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A combination of heart cells derived from human stem cells could be the answer to developing a desperately-needed treatment for heart failure, according to new research part-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and published in Nature Biotechnology.

Researchers have found that, by transplanting an area of damaged tissue with a combination of both heart muscle cells and supportive cells taken from the outer layer of the heart wall, they may be able to help the organs recover from the damage caused by a heart attack.

Scientists have been trying to use stem cells to repair damaged hearts for a number of years. Efforts have been unsuccessful so far, mainly because the vast majority of transplanted cells die within a few days.

Now, Dr Sanjay Sinha and his team at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Washington, have used supportive epicardial cells developed from human stem cells to help transplanted heart cells live longer.

The researchers used 3D human heart tissue grown in the lab from human stem cells to test the cell combination, finding that the supportive epicardial cells helped heart muscle cells to grow and mature. They also improved the heart muscle cell's ability to contract and relax.

In rats with damaged hearts, the combination also allowed the transplanted cells to survive and restore lost heart muscle and blood vessel cells.

Researchers now hope to understand how the supportive epicardial cells help to drive heart regeneration. Understanding these key details will bring them one step closer to testing heart regenerative therapies in clinical trials.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are living with debilitating heart failure, often as a result of a heart attack. During a heart attack, part of the heart is deprived of oxygen leading to death of heart muscle. This permanent loss of heart muscle as well as subsequent scarring combines to reduce the heart's ability to pump blood around the body.

People suffering from heart failure can't regenerate their damaged hearts and the only cure is a heart transplant. Ultimately, these researchers hope that, by harnessing the regenerative power of stem cells, they will one day be able to heal human hearts using a patient's own cells.

In addition to the BHF, this research was funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Dr Sanjay Sinha, BHF-funded researcher and leader of the study at the University of Cambridge, said:

"There are hundreds of thousands of people in the UK living with heart failure - many are in a race against time for a life-saving heart transplant. But with only around 200 heart transplants performed each year in the UK, it's absolutely essential that we start finding alternative treatments."

Dr Johannes Bargehr, first author of the study at the University of Cambridge said:

"Our research shows the huge potential of stem cells for one day becoming the first therapy for heart failure. Although we still have some way to go, we believe we're one giant step closer, and that's incredibly exciting."

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation which part-funded the research said:

"Despite advances in medical treatments, survival rates for heart failure remain poor and life expectancy is worse than for many cancers. Breakthroughs are desperately needed to ease the devastation caused by this dreadful condition.

"When it comes to mending broken hearts, stem cells haven't yet really lived up to their early promise. We hope that this latest research represents the turning of the tide in the use of these remarkable cells."

The BHF has invested millions of pounds in research to harness the power of stem cells in treating heart and circulatory diseases. The charity has funded three Centres of Regenerative Medicine across the UK, housing some of the world's leading experts.

As you enter a new environment such as visiting a classroom for the first time, your brain takes in information about your surroundings to help inform where you are and what direction you are facing. Knowing where the center of the room is located helps provide a reference point for processing space. A Dartmouth study published in Science provides new insight into navigation and spatial learning by examining how the rat brain processes spatial information from the outside world in an egocentric framework and converts it to information in relation to the animal's spatial position in an allocentric framework (referenced to the world at-large).

As the study explains, the postrhinal cortex of the rat brain is considered "the rodent homolog of the human parahippocampal cortex," which is thought to be responsible for spatial navigation. The study examined how the rat brain processes incoming sensory information to inform where it is. For each trial, the rat was placed in an open box ("room") and trained to forage for sugar pellets that fell from overhead. The rat was filmed and its brain activity was recorded using electrodes. Following the trials, the researchers analyzed what the spatial cells were doing in relation to where the rat was in the environment. The results demonstrated that the postrhinal cortex contains three types of spatial cells, which act together to provide a sense of where the rat is located and its directional orientation within the local environment.

Some neurons are "center-bearing" cells, which are egocentric in nature, and identify where the geometric center of the space is located in relation to the animal. The center-bearing cells inform the animal of its directional orientation relative to where the center of room is, such as whether the room center is in front or behind the animal.

Other neurons are "center-distance" cells, whose firing rates encode the distance the rat is from the center of the environment. Some center-distance cells may fire more rapidly in the center while others may fire more slowly there, but both types of these cells are encoding the same type of information.

Finally, other neurons are "head-direction" cells, which respond to and are specific to a cardinal direction. Regardless of where the animal is located in the room, the cell will fire whenever the animal is looking in a specific direction. Different head direction cells encode different directions and the population of this cell type appears to encode all 360 degrees.

Together, the center-bearing cells, center-distance cells and head-direction cells tell the animal where it is and what direction it is facing.

"Our results demonstrate that it appears that the rat uses the center of the environment to ground where its located, providing new insight into how these animals locate and orient themselves in an area that has boundaries," explains lead author Patrick A. LaChance, a graduate student in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth.

"In the area of spatial learning, the study's findings are exciting, as they illustrate how the postrhinal cortex could provide a template for how humans convert egocentric information (the reference frame in which all information enters the brain) into allocentric information (the reference frame relative to the external world) in the parahippocampal cortex, says co-author Jeffrey S. Taube, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth, whose lab focuses on spatial cognition and the neural correlates of navigation.

Other studies have shown that when humans experience brain damage to the parahippocampal cortex region, they may have topographical disorientation and may not be able to form new spatial representations and often are disoriented and get lost. In sum, the study sheds light on how and where in the brain spatial information gets processed in order to enable us to do things such as find our car in the parking lot at the end of the day and direct our route home.

Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the Status of U.S. Fisheries Annual Report to Congress, which details the status of 479 federally-managed stocks or stock complexes in the U.S. to identify which stocks are subject to overfishing, are overfished, or are rebuilt to sustainable levels.

Building upon the trend of the past few years, the report notes that the vast majority of U.S. fish stocks were at sustainable population levels in 2018, and the number of U.S. fish stocks subject to overfishing remains at a near all-time low. The report also documents a newly-rebuilt stock, smooth skate in the Gulf of Maine. This brings the total number of rebuilt U.S. marine fish stocks to 45 since the year 2000, an encouraging indicator that the U.S. fishery management system is achieving its long-term sustainability goals.

"The U.S. is an international leader in fisheries management, and through our work in partnership with the regional councils, we're on track to maintain that high standard," said Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, Ph.D., NOAA's Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. "Our fishing communities continue to succeed and contribute to the Blue Economy. In 2016 alone, U.S. commercial fishing, recreational fishing, and the seafood industry generated $212 billion in sales, contributed $100 billion to the gross domestic product, and supported 1.7 million full- and part-time jobs."

A stock is on the overfishing list when the harvest rate of that species is too high. Of 321 stocks with known status, 293 (91%) are not subject to overfishing. The remaining 28 stocks (9%) are subject to overfishing. Seven stocks were removed from the overfishing list, and five were added in 2018. As required under the Magnuson-Stevens Act (the U.S. ocean fisheries law), NOAA Fisheries works with regional fishery management councils and other partners to implement measures to immediately end overfishing.

A stock is on the overfished list when the population size of a stock is too low, whether because of fishing or other causes, such as environmental changes. Of 244 stocks with known status, 201 (or 82%) are not overfished, leaving 43 stocks (18%) listed as overfished. No stocks were removed from the overfished list in 2018, but eight were added. Several of these stocks are impacted by factors outside the control of domestic fisheries management. For example, for three stocks of coho salmon in Washington state, warmer water, drought or habitat degradation contributed to less than ideal spawning conditions.

One stock has been declared rebuilt: Smooth skate in the Gulf of Maine, which had been in a rebuilding plan for nine years under strict management.

"Achieving sustainable fisheries requires sound science, innovative management, effective enforcement, meaningful partnerships, and robust public participation," said Chris Oliver, Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries. "We are well positioned to meet the sustainability challenges of today and tomorrow thanks to the hard work of our fishermen, fishing communities, scientists and many other partners."

Wolves are charismatic, conspicuous, and easy to single out as the top predator affecting populations of elk, deer, and other prey animals. However, a new study has found that the secretive cougar is actually the main predator influencing the movement of elk across the winter range of northern Yellowstone National Park.

The study highlights that where prey live with more than one predator species, attention to one predator that ignores the role of another may lead to misunderstandings about the impact of predators on prey populations and ecosystems. It also offers new insight into how prey can use differences in hunting behavior among predators to maintain safety from all predators simultaneously.

Utah State University researchers Michel Kohl and Dan MacNulty co-led the study, published in Ecology Letters, with Toni Ruth (Hornocker Wildlife Institute and Wildlife Conservation Society), Matt Metz (University of Montana), Dan Stahler, Doug Smith, and P.J. White (Yellowstone National Park). Their work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Utah State University as part of Kohl's doctoral research. The study was based on long-term data from the Park's wolf and elk monitoring programs and Ruth's cougar research, which is detailed in a forthcoming book from the University Press of Colorado.

The team revisited global positioning system (GPS) data from 27 radio-collared elk that had been collected in 2001-2004 when numbers of wolves and cougars were highest. Kohl and MacNulty combined the elk GPS data with information on the daily activity patterns of GPS-collared cougars and wolves and the locations of cougar- and wolf-killed elk to test if elk avoided these predators by selecting for 'vacant hunting domains', places and times where and when neither predator was likely to kill elk.

"Cougars hunted mainly in forested, rugged areas at night, whereas wolves hunted mainly in grassy, flat areas during morning and at dusk" said Kohl, lead author of the paper and now an assistant professor at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia in Athens. "Elk sidestepped both cougars and wolves by selecting for areas outside these high-risk domains, namely forested, rugged areas during daylight when cougars were resting, and grassy, flat areas at night when wolves were snoozing".

Recognizing that cougars and wolves hunted in different places and at different times allowed the researchers to see how elk could simultaneously minimize threats from both predators. "Had we ignored the fact that these predators were on different schedules, we would have concluded, incorrectly, that avoiding one predator necessarily increased exposure to the other," said MacNulty, who is an associate professor in USU's Department of Wildland Resources and Ecology Center. "Movement out of the grassy, flat areas and into the forested, rugged areas to avoid wolves did not result in greater risk from cougars and vice versa because these predators were active at different times of the day".

Despite the compatibility of elk spatial responses to cougars and wolves, Ruth, who is now executive director of the Salmon Valley Stewardship in Salmon, Idaho, cautioned that "some adult elk still end up on the cougar and wolf menu, with those in poor condition during winter being most at risk".

Nevertheless, "the findings help explain why we observe wolves, cougars, and elk all coexisting and thriving on the Yellowstone landscape" said Stahler, who leads the current study of cougars in the Park. He notes that the ability of elk to coexist with wolves and cougars is consistent with their "long, shared evolutionary history".

More surprising, however, was that cougars, not wolves, exerted the most pressure on elk habitat selection. "Wolves are often the presumed or blamed predator for any change in a prey population, numerical or behavioral," said Smith, who leads the Park's wolf program. "Our research shows that this is not necessarily true, and that other large predators in addition to wolves need to be considered."

"Despite the fact that most prey species live in habitats with multiple predators, the majority of research on predator-prey interactions focuses on a single predator species," added Betsy von Holle, program director for the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology. "The novelty of this research is the simultaneous study of multiple predator species, revealing the complexity of predator avoidance behavior by the prey."

Tropical Storm Flossie continues tracking in a westward direction through the Eastern Pacific Ocean and is expected to move into the Central Pacific Ocean later today, August 2.

NASA's Aqua satellite used infrared light to provide temperature information of clouds and sea surface. The strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures. Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms with the potential to generate heavy rainfall.

On August 2 at 6:10 a.m. EDT (1010 UTC), the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite found those strongest storms around the center and in fragmented bands of thunderstorms circling the center, where cloud top temperatures as cold as minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius).

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, "Tropical Storm Flossie is a little more symmetric than it was last night. The center of the tropical storm appears to be more embedded within its central dense overcast."

At 11 a.m. EDT (5 a.m. HST/1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Flossie was located near latitude 17.1 degrees north and longitude 137.8 degrees west. That's about 1,145 miles (1.845 km) east of Hilo, Hawaii. Flossie is moving toward the west-northwest near 17 mph (28 kph), and this general heading with a slight decrease in forward speed is expected through early next week. Maximum sustained winds are near 70 mph (110 kph) with higher gusts. The estimated minimum central pressure is 993 millibars.

On the forecast track, Flossie is forecast to cross into the central Pacific basin later today.

Gradual weakening is anticipated over the weekend and will likely continue through early next week.

The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben has been promoting the transition of gene banks into bio-digital resource centres - the aim is the preparation and collation of the phenotypic and genetic information for all stored accessions. As an important step for the further development of the Federal Ex situ Gene Bank, which is being hosted by the IPK in Gatersleben, researchers have been evaluating the historical data which has been accrued by the gene bank over the last 70 years. Not only is the resulting published data an important new resource for researchers and plant breeders, the publications also provide blueprint strategies for the preparation of correlated datasets from which other gene banks and research facilities will be able to draw.

Gene banks have long outgrown their role as mere "storage facilities" of different plant accessions. With the increasing need for new and improved crop species due to climate change and the continuously growing world population, their importance as providers of novel phenotypic and genetic resources for plant breeders and researchers is becoming clearer. The steady progression of omics-technologies and the efforts of researchers worldwide have already started driving the evolution of the gene banks into the envisioned all-encompassing bio-digital resource centres. A group of scientists from the IPK in Gatersleben has been supporting the evolution of the Federal Ex situ Gene Bank by analysing the historical phenotypic data of different crops which was compiled over the last seven decades and making the data available to the public in a highly structured manner.

Analysing large amounts of phenotypic data is no small feat, considering that the gene bank hosted by the IPK with its collection of roughly 151,000 accessions counts as one of the ten largest gene banks worldwide. In addition, about 5% of the collection need to be regrown annually to regenerate the seeds. Due to this, further questions arise such as how to deal with non-orthogonal experimental designs, changes in agronomic practices or in weather patterns? And how to assess the quality of data which has been collected over such long periods of time and with different methods? Over a series of papers, the IPK researchers led by Prof. Dr. Jochen Reif have been examining and finding solutions to these challenges.

Focusing on the agronomic traits flowering time, plant height, and thousand grain weight, the scientists developed statistical models with which they were able to leverage maximal information from the available datasets. Employing innovative approaches for data analysis (for further reading see their 2018 Frontiers publication), they established an outlier corrected dataset as well as ready-to-use processed phenotypic data in the form of 'Best Linear Unbiased Estimations' (BLUEs). The BLUEs data now complement the passport information of a large number of accessions stored at the Gene Bank and allows the direct comparison of accessions across the different regeneration years.

The scientists had previously processed the historical data of the majority of the barley accessions stored at the Ex situ Gene Bank. A new paper, published in "Scientific Data", now sheds new light on the phenotypic data of 12,754 spring and winter wheat accessions whose seeds have been stored and continuously regenerated at the Gene Bank over the last 70 years.

Even though the historical data behind barley and wheat is now being prepared for further use by plant researchers and breeders, there is still plenty of phenotypic data for different accessions but also for different crops left - as well at the Federal Ex situ Gene Bank but also at the other gene banks worldwide. The data publications by the IPK researchers showcase methodologies which can be adapted for such further data evaluation-projects.

And whilst their results may stimulate new avenues for barley and wheat research and breeding, they also show how much potential and knowledge can be hidden away in seemingly dusty records - once the correct methods to unlock the hidden data have been found.

Despite their large body size, gorillas are known to have a vegetarian diet consisting almost exclusively of leafy vegetation and fruit. Their teeth are large and high crested when compared to other great apes which is traditionally seen as an adaptation to them spending a large amount of time chewing tough fibrous plant material. In contrast, their teeth are not well adapted to eating hard objects, such as nuts encased in a woody shell, because the high crests on their molar teeth would be at risk of damage. "I was amazed when we first observed the nut eating by the gorillas", states Martha Robbins, senior author on the paper. "We can not only see it, but also hear it, as the shell gives way to the incredible strength of their bite. Gorillas obviously have large, powerful jaws, but we did not expect to see this because their teeth are not well-suited to such behavior."

The nuts of Coula edulis are encased in a hard, woody shell that takes around 271 kg of force to crack. Yet for the three months the nuts are available, the gorillas of Loango National Park concentrate their feeding on the energy rich kernels, spending up to three hours a day chomping through nuts. This is surprising as animals that eat very hard food items tend to have strong, rounded molars that act like a pestle and mortar and are very efficient at cracking brittle foods. Like other foliage eaters, gorilla teeth have higher crests providing extra cutting edges for slicing tough material. Under the monumental bite force required to crack nuts, teeth with sharp edges are prone to break meaning they may be worn away quickly. The researchers were surprised to learn that the gorillas at Loango are regularly gambling with their teeth and taxing them close to their predicted mechanical limits. While some primates, like chimps, protect their teeth by using tools to crack open nuts, it appears that the gorillas at Loango National Park reply on brute strength to break through the woody shells of Coula edulis nuts. The fact they do this year after year indicates that gorilla teeth may be stronger than previously thought.

The research also implies that western lowland gorillas have much greater dietary breadth than previously believed. The absence of nut cracking behavior in other populations of western gorillas where the nuts are also present suggests the behavior may be cultural, if gorillas need to observe and learn the behavior from other group members. "The fact that this nut eating is observed in Loango but not in other forests in central Africa where the nut occurs stresses the importance of studying and conserving gorillas throughout the habitat where they are found", says Robbins.

Discovering that some gorillas routinely partake in nut cracking with their teeth could also influence the way researchers interpret the fossil remains of human ancestors. Despite having teeth seemingly shaped for a leafy diet the study shows that western lowland gorillas are capable of routinely cracking nuts, which has important implications for the ways researchers predict the diet of human ancestors based on the shape of their teeth.

People think of electric scooters, or e-scooters, as environmentally friendly ways to get around town. But a new study from North Carolina State University finds it's not that simple: shared e-scooters may be greener than most cars, but they can be less green than several other options.

"E-scooter companies tout themselves as having little or no carbon footprint, which is a bold statement," says Jeremiah Johnson, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State. "We wanted to look broadly at the environmental impacts of shared e-scooters - and how that compares to other local transportation options."

To capture the impact of e-scooters, researchers looked at emissions associated with four aspects of each scooter's life cycle: the production of the materials and components that go into each scooter; the manufacturing process; shipping the scooter from the manufacturer to its city of use; and collecting, charging and redistributing the scooters.

The researchers also conducted a small-scale survey of e-scooter riders to see what modes of transportation they would have used if they hadn't used an e-scooter. The researchers found that 49% of riders would have biked or walked; 34% would have used a car; 11% would have taken a bus; and 7% wouldn't have taken the trip at all. These results were similar to those of a larger survey done by the city of Portland, Oregon.

In order to compare the impact of e-scooters to that of other transport options, the researchers looked at previously published life cycle analyses of cars, buses, electric mopeds and bicycles. Researchers looked at four types of pollution and environmental impact: climate change impact; nutrient loading in water; respiratory health impacts related to air pollution; and acidification. The performance results were similar for all four types of pollution.

"A lot of what we found is pretty complicated, but a few things were clear," Johnson says. "Biking - even with an electric bike - is almost always more environmentally friendly than using a shared e-scooter. The sole possible exception is for people who use pay-to-ride bike-share programs. Those companies use cars and trucks to redistribute the bicycles in their service area, which can sometimes make them less environmentally friendly than using an e-scooter."

By the same token, the study found that driving a car is almost always less environmentally friendly than using an e-scooter. But some results may surprise you. For example, taking the bus on a route with high ridership is usually more environmentally friendly than an e-scooter.

"We found that the environmental impact from the electricity used to charge the e-scooters is fairly small - about 5% of its overall impact," Johnson says. "The real impact comes largely from two areas: using other vehicles to collect and redistribute the scooters; and emissions related to producing the materials and components that go into each scooter."

That means that there are two major factors that contribute to each scooter's environmental footprint. First is that the less driving that is done to collect and redistribute the scooters, the smaller the impact. The second factor is the scooters' lifetime: the longer the scooter is in service, the more time it has to offset the impact caused by making all of its constituent parts.

"There are a lot of factors to consider, but e-scooters are environmentally friendly compared to some modes of transport," Johnson says. "And there are things that companies and local governments can do to further reduce their impacts. For example, allowing - or encouraging - companies to collect scooters only when they hit a battery depletion threshold would reduce a scooter's impact, because you wouldn't be collecting scooters that don't need re-charging."

Carbon nanotubes able to take on the desired shapes thanks to a special chemical treatment, called crosslinking and, at the same time, able to function as substrata for the growth of nerve cells, finely tuning their growth and activity. The research just published in ACS Nano, the prestigious international scientific journal, is a new and important step towards the construction of neuronal regenerative-interfaces to repair spinal injuries. The study is the new achievement of a long-term and, in terms of results, successful collaboration between the scientists Laura Ballerini of SISSA (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati), Trieste, and Maurizio Prato of the University of Trieste. The work team has also been assisted by CIC biomaGUNE of San Sebastián, Spain.

Self-standing nanotubes

The carbon nanotubes used in the research have been modified by appropriate chemical treatments: "For many years, in our laboratories we have been working on the chemical reactivity of carbon nanotubes, a fascinating but very difficult material to work. Thanks to our experience, we have crosslinked them or, to say it more clearly, we have treated the nanotubes so they could link themselves to one another thanks to specific chemical reactions. We have discovered that this procedure gives the material very interesting characteristics. For example, the material organises itself in a stable manner according to a precise shape, we choose: a tissue where nerve cells need to be planted, for example. Or around some electrodes" explains Professor Prato. "We know from previous research that nerve cells grow well on carbon nanotubes so they could be used as a surface to build hybrid devices to regenerate nerve tissues. It was necessary to ensure that this chemical modification did not compromise this process and study whether the interaction with neurons was altered".

Towards biosynthetic hybrids

Professor Ballerini continues: "We have discovered that the chemical process has important effects because through this treatment we can modulate the activity of neurons, in terms of growth, adhesion and survival. These materials can also regulate the communication between neurons. We can say that the carpet of crosslinked carbon nanotubes interacts intensely and constructively with the nerve cells". This interaction depends on how much the different carbon nanotubes are linked to each other, or rather crosslinked. The lower the link number among the nanotubes the higher the activity of neurons that grow on their surface. Through the chemical control of their properties, and of the links between them, it is possible to regulate the response of the neurons. Ballerini and Prato explain: "This is an intriguing result that emerges from the important and fruitful collaboration between our research groups involving advanced research in chemistry, nanoscience and neurobiology . This study provides a further step in the design of future biosynthetic hybrids to recover injured nerve tissues functions".

A KAIST team has designed a novel strategy for synthesizing single-crystalline graphene quantum dots, which emit stable blue light. The research team confirmed that a display made of their synthesized graphene quantum dots successfully emitted blue light with stable electric pressure, reportedly resolving the long-standing challenges of blue light emission in manufactured displays. The study, led by Professor O Ok Park in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, was featured online in Nano Letters on July 5.

Graphene has gained increased attention as a next-generation material for its heat and electrical conductivity as well as its transparency. However, single and multi-layered graphene have characteristics of a conductor so that it is difficult to apply into semiconductor. Only when downsized to the nanoscale, semiconductor's distinct feature of bandgap will be exhibited to emit the light in the graphene. This illuminating featuring of dot is referred to as a graphene quantum dot.

Conventionally, single-crystalline graphene has been fabricated by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on copper or nickel thin films, or by peeling graphite physically and chemically. However, graphene made via chemical vapor deposition is mainly used for large-surface transparent electrodes. Meanwhile, graphene made by chemical and physical peeling carries uneven size defects.

The research team explained that their graphene quantum dots exhibited a very stable single-phase reaction when they mixed amine and acetic acid with an aqueous solution of glucose. Then, they synthesized single-crystalline graphene quantum dots from the self-assembly of the reaction intermediate. In the course of fabrication, the team developed a new separation method at a low-temperature precipitation, which led to successfully creating a homogeneous nucleation of graphene quantum dots via a single-phase reaction.

Professor Park and his colleagues have developed solution phase synthesis technology that allows for the creation of the desired crystal size for single nanocrystals down to 100 nano meters. It is reportedly the first synthesis of the homogeneous nucleation of graphene through a single-phase reaction.

Professor Park said, "This solution method will significantly contribute to the grafting of graphene in various fields. The application of this new graphene will expand the scope of its applications such as for flexible displays and varistors."

ITHACA, N.Y. - For the first time, scientists have unraveled genetic changes that cause rapid fish evolution due to intense harvesting - changes that previously had been invisible to researchers.

Over recent decades, many commercially harvested fish have grown slower and matured earlier, which can translate into lower yields and a reduced resilience to overexploitation. Scientists have long suspected rapid evolutionary change in fish is caused by intense harvest pressure.

"Most people think of evolution as a very slow process that unfolds over millennial time scales, but evolution can, in fact, happen very quickly," said lead author Nina Overgaard Therkildsen, professor of conservation genomics at Cornell University.

The paper, "Contrasting Genomic Shifts Underlie Parallel Phenotypic Evolution in Response to Fishing," was published in Science.

In heavily exploited fish stocks, fishing almost always targets the largest individuals.

"Slower-growing fish will be smaller and escape the nets better, thereby having a higher chance of passing their genes on to the next generations. This way, fishing can cause rapid evolutionary change in growth rates and other traits," Therkildsen said. "We see many indications of this effect in wild fish stocks, but no one has known what the underlying genetic changes were."

Therkildsen and her colleagues took advantage of an influential experiment published in 2002. Six populations of Atlantic silversides, a fish that grows no bigger than 6 inches in length, had been subjected to intense harvesting in the lab. In two populations, the largest individuals were removed; in another two populations, the smallest individuals were removed; and in the final two populations, the fishing was random with respect to size.

After only four generations, the harvesting had led to an evolution of an almost two-fold difference in adult size between the groups. Therkildsen and her team sequenced the full genome of almost 900 of these fish to examine the DNA-level changes responsible for these striking shifts.

The team identified hundreds of different genes across the genome that changed consistently between populations selected for fast and slow growth. They also observed large linked-blocks of genes that changed in concert, dramatically shifting the frequencies of hundreds of genes all at the same time.

Surprisingly, these large shifts only happened in some of the populations, according to the new paper. This means there were multiple genomic solutions for the fish in this experiment to get either larger or smaller.

Research like this can assess human impacts and improve humanity's understanding of "the speed, consequences and reversibility of complex adaptations as we continue to sculpt the evolutionary trajectories of the species around us," Therkildsen said.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the South China Sea and saw Tropical Storm Wipha hugging the southern coast of China.

On August 1, 2019 at 1:35 a.m. EDT (0535 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image of Wipha that showed the center of circulation just off the coast of southern China. The center was just east of the southern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula of southern Guangdong province, and northeast of Hainan Island, China. MODIS imagery shows that despite the center in that area, the bands of thunderstorms that circle the center extend over Hainan Island and into the southern Guangdong Province as well as over the South China Sea.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Wipha was located near latitude 21.3 degrees north and longitude 110.2 degrees west. Wipha was about 241 nautical miles east of Hanoi, Vietnam. Wipha was moving to the northwest and had maximum sustained winds near 35 knots (40 mph/64 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects Wipha to skirt the southern coast of China and move through the Gulf of Tonkin, with landfall along the northeast coast of Vietnam early on August 3. It is expected to dissipate soon after landfall.

Leipzig, Brussels. The current reform proposals of the EU Commission on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are unlikely to improve environmental protection, say researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Göttingen in the journal Science. While the EU has committed to greater sustainability, this is not reflected in the CAP reform proposal. The authors show how the ongoing reform process could still accommodate conclusive scientific findings and public demand to address environmental challenges including climate change.

Agricultural areas cover 174 million hectares, or 40 percent of the EU area (over 50 percent in Germany). Land use intensification, primarily by agriculture, is identified by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as the number one cause of biodiversity loss, with risk to human wellbeing resulting from losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The European Union, and thus also Germany, has committed in various international agreements to shift toward sustainable agriculture, the protection of biodiversity, and combatting climate change. With approx. 40 percent of the total budget, the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the most important policy areas for implementing these international commitments. "The proposal made by the European Commission for the CAP post-2020, published in June 2018, demonstrates very little of this intention," says a research team led by Dr Guy Pe'er (iDiv, UFZ) and Dr Sebastian Lakner (University of Göttingen).

The researchers analysed the proposal for the CAP post-2020 with a focus on three questions: Is the reform proposal compatible with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), does it reflect public debate on agriculture, and, does it offer a clear improvement compared to the current CAP? The analysis was based on a comprehensive review of the literature with about 450 publications, addressing issues such as effectiveness, efficiency and relevance of the CAP. The scientists' conclusion: The proposed CAP represents a clear step backwards compared with the current one.

"Taking sustainability and the SDGs seriously requires a deep reflection on agricultural policy, its budgets and instruments, and developing good indicators for measuring success," says ecologist Guy Pe'er. "Beyond words, we found little of that." According to the researchers, the CAP has the potential to support at least nine of the seventeen SDGs, but currently it only contributes to achieving two of them.

The researchers also criticize that the EU wants to maintain some of the CAP instruments that have been proven to be inefficient, harmful to the environment and socially unfair. One key example for an inefficient instrument are the Direct Payments under the so-called Pillar 1 of the CAP. Around 40 billion euros (about 70 percent of the CAP budget) are paid to farmers on the basis of the cultivated area alone. This leads to unequal funding distribution: 1.8 percent of recipients get 32 percent of the money.

"These compensatory payments, provisionally introduced in 1992 as an interim solution, are lacking a sound scientific justification," says agricultural economist Sebastian Lakner of the University of Göttingen. According to the researchers' analysis, Direct Payments contribute very little both to environmental or social goals.

This criticism is not new, and was already reflected by the EU in 2010 with the so-called 'Greening' of Direct Payments - but the Greening attempt was watered down by political pressure during the last reform process and ended up largely ineffective, say the researchers.

The EU Commission proposes to maintain and even expand Direct Payments, but came up with a so-called new 'green architecture' in response to the widespread criticism. This includes an expansion of the Good Environmental Agricultural Criteria and new voluntary measures called 'eco-schemes' in Pillar 1. In addition, the EU commission states that 40 percent of the CAP shall be labelled as 'climate-friendly'. But according to the researchers, this calculus remains questionable. And while agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are currently rising rather than declining, the Commission offers no suitable specific instruments to address climate change.

Pillar 2, called 'Rural Development Programme', offers much better tools to address biodiversity protection and climate change. While environmental instruments in Pillar 2 take merely one tenth of Pillar 1, the Commission suggests to considerably cut Pillar 2 by 28 percent in the coming years, risking both environment and rural societies, according to the researchers.

The researchers believe the key reason for the environmental shortfalls lies in an unbalanced reform process which allows powerful lobby organisations far-reaching opportunities to influence the reform and promote own interests, excluding important players from science and society.

"The EU obviously lacks the will to meet public demand for sustainable agriculture and to implement the global environmental and development goals it had a share in adopting," says Pe'er. "Lobby interests have clearly outweighed both ample evidence and public interests." According to an EU survey, 92 percent of the citizens and 64 percent of farmers say that the CAP should improve its performance with respect to environmental and climate protection.

The researchers see the termination of Direct Payments one key task for improving the CAP. In the short term, Pillar 2 should be strengthened, and measures that have been proven to be beneficial for biodiversity and sustainability should be supported in order to meet the SDGs.

Pe'er and Lakner see the newly-elected European Parliament as an opportunity to reshape the reform process in order to still meet public will and the EU's commitments to international obligations: "There is sufficient scientific evidence on what works and what doesn't, especially with respect to the environment," says Pe'er. "It should be in the core interest of the EU Commission to use tax payers' money more efficiently to support societal objectives such as the maintenance of biodiversity or in general sustainable agriculture," adds Lakner. The scientists believe that a genuine reform process, which involves all relevant stakeholders and takes scientific findings seriously, can help rebuilding public support and acceptance of the CAP .

The final round of CAP negotiations between the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament is expected to start in autumn.

The term "fake news" has been popularized by President Donald Trump in recent years, and while its meaning has been hotly debated, the spreading of false information to fulfill a political agenda is far from a new concept around the world. Exploring the perception of the "fake news" phenomenon is critical to combating the ongoing global erosion of trust in the media according to a study co-authored by a University of Houston researcher.

Dani Madrid-Morales, assistant professor of journalism at the UH Jack J. Valenti School of Communication and Herman Wasserman at the University of Cape Town, found that in sub-Saharan Africa -- where disinformation campaigns have been used recently to influence electoral campaigns -- perceived exposure to disinformation is high and trust in national media and social media is low.

The researchers polled nearly 1,900 people in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa who are highly educated, live in urban, middle class areas and have access to social media.

As many as 90% of Kenyans, 93% of Nigerians and 76% of South Africans believe they are exposed to false news about politics on a fairly regular basis. In a 2016 Pew Research Center study which sampled just over 1,000 Americans, 71% of respondents say they often or sometimes see fake political news.

"We found that people in sub-Saharan Africa particularly distrust information on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp because that's where they find 'fake news' most often," Madrid-Morales said about the findings published in this month's African Journalism Studies. "Governments are already using this as an excuse to put restrictions on the media by saying that too much freedom of speech on these American platforms poses a 'danger' to national security."

When it comes to sharing a political story that study participants knew at the time was made up, 29% of Kenyans, 18% of Nigerians and 25% of South Africans answered "yes." These numbers are higher than the U.S. where 14% of participants answered "yes" in the Pew study.

When disinformation campaigns challenge access to reliable information, citizens are left to make uninformed choices. So-called "social media entrepreneurs" were paid by politicians to spread false information about opponents in the 2019 Nigerian election. In 2016, supporters of former South African president Jacob Zuma hired a public relations firm to create bogus Twitter accounts, bots and hate-filled websites to set off racial tensions.

"We have thought of these platforms as tools to empower people's speech, but we're finding that in certain instances, they are not empowering people," said Madrid-Morales. "They are decreasing our ability to make good judgements."

Another revealing finding is that, while 19% of U.S. respondents say they have hardly or never encountered inaccurate political news, the percentages in all three African countries are significantly smaller (Kenya, 3%; Nigeria, 2%; South Africa, 8%). The study concluded that the more people feel they are exposed to fake news regularly, the more they are likely to say they do not trust the media in general.

Plants have evolved to produce a variety of compounds that vary from species to species. These compounds play a key role for the survival strategies of plants. Compounds that are bitter and poisonous protect the plants from being eaten by insects and animals. Meanwhile, compounds that have good smell or colorful pigments attract insects carrying pollens.

Among the compounds produced by plants, some substances have medicinal uses due to their physiological effects on the human body. Researchers have reported that matrine can be used as a depressant of the central nervous system, similar to morphine, and huperizine A can also be used as a supplement in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. These compounds are called alkaloids, which are also the metabolites produced from amino acid lysine in certain species of plants.

Now, how has the system of lysine-derived alkaloids been evolved in plants? In 2016, the research team at Chiba University discovered that plants producing lysine-derived alkaloids have particular enzymes that possess bifunctional decarboxylating activity toward ornithine and lysine (lysine/ornithine decarboxylase). These enzymes have been evolved by a micro-mutation from the ancient enzyme (ornithine decarboxylase), which is essential for the production of polyamine used in fundamental and biological activities, such as cell division, in various organisms. These enzymes can decarboxylate and activate amino acid lysine and then send it into alkaloid production in plant cells. The micro-mutation is crucial for metabolism producing alkaloids and is common for plants using lysine as a material for alkaloid production.

Since this discovery in 2016, the research team has been expecting that the micro-mutated enzyme is a key factor in the plants' evolution for producing a certain type of alkaloid given that this mutation can be seen only in plant species producing lysine-derived alkaloid.

Finally, the research teams at Chiba University, RIKEN, and Kazusa DNA Research Institute confirmed in a paper published in the Plant Journal on July 31, 2019 that the alkaloids were generated by inserting the lysine/ornithine decarboxylating enzyme gene from Lupinus angustifolius producing lysine-derived alkaloid into Arabidopsis thaliana (A. thaliana). The team also identified the type of metabolites that were newly generated in A. thaliana, which is a model plant initially without the function to produce any alkaloid.

It is interesting to note that the research team recreated the metabolic evolution of the plant producing alkaloids in a model plant. A. thaliana was transformed to produce alkaloids by inserting the gene of the enzyme to switch the metabolic flow. The expression of the gene introduced in A. thaliana resulted in cadaverine (1,5-diaminopentane) production from lysine, which is further metabolized by endogenous enzymes. These processes resulted in the generation of new alkaloid related metabolites; 5-aminopentanal, 5-aminopentanoic acid, and δ-valerolactam by A. thaliana.

It is a noteworthy methodological development that the research team successfully identified the newly generated substances by detecting the changes in metabolites before and after introducing the gene, which is a challenging task given that plants usually contain several thousands of metabolites.

"We were able to change the metabolic flow by manipulating one of the genes in the plant, and also identify what kinds of alkaloids generated in the cells, which is a big step for the next discovery," said Mami Yamazaki, Associate Professor of Chiba University, who led the experiment. "Our research has opened a possible way to produce new compounds, which don't exist in nature yet, by performing similar genetic engineering on plants with different potentials of metabolic ability. Such expansion of chemical diversity is an important theme required for the development of the seeds in drug industries".

The research team is hoping that elucidating the metabolic mechanism in plants with the newly developed method will result in the stable supply of medical ingredients within the next several years.