Earth

A single-step, plasma-enhanced catalytic process to convert sulfur dioxide to pure sulfur from tail gas streams may provide a promising, more environmentally-friendly alternative to current multistage thermal, catalytic and absorptive processes, according to scientists at Penn State.

"Sulfur dioxides can cause significant environmental problems like acid rain, and it can cause sea acidification," said Xiaoxing Wang, associate research professor at the Penn State EMS Energy Institute. "Sulfur can also contribute to fine particulate matter in the air we breathe, which can be more severe than the sulfur dioxide itself."

Exposure to particulate matter was estimated to cause 4.2 million premature deaths and more than 100 million disability-adjusted life years -- which measures years lost due to illness, disability or death -- according to the Lancet Global Burden of Diseases Study, published in 2015.

According to Wang, current desulfurization methods can successfully remove sulfur dioxide from tail gas streams but not without significant drawbacks.

Flue gas desulfurization technologies, for example, are the most used methods to capture sulfur dioxide, but these processes create a large amount of solid waste in the form of metal sulfate that requires disposal. Furthermore, these processes produce wastewater that requires additional treatment, making the overall method costly and environmentally unfriendly.

Alternatively, sulfur dioxide can be reduced to solid elemental sulfur through catalysis -- a chemical reaction brought on by a catalyst and usually a reducing agent such as hydrogen, methane, or carbon monoxide -- and then used as a raw material for such things as fertilizer. However, high temperatures are normally needed in the traditional catalytic process to attain high conversion levels. This is not ideal because it uses a great deal of energy and there is a loss of catalyst activity, according to the scientists.

Due to these flaws, Wang and his colleagues tested a novel technology, a one-step, low-temperature plasma-assisted catalytic process that eliminates the need for high temperatures and creates far less waste than FGD technologies.

To test this process, the team loaded an iron sulfide catalyst into a packed bed reactor. Then they introduced the hydrogen and the sulfur dioxide gas mixtures, which passed through the catalyst bed at roughly 300 degrees Fahrenheit. They then turned on the nonthermal plasma and the reactions immediately began to occur.

Once the process completed, they analyzed the samples to see how much sulfur dioxide was in the gas and how much hydrogen was consumed. They also collected and analyzed the solid sulfur, which accumulates at the bottom of the reactor. They published their results in ACS Catalysis and a recent issue of the Journal of Catalysis.

"The temperature we used, 150 degrees C (about 300 degrees F), is higher than the sulfur melt point to avoid sulfur deposition over the catalyst," Wang said. "Through this process, the catalyst shows very excellent stability. When run for several hours, we do not see any deactivation. The activity and the selectivity stay the same."

The researchers also found that this process dramatically promoted sulfur dioxide reduction at low temperatures, enhancing conversion by 148% to 200 percent and 87 to 120 percent using hydrogen and methane, respectively.

Sean Knecht, assistant teaching professor in the School of Engineering Design, Technology and Professional Programs, said that NTP works because highly energetic electrons interact with gas molecules to produce reactive species -- radicals, ions and excited molecules -- enabling various chemical reactions at low temperature.

"The result is that the electrons are able to initiate what would appear to be thermodynamically-unfavorable chemical reactions through dissociation and excitation of reactants at much lower temperatures than thermal catalysis," Knecht said. "If these reactions can be undertaken at much lower temperatures than are typical for thermal catalysis, as we have shown, then the power input to future systems is significantly reduced, which is a big deal."

Wang added that using plasma allows them to achieve optimal performance using just 10 watts of electricity. Another advantage is that renewable energy, such as wind or solar, can be easily applied to this process to supply power to the plasma.

The researchers now want to better understand exactly how the plasma contributes to the catalysis process and seek to develop an even more effective catalyst for the process.

"A current challenge that we are working to address is further isolating the effects of the plasma versus effects of the catalyst and the synergistic aspects," Knecht said. "We are looking at some surface spectroscopy options presently and at some point, combining with computational modeling. Bringing these together can provide a more holistic understanding of the physics and chemistry at play."

If the process is commercializable, it has the potential to largely replace the current FDG technologies.

"It's highly beneficial to energy and the environment," Wang said. "Our process saves energy, reduces waste and saves water. This is very transformational."

Seabird populations in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean are facing direct and indirect impacts of climate change due to rising temperatures and ocean acidification. However, long-term monitoring of seabird populations in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean typically only began in the 1950s, posing a challenge to understanding the long-term responses of seabirds to global change.

Dulcinea Groff, a University of Wyoming postdoctoral research associate with the Wyoming Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), led a study that put together a puzzle of the 14,000-year-old record of tussac grasslands in the Falkland Islands.

"First, the 14,000-year-old record raises a very troubling question about where seabirds will go as the climate continues to warm because the seabirds at Surf Bay established during cooler climates," Groff says. "Seabird conservation efforts in the South Atlantic should be prepared for these species to move to new breeding grounds in a warmer world, and those locations may not be protected. Second, we show just how important the nutrients in seabird poop are for the ongoing efforts to restore and conserve their grassland habitat."

Groff is lead author of a paper, titled "Seabird Establishment During Regional Cooling Drove a Terrestrial Ecosystem Shift 5,000 Years Ago," that appears in the Oct. 23 issue of Science Advances. The journal is the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) open-access multidisciplinary journal, publishing impactful research papers and reviews in any area of science, in both disciplinary-specific and broad, interdisciplinary areas.

At the time of the study, which took place on separate trips during 2014 and 2016, Groff was a Ph.D. student at the University of Maine. The work is a chapter of her dissertation. Others who contributed to the paper were from the University of Maine, the University of Hong Kong and the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute in Stanley, Falkland Islands.

Seabirds first came to the Falklands approximately 5,000 years ago, just as the region was cooling, the study says. Seabirds there are situated by the parts of the tussac grass the birds use. For example, some seabirds use the soft peat beneath the tussac to burrow into and make their nests, Groff says. These include the Magellanic penguin, white-chinned petrel, thin-billed prion, common diving petrel, Falkland diving petrel, sooty shearwater and great shearwater.

There are ground-level nesting seabirds like the Southern rockhopper penguin, as well as seabirds that commonly nest adjacent to the tussac grass. These include the black-browed albatross, gentoo penguin, rock shag, South American tern, kelp gull and imperial cormorant.

Marine-derived nutrients from bird guano facilitated tussac establishment, the paper says.

Within 200 years after seabirds established at Surf Bay, the plant community changed from a mixture of shrubs and grasses to being dominated by grasses. As a result, the fire activity increased in these grasslands.

"We're not sure exactly why fire activity increased, but grassland fires are known to be controlled more by the amount of fuel available on the landscape and less by how dry the conditions are at the time," says Groff, who also is a research fellow at Lehigh University. "For this reason, we suggest that either there was more lightning to start the grassland fires or there was more fuel on the landscape for the fire to burn because of the increase of these grasslands. What's fascinating is that fire is a natural part of this ecosystem, and this is something we knew little about before."

To compile the 14,000-year-old record, the research group collected a peat profile for pollen and charcoal analyses, and reconstructed seabird populations of the past.

"Peat is a natural archive of information about past environments because it preserves the remains of plants and animals really well as it accumulates or builds up over thousands of years," Groff says. "We examined pollen made by the plants; charcoal left over from grassland fires; and chemical indicators associated with seabirds being present, which all get preserved in the peat as it accumulates over time."

The peat profile allowed the research group to determine the order of events with the seabirds and their breeding habitat, the tussac grasslands.

"I think of it as a 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' scenario," she says. "By counting the number of pollen grains and pieces of charcoal, and examining the chemistry of the peat profile, we learned that seabirds arrived before the establishment of the grassland."

The group also took a look at an extinct predator called the "warrah" or Falkland Islands wolf that could have caused seabird abandonment and redistribution of ground nesting seabirds. However, the impact that the warrah would have had on the seabirds in the Falkland Islands is unknown.

"Using a technique called radiocarbon dating, we were able to determine the age of warrah fossils," Groff says. "The ages tell us that the warrah was in the Falkland Islands by at least 3,500 years ago, at the same time that seabirds were there."

A warming South Atlantic casts doubt over the future of the Falkland Islands as a long-term seabird breeding hot spot. Conservation efforts focusing on tussac restoration should include this terrestrial-marine linkage, although a warming Southern Ocean calls into question the long-term viability of the Falkland Islands as habitat for low-latitude seabirds, according to the paper.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Since 2017, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers Casey Morrow, Ph.D., and Hyunmin Koo, Ph.D., have used powerful genomic tools and supercomputers that analyze massive amounts of genetic data to identify individual strains within single species of the gut microbiome.

This microbiome "fingerprint" method has helped show the maternal sources of microbes for the human infant or mouse pup microbiomes, as well as showing extreme persistence of gut microbial strains in adult human twins who lived apart after cohabitating for decades.

Now Koo and Morrow have turned their microbial strain stability studies to human infants and children, ages shortly after birth (about 6 months) to 6 years. In general, they found that there were individualized patterns of microbial strain specificity as the infant gut microbiomes developed.

The infant gut microbial ecosystem starts with short-term changes in microbial composition that eventually resolve to a stable microbial composition, the focus of the current study. These stable microbe-host interactions are essential for efficient digestion of food, healthy immune development and resistance to colonization with pathogens.

"In general, the early gut microbial community is dominated by microbes that can feed on the carbohydrates present in breast milk or formula, such as Bifidobacterium adolescentis," Morrow said. "As the infant grows, the transition to solid foods and physical growth result in changes in the spatial structure of the gut, which contributes to the variation in the physical and chemical environment that provides new ecological niche opportunities for growth of microbial strains. This ecosystem transition correlates with the appearance of Bacteroidetes -- such as Bacteroides vulgatus -- within the gut microbial community structure."

The UAB researchers applied their microbe fingerprint technique to two metagenomic DNA sequencing data sets, from previously published studies by others, of fecal samples of infants and young children collected as a time series. The first set of 31 infants had samples collected shortly after birth and at 1, 2 and 3 years of age. Fourteen of those children had multiple antibiotic treatments, which can disrupt the gut microbiome; the rest did not have antibiotics. The second data set included nine infants who were sampled from 6 months of age up to 6 years; four of the nine had been given multiple antibiotics.

Of the 17 infants in the first data set who had not received antibiotics during the three years after birth, an infant-specific pattern was seen for stable and unstable microbial strains. Only one infant had no stable strains identified out of the 20 bacterial species analyzed. For the 14 infants who had multiple doses of antibiotics, 10 showed a unique pattern of transient strains that appeared for a short time after multiple antibiotic treatments.

For the second data set, the UAB researchers analyzed the gut microbial strain stability of Bacteroides vulgatus and Bifidobacterium adolescentis for up to six years following birth. They found individual specific patterns of varying dominant microbial strains that were independent of antibiotic exposure and birth mode. Importantly, there was no obvious linkage between strain changes in B. vulgatus and B. adolescentis. For example, one infant given multiple antibiotics had limited change in B. vulgatus strains as B. adolescentis strains changed extensively, while another infant given multiple antibiotics had the opposite pattern of strain changes.

The researchers also saw several examples of transient microbial strain change for short periods, without antibiotic treatments, followed by recovery to the dominant strain. Although the driving force for those changes is unknown, there were several instances where an infant-specific complete strain change for B. vulgatus and for B. adolescentis occurred. The metadata for those infants showed no obvious correlation of those changes with sex, country of origin, delivery mode or whether the infant would go on to develop diabetes.

"The results of our analysis using both data sets highlight that microbial strain change is inherent in the developing infant gut microbial ecosystem," Koo and Morrow said. "Furthermore, the results from our study support the use of the strain-tracking method to monitor the development of a stable and healthy microbial community."

Morrow, Koo and colleagues have used their microbe fingerprint tool in previous strain-tracking studies. In 2017, they found that fecal donor microbes -- used to treat patients with recurrent Clostridium difficile infections -- remained in recipients for months or years after fecal transplants. In 2018, they showed that changes in the upper gastrointestinal tract through obesity surgery led to the emergence of new strains of microbes. In 2019, they analyzed the stability of new strains in individuals after antibiotic treatments, and earlier this year, they did the adult twin study, which showed that twins shared a certain strain or strains between each pair for periods of years, and even decades, after they began living apart from each other. Also this year, they showed that an individualized mosaic of microbial strains was transmitted to the infant gut microbiome from a mother giving birth through vaginal delivery, as analyzed in mother-infant pairs, as well as mouse dams and pups.

Ocean acidification is no longer a sombre forecast for the Great Barrier Reef but a present-day reality, a new study reveals.

The study, published in the international Journal Scientific Reports, shows carbon dioxide (CO2) and ocean acidification are rapidly increasing on the Reef. Seawater CO2 has risen 6 per cent over the past 10 years and matches the rate of CO2 increases in the atmosphere, confirming the influence of atmospheric CO2 on seawater CO2 levels.

"People talk about ocean acidification in terms of 50 years' time, but for the first time our study shows how fast ocean acidification is already happening on the Reef," said Dr Katharina Fabricius, lead author and Senior Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

The research, a collaboration between AIMS and CSIRO, drew on over a decade of observations collected as part of Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) to conclude that the Reef's rich carbonate seafloor is not buffering against ocean acidification as previously thought.

"Our research shows that acidification is rapidly changing the conditions that support the growth of coral on the Reef. It's never been more important to address ocean acidification in plans to manage the Reef", said Dr. Bronte Tilbrook, a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO who leads IMOS' observational projects for CO2 and ocean acidification.

Ocean acidification results from seawater absorbing excess CO2 that has been emitted into the atmosphere. The CO2 dissolves in the seawater where it changes the chemistry. This includes decreasing the water's pH, and reducing the aragonite saturation state, which is critical for building the skeletons of reef-building coral and other marine organisms. Under reduced pH conditions, their calcium carbonate skeletons take longer to form and weaken, leaving them more susceptible to damage and erosion.

While long-term data exist for CO2 and ocean acidification trends in open oceans, there have been very few long-term data on these trends in coastal waters around the world, including the Great Barrier Reef. Biological and physical processes like respiration create large fluctuations in CO2 in coastal areas, making the detection of trends more difficult.

The study has filled this important knowledge gap by analysing 10 years of CO2, pH and aragonite saturation state data (2009-2019). These data were collected as part of Australia's IMOS network at two long-term monitoring stations, located 650 kilometres apart at contrasting locations.

The researchers found the minimum CO2 concentrations measured today were likely to already have passed the highest CO2 levels expected 60 years ago, even after accounting for the effects of temperature, nutrients, salinity, and daily and seasonal changes.

"We know now that oceans are taking up about 23% of the excess CO2 from the air. They actually provide a service to humanity by slowing climate change. But the price to pay is that the seawater's carbon chemistry is changing, and we didn't know it was happening in dynamic coastal waters at such fast rates," Dr Fabricius said.

In another research first, AIMS and CSIRO scientists have used data from 1384 Reef sites to show coastal acidification's negative impacts on three important indicators of Reef health:

the numbers of both baby coral and coralline algae are plummeting as CO2 increases across the Reef, and

undesirable seaweed is thriving at high CO2 locations.

The study, published earlier this year in the journal Global Change Biology, found these baby coral and coralline algae also decreased and seaweed increased as fine suspended sediment increased across the Reef -- with the greatest sediment concentration and organism changes observed closer to the shore. The researchers highlighted effective water quality management as an achievable solution to reduce coastal acidification's impact on the Reef.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have discovered a new inflammatory disorder called vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory and somatic syndrome (VEXAS), which is caused by mutations in the UBA1 gene. VEXAS causes symptoms that included blood clots in veins, recurrent fevers, pulmonary abnormalities and vacuoles (unusual cavity-like structures) in myeloid cells. The scientists reported their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Nearly 125 million people in the U.S. live with some form of a chronic inflammatory disease. Many of these diseases have overlapping symptoms, which often make it difficult for researchers to diagnose the specific inflammatory disease in a given patient.

Researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the NIH, and collaborators from other NIH Institutes took a unique approach to address this challenge. They studied the genome sequences from more than 2,500 individuals with undiagnosed inflammatory diseases, paying particular attention to a set of over 800 genes related to the process of ubiquitylation, which helps regulate both various protein functions inside a cell and the immune system overall. By doing so, they found a gene that is intricately linked to VEXAS, a disease that can be life-threatening. So far, 40% of VEXAS patients who the team studied have died, revealing the devastating consequences of the severe condition.

Usually, researchers discover a previously unknown disease by studying several patients with similar symptoms, then searching for a gene or multiple genes that may play a role in causing the disease. However, this was not a viable option for the NIH research team.

"We had many patients with undiagnosed inflammatory conditions who were coming to the NIH Clinical Center, and we were just unable to diagnose them," said David B. Beck, M.D., Ph.D., clinical fellow at NHGRI and lead author of the paper. "That's when we had the idea of doing it the opposite way. Instead of starting with symptoms, start with a list of genes. Then, study the genomes of undiagnosed individuals and see where it takes us."

Out of the genome sequences of 2,560 patients with undiagnosed inflammatory conditions, over 1,000 patients had undiagnosed recurrent fevers and body-wide inflammation. The rest, part of the NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Network, had unusual and unclassified disorders.

"Our objective was to see if any of the 2,560 patients shared variations in the same gene," said Daniel Kastner, M.D., Ph.D., scientific director of the Intramural Research Program at NHGRI and a senior author of the paper. "Instead of looking at clinical similarities, we were instead taking advantage of shared genomic similarities that could help us discover a completely new disease."

Out of the 800 genes, one stood out. Three middle-aged males had rare and potentially damaging genomic variants in the UBA1 gene, but each of the three males appeared to have two copies of the UBA1 gene with one copy harboring the mutation, which was not unexpected because humans usually have two copies of every gene. However, the UBA1 gene resides in the X chromosome, and males have only one X chromosome (and one Y chromosome).

"We were amazed to see this and wondered what it could mean. And that's when it clicked--this was only possible if there was mosaicism in these men," said Dr. Beck.

Mosaicism occurs when some people have groups of cells with mutations that are different from the rest of the body. The team predicted that there were specific cells in the patients' bodies that carried the UBA1 gene in its normal form while other cells carried the gene in its mutated form.

Using DNA-sequencing methodologies, the researchers found that the mosaicism was indeed present in the patients' myeloid cells, which are responsible for systemic inflammation and act as the first line of defense against infections.

The researchers then analyzed the genome sequences of additional individuals from various NIH cohorts and databases, which led to the discovery of an additional 22 adult males with the UBA1 gene mutations. Most of the individuals had symptoms that included blood clots in veins, recurrent fevers, pulmonary abnormalities and vacuoles (unusual cavity-like structures) in the myeloid cells.

Out of the combined 25 individuals, researchers were able to find a link between the various clinical rheumatologic and blood-related diagnoses made for the patients. Because these conditions exist in people with UBA1 mutations, the team grouped the various conditions into a new disease: VEXAS.

"By using this genome-first approach, we have managed to find a thread that ties together patients carrying all of these seemingly unrelated, disparate diagnoses," Dr. Kastner said.

The researchers hope that this new genome-first strategy will help healthcare professionals improve disease assessments and provide appropriate treatments for thousands of patients who have various inflammation-related conditions. The study may also pave the way for a new and more appropriate classification of inflammatory diseases.

An international team of coastal scientists has dismissed suggestions that half the world's beaches could become extinct over the course of the 21st century.

The claim was made by European researchers in a paper published in Nature Climate Change in March 2020 (Sandy coastlines under threat of erosion by Vousdoukas et al).

However, academics from the UK, France, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the USA have re-examined the data and methodology that underpinned the original study and say they strongly disagree with its conclusion.

They have now published a rebuttal to the article in the same journal, and concluded that with the global data and numerical methods available today it is impossible to make such global and wide-reaching predictions.

Critical to their disagreement with the original paper's conclusions is the fact that they say there is potential for beaches to migrate landwards as sea level rises and shorelines retreat.

The key notion behind that is that if beaches have space to move into under the influence of rising sea levels - referred to as accommodation space - they will retain their overall shape and form but in a more landward position.

The new research says that beaches backed by hard coastal cliffs and engineering structures, such as seawalls, are indeed likely to disappear in the future due to sea-level rise as these beaches are unable to migrate landward.

They will first experience 'coastal squeeze' resulting in a decrease in width, and will eventually drown.

However, beaches backed by low-lying coastal plains, shallow lagoons, salt marshes and dunes will migrate landward as a result of rising sea level. In these cases, the shoreline will retreat, but the beaches are still likely to remain, albeit a little raised in elevation and located landward, and will certainly not go 'extinct'.

The new paper says there is currently no information available globally on the number of beaches which fall into either category and, as such, it is impossible to quantify what proportion of the world's beaches will disappear between now and 2100.

Andrew Cooper, Professor of Coastal Studies at Ulster University and the new paper's lead author, said: "New methods are needed for predicting impacts of sea-level rise on the coast. This will require better datasets of coastal morphology and improved understanding of the mechanisms of shoreline response in given settings. As sea level rises, shoreline retreat must, and will, happen but beaches will survive. The biggest threat to the continued existence of beaches is coastal defence structures that limit their ability to migrate."

Co-author Professor Gerd Masselink, from the University of Plymouth's Coastal Processes Research Group, led a study earlier this year which found that island 'drowning' is not inevitable as sea levels rise.

He added: "Sea level is currently rising and will continue to rise at an increasing rate for many years to come. This will lead to more coastal erosion and it is crucial that we anticipate the future loss of land and take this into account in coastal management and planning to avoid putting more buildings and coastal infrastructure in harm's way. In the UK, Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs) are becoming increasingly important as a planning tool. CCMAs are areas that are likely to be affected by coastal change in the future and development in these areas should be avoided. This will then enable the coastline to respond naturally to sea-level rise, preventing coastal squeeze and loss of beaches."

Coastal structures such as seawalls prevent beaches from naturally adjusting to rising sea levels by migrating landward and in those settings, removal of the structures (managed realignment) or nature-based solutions (beach nourishment) may be the only methods to safeguard the future of these beaches.

Death rates from people with severe COVID-19 in hospital have dropped to around a half of the rate at the peak of the pandemic, new research has revealed.

An analysis of over 21,000 hospital admissions, published in Critical Care Medicine, found a significant drop in death rates for both high dependency unit admissions and intensive care admissions between March and the end of June.

The team was led by the University of Exeter and involved the University of Warwick, and was supported by The Alan Turing Institute. They found death rates were highest in late March, at 26 per cent among people admitted to high dependency units, and 41 per cent among people admitted to intensive care. For June admissions, death rates had dropped to 7 per cent among high dependency unit admissions, and to 21 per cent among intensive care admissions.

Dr John Dennis, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the research, said: "Importantly, we controlled for factors including age, sex, ethnicity and other health conditions such as diabetes. This suggests the improvement in death rates in more recent months is not simply due to younger, or previously healthier, people being admitted to critical care. A number of factors are likely to be at play here, including improved understanding of how to manage COVID-19 amongst doctors, and the introduction of effective treatments."

The team accessed national data from adults admitted to critical care via the COVID-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System (CHESS), collected by Public Health England. They looks at how the proportion of people with COVID-19 dying within 30 days of admission changed over March until the end of June.

Dr Bilal Mateen, of the University of Warwick, said: "The reduction in the number of people dying from COVID-19 in hospitals is clearly a step in the right direction, but it's important that we do not become complacent as a result. It's possible that the higher death rates at the peak of the pandemic are in part because hospitals were so overcrowded at that point. Even at the lowest point, nearly a quarter of admissions to intensive care were still dying- that's a huge number of people, and we have to do all we can to control the spread of the virus and keep hospital admissions as low as possible."

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is changing the world like never before. This crisis is unlikely contained in the absence of effective therapeutics or vaccine. The papain-like protease (PLpro) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) plays essential roles in virus replication and immune evasion, presenting a promising drug target.

The authors of this paper determined two important structures of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro protease. The unliganded structure has novel crystal packing, high solvent content and reasonable resolution; thus, it offers a good foundation for fragment-based screening targeting the enzyme. The GRL0617 bound structure provides valuable insight into the inhibition mechanism at atomic level. Given that GRL0617 is one of the most promising inhibitors of CoV PLpro, the authors findings will aid further optimization of the inhibitor, which may contribute to speed up therapeutic development of COVID-19.

Current species loss directly affects the life of humans as regards nutrition, water supply, construction materials, and energy sources. This is confirmed by the Jena Experiment, one of the biggest experiments on biodiversity in which scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) were involved. The Jena consortium now reports in Nature Ecology & Evolution that ecosystem functions cannot only be predicted from the properties of plants, but that the entire complexity of biotic and abiotic interactions has to be considered. (DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-01316-9)

Biodiversity on Earth, including the diversity of species, genetic diversity within species, and the diversity of ecosystems, is the basis of life of all organisms, including humans. Fundamental processes depend on biodiversity, such as plant growth and the stability of material cycles. However, biological diversity is decreasing continuously. According to researchers, this loss has meanwhile reached an alarming extent. For this reason, numerous scientific studies and experiments cover the importance of biodiversity to the functioning of ecosystems and their use for humans.

Species Loss Has Direct Consequences for Humans

One of the biggest and longest projects on biodiversity is the Jena Experiment that was funded by the German Research Foundation from 2002 to 2019 (DFG; research groups FOR 456 and FOR 1451) and coordinated by Jena University. In the experiment researchers from different scientific institutions studied the effects of biodiversity on grassland. Through comprehensive quantification of cycles of major chemical elements and investigation of above-ground and underground processes, they determined basic mechanisms. Professor Wolfgang Wilcke, Head of the Geomorphology and Soil Science Group of KIT's Institute of Geography and Geoecology (IFGG), and Dr. Sophia Leimer, scientist and member of this group, participated in the experiment and studied the relationship between plant diversity and the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle.

"The findings of the Jena Experiment confirm that current species loss has directly consequences for humankind," Wilcke says. "As a result, functions of nature that may apparently be taken for granted break off." According to the geoecologist, examples are the production of biomass for food, fabrics, construction materials, and fuels as well as water and nutrient cycles. Their changes have severe impacts, such as floods, drought, or groundwater pollution. "To stop this development and to protect species diversity, further research and practical measures on all levels are needed, from the individual consumer to national governments to international bodies," Wilcke continues.

Significance of Biodiversity Can Only Be Determined by Interdisciplinary Research

In a series of three publications in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the Jena consortium published major results between 2018 and 2020: The more ecosystem functions, such as a closed nutrient cycle, and resulting ecosystem services (e.g. biomass production) are to be achieved, the more plant species are needed, the scientists say.

Together with the BioDIV Experiment in the USA, the Jena consortium found that the results of artificial experiments, in which mixes of plant species were usually composed randomly, are stable and may be transferred to the natural world.

In its most recent publication, the Jena Experiment concludes that ecosystem functions and services cannot only be predicted from the properties of plants. It is rather necessary to consider the entire complexity of biotic and abiotic interactions of an ecosystem, i.e. all interactions in the living and non-living nature.

One of the most important questions in science is how life began on Earth.

One theory is that wet-dry cycling on the early Earth - whether through rainy/dry periods, or through phenomena such as geysers - encouraged molecular complexity. The hydration/rehydration cycle is thought to have created conditions that allowed membraneless compartments called complex coacervates to act as homes for chemicals to combine to create life.

Using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, scientists in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago studied these polymer compartments as they undergo phase changes to understand just what happens inside them during wet-dry cycle.

The results, published October 27 in Nature Communications, could not only shed further light on prebiotic Earth, they could also have implications for the design of electronics and drug delivery systems.

"Seeing these polymer assemblies as they undergo changes in complex environments helps us understand just how these compartments behaved on early Earth, and how we can use them going forward," said Matthew Tirrell, dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor, and co-author of the paper.

Seeing inside complex coacervates

In research led by Pennsylvania State University, scientists examined polyelectrolyte coacervates in water that had the same makeup as pond water. A pond regularly dries up and is then replenished with rain. This cyclic dehydration and rehydration makes it easier for molecular building blocks, like amino acids and nucleotides, to assemble into peptides and proteins, like DNA and RNA, by lowering the thermodynamic barrier that keeps them from combining.

The Tirrell Lab are experts on polymer compartments like polyelectrolyte coacervates, having previously described how these materials act under different phase changes.

The PME researchers used small-angle X-ray scattering at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source to look at the internal structure of coacervates as the wet-dry conditions changed. They found that as the water sample dried, the concentration of RNA increased, but the RNA concentration inside the polymer compartments remained constant. They also found that the salt concentration of the sample increased as the water dried, weakening polymer interactions, which made the compartments actually more hydrated.

Repetitive cycles of hydration and dehydration "caused a progressive evolution of the compartments," Tirrell said, which permanently changed the composition of the coacervates.

"This changes the physical properties of the coacervate and affects molecule exchange, which could be a clue for how early life began," said Alexander Marras, a postdoctoral researcher in Tirrell's group.

Designing drug delivery systems

Understanding how dynamic conditions affect coacervates could have implications in electronic devices that use the polymer compartments in visual displays, or in drug delivery. Compartments like this could be used to carry a therapy within the body, and understanding how polymers assemble and react to changing conditions is key to designing new ways to deliver drugs.

Marras, former UChicago postdoc Jeffrey Ting, and researchers with Penn State forged this research collaboration during a Gordon Research Conference in Switzerland. Penn State researchers, who ultimately led this research, were interested in studying how coacervates behaved on the early Earth. During a hike on a glacier, Ting, Marras, and the Penn State researchers discussed how they could collaborate by using the Advanced Photon Source to see inside the compartments.

"Argonne is really a world-class facility that allows us to be at the forefront of this kind of work," Marras said.

After cancer surgery, the crucial question is: Are there possibly cancer cells left behind that can continue to grow, or has the entire tumor actually been removed? To find out, the tumor is examined by pathologists. Until now, thin sections were made which were then analyzed under a microscope. A new technique, developed at TU Wien (Vienna), together with the TU Munich, could now initiate a revolution in pathology: Tumor tissue is made transparent and illuminated with a special ultramicroscope. This makes it possible to analyze all the tissue removed in 3D without the need for slicing up the tumor. That way, the reliability of the diagnosis can be significantly increased. The new technique has now been published in the journal "Nature Scientific Reports".

Tissue samples that save lives

"Under the microscope you can see whether the removed tumor is surrounded by a seam of healthy tissue," says Prof. Hans Ulrich Dodt from the Institute of Solid State Electronics at TU Wien. "If this is the case, the patient often only needs to recover. If this is not the case, it may be necessary to perform follow-up surgery or additional radiation therapy. Especially after breast cancer operations this happens frequently."

The problem is that it is never possible to completely examine the entire tumor in this way. "Usually, an approximately 4 micrometer thick section is made every 5 millimeters. This means that only about one thousandth of the entire tumor volume is actually examined." In critical areas, a finer spacing may be chosen, but it is impossible to study the entire tissue in this way.

Transparent tissue: ultramicroscopy

However, with the help of a special technique called ultramicroscopy, it is now possible to make the entire tumor visible in three dimensions - Inna Sabdyusheva worked on this in the context of her dissertation (at TU Wien and the Center for Brain Research at MedUni Vienna). She developed a chemical process to "clear" breast cancer samples - they become transparent, but the structure remains unchanged and the cancer cells can still be recognized.

The transparent sample is then examined under an ultramicroscope. A so-called "light sheet", a thin layer of laser beams, penetrates the tissue. The sample is then analyzed layer by layer, and the computer can then display any section through the tumor, even though it has never been cut up. In this way, insights are gained that were previously impossible: In some tissue samples, for example, milk ducts clogged with cancer cells could be seen.

The chemical process on which Inna Sabdyusheva's work is based was developed at TU Wien by Klaus Becker. A special optical system with which particularly long and thin light sheets can be generated was constructed by Saideh Saghafi in the same research group. This was crucial for the current work - the resolution of this microscopy method depends on how thin the light sheet is.

The investigations were carried out in close cooperation with the Pathological Institute of the TU Munich, which also provided most of the tumor pieces from breast cancer operations. The Clinic for Surgery at Vienna General Hospital also provided pieces of other tumor types.

Revolution in pathology

"We are convinced that this method will revolutionize pathology," says Hans- Ulrich Dodt. "In less time than before, greater reliability in examinations can be achieved. In addition, the new 3D method should also provide completely new insights into cancer development in the future. Since it is now possible for the first time to display the spread of cancer cells in human surgical specimens in three dimensions, understanding of tumor biology should also make significant progress.

The new 3D tumor microscopy should make work in pathology much easier. "Instead of inspecting a large number of histological sections under the microscope, pathologists will in future be able to scroll through the images with the mouse, similarly to how radiologists are working today," says Hans-Ulrich Dodt. The enormous amount of image data that is generated in the process also opens up completely new opportunities in the field of artificial intelligence, believes Dodt: "Perhaps such computer programs could speed up and simplify tumor diagnostics in the future."

Ecological monitoring is the recording of biological diversity and its spatial and temporal changes. The lack of monitoring programmes which cover a broad range of species often means that, in many countries, no clear assessments can be made about the status of biodiversity. As a result, factors which may lead to declines cannot be identified and remedied.

The necessary information, and the various stakeholders such as public authorities, scientists, specialist organisations, nature conservation associations and certain professional groups from the private sector would definitely be available in many places. However, they cannot always work in a coordinated way, as they often operate within very different institutional frameworks. Valuable knowledge and data are therefore not pooled, and gaps in the collection of data not filled. "This is why we have to create a culture of integration involving all those who are active in biodiversity monitoring," says the first author of the study, Dr Hjalmar Kühl, ecologist at iDiv and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA).

Framework of trust

This can be achieved by bringing the various stakeholder groups together. "What's needed is a framework within which decisions are not always made centrally, but in which the various groups network, trust each other and decide together what needs to be done," says Kühl. "This self-organisation can increase the participants' motivation and thus ensure greater acceptance on the part of the respective interest groups and anchor the topic of biodiversity more firmly in the public consciousness."

To achieve this, workshops and symposia could bring relevant stakeholders together to collaborate in developing appropriate incentives and the necessary technical requirements for the exchange of data, results and analyses. "New approaches for the analysis of a wide range of monitoring data show how the information provided by a monitoring network can be interlinked with that from others," says co-author Dr Diana Bowler, ecologist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and iDiv. This allows the activities of various interest groups and individuals to be easily integrated.

In Europe, between 80 and 90 percent of biodiversity data is collected by volunteers

The assistance and involvement of volunteers, participants in Citizen Science programmes and species experts from professional associations is indispensable in many cases. For example, it was only through a study by the Krefeld Entomological Association which, in 2017, revealed the severe decline in flying insects that insect protection became a topic for the political agenda in Germany. Particularly, in the case of species groups such as beetles, hoverflies and cicadas, for whose identification the authorities rely on taxonomic expertise, volunteer participation is important for long-term surveys.

"There's a long history of volunteer natural scientists who are fascinated by biological diversity and work for its preservation," says last author Prof Aletta Bonn, research group leader at the UFZ, iDiv and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. "This citizen science data can be integrated with other monitoring data to identify trends and information gaps. A cultural change regarding cooperation in science is required - towards integrated monitoring for sustainable biodiversity protection."

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 27, 2020 - Treating cancer without debilitating side effects has long been the holy grail of oncologists, and researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Switzerland's Lausanne University Hospital/University of Luassanne (CHUV/UNIL) may have found it.

Charles Limoli, professor of radiation oncology at UCI, and Marie-Catherine Vozenin, associate professor of radiation oncology at CHUV/UNIL, used an ultra-high dose rate of radiation therapy to eliminate brain tumors in mice, bypassing key side effects usually caused by cranial irradiation. Their findings are published in Clinical Cancer Research.

"It's not unreasonable to expect that in 10 years, this may become a widespread option for radiotherapy patients worldwide," Limoli said.

Traditional radiation therapy exposes a tumor and nearby normal tissue to radiation for several minutes at a time, but FLASH radiation therapy (FLASH-RT) allows delivery of the same dose in only tenths of seconds. The speed eliminates many of the toxicities that normally plague cancer survivors long after radiation treatments, significantly decreasing side effects such as inflammation and impairments to cognition.

As in traditional radiation therapy, the researchers fractionated the dose - divided the total over several sessions. Using FLASH-RT, they found that the same total dose of radiation delivered at quicker dose rates removed brain tumors just as effectively as the traditional method.

"This is very important, since fractionation is the standard in the clinic and the easiest way to transfer FLASH-RT at the clinical level," said principal investigator Vozenin, an adjunct professor at UCI.

Though this work focused on the brain, FLASH-RT has also been used to treat lung, skin and intestinal cancers, while still preventing many radiation-induced complications. These additional studies have been successful across several types of animals, including fish, mice, pigs, cats and one human subject.

"It seems that this treatment is going to be universally beneficial for most cancer types," Limoli said.

Now that researchers have verified that the method works, groups around the world are developing machines that would make FLASH technology available in clinics. One device is awaiting approval in the U.S. and Europe, and Vozenin plans to use it in two clinical trials at CHUV early next year.

Meanwhile, she and Limoli are investigating the mechanisms behind FLASH-RT's beneficial effects to better understand how the technology works.

Said Limoli: "In the last 30 or 40 years, I'd say, there's been nothing in the field of radiation sciences as exciting as this."

Ithaca, NY--A new study from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology confirms that most birds--but not all--synchronize their migratory movements with seasonal changes in vegetation greenness. This is the first study of its kind to cover the Western Hemisphere during the year-long life cycle of North American migratory birds that feed on vegetation, seeds, nectar, insects, or meat. The findings were published today in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

"As you might expect, migration synchronization with vegetation greenness is strongest for birds that eat vegetation, seeds, or both, during spring and autumn migration, but especially during spring," says lead author Frank La Sorte at the Cornell Lab. "You could say they follow the 'green wave' north in the spring and then follow it in reverse during the fall, keeping pace with a wave that is retreating ahead of the North American winter."

The "green wave" of maturing and dying vegetation is plainly visible in this animation based on data from the MODIS imaging sensors onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. Vegetation greenness in Central and South America remains relatively stable except in the eastern portion of the continent. Animation by Frank La Sorte, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

But the pattern does not hold for carnivores, such as hawks and eagles, in the West during either migration period. The evidence is also weak for synchronization among insect-eating birds during spring migration in eastern and central portions of the United States. Birds that rely on nectar--hummingbirds primarily--also showed looser ties to vegetation greenness in the West. The reason for the lack of synchronization for insect-eating birds in the East is a massive geographical barrier to migration: the Gulf of Mexico. Birds wintering in Central and South America cannot detect vegetation changes on the U.S. side of the Gulf in spring and vice versa in the fall.

Scientists used data from satellites to estimate the greenness of vegetation year round and cross-referenced that data with eBird observations for 230 North American migratory bird species from 2006 through 2018. eBird is the Lab's worldwide bird observation reporting platform. So why does all this matter? Climate change.

Vegetation green-up in the spring is controlled by changes in temperature and precipitation; die-back of vegetation in the autumn is controlled by temperature and hours of daylight--all factors important in timing of migrations.

"Our findings emphasize the need to better understand the environmental cues that regulate migratory behavior and the implications for migratory birds if these cues change," La Sorte says. "Unchecked climate change means it's more likely that there will be a mismatch--migratory birds during stopover or when arriving on their breeding or wintering grounds could miss the peak food supply--no matter what they eat."

Research at Washington State University sheds new light on one molecule that may be used to treat a heart condition that can lead to stroke, heart attack and other forms of heart disease.

That molecule is mavacamten. Scientists at WSU's Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience department discovered it suppresses excessive force generated by hyper-contractile muscle cells in the human heart.

The research, published in the British Journal of Pharmacology, is especially significant for those with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition where the left ventricle wall of the heart is enlarged. If left untreated, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can lead to cardiac fibrosis, stroke, heart attack, heart failure, other forms of heart disease and a condition known as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome.

"Too much contraction leads to thicker, stiffer hearts, where the heart contracts so much it is unable to properly fill with blood as the heart relaxes," said Peter Awinda, first author on the paper and scientific manager in Bertrand Tanner's laboratory at WSU. "This ends up pushing less blood out of the heart with each heartbeat and, in turn, less blood pumped throughout the body like it is supposed to be."

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy affects men and women equally. About 1 out of every 500 people have the disease.While there are some genetic markers to detect it, most people only discover their condition after a cardiac event that often results in a hospital visit.

The research

The project is a collaboration between the Tanner Laboratory in Pullman and Ken Campbell's laboratory at University of Kentucky. Campbell manages a human cardiac biobank, where he ships tissue samples frozen in liquid nitrogen to Tanner, who is the principal investigator for the research.

After arriving in Pullman, the cardiac tissue was thawed, 'skinned' to remove the cell membrane, and trimmed to the right dimensions for an experiment.

Three micrograms of the drug, mavacamten, were then applied to some of the prepared tissue samples; other samples did not receive the drug and were labeled as controls.

To activate muscle contraction Awinda applied calcium to the tissue.

"As we increase calcium concentration it encourages contraction and the muscle goes from relaxed to contracted, and so we were testing the drug against these different levels of force," Awinda said.

He found the drug reduces the maximal force of contraction by nearly 20 to 30% compared to the controls.

"The drug is successful because it is an inhibitor of myosin, which is one of the proteins required for the muscle contraction process," Awinda said. "The research shows this could be a good candidate to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy."

The collaborative study was made possible by organ donors and their families. The work was paid for by a $300,000 grant from the American Heart Association to Tanner and Campbell.

These initial studies helped Tanner and Campbell add an additional $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to support additional work in this area over the next 4 years.

Next steps

One of the research team's next goals is to see how mice with a human mutation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy respond to the drug.

Awinda said researching mice expressing the human gene is significant because it may provide a connection to what is seen in humans.

"When we see the same effects in the mice samples that we see in the human tissues, the drug is doing what it is intended to," he said. "Both studies really help reinforce our understanding and inform us of what we see happening."