Earth

Coral reefs around the world are threatened by warming ocean temperatures, a major driver of coral bleaching. Scientists routinely use sea-surface temperature data collected by satellites to predict the temperature-driven stress on reef communities, but new research shows that surface measurements alone may not accurately predict the full extent of thermal stress on deeper corals.

A new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the Coral Reef Research Foundation (CRRF) in Palau describes a novel approach for predicting warm temperature-induced stress on corals from the sea surface through a deeper expanse ranging from 30-150 meters (100-500 feet) known as the mesophotic zone.

Corals at this depth are thought of by some in the science community as being safer from ocean warming than their shallow-water counterparts. But the Scripps Oceanography team found that even in the deep, corals are episodically exposed to thermal stress at intervals different than those corals near the surface.

The researchers utilized nearly two decades of data sets--including sea level, sea-surface temperature, and temperature observations that ranged between the surface and deep into the mesophotic zone--to develop a forecast tool for the vertical extent of how corals will be stressed by temperature. This research was conducted at three reef locations around the island nation of Palau, located in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

This novel approach to measure and predict temperature stress on coral reefs is described in a new study published Aug. 27 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"We're now adding the dimension of depth into the problem where before we were only skimming the surface of what temperature stress meant for corals," said Scripps PhD candidate Travis Schramek, lead author of the study. "We see that the heat-induced stress penetrates all the way into the mesophotic zone during larger bleaching events."

In addition to looking at sea-surface temperature data collected by global satellites, the scientists used a network of reef temperature recorders maintained by CRRF divers in key locations across Palau down to depths of 90 meters (295 feet).

CRRF has maintained this array of temperature gauges across Palau, stretching from the surface to the mesophotic reefs since 1999. Only a small number of divers in the world possess the training, skills, and equipment to safely and routinely dive in the mesophotic zone. One of these rare scientific divers is Pat Colin, director of CRRF and a coauthor of the study.

For nearly 20 years, Colin and a small team have conducted weekly dives at locations across Palau as part of a long-term temperature-monitoring program. Surveys to assess bleaching in the mesophotic zone are severely limited, so the Scripps team, which included scientists Mark Merrifield and Eric Terrill, found Colin's observational data sets to be incredibly valuable.

The observations showed that deeper zones are showing bleaching coincident with the higher temperatures, right along with shallow reefs.

"Our understanding of the ocean is really going to continue to be driven by observations. The models are really informative, but the way that we ground them is through observing the Earth system," said Schramek. "Having observations like what Pat has collected shows the power of actually going and deploying tools and observing Earth in a unique way."

The researchers said they hope these results will instigate more temperature stress event surveys to better understand the mesophotic zone in Palau and other tropical regions. They also looked at daily tide gauge records from the Malakal Harbor station in Palau from 1970-2017. This data, collected by the University of Hawaii Sea Level Center, allowed the team to study the regional sea level records in the area.

By coupling sea level and sea temperature data sets, Schramek found that the height of the ocean surface is a strong indicator of how water temperatures are changing tens of meters below. He and the team then further used this data to predict the temperatures experienced by coral reefs living near the surface, as well as those living in deeper waters. Schramek developed an algorithm to apply the accepted coral stress algorithms to depths that included the deeper mesophotic, typically thought to be a refuge from thermal stress.

"A surprising outcome of the study is that the oceanic conditions along the dramatic reef walls that are the boundaries of Palau are very representative of the broader Western Pacific," said Scripps oceanographer Terrill. "As a result, we had a surprising amount of success in predicting the vertical structure of the temperature fields that the coral communities would be exposed to, even during El Niño conditions."

He added that the results suggest promise in applying the method to the other islands in this Pacific region that don't benefit from the long-term time records that Palau has as a result of CRRF's dedicated measurement campaign.

The team's new insights on how to predict temperature stress on deep corals may contribute to a better understanding of the entire reef system as a whole, which could inform conservation and policy efforts to protect this valuable and diverse ecosystem.

"Now that we've observed this ecosystem in a unique way, we can start to better assess how corals in the mesophotic zone are stressed," said Schramek. "If we can better understand how they're stressed, then we can better understand how to protect them."

STRASBURG, PA- A new report has identified an alternative method to deliver nusinersen to patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) using a subcutaneous intrathecal catheter system (SIC) configured by connecting an intrathecal catheter to an implantable infusion port. SMA is a devastating genetic disease that leads to progressive degeneration of motor neurons that control movement, swallowing, and breathing. It is the leading genetic cause of infant death worldwide. Nusinersen is the first FDA approved therapy for SMA but must be administered into the cerebrospinal fluid by repeat lumbar puncture every 4 months for life. Unfortunately, the majority of surviving SMA patients have skeletal deformities or spinal hardware that make it difficult to safely and reliably access the cerebrospinal fluid.

The study, by clinicians and researchers at the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, PA and the Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington DE, appears in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics. Ten SMA patients underwent implantation of the catheter device and received nusinersen dosing through the SIC. The device implantation took less than two hours and was well tolerated in all patients, with an average hospital stay of less than 55 hours. Once the SIC system was implanted, all subsequent nusinersen doses were administered in less than 20 minutes, requiring only topical anesthetic in an outpatient setting. SIC implantation significantly reduced the cost of drug administration.

This SIC dosing method might also benefit SMA patients without advanced neuromuscular disease or spinal pathology; repeated lumbar puncture can prove challenging for any SMA patient, especially newborns and young children, who have the highest rate of traumatic complications (20-50%) when nusinersen is administered by lumbar puncture.

While the study's observations suggest the SIC system to be relatively safe and without complications, use of the device warrants further multicenter trials. If proven effective in future studies, this method could double the number of patients able to receive nusinersen worldwide and reduce costs five- to ten-fold.

Humans instinctively adopt the gait that requires the least amount of energy given the walking conditions. Without realizing it, we are constantly tweaking our pace, stride length and foot lift. But could we consciously play with these parameters in order to influence our energy expenditure?

Researchers at EPFL's Biorobotics Laboratory studied eight gait parameters in order to come up with a very sophisticated software program that uses an avatar to predict how much energy people use when they walk depending on their walking style. This research has been published in Scientific Reports. Salman Faraji, the co-lead author, devoted an entire section of his thesis to this topic.

The avatar - a torso equipped with two legs with feet - can be freely configured. Users start by entering their height and weight and can then set the walking speed, distance between their feet (stride length and stride width), and foot lift, along with the incline of both the torso and the ground. They can also add mass and simulate the effect of being pushed or pulled at different parts of the body. The number of calories burned and the energy consumption are displayed in real time whenever the parameters are modified.

Making custom exoskeletons

This pioneering software drew on a number of experiments appearing in recent literature, and it offers a huge number of potential applications - especially in the medical realm. "The software could be used to select the best design for an exoskeleton or a custom prosthetic, in order to reduce the user's effort. With a wearable exoskeleton, for example, we could optimize the location of the battery and actuators, or determine the ideal walking pattern for the user's preferred speed," says Amy Wu, the study's other co-lead author. The software could even determine where a backpack should be worn in order to minimize energy expenditure. "If, on the other hand, your goal is to burn calories, the software could be used to find a series of movements with a high metabolic cost."

Designed for humanoid robots

The software was created in a robotics lab and was initially intended to study the mechanics of human gait for use in humanoid robots. "The way humans walk is extremely complex. The level of control required is a huge challenge for humanoid robots, which often don't get it quite right," says Faraji. "We have a long way to go before we really understand all the parameters that go into human, animal and robot locomotion."

MADISON, Wis. -- After decades of trapping, the last known American marten was spotted on Isle Royale in 1917. Fifty years later, in 1966, the National Park Service planned to reintroduce martens to the national park situated in Lake Superior, but nobody knows if the agency ever followed through. Then, in 1993, martens were confirmed on the island for the first time in 76 years.

Whether these small, forest-dwelling carnivores -- valued historically for their fur -- had been hiding there the whole time, found their way back, or were introduced in the 1960s without any records has remained a mystery for the last quarter century.

But in new research published today (Aug. 23, 2018) in the journal Scientific Reports, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, collaborating with the National Park Service, traced the recolonization to martens likely arriving in the 1990s, shortly before they were spotted.

Genetic studies of martens from Isle Royale and nearby populations in America and Canada showed that the contemporary population came from nearby Ontario, Canada. The animals likely wandered over on an ice bridge in the winter, the researchers speculate.

The results provide much-needed context about the natural history of an island long considered an unspoiled wilderness, but one with a long history of ecological disruptions and recoveries. The island park may be best known for the ebb and flow of its wolf and moose populations, which have been tracked for 60 years.

With additional wolves set to be relocated to Isle Royale in the coming months, the new research provides ecologists and land managers with a fuller picture of how dynamic even seemingly isolated island ecosystems can be.

After all, say the researchers, if the house-cat-sized marten can find its way over, islands like Isle Royale may be less isolated and static than we think.

Jonathan Pauli, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology at UW-Madison, has studied martens for years as part of efforts to understand how communities of wild animals respond to human disturbance. In 2015, his group provided evidence that martens had long escaped detection on islands in southeastern Alaska prior to deliberate reintroduction efforts in the 20th century. And in work published in 2016 with graduate student Phil Manlick, Pauli called into question the effectiveness of periodic augmentations of reintroduced marten populations in Wisconsin, where the once-extirpated carnivore remains an endangered species.

Part of the problem in studying martens: They're hard as heck to spot in the wild.

"I've never seen a Wisconsin marten without trapping one," says Manlick.

Manlick, Pauli and co-author Mark Romanski of the National Park Service collected marten scat samples on the island from 2006 to 2008 and again from 2012 to 2013. They gathered additional samples from nearby marten populations in Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Samples from a different species, the Pacific marten, located in Colorado, served as a comparison. In total, the researchers collected samples from 230 individuals.

They analyzed DNA extracted from the samples to get a genetic fingerprint of the different populations. The team then evaluated three possible colonization scenarios: that an ancient population of martens had escaped detection after presumed extirpation, that the planned 1966 reintroduction actually occurred and was successful, or that a more recent reintroduction took place.

An initial analysis of the martens' DNA showed that the Isle Royale population was related to martens from Ontario. But the island population's DNA fingerprint was different, unique enough to suggest that they might have been isolated from the mainland for sufficient time to diverge into their own subpopulation. This distinct pattern supported the idea that a hidden population of martens had escaped detection during the 20th century.

"If something's been isolated out there for thousands of years, there's going to be some (genetic) mutations that build up in that population, where they're going to look distinct from everybody else around them," says Manlick, explaining how, over generations, genomes slowly accumulate mutations. "And that's what we anticipated seeing. But we didn't."

A closer look at DNA from the mitochondria -- the energy-generating part of the cell has its own, tiny genome -- revealed that the Isle Royale martens were part of one larger, common population around Lake Superior.

"They actually look just like all the other martens in the region who have come from Ontario and Minnesota and Michigan, and all these groups of martens all kind of look the same" genetically, says Manlick.

The low genetic diversity of the Isle Royale martens indicated that their population had experienced a severe genetic bottleneck. Analysis of the bottleneck estimated that the island's population began with just two individuals -- or even one pregnant female -- and that they migrated to the island less than a generation before samples were first collected in the early 2000s.

In other words, Isle Royale's martens repopulated the island just before they were spotted again, in 1993, after a 76-year absence. Though it's impossible to prove, the researchers venture that the martens walked 16 miles over an ice bridge from Ontario, a known pathway for other animals. Such connections to land are becoming less common in a warming climate.

"Much of what we understand about the island and its ecosystem evolves as we develop new techniques for analysis. At the onset of the project I was pulling for a remnant population, but to find out that martens just arrived blew my mind," says Romanski. "I am used to being wrong, but in this instance I certainly don't mind, as the story is richer."

"If they naturally colonized the island, it has implications for the management of Isle Royale in general," says Pauli.

That's because ongoing management decisions, such as the relocation of more wolves to the island slated for this fall, are based in part on assumptions that the island ecosystem won't recover from disturbances without human help. But the small marten found its way back. So might other species. The take-home lesson, say the researchers, is that even protected, isolated ecosystems can be resilient and are rarely static.

"This does suggest that these islands are maybe not as insulated as we think," says Pauli, "and that they are indeed way more dynamic than we give them credit for."

The world is on fire. Or so it appears in this image from NASA's Worldview. The red points overlaid on the image designate those areas that by using thermal bands detect actively burning fires. Africa seems to have the most concentrated fires. This could be due to the fact that these are most likely agricultural fires. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality.

Elsewhere the fires, such as in North America are wildfires for the most part. In South America, specifically Chile has had horrendous numbers of wildfires this year. A study conducted by Montana State University found that: "Besides low humidity, high winds and extreme temperatures--some of the same factors contributing to fires raging across the United States--central Chile is experiencing a mega drought and large portions of its diverse native forests have been converted to more flammable tree plantations, the researchers said." More on this study can be found here: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-massive-south-central-chile.html#jCp

However, in Brazil the fires are both wildfires and man-made fires set to clear crop fields of detritus from the last growing season. Fires are also commonly used during Brazil's dry period to deforest land and clear it for raising cattle or other agricultural or extraction purposes. The problem with these fires is that they grow out of control quickly due to climate issues. Hot, dry conditions coupled with wind drive fires far from their original intended burn area. According to the Global Fire Watch site (between 8/15 and 8/22) shows: 30,964 fire alerts.

Australia is also where you tend to find large bushfires in its more remote areas. Hotter, drier summers in Australia will mean longer fire seasons - and urban sprawl into bushland is putting more people at risk for when those fires break out. For large areas in the north and west, bushfire season has been brought forward a whole two months to August - well into winter, which officially began 1 June. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (Bom), the January to July period 2018 was the warmest in NSW since 1910. As the climate continues to change and areas become hotter and drier, more and more extreme bushfires will break out across the entire Australian continent.

CAMBRIDGE, MD (August 23, 2018)--The word Sargassum conjures up images of a vast floating island off the coast of Bermuda, the mystical Sargasso Sea that has fascinated and inspired sailors' tales for hundreds of years.

Sargassum is actually a floating seaweed that drifts on ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico. It is unusual because it's the only seaweed in the world that never spends any part of its life cycle attached to the bottom. Sometimes called a golden floating rainforest, clumps of Sargassum--ranging in size from a softball to floating rafts miles long--are their own ecosystem.

"These Sargassum rafts provide key habitat and structure in the open ocean--fish, little crabs, and juvenile sea turtles spend a bunch of time in and around them," said University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science graduate student Maureen Brooks, who studies the movement of Sargassum in the ocean.

New research explores how the Sargassum might grow while it is meandering along the currents, not just where it floats, combining both ocean physics and seaweed biology for the first time to understand its distribution patterns. Knowing could eventually help predict its arrival and impact on beaches around the world.

Beginning in 2011, unprecedented quantities of Sargassum began washing ashore along the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Piles of stranded seaweed several feet thick covered tourist beaches in Puerto Rico and even Galveston, Texas, driving away tourists, smothering turtle nests, and increasing fish kills. And the inundations seem to be becoming more frequent.

"We started seeing larger amounts of Sargassum coming up from the Tropics," said Brooks. "It has always been around, but recently there has been a lot more of it washing up on beaches from the Caribbean to west Africa."

Brooks set out to discover what was driving these new seasonal changes. Knowing could help better predict where the Sargassum will travel--and how much of it will land on beaches, giving communities more time to prepare.

"I'm interested in how much of that seasonal pattern is driven by the biology--the growth of the seaweed--and how much was due to it moving around the ocean currents," she said.

In a recent study, Brooks and her University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science co-authors Victoria Coles and Raleigh Hood showed that it's important to include both ocean physics and seaweed biology to understand the patterns of Sargassum we observe.

They looked at satellite observations from 2001-2012, monthly snapshots of Sargassum floating in the Atlantic Ocean to find what the average pattern--a program that runs on a supercomputer--to play out different scenarios of the seaweed's growth and travel along all the currents in the ocean. It's similar to dropping tens of thousands of ping-pong balls off in different points in the ocean and tracking where each one of them travels along the ocean currents.

"When we first ran the model, we placed Sargassum particles everywhere around the Atlantic and looked at what happened," she said.

Researchers factored into the model for the first time how the Sargassum would grow while it was meandering along the currents, not just where it would float. "You need to include both ocean physics and seaweed biology to understand the patterns of Sargassum we observe," she said.

They found that two regions influence the spread of Sargassum across the Atlantic.

"We looked at pathways and found two regions that seemed to have more influence on the seasonal pattern than other places--the western tropics near the mouth of the Amazon River and the Gulf of Mexico," she said. "If they start in those two places, they are going to recreate that seasonal pattern that we expect--those two places act like a source."

Knowing the beginning Sargassum's ocean journey could eventually help predict its arrival and impact on beaches around the world.

"Hopefully we can use satellite data to better predict where it's going to be," she said. "If we know more about how it's moving we might be able to predict it a little farther in advance."

An international team of researchers has determined the function of a new family of proteins associated with cancer and autism. The results have been published in Molecular Cell. The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF).

To make our body function well, cells must constantly make new proteins under the guidance of our genetic programme. Proteins are chains of amino acids synthesised by a special molecular machine, the ribosome. The amino acid sequence is encoded in a template, the mRNA molecule, and the decoding and synthesis process is called translation. In order to synthesise the right protein, a ribosome must attach to mRNA, find the correct point for starting the synthesis, then "read" the entire coding region and release the finished protein. All these translation stages are already relatively well understood but a fate of the ribosome after it has finished its work remained elusive.

Progress in understanding these complex processes was made thanks to the joint efforts of US and Russian scientists. The team studied a family of proteins that includes MCT-1, which is a product of an oncogene (a gene that can trigger tumour formation); its partner DENR, which is associated with autism; and the translation factor elF2D.

"We discovered factor elF2D as early as 2010," says Sergey Dmitriev, a head of the Russian part of the project, senior researcher at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). "We characterised its biochemical activity but, at that time, there was no clear evidence of the role played by this protein in the living cell. Since then, a number of high-impact papers have been published suggesting that eIF2D and two similar factors, MCT-1 and DENR, can be involved in reading a special class of mRNA. These mRNA molecules have additional short reading frames, so-called uORFs, before the main coding region that encodes the main protein."

Such uORFs can also be read by a ribosome. In many cases, this prevents the ribosome from reaching the main coding region, thereby regulating production of the main protein. As short uORFs are present in approximately half of the human mRNAs, it was important to find out the possible role of eIF2D, MCT-1 and DENR in their translation. Yet attempts to pinpoint the function of their factors or shed light on how they work in the human body remained unsuccessful.

"Thus, we turned to simpler organisms, such as yeast," says Desislava Makeeva, a PhD student in the School of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, MSU and co-author of the article. "We worked with yeast strains that had no genes of these factors. Our partners from the National Institutes of Health, USA, applied ribosome profiling, allowing translation in mutant cells to be studied systematically, while we took on the biochemical part."

Ribosome profiling is based on high-throughput sequencing (determination of nucleotide sequence) of millions of small mRNA fragments covered by translating ribosomes. This breakthrough technique shows the full picture of protein biosynthesis in a cell at a particular moment. In other words, it takes a "snapshot" of translation of all mRNA molecules under specific conditions and allows the intensity of the process to be determined for each mRNA.

"In our laboratory, this method is used to study translation in mammalian cells," explains Sergey, "But our American colleagues applied it to yeast. However, the data obtained with such systems approaches should be verified by classical methods, to avoid misleading interpretations. To this end, we used cell-free translation systems: we prepared yeast cell extracts, added mRNA that had been synthesised in a test tube and observed how much product was synthesised from these RNA molecules in the case of yeast strains with or without mutations in a particular gene."

This collaboration allowed the researchers to find out that factors eIF2D, MCT-1 and DENR are required for the ribosome to detach timely from the mRNA once the translation is complete. Moreover, in cases when the mRNA contains a uORF, a lack of these factors also interferes with the translation of the main coding region, leading to increased production of the main protein. Apparently, the oncogenic potential of MCT-1 and disruptions of neuronal development associated with mutations in the DENR gene are linked to the role of these factors in the translation of uORF-containing mRNA, many of which encode important regulators of cell processes.

CINCINNATI - Scientists may be on the road to solving the mystery of a group of mostly incurable blood diseases called myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), which cause people to have immature, malfunctioning bone marrow cells that fuel a diverse set of health problems and can lead to leukemia.

MDS is linked to a number of different gene mutations and considered one of the most complex malignancies affecting blood-making hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow, according to Gang Huang, PhD, a cancer biologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. He is lead investigator of a new study in the journal Cancer Discovery. It identifies a gene that in laboratory experiments fuels the biological processes that cause the different types of MDS that physicians see in patients.

"We know the genomes of MDS patients have recurrent mutations in different transcriptional, epigenetic and metabolic regulators, but the incidence of these mutations does not directly correspond to the disease when it occurs," said Huang, a member of the divisions of Pathology and Experimental Hematology and Cancer Biology. "Our study shows that malfunctions in the signaling of HIF1A could be generating the diverse medical problems doctors see in MDS patients."

MDS is becoming more prevalent as the population ages, with the median age of occurrence at about 70 years, according to the researchers. The only curative therapy is a bone marrow transplant, but it's only appropriate in a rare number of cases, one reason being that older patients who get MDS are not healthy enough to tolerate hematopoietic stem cells transplantation.

Metabolism and Oxygen Regulator

HIF1A (hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha) is a transcription factor, a regulatory gene that tells other genes what do to. HIF1A plays a vital role in how cells respond to metabolic changes and oxygen, and it affects the function of more than a thousand genes. This includes a vital role in regulating biological functions in blood-cell-making hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow.

Huang and his colleagues identified HIF1A's central role first by studying donated cells from MDS patients. This included extensive analysis of the cells' transcriptome (a complete list of messenger RNA molecules expressed from the genes in an organism) and epigenome (the collection of chemicals that help regulate genes in cells).

The scientists found evidence of dysregulated HIF1A in the patient cells. This led to experiments in different genetic mouse models to study the onset of MDS and its genetic and molecular drivers. These tests confirmed that dysregulation of HIF1A has a central role in the onset, including different manifestations and symptoms found in patients.

Possible Therapeutic Target

Although the authors stress that years of additional research are needed before knowing if their findings will become clinically relevant, their study does point to HIF1A as a potential therapeutic target for a disease that needs new and improved therapeutic options. They determined this by genetically and chemically eliminating HIF1A signaling from their genetic mouse models of MDS. The scientists report that inhibiting HIF1A reversed a broad spectrum of MDS symptoms.

Huang said the next challenge for researchers is to identify an HIF1A-specific therapeutic agent for treating MDS. Currently, most small-molecule inhibitors of HIF1A target both it and a second related molecule called HIF2A, which would make them unsuitable for MDS patients.

MIAMI--A new analysis shows that the habitats of three shark species (great hammerhead, tiger, and bull sharks) are relatively well protected from longline fishing in federal waters off the southeastern United States, but that that some prime locations are still vulnerable to fishing.

The new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science has important implications to further protect these at-risk species from unintentional fishing, known as bycatch, in U.S. federal waters.

Great hammerhead sharks are considered overfished and are experiencing population declines in the subtropical Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Tiger and bull shark populations have experienced declines to a lesser extent in the region over the past several decades and their populations appear to be stabilizing at present.

The research team analyzed data from 96 tagged great hammerheads, tiger, and bull sharks to create habitat suitability models that reveal specific areas where these sharks are most likely to occur due to favorable environmental conditions. These 'highly suitable habitats' were then compared to areas where longline fishing gear is currently prohibited to determine what proportion of their habitats are protected from, and vulnerable to, longline fishing activity.

The analysis showed that highly suitable habitats overlapping with the longline fishing restricted areas varied by species and season. Highly suitable habitats of great hammerheads and tiger sharks were relatively well protected from pelagic longlines yet vulnerable to bottom longline fishing. In addition, both species were vulnerable to pelagic and bottom longline fishing off southwestern Florida. Accordingly, the researchers suggested that extending longline gear restrictions to this area may benefit both great hammerhead and tiger sharks species.

"This study highlights the importance of considering seasonal trends in habitat use and movement patterns as these can vary greatly throughout the year and may impact the effectiveness of management plans for these species," said the study's lead author Hannah Calich, a UM Rosenstiel School alumna and current Ph.D. student at the University of Western Australia.

"Given the wide ranging movements of many migratory marine animals, the extent to which management areas protect their key habitats is often unknown and certainly very challenging to determine," said Neil Hammerschlag, a Research Associate Professor at UM's Rosenstiel School and study co-author. "We hope our approach will be helpful to researchers working with other migratory species, such as billfish, turtles, whales, seals, and tunas, to better help address these conservation issues."

NASA's Aqua satellite provided a look at water vapor in Typhoon Soulik as it passed just south of Japan.

Water vapor releases latent heat as it condenses into liquid. That liquid becomes clouds and thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Soulik on Aug. 22 at 12:50 a.m. EDT (0450 UTC), and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard analyzed the water vapor content in the storm. MODIS found highest concentrations and strongest storms north of the eye, ranging from northwest to northeast of the center.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Aug. 21, the center of Typhoon Soulik was located near 27.7 degrees north latitude and 137.0 degrees east longitude. That's about 245 nautical miles west-northwest of Iwo To Island, Japan. Soulik is moving toward the northwest and maximum sustained winds are near 115mph (100 knots/185 kph) with higher gusts.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC expects Soulik to turn to the north and northeast and make landfall in southeastern South Korea on Aug. 23.

Most of the time, cooking is a matter of following a recipe - combine specific amounts of specific ingredients in the right way and the predictable outcome is that you'll wind up with a tasty meal.

Unfortunately, those same rules don't apply in physics.

Despite a deep understanding of the properties of individual atoms - the "ingredients" that make up a crystal - scientists found that, when they are combined they often display new, unanticipated properties, making efforts to design new materials with specific properties little more than guesswork.

To make that process more predictable, Harvard Graduate Student Hoi Chun (Adrian) Po Professor of Physics Ashvin Vishwanath and Tokyo university Professor Haruki Watanabe teamed up to produce a system to represent band structures - energy bands, similar to electron orbital, that run through solids - to quickly understand the properties of a given material. The study is described in a recently-published paper in Science Advances.

In the past decade, Vishwanath said, the material that most researchers are looking for are so-called topological insulators - materials that are metallic on the exterior, but insulators inside. More recently, generalizations of topological insulators called topological crystalline insulators and topological semimetals have also generated a lot of interest. Symmetries of crystals play a prominent role in making these phases possible.

"A lot of the effort in the early days was on being able to predict whether a material would be an insulator or metallic," he said. "But about 10 or 20 years ago, people realized we could produce these topological materials, (which was exciting) because they have electronic properties that are very desirable. For example, they could be exploited to use the spin of the electron, rather than its charge to perform computation in a more energy efficient way. They may also help create the hardware for a topological quantum computer, one that performs computing in a radically new way.

"Insight into band structures would help us find real materials with these topological properties," Vishwanath said. "Right now the way people do this is really more of a guess...and what we are trying to do is to come up with efficient ways of diagnosing whether the material or materials you're interested in have a good chance of having topological properties."

But predicting which materials are topological, Vishwanath said, is easier said than done.

"The first problem is the huge number of ways in which atoms can form crystals," he said. "Even if you forget about the chemical complexity, forget about which elements are in there, just in the structure...there are 230 ways in which you can put atoms together into crystals."

The complexity, though, doesn't end there - Watanabe, Po and Vishwanath, were specifically interested in magnetism, and when that is added to the mix, the number of possible structures jumps dramatically, to 1,651.

"So there's a huge complexity there and that's one of the challenges," Vishwanath said. "If we wanted, we could just come up with a long list of options, but that's a very inelegant solution, and doesn't give you any insight into the problem.

"We took a different approach," he continued. "The key idea was...we found a way to represent certain key attributes of band structures as a vector in some high-dimensional space".

Using that tool, Watanabe, Po and Vishwanath were able to classify all 1,651 possibilities according to whether they were simple insulators, metallic or topological insulators.

"While each magnetic space group would previously have taken a graduate student a day to figure out, our new formulation allows for a simple automation of the task which is completed on a laptop for all 1,651 instances in half a day," Po said.

Armed with that information, Vishwanath said, researchers can now make more informed choices when designing new materials.

"This is a way to narrow down the options," he said. "There are other ways to do it, but we like to think this approach has some advantages."

As an example, he pointed to the periodic table, whose organization is designed not just to provide information about various elements, but also about how those elements are related to one another.

"You could list all the elements alphabetically, which would make them easy to look up and find," Vishwanath said. "But the periodic table gives you more information. Our system is similar - we can group structures together based on how they're related to each other."

"In the literature, there already exists a highly mathematical way (the so-called K-theory) of classifying topological insulators," Watanabe added. "However, this approach hasn't been really used for materials search so far because it requires a high-level of abstract mathematics and is hard to compute. The advantage of our approach is its simplicity -- it only involves linear algebra and group theory, both of which are undergraduate math subjects. This means that many researchers in the world can implement the scheme themselves and find candidate magnetic topological materials."

Going forward, Vishwanath and colleagues are working closely with materials scientists to use the system to model the expected properties of new materials, and are continuing to explore what information can be teased out of the system.

"In some ways, this mirrors our attempts to understand atoms," he said. "What atomic physics did for chemistry was organize things. It explained the periodic table. We are trying to get a similar understanding not for single atoms, but for collections of atoms, and we hope this is one of the organizing principles for that."

This research was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation, a Simons Investigator Award and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

New research reveals that many lakes in the continental United States are becoming "murkier, with potentially negative consequences for water quality and aquatic life. The findings are published in Limnology and Oceanography.

In the 5 years between 2007 and 2012, the dominant lake type in the United States shifted from clear, blue lakes to greenish-brown, murky lakes. Blue lakes declined by 18% while murky lakes increased by 12%. The investigators cannot definitively say what is causing this shift, but they suspect that land cover and land use patterns within a watershed, as well as changes in climate, may be important factors.

"Blue lakes typically are those that do not show evidence of nutrient pollution or elevated organic matter while murky lakes have high levels of both," said lead author Dr. Dina Leech, of Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. "A shift toward murkiness is a management concern because murky lakes tend to have more algae, including potentially harmful cyanobacteria. And with poor food quality at the base of the food web, over time murky lakes may not be able to support a healthy fishery."

Despite plants and vegetation being key to the Earth's ecosystem, little is known about the origin of their roots. However in new research, published in Nature, Oxford University scientists describe a transitional root fossils from the earliest land ecosystem that sheds light on how roots have evolved.

The findings suggest that plant roots have evolved more than once, and that the characteristics of roots developed in a step-wise manner - with the central root organ evolving first. And the root cap subsequently coming later.

Dr Sandy Hetherington and Professor Liam Dolan - both of Oxford's Department of Plant Sciences and Magdalen College Oxford, conducted a microscopic study of the oldest known plant ecosystem - the 407 million-year-old Rhynie chert.

Dr Hetherington said: 'The level of preservation in the Rhynie chert is truly remarkable - it never ceases to amaze me that I am able to examine the cellular organisation of plants that were growing 407 million years ago. It provides an exceptional window into life on the terrestrial surface at that time.'

The defining feature of modern-day plant roots is the meristem -- a self-renewing structure that is covered by a cap at its apex. Root meristems are hard to spot in the fragmentary fossil record, which can make it challenging to unearth the evolutionary origin of roots.

The authors found evidence of root meristems belonging to the lycopsid plant Asteroxylon mackiei. Lycopsids - commonly known as club mosses, are vascular plants (those with tissues that internally move resources) whose lineage branched off early, before the other higher plants (the euphyllophytes).

The team were able to build a 3D reconstruction of the fossil meristem.

The fossil analysis reveals that the meristems of A. mackiei lack both root hairs and caps -- they are covered instead by a continuous layer of surface tissue. This structure makes these roots unique among the vascular plants.

The paper's conclusion suggests that these roots are a transitional step towards modern-style, rooted vascular plants. The findings support the idea that, as this cap-less transitional structure appears in a plant that is already a lycopsid, roots with caps evolved separately in lycopsids and euphyllophytes from their common, root-less ancestors.

Discussing plans to expand on this work, Professor Dolan said: 'Our discovery suggests that plant organs were built up step-by-step during the course of plant evolution.

'The evolution of roots was a critical time in Earth's history and resulted in a dramatic reduction of atmospheric carbon. Now that we know that roots evolved in a step by step manner, we can go back to ancient rocks looking for structures that are missing "parts" that are present in extant roots.

'I really want to find out where root caps came from. They seemed to have appeared out of thin air. They are very important in extant roots; the root cap is important to protect the root as it pushes through the soil and it is the site where roots detect gravity. How did these ancient roots manage without a cap to provide these functions?'

With Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, as a hub, the world's first global research network into climate change denial has now been established. Building on a brand-new research publication showing the links between conservatism, xenophobia and climate change denial, the network will study how the growth of right-wing nationalism in Europe has contributed to an increase in climate change denial.

Scientific awareness of the greenhouse effect, and human influence on the climate, has existed for over three decades. During the 1980s, there was a strong environmental movement and a political consensus on the issue, but in recent years, climate change denial - denying that changes to the climate are due to human influence on the environment - has increased.

"Two strong groups have joined forces on this issue - the extractive industry, and right-wing nationalists. The combination has taken the current debate to a much more dramatic level than previously, at the same time as our window of opportunity is disappearing."

This is the analysis of Chalmers researcher Martin Hultman, Associate Professor in Science, Technology and Environmental studies, and research leader for the comprehensive project: "Why don't we take climate change seriously? A study of climate change denial", which is now collecting the world's foremost researchers in this area.

In the project, the network will examine the ideas and interests behind climate change denial, with a particular focus on right-wing nationalism, extractive industries, and conservative thinktanks. The goal is to increase understanding of climate change denial, and its influence on political decision-making, but also to raise awareness among the general public, those in power, research institutes, and industry.

Right-wing nationalism's links to climate change denial are a relatively unresearched topic, but Environmental Sociology recently published an article where Hultman and his research colleagues show the connections between conservatism, xenophobia, and climate change denial, through a study in Norway.

Hultman explains that many of the right-wing nationalist parties in Europe now have climate change denial as one of their most important issues.

"These parties are increasing in significance. We see it in Denmark and Norway, in Britain with UKIP, and Front National in France. But also, in Sweden, with the Sweden Democrats' suspicion towards SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), their dismissal of the Paris Agreement and of climate laws, and in their appraisal of climate change denier Václav Klaus as a freedom-fighting hero," he says. Hultman also mentions the Trump administration in the USA as a prime example.

Through the new research project, a unique international collaborative platform for research into climate change denial, Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism (CEFORCED), will be established, which will connect around 40 of the world's foremost scientific experts in the area and pave the way for international comparisons. The platform builds upon the world's first conference in the subject, which Hultman and Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University organised in 2016.

"Thanks to this international platform, we can investigate how climate change denial arguments arise and are spread - and see differences and similarities in different cultural contexts," says Hultman.

An important foundation of the project will be a broad, interdisciplinary view of climate change denial, linking together different disciplines such as geopolitics, environmental psychology, technological history, environmental sociology, gender research, environmental history, energy policy, environmental humanism and technology and science studies.

"We do not dismiss climate change denial as something limited to, for example, powerful, older men with strong connections to the fossil-fuels industry - even if such organised groups do play important roles. Knowledge of climate change and its causes has been around for a long time, so firstly, we also need to understand the type of reactions and everyday denials that explain why we don't take the greenhouse effect seriously - even when we see the consequences in front of our eyes."

According to Martin Hultman, there are strong reasons for the prevalence of climate change denial, and why it can be so difficult to take in the implications of climate science.

"Around 80 percent of all energy bought and sold in the world is oil, coal, or gas. The world's economy runs on this type of energy, which is destroying our habitat at the same time. This makes climate science's findings problematic, because it means that many in Sweden - and in other countries which use these resources to maintain their lifestyle - need to change their way of life, and many of the most powerful companies in the world will have to change their business models. At the same time, a more climate-friendly lifestyle involves a lot of what many of us hold dear. For example, more time socialising, more contact with nature, better health and less stress. "

Global research network on climate change denial established

The project "Why don't we take climate change seriously? A study of climate change denial" is a multi-year, interdisciplinary and international project, which is financed by the Swedish Energy Agency.

The project establishes the world's first research network on climate change denial - the Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism (CEFORCED), which includes around 40 scientific experts, including among others, Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University.

The project shall investigate right-wing nationalism, Conservative thinktanks, and extractive industries as key focuses.

* Right-wing nationalism:

The project will map right-wing nationalist parties in Europe and their arguments around climate change denialism. Among other things, Twitter and other internet discussion groups will be analysed.

* Extractive industries:

The project will undertake a historical investigation into Sweden's extractive industries -what they have learned about climate change, and how they have acted, as well as connecting knowledge to international studies into the debate.

* Conservative thinktanks:

The project maps out how conservative thinktanks in Sweden analyse and communicate around climate, as well as their connections to lobby groups of similar character.

Different forms of climate change denial

According to earlier research, several forms of climate change denial exist:

* Organised: Groups such as Klimatsans (Climate Sense) or Stockholmsinitiativet (The Stockholm Initiative) in Sweden, as well as lobby groups like the Heartland Institute in the USA, which support and spread climate change denial.

* Party Political: Political parties such as UKIP in Britain, and AfD in Germany among others, who work against different forms of climate policy.

* Response denial: For example, when people in positions of power make decisions such as the construction of Sälen airport in the Swedish mountains, running totally counter to the climate policies they claim to support.

* Everyday denial: When people act as though as they unaware of climate change, and, for example, fly several times a year to foreign countries.

Childhood experience of parental cancer is linked to poorer school grades, educational attainment, and subsequent earning power as a young adult, suggests a data linkage study of more than 1 million Danes, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

The more severe the parent's cancer, the greater the impact seemed to be, the findings indicate.

One in three people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and it has been estimated that one in every six survivors of the disease lives with children.

To find out about the potential impact on overall educational attainment and income by the age of 30 of having a parent with cancer during childhood, the researchers drew on 1,155,214 Danish children born between January 1978 and December 1999.

School performance was measured by final grade point average, based on a combination of exam results and teacher assessment achieved by ninth grade (around the age of 15) in 795,160 children born between 1986 and 1999.

Information on overall levels of educational attainment and disposable income by the age of 30 was compiled using national statistical data for 360,054 children born between 1978 and 1984.

Details of parental cancer were obtained from the Danish National Patient Registry. This was defined as a diagnosis before the child was 18, and for the purposes of school performance, before the age of 15.

Disease severity was defined by average 5-year survival in Denmark for a particular type of cancer, and categorised as good (above 85%); intermediate ( 50-85%); and poor (below 50%).

In all, around one in 20 children (4-5%) had had at least one parent diagnosed with cancer. Five year survival was categorised as good in around half of these cases. Among the mums, breast, gynaecological and skin cancers were the most common types; among the dads, these were cancers of the prostate, bladder, bowel, lung, and skin.

Children with experience of parental cancer had a lower final grade average than children whose parents had not had cancer, when potentially influential factors, such as parents' educational attainment, were taken into account. Although this difference was small, it was nevertheless statistically significant.

The grade average was even lower among children whose parents had a poor chance of surviving five years or who had died of their disease. But it was slightly higher among those whose parents had a good chance of surviving five years or who were still alive by the child's 15th birthday.

Parental cancer was also associated with a greater risk of low educational attainment, particularly if it was the father who had been affected.

What's more, this risk was 1.5 times higher if the chances of surviving 5 years were poor, and 1.6 times higher if the parent died. No such associations were evident if the outlook was good or if the parent was alive by the child's 18th birthday.

There was a moderately increased risk of lower earnings power by the age of 30 if a parent had had cancer. This risk was highest among children whose parents had a poor chance of surviving 5 years or who died of their cancer.

Particularly badly affected were children who had been under 5 when the diagnosis was made, suggesting that any impact of parental cancer in early childhood may extend across the life course, say the researchers.

This is an observational study, and as such, can't establish cause. But the researchers nevertheless explain: "In a life course perspective, parental cancer in childhood could be considered as a potential early life stressor that may increase the health vulnerability to later life exposures, expanding the risk of later social disadvantage and poor adult health."

They conclude that their findings: "may indicate that some children who experience parental cancer would benefit from appropriate support and early educational rehabilitation in [their] teenage years."