Earth

Moles stop growing when they reach a certain size due to normal interactions between cells, despite having cancer-associated gene mutations, says a new study published today in eLife.

The findings in mice could help scientists develop new ways to prevent skin cancer growth that take advantage of the normal mechanisms that control cell growth in the body.

Mutations that activate the protein made by the BRAF gene are believed to contribute to the development of skin cancer. However, recent studies have shown that these mutations do not often cause skin cancer, but instead result in the formation of completely harmless pigmented moles on the skin. In fact, 90% of moles have these cancer-linked mutations but never go on to form tumours. "Exploring why moles stop growing might lead us to a better understanding of what goes wrong in skin cancer," says lead author Roland Ruiz-Vega, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Irvine, US.

Scientists believe that stress caused by rapid cell growth may stop the growth of moles through a process called oncogene-induced senescence (OIS), but this has not been proven. To test the idea, Ruiz-Vega and colleagues studied mice with BRAF mutations that develop numerous moles.

The team first focused on assessing 'senescence', a set of changes in cells usually associated with aging. Using a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing to compare mole cells with normal skin cells, they found that moles are growth-arrested, but no more senescent than normal skin cells. The cells also did not have any apparent differences in gene expression (where a gene is activated to create a necessary protein) that would support the idea of OIS controlling their growth.

Additionally, computer modelling of mole growth did not support the idea of OIS. In fact, the models suggested that mole cells communicate with each other when moles reach a certain size and stop growing. The same kind of communication also takes place in many normal tissues to enable them to achieve and maintain a correct size.

"Our results suggest that moles stop growing as a result of normal cell-to-cell communication, not as a response to stress from cancer genes, potentially changing the way we think about skin cancer," explains senior author Arthur Lander, Director of the Center for Complex Biological Systems, and Donald Bren Professor of Developmental and Cell Biology, at the University of California, Irvine. "This work paves the way for further research into the mechanisms that control skin cell growth, with the aim of better understanding what goes wrong to cause skin cancer and ultimately developing new treatments to help prevent the disease."

In a proof-of-concept study, education and artificial intelligence researchers have demonstrated the use of a machine-learning model to predict how long individual museum visitors will engage with a given exhibit. The finding opens the door to a host of new work on improving user engagement with informal learning tools.

"Education is an important part of the mission statement for most museums," says Jonathan Rowe, co-author of the study and a research scientist in North Carolina State University's Center for Educational Informatics (CEI). "The amount of time people spend engaging with an exhibit is used as a proxy for engagement and helps us assess the quality of learning experiences in a museum setting. It's not like school - you can't make visitors take a test."

"If we can determine how long people will spend at an exhibit, or when an exhibit begins to lose their attention, we can use that information to develop and implement adaptive exhibits that respond to user behavior in order to keep visitors engaged," says Andrew Emerson, first author of the study and a Ph.D. student at NC State.

"We could also feed relevant data to museum staff on what is working and what people aren't responding to," Rowe says. "That can help them allocate personnel or other resources to shape the museum experience based on which visitors are on the floor at any given time."

To determine how machine-learning programs might be able to predict user interaction times, the researchers closely monitored 85 museum visitors as they engaged with an interactive exhibit on environmental science. Specifically, the researchers collected data on study participants' facial expressions, posture, where they looked on the exhibit's screen and which parts of the screen they touched.

The data were fed into five different machine-learning models to determine which combinations of data and models resulted in the most accurate predictions.

"We found that a particular machine-learning method called 'random forests' worked quite well, even using only posture and facial expression data," Emerson says.

The researchers also found that the models worked better the longer people interacted with the exhibit, since that gave them more data to work with. For example, a prediction made after a few minutes would be more accurate than a prediction made after 30 seconds. For context, user interactions with the exhibit lasted as long as 12 minutes.

"We're excited about this, because it paves the way for new approaches to study how visitors learn in museums," says Rowe. "Ultimately, we want to use technology to make learning more effective and more engaging."

PHILADELPHIA -- (Oct. 13, 2020) -- Researchers at The Wistar Institute and collaborators from the University of Notre Dame are developing anticancer compounds targeting a pathway of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response implicated in the development of multiple myeloma (MM), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and lymphoma. The study was published online today in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The ER is an important organelle in our cells that oversees the quality control of protein folding under normal conditions and responds to the accumulation of misfolded proteins found under stressful conditions by activating specific mechanisms and signaling pathways such as the IRE-1/XBP-1 pathway that triggers a cascade of events that brings cells back to normal physiological conditions.

The laboratory of Chih-Chi Andrew Hu, Ph.D., professor in the Immunology, Microenvironment & Metastasis Program at Wistar, and collaborators show that targeting the ER stress signaling response is an effective strategy against various B cell cancers that rely upon ER stress signaling response to survive under stressful conditions.

The Wistar Institute and Notre Dame teams are working together to advance a new class of compounds to inhibit IRE-1 protein and block the function of the IRE-1/XBP-1 pathway, which promotes survival of malignant B cells such as MM and CLL cells. The IRE-1 inhibitors being developed by Hu and collaborators have shown promising activity in several preclinical cancer models, compared to other commercially available IRE-1 inhibitors having variable and inconsistent ability to selectively target ER stress signaling in vitro and in vivo.

"We carefully compared many published inhibitors of the IRE-1/XBP-1 pathway with our own inhibitors, showing that our compounds are the most reliable small molecule inhibitors for targeting this pathway in malignant B cells and that many of the other published inhibitors we tested have subpar activity or adverse off-target effects," said Hu.

The team measured the ability of various inhibitors to block the RNase activity of IRE-1 in test tubes and within the cells. The best-performing molecules were further evaluated for their cytotoxicity against MM, CLL and mantle cell lymphoma, both as single agents and in combination with PI3K/AKT pathway inhibitors that are used as targeted therapy for these malignancies.

Two inhibitors developed by the team, B-I09 and D-F07, showed the highest and longest-lasting inhibitory activity at lower concentrations.

To improve the tumor specificity of these compounds, Hu and colleagues exploited a feature of tumor cells. Since tumor cells typically produce higher hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) levels than normal cells, researchers designed, synthesized and tested novel inhibitors modified with boronate cages, which require high levels of H2O2 to subsequently turn on their inhibitory activity towards IRE-1.

E-F02, a modified prodrug form of B-I09, could be optimally activated by H2O2 to inhibit IRE-1 in malignant B cells. Furthermore, its killing activity was further enhanced in combination with a compound that induces the production of H2O2 in the cells. "E-F02's inhibitory activity can be controlled spatiotemporally with specificity against cancer cells in vitro," said co-corresponding author Chih-Hang Anthony Tang, M.D., Ph.D., a staff scientist in the Hu lab. "Next step is to further test it in vivo in our cancer mouse models."

"We are interested in collaborating with a biotech partner to complete preclinical testing of our lead candidates in order to pursue clinical development of our IRE-1/XBP-1s inhibitors to target human CLL and many other cancers including solid tumors to one day deliver a new highly specific and effective cancer therapy."

The traditional mathematical model of predator-prey relations in the wild does not take into account indirect nonlocal interactions. However, according to a mathematician from RUDN University, they affect the dynamics of predators and prey in a system, and the nature of this effect is sensitive to the initial conditions. An article about his work was published in the Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation journal.

Ecologists use mathematical models of ecosystems to understand their structure and predict their development. Predator-prey is one of the basic models of this kind. With its help scientists can for instance calculate changes in the numbers of carnivores and herbivores depending on numerous conditions: the breeding of the latter, starvation of the former, amounts of prey eaten by predators, migrations, and so on. However, this model only takes into account local interactions, i.e. direct interactions between predators and prey in each given spatial location, while actual ecosystems also include nonlocal ones. A mathematician from RUDN University working together with his colleagues from the UK and India enhanced the standard predator-prey model taking these less obvious factors into account. Using his work, ecologists will be able to better understand developments in natural systems.

One example of natural nonlocal interactions is arid regions. To grow there, plants need to have a vast root system to collect moisture from large territories, not just from the vicinity of their location. Mathematically, this nonlocality is expressed as an integral that sums up the effect of the whole system at each given point. The competition for food among herbivores is also nonlocal, so a model has to take into account the integral amount of food in a system, not at each particular place.

"Nonlocal properties of movement are of interest for researchers; however, the nonlocal origin of this dynamics is often discarded. Still, there are a lot of natural systems with nonlocal interactions. One of the best examples may be the vegetation-water system, especially in semi-arid regions. There, nonlocality is a direct result of extensive root networks. We have confirmed that the nonlocality of intraspecific interactions can be the cause of different system dynamics in the predator-prey model," said Prof. Sergey Petrovskii from RUDN University.

The team tested their concept using computer modeling and found out that even if a system initially has equal numbers of carnivores and herbivores, after some time their quantities start to grow differently at different points due to nonlocal interactions. As a result, the total quantity of the system becomes dominated either by predators or prey, and different spatial patterns are formed. Another feature of a nonlocal system is bistability, i.e. possible coexistence of two patterns. This is an important attribute of nonlocality. It is the initial conditions that determine which pattern eventually succeeds.

Fighting clever parasites requires smart vaccines that can trigger critical immune responses. A University of Chicago-based research team has found a novel way to do that. These experts, specialists in toxoplasmosis and leaders in vaccine design, have focused on one of the most frequent parasitic infections of humans.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, can cause lifelong infection. It lives in the brain (and sometimes the eyes) of about 30 percent of all humans. When someone drinks contaminated water, eats infected undercooked meat or is exposed to these parasites in soil, it can result in lasting damage. Infection from unrecognized exposure to this microscopic parasite can harm the eyes, damage the brain and, in some cases, lead to death. Toxoplasmosis, according to the CDC, is the second most frequent cause of foodborne-associated death in the United States.

These parasites tend to attack unborn babies, newborns, children and adults. While most healthy adults who are exposed to the parasite never experience any serious symptoms, dormant, unrecognized, smoldering infections can emerge years later in immune-compromised patients. There is currently no vaccine to protect people from this infection.

"We urgently need a vaccine, as well as new and better medicines, to prevent and treat this infection," said the study's senior author, Rima McLeod, MD, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science and Pediatrics at University of Chicago and a leading authority on toxoplasmosis.

"Millions of people suffer from these infections," McLeod said. These neglected infections are often detected too late to prevent irreversible damage, and some patients die if the infection is untreated. Until now, no vaccine has been available for humans and no known medicine in clinical use has been able to eliminate the chronic, encysted form of Toxoplasma.

In an article published in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature), the research team unveiled a clever "immunosense" approach - the use of Self-Assembling Protein Nanoparticles (SAPNs). These have been engineered to boost each component of the immune system. The goal is to protect humans from this common, harmful and sometimes lethal parasite. "Engineering and characterization of a novel Self Assembling Protein for Toxoplasma peptide vaccine in HLA-A*11:01, HLA-A*02:01 and HLA-B*07:02 transgenic mice" was published online on October 12, 2020.

The team used cell-based and murine models. These mouse models have human immune-response genes to mimic how people can fight the infection. The SAPN scaffold serves as a stimulus, boosting the innate immune response and delivering components of the vaccine to relevant target cells.

"Especially important," McLeod said, "these novel SAPNs have been engineered to have the size, shape and ability to produce immune responses against Toxoplasma gondii. This triggers a protective effect."

The team's approach has been quickly adopted by other investigators. There is ongoing work to immunize against herpetic eye disease, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID19), HIV, malaria and influenza viruses.

The researchers found that their SAPN scaffold can fold reliably into a stable shape. As the immune system perceives it as a foreign invader stimulating a protective immune response, the scaffold can incorporate components that stimulate an immune response against the genetic variants of the parasite.

This can be tailored for people of differing genetic backgrounds. The vaccine becomes a multisystem targeting weapon. The researchers named their new weapon "ToxAll." They describe it as a "multi-epitope, multi-functional, toxoplasmosis nano-vaccine."

It contains crucial immunity-stimulating components, mixed with an adjuvant, known as GLA-SE, that appears to be powerful and safe in humans. This type of vaccine, with components from plasmodia, has already been tested in primates for malaria, and is moving into the clinic.

Prior infections with T.gondii before pregnancy can protect a pregnant woman from passing the infection to her unborn child. But when a mother first acquires the infection during pregnancy - before her body can mount an immune response - the parasite can cause significant harm to the unborn child.

The investigators first created a live, attenuated vaccine that can protect mice against toxoplasmosis. Prior natural infection of humans can confer protection, and live vaccines could protect mice. These live vaccines, however, can have safety concerns.

ToxAll was created as a synthetic vaccine that could stimulate danger signals, alerting the immune system to focus on foreign invaders. A crucial part of the process is to create a design with the right properties, assembling particles into predictable shapes that resemble viruses, then enabling the fragments of components of the parasite to educate the "adaptive memory" of the immune system. This creates a long-lasting immune response, including antibodies and protective T lymphocytes.

Protection with the full SAPN, at this point, is not yet available, "but is under development with promising results," McLeod said. The team is working to expand the use of additional fragments of the parasite. They hope to create a next generation vaccine that could provide lasting immunity against toxoplasmosis - one that could offer a novel, safe, synthetic vaccine to prevent this disease.

The next step is to develop vaccines as part of a "toolbox" that also includes new medicines and novel use of older medicines for prevention and treatment of toxoplasmosis. The team has applied their clinical and laboratory experiences to understand the infection and devise ways to prevent it, using immunology, genetics, bioinformatics and systems biology to develop and enhance the vaccine and make certain it can help humans worldwide.

"We now think we are reaching the next stage," McLeod said. "Our toolbox could be developed to prevent and treat human T. gondii and P. falciparum infections." This approach for vaccines, she added, "can generate innate immunity, cell-mediated adaptive immunity, and host-neutralizing antibodies that are critical to protect against different pathogens."

A seemingly small one-to-two degree change in the global climate can dramatically alter weather-related hazards. Given that such a small change can result in such big impacts, it is important to have the most accurate information possible when studying the impact of climate change. This can be especially challenging in data sparse areas like Africa, where some of the most dangerous hazards are expected to emerge.

A new data set published in the journal Scientific Data provides high-resolution, daily temperatures from around the globe that could prove valuable in studying human health impacts from heat waves, risks to agriculture, droughts, potential crop failures, and food insecurity.

Data scientists Andrew Verdin and Kathryn Grace of the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota worked with colleagues at the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California Santa Barbara to produce and validate the data set.

"It's important to have this high-resolution because of the wide-ranging impacts - to health, agriculture, infrastructure. People experiencing heat waves, crop failures, droughts - that's all local," said Verdin, the lead author.

By combining weather station data, remotely sensed infrared data and the weather simulation models, this new data set provides daily estimates of 2-meter maximum and minimum air temperatures for 1983-2016. Named CHIRTS-daily, this data provides high levels of accuracy, even in areas where on-site weather data collection is sparse. Current efforts are focused on updating the data set in near real time.

"We know that the next 20 years are going to bring more extreme heat waves that will put millions or even billions of people in harm's way. CHIRTS-daily will help us monitor, understand, and mitigate these rapidly emerging climate hazards", said Chris Funk, director of the Climate Hazards Center.

Additionally, the people who are most vulnerable are often located in areas where publicly available weather station data are deteriorating or unreliable. Areas with rapidly expanding populations and exposures (e.g. Africa, Central America, and parts of Asia) can't rely on weather observations. By combining different sources of weather information, each contributes to provide detail and context for a more accurate, global temperature dataset.

"We're really excited about the possibilities for fine-scale, community-focused climate-health data analyses that this dataset can support. We're excited to see researchers use it," said co-author Kathryn Grace.

URBANA, Ill. - What exactly is the relationship between soil nitrogen, corn yield, and nitrogen loss? Most farmers would be forgiven for assuming a straightforward linear relationship: more nitrogen, more grain yield, and maybe, more loss. That's the assumption many nitrogen management models are based on, but it turns out there's very little published science to back up that assumption.

In a recent paper leveraging a multi-year dataset from 11 experimental plots and on-farm trials around the state, University of Illinois scientists definitively established the relationship between soil nitrogen at different growth stages and corn yield. The results provide more precise ways to manage nitrogen for grain yield while lowering nitrogen losses.

"Technology nowadays moves very fast. There's a lot of modeling tools out there to help growers match nitrogen to crop needs, but very little published data showing the relationship," says Giovani Preza-Fontes, doctoral researcher in the Department of Crop Sciences at Illinois and lead author on the paper. "Our work shows soil nitrogen explains the majority (46-61%) of the variation in grain yield. It is a good predictor."

This information could complement crop modeling efforts, but it should also help farmers feel more confident in their nitrogen management decisions at critical moments.

"When we get a lot of rain, people often guess that some nitrogen was lost from the soil, and may be inclined to put more on. We did this study to try to show how much the crop needs to have in the soil at different stages of growth," says Emerson Nafziger, emeritus professor in crop sciences and co-author on the study.

Researchers applied nitrogen at different rates, times, and forms, then measured the amount of soil mineral nitrogen (SMN) to see how much nitrogen was available to the plant over time. They measured SMN several times during the first half of the growing season, beginning when corn was about a foot tall and ending as the crop approached pollination.

Interestingly, they found the amount of SMN needed to maximize grain yield changed over time as the crop developed.

"In early June, with plants about a foot tall, we found that corn needed more nitrogen in the soil than it needed later. Ten to 14 days later, the SMN level needed for best yields had dropped by about one-third, and it stayed at that level for two more sampling periods, into early July. That's probably our most surprising finding," Nafziger says. "It's some of the first data that's been published on how soil nitrogen actually changes."

"We know the plant's taking up its nitrogen most rapidly during that period, and the fact that soil nitrogen isn't changing very much shows that the nitrogen is coming from soil organic matter through the process of mineralization. Mineralization is a microbial process favored by the same conditions that favor rapid crop growth, so it's at its maximum rate during this period," he adds.

In other words, adding more nitrogen during rapid growth may end up causing an excess of soil nitrogen that could lead to losses.

To better estimate potential losses, the researchers calculated a simple nitrogen balance (input as nitrogen fertilizer minus output, removed in grain) for each site and year.

"We confirmed there's a tradeoff between productivity and environmental impact. We found a 22% yield increase when SMN increased from deficient to optimal levels, but adding enough nitrogen also increased the probability of environmental nitrogen losses," Preza-Fontes says. "It's important to not only focus on increasing productivity when developing new tools for nitrogen management. We also need to account for potential nitrogen losses to meet sustainability goals in the region."

Using a NASA satellite rainfall product that incorporates data from satellites and observations, NASA estimated Nangka's rainfall rates as the storm soaked Hainan Island, China early on Oct. 13 (EDT).

Nangka formed in the South China Sea and moved in a westerly direction over the last couple of days.

Nangka's Status on Oct. 13

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Nangka was located near latitude 19.1 degrees north and longitude 110.0 degrees east just over Hainan Island, China. It is about 286 nautical miles east-southeast of Hanoi, Vietnam. Nangka is moving toward the west-northwest.

Maximum sustained winds are near 50 knots (58 mph/93 kph) with higher gusts. Nangka is forecast to strengthen slightly in the Gulf of Tonkin (the body of water between Hainan Island, China and Vietnam) and then weaken as it moves toward Vietnam.

Estimating Nangka's Rainfall Rates from Space

NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM or IMERG, which is a NASA satellite rainfall product estimated on Oct. 13 at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) that Nangka was generating as much as 30 mm (1.18 inches) of rain per hour around the center of circulation.

Rainfall throughout most of the storm and in fragmented bands of thunderstorms north and east of the center was estimated as falling at a rate between 5 and 15 mm (0.2 to 0.6 inches) per hour. At the U.S. Naval Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the IMERG rainfall data was overlaid on infrared imagery from Japan's Himawari-8 satellite to provide a full extent of the storm.

What Does IMERG Do?

This near-real time rainfall estimate comes from the NASA's IMERG, which combines observations from a fleet of satellites in near-real time to provide near-global estimates of precipitation every 30 minutes. By combining NASA precipitation estimates with other data sources, we can gain a greater understanding of major storms that affect our planet.

What the IMERG does is "morph" high-quality satellite observations along the direction of the steering winds to deliver information about rain at times and places where such satellite overflights did not occur. Information morphing is particularly important over the majority of the world's surface that lacks ground-radar coverage. Basically, IMERG fills in the blanks between weather observation stations.

NASA Researches Tropical Cyclones

Hurricanes/tropical cyclones are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration.

For more information about NASA's IMERG, visit: https://pmm.nasa.gov/gpm/imerg-global-image

For updated forecasts, visit the Hong Kong Observatory: https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/index.html

By Rob Gutro
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The American pika is a charismatic, diminutive relative of rabbits that some researchers say is at high risk of extinction due to climate change. Pikas typically live in cool habitats, often in mountains, under rocks and boulders. Because pikas are sensitive to high temperatures, some researchers predict that, as the Earth's temperature rises, pikas will have to move ever higher elevations until they eventually run out of habitat and die out. Some scientists have claimed this cute little herbivore is the proverbial canary in the coal mine for climate change.

A new extensive review by Arizona State University emeritus professor Andrew Smith, published in the October issue of the Journal of Mammalogy, finds that the American pika is far more resilient in the face of warm temperatures than previously believed. While emphasizing that climate change is a serious threat to the survival of many species on Earth, Smith believes that the American pika currently is adapting remarkably well.

Smith has studied the American pika for more than 50 years and presents evidence from a thorough literature review showing that American pika populations are healthy across the full range of the species, which extends from British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, to northern New Mexico in the U.S.

Occupancy in potential pika habitat in the major western North American mountains was found to be uniformly high. Among sites that have been surveyed recently, there was no discernible climate signal that discriminated between the many occupied and relatively few unoccupied sites.

"This is a sign of a robust species," Smith said.

Smith said most of the studies that have raised alarms about the fate of the pika are based on a relatively small number of restricted sites at the margins of the pika's geographic range, primarily in the Great Basin. However, a recent comprehensive study of pikas evaluating 3,250 sites in the Great Basin found pikas living in over 73% of the suitable habitat investigated. Most important, the sites currently occupied by pikas and the sites where they are no longer found were characterized by similar climatic features.

"These results show that pikas are able to tolerate a broader set of habitat conditions than previously understood," Smith adds.

Smith's most interesting finding is that pikas are apparently much more resilient than previously believed, allowing them to survive even at hot, low-elevation sites. Bodie California State Historic Park, the Mono Craters, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Lava Beds National Monument, and the Columbia River Gorge (all hot, low-elevation sites) retain active pika populations, demonstrating the adaptive capacity and resilience of pikas. Pikas cope with warm temperatures by retreating into their cool, underground talus habitat during the hot daylight hours and augment their restricted daytime foraging with nocturnal activity.

This doesn't mean that some pika populations have not been pushed to their limit, leading to their disappearance from some habitats. Smith's review points out that most documented cases of local loss of pika populations have occurred on small, isolated habitat patches.

"Due to the relatively poor ability of pikas to disperse between areas, those habitats are not likely to be recolonized, particularly in light of our warming climate," Smith said. "In spite of the general health of pikas across their range, these losses represent a one-way street, leading to a gradual loss of some pika populations. Fortunately for pikas, their preferred talus habitat in the major mountain cordilleras is larger and more contiguous, so the overall risk to this species is low."

Smith's work emphasizes the importance of incorporating all aspects of a species' behavior and ecology when considering its conservation status, and that all available data must be considered before suggesting a species is going extinct. For the American pika, the data conclusively show that rather than facing extinction, American pikas are changing their behaviors in ways that help them better withstand climate change, at least for now.

Scientists have discovered a new way to manipulate magnets with laser light pulses shorter than a trillionth of a second.

The international team of researchers, led by Lancaster and Radboud Universities, also identified the light wavelength or colour which enables the most efficient manipulation. The finding is published in Physical Review Letters.

Magnets have fascinated people since ancient times, but until a hundred years ago the theoretical understanding of magnetism remained very elusive. The breakthrough in understanding occurred with the development of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the fact that each electron has an intrinsic magnetic moment or spin.

The spin can be seen as an elementary "needle of a compass", typically depicted as an arrow showing the direction from North to South poles. In magnets all spins are aligned along the same direction by the force called exchange interaction. The exchange interaction is one of the strongest quantum effects which is responsible for the very existence of magnetic materials.

The strength of the exchange interaction can be appreciated from the fact that it generates magnetic fields 10,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. Another manifestation of its strength is the fact that it can drive spins to rotate with a period of one trillionth of a second and even faster.

Manipulating the exchange interaction would be the most efficient and ultimately fastest way to control magnetism. To achieve this result, the researchers used the fastest and the strongest stimulus available: ultrashort laser pulse excitation.

However, in order to detect/observe the effect of light on magnetism one would need an ultrafast magnetometer - a device which would be able to trace the dynamics of spins with less that a trillionth of a second resolution. This is much faster than the temporal resolution of modern electronics.

But the authors have found a solution to this problem, as lead researcher Dr Rostislav Mikhaylovskiy from Lancaster University explains: "The spins oscillate at Terahertz frequencies almost a trillion times faster than the standard power line frequency of 50 Hz. Thanks to such high frequencies of oscillations, the spins act as efficient antennas emitting electromagnetic radiation. By analyzing the properties of the emitted radiation we can extract information about the ultrafast magnetization dynamics triggered by the optical steering of the exchange forces."

By systematically varying the colour of the excitation laser pulses from red to blue, the scientists were able to identify the light wavelength for which the effect of light on magnetism is the strongest.

Dr Mikhaylovskiy said: "It was very important to see that the effect of light on the exchange interaction really exists. By tuning the wavelength or colour of light we started to understand how to enhance this effect."

This exciting discovery opens a new research line at Lancaster University led by Dr Mikhaylovskiy. The next step is to perform systematic studies of the ultrafast control of magnetism in a broad spectral range, to compare the efficiencies of the pumping in the far-, mid-infrared and visible ranges and thus to identify the most efficient as well as the fastest approach for the manipulation of spins. To this end a new laser system capable of producing laser pulses in all these frequency ranges has been commissioned.

The year 2020 marks the end of the "UN Decade of Biodiversity". However, the UN report published in September shows that none of the 20 Aichi-Biodiversity Targets that where agreed in 2010 has been achieved in the last ten years. Worldwide, the conservation of biodiversity therefore remains a major challenge - this applies particularly to freshwater ecosystems which so far are not sufficiently taken into account in political processes and regulations. An international research team led by IGB has now issued 14 recommendations for political follow-up agreements on the protection of biological diversity - with special focus on freshwater biodiversity.

Freshwater is a central resource for humans as well as nature. However, living organisms in rivers, lakes and wetlands are exposed to many human-made pressures: climate change, overexploitation, changes and loss of habitats, pollution and the threat of invasive species are leading to a dramatic loss of species and population declines. The 14 recommendations now published for the global protection of freshwater biodiversity are based on current research knowledge and practical experience from European policy and administration.

The updating of two important international frameworks on biodiversity is currently prepared: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy.

"This is an important moment to bring scientific knowledge into the process. Political strategies and decisions must place a stronger focus on the unique ecology of freshwater life and the many threats to it. In previous regulations, the protection of freshwaters has often been treated in an inferior manner; e.g. inland waters are included within land regulations - because they are not marine - because they are aquatic. The latest Living Planet Report shows that the loss of freshwater populations is the most dramatic - a loss of 84 percent between 1970 and 2016," stresses IGB researcher Sonja Jähnig, who lead the study.

Recognising inland waters as a true ecological "third realm"

For their very first recommendation, hence, the authors argue that freshwaters be considered as a separate, ecological "third realm" alongside land and sea, with special management requirements in future biodiversity agreements. For example, specific targets for freshwater ecosystems could be included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6 (Clean water and sanitation), 13 (Climate action), 14 (Life below water) and 15 (Life on land).

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted in 1993 also combines inland waters with terrestrial areas. The CBD Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 included 20 Aichi biodiversity targets. The most important targets for freshwater include: target 5 (Habitat loss halved or reduced), target 8 (Pollution reduced); target 9 (Invasive alien species prevented and controlled); target 11 (Protected areas increased and improved), target 12 (Extinction prevented).

Appropriate freshwater habitat targets should also be set in networks of protected areas, such as the European Natura 2000 network, which aims to protect core breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species, and some rare natural habitat types.

Furthermore, many important freshwater habitats are overlooked, such as urban and agricultural water bodies. The separate designation of heavily modified water bodies (HMWBs) in the European Water Framework Directive (EU WFD) is a good example of how artificial or heavily human-influenced habitats could also be taken into account.

"Even if results of international conservation efforts have been very sobering so far - we scientists will continue to contribute our expertise to highlight the dramatic loss of freshwater biodiversity and help to mitigate and stop it. The recommendations formulated can help to improve the political framework for the protection of aquatic biodiversity," emphasises Sonja Jähnig.

This is what the researchers recommend to policy and administration actors

To recognise that:

1. Inland waters are a true ecological "third realm" alongside land and sea

2. Freshwater ecosystems provide vital ecosystem services to humans.

3. Connectivity should be maintained across different spatio-temporal scales and hydrological dimensions.

4. Water bodies are not isolated islands in the landscape, but reflect environmental influences from their surroundings. The catchment area should therefore be the basis of any consideration.

5. Freshwater habitats are complex and embedded in and linked to other socio-ecological systems.

Improve monitoring and management:

6) In the EU, the geographical distribution of many threatened aquatic species overlap with Natura 2000 protected areas, the Ramsar Convention and other agreements More effective integrated management within these areas would benefit both nature and climate protection.

7) The identification of charismatic flagship species is an important step towards raising awareness of the biodiversity crisis in society and politics. Large animals such as river dolphins, hippos and sturgeons are particularly suitable for this purpose.

8) Monitoring and management of invasive freshwater species (IAS) must be improved. The European IAS list, for example, is based exclusively on risk assessment, but leaves risk management to the Member States without regional or European coordination. Harmonisation between the CBD and EU contracting states is urgently needed.

9) Freshwater monitoring programmes at national and international level are essential for adaptive management, but would need to be expanded, coordinated and better funded.

10) Hydrological and biological data on inland waters should be managed according to the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) in order to facilitate access to and use of such data. This is essential, for example, to assess the impact of different stressors and management measures.

11) Monitoring programmes should make use of current research methods and new data sources.

12) Strategic planning in river basin management should be promoted to balance the water needs of people and wildlife.

This applies across the board:

13) National and local efforts to protect biodiversity in inland waters should make greater use of existing global information sources, such as the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) Red List.

14) Future policy decisions should enhance synergies between Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and freshwater biodiversity conservation.

p>Through a simple process of heating and cooling, New York University researchers have created a new crystal form of deltamethrin--a common insecticide used to control malaria--resulting in an insecticide that is up to 12 times more effective against mosquitoes than the existing form.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may provide a much-needed and affordable insecticide alternative in the face of growing resistance among mosquitoes.

"The use of more active crystal forms of insecticides is a simple and powerful strategy for improving commercially available compounds for malaria control, circumventing the need for developing new products in the ongoing fight against mosquito-borne diseases," said Bart Kahr, professor of chemistry at NYU and one of the study's senior authors.

"Improvements in malaria control are needed as urgently as ever during the global COVID-19 crisis," added Kahr. "The number of deaths from malaria in Africa this year is projected to double as a result of coronavirus-related disruptions to supply chains. We need public health measures to curtail both infectious diseases, and for malaria, this includes more effective insecticides."

Malaria is a major public health challenge worldwide, with more than 200 million cases and 400,000 deaths reported each year. Insecticides such as deltamethrin can prevent the spread of diseases carried by mosquitoes and are often sprayed indoors and on bed nets. However, mosquitoes are increasingly becoming resistant to insecticides, leaving researchers and public health officials searching for alternatives with new modes of action.

Many insecticides, including deltamethrin, are in the form of crystals--the research focus for Kahr and fellow NYU chemistry professor Michael Ward. When mosquitoes step on insecticide crystals, the insecticide is absorbed through their feet and, if effective, kills the mosquitoes.

As part of their research on crystal formation and growth, Kahr and Ward study and manipulate insecticide crystals, exploring their alternative forms. In their PNAS study, the researchers heated the commercially available form of deltamethrin to 110°C/230°F for a few minutes and let it cool to room temperature; this resulted in a new crystallized form of deltamethrin, composed of long, tiny fibers radiating from a single point.

When tested on Anopheles quadrimaculatus and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes--both of which transmit malaria--and fruit flies, the new crystal form of deltamethrin worked up to 12 times faster than the existing form. Fast-acting insecticides are important for quickly controlling mosquitoes before they reproduce or continue spreading diseases.

The new form also remained stable--and able to rapidly kill mosquitoes--for at least three months.

To simulate how the two forms of deltamethrin would perform in stemming the spread of malaria, the researchers turned to epidemiological modeling that suggests that using the new form in indoor spraying in place of the original form would significantly suppress malaria transmission, even in regions with high levels of insecticide resistance. Moreover, less of the new form would need to be used to achieve the same effect, potentially lowering the cost of mosquito control programs and reducing environmental exposure to the insecticide.

"Deltamethrin has been a leading tool in combating malaria, but it faces an uncertain future, threatened by developing insecticide resistance. The simple preparation of this new crystal form of deltamethrin, coupled with its stability and markedly greater efficacy, shows us that the new form can serve as a powerful and affordable tool for controlling malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases," said Ward.

Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have discovered a new mechanism by which substances can open a certain type of ion channel and in this way regulate nerve impulses. The study, published in the scientific journal PNAS, identifies a large group of substances that influence the coupling between the various functional parts of an ion channel. The discovery may help in the development of future drugs.

Electrical signals known as nerve impulses are continuously being transmitted at lightning speed in our bodies. They are the foundation of brain activity: they are necessary to keep the heart beating: and they are vital to any form of movement and our experience of the world around us through our senses. These nerve impulses arise when electrically charged ions pass through channels in the cell membrane that surrounds the cells.

Some ion channels act as accelerators in the nervous system, and increase nerve signalling, while others act as brakes. Drugs can either open or close ion channels, and the effect on nerve signalling depends on which ion channels the drug affects. Local anaesthesia, for example, works by blocking certain ion channels and reducing the experience of pain. Much research has been done on substances that close ion channels, but relatively little is known about substances that open them. The treatments available for several conditions such as epilepsy, heart arrhythmias and chronic pain are deficient. This is why Fredrik Elinder and his colleagues are attempting to identify molecules, and subsequently design specific molecules that have well-defined effects on different types of ion channel.

In the new study, the scientists used high-throughput laboratory technology to study the effects of 10,000 molecules in libraries of chemical substances from the Science for Life Laboratory, SciLifeLab.

"High-throughput screening technology has long been used in the pharmaceutical industry, but it's quite new in academic research. The pharmaceutical industry starts with an extremely specific question and is looking for a substance that can act against a particular disease. In contrast, we used the technology to seek answers to an extremely open question, and were surprised by the answers", says Fredrik Elinder, professor in the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences at Linköping University.

Ion channels consist of two parts. The channel, or pore, that allows ions to pass through is in the centre. Around this channel are components known as voltage sensors that sense the electrical voltage of the nerve cell. Established drugs that target the channels, such as local anaesthetics, block the pore, but the LiU researchers are seeking other ways to finely adjust the function of ion channels by affecting other parts of the mechanism that opens and closes the pores. In the present study, they sought for substances that influence the ion channels that allow potassium ions to pass, opening the potassium channels in a specific manner. For this they used a specially designed ion channel on which they tested all the substances in the library.

They investigated 10,000 substances, from which they could identify 247 molecules with very similar structures - which, interestingly, are similar to the structure of the anticoagulant drug warfarin.

The scientists have previously studied resin acids, which keep the channel in its open state. The researchers believed that they could use the specially designed ion channel to find substances that function in the same way as those found in resin. But when they investigated the substances in more detail, they realised that the substances worked by a completely different mechanism.

"We found that the new class of substances with warfarin-like structures bind to a completely different place on the ion channel: they act on the side of the ion channel that faces in towards the cell, where the coupling between the two parts of the ion channel is located. They keep this coupling in its active position which in turn keeps the channel open. This was a huge surprise for us. As far as I know no other substance has been shown to act on the coupling between the voltage sensors and the pore", says Fredrik Elinder.

The researchers hope that the discovery of the new binding site can form a basis on which to develop tailored substances with specific effects on specific ion channels. The next step will be to find out exactly which channels the substances act on. This should give clues about which diseases can be treated by drugs that affect the ion channels.

Since the discovery of graphene more than 15 years ago, researchers have been in a global race to unlock its unique properties. Not only is graphene--a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon arranged in a hexagonal lattice--the strongest, thinnest material known to man, it is also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.

Now, a team of researchers at Columbia University and the University of Washington has discovered that a variety of exotic electronic states, including a rare form of magnetism, can arise in a three-layer graphene structure.

The findings appear in an article published Oct. 12 in Nature Physics.

The work was inspired by recent studies of twisted monolayers or twisted bilayers of graphene, comprising either two or four total sheets. These materials were found to host an array of unusual electronic states driven by strong interactions between electrons.

"We wondered what would happen if we combined graphene monolayers and bilayers into a twisted three-layer system," said Cory Dean, a professor of physics at Columbia University and one of the paper's senior authors. "We found that varying the number of graphene layers endows these composite materials with some exciting new properties that had not been seen before."

In addition to Dean, Assistant Professor Matthew Yankowitz and Professor Xiaodong Xu, both in the departments of physics and materials science and engineering at University of Washington, are senior authors on the work. Columbia graduate student Shaowen Chen, and University of Washington graduate student Minhao He are the paper's co-lead authors.

To conduct their experiment, the researchers stacked a monolayer sheet of graphene onto a bilayer sheet and twisted them by about 1 degree. At temperatures a few degrees over absolute zero, the team observed an array of insulating states--which do not conduct electricity--driven by strong interactions between electrons. They also found that these states could be controlled by applying an electric field across the graphene sheets.

"We learned that the direction of an applied electric field matters a lot," said Yankowitz, who is also a former postdoctoral researcher in Dean's group.

When the researchers pointed the electric field toward the monolayer graphene sheet, the system resembled twisted bilayer graphene. But when they flipped the direction of the electric field and pointed it toward the bilayer graphene sheet, it mimicked twisted double bilayer graphene--the four-layer structure.

The team also discovered new magnetic states in the system. Unlike conventional magnets, which are driven by a quantum mechanical property of electrons called "spin," a collective swirling motion of the electrons in the team's three-layer structure underlies the magnetism, they observed.

This form of magnetism was discovered recently by other researchers in various structures of graphene resting on crystals of boron nitride. The team has now demonstrated that it can also be observed in a simpler system constructed entirely with graphene.

"Pure carbon is not magnetic," said Yankowitz. "Remarkably, we can engineer this property by arranging our three graphene sheets at just the right twist angles."

In addition to the magnetism, the study uncovered signs of topology in the structure. Akin to tying different types of knots in a rope, the topological properties of the material may lead to new forms of information storage, which "may be a platform for quantum computation or new types of energy-efficient data storage applications," Xu said.

For now, they are working on experiments to further understand the fundamental properties of the new states they discovered in this platform. "This is really just the beginning," said Yankowitz.

Geoscientists at the University of Sydney have discovered a natural laboratory to test claims that the carbon captured during the erosion and weathering of common rocks could be a viable mitigation strategy against global warming.

That laboratory is the Tweed River valley in north-eastern New South Wales.

"When common rocks, known as olivine, chemically break down, they absorb carbon dioxide to form carbonates that can then be washed into the oceans," said lead author of the study, Kyle Manley, a student at the University of Irvine in California, who started the research while studying at Sydney.

"In that way, river valleys like the Tweed can act as carbon sinks."

The carbonates formed in this process later become the shells of marine animals and corals. Over millions of years, these remnants can form huge undersea carbonate structures. Occasionally they are pushed above sea level, such as the White Cliffs of Dover in England.

In order to combat global warming, some have proposed olivine weathering and its carbon capture could be harnessed to absorb millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

"But those ideas haven't really been tested at scale," said Mr Manley, who started the study while on undergraduate exchange at the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, completing it at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Research now published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Sciences, will allow scientists to test these claims in the Tweed catchment area, a 1326 square kilometre region, and in other regions that act as carbon sinks.

Co-author Dr Tristan Salles from the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney said: "We ran seven scenarios up to 2100 and 2500 to see how much carbon might be absorbed in different climatic conditions.

"In all scenarios we estimate millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide could be absorbed - but this is a drop in the ocean of the billions of tonnes a year of carbon pollution expected to be emitted over the coming decades and centuries."

The seven scenarios also describe a complex and interconnected interplay between weathering and sea-level rise that will see oceans encroach along the Tweed coast. However, in some areas, extensive weathering will deposit huge amounts of new sediment onto the coastal plain.

Dr Salles said: "Increased global temperatures are likely to see increased rainfall in this part of Australia, which will greatly accelerate the weathering process of olivine rocks.

"Our modelling shows that in some parts of the Tweed floodplain between 3.8 and 6.5 metres of sediment could be deposited. A counter-process will see coastal erosion from the encroaching ocean."

From their initial modelling of the Tweed catchment, the scientists estimate between 57 and 73 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year could be absorbed in olivine weathering by the end of this century. The United Nations mid-range estimate for carbon emissions at 2100 is about 70 billion tonnes a year, meaning a site like the Tweed catchment would absorb less than 0.1 percent of total carbon emissions.

The scientists used modelling data from the Australian government and the UN's International Panel on Climate Change and from extensive data on the Tweed River valley from Geoscience Australia and the Three Dimensional Great Barrier Reef project (3DGBR).

"Nobody is suggesting that carbon sequestration via olivine weathering will solve our problems," said co-author Professor Dietmar Müller. "But given that there are proposals to artificially enhance this weathering process to absorb carbon pollution, it is important we understand just how viable this could be."

The scientists say that their modelling will assist in the identification of other regions where climate change could create environments in which enhanced natural carbon sequestration might occur.

"What we did find is that the rate and magnitude of sea-level rise is the dominant control of where, when and how much sediment is deposited in such a region," Mr Manley said.

"Climate change will throw these river systems out of equilibrium, so there is still much work to do to understand how they will operate as natural carbon sinks."