Earth

The way in which a compound inspired by nature produces hydrogen has now been described in detail for the first time by an international research team from the University of Jena, Germany and the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy. These findings are the foundation for the energy-efficient production of hydrogen as a sustainable energy source.

Nature as a model

There are naturally occurring microorganisms that produce hydrogen, using special enzymes called hydrogenases. "What is special about hydrogenases is that they generate hydrogen catalytically. Unlike electrolysis, which is usually carried out industrially using an expensive platinum catalyst, the microorganisms use organometallic iron compounds," explains Prof. Wolfgang Weigand from the Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Jena in Germany. "As an energy source, hydrogen is naturally of great interest. That's why we want to understand exactly how this catalytic process takes place," he adds.

In the past, numerous compounds have already been produced worldwide that are chemically modelled on the naturally occurring hydrogenases. In cooperation with the university of Milan, Weigand and his team in Jena have now produced a compound that has yielded entirely new insights into the catalysis process.

"As in nature, our model is based on a molecule that contains two iron atoms. Compared with the natural form, however, we changed the chemical environment of the iron in a specific way. To be precise, an amine was replaced by a phosphine oxide with similar chemical properties. We therefore brought the element phosphorus into play."

Detailed insight into electrocatalytic hydrogen production

This enabled Weigand and his team to better understand the process of hydrogen formation. Water is composed of positively charged protons and negatively charged hydroxide ions.

"Our goal was to understand how these protons form hydrogen. However, the proton donor in our experiments was not water, but an acid," Weigand says. "We observed that the proton of the acid is transferred to the phosphine oxide of our compound followed by a proton release to one of the iron atoms. A similar process would also be found in the natural variant of the molecule," he adds. In order to balance the proton's positive charge and ultimately produce hydrogen, negatively charged electrons were introduced in the form of electric current. With the help of cyclic voltammetry and simulation software developed at the University of Jena, the individual steps in which these protons were finally reduced to free hydrogen were examined.

"During the experiment, we could actually see how the hydrogen gas rose from the solution in small bubbles," notes Weigand. "The experimental measurement data from the cyclic voltammetry and the simulation results were then used by the research team in Milan for quantum chemical calculations," adds Weigand. "This enabled us to propose a plausible mechanism for how the entire reaction proceeds chemically to produce the hydrogen - and this for each individual step of the reaction. This has never been done before with this level of accuracy." The group published the results and the proposed reaction pathway in the renowned journal "ACS Catalysis".

The goal: hydrogen through solar energy

Building on these findings, Weigand and his team now want to develop new compounds that can not only produce hydrogen in an energy-efficient way, but also use sustainable energy sources to do so.

"The goal of the Transregio Collaborative Research Centre 234 'CataLight', of which this research is a part, is the production of hydrogen by splitting water with the use of sunlight," Weigand explains. "With the knowledge gained from our research, we are now working on designing and investigating new catalysts based on the hydrogenases, which are ultimately activated using light energy."

The ancient Maya city of Tikal was a bustling metropolis and home to tens of thousands of people.

The city comprised roads, paved plazas, towering pyramids, temples and palaces and thousands of homes for its residents, all supported by agriculture.

Now researchers at the University of Cincinnati say Tikal's reservoirs -- critical sources of city drinking water -- were lined with trees and wild vegetation that would have provided scenic natural beauty in the heart of the busy city.

UC researchers developed a novel system to analyze ancient plant DNA in the sediment of Tikal's temple and palace reservoirs to identify more than 30 species of trees, grasses, vines and flowering plants that lived along its banks more than 1,000 years ago. Their findings paint a picture of a lush, wild oasis.

"Almost all of the city center was paved. That would get pretty hot during the dry season," said paleoethnobotanist David Lentz, a professor of biology in UC's College of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study.

"So it would make sense that they would have places that were nice and cool right along the reservoir," he said. "It must have been beautiful to look at with the water and trees and a welcome place for the kings and their families to go."

The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Lentz and his research team offered four hypotheses about what, if any, plants might have grown along the all-important reservoirs: Did the Maya grow crops such as maize or squash there? Or did they plant fruit trees like those found at a similar reservoir at Mexico's Purron Dam?

Maybe they lined the reservoirs with cattails in keeping with their nickname people of the reeds? Lentz noted that water lilies often adorn ancient Maya paintings.

"Throughout Maya iconography, water lilies represent continuity between the water world and the above world," Lentz said. "It was part of their mythology."

But researchers found little evidence to support any of these hypotheses. Instead, they found evidence bolstering a fourth idea: that the Maya allowed the embankments to remain undisturbed forest. This would have helped to prevent erosion and provided medicinal or edible plants and fruits.

Researchers found evidence of a variety of plants living along the aquifers, including trees like cabbage bark and ramón that tower 100 feet high. Lentz said ramón is a dominant rainforest species in Guatemala.

"Why you would find ramón around the reservoir is a curiosity. The answer is they left this forest intact," Lentz said. "Tikal has a harsh climate. It's pretty tough to survive when you don't get rain for five months of the year. This reservoir would have been the font of their lives. So they sometimes would protect these places by not cutting down the trees and preserving a sacred grove."

Among dozens of plants native to the region, they found evidence of wild onion, fig, wild cherry and two types of grasses. Lentz said grass seeds might have been introduced to the reservoir by visiting waterfowl. Grass would have proliferated at the edges of the reservoirs during dry seasons and droughts.

"Tikal had a series of devastating droughts. As the water levels dropped, they saw blue green algae blooms, which produces toxic substances," Lentz said. "The droughts were great for the grass but not so much for the forest plants that lived along the reservoir's banks."

Were these wild areas the equivalent of a park?

"I think they were. I don't know how public they would have been," Lentz said. "This was a sacred area of the city surrounded by temples and palaces. I don't know if the commoners would have been that welcome."

Tikal was a flourishing seat of power, religion and trade for Mesoamerica in what is now northern Guatemala, reaching its peak of influence more than 1,200 years ago. Today, the cultural and archaeological site is a scenic national park surrounded by primary rainforest.

But more than 1,000 years ago, the area would have looked dramatically different. Instead of rainforest, the city center would have been surrounded by homes and farm plots of corn, beans and squash needed to support 60,000 people or more. At its peak, Tikal was bigger in population than Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Atlantic City, New Jersey; or Pensacola, Florida.

Given the documented and widespread deforestation that occurred around Tikal during the city's rise and fall, the presence of an intact forest in the city would have stood out, said Nicholas Dunning, a UC geography professor and study co-author.

"It would not have been much of a park -- maybe 50 meters by 50 meters," Dunning said. "But it would have been in vivid contrast to the surrounding area of the city's central precinct, which was essentially entirely paved with plaster with many of the buildings colored red."

The reservoirs would have held significance beyond their value as an important source of water, he said.

"Given that the Maya were a forest culture whose cosmology included many forest elements (for example, certain sacred trees that held up the sky) having a sacred grove adjacent to the sacred spring and pool at the heart of the city was an extremely potent symbol -- kind of like parts of the cosmos in miniature," Dunning said. "On the other hand, ancient Maya cities as a whole were very green."

Tikal put today's urban gardens to shame.

"Away from the central precinct of Tikal, most of the land was either managed trees or crops," Dunning said. "Just about every household complex had significant gardens. A great deal of the food consumed by the residents of Maya cities was probably grown within the city itself or its immediate hinterland. Nothing much like a modern Western city."

Previously, researchers learned about the crops and wild plants that grew in ancient Tikal by studying ancient pollen or charcoal, Lentz said. For their study, UC turned to next-generation DNA sequencing that can identify plants and animals with even small strands of DNA.

"Typically, high-quality, high-concentration DNA is needed for next-gen work," UC botanist and study co-author Eric Tepe said. "The Tikal samples were both poor quality and very low concentration."

Microbiologists Alison Weiss, a professor in UC's College of Medicine, and Trinity Hamilton, now with the University of Minnesota, took up the task of analyzing ancient microbial DNA from the reservoir's sediment samples.

Weiss studies pathogenic E. coli and human microbiomes in her lab. Her latest work examined how chemotherapy in cancer patients impairs the protective lining of their digestive systems. But she likes all science, she said, and was eager to accept a new challenge.

"The DNA is ancient so it tends to be degraded with short little sequences," Weiss said.

With the help of the Florida company Rapid Genomics, UC's scientists developed a novel probe to select plant DNA in the sediment samples. And they were able to amplify small strands of DNA from chloroplasts, the plant structures where photosynthesis takes place. Then researchers could match the ancient Tikal samples with the DNA of known plant species in much the same way scientists amplify ribosomal DNA to identify species of bacteria.

"The analysis was quite challenging because we were the first to do this," Weiss said. "Bacterial ribosomal DNA has a database. There was no database for this. We had to take sequences one by one and search the general database to find the best match."

"This project was a bit of a shot in the dark," Tepe said. "We half-expected to get no results at all. The fact that we were able to get an idea of the vegetation surrounding the reservoirs at Tikal is, in my opinion, a spectacular success and a proof of concept that we hope to apply to other Mayan sites."

UC researchers can now study the ancient world in a promising new way.

"We're delighted we had success," Weiss said. "It took a long time to figure out how to do it and make sure it wasn't junk data in, junk data out. Now to be able to learn more about ancient people from these sediment studies is very exciting."

Irvine, CA - June 22, 2021 - A new University of California, Irvine-led study reveals albumin (Alb), among the most abundant proteins in the body, activates a proton channel (hHv1), also widespread in the body, giving sperm the ability to penetrate and fertilize an egg, and allowing white blood cells to secrete large amounts of inflammatory mediators to fight infection.

The study titled, "Direct activation of the proton channel by albumin leads to human sperm capacitation and sustained release of inflammatory mediators by neutrophils," was published today in Nature Communications.

Researchers examined the physiological connection between Alb and human voltage-gated proton channels (hHv1), which are both essential to cell biology in health and diseases. They also demonstrated the mechanism by which Alb binds directly to hHv1 to activate the channel. This research explains how sperm are triggered to fertilize, and neutrophils are stimulated to release mediators in the innate immune response, describing a new role for Alb in physiology that will operate in the many tissues expressing hHv1.

"We found that the interaction of Alb and hHv1 activates sperm when they leave semen and enter the female reproductive tract because Alb is low in semen and high in the reproductive tract. We now understand why albumin supplementation improves IVF," said first author Ruiming Zhao, PhD, from the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at UCI School of Medicine. "We also found the same Alb/hHv1 interaction allows the white blood cells called neutrophils to produce and secrete the inflammatory mediators that kill bacteria and fight infection. However, it's important to note that the inflammatory response itself can lead to disease."

The essential stimulatory role of Alb in the physiology of sperm and neutrophils via hHv1 suggests that Alb will have as-yet unrecognized enhancing or deleterious roles in the other tissues, including the central nervous system, heart and lungs, and will influence cancers of the breast and gastrointestinal tract.

"It is exciting to discover that a common protein has the power to activate the proton channel. This finding suggests new strategies to block or enhance fertility, and to augment or suppress the innate immune response and inflammation," said senior author Steve A. N. Goldstein, MD, PhD, vice chancellor of Health Affairs at UCI and distinguished professor in the School of Medicine Departments of Pediatrics and Physiology & Biophysics, and in the new School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

hHv1 is implicated in a wide range of biological processes in addition to the capacitation of sperm and the innate immune responses included in the study. The channels have notable roles in proliferation of cancer cells, tissue damage during ischemic stroke, and hypertensive injury of the kidney. Because Alb is ubiquitous at levels that vary in different human compartments in health and disease, the potentiation of hHv1 by Alb described in the paper will be widespread, tissue-dependent, and play both salutary and unfavorable roles in human physiology.

"We have modeled the structural basis for binding of Alb to the channel that leads to activation and changes in cellular function, and we are now conducting in vivo studies of viral and bacterial infections. Our next steps include studies of the effects of inhibitors of the Alb-hHv1 interaction on infection, inflammation and fertility," said Goldstein.

Machine learning algorithms do a lot for us every day--send unwanted email to our spam folder, warn us if our car is about to back into something, and give us recommendations on what TV show to watch next. Now, we are increasingly using these same algorithms to make environmental predictions for us.

A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, University of Pittsburgh, and U.S. Geological Survey recently published a new study on predicting flow and temperature in river networks in the 2021 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) International Conference on Data Mining (SDM21) proceedings. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The research demonstrates a new machine learning method where the algorithm is "taught" the rules of the physical world in order to make better predictions and steer the algorithm toward physically meaningful relationships between inputs and outputs.

The study presents a model that can make more accurate river and stream temperature predictions, even when little data is available, which is the case in most rivers and streams. The model can also better generalize to different time periods.

"Water temperature in streams is a 'master variable' for many important aquatic systems, including the suitability of aquatic habitats, evaporation rates, greenhouse gas exchange, and efficiency of thermoelectric energy production," said Xiaowei Jia, a lead author of the study and assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Computer Science at University in the School of Computing and Information. "Accurate prediction of water temperature and streamflow also aids in decision making for resource managers, for example helping them to determine when and how much water to release from reservoirs to downstream rivers.

A common criticism of machine learning is that the predictions aren't rooted in physical meaning. That is, the algorithms are just finding correlations between inputs and outputs, and sometimes those correlations can be "spurious" or give false results. The model often won't be able to handle a situation where the relationship between inputs and outputs changes.

The new method published by Jia, who is also a 2020 Ph.D. graduate of the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Science and Engineering, and his colleagues uses "process-guided or knowledge-guided machine learning." This method is applied to a use case of water temperature prediction in the Delaware River Basin (DRB) and is designed to overcome some of the common pitfalls of prediction using machine learning. The method informs the machine learning model with a relatively simple process--correlation through time, the spatial connections between streams, and energy budget equations.

Data sparsity and variability in stream temperature dynamics are not unique to the Delaware River Basin. Relative to most of the continental United States, the Delaware River Basin is well-monitored for water temperature. The Delaware River Basin is therefore an ideal place to develop new methods for stream temperature prediction.

An interactive visual explainer released by the U.S. Geological Survey highlights these model developments and the importance of water temperature predictions in the DRB. The visualization demonstrates the societal need for water temperature predictions, where reservoirs provide drinking water to more than 15 million people, but also have competing water demands to maintain downstream flows and cold-water habitat for important game fish species. Reservoir managers can release cold water when they anticipate water temperature will exceed critical thresholds and having accurate water temperature predictions is key to using limited water resources only when necessary.

The recent study builds on a collaboration between water scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Minnesota Twin Cities computer scientists in Professor Vipin Kumar's lab in the College of Science and Engineering's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, where researchers have been developing knowledge-guided machine learning techniques.

"These knowledge-guided machine learning techniques are fundamentally more powerful than standard machine learning approaches and traditional mechanistic models used by the scientific community to address environmental problems," Kumar said.

These new generation of machine learning methods, funded by NSF's Harnessing the Data Revolution Program, are being used to address a variety of environmental problems such as improving lake and stream temperature predictions.

In another new NSF-funded study on predicting water temperature dynamics of unmonitored lakes in the American Geophysical Union's Water Resources Research led by University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate Jared Willard, researchers show how knowledge-guided machine learning models were used to solve one of the most challenging environmental prediction problems--prediction in unmonitored ecosystems.

Models were transferred from well-observed lakes to lakes with few to no observations, leading to accurate predictions even in lakes where temperature observations don't exist. Researchers say their approach readily scales to thousands of lakes, demonstrating that the method (with meaningful predictor variables and high-quality source models) is a promising approach for many kinds of unmonitored systems and environmental variables in the future.

New Orleans, LA - An analysis conducted by a group of investigators including Tamara Bradford, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, found that children and adolescents with Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) initially treated with intravenous immune globulin (IVIG) plus glucocorticoids had a lower risk of new or persistent cardiovascular dysfunction than IVIG alone. The research was part of the Overcoming COVID-19 Study, a nationwide collaboration of physicians at pediatric hospitals and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The results were published online in the New England Journal of Medicine, available here.

The researchers analyzed surveillance data on 518 children and adolescents with MIS-C who were admitted to US hospitals between March 15 and October 31, 2020. Eighty-nine (17%) received IVIG only; 241 (47%) received IVIG and glucocorticoids; 107 (21%) received IVIG, glucocorticoids, and a biologic; and 81 (16%) received other treatments, including glucocorticoids only, a biologic only, glucocorticoids and a biologic, or IVIG and a biologic. They found that initial treatment with IVIG plus glucocorticoids (103 patients) was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular dysfunction on or after day two than IVIG alone -- 103 patients or 17% vs. 31%. Among those who received IVIG plus glucocorticoids, left ventricular dysfunction occurred in 8% and 17% of the patients, respectively, and shock resulting in vasopressor use in 13% and 24%. The use of adjunctive therapy was also lower among patients who received IVIG plus glucocorticoids than among those who received IVIG alone -- 34% vs. 70%.

"Because MIS-C cases have been sporadic, following surges of COVID-19 cases, we haven't had the benefit of randomized clinical trials of treatment strategies," notes Dr. Bradford, who practices at Children's Hospital New Orleans.

The authors write that evaluating clinical outcomes in patients with MIS-C who were treated with various immunomodulatory therapies could provide insight into their effectiveness. Until published data that define best practices are available, these data provide clinicians with additional evidence to guide treatment for MIS-C. The ongoing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the emergence of variants of concern may promote continued outbreaks of MIS-C in the United States and internationally. Additional evidence-based studies are needed to examine the generalizability of these findings across a broad range of geographic regions and practice settings.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines MIS-C as a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. We do not yet know what causes MIS-C. However, many children with MIS-C had the virus that causes COVID-19 or had been around someone with COVID-19.

As of June 2, 2021, a total of 4,018 patients in the US have met the MIS-C case definition, with 36 deaths. Of those, 100-149 have been in Louisiana.

New research examined the effect of different parenting styles during adolescence on crime among African American men. The study found that parenting styles characterized by little behavioral control placed youth at significant risk for adult crime, even though some of those styles included high levels of nurturance. In contrast, youth whose parents monitored them, were consistent in their parenting, and had high levels of behavioral control were at lowest risk for adult crime.

The study, by researchers at the University of Georgia and Mississippi State University, is forthcoming in Criminology, a publication of the American Society of Criminology.

"We examined parenting styles rather than parenting behaviors, which allowed us to look at various combinations of parenting behaviors--things like warmth, monitoring, and consistent discipline--as they naturally co-occur rather than treating them as though each occurs in a vacuum," explains Leslie Gordon Simons, professor of sociology at the University of Georgia, who led the study.

In their analysis, the authors went beyond how parenting is typically studied to include styles that use corporal punishment. This approach allowed them to examine the impact of corporal punishment in the context in which it takes place (e.g., the presence or absence of nurturance or behavioral control).

The researchers examined longitudinal data on 318 African American men to identify the effects of eight parenting styles in early adolescence on crime in young adulthood. The participants, from a sample initially recruited from Iowa and Georgia, were part of the Family and Community Health Study and were generally representative of African American families in poor, working-class, and middle-class neighborhoods.

The researchers assessed parents' style when youth were 10 and 12 years old and identified eight styles of parenting: authoritative, no-nonsense, authoritarian, vigilant, permissive, lax, neglectful, or abusive. The researchers also measured criminal behavior when youth were 22 and 25 years old. In addition, the study considered how childhood traits (e.g., conduct problems, poor self-control), as well as background and social-environmental variables (e.g., parents' education, community violence), were likely to affect the quality of parenting and youth's antisocial behavior. Researchers also observed the effects of parenting styles mediated by factors that can cause criminal behavior, including antisocial behavior, negative emotions, affiliations with deviant peers, and involvement with the criminal justice system.

The study found that found that parenting styles that involved high levels of behavioral control (e.g., authoritative, authoritarian, no-nonsense) reduced the risk of crime in adulthood. In contrast, the study found that parenting styles with low levels of behavioral control (e.g., abusive, permissive, and lax) significantly increased the risk for crime in adulthood. The harmful consequences of abusive parenting (harsh corporal punishment in the absence of nurturance or behavioral control) are not surprising, but the negative consequences of permissive parenting (which were characterized by indulgent levels of warmth without behavioral control) and lax parenting (which involves high levels of nurturance combined with corporal punishment) suggest that parenting styles lacking monitoring and consistent discipline are more likely to put youth at risk for later criminal behavior, even when parents are warm and nurturing.

"This suggests that parenting with a lot of responsiveness is not, on its own, sufficient to reduce risk for criminal involvement," notes Tara Sutton, assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University, who coauthored the study.

The study also found that the effects of corporal punishment on crime depend on the parenting context in which the punishment occurs: It can enhance monitoring and consistency of some parenting styles (e.g., no-nonsense), but in the absence of these behaviors (e.g., lax, abusive parenting styles), it is a risk factor for later participation in crime. The authors note that although some parenting styles that include corporal punishment were effective at deterring adult crime, past research has found that there are costs associated with this this discipline strategy, such as adolescent depression, anxiety, and poor school performance.

The authors identified as a limitation that their study considered only one outcome--crime; studying other outcomes might yield different results. For example, experiencing warm, nurturing parenting as an adolescent may be associated with later success at being a loving romantic partner or father.

Also, while the study considered the impact of parenting during adolescence on criminal behavior during early adulthood, it did not consider the extent to which parenting might moderate the effects of various criminogenic factors (e.g., neighborhood crime), so the authors suggest the study be viewed as a conservative estimate of the effect of parenting on adult crime.

"Most studies on predictors of crime have focused on peer affiliations, neighborhood disadvantage, racial discrimination, and transitions to adulthood, with less attention to the effect of parenting during adolescence on adult criminal behavior," notes Dr. Simons. "Our study suggests that parents, who are the primary socialization agents during their children's formative years, continue to have considerable influence over their adolescents' later criminal behavior."

WASHINGTON--More than half of the structures in the contiguous United States are exposed to potentially devastating natural hazards--such as floods, tornadoes and wildfires--according to a new study in the AGU journal Earth's Future, which publishes interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants.

Increasing temperatures and environmental changes contribute to this trend, and the research also shines the light on another culprit: the way humans develop open land, towns and cities.

"We know that climate change is increasing the risk of damage from some natural hazards," said Virginia Iglesias, a research scientist with the University of Colorado Boulder Earth Lab and lead author of the paper. "But are losses also increasing because of the way that we are developing our cities, our towns?"

Yes, the new analysis found. To evaluate the impact of development on natural hazard risk, Iglesias and her colleagues built maps of earthquake, flood, hurricane, tornado and wildfire hazards and compared them to a unique dataset of historical land-use derived from Zillow's housing and property database. The team identified natural hazard "hotspots" by mapping where the probability or magnitude of an individual natural hazard event fell in the top 10 percent.

"Since development patterns drive exposure and loss, more detailed mapping can improve national-scale risk assessments," Iglesias said. "This study fills a gap by exploring changes in hazard exposure across the country, at fine resolution, for multiple hazards, and over long periods."

The study shows that 57% of the structures in the contiguous United States are in natural hazard hotspots; these hotspots make up only about a third of the total land. About 1.5 million structures are in hotspots of two or more natural hazards. Despite a national slowdown in development over the last decade, the number of structures in natural hazard hotspots is still increasing, the authors found.

In some hotspots, people have built protections like levees and floodwalls, the authors noted in the new assessment. This becomes an interesting question for further research: can that infrastructure protect properties from hazardous events in the future?

The study also investigated regional development patterns that affect hazard risk. In hurricane and earthquake hotspots, for example, the primary driver for an increase in risk was the fact that people were adding buildings, homes, and other structures to already developed areas in cities and suburbs. In wildfire, flood, and tornado hotspots, it was the expansion of new buildings in rural areas and wildlands that increased risk of damage.

Iglesias and her colleagues suggest that local decision makers could use the methods innovated in this study to improve risk assessments in their purview and to better understand the socio-economic variables that might increase the risk exposure of neighborhoods or communities.

"Vulnerability matters. There's evidence that natural disasters exacerbate socioeconomic inequality," Iglesias said. "If we want to make decisions that effectively increase the ability of communities to cope with natural hazards, we need to know where vulnerable populations live, and the specific hazards they're exposed to."

Researchers have shown why people with mental health disorders, including anorexia and panic disorders, experience physical signals differently.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, found that the part of the brain which interprets physical signals from the body behaves differently in people with a range of mental health disorders, suggesting that it could be a target for future treatments.

The researchers studied 'interoception' - the ability to sense internal conditions in the body - and whether there were any common brain differences during this process in people with mental health disorders. They found that a region of the brain called the dorsal mid-insula showed different activity during interoception across a range of disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders and anxiety disorders.

Many people with mental health disorders experience physical symptoms differently, whether that's feeling uncomfortably full in anorexia, or feeling like you don't have enough air in panic disorder.

The results, reported in The American Journal of Psychiatry, show that activity in the dorsal mid-insula could drive these different interpretations of bodily sensations in mental health. Increased awareness of the differences in how people experience physical symptoms could also be useful to those treating mental health disorders.

We all use exteroception - sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch - to navigate daily life. But interoception - the ability to interpret signals from our body - is equally important for survival, even though it often happens subconsciously.

"Interoception is something we are all doing constantly, although we might not be aware of it," said lead author Dr Camilla Nord from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. "For example, most of us are able to interpret the signals of low blood sugar, such as tiredness or irritability, and know to eat something. However, there are differences in how our brains interpret these signals."

Differences in interoceptive processes have previously been identified in people with eating disorders, anxiety and depression, panic disorder, addiction and other mental health disorders. Theoretical models have suggested that disrupted cortical processing drives these changes in interoceptive processing, conferring vulnerability to a range of mental health symptoms.

Nord and her colleagues combined brain imaging data from previous studies and compared differences in brain activity during interoception between 626 patients with mental health disorders and 610 healthy controls. "We wanted to find out whether there is something similar happening in the brain in people with different mental disorders, irrespective of their diagnosis," she said.

Their analysis showed that for patients with bipolar, anxiety, major depression, anorexia and schizophrenia, part of the cerebral cortex called the dorsal mid-insula showed different brain activation when processing pain, hunger and other interoceptive signals when compared to the control group.

The researchers then ran a follow-up analysis and found that the dorsal mid-insula does not overlap with regions of the brain altered by antidepressant drugs or regions altered by psychological therapy, suggesting that it could be studied as a new target for future therapeutics to treat differences in interoception.

"It's surprising that in spite of the diversity of psychological symptoms, there appears to be a common factor in how physical signals are processed differently by the brain in mental health disorders," said Nord. "It shows how intertwined physical and mental health are, but also the limitations of our diagnostic system - some important factors in mental health might be 'transdiagnostic', that is, found across many diagnoses."

In future, Dr Nord is planning studies to test whether this disrupted activation could be altered by new treatments for mental health disorders, such as brain stimulation.

Indigenous people living in rural Canada are 16 times more likely to have to travel 200 km or more to give birth than non-Indigenous people, underscoring the need for more access to birthing facilities and providers for Indigenous families in rural regions, found new research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.201903.

Using data from the Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey (MES), this study included 3100 mothers living in rural and small towns in Canada and weighted the sample to represent 31,100 mothers, totaling 1800 Indigenous and 29,300 non-Indigenous mothers. First Nations women living on-reserve were excluded from the MES. Indigenous mothers were younger and were more likely to be single, have lower levels of education, have an income under $30,000 a year, have experienced abuse and have been admitted to hospital during pregnancy than non-Indigenous mothers.

Taking these factors into account, the study found that in rural areas, 23% of Indigenous people travelled 200 km or more to give birth compared with only 2% of non-Indigenous people.

"Our findings show an Indigenous and non-Indigenous disparity in geographic access to birthing within rural areas and suggest that this disparity is not primarily driven by medical complications of pregnancy, birth complications requiring cesarian delivery or other birth complications," writes Dr. Janet Smylie, St. Michael's Hospital, Unity Health Toronto and the University of Toronto, with coauthors.

In Canada, Indigenous people are more likely to live in rural and remote regions than in urban areas. The study accounts for this, and the authors suggest that this discrepancy in travel distances can be attributed to a lack of birthing facilities and providers near rural Indigenous communities -- a legacy of colonial policies that prioritized non-Indigenous settlements for locating quality health care facilities.

"Given the size of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous disparity in access to birth close to home identified by our study, the documented negative impacts of birth away from home for Indigenous families, and existing recommendations, there is a clear need to advance policies that support more equitable geographic access to birthing for Indigenous families in rural areas," write the authors.

The authors suggest that supporting Indigenous midwives and other health professionals as well as involving Indigenous leaders and communities in health service planning and delivery could increase access to birth closer to home for Indigenous peoples living in rural and remote areas.

In the mid-2030s, multiple United States coastal regions may see rapid increases in the number of high-tide flooding (HTF) days, according to a study led by the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and published today in Nature Climate Change. The combined effects of sea-level rise (SLR) and natural fluctuations in tidal range are anticipated to cause tipping points in the frequency of HTF.

Coastal locations around the U.S., particularly along the Atlantic coast, are experiencing recurrent flooding at high tide. The impact of HTF accumulates over numerous seemingly minor occurrences, which can exceed the impact of rare extremes over time. These impacts are subtle--for example, the loss of revenue due to recurrent road and business closures--compared with the physical damage of property and infrastructure associated with extreme storm-driven events.

"We expect the most rapid increases to be along U.S. Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coastlines, which includes Hawai?i and other Pacific Islands. This is important, because this is the point at which high-tide flooding transitions from being primarily a local or regional issue and becomes a national issue affecting a majority of our nation's coastlines," said lead author Phil Thompson, director of the UH Sea Level Center and assistant professor of oceanography in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

Thompson and researchers from around the country analyzed tide gauge data from 89 coastal locations around the U.S., including 10 locations from Hawai'i and U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands, and developed a novel statistical technique that combined changes in tidal range with NOAA sea level rise scenarios for the 21st century to produce the projections of high-tide flooding.

Continued sea-level rise will exacerbate the issue where present, and many more locations will begin to experience recurrent high-tide flooding in the coming decades. Additionally, the research team found that annual cycles in tides and sea level can combine with oceanographic anomalies to produce many high-tide flooding episodes over a short amount of time--creating extreme months with clustered events.

The results of the study directly address how coastal communities could plan for future.

"Scientists, engineers and decision-makers are accustomed to thinking about rare high-impact events, for example, a 100-year storm, but we demonstrate that it is important to plan for extreme months or seasons during which the number of flooding episodes, rather than the magnitude, is exceptional," said Thompson.

Further, the scientists found that naturally occurring fluctuations in tidal range from one decade to the next alternately reduce and exacerbate the impacts of sea level rise.

"Understanding and communicating this phenomenon reduces the possibility of complacency and inaction during periods of reduced impacts and helps us be more prepared for periods when impacts will be heightened," Thompson added. "As an island state with much of its infrastructure and economy vulnerable to sea level rise, these results are crucial to understanding how impacts from sea level rise will evolve in coming decades in Hawai'i."

Research such as this provides sound, science-based information on which decision makers can base plans for adapting to sea level rise and mitigating the impacts of local and regional flooding.

Tropical cyclones (TCs) can bring strong wind, heavy rain, and storm surge. Meteorologists are concerned that the effects of global warming may change how these storms impact humans.

Scientists use global climate models (GCMs) in climate change studies to simulate future changes in temperature, precipitation, etc. However, due to their coarse resolutions, many models cannot properly simulate small-scale weather and climate systems like TCs, which means that they cannot capture all the dynamic processes within a TC.

A study led by Prof. Gao Xuejie from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) highlights ways to use regional climate models (RCMs) rather than GCMs to better simulate TC activity through the rest of the century.

The study was published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

"We conducted an unprecedented new set of RCM (RegCM4) simulations at 25-km grid spacing driven by five global models over East Asia," said Prof. GAO, the corresponding author of the study. "This provides a good opportunity to conduct studies on the topic of TCs in the western North Pacific (WNP), which is the most active basin of TC activity."

The team began by evaluating the performance of RegCM4 model, which reproduced recent and present-day TC activity throughout the WNP. They found that the model reproduced major features of observed TC activity throughout the region.

"Although it underestimated their intensity as most climate models did," said Prof. Gao. Recent studies showed that future TC intensity is the most difficult variable for models to simulate.

Data also suggested that by the end of the 21st century, the annual mean frequency of TC genesis and occurrence frequency is projected to increase, by 16% and 10%, respectively. Even with models underestimating future TC intensity, simulated TCs tend to be stronger.

Additionally, RCM projections indicated more TC landfalls within most coastal provinces of China, with an increase of ~18% over the whole Chinese territory.

"There are still large uncertainties in projecting future changes in TC activity, due to the limitation of the current climate models, and complexity of the TC systems, particularly concerning their genesis and occurrence," said Prof. Gao. "But most climate models agree with the increased intensity of future TCs, indicating higher risks associated with TCs in the future."

A species of butterfly found in Sub-Saharan Africa is able to migrate thousands of miles to Europe, crossing the Saharan Desert, in years when weather conditions are favourable, scientists have found.

The striking Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) butterfly has been shown for the first time to be capable of making the 12,000-14,000km round trip - the longest insect migration known so far - in greater numbers, when wetter conditions in the desert help the plants on which it lays eggs.

The international research team's findings increase understanding of how insects, including pollinators, pests and the diseases they carry could spread between continents in future as climate change alters seasonal conditions.

Professor Tom Oliver, an ecologist at the University of Reading and co-author of the study, said: "We know that the number of Painted Lady butterflies in Europe varies wildly, sometimes with 100 times more from one year to the next. However, the conditions that caused this were unknown, and the suggestion the butterflies could cross the Sahara desert and oceans to reach Europe was not proven.

"This research shows this unlikely journey is possible, and that certain climate conditions leading up to migration season have a big influence on the numbers that make it. It demonstrates how the wildlife we see in the UK can transcend national boundaries, and protecting such species requires strong international cooperation".

As well as answering long-asked questions about butterfly migrations, the findings could help predictions of the movements of other insects that affect people, such as the locusts currently plaguing East Africa, or by malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Professor Oliver said: "We enjoy seeing the beautiful Painted Lady butterflies in our gardens in Europe, but climate change will also lead to shifts in invasive species that are crop pests or those that spread diseases. Food shortages in East Africa are a reminder that the impacts of climate change can be much more dramatic than a few degrees of warming might first seem."

The Painted Lady migrates during the spring, following a winter breeding season. Researchers used long-term monitoring data from thousands of trained volunteer recorders, along with climate and atmospheric data in regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe to learn about their movement.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, found that increased vegetation in the African Savanna during the winter and in North Africa in the spring, combined with favourable tail winds, are the three most important factors in the number that migrate to Europe.

Painted Lady caterpillars feed on the leaves of plants that thrive in wetter winter conditions in the Savannah and Sahel regions of sub-Saharan Africa, causing population numbers to explode. They migrate across the Sahara, and when there are also wet and green spring conditions in North Africa these allow further breeding and swell the numbers that cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe.

Simulations by the scientists also showed that there are regularly favourable tailwinds between Africa and Western Europe, offering insects opportunities for transcontinental travel.

The team calculated that the butterflies must fly non-stop during the day and rest during night to cross the Sahara, making stops to feed on nectar. This is similar to the pattern in which night-flying songbirds migrate.

They concluded the butterflies must fly up to 1-3km above sea level to take advantage of favourable tailwinds, as their maximum self-powered flying speed of around 6 metres per second would make a Sahara crossing extremely difficult.

The researchers used observations of similar butterfly species to calculate that Painted Ladies have enough body fat after metamorphosis to sustain 40 hours of non-stop flying, and keep this topped up by feeding on nectar whenever possible in order to cross the Sahara.

The findings may help improve predictions of which insect species might be found in different regions in future due to climate change, and the numbers they could arrive in.

The authors of new research say supporting children and young people's mental health is as important as supporting their academic progress, and that particular attention should be paid to the fact that some young people have struggled more than others.

Findings from their study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, focused on the connections between loneliness, social contact, parental relationships, and the mental health of adolescents aged 11-16 during the first full UK lockdown from March to May 2020.

Their analysis drew on self-reported data from 894 young people who each completed a survey throughout to gauge their experiences of lockdown and its effects on their emotions, relationships, and feelings.

The team from the universities of Bath, Bristol, Oxford, Leicester, Reading and UCL identified that it was the type of social contact with friends and family that most shaped young people's mental health outcomes. For example, whereas regular voice and video calls with friends had positive impacts for individuals, more indirect communications, such as increased texting / messaging, including via social media, either made no difference or had a negative impact.

The study found a strong association between perceived closeness with parents and positive impacts on psychological distress. This, say the authors, is different from proximity with parents, and instead is about emotional connection. For example, parents may have been working away from the home during lockdown but what mattered was the closeness of their connection with children when they returned. Unsurprising and consistent with previous findings, young people who were lonelier also had greater mental health difficulties at the outset of lockdown.

With their results, in the context of a further disrupted year and with the prospect of summer holiday catch-ups, the researchers suggest that schools and other community support organisations need to address the differential experiences of young people to ensure those who have struggled get appropriate support. This can help avoid some of the potential long-term and negative impacts of loneliness in childhood, they say.

They argue that summer holiday programmes must prioritise wellbeing support, including social interaction either in-person or digitally. This means making time for socialising is crucial. In addition, policymakers need to acknowledge the growing demand for mental health services that will be required and urgently increase funding in child and adolescent mental health services.

First author, Dr Kate Cooper from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, explained: "We need to fundamentally increase mental health service provision for young people who are struggling following this exceptionally challenging period. Our research found that young people who were closer to their parents, and who had more contact with their friends and family by voice and video calls had better mental health after a month in lockdown - but of course not all young people had this support.

"Schools have been working incredibly hard to meet student needs throughout the pandemic, but it's important that when we think about catch-up programmes this summer these are not just orientated towards academic support. That is of course important, but it's children's wellbeing and mental health that provide the foundation for learning, and so it would be counterproductive to provide catch-up programmes which do not prioritise mental health and social connections."

Dr Maria Loades, clinical psychologist also from Bath's Department of Psychology, added: "We need to do all we can to support young people's wellbeing, and to ensure that they are encouraged to seek support if they are struggling with their mental health, as early as possible. The pandemic has been tough for young people and parents, and the full legacy of this on mental health and social connection is yet to be fully understood."

Research from Dr Loades released last June, shortly after the first wave of COVID-19, highlighted the potential long-term impact of children's loneliness on their mental health as a result of lockdown.

Helsinki University research group used live tissue imaging for the first time to visualise the emergence of the mammary gland.

Despite long-standing interest, the cellular mechanisms driving the initiation of mammary gland development have remained elusive for decades, mostly due to technical limitations in studying dynamic cell behaviors in live tissues. Recent advances in microscopic methods and availability of various mouse models allowed the research group of Marja Mikkola from HiLIFE Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki to address this question. This is the first time when live tissue imaging has been used to visualise the emergence of the mammary gland.

Mammary gland is the class-defining organ of mammals, yet we know surprisingly little how its development commences. In their recent study published in Journal of Cell Biology, the research group of Marja Mikkola used time-lapse imaging to show that the growth of the mammary bud is primarily fueled by migration of cells to the bud. In contrast, although increase in cellular size and cell proliferation contribute to this process, the role of these mechanisms remains minor.

"Interestingly, mammary bud cells, unlike most of other skin derivatives such as hair follicle and tooth bud, do not divide for several days, indicating that this might be a unique feature of early mammary gland development" says graduate student Ewelina Trela, the lead author of the study. "However, we do not yet know why this happens", she continues.

Mammary buds use a previously undescribed mechanism for invagination

Tissue invagination, or tissue folding inwards into the underlying stroma, is a fundamental mechanism that occurs to generate the architecture of many organs. In the same piece of work, the authors describe a novel mechanism for tissue invagination.

"Using confocal fluorescence microscopy, we found thin and elongated epidermal keratinocytes surrounding mammary bud in a rim like fashion: their appearance and disappearance coincided with the invagination process suggesting that these cells, named ring cells, could be functionally important" details principal investigator Marja Mikkola.

Next, the Mikkola group teamed up with the group of Sara Wickström at HiLIFE and Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki to establish live imaging of the forming mammary bud, which confirmed that ring cells move circumferentially around the mammary bud.

The study also revealed that the ring cells exert contractile force through the actomyosin network, via non-muscle myosin IIA (NMIIA). The functionality of ring cells was impaired in NMIIA deficient mice leading to compromised mammary bud shape. Whether other developing organs utilize a similar cellular mechanism for invagination remains an open question.

Washington, DC, June 21, 2021 - Depression in youth, between the ages of 10 and 24 years, is both a leading cause of stress and a possible risk factor for future diseases and impairment. Now, a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, confirms that depression in childhood or adolescence is associated with higher levels of adult anxiety and substance use disorders, worse health and social functioning, less financial and educational achievement, and increased criminality.

The findings are based on the Great Smoky Mountains Study, an ongoing longitudinal community-based project tracking the health of 1,420 participants from the rural US Southeast that has been ongoing since 1993.

Lead author William Copeland, PhD, and professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont, VA, USA said: "One in twelve children struggle with depression at some point between the ages 9 and 16, with girls more likely to be affected than boys. This is a common childhood challenge, that, unfortunately, often goes unnoticed by the adults in children's lives, including parents, teachers, and pediatricians.

"The literature is clear that we have effective treatments to help children who are dealing with depression. The problem is that in the real world the majority of children with depression never receive any treatment at all and have to cope with this challenge on their own. This study highlights the consequences of this unmet need."

Children in the study were assessed for depression symptoms through interviews with the children and one of their parents up to eight times between the ages 9 to 16. These same participants were then followed up to four times in young adulthood, at ages 19, 21, 25, and 30 to evaluate their mental health and their real world functioning in terms of health, wealth, crime, and social outcomes.

A diagnosis of depression in childhood was associated with a broad range of poorer well-being indicators in adulthood. These links between early depression and poor adult outcomes persisted after accounting for the participants' early exposure to adversities like low socioeconomic status, family problems, abuse and bullying.

The links were strongest for children who chronically displayed high levels of depressive symptoms across childhood rather than those that happened to report symptoms at a single timepoint. This finding is consistent with the idea that persistent depressed mood, in particular, is associated with the worst long-term adult outcomes.

Co-author Iman Alaie, MSc, and a PhD student in the Department of Neuroscience at Uppsala University, Sweden said: "The participants who became depressed as adolescents actually fared worse in the long term than those who had their first bout of depression already in childhood. From a developmental perspective, this was quite an unexpected finding given the current recognition that earlier onset of the disorder may portend poorer outcomes."

The study was not without some good news.

Children who received specialty mental health services to address their mental health challenges were less likely to have worsening mental health problems - particularly anxiety - as they entered adulthood. Even here, however, children who received services continued to display problems in other important areas, including substance use, suggesting that childhood mental health services alone may not be a panacea against all future health problems.

"Our findings underscore the importance of timely and effective treatment, but we should also consider additional support needs during the transition to adulthood," said Ulf Jonsson, an Associate Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University.

Overall, the study affirms the public health burden from childhood depression and depressive symptoms, especially when experienced over longer periods of time. "When we consider the burden of depression on children, their families and school, and look at this from a public health perspective, it becomes clear that we need do a better job alleviating risk factors for childhood depression when possible, having better screening processes to detect childhood depression and to use evidence-based preventions and treatments when we see that a child is at risk for depression or has developed depression," added Lilly Shanahan, PhD, professor in the department of Psychology and at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.