Earth

An innovative technique to improve cancer treatments using tumour biopsies less than 30 minutes after they're taken has been developed at The University of Queensland.

The 'Drug uptake in ex Vivo tumours' technique was developed after researchers found fresh patient tumour biopsies responded differently to treatments than the tissue cultures traditionally used.

Its inventor, UQ Diamantina Institute's Dr Fiona Simpson, said it could be used to show how long antibodies stayed active in patients, or when antibodies were taken into the tumour where they're destroyed.

"The technique will significantly help pharmaceutical and technology companies design future cancer drugs," Dr Simpson said.

"Until now, scientists have only looked at how cancer drugs interact with tissue culture, not fresh tumours.

"Applying medications to tissue culture doesn't always work because the immune system responds differently in a body.

"I thought it was pretty obvious that we should test cancer drugs on actual tumours, but people kept telling my research team that it wouldn't work!"

The technique includes a step-by-step process to help drug companies and researchers better understand how drugs interact with patients, and respond to targeted treatments.

"We've created a comprehensive process, including detailed videos on tumour extraction and drug-testing processes, for researchers around the world to use," she said.

"The technique is useful for all types of cancers, and we're very excited about its possibilities."

A mystery surrounding the space around our solar system is unfolding thanks to evidence of supernovae found in deep-sea sediments.

Professor Anton Wallner, a nuclear physicist at ANU, led the study which shows the Earth has been travelling for the last 33,000 years through a cloud of faintly radioactive dust.

"These clouds could be remnants of previous supernova explosions, a powerful and super bright explosion of a star," Professor Wallner said.

Professor Wallner conducted the research at the ANU Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF). He also holds joint positions at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and Technical University Dresden (TUD) in Germany.

The researchers searched through several deep-sea sediments from two different locations that date back 33,000 years using the extreme sensitivity of HIAF's mass spectrometer. They found clear traces of the isotope iron-60, which is formed when stars die in supernova explosions.

Iron-60 is radioactive and completely decays away within 15 million years, which means any iron-60 found on the earth must have been formed much later than the rest of the 4.6-billion-year old earth and arrived here from nearby supernovae before settling on the ocean floor.

Professor Wallner previously found traces of iron-60 at about 2.6 million years ago, and possibly another at around 6 million years ago, suggesting earth had travelled through fallout clouds from nearby supernovae.

For the last few thousand years the solar system has been moving through a denser cloud of gas and dust, known as the local interstellar cloud, (LIC), whose origins are unclear. If this cloud had originated during the past few million years from a supernova, it would contain iron-60, and so the team decided to search more recent sediment to find out.

Sure enough, there was iron-60 in the sediment at extremely low levels - equating to radioactivity levels in space far below the Earth's natural background levels - and the distribution of the iron-60 matched earth's recent travel through the local interstellar cloud. But the iron-60 extended further back and was spread throughout the entire 33,000 year measurement period.

The lack of correlation with the solar system's time in the current local interstellar cloud seems to pose more questions than it answers. Firstly, if the cloud was not formed by a supernova, where did it come from? And secondly, why is there iron-60 so evenly spread throughout space?

"There are recent papers that suggest iron-60 trapped in dust particles might bounce around in the interstellar medium," Professor Wallner said.

"So the iron-60 could originate from even older supernovae explosions, and what we measure is some kind of echo.

"More data is required to resolve these details."

Younger teenagers in the South West of England felt less anxious and more connected to school when they were away from it during the COVID-19 global pandemic public lockdown, a first-of-its-kind study has found.

The striking results of research led by the University of Bristol are published today by the National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR) in a report which raises questions about the impact of the school environment on young people's mental health and calls for more support to help them when they return to the classroom.

More than half (54 per cent) of the 13 to 14-year-old girls surveyed last October showed they were at risk of anxiety, compared to around a quarter (26 per cent) of boys of the same age. When surveyed again in May, during the pandemic which forced schools to shut and placed unprecedented restrictions on people's lives, the figures dropped by nearly 10 per cent among girls to less than half (45 per cent) and to less than one in five of boys (18 per cent).

"With the whole world in the grip of a devastating pandemic, which has thrown everyone's lives into turmoil, the natural expectation would be to see an increase in anxiety said lead author Emily Widnall, Senior Research Associate in Population Health Sciences at the University of Bristol's Medical School.

"While we saw anxiety levels rise for a few of our participants, it was a big surprise to discover quite the opposite was the case for many of them. Of particular interest, those students who felt least connected to school before the lockdown saw a larger decrease in anxiety which raises questions about how the school environment affects some younger teenagers' mental well-being."

Depression levels remained fairly consistent over time, with a 2 per cent decrease of boys at risk of depression and a 3 per cent increase in girls at risk of depression.

"This was again unexpected and arguably shows the resilience of young people and their ability to adapt to challenging situations," Widnall said.

"Amidst other headlines highlighting concerns about young people's mental health being negatively affected, this is in one sense very welcome news, but at the same time it raises interesting questions about what the key drivers and triggers of anxiety or depression are for this particular age group."

Many students' sense of well-being also improved during lockdown, with boys showing a bigger improvement than girls. Those with the lowest levels of well-being pre-pandemic benefited most, with their scores increasing by 14 per cent compared to no increase in those with average to above average well-being.

"The survey gives a unique insight into how many younger teenagers feel without the day-to-day pressures of school life, for example academic achievement and challenging peer relationships, in their lives," Widnall said.

Despite not attending, boys and girls both reported stronger connectedness to school during lockdown, with marked increases in the number of students who said they get the opportunity to talk with their teachers.

"This was another surprise finding. You would imagine being away from school would logically make you feel more distant and less connected. It will be interesting for further research to explore the reasons why young people reported feeling more connected to school, but one possible explanation could be the new ways that teachers found to engage with students via digital platforms, which of course young people are already very familiar with," Widnall said.

Survey results showed reduced anxiety and improved well-being coincided with significantly greater usage of social media among girls. The biggest increase was seen during the week, when more than half of girls (55 per cent) reported spending in excess of three hours daily on social media during lockdown.

"This challenges the common perception that social media has a detrimental impact on young people's mental health. The statistics for girls within this survey suggest these channels may play an important role in helping teenagers bond, feel more connected and in touch, especially during a period of physical isolation," Widnall said.

"Respondents, especially girls, also reported using social media as a tool for learning, rather than just browsing or chatting amongst friends."

The survey involved more than 1,000 year nine students from 17 secondary schools across the South West. Based on its findings, the report makes policy recommendations including prioritisation of student's mental health and wellbeing alongside catch up on academic work and considering ways to prevent a rise in anxiety back to pre-pandemic levels.

Dr Judi Kidger, senior author and Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Bristol, said: "Our findings raise questions about the role of the school environment in explaining rises in mental health difficulties among teenagers in recent years. As schools re-open, we need to consider ways in which schools can be more supportive of mental health for all students.

"With children and young people having been out of the classroom for so long, and with many students in this study seeing improvements in mental health and well-being during that time, the case to address issues weighing on their quality of life at school is stronger than ever."

In a first-ever study using ozone data collected by commercial aircraft, researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder found that levels of the pollutant in the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere have increased across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 20 years. That's even as tighter controls on emissions of ozone precursors have lowered ground-level ozone in some places, including North America and Europe.

Tropospheric ozone--ozone between Earth's surface and 12 to 15 kilometers above Earth--is a greenhouse gas and air pollutant that, at high levels, can harm people's lungs and damage plants.

In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, the team found an overall increase in ozone levels above the Northern Hemisphere. "That's a big deal because it means that as we try to limit our pollution locally, it might not work as well as we thought," said Audrey Gaudel, a CIRES scientist working in the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory and the study's lead author. She and her colleagues documented the greatest ozone increases in the tropics, Gaudel said, noting that ozone exported from the tropics may be driving increases above other areas of the Northern Hemisphere.

Gaudel and her co-authors, CIRES scientists in NOAA and international colleagues, also found the most striking increases in areas where ozone levels were once lowest: Malaysia/Indonesia, Southeast Asia and India, for example. Those regions had very low ozone values between 1994-2004, and very high levels in recent years, between 2011-2016.

Previous studies could not draw firm conclusions on Northern Hemisphere ozone trends, according to Gaudel, because there are too few long-term monitoring locations and because new satellites with near-global coverage have provided conflicting results on ozone trends.

So the researchers turned to aircraft data from Europe's In-Service Aircraft for the Global Observing System (IAGOS) program. "Since 1994, IAGOS has measured ozone worldwide using the same instrument on every plane, giving us consistent measurements over time and space from Earth's surface to the upper troposphere," Gaudel said. Between 1994 and 2016, commercial aircraft captured 34,600 ozone profiles, or about four profiles each day.

Gaudel and her colleagues used these measurements to calculate changes in tropospheric ozone from the mid-1990s to 2016 above 11 regions in the Northern Hemisphere. They found an overall increase in ozone in all regions where they looked, including four in the mid-latitudes, two in the subtropics, two in the tropics and three equatorial regions. On average, median ozone values had increased by 5% per decade.

In the so-called "lower troposphere," which is closer to Earth's surface, ozone has decreased above some mid-latitude regions, including Europe and the United States, where ozone precursor emissions have decreased. The researchers found those reductions were offset by increases higher in the troposphere--with the net result being an overall ozone increase from the surface to 12 km.

To understand what was causing the observed ozone changes, the researchers looked at the emissions inventories of one of the main ozone precursors--nitrogen oxides (NOx)--used as input for the global chemistry transport model MERRA-2 GMI, which reproduces accurately the IAGOS measurements. The model showed that increased anthropogenic emissions in the tropics were likely driving the observed increase of ozone in the Northern Hemisphere.

Next, Gaudel wants to take a closer look at ozone in the tropics. Africa may be emerging as a global hotspot for air pollution precursors, for example, and IAGOS data will let her dig deeper into that continent's role in recent trends. She'll also compare tropical ozone measurements from IAGOS, taken above polluted regions, with measurements from the NASA Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) field campaign, which measured trace gases and aerosol particles in more remote, less polluted regions including the tropics. And she'll look at measurements from TROPOMI, an instrument on board a European Space Agency satellite gathering information on atmospheric composition.

"We want to understand the variability of ozone and its precursors and the impact of polluted regions on remote regions," Gaudel said. "So we're using the best tools we have, including IAGOS, ATom data and TROPOMI data, to get profiles and columns of ozone and its precursors from different kinds of human activities and natural sources."

A new study shows nutrients can aggravate the already negative effects of climate change on corals to trigger mass coral bleaching.

Coral reef environments are typically low in naturally occurring nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous compounds. But ocean currents passing by can bring in a concentration of nutrients from elsewhere. Similarly, nutrients from man-made fertilisers and stormwater runoff enter reefs from adjacent coastlines.

Lead author Dr Thomas DeCarlo from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) says corals are sensitive to high levels of nutrients.

"As the climate warms, mass coral bleaching could occur as often as annually within this century," Dr DeCarlo said. "In our study, we found that already heat-stressed corals exposed to excess nutrient levels were even more susceptible to bleaching."

The study suggests ecosystem managers can reduce the impacts of coral bleaching by implementing strategies to reduce nutrient stress in areas subject to thermal stress.

Co-author Professor John Pandolfi from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at The University of Queensland says this and previous studies, including on the Great Barrier Reef, related coral bleaching to combinations of heat and nutrient stresses.

"Our results provide a roadmap for coral reef conservation efforts to be at their most effective," Prof Pandolfi said. "We suggest oceanographic processes should be included when deciding when and where to allocate resources or protection."

Using the skeletal cores of long-living corals, the authors studied the past few decades worth of bleaching events in the Red Sea. They found the reefs historically suffered severe bleaching only when high sea surface temperatures were coupled with high nutrient levels.

The Red Sea was chosen as a study site as it is one of the only marine environments where the effects of summertime nutrients and heat stress are independent of each other: only one area has a single major source of nutrients in the summer, when a water mass brings nutrients to the surface through a process called upwelling.

Previous field tests on the role of nutrients in coral bleaching were otherwise difficult: nutrients and temperature often co-vary in the ocean, making it difficult to disentangle their effects. Nutrient loads are also difficult to measure in the same way sea surface temperatures are, via satellite.

"The fact that nutrients are more difficult to measure than temperature may be restricting our recognition of their importance," Dr DeCarlo said. "And we need greater longer-term monitoring efforts of nutrient levels on coral reefs."

"Incorporating nutrient-supplying ocean currents into coral bleaching forecasts will enhance those predictions that are based on temperatures alone," Prof Pandolfi said.

"Our research suggests that projections of coral reef futures should move beyond solely temperature-based stress to incorporate the influence of ocean current systems on coral reef nutrient enrichment, and thus susceptibility to bleaching," Dr DeCarlo said.

Every year, thousands of people end up in the emergency room or hospital with minor head injuries, often diagnosed as concussions. Concussions usually result from falls, violence, bicycle accidents or sports injuries.

In the first days following a severe concussion, it is common to experience headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, an increased need for sleep or difficulty sleeping.

"Most people fully recover from their problems after a short time, but some individuals suffer long-term problems that affect their quality of life, work and school," says PhD candidate researcher Simen Berg Saksvik at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Department of Psychology.

Lingering symptoms can be especially detrimental to sleep, according to a new study published in the Journal of Neurotrauma. Berg Saksvik is the first author.

The study included 378 patients who had sustained concussions and were treated at one of two emergency departments in Trondheim. They were tracked for one year following their injury.

The patients with concussions were compared with two control groups: patients who had other types of injuries that did not involve the head, and volunteer participants without any injuries.

"We found that problems like an increased need for sleep, poor sleep quality, daytime drowsiness and fatigue occurred much more often and lasted longer after concussions than after other types of injuries," Berg Saksvik said.

In this study, 136 participants experienced a sleep or daytime problem two weeks after injury. Of these, 72 patients, or 53 per cent, had problems lasting three months or longer.

Internationally, the study is unique in terms of its size and degree of close follow-up of patients.

The study provides new knowledge that is also clinically relevant for a large group of patients. It is important to understand how patients who suffer symptoms following a concussion differ from those who recover by themselves.

"Sleep problems are often associated with issues like poor memory, concentration difficulties, depression and anxiety. Treating sleep problems as early possible as after a concussion may help slow down or prevent the development of such problems," says Berg Saksvik.

Alexander Olsen is an associate professor at the Department of Psychology, and neuropsychologist in the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic at St. Olavs Hospital. In his clinical work at the hospital, Olsen encounters patients with long-standing ailments following concussions.

The clinic's main goal is to reduce symptoms that are linked to a concussion and increase the functional level of patients who have such ailments.

"Today we don't have a standard treatment that we know works for all patients with long-term pain following a concussion," says Olsen.

One of the reasons is that we don't know enough about why some people develop these post-concussion problems and others don't. Another reason is that patients often have multiple ailments at the same time, and it can be difficult to know what is related to what.

We probably need to stop treating all patients with concussions in the same way.

"It might be more appropriate to provide treatment that is known to be effective for the various specific ailments, like headaches, sleep problems, anxiety and so on, regardless of the cause as long as we don't know what it is," Olsen says.

The findings also indicate that factors that directly affect our brain health play a role in the development of sleep problems and that the symptoms continue for a long time.

The researchers will be delving into which underlying mechanisms can explain these associations between sleep and brain health.

"Then we'll be able to offer better and even more personalized follow-up and treatment," says Olsen.

Olsen finds it interesting that sleep problems in particular are so common following a concussion and seem to last so long for many patients.

"More effective treatment methods for sleep problems have gradually been developed, but these haven't been tested systematically to any degree in this patient group. In other patient groups, research has shown that if we succeed in treating sleep problems, patients will get rid of other ailments at the same time - such as concentration difficulties, tiredness, anxiety and depression - although these aren't the specific focus of the treatment," he says.

The researchers are hopeful that this might also work for many patients who have suffered concussions. Therefore, the research group is planning a new treatment study for patients with sleep disturbances in collaboration with the Sleep and Chronotherapy Group at St. Olavs Hospital and NTNU's Department of Mental Health.

New insights could also help other patients struggling with sleep problems, including those with various types of mental and neurological disorders.

Recent research suggests that concussions and sleep problems may both be linked to inflammation of the brain and the rest of the body. Over time this can affect brain health.

"Now we're planning to investigate biological explanatory models for sleep disturbances by using brain imaging and blood tests collected from these individuals," says Berg Saksvik.

MRI images can show if there are any changes in the brain that are associated with sleep problems.

"One advantage is that we have MRI images taken at several points following injury. This allows us to investigate how these images develop over time," says Berg Saksvik.

The preliminary findings have been made possible through an interdisciplinary collaboration across institutes at NTNU and the clinical environment at St. Olav's hospital.

The research group also includes associate professor and chief physician Toril Skandsen, who heads the Trondheim mild traumatic brain injury follow-up study, which is the overarching study that the data comes from.

The researchers are grateful to the patients who contributed to their study.

To understand how chemical reactions begin, chemists have been using super-slow motion experiments for years to study the very first moments of a reaction. These days, measurements with a resolution of a few dozen attoseconds are possible. An attosecond is 1x10^-18 of a second, i.e. a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second.

"In these first few dozen attoseconds of a reaction, you can already observe how electrons shift within molecules," explains Hans Jakob Wörner, Professor at the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry at ETH Zurich. "Later, in the course of about 10,000 attoseconds or 10 femtoseconds, chemical reactions result in movements of atoms up to and including the breaking of chemical bonds."

Five years ago, the ETH professor was one of the first scientists to be able to detect electron movements in molecules on the attosecond scale. However, up to now such measurements could be carried out only on molecules in gaseous form because they take place in a high-vacuum chamber.

Delayed transport of electrons from the liquid

After building novel measuring equipment, Wörner and his colleagues have now succeeded in detecting such movements in liquids. To this end, the researchers made use of photoemission in water: they irradiated water molecules with light, causing them to emit electrons that the scientists could then measure. "We chose to use this process for our investigation because it is possible to start it with high temporal precision using laser pulses," Wörner says.

The new measurements also took place in high vacuum. Wörner and his team injected a 25-micrometre-thin water microjet into the measuring chamber. This allowed them to discover that electrons are emitted from water molecules in liquid form 50-70 attoseconds later than from water molecules in vapour form. The time difference is due to the fact that the molecules in liquid form are surrounded by other water molecules, which has a measurable delay effect on individual molecules.

Important step

"Electron movements are the key events in chemical reactions. That's why it's so important to measure them on a high-resolution time scale," Wörner says. "The step from measurements in gases to measurements in liquids is of particular importance, because most chemical reactions - especially the ones that are biochemically interesting - take place in liquids."

Among those, there are numerous processes that, like photoemission in water, are also triggered by light radiation. These include photosynthesis in plants, the biochemical processes on our retina that enable us to see, and damage to DNA caused by X-rays or other ionising radiation. With the help of attosecond measurements, scientists should gain new insights into these processes in the coming years.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - In the first comprehensive study of the link between rising sea levels and inland water tables along the California coast, researchers found an increased threat to populated areas already at risk from rising water tables, and the possibility of flooding in unexpected inland areas.

In the new study, researchers modeled the effects of rising sea level along the entire California coastline. While results varied with local topography, the study indicates rising sea levels could push inland water tables higher, resulting in damage to infrastructure and increased severity of flooding.

"Increased roadway fatigue, reduced sewer and septic drainage, and the potential for mobilizing contaminants in soils currently above the water table will eventually be triggered farther inland as the water table rises with higher sea levels," researchers concluded.

Kevin Befus, assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Arkansas, is the first author of the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

While many coastal areas are focused on overland flooding as a result of sea level rise, the threat of rising groundwater tables, known as "shoaling," is not as well known or understood. Shoaling occurs when rising seawater pushes inland. The denser marine water underlies shallow freshwater aquifers, pushing them upward. In some low-lying areas, shoaling could force groundwater water to the surface, increasing the likelihood of flood damage.

Researchers identified key infrastructure at risk from shoaling, including the Port of Los Angeles and airports in Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

But groundwater does not need to emerge to cause problems, the authors noted. Rising water tables, for instance from 6 feet below ground to 3 feet, could impact buried infrastructure such as wastewater pipes, electrical conduits and building foundations. Places like Miami and Hawaii have long grappled with this immediate connection between the ocean and their groundwater. But for most coastal communities in California, the connection is more subtle and has not yet become a part of their climate planning.

MADISON, Wis. -- When it comes to climate change, University of Wisconsin¬-Madison forest and wildlife ecology Professor Ben Zuckerberg says birds are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They are both responsive and sensitive to changes in the environment, including the extreme weather events associated with a warming planet.

However, not all birds are the same, and not all weather events have the same impact. How do different bird species respond to extreme weather events that occur for different amounts of time, ranging from weekly events like heat waves to seasonal events like drought? And how do traits unique to different species -- for example, how far they migrate or how commonly they occur -- predict their vulnerability to extreme weather?

To answer these questions, ecologists would traditionally observe a small number of bird species at a few sites over a few years, and then draw general conclusions. However, Zuckerberg and UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher Jeremy Cohen, along with Daniel Fink of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, had more ambitious goals: they looked at 109 species across eastern North America over a 15-year period, and integrated this information with fine-scale satellite temperature and precipitation data.

In a study recently published in the journal Global Change Biology, the researchers show that not all birds are equally vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather resulting from climate change. As the planet warms, some species will adapt while others may struggle without conservation measures. The results of this study could help conservationists target their efforts to vulnerable species, as well as locations where extreme weather events are predicted.

The researchers used data from eBird, a global citizen-science initiative where bird enthusiasts submit checklists of bird sightings online. These checklists include which species were seen, how many, the location and time, and other observations.

The researchers compiled more than 830,000 of these checklists and integrated each one with weather data summarized over the week, month and three months before the observation was recorded. They relied on advanced computing to manage this large amount of information.

"The study we did would not have been remotely possible without data science," says Cohen. The emerging field of data science involves the study, development or application of methods that reveal new insights from data.

Zuckerberg points out that the combination of citizen science and data science makes research possible at a scale that was previously unimaginable for ecologists. However, citizen science has its limitations. Researchers have less control over the scientific process, and data quality can vary.

"Someone can go out for five minutes or two hours and submit eBird data. They can submit a checklist for 10 species or 40 species," says Zuckerberg. "We've adopted data science methods for working with large, unstructured data sets."

After controlling for this noisy data, the researchers observed that some species are less sensitive to extreme weather, and populations are not equally exposed to its effects because some geographic areas are warming faster than others.

When it comes to heat waves, Cohen notes, "long-distance migrants were not super affected by really hot periods. They winter in tropical environments and should be tolerant of heat."

However, resident birds and short-distance migrants such as robins and red-winged blackbirds responded negatively to heat waves, with their numbers sometimes declining 10% to 30% over several weeks.

As for drought, commonly occurring species like crows were more resilient than rare birds, particularly if the drought was severe and long-lasting.

"Rarer species have more specialized habitat and food requirements -- this is a general rule in ecology," says Cohen. "More common species usually have more options. If habitat quality declines due to drought, a generalist can go somewhere else."

Cohen says this is the first large-scale study, spanning half a continent, to look at how birds respond immediately after weather events. Because of the scope of the project, conservationists can better understand how many different bird species are likely to be affected by climate change, and mitigate some of the negative effects.

"If birds are truly winged sentinels of climate change, the greater likelihood of drought, flooding and extreme temperature conditions like heat waves will have significant consequences," says Zuckerberg. "We need to think about how we help species adapt to climate extremes."

Striking images of the California wildfires are seen in these nighttime satellite images taken by the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite on Aug. 20, 2020. At approximately 3:01 am PDT, NOAA-NASA's Suomi NPP was almost directly overhead and imaged the regionusing different bands on its VIIRS (Visible infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument. Large fires are easily visible in this image. Suomi NPP's day/night band clearly showed that lights in the Central Valley were being scattered by the smoke, from both the LNU and the SCU Lightning Complexes.

California is experiencing major, sustained wildfires across much of the state along with a heat wave that has produced what has been called a "heat dome" over much of the state. National Interagency Fire Meteorologist Nicky Nausler tweeted on Aug. 18: "7000+ lightning strikes have ignited 350+ fires including several large fires and complexes across central and northern California." These storms produced more than 53,262 lightning strikes, although all were not cloud-to-ground and some were over the Pacific, according to the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network's Chris Vagasky on Twitter. However, 13,845 were cloud-to-ground strikes. Some of the fires that were started due to those strikes have merged and become major complexes of fires such as the two largest complexes the LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex. The amount of lightning that occurred over three and a half days is 9% of the amount that California usually sees in a year.

The LNU Complex of fire is currently 215,000 acres with 0% containment. The fire complex is made up of seven fires lit by lightning on Aug. 17 in the Napa Valley Area. The LNU stands for Lake Napa Unit which is the fire unit currently battling the blaze complex. The LNU fire complex now ranks as the ninth largest fire in California history. The second complex is the SCU complex which has consumed 157,475 acres and is 5% contained. This fire is a complex of over 20 fires and is located near Santa Clara where it is being managed by the Santa Clara fire unit.

Some of these fires are so powerful they are able to "create" weather systems of their own. Wildfires generate hot air that rises up creating an updraft. As the air rises up, moisture in the upper atmosphere cool and condenses the air into water droplets on the ash, also rising, which comes together as a cloud. A cloud that is produced by a fire is called a pyrocumulus or "fire cloud." If the fire is large enough a pyrocumulonimbus cloud can be generated which is not only a fire cloud but a fire storm cloud which can produce winds and lightning, continuing the cycle with more fires being started. Updrafts can also produce tornadoes or even "fire tornadoes" when the updraft occurs so quickly that it creates a whirling effect, and a fire tornado is created.

The extended heat wave, the dry forest conditions, and unusual August storms all combined to create the current situation California finds itself in. Face masks, once worn just to ward off the novel coronavirus, have also become a way to shield residents from the effects of the smoke that is also blanketing the state.

Currently over 48,000 people have been evacuated in the state due to the current wildfire situation.

NASA's satellite instruments are often the first to detect wildfires burning in remote regions, and the locations of new fires are sent directly to land managers worldwide within hours of the satellite overpass. Together, NASA instruments detect actively burning fires, track the transport of smoke from fires, provide information for fire management, and map the extent of changes to ecosystems, based on the extent and severity of burn scars. NASA has a fleet of Earth-observing instruments, many of which contribute to our understanding of fire in the Earth system. Satellites in orbit around the poles provide observations of the entire planet several times per day, whereas satellites in a geostationary orbit provide coarse-resolution imagery of fires, smoke and clouds every five to 15 minutes. For more information visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/missions/index.html

Image Courtesy: NOAA/NASA/William Straka U. of W-Madison/CIMSS/SSEC. Caption: Lynn Jenner and William Straka, University of Wisconsin-Madison

When news about a novel coronavirus switched from a chronicle of its progress in China to headlines about a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Gladstone Institutes scientist Nadia Roan, PhD, was in the midst of publishing several papers on T cells and their role in HIV spread and long-lasting infections.

Aside from serving as HIV targets and hideouts, T cells are an important part of the body’s immune response against many viruses. They are also the cell type that is most evidently depleted in severe cases of COVID-19. Roan decided to apply her expertise in T cells to understanding how people respond to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Now, Roan and her team have catalogued the T cells of people who have recovered from mild cases of COVID-19. Their analysis, published in Cell Reports Medicine, sheds light on what a successful immune response to SARS-CoV-2 might entail, and has implications for vaccine development.

Much of the body’s fight against viruses or other pathogens is carried out by antibodies, which latch onto specific molecules on the surface of pathogens and mark them for destruction. But antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 appear to wane rapidly after an infection, which raises the concern that their protective effect might be short-lived.

“Most studies on host immunity to SARS-CoV-2 have focused on the antibody response,” says Roan, who is also an associate professor of urology at UC San Francisco. “However, other studies also suggest that SARS-CoV-2 can elicit a strong T cell response.”

Therefore, an important question is whether SARS-CoV-2 infection activates T cells that are long-lived and could confer long-term immunity against the virus. Another question is whether the T cell response could explain why some people recover from infection after only minor ailments while others succumb to protracted illness sometimes ending in death.

To answer these questions, Roan and her team obtained blood samples from nine donors who had recovered from a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection after having experienced only mild symptoms.  

“We reasoned that these patients would have immune systems that are particularly good at eliminating the virus,” says Roan.

Cells from Recovered Patients Hold the Answers

Roan’s group used a technique called CyTOF, which characterizes T cells according to the proteins they contain or carry on their surface. Different combinations of proteins dictate the different roles T cells play in an infection, and can be used as markers to identify the types of T cells present in a person’s blood. Because CyTOF can track nearly 40 different protein markers at once, the researchers can detect many different characteristics in any given cell.

“Knowing the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells is important to inform us of their functional properties, including their ability to persist long-term in convalescent individuals,” says Roan. 

T cells come in two main flavors: CD4+ T cells, whose main role is to stimulate the overall immune system’s response to an invader, and CD8+ T cells, many of which kill infected cells. Within these broad categories, CyTOF can distinguish many more subcategories. For instance, it can tell short-lived from long-lived cells, and “effector” T cells, cells that fight a current infection, from “memory” T cells, the persisting cells that help mount a quicker response to the next round of infection.

T cells recognize small pieces of pathogen proteins that are displayed on the surface of infected cells. To ensure they were looking at the patients’ response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, Roan’s team selected T cells specific to the virus’s proteins. For comparison, they also examined T cells specific to other viruses, such as the flu and cytomegalovirus, a common pathogen to which many individuals have previously been exposed.

After subjecting the patients’ samples to CyTOF, Roan’s team discovered intriguing patterns in the SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells that may explain how these patients recovered from COVID-19.

First, the patients’ CD4+ T cells specific to SARS-CoV-2 belong to a category called “Th1” known to effectively fight viruses, and not to categories associated with other types of inflammation that are less effective against viruses and can lead to immune-mediated pathology. This could help explain the patients’ recovery, given that, in contrast, severe COVID-19 cases are characterized with uncontrolled inflammation and tissue damage.

Second, the CD4+ T cells in the samples are mostly “memory” and “helper” T cells, which stimulate the production of pathogen-specific antibodies. The SARS-CoV-2 specific helper T cells found in convalescent patients presumably helped them mount an effective and specific antibody defense against the virus.

Third, the patients’ CD8+ T cells belonged to a subcategory known to protect against various other viruses. Roan and her group speculate that these cells are toxic to infected cells, long-lived, and able to proliferate quickly—properties that would allow them to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 infected cells efficiently, thus preventing the virus from building up after infection.

Interestingly, a large proportion of the T cells specific to SARS-CoV-2 carried a surface protein that is known to mark long-lived T cells. Indeed, these cells were found in convalescents more than 2 months after infection. Roan’s team cultured these cells in the presence of a common T cell growth factor currently being tested as a way to improve clinical outcomes for COVID-19 patients with a depleted store of T cells. The cells markedly increased in numbers, demonstrating a powerful ability to proliferate.

“These results suggest that SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells are not only long-lived, but can be maintained by constant proliferation. Therefore, they can presumably fight off a new infection long after the first one has cleared,” says Roan.

Studies involving a larger number of patients, including those who suffered severe illness, will be needed to understand why different people respond so differently to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Roan and her team have already begun comparing T cell responses in mild vs. severe cases, and will investigate the possibility that prior exposure to other coronaviruses might boost a person’s immune response to the new virus.

Meanwhile, the features shared in these nine recovered patients provide important insights.

“Our findings suggest that while antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 may fade relatively quickly, long-term immunity to the virus may be generated in the form of memory responses, including that of memory T cells,” sa

Journal

Cell Reports Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrm.2020.100081

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with a nighttime view of Tropical Depression 13 early on Aug. 21. By 11 a.m. EDT, it had strengthened into Tropical Storm Laura.

NASA's Night-Time View of Tropical Depression 13

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a nighttime image of Tropical Depression 13 during the early morning hours of Aug. 21. Nighttime imagery showed the structure of Tropical Depression 13 was still somewhat elongated but it had become better organized than it was yesterday although it still lacked well-defined banding features. Nighttime imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite was created using the NASA Worldview application at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

When NOAA's Hurricane Hunters flew over the storm later in the morning, they also found that the center of the storm is located somewhat to the south of previous estimates.

Numerous Watches and Warnings Now in Effect

NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) has posted many watches and warnings for Laura on Aug. 21. In addition to the U.S., the following governments issued warnings or watches for their islands: Antigua, the Netherlands, France, St. Maarten, Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Tropical Storm Warnings have been issued for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The government of Antigua has issued a Tropical Storm Warning for Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, and the British Virgin Islands. The government of the Netherlands has issued a Tropical Storm Warning for Saba and St. Eustatius. The government of France has issued a Tropical Storm Warning for St. Martin and St. Barthelemy. The government of St. Maarten has issued a Tropical Storm Warning for St. Maarten. The government of the Dominican Republic has issued a Tropical Storm Watch for northern coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Cabron to the border with Haiti. The government of Haiti has issued a Tropical Storm Watch for northern coast of Haiti from Le Mole St. Nicholas to the border with the Dominican Republic.

Tropical Storm Laura's Status on Aug. 21

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) noted the center of Tropical Storm Laura was located near latitude 17.0 degrees north and longitude 60.2 degrees west. Laura was about 210 miles (335 km) east-southeast of the Northern Leeward Islands.

Laura was moving toward the west near 18 mph (30 kph) and a generally west-northwestward motion at a faster forward speed is expected over the next couple of days. Maximum sustained winds were near 45 mph (75 kph) with higher gusts. Some slow strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 150 miles (240 km) from the center. The minimum central pressure estimated from NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft observations was 1007 millibars.

Laura's Forecast Track

NHC Hurricane Forecaster Richard Pasch noted, "Laura is expected to move mainly west-northwestward on the south side of a subtropical high pressure system over the next couple of days.  Later in the forecast period, the tropical cyclone should turn toward the northwest as it moves around the western periphery of the high [pressure area]."

On the forecast track, the center of Laura will move near or over the northern Leeward Islands later today, Aug. 21, near or over Puerto Rico Saturday morning, and near the northern coast of Hispaniola late Saturday and early Sunday, Aug. 23.

The eastern Arctic Ocean's winter ice grew less than half as much as normal during the past decade, due to the growing influence of heat from the ocean's interior, researchers have found.

The finding came from an international study led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Finnish Meteorological Institute. The study, published in the Journal of Climate, used data collected by ocean moorings in the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean from 2003-2018.

The moorings measured the heat released from the ocean interior to the upper ocean and sea ice during winter. In 2016-2018, the estimated heat flux was about 10 watts per square meter, which is enough to prevent 80-90 centimeters (almost 3 feet) of sea ice from forming each year. Previous heat flux measurements were about half of that much.

"In the past, when weighing the contribution of atmosphere and ocean to melting sea ice in the Eurasian Basin, the atmosphere led," said Igor Polyakov, an oceanographer at UAF's International Arctic Research Center and FMI. "Now for the first time, ocean leads. That's a big change."

Typically, across much of the Arctic a thick layer of cold fresher water, known as a halocline, isolates the heat associated with the intruding Atlantic water from the sea surface and from sea ice.

This new study shows that an abnormal influx of salty warm water from the Atlantic Ocean is weakening and thinning the halocline, allowing more mixing. According to the new study, warm water of Atlantic origin is now moving much closer to the surface.

"The normal position of the upper boundary of this water in this region was about 150 meters. Now this water is at 80 meters," explained Polyakov.

A natural winter process increases this mixing. As sea water freezes, the salt is expelled from ice into the water. This brine-enriched water is heavier and sinks. In the absence of a strong halocline, the cold salty water mixes much more efficiently with the shallower, warm Atlantic water. This heat is then transferred upward to the bottom of sea ice, limiting the amount of ice that can form during winter.

"These new results show the growing and spreading influence of heat associated with Atlantic water entering the Arctic Ocean," added Tom Rippeth, a collaborator from Bangor University. "They also suggest a new feedback mechanism is contributing to accelerating sea ice loss."

Polyakov and his team hypothesize that the ocean's ability to control winter ice growth creates feedback that speeds overall sea ice loss in the Arctic. In this feedback, both declining sea ice and the weakening halocline barrier cause the ocean's interior to release heat to the surface, resulting in further sea ice loss. The mechanism augments the well-known ice-albedo feedback -- which occurs when the atmosphere melts sea ice, causing open water, which in turn absorbs more heat, melting more sea ice.

When these two feedback mechanisms combine, they accelerate sea ice decline. The ocean heat feedback limits sea ice growth in winter, while the ice-albedo feedback more easily melts the thinner ice in summer.

"As they start working together, the coupling between the atmosphere, ice and ocean becomes very strong, much stronger than it was before," said Polyakov. "Together they can maintain a very fast rate of ice melt in the Arctic."

Polyakov and Rippeth collaborated on a second, associated study showing how this new coupling between the ocean, ice and atmosphere is responsible for stronger currents in the eastern Arctic Ocean.

According to that research, between 2004-2018 the currents in the upper 164 feet of the ocean doubled in strength. Loss of sea ice, making surface waters more susceptible to the effects of wind, appears to be one of the factors contributing to the increase.

The stronger currents create more turbulence, which increases the amount of mixing, known as shear, that occurs between surface waters and the deeper ocean. As described earlier, ocean mixing contributes to a feedback mechanism that further accelerates sea ice decline.

Accelerated currents have practical implications in the Arctic. Ship captains need accurate maps of currents for navigation. Since currents move sea ice, oil and gas extraction activities also need information about currents.

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.

1. 37.7 Million Adults Living With School-Age Children and 2.9 Million K-12 Teachers Have Medical Conditions That Raise Their Risk of Severe COVID-19

As debate continues over the re-opening of schools this fall, a new analysis from researchers at Harvard Medical School and the City University of New York's Hunter College sheds light on the risks for adults who work or live in close contact with schoolchildren. The researchers studied nationally representative data from the 2018 National Health Interview Survey to determine risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness among teachers and adults living with school-aged children. They found that 2.3 million school-teachers and 28.6 million of those adults are either over 64 years in age or have chronic diseases that put them at high risk of severe COVID-19. An additional 630,000 teachers and 9.05 million people living with children have conditions that may increase their risk. Read the full text https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5413.

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Adam Gaffney, MD MPH, can be reached directly at agaffney@challiance.org.

2. Review provides advice for managing the postpandemic mental health crisis among clinicians

Previous pandemics have seen high psychiatric morbidity among health care workers. Protecting clinician mental health in the aftermath of COVID-19 requires an evidence-based approach to developing and deploying comprehensive clinician mental health support. Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine, the University of California, San Francisco, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and Children's Hospital Los Angeles reviewed 96 articles addressing clinician mental health in COVID-19 and prior pandemics to identify common themes and learnings that will help to address the coming crisis. In addition to the literature review, in collaboration with the Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine (CHARM) network, the authors gathered practice guidelines and resources from health care organizations and professional societies worldwide to synthesize a list of resources deemed high-yield by well-being leaders. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4199.

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Rachel Schwartz, PhD, can be reached through Margarita Gallardo at mjgallardo@stanford.edu.

Tin monosulfide (SnS) is a promising material used for next generation solar cells because of its nontoxic characteristics and abundance, in addition to its excellent photovoltaic properties. Sakiko Kawanishi and Issei Suzuki led a team that has succeeded in growing large single crystals of SnS, which can provide a pathway for the fabrication of SnS solar cells with a high conversion efficiency.

A p-n homojunction, which consists of p-type and n-type SnS, is key to obtaining SnS solar cells with high efficiency. The manufacturing of such solar cells has until now proved difficult due to the complexity of fabricating n-type SnS in contrast to the easily fabricable p-type SnS.

To solve the problem, the team designed an original feed composition used for the flux growth of SnS crystals. This is something that had not been successfully trialed before. A dramatic change appeared in the grown crystals by halogen addition, that is, enlargement of the crystal size to a maximum 24 mm in width (Figure 1), in addition to including an n-type conduction characteristic. The larger crystals lower the stakes of trial manufacturing the SnS solar cells with p-n homojunction, which accelerates the development for practical application.