Culture

Like tree rings, cave stalagmites are a portal to a prehistoric Earth, and now scientists from UNSW Sydney have found they are consistently reliable as time trackers the world over.

In a global investigation into the growth properties of stalagmites distributed across the world, the scientists found that while growth fluctuations due to climate events are evident in the shorter period, stalagmite growth over the longer periods - tens of thousands of years - are surprisingly linear.

"Our new global analysis shows that we can consider stalagmite growth as being like a metronome and very constant over hundreds and thousands of years," says Professor Andy Baker, UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"Sometimes extreme weather events can disturb this metronome for a few years, making the growth a bit faster or slower, and we can use that to explore climate variations.

"But in general, stalagmite growth is predictable and it is this unique property that makes them so valuable to researchers - you can tell the time in the past by using the very regular growth rings that are widely present across the globe."

Stalagmites, which grow from cave floors as water drips from stalactites at the cave ceiling, are the result of chemicals carried by the water in solution that turns to solid form in the cave. They are built by layers of calcite crystals, which may be perfectly stacked one on top of the other if nothing disturbs the growth.

"But in reality, there are many disturbances in caves," says Prof. Baker.

"Tiny particles from the soil above and trace elements of chemicals can disturb the stacking to create pores between growing crystals or even slightly change their shape in the morphology - or fabric - of the growing crystals."

STEADY GROWTH

Scientists have used stalagmites as gauges of different parts of the planet's conditions over millennia for some time, but whether all stalagmites grew the same way in caves of different climatic conditions remained unknown - until now.

"Before this analysis, we did not have evidence that stalagmites are only found in regions with seasonal precipitation, nor was it obvious that the stalagmite growth rate is relatively unchanging over time and that this is a ubiquitous property," Prof. Baker says.

"What we have learned is that for an environmental signal to be preserved in stalagmite laminae thickness variations, a large perturbation to weather patterns is required - such as prolonged wet or dry years associated El Niño or La Niña.

"But in regions where there is a seasonality of precipitation, the long-term constant growth rate of laminated stalagmites provides an unparalleled capacity for precise chronology building."

The researchers found that between different locations around the world, warmer climates tended towards more stalagmite growth over time, while colder climates saw growth slowed.

But the research showed that the majority of stalagmite samples, irrespective of location, followed a linear growth over the timescale of tens of thousands of years.

"The 'global average stalagmite' increased in height by about one metre over the last 11,000 years," Prof. Baker says.

SNAPSHOT OF THE PAST

Analysing the way the laminae are organised can help scientists read environmental conditions and weather events of the distant past. In seasonal climates, these changes in the fabric can occur at regular intervals, producing layers they call 'annually laminated stalagmites'. But when extreme weather events occur, as happens with the El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation phenomenon involving mega-droughts, bushfires and flooding events, variations of thicknesses of stalagmite laminae can provide vital clues.

"We can use other chemical evidence in stalagmites to obtain records of past environmental change, and know exactly when this happened," says Prof. Baker.

"For example, at UNSW we are reconstructing fire histories from cave stalagmites for the first time. Working in Western Australia, and using stalagmites that have these continuous laminae and regular growth, we can identify how often fires have occurred in the past from the traces left behind from the soluble part of bushfire ash that gets transported to the stalagmite by drip water."

The researchers say that they still have limited understanding on how crystals grow within each lamina, so future studies could investigate the internal structure of the laminae and the crystal growth mechanisms involved.

The analysis was published in the April issue of Reviews of Geophysics journal.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Attempts at restricting people's mobility to control the spread of COVID-19 may be effective only for a short period, researchers said. A new study examines people's mobility for seven months during the pandemic in the United States using publicly available, anonymized mobile phone data.

Reported in the Journal of Transport Geography, the study alerts authorities to the need for more manageable travel restrictions and policies that reduce COVID-19 exposure risk to essential workers - who, because they are required to be physically present at their workplaces, remained highly mobile during the pandemic.

The longitudinal study is one of the first to compare mobility data using a broad range of people over an extended period, rather than a cross section of data from a single point in time, the researchers said.

"The longitudinal approach allowed us to differentiate between two distinct waves over our study period: a first wave from March to June and a second wave from June to September," said Junghwan Kim, a graduate student in geography and geographic information science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the research with Mei-Po Kwan, a geography professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Kim's doctoral adviser at the U. of I. "This approach also allowed us to look for relationships between mobility change and various social, spatial, policy and political factors."

The study used mobile device data from 2,639 of the 3,000 U.S. counties, excluding those with too little data, those with excessively high mobility levels and those with incomplete demographic data.

"We found that, overall, mobility declined sharply in March and April but quickly recovered to the pre-pandemic mobility levels from April through June, forming a V-shaped data curve," Kim said. "During the second wave that occurred between June and September, we saw very little change in mobility despite the COVID-19 pandemic becoming more severe."
A closer look at the data showed that mobility changes are associated with political partisanship, poverty, mobility restriction and high COVID-19 case numbers, the researchers said.

The team found that people's mobility in Democratic Party-leaning counties was slower to recover than in Republican Party-leaning counties; that counties with more poor people showed only a slight decrease in mobility throughout the study period; and that statewide COVID-19 mobility restrictions were more effective during March and April than from April to June.

"The political result not only corroborates the findings from similar studies but also reflects how the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been highly politicized," Kim said. "The results that show that the working poor were traveling almost normally during the pandemic - likely because they tend to make up a large percentage of essential workers - is a problem that needs to be addressed."

There are limitations to this type of study, the researchers said, including the anonymous nature of mobile device data, which protects user privacy but hampers the ability to obtain more accurate individual-level data. Additionally, this type of data does not account for complex interactions between human mobility and COVID-19 severity.

"Considering that mobility is a critical component of people's daily lives in modern societies, such as the U.S., we hope that policymakers can carefully design and implement pandemic-control policies that people will find easier to follow," Kim said.

Grass crops are able to bend the rules of evolution by borrowing genes from their neighbours, giving them a competitive advantage, a new study has revealed.

Research, led by the University of Sheffield, is the first to show that grasses can incorporate DNA from other species into their genomes through a process known as lateral gene transfer.

The stolen genetic secrets give them an evolutionary advantage by allowing them to grow faster, bigger or stronger and adapt to new environments quicker. These findings could inform future work to create crops that are more resistant to the effects of climate change and help to tackle food security problems.

The Sheffield team studied grasses, which include some of the most economically and ecologically important plants, such as the most globally cultivated crops wheat, maize, rice and barley.

Dr Luke Dunning, senior author of the research from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: "Grasses are taking an evolutionary shortcut by borrowing genes from their neighbours. By using genetic detective work to trace the origin of each gene, we found over 100 examples where the gene had a significantly different history to the species it was found in.

"The findings may make us as a society reconsider how we view GM technology, as grasses have naturally exploited a very similar process. If we can determine how this process is happening it may allow us to naturally modify crops and make them more resistant to climate change.

"What we are seeing is not hybridisation, but the consequences are similar. Lateral gene transfer can move genetic information across wider evolutionary distances, which means it can potentially have even bigger impacts.

"Whilst only a relatively small proportion of genes are transferred between species, this process potentially allows grasses to cherry pick information from other species. This likely gives them huge advantages and may allow them to adapt to their surrounding environment quicker.

Samuel Hibdige, first author of the research and PhD Researcher from the University of Sheffield, said: "We still don't know how this is happening or what the full implications are. But, we know it is widespread in grasses, a family of plants that provide a majority of the food we eat.

"We detected foreign DNA in a wide range of grasses with all kinds of life history strategies indicating it is not restricted to those with a specific trait. However, we did detect a statistical increase in species which possess certain kinds of modified stems called rhizomes."

Since Darwin, much of our understanding of evolution has been based on the assumption that common descent is the rule for plant and animal evolution, with genetic information passed from parents to offspring.

The team's next steps will be to determine the biological mechanism behind this phenomenon and to investigate whether this is an ongoing process in crops that contributes to the differences we observe between crop varieties.

A new species of deep-sea dwelling dumbo octopus called Grimpoteuthis imperator sp. nov. has been described using a combination of MRI, micro-CT and minimally invasive gene analysis rather than traditional dissection methods. The findings are presented in the open access journal BMC Biology.

The single specimen, which was identified as a mature male, was named G. imperator because it was discovered in the northern part of the Emperor Seamounts, an undersea mountain ridge in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. In addition to the scientific name in Latin, the authors suggest possible common names for this new species such as Emperor dumbo, Dumbo impérial (French), and Kaiserdumbo (German).

Finned or dumbo octopods, although considered rare organisms, form a significant part of the megafauna in deep-sea habitats down to at least 7,000 m depth. Current methods used to describe new cephalopod species often require dissection to examine internal organs, which involves damage to or even partial destruction of a specimen and may thus preclude analysis of singular, endangered, rare, or otherwise valuable organisms.

Alexander Ziegler and Christina Sagorny at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany combined non-invasive methods including digital photography, standardized measurements, high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), with minimally-invasive tissue sampling for DNA analysis to gather morphological as well as molecular information on the specimen collected during R/V SONNE's scientific cruise SO-249 BERING. Using this novel combination of non-invasive and minimally invasive techniques allowed the authors to describe a large zoological specimen for the first time without damaging it.

The authors were able to identify details including shell and gill shape, digestive tract morphology, as well as more minute structures such as the nervous system and sensory organs, but also morphological characters so far not used in the description of octopus species, such as the shape of the systemic heart. By using micro-CT, which is more suitable than MRI for visualization of chitinous tissues, the authors were also able to build the first interactive 3D model of a cephalopod beak.

Characteristics including shell form, fin position, and arm length identified the specimen as belonging to the genus Grimpoteuthis. However, the number of suckers, half-orange-shaped gills, and details of the shell differentiate it from all previously described Grimpoteuthis species.

Alexander Ziegler said: "The MRI and micro-CT datasets we have obtained here and which are publicly available from the repository MorphoBank could be used for further analyses that would not have been possible to this extent using conventional, invasive techniques. This may allow other researchers to draw conclusions about the life style and behaviour of hard-to-observe deep sea organisms."

A radically reformed approach to education, in which different subjects teach connected themes, like climate change or food security, is being proposed by researchers, who argue that it would better prepare children for future crises.

In a newly-published study, education researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh argue that there is a compelling case for a drastic shake-up of the school curriculum, so that subjects are no longer taught independently of one another. Instead, they argue that the arts and sciences should 'teach together' around real-world problems, and in a manner rooted in pupils' lived experiences.

The model draws inspiration from Renaissance polymaths like Leonardo Da Vinci, who worked across disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of deeper knowledge. Similar, 'trans-disciplinary' approaches are already used in well-regarded education systems such as Finland's. The idea also echoes recent calls by the youth campaign, Teach the Future, to break down subject silos to teach climate change.

The academic paper, in the journal Curriculum Perspectives, also presents evidence from two recent projects in which pupils appeared to benefit from an approach to teaching which blurred subject boundaries.

One, which invited South African teenagers from disadvantaged settings to create 'math-artworks', produced evidence that as well as increasing their familiarity with key mathematical principles, the project also enabled pupils to understand more about the relevance of maths in their own lives. In the second case study, primary school children in Aberdeen showed a deeper understanding of food security and environmental protection issues after learning to grow food in their school grounds.

Pam Burnard, Professor of Arts, Creativities and Education at the University of Cambridge, said: "If we look at the amazing designs that Da Vinci produced, it's clear he was combining different disciplines to advance knowledge and solve problems. We need to encourage children to think in a similar way because tomorrow's adults will have to problem-solve differently due to the existential crises they will face: especially those of climate, sustainability, and the precarity of life on Earth."

Dr Laura Colucci-Gray, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Education and Sport, said: "The nature of these problems calls for a radically different approach to knowledge. We are proposing a move from the idea of a curriculum as something children are just 'given' to a curriculum 'in-the-making', in response to transformations that will define their lives."

The paper contributes to an emerging field called 'STEAM' education. This seeks to reinsert the 'A' of arts into national attempts to encourage the uptake of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), in response to a critical skills gap in related areas of the economy.

Some educationists argue that the emphasis on STEM is devaluing other subjects, and that arts disciplines are also powerful tools for delivering the problem-solving skills society needs. "For education to reflect that requires a major shift away from linear conceptions where subjects are taught separately, and towards a situation where they are inseparable," Burnard said.

In their alternative model, the researchers suggest giving schools greater freedom to determine how to meet general study targets set by the curriculum. Teachers and leadership teams would make collective decisions and share practices about how to engage pupils with unifying, cross-curricular themes, such as environmental sustainability.

They add that this might also involve the imaginative use of space and resources, and closer links between schools and their communities to connect learning to pupils' lived experiences beyond the classroom.

Evidence is also emerging that a transdisciplinary approach enhances pupils' acquisition of key skills. In the math-artwork project cited in the study, students in South Africa were asked to create art which showed the links between maths and the world around them. Subsequent analysis of the 113 submissions showed that pupils had applied principles such as measurement, ratio and proportion, and geometry in their creations.

The researchers also found, however, that participants had engaged deeply with the meaning of maths at a level rarely seen in conventional lessons. One especially powerful example, by a 16-year-old male student, was entitled The Stressed Vitruvian Man, inspired by Da Vinci's The Vitruvian Man. Like Da Vinci, the young artist's work was partly a study of the proportions of the human body, but at the same time, the student used it to comment on both the potential, and dangers, of creating a society built on mathematical principles alone.

Similarly, the primary school pupils in Aberdeen showed a deepened understanding of issues like food production and natural resource management when they were given the opportunity to take responsibility for a small piece of land in their school. Researchers found that the survival of plants became personal to the pupils, rather than just an abstract concept that they had learned about in science lessons. It also introduced them to other, related ethical challenges which those lessons rarely address: such as how to produce enough food when space is limited.

Any attempted reimagining of education along transdisciplinary lines would require children's attainment to be measured differently, the researchers add. "It would require a system of testing which measures how children are internalising ideas and what they are expressing - not just what they know," Burnard said. "That may be an uncomfortable idea for some, but it is the sort of radical thinking we need if education is going to prepare young people for the future."

SINGAPORE, 22 April 2021 - A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore discovered a new mitochondrial peptide called MOCCI that plays an important role in regulating inflammation of blood vessel and immunity. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, revealed how one gene encoded two molecules that provide two-pronged protection following viral infection.

Chronic and excessive inflammation of the blood vessels, known as vascular inflammation, can lead to tissue damage and cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis and fibrosis. Although some therapies have shown promising results in clinical trials, they have considerable side effects, such as immunosuppression leading to increased risk of infection, and limited efficacy. Therefore, more effective treatments are urgently needed.

"In this study, we aimed to identify new targets to combat inflammation in the lining of blood vessels. Specifically, we wanted to target small naturally-produced peptides that have not been studied before," explained Assistant Professor Lena Ho, from the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS, who led the team that included Associate Professor Ashley St John, Assistant Professor Owen Rackham and Senior Research Fellow Dr Cheryl Lee.

The Duke-NUS team, in collaboration with colleagues from the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at A*STAR Singapore, investigated a group of peptides called Mito-SEPs that localise in mitochondria, the cellular organelles well-known for their role in cellular energy production. After observing that Mito-SEPs appear to be involved in regulating inflammation, they screened cells from the lining of human aortic blood vessels to uncover peptides involved in this process.

They found a new peptide, which they named MOCCI--short for Modulator of Cytochrome C oxidase during Inflammation--that is made only when cells undergo inflammation and infection.

To their surprise, they discovered that MOCCI is a hitherto unknown component of Complex IV, a part of a series of enzymes in the mitochondria responsible for energy production, called the electron transport chain. During inflammation, MOCCI incorporates into Complex IV to dampen its activity. Collaborating with Assoc Prof St John at Duke-NUS, the researchers found that this dampening is required to reduce inflammation following viral infection.

"Our finding that the composition of the electron transport chain changes in response to inflammation is novel. MOCCI in essence repurposes part of the energy production centre in the cell to regulate inflammation," said Dr Lee, the lead author of this study.

The researchers also discovered that MOCCI is made together with a micro-RNA molecule called miR-147b. The two molecules are made from different sections of the same gene. MOCCI originates from the sequence of the gene that codes for proteins, while miR-147b is made from the non-coding section.

While the miR-147b molecule also exerts anti-inflammatory effects, it actively prevents viruses from replicating at the same time. This implies that MOCCI and miR-147b function in tandem to help to control viral infection and suppress inflammation.

"This dual-pronged strategy is an elegant mechanism that the body has put in place to prevent excessive and potentially tissue-damaging inflammation during infection, such as the cytokine storm seen in COVID-19 infection, and colitis" said Asst Prof Ho. "The gene encoding MOCCI is one of the first genes described to have both coding and non-coding functions. The fact these dual functions are coordinated to achieve a concerted biological outcome is a significant finding in cell biology."

Professor Patrick Casey, Senior Vice-Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, commented, "Medicine and healthcare advance with the aid of new discoveries in fundamental research. This study by Asst Prof Ho and her collaborators provides valuable insight on inflammation and immunity--a topic that has become even more important in the context of COVID-19."

The researchers say the next step is to explore how to develop targeted pharmacological treatments that can mimic the anti-inflammatory effects of MOCCI and miR147b. They also plan to investigate the role of MOCCI in common chronic inflammatory diseases such as colitis and psoriasis.

Substantial proportions of pregnant and postpartum women scored high for symptoms of anxiety, depression, loneliness and post-traumatic stress in relation to COVID-19 in a survey carried out in May and June 2020, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Karestan Koenen and Archana Basu of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US, and colleagues.

Pregnant and postpartum women face unique challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic that may put them at elevated risk of mental health problems. These include concerns about greater severity of COVID-19 disease, potential infection of newborns and increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes. Perinatal mental health problems are a critical public health issue which can adversely impact not only women's own health but also infant outcomes, mother-infant bonding, and later offspring health.

In the new study, researchers carried out an anonymous, online, cross-sectional survey of pregnant and postpartum women in 64 countries between May 26, 2020 and June 13, 2020. The survey was available in twelve languages and was advertised in social media and online parenting forums. Participants gave information on demographics, COVID-19 exposure and worries, information seeking behavior, COVID-19 prevention behaviors, and mental health symptoms. The mental health symptoms reported in the study were based on modified screening questionnaires rather than a clinical diagnosis.

The study found that, of 6,894 participants, a substantial number scored at or above the cut-off for elevated anxiety/depression (2,138, or 31 percent), loneliness (3,691, or 53 percent), and post-traumatic stress in relation to COVID-19 (2,979, or 43 percent), despite the fact that only 117 women (2 percent) had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and only 510 (7 percent) had been in contact with someone with COVID-19. These numbers were higher than rates of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression previously reported for the general population during the pandemic, or for perinatal and postpartum women prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Information seeking from any source--including social media, news or word-of-mouth--five or more times a day was associated with more than twice the odds of elevated post-traumatic stress in relation to COVID-19 and anxiety/depression. For example, checking social media more than five times a day was associated with 2.25 times higher odds of elevated post-traumatic stress (95%CI 1.92-2.65) and 2.83 times higher odds of anxiety/depression (95%CI 2.39-3.34). In addition, being very worried about COVID-19 was strongly associated with elevated post-traumatic stress (OR 4.75, 95%CI 3.34-6.87) and anxiety/depression (OR 1.51, 95% CI 1.09-2.13). The majority of participants reported engaging in COVID-19 prevention behaviors (e.g., 93.3 percent reported practicing hand hygiene and 84.5 percent reported wearing a face mask) but these behaviors were not associated with anxiety/ depression symptoms. The authors suggest that COVID-19 prevention behaviors are central to containing the viral spread and mitigating physical health risk, but public health campaigns and medical care systems also need to explicitly address the impact of COVID-19 related stressors on mental health in perinatal women.

The authors add: "Our results suggest that globally, pregnant women and new moms' mental health is still another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maternal mental health and wellbeing is critical for mothers and foundational for healthy child development. There is an urgent need for maternal mental health to be fully integrated into standard prenatal and postpartum care."

Time seems to pass more slowly in the UK COVID-19 lockdown - especially for people who are depressed, shielding or dissatisfied with social interactions

Kobe University Hospital's Dr. NISHIMORI Makoto and Project Assistant Professor KIUCHI Kunihiko et al. (of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine) have developed an AI that uses multiple kinds of test data to predict the location of surplus pathways in the heart called 'accessory pathways', which cause the heart to beat irregularly. In this study, the researchers were able to improve diagnosis accuracy by having the AI learn from two completely different types of test results- electrocardiography (ECG) data and X-ray images. It is hoped that this methodology can be applied to other disorders based upon the successful results of this research.

These research results were published online in 'Scientific Reports' on April 13, 2021.

Research Background

Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) is an arrhythmic disorder. Patients with WPW syndrome are born with surplus pathways inside their hearts called 'accessory pathways', which can cause tachycardia episodes where the pulse speeds up. Catheter ablation involves using a catheter to selectively cauterize accessory pathways and can completely cure this disorder. However, the success rate of catheter ablation varies depending on the location of the accessory pathways. Conventionally, a 12-lead ECG (i.e. a regular electrocardiography) has been used to predict accessory pathway location prior to treatment. However, this current method that relies solely on ECG is insufficiently accurate, which makes it difficult to give patients a full explanation that includes the success rate of treatment. This research study tried using AI to solve this problem.

The researchers used a methodology for teaching AI called deep learning. Deep learning involves entering the data for each patient and the corresponding answers into a program. By repeating this learning process, the program automatically becomes smarter. Using this methodology, the research group was able to present a solution to a previously unresolved problem, thus further promoting the application of AI to modern medicine.

Research Methodology

Firstly, Dr. Nishimori's team developed AI using only ECG data and compared its performance to previous methods. They conducted repeated learning where they gave the AI each patients' ECG data and the accessory pathway location (i.e. the answer) in each case at the same time, successfully creating an AI with a higher accuracy rate than previous methods. However, the AI was unable to perform correct predictions every time from ECG data alone. The cause of this issue was thought to be that the ECG data is affected by the differences in size and position of each heart, therefore the ECG data did not match even when the location of the accessory pathway was the same. This problem was resolved by having the AI learn data, such as information on each heart's size, from chest x-ray images at the same time (Figure 1). By simultaneously learning both the pre-treatment ECG and X-ray image data, the AI was able to obtain the missing information and its diagnostic accuracy was significantly improved (Figure 2) compared to when only ECG data was used.

Further Developments

The advancement of AI technology in recent years has made it possible for AI to make highly accurate diagnoses based on various kinds of test data in the field of medicine. However, there are cases where data from a single test is insufficient for AI to perform an accurate diagnosis. This research study successfully increased the accuracy by having the AI learn not only from ECG results but also from chest X-ray images, which are a completely different type of data. AI-mediated accurate diagnoses will enable doctors to give pre-treatment patients a more accurate explanation of their condition, which will hopefully put patients at ease. In addition, this research could be applied to various other disorders and will hopefully lead to the implementation of AI diagnosis software.

Floodwaters are not what most people consider a blessing. But they could help remedy California's increasingly parched groundwater systems, according to a new Stanford-led study. The research, published in Science Advances, develops a framework to calculate future floodwater volumes under a changing climate and identifies areas where investments in California's aging water infrastructure could amplify groundwater recharge. As the state grapples with more intense storms and droughts, stowing away floodwaters would not only reduce flood risks but also build more water reserves for drier times.

"This is the first comprehensive assessment of floodwater recharge potential in California under climate change," said study lead author Xiaogang He, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at the National University of Singapore who pursued the research as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Program on Water in the West.

Whether it's rivers overflowing in the Central Valley flatlands, high-tide storms hitting lowland coastal areas, flash floods drenching southern deserts or impermeable concrete-laden cities pooling with water, California is susceptible to flooding. Alternately, looming droughts often raise concern about water supply, as diminished groundwater sinks land, contaminates drinking water and reduces surface supplies. These declining reserves also hamper climate resilience - during periods of drought up to 60 percent of the state's water comes from groundwater and 85 percent of Californians depend on the resource for at least a portion of their water supply.

Water banking

As climate change intensifies the severity and frequency of these extreme events, amplifying refill rates could help the state reach a more balanced groundwater budget. One practice, called water banking or managed aquifer recharge, involves augmenting surface infrastructure, such as reservoirs or pipelines, with underground infrastructure, such as aquifers and wells, to increase the transfer of floodwater for storage in groundwater basins.

A newer strategy for managing surface water, compared to more traditional methods like reservoirs and dams, water banking poses multiple benefits including flood risk reduction and improved ecosystem services. While groundwater basins offer a vast network for water safekeeping, pinpointing areas prime for replenishment, gauging infrastructure needed and the amount of water available remains key, especially in a warming and uncertain climate.

"Integrating managed aquifer recharge with floodwaters into already complex water management infrastructure offers many benefits, but requires careful consideration of uncertainties and constraints. Our growing understanding of climate change makes this an opportune time to examine the potential for these benefits," said senior author David Freyberg, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

The researchers designed a framework to estimate future floodwater availability across the state. Developing a hybrid computer model using hydrologic and climate simulations and statistical tools, the team calculated water available for recharge under different climate change scenarios through 2090. They also identified areas where infrastructure investments should be prioritized to tap floodwater potential and increase recharge.

Future floodwaters

The team found California will experience increased floodwater from both heavier rain patterns and earlier snowmelt due to warmer temperatures, under a narrowing window of concentrated wet weather. In particular, the Sacramento River and North Coast, along with the northern and central Sierra Nevada region, will see more substantial floodwater volumes. These deluges could overload current water infrastructure, such as reservoirs and aqueducts. However, if the region is standing ready with additional floodwater diversion infrastructure, such as canals or pipelines, it could maximize recharge potential and transfer more of it toward arid Southern California.

Future projections find unchanging or in some cases even drier conditions in Southern California. This widening divide is bad news for the region, which currently has greater groundwater depletion and recharge needs than its northern counterpart. This mismatch of water abundance and need reveals a profound challenge for recharge practices, in terms of moving high volumes of water from where it will be available in Northern California to where it will be needed southward.

The researchers also found recharge estimates for the San Joaquin Valley - one of the world's most productive agricultural regions - could help restock a large portion of depleted groundwater aquifers. Sitting at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, this region will need to accommodate larger volumes of water both above and below the surface in order to maximize refill potential. Water managers will need to expand conveyance projects and reopen reservoirs there.

While climate impacts are the most dominant influence, the researchers point out that other factors, including infrastructure capacity, policy constraints, financial and environmental concerns must be jointly considered during the planning process.

The study's framework is adaptable and scalable for managing drought, flood and depleted groundwater aquifers worldwide.

"At the global scale only 1 percent of groundwater recharge occurs from managed aquifer recharge," He said. "This work can be applied to help other depleted aquifers, such as the North China Plain or India's Upper Ganges, reach and maintain sustainable groundwater levels."

Addressing a much-debated question about the impact of stress on survival in wild, nonhuman primates, a new multi-decadal study involving 242 wild female baboons found evidence to support chronic stress as a significant factor affecting survival. The study found that a female baboon with a stress response - as reflected in fecal glucocorticoid concentrations, a biomarker of stress response - in the top 90% for her age throughout adulthood was expected to lose 5.4 years of life compared to a female with glucocorticoid concentrations in the bottom 10% for her age group. The findings, which leveraged more than 14,000 fecal glucocorticoid measurements over a total of more than 1,600 years of female adult lifespan, support that these stress response measurements may be strong predictors of survival in female baboons. The results could also help explain why some nonhuman primate individuals, as well as humans, live longer than others. Scientists have debated whether differences in chronic activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (the stress response) during adulthood are tied to individual differences in survival. Previous research on humans has shown that factors such as social isolation and low socioeconomic status are associated with elevated glucocorticoid levels from increased HPA axis activation, and further research has found that chronically elevated glucocorticoid levels can lead to health problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. However, evidence for the link between chronic stress and detrimental health effects in non-human primates had not been previously identified in natural animal populations. To close this research gap, Fernando Campos and colleagues measured and analyzed 14,173 fecal glucocorticoid measurements from adult female baboons living in the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya, over the course of their entire adult (>5 years old) lives. They chose to use fecal measurements because they are more stable than those from blood or plasma, reflect concentrations over several hours rather than at one instance, and are not altered by restraint or handling. The researchers then developed models to test the links between longevity and lifelong high glucocorticoid levels as opposed to increases in glucocorticoids associated with discrete events and specific conditions (such as dominance rank, group size, pregnancy, and lactation). The authors observed greater differences in life expectancy between those individuals with high- and low- fecal glucocorticoid measurements in the cumulative effect model than in a current value model, the latter of which illustrated a spike in concentrations prior to death caused by trauma or illness. The findings suggest that high stress levels throughout adult life affect survival, not just high stress levels close to the time of an individual's death. Campos et al. note that the effects of chronic stress on the survival of adult female baboons are robustly linked to those of social isolation and early-life adversity, as they are in humans.

Wildfire smoke can trigger a host of respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms, ranging from runny nose and cough to a potentially life-threatening heart attack or stroke. A new study suggests that the dangers posed by wildfire smoke may also extend to the largest organ in the human body, and our first line of defense against outside threat: the skin.

During the two weeks in November 2018 when wildfire smoke from the Camp Fire choked the San Francisco Bay Area, health clinics in San Francisco saw an uptick in the number of patients visiting with concerns of eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, and general itch, compared to the same time of the year in 2015 and 2016, the study found.

The findings suggest that even short-term exposure to hazardous air quality from wildfire smoke can be damaging to skin health. The report, carried out by physician researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, appears on April 21 in the journal JAMA Dermatology.

"Existing research on air pollution and health outcomes has focused primarily on cardiac and respiratory health outcomes, and understandably so. But there is a gap in the research connecting air pollution and skin health," said study lead author Raj Fadadu, a student in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. "Skin is the largest organ of the human body, and it's in constant interaction with the external environment. So, it makes sense that changes in the external environment, such as increases or decreases in air pollution, could affect our skin health."

Air Pollutants Can Slip through Skin Barriers

Air pollution from wildfires, which consists of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and gases, can impact both normal and eczema-prone skin in a variety of ways. These pollutants often contain chemical compounds that act like keys, allowing them to slip past the skin's outer barrier and penetrate into cells, where they can disrupt gene transcription, trigger oxidative stress or cause inflammation.

Eczema, or atopic dermatitis, is a chronic condition which affects the skin's ability to serve as an effective barrier against environmental factors. Because the skin's barrier has been compromised, people with this condition are prone to flare-ups of red, itchy skin in response to irritants, and may be even more prone to harm from air pollution.

"Skin is a very excellent physical barrier that separates us and protects us from the environment," said study senior author Dr. Maria Wei, a dermatologist and melanoma specialist at UCSF. "However, there are certain skin disorders, such as atopic dermatitis, in which the barrier is not fully functional. It's not normal even when you don't have a rash. So, it would make sense that when exposed to significant air pollution, people with this condition might see an effect on the skin."

Even Short Burst of Air Pollution During the Camp Fire Harms Skin Health

Earlier studies have found a link between atopic dermatitis and air pollution in cities with high background levels of air pollution from cars and industry. However, this is the first study to examine the impacts of a very short burst of extremely hazardous air from wildfires. Despite being located 175 miles away from the Camp Fire, San Francisco saw an approximately nine-fold increase in baseline PM2.5 levels during the time of the blaze.

To conduct the study, the team examined data from more than 8,000 visits to dermatology clinics by both adults and children between October of 2015, 2016 and 2018, and February of the following year. They found that, during the Camp Fire, clinic visits for atopic dermatitis and general itch increased significantly in both adult and pediatric patients.

"Fully 89 percent of the patients that had itch during the time of the Camp Fire did not have a known diagnosis of atopic dermatitis, suggesting that folks with normal skin also experienced irritation and/or absorption of toxins within a very short period of time," Wei said.

While skin conditions like eczema and itch may not be as life-threatening as the respiratory and cardiovascular impacts of wildfire smoke, they can still severely impact people's lives, the researchers say. The study also documented increased rates of prescribed medications, such as steroids, during times of high air pollution, suggesting that patients can experience severe symptoms.

Individuals can protect their skin during wildfire season by staying indoors, wearing clothing that covers the skin if they do go outside, and using emollients, which can strengthen the skin's barrier function. A new medication to treat eczema, called Tapinarof, is now in clinical trials and could also be a useful tool during times of bad air.

"A lot of the conversations about the health implications of climate change and air pollution don't focus on skin health, but it's important to recognize that skin conditions do affect people's quality of life, their social interactions and how they feel psychologically," Fadadu said. "I hope that these health impacts can be more integrated into policies and discussions about the wide-ranging health effects of climate change and air pollution."

A mechanistic understanding of brain development requires a systematic survey of neural progenitor cell types, their lineage specification and maturation of postmitotic neurons. Cumulative evidences based on single-cell transcriptomic analysis have revealed the heterogeneity of cortical neural progenitors, their temporal patterning and the developmental trajectories of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the developing neocortex. Nevertheless, the developmental hierarchy of the hypothalamus, which contains an astounding diversity of neurons that regulate endocrine, autonomic and behavioral functions, has not been well understood.

Recently, however, Prof. WU Qingfeng's group from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) conducted a study focusing on the origin of this neuronal diversity. For their work, they profiled the transcriptome of 43,261 hypothalamic neural cells to map the developmental landscape of the mouse hypothalamus and mapped the trajectory of radial glial cells (RGCs), intermediate progeny+++tor cells (IPCs), nascent neurons and peptidergic neurons.

The researchers found that RGCs adopt a conserved strategy for multipotential differentiation, but generate both Ascl1+ and Neurog2+ IPCs. Ascl1+ IPCs differ from their telencephalic counterpart by displaying fate bifurcation whereby they can differentiate into both glutamatergic (excitatory) and GABAergic (inhibitory) neurons. Postmitotic nascent neurons derived from IPCs further resolve into multiple peptidergic neuronal subtypes. Clonal analysis also demonstrates that single RGCs can produce multiple neuronal subtypes.

This finding reveals that multiple cell types along the lineage hierarchy contribute to the fate diversification of hypothalamic neurons in a stepwise fashion, thus uncovering an effective strategy for neural progenitors to generate extreme neuronal diversity.

Furthermore, this study provides a developmental perspective for understanding hypothalamus plasticity and gaining valuable insights into hypothalamic diseases such as anorexia, narcolepsy and insomnia.

This work, entitled "Cascade diversification directs generation of neuronal diversity in the hypothalamus," was published in Cell Stem Cell on April 21.

MADISON, Wis. -- Tens of millions of people worldwide are affected by diseases like macular degeneration or have had accidents that permanently damage the light-sensitive photoreceptors within their retinas that enable vision.

The human body is not capable of regenerating those photoreceptors, but new advances by medical researchers and engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may provide hope for those suffering from vision loss. They described their work today in the journal Science Advances.

Researchers at UW-Madison have made new photoreceptors from human pluripotent stem cells. However, it remains challenging to precisely deliver those photoreceptors within the diseased or damaged eye so that they can form appropriate connections, says David Gamm, director of the McPherson Eye Research Institute and professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

"While it was a breakthrough to be able to make the spare parts -- these photoreceptors -- it's still necessary to get them to the right spot so they can effectively reconstruct the retina," he says. "So, we started thinking, 'How can we deliver these cells in a more intelligent way?' That's when we reached out to our world-class engineers at UW-Madison."

Gamm is collaborating with colleagues Shaoqin (Sarah) Gong, a professor of biomedical engineering, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery faculty member and an expert in biomaterials, and Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and an expert in semiconductors whose lab is experienced in sophisticated micro- and nanofabrication. Together, their research groups have developed a micro-molded scaffolding photoreceptor "patch" designed to be implanted under a damaged or diseased retina.

In 2018, the team developed its first biodegradable polymer scaffolding with wine-glass-shaped pores to hold the photoreceptor cells in place. However, that design wasn't optimal since it could not fit many photoreceptors in each pore.

In this second-generation scaffold, the team opted for an "ice cube tray" design, which can hold three times as many cells while reducing the amount of biomaterial used for the scaffolding to facilitate faster degradation of the synthetic material within the eye.

Gong and her team, led by graduate student Ruosen (Alex) Xie, screened a long list of potential biomaterials before deciding on poly(glycerol-sebacate), or PGS, a material that is compatible with the retina and can be safely metabolized by the body after degradation. The Gong lab optimized the formulation and further developed a curing process to achieve desirable material properties for making the scaffolds.

"We wanted the material to be very strong," says graduate student and co-first author Allison Ludwig, who works in Gamm's lab, "and in the eye, it degrades pretty quickly over about two months. That's ideal for the human retina."

The process of crafting the scaffold with the desired mechanical strength and precise dimensions was performed by co-first author Inkyu Lee and graduate student Juhwan Lee, who work in Ma's lab. To achieve highly ordered 3D ice cube tray-shaped microstructures from the biodegradable and biocompatible PGS films with micron-sized features, they developed multi-step micro-molding techniques that can transfer patterns to flexible polymer films.

The final scaffold fabrication work was tedious and frustrating. Fractures and imperfections occurred on the soft scaffolds during demounting from the micro molds, rendering the micro molds inoperable for further use -- but Inkyu Lee ultimately discovered that soaking the scaffold in isopropyl alcohol allowed it to release cleanly.

"The fabrication processes creating a scaffold with micron-sized features involve a lot of person-dependent technical handling skills, which makes the production of scaffolds with a uniform quality difficult," he says. "I wanted to achieve something that is repeatable regardless of an operator's handling skills. I was enlightened by the fact that the PGS polymer swells in isopropyl alcohol. Exploiting this property ultimately facilitated the release of the scaffolds from the micro molds."

Using this approach, Ma's lab was able to reliably demount the scaffold from micro molds without surface defects and retain the mold's microstructures, maintaining the mold surface integrity for reuse. In the end, microscopy revealed the fabrication technique was a success, reliably reproducing a perfect ice cube tray-shaped scaffold capable of holding more than 300,000 photoreceptors in approximately the area of the human macula, the center of the retina.

"Overall, the results are very exciting and significant," says Ma. "Once we figured out the recipe, mass production became immediately possible, and commercialization will be very easy. The fabrication methods can be used to create many other types of soft scaffolds for various biomedical applications, such as complicated tissue engineering, etc."

The team has disclosed the scaffold structure and the fabrication method to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which has filed a patent application.

The team plans to continue optimizing its scaffolding shape, fabrication technique and bio-resorbable materials for faster production to satisfy future surgical needs. In the meantime, the current iteration of the scaffolding patch is almost ready for surgical testing in large animals. If successful, the patch will eventually be tested in humans.

"We're hoping these early generation retinal patches will be safe and restore some vision. Then we'll be able to innovate and improve upon the technology and the outcomes over time," says Gamm. "We didn't start out with supercomputers on our wrists and we're not going to start out by completely erasing blindness in our first attempt. But we're very excited about taking a significant step in that direction."

Water is abundant in our solar system. Even outside of our own planet, scientists have detected ice on the moon, in Saturn's rings and in comets, liquid water on Mars and under the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, and traces of water vapor in the scorching atmosphere of Venus. Studies have shown that water played an important role in the early evolution and formation of the solar system. To learn more about this role, planetary scientists have searched for evidence of liquid water in extraterrestrial materials such as meteorites, most of which originate from asteroids that formed in the early history of the solar system.

Scientists have even found water as hydroxyls and molecules in meteorites in the context of hydrous minerals, which are basically solids with some ionic or molecular water incorporated within them. Dr. Akira Tsuchiyama, Visiting Research Professor at Ritsumeikan University, says, "Scientists further expect that liquid water should remain as fluid inclusions in minerals that precipitated in aqueous fluid" (or, to put it simply, formed from drops of water that contained various other things dissolved inside them). Scientists have found such liquid water inclusions inside salt crystals located within a class of meteorites known as ordinary chondrites, which represent the vast majority of all meteorites found on Earth though the salt actually originated from other, more primitive parent objects.

Prof. Tsuchiyama and his colleagues wanted to know whether liquid water inclusions are present in a form of calcium carbonate known as calcite within a class of meteorites known as "carbonaceous chondrites", which come from asteroids that formed very early in the history of the solar system. They therefore examined samples of the Sutter's Mill meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite originating in an asteroid that formed 4.6 billion years ago. The results of their investigation, led by Prof. Tsuchiyama, appear in an article recently published in the prestigious journal Science Advances.

The researchers used advanced microscopy techniques to examine the Sutter's Mill meteorite fragments, and they found a calcite crystal containing a nanoscale aqueous fluid inclusion that contains at least 15% carbon dioxide. This finding confirms that calcite crystals in ancient carbonaceous chondrites can indeed contain not only liquid water, but also carbon dioxide.

The presence of liquid water inclusions within the Sutter's Mill meteorite has interesting implications concerning the origins of the meteorite's parent asteroid and the early history of the solar system. The inclusions likely occurred due to the parent asteroid forming with bits of frozen water and carbon dioxide inside of it. This would require the asteroid to have formed in a part of the solar system cold enough for water and carbon dioxide to freeze, and these conditions would place the site of formation far outside of Earth's orbit, likely beyond even the orbit of Jupiter. The asteroid must then have been transported to the inner regions of the solar system where fragments could later collide with the planet Earth. This assumption is consistent with recent theoretical studies of the solar system's evolution that suggest that asteroids rich in small, volatile molecules like water and carbon dioxide formed beyond Jupiter's orbit before being transported to areas closer to the sun. The most likely cause of the asteroid's transportation into the inner solar system would be the gravitational effects of the planet Jupiter and its migration.

In conclusion, the discovery of water inclusions within a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite from the early history of the solar system is an important achievement for planetary science. Prof. Tsuchiyama proudly notes, "This achievement shows that our team could detect a tiny fluid trapped in a mineral 4.6 billion years ago."

By obtaining chemical snapshots of an ancient meteorite's contents, his team's work can provide important insights into processes at work in the solar system's early history.