Earth

Today's shifting environmental conditions are creating an uncertain future for many top predators in marine ecosystems, but to protect the key habitat of a species, you first have to know where that habitat is and what threats might be affecting it. A new study from The Condor: Ornithological Applications looks at where New Zealand's endangered Westland Petrel forages during its breeding season and shows that its range overlaps more with trawl fishing activity than conservationists realized.

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa's Susan Waugh and her colleagues outfitted 73 petrels with GPS loggers over the course of four breeding seasons to track where they went during their foraging trips in the Tasman Sea. The results show that the birds' core feeding areas were consistent from year to year, located within 250 kilometers of their breeding colonies and focused on highly productive areas where the seafloor is steeply sloped. These sites often overlap with areas of significant trawl fishing activity, and further data is needed to see whether this co-occurrence translates into bird mortality. The species is the tenth most at-risk species from the impacts of New Zealand commercial fishing, but it appears that its actual ranking may be even higher as a result of the finding that the species is exposed to more fisheries activity than was previously understood.

"Our work on Westland petrels started in 2010, with a desire to understand how this species was faring demographically, as well as the key influences on it," says Waugh. "Our work highlights a key factor in the birds' ecology that has strong implications for conservation--these birds predictably use the same waters year in and year out, regardless of El Niño cycles, and they are therefore a great candidate for a marine protected area to create protection of their trophic relationships. We feel this Westland Petrel foraging data will provide a high-quality information source to help define key areas for marine conservation that will also provide protection for a whole suite of species."

"A remarkable and important aspect of this study is that they performed this investigation during a six-year period, encompassing a variety of environmental conditions. Whatever the sex or the breeding stage considered, Westland Petrels consistently foraged in the same core areas from year to year," adds Christophe Barbraud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, a seabird conservation expert who was not involved in the study. "Since these areas were also consistently and heavily used by trawl fisheries, these results call for the implementation of marine spatial management tools, such as marine reserves or restrictions and monitoring of interactions between individual Westland Petrels and trawl fisheries, to ensure the conservation of this endangered petrel species."

How do you boost soil water content and soil health without irrigating? Best cover it with a layer of straw, a new study concludes.

Farmers in China's Loess Plateau have for decades used both plastic and straw as a soil cover, or mulch, between crops. Much of the region's agriculture, of which corn is a large part, is dryland; the crops depend solely on seasonal rainfall. Dry spells can hurt crop growth and yield. So the two mulches--both inexpensive and readily available--are used to stop water loss from evaporation and keep soil warm.

Although the mulches had been in use since the 1970s, "there were no studies being done about the effect of mulching on soil quality, soil health, and carbon sequestration," said Upendra M. Sainju. Sainju is a soil scientist at the USDA-ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Lab in Montana.

To investigate this, as well the mulches' effects on corn yields, the scientists designed a five-year experiment in which they compared straw mulch, plastic mulch, and no mulch. At their test plots at the Changwu Agro-Ecological Station, they covered the soil in May and removed the mulches when the corn was harvested in October. They took soil samples at the end of each season to analyze carbon. The scientists also compared corn yields between the different plots.

On average, corn yield was highest in the plastic mulch, by 21 to 25 percent. Straw mulch also increased yield compared to bare soil, but only by five percent. What could be responsible for this difference? Since straw is high in carbon, decomposer microbes feed on free nitrogen in soil to balance their diet. This takes nitrogen--a key plant nutrient--away from the corn, affecting its yield.

However, soil organic carbon was highest in the straw mulch plots. This is desirable because carbon-rich soils are better at removing greenhouse gases from the air, said Sainju. Higher-carbon soils also hold more nutrients and have a cookie crumb-like structure. Both of these qualities benefit crops.

In the plastic mulch plots, the extra water boosted microbial activity. The hungry microbes consumed soil organic matter, converting it to carbon dioxide in the process. Using up the soil carbon this quickly reduces the ability of soil to act as a sink for carbon.

"We thought that the plastic mulch would be better because it increases soil moisture," said Sainju. "The result was surprising in the sense that if you have too much water it increases the microbial activity, which can break down organic carbon."

Building soil carbon is an important long-term goal worldwide, especially in China. Farmers in China can earn money from carbon credits when they improve soil's ability to store carbon. This makes straw the winner, according to the researchers. Although straw mulch increased microbial activity that used nitrogen, growers can adjust nitrogen fertilizer use to help balance out the processes. This will increase soil carbon and create high yields.

Deep-diving whales and other marine mammals can get the bends--the same painful and potentially life-threatening decompression sickness that strikes scuba divers who surface too quickly. A new study offers a hypothesis of how marine mammals generally avoid getting the bends and how they can succumb under stressful conditions.

The key is the unusual lung architecture of whales, dolphins and porpoises (and possibly other breath-holding diving vertebrates), which creates two different pulmonary regions under deep-sea pressure, say researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Fundacion Oceanografic in Spain. Their study was published April 25, 2018, in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"How some marine mammals and turtles can repeatedly dive as deep and as long as they do has perplexed scientists for a very long time," says Michael Moore, director of the Marine Mammal Center at WHOI and co-author of the study. "This paper opens a window through which we can take a new perspective on the question."

When air-breathing mammals dive to high-pressure depths, their lungs compress. That collapses their alveoli--the tiny sacs at the end of the airways where gas exchange occurs. Nitrogen bubbles build up in the animals' bloodstream and tissue. If they ascend slowly, the nitrogen can return to the lungs and be exhaled. But if they ascend too fast, the nitrogen bubbles don't have time to diffuse back into the lungs. Under less pressure at shallower depths, the nitrogen bubbles expand in the bloodstream and tissue, causing pain and damage.

Marine mammals' chest structure allows their lungs to compress. Scientists have assumed that this passive compression was marine mammals' main adaptation to avoid taking up excessive nitrogen at depth and getting the bends.

In their study, the researchers took CT images of a deceased dolphin, seal, and a domestic pig pressurized in a hyperbaric chamber. The team was able to see how the marine mammals' lung architecture creates two pulmonary regions: one air-filled and the other collapsed. The researchers believe that blood flows mainly through the collapsed region of the lungs. That causes what is called a ventilation-perfusion mismatch, which allows some oxygen and carbon dioxide to be absorbed by the animal's bloodstream, while minimizing or preventing the exchange of nitrogen. This is possible because each gas has a different solubility in the blood. The terrestrial pig did not show that structural adaptation.

This mechanism would protect cetaceans from taking up excessive amounts of nitrogen and thus minimize risk of the bends, says lead author Daniel García-Parraga of the Fundacion Oceanografic.

However, he said, "Excessive stress, as may occur during exposure to human-made sound, may cause the system to fail and increase blood to flow to the air-filled regions. This would enhance gas exchange, and nitrogen would increase in the blood and tissues as the pressure decreases during ascent."

Scientists once thought that diving marine mammals were immune from decompression sickness, but a 2002 stranding event linked to navy sonar exercises revealed that 14 whales that died after beaching off the Canary Islands had gas bubbles in their tissues--a sign of the bends. The researchers say the paper's findings could support previous implications of decompression sickness in some cetacean mass strandings associated with navy sonar exercises.

The team says further research will require the development of tools to analyze how lung blood flow and ventilation patterns change with various stressors during diving.

A Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory research team has developed an exceptional next-generation material for nuclear radiation detection that could provide a significantly less expensive alternative to the detectors now in commercial use.

Specifically, the high-performance material is used in a device that can detect gamma rays, weak signals given off by nuclear materials, and can easily identify individual radioactive isotopes. It has been more than 30 years since a material with this performance was developed, with the new material having the advantage of inexpensive production.

Potential uses for the new device include more widespread detectors -- including handheld -- for nuclear weapons and materials as well as applications in biomedical imaging, astronomy and spectroscopy.

"Governments of the world want a quick, low-cost way to detect gamma rays and nuclear radiation to fight terrorist activities, such as smuggling and dirty bombs, and the proliferation of nuclear materials," said Northwestern's Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, the corresponding author of the paper. "This has been a very difficult problem for scientists to solve. Now we have an exciting new semiconductor device that is inexpensive to make and works well at room temperature."

Kanatzidis is a Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He has a joint appointment with Argonne.

The research was published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

In 2013, Argonne published a scientific study noting the promise of cesium lead bromide in the form of perovskite crystals for high-energy radiation detection. Since then, researchers led by Kanatzidis, Duck Young Chung of Argonne and Constantinos Stoumpos of Northwestern have worked to purify and improve the material.

The breakthrough came when Yihui He, a postdoctoral fellow in Kanatzidis' group and the paper's first author, took the improved material and reconfigured the semiconductor device. Instead of using the same electrode on either side of the crystal, he used two different electrodes. With this asymmetrical design, the device only conducts electricity when gamma rays are present.

The researchers compared the performance of their new cesium lead bromide detector to the conventional cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detector and found it performed just as well in detecting gamma rays with high resolution from cobalt-57.

"We achieved the same performance in two years of research and development as others did in 20 years with cadmium zinc telluride, the expensive material that is currently used," Kanatzidis said.

It is important to know what the gamma-ray emitting material is, Kanatzidis stressed, because some materials are legal and some are illegal. Each radioactive isotope possesses its own "fingerprint": a different decay behavior and a unique characteristic gamma-ray emission spectrum. The new cesium lead bromide detector can detect these fingerprints.

In the study, the researchers found the detector successfully identified radioactive isotopes americium-241, cobalt-57, cesium-137 and sodium-22. The researchers also produced larger crystal samples to demonstrate the material can be scaled up.

The paper is titled "High spectral resolution of gamma-rays at room temperature by perovskite CsPbBr single crystals."

An international team including researchers from King's College London have found physical activity can protect against the emergence of depression, regardless of age and geographical region.

The researchers from Brazil, Belgium, Australia, USA, UK and Sweden pooled data from 49 unique cohort studies of people free from mental illness that examined if physical activity is associated with a decreased risk of developing depression.

In total, 266,939 individuals were included, with a gender distribution of 47% males, and on average the individuals were followed up after 7.4 years.

Once the data were extracted they found that compared with people with low levels of physical activity, those with high levels had lower odds of developing depression in the future.

Furthermore, physical activity had a protective effect against the emergence of depression in youths, in adults, and in the elderly and across geographical regions, (in Europe, North America, and Oceania).

Lead author Professor Dr Felipe Barreto Schuch, Universidade La Salle (Brazil), said, 'This is the first global meta-analysis to establish that engaging in physical activity is beneficial for protecting the general population from developing depression.'

'The evidence is clear that people that are more active have a lesser risk of developing depression. We have looked at whether these effects happen at different age groups and across different continents and the results are clear. Regardless your age or where you live, physical activity can reduce the risk of having depression later in life.'

Co-author Dr Brendon Stubbs, Post-doctoral research physiotherapist, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London and Head of Physiotherapy, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, said,

'Our robust analysis of over a quarter of a million people found consistent evidence that people who are more active are less likely to develop depression in the future.

We found that higher levels of physical activity were protective from future depression in children, adults and older adults, across every continent and after taking into account other important factors such as body mass index, smoking and physical health conditions.

'Given the multitude of other health benefits of physical activity, our data add to the pressing calls to prioritise physical activity across the lifespan.'

Co-author Dr Simon Rosenbaum, Senior Research Fellow at UNSW Sydney and the Black Dog Institute, said, 'The challenge ahead is ensuring that this overwhelming evidence is translated into meaningful policy change that creates environments and opportunities to help everyone, including vulnerable members of our society, engage in physical activity'.

Co-author Dr Joseph Firth, Research Fellow at NICM Health Research Institute at Western Sydney University said, 'The compelling evidence presented here provides an even stronger case for engaging all people in regular physical activity; through schools, workplaces, leisure programs and elsewhere, in order to reduce the risk of depression across the lifespan.'

Further studies are warranted to evaluate the minimum physical activity levels required and the effects of different types of activity and 'dosages' on subsequent risk for depression.

As concerns about privacy increase for people using mobile apps, users' trust and engagement may hinge on perceptions about how the app uses their data and whether it seeks user input before delivering personalized services, according to researchers. However, their reactions may also depend on how familiar a user is with technology, they added.

In a study of a prototype app for recommending eco-friendly stores, users considered an app more trustworthy and easier to use if they felt they were consulted about the distance and nature of the stores they prefer, a process called overt personalization. Usability of the app was dampened when the personalization was covert, when it recommended stores without first asking their preferences.

But, it is not always feasible to consult app users because it would interrupt them and require them to make too many choices, said the researchers. One solution is to make sure that users have a clear understanding of how the app is using their data.

According to the researchers, higher perceived transparency -- whether users recognize that the app is clearly conveying how and why it is collecting the data -- is associated with better product involvement and user engagement. Transparency can also mean lower privacy concerns.

"Providing details about how the app is going to do things, such as how it will use your information, how it will store the data and how it's going to delete that information, may reduce some of the privacy concerns and the feeling of being creeped out by personalized offerings," said S. Shyam Sundar, distinguished professor of communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory.

Tsai-Wei Chen, a user experience designer at Optum, who worked with Sundar, said that the perception of control can lead to a series of positive user reactions.

"If you give people a perception of control, they trust the app more, and, the more they trust it, the greater their involvement in the app and the more positive attitudes," said Chen. "Their privacy concerns also went down and they had greater engagement with the app."

The researchers, who presented their findings at the CHI Conference in Montreal, found a connection between a user's technological savvy and his or her ability to perceive overt personalization and information transparency.

"People who were more familiar with using technology -- power users -- could tell the difference between overt and covert personalization," said Sundar. "They better recognized the value of information transparency and felt that it made up for perceived lack of overtness in personalization."

The researchers suggest that because users' familiarity with technology may influence how they experience features, such as privacy controls, developers should have a clear understanding of their customers' expertise and limitations when designing an app.

Developers should also make cues about information usage more obvious for casual tech users, they added.

"For users who have some tech expertise, it's easier to incorporate covert personalization, but make sure the transparency cues are apparent and easy to understand," said Chen. "For users with lower tech expertise, you need to work hard to convey overt personalization and information transparency, or find other features to increase their trust."

For the study, the researchers recruited 302 participants to use five different versions of an app prototype, called GreenByMe, that recommended local eco-friendly stores. The five versions covered the different conditions of the experiment, including covert personalization, overt personalization, high transparency, low transparency, and a control condition.

In the overt condition, the app displayed selection menus. To test transparency, in the high transparency condition, a screen contained an explanation on how the information would be used.

In an effort to improve the quality of biodiversity records, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) use automated data processing to check individual data items. The records are provided to the ALA and GBIF by museums, herbaria and other biodiversity data sources.

However, an independent analysis of such records reports that ALA and GBIF data processing also leads to data loss and unjustified changes in scientific names.

The study was carried out by Dr Robert Mesibov, an Australian millipede specialist who also works as a data auditor. Dr Mesibov checked around 800,000 records retrieved from the Australian Museum, Museums Victoria and the New Zealand Arthropod Collection. His results are published in the open access journal ZooKeys, and also archived in a public data repository.

"I was mainly interested in changes made by the aggregators to the genus and species names in the records," said Dr Mesibov.

"I found that names in up to 1 in 5 records were changed, often because the aggregator couldn't find the name in the look-up table it used."

Another worrying result concerned type specimens - the reference specimens upon which scientific names are based. On a number of occasions, the aggregators were found to have replaced the name of a type specimen with a name tied to an entirely different type specimen.

The biggest surprise, according to Dr Mesibov, was the major disagreement on names between aggregators.

"There was very little agreement," he explained. "One aggregator would change a name and the other wouldn't, or would change it in a different way."

Furthermore, dates, names and locality information were sometimes lost from records, mainly due to programming errors in the software used by aggregators to check data items. In some data fields the loss reached 100%, with no original data items surviving the processing.

"The lesson from this audit is that biodiversity data aggregation isn't harmless," said Dr Mesibov. "It can lose and confuse perfectly good data."

"Users of aggregated data should always download both original and processed data items, and should check for data loss or modification, and for replacement of names," he concluded.

Drinking alcohol may be linked to pre-menstrual syndrome, or PMS for short, suggests a pooled analysis of published study data in the online journal BMJ Open.

Based on the global prevalence of alcohol drinking and their study findings, the Spanish researchers estimate that around one in 10 cases (11%) might be linked to alcohol intake.

Premenstrual syndrome includes any or all of mood swings, tender breasts, food cravings, fatigue, irritability and depression. Its severity varies from woman to woman.

The cost of PMS in the US has been estimated at US$ 5000 per case every year, with women likely to experience 3000 days of disabling symptoms during their reproductive lives.

Several studies have shown that PMS tends to be more severe among women who drink alcohol, but it's not clear whether this is due to the alcohol itself or whether women reach for the bottle to cope with their symptoms.

To try and find out more, the researchers therefore trawled research databases for relevant studies published up to May 2017, and found 19 from eight different countries, involving more than 47,000 participants.

Pooled analysis of the data from these 19 studies produced estimates showing that alcohol intake was associated with a "moderate" heightened risk of PMS of 45 percent, rising to 79 percent for heavy drinkers.

While the design of the included studies precludes the ability to establish cause, the relatively large number, and the consistency of the results, suggest that alcohol may be associated with an increase in the risk of PMS, they say.

"These findings are important given that the worldwide prevalence of alcohol drinking among women is not negligible," they write.

Globally, the proportion of women who drink alcohol is thought to be around 30 percent, with around one in 20 (6%) of those heavy drinkers. But in Europe and America the equivalent figures are higher, at almost 60 percent and over 12.5 percent, respectively.

"Based on the figures above and on our results, we estimate that 11% of the PMS cases may be associated to alcohol intake worldwide and 21% in Europe," write the researchers. "Furthermore, heavy drinking may be associated with 4% of the PMS cases in the world and over 9% in Europe."

They speculate that if the association is causal in nature, "eliminating heavy drinking in women would then prevent one in every 12 cases in Europe."

There are some plausible biological explanations for the association found, they explain. Alcohol might boost PMS risk by altering levels of the sex steroid hormones and gonadotropin during the menstrual cycle, and/or it might interfere with the production of key 'mood' chemicals in the brain, such as serotonin, they suggest.

Further research is most definitely needed, they conclude.

New research from King's College London shows that lonely young adults are more likely to experience mental health problems and more likely to be out of work than their peers. The study, published today in Psychological Medicine, gives a detailed snapshot of the lives of lonely 18-year-olds and shows how loneliness goes hand-in-hand with a wide range of problems in health and wellbeing.

Loneliness is strongly linked with premature death in old age, to a similar degree as smoking or obesity. With increasing attention on loneliness as a major public health issue, the study highlights the importance of early intervention to prevent young adults being trapped in loneliness as they age.

Over 2000 British 18-year-olds were asked questions such as 'how often do you feel you lack companionship?' and 'how often do you feel left out?', and were interviewed about their mental and physical health, lifestyle habits, education and employment.

Loneliness was common among young adults: the researchers found a quarter of study participants reported feeling lonely some of the time and approximately 7% reported feeling lonely often. These findings mirror a recent ONS survey which found that loneliness was more common among 16 to 24-year-olds than any other age group.

'It's often assumed that loneliness is an affliction of old age, but it is also very common among younger people,' said lead author Dr Timothy Matthews from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London. 'Unlike many other risk factors, loneliness does not discriminate: it affects people from all walks of life; men and women, rich and poor.'

Lonely young adults were more than twice as likely to have mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and to have self-harmed or attempted suicide. They were also more likely to have seen their GP or a counsellor for mental health problems in the past year.

In addition, lonelier young adults were more likely to be out of work and education and were less confident about their career prospects. One in five people in the loneliest 10% of the sample were not in education, employment or training, compared to one in ten non-lonely young people.

Lonelier young people were also less likely to be physically active, more likely to smoke, and more likely to use technology compulsively (at the expense of other activities and obligations).

Dr Matthews said: 'Our findings suggest that if someone tells their GP or a friend that they feel lonely, that could be a red flag that they're struggling in a range of other areas in life.

'There are lots of community initiatives to try and encourage people to get together and take part in shared activities. However, it's important to remember that some people can feel lonely in a crowd, and the most effective interventions to reduce loneliness involve counselling to help individuals tackle negative patterns of thinking.'

The study does not show whether loneliness is the cause of problems in health and wellbeing, but it does show how loneliness cuts across a wide range of important social issues.

Senior author Professor Louise Arseneault from the IoPPN said: 'It's important that we become comfortable talking about loneliness as a society. People are often reluctant to admit that they feel lonely, because there is still a stigma attached to it. That in itself can be profoundly isolating.'

Madrid, Spain: Researchers identified novel chromosomal mutations and described their role in the development of resistance of Escherichia coli (E. coli) to broad-spectrum antibiotic fosfomycin, according to research presented at the 28th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) [1].

Researchers from France studied the genetic basis of fosfomycin resistance in a panel of E. coli isolates and found that certain mutations rendered fosfomycin ineffective at lower doses compared with other mutations. They obtained four mutants in vitro and used a set of 20 clinical isolates, 11 of which were susceptible to antibiotics and nine of which were resistant. The team analysed the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of fosfomycin, which is the concentration at which bacterial growth was prevented. A low MIC means that a smaller amount of the antibiotic was needed to stop growth compared to samples with high MICs.

"In this study, we have identified novel chromosomal mutations both selected in vitro and in vivo and experimentally determined their role in fosfomycin resistance," explained presenting author Prof. Vincent Cattoir. "Mutations in uhpB and uhpC appear to be more frequent than those in already known genes."

Researchers found no genetic mutations in the 11 E. coli isolates that responded to fosfomycin, with MICs ranging from 0.5 to 8 mg/L. However, they found several mutations in each of the nine fosfomycin-resistant isolates, which exhibited MICs in the range of 64-256 mg/L.

Cattoir's team obtained two mutants that corresponded with mutations in two novel genes, uhpB and uhpC. Additional mutations were noted on genes galU and Ion. When researchers introduced the uhpB and uhpC mutations, the amount of fosfomycin needed to stop the visible growth of E. coli was 64-fold. Single mutations in the galU and Ion genes only caused a two-fold increase in the MIC. Three other uhpB/uhpC mutations each led to a 128-fold increase in fosfomycin MICs.

Fosfomycin is an antibiotic used to treat bladder and urinary tract infections. Fosfomycin resistance results from a set of known chromosomal mutations or the acquisition of mutated genes from elsewhere, such as other bacterial species. But resistance is also observed in some strains that do not have these known mutations or acquired genes.

A strain of the disease responsible for killing off nearly two thirds of the UK's greenfinches has been discovered in myna bird populations in Pakistan.

Mynas are native to the Indian subcontinent and are one of the world's most invasive species. Although the disease is not generally fatal to them, experts from the University of East Anglia studying the birds say there is a risk they might pass it on to other species.

Avian trichomonosis, more commonly called canker or frounce, is carried by a parasite that primarily infects pigeons in the UK and the larger birds of prey which feed on them.

But in 2005 scientists found the disease had jumped into Britain's garden songbird populations, predominantly affecting greenfinches and chaffinches.

Since then, the greenfinch population in the UK has fallen from around 4.3 million breeding pairs to fewer than 1.5 million in 2016.

In 2011, the disease was discovered to have reached European finch populations. Now researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have found it in an entirely separate songbird species - the common myna.

Working in partnership with the University of Agriculture in Pakistan, researchers captured and screened 167 myna birds from eight different sites around the Faisalabad region of Pakistan. They discovered that around 20 per cent of the birds were infected with the disease and that there were infected birds at all of the sites surveyed.

The study, published in the journal Parasitology, also identified that the disease affecting the mynas was a different strain from the one found in the UK songbirds. Few of the infected birds had signs of poor health, suggesting that they can carry the disease without it being fatal.

Because myna birds are so invasive, however, there is a significant risk that they can spread the disease to other species that might not otherwise come into contact with it.

Dr Kevin Tyler, from UEA and a senior author of the study, said: "Mynas are able to roost almost anywhere in warm climates, which is one reason they are so successful, but it could also mean they are likely to spread the disease further.

"Mynas have already been implicated in the spread of bird flu through contact with poultry, so this could be of concern to poultry farmers. However, further research and testing is needed to see whether the disease has yet spread from mynas to other species."

He added: "In the UK, pigeons carry this disease without serious symptoms and it looks like myna birds are able to do the same. This could be due to a natural resilience to the disease, or it could be that this is a less virulent strain - again, we need to carry out further research to investigate."

Although mynas are thought to be native to the Indian subcontinent, populations of the birds have spread around the world, so the team is also keen to test for the disease in other countries.

'Endemic infection of the common mynah Acridotheres tristis with Trichomonas gallinae the agent of avian trichomonosis', by Hassan Ali Farooq, Hammad Ahmad Khan, Abdulwahed Fahad Alrefaei and Kevin Morris Tyler, is published in Parasitology on April 23, 2018.

Of the more than 38 million Americans who experience migraine headaches, 28 million are women. Compared to men, women also experience more frequent and severe migraines and don't respond as well to drug treatments. Findings from a new study conducted in rats reveal that females may be more susceptible to migraines and less responsive to treatment because of the way fluctuations in the hormone estrogen affect cells in the brain.

Emily Galloway, an undergraduate research assistant in the laboratory of Tally Largent-Milnes in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, will present this research at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting during the 2018 Experimental Biology meeting to be held April 21-25 in San Diego.

"Conducting research on the molecular mechanisms behind migraine is the first step in creating more targeted drugs to treat this condition, for men and women," said Galloway. "Knowledge gained from this work could lead to relief for millions of those who suffer from migraines and identify individuals who may have better responses to specific therapies."

The new study is one of the first to examine the role of the sodium proton exchanger NHE1 in migraine headaches. NHE1 regulates the transport of protons and sodium ions across cell membranes, including those that make up the blood-brain barrier. When NHE1 isn't present at high enough levels or doesn't function properly, it can cause increased pain signaling that leads to a migraine. Problems with NHE1 can also directly alter the ability of migraine drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Even though women are much more likely to experience migraines than men, most migraine research is conducted using male animal models. In the new study, the researchers examined both male and female rats and found NHE1 expression levels were four times higher in the brains of the male rats. In the female rats, they observed that the highest estrogen levels corresponded with the lowest levels of NHE1 expressed in the endothelial cells that form the blood vessels in the brain.

"Based on our findings, we think that women are more susceptible to migraine because the larger magnitude sex hormone fluctuations lead to changes in NHE1 expression, which may leave the brain vulnerable to ion dysregulation and pain activation," said Galloway.

The new work is part of an effort to create a molecular map of how sex hormones affect NHE1 expression. In the future, the researchers want to see if drugs that target certain players in this map would prevent dysregulation of NHE1 expression at the blood brain barrier. This could lead to new treatments for people who suffer from migraines.

Emily Galloway will present the findings during the Signal Transduction and Cellular Regulation Session from 12:15-1:00 p.m. Sunday, April 22, in Exhibit Halls A-D, San Diego Convention Center (poster B291 553.60) (abstract). Contact the media team for more information or to obtain a free press pass to attend the meeting.

Barcelona, Spain: Quality of life for women treated with a more targeted radiotherapy treatment - called accelerated partial breast irradiation - is at least as good as quality of life for women treated with standard radiotherapy, according to research presented at the ESTRO 37 conference and published simultaneously in The Lancet Oncology [1].

The treatment uses small tubes to deliver a higher dose of radiotherapy directly to the site of the tumour over a shorter period of time. Previous research shows that it is just as effective at treating early stage breast cancer as radiotherapy to the whole of the breast.

Researchers say the targeted treatment, which takes a week, is a good option for women with early breast cancer, especially those who would struggle with the three to six-week schedule of traditional radiotherapy.

The analysis of quality of life data was led by Dr Rebekka Schäfer, a clinician in the department of radiation oncology at University Hospital Würzburg, Germany. It involved more than 600 women treated at 16 hospitals across Europe who all had surgery to remove an early stage tumour.

Around half of the women received whole breast radiotherapy while the other half received the accelerated partial breast irradiation treatment. The research was part of a larger study that has already shown that the treatments are equally good in terms of survival and preventing cancer recurring in the breast.

Dr Schäfer said: "This treatment focuses only on the area of the breast where the tumour has been removed and so it offers a number of advantages. It allows us to deliver a higher dose of radiation to a smaller area, which means the course of treatment is shortened from three to six weeks down to one week or less. It also makes it easier to avoid unnecessary radiation to other parts of the body, such as the heart and lungs.

"However, compared to external radiotherapy this is a more invasive treatment, so we wanted to see how it affected women's quality of life and their symptoms, both when they are treated and in the longer term."

Researchers questioned women about their symptoms and quality of life before and after their radiotherapy treatments, and at regular intervals for up to five years following treatment.

They found that women's quality of life was equally good in both groups and remained so over the five years.

Symptoms of breast swelling and pain, and skin problems of the breast were worse in women treated with whole breast radiotherapy, especially immediately after treatment and three months later. Swelling and discomfort in the arm was also somewhat worse in the women given standard treatment.

Dr Schäfer added: "More and more women are surviving breast cancer for longer and longer, so we need to be sure that treatments do not detract from their quality of life in the long term.

"Research like this is vital because it allows us to offer treatment choices. For a variety of reasons patients may find it difficult to manage a treatment schedule that lasts up to six weeks. They may have to travel a long way to reach hospital, or they may wish to return to work as soon as possible, so they might prefer a treatment that can be carried out in a week or less."

The researchers plan a ten-year follow-up of women in the trial to see if quality of life remains good and to see if there is any difference in cancer recurrence between the two treatments.

President of ESTRO, Professor Yolande Lievens, head of the department of radiation oncology at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium, said: "Until recently, radiotherapy to the whole breast has been the gold-standard treatment following surgery for early stage breast cancer. However, different technical approaches to partial breast irradiation have been developed and are gaining acceptance in clinical practice. The treatment described is already available at many hospitals in Europe. This study adds to evidence that accelerated partial breast treatments may be a valuable alternative for women with early stage breast cancer."

The Experimental Biology 2018 meeting (EB 2018) will showcase exciting new research aimed at understanding contamination and improving the environment.

Assessing harmful environmental exposures in wildlife

Biomarkers offer a way to detect whether an organism has been exposed to harmful environmental contaminants and to measure how that exposure may be affecting the organism's health. Although many biomarkers of contaminant exposure and effect have been identified in people, it has been difficult to develop these biomarkers for wildlife because traditional methods require tissue or blood samples from the organism. Researchers from Griffith University in Australia are working to overcome this problem by optimizing biomarker discovery methods that use cultured cells from wildlife. They demonstrated the new method by culturing skin cells from a green sea turtle and exposing the cells to polycholorinated biphenyl (PCB) and perfluorononanoic acid, contaminants that commonly accumulate in sea turtles. Mass spectrometry analysis of the cells revealed many proteins that changed expression levels after exposure, including a previously identified biomarker for PCB exposure in sea turtles. By using cultured cells, the new method could offer a faster way to develop and confirm biomarkers of both exposure and effect without invasive sampling.

Stephanie Chaousis will present this research at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) annual meeting from 1:30-2:15 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, in Exhibit Halls A-D (poster B295 802.7) (abstract).

A more sustainable way to make biodiesel

Scientists continue to search for more environmentally friendly ways to convert low-cost cooking oil and grease waste into biodiesel. Although using the enzyme lipase to speed up the conversion process is a promising approach, the enzyme's activity levels are not high enough for industrial-scale biodiesel production. Researchers from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, examined whether nanoparticle-based formulations could boost lipase activity levels. Using lipase from the fungus Candida rugosa, they developed lipase nanoparticles, cross-linked lipase nanoparticles and lipase nanoparticles immobilized on iron oxide nanoparticles. All three nanoparticle formulations exhibited faster biodiesel production with more operational stability than traditional lipase formulations. They also demonstrated that using the right solvent increased activity even more. For example, enzyme activity increased 54-fold when the solvent 1,4 dioxane was used with lipase nanoparticles immobilized on iron oxide nanoparticles.

Héctor Rivera will present this research at the ASBMB annual meeting from 12:45-1 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, in Exhibit Halls A-D (poster B256) (abstract).

Harmful bacteria found on ocean plastic

The ever-increasing volume of plastic debris entering coastal waters and oceans negatively affects water quality, wildlife and the environment. To better understand these effects, researchers from National University and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California are studying microbes that attach to plastic in coastal areas. After submerging three common types of plastic in Southern California coastal waters, they used DNA sequencing to identify microbes on the plastic at four time points between 3 and 40 days. They found that over 40 percent of the DNA sequences were from organisms that had not yet been identified. The three plastics each harbored different types bacteria, which also differed from the bacteria found in the surrounding water. Importantly, plastic retrieved at the early timepoints showed evidence of bacteria that could lead to human disease. The findings indicate a potential new route for plastic ocean debris to affect human health and the environment.

Ana Maria Barral will present this research at the ASBMB annual meeting from 1:30-2:15 p.m. Sunday, April 22, in Exhibit Halls A-D (poster B349 534.5) (abstract).

Prenatal effects of low-level marine toxin exposure

Domoic acid, a naturally occurring toxin produced by certain marine algae, can cause fatal central nervous system toxicity in people who consume highly-contaminated shellfish. Although government guidelines limit exposure to a tolerable daily intake of 0.075 milligrams per kilogram to reduce risks of toxicity from short-term exposure, effects of long-term low levels of exposure are not known. In a study of 20 pregnant monkeys, researchers from the University of Washington found that mother and fetus experienced similar exposure to domoic acid when the mothers received 0.075 or 0.15 milligrams per kilogram domoic acid daily for at least two months before pregnancy and for the length of pregnancy. The study also revealed that amniotic fluid may contribute to continuous domoic acid exposure in the womb. Some exposed monkeys showed subtle signs of neurological effects, such as tremors. Based on these new findings, the researchers suggest that the tolerable daily intake for domoic acid may need to be lowered to reduce human health risks associated with long-term, low-level exposure.

Sara Shum will present this research at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting from 12:30-2:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 24, in Exhibit Halls A-D (poster C167) (abstract).

EB 2018 is the premier annual meeting of five scientific societies to be held April 21-25 at the San Diego Convention Center. Contact the media team for abstracts, images and interviews, or to obtain a free press pass to attend the meeting.

One of the most frustrating and debilitating complications of diabetes is the development of wounds on the foot or lower leg. Once they form, they can persist for months, leading to painful and dangerous infections.

New research uncovers the role of a particular protein in maintaining these wounds and suggests that reversing its effects could help aid wound healing in patients with diabetes.

"We discovered that a specific protein, thrombospondin-2 (TSP2), is elevated in wounds of patients with diabetes as well as in animal models of diabetes," said Britta Kunkemoeller, a doctoral student at Yale University who conducted the study. "To determine whether TSP2 contributes to delayed wound healing, we genetically removed TSP2 from a mouse model of diabetes and observed improved wound healing. Our study shows that TSP2 could be a target for a specific therapy for diabetic wounds."

Kunkemoeller will present the research at the American Society for Investigative Pathology annual meeting during the 2018 Experimental Biology meeting, held April 21-25 in San Diego.

Diabetes currently afflicts nearly 26 million Americans, more than 8 percent of the population. Diabetic wounds are one of many complications of the disease.

Treatment for these wounds is mostly limited to standard wound care, such as moist bandages, removal of damaged tissue and footwear that reduces pressure on the wound. Despite these measures, the wounds often persist. In the most severe cases, it becomes necessary to amputate the affected foot or lower leg; diabetic wounds are the leading cause of amputations in the United States.

Most previous work on wound healing in diabetes has focused on the types of cells that are involved in wound healing such as immune cells, skin cells and the cells that form blood vessels. By contrast, Kunkemoeller's research focuses on TSP2, a component of the extracellular matrix. The extracellular matrix is a meshwork that serves as the structural foundation for cells, like the scaffolding used in construction.

In addition to providing structural support, the extracellular matrix regulates processes that are important to wound healing, including the behavior of immune, skin and vessel-forming cells. TSP2 is a component of the extracellular matrix that influences how the matrix is formed, as well as the development and communication of other types of cells that grow within the matrix.

"Our focus on TSP2 therefore allowed us to study a single molecule that influences several wound-healing related processes," explained Kunkemoeller.

The team bred mice that develop type 2 diabetes but cannot produce TSP2. When the researchers induced wounds in these mice, they found that the mice without TSP2 healed significantly better and faster than other mice that had diabetes along with normal levels of TSP2.

They also analyzed the factors that influence how much TSP2 the body produces. That part of the study revealed that TSP2 production increases when blood sugar levels are higher, explaining why people with diabetes have higher levels of TSP2 than people without diabetes.

"Currently, our lab is developing engineered biomaterials derived from extracellular matrix that lacks TSP2," said Kunkemoeller. "Our plan is to apply such materials to diabetic wounds in mouse models in order to evaluate their efficacy. Going forward, additional research will focus on either preventing the production or inhibiting the function of TSP2 in diabetic wounds."

Britta Kunkemoeller will present this research on Saturday, April 21, from 8:30-11:30 a.m. in Room 2 (poster 414.3), San Diego Convention Center (abstract) and on Tuesday, April 24, from 2:30-2:45 p.m. in Room 4. Contact the media team for more information or to obtain a free press pass to attend the meeting.