Tech

Software to help towns and cities use street-planting to reduce citizens' exposure to air pollution has been developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham.

Street planting, or 'green infrastructure', is an essential part of the urban realm, but there is a misconception that plants remove or 'soak up' a lot of pollution. Instead, planting at this scale primarily serves to redistribute pollution by changing air currents within streets and beside open roads.

Because of this, not only the position and amount of planting within a street, but also the layout and orientation of that street, are critical to its impacts on local air quality.

The software - the Green Infrastructure for Roadside Air Quality or 'GI4RAQ' Platform - has been designed by experts in the University of Birmingham's Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) and School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, in partnership with practitioner organisations, including: Transport for London, Greater London Authority and Birmingham City Council. It is the result of three years' collaboration, funded principally through three Innovation grants from the Natural Environment Research Council.

Free to use and open-source, the software enables practitioners to estimate the changes in pollutant concentrations (throughout the cross-section of a street) resulting from different planting schemes. It focusses on key pollutants from road transport: NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) and PM2.5 (fine particulate matter). Its calculations draw on wind data from monitoring stations across the UK, and determine how background wind conditions interact with the local urban form and planting specified by the user.

The software's performance and underlying science are documented in a paper published last month in the open-access journal, Forests.

Lead researcher, Dr James Levine says: "In reducing our exposure to pollution from nearby vehicles, strategic planting can complement essential emission reductions in reducing health impacts. But it's not as simple as thinking that any planting will do good - if indiscriminate, it's just as likely to have a negative impact. There are many good reasons to invest in green infrastructure but, if planting in the name of improving air quality, we must ensure it delivers genuine benefits. By estimating the benefits at planning, we can ensure good schemes are robust to cost-cutting and fully realised."

Informed by their work with Dr Levine, Transport for London is currently exploring a potential 'healthy and resilient streets' scheme with the Greater London Authority. Dr Levine is also in discussion with The Mersey Forest and Liverpool City Council regarding a scheme in central Liverpool.

Paul Nolan OBE, Director of the Mersey Forest, commented: "The GI4RAQ Platform bridges the gap between academic researchers and organisations like The Mersey Forest, cutting through the often-mixed messages regarding the impacts of vegetation on urban air quality, in support of projects delivering genuine, lasting benefits."

Frailty is a better predictor than factors such as age when determining how older adults fare one year after receiving critical care.

A team led by researchers from the University of Waterloo analyzed data from more than 24,000 community-dwelling older adults receiving home care in Ontario who were subsequently admitted into an intensive-care unit (ICU).

They applied three different measures for baseline frailty and found that an individual's level of frailty was linked to survival one year later. The most frail ICU survivors had only a one in five chance of living to one year after discharge.

Clinical frailty is age-related and characterized by a reduced ability to maintain or restore physical, physiological or cognitive functions when subject to health stressors.

"Our results tell us that baseline frailty can help inform treatment plans and goals of care for older persons with critical illness," said Luke Turcotte, first author and a postdoctoral fellow at Waterloo during this research.

Turcotte stressed that even though frailty levels could be a key measure when determining who will benefit from critical care, it is important to differentiate between frailty and disability, particularly for individuals with chronic and stable disabilities.

"The concept of frailty relates to age-associated vulnerability, and thus its application needs to be limited to older persons with complex health problems," said senior author George Heckman, a professor in the School of Public Health Sciences and Schlegel-UW Research Chair in Geriatric Medicine at the Research Institute for Aging.

Previous research had analyzed smaller data sets, with similar conclusions. For this study, the researchers used data from interRAI standardized health assessments, used in home care in almost all of Canada and internationally.

The researchers believe the concept of frailty can best be used to guide conversations about advance care planning with home care clients and their families. "For instance, a frail individual may express the wish to forego ICU care given a poor prognosis," Heckman said. "Additional research should focus on post-ICU functional and quality of life outcomes."

The paper, "Baseline Frailty as a Predictor of Survival after Critical Care: a Retrospective Cohort Study of Older Adults Receiving Home Care in Ontario, Canada" was co-authored by Luke Turcotte, Ann Alexandra Zalucky, Nathan M. Stall, James Downar, Kenneth Rockwood, Olga Theou, Caitlin McArthur, and George Heckman. It was published in the journal CHEST.

A new study shows how urbanisation has influenced anthropogenic CO2 and air pollutant emissions across all world regions, by making use of the latest developments in the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR, https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The results show that by 2015 urban centres were the source of a third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and the majority of air pollutant emissions.

The authors, from institutions in France and Italy, used the EDGAR database to provide a country-to-global view of the evolution of sector-specific air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions from urban centres and other geographical entities for different types of human settlement over the past five decades. Their results are published on July 6 in the IOP Publishing journal Environmental Research Letters.

Between 1975 and 2015, the global population increased by 80%; the global urban population almost doubled, while the global rural population increased by only 40%. The urban population increased for all continents. The fastest urban population growth occurred in developing and emerging regions. By 2015, almost half of the global population lived in urban centres, while the largest urban centres with more than 1 million inhabitants (representing only 5% of the global surface) had 22% of the world's population living in them.

From a sustainability perspective, the capacity to identify the nature, location, and source of emissions is particularly important, to be able to tailor emission reduction policies and evaluate population exposure properly.

The consolidated version 5 of EDGAR represents the state of the art within the emission inventory communities, characterising current and historic emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases at the global, regional, and country level. EDGAR provides spatio-temporal homogenous consistent greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions data at the global scale between 1970 and 2015. EDGAR spatially distributes anthropogenic emissions over a global grid map with a spatial resolution of 0.1 degree (about 10 km), enabling the investigation of where emissions happen, and supporting the development of place-based mitigation measures from global to local level.

The results show that urban centres make a large contribution to global air pollutant and CO2 emissions. Expanding the definition of urban areas to include suburbs, roughly 50% of the global emissions take place in around 1% of the global surface. When all urban areas and not only urban centres are included, around 70-80% of global emissions are included. These are mostly driven by combustion sources. Given that these emissions are spatially concentrated, they can benefit from geographically focused mitigation actions. The only exception is NH3, where rural areas account for more than 50% of global emissions, mainly associated with agricultural activities. Emissions in urban centres have increased strongly in emerging economies in the past five decades, but decreased in high-income economies; CO, SO2 and PM10 emissions in industrialised countries decreased, due to higher energy efficiency and the implementation of new technologies and abatement measures. For megacities, emissions in high-income countries have been reduced by the implementation of effective mitigation actions, de-industrialisation, and the growth of the service economy. Finally, per-capita urban CO2 emissions show spatial differences at the global level, among different countries and cities; high-income countries have decoupled their emissions from economic growth.

While climate change is a global issue, air quality is related to the more local problem of reducing urban population exposure to harmful pollutants, to decrease the impact on human health and ecosystems. Local actions are therefore needed for both climate and air pollution reasons. From this point of view, city-level actions can be effective in reducing PM2.5 population exposure; for European cities, a 30% PM2.5 reduction can be achieved with urban actions in at least half of the considered cities.

Most of us are familiar with the fact that women live longer than men. But fellas, if we told you there was one thing that could be done to increase your lifespan, would you do it?

In a study published today in eLife , University of Otago researchers along with collaborators from the United States, have shown that castration of male sheep delays aging of DNA compared to intact males, and that it also drives feminine characteristics of DNA and the chemical tags it holds, known as DNA methylation.

"Both farmers and scientists have known for some time that castrated male sheep live on average much longer than their intact counterparts; however, this is the first time anyone has looked at DNA to see if it also ages slower," says first-author of the study, University of Otago Anatomy PhD student Victoria Sugrue.

In order to do this, the researchers first had to generate an 'epigenetic clock' from large numbers of sheep so they could measure DNA aging. They then looked at the epigenetic clock of castrated and intact males and found their 'ticking rate' is different; meaning that the longer lives of castrated sheep, or 'wethers' as they are referred to by farmers, is reflected in their DNA.

Underpinning this study is the rapid development of tools to study DNA aging. Recently it has become possible to estimate the age of humans and other mammals using only DNA and epigenetic clocks.

Inventor of the epigenetic clock and study co-author, Professor Steve Horvath, from the University of California in Los Angeles explains; "We developed a way to measure biological age in a broad range of mammals - we have looked at over 200 species so far and discovered surprising commonality in which animals age. But the sheep study was unique in that it specifically isolated the effects of male hormones on aging."

Dr Tim Hore, research team co-leader and Senior Lecturer at Otago's Department of Anatomy, says the study's findings provide new avenues to understand the mechanism of male-accelerated aging.

"We found that males and females have very different patterns of DNA aging in sheep; and that despite being male, the castrates (wethers) had very feminine characteristics at specific DNA sites.

"Interestingly, those sites most affected by castration also bind to receptors of male hormones in humans at a much greater rate than we would expect by chance. This provides a clear link between castration, male hormones and sex-specific differences in DNA aging," Dr Hore says.

To understand which tissues are strongly affected by hormone levels, the researchers looked at sex effects in mice. In tissues where the male hormone receptors are found (e.g. skin, kidney and brain) large differences between the DNA patterns in males and females was observed. In contrast, tissues without male hormone receptor expression looked the same in males and females.

"Most researchers use blood for measuring biological age, and we did this for sheep too; however, it was not blood but skin where we found sex-specific aging effects in the DNA of sheep. And this appeared to be also true for mouse where we had data from many tissues and in both males and females," Dr Hore adds.

In addition to stimulating further understanding about the role of male sex hormones in accelerating aging, the researchers hope their work will have wider implications. As the first epigenetic clock for sheep, it is possible this work will end up being used to help farmers determine which sheep are going to live longer (and be more productive), or identify meat claiming to be succulent New Zealand lamb, when it is really mutton.

This work was funded by University of Otago and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication. Research materials were provided by generous donation from the Central Otago farming community, Totovision Ltd, the University of Auckland and the South Australian Research and Development Institute.

SOMETHING TO PONDER: SHREK the famous NZ wether.

Arguably the most famous New Zealand sheep was "Shrek", the Central Otago merino who evaded musterers for 6 years and consequently grew a 27 kg fleece - many times larger than the average sheep. Shrek's discovery, and subsequent shearing, came with great media interest, national travel and even a visits to offshore icebergs and the New Zealand parliament.

It has long been speculated that the secret to Shrek's mammoth fleece and subsequent notoriety was his cunning ability to avoid capture and the fact he could survive cold alpine winters by sheltering in caves. But less appreciated is the fact that Shrek was a castrated male (wether), and ultimately lived to a grand age of 16.

"By the time Shrek was caught he was already 10 years old - roughly the maximum age of the most long-lived sheep on a commercial farm. I think at least part of Shrek's fame was simply that he lived so long - something which almost certainly wouldn't have happened if he was not castrated," Dr Hore says.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. KONG Lingtao at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has prepared a type of hollow amorphous Co/C composites to activate hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to generate singlet oxygen, achieving selective elimination of oxytetracycline (OTC) in complicated water matrices. The relevant results was published in Chemical Engineering Journal.

OTC is the most common tetracycline antibiotic in the field of animal husbandry. It can be detected in water, soil and other areas which features on strong biological stability and cannot be effectively removed by conventional technical means.

As a simple and efficient advanced oxidation technology, Fenton-like oxidation has been considered as an effective way for water pollution. singlet oxygen, as an electrophilic non-radical, exhibits excellent anti-interference to background substrates, and can help to achieve the selective removal of organic pollutants containing electron-rich groups. However, in most Fenton-like reactions, the yield of singlet oxygen is low and the contribution is small.

In this study, the researchers designed and prepared a hollow amorphous Co/C composites with a large number of oxygen-containing functional groups such as carbonyl and hydroxyl distributed on the surface.

They obtained Co/C-3 material by optimizing the ratio of cobalt and carbon, and realized the optimal degradation of 20 ppm OTC by activating H2O2 under neutral pH conditions. The catalytic degradation system exhibited excellent repeatability, stability and anti-interference ability. Quenching experiments and Electron Paramagnetic Resonance results confirmed that converted singlet oxygen was the main oxidizing species, and hydroxyl radical didn't not appear in the system.

The synergistic interaction between cobalt and oxygen-containing functional groups within materials played the key role on activating H2O2 in the formation of singlet oxygen. In addition, the possible degradation pathways and potential ecological toxicities of OTC and its intermediates were revealed.

The above job is supported by projects and units such as the National Key R&D Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Anhui Provincial Major Science and Technology Project, and the USTC Supercomputing Center.

Ishikawa, Japan - Many researchers in the field of materials science constantly seek novel and versatile platforms that can be used to tailor materials to match their intended use. One example of this are covalent organic frameworks (COFs), an emerging class of crystalline porous polymers with a favorable set of fundamental properties, namely crystallinity, stability, and porosity. This combination makes them, in theory, adjustable to many modern applications. Unfortunately, owing to the way COFs are usually obtained, these properties are not very pronounced, resulting in unstable, low-crystallinity solids with limited porosity.

At the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Dr. Zhongping Li, Associate Professor Yuki Nagao, and colleagues are trying to put an end to this issue and showcase the true potential of COFs. In their latest study, which was published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition as Very Important Paper, Dr. Nagao, Professor Donglin Jiang at the National University of Singapore, and his team devised a novel strategy for easily tuning the light-emitting properties of hydrazone-linked COFs to produce red, green, or blue (RGB) light by using a single material. This work was the result of a lot of efforts by many researchers including first-author Zhongping Li, Keyu Geng, Ting He, Ke Tian Tan, Ning Huang, Qiuhong Jiang, and Donglin Jiang at the National University of Singapore.

The researchers had been exploring a new concept that involves introducing atoms or small molecular groups into the pore walls of COFs. Though the changes in composition are relatively minor, the orderly introduction of these groups in surface sites causes drastic effects in the electronic structure of the entire molecule, altering some of its physicochemical properties. Without really expecting it, the researchers found that the small perturbations introduced in single surface sites greatly modified the light-emission characteristics of hydrazone-linked COFs.

More specifically, by introducing hydrogen, chlorine, methoxy, methyl, or hydroxy surface sites on the pore walls of COFs (see Figure 1), the team produced compounds that could be fine-tuned to emit light at various distinct frequencies within the RGB spectrum. Surprisingly, these COFs are among the few known material frameworks that can be easily tailored to emit any one of the three primary colors, and even colors in-between (see Figure 2). This is in stark contrast to most available RGB technologies, which require different materials to produce the three primary colors. "Thanks to the exciting features we observed, COF-based materials offer a solution to the low tunability problems found in organic/polymeric light-emitting materials," remarks Dr. Li, "By introducing perturbations with multiple wall surface sites, our frameworks can be used to edit the light-emission of materials to achieve any given color in a pre-designable and digital way."

Importantly, aside from these useful color tunability properties, the synthesized COFs were also up there in terms of luminescence, stability, and sensitivity to guest molecules. This combination of features makes the proposed framework especially attractive for light-emitting and sensing implementations using organic and polymeric materials, as well as for other types of applications, as Dr. Li explains: "Our perturbation strategy of introducing single atoms or small groups to induce electronic effects is compatible with further functionalization and should be widely applicable to other types of COFs."

It's possible that the strategy devices in this study will shape a new regime in light-emitting organic materials, which shall be useful for highly sophisticated applications and daily-life devices alike. Further refinement of similar methods will let us truly harness the power that even small, yet rational changes can have in the macroscopic behavior of certain materials.

A new nanotechnology development by an international research team led by Tel Aviv University researchers will make it possible to generate electric currents and voltage within the human body through the activation of various organs (mechanical force). The researchers explain that the development involves a new and very strong biological material, similar to collagen, which is non-toxic and causes no harm to the body's tissues. The researchers believe that this new nanotechnology has many potential applications in medicine, including harvesting clean energy to operate devices implanted in the body (such as pacemakers) through the body's natural movements, eliminating the need for batteries.

The study was led by Prof. Ehud Gazit of the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at the Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Fleischman Faculty of Engineering and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, along with his lab team, Dr. Santu Bera and Dr. Wei Ji.

Also taking part in the study were researchers from the Weizmann Institute and a number of research institutes in Ireland, China and Australia. As a result of their findings, the researchers received two ERC-POC grants aimed at using the scientific research from the ERC grant that Gazit had previously won for applied technology. The research was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

Prof. Gazit, who is also Founding Director of the BLAVATNIK CENTER for Drug Discovery, explains: "Collagen is the most prevalent protein in the human body, constituting about 30% of all of the proteins in our body. It is a biological material with a helical structure and a variety of important physical properties, such as mechanical strength and flexibility, which are useful in many applications. However, because the collagen molecule itself is large and complex, researchers have long been looking for a minimalistic, short and simple molecule that is based on collagen and exhibits similar properties. About a year and a half ago, in the journal Nature Materials, our group published a study in which we used nanotechnological means to engineer a new biological material that meets these requirements. It is a tripeptide - a very short molecule called Hyp-Phe-Phe consisting of only three amino acids - capable of a simple process of self-assembly of forming a collagen-like helical structure that is flexible and boasts a strength similar to that of the metal titanium. In the present study, we sought to examine whether the new material we developed bears another feature that characterizes collagen - piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity is the ability of a material to generate electric currents and voltage as a result of the application of mechanical force, or vice versa, to create a mechanical force as the result of exposure to an electric field."

In the study, the researchers created nanometric structures of the engineered material, and with the help of advanced nanotechnology tools, applied mechanical pressure on them. The experiment revealed that the material does indeed produce electric currents and voltage as a result of the pressure. Moreover, tiny structures of only hundreds of nanometers demonstrated one of the highest levels of piezoelectric ability ever discovered, comparable or superior to that of the piezoelectric materials commonly found in today's market (most of which contain lead and are therefore not suitable for medical applications).

According to the researchers, the discovery of piezoelectricity of this magnitude in a nanometric material is of great significance, as it demonstrates the ability of the engineered material to serve as a kind of tiny motor for very small devices. Next, the researchers plan to apply crystallography and computational quantum mechanical methods (density functional theory) in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the material's piezoelectric behavior and thereby enable the accurate engineering of crystals for the building of biomedical devices.

Prof. Gazit adds: "Most of the piezoelectric materials that we know of today are toxic lead-based materials, or polymers, meaning they are not environmentally and human body-friendly. Our new material, however, is completely biological, and therefore suitable for uses within the body. For example, a device made from this material may replace a battery that supplies energy to implants like pacemakers, though it should be replaced from time to time. Body movements - like heartbeats, jaw movements, bowel movements, or any other movement that occurs in the body on a regular basis - will charge the device with electricity, which will continuously activate the implant."

Now, as part of their continuing research, the researchers are seeking to understand the molecular mechanisms of the engineered material with the goal of realizing its immense potential and turning this scientific discovery into applied technology. At this stage, the focus is on the development of medical devices, but Prof. Gazit emphasizes that "environmentally friendly piezoelectric materials, such as the one we have developed, have tremendous potential in a wide range of areas because they produce green energy using mechanical force that is being used anyway. For example, a car driving down the street can turn on the streetlights. These materials may also replace lead-containing piezoelectric materials that are currently in widespread use, but that raise concerns about the leakage of toxic metal into the environment."

Recently, with the help of a steady-state strong magnetic field experimental device, scientists constructed nano-scale borate bioactive glass (Nano-HCA@BG), which can effectively reduce the biological toxicity of borate bioglass, improve the biocompatibility of the glass, and promote the effect of borate bioglass on skin repair.

Prof. WANG Junfeng from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with Prof. ZHANG Teng from Fuzhou University in this study, said, "it is expected to become the next generation of skin wound repair dressings." Related research was published in Chemical Engineering Journal.

Borate bioglass is a glass with boron element (B) as the glass network matrix. With good dopability and degradability, it has great potential in the field of skin tissue repair. However, It releases a large amount of alkaline ions, and the explosive release of these ions will change the acid-base environment of the tissue around the glass material, thereby inhibiting cell proliferation.

In addition, the effective surface area of micron-sized borate bioglass in contact with tissues at the wound is small, and the ions on the glass surface are not conducive to the deposition of collagen, so scars are easily formed at the wound after healing. Therefore, preparing a nano-scale borate bioglass with no biological toxicity and excellent biological performance is an urgent problem to be solved.

In this study, the researchers used a special mobile phase, for the first time, to pre-treat micron-sized borate bioglass by melting method in vitro. They obtained Nano-scale (~50nm) borate bioglass (Nano-HCA@BG), which was covered with an amorphous hydroxyapatite (HCA) layer.

During the processing, the ions (PO43- and CO32-) in the mobile phase were deposited on the surface of the glass to form the HCA layer, which effectively inhibited the rapid release of boron and calcium in the remaining glass and thereby reduced the biological toxicity of the glass itself to cells.

In addition, HCA, as an important inorganic component in bones, has good biocompatibility, and can accelerate the induction of collagen synthesis in tissues.

The results of in vitro degradation experiments, cell experiments, and animal experiments showed that compared with the existing commercialized bioactive glass, HCA and micron-sized borate bioglass, nano-HCA@BG slow-released boron calcium, and other elements can effectively accelerate wound cells migration and further up-regulation of the expression of vascular-related growth factors in the wound.

Besides, the amorphous HCA layer on the surface of the glass not only reduces the rapid release of the glass, but also promotes the deposition of collagen in the wound, which in turn promotes the healing of the wound more quickly.

However, the majority of these organisms are believed to be in a state a state of 'dormancy' due to environmental stress, such as nutrient-poor conditions. An international team of scientists led by Dagmar Woebken and Stephanie A. Eichorst from the University of Vienna investigated how acidobacteria, which are widespread in soils, can survive under adverse conditions. Two recent studies published in The ISME Journal and mSystems describe these survival strategies.

The living conditions that microorganisms encounter in soils are unpredictable and challenging. Nutrients and oxygen are frequently scarce for long periods. Acidobacteria manage to defy these extreme conditions. They are found in an astonishing diversity in soils worldwide. "Since they are this widespread, we assume that Acidobacteria play a central role for the microbial community and thus also for the ecological balance in soils," explains Stephanie A. Eichorst, microbiologist at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CMESS) at the University of Vienna. In a multi-year research project, a team around Eichorst and her colleague Dagmar Woebken, supported by international colleagues, have investigated the success strategies of these soil microbes.

Acidobacteria 'breathing-in' low amounts of oxygen with unexpected enzymes

In their most recent study now published in mSystems, the researchers show that acidobacteria are surprisingly efficient in extracting energy from oxygen. In experiments, the microbiologists from the Universities of Vienna, Cádiz (Spain) and Aarhus (Denmark) and from the Joint Microbiome Facility - a joint venture of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna - were able to demonstrate that the soil bacteria can use so-called low-affinity terminal oxidases to 'breathe' the smallest amounts of oxygen. Terminal oxidases are used for the generation of energy, which can be low-affinity (using higher concentrations of O2) or high-affinity enzymes (using low concentrations of O2). "Until now, it has been assumed that microorganisms need enzymes with a high affinity for oxygen in order to be able to breathe in environments with the lowest oxygen content," Daniela Trojan, first author of the study, reports. "In contrast, our experiments surprisingly showed that they can also use low-affinity enzymes for this purpose." As low-oxygen habitats are widely distributed on Earth, these findings have implications for other systems.

Acidobacteria scavenge atmospheric hydrogen to survive periods of starvation

The researchers have already deciphered a second survival strategy of these successful soil bacteria. A previous analysis - published in The ISME Journal - explored the ability of Acidobacteria to oxidize dihydrogen (H2), an atmospheric gas, at extremely low concentrations. "This is a mechanism that can be used to generate energy to survive periods of carbon limitation, i.e., nutrient shortage," explains Dagmar Woebken, who in a project funded by the European Research Council focuses on survival strategies in soil microorganisms. Surprisingly, it turns out that members of the Acidobacteria are the second most abundant group of microorganisms having this ability across different soils - a key finding in this study. In collaboration with other scientists from the University of Vienna and Monash University (Australia), the researchers were able to confirm this finding with acidobacterial strains in the lab. "Our data support the growing evidence that trace gases, such as hydrogen, are used as energy source for bacterial persistence," summarized Andrew Giguere, one of the co-first authors of the study.

Combining different methods for a more complete view and new insights

For both studies, the research team used an ambitious combination of several approaches to investigate a diverse, but challenging environment - soil and representative organisms from soil. In doing so, they were able to obtain a clearer picture about the flexibility and mechanisms soil microorganisms use to survive stressful conditions. "With just one approach, our findings would have been different. Rather the combination of these approaches, available both here at the University and with our collaboration partners, allowed to us to reach beyond our assumptions," says Eichorst. "Specifically, we found that acidobacteria can use low-affinity enzymes for respiration at low oxygen, which was surprising as it deviates from what one reads in the textbooks," recounts Woebken. As such, both advocate for combining molecular-based analyses with classical microbiology to address research questions. This way, it is possible to dig even deeper into the lifestyles of soil bacteria; and with this knowledge, it is possible to understand how the biodiversity of microorganisms in the soil is maintained.

Medical researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have uncovered how signal proteins of the immune system regulate the development of atherosclerosis. 

Atherosclerosis is one of the most common causes of death in Germany. The condition is characterized by the build-up of cholesterol and other fatty metabolites in the arterial wall directly below the endothelial cell layer, which is in direct contact with the bloodstream. This process results in constriction of the artery, which obstructs blood flow and can trigger heart attacks and strokes. Atherosclerosis is generally treated with drugs that reduce the concentration of lipids in the circulation, often using compounds called statins. However, statins effectively reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in only 35 to 40% of the patients treated. The remaining 60% fail to respond to the medication. This has prompted the search for other drug targets. Since atherosclerosis is linked to chronic inflammatory processes, the immune system might offer new therapeutic options for tackling the disease. A group of researchers led by Professor Esther Lutgens and Dr. Dorothee Atzler at the LMU Medical Center have now elucidated an important component of the immune reaction involved in atherogenesis.

Immunotherapy as a treatment for atherosclerosis

Lutgens and her team at the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention (Director: Prof. Dr. Christian Weber) and at the University of Amsterdam have now shown that the interaction between proteins called CD40L and CD40 represents a promising drug target for the suppression of atherosclerosis. The protein CD40L is synthesized by, and expressed on the surface of specialized cells of the immune system. It is recognized by the CD40 protein, a membrane-bound receptor that is expressed on antigen-presenting cells. However, CD40L also binds to receptors on other cell types that have diverse physiological functions. Using a mouse model, the LMU researchers deleted the gene for CD40L specifically in T cells and platelets as well as its counterpart, CD40, on dendritic cells. They then crossed these mice with a strain that is particularly prone to develop atherosclerosis.

Secretion of interferon-gamma by T-cells is known to stimulate immune functions, but the CD40L-deficient T-cells were found to secrete less interferon-gamma than those in which the gene is intact. In addition, further experiments indeed showed that, in the absence of CD40L in T-cells, the atherosclerotic plaques that formed were smaller and more stable. This suggests that inhibition of CD40L could enhance the stability of atherosclerotic plaques, and thus reduce the incidence of heart attacks induced by the rupture of blood vessels.

Similar results were obtained in a mouse strain that was unable to produce CD40 in dendritic cells. Deletion of CD40L in platelets, on the other hand, had no effect on the incidence of atherosclerosis, but it was associated with a reduction in atherosclerosis-associated clot formation.

"Our results provide clear evidence for differential, cell-type-specific functions of the CD40L/CD40 interaction in the context of atherosclerosis, and this has implications for therapeutic strategies that focus on this signaling pathway," says Lutgens. Her group is now extending their studies of the effects of CD40 und CD40L to other cell types, with the aim of developing drugs that can inhibit the functions of these proteins in a cell-specific fashion. In principle, this could be done by using either small-molecule inhibitors or bifunctional antibodies with different binding sites.

Researchers from Skoltech and the Mental Health Research Center have found 22 lipids in the blood plasma of people with schizophrenia that were associated with lower symptom improvement over time during treatment. These can help track resistance to medication that affects over a third of patients. The paper was published in the journal Biomolecules.

Studies suggest that up to 34% of people living with schizophrenia can be resistant to two or more antipsychotic medications used to treat the disorder. Individual responses vary greatly, and there are no satisfactory biomarkers of treatment response yet, which can often turn finding the right medication into a painful and protracted guessing game.

Recently researchers have turned to studying lipids and the important function they are now known to play in both the properties and functionality of the brain, such as membrane fluidity and permeability, retrograde signaling, neural plasticity, and neurotransmitter release modulation. “Lipidomics is a growing field, and a lot remains unknown about lipid metabolism and its alteration in disease, which makes lipidomics a promising field for new discoveries,” the paper’s lead author, Anna Tkachev of the Skoltech Center for Neurobiology and Brain Restoration (CNBR), says.

Anna Tkachev and her colleagues measured the blood lipid abundances for 322 blood plasma lipids in 92 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and undergoing treatment in a hospital. They studied the associations between symptom improvement and individual changes in blood plasma lipid levels by collecting blood plasma at two distinct time points: at the beginning and at the end of a hospital stay that lasted for 37 days on average.

Doctors used the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) to assess the condition of the patients; a higher score corresponds to more severe symptoms, so researchers were looking for a drop in PANSS score over time. All but one patient showed improvement, but the extent was different. “We found that, for patients with the least improvement in symptom severity, 22 lipids, including 20 triglyceride species, were increased at the second time point, while patients with most improvement did not demonstrate the same increase in lipid levels,” the authors write.

Anna Tkachev notes that a lot remains uncertain about the role of lipids in disease, and the role of lipids in schizophrenia in particular. “Typically, in a clinical setting, only total triglycerides are measured in the blood. In our study, we assessed lipids at a more detailed level of individual triglyceride species. The lipids we find significant in our study (shorter chain triglycerides) are not among the most abundant triglycerides, and any variation in their levels would probably remain undetected at the level of total triglyceride measurement. Because many studies in the past have focused on total triglyceride levels and not detailed level of individual lipid species, it is difficult to say for now what these alterations signify,” she says.

The lipids the team found seem to be related to metabolic alterations: they have been reported to be affected in diabetes and non-alcohol fatty liver disease. “Metabolic abnormalities are, unfortunately, common in patients suffering from schizophrenia, and managing these metabolic abnormalities is an important part of managing the psychiatric disorder. However, there seems to be a complex interplay between metabolic abnormalities and psychiatric health. The role these metabolic abnormalities play in schizophrenia is not well understood, and the cause-effect relationship between the two is unclear as well,” Tkachev explains.

Since the researchers were looking at individual changes in lipid levels and not the levels of lipids at baseline, their results cannot be used for a predictive model of treatment response. “Our results show that different levels of symptom improvement are associated with different alterations in lipid levels. Rather than providing a predictive biomarker, we hope that our results can help further the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of disease manifestation and treatment response,” Tkachev says.

Journal

Biomolecules

DOI

10.3390/biom11050720

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this article the authors Xiao'en Shi, Xu Zhang, Xinlu Zhang, Haizhen Guo and Sheng Wang from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China discuss the integration of reactive oxygen species generation and prodrug activation for cancer therapy.

The combination of chemotherapeutic drugs and reactive oxygen species (ROS) can improve cancer treatment outcome. Many ROS-generation strategies can specifically consume tumor-inherent oxygen and generate ROS, resulting in amplified ROS level and aggravated hypoxia. Therefore, the ROS generation strategy can integrate with prodrug activation strategy to realize synergetic therapy.

In recent years, stimuli-responsive nanomedicines have been developed to realize the integration of ROS generation and prodrug activation. Triggered by a stimulus, nanomedicines can generate ROS at the tumor site, which can further activate the release of active drugs. The authors of this article summarize the latest progress of these nanomedicines and discuss the perspectives and challenges.

Article reference: Xiao'en Shi, Xu Zhang, Xinlu Zhang, Haizhen Guo and Sheng Wang, The Integration of Reactive Oxygen Species Generation and Prodrug Activation for Cancer Therapy. BIO Integration, 2021, https://doi.org/10.15212/bioi-2021-0011

BIO Integration is fully open access journal which will allow for the rapid dissemination of multidisciplinary views driving the progress of modern medicine.

As part of its mandate to help bring interesting work and knowledge from around the world to a wider audience, BIOI will actively support authors through open access publishing and through waiving author fees in its first years. Also, publication support for authors whose first language is not English will be offered in areas such as manuscript development, English language editing and artwork assistance.

The onset of the Indian summer monsoon has been predicted three months ahead for the last 40 years with the highest precision up until today. The result indicates longer seasonal forecasts based on machine learning may be a way to mitigate the consequences of an erratic monsoon system under future global warming. Dr. Takahito Mitsui and Dr. Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK Potsdam), Germany, published the results in Environmental Research Letters. The work is part of the European TiPES project, Coordinated from The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and PIK Potsdam.

Millions of people as well as natural habitats depend on the precipitation from the Indian summer monsoon. Global warming, however, is already changing the monsoon system and will further increase the variation in precipitation patterns as well as monsoon onset and duration in the future. Seasonal forecasts might provide early warnings for farmers and others depending on the Indian monsoon to plan ahead and mitigate the consequences of interannual variabilities.

Climate scientists from PIK Potsdam, Germany now provide an improved three-month preseasonal forecast using machine learning. The predictions use data since 1948 and thus cover the climate changes of the latest decennia. The work provides a promising basis for further research toward predicting the onset of the Indian summer monsoon in the coming decades, as accelerated global warming might change the dynamics behind this monsoon system.

Comparing reconstructed data of tropospheric temperatures over the Indian Ocean and the Indian subcontinent the scientists used a shift in temperature balance between two areas to predict the monsoon onset. The resulting accuracy of +/- 4.8 days is an improvement compared to earlier attempts using traditional weather prediction models to forecast the Indian monsoon onset in a three months range.

"We can confirm with a level of optimism that it should be possible to predict the onsets of future monsoons even as global climate change accelerates in the coming decades. Indeed, our prediction method works well for the last 40 years, during which gradual global warming already has taken place," says Takahito Mitsui.

"Our study reveals the large potential of machine learning methods in forecasting climate phenomena such as the monsoon onset. Ultimately, our goal is to combine traditional weather prediction models with machine learning models such as the one proposed here, which will hopefully lead to even more skilful forecasts," says Niklas Boers.

The possibility of accurate predictions in a world with a much higher global warming, however, has not yet been investigated. The outlook for the Indian monsoon system in a changing global climate is scientifically debated. The current monsoon system might tip to a more irregular state. But it might also simply change gradually as the seasonal imbalances between the temperatures over regional landmasses and sea surfaces shift with global warming.

"We will be able to examine this with the climate model simulations under global warming scenarios. Then we will be able to answer more confidently if our method can, or cannot predict some possible failure in the Indian Monsoon system in advance," says Takahito Mitsui.

The TiPES project is an EU Horizon 2020 interdisciplinary climate science project on tipping points in the Earth system. 18 partner institutions work together in more than 10 countries. TiPES is coordinated and led by The Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

The TiPES project has received funding from the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant agreement number 820970.

Two model studies document the probability of climate tipping in Earth subsystems. The findings support the urgency of restricting CO2 emissions as abrupt climate changes might be less predictable and more widespread in the climate system than anticipated. The work is part of the European TiPES project, coordinated by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark but was conducted by Professor Michael Ghil, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France and coauthours from The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and Parthenope University of Naples, Italy.

Tipping could be imminent

It is often assumed climate change will proceed gradually as we increase the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. Over the last 15 years, however, it has become increasingly clear that the Earth's climate system or subsystems thereof - such as sea ice cover, monsoon systems, and ocean currents - might shift abruptly and with little warning as CO2 levels go up. This is known as climate tipping.

Two studies from the European TiPES project now add to the evidence that tipping could be imminent and might be more widespread in the climate system than usually anticipated.

El Ninõ tips weather-system

In the first study, the authors show in a coupled ocean-atmosphere model how the mid-latitude wind systems over Europe and North America has a probability to tip between different types of behaviour (or different regimes, as climate scientists say) depending on the strength of an El Niño. In other words, the climate phenomenon El Niño - during which heat builds up in the surface layers of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean - determines whether the mid-latitude wind system in the U.S.A. will be more or less likely to shift abruptly between one regime and another.

Such probabilistic climate tipping complicates prediction, which is generally based on the assumption that climate systems change gradually in a more predictable manner. The findings, - co-authored with Stéphane Vannitsem and Jonathan Demaeyer from the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and published in Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, thus explain why the patterns of precipitation and temperature during and after an El Niño, have been difficult to predict with accuracy up till now.

Tipping the Gulf Stream

The other result concerns rate-induced tipping. This kind of climate tipping takes place not because a certain threshold level is reached, like a CO2 level in the atmosphere, but rather because the rate of change is too fast for the system to evolve gradually.

The study - co-authored with Stefano Pierini from the Parthenope University of Naples and published in Scientific Reports, finds rate-induced tipping in a simplified model of the wind-driven ocean circulation for the first time. In this model study, the Gulf Stream - which distributes heat to the North Atlantic and plays an important role in keeping the temperatures in Western Europe relatively mild - tips between regimes when CO2 is introduced at a rapid rate into the model.

A real risk

Such a result is highly relevant as levels of CO2 in the atmosphere currently go up at an unprecedented rate. If the Gulf Stream eventually tips in this rate-induced manner, Western Europe could experience rather abrupt changes to its climate.

"These results indicate that climate tipping is an imminent risk in the Earth System. Even the safe operating space of 1.5 or 2.0 degrees above present generally assumed by the IPCC might not be all that safe. According to the precautionary principle, we must consider abrupt and irreversible changes to the climate system as a real risk - at least until we understand these phenomena better," says Professor Michael Ghil.

The TiPES project is an EU Horizon 2020 interdisciplinary climate science project on tipping points in the Earth system. 18 partner institutions work together in more than 10 countries. TiPES is coordinated and led by The Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

The TiPES project has received funding from the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant agreement number 820970.

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [July 6, 2021] -- New research in the June 2021 issue of JNCCN--Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network assesses the quality of cancer care delivered through extended sites coordinated by some of the country's largest cancer centers. The study was developed to implement strategies for disseminating discoveries and expanding access to the highest quality cancer care as part of AACI's Network Care Initiative, established by former AACI President Stanton L. Gerson, MD, Director of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. Results were calculated based on responses to a mixed-methods survey answered by 69 cancer centers between September 2017 and December 2018, at which time 56 reported at least one network practice site.

Just over half indicated that network sites had full access to the main centers' electronic medical records (EMRs), and even fewer main centers had complete access to records throughout their network sites.

"Our findings demonstrate the need to improve network site alignment, particularly in patient navigators, care paths, and clinical trial access," said Dr. Gerson, the study's lead researcher and interim dean of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "Most federal cancer center reviews do not assess the total population of cancer patients served by major cancer centers and their affiliated sites. These data suggest that a very sizable portion of new cancer cases are cared for by these centers and their networks. Greater cancer center/network coordination could ultimately lead to improved access to clinical trials for the underrepresented communities many of these network sites serve."

According to the survey results, some key opportunities to improve coordination of care include:

Implementing integrated EMRs across networks;

Reviewing best clinical care practices, with more rigorous use of care paths and coordination of diagnosis and treatment planning across sites;

Greater attention and support for cancer clinical trials across network sites; and

Improved physician oversight of clinical and research expectations, hiring, review and other links with cancer center main campus sites.

"Many studies show that consistency through care plans and guidelines improves patient outcomes, clinical response, and survival. More proactive approaches, including care paths, tumor boards across networks, and recognition of the value of placing disease experts at network sites, will improve the standardization of care across sites," Dr. Gerson added.

"Disparities in cancer care outcomes, most significantly patient survival, have been shown between NCI-designated cancer centers and community hospitals, where two-thirds of cancer patients are cared for in the U.S." commented Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, Deputy Director for Clinical Services at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in this research. "Rural cancer programs often have limited cancer physicians representing all relevant specialties and urban safety-net hospitals often have limited financial resources to support high-quality cancer programs. Partnerships between academic cancer centers and community and safety-net hospitals have the potential to improve outcomes for a broader spectrum of cancer patients in the U.S. One might consider support of these cancer programs an obligation of academic cancer centers. This study outlines some potential mechanisms of support."

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began well after this survey closed, and the growing call for increasing diversity in clinical trials, is also driving the need to better integrate network sites as a tool for delivering quality care to underserved populations. On June 7, NCCN presented a webinar on "Utilization of Network Satellite Locations" as part of a series on COVID-19 and Cancer Center Operations. Dr. Shulman was one of the panelists, along with other members of the NCCN Best Practices Committee. That video is available at: NCCN.org/covid-19.