Earth

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A dramatic decline in bees and other pollinating insects presents a threat to the global food supply, yet it's getting little attention in mainstream news.
That's the conclusion of a study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, published this week in a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was based on a search of nearly 25 million news items from six prominent U.S. and global news sources, among them The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The study found "vanishingly low levels of attention to pollinator population topics" over several decades, even compared with what many would consider the limited coverage of climate change.

The study, titled "No buzz for bees," was led by Scott Althaus, the director of the U. of I. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research, and May Berenbaum, a leading expert on pollinator declines, head of Illinois' entomology department and one of three editors of the PNAS special issue.

The research utilized the Cline Center's Global News Index, a unique database of millions of news items from thousands of global news sources, published over decades.

"No study like this, and certainly not at this scale, has ever been done before," said Althaus, also an expert on news coverage and its effects. "There simply has not been academic research on the evolving nature of news coverage given to pollinator declines, despite the importance of that topic within the scientific community."

The study also analyzed decades of coverage in three English-language wire services based abroad: Agence France Presse, in France; Deutsche Presse Agentur, in Germany; and Xinhua General News Service, in China.
Berenbaum, often described as an "ambassador for insects," initiated the project out of a desire to gauge public awareness of the pollinator-decline issue. She said she was startled by the results.

"As much as the entomological community is gripped by this impending crisis, it appears the public isn't paying much attention," she said. "It's not that people are indifferent, it's just that they don't even know about it."
And they need to know about it, she said, because "it's a serious problem for everybody. Insects provide essential ecosystem services that people aren't aware of and take for granted, and for which we have no substitutes."

The Cline Center researchers, including study co-authors Jenna Jordan and Dan Shalmon, found that the minimal amount of news coverage on pollinator decline that appeared in the six news outlets was concentrated in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and then most often was relegated to science or other specialty sections. Rarely did pollinator news appear on the front page, Althaus said. "It's not making it into the mainstream of public affairs news coverage. As we look at wire service reporting in the U.S., we hardly see any coverage of this topic at all."

That was also true for the three English-language foreign-based wire services they looked at, Althaus said. "It's really difficult for us to know whether there might be specialty publications within these countries that are taking the issue up. But from what we can see for the broad-based wire service reporting, it is simply not on the radar screens of major news organizations in these other parts of the world."

Since the vast majority of studies on pollinator decline have been done in Europe and North America, Berenbaum said, "we don't even know how serious the problem is. Most insect biodiversity, including pollinator diversity, is in the tropics."

As for the factors contributing to pollinator decline, and insect decline generally, Berenbaum pointed to the introductory article for the special issue of PNAS, "Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts," of which she is also a co-author. There's "no nice clean story with one bad guy and an easy solution," she said, but almost all the causes relate to human activities, from climate change to pollution to agriculture.

On an individual level, Berenbaum said, "we can make a difference in the decisions we make about what flowers we plant in our gardens, which weeds we tolerate in our yards, even how we manage insect pests. A single backyard bug zapper, for instance, can kill tens of thousands of harmless insects over the course of a summer, including many pollinators, while killing barely a thimble-full of mosquitoes."

WASHINGTON -- In a new study, researchers show that a light-based analytical technique known as Raman spectroscopy could aid in early detection of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC).

OSCC is the most prevalent type of oral cancer and ranks among the most common cancers diagnosed worldwide. Although effective treatments are available, the cancer is often not detected until a late stage, resulting in overall poor prognosis.

"Raman spectroscopy is not only label-free and non-invasive, but it can potentially be used in ambient light conditions," says research team leader Levi Matthies from University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. "This makes it promising for use as a potential screening tool in the dentist's office."

In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Biomedical Optics Express, a multi-institutional team of researchers report, for the first time, that a type of Raman spectroscopy known as shifted-excited Raman difference spectroscopy (SERDS) can successfully distinguish between healthy tissue, OSCC and non-cancerous lesions.

According to current guidelines, clinically apparent, conspicuous mucosal lesions of the oral cavity require initial conservative treatment and monitoring. If they persist, a diagnosis is established by surgical biopsy. "Our study shows the potential of Raman spectroscopy for revealing whether a lesion is cancerous in real time," said Matthies. "Although it won't replace biopsies any time soon, the technique could help reduce the lapse of valuable time as well as the number of invasive procedures."

Light-based cancer detection

Raman spectroscopy uses light to reveal information about the molecular composition of biological tissue. A variant of this analysis approach known as SERDS is useful for analyzing samples such as tissue that exhibit strong background fluorescence, which can obscure Raman signals from molecules of interest.

To find out if SERDS could be useful for OSCC diagnosis, the researchers designed a compact and portable Raman sensor consisting of a tunable diode laser, a fiber coupled spectrometer and Raman probe. They then used it to analyze biopsy samples from 37 patients at 180 measurement locations. The analysis was performed with tissue kept in a natural state without adding any labeling agents.

After processing the raw spectroscopy data, the researchers trained and tested computational models designed to classify the tissue. The approach was able to distinguish OSCC from non-malignant lesions with an accuracy of 88.4%, and OSCC from healthy tissue with an accuracy of 89.8%. Most of the spectral features used to distinguish malignant and non-malignant lesions originated from protein and nucleic acid molecules.

"Our results show that this approach is a promising candidate for objective, chair-side diagnosis of oral cavity lesions in real-time without the addition of labeling agents," said Matthies. "It could help reduce the diagnostic gap between clinical exam and invasive biopsy."

The researchers say that with further development their approach could be expanded to classify precancerous conditions, grade the severity of dysplastic tissue aberration and distinguish various oral lesion subtypes. They also are working to make their system more portable and increase the speed of the analysis to support real-time diagnosis.

A group of scientists led by the American Museum of Natural History and Bat Conservation International have discovered a new species of a striking orange and black bat in a mountain range in West Africa. The species, which the researchers expect is likely critically endangered, underscores the importance of sub-Saharan "sky islands" to bat diversity. The species is described today in the journal American Museum Novitates.

"In an age of extinction, a discovery like this offers a glimmer of hope," said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International and an associate research professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It's a spectacular animal. It has this bright-orange fur, and because it was so distinct, that led us to realize it was not described before. Discovering a new mammal is rare. It has been a dream of mine since I was a child."

In 2018, Frick and her colleagues at Bat Conservation International and the University of Maroua in Cameroon were in the Nimba Mountains in Guinea conducting field surveys in natural caves and mining tunnels, known as adits, that were built in the 1970s and 1980s and have since been colonized by bats. In collaboration with the local mining company, Société des Mines de Fer de Guinée (SMFG), the scientists are trying to understand which bat species use which adits and at what times of the year. Of particular interest is Lamotte's roundleaf bat, Hipposideros lamottei, which is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered and has only ever been recorded in the Nimba Mountains. Much of its known population lives in the adits, which are in different states of collapse and will disappear in time. While surveying for this bat, the researchers found something peculiar--a bat that looked nothing like Lamotte's roundleaf bat and did not match the descriptions of any other species that they knew occurred in the area. Later that night, they called on American Museum of Natural History Curator Nancy Simmons, a bat expert and chair of the Museum's Department of Mammalogy, for help.

"As soon as I looked at it, I agreed that it was something new," said Simmons, the lead author of the paper and Bat Conservation International Board member. "Then began the long path of documentation and gathering all the data needed to show that it's indeed unlike any other known species."

Through morphological, mor¬phometric, echolocation, and genetic data, including comparative data from collections at the Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the British Museum, the scientists described the new species, which they named Myotis nimbaensis ("from Nimba") in recognition of the mountain range in which it is found. A chain of "African sky islands," the Nimba Mountains have peaks rising between 1,600-1,750 meters (about 1 mile) above sea level and are surrounded by drastically different lowland habitats. As such, they are home to exceptional biodiversity, including bats.

"In addition to the Lamotte's roundleaf bat, it's possible Myotis nimbaensis could be the second bat species found only in this particular mountain range," said Jon Flanders, Bat Conservation International's director of endangered species interventions.

This study is part of an ongoing effort critical in helping the Nimba Mountain bats survive. Bat Conservation International and SMFG have already started working together to build new tunnels, reinforced to last for centuries and in habitat away from the mining project, for the Lamotte's roundleaf bat. And although little is known yet about the population and range of Myotis nimbaensis, efforts like this will likely help it as well.

Even with the COVID-19-related small dip in global carbon emissions due to limited travel and other activities, the ocean temperatures continued a trend of breaking records in 2020. A new study, authored by 20 scientists from 13 institutes around the world, reported the highest ocean temperatures since 1955 from surface level to a depth of 2,000 meters.

The report was published on January 13 in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences and concluded with a plea to the policymakers and others to consider the lasting damage warmer oceans can cause as they attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change.

"Over 90% of the excess heat due to global warming is absorbed by the oceans, so ocean warming is a direct indicator of global warming -- the warming we have measured paints a picture of long-term global warming," said Lijing Cheng, lead paper author and associate professor with the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Cheng is also affiliated with CAS's Center for Ocean Mega-Science. "However, due to the ocean's delayed response to global warming, the trends of ocean change will persist at least for several decades, so societies need to adapt to the now unavoidable consequences of our unabated warming. But there is still time to take action and reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases."

Using a method developed at IAP/CAS, the researchers calculated the ocean temperatures and salinity of the oceans down to 2,000 meters with data taking from all available observation from various measurement devices from the World Ocean Database, which is overseen by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Environmental Information.

They found that, in 2020, the upper 2,000 meters of the world's oceans absorbed 20 more Zettajoules than in 2019. That amount of heat could boil 1.3 billion kettles, each containing 1.5 liters of water.

"Why is the ocean not boiling?" Cheng asked. "Because the ocean is vast. We can imagine how much energy the ocean can absorb and contain, and, when it's released slowly, how big the impact is."

The researchers reported other effects, such as ocean salinity pattern amplification and more stratification due to the upper layer warming quicker than the deeper sections. Both changes could cause harm to ocean ecosystems.

"The fresh gets fresher; the salty gets saltier," Cheng said. "The ocean takes a large amount of global warming heat, buffering global warming. However, the associated ocean changes also pose a severe risk to human and natural systems."

Cheng noted the 2020 wildfires that ravaged Australia, parts of the Amazon region, and the west coast of the United States.

"Warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere and also promote more intense rainfalls in all storms, and especially hurricanes, increasing the risk of flooding," Cheng said. "Extreme fires like those witnessed in 2020 will become even more common in the future. Warmer oceans also make storms more powerful, particularly typhoons and hurricanes."

The researchers will continue to monitor the ocean temperatures and the impacts warming has on other oceanic characteristics, such as salinity and stratification.

"As more countries pledge to achieve 'carbon neutrality' or 'zero carbon' in the coming decades, special attention should be paid to the ocean," Cheng said. "Any activities or agreements to address global warming must be coupled with the understanding that the ocean has already absorbed an immense amount of heat and will continue to absorb excess energy in the Earth's system until atmospheric carbon levels are significantly lowered."

A loss of biodiversity and accelerating climate change in the coming decades coupled with ignorance and inaction is threatening the survival of all species, including our very own, according to the experts from institutions including Stanford University, UCLA, and Flinders University.

The researchers state that world leaders need a 'cold shower' regarding the state of our environment, both to plan and act to avoid a ghastly future.

Lead author Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia says he and his colleagues have summarised the state of the natural world in stark form to help clarify the gravity of the human predicament.

"Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth's ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization" Professor Bradshaw says.

"In fact, the scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.

"The problem is compounded by ignorance and short-term self-interest, with the pursuit of wealth and political interests stymying the action that is crucial for survival" he says.

Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University says that no political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action.

"Stopping biodiversity loss is nowhere close to the top of any country's priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability.

"While it is positive news that President-elect Biden intends to reengage the US in Paris Climate accord within his first 100 days of office, it is a minuscule gesture given the scale of the challenge.

"Humanity is running an ecological Ponzi scheme in which society robs nature and future generations to pay for short-term economic enhancement today".

"Most economies operate on the basis that counteraction now is too costly to be politically palatable. Combined with disinformation campaigns to protect short-term profits it is doubtful that the scale of changes we need will be made in time" Professor Ehrlich says.

Professor Dan Blumstein from UCLA says the scientists are choosing to speak boldly and fearlessly because life literally depends on it.

"What we are saying might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But we need to be candid, accurate, and honest if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future.

"Without political will backed by tangible action that scales to the enormity of the problems facing us, the added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of the Earth's life-support system upon which we all depend.

"Human population growth and consumption continues to escalate, and we're still more focused on expanding human enterprise than we are on devising and implementing solutions to critical issues such as biodiversity loss. By the time we fully comprehend the impact of ecological deterioration, it will be too late.

"Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals, and catastrophe will surely follow" Professor Blumstein concludes.

The experts say their 'perspective' paper, which cites more than 150 studies, seeks to outline clearly and unambiguously the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption, planetary toxification, all tied to human consumption and population growth to demonstrate the near certainty that these problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come. It also explains the impact of political impotence and the ineffectiveness of current and planned actions to address the ominous scale of environmental erosion.

January 13, 2021 - The element nitrogen is a double-edged sword. It is essential for growing plants and feeding people, but it is also a leading cause of pollution across the world. Only by using nitrogen more sustainably can the positive and harmful effects of nitrogen be balanced.

Xia (Emma) Liang, a member of the American Society of Agronomy, studies nitrogen loss during food production.

Liang and her team created a framework that accurately measures nitrogen loss across a wide variety of crops and food products. She recently presented their research at the virtual 2020 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting.

"This framework can capture the environmental impacts and societal costs of nitrogen losses," Liang explains. "This allows us to potentially provide information to inform consumers, producers, and policymakers."

The team hopes this research will help make major progress in making agricultural systems across the world more sustainable, less polluting, and more profitable.

Their framework measured both overall nitrogen loss and nitrogen loss intensity. The latter is the loss per unit of food or per unit of nitrogen produced. This allowed better comparisons across different crops and food items.

For example, cereal grains have a low loss intensity but a high overall loss because they are grown in such large quantities. On the other hand, an animal product like buffalo meat has a high loss intensity but a low overall loss. This is due to the small amount produced.

The framework reveals that the loss quantity and loss intensity vary a lot for different food products, especially when compared between farmers and countries. The database includes 115 crop and 11 livestock commodities at the global scale.

Cattle contribute the most to global nitrogen pollution. They are followed by the production of rice, wheat, maize, pork, and soybeans. Beef is also the food with the highest loss intensity, followed by lamb, pork and other livestock products. Generally, the loss intensity of livestock is much larger than the loss intensity of crop products.

"The lowest nitrogen loss for the 11 livestock products exceeds that of vegetable substitutes," Liang says. "This confirms the importance of dietary change to reduce nitrogen loss through consumption."

The nitrogen loss from fields can cause harm in multiple ways. It can cause smog and further climate change. It harms soil and water, as well as the plants and animals that live there. For humans, high levels of nitrogen in the air and water have been connected to illness.

Liang highlights that with current activities, the planet's nitrogen boundary, a "safe operating space" for humanity, is exceeded by over two-fold.

Solutions are complex. On farms themselves, there are many techniques to better manage nitrogen. These include better fertilizer technologies and practices, improved crop varieties, and following the "4 Rs." This means using the right fertilizer in the right amount at the right time in the right place. There are also ways to improve nitrogen management in livestock.

However, Liang explains that on-the-farm solutions are only half the battle. An economic approach is also needed.

"An economic approach would provide incentives for adopting better nitrogen management practices," she says. "For instance, incentives should be given to promote sustainable measures to maintain the soil nitrogen. These include reducing the risk of soil degradation and erosion and the overuse of fertilizers."

Individuals can also adopt helpful changes, she adds. Reducing consumption of meat and reducing food waste are two options. Another is having discussions about sustainable nitrogen management.

"When we buy a washing machine or a car, we can choose a more water efficient and energy efficient product by water and energy rating," Liang says. "However, despite growing recognition of the importance of nitrogen in sustainable food production and consumption, we don't follow a similar idea for foods we eat."

A rare mineral that has allowed Roman concrete marine barriers to survive for more than 2,000 years has been found in the thick concrete walls of a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Japan. The formation of aluminous tobermorite increased the strength of the walls more than three times their design strength, Nagoya University researchers and colleagues report in the journal Materials and Design. The finding could help scientists develop stronger and more eco-friendly concrete.

"We found that cement hydrates and rock-forming minerals reacted in a way similar to what happens in Roman concrete, significantly increasing the strength of the nuclear plant walls," says Nagoya University environmental engineer Ippei Maruyama.

Research has shown that Roman concrete used in the construction of marine barriers has managed to survive for more than two millennia because seawater dissolves volcanic ash in the mixture, leading to the formation of aluminous tobermorite. Since aluminous tobermorite is a crystal, it makes the concrete more chemically stable and stronger. It is very difficult to incorporate aluminous tobermorite directly into modern-day concrete. Scientists have generated the mineral in the lab, but it requires very high temperatures above 70°C. On the other hand, laboratory experiments have shown that hot environments are detrimental to concrete strength, which has led to regulations that limit its use to temperatures below 65°C.

Maruyama and his colleagues found that aluminous tobermorite formed in a nuclear reactor's concrete walls when temperatures of 40-55°C were maintained for 16.5 years.

The samples were taken from the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, which operated from 1976 to 2009.

In-depth analyses showed that the reactor's very thick walls were able to retain moisture. Minerals used to make the concrete reacted in the presence of this water, increasing availability of silicon and aluminium ions and the alkali content of the wall. This ultimately led to the formation of aluminous tobermorite.

"Our understanding of concrete is based on short-term experiments conducted at lab time scales," says Maruyama. "But real concrete structures give us more insights for long-term use."

Maruyama and his colleagues are searching for ways to make concrete more durable and environmentally friendly. Cement used in concrete manufacturing produces nearly 10% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions, so the team is looking to produce more eco-friendly mixtures that still meet standardized requirements for strong concrete structures.

Conflict between divorced or separated parents increases the risk of children developing physical and mental health problems.

A new study from the Arizona State University Research and Education Advancing Children's Health (REACH) Institute has found that children experience fear of being abandoned when their divorced or separated parents engage in conflict. Worrying about being abandoned predicted future mental health problems in children. The work will be published in Child Development on January 12.

"Conflict is a salient stressor for kids, and the link between exposure to interparental conflict and mental health problems in children is well established across all family types - married, cohabitating, separated and divorced," said Karey O'Hara, a research assistant professor of psychology at ASU and first author on the paper. "Conflict between divorced or separated parents predicted children experiencing fear that they would be abandoned by one or both parents. This feeling was associated with future mental health problems, especially for those who had strong relationships with their fathers."

Based on studies including children from families with married or cohabitating parents, the researchers knew that children view interparental conflict as a threat, often wondering if their parents will get divorced.

To understand how children with divorced or separated parents interpreted interparental conflict, the researchers surveyed families participating in the New Beginnings Program, asking 559 children (aged 9-18 years) about their exposure to conflict. The questions included topics like whether their parents fought in front of them, spoke poorly of the other parent or asked children to carry messages. Children exposed to interparental conflict were more likely to report worrying about being abandoned by one or both of their parents.

"When parents who are married or cohabitating engage in conflict, the child might worry about their parents separating," O'Hara said. "But children whose parents are divorced or separated have already seen the dissolution of their family. The idea that they might be abandoned might be unlikely, but it is not illogical from their perspective."

The fear of abandonment was persistent: Exposure to parental conflict predicted fear of abandonment three months later. And, worrying about abandonment predicted mental health problems, as reported by the children themselves and their teachers, 10 months later.

Because quality parent-child relationships are known to buffer children against stress, the researchers expected children who had strong relationships with a parent to experience less fear of abandonment and mental health problems. But the team did not find a general buffering effect of parenting.

"A strong father-child relationship came at a cost when interparental conflict was high," O'Hara said. "Having a high quality parenting relationship is protective, but it is possible that quality parenting alone is not enough in the context of high levels of interparental conflict between divorced parents."

WASHINGTON, January 12, 2021 -- Singing may be the next-generation, noninvasive approach to determining the health of a patient's thyroid.

Typically, a fine needle is used to detect the presence of a tumor in the thyroid, which most commonly affects children and younger women. However, this method can only detect about 5% of thyroid cancers.

Researchers from Université de Tours, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Dijon-Bourgogne, and Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté suggest a simpler approach: singing. They demonstrate the technique in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

"Developing noninvasive methods would reduce the stress of patients during their medical exams," said Steve Beuve, one of the authors. "Having to sing during a medical exam can perhaps help release some of the nervous tension even more."

When a person sings, the vibrations from their voice create waves in the tissue near the vocal tract called shear waves. If a tumor is present in the thyroid, the elasticity of its surrounding tissue increases, stiffening, and causing the shear waves to accelerate.

Using ultrasound imaging to measure the speed of these waves, the researchers can determine the elasticity of the thyroid tissue. This method, which the authors call vocal passive elastography, is an extension of passive elastography, a shear wave propagation tracking technique used in seismology.

"The propagation of shear waves gives us information about mechanical properties of soft tissues," Beuve said.

Because the elasticity of biological tissues depends on the speed of the shear waves, by asking a volunteer to sing and maintain an "eeee" sound at 150 hertz, approximately the frequency of D3, the group was able to characterize the thyroid and find any abnormally stiff areas.

A key benefit of V-PE is how quick and easy it is. It requires no specialized or complex equipment added to the ultrasound scanner and only needs about one second of data acquisition to complete. Analyzing the data is the longest step, but a computer program that the team developed does the computation automatically.

The group is working on improving the user friendliness of the computer interface and potentially expanding V-PE to include other areas near the vocal tract, such as the brain.

"We want to cooperate with physicians to propose protocols to verify the relevance of elasticity as a biomarker of pathogens," Beuve said.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Wild bees are more affected by climate change than by disturbances to their habitats, according to a team of researchers led by Penn State. The findings suggest that addressing land-use issues alone will not be sufficient to protecting these important pollinators.

"Our study found that the most critical factor influencing wild bee abundance and species diversity was the weather, particularly temperature and precipitation," said Christina Grozinger, Distinguished Professor of Entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research, Penn State. "In the Northeastern United States, past trends and future predictions show a changing climate with warmer winters, more intense precipitation in winter and spring, and longer growing seasons with higher maximum temperatures. In almost all of our analyses, these conditions were associated with lower abundance of wild bees, suggesting that climate change poses a significant threat to wild bee communities."

According to Melanie Kammerer, graduate student in entomology, Penn State, few studies have considered the effects of both climate and land use on wild bees.

"We thought this was an oversight because, like many organisms, bees are experiencing habitat loss and climate change simultaneously," she said. "By looking at both factors in the same study, we were able to compare the relative importance of these two stressors."

To conduct their study, the researchers analyzed a 14-year United States Geological Survey data set of wild bee occurrences from more than 1,000 locations in Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C., specifically examining how different bee species and communities respond to land-use and climate factors.

"To really understand the effects of weather and climate, particularly as weather patterns become more variable with climate change, we need to use these very large, long-term data sets," said Grozinger. "We hope that our study, and others like it, will help encourage the collection and integration of these data sets for future research."

Using land cover maps and spatial models, the team described the landscape surrounding each of the sampling locations, including the habitat size and available floral and nesting resources. The team’s results appear today (Jan. 12) in Global Change Biology. Finally, the researchers compiled a large suite of climate variables and used machine-learning models to identify the most important variables and to quantify their effects on wild bees.

"We found that temperature and precipitation patterns are very important drivers of wild bee communities in our study, more important than the amount of suitable habitat or floral and nesting resources in the landscape," said Kammerer.

Interestingly, added Grozinger, different bee species were most affected by different weather conditions. For example, she said, areas with more rain had fewer spring bees.

"We think the rain limits the ability of spring bees to collect food for their offspring," said Grozinger. "Similarly, a very hot summer, which might reduce flowering plants, was associated with fewer summer bees the next year."

In addition, warm winters led to reduced numbers of some bee species.

"This result coincides with studies showing that, with earlier spring onset, overwintering adults had higher pre-emergence weight loss and mortality and shorter life span post-emergence," Grozinger said.

Kammerer noted that these weather changes will likely worsen in the coming years.

"In the future, warm winters and long, hot summers are predicted to occur more frequently, which we expect will be a serious challenge to wild-bee populations," she said. "We are just beginning to understand the many ways that climate influences bees, but in order to conserve these essential pollinators, we need to figure out when, where and how changing climate disrupts bee life cycles, and we need to move from considering single stressors to quantifying multiple, potentially interacting pressures on wild-bee communities."

According to the researchers, the study is part of the their larger Beescape project, which allows individuals -- including growers, conservationists and gardeners -- to explore the landscape quality at their site and potentially make adjustments to improve conditions for bees. Given their new findings, the researchers plan to expand Beescape to include weather and climate conditions.

Brain cells often cluster and grow together creating three-dimensional columns. While this pillar-like pattern of neurons is established, the exact mechanism behind its formation is still elusive. Makoto Sato's team at Kanazawa University has been closely studying this phenomenon. Their recent findings explain how molecules in the brain work in conjunction to create the architectural marvels that are the columns.

The researchers base much of their work on the Drosophila (fruit fly) due to the organism's genetic similarities to humans. In this study they focused on the visual center of the fly's brain in a region known as the medulla. This region resembles the human cerebral cortex--the primary seat of reasoning. Developing columns in the medulla were photographed in real-time to find that a protein known as Fmi was abundant in the growing stages of the fly and vanished shortly after. Fmi also partakes in a process known as planar cell polarity (PCP) which drives the spatial orientation of a cell in two-dimensional space. Thus, it was purported that PCP was also at play in the development of columns. Indeed, deactivation of PCP components resulted in impaired column formation. What's more, a new candidate, Fz2, was found to be working closely with the individual PCP components.

Fz2 is linked to a cellular pathway called Wnt signaling. A close inspection of the medulla revealed that prime regulators of the Wnt pathway, DWnt4 and DWnt10, were operational in the vicinity. When DWnt4 and DWnt10 were also disabled, a disruption of column structure in neighboring regions followed. Column construction was controlled by a complex chain of architects.

Makoto Sato and his co-workers have previously revealed three neurons types--R7, R8 and Mi1-- to comprise the columns. Thus, they then investigated the role of Wnt/PCP in these neurons. Switching PCP off resulted in the Mi1 and R8 neurons changing direction, confirming that orientation was controlled by this pathway. On the other hand, when Wnt signaling was turned off the Mi1 neurons also showed structural impairment. Wnt/PCP was, therefore, instrumental to proper spatial and structural development of the columns.

This study reveals the intertwined nature of the mechanisms that drive brain development. "[We] show that Wnt ligands globally regulate neuronal orientation and column arrangement through Fz2/planar cell polarity signaling in a three-dimensional space in the brain", summarize the researchers. These processes are key to monitoring healthy growth and tracking disorders in the developing brain.

Background:

Planar cell polarity (PCP) - Cell polarity is a phenomenon that enables spatial differences in shape and size within cells. Thus, cells may appear elongated at one end and oval at the other (as seen in the classic image of a neuron). This polarity occurs in a two-dimensional space and enables cells to carry out multiple functions simultaneously. A neuron can thus traverse distances at one end while the other end sustains essential life processes. Since the PCP is a complex process, multiple molecules are part of its chain. Until now, the role of PCP in regulating three-dimensional spatial orientation within neurons was elusive. This study elucidates how Wnt signaling works in conjunction with PCP to achieve this.

Researchers at Tampere University, Finland, have published new results in collaboration with an international research network that help to understand the biological phenomena mediated by cell membrane integrin receptors and contribute to the development of methods for the treatment of cancer.

In the cell membrane, integrins form the connection between the cytoskeleton and the extracellular matrix. The regulation of integrin activity is essential for the function of tissues and individual cells.

The studies investigated the structure and function of talin, a cytoskeletal protein, which is important in the regulation of the integrin receptor activity. Talin binds to integrin via its "head" and connects it to the cytoskeleton, thereby acting as a part of the cellular mechano-signalling network, which affects cell adhesion, migration, but also gene expression among other things.

One of the studies now published used X-ray crystallography to reveal the atomic structure of talin "head", giving unprecedented insights how talin binds to integrins.

"The activation of integrins mediated by talin is essential in various cancers, for example, and knowing the detailed structure of talin opens up new possibilities to combat cancer by developing inhibitors that prevent the interaction of talin and integrin," says Professor Vesa Hytönen from Tampere University.

The structure of talin was discovered in a group led by Professor Jinhua Wu (Fox Chase Cancer Center, PA, USA), and a research group at Tampere University led by Professor Vesa Hytönen was responsible for the biophysical characterizations in the study, while the cell-biological consequences were studied at the University of Geneva, Switzerland in a research group headed by Professor Bernhard Wehrle-Haller. The results were published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The significance of the structure of talin for integrin activation gained new perspectives in Sampo Kukkurainen's doctoral dissertation, which used molecular dynamics simulations to study the interaction of the talin - integrin pair.

The multidisciplinary research project related to Kukkurainen's dissertation project was also carried out in close collaboration with the research group of Professor Bernhard Wehrle-Haller (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and involved several research groups from Europe and the United States, including Professor Janne Jänis's research group at the University of Eastern Finland and Research Director Markku Varjosalo's and Professor Ilpo Vattulainen's research groups at the University of Helsinki. The results were published in the Journal of Cell Science.

The study provided new detailed information on the mechanism of protein interaction.

"The study showed that the loop of the F1 subunit of talin is essential for the activation of integrins," says Dr. Kukkurainen.

At Tampere University, doctoral researcher Latifeh Azizi is currently investigating how the mutation of talin affects protein function.

An article related to Azizi's study published in Scientific Reports showed how mutations observed in cancer patients affect the structure, interactions, and biological activity of talin in cells. The study was conducted in collaboration with a research group led by Dr. Ben Goult (University of Kent, UK). The mutations selected for the study were screened from sequence databases using structural data and bioinformatics methods.

"It was interesting to find that a single mutation in a large protein can affect cell function so much," says Azizi.

The study showed that talin mutations affect cell motility and cell communication. The research result is a step towards personalised medical treatments in which information from a cancer patient's tumour can be used to select an appropriate treatment.

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a condition caused by the weakening of the heart muscle, affecting the ventricles (chambers in the heart that push blood around the body as it contracts). If allowed to progress unchecked, DCM can lead to heart failure and death, especially in children. The only cure, at present, is a heart transplant, which comes with its own challenges: long waiting times to secure a suitable donor heart, the possibility of organ rejection, long hospitalizations and recovery times, among others.

In recent decades, stem cells have become the cornerstone of regenerative medicine, allowing medical professionals to treat damaged organs and reverse the course of several diseases that were previously deemed irrevocable. Scientists have turned to "cardiosphere-derived cells" (CDCs), a type of cardiac stem cells known to have beneficial effects in adults suffering from specific heart conditions. By developing ("differentiating") into heart tissue, CDCs can reverse the damage inflicted by diseases. However, little is known about their safety and therapeutic benefit in children.

To address this problem, Professor Hidemasa Oh led an interdepartmental team of scientists at Okayama University, Japan, to launching the first steps to assess this therapy in children suffering from DCM. In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, the team not only showed the effectiveness of CDCs in replenishing damaged tissues in DCM but also revealed how this happens. Prof Oh explains the motivation, "I have been working on cardiac regeneration therapy since 2001. In this study, my team and I assessed the safety and efficacy of using CDCs to treat DCM in children ."

The first step of any trial when testing a new drug or therapy is to use animal models who react similarly to humans, which shows us whether the treatment is safe and has the intended effect. Thus, to begin with, the researchers tested this method in pigs, inducing cardiac symptoms similar to DCM and treating them with different doses of CDCs or a placebo. In those given the stem cell treatment, the scientists noticed quick improvements in cardiac function. The heart muscle thickened, allowing more blood to be pumped around the body. This effectively reversed the damage induced in the pigs' hearts, an encouraging result leading them to progress to small, controlled human trials.

Their phase 1 trial involved five young patients suffering from DCM. The scientists now had a better idea of the suitable dose of CDCs to give their young patients, thanks to the pre-clinical trials in animals. One year after injection, the patients showed no sign of severe side effects from the treatment, but most importantly, there were encouraging signs of improved heart function. The authors are cautious: based on the small population size of their study, they cannot establish a strong conclusion. However, they are satisfied that CDC treatment appears sufficiently safe and effective to progress to a larger clinical trial. As Prof Oh explains, "We intend to move these results into a randomized phase 2 trial to obtain a pharmaceutical approval of this therapy in Japan ."

Another important finding was the mechanism through which CDCs actually lead to improved cardiac function. Indeed, their analyses revealed that transplanted cells secrete small vesicles called "exosomes," which are enriched with proteins called "microRNAs" that initiate a whole cascade of molecular interactions. These microRNA-enriched exosomes have two effects. First, it blocks the damage-inducing cells from causing further harm to the heart tissue. Secondly, it induces the differentiation of stem cells into fully functioning cardiac cells ("cardiomyocytes"), starting the regenerative process. This generates hope that injecting these exosomes alone might be enough to reverse this type of heart damage in patients, bypassing the need for CDCs in the first place.

Looking back on their research, the scientists are hopeful that a phase 2 trial will confirm their suspicions, and what this could mean for future patients. Prospective transplant patients sometimes wait for years for a donor heart to become available. This type of therapy could allow them to live relatively normal lives, and even prevent the need for a transplant altogether for patients who have not yet reached such a critical stage.

Tsukuba, Japan - Proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are an energy storage technology that will help lower the environmental footprint of transportation. These fuel cells make use of a chemical reaction known as oxygen reduction. This reaction needs a low-cost catalyst for widespread commercial applications. Nitrogen-doped carbon is one such catalyst, but the chemical details of how nitrogen doping works are rather controversial. Such knowledge is important to improving the function of PEM fuel cells in future technologies.

In a study recently published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, researchers from the University of Tsukuba reported chemical details for optimizing the oxygen reduction reaction in PEM fuel cells in acidic conditions. This configuration helps the carbon catalyst adsorb oxygen in a way that enables the fuel cell to function.

Nitrogen can adopt various bonding configurations, such as pyridinic, in nitrogen-doped carbon catalysts. For years, researchers have tried to determine which bonding configurations are the source of electrolytic activity in PEM fuel cells. The results of such studies may be unclear unless the reaction mechanisms are clarified with controlled bonding and crystallographic orientation of the nitrogen atom on the catalysts.

"We deposited seven nitrogenous molecules onto a paracrystalline carbon black catalyst to make model catalysts with homogeneous structures," says lead author Professor Kotaro Takeyasu. "We found that 1,10-phenanthroline, with two pyridinic nitrogen atoms at the armchair edges of the catalyst, had the highest activity with reference to current density."

Sulfuric acid fully acidifed the nitrogen atoms in the catalyst. Upon applying an appropriate voltage under oxygen-saturated conditions, the protonated nitrogen atoms in the catalyst were reduced. This was attributable to the simultaneous oxygen adsorption, because there was no reduction in nitrogen-saturated conditions.

"Density functional theory calculations also indicate that oxygen adsorption promotes the reduction of fully protonated nitrogen atoms," explains senior author, Professor Junji Nakamura. "Thus, oxygen absorbs onto the catalyst and at the same time, the nitrogen atoms are reduced for additional catalytic cycles."

Current PEM fuel cells use platinum catalysts. Because platinum is a rare metal it is not a realistic option for commercial applications in the long term. Thus, platinum catalysts will not enable PEM fuel cells to contribute to a low-carbon economy. The findings described here will help researchers improve the performance of carbon-based catalysts for PEM fuel cells and improve the sustainability of transportation.

Nausea and vomiting symptoms during pregnancy start within a three day timeframe for most women, according to new study from University of Warwick

More accurate measurement achieved by calculating start of pregnancy from date of ovulation - rather than last menstrual period

Points to a potential biological cause for nausea and vomiting, and supports the view that the condition has been trivialised

Researchers from the University of Warwick have narrowed the time frame that nausea and vomiting during pregnancy will potentially start to just three days for most women, opening up the possibility for scientists to identify a biological cause for the condition.

By measuring the onset of symptoms from a woman's date of ovulation for the first time, rather than last menstrual period, they have demonstrated that symptoms start earlier in pregnancy than previously thought, and within a smaller time frame.

Nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, often referred to as pregnancy sickness, which usually ends by 12 -14 weeks of pregnancy is experienced by most women during pregnancy although some will experience it more severely, as in the case of hyperemesis gravidarm when the symptoms can continue throughout the pregnancy. The cause has historically often been seen as psychological but this latest study reinforces the view that the cause is biological and is linked to a specific developmental stage of pregnancy.

Researchers from Warwick Medical School and the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick have drawn their conclusions from a unique dataset collected at the Clearblue Innovation Centre, by SPD Development Company Ltd. Their results, published in the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, identify a specific time period during pregnancy that could point scientists to an anatomical or biochemical cause for the condition.

The date of a woman's last menstrual period is commonly used to measure the start of pregnancy, but their date of ovulation is thought to be a more accurate starting point as menstrual cycles can vary greatly between individuals, and even between cycles for the same individual.

The researchers used data from daily symptom diaries kept by 256 pregnant women to compare the start of their nausea and vomiting symptoms to the date of their last menstrual period and date of ovulation, as determined by a urine test.

Using their date of ovulation as the start of pregnancy most women experienced the first symptoms of pregnancy sickness after 8 to 10 days, compared to 20 to 30 days if measured from their last menstrual period. This not only demonstrated that pregnancy sickness starts earlier than previous research has shown, but has also shown that using date of ovulation narrows the time frame that symptoms start to 3 days, compared to 11 days if last menstrual period is used.

Lead author Professor Roger Gadsby of Warwick Medical School said: "The precise course of pregnancy sickness is unknown, but this research shows that it occurs at a specific developmental stage, in a specific timeslot.

"For researchers it narrows our focus in terms of where we look for the cause. If we know that symptoms occur in a very narrow window 8-10 days after ovulation, researchers can concentrate their efforts on that particular stage of development to find the cause of the condition, both anatomically and biochemically.

"In the past, women suffering with nausea and vomiting in pregnancy have had their symptoms trivialised and overlooked because it was thought there was a psychological basis for the symptoms. This research further reinforces that nothing could be further from the truth, that this is a biological problem related to the development of the early fetus."

The research also found that 94% of women experienced symptoms of pregnancy sickness, a higher proportion than previous research that generally calculates the proportion as closer to 80%. This is likely to be because data was regularly collected from participants before they became pregnant up to 60 days after last menstrual period, while most other studies ask women to recall their symptoms after they have become pregnant.

Professor Roger Gadsby adds: "What we've shown is that more people get symptoms of pregnancy sickness than has ever been shown before, and one of the reasons for that is that this research has picked up mild early symptoms that tend to fade by 7-8 weeks. In other studies those symptoms would have faded by the time the research started."

Previous research by the same team has demonstrated that the term 'morning sickness' is misleading as nausea and vomiting can occur at any time of day, and argues that 'nausea and sickness in pregnancy' or 'pregnancy sickness' is more appropriate and avoids trivialising the condition.