Culture

ANN ARBOR--While conducting fieldwork in Puerto Rico's central mountainous region in 2016, University of Michigan ecologists noticed tiny trails of bright orange snail excrement on the undersurface of coffee leaves afflicted with coffee leaf rust, the crop's most economically important pest.

Intrigued, they conducted field observations and laboratory experiments over the next several years and showed that the widespread invasive snail Bradybaena similaris, commonly known as the Asian tramp snail and normally a plant-eater, had shifted its diet to consume the fungal pathogen that causes coffee leaf rust, which has ravaged coffee plantations across Latin America in recent years.

Now the U-M researchers are exploring the possibility that B. similaris and other snails and slugs, which are part of a large class of animals called gastropods, could be used as a biological control to help rein in coffee leaf rust. But as ecologists, they are keenly aware of the many disastrous attempts at biological control of pests in the past.

"This is the first time that any gastropod has been described as consuming this pathogen, and this finding may potentially have implications for controlling it in Puerto Rico," said U-M doctoral student Zachary Hajian-Forooshani, lead author of a paper published online Jan. 12 in the journal Ecology.

"But further work is needed to understand the potential tradeoffs B. similaris and other gastropods may provide to coffee agroecosystems, given our understanding of other elements within the system," said Hajian-Forooshani, who is advised by U-M ecologist John Vandermeer, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Vandermeer and U-M ecologist Ivette Perfecto, a professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability, lead a team that has been monitoring coffee leaf rust and its community of natural enemies on 25 farms throughout Puerto Rico's coffee-producing region.

Those natural enemies include fly larvae, mites, and a surprisingly diverse community of fungi living on coffee leaves, within or alongside the orange blotches that mark coffee leaf rust lesions. Hajian-Forooshani has been studying all of these natural enemies for his doctoral dissertation.

"Of all the natural enemies I have been studying, these gastropods in Puerto Rico most obviously and effectively clear the leaves of the coffee leaf rust fungal spores," he said in an email from Puerto Rico.

Chief among those gastropods is B. similaris, originally from Southeast Asia and now one of the world's most widely distributed invasive land snails. It has a light brown shell that is 12 to 16 millimeters (roughly one-half to two-thirds of an inch) across.

In their Ecology paper, Hajian-Forooshani, Vandermeer and Perfecto describe experiments in which a single infected coffee leaf and a single B. similaris snail were placed together inside dark containers. After 24 hours, the number of coffee leaf rust fungal spores on the leaves had been reduced by roughly 30%.

However, the snails were also responsible for a roughly 17% reduction in the number of lesions caused by another natural enemy of coffee leaf rust, the parasitic fungus Lecanicillium lecanii.

"With the data we are collecting now, we seek to find out if there are any apparent tradeoffs between these two consumers of the coffee leaf rust," Hajian-Forooshani said. "For example, if the fungal parasite is especially efficient at reducing the rust, and the snail eats it along with the rust itself, that could be a tradeoff: promote the snail to control the rust and face the possibility that the snail eats too much of the other controlling factor."

In their Ecology paper, the authors say they're cognizant of "the many disastrous attempts at classical biological control" in the past.

One of the best-known examples of a biological backfire was the introduction of the cane toad into Australia in the mid-1930s to control a beetle that was destroying sugar cane. Long story short, the cane toad was completely ineffective at controlling the beetle and became a pest in its own right by multiplying dramatically in the absence of natural enemies.

So, it's too soon to tell if the fungus-eating appetite of B. similaris and other snails could be harnessed in the fight against coffee leaf rust. One big unanswered question: Do the fungal spores remain viable after they pass through the guts of the snails?

"The gastropods seem to reduce the number of spores on the leaf, but it's not clear if the spores can still germinate in the excrement," Hajian-Forooshani said. "Also, we don't know how the effect of the gastropods on coffee leaf rust scales up to impact the pathogen dynamics at the farm or regional scale."

And the potential role of gastropods in the fight against coffee rust elsewhere in Latin America remains unknown. But the U-M researchers hope their findings in Puerto Rico will stimulate further research in other coffee-growing regions.

A new study shows how a common stomach bacterium is able to keep its corkscrew-like shape as it grows. Disrupting the shape could point the way for future, more-specialized antibiotics that prevent the bacterium from being harmful.

The study, published in eLife earlier this month by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, revealed that Helicobacter pylori maintains its helical shape by targeting cell-wall synthesis on opposite sides of the curvy-shaped bacterium. The team identified two proteins, MreB and CcmA, that balance cell-wall production in the right areas.

"In the case of H. pylori, its shape is key to its success as a pathogen," said Dr. Nina Salama, a bacteriologist at Fred Hutch who led the study. "In our latest study we show for the first time how two proteins are responsible for giving the bacterium its twisty form, and without those proteins H. pylori cannot work."

Salama is a member of the Human Biology and the Public Health Sciences Divisions at Fred Hutch. Her team was the first to demonstrate how important H. pylori's corkscrew shape is for its ability to infect its host. The distinctive shape helps it swim through stomach mucus, allowing it to cause an infection that can trigger ulcers and stomach cancer.

"Our latest findings take an important step toward understanding how H. pylori maintain their shape and how to design more specific antibiotics to target the infections they cause," Salama said.

H. pylori infects about half of the world's population. The bacterium burrows into mucus lining of the stomach and sets up long-term inflammation that can trigger ulcers and stomach cancer. Stomach cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, particularly in Asian countries.

The bacterium's shape is dictated by the shape of its cell wall, a strong, flexible meshwork that contains its cellular contents. But how does H. pylori make itself helical? That's a fundamental question that Jennifer Taylor, first author of the eLife paper and a graduate student in Salama's lab, explored.

"Bacteria put a lot of effort into maintaining their shapes," she said. "A deeper understanding of how the bacterium creates and maintains its shape even as it grows and divides could spur the development of more cell-wall attacking antibiotics."

Taylor examined a variety of cell-wall building mechanism in H. pylori to figure out what strategy it was using to build its shape. It turns out that two proteins coordinated the growth:

MreB: a rod-shaped protein that bacteria use to direct wall-building and is known to help straighten out divots in the cell wall in other bacterial species. MreB helps maintain the side of H. pylori that the researchers called the "negative" curve, or the side that is shorter between the two ends.

CcmA: balances out MreB's wall-building activities, by directing cell-wall construction on the opposite side of the cell - the "positive" curve that is the longer side.

The researchers also saw that H. pylori cells with defective CcmA achieve only a gentle curve, suggesting that disrupting the CcmA protein could help weaken the harm from the bacterium.

Though a tiny organism, H. pylori is still very large with respect to the molecules that set its shape pattern. Its shape doesn't just help scientists spot H. pylori under the microscope; the bug's corkscrew form is critical to its ability to escape stomach acid and anchor in for the long haul by swimming through the stomach's mucus lining.

Antibiotics are already used to help prevent stomach cancer and ulcers by wiping out H. pylori -- but they have downsides.

"Some of these antibiotics that target the cell wall wipe out lots of different bugs," Salama said. "One of the goals of our research is to discover a more specific approach for a bug like Helicobacter. We could target its special shape to create a less-broad, more-specific antibiotic."

They're now looking beyond how the cell wall is created to how it is structured and changed over time and how the cell shape contributes to H. pylori's ability to colonize and survive in the stomach.

The Florida Everglades evokes images of fanboats skimming over swamps, while alligators peer through the waters and clouds of insects hover just above. Described as a "river of grass" that stretches some 580,000 square miles across southern Florida, they encompass a wide range of ecosystems ranging from wetlands to tree islands to cattails.

In 2018, the US Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), embarked on a pilot project with biology students from Boca Raton Community High School in Palm Beach County, Florida. The class sought to apply the latest molecular techniques to learn more about the microbial communities in the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a 226-square mile area of the northern Everglades in Palm Beach County, and particularly about the microbes that play roles in the methane cycle. Their data report, which provides the only known reference microbiome data sets for the Loxahatchee Refuge, was published January 21, 2020 in the journal Environmental Microbiome.

"Before JGI was involved, I was not sure we could even complete a full project. Every other group I contacted was happy to offer advice but declined to offer actual scientific help," said Jonathan Benskin, who teaches the A-Level Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) Biology class at Boca Raton Community High School. "I can't thank JGI enough for being willing to take a risk on a group of public high school students to see this project through to completion. JGI does not only contribute to the body of current scientific knowledge, they are also equipping the next generation of scientists that will help shape all of our futures."

Proposing a Research Experience

Benskin wanted to give his high school juniors a research project experience and one of his email inquiries, sent through JGI's Integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes (IMG/M) system, reached Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh, who heads the Metagenome Program. "After discussing the project with him, I was inspired by his enthusiasm and drive to give his students this experience. My current career path was heavily influenced by my own high school biology teacher, who helped connect me with internships and training at the Clorox Company and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory," she said. "The JGI is one of the only places that could take on a project like this because we have the resources as a user facility. The Metagenome Program team provided guidance and encouragement to submit a proposal, which was approved as a Director's Science project by JGI Director Nigel Mouncey."

A Comprehensive Learning Experience

Eloe-Fadrosh decided, "If we're going to have this be a project, we want it to be a really comprehensive learning experience." Over the course of the year, she and other JGI staff conducted several real-time, video-conferenced seminars with the class. The 18 students organized and conducted a field trip, armed with the proper permits, to the refuge to collect soil samples from multiple locations. Back in the classroom, JGI researchers walked students through the processes of DNA sequencing, metagenome assembly, and even an introduction to data analysis using the IMG/M system.

"When I originally envisioned the project of the class, I knew that I wanted them to write a final paper that could be published. Watching 18 students working to create a paper simultaneously in the same document was a sight that I will remember," said Benskin. "The best part of the entire project was being able to tell the students that the paper was accepted for publication in a reputable scientific journal. It was gratifying to see the empowerment displayed across each of their faces."

Eloe-Fadrosh considers the experience the highlight of her past year's work at the JGI. As the students look forward to graduating high school in a few months, Benskin shared his own reflections on the experience.

"'Doing science is something that might be talked about in high school and even undergraduate college classes, but it is an experience that very few students in these classes are allowed to do. I hope they can walk away from this project empowered to go into college and seek out opportunities that they might have previously believed they would not be capable of accomplishing."

Just in time for the New Year, a new Cal Poly study shows that if you want to lose weight and keep it off, building healthy dietary, self-monitoring and psychological coping strategies may be the keys to success.

Results published today in Obesity found that some of the most effective behaviors and psychological strategies reported by those maintaining their weight loss included choosing healthy food, tracking what you eat and using positive self-talk.

The study surveyed almost 5,000 members of WW (formerly Weight Watchers) who reported losing an average of about 50 pounds and kept it off for more than three years, to look at their weight management strategies. Researchers compared this group to a control group of more than 500 people with obesity and who reported not gaining or losing more than five pounds for a period of greater than five years.

The research team examined 54 behaviors related to weight management. Compared to the group of weight-stable individuals, the group of weight loss maintainers reported more frequent use of strategies like setting daily food intake goals, recording what was eaten each day, measuring foods, thinking about past successes, and remaining positive in the face of weight regain. The researchers also found that these eating and thinking behaviors became easier and more ingrained over time in the group of those maintaining their weight loss.

"People who maintained their successful weight loss the longest reported greater frequency and repetition in healthy eating choices," said Suzanne Phelan, a kinesiology and public health professor who led the study. "Healthier choices also became more automatic the longer people continued to make those choices. These findings are encouraging for those working at weight loss maintenance. Over time, weight loss maintenance may become easier, requiring less intentional effort."

The nation's principal health statistics agency, estimates that nearly two out of five (40%) adults in the U.S. have obesity and another one in three (32%) have overweight. Obesity increases the likelihood of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers, among other health conditions.

While the terms "overweight" and "obesity" are similar, the difference between the two arises with Body Mass Index, or BMI, which is a measure of body fat based on an individual's weight in relation to his or her height and age. In general, a person with a BMI of 25-29.9 is considered to have overweight, while a person with a BMI over 30 is considered to have obesity.

"Successful weight loss is associated with a variety of health benefits," Phelan said. "The improved quality of life observed among the successful weight losers in this study may serve as an important motivator for people working at long-term weight management."

The results of this study can help people focus on the strategies that are most likely to help participants maintain a healthy weight

An international team of scientists report in the journal Genome Biology results from a pilot project, co-led by Robert Waterhouse, Group Leader at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and University of Lausanne, to kick-start the global sequencing initiative of thousands of arthropods. Comparative analyses across 76 species spanning 500 million years of evolution reveal dynamic genomic changes that point to key factors behind their success and open up many new areas of research.

Friends and foes, arthropods rule the world

Arthropods make up the most species-rich and diverse group of animals on Earth, with numerous adaptations over 500 million years of evolution that have allowed them to exploit all major ecosystems. They play vital roles in the healthy ecology of our planet as well as being both beneficial and detrimental to the success of humankind through pollination and biowaste recycling, or destroying crops and spreading disease. "By sequencing and comparing their genomes we can begin to identify some of the key genetic factors behind their evolutionary success," explains Waterhouse, "but will the impact of human activities in modern times bring an end to their rule, or will their ability to adapt and innovate ensure their survival?"

The i5k pilot project: kick-starting arthropod genome sequencing

The i5k initiative to sequence and annotate the genomes of 5000 species of insects and other arthropods, was launched in a letter to Science in 2011. From the outset, the initiative aimed to support the development of new genomic resources for understanding the molecular biology and evolution of arthropods. Since then, the i5k has grown into a broad community of scientists using genomics to study insects and other arthropods in many different contexts from fundamental animal biology, to effects on ecology and the environment, and impacts on human health and agriculture2. To kick-start the i5k, a pilot project was launched at the Baylor College of Medicine led by Stephen Richards to sequence, assemble, and annotate the genomes of 28 diverse arthropod species carefully selected from 787 community nominations.

Large-scale multi-species genome comparisons

"The identification and annotation of thousands of genes from the i5k pilot project substantially increases our current genomic sampling of arthropods," says Waterhouse. Combining these with previously sequenced genomes enabled the researchers to perform a large-scale comparative analysis across 76 diverse species including flies, butterflies, moths, beetles, bees, ants, wasps, true bugs, thrips, lice, cockroaches, termites, mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies, bristletails, crustaceans, centipedes, spiders, ticks, mites, and scorpions. PhD students Gregg Thomas from Indiana University, USA, and Elias Dohmen from the University of Münster, Germany, used the annotated genomes to perform the computational evolutionary analyses of more than one million arthropod genes.

Dynamic gene family evolution - a key to success?

The team's analyses focused on tracing gene evolutionary histories to estimate changes in gene content and gene structure over 500 million years. This enabled identification of families of genes that have substantially increased or decreased in size, or newly emerged or disappeared, or rearranged their protein domains, between and within each of the major arthropod subgroups. The gene families found to be most dynamically changing encode proteins involved in functions linked to digestion, chemical defence, and the building and remodelling of chitin - a major part of arthropod exoskeletons. Adaptability of digestive processes and mechanisms to neutralise harmful chemicals undoubtedly served arthropods well as they conquered a wide variety of ecological niches. Perhaps even more importantly, the flexibility that comes with a segmented body plan and a dynamically remodellable exoskeleton allowed them to thrive by physically adapting to new ecosystems.

Innovation through invention and repurposing

Newly evolved gene families also reflect functions known to be important in different arthropod groups, such as visual learning and behaviour, pheromone and odorant detection, neuronal activity, and wing development. These may enhance food location abilities or fine-tune species self-recognition and communication. In contrast, few changes were identified in the ancestor of insects that undergo complete metamorphosis: the dramatic change from the juvenile form to the fully developed adult (like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly). This has traditionally been thought of as a major step in the evolution of insects from the original state of developing through gradual nymph stages until finally reaching the adult stage. "These findings support the idea that this key transition is more likely to have occurred through the rewiring of existing gene networks or building new networks using existing genes, a scenario of new-tricks-for-old-genes" explains Waterhouse.

Genomic insights into arthropod biology and evolution

Several detailed genomic studies of individual i5k species have focused on their fascinating biological traits such as the feeding ecology and developmental biology of the milkweed bug, insecticide resistance, blood feeding, and traumatic sex of the bed bug, horizontal gene transfer from bacteria and fungi and digestion of plant materials by the Asian long-horned beetle, and parasite-host interactions and potential vaccines for the sheep blowfly. The combined analyses reveal dynamically changing and newly emerged gene families that will stimulate new areas of research. "We can take these hypotheses into the lab and use them to directly study how the genome is translated into visible morphology at a resolution that cannot be achieved with any other animal group," says co-lead author, Ariel Chipman, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. The new resources substantially advance progress towards building a comprehensive genomic catalogue of life on our planet, and with more than a million described arthropod species and estimates of seven times as many, there clearly remains a great deal to discover!

Next steps in arthropod genomics and beyond

More effective and cost-efficient DNA sequencing technologies mean that new ambitious initiatives are already underway to sequence the genomes of additional arthropods. These include the Global Ant Genome Alliance and the Global Invertebrate Genomics Alliance, as well as the Darwin Tree of Life Project that is targeting all known species of animals in the British Isles, and the global network of communities coordinated by the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) that aims to sequence all of Earth's eukaryotic biodiversity7. The EBP's goals also include benefitting human welfare, where the roles of arthropods are clear and the hidden benefits are likely to be substantial, as well as protecting biodiversity and understanding ecosystems, where alarming reports of declining numbers make arthropods a priority. "The completion of the i5k pilot project therefore represents an important milestone in the progress towards intensifying efforts to develop a comprehensive genomic catalogue of life on our planet", concludes Richards.

In 2018, 1.7 million people died from lung cancer worldwide, a number equivalent to the population of Barcelona. The high mortality rate of lung cancer reflects the need for the development of treatments that are more efficient.

A study headed by Ángel R. Nebreda, ICREA researcher and head of the Signalling and Cell Cycle Lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and published in the journal PNAS demonstrates that the protein p38 is one of the key elements supporting lung cancer growth. In particular, the study focuses on cells expressing the oncogene Kras, which causes the transformation of a healthy cell into a cancer cell and whose mutations are responsible for approximately 25% of lung cancer cases.

For this study, the scientists have used genetic mouse models that develop lung tumours with the KrasG12V mutation. Using these models, they have observed that p38 inhibition leads to a dramatic reduction in tumour growth and aggressiveness. Furthermore, complementary studies performed with information deposited in cancer genome databases indicate that the patients with lower levels of p38 in tumours have a more favourable prognosis. This function of p38 is related to the production of factors that stimulate cancer cell division and thus enhance tumour growth.

The relevance of this work lies in the fact that "it shows how tumours exploit a protein, which in principle protects healthy lung cells, for their own progression," says Jessica Vitos, first author of the paper. The result of this study may find therapeutic application. In this regard, "Chemical compounds that inhibit p38 function would interfere with the growth of lung cancer cells," she explains.

The study has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICINN), the Catalonian Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR), and the BBVA Foundation.

The damage visible and infrared light can do to our skin has been revealed for the first time in new research by scientists at Newcastle University, UK.

The detrimental effects of exposure to the sun's rays are well documented, and the main aim of sunscreens is to protect the skin against dangerous ultraviolet radiation (UV).

However, experts at Newcastle University have now scientifically proven that UV rays are not the only type that can penetrate deep into the skin, as visible and infared light can also harm our skin's cells.

The study, published online today in The FASEB Journal, reveals that the deeper dermal layer of the skin is damaged by UV, visible and infared light and that it may be beneficial for anti-ageing to protect our skin against all three.

Damage to skin

Professor Mark Birch-Machin, a professor of Molecular Dermatology at Newcastle University's Faculty of Medical Sciences, led the European study and said these rays may contribute to the skin's damage particularly when UV is present.

He said: "We protect ourselves from ultraviolet rays in sunlight using sunscreens to prevent sunburn, premature ageing and increased risk of skin cancer. However, along with UV, sunlight also contains visible and infrared light.

"It is important to consider that visible and infrared light may also be contributing to the damage our skin receives from the sun, and that it could be beneficial to protect our skin against these as well when UV is present

"In addition we found that our skin cells are sensitive not only to the single UV, visible and infrared wavelengths but also to their interaction within sunlight. This means on their own each is fine but when combined the effect is enhanced, like in boxing - the first blow, the UV, does the major damage and then the smaller jabs, punches two and three, represented by visible and infrared topple the boxer to the floor.

"Visible and infrared on their own have a small effect on skin damage but their potency is increased dramatically when UV is present."

The study looked at whether UV, visible and infrared light from a solar lamp - which mimics natural sunlight - had an effect on markers of damage in skin cells from human adults.

It was found that cells from the top layer of the skin (keratinocytes) were damaged by UV light, and were not damaged further by "complete" solar light containing UV, visible and infrared light.

In contrast, cells from the dermal layer deeper in the skin (fibroblasts) were damaged by UV as expected, but had greater damage from the complete solar light. These cells were more damaged by the inclusion of the visible and infrared light, which left the keratinocytes unaffected.

Assessing skin protection

Professor Birch-Machin said: "Further experiments showed that while each of these three light components caused damage on their own, the impact of the combination was far greater at a deep skin level.

"People should not be worried if they are following a good sunsmart lifestyle as recommended by national skin charities. However, this study provides key detailed information to help the commercial sunscreen industry in their ongoing protection strategy offered by suncreams and by looking at ways to protect our skin from 'complete' solar light."

Visible and infrared light do not cause sunburn and they are not known to directly be a skin cancer risk.

Further research will be done by Newcastle University scientists to understand the mechanism of the synergistic effect of combined UV, visible and infrared light. In addition, they will look at why the deeper dermal fibroblasts are more sensitive than the top-layer epidermal keratinocytes.

Recent tragedies on Everest have exposed growing resentment felt by some Sherpas towards foreign climbers and the foreign companies profiting from the mountain. One source of dispute has been Sherpa concern that some climbers are not fit enough to cope with the altitude.

Now Cambridge historian Lachlan Fleetwood has found evidence of closely-related friction going back to the early 1800s. In an article published in Itinerario, he shows that attitude sickness undermined British imperial expectations that white bodies would outperform those of their new Himalayan subjects.

Having studied dozens of rare journals, letters and reports written by British surveyors, explorers and travellers, Fleetwood shows how this fuelled distrust between British travellers and Himalayan peoples in some of their first encounters with an expansionist British India. He also reveals that both Europeans and locals exploited uncertainty about altitude sickness for personal gain.

Today, the causes, symptoms and treatment of altitude sickness are common knowledge but in the early nineteenth century, this invisible force was poorly understood. Recent scientific research has shown that Sherpas, an ethnic group from the mountain regions of Nepal, have evolved to become particularly efficient at producing energy even when oxygen is scarce.

Fleetwood, a historian of science and empire, explains: "The British struggled with two competing aims - they wanted to describe their physical trials to secure heroic authority at home. But in doing so, they didn't want to upset racial hierarchies by suggesting that white bodies suffered more than Asian ones."

This tension is palpable in the writing of the Bengal infantryman Alexander Gerard. In the 1820s, he described how he and his brother James overtook their Himalayan porters and "had infinite trouble in getting them to go on". But he then admitted: "we could not have walked much faster ourselves, for we felt a fulness in the head, and experienced a general debility."

Even more telling, while ascending towards the frontier with Tibet, Alexander wrote: "we were so completely exhausted at first, that we rested every hundred yards; & had we not been ashamed before so many people, some of whom we got to accompany us after much entreaty, we should certainly have turned back."

This striking admission of shame appears in an unpublished report to the East India Company and in a published version of the same incident, a remarkable additional sentence was inserted: "we observed the thermometer every minute almost, in order to show the people we were doing something."

Fleetwood says of this: "It's fascinating to picture these brothers pretending to do Western science to mask their physical shortcomings. This is a far cry from the popular image of heroic Victorian explorers."

"The narrative shifted in the late nineteenth century so that Sherpas came to be valorised as heroic in their own right. This involved a growing acceptance that their bodies are better adapted to high altitude. But recent events on Everest show that comparisons of physical performance remain a major source of tension."

Much of Fleetwood's evidence comes from East India Company employees, especially Bengal infantryman seconded to surveys in the mountains. In the late eighteenth century, travelling to very high altitudes was something largely new for European travellers and then as today, their progress in the Himalaya relied on extensive pre-existing routes and co-opting Himalayan people (especially Bhotiya, Tartar, Wakhi, and Lepcha) to show them the correct paths, carry their supplies, and take on significant risk. This forced British travellers to compare their physical performance with that of the indigenous population.

Nineteenth-century attempts to conceal vulnerability to altitude sickness could be embarrassingly unconvincing. After reaching the Bamsaru Pass, the Scottish artist James Baillie Fraser remarked: "It was ludicrous to see those who had laughed at others yielding, some to lassitude, and others to sickness, yet endeavouring to conceal it from the rest. I believe I held out longer than any one; yet after passing this gorge every few paces of ascent seemed an insuperable labour, and even in passing along the most level places my knees trembled under me."

Measuring pulses and rates of breathing added a new dimension to the 'politics of comparison', as European travellers tried to make sense of wildly differing symptoms. While in the Pamirs, the naval officer and surveyor John Wood took the pulses of everyone in his party and noted with surprise that his was the slowest. Fleetwood is skeptical about this data and Wood admitted that his comparisons were not entirely fair, not least because the men had been carrying different loads.

While Fleetwood's focus is on the behaviour of Europeans, he suggests that guides and porters may have attempted to exploit the uncertainty around altitude using the idea of a poisonous plant to resist unpleasant and perilous labour. Himalayan people often told European travellers that their suffering was caused by Bis-ki-huwa, or simply the Bis, which was translated as 'Wind of Poison'. Most European observers dismissed the idea mainly because the plant rarely appeared where altitude sickness was felt.

From the 1850s, scientific knowledge about altitude sickness significantly improved thanks to more systematic scientific studies of respiratory physiology, but European travellers continued to play down their vulnerability.

Worldwide, more than 23 percent of the population suffer from chronic low back pain (CLBP). This makes CLBP the most prevalent chronic pain disorder, associated with immense costs to the health care system. The problems are often attributed to risks at the workplace, but are usually related to physical factors such as incorrect posture or sitting for too long. In a meta-analysis, researchers from TU Dresden were able to show that psychosocial areas of work life such as workload, job control and social support significantly contribute tothe development of the disease, as well.

For the analysis, the team synthesized more than 19,000 data sets from 18 studies investigating associations between psychosocial areas of work life and CLBP. The results of this review revealed robust evidence of an association between exposures to work-related psychosocial risk factors and CLBP: "People with a high workload suffered more frequently from chronic low back pain. Employees with more job control were less affected. It was also shown that back pain was lower when people received social support at work from their superiors and colleagues," explains social psychologist Dr. Anne Tomaschek.

"These data provide an important basis for the development of prevention programs," continues Dr. Denise Dörfel, postdoc at the Chair of Work and Organisational Psychology. "In view of the increasing burden and high costs of CLBP for individuals, employers and society, this meta-analysis provides important insights for public health and human resource management. A redesign of working conditions could reduce pain-related absenteeism. Flexible breaks, more autonomy in scheduling the work, all this reduces the workload," explains the psychologist. "Social support from colleagues and more feedback and recognition from superiors may also help."

CLEVELAND, Ohio (January 22, 2020)--If you're having difficulty identifying the right word to express yourself clearly or remembering a story correctly, you may blame menopause. A new study suggests that physiologic hot flashes are associated with decreased verbal memory and with alterations in brain function during encoding and retrieval of memory, especially in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Study results are published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

Previous studies have already shown that women experience a decline in memory for verbal material, such as words and stories, as they transition through menopause. In this new study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to document the occurrence of physiologic hot flashes and their specific effect on hippocampal and prefrontal cortex function during encoding and recognition conditions of a memory task. The strengths of this study are in the use of physiologic hot flash monitoring to confirm the hot flash versus relying on patient recall and the use of functional MRI to specifically evaluate real-time changes occurring within the brain during the memory testing.

Although larger studies are needed to fully evaluate the reliability of the relationship between hot flashes and altered brain function, this study provides new insights into specific areas in the brain involved in memory that appear to be adversely affected by hot flashes.

The study results appear in the article "Hot flashes are associated with altered brain function during a memory task."

"The findings of this preliminary study, although small, support an association between objectively monitored hot flashes and adverse functional changes in the brain that affect memory. Further study is needed to determine whether hot flashes actually cause these brain changes and whether treatment of hot flashes will prevent or normalize them," says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.

When Hurricane Irma made landfall in Florida in September 2017, the Category 5 storm offered a team of wildlife researchers a first-ever opportunity to observe behavioral responses of white-tailed deer to an extreme weather event in real time. The data collected are providing crucial new insights for scientists seeking to minimize the impacts of severe weather and climate change on wildlife.

Heather Abernathy, a doctoral student in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, detailed the group's findings in a recent issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a key biological research journal.

The paper is one outcome from a large, ongoing collaborative study of white-tailed deer population dynamics as well as interactions between white-tailed deer and Florida panther in southwestern Florida by Virginia Tech, the University of Georgia, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Since 2015, researchers have been monitoring white-tailed deer using GPS collars to track their movements through the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and the northern management units of Big Cypress National Preserve. As Hurricane Irma made landfall, the team was able to track the movements of individual white-tailed deer in real time utilizing satellite data transmitted from the GPS collars every four hours.

Using the data collected during the hurricane, the researchers were able to estimate habitat use and movement rates. "We found that the deer, particularly the female deer, increased their movement rate substantially," said Abernathy, who is in her third year as a student in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. "We also observed that the deer changed their habitat selection during the storm."

"Typically, deer prefer prairie and marshland habitats during the wet season -- those areas have the most prolific forage -- and avoid forests because that is the habitat of their main predator: the Florida panther," continued Abernathy, who has helped coordinate the project and was the lead author of the paper. "During the storm, we observed the inverse: deer avoided those areas, selecting the pine forests at higher elevations. More than half of the animals we tracked left their home range for higher terrain."

These findings suggest that animals have the capacity to adapt their behaviors to survive extreme weather events. Since global climate change has the potential to contribute to an increase in flooding, drought, hurricanes, and tsunamis, this research has broad implications for wildlife behavioral mitigation strategies.

"In a lot of our climate change assessments, we make the assumption that animal behavior is static and that what we observe now is how the animals are going to respond in extreme events, such as hurricanes," Abernathy explained. "What this research demonstrates is that animals have behavioral mechanisms that allow for survival, but those mechanisms aren't going to be observed until the animals are undergoing a significant event."

Abernathy's research has local implications as well: because deer seek higher elevations of pine forests during heavy storms, it is essential that land managers and conservationists protect and manage these environments. They could mean the difference between life and death for this key prey species of the endangered Florida panther.

"Heather has masterfully handled the role as the point of contact for the cooperating agencies and numerous stakeholder groups affiliated with this project," noted Assistant Professor Mike Cherry, Abernathy's advisor. "Many of these groups have passionate opinions about our research, and Heather has interacted with these groups with grace and professionalism. I could not imagine a better spokesperson for our project."

A psychiatrist specialising in sexual dysfunction caused by antidepressants is calling for greater recognition of the problems that can endure after treatment stops. Professor David Healy, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, said problems may begin after only a few doses and leave someone affected for life, or a relatively mild dysfunction can worsen dramatically when the person stops treatment.

Called Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD), the core features of the condition are genital numbing, loss or muting of orgasm and loss of libido. According to Professor Healy many patients are just as concerned by additional features like emotional numbing or derealisation. Both sexes, all ages and every ethnic group can be affected.

Professor Healy, of Bangor University, said: "10% of people of sexually active years in developed countries are on antidepressants chronically. Nearly 20% of the population, therefore, may not be able to make love the way they want. In some deprived areas, the figure may be much higher. Some likely comfort themselves with the thought that once they stop treatment, they will get back to normal, when in fact they may be even less able to function."

In June 2019, in response to a petition lodged by Professor Healy and colleagues in 2018, the European Medicines Agency asked pharmaceutical companies to warn that sexual dysfunction can endure after antidepressant treatment stops.

Professor Healy said: "There is a great need to recognise these treatment-related enduring sexual dysfunctions and pinpoint how they arise and might be treated."

There were some weight loss and health benefits for overweight adults who followed the Mediterranean, Intermittent Fasting and Paleo diets, though adherence to the diets dropped off considerably during the one-year study, new University of Otago research shows.

Intermittent fasting - whereby participants limit their energy intake to about 25 per cent of their usual diet (500kcal for women and 600kcal for men) on two self-selected days per week, led to slightly more weight loss than the other diets. The Mediterranean diet also improved blood sugar levels.

Co-lead author Dr Melyssa Roy, a Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine, says the amount of weight loss was modest - on average two to four kilograms for the 250 participants, but for those choosing the fasting or Mediterranean diets, clinically significant improvements in blood pressure were also seen.

The aim of the research was to examine how effective all three diets were in a "real world" setting, where participants self-selected which diet they wished to follow, without any ongoing support from a dietitian.

Dr Roy says the evidence shows that for some people the Mediterranean, fasting or paleo (Paleolithic) diets can be "healthful, beneficial ways to eat".

"This work supports the idea that there isn't a single 'right' diet - there are a range of options that may suit different people and be effective. In this study, people were given dietary guidelines at the start and then continued with their diets in the real world while living normally. About half of the participants were still following their diets after a year and had experienced improvements in markers of health.

"Like the Mediterranean diet, intermittent fasting and paleo diets can also be valid healthy eating approaches - the best diet is the one that includes healthy foods and suits the individual."

The Mediterranean diet encouraged consumption of fruit, vegetables, whole-grain breads and cereals, legumes, nuts, seeds and olive oil with moderate amounts of fish, chicken, eggs and diary and red meat once a week or less.

The paleo diet consists of mostly less-processed foods with an emphasis on eating fruit and vegetables, animal proteins, nuts, coconut products and extra-virgin olive oil. While "original" Paleo diets strictly exclude all legumes, dairy and grains, this study used a modified version including some dairy as well as up to one serving daily of legumes and grain-based food.

Co-lead author Dr Michelle Jospe, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Medicine, says the results showed people found the Mediterranean diet to be the easiest to adhere to.

"Our participants could follow the diet's guidelines more closely than the fasting and paleo diets and were more likely to stay with it after the year, as our retention rates showed."

Most of the 250 participants (54 per cent) chose the fasting diet, while 27 per cent chose the Mediterranean and 18 per cent the paleo. After 12 months, the Mediterranean diet had the best retention rate with 57 per cent of participants continuing, with 54 per cent still fasting and 35 per cent still on the paleo diet.

After 12 months, the average weight loss was 4.0kg for those choosing the fasting diet, 2.8kg on the Mediterranean diet and 1.8kg on the paleo diet.

Reduced systolic blood pressure was observed among those participating in the fasting and Mediterranean diets, together with reduced blood sugar levels in the Mediterranean diet.

Dr Jospe explains participants who said they were still following their diet at 12 months lost even more weight, showing the importance of choosing a diet that is sustainable.

She believes the results of this study are relevant to the thousands of people following self-chosen diets with little supervision and indicates more realistic outcomes.

We've all heard, and seen, how a picture paints a thousand words. Now, in a scientific twist on that saying, researchers at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab), are creating pictures that paint thousands of molecules.

Using a uniquely powerful instrument, the scientists have refined a technique called mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) that translates reams of data into detailed visuals of the molecular makeup of biological samples. Their work, published this week in Analytical Chemistry, features images with mass resolution so high that every color in the image represents a distinct kind of molecule.

MSI is not new. For years, scientists have used the technique to convert mass spectrometry analyses of a sample's chemical makeup into spatial representations showing which molecules occur where.

What is different now, explained National MagLab chemist Don Smith, corresponding author on the study, is the breadth and depth of the data generated with the lab's world-record 21-tesla ion cyclotron resonance (ICR) mass spectrometer, called the "21-T" for short. Tesla is a unit of magnetic field strength; a fridge magnet has a field of about 0.01 tesla and a typical hospital MRI magnet has a field of 2 or 3 teslas.

The 21-T enables mass spectrometry images to become ultra-high definition, with many more pixels making up the image.

"I like to think of this as the most information per pixel -- how much chemical information we can get from each pixel in a given amount of time," Smith said. "We are observing new molecules that have never been observed, never been mass resolved in tissue before."

Last year, Smith teamed up with Ron Heeren from the Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. With their team, the scientists ran a month's worth of experiments in the 21-T, examining brain tissue from healthy rats. In each 24-hour experiment, they focused on specific biomolecules. In the two data sets examined for the Analytical Chemistry article, the team looked for certain lipids, a class of biomolecules that execute critical functions in the body, including in cell membranes.

Mass spectrometers are fancy molecular scales that use a strong magnet to identify each molecule in a substance by its unique mass. The molecules must first be given a positive or negative charge (ionized) so that the magnet can detect them. The team used a technique called matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (or MALDI), used for the first time on the 21-T for this project with a special instrument shipped from Maastricht to Tallahassee. With this setup, they were able to methodically vaporize, ionize and measure one hair's-width of tissue at a time, each containing thousands of molecules. In this way, bit by bit, they amassed measurements that special software converted into an MRI-like map of the molecules' spatial distribution.

"It worked right away," said Smith of the experiments. "That was a very pleasant surprise."

The 21-T, acquired by the National MagLab in 2014 with funding from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry, proved an amazingly sensitive scale. Smith noted that scientists were able to separate two molecules with a difference in molecular weight of about three electrons -- about .00179 daltons (the unit of molecular mass) or just a tiny fraction of the weight of a water molecule.

"This is the reason we come to the MagLab," Heeren said, "to push imaging boundaries and see molecular detail that would otherwise remain hidden."

The 21-T has proven to be a remarkably versatile instrument, said Chris Hendrickson, director of the lab's ICR facility and a co-author on the paper.

"The experiments it has enabled have run the gamut from medical biology to emerging environmental contaminants," he said.

Smith said this technique could become a powerful tool for health research. Currently the 21-T is routinely used to examine the molecular makeup of, among other types of samples, complex proteins. Future MALDI experiments could reveal not just which molecules are in there, but precisely where in a tissue sample each is located.

Cancer researchers could use the technique to examine, on the molecular level, exactly where and how a drug travels through diseased tissue; another scientist could study how an organism responds to exposure to a pollutant. Researchers may even be able to compare examples of the same kind of cell to one another to detect subtle molecular differences.

As for Smith, he and his team have their work cut out for them, with plenty of data awaiting analysis.

"We basically tried a little bit of everything," said Smith of last year's experiments.

That's two data sets down, 26 to go.

In addition to Smith, Heeren and Hendrickson, contributors to the article included Andrew Bowman (first author) and Shane Ellis of Maastricht University and National MagLab scientist Greg Blakney. The MALDI instrumentation used for the experiments was made available with support from the Dutch province of Limburg.

Where does the water in the Grand Canyon come from?

We all know the Colorado River, but it's not the most mysterious water resource in the Grand Canyon; we know it moves through at a rate of about 12,000 cubic feet per second as it travels from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California. But Roaring Springs, Grand Canyon National Park's only water source, is a bigger mystery--one NAU researcher Natalie Jones hopes to have a hand in solving.

Jones, an NAU research technician and graduate student contracted by the Grand Canyon Physical Sciences program, asked where the water in Roaring Springs comes from in research she did with School of Earth and Sustainability professor Abe Springer. It's building on previous research for both of them. They published their findings in November in Hydrogeology Journal, with Jones as the lead author and in collaboration with researchers at the Grand Canyon National Park, Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests and the Kentucky Geological Survey at the University of Kentucky.

So, where does the water come from? It's complicated. But this research helps to pinpoint the region feeding the springs and, importantly, the risk of contamination in that region. It takes researchers one step closer to understanding how to protect this vital resource.

Jones and her co-authors set out to investigate how to create a better way to model karst-aquifer vulnerability in the Grand Canyon. Having a model that more accurately predicts different variables in the geology and water behavior in the park will benefit future researchers and water managers as they consider individual recharge areas and how best to protect them.

What is karst and why does it matter?

Did you know water can sometimes dissolve rock? Karst is a type of rocky feature such as a cave or sinkhole that forms in dissolvable rocks. Karst creates pathways that can carry water quickly from the land surface directly to underground aquifers. Karst landscapes cover about 16 percent of the Earth's land surface, including most of the Colorado Plateau around Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. It's an important geologic feature that most of us have never heard of.

Karst aquifers, which have a pipe-like flow network of caves and conduits, directly supply up to 25 percent of the world population with water for drinking, agriculture and other needs and they are uniquely vulnerable to contamination. Two such aquifers, the Redwall and Coconino aquifers, supply water to Roaring Springs and many other Grand Canyon springs. The two aquifers are stacked on top of each other. While there are many types of vulnerability models, most ignore the complication of layered karst aquifer systems; this results in oversimplified, less accurate modeling.

"Vulnerability models identify regions of high, moderate and low vulnerability on the land surface, which directly relates to how quickly and efficiently water or contaminants would sink and enter the aquifer," Jones said. "However, existing well-regarded vulnerability modeling methods for karst aquifers did not produce realistic results for our region."

How does the modeling work?

Jones modified the well-known concentration-overburden-precipitation method (COP). This method is effective, the researchers say, but it oversimplifies some details, which limits the model. She presented two new models that better address the factors that help scientists predict vulnerability.

The modifications more accurately account for recharge patterns in the Grand Canyon region, which has many karst features and a deep, complex aquifer system. Jones and the research team automated a process to identify sinkholes from high-resolution topography data, converted those data into sinkhole densities, and combined those data with a map of fault locations in the region. Jones then incorporated these features into the existing model using a geographic information system to produce the final vulnerability model.

It meant significant data processing, but the result was a model that produced greater resolution of vulnerability regions and fit well with previous groundwater flow path analyses. In addition to creating a better model on which future research can build, Jones found similar patterns in vulnerability between the two karst aquifers in the Grand Canyon region, despite them being separated by more than 600 meters of impermeable rock.

Jones also learned that about a fifth of the Kaibab Plateau has high vulnerability to contamination of the Redwall-Muav aquifer, which is about 1,000 meters deep, and almost half of the plateau surface (45.6 percent) has high to very high vulnerability for the Coconino aquifer, which is much closer to the surface.

What does this mean for me?

If you've stopped to fill your water bottle while you're hiking the Grand Canyon or admiring the views on the canyon rim, this matters to you. Since the Roaring Springs is the only source of water in the park, its quality has significant value. This research provides better information to water managers to protect the Grand Canyon's water resources, including creeks on the north side, which researchers think are recharged by the Kaibab Plateau.

"These springs and streams support diverse ecosystems, and many hikers and wildlife rely on them for survival," Jones said. "This research helps narrow down where these water sources are coming from and could help us better protect them in the future."