coast of the United State, in some areas twice as large as a category five hurricane. It could mean major destruction along the East Coast."

On a smaller scale, but within the United States, Hawaii's volcanoes pose a constant threat of eruption and flank collapses.

"If a piece of one of Hawaii's volcanoes was to break off, it could create a significant tsunami," said Grilli.

Not Much Warning

Despite advances in technology, there is still very little warning when a volcano is on the verge of eruption or a tsunami is forming as a result of it.

"We have high-frequency radar and systems that can monitor surface currents, including those caused by tsunamis, but we're still a long way from being able to predict when an earthquake, volcano eruption or tsunami may occur," said Grilli.

After Japan was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 in 2011, resulting in a tsunami and a nuclear power-plant accident, which left close to 18,000 people dead, the country spent $12 billion to build 42-foot-high concrete seawalls.

The walls block the view of the ocean, but experts say the barriers are worth it, as they should minimize damage and buy time for evacuation. In some areas of the United States, such as along the Cascadia subduction zone off of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, there would be very little time to retreat to safe ground should a large earthquake and tsunami occur.

"In Oregon, people are worried about evacuation if we had 'The Big One,'" said Grilli. "Even though people have built artificial hills for a vertical evacuation, at most there would be a 15-minute tsunami warning. There just wouldn't be enough time to get everyone to safety."