Earth

While play and playfulness have been studied well in children, their structure and consequences are understudied in adults. A new article published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass highlights available research on this topic and also examines why playfulness is important in romantic relationships.

The authors note that playfulness encourages the experience of positive emotions and might relate to potential biological processes--such as the activation of hormones and certain brain circuits. It also influences how people communicate and interact with each other, for example by helping to deal with stress, and solving interpersonal tension. These can all impact relationship satisfaction and trust, ultimately affecting the longevity of relationships.

"Our literature review and studies from our lab show that being playful contributes to most people's love lives," said lead author Kay Brauer, MSc, of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, in Germany. "Playful behaviors such as surprising the partner, retelling and reenacting joint experiences with the partner, or jointly forming new experiences often contribute to the happiness and longevity of relationships."

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2021 -- Sea-based fish farming systems using net pens are hard on the environment and the fish. A closed cage can improve fish welfare, but fresh seawater must be continuously circulated through the cage. However, ocean waves can cause this circulating water to slosh inside the cage, creating violent motions and endangering the cage and the fish.

A study using a scale-model fish containment system is reported in Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing. The study shows why violent sloshing motions arise and how to minimize them.

Gentle currents can be artificially maintained inside cylindrical closed cages developed for salmon farming. The current is produced by injecting seawater through nozzles in the side, creating a circular flow inside. The maximum flow rate should not exceed the critical swimming speed at which salmon can swim comfortably for an extended time.

While this artificial current improves fish health, it also affects the natural frequencies of sloshing that can be excited inside the floating cage by ocean waves. These violent sloshing motions occur even when relatively small waves hit the cage, since the resonance phenomenon amplifies wave motion.

"In the scientific literature, similar problems of fluid dynamic behavior in spinning tanks have been found only in studies of stability and control of rocket fuel tanks, gas turbines, and centrifuges," co-author Claudio Lugni said.

"It is not straightforward to apply results about rocket tanks to aquaculture tanks," said co-author Andrei Tsarau.

To address this problem, a scale model of a cylindrical fish cage was attached to a mechanical rig that could move the cylinder from side to side. The scale model was partially filled with water and included nozzles to inject an artificial circular current.

When the system was oscillated sideways by the rig, sloshing motions began and were monitored by sensors in the tank.

"Depending on the forcing frequency, various sloshing regimes characterized by different wave shapes and amplitudes on the free surface of the liquid were observed in the experiment," Lugni said.

Computational and theoretical studies with and without the rotating current were carried out and compared to the experiment. The investigators found the violent sloshing observed when the liquid in the cylinder is not circulated can be suppressed at the same excitation frequencies if the liquid is rotated at high enough angular velocities.

This effect may be beneficial for relatively small cages with a radius less than 10 meters under forced-sloshing conditions. In such cages, the liquid can be rotated at high enough angular velocity without forcing the fish to swim at speeds above their critical limit.

"For larger cages, the same angular velocity would lead to flow velocities too high for the fish," said Tsarau.

Like a well-trained soldier, a white blood cell uses specialized abilities to identify and ultimately destroy dangerous intruders, including creating a protrusion to effectively reach out, lock-on, probe, and possibly attack its prey. Researchers reporting March 16 in Biophysical Journal show in detail that these cells take seconds to morph into these highly rigid and viscous defensive units.

Senior author Julien Husson (@_julienhusson), a biophysicist at École Polytechnique near Paris, and collaborators showed previously that certain white blood cells, called T cells, can push and pull perceived threats via specialized connections. To exert such forces, a cell must reorganize its internal structure, making itself more rigid. In the current study, Husson's team devised a micropipette rheometer to measure the rigidity, along with the viscosity, of a white blood cell during its transformation. The researchers' goal was to quantify the physical changes that arise in a white blood cell as it pushes or pulls on a foreign body--in this case, a bead coated with chemicals to attract the cell.

"We knew that when forming and using its protrusion, the cell was strongly reorganizing its cytoskeleton and that this cytoskeleton is a big player in giving a cell its mechanical properties," says Husson. "So, I believed there should be some signature mechanical trace."

Stiffness is a measure of how much a material deforms when under a certain amount of pressure, whereas viscosity refers to how fast the material deforms under this pressure. Therefore, to simultaneously measure these properties of a white blood cell while instigating the cell's immune response, the team needed an experimental setup that could somehow both maintain and vary the force on the cell while also causing it to respond as if it come upon a threat.

The researchers' solution was to apply a force that carefully oscillated around a constant, average value. The cell's stiffness was calculated from the tiny deformation induced by the oscillations, and the viscosity was calculated from the delay between an oscillation and resulting deformation. At the same time, the object applying the force was a bead coated with antibodies, which caused the cell to activate, change shape, and latch onto the bead.

"Despite expecting some mechanical changes, what we found was surprisingly dramatic," says Husson. The team looked at three types of white blood cells and discovered that in all cases, "the cells' stiffnesses and viscosities begin changing within seconds of coming into contact with the beads and increase up to ten times within minutes."

"Intriguingly," Husson says, "the mechanical changes begin even before any shape changes," evoking the question of whether these significant changes to white blood cells' mechanical properties are simply consequences of other functions or have their own utility.

The answer to this question could lie in another result of the study: Husson and colleagues found that a cell's stiffness and viscosity change together, at a fixed ratio that is unique to the cell type, like a mechanical fingerprint. "It was really exciting to know that there was this kind of universality," he says.

Altogether, the paper's results suggest an underlying physical mechanism that could apply broadly across cell types and lead to new models, theories, and ultimately a better understanding and control of our cells, in our immune system and beyond.

Stem-cell-derived organoids that swell up with tears could shed light on the biology of crying and dry-eye disease, suggests a study publishing March 16 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Although regenerative therapies using human tear-gland organoids will not be possible anytime soon, these researchers have demonstrated that the organoids can engraft, integrate, and produce mature tear products upon transplantation into mouse tear glands.

"We hope that scientists will use our model to identify new treatment options for patients with tear-gland disorders by either testing new drugs on a patient's organoids or expanding healthy cells and, one day, using them for transplantation," says senior study author Hans Clevers (@HansClevers) of the Hubrecht Institute.

The tear gland, or lacrimal gland, secretes the watery layer of the tear film and is essential for lubricating and protecting the eye. Dysfunction in tear production or secretion can lead to dry-eye disease or Sjögren's syndrome--a poorly understood autoimmune disease that causes dry eyes and dry mouth. Currently, treatment options for patients with disorders of the lacrimal gland include eye drops, tear-duct plugs, and surgery.

"What struck us is that at least 5% of the adult population is estimated to have dry-eye disease, which is most of the time related to a defect of tear production by the tear gland," says co-first study author Yorick Post of the Hubrecht Institute. "But treatment options are limited because there was no complete understanding of the biology and no reliable, long-term in vitro model to study the tear gland."

To overcome this hurdle, the researchers generated 3D mouse and human lacrimal-gland organoids derived from adult stem cells by adapting a protocol they previously used for other organs. The organoids could be expanded over multiple months and recapitulated structural, transcriptional, and functional features of the lacrimal-gland epithelium--tissue that secretes most of the tear fluid. Remarkably, the organoids swelled up like a balloon after being exposed to the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, which triggers tear secretion.

"The challenge was to get the organoids to cry, as this is a hallmark of the lacrimal gland," says co-first study author Marie Bannier-Hélaouët of the Hubrecht Institute. "We had to modify the cocktail of factors the organoids are grown in so that they would become the mature cells that we have in our tear glands and that are capable of crying."

The researchers leveraged the mouse organoids to explore the role of Pax6--the master control gene for eye development--in adult tear glands. By using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to delete Pax6, they discovered that the gene is an important contributor to the maturation of adult lacrimal-gland epithelial cells. These particular organoids could provide valuable insights into potential treatments for Sjögren's syndrome because PAX6 deficiency has been observed in the eye tissue of these patients.

Using single-cell mRNA sequencing, the researchers also examined poorly understood cellular features and origins of tear components in the lacrimal gland. Their single-cell atlas revealed new tear components and demonstrated that ductal and acinar cells in the human lacrimal gland secrete a different repertoire of tear components.

To test the potential of the organoids for regenerative medicine, the researchers then transplanted human organoid cells into mouse lacrimal glands. Two weeks later, the human organoid cells formed duct-like structures that remained in the lacrimal gland for at least two months. Engrafted organoids appeared to self-organize, and some cells were proliferating up to two months after transplantation. Moreover, the researchers detected tear proteins inside the ducts formed by the transplanted cells.

The beneficial effects of organoid transplantation will need to be validated in mouse models of dry eye disease. Future studies could also focus on modeling Sjögren's syndrome by incorporating immune cells into the organoids. "Patient-derived organoids open up new avenues to study lacrimal gland diseases in a personalized fashion," Clevers says. "But there is still a long way to go before these mini-organoids can be used for regenerative therapies."

Wealthier northeastern US states and Western European countries tended to have significantly lower mortality rates during second-wave COVID-19 infections, new research from the University of Sydney and Tsinghua University has shown. However, the pattern was not as general as expected, with notable exceptions to this trend in Sweden and Germany.

Researchers say mortality change could have several explanations:

European first-wave case counts were underestimated;

First-wave deaths disproportionately affected the elderly;

Second-wave infections tended to affect younger people;

With some exceptions, lower mortality rates occurred in countries with more socialised and equitable health systems.

The researchers, Nick James, Max Menzies and Peter Radchenko, believe their new methodology could assist epidemiologists to analyse data consistently to assess the impact of COVID-19 mortality across populations.

"We have been able to look at the mortality rates in a more dynamic way," said Mr James from the University of Sydney.

They have published their results today in the mathematical journal Chaos.

"We take a time series of infection rates by country, apply an algorithmic approach to chop it up into first and later waves and then do some relatively simple optimisation and calculations to determine two different mortality numbers," said Nick James, a PhD student in the School of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Sydney.

The mortality rate of the massive European second wave turned out to be less severe than expected: at least with respect to reported cases and deaths. The researchers wanted to know how big that drop in mortality was and how it differed between countries.

"We think answering these questions is important and we wanted to answer this for all of Europe, not just the wealthier Western countries," said Dr Max Menzies from Tsinghua University. "In Belarus, for example, the mortality rate actually increased during its second wave, while Ukraine and Moldova were still in their first wave as of the end of November 2020."

The researchers discovered this was very different from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and other countries that drastically reduced their mortality rates - at least with respect to reported numbers - between their first and second waves.

The differences tended to be less marked in the United States, with a flatter outcome. However, states such as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which were particularly hard hit in the first wave saw second-wave mortality rates decline in line with many western European countries.

Using a sophisticated mathematical model, each country in Europe and each state in the US was given a mortality data point for the first and second waves. Comparing these figures gives each country or state a data point, or mortality ratio.

In Europe, only Belarus - with a data point of 0.72 - saw a ratio below 1.0, which means that its mortality increased. In the US two states - Arkansas (0.69) and Tennessee (0.88) - had ratios below 1.0 indicating an increase in mortality.

Countries that experience a more than tenfold decrease in mortality in Europe were: Belgium (11.25), Denmark (14.28), France (13.67), the Netherlands (16.17).

"Our work shows sharp drops in mortality with respect to reported cases and deaths," Dr Menzies said. "However, the problem will always be what is the true number of cases in the early first wave? We may never know, but we imagine future research and analysis will try to determine it."

When the researchers reran their analysis on estimated true cases and estimated deaths, Associate Professor Peter Radchenko, from the University of Sydney Business School, pointed out that those measures show serious limitations.

"Excess mortality can be negative relative to previous years due to fluctuations from other causes, so it's unsuitable for measuring the true numbers of COVID-19 deaths," Associate Professor Radchenko said. "We hope others will more closely analyse the true numbers, perhaps using more specialised data such as out of particular hospitals or regions where testing was more reliable."

Broad similarity was also observed between Europe and the US, where northeastern states behaved similarly to wealthy Western European countries in their sharp reductions of mortality during the second wave.

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2021 -- Cancerous cells exhibit several key differences from healthy cells that help identify them as dangerous. For instance, the pH -- the level of acidity -- within a cancerous cell is not the same as the pH within a healthy cell.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore developed a method of using machine learning to determine whether a single cell is cancerous by detecting its pH. They describe their work in the journal APL Bioengineering, from AIP Publishing.

"The ability to identify single cells has acquired a paramount importance in the field of precision and personalized medicine," said Chwee Teck Lim, one of the authors. "This is because it is the only way to account for the inherent heterogeneity associated with any biological specimen."

Lim explained that other techniques for examining a single cell can induce toxic effects or even kill the cell. Their approach, however, can discriminate cells originating from normal tissues from cells originating from cancerous tissues, as well as among different types of cancer, while keeping the cells alive.

The method relies on treating the cells with bromothymol blue, a pH-sensitive dye that changes color depending on how acidic a solution is. Each type of cell exhibits its own unique fingerprint of red, green, and blue (RGB) based on its intracellular acidity. Because cancerous transformation alters the cell's pH, an unhealthy cell will respond to bromothymol blue differently, resulting in a characteristic shift of its RGB fingerprint.

By training a machine learning algorithm to map combinations of colors to the disease state of individual cells, the authors can easily recognize an undesired shift. This allows them to determine the health of a cell using only simple, standard equipment: an inverted microscope and a color camera.

"Our method allowed us to classify single cells of various human tissues, both normal and cancerous, by focusing solely on the inherent acidity levels that each cell type tends to exhibit, and using simple and inexpensive equipment," Lim said.

For practical implementations of this approach, medical professionals will need to noninvasively acquire a sample of the cells in question.

"One potential application of this technique would be in liquid biopsy, where tumor cells that escaped from the primary tumor can be isolated in a minimally invasive fashion from bodily fluids," Lim said.

The group is looking forward to advancing the concept further to try to detect different stages of malignancies from the cells. They envision a real-time version of the procedure, in which cells suspended in a solution can be automatically recognized and handled.

What The Study Did: The findings of this study suggest that, based on a sample from an otherwise healthy population, the overall number of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the U.S. may be substantially higher than estimates based on public health case reporting.

Authors: Robert L. Stout, Ph.D., of Clinical Reference Laboratory Inc. in Lenexa, Kansas, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.1552)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

16th of March, Tuesday, 2021 -- Longevity medicine is a rapidly evolving branch of preventative precision medicine that is specifically focused on promoting healthspan and lifespan, utilizing aging biomarkers commonly referred to as aging clocks. Over the past decade advances in AI and machine learning enabled the development of deep aging clocks (DACs) and other novel tools to track the rate of aging. In parallel novel preventative and therapeutic interventions have been discovered or progressed into clinical trials. Many medical and public health professionals do not have time to read the thousands of research papers covering this new field and actively engage in cutting-edge innovation in preventative medicine. And there are few educational resources that outline the benefits of longevity medicine. However, in order for the field to evolve, it is important that these materials are easily accessible for the broad medical community and presented at the level acceptable by the general medical practitioners.

In the comment titled "Longevity medicine: upskilling the physicians of tomorrow" (Lancet Healthy Longevity, 2021) Evelyne Bischof, MD, Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, MD, PhD, Richard Siow, PhD, Alexey Moskalev, PhD, summarise current findings on the main types of deep aging clocks, longevity medicine and reflect on the necessary education in this field.

Multiple institutions providing medical education are now actively seeking collaborations with artificial intelligence experts to create educational content that will help medical professionals acquire new skills in artificial intelligence for healthcare. However, it was not until 2020 when the first educational curriculum in longevity medicine for physicians was created by the team of scientists and clinicians, led by the artificial intelligence and longevity scientist and entrepreneur, Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD.

In connection with the article calling for more educational resources scientists launched the first longevity medicine course for physicians.

The course provided the physicians and other medical professionals with the introduction to the theoretical and practical basics of longevity medicine, which includes molecular mechanisms, theories of aging, biomarkers of aging, and geroprotector regimens. This course, as well as similar courses, provide medical and public health professionals with the baseline knowledge required to understand aging research, knowledge about longevity therapies available related to senescence-related processes, and the skills to examine biomarkers of aging and other age testing mechanisms. The course discusses advances in research in drug design, machine learning, omics, differential diagnosis, biogerontology, geroprotective interventions and healthcare organisations while also educating medical clinicians on how to implement them on a daily basis.

Physicians and medical professionals can register for this course at Udemy at no charge during the promotional periods, take the course at their own pace at any time, and receive a certificate of completion. The next promotion will transpire from 16th to 22nd March 2021 on Udemy Platform (coupon codes: LONGEVITYMED, LONGEVITY_MED) and students registering for this course will be able to start the course at any time and receive a certificate of completion free.

The authors also agreed to collaborate on a course to be available free of charge to physicians and the general public at https://www.longevity.degree/

"Longevity physicians are looking for ways to reduce the gap between the current parameters, such as the current biological age, and the parameters of optimal maximum physical performance, such as the ideal biological age, predicted by deep learning. It is essential that practicing doctors have access to the appropriate longevity medicine education through a credible curriculum", said Evelyne Bischof, MD.

"The emergence of reliable markers for human aging now allows us to understand what interventions reduce the rate of aging. We are on the cusp of a new era in medicine where age-associated diseases and perhaps aging itself can be slowed or even halted. Education about interventions leading to healthy aging is paramount for allowing everyone a healthier and longer life", said Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, MD, PhD.

Global drylands are experiencing faster-than-average warming and are also among the most vulnerable regions to climate change. Meteorological metrics all point to an emerging trend of increased surface aridity, raising concerns of land desertification and degradation. However, recent satellite observations also show lusher drylands, in apparent contradiction to the image of drylands becoming drier. In a new Review Article published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, an international team comprehensively examined global dryland aridity changes with evidence from the literature and various sources of Earth observations and numerical modeling. A key message of this synthesis is that, by considering the physiological effect of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), the apparent paradox between enhanced surface aridity and lusher dryland vegetation can actually be resolved.

Led by researchers from Peking University, the team includes scientists with diverse expertise on global dryland research from China, UK, France, Australia, USA and Austria. By employing a broad range of aridity metrics, the team provided a more complete picture of current and future aridity changes over global drylands. They found that atmospheric-based metrics generally show a strong trend of rising dryness; while soil moisture and runoff also imply increasing dryland aridity, yet at slower paces. By contrast, ecosystem-based metrics show a trend of greening and reduced plant water stress, despite the rising atmospheric dryness. The co-occurrence of atmospheric drying and ecosystem greening over drylands is also confirmed by model simulations of vegetation dynamics.

Lian Xu from Peking University, the lead author of this study, explains: "Literally, aridity means insufficient water supply to meet the demand. However, for different parts of the land surface, their supply and demand sides are different; and they can move in divergent directions under environmental change. Therefore, when different dryness metrics are brought together in a unified framework, they can have very different trends". He further added: "No single metric fully captures the complex nature of the land surface aridity".

Higher temperatures increase atmospheric demand for water, and are expected to aggravate plant water stress. However, dryland plants are found to experience reduced levels of water stress thanks to the simultaneously increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2. This is because the pores of plant leaves (stomata), which allow for water loss through a process called transpiration, partially close under higher CO2 concentrations, conserves water under increasing aridity. For water-stressed ecosystems, the saved water allows plants to capture extra CO2 and thus trigger more vigorous growth (greening). The reduced plant transpiration also impacts other land surface processes, leaving more water stored in soils and running off through rivers, but at the same time also making the near-surface air warmer and drier.

"It is always tempting to define the water stress plants will feel under climate change by the new weather regimes they might experience. Our research shows that ignoring vegetation physiological response gives an incomplete picture, as the capability to adjust to drier conditions is stronger than expected", said Chris Huntingford from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

The authors note that future changes to drylands may be highly nonlinear, and subject to additional drivers such as flash droughts, fire disturbances and intensification of human activities, which are not yet fully understood. "Understanding possible nonlinear behaviors and tipping points of dryland ecosystem changes, and improving their representation in Earth system models, is a high priority for future research", Lian added.

In the future, the rapidly growing populations and socio-economic development in drylands may increase human water demand dramatically, which will become the key driving force of dryland aridity changes, competing with ecosystems for water and posing a growing threat to ecosystem health. "Dryland water-resource management and climate-change mitigation policies should consider how to manage water in more efficient and sustainable ways, to safeguard food security while simultaneously maintain healthy ecosystems", said Fu Bojie of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who leads the Global Dryland Ecosystem Programme (Global-DEP) aiming to facilitate dryland social-ecological sustainability.

New findings on the diet of Arctic foxes, determined by the condition of their teeth, show how varying climate conditions in the Arctic affect the animals that live there.

In a study published in Polar Biology, Peter Ungar, Distinguished Professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, and several co-authors analyzed tooth breakage and wear - both gross and micro - of Arctic foxes from Russia's Yamal Peninsula.

Studying the effect of varying climate conditions within this region helps scientists understand the impact of climate change on vulnerable animals and could explain future responses and adaptation, given the warming trend and thawing in Arctic areas. The researchers' study is the first to combine dental proxies for short-term, or seasonal, and long-term, or lifetime, diet to better understand how resource depletion affects species differently in different locations within the Arctic.

In this study, the researchers compared the condition of the teeth over space - northern versus southern peninsula - and time and found that foxes from the northern peninsula likely had to periodically rely on larger prey rather than their preferred prey of rodents such as lemmings and voles.

Microwear analysis of teeth indicated the foxes in both locations dined on the preferred smaller prey during rodent "rich" years. However, during rodent "bust" years in the southern peninsula, the foxes had to adapt to conditions and fall back on larger prey, such as ptarmigans and hares. In the north, where these species were less available, foxes evidently scavenged more reindeer carcasses.

Bone consumption by animals causes tooth breakage, heavy wear and microscopic pitting. Breakage and gross wear reflect animal diet over the course of a lifetime, whereas microscopic pitting reflects a pattern of seasonal changes over time. Ungar is a leading expert in dental microwear analysis, including what it says about animals' diet as it relates to evolution.

"These data together suggest that dental evidence can provide important insights into variation in the feeding ecology of Arctic foxes and potentially into the impacts of changes in food abundance across space and time," Ungar said.

The Arctic fox is listed as a climate change flagship species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The researchers, including colleagues from the United States, Russia, Norway and France, examined 78 Arctic fox specimens, all caught by indigenous trappers on Yamal for the purpose of harvesting fur. Preliminary analysis focused on three trapping periods - December 1981 to March 1982, November 1983 to March 1984 and October 2007 to March 2008. The foxes were selected from the northern and southern Yamal regions during the rodent-poor periods of 1981-1982 and 2007-2008 and rodent-rich period of 1983-1984.

"Time or space alone is not enough to get the full story of fox ecological response to environmental variation," Ungar said. "Combining these proxies for understanding life in the past is essential to inform us on the ecology of living animals in a rapidly changing and fragile ecosystem."

The researchers' study is part of a large, multi-year project focused on the Yamal Peninsula, which serves as a small-scale and manageable research model for the Arctic as a whole. Habitats of the Yamal region, roughly 1,400 miles northeast of Moscow, range from forest in the south to tundra in the north. The Yamal has a rich diversity of native and invasive plant and animal species, a large indigenous population with strong traditional culture, and economically critical natural resources. As part of this project, Ungar and his colleagues are studying how climate change - specifically warming and extreme weather - has affected the temperature, precipitation and landforms in the region, and how people, animals and plants have adapted to these changes.

The Three Gorges project, completed in 2009, is one of the world's largest hydropower projects. It has brought important social and economic benefits in flood control, power generation, shipping and water resources redistribution.

But how does such a large-scale water conservancy project affect the local climate, and is the response to climate change a relatively vulnerable one? The Three Gorges Project has been repeated questioned, especially whenever rainstorms, floods and drought hit the area around the reservoir area or its neighboring areas, since the Three Gorges Reservoir started to raise its water level to the desired target.

"The Three Gorges Region is located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and its annual climate characteristics are obviously affected by the surrounding climate of the Yangtze River, which means that it is greatly affected by the synergistic influence of large-scale atmospheric circulation, oceanic forcing, and water vapor transport. In order to better understand the climate of the Three Gorges Region, the National Climate Center has carried out continuous climate monitoring since 1996 and released its Annual Climate Report each year. Our report is the latest result based on the observation data in 2019, part of a series of annual climate reports for the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River, providing information on climate monitoring, meteorological disasters and climate impacts," says Dr. CHEN Xianyan, a researcher at the National Climate Center and the first author of this paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Although against the background of climate warming, significant changes have been found in temperature, precipitation and other meteorological observations, as well as some extreme climate events, in the Three Gorges Region and its surrounding areas in the past several decades. Many studies have shown, based on numerical simulation experiment results and statistical comparative analyses, that the Three Gorges Region has little influence on local climate changes compared with environmental climate changes.

Characterized by a much warmer spring and autumn, and much drier fall, the climate in the year 2019 in the Three Gorges Region showed an upward trend in temperature.

The major climate events in the Three Gorges Region in 2019, including heat waves, drought, heavy rain and flooding, were not isolated events in region; they were the responses to weather extremes in the Yangtze River Basin as a whole. The information in the annual report was not a diagnosis of extreme climate events. However, detailed climate information is helpful to understand the climate and its changes in the Three Gorges Region, and is also the basis of research on the climatic effects of the Three Gorges Region.

"We intend to carry out continuous monitoring in this area and analyze the causes and mechanisms of climate extremes to assess the impact of reservoir impoundment," concludes CHEN.

Following a relocation of ice cores to the Copenhagen suburb of Rødovre in 2017, University of Copenhagen researchers found unopened boxes of ice cores dating back to 1966--the first ice cores drilled on Earth.

Analyses of the long-forgotten ice have now been completed and are presented in a new study with groundbreaking results.

Within the cores, which come from deep within the ice sheet at Camp Century, Greenland, the UCPH researchers and their Belgian and American colleagues became the first ever to find these millions of years old macrofossils.

The fossils are large enough to be seen without a microscope.

"We pinched ourselves over the treasure we'd found! Because within the cores, which for the most part resemble compressed gravel, we could identify entire twigs and leaves, perfectly preserved after millions of years. We had never found anything like this, nor had anyone else," explains Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, who adds:

"Thorough DNA analyses are typically required to identify which plants and animals are in ice. But here, we could see things immediately. The ice was drilled in an amazing location where there were obviously plants and branches before ice covered Greenland."

Revealing details about the past

While twigs and leaves may not sound like much, they reveal a rare and unique story about the vegetation of the Greenlandic landscape as it was millions of years ago, when Earth's climate was warmer, and Greenland wasn't covered by ice.

"Among the leaves, twigs and plant remnants we found are liverwort plants and and wooly feather moss. Our analyses show that they come from boreal forest--the conifer, birch and willow forests common to Canada and Alaska. These hardy plants and trees are tolerant of cold conditions," explains Dorthe Dahl-Jensen.

The ice cores have also provided the researchers with knowledge about climate change in Greenland dating back several million years. This knowledge is useful for helping us peer into the crystal ball and see the climate of the future.

"After measuring water isotopes in the ice, we can confirm earlier findings that the ice sheet has been intact and covered Greenland for roughly one million years. Before then, there were periods in between ice sheets when Greenland was ice-free, These results illustrate just how awesome ice is and how it can withstand so much--including periods of higher temperatures like the one we are in now," explains the climate professor.

According to the researcher though, the ice will be strongly influenced by the rise in temperature that several climate models predict will occur over roughly the next 100 years.

"Should the worst-case scenarios transpire, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will start melting, which could cause sea levels to rise up to 70 meters. However, this will take a long time, thousandes of years. Fortunately, we can still do something about it and avoid these large rises in sea level--it's a matter of action," she says.

The next step in working with the forgotten ice cores of Camp Century is to perform DNA analyses of both the ice and sedimentary residues.

"We'll see if we can find remnants of beetles, butterflies and other insects too," concludes Professor Dahl-Jensen.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Nearly every older adult was prescribed a prescription drug that increased their risk of falling in 2017, according to new University at Buffalo research.

The study found that the percentage of adults 65 and older who were prescribed a fall- risk-increasing drug climbed to 94% in 2017, a significant leap from 57% in 1999. The research also revealed that the rate of death caused by falls in older adults more than doubled during the same time period.

Even minor falls may be dangerous for older adults. Falls that are not fatal can still result in injuries - such as hip fractures and head traumas - that may drastically lower remaining quality of life. Each year, nearly $50 billion is spent on medical costs related to fall injuries among older adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The alarming results solidify the importance of interventions to de-prescribe potentially inappropriate drugs among older, frailer patients, says Amy Shaver, PharmD, lead investigator and postdoctoral associate in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions.

"Our study indicates two trends increasing concurrently at a population level that should be examined at the individual level. Our hope is it will start more conversations on health care teams about the pros and cons of medications prescribed for vulnerable populations," says Shaver.

Additional investigators in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences include Collin Clark, PharmD, clinical assistant professor; David Jacobs, PharmD, PhD, assistant professor; Robert Wahler Jr., PharmD, clinical associate professor; and Mary Hejna, PharmD, pharmacy resident at Kaleida Health.

Recently published in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, the study examined data on deaths due to falls and prescription fills among people 65 and older from the National Vital Statistics System and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.

Fall-risk-increasing drugs include antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, antihypertensives (for high blood pressure), opioids, sedative hypnotics, and benzodiazepines (tranquilizers such as Valium and Xanax), as well as other nonprescription medications.

From 1999-2017, more than 7.8 billion fall-risk-increasing drug orders were filled by older adults in the United States. The majority of the prescriptions were for antihypertensives. However, there was also a sharp rise in the use of antidepressants, from 12 million prescriptions in 1999 to more than 52 million in 2017.

"The rise in the use of antidepressant medications seen in this study is likely related to the use of these agents as safer alternatives to older medications for conditions such as depression and anxiety," says Shaver. "However, it is important to note that these medications are still associated with increased risks of falls and fractures among older adults."

Women were also found more likely than men to be prescribed fall-risk-increasing drugs, particularly Black women, who received the medications at the highest rate compared to women of other races. White women who were 85 and older experienced the largest increase in deaths from falls, rising 160% between 1999 and 2017.

The investigators are involved in multidisciplinary de-prescribing initiatives conducted through Team Alice and the UB Center for Successful Aging. The efforts encourage and evaluate patient/caregiver-initiated de-prescribing conversations with health care providers, promote interprofessional education on de-prescribing, and advocate for policy and system changes.

SAN ANTONIO -- March 16, 2021 -- One of the most profound discoveries in planetary science over the past 25 years is that worlds with oceans beneath layers of rock and ice are common in our solar system. Such worlds include the icy satellites of the giant planets, like Europa, Titan and Enceladus, and distant planets like Pluto.

In a report presented at the 52nd annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 52) this week, Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist S. Alan Stern writes that the prevalence of interior water ocean worlds (IWOWs) in our solar system suggests they may be prevalent in other star systems as well, vastly expanding the conditions for planetary habitability and biological survival over time.

It has been known for many years that worlds like Earth, with oceans that lie on their surface, must reside within a narrow range of distances from their stars to maintain the temperatures that preserve those oceans. However, IWOWs are found over a much wider range of distances from their stars. This greatly expands the number of habitable worlds likely to exist across the galaxy.

Worlds like Earth, with oceans on their exterior, are also subject to many kinds of threats to life, ranging from asteroid and comet impacts, to stellar flares with dangerous radiation, to nearby supernova explosions and more. Stern's paper points out that IWOWs are impervious to such threats because their oceans are protected by a roof of ice and rock, typically several to many tens of kilometers thick, that overlie their oceans.

"Interior water ocean worlds are better suited to provide many kinds of environmental stability, and are less likely to suffer threats to life from their own atmosphere, their star, their solar system, and the galaxy, than are worlds like Earth, which have their oceans on the outside," said Stern.

He also points out that the same layer of rock and ice that protects the oceans on IWOWs also conceals life from being detected by virtually all astronomical techniques. If such worlds are the predominant abodes of life in the galaxy and if intelligent life arises in them -- both big "ifs," Stern emphasizes -- then IWOWs may also help crack the so-called Fermi Paradox. Posed by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi in the early 1960s, the Fermi Paradox questions why we don't see obvious evidence of life if it's prevalent across the universe.

"The same protective layer of ice and rock that creates stable environments for life also sequesters that life from easy detection," said Stern.

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) uncover potential novel therapeutic strategies for oral and esophageal carcinomas

Tokyo, Japan - Discovering and treating tumors before they spread throughout the body is key for cancer patients to achieve positive outcomes. When tumor cells spread, which is known as metastasis, they can take over other organs and lead to death. Oral and esophageal carcinomas, or mouth and throat cancers, frequently metastasize to the lymph nodes. Unfortunately, there are currently no therapies that are specific to treating these particular cancers. Now, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) identified several drugs that can possibly be used to treat oral and esophageal carcinomas.

In an article published in Molecular Cancer Research, a group of researchers from TMDU found that combining two drugs, pitavastatin and capmatinib, inhibited the viability of oral cancer cells in culture, as well as the growth of tumors in a mouse model.

Although esophageal carcinoma is the sixth most deadly cancer worldwide and is relatively well understood at the molecular level, the research has not been translated into specific therapeutic development. Because of this urgent need, the TMDU group became interested in drug repurposing, where a drug that has been approved for a certain disease can be used to effectively treat an additional indication. This concept significantly speeds up the drug discovery and development process, increasing the number of patients that can benefit from an established therapeutic.

"Drug repurposing can be extremely helpful for discovering efficacious treatments for diseases lacking approved therapies," says lead author of the study Tomoki Muramatsu "We began this process for oral and esophageal carcinomas by screening an FDA-approved drug library."

The researchers performed the drug screening on a highly metastatic oral cancer cell line. Overall, the drug pitavastatin reduced the growth of these cells most significantly. Through molecular analysis, they determined that pitavastatin acted by inhibiting a cellular pathway called MET signaling. Because of this, the researchers added in a second MET inhibitor drug, known as capmatinib.

"Combining pitavastatin with capmatinib resulted in an even greater reduction in cancer cell growth," describes senior author Johji Inazawa. "Capmatinib by itself had no effect on the cancer cells, but it synergized with pitavastatin."

The researchers then injected these cells into mice to generate tumors and observed a similar effect with the pitavastatin and capmatinib combination.

"Our results in the mouse model corroborated our in vitro findings," says Muramatsu. "The data suggest that MET signaling may be a valuable therapeutic target in these tumors."

The study also identified a potential biomarker for these particular cancers - a gene called GGPS1. Expression levels of this gene may correlate with patient responsiveness to pitavastatin. This work provides knowledge that may be vital for identifying therapeutics for these devastating diseases.