Earth

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Field trials in the Northwest and Southwest show that poplar trees can be genetically modified to reduce negative impacts on air quality while leaving their growth potential virtually unchanged, says an Oregon State University researcher who collaborated on the study.

The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are important because poplar plantations cover 9.4 million hectares globally - more than double the land used 15 years ago. Poplars are fast-growing trees that are a source of biofuel and other products including paper, pallets, plywood and furniture frames.

A drawback of poplar plantations is that the trees are also a major producer of isoprene, the key component of natural rubber and a pre-pollutant.

Increases in isoprene negatively affect regional air quality and also unbalance the global energy budget by leading to higher levels of atmospheric aerosol production, more ozone in the air and longer methane life. Ozone and methane are greenhouse gases, and ozone is also a respiratory irritant.

Poplar and other trees including oak, eucalyptus and conifers produce isoprene in their leaves in response to climate stress such as high temperatures.

A research collaboration led by scientists at the University of Arizona, the Institute of Biochemical Plant Pathology in Germany, Portland State University and OSU genetically modified poplars not to produce isoprene, then tested them in three-year trials at plantations in Oregon and Arizona.

They found that trees whose isoprene production was genetically suppressed did not suffer any ill effects in terms of photosynthesis or "biomass production" - they were able to make fuel and grow as well as trees that were producing isoprene.

Steve Strauss, distinguished professor of forest biotechnology in the OSU College of Forestry, said there are a couple of possible explanations for the findings.

One is that, without the ability to produce isoprene, the modified poplars appear to be making "compensatory protective compounds."

Another is that most of the trees' growth takes place during cooler times of the year, so heat stress, which triggers isoprene production, likely has little effect on photosynthesis at that time.

"Our findings suggest that isoprene emissions can be diminished without affecting biomass production in temperate forest plantations," Strauss said. "That's what we wanted to examine - can you turn down isoprene production, and does it matter to biomass productivity and general plant health? It looks like it doesn't impair either significantly. In Arizona, where it's super hot, if isoprene mattered to productivity, it would show up in a striking way, but it did not. Plants are smart - they'll compensate and do something different if they need to."

In this study, scientists used a genetic engineering tool known as RNA interference. RNA, ribonucleic acid, transmits protein coding instructions from each cell's DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, which holds the organism's genetic code.

"RNA interference is like a vaccination - it triggers a natural and highly specific mechanism whereby specific targets are suppressed, be they the RNA of viruses or endogenous genes," Strauss said. "You can also do this with CRISPR at the DNA level, and it usually works even better."

CRISPR, short for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats," targets specific stretches of genetic code for DNA editing at exact locations.

"You could also do the same thing through conventional breeding," Strauss said. "It would be a lot less efficient and precise, and it might be a nightmare for breeders who may need to reassess all of their germplasm and possibly exclude their most productive cultivars as a result, but it could be done."

Corresponding author Russ Monson of the University of Arizona said the study lays the groundwork for future isoprene research, including in different growing environments.

"The fact that cultivars of poplar can be produced in a way that ameliorates atmospheric impacts without significantly reducing biomass production gives us a lot of optimism," Monson said. "We're striving toward greater environmental sustainability while developing plantation?scale biomass sources that can serve as fossil fuel alternatives. We also need to keep working toward solutions to the current regulatory and market roadblocks that make large-scale research and commercial uses for genetically engineered trees difficult."

Sustainable forest management systems and their certifying bodies operate under the assumption that genetically modified equates to dangerous, Strauss said.

"If something is GMO, it's guilty until proven safe in the minds of many and in our regulations today," he said. "These technologies are new tools that require scientific research to evaluate and refine them on a case-by-case basis. We have a huge need for expanded production of sustainable and renewable forest products and ecological services, and biotechnologies can help meet that need."

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (January 06, 2020)-- Scientists at Tufts University have identified a molecular mechanism that could reverse the genetic defect responsible for Friedreich's ataxia, a neurodegenerative disease that leaves its victims with difficulty walking, a loss of sensation in the arms and legs and impaired speech caused by degeneration of nerve tissue in the spinal cord. The researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the genetic anomaly that causes the disease - the multiple repetition of a three letter DNA sequence - could potentially be reversed by enhancing a natural process that contracts the repetitive sequences in living tissue.

Friedreich's ataxia is a genetic disease caused by the presence of an expanded repetition of a three letter genetic sequence, GAA in the FXN gene, which encodes for frataxin, a protein required for proper function of the mitochondria - the cell's "batteries" that generate the fuel to keep all other cell functions running. Healthy people usually have 8 to 34 GAA repeats, carriers have 35 to 70 repeats, and individuals that exhibit disease symptoms have more than 70 -- and commonly have hundreds of repeats. With more DNA repeats, it becomes increasingly difficult for the cells to "read" the FXN gene and produce the protein required by the mitochondria, which in turn cease to function properly. One in 40,000 individuals has this condition.

"The DNA repeats literally gum up the works," said Sergei Mirkin, professor and chair of the Department of Biology in the School of Arts & Sciences at Tufts University. "They can also cause other mutations in the surrounding DNA, or make chromosomes extremely fragile, breaking into pieces, or rearranging themselves. If we can shrink the DNA repetition in tissues to levels found in healthy people, we might be able to stabilize the DNA and reduce the effects of disease."

It is known that in patients' tissues, the GAA repeats are unstable and continuously expand and contract. Understanding the mechanism of GAA repeat expansion and contraction - especially contraction - is important to developing this strategy for battling the currently incurable disease. Numerous theories have been advanced as to how the DNA repeats contract, although the precise details of the mechanism remained largely unknown. In order to pinpoint the actual mechanism, the authors of the study developed an experimental system in yeast (Saccharormyces cerevisiae) to quantitatively measure the effects of different interventions on contractions of DNA repeats, and found that contractions happened usually during the process of DNA replication, in the course of what is referred to as "lagging strand synthesis."

When the two strands of DNA are copied, one strand is replicated in a continuous manner, while the other must be assembled from smaller pieces stitched together. This is the lagging strand, so named because its more complex synthesis limits the rate at which the DNA can be copied.

The Tufts researchers found that the contraction of repeats depends on the ability of the DNA repeat to form an unusual triple-helical DNA structure along the lagging strand. The normal structure of DNA is a double helix consisting of two strands winding around each other. A triple helix, in contrast, consists of three strands wrapped in a helical twist.

As the replication machinery moves across the lagging strand, it cannot easily bypass a triplex formed by the repeat. When the replication machinery jumps over this triple helix hurdle, the copied DNA strand ends up with fewer GAA repeats.

"While these results were uncovered in a yeast model, they do provide us with a clue into the mechanism of DNA repeat instability in Friedreich's ataxia," said Alexandra Khristich, graduate student in Mirkin's lab and first author of the study. "I hope that our discovery would become a starting point for the potential development of therapeutic strategies that tip the balance toward DNA repeat contraction in patient tissues"

For the first time, scientists have provided reliable regional estimates of land subsidence and water-level rise in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta. Depending on the region of the delta, water-level rise could reach 85 to 140 cm by 2100. The work, published in PNAS on 6 January 2020 by researchers from the CNRS, IRD, BRGM, La Rochelle Université, Université des Antilles and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (1), should provide input for future impact studies and adaptation plans.

Although the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta is the largest and most densely populated delta in the world (2), and one of the places most vulnerable to climate change, the extent and impact of water-level rise there remain poorly known. The area, which covers two thirds of Bangladesh and part of eastern India, is already regularly prone to flooding, favoured by intense monsoon rainfall, rising sea levels, river flows and land subsidence. However, it is difficult to disentangle these various factors. In addition, forecasts carried out so far have been based on highly localised measurements of water level.

To overcome these difficulties, the researchers analysed monthly readings from 101 gauges measuring water and sea levels across the delta. By aggregating the data over geographical areas in order to filter out local effects and offset quality differences between gauges, they obtained robust estimates for water-level changes. Between 1968 and 2012, water level increased by 3 mm/year on average, slightly more than global mean sea level rise (2 mm/year during the same period).

They then estimated the contribution of land subsidence, obtained by subtracting from absolute sea level (3) the measurements of relative water level obtained previously. According to their calculations, maximum land subsidence in the delta between 1993 and 2012 was between 1 and 7 mm/year. Although not negligible, these values are lower than some local measurements (e.g. 1-2 cm/year in Dhaka) that have been used as a reference until now.

If subsidence continues at the same rate, and even under a greenhouse gas mitigation scenario, water-level rise in the delta, depending on the area, could reach 85 to 140 cm by the end of the century compared to the period 1986-2005. This is twice as high as the projections provided in the latest IPCC report, which did not take land subsidence into account.

This work should help to improve forecasts of water level in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, and thus lead to refine impact studies and possible adaptation scenarios for its 200 million inhabitants.

A new submarine volcano was formed off the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean in 2018. This was shown by an oceanographic campaign in May 2019. Now an international team led by the scientist Simone Cesca from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ has illuminated the processes deep inside the Earth before and during the formation of the new volcano.

It is as if the researchers had deciphered a new type of signal from the Earth's interior that indicates a dramatic movement of molten rocks before the eruption. With their specially developed seismological methods, the researchers are reconstructing the partial emptying of one of the deepest and largest active magma reservoirs ever discovered in the upper mantle. The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Since May 2018, an unusual sequence of earthquakes has been recorded off-coast the island of Mayotte in the Comoros archipelago between Africa and Madagascar. Seismic activity began with a swarm of thousands of 'seemingly tectonic' earthquakes, culminating in an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 in May 2018. Mostly since June 2018, however, a completely new form of earthquake signal has emerged that was so strong that it could be recorded up to a thousand kilometres away. These 20 to 30 minute long signals are characterized by particularly harmonic, low frequencies, almost monochromatic, similar to a large bell or a double bass, and are called Very Long Period (VLP) signals. Although the centre of the seismic activity was located almost 35 kilometres offshore the east of the island, a continuous lowering and eastward motion of the earth's surface at Mayotte had begun at the same time as the massive swarms of VLP events started, accumulating to almost 20 centimetres to date.

Although there was no evidence of earlier volcanic activity in the epicentre of the seismic activity, GFZ scientists had suspected magmatic processes from the beginning, as quake swarms in the upper earth crust often arise as a reaction to the rise of magma and VLPs in earlier years were associated with the collapse of large caldera volcanoes. The special frequency content of the VLP signals is caused by the resonance oscillation of the buried magma chamber. The deeper the vibrations, the larger the magma reservoir. However, the earthquake swarms under the ocean floor were much deeper than with other volcanoes and the resonance tones of the VLPs were unusually low and strong.

An international team led by GFZ scientist Simone Cesca analysed seismological and geodetic data from the region to study these observations and their evolution over time. However, the investigations were complicated by the fact that there was no seismic network on the ocean floor and therefore only measurements were available at great distances on Mayotte, Madagascar and in Africa. "We tried to improve the unfavourable initial situation by developing special new analytical methods such as cluster and directional beam methods," says Cesca.

The team identified different activity phases within the sequence of events from May 2018 to today. The initial swarm phase indicated a rapid upward movement of magma from a deep mantle reservoir more than 30 kilometres below the Earth's surface. Once an open channel had formed from the Earth's mantle to the seabed, the magma began to flow unhindered and form a new underwater volcano. A French oceanographic campaign recently confirmed the formation of the submarine volcano, whose location coincides with the reconstructed magma rise.

In this phase, the apparent tectonic earthquake activity decreased again, while the lowering of the ground on the island of Mayotte began. Likewise, long-lasting monofrequency VLP signals started. "We interpret this as a sign of the collapse of the deep magma chamber off the coast of Mayotte," explains Eleonora Rivalta, co-author of the scientific team. "It is the deepest (~30 km) and largest magma reservoir in the upper mantle (more than 3.4 cubic kilometres) to date, which is beginning to empty abruptly."

"Since the seabed lies 3 kilometres below the water surface, almost nobody noticed the enormous eruption. However, there are still possible hazards for the island of Mayotte today, as the Earth's crust above the deep reservoir could continue to collapse, triggering stronger earthquakes," says Torsten Dahm, Head of the section Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes at the GFZ.

A study at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences examined the efficiency of irrigation schedules used for container-grown plants to determine if they could be improved with specific daily adjustments.

Jeff Million and Tom Yeager conducted two experiments to monitor the effect of irrigation schedules on plant growth and water usage.

The researchers present their findings in their article "Periodic Versus Real-time Adjustment of a Leaching Fraction-based Microirrigation Schedule for Container-grown Plants" published in the open-access journal HortScience, published by the American Society for Horticultural Science.

The goal of efficient irrigation is to supply enough water for profitable production, but not so much that unnecessary leaching occurs. Million and Yeager determined that one method for monitoring irrigation efficiency under a wide range of production conditions is to note the amount of container drainage and then divide that by the amount of irrigation water applied to the container. The result is called the leaching fraction.

The leaching fraction is defined as the degree of extra irrigation water that must be applied above the amount required by the crop in order to maintain acceptable substrate water content.

Open-field production of 524,000 irrigated acres of horticultural plants in the United States used 205 billion gallons of water in a recent year. Fifty percent of this water was pumped from groundwater sources. These figures are concerning because water resources for irrigation are becoming increasingly limited--technologies to conserve water are needed.

Million and Yeager devised two experiments to determine if a leaching fraction-guided irrigation practice with fixed irrigation run times could be improved by using an evapotranspiration-based scheduling program to make additional adjustments to irrigation run times based on real-time weather information, including rain.

Evapotranspiration is the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and by transpiration from plants.

Although sprinkler irrigation is used to produce plants in small containers in high densities, direct application of water using spray-stake irrigation is used to produce plants in larger containers that are placed in low densities. Compared with in-ground production, container production of plants with sprinkler irrigation is inherently inefficient, as containers occupy only a fraction of the production area even when closely spaced.

Direct application of water to the container with spray-stake irrigation can also be inefficient. Typical water delivery rates for spray-stakes are much higher than for typical sprinkler systems so that small changes in irrigation run times can equate to large changes in application volumes and higher chances of overwatering.

Efficiency of spray-stake irrigation can be improved by using a cyclic irrigation system that applies water multiple times per day rather than relying on a single application.

A tested irrigation system with pressure-compensating emitters applied irrigation uniformly and consistently, whereas in a nursery with large irrigated areas, irrigation water may be distributed less uniformly, and irrigation applications may be unpredictably skipped for a host of reasons.

Million and Yeager used a medium-flow, down-spray emitter in a container that represented the smaller size of the range of containers that are typically in nurseries and production facilities. This likely resulted in a more efficient retention of water than would have occurred using the same spray-stake in a larger container.

The researchers found that small daily adjustments to the amount of water applied based on evapotranspiration were not beneficial for saving water compared to adjustments made every 1 to 3 weeks, based on leaching fraction tests. The fact that plant growth was similar for all plants indicates, as Yeager adds, "the leaching fraction test provides a way to justify the amount of irrigation applied and the test is easy to conduct in the nursery."

NASA's Aqua satellite provided a near visible image and analyzed the cloud top temperatures in Tropical Cyclone Blake, located along the northern coast of Western Australia. Tropical Cyclone Blake is just north of Broome, a coastal town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

On January 6, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology posted warnings and watches for Blake. The Warning zone stretches from Cockatoo Island to De Grey. The Watch zone extends from De Grey to Whim Creek, including Port Hedland and extending inland to include Marble Bar and Nullagine.

In addition, there are several community alerts in effect. A Yellow alert is in effect for residents in or near communities from Cockatoo Island to Bidyadanga, including Bidyadanga and Broome but not including Derby, need to take action and get ready to shelter from a cyclone. A Blue alert is in effect for residents in or near communities from Bidyadanga to De Grey, need to prepare for cyclonic weather.

One of the ways NASA researches tropical cyclones is using infrared data that provides temperature information. Cloud top temperatures identify where the strongest storms are located. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and they have the colder cloud temperatures.

On Jan. 6 at 12:35 a.m. EST (0535 UTC/1:35 p.m. AWST) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Cyclone Blake's cloud top temperatures using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS showed the strongest storms contained cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than 210 Kelvin (minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit/minus 63.1 degrees Celsius) around the center. NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

Tropical cyclones do not always have uniform strength, and some sides have stronger sides than others, so knowing where the strongest sides of the storms are located helps forecasters. NASA then provides data to tropical cyclone meteorologists so they can incorporate it in their forecasts. Satellite data has shown that the strongest storms associated with the system is currently confined to the southwestern portion of the circulation, and the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted the low-level circulation remains robust.

On January 6 at 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that Blake has maximum sustained winds near 50 knots (48 mph/93 kph). Forecasters believe that Blake has peaked in intensity and after today, it will begin a weakening trend. Blake was centered near 17.7 degrees south latitude and 121.9 degrees east longitude, approximately 32 nautical miles north-northwest of Broome, Australia. Blake has tracked south-southwestward and is forecast to continue moving in that general direction.

Forecasters at JTWC anticipate landfall to the east of Port Hedland between 24 and 26 hours (from Jan. 6 at 10 a.m. EST/1500 UTC). After landfall, the system is expected to continue moving inland and slowly dissipate by 72 hours.

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

The AIRS instrument is one of six instruments flying on board NASA's Aqua satellite, launched on May 4, 2002.

The protein, called syndecan-4, combines with fellow cell membrane proteins, called integrins, to form protruding 'hands' that sense the environment outside the cell.

Both proteins sit in the cell membrane, with one end pointing inside the cell and the other outside. They are therefore in a prime position to sense conditions outside the cell and convert signals to biochemical messages that change conditions inside the cell. In doing so, they're able to drive some of the cellular processes behind cancer and other diseases.

The early-stage research, conducted by a team at Imperial College London, Queen Mary University of London, and Tampere University in Finland, could present a new research pathway and drug target for certain cancer types.

Lead researcher Dr Armando del Río Hernández, of Imperial's Department of Bioengineering, said: "Our findings could have immediate implications in the fields of cell and developmental biology, and lead to developments in several diseases including cancer and fibrosis."

The paper is published today in Nature Materials.

Helping hands

Syndecan-4 exists in nearly every human cell and is already known for its role in cardiovascular disease. However its potential roles in cancer biology and drug development have thus far been overlooked.

To study syndecan-4 the research team, led by Dr del Río Hernández, used biophysical, cell biology, and computational techniques.

The team found that activating these cellular 'hands' triggers a pathway with key roles in disease development, involving a cellular protein called the yes-associated protein (YAP).

YAP triggers some of the typical hallmarks of cancer. It reduces cells' ability to programme their own death, in a process called apoptosis. Cells initiate apoptosis when they age or malfunction, so halting apoptosis allows diseased, even cancerous, cells to spread. YAP also controls the development of blood vessels - a hallmark of cancer as tumour growth requires extra blood flow.

They also found that syndecan-4 helps cells respond to movements outside themselves, by creating tension in the cytoskeleton - the 'scaffolding' within cells. This makes cells stiffen, which activates an enzyme called PI3K that regulates additional hallmarks of cancer.

It does this by converting the movements outside the cell into biochemical signals which, the researchers found, 'tune' the way the cells respond to tension and movement.

Dr del Río Hernández said: "The way cells interact with their environment could inform how we engineer tissues and mimic human organs for drug design. Syndecan-4 could now play a fundamental part in this endeavour."

Co-lead author Dr Stephen Thorpe of Queen Mary University of London said: "As syndecan-4 is expressed on almost all of our cells, the mechanisms we've uncovered could be targeted to alter any number of diseases and biological processes."

Professor Vesa Hytönen of Tampere University said: "Better understanding of cellular mechanosensing opens possibilities to develop treatments for conditions like cancer and fibrosis."

Onward pathways

Next, the research team will further investigate syndecan-4's links to specific diseases like pancreatic cancer.

Dr del Río Hernandez said: "Our next approach will involve syndecan-4 as a key contributor in disease. We hope this will lead to new insights into disease mechanisms."

The increased freshwater from melting Antarctic ice sheets plus increased wind has reduced the amount of oxygen in the Southern Ocean and made it more acidic and warmer, according to new research led by University of Arizona geoscientists.

The researchers found Southern Ocean waters had changed by comparing shipboard measurements taken from 1990 to 2004 with measurements taken by a fleet of microsensor-equipped robot floats from 2012 to 2019. The observed oxygen loss and warming around the Antarctic coast is much larger than predicted by a climate model, which could have implications for predictions of ice melt.

The discovery drove the research team to improve current climate change computer models to better reflect the environmental changes around Antarctica.

"It's the first time we've been able to reproduce the new changes in the Southern Ocean with an Earth system model," said co-author Joellen Russell, a professor of geosciences.

The research is the first to incorporate the Southern Ocean's increased freshwater plus additional wind into a climate change model, she said. The team used the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ESM2M model.

Previously, global climate change models did not predict the current physical and chemical changes in the Southern Ocean, said Russell, who holds the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair in Integrative Science.

"We underestimated how much influence that added freshwater and wind would have. When we add these two components to the model, we can directly and beautifully reproduce what has happened over the last 30 years," she said.

Now, models will be able to do a better job of predicting future environmental changes in and around Antarctica, she said, adding that the Southern Ocean takes up most of the heat produced by anthropogenic global warming.

"One out of every eight carbon molecules that comes out of your tailpipe goes into the Southern Ocean," Russell said. "Our model says that in the future, we may not have as big of a carbon sink as we were hoping."

First author Ben Bronselaer led the effort to improve the climate models when he was a postdoctoral research associate in Russell's lab. He is now a meteorological and oceanographic engineer at the British multinational oil and gas company BP in London.

The team's paper, "Importance of wind and meltwater for observed chemical and physical changes in the Southern Ocean," is scheduled for publication in Nature Geoscience on Jan. 6. A list of additional co-authors and their affiliations is at the bottom of this release.

To develop a better understanding of the Earth's climate system, scientists constantly refine their global climate change models.

As part of that effort, the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling Project, or SOCCOM, studies the Southern Ocean and its influence on climate.

The National Science Foundation funds SOCCOM, with additional support provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and NASA.

Russell leads the SOCCOM group that improves how the Southern Ocean is represented in computer models of global climate. She's been studying the ocean around Antarctica for 25 years.

"My first research cruise in the Southern Ocean was in 1994. It was in the winter in the deep South Pacific. I had grown up in Alaska, and I knew what a blizzard felt like - and I had never felt winds like that before," she said.

She's been "obsessed" by the extreme Antarctic winter winds ever since, she said.

Russell and other scientists have been taking shipboard measurements in the waters around Antarctica for decades, but winter conditions make that extremely difficult. Moreover, the extent of the winter sea ice makes taking nearshore measurements from ships impossible, she said.

The robot floats SOCCOM began deploying in 2014 have solved that problem.

"The robot floats can go under the winter ice and work all winter long collecting data. The robot floats are the revolution in how we can even imagine looking at the evolution of the ice and the ocean," she said. "We had never seen the winter-time chemistry under the ice."

The floats revealed how much Antarctic waters had changed in the last several decades - a development global climate models had not predicted.

Bronselaer, Russell and their colleagues had previously added additional freshwater from melting ice sheets to climate models, but that revision did not reproduce the recent changes in the Southern Ocean's chemistry.

Increasing the freshwater and the amount of Antarctic wind in the model solved the problem - now the model correctly represents the current state of Antarctic waters.

The team also used the improved model to forecast conditions in the Southern Ocean. The forecast suggests that in the future, the Southern Ocean may not take up as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as previously predicted.

Russell plans to continue pursuing the Antarctic's winter winds.

"We didn't observe it - but the model says we need it," she said. "I'm proposing to NASA a satellite to go hunt for the missing wind."

Colombian infants exposed to Zika virus in the womb showed neurodevelopmental delays as toddlers, despite having "normal" brain imaging and head circumference at birth, a finding that underscores the importance of long-term neurodevelopmental follow-up for Zika-exposed infants, according to a study published online Jan. 6, 2020, in JAMA Pediatrics.

"These infants had no evidence of Zika deficits or microcephaly at birth. Neurodevelopmental deficits, including declines in mobility and social cognition, emerged in their first year of life even as their head circumference remained normal," says Sarah B. Mulkey, M.D. Ph.D., a fetal/neonatal neurologist at Children's National Hospital and the study's first author. "

About one-third of these newborns who underwent postnatal head ultrasound had nonspecific imaging results, which we believe are the first published results finding a link between subtle brain injuries and impaired neuromotor development in Zika-exposed children."

The multi-institutional research group led by Children's National enrolled pregnant women in Atlántico Department, which hugs the Caribbean coast of Colombia, who had been exposed to Zika, and performed a series of fetal magnetic resonance images (MRI) and ultrasounds as their pregnancies progressed.

Even though their mothers had laboratory-confirmed Zika infections, 77 out of 82 of their offspring were born with no sign of congenital Zika syndrome, a constellation of birth defects that includes severe brain abnormalities, eye problems and congenital contractures, and 70 underwent additional testing of neurodevelopment during infancy. These apparently normal newborns were born between Aug. 1, 2016, and Nov. 30, 2017, at the height of the Zika epidemic, and had normal head circumference.

When they were 4 to 8 months or 9 to 18 months of age, the infants' neurodevelopment was evaluated using two validated tools, the Warner Initial Developmental Evaluation of Adaptive and Functional Skills (a 50-item test of such skills as self-care, mobility, communication and social cognition) and the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (a motor examination of infants in prone, supine, sitting and standing positions). Some infants were assessed during each time point.

Women participating in the study were highly motivated, with 91% following up with appointments, even if it meant traveling hours by bus. In addition to Children's National faculty traveling to Colombia to train staff how to administer the screening instruments, videotaped assessments, MRIs and ultrasounds were read, analyzed and scored at Children's National. According to the study team, the U.S. scoring of Alberta Infant Motor Scale tests administered in Colombia is also unprecedented for a research study and offers the potential of remote scoring of infants' motor skill maturity in regions of the world where pediatric specialists, like child neurologists, are lacking.

"Normally, neurodevelopment in infants and toddlers continues for years, building a sturdy neural network that they later use to carry out complex neurologic and cognitive functions as children enter school," Dr. Mulkey adds. "Our findings underscore the recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all infants exposed to Zika in the womb undergo long-term follow-up, providing an opportunity to intervene earlier."

Find a restaurant. Book a hotel. Choose a product to buy. Online ratings and reviews from other customers can help with making decisions on all of these, and their use has exploded in the past decade.

But online ratings of physicians? A new poll suggests they don't yet hold as much sway with the Americans who use the most health care: people over age 50.

In all, 43% of people between the age of 50 and 80 said they had ever looked up a doctor online to see how others rated him or her, or what was said in their reviews.

One-third of them had done so at least once in the past year, according to new results from the National Poll on Healthy Aging. And two-thirds of them had chosen a doctor due to good online ratings and reviews.

When it comes to choosing a physician, online reviews matter about as much as what an older person hears from family and friends through word of mouth - but only one in five poll respondents called either source of information "very important."

The poll, carried out by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center, involved a national sample of more than 2,200 adults aged 50 to 80. They answered questions about many aspects of online physician ratings.

"People of all ages are turning to the web to find information, so it is not surprising that older Americans are looking up physician ratings online," says David Hanauer, M.D., M.S., an associate professor at the University of Michigan, IHPI member and specialist in clinical informatics who worked on the poll. "But it is a bit of a surprise that these online ratings now carry as much weight as recommendations from family and friends."

What mattered more to older Americans than the number of stars a doctor received online? According to the poll, 61% of all those polled said the wait time for an appointment was very important, and about 40% said that about recommendations from other doctors or the physician's level of experience.

Meanwhile, only 7% of those polled said they had actually posted a review or rating of a doctor online -- even though older adults are much more likely than most younger people to see more than one physician, or to see physicians and other providers multiple times in a year.

"Finding a new doctor can be stressful. Online rating might be one of many sources of information that can help older adults navigate this process," says Preeti Malani, M.D., director of the poll and a professor of internal medicine at U-M.

No matter what, the new poll results suggest that the stereotype of older adults as not Internet-savvy is outdated.

"This survey makes it clear that although online physician reviews and ratings are important to older consumers, they are savvy about information gathered on the internet and have a healthy dose of skepticism around them, too," says Alison Bryant, Ph.D., senior vice president of research for AARP.

Among those who did look at reviews, 69% said they wouldn't select a doctor who had mostly negative reviews. Meanwhile, 71% said that a few bad reviews among a large number of positive reviews wouldn't keep them from choosing a physician.

Just over half of those polled said they thought physicians influence their ratings to make themselves look good. And in fact, 17% of those who posted a review said they did so because the staff at their doctor's office encouraged them to.

Most older adults don't appear to be using a longstanding source of information: state medical boards.

Hanauer, who has faculty positions in the Department of Pediatrics at the U-M Medical School and at the U-M School of Information, is the Program Director for Clinical Informatics at the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research. He is a member of IHPI and of U-M's Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Center.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging results are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of 2,256 adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a wide range of questions online. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have them.

New research from the University of Sheffield shows a certain class of cancer drugs could be used in the future to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

For the first time drugs could be developed to stop the progression of the disease and promote healing within the lungs

COPD makes breathing progressively more difficult for millions of people around the world, including the 1.2 million people living with the disease in the UK

New research has shown the potential for clinically available cancer treatments to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Scientists from the University of Sheffield have been investigating the effect of drugs used to treat a variety of cancers on this inflammatory response; the main driver of lung damage in people living with COPD.

COPD slowly develops over many years - often patients are not aware they have it until their 40s or 50s - and for the 1.2 million people in the UK who have been diagnosed, it makes breathing progressively more difficult.

People living with COPD experience a wide range of symptoms that have an increasing impact on their quality of life, including breathlessness, coughing and frequent chest infections.

The damage to the lungs is driven by inflammation caused by immune cells called neutrophils.

A research team at the University's Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease screened a library of cancer drugs and identified a number of compounds which accelerate the death of the neutrophil cells and promote healing in the lungs.

The research, funded mainly by the Medical Research Council, discovered that specific cancer drugs inhibit a cell signalling process controlling the death-rate of the harmful neutrophils. The team also discovered that editing the genes that encode the cell signalling in the first place, further decreased inflammation.

Dr Lynne Prince, Russell Fellow at the University of Sheffield, said: "COPD is usually treated with steroids and airway muscle relaxants which ease symptoms, but there is currently no effective treatment clinically available to counteract the damage it does to the lungs.

"Our research now shows that inhibitors of these cell signalling processes, or ErbB kinases, could have therapeutic potential in neutrophilic inflammatory disease.

"The hope of these drugs is that they can clear the damaging cells from the lungs of people living with COPD, preventing any further damage and therefore the progression of the disease for the first time."

Repurposing a clinically available drug has many benefits, said Professor Stephen Renshaw, from the University of Sheffield: "We are in desperate need of a new treatment for COPD, millions of people all over the world live with the disease and it has a massive impact on their quality of life, especially as the disease progresses.

"What is exciting about this research is that these drug compounds are available now, which means if our continued research can effectively find a lead compound to benefit people living with COPD, they are ready to use.

"As neutrophilic inflammation is also central to the progression of other chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, the research has the potential to impact not only people living with COPD.

"Our next step is to find a way to test these drugs in people with COPD to understand how the ErbB kinase signalling process has an effect on lung inflammation and to address any potential side effects."

A new submarine volcano was formed off the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean in 2018. This was shown by an oceanographic campaign in May 2019. Now an international team led by the scientist Simone Cesca from the German GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ is illuminating the processes deep inside the earth before and during the formation of the new volcano. It is as if the researchers had deciphered a new type of signal from the Earth's interior that indicates a dramatic movement of molten rocks before the eruption. With their specially developed seismological methods, the researchers are reconstructing the partial emptying of one of the deepest and largest active magma reservoirs ever discovered in the upper mantle. The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Since May 2018, an unusual sequence of earthquakes has been recorded off-coast the island of Mayotte in the Comoros archipelago between Africa and Madagascar. Seismic activity began with a swarm of thousands of "seemingly tectonic" earthquakes, culminating in an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 in May 2018. Mostly since June 2018, however, a completely new form of earthquake signal has emerged that was so strong that it could be recorded up to a thousand kilometers away. These 20 to 30 minute long signals are characterized by particularly harmonic, low frequencies, almost monochromatic, similar to a large bell or a double bass, and are called Very Long Period (VLP) signals. Although the centre of the seismic activity was located almost 35 kilometres offshore the east of the island, a continuous lowering and eastward motion of the earth's surface at Mayotte had begun at the same time as the massive swarms of VLP events started, accumulating to almost 20 cm to date.

Although there was no evidence of earlier volcanic activity in the epicenter of the seismic activity, GFZ scientists had suspected magmatic processes from the beginning, as quake swarms in the upper earth crust often arise as a reaction to the rise of magma and VLPs in earlier years were associated with the collapse of large caldera volcanoes. The special frequency content of the VLP signals is caused by the resonance oscillation of the buried magma chamber. The deeper the vibrations, the larger the magma reservoir. However, the earthquake swarms under the ocean floor were much deeper than with other volcanoes and the resonance tones of the VLPs were unusually low and strong.

An international team led by GFZ scientist Simone Cesca analysed seismological and geodetic data from the region to study these observations and their evolution over time. However, the investigations were complicated by the fact that there was no seismic network on the ocean floor and therefore only measurements were available at great distances on Mayotte, Madagascar and in Africa. "We tried to improve the unfavourable initial situation by developing special new analytical methods such as cluster and directional beam methods," says Cesca.

The team identified different activity phases within the sequence of events from May 2018 to today. The initial swarm phase indicated a rapid upward movement of magma from a deep mantle reservoir more than 30 kilometres below the Earth's surface. Once an open channel had formed from the Earth's mantle to the seabed, the magma began to flow unhindered and form a new underwater volcano. A French oceanographic campaign recently confirmed the birth of the submarine volcano, whose location coincides with the reconstructed magma rise.

In this phase, the apparent tectonic earthquake activity decreased again, while the lowering of the ground on the island of Mayotte began. Likewise, long-lasting monofreququent VLP signals started. "We interpret this as a sign of the collapse of the deep magma chamber off the coast of Mayotte," explains Eleonora Rivalta, co-author of the scientific team. "It is the deepest (~30 km) and largest magma reservoir in the upper mantle (more than 3.4 cubic kilometres) to date, which is beginning to empty abruptly.

"Since the seabed lies 3 kilometers below the water surface, almost nobody noticed the enormous eruption. However, there are still possible hazards for the island of Mayotte today, as the Earth's crust above the deep reservoir could continue to collapse, triggering stronger earthquakes," says Torsten Dahm, Head of the section Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes at the GFZ.

Boston, MA -- Chemical compounds found in skin creams and other personal care products can cause an allergic reaction in the skin, a common condition known as allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). While ACD is on the rise, particularly in industrialized countries, exactly how personal care chemical compounds trigger a reaction remains unknown. Most allergic reactions involving T cells are attributed to proteins or peptide antigens that trigger the immune system. But chemical compounds found in personal care products are different kinds of molecules that were not thought to be able to directly elicit a reaction by T cells. Investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Columbia University and Monash University have uncovered a new molecular mechanism by which common components of consumer products can trigger an immune response, highlighting a specific molecular connection that may explain the mystery behind these cases of ACD. The team's findings are published in Science Immunology.

"What we present here is a molecular missing link," said co-senior author D. Branch Moody, MD, a principal investigator and physician in the Brigham's Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation and Immunity. "We questioned the prevailing paradigm that T cell-mediated allergic reaction is only triggered when T cells respond to proteins or peptide antigens. We find a mechanism through which fragrance can initiate a T cell response through a protein called CD1a."

For many substances, such as those found in soaps, cosmetics, fragrances, jewelry and plants, it is unclear how a reaction by T cells is triggered. Chemical compounds found in these products were thought to be too small and of the wrong chemical structure to be detected directly by T cells, which are the immune cells that set off ACD.

The researchers, including the co-lead author Annemieke de Jong from Columbia University, wondered if there might be another explanation. The team tested whether CD1a, a molecule found in immune cells that form the outer layer of human skin, could bind directly to allergens found in personal care products and present these molecules to the immune system, triggering a reaction. First author, Sarah Nicolai, MD, a research fellow in Medicine at the Brigham, exposed T cells to material from skin patch testing kits used in allergy clinics and found that T cells responded to certain substances, including balsam of Peru, a tree oil widely used in cosmetics and toothpaste. The team further identified substances within balsam of Peru -- benzyl benzoate and benzyl cinnamate -- directly responsible for stimulating the T cell response. Investigators also tested similar substances and found a dozen small molecules, including farnesol, that appeared to elicit a response.

To further understand how these compounds triggered a reaction, investigators at Monash University solved the X-ray crystal structure, revealing that when farnesol forms a complex with CD1a, farnesol kicks out naturally occurring human lipids, making CD1a more visible to T cells and leading to T cell activation.

The authors note that while their work shows that fragrances found in personal care products can directly initiate a T cell response, further investigation is needed to understand if this causes disease and allergic reactions. To better understand this, they will need to see if patients commonly have T cells that recognize molecules like farnesol. The team is also seeking new molecules that could block the response of CD1a and override the activation of T cells. Work is currently underway to identify promising molecules.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) do not appear to exist, according to a team of meteorologists who believe this has implications for both the validity of previous studies attributing past trends to these hypothetical natural oscillations and for the prospects of decade-scale climate predictability.

Using both observational data and climate model simulations, the researchers showed that there was no consistent evidence for decadal or longer-term internal oscillatory signals that could be differentiated from climatic noise -- random year to year variation. The only verifiable oscillation is the well-known El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

"A distinct -- 40 to 50 year timescale -- spectral peak that appears in global surface temperature observations appears to reflect the response of the climate system to a combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing rather than any intrinsic internal oscillation," the researchers report today (Jan. 3) in Nature Communications.

According to the researchers, if the Atlantic Multidecadal or Pacific Decadal oscillations existed, there would be evidence for their existence across the suite of current state-of-the-art climate model simulations.

"Given the current sophistication of climate models as seen in their ability to capture the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, we would expect to see consistent evidence for oscillations across a suite of climate models," said Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State. "We found no such evidence."

Using the MTM-SVD method -- a tool co-developed by Mann in the mid-1990s and used so far in more than 50 peer reviewed articles across several fields -- the researchers looked at observational and long term "control" simulation generated global surface temperature data. The observational record goes back more than 150 years. The control simulations, which have no external drivers applied to the models, are from the most recent global climate model intercomparison projects (CMIPS).

"We found a tendency in the control models for oscillations in the three to seven year ENSO band," said Mann. "However, we found no other signals, no Pacific or Atlantic climate variability on decadal or longer timescales that could be characterized as a true oscillation. Such variability was essentially indistinguishable from random noise."

Using the "forced" suite of CMIPS simulations where the climate models are driven with external factors such as volcanoes and human increase in pollution, the researchers showed that the apparent 40 to 50 year spectral peak sometimes associated with the AMO is actually an artifact of the slowdown in warming from the 1950s to 1970s. This warming was due to the buildup of sulfur "aerosol" pollutants that cool the Earth's surface. The passage of the Clean Air Acts in the 1970s removed the cooling effect and greenhouse gas warming increasingly dominated. The slowdown and subsequent acceleration of warming masquerades as an apparent "oscillation."

"Our study provides another line of evidence that purported decadal and longer timescale internal oscillation in climate that have been identified through analysis of observational data are in fact mostly a result of external influences like greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions by humans," said study co-author Byron A. Steinman, associate professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

The world scientific community is waging a difficult and prolonged war on cancer. New research in the field of immunogenic cell death can extend the area of drugs application and ensure patients' protection from relapse after therapy.

Cancer treatment is not just the removal of the tumor cells from the body, and chemotherapy. The doctors' aim is to provide a scenario that would prevent tumor cells from proliferating and causing a new disease.

For many years, scientists at the Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod and the University of Ghent (Belgium) have been engaged in research aimed to minimize the harm to the body after cancer treatment and have been looking for new approaches to treating cancer patients.

The project, supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation and headed by Dmitry Krys'ko, leading researcher of the Lobachevsky University's Institute of Biology and Biomedicine, professor at Ghent University, has yielded its first major results.

According to Professor Dmitry Krys'ko, the existing anti-cancer therapy (chemotherapy, radiation therapy and photodynamic therapy) causes great damage to the body as a whole, while his team's research is aimed at the stimulation of immunogenic cell death, which not only minimizes the damage, but also enhances the efficacy of treatment by involving the body's resources in the fight against cancer.

"In this study, we tested some drugs for anticancer therapy based on photodynamic treatment and investigated their new immunogenic properties. We can say that not only the external impact will be used to fight cancer, but also the body itself will engage in the fight by triggering the reactions of the adaptive immune response.

The concept of immunogenic cell death (ICD) includes a programmed death of cancer cells with subsequent release of molecules that give a danger signal to the immune system. We tested the drugs that are already used in cancer therapy, and enhanced the action of these agents," said Professor Krys'ko.

The study employed a number of methods and approaches that were used in in vitro and in vivo experiments. At the laboratories of Lobachevsky University and the University of Ghent, researchers studied how substances accumulate in the cell, analyzed cell death types when cells were exposed to photosensitizers, and revealed molecular mechanisms of the phenomena that occur to the cells in the process of their death.

"In this study, we examined the cellular-level response of dendritic cells (immune system components) in their interaction with cancer cells that were exposed to photodynamic therapy (PDT) and proved that photodynamic therapy can activate the body's own immune response," said Victoria Turubanova, research assistant of the Department of General and Medical Genetics at the UNN Institute of Biology and Biomedicine.

The researchers have examined additional aspects of the use of existing drugs for developing new cancer protocols based on the stimulation of the immune system. Such variants of therapy reduce the risk of metastasis and enhance the effectiveness of the patient's recovery.

A series of experiments on laboratory mice was performed, resulting in an important conclusion that the cellular vaccine prepared from dying cancer cells protects the mouse from cancer by preventing tumor development in the body.

Based on the results obtained, the researchers have published their article «Immunogenic cell death induced by a new photodynamic therapy based on Photosens and Photodithazine» in the BMC Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer (with the impact factor of 8.67), which describes new variants of photosensitizers that cause immunogenic cell death of cancer cells.