Earth

Smoke from local wildfires can affect the health of Colorado residents, in addition to smoke from fires in forests as far away as California and the Pacific Northwest.

Researchers at Colorado State University, curious about the health effects from smoke from large wildfires across the Western United States, analyzed six years of hospitalization data and death records for the cities along the Front Range, which reaches deep into central Colorado from southern Wyoming.

They found that wildfire smoke was associated with increased hospitalizations for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and some cardiovascular health outcomes. They also discovered that wildfire smoke was associated with deaths from asthma and cardiovascular disease, but that there was a difference in the effects of smoke from local fires and that from distant ones.

Long-range smoke was associated with expected increases in hospitalizations and increased risk of death from cardiovascular outcomes.

But when the research team separated out health effects of smoke from local wildfires in early summer 2012 from long-range smoke from late summer 2012 and summer 2015, they found that local wildfires were associated with meaningful decreases in hospitalizations, especially for asthma.

The study, "Differential Cardiopulmonary Health Impacts of Local and Long?Range Transport of Wildfire Smoke," was recently published in GeoHealth, a journal from the American Geophysical Union.

Residents protect themselves from local fires

Sheryl Magzamen, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at CSU, said the team believes that evacuation efforts and related media coverage of local wildfires may have helped protect residents from adverse health effects of smoke exposure as well as direct impacts of the fires.

"There's a lack of communication about smoke from distant wildfires," said Magzamen. "Generally when there are local fires, there are advisories in the news that are associated with evacuations and local fire conditions. Due to the presence of the fire, people take measures to protect themselves. This could be why we see this lower risk of health effects from smoke associated with local fires."

Researchers described the long-range wildfire smoke as resembling fog, which is what Magzamen said she noticed in Fort Collins in August 2015. At the time, she was collaborating on a project with Jeff Pierce, associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science.

"I thought it was weird to see fog on that day," she explained. "Jeff said, 'That's actually smoke.' We all took a step back."

Smoke changes with age

Pierce, a co-author on this study, said researchers don't really know how harmful smoke is as it gets older, or becomes long-range smoke.

"In Fort Collins, about half the time we had smoke in late August or September 2020, this was smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire," he explained. "This smoke was only a couple hours old when it got here. At other times, we were getting smoke from California, and the smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire was either going over our heads or further south."

The Cameron Peak Fire was reported on Aug. 13, 2020, and burned into October, consuming 208,913 acres on the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in Larimer and Jackson Counties and Rocky Mountain National Park. It was the first wildfire in Colorado history to burn more than 200,000 acres.

The average person would not notice a difference in wildfire smoke, Pierce said.

"If the smoke is even two days old, things happen chemically, which changes the smoke a lot," he explained. "If it didn't smell like wood burning, it was long-range smoke from California."

Magzamen said that the team is working to better understand these chemical changes.

"As the small particles found in wildfire smoke age, they can cause more oxidative stress and more respiratory health effects," she said. "But wildfire smoke itself is a mixture of particles and gases. Teasing apart the effects of all the components of smoke and what happens to the mixture across space and time - and how those changes impact health - is an enormous scientific challenge."

Better air quality monitoring

Magzamen said the gap in understanding the source of wildfire smoke is because it historically has been measured by land-based sensors, which are primarily located in large urban areas and sparsely located in other regions, even along the Front Range.

"Even over the last five years, our air quality monitoring networks have been enhanced with new technologies and better measurements of real-time smoke effects," she said.

CSU researchers are now collaborating with local government officials on messaging related to the different types of wildfire smoke, with a specific aim to reach the most vulnerable populations. This includes caretakers of young children, people experiencing homelessness and others who can't shelter safely in place during wildfire season.

"We want people to be smoke-aware," she said. "On the Front Range, we have wildfire smoke every summer. We may not get Cameron Peak-size type of fires every year, but we are downwind for pretty much the entire Western United States," she said. "It's critical that we keep people healthy and safe."

Some of Princeton's leading cancer researchers were startled to discover that what they thought was a straightforward investigation into how cancer spreads through the body -- metastasis -- turned up evidence of liquid-liquid phase separations: the new field of biology research that investigates how liquid blobs of living materials merge into each other, similar to the movements seen in a lava lamp or in liquid mercury.

"We believe this is the first time that phase separation has been implicated in cancer metastasis," said Yibin Kang, the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology. He is the senior author on a new paper featured on the cover of the current issue of Nature Cell Biology.

Not only does their work tie phase separations to cancer research, but the merging blobs turned out to create more than the sum of their parts, self-assembling into a previously unknown organelle (essentially an organ of the cell).

Discovering a new organelle is revolutionary, Kang said. He compared it to finding a new planet within our solar system. "Some organelles we have known for 100 years or more, and then all of a sudden, we found a new one!"

This will shift some fundamental perceptions of what a cell is and does, said Mark Esposito, a 2017 Ph.D. alumnus and current postdoc in Kang's lab who is the first author on the new paper. "Everybody goes to school, and they learn 'The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,' and a few other things about a few organelles, but now, our classic definition of what's inside a cell, of how a cell organizes itself and controls its behavior, is starting to shift," he said. "Our research marks a very concrete step forward in that."

The work grew out of collaborations between researchers in the labs of three Princeton professors: Kang; Ileana Cristea, a professor of molecular biology and leading expert in the mass spectroscopy of living tissue; and Cliff Brangwynne, the June K. Wu '92 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and director of the Princeton Bioengineering Initiative, who pioneered the study of phase separation in biological processes.

"Ileana is a biochemist, Cliff is a biophysicist and engineer, and I am a cancer biologist -- a cell biologist," Kang said. "Princeton is just a wonderful place for people to connect and collaborate. We have a very small campus. All the science departments are right next to each other. Ileana's lab is actually on the same floor of Lewis Thomas as mine! These very close relationships, among very diverse research areas, allow us to bring in technologies from many different angles, and allow breakthroughs to understanding the mechanisms of metabolism in cancer -- its progression, metastasis and the immune response -- and also come up with new ways to target it."

The latest breakthrough, featuring the as-yet unnamed organelle, adds new understanding to the role of the Wnt signaling pathway, a system whose discovery led to the 1995 Nobel Prize for Eric Wieschaus, Princeton's Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and a professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. The Wnt pathway is vital to embryonic development in countless organisms, from tiny invertebrate insects to humans. Wieschaus discovered that cancer can co-opt this pathway, essentially corrupting its ability to grow as rapidly as embryos must, to grow tumors.

Subsequent research has revealed that the Wnt signaling pathway plays multiple roles in healthy bone growth as well as in cancer metastasizing to bones. Kang and his colleagues were investigating the complex interplay between Wnt, a signaling molecule called TGF-b, and a relatively unknown gene named DACT1 when they discovered this new organelle.

Think of it as panic-shopping before a storm, said Esposito. Buying up bread and milk before a blizzard -- or hoarding hand sanitizer and toilet paper when a pandemic is looming on the horizon -- aren't just human traits, it turns out. They happen on the cellular level, too.

Here's how it works: The panicked shopper is DACT1, and the blizzard (or pandemic) is TGF-ß. The bread and hand sanitizer are Casein Kinase 2 (CK2), and in the presence of a storm, DACT1 grabs up as much of them as possible, and the newly discovered organelle sequesters them away. By hoarding CK2, the shopper prevents other folks from making sandwiches and sanitizing their hands, i.e. preventing the healthy operation of the Wnt pathway.

Through a series of detailed and complex experiments, the researchers pieced together the story: bone tumors initially induce Wnt signaling, to disseminate (spread) through the bone. Then, TGF-b, which is abundant in bones, inspires the panicked shopping, suppressing Wnt signaling. The tumors then stimulate the growth of osteoclasts, which scrub away old bone tissue. (Healthy bones are constantly being replenished in a two-part process: osteoclasts scrub away a layer of bone, then osteoblasts rebuild the bone with new material.) This further increases the TGF-b concentration, prompting even more DACT1 hoarding and subsequent Wnt suppression that has been shown to be important in further metastasis.

By discovering the roles of DACT1 and this organelle, Kang and his team have found new possible targets for cancer drugs. "For example, if we have a way to disrupt the DACT1 complex, perhaps the tumor will disseminate, but it will never be able to 'grow up' to be life-threatening metastasis. That's the hope," Kang said.

Kang and Esposito recently co-founded KayoThera to pursue the development of medications for patients with late-stage or metastatic cancers, based on their work together in the Kang lab. "The kind of fundamental study that Mark is doing both presents groundbreaking science findings and can also lead to medical breakthroughs," said Kang.

The researchers have found that DACT1 plays many other roles as well, which their team is only beginning to explore. The mass spectrometry collaboration with Cristea's team revealed more than 600 different proteins in the mysterious organelle. Mass spectrometry allows scientists to find out the exact components of almost any substance imaged on a microscope slide.

"This is a more dynamic signaling node than just controlling Wnt and TGF-b." said Esposito. "This is just the tip of the iceberg on a new field of biology."

This bridge between phase separations and cancer research is still in its infancy, but it already shows great potential, said Brangwynne, who was a co-author on the paper.

"The role that biomolecular condensates play in cancer -- both its genesis but particularly its spread through metastasis -- is still poorly understood," he said. "This study provides new insights into the interplay of cancer signaling pathways and condensate biophysics, and it will open up new therapeutic avenues."

Farmers in the Midwest may be able to bypass the warming climate not by getting more water for their crops, but instead by adapting to climate change through soil management says a new study from Michigan State University.

"The Midwest supplies 30% of the world's corn and soybeans," said Bruno Basso, an ecosystems scientist and MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences within the College of Natural Science. "These crops are sensitive to temperature and water changes."

Previous studies have suggested that by 2050, the Midwest will need about 35% more water to sustain its current levels of corn and soybean yields. But research done by Basso and colleagues found that the data does not support this idea. The Midwest is in a unique location that typically receives ample rainfall and has deep soil, ideal for farming.

The research was published March 5 in Nature Communications.

Basso, with his lab members Rafael Martinez-Feria and Lydia Rill, and MSU Distinguished Emeritus Professor Joe Ritchie, analyzed climate trends from weather stations from across the Midwest dating as far back as 1894.

The researchers found that average daily temperatures during the summer have increased throughout much of the Midwest. But they also discovered that daily minimum air temperatures, usually during the nighttime, have increased while the daily maximum daytime temperatures have decreased.

These trends held true during the full, 120-year weather record studied or during more 30- to 60-year time periods.

"Warmer temperatures generally mean that crops need more water, but that doesn't seem to be the case in the Midwest," said Basso, who is also a faculty member at MSU's W.K. Kellogg Biological Station and AgBioResearch. "Because the increase in average temperature comes from higher minimum temperatures -- the temperature at which dew is formed -- this means that the air is also becoming more humid."

Ritchie, one of the co-authors on the study, said that these two contrasting trends have canceled each other out, and that so far, the potential crop water demand has remained relatively unchanged despite the warming climate.

Data were entered into computer simulation models developed at MSU by Basso and Ritchie to gauge the impact if these trends continued into 2050. Martinez-Feria, another co-author on the study, said that in the worst-case scenario, the amount of water needed by crops could increase by an average of 2.5%. More conservative estimates indicate that water needs would remain practically the same, because summer rainfall would also increase.

Basso cautions that although crop water needs may be similar in the future, increasing air temperatures also make droughts more likely to occur. "The impact climate change will have on the Midwest is still uncertain," he said. "We are still at risk of droughts."

But instead of installing extensive and expensive irrigation systems that might only pay off under extreme droughts, Bassos advises farmers to invest in technology and regenerative soil practices that make plants more resilient and adaptable to climate change.

"As we continue to learn more about weather and its increased variability, farmers need to adapt, which they are starting to do," Basso said. "I feel optimistic that with the progress made in regenerative practices, genetics and digital technology solutions, we can adapt to climate and have a better chance of winning this battle against our own previous mistakes."

New evidence published today in the Cochrane Library suggests that smokers who quit can feel the positive benefits within weeks.

The research, led by Dr Gemma Taylor from the University of Bath's Addiction & Mental Health Group and published this week to coincide with No Smoking Day 2021 (Wednesday 10 March), finds that reductions in anxiety and depression among those who quit is at least as great as for those taking anti-depressants. It also finds that people's social relationships are unlikely to suffer if they stop.

Smoking is the world's leading cause of preventable illness and death. One in every two people who smoke will die of a smoking-related disease unless they quit. However, some people still believe that smoking reduces stress and other mental health symptoms, and that quitting might exacerbate mental health problems. Some people who smoke also worry that stopping might have a negative impact on their social lives and friendships.

The Cochrane review, which summarises evidence from 102 observational studies involving nearly 170,000 people, found that people who stopped smoking for at least 6 weeks experienced less depression, anxiety, and stress than people who continued to smoke. People who quit also experienced more positive feelings and better psychological wellbeing. Giving up smoking did not have an impact on the quality of people's social relationships, and it is possible that stopping smoking may be associated with a small improvement in social wellbeing.

The review authors combined the results from 63 studies that measured changes in mental health symptoms in people who stopped smoking with changes occurring in people who continued to smoke. They also combined results from 10 studies that measured how many people developed a mental health disorder during the study. The studies involved a wide range of people, including people with prior mental health conditions and people with long-term physical illnesses. The length of time the studies followed people varied from six weeks to up to six years.

The lead author Dr Gemma Taylor from the Addiction & Mental Health Group at the University of Bath said: "Smokers often believe that cigarettes are the crutch they need when they feel low, but there is good reason to think that smoking is actually making them feel worse. The daily cycle of waking up with cravings, satisfying the cravings through smoking only to be back wanting another cigarette within hours has an understandable impact on how people feel. But get past the withdrawal that many smokers feel when they stop, and better mental health is on the other side.

"From our evidence we see that the link between smoking cessation and mood seem to be similar in a range of people, and most crucially, there is no evidence that people with mental health conditions will experience a worsening of their health if they stop smoking."

This new research comes as Public Health England (PHE) also publishes data that shows smokers have poorer mental wellbeing than non-smokers. Smokers scored worse than the population as a whole on every mental wellbeing indicator with levels of anxiety and unhappiness increasing between 2019 and 2020. In 2019 1.6 million smokers had high levels of anxiety. As anxiety increased for the whole population in 2020 as a result of COVID-19, this rose with 2.4 million smokers reporting high levels of anxiety, an increase of 50%. Smokers reporting low levels of happiness also rose, from 900,000 in 2019 to 1.3 million in 2020.

Speaking on No Smoking Day, Deborah Arnott, Chief Executive of Action on Smoking and Health said: "After the year we've all had, some smokers might feel now is not the time to stop. The opposite is true, put smoking behind you and a brighter future beckons. Using nicotine replacement, whether patches gum or vapes, can help deal with any withdrawal symptoms, which last at most a matter of weeks. Be confident that once you've put smoking behind you not only will you be healthier and wealthier but feel happier too."

The mountain forests of Tanzania are more than 9,300 miles away from Salt Lake City, Utah. But, as in eastern Africa, the wild places of Utah depend on a diversity of birds to spread seeds, eat pests and clean up carrion. Birds keep ecosystems healthy. So if birds in Tanzania are in trouble in a warming climate, as found in a recent study by University of Utah researchers, people in Utah as well as in the African tropics should pay attention.

In a new study published in Global Change Biology, doctoral student Monte Neate-Clegg and colleagues tracked the demographics of 21 bird species over 30 years of observations from a mountain forest in Tanzania. For at least six of the species, their population declined over 30 years could be most attributable to rising temperatures--an effect of a warming world. Smaller birds, as well as those that live at the lower part of their elevation range, were at higher risk for slowed population growth.

"If climate change continues to cause population declines in tropical birds, these species could go extinct," Neate-Clegg says. "And what is happening to birds is almost certainly happening to other organisms."

Three decades in Tanzania

This story starts with William Newmark, a conservation biologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah. In 1987, he began collecting data on birds in the East and West Usambara Mountains in northeastern Tanzania. To track the birds, he and his colleagues set up mist nets, nearly invisible nets that safely and temporarily trap birds so that researchers can gently place an identification band (or record a band number if a bird already has one) and release it again.

"Understory tropical birds are also a particularly good group of organisms to assess the impact of climate change on biodiversity because they can be individually banded and thus carefully monitored over time," says Newmark. "Furthermore many tropical understory birds are poor dispersers, and thus they do not have the option to move elsewhere when their environment changes and consequently are excellent indicators of environmental change."

In 2017, Neate-Clegg joined the project, and in 2019 traveled to Tanzania for 10 weeks of fieldwork. "It rained a lot which made things pretty miserable, and the length of isolation was a mental challenge, but good practice for a pandemic!" he says. But the local field team, led by Victor Mkongewa, was fantastic, he says. "They ran a tight ship and made me feel very welcome. Being in the jungle is always a magical experience and I enjoyed exploring the forests and mountains. Having hornbills as an alarm clock never got old!"

Thirty years of bird observations generate a vast and powerful dataset, one that is rare in the tropics. Bird banding is a powerful tool in itself because demographic information for bird species can be derived from the rate at which previously banded birds are re-encountered.

"This dataset was a great opportunity to test for long-term climate signals," Neate-Clegg says. And the location featured high biodiversity and high levels of species that were found in that area and nowhere else. "Historically the forests have been fragmented, and now climate change threatens these species as well," he says. "So it's a really important ecosystem to study, especially given how little research takes place in Africa compared to other tropical locales."

Bird demographics

The researchers examined the resulting data in a few different ways. First, they looked at how the demographics, or population characteristics, of 21 bird species changed over the study period. Specifically, they looked at population growth, including through reproduction, and survival rates.

To explore possible factors behind the trends, the researchers compared demographic trends with precipitation and temperature trends, finding that for more than half of the species studied, the rising temperature was correlated with decreasing population growth rates. After more statistical analysis, they found that temperature explained demographic trends better than just the passage of time for six of the 21 species, or a little more than a quarter.

Neate-Clegg was surprised that precipitation wasn't more of a factor relative to temperature. "Rainfall has been linked to demographic rates in tropical birds in Panama," he says. "More rain means healthier plants, and more insects such as caterpillars, so we expect rain to help bird demographic rates.  "On the other hand," says Newmark, "the dry season in the Usambara Mountains is shorter and less pronounced than in Panama and thus there is a less seasonal change in food supply for birds in the Usambara Mountains than in Panama."

Other characteristics emerged as important factors. Birds with smaller bodies exhibited lower population growth, as did birds who lived below the midpoint of their optimal elevation range.

What it means for the rest of the world

The declines in population growth, Neate-Clegg says, are more likely to be due to less reproduction than to bird mortality. "To survive and reproduce birds need to find food and avoid predators and parasites," he says. "If changes in temperature affect any of these processes it could affect the birds." Climate effects on insect abundance, predator activity or fruit timing, he says, could negatively affect birds.

Climate change is a complex global phenomenon, with the potential for winners and losers in various corners of the animal kingdom, Neate-Clegg says.

"Birds trapped in montane forest blocks such as in the Usambara mountains will likely be losers because they live in isolated habitats and so don't really have the option of escaping the temperature increases," he says. "I think montane birds throughout the tropics, and even in temperate places such as the Rockies, will be feeling the pressure of increasing temperatures."

And that matters because birds are not just birds. They're integral components of their ecosystems. In forests particularly, birds participate in seed dispersal and pollination, and their loss threatens the health of forests with all the benefits to soil, air, water and wildlife that they carry. In places like Tanzania, Neate-Clegg adds, biodiversity spurs eco-tourism which supports local economies. "The world," he says, "would be poorer without this diversity."

"This study highlights," Newmark says, "the importance of rapidly developing conservation strategies for tropical birds that incorporate the impact of climate change."

People who frequently try to impress or persuade others with misleading exaggerations and distortions are themselves more likely to be fooled by impressive-sounding misinformation, new research from the University of Waterloo shows.

The researchers found that people who frequently engage in "persuasive bullshitting" were actually quite poor at identifying it. Specifically, they had trouble distinguishing intentionally profound or scientifically accurate fact from impressive but meaningless fiction. Importantly, these frequent BSers are also much more likely to fall for fake news headlines.

"It probably seems intuitive to believe that you can't bullshit a bullshitter, but our research suggests that this isn't actually the case," says Shane Littrell, lead author of the paper and cognitive psychology PhD candidate at Waterloo. "In fact, it appears that the biggest purveyors of persuasive bullshit are ironically some of the ones most likely to fall for it."

The researchers define "bullshit" as information designed to impress, persuade, or otherwise mislead people that is often constructed without concern for the truth. They also identify two types of bullshitting-- persuasive and evasive. "Persuasive" uses misleading exaggerations and embellishments to impress, persuade, or fit in with others, while 'evasive' involves giving irrelevant, evasive responses in situations where frankness might result in hurt feelings or reputational harm.

In a series of studies conducted with over 800 participants from the US and Canada, the researchers examined the relations between participants' self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines. Participants also completed measures of cognitive ability, metacognitive insight, intellectual overconfidence, and reflective thinking.

"We found that the more frequently someone engages in persuasive bullshitting, the more likely they are to be duped by various types of misleading information regardless of their cognitive ability, engagement in reflective thinking, or metacognitive skills," Littrell said. "Persuasive BSers seem to mistake superficial profoundness for actual profoundness. So, if something simply sounds profound, truthful, or accurate to them that means it really is. But evasive bullshitters were much better at making this distinction."

The research may help shed light on the processes underlying the spread of some types of misinformation, which could have important implications for the fight against this growing problem.

The analysis of immune cells infiltrating cerebrospinal fluid enables the characterization of the tumor microenvironment in brain metastases.

Findings reported today in Nature Communications* confirm that these cells recapitulate the characteristics of those detected in brain metastases, and could act as novel and non-invasive biomarkers to predict patient responsiveness to immune-based therapies.

Results from a study led by Joan Seoane, Director of Preclinical and Translational Research co-program at VHIO and ICREA Professor, show that immune cells accessing cerebrospinal fluid faithfully recapitulate the characteristics of cells identified in brain metastasis, and could therefore constitute novel biomarkers of response to immune-based therapies.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors including anti-PD1, anti-PD-L1, and anti-CTLA4, have shown significant clinical benefits in patients with progressive or metastatic solid tumors, including some brain metastasis. Notably, these immune-based therapies have improved outcomes for some of those suffering from lung cancer and melanoma. Together, these tumor types (represent between 30-40% of all cancers), along with breast cancer, are three common malignancies that lead to brain metastases.

"One of the major challenges in improving outcomes for patients suffering from brain metastases caused by these cancers is that new lesions can differ immensely from the primary tumor, and thus respond in a different way to immune-based therapies," observes Joan Seoane, co-Corresponding Author of this present study that published today in Nature Communications*.

Brain metastases are the most frequent tumor of the brain, with a dismal prognosis. While a fraction of patients benefit from treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors, the majority do not. To predict response to these therapies necessitates the characterization of tumor specimens. Due to the anatomical location of brain tumors and the risk of surgical procedures, accessing samples from brain malignancies is challenging.

Results from previous studies** led by Joan Seoane, as well as those of other groups, have evidenced that cerebrospinal fluid can provide vital insights into the genomic characteristics of brain tumors and therefore be used as a minimally invasive liquid biopsy. Spurred by these findings, the investigators conducted this present research to establish whether they could effectively characterize the immunological phenotype through the analysis of cerebrospinal fluid.

To test this hypothesis, Joan Seoane's team analyzed samples from 48 patients with brain metastasis. These samples were obtained thanks to the generosity of patients receiving treatment at our Vall d'Hebron University Hospital (HUVH), as well as the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona, who gave their full consent to use their samples. The collection of samples was possible thanks to the dedication and expertise of these hospitals' Neurosurgery Services.

The researchers assessed the immune cells present in the brain metastases, and in parallel, performed immune cell profiling of the cerebrospinal fluid. They sought to identify which cell types were present in the cerebrospinal fluid and compare them with those obtained from the metastatic lesions.

"By establishing similarities between the two, we have identified a novel and minimally invasive method that can allow us to predict response to immunotherapy in these patients. This pioneering approach could more precisely guide clinical decision making in treating these patients with immune-based therapeutic strategies," adds Joan Seoane.

By analyzing cerebrospinal fluid, Joan Seoane's team have been able to identify the T-cells that recognize the tumor, and those that are active in treatment. "Each immune T-cell has a unique sequence that recognizes a particular tumor antigen. When their tracing and targeting commence, these cells are activated and begin to proliferate. Through this study, we have been able to characterize the individual sequences of immune cells and, in this way, identify which immune cells are fighting the tumor and discern how they evolve over time," continues Joan Seoane.

The study was also carried out in collaboration with colleagues at the National Centre for Genomic Analysis-Centre for Genomic Regulation (CNAG-CRG), Barcelona. Directed by Holger Heyn, Head of CNAG-CRG's Single Cell Genomics Team, theu performed single cell transcriptome sequencing of around 6000 cells by scRNA-seq technology.

"Single cell transcriptome sequencing provides the highest resolution for the detection and monitoring of several different diseases. The identification of clonal T-cells in both metastasis and liquid biopsy is of particular interest. We have shown that the sequencing of T-cell receptors provides a cellular barcode that can be assessed outside of the tumor. Importantly, this approach opens up new avenues for the detection of systemic disease," concludes Holger Heyn, co-Corresponding Author of this present study.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Physicians understand frailty as a dysregulation among multiple systems in the body that make it less resilient and unable to recover completely when faced with a physical challenge such as injury or illness. "Defining frailty on a scientific level, however, has been a challenging task," explains Ravi Varadhan, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology in the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Gaining a better understanding of physical frailty could eventually help people age more healthfully, suggests a Johns Hopkins research team led by Linda Fried, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health (Fried was previously at Johns Hopkins) and Varadhan, in a perspective article published in the January issue of Nature Aging.

The researchers developed a system for diagnosing frailness, which is characterized by three or more of five key clinical signs and symptoms: weakness, slow walking speed, low level of physical activity, fatigue or exhaustion, and unintentional weight loss.

They say that frailty is a distinct state that occurs when key physiological and biological systems -- including the metabolism, musculoskeletal and stress-response systems -- become out of sync with one another, interacting in an unbalanced way when faced with challenges. Eventually, Varadhan says, disharmony among these systems pushes the body across a threshold into a state of highly diminished function and resilience.

In the perspective article, Varadhan and colleagues point to Johns Hopkins' 2012 Women's Health and Aging Study II research initiative as evidence. In this study, volunteers from 85 to 94 years old received a standard oral glucose tolerance test, in which their blood glucose and blood insulin levels were measured after they consumed a high-sugar drink. Those with diagnosed frailty had exaggerated responses, on average, to both measures and were far slower to return to blood sugar baseline than those who weren't frail -- a sign of a failing metabolic system.

Similarly, frail women participating in the same study had molecular markers of slower muscle recovery after exercise, which is an indicator of a weakened musculoskeletal system. Also, following a simulation test, these women produced less cortisol, a hormone that indicates the body's response to stress and is a sign of a dysregulated stress response.

The metabolism, musculoskeletal and stress-response systems provide feedback to one another, so a challenge to any of these systems could lead to a domino effect in the others, raising the risk for a wide range of health problems associated with aging, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, Varadhan says.

Interventions that target multiple systems at once, such as physical exercise -- rather than those that have an effect on just a single system, such as a drug that lowers blood sugar--could potentially prevent, slow or reverse frailty, the researchers report.

Varadhan and his colleagues continue to study exercise and other interventions to develop the best ways to stave off and treat this common consequence of aging.

"The more we learn about frailty," he says, "the more we can help people live better lives as they age."

"We hope the dynamical systems lens through which we considered physiological fitness in our study may lend fundamental insights into the nature and maintenance of health, and not only its loss in states of frailty and diminished resilience," says Karen Bandeen-Roche, Ph.D., Hurley-Dorrier Professor and chair of biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and co-senior author of the article.

Malaria is the deadliest pathogen in human history. Nearly half the people on Earth are at risk of contracting the disease from the parasites that cause it. But humans aren't the only ones who can get these parasites--different forms are found in other animals, including birds. By studying the DNA of those strains, scientists can get a better picture of how malarial parasites live, which may give clues on how to stop the disease. In a new paper in PNAS, researchers analyzed blood samples of more than 1,000 species of birds from the Andes looking for malaria; they found that the strains of malaria present in a local area don't always neatly align with the types of birds living there.

"Traditionally, we thought that there's kind of a one-to-one relationship between hosts and parasites, that the evolutionary relationship between the parasites will mirror the evolutionary relationships of the host," says Heather Skeen, a PhD student at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum and one of the study's co-authors. "And what we found is that with birds and malaria, this is largely not true."

"This study was an opportunity to ask the question, 'What does a community of malarial parasites actually look like?'" says John Bates, curator of birds at the Field Museum and a co-author of the paper, which was led by Cornell University's Sabrina McNew and University of New Mexico's Christopher Witt. "It involved changing the way we do fieldwork to collect the relevant data. This research is an attempt to figure out how the ecological and evolutionary relationships of parasites compare to those of bird communities. We found that it's not simple."

He's right, it's not simple, but here's the background: malaria is a single-celled organism that lives as a parasite inside multiple host organisms during its life cycle, including the blood of birds and mammals and the guts of insects like mosquitoes. When humans are infected with malaria, it can kill us, but other animals, including most birds, often survive malaria infection. . And while humans can't catch bird malaria, getting a better understanding of malaria in birds might help us treat or prevent human malaria in the future.

To learn about malaria in birds, the researchers collected blood samples from thousands of birds in different parts of the Andes Mountains in Peru. These blood samples were then transported back to the Field Museum in Chicago and genetically sequenced at the museum's Pritzker DNA Laboratory.

The researchers then compared the DNA from the different birds as well as the different malaria parasites present in their blood. "There are hypothesized to be as many malarial strains as species of birds--about 10,000," explains Skeen.

To better understand how the ecological and evolutionary relationships of birds and their malaria pathogens, the team sampled 18 different biological communities in the Peruvian Andes, and when they analyzed the DNA of the birds and malaria present, they found around 1,350 bird species but only about 400 strains of malaria. They demonstrate that the kinds of birds in a community were good predictors for the strains of malaria in a community, but not vice versa--those same malaria strains might turn up in a different community of birds.

Instead, the researchers learned that the weather in different areas made a bigger difference to the strains of malaria present than the kinds of birds in the community. "Microclimate, or the climate in very specific habitats, appears to be the main driver of pathogen prevalence in communities," says Skeen. "Rainfall is one of the most significant predictors of community turnover, and I think that's because the insects that spread these parasites are more affected by variations in precipitation than birds are." For instance, extra rain might create stagnant puddles that mosquitoes lay their eggs in, and these mosquitoes help spread malaria throughout a community of birds.

The researchers, who along with Skeen, Bates, McNew, and Witt included Shannon Hackett and Shane DuBay from the Field Museum, analyzed the community patterns they found and mapped the biodiversity of both the birds and the parasites. These analyses could help scientists attempting to protect areas of extreme biodiversity within the Andes and give biologists a better understanding of how malaria strains evolve and change.

"It's a whole other research area for multiple people to potentially work on. There's a lot to do, there are literally people that have spent their graduate career pulling out salivary glands from mosquitoes and squashing them on the microscope slides in order to get access to the malaria in the salivary glands of mosquitoes," says Bates. "It highlights how far we've come and how far we have to go."

Professor Rosalind Gill, from City, University of London's Gender and Sexualities Research Centre, has today published a new report to mark International Women's Day.

The report - Changing the Perfect Picture: Smartphones, Social Media and Appearance Pressures - is based on research with 175 young women and nonbinary people in the UK.

Covering a range of issues - experiences of lockdown, feelings about 'body positivity', how to show support for Black Lives Matter - the research documents young people's persistent anger with a mass media that they deem 'too white', 'too heterosexual' and too focused on very narrow definitions of beauty.

Professor Gill said: "A critique of perfection ran through the research like a bass track, with young people telling me that they feel overwhelmed by images that are 'too perfect'.

"Women of colour, disabled women and gender nonconforming folk told me they rarely see anyone like them in the media."

The report raises particular issues about how appearance standards are narrowing and how the affordances of smartphones (e.g., magnification and screenshotting), together with editing and filtering apps like Facetune, are contributing towards a society in which young people feel under constant forensic scrutiny by their peers.

Ninety per cent of women report using a filter or editing their photos before posting to even out their skin tone, reshape their jaw or nose, shave off weight, brighten or bronze their skin, and their whiten teeth.

Young women in the study also described regularly seeing advertisements or push notifications for cosmetic procedures - particularly for teeth whitening, lip fillers, and surgery to enhance bottom, breasts or nose.

Social media algorithms mean that, as one 21-year-old put it: "Once you look, you will never be allowed to forget."

Professor Gill said: "With nearly 100 million photos posted every single day on Instagram alone, we have never been such a visually dominated society.

"Posting on social media can produce the intense pleasure of 'getting likes' and appreciative attention, but it is also a source of huge anxiety for most young women.

"I was struck by young women saying to me again and again: 'I feel judged'."

Professor Gill noted that, while the research would have been important at any time, the unique context of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown gave it a particular urgency.

She said: "Day after day, reports were published highlighting the devastating mental health impacts of the pandemic on young people: their education suddenly halted, their freedoms curtailed, with many experiencing financial hardship, emotional difficulties or bereavement.

"This research helps to shed light on how a diverse sample of young people navigated this challenging time, as well as offering more general insights into their lives.

"In some ways, young people's familiarity with online tools and platforms better prepared them (relative to older groups) for the lockdown period in which so many aspects of life moved online - including work, education, psychological and health services, and social lives.

"In other ways, as this report shows, they experienced heightened pressure and distress."

The research was funded by City, University of London, and carried out at the Gender and Sexualities Research Centre (GSRC) during 2020.

The GSRC analyses how gender and sexuality intersect with other social divisions and identities in a rapidly changing world, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, collaboration and research.

A summary report was submitted to the Government Equalities Office's Inquiry into Body Image.

Recently, research group, led by Prof. FU Yao and associate research fellow LU Xi From Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and School of Chemistry and Materials Science of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), has made significant achievements in the field of synthesis of chiral amines. They developed a mild and general nickel-catalysed asymmetric reductive hydroalkylation and realized the modular synthesis of chiral aliphatic amines.

Results were published in Nature Communications on Feb. 26, 2021.

Chiral amines are important chiral auxiliaries and key synthetic intermediates of pharmaceuticals and natural products. It is an important direction to develop efficient and convenient synthesis of chiral amines in organic synthetic chemistry. However, conventional catalytic synthesis methods, such as imine and enamine hydrogenation, imine alkylation, olefin hydroamination and others, have limited substrate structure in the synthesis of dialkyl substituted chiral aliphatic amines.

The research group proposed the concept of olefin reductive coupling and developed a cheap nickel catalytic system to realize carbon carbon coupling under mild conditions by replacing equivalent metal reagents with olefins.

In this work, they combined saturated carbon couple, and successfully realized the asymmetric hydroalkylation of enamides catalyzed by Ni MH. In addition, the asymmetric hydroalkylation of enamide with α-borate halide can be realized to prepare β-aminoborate with two chiral centers. Tandem conversion of organic boron compounds will contribute to the development of amine chiral molecules with complex structures.

This work is a complement and breakthrough for the structural limitations of conventional chiral amine synthesis strategies.

Along the western edge of Alaska's Aleutian archipelago, a group of islands that were inadvertently populated with rodents came to earn the ignominious label of the "Rat Islands." The non-native invaders were accidentally introduced to these islands, and others throughout the Aleutian chain, through shipwrecks dating back to the 1700s and World War II occupation. The resilient rodents, which are known to be among the most damaging invasive animals, adapted and thrived in the new setting and eventually overwhelmed the island ecosystems, disrupting the natural ecological order and driving out native species.

A coordinated conservation effort that removed the rats from one of the islands formerly known as Rat Island has become a new example of how ecosystems can fully recover to their natural state in little more than a decade. The ecological rebound at newly named Hawadax Island (a return to the original Aleut name meaning "the island over there with two knolls") extended from land to the island's interconnected marine community. Results of a study published in Scientific Reports and led by a University of California San Diego researcher has documented the remarkable recovery.

"We were surprised that the level of recovery unfolded so quickly--we thought it could be longer," said Carolyn Kurle, an associate professor in the UC San Diego Division of Biological Sciences Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution and lead author of the new study, which includes researchers from UC Santa Cruz, Island Conservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and The Nature Conservancy.

Kurle has taken part in research expeditions to more than 35 of the islands in the Aleutian chain. She and her colleagues conducted surveys at Hawadax in 2008 when the invasive rodents dominated the island ecosystem. As a new, direct predator to native island species, the rats unleashed a cascade of disruption for the island's food chain. They preyed upon shore bird eggs and chicks, which nearly wiped out the island's breeding shorebird population. Without birds consuming herbivorous seashore invertebrates such as snails and limpets, the island's intertidal plant-eaters flourished, significantly driving down the abundance of the marine kelp.

To reverse these effects, a coordinated conservation strategy to save the native species on Hawadax removed the rats in 2008. The effort presented a rare case in which researchers were able to compare ecosystem data from surveys during rat dominance with a recovering ecosystem five years later and a fully recovered system after 11 years.

"You don't often get the opportunity to return to a remote location and collect data after the fact," said Kurle, who noted that the researchers also compared the survey data with naturally balanced ecosystems on neighboring islands that had never been occupied with rats. "Sometimes it's hard to say that a conservation action had any sort of impact, but in this particular case we took a conservation action that was expensive and difficult, and we actually demonstrated that it worked. But we didn't expect it to be so fast."

With the rats removed at Hawadax, the seabirds returned and are again consuming the seashore invertebrates, which has allowed the recovery and rebound of the kelp community.

"Invasive rats are almost always direct predators of native animals when they become introduced on islands," said Kurle. "So when the birds returned it led to an entirely different structure in the marine community on this island. It now has a structure that more closely resembles what we observe on islands that have never had rat invaders."

The researchers say more studies that focus on understanding and measuring both direct and indirect impacts of invaders, and how inter-connected communities respond following removal of those impacts, are needed to underscore the broad conservation successes associated with invasive species eradication, especially on islands.

"This study both confirms the profound impacts of introduced species like rats across entire sensitive island ecosystems while at the same time demonstrating the remarkable conservation benefits of their removal," said Donald Croll, study co-author and professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at UC Santa Cruz.

The earliest multicellular organisms may have lacked heads, legs, or arms, but pieces of them remain inside of us today, new research shows.

According to a UC Riverside study, 555-million-year-old oceanic creatures from the Ediacaran period share genes with today's animals, including humans.

"None of them had heads or skeletons. Many of them probably looked like three-dimensional bathmats on the sea floor, round discs that stuck up," said Mary Droser, a geology professor at UCR. "These animals are so weird and so different, it's difficult to assign them to modern categories of living organisms just by looking at them, and it's not like we can extract their DNA -- we can't."

However, well-preserved fossil records have allowed Droser and the study's first author, recent UCR doctoral graduate Scott Evans, to link the animals' appearance and likely behaviors to genetic analysis of currently living things. Their research on these links has been recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

For their analysis, the researchers considered four animals representative of the more than 40 recognized species that have been identified from the Ediacaran era. These creatures ranged in size from a few millimeters to nearly a meter in length.

Kimberella were teardrop-shaped creatures with one broad, rounded end and one narrow end that likely scraped the sea floor for food with a proboscis. Further, they could move around using a "muscular foot" like snails today. The study included flat, oval-shaped Dickinsonia with a series of raised bands on their surface, and Tribrachidium, who spent their lives immobilized at the bottom of the sea.

Also analyzed were Ikaria, animals recently discovered by a team including Evans and Droser. They were about the size and shape of a grain of rice, and represent the first bilaterians -- organisms with a front, back, and openings at either end connected by a gut. Evans said it's likely Ikaria had mouths, though those weren't preserved in the fossil records, and they crawled through organic matter "eating as they went."

All four of the animals were multicellular, with cells of different types. Most had symmetry on their left and right sides, as well as noncentralized nervous systems and musculature.

Additionally, they seem to have been able to repair damaged body parts through a process known as apoptosis. The same genes involved are key elements of human immune systems, which helps to eliminate virus-infected and pre-cancerous cells.

These animals likely had the genetic parts responsible for heads and the sensory organs usually found there. However, the complexity of interaction between these genes that would give rise to such features hadn't yet been achieved.

"The fact that we can say these genes were operating in something that's been extinct for half a billion years is fascinating to me," Evans said.

The work was supported by a NASA Exobiology grant, and a Peter Buck postdoctoral fellowship.

Going forward, the team is planning to investigate muscle development and functional studies to further understand early animal evolution.

"Our work is a way to put these animals on the tree of life, in some respects," Droser said. "And show they're genetically linked to modern animals, and to us."

A global observation of an ongoing atmospheric drying -- known by scientists as a rise in vapor pressure deficit -- has been observed worldwide since the early 2000s. In recent years, this concerning phenomenon has been on the rise, and is predicted to amplify even more in the coming decades as climate change intensifies.

In a new paper published in the journal Global Change Biology, research from the University of Minnesota and Western University in Ontario, Canada, outlines global atmospheric drying significantly reduces productivity of both crops and non-crop plants, even under well-watered conditions. The new findings were established on a large-scale analysis covering 50 years of research and 112 plant species.

"When there is a high vapor pressure deficit, our atmosphere pulls water from other sources: animals, plants, etc.," said senior author Walid Sadok, an assistant professor in the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota. "An increase in vapor pressure deficit places greater demand on the crop to use more water. In turn, this puts more pressure on farmers to ensure this demand for water is met -- either via precipitation or irrigation --so that yields do not decrease."

"We believe a climate change-driven increase in atmospheric drying will reduce plant productivity and crop yields -- both in Minnesota and globally," said Sadok.

In their analysis, researchers suspected plants would sense and respond to this phenomenon in unexpected ways, generating additional costs on productivity. Findings bear out that various plant species -- from wheat, corn, and even birch trees -- take cues from atmospheric drying and anticipate future drought events.

Through this process, plants reprogram themselves to become more conservative -- or in other words: grow smaller, shorter and more resistant to drought, even if the drought itself does not happen. Additionally, due to this conservative behavior, plants are less able to fix atmospheric CO2 to perform photosynthesis and produce seeds. The net result? Productivity decreases.

"As we race to increase production to feed a bigger population, this is a new hurdle that will need to be cleared," said Sadok. "Atmospheric drying could limit yields, even in regions where irrigation or soil moisture is not limiting, such as Minnesota."

On a positive note, the analysis indicates different species or varieties within species respond more or less strongly to this drying depending on their evolutionary and genetic make-up. For example, in wheat, some varieties are less responsive to this new stress compared to others, and this type of variability seems to exist within other non-crop species as well.

"This finding is particularly promising as it points to the possibility of breeding for genotypes with an ability to stay productive despite the increase in atmospheric drying," said Sadok.

Danielle Way, a plant physiologist and co-author of the study from Western University, sees similar outcomes when it comes to ecosystems.

"Variation in plants' sensitivity to atmospheric drying could also be leveraged to predict how natural ecosystems will respond to climate change and manage them in ways that increase their resilience to climate change," she said.

In the future, researchers believe these findings can be used to design new crop varieties and manage ecosystems in ways that make them more resilient to atmospheric drying. However, new collaborations are needed between plant physiologists, ecologists, agronomists, breeders and farmers to make sure the right kind of variety is released to farmers depending on their specific conditions.

"Ultimately, this investigation calls for more focused interdisciplinary research efforts to better understand, predict and mitigate the complex effects of atmospheric drying on ecosystems and food security," Sadok and Way said.

The research was funded by grants from the Minnesota Wheat Research & Promotion Council, the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

Microscopic fossilized shells are helping geologists reconstruct Earth's climate during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of abrupt global warming and ocean acidification that occurred 56 million years ago. Clues from these ancient shells can help scientists better predict future warming and ocean acidification driven by human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

Led by Northwestern University, the researchers analyzed shells from foraminifera, an ocean-dwelling unicellular organism with an external shell made of calcium carbonate. After analyzing the calcium isotope composition of the fossils, the researchers concluded that massive volcanic activity injected large amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth system, causing global warming and ocean acidification.

They also found that global warming and ocean acidification did not just passively affect foraminifera. The organisms also actively responded by reducing calcification rates when building their shells. As calcification slowed, the foraminifera consumed less alkalinity from seawater, which helped buffer increasing ocean acidity.

"The formation and dissolution of calcium carbonate help regulate the acidity and alkalinity of seawater," said Northwestern's Andrew Jacobson, a senior author of the study. "Our calcium isotope data indicate that reduced foraminiferal calcification worked to dampen ocean acidification before and across the PETM."

"This is a pretty new concept in the field," added Gabriella Kitch, the study's first author. "Previously, people thought that only the dissolution of carbonates at the sea floor could increase alkalinity of the ocean and buffer the effects of ocean acidification. But we are adding to existing studies that show decreased carbonate production has the same buffering effect."

The research was published online last week (March 4) in the journal Geology. This is the first study to examine the calcium isotope composition of foraminifera to reconstruct conditions before and across the PETM and the third recent Northwestern study to find that ocean acidification -- due to volcanic carbon dioxide emissions -- preceded major prehistoric environmental catastrophes, such as mass extinctions, oceanic anoxic events and periods of intense global warming.

Jacobson is a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Kitch is a Ph.D. candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Jacobson's laboratory. Northwestern Earth science professors Bradley Sageman and Matthew Hurtgen, as well as collaborators from the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the University of Kansas, coauthored the paper with Jacobson and Kitch.

Sorting microscopic shells

To study oceanic conditions during the PETM, the researchers examined the calcium isotope composition of foraminiferal fossils collected from two sites -- one in the southeast Atlantic Ocean and one in the Pacific Ocean -- by the Ocean Drilling Program.

Because each fossilized shell is about the size of a single grain of sand, UCSC researchers physically collected the tiny specimens by first identifying them under a microscope. After sorting the shells from bulk sediments, the Northwestern team dissolved the samples and analyzed their calcium isotope composition using a thermal ionization mass spectrometer.

"The work is very challenging," Jacobson said. "To manipulate these tiny materials, you have to pick them up, one by one, with a wet paintbrush tip under a microscope."

Stress prior to PETM

As the shells formed more than 56 million years ago, they responded to oceanic conditions. By examining these shells, the Northwestern team found that calcium isotope ratios increased prior to the onset of the PETM.

"We are looking at one group of organisms that built their shells in one part of the ocean, recording the seawater chemistry surrounding them," Kitch said. "We think the calcium isotope data reveal potential stress prior to the well-known boundary."

Other archives indicate that the atmosphere-ocean system experienced a massive carbon dioxide release immediately before the PETM. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, it forms a weak acid that can inhibit calcium carbonate formation. Although it is still undetermined, Earth scientists believe the carbon release most likely came from volcanic activity or cascading effects, such as a release of methane hydrates from the seafloor as a result of ocean warming.

"My suspicion is that it's both of these factors or some sort of combination," Sageman said. "Most big events in Earth's history represent a confluence of many actors coming together at the same time."

Consistent pattern emerges

This is the third study led by Jacobson to find that ocean acidification precedes major environmental catastrophes that correlate with large igneous province eruptions. Last month, Jacobson's team published results finding that volcanic activity triggered a biocalcification crisis prior to an ocean anoxic event that occurred 120 million years ago. Just over a year ago, Jacobson's team published another study finding ocean acidification preceded the asteroid impact leading to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event 66 million years ago, which included the demise of dinosaurs.

In all three studies, Jacobson's team used sophisticated tools in his laboratory to analyze the calcium isotope composition of calcium carbonate fossils and sediment. Jacobson said a clear pattern is emerging. Influxes of carbon dioxide led to global warming and ocean acidification and, ultimately, to massive environmental changes.

"In all of our studies, we consistently see an increase in calcium isotope ratios before the onset of major events or extinction horizons," Jacobson said. "This seems to point to similar drivers and common responses."

"Perhaps the calcium isotope system has a sensitivity to the earliest phases of these events," Sageman added.

Predictor for future ocean stress

Many researchers study the PETM because it provides the best analog for current-day, human-caused global warming. The carbon influx during the PETM is similar to the amount of carbon released during the past two centuries. The timescales, however, differ significantly. Temperatures during the PETM increased by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius over 170,000 years. With human-caused climate change, the same level of warming is projected to occur in less than 200 years, if carbon dioxide emissions remain unabated.

Frighteningly, terrestrial and ocean stress, including a major decrease in foraminiferal calcification, accompanied the PETM.

"The PETM is a model for what happens during major large carbon cycle perturbations," Jacobson said. "A lot of predictions for Earth's future climate rely on understanding what happened during the PETM."