Earth

In a new study published in Conservation Science and Practice, researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) partnered with Indonesian experts to explore the motivations and challenges of women pursuing a career in conservation sciences in Indonesia. Given that Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet but is simultaneously experiencing extreme rates of deforestation, it is an important target country for the conservation of global biodiversity. Conservation work remains male-dominated in Indonesia, especially fieldwork, so gaining a better understanding of the cultural norms and barriers in place for Indonesian women aspiring to a career in conservation represents an important step in supporting women in this field. With more diverse faces and voices representing global conservation, the country and others like it can tap into the full potential of their intellectual and creative resources to help solve grave global challenges like dwindling biodiversity.

"We are facing huge challenges in the conservation of biodiversity globally," says Erin Poor, postdoctoral researcher in Environmental Science and Technology (ENST) at UMD and leader of this work. "Climate change, habitat loss and encroachment, an increasing human population putting stress on natural landscapes, increased agriculture - these are all large, complex, multidisciplinary challenges. The more intelligent minds we have working to identify creative solutions that benefit humans and wildlife, the better. This means enabling and creating space for women and other underrepresented groups to voice their ideas for conservation solutions."

In order to explore this idea while also practically supporting Indonesian women in conservation, Poor developed and facilitated a workshop in Riau Province, central Sumatra, Indonesia due to its importance in global conservation. Working closely with Indonesian leaders at the World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia (WWF) and the Universitas Gadjah Mada, Poor and the UMD team identified a need for culturally appropriate training and mentorship for women wanting to conduct conservation fieldwork. The workshop was held from September 13-15, 2019, with the goal of providing participants with networking opportunities and offering a setting in which more experienced women in conservation could mentor less experienced women and train them on practical fieldwork skills. As a pilot workshop, 11 Indonesian early-career women attended the workshop, with 3 established Indonesian women providing mentorship and instruction.

"The young women in our workshop were excited and passionate about conservation," says Poor. "We seemed to pick up on the lack of technical training for these women (which may also be an issue among men), and the lack of encouragement and support evidenced by discouragement from family members, a lack of female mentors and networks, and societal perceptions about female roles. Women are excited and passionate about conservation work, they just need to be given the support and tools to be effective."

Documenting the motivations and challenges of these women and their unique experiences represents an important step in making sure women in conservation have the support they need, explains Jennifer Mullinax, assistant professor with ENST and co-author.

"It was telling to see the limited information that existed on the paths, support, and limitations of women in STEM in Indonesia. This is one of the first bricks in the wall of knowledge we need to build a more inclusive and diverse conservation discipline in the global south."

Mullinax provided support for the trip to Indonesia, which was in many ways a continuation of work that Poor had started while pursuing her PhD. "I believe strongly in uplifting and supporting women, especially women in STEM," stresses Mullinax. "As Erin was describing her experiences in Sumatra and her intentions of having the training workshop, I suggested this may be an opportunity to survey the participants and start documenting the needs and barriers of women pursuing STEM in Indonesia. Everyone was on board and considered it a great opportunity as well as potential justification for doing more, larger training and surveys in the future."

To assist with the survey development and analysis, Poor and Mullinax reached out to Jen Shaffer, assistant professor in Anthropology with the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS). Shaffer identified a key motivator for the women in this study as a love of nature and a passion for the environment, while challenges were mainly related to gender and cultural norms.

"Although I was unable to participate in the workshop, I really appreciated the opportunity to document the motivations and challenges that established and early career Indonesian women working in conservation science expressed," says Shaffer. "Some of their challenges are unique, and others are experienced by women scientists regardless of where they live and work. Reading their motivation responses to work in conservation was also very uplifting. I saw lots of parallels with discussions I've had with students and colleagues working in conservation science, and it shows our common feelings of passion for, excitement about, and care for nature. We are all working towards a common goal."

"The women in our study expressed some of the same sentiments that I experienced," adds Poor. "First, conservation advertisements often advertise for men - expressing inherent doubt in the physical capabilities of women to do field work. Secondly, Indonesia is extremely diverse in religious, ethnic, and social beliefs, but a belief persists in some geographic regions and in some parts of society that women should be in less physical jobs or be family and household caretakers. Another factor impacting women in the field is that some people also still believe that unmarried men and women should not be alone together."

Poor experienced some of these issues firsthand during her time in Indonesia as a doctoral student. "For me, this was extremely personal," says Poor. "I spent two years in Indonesia doing field work for my PhD research. Almost all of my female friends and I faced sexual harassment and discrimination repeatedly. The field teams I worked with were all male (who were all excellent professionals), and I tried to recruit women to join my team but I only found one woman who actually was able and willing to come to the field. She ended up being hired by WWF as a field team leader (only the second woman in central Sumatra) after my research, and I count that as one of the biggest successes of my research. After experiencing persistent doubt about my abilities as a woman in Indonesia, working to get more women in the field became a personal passion of mine."

Despite these challenges, Poor and the team are hopeful for the future of women in conservation and have plans to expand this work. Poor has been elected as the Vice President of Membership for the Society for Conservation Biology, and she hopes to reach out to young women to increase their involvement in the field. She and the team also hope to continue their research and training efforts on a broader scale.

"I hope this spurs others to take a look at recruitment and retention of women scientists in other areas as well," adds Poor. "By identifying the challenges and motivations women are facing, especially in understudied biodiverse areas in the global south, we can work to remove these challenges and encourage motivations. However, this must be done at the request and with the coordination of scientists in those locations. I am hoping that in Indonesia specifically, those involved with this study will begin thinking about and implementing similar workshops and events specifically geared towards young women conservation biologists."

Gas hydrates are a solid compound of gases and water that have an ice-like structure at low temperatures and high pressures. Compounds of methane and water, so-called methane hydrates, are found especially at many ocean margins - also in the Black Sea. In addition to a possible use as an energy source, methane hydrate deposits are being investigated for their stability, as they can dissolve with changes in temperature and pressure. In addition to releases of methane, this can also have an impact on submarine slope stability.

During a six-week expedition with the German research vessel METEOR in autumn 2017, a team from MARUM and GEOMAR investigated a methane hydrate deposit in the deep-sea fan of the Danube in the western Black Sea. During the cruise, which was part of the joint project SUGAR III "Submarine Gas Hydrate Resources" jointly funded by the BMWi and BMBF, the gas hydrate deposits were drilled using the mobile seafloor drilling device MARUM-MeBo200. The results of the investigations, which have now been published in the international journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, have provided the scientists with new insights into changes in the stability of gas hydrates.

"Based on data from previous expeditions, we selected two working areas where, on the one hand, methane hydrate and free methane gas coexist in the upper 50 to 150 metres of the hydrate stability zone and, on the other hand, a landslide and gas seeps were found directly at the edge of the gas hydrate stability zone", explains Prof. Dr. Gerhard Bohrmann, expedition leader from MARUM and co-author of the study. "For our investigations we used our drilling device MARUM-MeBo200 and broke all previous depth records with a maximum depth reached of almost 145 metres".

In addition to obtaining samples, the scientists were, for the first time, also able to carry out detailed in situ temperature measurements down to the base of the gas hydrate stability under the seabed. Previously, this baseline was determined using seismic methods, from which the so-called "bottom simulating reflector" (BSR) was obtained as an indicator of this base. "However, our work has now proven for the first time that the approach using the BSR does not work for the Black Sea", explains Dr. Michael Riedel from GEOMAR, lead author of the study. "From our point of view, the gas-hydrate stability boundary has already approached the warmer conditions in the subsurface, but the free methane gas, which is always found at this lower edge, has not yet managed to rise with it", Riedel continues. The reasons for this could be attributed to the low permeability of the sediments, which means the methane gas is still "stuck" down there and can only rise very, very slowly under its own power, according to the scientist.

"However, our new analyses of the seismic data have also shown that in a few places the methane gas can break through the BSR. There, a new BSR is just establishing itself over the 'old' reflector. This is new and has never been seen before", says Dr Matthias Haeckel, co-author of the study from GEOMAR. "Our interpretation is that the gas can rise in these places, as disturbances in the seabed here favour the flow of gas", Haeckel continues.

"In summary, we have found a very dynamic situation in this region, which also appears to be related with the development of the Black Sea since the last ice age", says Michael Riedel. After the last glacial maximum (LGM), the sea level rose (pressure increase), and when the global sea level rose above the threshold of the Bosporus, salty water from the Mediterranean Sea was able to propagate into the Black Sea. Before that, this ocean basin was basically a freshwater lake. In addition, global warming since the LGM has caused a temperature rise of the bottom water in the Black Sea. The combination of these three factors - salinity, pressure and temperature - had drastic effects on the methane hydrates, which decompose as a result of these effects. The current study exemplifies the complex feedbacks and time scales that induce climate changes in the marine environment and is therefore well suited to estimate the expected consequences of today's more rapid global warming - especially on the Arctic gas hydrate deposits.

Cruise leader Gerhard Bohrmann summarizes: "At the end of the SUGAR-3 programme, the drilling campaign with MeBo200 in the Black Sea showed us once again very clearly how quickly the methane hydrate stability in the ocean deposits also changes with environmental fluctuations".

A team of Australian and German researchers has discovered a novel pathway that plants can use to save water and improve their drought tolerance.

The research published today in Nature Communications shows that the molecule GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), most commonly associated with relaxation in animals, can control the size of the pores on plant leaves to minimise water loss.

Matthew Gilliham, Director of the Waite Research Institute at the University of Adelaide, who led the research team, said they found: "GABA minimised pore openings in a range of crops such as barley, broad bean and soybean, and in lab plants that produce more GABA than normal. This led to the lab plants using less water from the soil and surviving longer in the drought experiments."

"We found plants that produce lots of GABA reduce how much their pores open, thereby taking a smaller breath and reducing water loss."

In an earlier study, members of the team found that GABA - known as a nerve signal in animals - could act as plant GABA receptors. This led to renewed speculation that GABA could be a signal in plants as well as in animals.

Lead author on the study, Dr Bo Xu, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology adds: "Both plants and animals produce GABA and they put it to different uses. Plants don't have nerves, instead they appear to use GABA to match their energy levels with their response to the environment."

"GABA doesn't close pores on leaves like other stress signals, it acts in a different way - how much a plant accumulates GABA when it is stressed determines how much it applies the brake pedal to reduce the pore opening the following morning, and water loss that day - like a stress memory of the day before."

Professor Rainer Hedrich at the University of Würzburg, a pioneer in studying how plants regulate water loss, led the German component of the study.

"I've been studying how plants regulate their stomatal pores for over 35 years. To find a completely new and unexpected way that they are regulated has certainly been one of our most surprising discoveries. I look forward to seeing how this translates out in the field."

The team recently received a new grant from the Australian Federal Government to partner with researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK, and are looking for new PhD students to join the team to discover new components of the signalling pathway and to trial its impact in crops.

SAN ANTONIO -- March 29, 2021 -- The SwRI-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) orbiting Jupiter aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft has detected new faint aurora features, characterized by ring-like emissions, which expand rapidly over time. SwRI scientists determined that charged particles coming from the edge of Jupiter's massive magnetosphere triggered these auroral emissions.

"We think these newly discovered faint ultraviolet features originate millions of miles away from Jupiter, near the Jovian magnetosphere's boundary with the solar wind," said Dr. Vincent Hue, lead author of a paper accepted by the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. "The solar wind is a supersonic stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun. When they reach Jupiter, they interact with its magnetosphere in a way that is still not well understood."

Both Jupiter and Earth have magnetic fields that provide protection from the solar wind. The stronger the magnetic field, the larger the magnetosphere. Jupiter's magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than Earth's and creates a magnetosphere so large it begins to deflect the solar wind 2-4 million miles before it reaches Jupiter.

"Despite decades of observations from Earth combined with numerous in-situ spacecraft measurements, scientists still do not fully understand the role the solar wind plays in moderating Jupiter's auroral emissions," said SwRI's Dr. Thomas Greathouse, a co-author on this study. "Jupiter's magnetospheric dynamics, the motion of charged particles within its magnetosphere, is largely controlled by Jupiter's 10-hour rotation, the fastest in the solar system. The solar wind's role is still debated."

One of the goals of the Juno mission, recently approved by NASA for an extension until 2025, is to explore Jupiter's magnetosphere by measuring its auroras with the UVS instrument. Previous observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and Juno have allowed scientists to determine that most of Jupiter's powerful auroras are generated by internal processes, that is the motion of charged particles within the magnetosphere. However, on numerous occasions, UVS has detected a faint type of aurora, characterized by rings of emissions expanding rapidly with time.

"The high-latitude location of the rings indicates that the particles causing the emissions are coming from the distant Jovian magnetosphere, near its boundary with the solar wind," said Bertrand Bonfond, a co-author on this study from Belgium's Liège University. In this region, plasma from the solar wind often interacts with the Jovian plasma in a way that is thought to form "Kelvin-Helmholtz" instabilities. These phenomena occur when there are shear velocities, such as at the interface between two fluids moving at different speeds. Another potential candidate to produce the rings are dayside magnetic reconnection events, where oppositely directed Jovian and interplanetary magnetic fields converge, rearrange and reconnect.

Both of these processes are thought to generate particle beams that could travel along the Jovian magnetic field lines, to eventually precipitate and trigger the ring auroras on Jupiter.

"Although this study does not conclude what processes produce these features, the Juno extended mission will allow us to capture and study more of these faint transient events," Hue said.

Materials such as gallium arsenide are extremely important for the production of electronic devices. As supplies of it are limited, or they can present health and environmental hazards, specialists are looking for alternative materials. So-called conjugated polymers are candidates. These organic macromolecules have semi-conductor properties, i.e. they can conduct electricity under certain conditions. One possible way of producing them in the desired two-dimensional - i.e. extremely flat - form is presented by surface chemistry, a field of research established in 2007.

Since then, many reactions have been developed and interesting materials produced for possible applications. Most of the reactions are based on the formation of carbon-carbon bonds. A team consisting of various working groups from the departments of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Münster (Germany) has now used silicon-silicon bond formation to construct a polymer - a premiere in surface chemistry.

Previously, one obstacle had been the linking of silicon atoms. Constructing polymers in this way using traditional synthetic chemistry, i.e. in a solution, is complicated. The fact that they are now the first to have succeeded in producing a silicon polymer is something the Münster researchers owe to the possibilities offered by surface chemistry. The trick was as follows: the linking of the atoms takes place on an extremely smooth metal surface, onto which the molecules are vapour-deposited. This produces very thin material layers. If the usual carbon is replaced by silicon, long polymers can be obtained, even with mild reaction conditions. From silicon polymers, the researchers hope for innovative material properties and new, promising candidates for potential applications. The results of the study have been published in the journal "Nature Chemistry".

Methodology

A team of chemists headed by Prof. Armido Studer produced molecules consisting of silyl groups connected by means of a so-called organic linker. Physicists from the team led by Prof. Harald Fuchs investigated their reactivity on metal surfaces (gold or copper). They demonstrated that the reaction of the silicon-hydrogen bonds within the silyl groups already occurred at room temperature, whereas a similar coupling of carbon-carbon bonds normally requires temperatures above 300 degrees Celsius. In the next step, the researchers clarified the exact structure of the links formed: two hydrogen atoms are removed from each silicon atom in order to create the high-order structures. More detailed analyses showed in addition a bonding of the silicon atoms to the metal surface.

As the structure of the final polymer could not be completely clarified using customary scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), a team headed by chemist Prof. Johannes Neugebauer used computational chemical methods for this purpose and simulated the STM images of various potential products. To provide further support in characterizing the product, a team led by physicist Dr. Harry Mönig employed a method specifically intended for these issues based on atomic force microscopy. This method made it possible not only to depict the entire product, but also to localize the hydrogen atoms with drastically increased resolution. Johannes Neugebauer's team also succeeded in developing a mechanistic model and simulating the necessary reaction steps to form the product found.

Contributions from different angles

"The properties of the polymers could be examined in future studies with regard to their electrical conductivity," says chemist Dr. Henning Klaasen. "Also, the molecular design could be varied in order to adapt the properties for an application of the materials as organic semi-conductors." And Lacheng Liu, a PhD student in Physics, adds, "In addition, this method could be used to develop a completely new strategy for molecular changes to functionalization of surfaces and nanoparticles."

In future, the team plans to investigate in greater detail the surface chemistry of new silicon-containing functional groups and is also aiming to introduce further functional groups. "We have shown that not only carbon can be used to create fascinating structures. The various contributions made from different angles - by chemists and physicists, by people with a theoretical approach, by others with a practical approach - all required a high degree of creativity. This enabled us to explore a new path in bond formation reactions in surface chemistry," is how Melanie Wittler, a PhD student in Chemistry, sums up the work done.

A new study by Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Health Sciences researchers - published today in the American Journal of Epidemiology - found correlations between increased expressions of autistic-like behaviours in pre-school aged children to gestational exposure to select environmental toxicants, including metals, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), phthalates, and bisphenol-A (BPA).

This population study measured the levels of 25 chemicals in blood and urine samples collected from 1,861 Canadian women during the first trimester of pregnancy. A follow up survey was conducted with 478 participants, using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) tool for assessing autistic-like behaviours in pre- school children.

The researchers found that higher maternal concentrations of cadmium, lead, and some phthalates in blood or urine samples was associated with increased SRS scores, and these associations were particularly strong among children with a higher degree of autistic-like behaviours. Interestingly, the study also noted that increased maternal concentrations of manganese, trans-Nonachlor, many organophosphate pesticide metabolites, and mono-ethyl phthalate (MEP) were most strongly associated with lower SRS scores.

The study's lead author, Josh Alampi, notes that this study primarily "highlights the relationships between select environmental toxicants and increased SRS scores. Further studies are needed to fully assess the links and impacts of these environmental chemicals on brain development during pregnancy."

The results were achieved by using a statistical analysis tool, called Bayesian quantile regression, that allowed investigators to determine which individual toxicants were associated with increased SRS scores in a more nuanced way than conventional methods.

"The relationships we discovered between these toxicants and SRS scores would not have been detected through the use of a means-based method of statistical analysis (such as linear regression)," noted Alampi. "Although quantile regression is not frequently used by investigators, it can be a powerful way to analyze complex population-based data."

Heavy caseloads, job stress and biases can strain relations between parole and probation officers and their clients, upping offenders' likelihood of landing back behind bars.

On a more hopeful note, a new University of California, Berkeley, study suggests that nonjudgmental empathy training helps court-appointed supervision officers feel more emotionally connected to their clients and, arguably, better able to deter them from criminal backsliding.

The findings, published March 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show, on average, a 13% decrease in recidivism among the clients of parole and probation officers who participated in the UC Berkeley empathy training experiment.

"If an officer received this empathic training, real-world behavioral outcomes changed for the people they supervised, who, in turn, were less likely to go back to jail," said study lead and senior author Jason Okonofua, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.

The results are particularly salient in the face of nationwide efforts to reduce prison and jail populations amid a deadly pandemic and other adversities. The U.S. criminal justice system has among the highest rates of recidivism, with approximately two-thirds of incarcerated people rearrested within three years of their release and one-half sent back behind bars.

"The combination of COVID-19 and ongoing criminal justice reforms are diverting more people away from incarceration and toward probation or parole, which is why we need to develop scalable ways to keep pace with this change," said Okonofua, who has led similar interventions for school teachers to check their biases before disciplining students.

At the invitation of a correctional department in a large East Coast city, Okonofua and graduate students in his lab at UC Berkeley sought to find out if a more caring approach on the part of court-appointed supervision officers would reverse trends in recidivism.

Among other duties, parole and probation officers keep track of their clients' whereabouts, make sure they don't miss a drug test or court hearing, or otherwise violate the terms of their release, and provide resources to help them stay out of trouble and out of jail.

For the study, the researchers surveyed more than 200 parole and probation officers who oversee more than 20,000 people convicted of crimes ranging from violent crimes to petty theft. Research protocols bar identifying the agency and its location.

Using their own and other scholars' methodologies, the researchers designed and administered a 30-minute online empathy survey that focused on the officers' job motivation, biases and views on relationships and responsibilities.

To trigger their sense of purpose and values, and tap into their empathy, the UC Berkeley survey asked what parts of the work they found fulfilling. One respondent talked about how, "When I run across those guys, and they're doing well, I'm like, 'Awesome!'" Others reported that being an advocate for people in need was most important to them.

As for addressing biases -- including assumptions that certain people are predisposed to a life of crime -- the survey cited egregious cases in which probation and parole officers abused their power over those under their supervision.

Survey takers were also asked to rate how much responsibility they bear, as individuals and members of a profession, for their peers' transgressions. Most answered that they bore no responsibility.

Ten months after administering the training, researchers found a 13% decrease in recidivism among the offenders whose parole and probation officers had completed the empathy survey.

While the study yielded no specifics on what prevented the parolees and people on probation for reoffending in the period following the officers' empathy training, the results suggest that a change in relationship dynamics played a key role.

"The officer is in a position of power to influence if it's going to be an empathic or punitive relationship in ways that the person on parole or probation is not," Okonofua said.

"As our study shows," he added, "the relationship between probation and parole officers and the people they supervise plays a pivotal role and can lead to positive outcomes, if efforts to be more understanding are taken into consideration."

About 61% of Americans have had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), experts' formal term for a traumatic childhood event.

ACEs--which may include abuse, neglect and severe household dysfunction--often lead to psychological and social struggles that reach into adulthood, making ACEs a major public health challenge. But the long-term consequences of ACEs are just beginning to be understood in detail. To fill in the picture, two recent BYU studies analyzed how ACEs shape adolescents' delinquent behaviors as well as fathers' parenting approaches.

ACEs linked to girls'--but not boys'--delinquent behavior

Although the role of adversity in adolescent delinquency has long been examined in the field of criminology, only in the past decade have criminologists referred to these events as ACEs and seriously considered how early ACEs predict a person's delinquency, according to BYU sociology professors Hayley Pierce and Melissa S. Jones.

In their study of that relationship, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Pierce and Jones showed that ACEs do have a significant effect on teenagers' criminal behavior--at least for girls. Girls who experienced four or more ACEs by age five, during the most sensitive period of brain development, were 36% more likely to participate in delinquent behavior. Boys' delinquent behavior, on the other hand, appeared unrelated to early ACEs, although boys have an overall higher rate of delinquency.

"These results run counter to previous research suggesting that girls are far more likely than boys to internalize trauma through developing an eating disorder or other self-harming behaviors," said Jones. "What we find here is the opposite: girls are externalizing trauma through delinquent acts."

Pierce and Jones drew their data from the longitudinal Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. The survey examined childhood adversity and adolescent behavior over a 15-year period for approximately 5,000 children, with a high proportion born to poor, single-parent or minority families in the U.S.

"Our analysis points toward the need for gendered strategies in working with children with ACEs because the different ways boys and girls are socialized shape how they process trauma," Jones said.

The study should also promote compassion and understanding for adolescents who act out, the researchers emphasized.

"One of the most important things I teach in my juvenile delinquency class is that delinquency is a symptom of an underlying problem," said Jones. "If an adolescent is getting arrested, there's often something else going on in the child's life, such as problems at home."

"When adolescents engage in delinquency, it's important first to ask, 'Okay, what got you here?' and work from that knowledge," Pierce added.

ACEs predict less warmth, more harsh discipline in fathers

Even though ACEs may not be linked to teen boys' delinquency, having ACEs earlier in life does apparently impact how men parent.

Most existing research on ACEs and parenting focuses on mothers and looks exclusively at abuse. Curious about ACEs' effects on fathers and the wider range of ACEs that may influence more day-to-day aspects of parenting, BYU sociologist Kevin Shafer and Scott Easton of Boston College decided to examine parenting patterns in men with past ACEs.

In a study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, they found that fathers who had experienced at least three ACEs were more likely to use harsh disciplinary techniques. Compared to the mothers with ACEs from previous studies, these men were also less likely to exhibit positive parenting characteristics, such as giving affection to their kids, providing care for young children and being emotionally supportive. The more ACEs a father had, the greater their effect on his parenting.

ACEs likely influence fathering partly because ACEs are associated with poor mental health, including depression, anxiety or anger management problems. Mental health challenges in turn influence how men parent their children.

"While on the face of it that sounds bad, it's weirdly also a good thing because even though ACEs happened in the past and can't be changed, you can get treatment for mental health issues in the present," said Shafer. "When men get that help, they can blunt the impact of their ACEs on how they parent their kids, and that improves their kids' outcomes. So their own childhood isn't destiny."

The study analyzed data from the 2015-16 U.S. Survey of Contemporary Fatherhood, which queried over 2,000 fathers about their adverse childhood experiences, degree of psychological distress and parenting habits.

The connection between ACEs and negative fathering techniques is especially indicative of the "untreated trauma" suffered by many men, which Shafer believes is "one of the biggest public health issues we have."

"We have a lot of individuals walking around with ACEs going untreated, and our study shows that has a wide-ranging impact on people in their lives," said Shafer. A big part of the solution would be a "comprehensive public mental health strategy" for fathers, which may include better incorporating fathers into the childbirth experience and early pediatric care, as well as regularly screening fathers for mental health, he concluded.

Hail severity may increase in most regions of the world while Australia and Europe are expected to experience more hailstorms as a result of climate change, an international review led by a UNSW Sydney researcher has found.

The review study, published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, examined the effects climate change will have on hail in the future.

It shows a global summary of hail trends from past observations and projected future trends from simulations and models.

The review led to the general expectation that hailstorm frequency will decrease in East Asia and North America, while increasing in Australia and Europe, and that hailstorm severity will increase in most regions.

Researchers from University of Bern, Central Michigan University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Colorado State University and Peking University took part in the study.

"We came to the conclusion that on balance, the hail threat is likely to increase in Australia, especially in Australia's south-east including the Sydney area," lead author and postdoctoral researcher at UNSW Sydney's Climate Change Research Centre, Tim Raupach said.

But the researchers say current and future climate change effects on hailstorms remain highly uncertain, in part due to a lack of long-term observations and limited modelling studies.

"There's very high uncertainty when it comes to these predictions and Australia is particularly of high uncertainty because there are very few studies that have actually looked at Australia.

"We need to do further study to find out exactly what we expect to happen, not only in Australia but across the world."

Changing atmospheric conditions

The study examined the general expectation that atmospheric ingredients that affect hail ¬- an unstable atmosphere, the amount of melting of falling hailstones, and wind shear or differences in wind by height - would change with a warming climate and lead to less frequent but more intense hailstorms.

"We know with climate change that we are going to have more moisture in the atmosphere and that leads to more instability in the atmosphere, so we expect there will be more tendency for thunderstorms to occur because of this unstable atmosphere," Dr Raupach said.

Because the atmosphere will be warmer, the melting level ¬¬- which is the height in the atmosphere below which ice begins to melt ¬- will get higher, he said.

"So as a melting level gets higher, hail that forms high in the atmosphere and falls towards the ground has more time to melt and may indeed melt entirely before it gets to the ground, and you end up with no hail at the surface."

Overall wind shear - a process that "organises" storms and makes them more severe - is expected to decrease, he said, but hail storms will be more affected by the other two factors.

"The changes you can expect of these three properties of the atmosphere lead us to expect that hail will be less frequent, because there's more melting essentially in the future," Dr Raupach said.

"But the hail will be more severe when it does occur, because there will be more instability in the atmosphere which can lead to the formation of much larger hailstones.

"So when the hail does survive this extra melting, it will be larger and more severe when it does actually hit the surface."

The review showed, however, that this general expectation was not applicable everywhere, with reported hail changes differing in different parts of the world.

"Regional variability in the atmospheric changes leads to varying hail responses, which is why studies show increasing hail frequency in Europe but decreasing hail frequency in East Asia, for example", said Dr Raupach.

Hail is difficult to measure

The study looked at trends in hailstorms from past observations, such as from meteorological stations, hail pads (sheets that record hail impacts), and crowdsourced or media reports.

Dr Raupach said there was high uncertainty in these trends because hailstorms are very difficult to measure due to their small scale and rarity.

"If you put out an instrument to capture [or] measure hail, even in a place where you might expect a lot of hail, you might only get one or two hits on that instrument in a year," he said.

"If you are trying to look at climate change and long-term trends where you want decades of information, it's very difficult to collect that kind of information about hail."

The review also summarised results from simulations and model studies that project what the effects of climate change will be on hail in the future.

"You can see whether the model actually produces more hailstorms or less hailstorms in the future when you change the properties of the model, such as making the temperature higher or increasing the melting level height," Dr Raupach said.

Because hailstorms are a small-scale phenomenon, they are difficult to model with regular weather models.

"You need to have a very high-resolution model to actually be able to resolve the size of the hailstorm," Dr Raupach said.

"There have been a few of these studies but they are relatively rare and we need more of them to be able to understand how hail will change in the future with climate change."

Recommendations 'to reduce uncertainty'

To reduce the uncertainty about hailstorms and climate change, the researchers recommended recording long term observations with instruments such as hail pads in uncovered hail hotspots.

They also recommended improving so-called proxy relationships, which scientists use to try to statistically relate large-scale hailstorm "ingredients" in the atmosphere to the formation of hail that hits the surface.

"The problem we have with [these] proxy relationship[s] is that even when the atmosphere is thought to be prone to hail forming, it's still relatively rare that hail actually forms," Dr Raupach said.

Process-oriented studies which look at the details of how hail forms in clouds and then grows into large hail were also recommended to close current knowledge gaps.

"For example, a topic of current research is whether an increase of aerosols leads to an increase in hail formation or a decrease in hail formation," Dr Raupach said.

The changing economic impacts of hail should also be studied, since changes to building materials, population growth, and crop cycles also change hail exposure.

"We expect the damages that can be caused by hail to also change in the future," Dr Raupach said.

More high-resolution computer models, run at high-performance facilities such as the National Computational Infrastructure in Canberra, should be used in further research.

"As these systems come online, we are able to do high resolution studies that were previously too computationally expensive to actually run," he said. "These models are going to be extremely useful for understanding how hail will change in a warming climate."

A study with first-time learners of Japanese has measured how brain activity changes after just a few months of studying a new language. The results show that acquiring a new language initially boosts brain activity, which then reduces as language skills improve.

"In the first few months, you can quantitatively measure language-skill improvement by tracking brain activations," said Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, a neuroscientist at the University of Tokyo and first author of the research recently published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Researchers followed 15 volunteers as they moved to Tokyo and completed introductory Japanese classes for at least three hours each day. All volunteers were native speakers of European languages in their 20s who had previously studied English as children or teenagers, but had no prior experience studying Japanese or traveling to Japan.

Volunteers took multiple choice reading and listening tests after at least eight weeks of lessons and again six to fourteen weeks later. Researchers chose to assess only the "passive" language skills of reading and listening because those can be more objectively scored than the "active" skills of writing and speaking. Volunteers were inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner while taking the tests so that researchers could measure local blood flow around their brain regions, an indicator of neuronal activity.

"In simple terms, there are four brain regions specialized for language . Even in a native, second or third language, the same regions are responsible," said Sakai.

Those four regions are the grammar center and comprehension area in the left frontal lobe as well as the auditory processing and vocabulary areas in the temporo-parietal lobe. Additionally, the memory areas of the hippocampus and the vision areas of the brain, the occipital lobes, also become active to support the four language-related regions while taking the tests.

During the initial reading and listening tests, those areas of volunteers' brains showed significant increases in blood flow, revealing that the volunteers were thinking hard to recognize the characters and sounds of the unfamiliar language. Volunteers scored about 45% accuracy on the reading tests and 75% accuracy on the listening tests (random guessing on the multiple choice tests would produce 25% accuracy).

Researchers were able to distinguish between two subregions of the hippocampus during the listening tests. The observed activation pattern fits previously described roles for the anterior hippocampus in encoding new memories and for the posterior hippocampus in recalling stored information.

At the second test several weeks later, volunteers' reading test scores improved to an average of 55%. Their accuracy on the listening tests was unchanged, but they were faster to choose an answer, which researchers interpret as improved comprehension.

Comparing results from the first tests to the second tests, after additional weeks of study, researchers found decreased brain activation in the grammar center and comprehension area during listening tests, as well as in the visual areas of the occipital lobes during the reading tests.

"We expect that brain activation goes down after successfully learning a language because it doesn't require so much energy to understand," said Sakai.

Notably during the second listening test, volunteers had slightly increased activation of the auditory processing area of their temporal lobes, likely due to an improved "mind's voice" while hearing.

"Beginners have not mastered the sound patterns of the new language, so cannot hold in memory and imagine them well. They are still expending a lot of energy to recognize the speech in contrast to letters or grammar rules," said Sakai.

This pattern of brain activation changes -- a dramatic initial rise during the learning phase and a decline as the new language is successfully acquired and consolidated -- can give experts in the neurobiology of language a biometric tool to assess curricula for language learners or potentially for people regaining language skills lost after a stroke or other brain injury.

"In the future, we can measure brain activations to objectively compare different methods to learn a language and select a more effective technique," said Sakai.

Until an ideal method can be identified, researchers at UTokyo recommend acquiring a language in an immersion-style natural environment like studying abroad, or any way that simultaneously activates the brain's four language regions.

This pattern of brain activation over time in individual volunteers' brains mirrors results from previous research (see Figure 3E in Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1113530) where Sakai and his collaborators worked with native Japanese-speaking 13- and 19-year-olds who learned English in standard Tokyo public school lessons. Six years of study seemed to allow the 19-year-olds to understand the second language well enough that brain activation levels reduced to levels similar to those of their native language.

The recent study confirmed this same pattern of brain activation changes over just a few months, not years, potentially providing encouragement for anyone looking to learn a new language as an adult.

"We all have the same human brain, so it is possible for us to learn any natural language. We should try to exchange ideas in multiple languages to build better communication skills, but also to understand the world better -- to widen views about other people and about the future society," said Sakai.

Because of their interactions and conflicts with the major contemporaneous civilizations of Eurasia, the Scythians enjoy a legendary status in historiography and popular culture. The Scythians had major influences on the cultures of their powerful neighbors, spreading new technologies such as saddles and other improvements for horse riding. The ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Chinese empires all left a multitude of sources describing, from their perspectives, the customs and practices of the feared horse warriors that came from the interior lands of Eurasia.

Still, despite evidence from external sources, little is known about Scythian history. Without a written language or direct sources, the language or languages they spoke, where they came from and the extent to which the various cultures spread across such a huge area were in fact related to one another, remain unclear.

The Iron Age transition and the formation of the genetic profile of the Scythians

A new study published in Science Advances by an international team of geneticists, anthropologists and archeologists lead by scientists from the Archaeogenetics Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, helps illuminate the history of the Scythians with 111 ancient genomes from key Scythian and non-Scythian archaeological cultures of the Central Asian steppe. The results of this study reveal that substantial genetic turnovers were associated with the decline of the long-lasting Bronze Age sedentary groups and the rise of Scythian nomad cultures in the Iron Age. Their findings show that, following the relatively homogenous ancestry of the late Bronze Age herders, at the turn of the first millennium BCE, influxes from the east, west and south into the steppe formed new admixed gene pools.

The diverse peoples of the Central Asian Steppe

The study goes even further, identifying at least two main sources of origin for the nomadic Iron Age groups. An eastern source likely originated from populations in the Altai Mountains that, during the course of the Iron Age, spread west and south, admixing as they moved. These genetic results match with the timing and locations found in the archeological record and suggest an expansion of populations from the Altai area, where the earliest Scythian burials are found, connecting different renowned cultures such as the Saka, the Tasmola and the Pazyryk found in southern, central and eastern Kazakhstan respectively. Surprisingly, the groups located in the western Ural Mountains descend from a second separate, but simultaneous source. Contrary to the eastern case, this western gene pool, characteristic of the early Sauromatian-Sarmatian cultures, remained largely consistent through the westward spread of the Sarmatian cultures from the Urals into the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

The decline of the Scythian cultures associated with new genetic turnovers

The study also covers the transition period after the Iron Age, revealing new genetic turnovers and admixture events. These events intensified at the turn of the first millennium CE, concurrent with the decline and then disappearance of the Scythian cultures in the Central Steppe. In this case, the new far eastern Eurasian influx is plausibly associated with the spread of the nomad empires of the Eastern steppe in the first centuries CE, such as the Xiongnu and Xianbei confederations, as well as minor influxes from Iranian sources likely linked to the expansion of Persian-related civilization from the south.

Although many of the open questions on the history of the Scythians cannot be solved by ancient DNA alone, this study demonstrates how much the populations of Eurasia have changed and intermixed through time. Future studies should continue to explore the dynamics of these trans-Eurasian connections by covering different periods and geographic regions, revealing the history of connections between west, central and east Eurasia in the remote past and their genetic legacy in present day Eurasian populations.

The Basques are a unique population in Western Europe; their language is not related to any Indo-European language. Furthermore, genetically speaking, they have been considered to have distinct features. However, until now there was no conclusive study to explain the origin of their singularity.

Now, an international research team led by UPF has confirmed that the Basques' genetic uniqueness is the result of genetic continuity since the Iron Age, characterized by periods of isolation and scarce gene flow, and not its external origin in respect of other Iberian populations.

The study, led by David Comas, principal investigator at UPF and at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-UPF), has involved the most comprehensive geographic sampling to date of the Basque population, with over 600,000 genetic markers throughout the genome for each individual.

The result of the multidisciplinary study, which involved a team of linguists and geneticists, reveals in the journal Current Biology that the cultural barrier of the language promoted the isolation of the Basque population from subsequent population contacts, such as the influence of the Roman empire or the Islamic occupation of the peninsula, and even acted as an internal barrier in some cases due to the use of dialects.

"Sampling included microregions within the Basque Country and also the surrounding areas. Thus, we obtained samples from a geographic region where Euskera has always been spoken, others where it has been spoken historically but has been lost, and regions where it has never been spoken", points out André Flores-Bello, first author of the article. He also stresses that "our study is clear proof of the importance of the interaction between different disciplines such as linguistics, genetics and archaeological evidence when it comes to reconstructing our history".

The work compares the Basque people with other contemporary European populations and with data from ancient DNA. The results show that the Basques' genetic makeup is similar to other populations of Western Europe but with slight differences. These differences are due to a scarce gene flow as of the Iron Age, i.e., less mixing has occurred with other populations.

David Comas, full professor of Biological Anthropology at the UPF Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS), details that "for example, we find no influences from North Africa which are appreciated in most populations of the Iberian Peninsula, and neither do we find traces of other migrations such as the Romans".

The question of how genetically different the Basques are from one another has also been broached. In the Basque Country, they have found that the geographically closest settlements are genetically more similar. This correlation between genetics and geography is common, because neighbouring settlements have a shared history.

What is unique here is that there is a great deal of compartmentalization within an extremely small geographic region, which is not common in populations of this size. This genetic heterogeneity matches the Basque dialects. "To date it was thought that they were formed from the Middle Ages but we postulate that they may have arisen much earlier and are therefore related to the genetic structure", explains David Comas, head of the Human Genome Diversity research group of the IBE.

With the new methods available, we are increasingly able to reconstruct history on a smaller scale. "The large number of markers and samples we employ together with sophisticated computation enable us to solve issues that we could not broach until now and pave the way towards knowledge of the more local, more recent history of our species", Comas concludes.

The skin is the largest organ in the human body, and its outermost part, called the epidermis, is replenished every three weeks. The cells fueling this renewal of the epidermal stem cells, found in specialized areas or niche, within a region of the hair follicle (or root) is known as the 'bulge compartment'. The bulge compartment resident stem cells are multipotent meaning that they can contribute to the repair of skin when it's injured, and also regenerate the hair follicles during normal development. While several groups have focused attention on the stem cells themselves, less is known about niche or extrinsic factors that influence the state of these stem cells.

In the recent paper published in the Developmental Cell, Dr. Srikala Raghavan and her research group at the Centre for Inflammation and Tissue Homeostasis (CITH) theme, DBT-inStem identified the role for robust cell adhesion between stem cells in maintaining their quiescent properties. They focused on a protein called vinculin, a 'mechanotransducer' expressed in the skin. Mechanotransducers are proteins that signal by generating force within the cell via engaging with the cell's cytoskeleton. Vinculin is found at the junctions between cells, also known as the 'adherens junction', and between the cell and the substratum, known as the 'focal adhesion'. When the research team deleted the vinculin gene from the epidermal compartment (known as a conditional knockout, cKO), they found to their surprise that the animals were perfectly normal other than displaying a sparse coat of hair.

Ritusree Biswas, a graduate student in the Raghavan lab focused her analysis on exploring the behavior of hair follicles' stem cells. Her studies revealed that the stem cells in the vinculin cKO failed to maintain quiescence. Because the stem cells were constantly dividing, she was able to show that these cells no longer functioned like classical stem cells, which in turn contributed to the sparse hair phenotype. Avinanda Banerjee, another author on the publication, focused on the mechanism underpinning the loss of quiescence in these stem cells. She examined mechanotransduction or forces generated by cells that lacked vinculin in collaboration with Prof. Yan Jie and his post doc, Zhihai Zhao, at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI), Singapore. When Avinanda measured the forces at cell junctions generated by the vinculin KO (knockout) cells, she discovered that these cells generated only about half the force than a normal cell that expresses vinculin. This data suggested that the loss of vinculin was making the junctions weak. This was very surprising since they had shown that all of the proteins which were normally present at the junctions were present, in fact at higher levels.

The research team then focused on understanding the relationship between the weak junctions and loss of stem cell quiescence. They performed global gene expression profiling of vinculin KO cells to identify pathways that may have changed due to the loss of vinculin. One of pathways that was significantly changed was the YAP1 pathway. YAP1 is a transcription factor and controls the expression of genes that regulate the cell cycle. The increased expression of YAP1 in the KO provided an explanation for increased cell proliferation and loss of quiescence. So why is YAP1 expression dysregulated? It turns out that since YAP1 is such a potent regulator of cell proliferation, it is normally sequestered at the strong cell-cell junctions found in quiescent stem cells, otherwise known as a 'contact inhibited state'. However, since the junctions in the vinculin KO cells were weak, YAP1 was no longer sequestered at these junctions and could translocate into the nucleus and regulate cell proliferation.

This recent work by the Raghavan lab has implications beyond skin stem cells. When cancer cells metastasize out of their niche, there is a reduction in the expression of cell junction proteins and a concomitant increase in the expression of YAP1. In ongoing work, Srikala's lab is exploring how the loss of vinculin affects signals received by the nucleus.

Leigh syndrome is the most severe mitochondrial disease in children. It causes severe muscle weakness, movement defects, and intellectual disabilities. It usually leads to death within the first years of life. No causative treatment is currently available. One of the genes frequently mutated in patients is SURF1, which encodes for a protein involved in the process of energy generation in the cells. Animal models did not recapitulate the defects seen in the patients carrying mutations in SURF1. Therefore, the scientists did not have the tool to start understanding the disease mechanisms and to identify possible targets for treatment. They report about the first human model for this rare disease in Nature Communications, published on March 26th.

The group of Prof. Alessandro Prigione at the Department of General Pediatrics at the University Hospital Duesseldorf, Germany, in collaboration with the groups of Prof. Markus Schuelke at the Department of Neuropediatrics, Charite Universitaetsmedizin Berlin, and Prof. Nikolaus Rajewsky at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB), Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), have now developed the first human model of Leigh syndrome caused by SURF1 mutations.

To achieve this, the authors employed the technology of cellular reprogramming, which enables to convert cells from the skin into stem cells that are capable of generating neurons. They then used the molecular scissors CRISPR/Cas9 to precisely remove the mutation from the patient cells and to introduce the mutations into the control cells. Thus the authors were able to investigate the specific effect of SURF1 mutations in a controlled genetic background. They next generated neurons and brain organoids, which are of a three-dimensional structure and reproduce the features of early human brain development.

Using these models, the authors discovered that the neuronal defects seen in the patients may be caused by an energy deficit occurring at the level of neural precursors, which are the cells that generate neurons. These energy defects lead to insufficient neuronal branching, which causes improper brain function during development. Finally, the authors demonstrate that the neuronal branching defects can be corrected by improving the energy output of progenitor cells using SURF1 gene replacement therapy or by using the drug Bezafibrate, which is currently safe for clinical use in children.

These findings are important since they provide for the first time a model for studying the neuronal pathology of Leigh syndrome caused by SURF1 mutations. Moreover, they indicate practical strategies for treating children affected by the rare disease Leigh syndrome, which is an orphan disease with high medical needs.

Hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) include hematopoietic stem cells and several lineage-biased hematopoietic progenitor cells, which can provide all blood cell types in an adult organism. Among them, hematopoietic stem cells have the ability of self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation, and can rapidly respond under acute hematopoietic conditions. Meanwhile, the hematopoietic progenitor cells can maintain the supply of blood cells in homeostatic hematopoiesis. In a word, HSPCs are the core of the blood system, once their homeostasis is destroyed, it will lead to serious blood diseases and even death. Therefore, the researches associated with the HSPCs can provide a strong support for relevant theoretical studies and clinical treatments.

In order to study the development of the hematopoietic system, researchers often utilize zebrafish as a model, which has the advantages of short growth cycle, large amount of transparent eggs, in vitro fertilization of embryos, easy access to gene editing, and so on. In addition, the hematopoietic system of zebrafish is highly conserved to that of human, which is also the basis for the application of zebrafish in hematopoietic researches.

Back in 2012, Wenqing Zhang's research group and Yiyue Zhang's research group collaboratively carried out forward genetic screening of zebrafish, inducing random gene mutations in zebrafish through compound ENU, and obtaining a series of zebrafish mutants with hematopoietic defects. Based on this research, the cooperation team continues to explore these mutants, digging deeper into which genes are mutated and through which mechanisms these genes cause defects in the hematopoietic system.

Recently, a new research paper of Yiyue Zhang's lab and Wenqing Zhang's lab, named as "Slc20a1b is essential for hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell expansion", was published in SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences. This study revealed that a point mutation of zebrafish slc20a1b gene can significantly reduce the proliferation of HSPCs, resulting in a severe defect of hematopoietic development.

In this research, the researchers first conducted a more in-depth phenotypic identification of the smu07 mutant, obtained by the previous ENU mutagenesis. The hematopoietic defects of the erythroid, myeloid, and lymphoid lineages of the mutant were all present, suggesting that the upstream HSPCs may have been defected. Further investigation showed that the mutant's HSPCs could be produced normally at the initial stages, but then failed to expand continuously, and the number of HSPCs was significantly lower than that of normal zebrafish (Figure 1).

Next, the researchers performed genetic mapping of the mutation site and identified the causative gene to be slc20a1b, in which a single DNA base mutation caused a single amino acid mutation in its protein (D48E).With the help of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, they constructed an additional slc20a1b mutant, which phenotype was identical with the smu07 mutant, verifying that the gene causing the mutation was indeed slc20a1b.

Since slc20a1b is a widely expressed gene, the researchers further explored whether genetic mutations in HSPCs were responsible for its phenotype, or whether other cells in its niche played a dominant role. They found that the mutant HSPCs were unable to expand in a normal environment, while the wild-type HSPCs were able to expand in the mutant environment. This result proved that the defect was caused by the autonomous mutation of the slc20a1b gene in HSPCs.

Finally, the researchers investigated the cellular mechanism of the HSPC defects and found that the cell death of mutant HSPCs remained unchanged, but the defect of its proliferation ability prevented the HSPCs from being expanded. The cell cycle of mutant HSPCs was blocked in the G2/M phase and thus could not complete the normal proliferation cycles.

In summary, the authors found that slc20a1b mutant HSPCs autonomously developed an expansion defect, which is featured by cell cycle arrest leading to decreased proliferation (Figure 2), resulting in a severe deficiency of HSPCs and all hematopoietic lineages.

This study is the first to report the indispensable role of slc20a1b gene in HSPCs, revealing a novel regulation gene of the cell cycle of HSPCs.