Culture

Neanderthal thumbs were better adapted to holding tools in the same way that we hold a hammer, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports. The findings suggest that Neanderthals may have found precision grips -- where objects are held between the tip of the finger and thumb -- more challenging than power 'squeeze' grips, where objects are held like a hammer, between the fingers and the palm with the thumb directing force.

Using 3D analysis, Ameline Bardo and colleagues mapped the joints between the bones responsible for movement of the thumb -- referred to collectively as the trapeziometacarpal complex -- of five Neanderthal individuals, and compared the results to measurements taken from the remains of five early modern humans and 50 recent modern adults.

The authors found covariation in shape and relative orientation of the trapeziometacarpal complex joints that suggest different repetitive thumb movements in Neanderthals compared with modern humans. The joint at the base of the thumb of the Neanderthal remains is flatter with a smaller contact surface, and better suited to an extended thumb positioned alongside the side of the hand. This thumb posture suggests the regular use of power 'squeeze' grips, like the ones we now use to hold tools with handles. In comparison, these joint surfaces are generally larger and more curved in recent modern human thumbs, an advantage when gripping objects between the pads of the finger and thumb, known as a precision grip.

Although the morphology of the studied Neanderthals is better suited for power 'squeeze' grips, they would still have been capable of precision hand postures, but would have found this more challenging than modern humans, according to the authors.

Comparison of fossil morphology between the hands of Neanderthals and modern humans may provide further insight into the behaviours of our ancient relatives and early tool use.

A team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), led by Professor Fateh Chebana, has recently developed a cold-health watch and warning system for cold waves, a first in the world. Their results were published in November 2020 in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

"Cold waves, which are particularly severe in Quebec, can affect everyone, but especially people with chronic diseases. Data provided by the INSPQ indicates an increase in hospitalizations and mortality in cold weather. Therefore, designing an alert system similar to the one we developed for heat waves in 2010 seemed essential to us," says Professor Chebana, who led the study.

Based on past data, researchers were able to determine two temperature thresholds that would trigger an alert to warn healthcare professionals. Depending on the region, the temperature thresholds for a two-day cold wave causing an alert and related to excess mortality observed in the population vary between -15°C and -23°C during the day, and between -20°C and -29°C at night. The thresholds causing an alert and related to an excess of hospitalization in the population vary between -13°C and -23°C during the day, and between -17°C and -30°C at night.

Once the system is operational, it will use Environment Canada's forecasts and will take into account the reliability of these forecasts. The alert system also considers the effect of delays between exposure and observed health impacts. "Just because it was cold today doesn't mean that people die or go to the hospital on the same day. It takes several days to see the impact, longer than with high temperatures," he says.

A promising alert system

For now, these thresholds are the same throughout the winter period. The team is planning to improve the tool by adjusting thresholds according to the month. "A temperature of -15°C in December will not have the same effect on health as in February because the body has not yet adapted," says Professor Chebana.

The alert system currently considers the general population, but it could specifically look at higher-risk groups such as the elderly or those with respiratory problems. Researchers are also considering a specific feature applicable to tourism or the education sector, during school closures for example.

Currently managed by the INSPQ, the model will be integrated into its Système de surveillance et de prévention des impacts sanitaires des événements météorologiques extrêmes (SUPREME), a source of information on the impacts of extreme weather events on the health.

"Excessive mortality or hospitalizations caused by cold waves are not as well-known as for heat waves, even though their impact is high during the winter. This work, in collaboration with INRS hydrometeorological data modelling experts, will enable public health stakeholders to better monitor cold waves and implement appropriate interventions to prevent avoidable deaths or hospitalizations".

The number of people living with undiagnosed HIV is increasing in the WHO European Region. According to data published today by ECDC and the WHO/Europe, more than 136 000 people were newly diagnosed in 2019 - roughly 20% of these diagnoses were in the EU/EAA and 80% in the eastern part of the European Region.

Every second HIV diagnosis (53%) happens at a late stage of the infection, when the immune system has already started to fail. This is a sign that testing strategies in the Region are not working properly to diagnose HIV early.

The number of people diagnosed with AIDS, the end-stage of an untreated HIV infection, has gone down by more than half in the last decade and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 is achievable. However, in the EU/EEA for example, 74% of the 2 772 AIDS diagnoses in 2019 were made very soon after the initial HIV diagnosis - within three months. This shows a significant problem with late diagnosis of HIV infection.

Late diagnosis contributes to ongoing HIV transmission as, often for years at a time, people do not know they have HIV and are not getting treatment.

Although the trend across the Region as a whole has stabilised in recent years, the number of people newly diagnosed with HIV has increased by 16% since 2010. In contrast, the proportion of new diagnoses across EU/EEA countries has declined by 9% over the same period.

The number of newly reported HIV diagnoses and the estimated number of new HIV infections in the whole WHO European Region show that more people have become infected with HIV over the last decade than have been diagnosed, indicating that the number of people living with undiagnosed HIV is increasing in the Region.

In the EU/EEA, the opposite trend has been observed: the number of people living with undiagnosed HIV has been falling.

ECDC Director Dr Andrea Ammon highlights: "Despite the focus on COVID-19 right now, we must not lose sight of other public health issues like HIV. Earlier diagnosis of HIV is an urgent priority. We cannot reach the Sustainable Development Goal target if takes an average of three years for people to find out that they are HIV-positive after infection with the virus. Three years during which live-saving treatment is not available to them and during which they can unknowingly pass on HIV. If we want to reduce the high proportion of people diagnosed late, it is essential to diversify our HIV testing strategies as outlined in the ECDC testing guidance, for example."

Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, says: "I remember when a diagnosis of HIV seemed like a death sentence. Now, with proper treatment, people with HIV can live without fear of AIDS. These data are from 2019, and the question in 2020 has to be what effect the pandemic will have had on testing by the end of 2021. For now, our message has to be to protect the progress of the last decade by continuing to prioritize HIV testing and getting treatment to those who need it. We cannot allow the pandemic to rob us of an AIDS-free future that is within our grasp."

Early diagnosis: higher life expectancy and less transmission

The HIV/AIDS surveillance data for 2019 show that the proportion of those who are diagnosed late increases with age.

Across the whole Region, 67% (EU/EEA: 65%) of people aged 50 years and older were diagnosed late in the course of their HIV infection. In 2019, one in five new HIV diagnoses was in a person over 50 years of age.

The reasons for this are not yet fully understood. It may be that older adults themselves, or the healthcare workers looking after them, underestimate the risk of infection. Older adults may be more affected by the stigma associated with the disease and less comfortable asking to be tested.

WHO/Europe and ECDC stress that to reduce the number of future HIV infections, Europe needs to focus on three main areas:

Prioritising a range of prevention measures, such as awareness-raising, promotion of safer sex, condoms, provision of needle exchange programmes and opioid substitution therapy, and pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, also known as PrEP;

Providing efficient HIV counselling and testing services, including rapid diagnostic services, community-based HIV testing and HIV self-testing; and

Ensuring rapid access to quality treatment and care for those diagnosed.

Early diagnosis is important because it allows people to start HIV treatment sooner, which in turn increases their chances of living a long and healthy life and prevents further transmission.

Guidance to improve testing in Europe

In their guidelines, both WHO/Europe and ECDC recommend that HIV testing services include self-testing and community-based testing by lay providers using rapid tests.

Demystifying traditional Chinese medicine for conservationists could be the key to better protecting endangered species like pangolins, tigers and rhino, according to University of Queensland-led researchers.

UQ PhD candidate Hubert Cheung said efforts to shift entrenched values and beliefs about Chinese medicine are not achieving conservation gains in the short term.

He said a better understanding of traditional practices was critical for conservationists to form more effective strategies.

"The use of endangered species in traditional Chinese medicine threatens species' survival and is a challenge for conservationists," Mr Cheung said.

"Pushing messages of inefficacy, providing various forms of scientific evidence or promoting biomedical alternatives doesn't seem to be drastically influencing decisions and behaviours.

"And, although many practices and treatments continue to be criticised for lacking scientific support, the World Health Organization approved the inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine in its global compendium of medical practices last year.

"The challenge now is for conservationists to work proactively with practitioners and others in the industry to find sustainable solutions.

"However, most conservation scientists and organisations are unfamiliar with traditional Chinese medicine, which makes it difficult to devise effective and culturally-nuanced interventions."

The researchers have examined the core theories and practices of traditional Chinese medicine, in a bid to make it more accessible.

They hope their study - and the nuances within - will influence policy and campaigning.

"Today, traditional Chinese medicine is formally integrated into China's healthcare system, and has been central to China's response to the ongoing pandemic," Mr Cheung said.

"In fact, the Chinese government's COVID-19 clinical guidance has included recommendations for the use of a product containing bear bile, which has raised concerns among conservation groups."

UQ's Professor Hugh Possingham said traditional Chinese medicine was now not only entrenched in the social and cultural fabric of Chinese society, but also gaining users elsewhere.

"A better understanding of traditional Chinese medicine will empower conservationists to engage more constructively with stakeholders in this space," Professor Possingham said.

"We're hoping that this work can help all parties develop more effective and lasting solutions for species threatened by medicinal use."

University of Copenhagen researchers have been following vegetation trends across the planet's driest areas using satellite imagery from recent decades. They have identified a troubling trend: Too little vegetation is sprouting up from rainwater in developing nations, whereas things are headed in the opposite direction in wealthier ones. As a result, the future could see food shortages and growing numbers of climate refugees.

More than 40 percent of Earth's ecosystems are arid, an amount that is expected to increase significantly over the course of the 21st century. Some of these areas, such as those in Africa and Australia may be savannah or desert, where sparse rainfall has long been the norm. Within these biomes, vegetation and wildlife have adapted to making use of their scant water resources, but they are also extraordinarily vulnerable to climate change.

Using extensive imagery from satellites that monitor Earth every day, researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources Management have studied the evolution of vegetation in arid regions. Their conclusion is unequivocal:

"We observe a clear trend of arid areas developing in a negative direction in the most economically challenged countries. Here, it is apparent that the growth of vegetation has become increasingly decoupled from the water resources available and that there is simply less vegetation in relation to the amount of rainfall. The opposite is the case in the wealthiest countries," explains Professor Rasmus Fensholt of the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.

Worse in Asia and Africa, better in South America and Australia

The researchers analyzed 15 years worth of satellite imagery of vegetation and rainfall -- from 2000 to 2015. To compare the evolution of vegetation in arid regions of the world, the researchers removed precipitation totals from the equation. In other words, they produced a calculation that accounts for the fact that some regions received more rain in past decades, while other regions received less.

This provides a more accurate picture of ecosystem health, as human influences become easier to identify: In other words, whether resource use is balanced or whether an ecosystem's resources have been overexploited, with potentially fatal consequences -- as imbalanced systems may be irreparable.

"Here, our results demonstrate that in arid regions, particularly those in Africa and Asia, less vegetation grows for the amount of rainwater that falls, while more vegetation grows in arid areas of South America and Australia," says lead author Christin Abel, a postdoc at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.

Infographic text: Areas with purple hues indicate where vegetation growth relative to rainfall is declining, while green hues reveal areas where vegetation has grown more than expected. White areas represent ecosystems where vegetation growth is in balance with the water resources available.

According to the researchers, there may be several explanations for why climate change and rising global temperatures are impacting vegetation in arid regions of the world's poorest countries. Among the most obvious is rapid population growth, in Africa for example, where there is an increasing need to exploit land that is otherwise poorly suited for agriculture. Doing so produces lower yields and puts increasing amounts of livestock on too little grass in already fragile ecosystems.

Conversely, vegetation in arid areas of the world's wealthier countries seems to be coping better with climate change. This is likely due to the intensification and expansion of larger farms, where more economic resources allow for, among other things, irrigation and fertilization.

Food crises and more climate refugees

As a result of climate change, future trends for the planet's poorest areas only seem to be getting worse. Forecasts point to an expansion of today's arid areas where they will make up a larger and larger share of our global ecosystems. This may result in more and more people being left without food and their needing to migrate.

"One consequence of declining vegetation in the world's poorer arid regions areas may be an increase in climate refugees from various African countries. According to what we've seen in this study, there is no indication that the problem will diminish in the future," explains Rasmus Fensholt.

For a number of years, satellite imagery has let researchers observe that, overall, it actually appears that the world's arid regions have become greener. However, when researchers look at how much vegetation arid areas in developing countries get in relation to rainfall amounts, the picture looks different.

"We have been pleased to see that, for a number of years, vegetation has been on an upwards trend in arid regions. But if we dig only a tiny bit deeper and look at how successfully precipitation has translated into vegetation, then climate change seems to be hitting unevenly, which is troubling," says Rasmus Fensholt.

New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides further evidence for tidal disruption in the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4. This result explains a previous finding that this galaxy is missing most of its dark matter. By studying the galaxy's light and globular cluster distribution, astronomers have concluded that the gravity forces of the neighbouring galaxy NGC 1035 stripped the dark matter from NGC 1052-DF4 and are now tearing the galaxy apart.

In 2018 an international team of researchers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories uncovered, for the first time, a galaxy in our cosmic neighbourhood that is missing most of its dark matter. This discovery of the galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 was a surprise to astronomers, as it was understood that Dark matter (DM) is a key constituent in current models of galaxy formation and evolution. In fact, without the presence of DM, the primordial gas would lack enough gravity pull to start collapsing and forming new galaxies. A year later, another galaxy that misses dark matter was discovered, NGC 1052-DF4, which further triggered intense debates among astronomers about the nature of these objects.

Now, new Hubble data [1] have been used to explain the reason behind the missing dark matter in NGC 1052-DF4, which resides 45 million light-years away. Mireia Montes of the University of New South Wales in Australia led an international team of astronomers to study the galaxy using deep optical imaging. They discovered that the missing dark matter can be explained by the effects of tidal disruption. The gravity forces of the neighbouring massive galaxy NGC 1035 are tearing NGC 1052-DF4 apart. During this process, the dark matter is removed, while the stars feel the effects of the interaction with another galaxy at a later stage.

Until now, the removal of dark matter in this way has remained hidden from astronomers as it can only be observed using extremely deep images that can reveal extremely faint features. "We used Hubble in two ways to discover that NGC 1052-DF4 is experiencing an interaction," explained Montes. "This includes studying the galaxy's light and the galaxy's distribution of globular clusters."

Thanks to Hubble's high resolution, the astronomers could identify the galaxy's globular clusters. The 10.4-metre Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) telescope and the IAC80 telescope in the Canaries, Spain, were also used to complement Hubble's observations by further studying the data.

"It is not enough just to spend a lot of time observing the object, but a careful treatment of the data is vital," explained team member Raúl Infante-Sainz of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain. "It was therefore important that we use not just one telescope/instrument, but several (both ground- and space-based) to conduct this research. With the high resolution of Hubble, we can identify the globular clusters, and then with GTC photometry we obtain the physical properties."

Globular clusters are thought to form in the episodes of intense star formation that shaped galaxies. Their compact sizes and luminosity make them easily observable and they are therefore good tracers of the properties of their host galaxy. In this way, by studying and characterising the spatial distribution of the clusters in NGC 1052-DF4, astronomers can develop insight into the present state of the galaxy itself. The alignment of these clusters suggests they are being "stripped" from their host galaxy, and this supports the conclusion that tidal disruption is occurring.

By studying the galaxy's light, the astronomers also found evidence of tidal tails, which are formed of material moving away from NGC1052-DF4 -- this further supports the conclusion that this is a disruption event. Additional analysis concluded that the central parts of the galaxy remain untouched and only ~ 7% of the stellar mass of the galaxy is hosted in these tidal tails. This means that dark matter, which is less concentrated than stars, was previously and preferentially stripped from the galaxy, and now the outer stellar component is starting to be stripped as well.

"This result is a good indicator that, while the dark matter of the galaxy was evaporated from the system, the stars are only now starting to suffer the disruption mechanism," explained team member Ignacio Trujillo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain. "In time, NGC1052-DF4 will be cannibalised by the large system around NGC1035, with at least some of their stars floating free in deep space."

The discovery of evidence to support the mechanism of tidal disruption as the explanation for the galaxy's missing dark matter has not only solved an astronomical conundrum, but has also brought a sigh of relief to astronomers. Without it, scientists would be faced with having to revise our understanding of the laws of gravity.

"This discovery reconciles existing knowledge of how galaxies form and evolve with the most favorable cosmological model," added Montes.

Analysis of social media messages between care home staff on the coronavirus front line reveal their growing concerns over how to manage in the face of the virus.

Thousands of Whatsapp messages between 250 care home workers during the first coronavirus wave show workers were often asking questions which went unanswered due to a lack of proper guidance.

Staff asked where to purchase PPE; whether guidelines existed for isolating residents returning from hospital and how they could access testing.

But guidance either did not exist, was conflicting, or staff were not aware of it.

Care home staff formed the messaging group themselves in partnership with colleagues to offer support during the first wave. As group members, researchers at the University of Leeds analysed the questions and uncertainties raised.

They found most of the questions were about infection control and prevention and could have been tackled immediately through timely, responsive and unambiguous fact-based guidance.

But their analyses revealed scant guidance for care homes meant these basic needs were unmet.

Peter Hodkinson, Managing Director of Leeds care home company Westward Care Ltd, said: "This report highlights the isolation of care homes and their staff and the shortcomings of the 'arm's length' approach to the commissioning of these services. We need much more sector informed research to improve the outcome of those in receipt of care and the highest quality of care available to meet their needs. This will only be done by much closer collaboration."

The paper, Seeking Answers for Care Homes during the COVID-19 pandemic (COVID SEARCH), has been published in the journal Age and Ageing.

The social media messages reveal staff concerns over residents' wellbeing and relatives' anxieties; uncertainties over which symptoms predicted the need for self-isolating, and questions about how long staff with symptoms should self-isolate.

Other questions around the most effective strategies for resident and staff wellbeing, recruitment, communication and organisational impact needed further research, the group said.

It is the first systematic capture of the questions and uncertainties expressed by care home staff in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study has identified other areas of research which, importantly, have been informed by the sector itself.

Professor Karen Spilsbury, Chair in Nursing Research at Leeds' School of Healthcare, said: "COVID-19 has tragically impacted on long-term care worldwide, particularly for older people living in care homes.

"The pandemic has created new and unanticipated uncertainties for care home staff caring for older people.

"Scant care home-specific guidance during the early stages meant that basic information needs of care home staff were not satisfied."

Professor Spilsbury said policy makers, commissioners and regulators should make answering these questions a priority, and called for investment for research into the evidence produced by the study.

She said: "The experiences of care home staff should serve to focus the evidence-based response to the pandemic in care homes.

"We want to see care home providers and staff given timely, responsive and unambiguous guidance as they learn to live with and manage COVID-19."

The work was carried out in partnership with care providers Springfield Healthcare and Westward Care under the NICHE-Leeds research and innovation programme.

Cyd Akrill, Chief Nursing Officer for Springfield Healthcare, said: "In the early weeks of the pandemic it was frustrating and time consuming because guidance was often conflicting and the amount of advice was not always helpful. This research brought shared uncertainties together and helped us consider how they could be addressed. We were listened to and this was important. Our partnership with NICHE-Leeds yet again was invaluable not only to us but nationally and internationally."

Professor Carl Thompson, Dame Kathleen Raven Chair in Clinical Research at Leeds, said: "The basis for the kinds of evidence that can truly make a difference to the lives of people living and working in care homes are the uncertainties that people are struggling to address without reliable high-quality research that tackles what really matters. This is the first research to shine a light on these uncertainties, the questions that people have in homes and the research that can help."

Professor Adam Gordon, President-Elect of the British Geriatrics Society, said: "These research findings show us that care home staff were weeks, if not months, ahead of the government guidance when it came to identifying the most important areas of concern around the pandemic. They tell us that that those who write guidance for the sector need to develop better ways of rapidly consulting with and collating advice from care home staff. If we give these professionals a stronger voice, we'll make the right decisions quicker, and with greater certainty."

Scientists at Keele University and King's College London have found that 64% of people would be likely to have a COVID-19 vaccination when one became available.

The online survey of 1,500 UK adults also reported that 27% were unsure if they would have the vaccination, and just 9% - fewer than 1 in 10 - reported that they were unlikely to be vaccinated.

The online cross-sectional survey was conducted by a research team from Keele University and King's College London in collaboration with Public Health England, to understand the expected uptake of a future COVID-19 vaccine.

The researchers collected the data between July 14 and 17, 2020 and analysed associations between intention to be vaccinated when a vaccine becomes available, and socio-demographic factors such as age, race, ethnicity, and education, previous influenza vaccination, general vaccine attitudes and beliefs, attitudes and beliefs about COVID-19, and attitudes and beliefs about a COVID-19 vaccination.

Publishing their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, the team identify several factors associated with likelihood of accepting a coronavirus vaccine. People who had been vaccinated for flu last year were more likely to intend to be vaccinated for coronavirus, as were older people, people with more positive vaccination beliefs and attitudes, and people who perceived a greater risk of COVID-19 to others.

Joint first author Dr Sue Sherman, from Keele University's School of Psychology, said: "The scale and impact of COVID-19 are such that when a vaccine becomes available, we need to ensure that uptake is maximised in order to contain the mounting social and economic costs associated with the virus.

"Despite the pandemic nature and severity of COVID-19, high vaccine uptake cannot be assumed for various reasons, including something called the intention-behaviour gap. For instance, uptake of the H1N1 vaccine following the 2009 swine flu pandemic was poor in many countries.

"The highly contagious nature of COVID-19 means that once a vaccine becomes available, ensuring a good uptake will play an important role in reducing unnecessary deaths. In order to maximise the uptake of the coronavirus vaccine, campaigns to support vaccination programmes overall, including for other routine vaccination programmes such as the annual winter flu programme, will need to be in place."

Joint first author Dr Louise Smith, from the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Response at King's College London, said: "A coronavirus vaccine could offer us a chance to get back on the road to 'normal'. However, the vaccination programme will only be successful if people want to be vaccinated. We found that almost two thirds of the general population said that they would be likely to be vaccinated for coronavirus when a vaccine became available to them. Intention to be vaccinated for coronavirus was associated with having had a flu vaccine in the 2019/20 season, having positive attitudes towards vaccination generally, and thinking that a coronavirus vaccine would be safe. This is similar to what we see for uptake of other routine vaccinations.

"Although there is still considerable uncertainty around the details of a coronavirus vaccination, it is encouraging that most people report that they would be vaccinated for coronavirus when a vaccine becomes available to them."

The German media have disparaged dissenting voices on climate change, according to research published on 8 October in the high impact factor journal Media Culture & Society. Its authors are Lena von Zabern, UPF alumni who won the award for best master's degree final project in UPF Planetary Wellbeing, and Christopher D. Tulloch, who supervised her work and is a researcher with the Department of Communication.

The study is one of the first on the media representation of Greta Thunberg and the so-called "Fridays for Future" demonstrations protesting for the implementation of more environmental measures by the European youth to reverse climate change.

In their work, the researchers performed a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the German newspapers Bild.de, Zeit Online and FAZ.net, between August 2018 and March 2019. Their results reveal that while Zeit Online shows a framing towards intergenerational justice, the coverage of FAZ.net and Bild.de strongly adheres to the protest paradigm.

The researchers reveal that most newspaper articles studied guarantee protesters a voice, but this voice is often reduced to apolitical testimonies and the protesters' self-agency is undermined through disparagement. It highlights how the press, both popular (Bild) and quality (FAZ), uses a set of eight frames to undermine legitimate protests. "Thus, German media coverage tends to reproduce existing power structures by marginalizing and depoliticizing the political agenda of a system-critical protest", Zabern and Tulloch assert.

However, the study also demonstrates that the idea of climate change as a matter of intergenerational justice and children's rights has become established on the agenda of the media studied.

Work on planetary wellbeing driven by the University

Lena von Zabern is an alumni of the master's degree in International studies on Media, Power and Difference of the Department of Communication and her work won a prize awarded by the UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change ESCI-UPF and the UPF Barcelona School of Management, as part of the awards for the best bachelor's degree final project (TFG) and master's degree final project (TFM) on social responsibility and planetary wellbeing. Now, this work has resulted in the article published in a high impact factor journal. Tulloch stresses that "this is not the first time a student of this master's degree programme has published on environmental issues in a highly indexed journal". Indeed, in 2018, Elida Hoeg published an article on refugees of climate change, also in conjunction with Christopher Tulloch, in the Journal of Communication Inquiry.

Many animal groups decide where to go by a process similar to voting, allowing not only alphas to decide where the group goes next but giving equal say to all group members. But, for many species that live in stable groups - such as in primates and birds - the dominant, or alpha, group members often monopolise resources, such as the richest food patches and access to mates. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz have studied the links between dominance and group decision-making in wild vulturine guineafowl. They report that democratic decision-making plays an essential role in mitigating the power of alphas by deciding where to move next if those alphas are monopolising resources.

Vulturine guineafowl are large birds native to savannahs of East Africa. They are the first bird species to have been reported to live in a multilevel society where social groups comprising from 15 to more than 60 individuals interact preferentially with other social groups. Within these large groups, there is a clear dominance hierarchy. Like in wolves and primates, the dominant, or alpha, group members can outcompete other group members and exclude them from food.

While it had long been thought that alphas lead the way and decide where the group moves next, studies over the past decade have suggested that all group members can have equal say by 'voting' for where the group goes next. However, it has remained to be determined whether this form of democratic decision-making exists in order to keep the power of dominants in check. "Working together as a group is critical for these birds, as their bright plumage makes isolated individuals easy targets for predators such as leopards and martial eagles", says Damien Farine, the senior author of the study and lead research on the vulturine guineafowl project.

Despotic leadership versus democratic decision-making

The scientists found that who initiated, and therefore decided where the group moved to next, was dependent on the recent actions of the dominant group members. When groups were feeding in large spacious areas, where distributed food was equally accessible to everyone, then all group members contributed equally. However, when dominant individuals monopolised a particularly rich food patch - chasing other group members out - then the excluded subordinates combined their votes to move the group away from the patch, ultimately forcing the dominants to abandon their rich resources. These findings suggest democratic decision-making, as opposed to despotic leadership, has evolved so that all group members can obtain the resources (e.g. food and water) that they need to survive. This would not be possible if dominant individuals always decided what was best for themselve.

The researchers combined observations on foot, video tracking, and high-resolution GPS tracking across multiple groups of vulturine guineafowl, spanning several years. They first recorded all disputes between individuals birds to assign each animal a rank in the dominance hierarchy. They used an evaluation procedure common in chess, football, and table tennis used to assess players ranks based on who they lost and won matches against. The scientists also monitored which bird initiated departures from and to new feeding sites, and the order of individuals following from first to last.

Baboons also follow the majority vote

Having worked with baboons that inhabit the same savannah habitats, Damien Farine previously found that individuals can 'vote with their feet' by moving away from the group in their preferred direction. His previous study, conducted as part of a team of researchers now all based at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, found that when these individuals reach a majority, the rest of the group follows in that direction.

The current study on guineafowl suggests that democratic decisions about group movements are a critical piece of the puzzle that allows groups to remain cohesive despite the large inequalities in access to resources among individuals. By being able to initiate and make the group move away from monopolised resources, democratic decision-making allows subordinates to take back control when too much power is lost to dominants. They can even force higher-ranking animals to leave a feeding site that is best for them. "We were very excited when we first noticed that subordinates were leading their group after having lost access to resources, and we nicknamed this the 'losers lead mechanism'", says Danai Papageorgiou, doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour and leading researcher of the study. "Our findings highlight how collectives can react to rising social inequality. Democratic decision-making is critical for maintaining a balance of power in societies where functioning as a group is critical to survival", Papageorgiou adds.

Research at Cranfield University is paving the way for a new solution to kill aerosolised COVID-19 in enclosed environments such as hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Computational modelling has shown that low dose far-ultraviolet C (UVC) lighting can be used to disinfect in-room air, increasing disinfection rates by 50-85% compared to a room's ventilation alone.

Unlike typical UVC - which has been used to kill microorganisms for decades but is extremely harmful to humans, potentially causing cataracts or skin cancer - evidence has shown that far-UVC is safe to use around people.

Dr Liang Yang, Lecturer in Marine Renewable Energy Systems in the Centre for Renewable Energy Systems, Cranfield University, said: "In indoor environments where it may not be possible to socially distance, aerosolised coronavirus released through breathing increases the chance of spreading the disease. Infection controls focus on a combination of personal hygiene and the correct use of personal protective equipment, which has been in short supply in many countries. This research has shown that far-UVC lighting could provide an alternative, safe and inexpensive way to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

"We found that far-UVC illumination in poorly ventilated spaces can be as effective as N95 masks in preventing transmission. With detailed and accurate computational fluid dynamics modelling, we were able to track and eliminate the airborne transmission of pathogens."

The research was carried out in collaboration with Dr Andrew Buchan from Queen Mary University of London and Dr Kirk Atkinson from Ontario Tech University in Canada.

Dr Kirk Atkinson said: "Imagine if you could simply screw a far-UVC light bulb into a standard light fixture. Switching the light on will sterilise the air for everyone in the room. This is what we're aiming for. While industry and governments are investing heavily in ventilation infrastructure, ventilation by itself has mixed effectiveness if the virus is not being killed. Far-UVC is much cheaper to implement."

UVC light is a subtype of one of the three types of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than visible light rays. At 100 to 280 nanometres (nm), UVC has a shorter wavelength than UVA and UVB. Human-safe far-UVC falls in the 207 to 222 nm range and can be produced by special bulbs and lamps and used to disinfect pathogens.

Far-UVC is safe because it has the unique property of interacting more readily (and loses energy more rapidly) than lower wavelength UVC but is not energetic enough to reach living human cells.

A radiation transport and fluid dynamics model was developed as part of the research to quantify disinfection rates within a 3 metre by 3 metre air-conditioned single occupancy private room, representative of typical environments found in hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Researchers are now hoping to uncover new sources of funding for further investigation and to address outstanding issues necessary to expedite far-UVC light into service.

The Fraser River estuary in British Columbia is home to 102 species at risk of extinction. A new study says it's not too late to save these species if action is taken now.

"There is currently no overarching plan to save them. If we don't act quickly, many species, including species of salmon and southern resident killer whales, are likely to be functionally extinct in the next 25 years," says senior author Tara Martin, a professor of conservation science at UBC, in a paper published today in Conservation Science and Practice.

The Fraser estuary is the largest on the Pacific coast of North America. More than three million people in B.C.'s Lower Mainland live near the Fraser River, and many of them rely on these species and ecosystems for their livelihoods, culture and well-being.

Applying a conservation decision framework called Priority Threat Management developed by Martin and her team, the authors brought together over 65 experts in the ecology and management of species that utilize the Fraser River estuary to identify conservation actions, estimate their benefit to species recovery, their cost and feasibility.

The plan includes the implementation of an environmental co-governance body that sees First Nation, federal and provincial governments working together with municipalities, NGOs and industry to implement these strategies. The research finds that co-governance underpins conservation success in urban areas, by increasing the feasibility of management strategies.

Throughout history, humans have settled in areas of high biodiversity. Today, these areas are home to our biggest urban centres with biodiversity at increasing risk from escalating cumulative threats.

Lead author Laura Kehoe, who did the work while a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria and UBC, says it's not too late to save these species if we act now.

"The price tag is $381 million over 25 years or $15 million a year and invests in strategies ranging from aquatic habitat restoration and transport regulation to green infrastructure and public land management. This amounts to less than $6 per person a year in Greater Vancouver--the price of a single beer or latte."

The authors acknowledge that identifying the management strategies to conserve species within such regions, and ensuring effective governance to oversee their implementation, presents enormous challenges--yet the cost of not acting is staggering.

"Not only do we risk losing these species from the region, but the co-benefits from investing in these conservation actions are enormous," explains Martin. "For example, along with generating more than 40 full-time jobs for 25 years, historically the value of a Fraser salmon fishery exceeds $300 million a year, and whale watching is more than $26 million. If we lose thriving populations of these species, we lose these industries. Our study suggests that investing in conservation creates jobs and economic opportunities."

Crucially, the study found that future major industrial developments, including the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline and Roberts Bank port terminal expansion, jeopardizes the future of many of these species including the southern resident killer whale, salmon and sturgeon, and the migratory western sandpiper.

The study concludes that biodiversity conservation in heavily urbanized areas is not a lost cause but requires urgent strategic planning, attention to governance, and large-scale investment.

Having conducted a large-scale study, a team of scientists improved the classification of human diurnal activity and suggested using 6 chronotypes instead of just 'early birds' and 'night owls'. Two thousand participants, including the employees of the Institute of Medicine of RUDN University, were tested in the course of the research. The results of the work were published in the Personality and Individual Differences journal.

The physiological functions of our bodies are subject to diurnal rhythms. It means that a person can be more or less active and efficient depending on the time of the day. The two widely known chronotypes are 'early birds' that are most active in the morning and 'night owls' for which evenings are the most productive time. However, these two types are not clearly distinguished: about 60% of all people fail to fit into one of the categories. A team of scientists from the Institute of Medicine of RUDN University together with the leading Russian and foreign chronobiologists carried out a large-scale study and identified 4 additional chronotypes, thus expanding the common classification.

"The research of individual chronobiological and chronopsychological differences is predominantly focused on the morning and evening chronotypes. However, recent studies suggest that the existing classification needs to be reconsidered and expanded. Our team conducted a test and asked the participants to choose their diurnal activity types from six suggested options. Based on the results of the test, we studied the dynamics of sleep-wake patterns throughout the day," said Dmitry S. Sveshnikov, MD, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Physiology, Institute of Medicine of RUDN University.

The team suggested a new classification that includes 6 chronotypes characterized by different criteria: sleep duration, excessive diurnal drowsiness, ability to wake up and fall asleep as and when required, and so on. The four new chronotypes in the classification are highly active type (that remains active throughout the day), daytime sleepy type (that is active in the mornings and evenings, not in the afternoon), daytime active type (that is active in the afternoon), and moderately active type (with reduced activity throughout the day).

The team conducted a number of online tests with a total of 2,283 participants, and 95% of the respondents identified with one of the six chronotypes. Only 1/3 of them chose either a morning or an evening type (13% and 24%, respectively). The majority of the participants went for the other four types: 15% chose the daily type; 18%--daytime sleepy type, 9%--highly active type, and 16%--moderately active type.

"Taking into account the incidence of the types in question, we consider our hypothesis about the existence of additional chronotypes fully confirmed," added Dmitry S. Sveshnikov.

An international study led from the University of Turku, Finland, discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from a comet. The finding indicates that all the most important elements necessary for life may have been delivered to the Earth by comets.

Researchers have discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It takes the comet 6.5 years to orbit the Sun.

The dust particles have been collected with the COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser (COSIMA). The instrument was on-board the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft which tracked the comet at a few kilometre distance between September 2014 and September 2016. The COSIMA instrument collected the dust particles directly in the vicinity of the comet. Three 1cm2 target plates were photographed remotely. The particles were selected from these images and finally measured with a mass spectrometer. All the steps were controlled from Earth.

The detection of phosphorus (P+) ions in solid particles is contained in minerals or metallic phosphorus.

- We have shown that apatite minerals are not the source of phosphorus, which implies that the discovered phosphorus occurs in some more reduced and possibly more soluble form, says the project leader Harry Lehto from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Turku.

This is the first time that life-necessary CHNOPS-elements are found in solid cometary matter. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur were reported in previous studies by the COSIMA team from e.g. organic molecules. The discovered phosphorus, or P, is the last one of the CHNOPS-elements. The discovery of P indicates cometary delivery as a potential source of these elements to the young Earth.

Fluorine was also detected with CF+ secondary ions originating from the cometary dust. The first discovery of CF gas was from interstellar dust in 2019. CF+ is an ion now discovered on the comet and its characteristics in cometary environment are still unknown.

Finding medicines that can kill cancer cells while leaving normal tissue unscathed is a Holy Grail of oncology research. In two new papers, scientists at UC San Francisco and Princeton University present complementary strategies to crack this problem with "smart" cell therapies--living medicines that remain inert unless triggered by combinations of proteins that only ever appear together in cancer cells.

Biological aspects of this general approach have been explored for several years in the laboratory of Wendell Lim, PhD, and colleagues in the UCSF Cell Design Initiative and National Cancer Institute- sponsored Center for Synthetic Immunology. But the new work adds a powerful new dimension to this work by combining cutting-edge therapeutic cell engineering with advanced computational methods.

For one paper, published September 23, 2020 in Cell Systems, members of Lim's lab joined forces with the research group of computer scientist Olga G. Troyanskaya, PhD, of Princeton's Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute. Using a machine learning approach, the team analyzed massive databases of thousands of proteins found in both cancer and normal cells. They then combed through millions of possible protein combinations to assemble a catalog of combinations that could be used to precisely target only cancer cells while leaving normal ones alone.

In another paper, published in Science on November 27, 2020, Lim and colleagues then showed how this computationally derived protein data could be put to use to drive the design of effective and highly selective cell therapies for cancer.

"Currently, most cancer treatments, including cell therapies, are told 'block this,' or 'kill this,'" said Lim, also professor and chair of cellular and molecular pharmacology and a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. "We want to increase the nuance and sophistication of the decisions that a therapeutic cell makes."

Over the past decade, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have been in the spotlight as a powerful way to treat cancer. In CAR T cell therapy, immune system cells are taken from a patient's blood, and manipulated in the laboratory to express a specific receptor that will recognize a very particular marker, or antigen, on cancer cells.

While scientists have shown that CAR T cells can be quite effective, and sometimes curative, in blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, so far the method hasn't worked well in solid tumors, such as cancers of the breast, lung, or liver. Cells in these solid cancers often share antigens with normal cells found in other tissues, which poses the risk that CAR T cells could have off-target effects by targeting healthy organs. Also, solid tumors also often create suppressive microenvironments that limit the efficacy of CAR T cells.

For Lim, cells are akin to molecular computers that can sense their environment and then integrate that information to make decisions. Since solid tumors are more complex than blood cancers, "you have to make a more complex product" to fight them, he said.

In the Cell Systems study--led by Ruth Dannenfelser, PhD, a former graduate student in Troyanskaya's team at Princeton, and Gregory Allen, MD, PhD, a clinical fellow in the Lim lab--the researchers explored public databases to examine the gene expression profile of more than 2,300 genes in normal and tumor cells to see what antigens could help discriminate one from the other. The researchers used machine learning techniques to come up with the possible hits, and to see which antigens clustered together.

Based on this gene expression analysis, Lim, Troyanskaya, and colleagues applied Boolean logic to antigen combinations to determine if they could significantly improve how T cells recognize tumors while ignoring normal tissue. For example, using the Booleans AND, OR, or NOT, tumor cells might be differentiated from normal tissue using markers "A" OR "B," but NOT "C," where "C" is an antigen found only in normal tissue.

To program these instructions into T cells, they used a system known as synNotch, a customizable molecular sensor that allows synthetic biologists to fine-tune the programming of cells. Developed in the Lim lab in 2016, synNotch is a receptor that can be engineered to recognize a myriad of target antigens. The output response of synNotch can also be programmed, so that the cell executes any of a range of responses once an antigen is recognized.

To demonstrate the potential power of the data they had amassed, the team used synNotch to program T cells to kill kidney cancer cells that express a unique combination of antigens called CD70 and AXL. Although CD70 is also found in healthy immune cells, and AXL in healthy lung cells, T cells with an engineered synNotch AND logic gate killed only the cancer cells and spared the healthy cells.

"The field of big data analysis of cancer and the field of cell engineering have both exploded in the last few years, but these advances have not been brought together," said Troyanskaya. "The computing capabilities of therapeutic cells combined with machine learning approaches enable actionable use of the increasingly available rich genomic and proteomic data on cancers."

The work described in the new Science paper, led by former UCSF graduate student Jasper Williams, shows how multiple synNotch receptors can be daisy-chained to create a host of complex cancer recognition circuits. Since synNotch can activate the expression of selected genes in a "plug and play" manner, these components can be linked in different ways to create circuits with diverse Boolean functions, allowing for precise recognition of diseased cells and a range of responses when those cells are identified.

"This work is essentially a cell engineering manual that provides us with blueprints for how to build different classes of therapeutic T cells that could recognize almost any possible type of combinatorial antigen pattern that could exist on a cancer cell," said Lim.

For example, a synNotch receptor can be engineered so that when it recognizes antigen A, the cell makes a second synNotch that recognizes B, which in turn can induce the expression of a CAR that recognizes antigen C. The result is a T cell that requires the presence of all three antigens to trigger killing. In another example, if the T cell encounters an antigen present in normal tissues but not in the cancer, a synNotch receptor with a NOT function could be programmed to cause the T cell carrying it to die, sparing the normal cells from attack and possible toxic effects.

In the Science paper, using complex synNotch configurations like this, Lim and colleagues show they can selectively kill cells carrying different combinatorial markers of melanoma and breast cancer. Moreover, when synNotch-equipped T cells were injected into mice carrying two similar tumors with different antigen combinations, the T cells efficiently and precisely located the tumor they had been engineered to detect, and reliably executed the cellular program the scientists had designed.

Lim's group is now exploring how these circuits could be used in CAR T cells to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer that is nearly always fatal with conventional therapies.

"You're not just looking for one magic-bullet target. You're trying to use all the data," Lim said. "We need to comb through all of the available cancer data to find unambiguous combinatorial signatures of cancer. If we can do this, then it could launch the use of these smarter cells that really harness the computational sophistication of biology and have real impact on fighting cancer."