Earth

Scientists regularly use remote sensing drones and satellites to record how climate change affects permafrost thaw rates -- methods that work well in barren tundra landscapes where there's nothing to obstruct the view.

But in boreal regions, which harbor a significant portion of the world's permafrost, obscuring vegetation can stymy even the most advanced remote sensing technology.

In a study published in January, researchers in Germany and at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute developed a method of using satellite imagery to measure the depth of thaw directly above permafrost in boreal ecosystems. Rather than trying to peer past vegetation, they propose a unique solution that uses variations in forest color to infer the depth of permafrost beneath.

The forest for the trees

Permafrost deposits in the northern hemisphere have been continuously frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. The soil layer directly above that of permafrost, however, is much more dynamic -- freezing and thawing with the seasons and growing or shrinking as it interacts with different types of vegetation at the surface.

Because permafrost in boreal regions is often overlaid with thick forest cover, typical methods of measuring permafrost and the active layer that work well in tundra regions -- like using pulsed lasers or radar that penetrate the soil -- are ineffective and can give spurious results.

"The canopies get in the way in forested regions," said Christine Waigl, a researcher in the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and co-author on the study. "Some remote sensing instruments can penetrate the vegetation cover, but the interpretation requires specialized knowledge."

Instead of looking past the forest cover, scientists have turned to a variety of indirect methods. One approach is to assign categories to vegetation in order to obtain broad estimates for the size of the active layer underneath. The results can be imprecise -- similar to the difference between a sketch of a landscape and a high-resolution photo of it.

Instead, lead author Veronika Döpper, a researcher at the Berlin Institute of Technology, took a different approach, one in which she viewed the vegetative landscape as a continuum.

"In natural forests, the plants around you don't just fall into one category or the other with no gradient in between," said Döpper. "So in our study, rather than saying we had a birch-dominated forest or a black spruce-dominated forest with corresponding deep or shallow permafrost, we used our satellite imagery to see the gradient between the two."

Remote sensing color palette

To achieve this goal, Döpper obtained satellite imagery of the forests surrounding the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, that were taken during the summer of 2018. In order to know what she was looking at, Döpper set up over 65 10-by-10 meter plots outside Fairbanks that same summer in which she identified all the trees and shrubs, directly measured the depth of the active layer and recorded the location with GPS.

By using the GPS coordinates to locate each plot on the satellite maps, Döpper could then say how the total number of species in a given plot contributed to the color of those plots as seen in her remote sensing imagery.

"Different types of vegetation will have completely different tones in their color spectra and reflectances, which we can use to map vegetation composition," said Döpper.

With her plots as color guides, reflectances could then determine the exact type of vegetation growing over large swaths of forested and unforested areas outside of Fairbanks and, by proxy, could estimate the precise thaw depths for the same area.

Not only does this new approach promise to provide more accurate and abundant estimates of permafrost depth for use in climate modeling, it's also a valuable tool for communities in boreal regions.

When permafrost melts, the runoff bores channels through the soil, destabilizing the topography overhead. This can result in ground subsidence and landslides, endangering lives and posing risks to infrastructure.

Over 80% of Alaska is covered in permafrost. As these deposits continue to melt, innovative methods of monitoring their disappearance will be essential in more ways than one.

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2021 -- Tons of plastic debris get released into the ocean every day, and most of it accumulates within the middle of garbage patches, which tend to float on the oceans' surface in the center of each of their regions. The most infamous one, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is in the North Pacific Ocean.

Researchers in the U.S. and Germany decided to explore which pathways transport debris from the coasts to the middle of the oceans, as well as the relative strengths of different subtropical gyres in the oceans and how they influence long-term accumulation of debris.

In Chaos, from AIP Publishing, Philippe Miron, Francisco Beron-Vera, Luzie Helfmann, and Peter Koltai report creating a Markov chain model of the oceans' surface dynamics from historical trajectories of surface buoys. Their model describes the probability of plastic debris being transported from one region of ocean surface to another.

"Surface debris is released from the coast and distributed according to their location's share of the global land-based plastic waste entering the ocean," said Miron, an assistant scientist at the University of Miami. "To observe the long-term distribution of floating debris, beached debris is reinjected into the system following the same distribution. We call this model 'pollution aware,' because it models the injection, dispersion, and recirculation of debris within the system."

Transition path theory allows the researchers to identify pathways or transition paths connecting a source directly to a target.

"In this work, we focus on pathways from the coast to the subtropical gyres, from one gyre to another, and from the gyres to the coast," Miron said.

The researchers inferred debris pathways and explored garbage patch stability by quantifying the connection between them and their ability to retain trash.

"We identified a high-probability transition channel connecting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with the coasts of eastern Asia, which suggests an important source of plastic pollution there," said Miron. "And the weakness of the Indian Ocean gyre as a plastic debris trap is consistent with transition paths not converging within the gyre."

They found that gyres, in general, are weakly connected or disconnected from each other.

"Indeed, in the event of anomalously intense winds, a subtropical gyre is more likely to export garbage toward the coastlines than into another gyre," Miron said.

One of the biggest discoveries the group made is while the North Pacific subtropical gyre attracts the most debris, consistent with earlier assessments, the South Pacific gyre stands out as the most enduring, because debris has fewer pathways out and into other gyres.

"Our results, including prospects for garbage patches yet to be directly or robustly observed, namely in the Gulf of Guinea and in the Bay of Bengal, have implications for ocean cleanup activities," said Miron. "The reactive pollution routes we found provide targets -- aside from the great garbage patches themselves -- for those cleanup efforts."

The first UK COVID-19 lockdown saw a "rapid and sustained" fall in violence outside the home in the Welsh capital city, a new study led by Cardiff University has shown.

Researchers from Cardiff University's Crime and Security Research Institute (CSRI) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied data from Cardiff's sole emergency department (ED) from March to June 2020 and compared it to weekly data from January 2019 onwards.

They found there were almost 60% fewer attendances per week for violent injury outside the home in the first lockdown during which time going outside was allowed only for limited reasons like medical need, exercise or food shopping.
The researchers also found a significant reduction in the use of weapons and in violence-related ED visits by males of all ages.
Contrary to expectation, the analysis found no significant increase in visits resulting from violence inside the home.
The findings - the first analysis of violence from this perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic - are published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Lead author Professor Jonathan Shepherd, from the CSRI, said: "This sudden fall in violent injury is the largest any of us has ever seen. It's likely to reflect closure of city centre pubs and clubs in and around which most violence takes place, and widespread compliance with lockdown restrictions."

The researchers investigated the association between COVID-19 lockdown and ED visits for violence-related injuries using detailed violence screening first implemented in Cardiff two decades ago. They studied violence time, whether it took place inside or outside the home, weapon use, perpetrator type and the age and sex of the injured.

They examined visits at Cardiff's only emergency department - at the University Hospital of Wales - for violence-related injury from 1 January 2019 to 9 June 2020. The pre-lockdown period studied was 63 weeks and the lockdown period, 12 weeks.

They used a "difference-in-difference" regression model to identify statistically significant changes during lockdown. This model accounted for seasonal changes in the number of attendances.

For violence outside the home, they found significant decreases in ED visits during the lockdown of 92% among females under the age of 18 and 65% in males of all ages, and a significant decrease (92%) in those injured with a weapon. While people injured by strangers decreased significantly (65%), numbers of those injured by family members did not change significantly.

Regarding violence in the home, no significant change was found in any category.

"The lack of evidence of increase in violence in the home during the first UK lockdown is reassuring," said Professor Shepherd.

"The massive decrease outside the home but no increase in the home reflects the nature of the two environments. The night-time economy (pubs and clubs and the streets where they are situated) is an environment which facilitates violence and violent injury.

"On the other hand, in our study, the home environment is much less conducive to violence and violent injury. People who would have been injured in violence in the night-time economy are not injured in violence when they stay at home."

The researchers found that during these first months of the COVID-19 epidemic ED visits for all reasons dropped by 43% relative to the previous year. They said that while fears about catching COVID-19 may have affected the number of violence related ED visits, it is unlikely this affected the overall findings.

Cardiff University is due to release an England and Wales analysis of violence during the COVID-19 pandemic next month.

What The Study Did: Wearing surgical face masks for 30 minutes was not associated with changes in respiratory parameters or clinical signs of respiratory distress in this study of 47 infants and young children in Italy.

Authors: Silvia Bloise, M.D., of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, 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.2021.0414)

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

Washington, March 2, 2021--A first-of-its-kind analysis of parents' reviews of U.S. public K-12 schools, posted primarily from 2009 to 2019 on the popular school information site GreatSchools.org, found that most reviews were written by parents at schools in affluent neighborhoods and provided information that correlated strongly with test scores, a measure that closely tracks race and family income. Language associated with school effectiveness, which measures how much students improve in their test scores over time and is less correlated with demographics, was much less used. The research was published today in AERA Open, a peer-reviewed, open access journal of the American Educational Research Association.

"Our results reveal the large weight that parents in this timeframe placed on test scores as a measure of quality," said study coauthor Nabeel Gillani, a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Parents seemed to value schools based on current students' performance, not growth over time, which perhaps reflects the longstanding focus of education policies on test scores as a primary marker of school quality."

"School rating websites have come under scrutiny for ratings systems that overemphasize test scores," said Gillani. "Now we've found that subjective online parent reviews can do the same."

"Further research is needed to understand whether reviews reflecting school demographics have the potential to exacerbate neighborhood segregation or other conditions that impact access to high-quality education," Gillani said.

For their study, Gillani and his coauthors, Eric Chu, Doug Beeferman, and Deb Roy, also at MIT, and Rebecca Eynon, at the University of Oxford, applied recent advances in natural language processing to analyze about 830,000 reviews of more than 110,000 schools that were posted by self-identified parents primarily from 2009 to 2019 on GreatSchools.org. Their analyses identified and measured the prevalence of words and phrases that correlated with different measures of school quality--namely, test scores and student learning progress measures--along with school demographics like race and family income, drawn from the Stanford Education Data Archive.

Schools in urban areas and those serving affluent families were found to be more likely to receive parent reviews, and there were clear differences in the review language used by parents of children at majority-White vs. minority-White, and high-income vs. low-income schools.

The authors found that many of the words and phrases that were statistically associated with test scores also conveyed information about the racial and income makeup of schools. For example, words like "PTA" and "emails" were more often used in descriptions of schools with smaller percentages of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch and those serving a smaller percentage of non-White students, as were reviews using the terms "small school," "special needs," and "IEP" (Individualized Education Plan).

"Overall, parents' reviews tended to focus on topics that are associated with race and income in school systems," said Roy, who directs MIT's Center for Constructive Communication. "Wording such as 'the PTA,' 'emails,' 'private school,' 'we,' and 'us' are predictive of test scores, reflecting the tendency of more affluent, non-minority parents to have dual-parent households, digital connectivity, more schooling options, and more time to be involved and communicate regularly with teachers."

"These results reveal the subtle and sometimes hidden patterns in the words we use, sending signals and encoding biases that pervade our social realities," Roy said. "New techniques from machine learning applied to large data sets describing human behavior can help make those patterns visible."

The findings offer evidence that parents from lower-income, minority schools may have fewer voices to learn from.

"Unfortunately, many of these parents are not always tapped into social networks where they can readily receive guidance that helps them identify and select the best schools for their children," said Gillani.

According to the authors, rating sites should encourage parents and stakeholders to value growth as a measure of school quality. They should also adopt strategies to capture a more inclusive cross-section of parents' perspectives about schools and prompt insights that reflect how well schools help children learn and grow.

The analysis does not explore how parent reviews may have changed as a result of GreatSchools' methodological changes in recent years. GreatSchools updated its rating system in 2017 to include new measures of school quality and again in September 2020, after the study was conducted, to emphasize educational equity and give more weight to student growth. GreatSchools and MIT are pursuing a data and research partnership to continue examining how its site is being used and to explore modifications to mitigate potential inequity issues.

"It is critical to uplift the voices of all parents, especially those in traditionally underserved communities, to highlight their experiences within a school community," said GreatSchools CEO Jon Deane. "As we continue to evolve measures of school quality, including prioritizing academic growth over test scores, we value working alongside researchers to find new ways to more equitably serve all parents."

The authors suggest that parents and the public be mindful of how much weight to place on subjective assessments offered by other parents about any given school--and to be mindful of how ratings sites may factor these subjective assessments into their overall scores for schools. (GreatSchools does not factor subjective assessments into its overall ratings.) The authors also recommend that school administrators foster a culture where all parents' voices are valued and parents are encouraged to share their holistic views about the quality of education their children receive.

"One of the goals of school rating sites is to use available data to democratize access to information about school quality," said Gillani. "However, the school choice market is only as good as the information available to consumers. We need more representative voices talking about a more holistic set of topics if we want to maximize opportunities and outcomes for all students, especially those from less privileged backgrounds."

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2021 -- Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death globally. Unfortunately, the heart cannot regenerate new tissue, because the cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, do not divide after birth.

In their paper, published in APL Bioengineering by AIP Publishing, Syracuse researchers developed a shape memory polymer to grow cardiomyocytes. Raising the material's temperature from 30 degrees Celsius to 37 degrees Celsius turned the polymer's flat surface into nanowrinkles, which promoted cardiomyocyte alignment.

The research is part of the growing field of mechanobiology, which investigates how physical forces between cells and changes in their mechanical properties contribute to development, cell differentiation, physiology, and disease.

The researchers provide an overview in their paper of how some of the latest stimuli-responsive biomaterials (SRBs), which include the shape memory polymer, are used to mimic the dynamic microenvironment during heart development and disease progression.

Such research could provide better insight into the biomolecular and regulatory mechanisms that promote cell maturation, the final stages of cell differentiation, and spur the onset of disease.

Scientists have developed cardiac microenvironments by incorporating external stimulations, such as pressure or stretching, to promote cardiomyocyte growth and maturation. But, they haven't been able to control these microenvironments enough to reproduce the step-by-step gradual changes that occur in the body to understand the processes of rebuilding or remodeling heart tissue.

To address this challenge, researchers are using SRBs to learn more about how the microenvironment operates during heart development. SRBs, which are highly tunable, respond to temperature, pressure, electricity, and other external stimuli to provide cues for cell and tissue growth. SRBs undergo property switches in response to external stimuli, which means they can deliver on-demand changes that occur over time to affect the behaviors of cultured cells.

The ideal situation researchers are striving for is the creation of a synthetic 3D SRB-based cell culture platform that can change its material properties to mimic the natural progression of heart development. The platform could also help them learn more about the chemical and physical properties that lead to heart disease.

"It is crucial to understand how time-dependent biophysical cues affect cells during tissue formation," said author Zhen Ma. "However, conceptual models are still based largely on results from studies of static, 2D experimental platforms in which biophysical cues remain constant over time."

Ma suggests there should be a sharper focus on SRB electrical properties to expand the understanding of cardiac responses to extracellular changes. Embedding carbon nanotubes to enhance the conductivity of different polymer scaffolds, for instance, has been shown to improve intercellular communication and cardiomyocyte growth.

New research suggests that the ability of green algae to eat bacteria is likely much more widespread than previously thought, a finding that could be crucial to environmental and climate science. The work, led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, and the University of Arizona, found that five strains of single-celled green algae consume bacteria when they are "hungry," and only when those bacteria are alive. The study is published today in The ISME Journal.

"Traditionally, we think of green algae as being purely photosynthetic organisms, producing their food by soaking in sunlight," said Eunsoo Kim, an associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History and one of the study's corresponding authors. "But we've come to understand that there are potentially a number of species of green algae that also can eat bacteria when the conditions are right. And we've also found out just how finicky they are as eaters."

In 2013, Kim and her colleagues were the first to provide definitive proof that green algae eat bacteria, which they showed in an alga from the genus Cymbomonas. While some in the field viewed this behavior as a rare exception, Kim's lab continued to explore whether mixotrophy--the term that describes the mode by which organisms use both photosynthesis and phagocytosis (cell-eating) to power themselves--existed in other types of green algae. It was a difficult behavior to confirm until the research team came up with a new experimental approach led by Nicholas Bock, a graduate student at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Museum postdoctoral researcher Sophie Charvet.

The researchers conducted feeding experiments with live bacteria that were labeled with a non-toxic fluorescent dye and combined the bacteria with five different strains of unicellular green algae called prasinophytes for analyses through a flow cytometer, which helps scientists analyze cell properties in solution. The flow cytometer measured increasing levels of green fluorescence in the algal cells over time, suggesting that the algae were consuming the glowing bacteria. To confirm that ingestion was actually occurring, the researchers used high-precision microscopy to pinpoint the origin of the green fluorescence to the interior of the algal cells. In the process, the team discovered two particular quirks about the finicky eaters: the algal strains they tested only ate live bacteria (dead bacteria in the experiments were left untouched), and they ate more when the levels of other nutrients were low. These findings have large implications for the environmental study of green algae.

"Traditionally when people study bacterial ingestion by algae in the oceans for environmental samples, they use fluorescently labeled bacteria that have been killed in the labeling process," Charvet said. "At least for the five algal strains we had in culture, they preferentially feed on the live bacteria and seem to be snubbing the killed bacteria. This means that the impact of algae on bacterial communities in their natural environment has possibly been underestimated drastically because of the methods used."

Green algae are found around the world and help form the foundation of the aquatic food web. Along with other photosynthetic organisms like cyanobacteria, diatoms, and dinoflagellates--which are given the umbrella term phytoplankton--green algae function as a sort of biological carbon pump, consuming carbon dioxide on a scale equivalent to trees and other land plants in terrestrial ecosystems.

"For decades, scientists have been able to send satellites up and get optical data to infer global distributions of phytoplankton via chlorophyll measurement," said Bock, who conducted the work at Columbia under Solange Duhamel, now at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "Through that, we've come to understand that phytoplankton are vitally important for carbon cycling. The assumption in all of this is that all that chlorophyll just represents photosynthesis. It doesn't account for the mixotrophy piece because there's no easy way to detect [via satellite] if they're eating other cells. Our findings highlight that the story is actually more complex."

In parallel to the experiments led by Bock and Charvet, green algal bacteria-eating was investigated using a gene-based prediction model formulated by John Burns from the American Museum of Natural History and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. The predictions agreed with the experimental results and suggested that the behavior is even more widespread among the green algal tree of life.

A 'Fish DJ' at The University of Queensland has used her knowledge of cool beats to understand brain networks and hearing in baby fish.

The DJ-turned-researcher used her acoustic experience to design a speaker system for zebrafish larvae and discovered that their hearing is considerably better than originally thought.

PhD candidate Rebecca Poulsen from the Queensland Brain Institute said that combining this new speaker system with whole-brain imaging showed how larvae can hear a range of different sounds they would encounter in the wild.

"For many years my music career has been in music production and DJ-ing -- I've found underwater acoustics to be a lot more complicated than air frequencies," Ms Poulsen said.

"It is very rewarding to be using the acoustic skills I learnt in my undergraduate degree, and in my music career, to overcome the challenge of delivering sounds to our zebrafish in the lab.

"I designed the speaker to adhere to the chamber the larvae are in, so all the sound I play is accurately received by the larvae, with no loss through the air."

Ms Poulsen said people did not often think about underwater hearing, but it was crucial for fish survival - to escape predators, find food and communicate with each other.

Ms Poulsen worked with Associate Professor Ethan Scott, who specialises in the neural circuits and behaviour of sensory processing, to study the zebrafish and find out how their neurons work together to process sounds.

The tiny size of the zebrafish larvae allows researchers to study their entire brain under a microscope and see the activity of each brain cell individually.

"Using this new speaker system combined with whole brain imaging, we can see which brain cells and regions are active when the fish hear different types of sounds," Dr Scott said.

The researchers are testing different sounds to see if the fish can discriminate between single frequencies, white noise, short sharp sounds and sound with a gradual crescendo of volume.

These sounds include components of what a fish would hear in the wild, like running water, other fish swimming past, objects hitting the surface of the water and predators approaching.

"Conventional thinking is that fish larvae have rudimentary hearing, and only hear low-frequency sounds, but we have shown they can hear relatively high-frequency sounds and that they respond to several specific properties of diverse sounds," Dr Scott said.

"This raises a host of questions about how their brains interpret these sounds and how hearing contributes to their behaviour."

Ms Poulsen has played many types of sounds to the larvae to see which parts of their brains light up, but also some music - including MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"-- that even MC Hammer himself enjoyed.

A Hong Kong Baptist University-led (HKBU) research team has developed a novel drug which has the potential to become a next-generation treatment for cancers associated with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).

The peptide-linked drug, which is responsive to the acidic environment found in tumours, is the first known agent to have successfully targeted two viral proteins that are simultaneously produced by EBV. It also offers a new strategy by increasing the uptake of anti-cancer drugs in tumour cells, thus allowing the application of lower drug dosages which helps reduce treatment side effects and health risks.

The research results were published in the international academic journal Advanced Science.

New drug targets two EBV-specific viral proteins

EBV is one of the most common viruses in humans, having infected more than 90% of the human population worldwide. It is widely known that the virus plays a key role in several cancers such as nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), which is highly prevalent in Hong Kong and southern China.

Led by Professor Gary Wong Ka-Leung, Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry at HKBU, Dr Lung Hong Lok, Assistant Professor of the Department of Chemistry at HKBU, and Dr Law Ga-lai, Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the research team constructed a novel drug with a peptide, i.e., a component of the building blocks of various proteins, that can target two EBV-specific viral proteins - Latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) and Epstein-Barr nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1). They are the viral proteins which are expressed in all EBV-infected tumour cells, and both play a vital role in the development and progression of EBV-associated tumours.

Leveraging the success of the first-generation drugs developed by the research team in recent years, this novel dual-targeting drug employs the treatment mechanisms of: (1) targeting and binding to EBNA1, making it no longer functional, and (2) inhibiting LMP1 and serving as an imaging agent. Since LMP1 is more accessible to drug targeting due to its presence on the surface of cells, the ability of the new drug to selectively identify EBV-infected cancer cells is largely enhanced.

pH-sensitivity improves drug targeting

In addition, the researchers engineered the drug so that it has excellent sensitivity to an acidic environment. When the drug binds to a tumour cell, its peptide will cleave and be released in response to the acidic tumour microenvironment. It then enters the nucleus of the tumour cell and hinders the function of EBNA1. Since normal cells have a neutral environment, and cancer cells usually prevail in an acidic environment, the new drug's excellent sensitivity to acidic environments can minimise its off-target rate. As a result, unintended damage to normal cells can be reduced.

The synergistic combination of pH sensitivity (in an acidic environment) and the specific targeting of an accessible surface protein (LMP1) will dramatically raise the new drug's efficacy. The resulting increase in drug uptake rates will allow the application of a lower drug dosage and it will also minimise the side effects and health risks whilst maintaining the drug's functions.

The study also showed that the drug can emit unique responsive fluorescent signals once it has bound to the viral proteins, illustrating its potential role in tumour cell imaging.

Animal model demonstrates drug efficacy and safety

The novel drug was tested in an animal model by injecting it into mice with EBV-positive NPC tumours. The results showed that a low drug dosage of 12.5 mg per kg of body weight could reduce the NPC tumour size by half. In addition, the average body weight of the mice increased slightly during the experimental period, indicating an improvement in their health condition.

"The experimental results are good indicators that prove the drug's efficacy and safety. Since this is the first example of simultaneous imaging and inhibition of two EBV viral proteins, it can serve as a blueprint for a next-generation drug for the safe monitoring and treatment of a specific cancer," said Professor Wong.

Modern electronics is approaching the limit of its capabilities, which are determined by the fundamental laws of physics. Therefore, the use of classical materials, for example, silicon, is no longer able to meet the requirements for energy efficiency of the devices. Currently, it is necessary to start searching for new materials, new principles of electronic devices' functioning. To solve this problem, researchers of Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) are developing thin films, the elements for biomolecular electronics. Scientists believe that biological macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins, amino acids can become a promising material for modern electronics. It obtains several unique properties, for example, the self-organization ability, which is why the molecules can be assembled into certain structures, for example, into biomolecular films.

"Our scientific group is investigating various properties of the thin films based on the albumin protein. In the course of experiments, we dilute the protein in various concentrations and use the method of isothermal dehydration (water evaporation at a certain temperature and pressure) to form the biomolecular films. Depending on the composition of the initial samples and drying parameters, we obtain different structures inside the films, " notes Maxim Baranov, an assistant at the Higher School of Applied Physics and Space Technologies SPbPU.

Using an optical microscope, the scientists fixed the structures inside the dried albumin proteins, and also developed software in Python, which can isolate and analyze images of biomolecular films with a help of the special mathematical apparatus. Molecular modeling for solving this problem is carried out at the facilities of the Supercomputer Center "Polytechnic". The research results were published in the first quartile journal Symmetry by MDPI.

Maxim Baranov adds: "Semiconductor integrated circuits, which are currently used in electronic devices, have a stationary configuration. In turn, the functioning of proteins is based on dynamics, i.e. a biological system can transform in the process of interaction with other objects. Therefore, the molecules can perfectly repeat the required structure, for example as in integrated circuits. However, we expect a lower number of defects in the biomolecular thin films. We can't say that the biomolecular platform will completely replace the classic semiconductor devices. Rather, we are talking about its symbiosis. Our scientific group believes that thin films will be introduced not in the mass market of electronics, but rather in single applications.

According to scientists, various types of proteins can be used for further research, including plant proteins. Perhaps in the future, it will simplify the creation of biomolecular thin films. Currently, it is necessary to create a certain set of mathematical parameters for a more accurate description of the thin films and their properties. A large number of experiments will be carried out before a prototype of the element is created, which could be implemented into the future device.

Okazaki, Japan - Making gametes such as sperm and eggs from pluripotent stem cells, primitive cells that can make all the tissues, greatly contributes to efficient reproduction of livestock animals and future assisted reproductive medicine. Researchers pave the way to achieve this goal using a body of xenogenic animals.

The researchers previously developed a method to grow stem cells into an entire organ in the body, so-called blastocyst complementation. The blastocyst is a structure of early embryos. If stem cells are transplanted into the blastocyst obtained from animals that cannot make a certain organ, the stem cells compensate the missing organ in the developing body, and make the entire organ. "We expected this method is also applicable to the efficient production of gametes," explains an author who led the study, Dr. Toshihiro Kobayashi.

A year ago, the researchers created a genetically modified rat that completely lacks sperm and eggs. They hypothesized that the rat can be used as an excellent host to grow exogenous stem cells into gametes.

The researchers firstly transplanted allogenic rat stem cells into blastocyst obtained from rats that are unable to make gametes, and confirmed all the gametes were derived from the stem cells. The generated gametes deliver the genetic information from the stem cells to the next generation, which enables efficient production of genetically modified rats.

Then, researchers tested whether xenogenic mouse stem cells can make mouse gametes in the body of rats. Remarkably, mouse germ cells including sperm and spermatids were observed in the testis of the rats, and the spermatids could fertilize with mouse eggs to produce healthy pups (see figures).

"Making gametes from stem cells even in the xenogenic environment is quite important for the application of this strategy," says another author led the study, Dr. Masumi Hirabayashi. "In the future, we may be able to use the method to preserve endangered species, since their stem cells are available due to iPS cell technology."

The pandemic has impacted significantly on people who suffer chronic pain. A study performed by the eHealth Lab, a research group affiliated with the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's eHealth Center, has shown that 70% of the people with chronic pain have seen their condition worsen in terms of severity, frequency of episodes and interference in their daily activities.

A total of 502 patients took part in the study; 88% were women aged between 30 and 59, with long-duration chronic pain (mean duration, 7 years). Most participants (87.6%) had pain in more than one point; the most frequent locations were the abdomen, lower back and neck. The participants answered online surveys, designed in accordance with the IMMPACT (Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials) methodology, and the CPGQ (Chronic Pain Grade Questionnaire) was used to compare changes in the pain perceived by the patients since lockdown began.

The pandemic worsens pain

The results showed that job insecurity, worries about the future, the number of people living in the same dwelling, having someone close who has died of COVID-19, or fear of becoming infected with the virus may be related with a worsening of the pain.

The study also shows that the pandemic has favoured the emergence of new pain triggers. While stress and weather changes were the most frequently mentioned triggers before the pandemic, during lockdown a large number of participants have mentioned worrying about the future, sleep problems, insecurity, negative thoughts, sadness, loneliness, insufficient physical activity and fear of contagion as triggers.

New ways of coping with pain

The pandemic has also changed how a significant proportion of patients manage their pain. More than half (54.5%) have changed how they cope with it: "The study has shown that since the state of emergency began, more than half of the patients have used rest to manage their pain, and a similar percentage have increased the consumption of medication. Both could have counterproductive effects," explained Rubén Nieto, professor and researcher at the UOC's eHealth Lab. However, with the pandemic, people have also started turning to a new positive way to combat pain. Indeed, 48.2% have included stretching exercises as a new tool for dispelling pain.

ICTs, an opportunity for the future

"When there is a chronic pain problem, it is important that people be able to learn to live with it, focusing on achieving their life goals, with or without pain. It is difficult to eliminate the pain altogether, but it is possible to learn to cope with it and live with it. Biopsychosocial interventions may be useful, in which holistic approaches to pain management are used", explained Rubén Nieto, who is a specialist in understanding, assessing and treating pain problems from a multidimensional viewpoint.

Unfortunately, most people do not have access to these interventions, as few centres offer this type of treatment, and health professionals receive little specific training in pain management, according to Nieto. However, ICTs are emerging as a useful tool for taking this type of treatment to chronic pain patients: "ICTs provide an opportunity for combating pain and improving well-being, since they can facilitate access to evidence-based interventions at an affordable cost. And they can increase personal autonomy and empowerment", explained Nieto, who focuses part of his research on applying new technologies to health problems. "We need to learn from the experience gained from the pandemic in the use of ICTs in health," he continued. "The possibilities are limitless, from the classic teleconsultation to solutions based on artificial intelligence. But first we must plan and test their use."

Currently, the roles of free D-amino acids and D-amino acid residues in proteins are garnering extensive attention in biological fields such as molecular biology, physiology, microbiology, and pathophysiology. Because it is crucial to analyze these materials rapidly and accurately, many methods have been employed. However, samples for measurement are currently limited to solutions containing target molecules in the pure form. Hence, there is need for an analytical method for the in situ measurement of biological samples placed on a solid support.

We report the construction of a multidimensional vibrational circular dichroism spectroscopy (MutilD-VCD) for dipeptides and amino acids with D-amino acid residues in amides I and II regions. It was a challenging goal because of the disturbance of the bending vibration of water. VCD spectroscopy is a chiroptical spectroscopy with unique characteristics. In the present study, a quantum cascade laser (QCL) was installed as an infrared source to achieve high intensity and narrow focusing. A MultiD-VCD system with three coordinates (wavenumber, VCD intensity, and position) was developed. The instrument was switchable to a concurrent FT-VCD (Fourier Transform Vibrational Circular Dichroism) system. A scanning device was installed to move an attached motorized stage in two dimensions.

Results indicated that the instrument could obtain the VCD spectrum of dipeptides, including D-amino acid, in an aqueous solution under interference caused by a water medium. Moreover, it achieved the two-dimensional patterning of the distribution and discrimination of chiral components (L-Ala and D-Ser) within a KBr pellet. Our final goal is to identify the location of D-amino acid residue in the aggregates of proteins, such as amyloids, and to clarify how the chiral inversion of a single amino acid residue in a protein affects its biological functions. An improved spatial resolution may benefit the basic fields of analytical and medical sciences as well as the practical field of chiral component analysis in drugs in the future.

When it comes to the evolution of the mammal spine -- think of animals whose backbone allows them to gallop, hop, swim, run, or walk upright -- a key part of the tale is quite simple.

Because nonmammalian synapsids, the extinct forerunners to mammals, had similar traits to living reptiles (like having their limbs splayed out to the side instead of tucked into their body like today's mammals), the strongheld belief was that they must have also moved in similar ways. Primarily, their backbones must have moved side-to-side, bending like those of modern lizards, instead of the up-and-down bending motion mammal spines are known for. It's believed over time, and in response to selective pressures, the mammal spine evolved from that lizard like side-to-side bending to the mammal-like up-and-down bending seen today. The transition is known as the lateral-to-sagittal paradigm.

It's an easy to grasp story that's been taught in college textbooks on anatomy and evolution for decades. But, according to a new Harvard-led study, that long held belief is wrong.

"The problem with the original story was that, as opposed to being based on fossil evidence, it was primarily based just on a correlation with something else that was seen in living animals," said former Harvard postdoctoral researcher Katrina Jones. "It relied upon this assumption that these forerunners of mammals must function the same as lizards because this one aspect of their anatomy was similar to lizards.... We're saying just because the limb posture looked similar doesn't mean they moved the same."

The work, led by Jones, challenges the lateral-to-sagittal hypothesis by looking at the vertebrae of modern reptiles, mammals, and the extinct nonmammalian synapsids to determine how their vertebrae changed over time and its effect on how these creatures likely moved.

The analysis demonstrates the three lineages differ from one another other when it comes to the morphology, function, and characteristics of their spines, and suggests that mammal backbones didn't evolve from a reptile-like ancestor. There had to have been a completely different type of backbone function not observed in today's living vertebrates.

"The ancestral stock that mammals evolved from didn't look or function like a living reptile," said Stephanie Pierce, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the study's senior author. "They started off with their own unique set of characteristics and functions and then evolved towards mammals."

The study published in Current Biology on March 2.

It included collaborators Kenneth Angielczyk at the Field Museum of Natural History and Blake Dickson, Ph.D. '20 who worked in the Pierce lab as a graduate student but is now a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University.

Dickson's earlier work with the lab, reconstructing the evolution of terrestrial movement in early tetrapods by analyzing 3D scans of fossils, provided the method the researchers modified for the new study.

The team wanted to see how the origin story of the mammalian backbone, which comes in all shapes and sizes, held up under intense scrutiny.

They took CT scans of the spine of reptiles, mammals, and fossil nonmammalian synapsids to get 3D reconstructions of key portions of their backbones to see their shape. They then used statistical comparisons of those shapes and measured of how they bent to determine how they functioned and what movement they allowed.

They saw that the nonmammalian synapsids clearly had their own vertebral shapes and that they were distinct from both mammals and reptiles. This showed that key parts of the spine belonging to the ancestors of mammals had their own unique characteristics that are not seen in any living group.

When comparing function of the different spines, the researchers saw the nonmammalian synapsid spine acted very differently from both mammals and reptiles. Its dominant trait, was being very stiff with more limited capacity for lateral bending, unlike the lateral bending in the back of reptile spines. That suggested the long-held notion that these creatures moved like today's reptiles, particularly lizards, is wrong.

Looking at the spines of the living mammals they sampled, they saw that they were a sort of a jack-of-all-trades, displaying abilities in each of the functional traits they measured. This means that mammal backs can do much more than just sagittal bending, and that during their evolutionary history other functions were added to the stiff backs of their forerunners, such as spinal twisting for grooming fur. The results make the simple lateral-to-sagittal paradigm a much more complicated story.

The researchers cited advances in today's CT scanning technology, computational data, and statistical programs with making the study possible. They are currently working on further confirming their findings and creating full 3D spinal reconstructions for the species they looked at.

The group believes the work shows the power of the fossil record for testing long-held evolutionary ideas.

"If we only look at modern animals, such as living mammals and reptiles, we can come up with evolutionary hypotheses but they may not be correct," Pierce said. "Unless we go back into the fossil record and really dig into those extinct animals, we can't trace what those anatomical changes were, when they happen, or what selective pressures drove their evolution."

Ithaca, NY--The message about the bird-conservation benefits of shade-grown coffee may not be getting through to the people most likely to respond--birdwatchers. A team of researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Virginia Tech surveyed birdwatchers to learn if they drank shade-grown coffee and, if not, why not. Their findings were published today in the journal People and Nature.

"One of the most significant constraints to purchasing bird-friendly coffee among those surveyed was a lack of awareness," said Alicia Williams, lead author and former research assistant at the Cornell Lab and Virginia Tech. "I was surprised to see that only 9 percent of those surveyed purchased bird-friendly certified coffee and less than 40 percent were familiar with it."

Bird-friendly coffee is shade-grown, meaning that it is grown and harvested under the canopy of mature trees, a process that parallels how coffee was historically grown. But with most farms converting to full-sun operations, crucial habitats for migrating and resident bird species are being lost. Loss of habitat is a key factor in the overall decline of many bird species.

"Over recent decades, most of the shade coffee in Latin America has been converted to intensively managed row monocultures devoid of trees or other vegetation," explained Amanda Rodewald, the Garvin Professor and senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab. "As a result, many birds cannot find suitable habitats and are left with poor prospects of surviving migration and successfully breeding."

According to the survey, there's confusion about what certifications exist, where to buy bird-friendly coffee, and how coffee production impacts bird habitat.

"We know birdwatchers benefit from having healthy, diverse populations of birds, and they tend to be conservation-minded folks," explained Assistant Professor Ashley Dayer of Virginia Tech's Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. "We need to mobilize the estimated 45 million U.S. bird enthusiasts to help limit bird population declines. One way to do that is to encourage birdwatchers to seek out and purchase bird-friendly coffee, in stores and online."

Increasing awareness about shade-grown coffee and its potential impact on bird populations may include more and better advertising, more availability of the product, and collaborations between conservation organizations and coffee distributors.