Earth

In modern optics, a variety of nanoscale materials and their localisation have been examined, as they lead to novel optical effects. Viewing direction sensitive information display utilising optical Janus effect has attracted great attention owing to its dynamic operation scheme which delivers discriminative information delivery. However, the integration of nano-materials within multiple layer limit their application in dynamic and real-time colour tuning.

In a new paper published in Light Science & Applications, a team of scientists, led by senior researcher Yong-Sang Ryu (Sensor System Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea) & Professor Seung-Yeol Lee (School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Republic of Korea) and co-workers developed a liquid-permeable translucent mirror to achieve asymmetric reflective colour contrast depending on the viewing direction. Based on the simple and cost-effective metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) films, they designed an optical device which is capable of displaying distinct colours as well as messages with respect to the viewing directions. This optical device is comprised nanoscale air voids in the dielectric film space which plays a key role in colour tuning via an infiltration of exposed liquids into the optical hotspots. Because the physicochemical properties of the dielectric films lead colour creations in visible ranges, based on the thorough understandings of optical phenomena depending on the comprising nanostructures of MDM films, reflective colour tuning in varying refractive index of surrounding solvents were realized. These scientists summarize the optical properties of their device:

"We describe the design of a transreflective etalon that produces directionally asymmetric reflective colour depending on the direction of incident light. And we discovered that the precise control of the physicochemical properties of the comprising films led to creation of viewing-direction sensitive asymmetric information encryption varying both of nanostructures and surrounding liquids.

These results suggest that the manipulation of film geometries enables not only to display the colour contrast but to hide viewing-direction-sensitive message encryption via optical camouflage phenomenon."

"Moving forward, bidirectional display of two different tuneable messages/images appear to be a tangible goal in the next step to allow for a wider range of photonic applications, including dynamic/informative colour filters, smart windows, optical switches, double-side colour displays, optical data storage devices, and anti-counterfeiting devices. Furthermore, as the proposed fabrication process is compatible with large-area substrates, the design can be applied to optical-sensing platforms" the scientists forecast.

Every biological system is naturally equipped with a defense mechanism to protect against abnormal changes caused by either local, environmental, or biochemical alteration. White blood cells (WBC) play the role of such a 'soldier' in our immune response. One type of WBC, known as macrophages, is the most efficient and specialized fighter since it is simultaneously equipped with the power of selective identification and elimination of foreign invaders, as well as the potency to repair wounds. Depending on their work distribution, macrophages are mainly comprised of two types, M1 and M2. M1 cells act as the 'professional killer', while M2 cells are more concentrated on healing activity.

In a normal, healthy situation, the immune system maintains a good balance between M1 and M2 cells. But in diseased conditions like bacterial, virus or parasite infections, or inflammations for atherosclerosis, cancer, or arthritis, the balance between M1 and M2 becomes affected, and depending on the crisis, a particular shift in M1 or M2 population occurs. If such changes could be monitored, it would lead to easy diagnostics and prediction of health conditions. There is currently no tool that can provide easy detection of M1/M2 cells directly from tissue fluid or a blood sample in a label-free manner without fluorescent tagging.

In a study just published in the journal Nano Letters, researchers from Bar-Ilan University in Israel have shown a simple solution to this issue with the help of the scattering effect of Gold Nanorods (GNRs). Gold-based nanoparticles are well known for their prominent optical property with high absorbance and scattering effects. By manipulating the scattering effect and adjusting the surface coating of GNRs, the researchers were able to identify changes in the optical property of M1 and M2 macrophages and utilize them as a parameter to monitor physiological changes.

The researchers used the flow cytometer (FCM) to capture changes in the granularity of the cells in order to identify GNR-laden macrophages and determine the specific scattering of GNRs. The FCM is generally used to identify a particular population of fluorescence-labeled cells, but in this case, it was used in label-free detection based only on scattering that came from the GNRs. With this unique method the researchers observed that one type of coating of GNRs exhibited greater selectivity towards M2 cells over M1.

"Our approach in utilizing the scattering of GNRs to identify M1 and M2 macrophages opens a new strategy in cellular identifications using FCM with the help of increased scattering of internalized nanoparticles," says Dr. Ruchira Chakraborty, leading researcher at Prof. Dror Fixler's laboratory at Bar-Ilan University's the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials. "Further development of this technique will lead us to build a new point of care or a biopsy tool which can predict the stages of manifestation of diseases like cancer, atherosclerosis, and fibrosis just from the simple tissue fluids or blood samples," says Prof. Dror Fixler, Director of the Bar-Ilan Nano Institute, who led the study in cooperation with Prof. Ran Kornowski and Dr. Dorit Leshem from Beilinson Hospital.

DALLAS (SMU) - You've heard that they can sag with age, perpetuate the name of a regrettable ex, or reveal an embarrassing inability to spell. But tattoos may also impair the way we sweat, potentially causing the body to overheat if the tattoos cover a large area of the body.

A team of researchers that includes SMU physiologist Scott L. Davis outlined the connection between tattoos and damage to sweat glands in a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Their study of tattooed skin and adjacent non-tattooed skin on the arms of an evenly-divided group of men and women found that the tattooed sections of skin had reduced sweat rates. 

That's a potential problem because sweating is how the body cools itself and regulates its temperature.

"Any damage to eccrine (sweat) glands within the skin can impair sweating response and potentially increase the risk of overheating if the damage covers a large enough body surface area," Davis said.

Eccrine sweat glands, which are found in most skin across the body, produce sweat to cool the body. The human body must regulate its temperature for survival.

Davis, associate professor in applied physiology and wellness at SMU's Simmons School of Education and Human Development, collaborated for the study with researchers from Alma College, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

In the study, they determined sweating rates in the upper and lower arms of people with tattoos by comparing at least 5.6 square centimeters of tattooed skin with adjacent non-tattooed skin. Ten people - both men and women - participated in the study. 

These volunteer subjects wore a special tube-lined suit that circulated hot water in excess of 120 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes to increase core temperatures and measure the level of sweating. Tattooed and non-tattooed areas of skin both began to sweat at around the same time. But tattooed areas ultimately produced less sweat than areas without tattoos. 

The findings suggest that even though nerve signals to sweat glands weren't affected in tattooed skin, the sweat glands themselves were likely damaged during tattooing. 

Tattoos are made permanent by injecting ink through the thin layer of outer skin into the middle layer of skin known as the dermis, which contains connective tissue, hair follicles and sweat glands. Applying a tattoo typically requires puncturing the skin with needles 50 to 3,000 times per minute, at a depth of 1-5 millimeters which could result in sweat gland damage.  

"These data indicate that the collateral effects of the tattooing process negatively impact eccrine sweat gland function and could be considered a potential long-term complication or side effect of this cosmetic procedure," researchers wrote. 

The existence of a tectonic plate called Resurrection has long been a topic of debate among geologists, with some arguing it was never real. Others say it subducted - moved sideways and downward - into the earth's mantle somewhere in the Pacific Margin between 40 and 60 million years ago.

A team of geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics believes they have found the lost plate in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images - similar to a CT scan of the earth's interior. The findings, published in Geological Society of America Bulletin, could help geologists better predict volcanic hazards as well as mineral and hydrocarbon deposits.

"Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Volcanoes also affect climate change. So, when you are trying to model the earth and understand how climate has changed since time, you really want to know how many volcanoes there have been on earth."

Wu and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH Center for Tectonics and Tomography called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era. The rigid outermost shell of Earth, or lithosphere, is broken into tectonic plates and geologists have always known there were two plates in the Pacific Ocean at that time called Kula and Farallon. But there has been discussion about a potential third plate, Resurrection, having formed a special type of volcanic belt along Alaska and Washington State.

"We believe we have direct evidence that the Resurrection plate existed. We are also trying to solve a debate and advocate for which side our data supports," Fuston said.

Using 3D mapping technology, Fuston applied the slab unfolding technique to the mantle tomography images to pull out the subducted plates before unfolding and stretching them to their original shapes.

"When 'raised' back to the earth's surface and reconstructed, the boundaries of this ancient Resurrection tectonic plate match well with the ancient volcanic belts in Washington State and Alaska, providing a much sought after link between the ancient Pacific Ocean and the North American geologic record," explained Wu.

Chemists at the University of Bayreuth have developed a material that could well make an important contribution to climate protection and sustainable industrial production. With this material, the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) can be specifically separated from industrial waste gases, natural gas, or biogas, and thereby made available for recycling. The separation process is both energy efficient and cost-effective. In the journal Cell Reports Physical Science the researchers present the structure and function of the material.

The "Green Deal", presented by the European Commission in 2019, calls for the net emissions of greenhouse gases within the EU to be reduced to zero by 2050. This requires innovative processes that can separate and retain CO2 from waste gases and other gas mixtures so that it is not released into the atmosphere. The material developed in Bayreuth has one fundamental advantage over previous separation processes: It is capable of completely removing CO2 from gas mixtures without chemically binding CO2. These gas mixtures can be waste gases from industrial plants, but also natural gas or biogas. In all these cases, CO2 accumulates in the cavities of the material solely due to physical interaction. From there, it can be released without great expenditure of energy, to be made available again as a resource for industrial production. Hence, the separation process works, chemically speaking, according to the principle of physical adsorption. Like a spacious storage tank, the new material can be filled with and emptied of carbon dioxide in an energy-efficient way. In Bayreuth laboratories, it was designed in such a way as to only separate out CO2 and no other gas from the most varied gas mixtures.

"Our research team has succeeded in designing a material that fulfils two tasks at the same time. On the one hand, the physical interactions with CO2 are strong enough to free and retain this greenhouse gas from a gas mixture. On the other hand, however, they are weak enough to allow the release of CO2 from the material with only a small amount of energy", says Martin Riess M.Sc., first author of the new publication and doctoral researcher at the Inorganic Chemistry I research group at the University of Bayreuth.

The new material is an inorganic-organic hybrid. The chemical basis is clay minerals consisting of hundreds of individual glass platelets. These are only one nanometre thick each, and arranged precisely one above the other. Between the individual glass plates there are organic molecules that act as spacers. Their shape and chemical properties have been selected so that the pore spaces created are optimally tailored to accumulate CO2. Only carbon dioxide molecules can penetrate into the pore system of the material and be retained there. In contrast, methane, nitrogen, and other exhaust gas components must remain outside due to the size of their molecules. The researchers have used the so-called molecular sieve effect to increase the material's selectivity for CO2. They are currently working on the development of a membrane system based on clay minerals, designed to allow the continuous, selective, and energy-efficient separation of CO2 from gas mixtures.

The development of a hybrid material tailor-made for the separation and supply of CO2 was made possible thanks to a special measuring system set up in the Bayreuth laboratories which allows the precise determination of quantities of adsorbed gases and of the selectivity of the adsorbing material. This has enabled industrial processes to be reproduced realistically. "All criteria relevant to the evaluation of industrial CO2 separation processes have been completely fulfilled by our hybrid material. It can be produced cost-effectively, and stands to make an important contribution to reducing industrial carbon dioxide emissions, but also to the processing of biogas and acidic natural gas," says Martin Riess.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a debilitating disorder that causes rapid degeneration of the brain as well as progressing dementia. It is a fatal disorder, often leading to death within just several years of the onset. CJD is the most common form of a human disorder caused by "prions," pathogenic agents that induce abnormal folding of specific cellular proteins in the brain called "prion proteins." The major type of CJD, accounting for 85% of the cases, is called sporadic CJD (sCJD). Because sCJD mainly occurs in late-middle old age, an increase in the aging population worldwide can potentially cause a rise in CJD cases, which is a pressing global concern. Thus, to help policymakers plan ahead and establish a robust strategy, it is essential to estimate the trends of CJD-associated deaths and incidence.

To this end, a team of researchers at Okayama University, including Dr Yoshito Nishimura, Dr Toshihiro Koyama, and Dr Hideharu Hagiya, conducted a trend analysis of the incidence and mortality of CJD in Japan, between 2005 and 2014. Their findings are published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Research journal. Dr Nishimura, the first author of this study, says, "Despite CJD being a rare disease, the phenomenon of population aging may trigger a rise in the incidence and, thus, the socioeconomic and healthcare burden of CJD. Our aim was to analyze these trends, in an effort to spread awareness and spur new treatment strategies."

For their analysis, the scientists used national vital statistics data on CJD-associated deaths among individuals aged over 50 years as well as the government-funded nationwide CJD surveillance data (from 2005 to 2014) in Japan. Their analysis revealed that, from 2005 to 2014, there was a significant increase in the absolute number of deaths, mortality rates, and incidence rates associated with CJD, even after adjusting for age. In particular, the average increase in incidence was estimated to be 6.4% per year. This trend in CJD-associated mortality and incidence rates was especially prominent in the older-age group, particularly in those over the age of 70 years. Although a previous report by the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease International Surveillance Network had stated that annual death rates of sCJD had risen in most participating countries in the past two decades, this study shows that Japan might have had higher CJD-associated deaths and incidence than other countries, which the scientists attributed to a rise in the aging population. Dr Nishimura says, "The severe socioeconomic burden on caregivers due to CJD-induced dementia warrant the attention of policymakers and stress the need for a mitigative action plan with particular focus on the increase in the prevalence of dementia. In this regard, we hope that our findings can help to guide policymakers in the right direction."

In 2015, more than 4.7 million people in Japan were living with dementia, and this number is projected to rapidly increase to 7 million by 2025. Contrary to other forms of dementia, which progress relatively slowly, patients with CJD suffer from rapidly progressing dementia. Thus, there is an urgent need to find effective strategies to improve their quality of lives and reduce the burden on caregivers. The findings of this study take a step in this direction, by shedding light on the need for effective policy measures. Dr Nishimura concludes, "CJD, albeit rare, will be more prevalent in the next 5-10 years. Policymakers and health authorities can make use of our findings to establish effective health policies."

Optical fiber data transmission can be significantly improved by producing the fibers, made of silica glass, under high pressure, researchers from Japan and the US report in the journal npj Computational Materials.

Using computer simulations, researchers at Hokkaido University, The Pennsylvania State University and their industry collaborators theoretically show that signal loss from silica glass fibers can be reduced by more than 50 percent, which could dramatically extend the distance data can be transmitted without the need for amplification.

"Improvements in silica glass, the most important material for optical communication, have stalled in recent years due to lack of understanding of the material on the atomic level," says Associate Professor Madoka Ono of Hokkaido University's Research Institute of Electronic Science (RIES). "Our findings can now help guide future physical experiments and production processes, though it will be technically challenging."

Optical fibers have revolutionized high-bandwidth, long-distance communication all over the world. The cables carrying all that information are mainly made of fine threads of silica glass, slightly thicker than a human hair. The material is strong, flexible and very good at transmitting information, in the form of light, at low cost. But the data signal peters out before reaching its final destination due to light being scattered. Amplifiers and other tools are used to contain and relay the information before it scatters, ensuring it is delivered successfully. Scientists are seeking to reduce light scatter, called Rayleigh scattering, to help accelerate data transmission and move closer towards quantum communication.

Ono and her collaborators used multiple computational methods to predict what happens to the atomic structure of silica glass under high temperature and high pressure. They found large voids between silica atoms form when the glass is heated up and then cooled down, which is called quenching, under low pressure. But when this process occurs under 4 gigapascals (GPa), most of the large voids disappear and the glass takes on a much more uniform lattice structure.

Specifically, the models show that the glass goes under a physical transformation, and smaller rings of atoms are eliminated or "pruned" allowing larger rings to join more closely together. This helps to reduce the number of large voids and the average size of voids, which cause light scattering, and decrease signal loss by more than 50 percent.

The researchers suspect even greater improvements can be achieved using a slower cooling rate at higher pressure. The process could also be explored for other types of inorganic glass with similar structures. However, actually making glass fibers under such high pressures at an industrial scale is very difficult.

"Now that we know the ideal pressure, we hope this research will help spur the development of high-pressure manufacturing devices that can produce this ultra-transparent silica glass," Ono says.

(Vienna, 19 October 2020) Good news for the human immune system: researchers from MedUni Vienna's Departments of Dermatology and Surgery have managed to ascribe an immunological memory function to a subset of cytotoxic NK cells, which have hitherto been regarded as antigen-non-specific. The researchers found under the leadership of Georg Stary, who is also Co-Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases and affiliated with the CeMM (Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences) that around one third of all human liver NK cells can remember viruses and therefore respond specifically to them. These cells are therefore an interesting target for prophylactic use in the human immune system in the fight against infections and viruses.

NK cells are natural cytotoxic killer cells in human blood and are a type of lymphocyte, a subgroup of white blood cells or leukocytes. They are able to identify and kill abnormal cells such as tumour cells or virally infected cells (apoptosis). Up until now, NK cells have been regarded as having no memory function, meaning that they are unable to kill on an "antigen-specific" basis but are only able to react afresh each time to viruses and sources of infection in a non-specific way.

In the study recently published in the top journal Science Immunology, the MedUni Vienna scientists found that there is a subset of NK cells in the liver - the organ which is generally regarded as a large reservoir for NK cells - that is able to fight infections such as hepatitis A and B and to remember them. This subset also exhibits a unique gene expression profile that is different from that of other NK cell groups.

"Our study results show that this particular subset of NK cells mediates effective antigen-specific processes. This subset of NK cells could therefore be a suitable candidate for specific, therapeutic and also prophylactic vaccination strategies," summarises Stary. Healthy people have around 5 - 15% of NK cells in their blood, whereby the liver acts as a reservoir for these cells. As a next step, the authors are investigating the role of these NK cells in the course of infectious diseases. They also want to explore whether these NK cells could additionally take over missing memory functions in patients with rare diseases with immunodeficiencies affecting T and B lymphocytes.

Organic molecules formed the basis for the evolution of life. But how could inorganic precursors have given rise to them? Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich chemist Oliver Trapp now reports a reaction pathway in which minerals catalyze the formation of sugars in the absence of water.

More than 4 billion years ago, the Earth was very far from being the Blue Planet it would later become. At that point it had just begun to cool and, in the course of that process, the concentric structural zones that lie ever deeper beneath our feet were formed. The early Earth was dominated by volcanism, and the atmosphere was made up of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and water vapor. In this decidedly inhospitable environment the building blocks of life were formed. How then might this have come about?

Researchers have puzzled over the question for decades. The first breakthrough was made in 1953 by two chemists, named Stanley Miller and Harold C. Urey, at the University of Chicago. In their experiments, they simulated the atmosphere of the primordial Earth in a closed reaction system that contained the gases mentioned above. A miniature 'ocean' was heated to provide water vapor, and electrical discharges were passed through the system to mimic the effects of lightning. When they analyzed the chemicals produced under these conditions, Miller and Urey detected amino acids - the basic constituents of proteins - as well as a number of other organic acids.

It is now known that the conditions employed in these experiments did not reflect those that prevailed on the early Earth. Nevertheless, the Miller-Urey experiment initiated the field of prebiotic chemical evolution. However, it not throw much light on how other classes of molecules found in all biological cells - such as sugars, fats and nucleic acids - might have been generated. These compounds are however indispensable ingredients of the process that led to the first bacteria and subsequently to photosynthetic cyanobacteria that produced oxygen. This is why Oliver Trapp, Professor of Organic Chemistry at LMU, decided to focus his research on the prebiotic synthesis of these substances.

From formaldehyde to sugar

The story of synthetic routes from smaller precursors to sugars goes back almost a century prior to the Miller-Urey experiment. In 1861, the Russian chemist Alexander Butlerov showed that formaldehyde could give rise to various sugars via what became known as the formose reaction. Miller und Urey in fact found formic acid in their experiments, and it can be readily reduced to yield formaldehyde. Butlerov also discovered that the formose reaction is promoted by a number of metal oxides and hydroxides, including those of calcium, barium, thallium and lead. Notably calcium is abundantly available on and below the Earth's surface.

However, the hypothesis that sugars could have been produced via the formose reaction runs into two difficulties. The 'classical' formose reaction produces a diverse mixture of compounds, and it takes place only in aqueous media. These requirements are at odds with the fact that sugars have been detected in meteorites.

Together with colleagues at LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Trapp therefore decided to explore whether formaldehyde could give rise to sugars in a solid-phase system. With a view to simulating the kinds of mechanical forces to which solid minerals would have been subjected, all the reaction components were combined in a ball mill - in the absence of solvents, but adding enough formaldehyde to saturate the powdered solids

And indeed, the formose reaction was observed and several different minerals were found to catalyze it. The formaldehyde was adsorbed onto the solid particles, and the interaction resulted in the formation of the formaldehyde dimer (glycolaldehyde) - and ribose, the 5-carbon sugar that is an essential constituent of ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA is thought to have merged prior to DNA, and it serves as the repository of genetic information in many viruses, as well as providing the templates for protein synthesis in all cellular organisms. More complex sugars were also obtained in the experiments, together with a few byproducts, such as lactic acid and methanol.

"Our results provide a plausible explanation for the formation of sugars in the solid phase, even under extraterrestrial settings in the absence of water," says Trapp. They also prompt new questions that may point to new and unexpected prebiotic routes to the basic components of life as we know it, as Trapp affirms. "We are convinced that these new insights will open up entirely new perspectives for research on prebiotic, chemical evolution," he says.

Earth's history knows catastrophes which are unimaginable for humans. For example, around 66 million years ago an asteroid impact marked the end of the dinosaur era. Long before however, 252 million years ago at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic epochs, Earth witnessed a far more extreme mass extinction event that extinguished about three-quarters of all species on land and some 95 percent of all species in the ocean. Volcanic activity on an enormous scale in today's Siberia has long been debated as a likely trigger of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, but the exact sequence of events that led to the extinction remained highly controversial. Now, a team of researchers from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Italian and Canadian universities, provides for the first time a conclusive reconstruction of the key events that led to the mega-catastrophe. Their research also draws bleak lessons for the future. They report about their discoveries in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The international team led by Hana Jurikova studied isotopes of the element boron in the calcareous shells of fossil brachiopods - clam-like organisms - and with it determined the rate of ocean acidification over the Permian-Triassic boundary. Because the ocean pH and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are closely coupled, the team was able to reconstruct changes in atmospheric CO2 at the onset of the extinction from boron and carbon isotopes. They then used an innovative geochemical model to study the impact of the CO2 injection on the environment. Their findings showed that volcanic eruptions, from the then active flood basalt province "Siberian Traps", released immense amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. This large CO2 release lasted several millennia and led to a strong greenhouse effect on the late Permian world, causing extreme warming and acidification of the ocean. Dramatic changes in chemical weathering on land altered productivity and nutrient cycling in the ocean, and ultimately led to vast de-oxygenation of the ocean. The resulting multiple environmental stressors combined to wipe out a wide variety of animal and plant groups. Dr. Jurikova says: "We are dealing with a cascading catastrophe in which the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere set off a chain of events that successively extinguished almost all life in the seas.".

Hana Jurikova adds: "Ancient volcanic eruptions of this kind are not directly comparable to anthropogenic carbon emissions, and in fact all modern fossil fuel reserves are far too insufficient to release as much CO2 over hundreds of years, let alone thousands of years as was released 252 million years ago. But it is astonishing that humanity's CO2 emission rate is currently fourteen times higher than the annual emission rate at the time that marked the greatest biological catastrophe in Earth's history".

A large part of the work was done by the researcher at GEOMAR in Kiel, but she later joined the GFZ (Section 4.3) in Potsdam, and the "icing on the cake" for her were the results from a collaboration with the SIMS laboratory led by Michael Wiedenbeck at the GFZ (Section 3.1). Using the state-of-the-art large-geometry secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS), the isotopic composition of the shells could be measured directly on the specimens at the micrometer-scale. This made it possible to determine the boron isotopic composition even in the smallest fragments of brachiopod shells. Depending on the degree of acidification of the seas, the calcareous shells of the organisms living in them differ ever so slightly in their chemical composition. In this way, the pH value of long vanished oceans could be determined in the remains of the shells preserved as fossils in the rock record.

As species across the world adjust where they live in response to climate change, they will come into competition with other species that could hamper their ability to keep up with the pace of this change, according to new University of Colorado Boulder-led research.

The new findings, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms previous models showing that competition between species slows their expansion into new territories over multiple generations.

"The experiment shows how interspecies competition can put certain species at greater risk of extinction," said Geoffrey Legault, lead author of the study, who conducted the research while earning his doctoral degree in ecology and evolutionary biology at CU Boulder. "It has enabled us to improve the ecological models, and that helps us to make better predictions about nature."

The researchers found that competition between species sets the boundary where species expand their ranges, providing support for including interspecies competition in ecological models and studies that monitor, forecast or manage these changes in the natural world.

To achieve this new finding, the researchers used two species of a small, but resilient insect: the flour beetle.

Flour beetles have been studied since the early 1900s and are a model organism in ecology. In the same way that fruit flies are used as a model organism for studying genetics, flour beetles can represent the fundamental ecology of most organisms and their responses in the lab can be applied to larger ecological trends and patterns in the natural world.

In nature, these tiny creatures live on the ground in the leaf litter and in the bark of trees. While inconspicuous to us, they are common across the world.

In the lab, the researchers lined up a series of 1.5 inch-long plexiglass boxes joined by holes, which they could open and close like fences. The two species of flour beetles were born into opposite ends of this lineup, then observed as their populations expanded across the landscape and competed with each other.

"It's a microcosm of the larger natural world that allows you to focus in on the core processes of birth, death and movement," said Brett Melbourne, senior author on the study and associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Product pest and model organism

Upon entering Melbourne's laboratory, you might think you are in a bakery--not a space where scientific experiments are conducted. There is a dusting of flour everywhere and much of the equipment is more what you'd find in a bakery than a lab.

"We even sift the flour like you're supposed to when you're baking something," said Legault, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia.

Flour is both the flour beetles' habitat and their food source--but it's also a high-demand human food product. The beetles are considered a major stored product pest, as they can get into not only your cupboards, but grain silos and flour mills. As a result, many studies about these insects focus on exterminating them.

But for the researchers, these food pests are perfect for conducting tightly controlled experiments. As the beetles have a short life cycle, observing their populations across many generations can be done within a year.

Yet the work is still intensive. In the year of the experiment, 24 CU Boulder undergraduates assisted Legault and Melbourne in counting more than a million beetles.

Climate change and changing habitats

For Melbourne, this research is especially critical in relationship to climate change.

"One way that species are experiencing climate change is that their habitat is moving: It's either going up mountain sides or it's moving toward the poles," said Melbourne.

In many parts of the world, the pace at which habitats are moving in these northern and upward directions across the globe is more than a kilometer per year, according to Melbourne. That is really fast, especially for species with limited ability to change where they live.

Predictions on how well a species will survive due to climate change moving their habitat often focus on single, individual species. But as many species migrate to new areas, they will encounter established species that already live there. Because the two species may rely on the same food sources or other resources, the survival of both is threatened.

"These kinds of species interactions could be super important for the long-term persistence or extinction of species in response to moving habitats," Melbourne said.

In a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study involving both mice and patients who are part of an NIH Clinical Center trial, researchers discovered that a gene, called PIEZO2, may be responsible for the powerful urge to urinate that we normally feel several times a day. The results, published in Nature, suggest that the gene helps at least two different types of cells in the body sense when our bladders are full and need to be emptied. These results also expand the growing list of newly discovered senses under the gene's control.

"Urination is essential for our health. It's one of the primary ways our bodies dispose of waste. We show how specific genes and cells may play critical roles in initiating this process," said Ardem Patapoutian, Ph.D., professor, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA and a senior author of the paper. "We hope that these results provide a more detailed understanding of how urination works under healthy and disease conditions."

Urine is produced when the kidneys extract waste and excess water from the blood and send it to the bladder. Over time, it fills up and expands like a balloon, putting tension on the bladder muscles. Then, at a certain point, the body senses that it is reaching a limit, which triggers the urge to urinate.

The PIEZO2 gene contains instructions for making proteins that are activated when cells are stretched or squeezed. In this study, the researchers found that patients who are born with a genetic deficiency in PIEZO2 have trouble sensing bladder filling while experiments in mice suggested the gene plays two critical roles in this process. It may help certain bladder cells gauge expansion while also sparking neurons to relay tension signals to the rest of the nervous system.

The study was a collaboration between Dr. Patapoutian's team and researchers working in NIH labs led by Alex Chesler, Ph.D., senior investigator, at the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and a senior author of the paper, and Carsten Bönnemann, M.D., senior investigator at the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

In 2010, Dr. Patapoutian's team discovered the PIEZO2 gene along with a similar gene called PIEZO1 in a line of mouse brain tumors. Before then, scientists knew of only a few rare examples from flies, worms, and mice in which a gene helped tissue, such as hairy skin cells, sense changes in shape and pressure. Since the discovery, Dr. Patapoutian's team and others have primarily shown in mice that the PIEZO2 gene may play many roles throughout the body including controlling the sense of touch, vibration, pain, and proprioception, the unconscious awareness of one's body in space.

More recently Dr. Patapoutian's and Dr. Chesler's teams had been exploring whether PIEZO2 played a role in urination.

"There were a lot of reasons to think that PIEZO2 could be important for urination. Theoretically, it made sense as it is a pressure sensor for other internal sensory processes," said Kara L. Marshall, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow on Dr. Patapoutian's team and the lead author of the study.

Then in 2015, a breakthrough happened. The NIH researchers discovered people who were born with disabling mutations in their PIEZO2 genes. Initial evaluations of these PIEZO2 deficient individuals at the NIH's Clinical Center reproduced some of the mouse results. They had no sense of proprioception and could not feel some forms of touch and pain. They also had something else in common.

"We were really struck by what we heard during background interviews with patients and their families. Almost everyone mentioned that the patients had problems with urination. As children, they had trouble potty training. They would often have urinary tract infections. And most of them follow a daily urination schedule," said Dimah Saade, M.D., a clinical fellow on Dr. Bönnemann's team and an author of the paper. "After seeing a consistent pattern, we decided to take a closer look."

The researchers examined medical records, performed ultrasound scans, administered questionnaires, and conducted detailed interviews with 12 patients, 5 to 43 years of age, and their families.

Nearly all the patients claimed they could go an entire day without feeling the need to urinate and most urinated less than the normal five to six times per day. In fact, three patients reported only going once or twice a day. Five patients reported that when they finally do feel a need, it comes on as an abrupt urge. Seven patients reported that the act of urinating was difficult. They either had to wait for it to happen or needed to press their lower abdomen for it to start.

"These results strongly suggested that PIEZO2 plays a role in urination," said Dr. Marshall. "We wanted to know how it may do this."

In-depth experiments in mice helped them address this question.

Initially, the researchers found that the PIEZO2 gene was highly active in a few dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons that send nerve signals from the mouse bladder to the brain. Aided by an advanced, real-time imaging system, they saw that the cells lit up with activity when a mouse's bladder filled with fluid. They also found that the PIEZO2 gene was turned on in some "umbrella" cells which are found among the cells that line the inside of a bladder.

"These were the first clues to understanding where in the urinary tract PIEZO2 worked. They suggested that it may help control the bladder," said Nima Ghitani, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Chesler's lab and an author of the study.

Next, they found that deleting the gene from the neurons and umbrella cells not only reduced the cells' responses to bladder filling but also caused the mice to have problems with urination. The mutant mice showed some signs of incontinence and urinated randomly in their cages instead of in a corner as seen with control mice. Meanwhile, mutant mouse bladders required more fluid and greater pressure than normal to trigger urination which was reminiscent of the patient reports.

They also found that deleting the gene from the two cell types had longer lasting effects. For instance, the muscles of the mutant bladders were thicker than controls, suggesting the loss of sensation remodeled the bladder.

"Neurologists have always known that there's a strong link between the nervous system and bladder control, both on a conscious as well as on an automatic level," said Dr. Bönnemann. "Our patients together with the results in the mouse models teach us how the loss of the critical sensor PIEZO2 profoundly disrupts the wiring behind normal bladder control, ultimately reshaping the bladder itself."

Finally, the researchers found that deleting the PIEZO2 gene from either the umbrella cells or the DRG neurons produced similar results as deleting it from both cell types simultaneously. Eliminating the gene from either cell lengthened the time that mice would take before feeling the need to squeeze their bladders and it increased the pressure applied during each squeeze.

"Our results show how the PIEZO2 gene tightly coordinates urination," said Dr. Chesler. "This is a major advance in our understanding of interoception - or the sense of what's going inside our bodies."

In the future, the researchers will continue to examine the role PIEZO2 plays in urination and other interoceptive senses while also exploring the clinical implications of their discovery for the millions suffering from urinatory control problems.

Light from distant galaxies reveals important information about the nature of the universe and allows scientists to develop high-precision models of the history, evolution and structure of the cosmos.

The gravity associated with massive pockets of dark matter that lie between Earth and these galaxies, however, plays havoc with those galactic light signals. Gravity distorts galaxies' light -- a process called gravitational lensing -- and also slightly aligns the galaxies physically, resulting in additional gravitational lensing light signals that contaminate the true data.

In a study first published Aug. 5 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, University of Texas at Dallas scientists demonstrated the first use of a method called self-calibration to remove contamination from gravitational lensing signals. The results should lead to more accurate cosmological models of the universe, said Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the corresponding author of the study.

"The self-calibration method is something others proposed about 10 years ago; many thought it was just a theoretical method and moved away from it," Ishak-Boushaki said. "But I intuitively felt the promise. After eight years of persistent investigation maturing the method itself, and then the last two years applying it to the data, it bore fruit with important consequences for cosmological studies."/p>

A Lens on the Universe

Gravitational lensing is one of the most promising methods in cosmology to provide information on the parameters that underlie the current model of the universe.

"It can help us map the distribution of dark matter and discover information about the structure of the universe. But the measurement of such cosmological parameters can be off by as much as 30% if we do not extract the contamination in the gravitational lensing signal," Ishak-Boushaki said.

Due to the way distant galaxies form and the environment they form in, they are slightly physically aligned with the dark matter close to them. This intrinsic alignment generates additional spurious lensing signals, or a bias, which contaminate the data from the galaxies and thus skew the measurement of key cosmological parameters, including those that describe the amount of dark matter and dark energy in the universe and how fast galaxies move away from each other.

To complicate matters further, there are two types of intrinsic alignment that require different methods of mitigation. In their study, the research team used the self-calibration method to extract the nuisance signals from a type of alignment called intrinsic shape-gravitational shear, which is the most critical component.

"Our work significantly increases the chances of success to measure the properties of dark energy in an accurate way, which will allow us to understand what is causing cosmic acceleration," Ishak-Boushaki said. "Another impact will be to determine accurately whether Einstein's general theory of relativity holds at very large scales in the universe. These are very important questions."

Impact on Cosmology

Several large scientific surveys aimed at better understanding the universe are in the works, and they will gather gravitational lensing data. These include the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the European Space Agency's Euclid mission and NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

"The big winner here will be these upcoming surveys of gravitational lensing. We will really be able to get the full potential from them to understand our universe," said Ishak-Boushaki, who is a member and a convener of the LSST's Dark Energy Science Collaboration.

The self-calibration method to remove contaminated signals was first proposed by Dr. Pengjie Zhang, a professor of astronomy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a co-author of the current study.

Ishak-Boushaki further developed the method and introduced it to the realm of cosmological observations, along with one of his former students, Michael Troxel MS'11, PhD'14, now an assistant professor of physics at Duke University. Since 2012 the research has been supported by two grants to Ishak-Boushaki from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"Not everyone was sure that self-calibration would lead to such an important result. Some colleagues were encouraging; some were skeptical," Ishak-Boushaki said. "I've learned that it pays not to give up. My intuition was that if it was done right, it would work, and I'm grateful to the NSF for seeing the promise of this work."

DURHAM, N.C. -- Children who are later diagnosed with autism and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder visit doctors and hospitals more often in their first year of life than non-affected children, suggesting a potential new way to identify the conditions early.

The findings from Duke Health researchers, appearing online Oct. 19 in the journal Scientific Reports, provide evidence that health care utilization patterns in a baby's first year can be gleaned from electronic medical records, serving as a roadmap to provide timely diagnoses and treatments that could improve outcomes and reduce health care costs.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects approximately 1.5% of children in the United States and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects about 11% of U.S. children. ADHD symptoms are also present in up to 60% of children with ASD. The diagnoses are associated with higher utilization of health care services, at great expense to families.

"This study provides evidence that children who develop autism and ADHD are on a different path from the beginning," said lead author Matthew Engelhard, M.D., Ph.D., a senior research associate at Duke. "We have known that children with these diagnoses have more interactions with the health care system after they've been diagnosed, but this indicates that distinctive patterns of utilization begin early in these children's lives. This could provide an opportunity to intervene sooner."

"We know that children with ASD and ADHD often receive their diagnosis much later, missing out on the proven benefits that early interventions can bring," said Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D., director of the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. "Owing to the brain's inherent malleability -- its neuroplasticity -- early detection and intervention are critical to improving outcomes in ASD, especially in terms of language and social skills."

Engelhard and colleagues, including senior authors Dawson and Scott Kollins, Ph.D., used 10 years of data collected from the electronic health records of nearly 30,000 patients, primarily at Duke University Health System, who had at least two well-child visits before age one.

Patients were grouped as having later been diagnosed with ASD, ADHD, both conditions or no diagnosis. The researchers then analyzed the first-year records for hospital admissions, procedures, emergency department visits and outpatient clinical appointments.

For the children who were later found to have one or both of the diagnoses, their births tended to result in longer hospital stays compared to children without the disorders.

Children later diagnosed with ASD had higher numbers of procedures, including intubation and ventilation, and more outpatient specialty care visits for services such as physical therapy and eye appointments.

Children who were later found to have ADHD had more procedures, notably including blood transfusions, as well as more hospital admissions and more emergency department visits.

Studies show that treatments for these disorders work best when they begin early in a child's life, Dawson said. Understanding that there are signals available in a child's electronic health record could help lead to earlier and more targeted therapies.

"We are hopeful that these early utilization patterns can eventually be combined with other sources of data to build automated surveillance tools to help parents and pediatricians identify which kids will benefit most from early assessment and treatment," Kollins said.

The researchers said they plan to conduct additional analyses to explore more fully what specific health concerns prompted the extra doctor and hospital visits.

"We want to understand these distinctions in greater detail and identify them as soon as possible to make sure children have access to the resources they need," Engelhard said.

An international collaboration has provided the first insights into a new type of silk produced by the very unusual Australian basket-web spider, which uses it to build a lobster pot web that protects its eggs and trap prey.

The basket-web spider weaves a silk that is uniquely rigid and so robust that the basket-web doesn't need help from surrounding vegetation to maintain its structure.

"As far as we know, no other spider builds a web like this," said Professor Mark Elgar from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne.

"This silk retains its rigidity, allowing a rather exquisite silken basket or deadly ant trap."

The collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the University of Bayreuth with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation is likely to draw a lot of interest.

Entomologist William J Rainbow discovered the basket-spider in 1900 but made no mention of the nature of its silk, perhaps because he had only seen drawings of the web and imagined it to be more sack-like.

The recent study, just published in Scientific Reports, as Dimensional stability of a remarkable spider foraging web achieved by synergistic arrangement of silk fiber," has found that the silk used to construct the basket web is similar to the silk that many species of spiders use to wrap around their eggs, to protect them from the elements and enemies.

"Our discovery may provide insights into the evolution of foraging webs," said Professor Elgar. "It is widely thought that silk foraging webs, including the magnificent orb-webs, evolved from the habit of producing silk to protect egg cases. Perhaps the basket-web is an extension of the protective egg case and represents a rare contemporary example of an evolutionary ancestral process."

The basket-web spider is found only in Australia. Its basket is approximately 11mm in diameter and 14 mm deep and has crosslinked threads of varying diameters. The nature of the silk was revealed by the Australian Synchrotron, a national facility of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in south east Melbourne.

Professor Thomas Scheibel from the University of Bayreuth said the rigidity of the silk appears to come from the synergistic arrangement of microfibres and submicron fibres.

"Nature has created a complex structure that, at first glance, resembles industrially produced composites," said Professor Scheibel who headed the research from Germany.

"Further investigations have, however, shown that they are chemically different components and their respective properties together result in the thread's extreme elasticity and toughness, thus creating a high degree of robustness. With today's composite materials, on the other hand, it is mainly the fibres embedded in the matrix that establish the particular properties required, such as high stability."

While more work needs to be done to understand the molecular details of the silk, Professor Scheibel said there is potential interest in a new genetic material that can be produced in a scalable manner.

"The interesting feature is the high lateral stiffness as well as the gluing substances, which could be useful in several types of applications but it will be some time before this becomes a possibility."

Professor Elgar said "More generally the basket web, and the properties of its silk, highlight the importance of continuing to investigate obscure, unfamiliar species.

"There is increasing recognition that solutions to many of the complex challenges and puzzles we face today can be found from biological systems.

"This so-called 'Bioinspiration' draws on some 3.8 billion years of natural selection honing biological forms, processes and systems. The potential insights from that diversity of life, about which we still know rather little, is staggering."